Dear Reader

Dear Reader Column - September 3, 2024

Dear Reader,

Today's special guest, Ava Glass is the author of the espionage series Alias Emma. Ava Glass is a pseudonym for a former crime reporter and civil servant. Her time working for the government introduced her to the world of spies, and she's been fascinated by them ever since. She lives and writes in the south of England.

Ava's new book is The Trap. British spy Emma Makepeace races against the clock to stop the Russians from carrying out a high-profile assassination in this gripping thriller.

Join Ava's book club and win free books on her website: www.AvaGlass.co.uk, or follow her on social media: @AvaGlassBooks

Welcome Ava!

Moving Away

I didn't consciously choose to become an expat, although when I was hired by a London publisher in 1999 and moved to Britain, I joked to my friends that I was an economic migrant. In reality the plan, as I explained to my parents, was to work in London for two years, and then return to the US and settle down.

Although I didn't know it yet, that wasn't going to happen.

I arrived at Heathrow on a cool September morning, and spent two hours at immigration having my visa checked by a kindly older man who never once gave the impression he doubted my paperwork while also keeping me standing at his desk until my feet hurt. When I finally reached the baggage department, my suitcase was making its thousandth solo spin on the luggage carousal and everyone else from my plane was long gone. My adventure had begun.

That afternoon, after depositing my bags at my new place, I walked around my east London neighbourhood for the first time, and fell in love. Over the coming days, I would fall in love with more than that.

I loved my job as an editor and writer, and I adored London, and more than that--I fell madly in love with Britain. I liked its winding one-lane roads, and its soft constant rain, and the way everyone handled a crisis with steady lack of hysteria. As if it would be silly to get excited about something tiny like a bombing or a riot.

Sangfroid is one of my favourite descriptions. It comes from the French: 'sang froid' or 'cool blood.' The British had the cool blood I needed in my life.

I liked the changing of the seasons, from lukewarm summer to chilly autumn, when my feet crunched on a carpet of fallen acorns and golden leaves tangled themselves in my hair. Later, I was fascinated by winter at this northern latitude where the sun set in mid-afternoon and the moon rose at four o'clock.

I had always lived a peripatetic life. My parents moved constantly when I was a child, and as an adult I'd emulated them, living in four states in the five years after I'd graduated from college. Each move was interesting and brought me new friends, but no place ever truly felt like home. In fact, I wasn't certain I knew what home was. Home was an illusion.

England felt like home. Home had found me at last.

-- Ava Glass

www.AvaGlass.co.uk

* I hope you enjoyed reading today's guest column. If you're one of the winners, or your entry is an Honorable Mention in this year's Write a DearReader contest, it will be featured as a guest column. Cash prizes, rules and deadlines, along with last year's winning entries, read all about them at: https://www.dearreader.com/contest2024/index.html

Thanks for reading with me. It's so good to read with friends.

Suzanne Beecher
[email protected] 

Dear Reader Column - August 27, 2024

Dear Reader,

Cynthia Reeves, today's guest, is the author of three books of fiction: her new novel The Last Whaler the novel in stories Falling Through the NewWorld and the novella Badlands. 

Her lifelong interest in the Arctic began in childhood reading tales of doomed Arctic explorers. But it was her participation in the 2017 Arctic Circle Summer Solstice Expedition, which sailed Svalbard's western shores, as well as two subsequent residencies in Longyearbyen, that have inspired her writing since then. In August 2024, she will circumnavigate Svalbard aboard an icebreaker carrying a hundred artists, scientists, and crew.

Cynthia shares more about herself at: cynthiareeveswriter.com.

Five signed hardcovers means five lucky readers will win a copy of The Last Whaler...an elegiac meditation on the will to survive under extreme conditions. To enter the drawing, go to: https://www.cynthiareeveswriter.com/contact Please put DEAR READER on the subject line.

Why Maine?

Hand in hand, my father and I walked past the sold sign and his childhood home, the old cape where he grew up an only child on this remote farm in South Hope, Maine. We paused in front of the barn, now a skeleton of timbers. The door, silent on its hinges, stood open as if to welcome us one final time. Within, emptiness yawned in the very place his father tended to the last of thirty years of four o'clock, winter-dark mornings, milking his brindled heifers while outside, moonfall gilded the distant blueberry ridges copper-gold. 

