News, TBR, Quilts

We have been in social isolation but for me it's not been a boon time for reading. It has been hard to concentrate, but I am getting better. Luckily, I read my review books before the last minute.

We have been taking walks around the neighborhood, rarely seeing anyone. There have been dog walkers and some children on bikes, and parents with little ones in strollers. The school across the street is closed down.

But, Spring is showing its face here in S.E. Michigan. The crocus are in bloom, the daylilies and Sedum and daffodils and tulips are growing quickly.

The fitness center is closed, so no working with my coach. The community center is closed and so no visiting with the quilt group. The library is closed so book club is cancelled. The dentist office is closed. The restaurants are closed.

What isn't closed is our kitchen and I have baked a pie and cookies over the last week!

My mother-in-law majored in pie-making and shared this easy recipe with me years ago. Here is the recipe from her recipe book:

I have been making these cookies for close to forty years. I had no chocolate chips in the house so skipped the cocoa powder and substituted butterscotch chips.

I am also practising the piano again. I can almost play as well as I did as a teenager, lol. One music book I pulled out is Herb Alpert songs. I learned them in the summer of 1965, and playing them brings back a lot of memories.

I have finished reading 36 books this year! But of course there are lots more waiting for me.

In the mail:

• The Preserve by Ariel S. Winter. I read the author's novel Barren Cover and my review is quoted in the paperback edition!
• Little Family by Ishmael Beah, author of A Long Way Home: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier

Reading Now:

• Pelosi by Molly Ball
• The King of Confidence by Miles Harvey, about the leader of a cult on Michigan's Beaver Island
• Johnny One-Eye: A Tale of the American Revolution by Jerome Charyn
• Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury was the book club read, now cancelled. Since I haven't read it since the 1970s I want to finish it...sometime...

On my NetGalley and Edelweiss shelf:

• The Story of More by Hope Jahren, author of Lab Girl
• The Jane Austen Society by Natalie Jenner
• The Next Great Migration: The Beauty and Terror of Life on the Move by Sonia Shah
• Chasing Chopin by Annik LaFarge
• The Lost Pianos of Siberia by Sophy Roberts
• Night. Sleep. Death. The Stars. by Joyce Carol Oates
• How Beautiful We Were by Imbolo Mbue, author of Behold the Dreamers
• American Follies by Norman Lock, author of Feast Day of the Cannibals, The Wreckage of Eden, and A Boy in His Winter
• Bronte's Mistress by Finola Austin about Branwell Bronte
• The Truth about Baked Beans: An Edible New England History by Meg Muckenhoupt. (At university, I wrote a paper on the roots of American cooking when colonists had to adapt their traditions to new foods.)  

On my physical bookshelf still to read are review books:

• Simon the Fiddler by Jeanette Jiles
• The Splendid and the Vile by Eric Larson, author of Dead Wake 
• Country by Michael Hughes

Not a great photo, but I finished my yellow roses sampler and it is at the machine quilter.

I am working on the hand appliqued borders for my Hospital Sketches quilt. So many talented quilter have shared their completed quilts on the Facebook page run by the quilt designer Barbara Brackman.

I have three blocks of my many-faces-of-Emily Dickinson quilt. The one I am working on now was my first idea, Emily in her white dress and half hidden behind a curtain, looking out at the world.

The worst part of social isolation is not seeing our son, his girlfriend, and the grandpuppies! Sunny is getting SO BIG!

They are patterning social isolation for us.

I am sad to think that next month's book club may be cancelled. We are to read Miracle Creek and have a Skype visit with the author, Angie Kim.

But we all must do what we must. 

Stay home. Read good books. Enjoy your hobbies. Love your family. Stay safe.