May’s Mutterings: Rants and Ramblings
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Book review: True Grit by Charles Portis
True Grit by Charles Portis My rating: 4 of 5 stars I used to be an avid reader of Westerns, but this hasn’t been true for decades (literally). However, I read a commentary on the place “True Grit” should hold in the pantheon of books and decided to read it. All I knew beforehand was…
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Book review: Invisible Child by Andrea Elliott
Invisible Child: Poverty, Survival & Hope in an American City by Andrea Elliott My rating: 4 of 5 stars This book was recommended to me by a mentor of mine, and I am so glad she made the recommendation. The author, who is a reporter at the New York Times, follows one family and, in…
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Christmas in Hawaii 2023 (dedicated to “Mommy and the Troops”)
I wouldn’t call spending Christmas in Honolulu a tradition for us, exactly, but it is certainly lovely when the calendar for the 4 of us align and make it possible. And so it was thisyear, when we spent 11 glorious days in paradise, enjoying the sun, ocean, and surf. The theme for this year’s stay…
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Book review: The Recovery Agent by Janet Evanovich
The Recovery Agent by Janet Evanovich My rating: 3 of 5 stars This is the first in a new series by a well-known mystery author, Janet Evanovich, who writes the Stephanie Plum series. Gabriela Rose is a “recovery agent,” someone who is retained to find lost/stolen/missing items. And this time she is off to find…
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Book review: The Murder of Mr Wickham by Claudia Gray
The Murder of Mr. Wickham by Claudia Gray My rating: 3 of 5 stars The premise of the book is clever–the author has taken many of the characters from Jane Austen novels, thrown them together, and murdered one of them (no spoilers, but based on the title, it’s clear which character it is). Then, two…
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Rainbows and Shave Ice (plus Lawyers, Guns & Money!)
We returned earlier this month from a fabulous vacation in Hawaii! Highlights include: — Visits from all of our children: Jade could only stay for a week but managed to spend a dinner explaining her research in combinatorics (which was summarized by us mere mortals as “counting triangles”). Yinan stayed for 2 weeks, and Jim…
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Three Galas and a Photo Op
We are fond of galas, especially ones where we (or our hosts) have our own tables and, therefore, we can chat with our friends (or make new ones). We are less fond of photo ops, but they can sometimes be entertaining, generally for reasons other than the actual photo op itself. April/May have been a…
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Book review: Killers of a Certain Age by Deanna Raybourn
Killers of a Certain Age by Deanna Raybourn My rating: 4 of 5 stars This is a difficult-to-place genre of a book, which I really enjoyed). A group of middle-aged female assassins are retiring, but someone is trying to kill them, and they have to “unretire” long enough to fend off attempts to kill them…
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Holiday 2022
While many people think of the holiday season as consisting of snow and hot chocolate and other winter festivities, we much prefer sun and ocean and warmth for the holidays. And so off we went to Hawaii for Christmas!Honolulu never disappoints. (Nor does the Halekulani where we were staying.). We enjoyed warmth and ocean views.…
Got any book recommendations?