Yellow Wallpaper

For the record, I'm not a big fan of Adele. Mr. Fob bought her first album back in 2008 and listened to it a lot, and I never really liked it. He bought an album from someone else with a similar voice at the same time, and I think I mixed them up a bit in my head, but either way I hated them both. I just found her voice to be a little too grating for me. But, I've had "Hello" stuck in my head for the past few days (along with most of the English-speaking world I'm sure). Friday would have been our fourteenth anniversary. I tried to tell myself that it didn't matter, but I was still sad. In an even weirder coincidence, that evening I ended up driving past the church where we had our wedding reception and the apartment where I lived while we were engaged (we'd planned to live there, but got into campus housing instead). It's hard to believe that fourteen years have already passed since then--some things have changed a lot and some have not. But, really...

The Other Daughter by Lauren Willig  Willig has become one of my favorite authors for romantic historical fiction (if you like Kate Morton, you should try Lauren Willig). Some of her other books have used a structure that alternates between the present and the past, but this one is set completely in the past (early 1920s England) and has a more straightforwardly linear structure than some of Willig's other books that I've read. It was a fun read and I enjoyed the story; the resolution to the mystery also surprised me as well. The characters all felt a little flat, however, and I would have enjoyed the book more if it had had more emotional depth. Death Comes to Pemberley by P.D. James This was our book club read for the month, and we all agreed that it was kind of boring. On the one hand, James avoids a lot of the problems that I've seen in other homages to Austen. She stayed fairly true to the characters and the time period in which the books were set. However, the...

A Desperate Fortune by Susanna Kearsley I have not read anything by Kearsley before, but after reading this book I've decided to look for more of her books to see if I enjoy them as much as this one. I thought she did a great job balancing the historical story with the contemporary one, and I felt that both were equally compelling. There were some elements of the present-day romance that seemed a bit far-fetched, but I still enjoyed suspending my disbelief and enjoying the ride. Better than Before: Mastering the Habits of our Everyday Lives by Gretchen Rubin I've already talked about this book on another post , so I won't say much here. I think this could be a useful book to re-read in pieces, rather than trying to read through all at once. All the Bright Places by Jennifer Niven Sometimes I think I'm getting too old to read YA fiction, because when I read books like this where so much could be avoided by parents that paid attention to what their kids are d...

A few weeks ago I had a moment of insight after reading a blog post about self-care. The author described learning to take of herself after having a moment with a needy child, and realizing that she was good at taking care of her children by feeding them nutritious foods, helping them get enough sleep, and so on. I've read a lot about "taking care of yourself" and I thought I was doing that, but after reading the article I think that I really haven't been. I've always been the kind of mom who really worries about the physical needs of her children--I try to feed them good food, buy them comfortable clothes they like, limit their screen time, and enforce appropriate bedtimes. And yet, as soon as they aren't home or are in bed, I stay up late, use the computer too much, and eat way too much unhealthy food. Because I'm an adult.  Well, if too little sleep and too much sugar are bad for my kids, why do I do that to myself? Why hadn't I thought of this be...