Did my father imagine, as I did, his father perched on a stool, pulling udders in rhythm as milk filled a tin pail? Did he see my grandfather's grip falter, hands calloused by years of back-breaking labor, how quietly he lay down to still his restless heart as a thin column of milk rivered the hay? Did he hear the lowing of the cow whose udders yet ached, a whole vocabulary of loss in that sorrowful sound?

As a child, I'd summered on my grandparents' farm at the end of their gravel road, surrounded by dense poplars and hemlocks, framed by hills bearing the blueberry bushes we bent to harvest each August with scoop-like rakes. Breakfast was always piping hot blueberry pie with vanilla ice cream, afternoons spent swimming in the frigid waters of nearby Hobbs Pond, and evenings passed in rooms heated by roaring fires, even in summer. Nostalgia rooted in me the hope that the farm would pass down, generation to generation.

It wasn't to be.

But.

After a lifetime in the Philadelphia suburbs, I moved with my husband to Camden, Maine, to an old sea captain's house eight miles from my father's
childhood home and across from the harbor where my grandfather laid the granite walls that hold back the rushing waters of the Megunticook River as it spills into the Penobscot Bay. People wonder why we retired to one of the coldest of the United States. I wonder, too, when I'm shoveling out from the umpteenth snowstorm or leaning into a fierce maritime wind. The consolations are many, however: Driving past the old farm now reached by paved roads. Sharing meals with my father's friends--one just turned 92--as they tell stories of growing up in the 1930s and 40s with Dad, now gone five years. And most often, walking the carved and mortared stones beside the falls where my grandfather once knelt, icy water sluicing over his numbed hands, on the living side of the Megunticook.

-- Cynthia Reeves

cynthiareeveswriter.com.

Five signed hardcovers means five lucky readers will win a copy of The Last Whaler...an elegiac meditation on the will to survive under extreme conditions. To enter the drawing, go to: https://www.cynthiareeveswriter.com/contact Please put DEAR READER on the subject line.

* I hope you enjoyed reading today's guest column. If you're one of the winners, or your entry is an Honorable Mention in this year's Write a DearReader contest, it will be featured as a guest column. Cash prizes, rules and deadlines, along with last year's winning entries, read all about them at: https://www.dearreader.com/contest2024/index.html

Thanks for reading with me. It's so good to read with friends.

Suzanne Beecher
[email protected] 

Dear Reader Column - August 20, 2024

Dear Reader,

Our Guest Author today is Roberta Samuels, she writes: 

Dear Gentle Reader, It's my pleasure to tell you a little about myself. I earned degrees in French and Art History from Northwestern University and the University of Paris at the Sorbonne.

My latest book, Missing: A Modern Art Masterpiece in a French Village, an art mystery novella. The starting point for my books is based on my experiences living in an 18th century farmhouse and then in a medieval townhouse in a picturesque French village. The books are based on actual people and events around which I weave a fictional story. I research my topics and draw upon my former work as a French teacher, translator, tour escort and art gallery owner. I speak French fluently. I live in New York City and Montpezat de Quercy, France, with my partner.

Missing: A Modern Art Masterpiece in a French Village, recounts an American couple's search for a famous abstract artwork made by renowned modern artist, Sonia Delaunay. Delaunay was purportedly commissioned to create an artwork for the medieval church in the charming French village where the couple spend each summer. However, no such cultural attraction, which would bring needed tourism income to the village, is to be found there. Barbara and Sam set off to find it.

I would be delighted to learn about you, so please email me at [email protected]. Red Penguin Books will send a free copy of Missing: A Modern Art Masterpiece in a French Village, to three correspondents with my compliments.

The Charm Bracelet

My charm bracelet is a relic from another time, the 14 karat gold equivalent of the dodo.The first charm I received when I was eight years old is my favorite. It is a miniature gold replica of the Empire State Building.The Empire State Building charm has an ingenious secret built into its golden base. If I squint through a little round periscope window, I can spy a very large magnified image of the Statue of Liberty. Two, two iconic New York landmarks in one little charm!

Each year on my birthday, as I was theoretically growing more and more charming, I would be gifted with another bauble. Some of them were chosen to commemorate our family trips to Florida. One of them is in the shape of the state of Florida. Next to the Florida state charm is a seahorse charm with a diamond eye.

Some of the charms on my bracelet were chosen because of my interests or talents. One of them is in the shape of a graceful woman diving into the water. It was selected because I have always been a good swimmer.

