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

Gods In Alabama

Sizzle

Poems by Emily Dickinson

Read-A-Longs

Clarissa

My Book Rating System

A = Excellent in every way
B = Very good story
C  = Good/Average
D = Poor
F = So Bad I couldn't finish it

Archives

Short Story Monday: Arson Plus

Every week I receive a short story from the Library of America. This week’s story was classic detective fiction from none other than Dashiel Hammett. In case you’ve forgotten, Hammett is the genius who created Nick and Nora, Sam Spade/The Maltese Falcon and numerous novels featuring the Continental Detective Agency. This short story, Arson Plus, [...]

Short Story Monday: Chefoo, China by Thornton Wilder

When I was a young girl one of the highlights of our church life was the visits from our missionaries. They always wore native costumes and told us about the countries they came from. Their slide-shows were legendary. My favorite missionaries were always from China. It stirred my imagination to hear about such an exotic [...]

Short Story Monday: Reconstruction Work

I’ve been enjoying Julie/Read Handed‘s Monday posts. She’s been introducing us to Flash Fiction. If you’re like me, you’re saying, “Flash what?” Is this fiction that goes so fast I might miss it if I blink? I’ve learned that Flash Fiction is actually a short short-story. There’s a little controversy as to how many words [...]

Short Story Monday: A Presidential Candidate

Today is the official holiday designated to celebrate, I guess, the birthdays of all US presidents. It used to be that on February 12th we celebrated Lincoln’s birthday and February 22nd we celebrated Washington’s. Now it seems we lump all the presidents together on one day in February. We make it a Monday so we [...]

Short Story: Brother Robber by Helene Christaller

I went looking for simple, classic short stories centered on the celebration of Christmas. I found a nice collection of them called Home For Christmas. Some of the stories from the collection are available for download at The Plough. One story in the collection is this one, a very old tale handed down through many [...]