Free Libraries For All

I have always imagined that paradise will be a kind of library. —Jorge Luis Borges

I couldn't agree more, Mr. Borges, and while we're imagining, how about little free libraries on every corner as well. Why wait for paradise though when you can have one right in your own front yard? Our Pinterest followers have probably ascertained by now that we're a little in love with Little Free Libraries. Make that a lot of in love. This movement has our name written all over it. As does their British telephone booth model.

I need a Little Free Library for two glorious reasons: to spread book cheer and to add some charm to my charmless suburban neighborhood. Santa, I'm counting on you. I happen to know a cute young reader in Texas with library-building dreams of her own dancing in her head. Fingers crossed for the both of us, Abbie.

To learn more about building your own little library or finding one near you, visit Little Free Library. You can purchase one of their unfinished or finished libraries, or if you're handy with a hammer, build your own. Love the cause but don't have the time or space for your own little library? You can make a donation to help spread literacy around the world, one free little library at a time. A world with free books for all is paradise, indeed.

Posted by Rachel

Weekly Wrap-Up

It’s not a question of whether you will hurt, or of how much you will hurt; it’s a question of what you will do, and how well you will do it, while pain has her wanton way with you.

WHAT WE LOVE THIS WEEK

Young readers. You know what else we love? The Boys in the Boat. Daniel James Brown must love kids as well because he's adapted his lovely book for ages 10 and up. We'd stick with the grownup version for high schoolers, but for kids in 4th-8th grade, you can't beat The Boys in the Boat (Young Readers Adaptation). This should be required reading for all.

Subscribers. Are you one of them? It only takes 5 seconds; we timed it (okay, not really...that would be weird). What do you get for approximately 5 seconds of your sweet time? Never having to worry again about missing a book review—something we're sure is keeping you up at night. We can't sleep thinking about you not sleeping, so put us all out of our sleep-deprived misery and subscribe now. Thanks! We feel better already. (We only email when we post actual reviews, so we're talking 1-2 times a week tops.)

This explains a lot.

Little Free Libraries. We'll love you forever, Santa, if one of these shows up under our tree.

Writing journals inspired by the best of them. How can these covers not spark creativity and brilliance?

You. Which is why we're giving away a boxed set of The Puffin in Bloom Collection on Instagram next week.

COMING NEXT WEEK

A review of Brené Brown's The Gifts of Imperfection.

More on our obsession with Little Free Libraries.

Finding time to read amid the hustle and bustle.

Let's Get To Work

We have failed to recognize our great asset: time. A conscientious use of it could make us into something quite amazing. —Friedrich Schiller

Buy on Amazon

Anthony Trollope wrote three thousand words in three hours every day (that's 250 words per minute) before heading off to his job with the postal service—which he kept for 33 years during the writing of more than two dozen books. If he finished a novel during those 3 hours, he pulled out a clean sheet of paper and started a new one.

Anyone else feeling like a slacker right now? I'll be the first to admit I'm time-challenged. No conscientious use of it going on around here. I identify more with Marilynne Robinson who claims to be "incapable of discipline." Let's just say I'm a work in progress.

No matter where you fall on the routine spectrum, you'll love Mason Currey's Daily Rituals: How Artists Work. It's a fascinating view into how over 150 writers, artists, scientists, mathematicians, and philosophers master the daily grind and get to work doing what they love. An inspiring gift for anyone attempting to follow their passion and live a creative life.

Posted by Rachel

Throwback Thursday

If poisons were ponies, I'd put my money on cyanide.

Move over Nancy Drew, there's a new sleuth in town. A savvy chemist with a penchant for poison, Flavia de Luce balks at danger and loves nothing more than being knee deep in a good mystery. Oh, and she's eleven. Don't let her age fool you into thinking this is a novel for children; this one's for your grownup inner Nancy or Hardy boy.

I fell for Flavia in the first chapter. Mourning a mother she's never known, with a distracted, grieving father and two older sisters who make Cinderella's look benign, Flavia would be left to fend for herself if it weren't for Dogger, her father's factotum—or in non-lovely-British-speak, general servant. How I love Dogger. And Mrs. Mullett, the family's bumbling cook, who is "short and gray and round as a millstone and who....[thinks] of herself as a character in a poem by A. A. Milne."

A dead bird with a postage stamp pinned to its beak is found on the doorstep of Buckshaw, the family's rundown English estate, and within hours, Flavia finds a man, near death, lying in their cucumber patch. He whispers something before taking his last breath, and just like that, Flavia has a bona fide mystery on her hands. 

It also marks the beginning of her mostly love, sometimes hate, relationship with Inspector Hewitt, who starts things off badly when he dares ask Flavia to "rustle up" some tea for he and his detectives, rather than assist in the investigation. "So that was it. As at birth, so at death. Without so much as a kiss-me-quick-and-mind-the-marmalade, the only female in sight is enlisted to trot off and see that the water is boiled."

If you've yet to encounter Alan Bradley's The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie, you are in for a treat. And the treats don't stop there, Bradley has served up seven more Flavia tales over the past six years. This man, who didn't get started until he was 70 (yes, 70!), is on a roll. Asked how he came to be a 70-year-old first time novelist, he responded: "Well, the Roman author Seneca once said something like this: 'Hang on to your youthful enthusiasms--you’ll be able to use them better when you’re older.' So to put it briefly, I’m taking his advice." Apparently, I have years to finish my own novel. To quote Flavia, "Yaroo!"

While I love some books in the series more than others, Flavia has found a constant fan in me.

Posted by Rachel

Ode to Oliver

Once there was a boy and the boy loved stars very much.