There is also a charm of a ballerina dancing, holding a little pearl, the hem of her full skirt set with rubies. I was never a good dancer but I took lessons and I tried.

My charm bracelet was almost obsolete from the year it was completed in 1967. In the upheaval of the Age of Aquarius, a simply made peace sign suspended on a leather cord was much more desirable than a showy charm bracelet.

Although most fashion trends recycle after 50 years or so, charm bracelets have never had another day in the sun and I think I know why.

A charm bracelet symbolizes an archaic ideal. The out-of-date ideal of a charming, inoffensive, ineffective female has metamorphosed into the ideal of a strong, capable and independent woman who can do anything. The new ideal woman's embellishments are sleek and minimalist, pared down, the antithesis of a complicated, dangly adornment.

Come to think of it though,Taylor Swift might wear a charm bracelet. She manages to embody the new ideal woman and the older ‘feminine' values at the same time which might be part of her enormous success.

Even if I don't wear it, my beautiful bracelet is an indispensable keepsake. I'd never part with such a well-meaning expression of my parents' love and concern for me.

-- Roberta Samuels

I would be delighted to learn about you, so please email me at [email protected]. Red Penguin Books will send a free copy of Missing: A Modern Art Masterpiece in a French Village, to three correspondents with my compliments.

Thanks for reading with me. It's so good to read with friends.

Suzanne Beecher
[email protected] 

Dear Reader Column - August 13, 2024

Dear Reader,

I'm pleased to welcome Guest Author Frances Mayes to the book club today. Frances is the author of the classic Under the Tuscan Sun, which was a New York Times bestseller for more than two and a half years and became a movie starring Diane Lane.

Frances' other international bestsellers include Bella Tuscany, Every Day in Tuscany, A Year in the World, and three illustrated books: In Tuscany, Bringing Tuscany Home, and The Tuscan Sun Cookbook. Mayes is also the author of two novels, Swan and Women in Sunlight, six books of poetry, and The Discovery of Poetry. Her most recent books are See You in the Piazza and Always Italy. Her writing has been translated into more than fifty languages.

Her  brand new release is A Great Marriage... When a perfect wedding is called off just days before the big event, it sends two people--and their families--reeling.

Welcome to the book club, Frances...

When I walk into a library or bookstore, my first reaction is always a little shiver--all those books. The colossal effort! All that flailing in the dark recesses of the imagination or just the recesses of research. Whatever the subject, writing a book (whether good, bad, or indifferent), is a momentous accomplishment. My new novel, A Great Marriage, is about to join those others on the packed shelves. The feeling is like one I had in childhood when I pushed off onto the lake a little paper boat with a lighted birthday candle.

I love my characters, loved naming them and giving them their personalities and passions. Now that the last line is written, they are launched. I'm left to wonder how they've moved on, what they're thinking, and even if some of them are still alive. Since the book is set in 1995, much has happened in their lives by 2024. This sounds fanciful, but it connects to the involvement novelists develop with the people they've spun from their imaginations. Writing a novel, you're creating a world of your making, but you quickly realize that your characters won't just respond to the strings your fingers are pulling; they have--once you've given them the spark of life--their own plans.

This is my third novel. Having written memoir, travel narratives, poetry, and cookbooks, I've learned how different the writing is in each genre. (Probably for my career, I would have been better off if I had stuck to one mode.) For me, the variety has been an enormous learning curve. Memoir tries to recreate a time of life. I've got the story. I work on structure, finding the voice, word choice, sentences I hope are immortal, and deciding what to leave out and still tell the truth. Travel narratives are fun. I get to travel and read about the places I'm going. Delve into history, literature, music, art, cuisine--all great fun. I try to see the place from the inside out not the outside in. I must be careful with facts and with possible omissions. Poetry is the language art and is the best writing teacher of all because you learn imagery and pacing and compression and rhythm. I was fortunate to write, study, and teach it for many years. Cookbooks? The concept and the gathering of recipes feels creative but the tedium of the quarter teaspoon and the size of the pot and the thousand details, well, I'll just say two is enough. The reward is holding the book and seeing all your favorite recipes going out as a gift to a cook wanting something delicious.

Of the genres, I cannot pick a favorite. But as my novel escapes into the world, I can only say, Go little boat. Now, I can line up my pens and legal pads and wait for that moment when the next project announces itself.

