Welcome

Hi! My name is Margot. My blog is about the things I love to do. That could be what I'm reading, places we visit, my family, food, or whatever else is happening. I hope you'll stay and visit a while. Contact me by email: joyfullyretired (at) gmail (dot) com.

What I’m Reading

BuryYourDeadBury Your Dead

LookingForMe_Looking For Me

CottageGlassBeavhCottage at Glass Beach

Archives

Meet the Lunch Lady

Thanks to National Public Radio (NPR), I’ve discovered a series of fun graphic novels meant for 9 to 12 year olds.. They’re the Lunch Lady books by Jarrett Krosoczka. Have you heard about them? NPR has a book club for kids: Backseat Book Club: Youthful Reads for Junior Brainiacs. The Lunch Lady books are their [...]

Book Review: My Beloved World

Author: Sonia Sotomayor Publisher: Knopf, January 2013/Ramdom House Audio Format: Audiobook, Read by Rita Moreno Genre: Memoir My Rating: A+ Some of us believe that the people who sit in positions of power are born with a silver spoon in their mouths. They are wrong. Sonia Sotomayor’s life proves that there are outstanding exceptions to [...]

Book Review: Kinsey and Me

Author: Sue Grafton Publisher: Penguin Audio Genre: Audiobook, read by Judy Kaye My Rating: B Somewhere in the 1980s I started reading Sue Grafton’s Alphabet series. Right from the beginning with A is for Alibi, I liked the character of Kinsey Millhone. She is like no other fictional detective. Others have tried to copy her, [...]

Book Review: Untold Damages

Author: Robert K. Lewis Publisher: Midnight Ink, April 2013 Genre: Crime Fiction My Rating: B+ Summary: Mark Mallen had been a devoted cop, husband, father and friend. He lost it all while working undercover for the narcotics division of the San Francisco Police Department. He began using heroin because he thought he’d look more authentic [...]

Award-Winning Audiobooks

Did you know they awarded Grammys to audiobooks? I learned that earlier this year. They are called the Grammy Awards for the Best Spoken Word Albums. I got the list and tried to listen to all of the nominees for 2013. Unfortunately, our library only had three of them. I listened to all three and can [...]

Book Review: The Black Box

Author: Michael Connelly Publisher: Little, Brown, and Co., Nov. 2012 Genre: Mystery/Police Procedural My Rating: A The Black Box is Michael Connelly’s latest book featuring Harry Bosch. For those of you who don’t know him, Harry is a detective working for the Los Angeles Police Department. He’s not a super-macho cop who goes around shooting [...]

Book Review: Miss Julia Paints the Town

Author: Ann B. Ross Publisher: Viking Books, 2008 Genre: My Rating: C- One of the people who works at the library, not my favorite librarian, handed me this book. She said, “This book is wildly popular among the older ladies.” That was my first clue. I thought I read only books I picked myself. I [...]

Book Review: The Appeal

Author: John Grisham Publisher: Doubleday, 2008 Genre: Legal Thriller My Rating: A I set a goal for myself for 2013. I promised myself I would try to write my own summary of every book I review this year. When it came to this book, The Appeal, I really did try. The plot is very complicated [...]

Weekend Cooking: Dumpling Soup

A couple of weeks ago a friend took several vacation days from work so she and her daughter (along with nieces and cousins) could spend days making ravioli – hundreds of them. It’s a tradition they’ve done every year a few weeks before Easter. A friend of my mom’s used to do the same with [...]

Book Review: The Missing File

Author:  D.A. Mishani Publisher: Harper, March 19, 2013 Genre: Mystery/Detectivd Fiction My Rating: B+ As you know, I love mysteries and detective fiction. But, in all my reading this is the first time I’ve read a mystery set in Israel. I’m not so naive as to think crimes don’t happen everywhere humans live. But in [...]