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Robert Leighton

The flower that follows the sun does so even in cloudy days.

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Robert Leighton

Orison Swett Marden

Thrift means that you should always have the best you can possibly afford, when the thing has any reference to your physical and mental health, to your growth in efficiency and power.

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Orison Swett Marden

Frank Crane

Habits are safer than rules; you don't have to watch them. And you don't have to keep them, either. They keep you.

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Frank Crane

Vincent van Gogh

I never get tired of the blue sky.

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Vincent van Gogh

June 26, 2020

Thanks to the readers who wrote last week to note that the flowers in the newsletter were petunias, not pansies. I am not sure what I was thinking, but thanks to Myrna, Molly, Bonnie and Jane for catching this. I was amused by those who told me that “in their part of the country,” they were petunias. They are in ours, too. For humor, Tom Donadio, our Editorial Director --- who triple-checks the newsletter every week, but by his own admission knows nothing about flowers --- actually Googled pansies and thought the petunias looked like them! Which made me feel better. But they ARE petunias.

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Two Truths and a Lie by Meg Mitchell Moore

June 2020

TWO TRUTHS AND A LIE is a brisk read set in the beach town of Newburyport, Massachusetts, which is where author Meg Mitchell Moore lives. She made me want to visit there.

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The Guest List by Lucy Foley

June 2020

THE GUEST LIST by Lucy Foley is set on a remote island off the coast of Ireland.

The bride runs a magazine, and the groom is an actor with a hit show. The attendees include the best man’s fraternity brothers, who harbor a dark secret; the bridesmaid, who is a bit offbeat; the best man’s wife, who knows that her husband had a thing with the bride; and the wedding planner, who is holding it all together.

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The Second Home by Christina Clancy

June 2020

THE SECOND HOME by Christina Clancy hits on a theme to which many baby boomers can relate. The older parents in a family have passed away, and it’s time to figure out what to do with the family vacation home that has been around for the children’s entire lives.

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Rian Aditia

There's nothing sweeter than a cup of bitter coffee.

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Rian Aditia

Ottessa Moshfegh, author of Death in Her Hands

While on her daily walk with her dog in a secluded woods, a woman comes across a note, handwritten and carefully pinned to the ground by stones. "Her name was Magda. Nobody will ever know who killed her. It wasn't me. Here is her dead body." But there is no dead body. With very little to go on, our narrator invents a list of murder suspects and possible motives for the crime. Oddly, her suppositions begin to find correspondences in the real world, and the fog of mystery starts to fade into menacing certainty. As her investigation widens, strange dissonances accrue, perhaps associated with the darkness in her own past. We must face the prospect that there is either an innocent explanation for all this or a much more sinister one.

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