-- Frances Mays

https://francesmayesbooks.com/#books

Thanks for reading with me. It's so good to read with friends.

Suzanne Beecher
[email protected] 

Dear Reader Column - August 6, 2024

Dear Reader,

Today's Guest Author, Allia Zobel Nolan has written, at last count, over 150 books. They range from the Divine (inspirational books and Bible-based books for children) to the feline, (over ten books about cats and their antics).

Allia is absolutely thrilled about her latest children's book, Harriet Hurry-Up and the Oh-So-Slow Day. The topic is about something she herself struggles with: learning to wait. Both kids and adults alike can read about how to deal with impatience and the surprise ending makes this a delightfully fun book.

Send Allia an email, say "Hello" and your name will be entered in a drawing for one of three copies of Harriet Hurry-Up and the Oh-So-Slow Day. Reach out to Allia via [email protected]

To see Allia's latest books go to: www.AlliaWrites.com.

My Achilles Heel Walks on Four Feet

I consider myself a forceful woman--not given to many crutches. No nightlight keeps vigil while I sleep. Spiders don't make me squeamish. I know where the oil goes in my car. Still, I do have this one Achilles heel. It's my cats. I love them too much.

I admit it: I'm cat codependent. It's an addiction I've struggled with all my life. But happily, these days, I'm not alone. Women (and men) everywhere have caught on to what I've known for years: There's no getting "enough" of cats.

Still, it wasn't always like this. In the days before cats ruled social media, people thought I was a joke, the infamous cat lady gone over the edge.

"Did you notice her upper lip?" one of my business associates cackled. "She looks like she's sprouting whiskers."

"Yeah, and her briefcase stinks of salmon," another answered. "It's horribly unprofessional."

"What about those earrings?" yet another associate chimed in. "She makes them from her cats' fur. Disgusting."

Yet, what did those naysayers know? Back then, the general populace thought a cat was, well, just a cat. It's only recently people have come to see them as the loyal, loving, entertaining creatures they are. It's only today the cat reclaims the honored place she had back when pharaohs wore snakes on their heads and people rode to work on chariots.

Even today, though, some people still snicker that I go overboard. They don't realize I'm in recovery. Why only last week, I bought scoopable on sale instead of the designer brand
litter I've imported in the past. I saved two bucks, but I felt like a cad.

Truth is I have had to cut back in other ways, too. And it almost broke my heart. It isn't easy explaining to fur children who're used to having the air-conditioning and PBS on all day that they have to sweat and look out the window. But I have put my foot down. I no longer open up tin after tin of cat food to find one they like. I've set a limit of nine. And I've canceled the cats' animal enrichment classes with Ulma.

But things take time. And I'm working on it. But for now, Nolan needs his temples massaged. He gets those awful sinus headaches when he stays out all night. Then, maybe I'll surprise the kitties with a real treat. I mean how hard can it be to give a cat a French manicure?

How about you? Do you spoil your kitties? I bet you do.

-- Allia Zobel Nolan

[email protected]

Thanks for reading with me. It's so good to read with friends.

Suzanne Beecher
[email protected] 

Dear Reader Column - July 30, 2024

Dear Reader,

Today's guest author, Mary Fleming, is originally from Chicago, and moved to Paris in 1981, where she worked as a freelance journalist and consultant before turning full-time to writing fiction. Her previous novels are Someone Else and The Art of Regret. She chronicles her French life between Paris and the Perche (Normandy) in the photo-essay, A Paris-Perche Diary.

Mary's new novel is Civilisation Française: When recent college graduate Lily Owens enrolls in the Civilisation Française course at the Sorbonne in 1982, she hopes to put a difficult childhood behind her and to find direction for her future. She moves into a mansion on the place des Vosges where her job is to help the housekeeper, Germaine, care for the elderly, half-blind Amenia Quinon, another ex-pat American. The three women live alone in this old house of silence and secrets, mostly revolving in their own worlds. When Lily extends an invitation to a friend, all of their lives are upended.

Reach out to author Mary Fleming via Instagram: @flemingm6

SERENDIPITY

The first day of my freshman year, the college president welcomed our incoming class with a speech about serendipity, a word I did not know. I was so taken by the idea of 'the happiness of discovery' that I can still see myself leaning forward in that chapel pew, hanging on his every word.

