Not That Anyone Asked...

…but you guys I just read the best book and do you want to do a book club with me? For real, I’m not kidding. Let’s do a book club.

So my brain has been impaired since the pandemic shutdown. It’s been quite the five years. Join the club, I know….take a number, yadda yadda. I am aware it’s totally not just me and I’m in excellent company, which is one of the billion reasons that I’m inspired to share this with all of you. Anyway, one of the things that I have struggled with is getting back into reading. I haven’t been able to concentrate long enough to get into a book — or who am I kidding? I wouldn't make it past page one. I’d re-read the first ten sentences again and again, mind racing, or mind blank, perhaps both simultaneously. I have sported a book graveyard pile near my bed since 2020. Stories — all of them probably really excellent books that were abandoned by me on page “vii” Alas. All I’ve really been able to handle is Harry Potter audio books (woo! Jim Dale!) and insta reels about Elephant sanctuaries in Asia and Africa. I’ve always had a thing for elephants. Also, have you seen Sitting With Dogs?? Amazing. Rocky Kanaka is like the kinder, gentler Dog Whisperer. The Cesar Milan that we so badly need right now. When he does that ‘scoop’? I die. Ok, pivoting:

Good News!!!

I recently got back on the brain train, people! So great! All Aboard!! The Briar Club by Kate Quinn is what did it for me, and its such a good book and I want everyone I know to read it so that we can dish about all the characters and the plot twists and turns and hilarity and hijinks that take place, and make the recipes that are in each chapter and cry together about precious and fragile and complicated people and relationships and the magic of one’s chosen family. It’s a murder mystery-meets-romcom-meets-cookbook-meets-historical fiction where you laugh and cry and learn and go OMG she just did WHAT?!?!? And then you read the recipe at the end of every chapter and want to go make it immediately. So smart! Hooked me right in, feeder (and eater) that I am.

Also!

I’m not going to get really political here, but I will say that upon reading The Briar Club, I found immense comfort in the parallels that exist between THAT era and THIS era. If they can get through THAT, then we can get through THIS. And we will. Because we must. Because OMG people, what is happening out there in the world? Not a lot of awesome things. Another solid reason to get lost in a book.

Here’s what it’s about: (no spoilers, don’t worry) Set in Washington, DC, 1950. Everyone keeps to themselves at Briarwood House, a down-at-the-heels all-female boardinghouse in the heart of the nation’s capital where secrets hide behind white picket fences. But when the lovely, mysterious widow Grace March moves into the attic room, she draws her oddball collection of neighbors into unlikely friendship: poised English beauty Fliss, whose facade of perfect wife and mother covers gaping inner wounds; policeman’s daughter Nora, who finds herself entangled with a shadowy gangster; frustrated baseball star Beatrice, whose career has come to an end along with the women’s baseball league of WWII; and poisonous, gung-ho Arlene, who has thrown herself into McCarthy’s Red Scare. Grace’s weekly attic-room dinner parties and window-brewed sun tea become a healing balm on all their lives, but she hides a terrible secret of her own. When a shocking act of violence tears the house apart, the Briar Club women must decide once and for all: who is the true enemy in their midst? Capturing the paranoia of the McCarthy era and evoking the changing roles for women in postwar America, The Briar Club is an intimate and thrilling novel of secrets and loyalty put to the test.

So? Sounds cool, right? Read it! Then message me and we’ll chitty chat all about it. And make some sun tea and Swedish meatballs.

💃🏻📚💋