Like many in my generation and those that are coming after, I’ve been trying to get a handle on my screen-time use the last few years. I’ve tried many different strategies: deleting apps, trading a smartwatch for an analog, leaving the phone in a different room, setting limits and replacing technology with real-life hobbies. All of these have worked, for a while, but then I go back to my phone like a middle-aged woman to her stash of dark chocolate. Besides the inability to

I recently listened to The Woman at the Wheel by Penny Haw. This audiobook detailed the life of Bertha Ringer who was married to Karl Benz the inventor of the first horseless carriage, widely regarded as the father of the modern automobile. He spent his life designing and perfecting his inventions and she spent her life being interested in and supporting him and his work.. Like many books about women these days, this was a feminist empowerment book. Much of the theme of the

Why I read I read because of things I don’t have: Severe physical and mental difficulties Dyslexia ADHD A cruel or abusive spouse A full-time job A war-torn country Or an unsafe neighborhood And because of things I do: Time Attention Economic means Interest Ability Access to a library Education. I read because I couldn’t watch TV in the middle of the day while my toddlers were playing, but I could listen to a book. I read because focusing on my exhaustion at 2 am with a newbo

In The Unselected Journals of Emma Lyon by Beth Brower, one of the main characters (Islington) has his Thursdays. Thursdays are a day when he doesn’t commit to doing things he doesn’t want to do. A day when he has his friends over, and there is no agenda other than to read good books, eat good food, and make the occasional comment, but only if you want to. I think that is lovely. What would you do on a Thursday? I've tried for years to have my own version of Thursdays, but a

In the end of The Quest for the Silver Fleece, one of the main characters, Mary, who started out as a bright and promising school teacher is left sickly, barely functioning and divorced. Even though her story starts out a happy one, it ends unhappily. And that is something some readers hate. Many readers love rosy endings where everyone rides off into the sunset: handsome, charming, beautiful and fulfilled and though, I admit, I am a sucker for a good ending, it is not a requ

Laying on the floor of my messy teenage bedroom, a Coke in one hand and Les Miserables in the other I fell in love with reading for the first time. I had procrastinated this particular reading until the end and some long-forgotten assignment loomed on the horizon. So, I had determined to stay up until I finished the book, hence the need for a Coke, but somewhere between the main character, Jean Valjean deciding he would live a changed life and sacrificing that life for the a

It took me 2 months of grueling effort to slog through Crime and Punishment. Since I normally read a book a week, this was very out of character. Of course, some of this could be the newborn daughter I often held in my arms when I read, but it wasn’t all her fault. It was also the fault of Dostoevsky and the literary market of the 1800’s which, true to form, had published the book in 12 installments in a literary journal, making it long and complicated. It was also because of