Fully understanding the concept, though, is another matter, and it's possible the penny didn't fully drop until 30 years later in Paris. Late one evening, just after New Year, I went downstairs to walk Lily the Labrador. As I opened the door to the courtyard, out of the dark another dog came towards me with frightened, pleading eyes.

The building's gardienne didn't know where she came from, so I walked her, took her upstairs with Lily. From the tattoo in her ear (pet ID in France before the age of microchips), I had the name of the owner, but Madame C never answered my increasingly urgent messages.

My husband said: "There is no way we're keeping that dog." I could see his point. We already had one largish shedding creature and five children, quite enough to fill an urban household. But I couldn't hand her over to the pound. No one I approached wanted her.

In the meantime, the unnamed dog, who had the coat of a golden retriever and the body of Border collie, was not idle. She made a personal appeal to each member of the family. Paws on the lap, a lick of the face, an irresistibly penetrating, loving look, straight into the eye of the beholder, as if no one else in the world existed. She didn't even bark.

Despite the fact she was not housetrained, even my husband cracked. My daughter said: "Mum, it's fate."

Indeed. Elsa stayed.

She and Lily became great pals, and Elsa was as bereft as we were when Lily died. Though only obedient when she felt like it, her joie de vivre was irrepressible and highly contagious. Those eyes, that soft face, lit up the lives of everyone in her orbit. They spoke whole sentences. Right to the end we wondered if this enchanting creature of unknown origin was 100 per cent canine. In the countryside I was afraid she'd be taken for a fox and shot. At other times she seemed to possess traits of cats, deer, hares.

I don't know what I would have done without Elsa when we moved half-time to Berlin. She was the conduit through which I explored the city--was at the origin of the online Diary I began writing then and still write today. Her arrival in our courtyard that night turned out to be living proof of serendipity.

-- Mary Fleming

@flemingm6

Thanks for reading with me. It's so good to read with friends.

Suzanne Beecher
[email protected] 

Dear Reader Column - July 23, 2024

Dear Reader,

Please welcome today's guest author Detective Kim Mager, a 30-year law enforcement officer, who retired from the Ashland City Police in 2022. Kim works for a prosecutor's office and still holds a law enforcement commission. She specializes in sex offenses, violent crime, and child abuse and has investigated over 2,000 cases. Kim has a BA from Ashland University and graduated Top Gun of her Police Academy. She is married to husband, Dan, and they have three children, Corbin, Macy, and Reed.

Kim's new true crime title (with Lisa Pulitzer) is, A Hunger to Kill: A Serial Killer, a Determined Detective, and the Quest for a Confession That Changed a Small Town Forever. In this fascinating and profoundly chilling account, Detective Kim Mager, a real-life version of Clarice Starling, reveals how she closed in on-and broke-one of Ohio's most infamous serial killers.

You could win one of three copies of A Hunger to Kill. Send an email with your preferred shipping address (in case you're a winner) to: [email protected]

Finding Solitude

 As a detective, I've spent 30 years interviewing victims of sex offenses and violent crimes. I've sat across from countless suspects and relentlessly pursued their confessions. There have been many times when I have felt like I was suffocating upon entering a scene or when hearing a victim recount their trauma. There never seemed to be a right time to process what I had seen and heard because It wasn't about me, it was about the job I had to do. It was impacting me incrementally and it wasn't apparent to me for most of my career. I spent all of my time looking ahead and focusing on what I needed to do next. I mistakenly believed that because my cases were successful, that was the measure of whether I was okay. I was so wrong.

I reside back along a lane that is so far off the road, you can't hear traffic. I'm surrounded by rolling hills, trees, and a moving creek. For the majority of my career, I took it all for granted. A while back, after a particularly difficult case, I found myself walking my property. I didn't have a plan--I just felt a strong need to go. I walked until I found a small, grassy area between a pine grove and a hardwood forest. I sat down on the ground next to a century-old fallen tree with outgrown roots. I looked around and was taken by the natural beauty surrounding me. I became quiet and still. I felt so small and alone, almost apprehensive. I was afraid to even think because I feared losing control. I looked all around, with an unusual awareness. I could see the sun breaking through the trees, in glowing rays. I could smell the earthy decay of the forest floor, and I noticed the distinct scent of the walnut trees. Birds were rhythmically calling to each other and two squirrels were effortlessly jumping tree-to-tree. I could hear the water rippling over the river rock in the shallow creek. I had lived in the midst of all of that, but on that day, it was different. 