Je suis sous le charm.  I’m under a charm—that’s what you’ll think when you pour over an Oliver Jeffers picture book.  If you haven’t encountered Jeffers’ whimsical work on the page, you’ve missed out on adorable, capital A. How to Catch a Star, Lost and Found, The Moose Belongs to Me, Stuck, and all of the others are one part delight and three parts magic. I’m enchanted by Jeffers’ work, can you tell?  

Enchanting is just one lovely reason to pick up a copy of anything illustrated by Jeffers. Don’t discount the value of picture books for your children; they’re important for development.  Here are a few sound reasons why some less text-heavy books should be wrapped and put under your tree this year.  They introduce children to the concept of reading even when they can’t.  This is how your littles will start to read. It will also help young learners connect what they see with how they think.  Karen Lotz, President of Candlewick Press, confirms, “To some degree, picture books force an analog way of thinking.  From picture to picture, as the reader interacts with the book, their imagination is filling in the missing themes.”  It’s safe to say that Socrates, Plato, and a whole lotta other smart guys began a career in thinking with the initial step of looking at pictures with a bit of accompanying text.

I won’t even mention the fact that picture books help kids discover their world, and themselves for that matter, or that they build self-confidence and vocabulary too.  It’s no stretch of the imagination to suggest that these early “must sees” are as comforting as hot cocoa on a glacial winter day.  Marshmallows included.  Besides, they encourage a love of reading from the very beginning.  Jeffers will make bookworms out of your babies.  

Truth is, I buy Jeffers’ books for me. I’m under his spell.  If my kids are lucky, I’ll share a copy with them.  And a cup of hot cocoa too.  

Posted by Tracy

January Book Club Selection

There are three approaches we can take toward our possessions: face them now, face them sometime, or avoid them until the day we die.

Or put them in my closet. Which I suppose is my way of avoiding them until the day I die. My husband and I have a pact: If I die first, he must not, under any circumstances, let anyone see my "ain't nobody walking in" walk-in closet. Especially my mom. No grave is deep enough to bury that guilt.

I take comfort in the fact that I'm not alone (even if it is a fictional character):

Clearly, Monica and I are in desperate need of Marie Kondo's The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up. I picked it up last summer and felt overwhelmed just reading it. I don't trust my follow-through. My past attempts at decluttering have ended with me giving up and shoving everything in, you guessed it, my closet.

Books like these should come with a support group. Which makes it the perfect choice for our first book club selection. That, and it's January: the month we all think we can conquer the world...or at the very least...clutter. We'll post our progress throughout the month and want to hear yours as well: the good, the bad, and especially the ugly. No humming of Sanford and Son here.

More details to come on how our little online book club/support group will work. In the meantime, pick up a copy of the book and get ready for some life-changing magic. If only it came with a wand.

Posted by Rachel

Weekly Wrap-Up

There is nothing in the world so irresistibly contagious as laughter and good humor.

WHAT WE LOVE THIS WEEK

Yelena Bryksenkova's illustrated edition of A Christmas Carol. Our Instagram followers know we're in love with Lisbeth Zwerger's edition as well. We've yet to find a book illustrated by Zwerger that we haven't wanted to snatch up tout suite.

Subscribers! As in you should be one. Thanks to Tracy's incredibly talented and techie friend Ted, you can now sign up to receive emails when we post a book review. We're not looking to flood your inbox—we average 1 - 2 book reviews a week—you should only hear from us a couple times tops. So for a little cheer and book love in a sometimes dreary inbox, subscribe here. Or click on the Subscribe tab with that darling little "new!" above it. That's compliments of Ted as well. We owe this kind man a burger.

The Giving Manger. A beautiful way to put service back in the season and remind us all why we celebrate.

Hot cocoa, a cozy blanket, and a good book. We'll take our cocoa in one of these lovelies, please.

Now this is our kind of Superhero.

Your little library buffs are going to love bringing home their latest finds in this.

Book recommendations. A favorite friend suggested Brené Brown's The Gifts of Imperfection. A timely read as our ever-growing (and largely left undone) holiday to-do lists threaten to melt us into a pool of self-loathing.

COMING NEXT WEEK

A fabulous Instagram giveaway.

Our January Book Club selection.

Bookshop dreaming.

Bless Your Crooked Little Heart

Hobbies are for people who don't read books.

Noel Bostock had me on the second page with this gem: "Hobbies are for people who don't read books." Hear, hear! I suppose it's really his late godmother, Mattie, who had me—it was her saying, after all. She's brimming with nuggets of wisdom: "What is the one thing that is more important than money? Taste." Which calls to mind my mantra, via Dorothy Parker, "I've never been a millionaire, but I just know I'd be darling at it."

But enough about how darling I'd be. Back to Crooked Heart.

Desperate times call for desperate measures...and unlikely allies. You won't find two unlikelier than Noel Bostock and Vera Sedge. You will, however, find yourself rooting for them.

Noel, a ten year old evacuee during the London Blitz, finds himself housed with Vera, or Vee, a thirty-six-year-old widower and small-time con artist, drowning in debt and disappointment. Having spent years scraping by, caring for her mute mother and selfish son, Vee takes Noel in on a whim—hoping to use his limp and perceived daftness to her monetary advantage. For his part, Noel, who prefers books to people, has lost all interest in a world no longer inhabited by his godmother, the only family he's ever known. Roaming the bombed suburbs of London, cooking up schemes to make money off the giving hearts of others, Vee and Noel forge a hope-saving kinship—reminding us of the sage words of Sartre: "Home is other people."

Evans's tale is a black comedy set in a war-ravaged country—as unlikely a combination as Vee and Noel. Fortunately for us, it works as well as they do. I've long been a fan of humor's healing powers.

Posted by Rachel