I sat in silence, in a state of repressive coping. After a long pause, I slowly submitted and allowed myself to cautiously reflect. I stayed there for hours, giving thought to my cases, my family, my faith, and my purpose. I began to consciously focus on connecting with myself. I started to feel less alone. It felt surreal. I then realized I had been missing something. I didn't know I was looking for it, but I had found it--solitude. I found a space where I could connect exclusively with myself. A place where I could breathe. 

I now recognize the importance of encouraging others to find solitude. It doesn't have to be in the middle of a forest; it can be anywhere. It's simple, yet profound. Solitude is a state of being alone without feeling lonely. Solitude allows us to stay grounded and reconnect with ourselves. It lets us find calmness and inner focus. It's so critical to our well-being.

Although it took many years, I'm so thankful for the ability to reflect.

I'm drawn to that peaceful spot.

-- Kim Mager

You could win one of three copies of A Hunger to Kill Send an email with your preferred shipping address (in case you're a winner) to: [email protected]

Thanks for reading with me. It's so good to read with friends.

Suzanne Beecher
[email protected] 

Dear Reader Column - July 16, 2024

Dear Reader,

Today's guest, Laura Pritchett, is the author of seven novels. Known for championing the complex and contemporary West and giving voice to the working class, her books have garnered the PEN USA Award, the Milkweed National Fiction Prize, the WILLA, the High Plains Book Award, and others. She's also the author of two nonfiction books, one play, and edited three environmental-based anthologies. She directs the MFA in Nature Writing at Western Colorado University. When not writing or teaching, she's generally found exploring the mountains of her home state of Colorado.

Laura's new book is Three Keys...Newly widowed and unemployed, a woman in her mid-fifties sets off on a journey of trespassing and adventure through the American West and beyond in this witty, thought-provoking novel.

See the details below about how you could win one of five signed copies of Three Keys.

Welcome to the book club Laura...

I somewhat shyly admit it: During the pandemic, I became a bit of a "prepper." At night, I occupied my brain by considering what to do if the water supply fritzed--fill bathtubs and pans at first opportunity! In the day, I added fruit trees to my little orchard in the foothills of Colorado's Rocky Mountains--peaches would feed my family! It doesn't take an expert to see what my brain and heart were doing--I was scared, I wanted some control and sense of safety in uncertain times.

As someone who grew up on a ranch, and with brothers who took me camping, I have some of that how-to knowledge. I know where wild asparagus grows, I can catch and cook a fish. But the pandemic had me contemplating all that I do not know, which is plenty, and take for granted, which is even more. Didn't we all ponder our access to electricity and water and fuel (and even toilet paper!)?

My nervous system has since calmed. But I don't regret this time of what some might call neurotic and loopy behavior. For me, it was clarifying. For one thing, I have a bigger orchard, and apricots and peaches are on their way! For another thing, I've sat with my mortality, the transience of things, and my fears. While I recognize I likely need cortisol-free calm more than I need fishing line and water purifiers, I now have both.

I know I'm not alone in this. Enrollment in survival courses has increased dramatically since covid--everything from urban survival, naturalist schools, and outdoor survival camps--and learning, or re-learning, some of this is not a totally bad idea. Self-sufficiency can lead to empowerment, even as we recognize that we are dependent upon our community. My new book, The "Three Keys" came out of this push-pull between independence and dependence.

And at the end of the day, who doesn't like a good survival story? Whether in real life or in fiction, it's one of the greatest human endeavors: To get scrappy, think our way out of unique scenarios, overcome the odds, and to feel like we are sturdy souls, capable of strengths we didn't know we had. And sometimes, we get some extra fruit to boot.

What makes you feel empowered? I love to hear from readers and you can find me at [email protected]. I'm giving away 5 signed copies of my book, Three Keys so drop me a line.

-- Laura Pritchett

www.laurapritchett.com

Thanks for reading with me. It's so good to read with friends.

Suzanne Beecher
[email protected] 

Dear Reader Column - July 10, 2024

Dear Reader,

Please welcome today's guest author, Dr. Kathleen Sheppard. She is a Professor in the History and Political Science department at Missouri S&T in Rolla, Missouri. She has spent her whole career telling the life stories of women in Egyptology. Her most recent book, Women in the Valley of the Kings: The Untold Story of Women Egyptologists in the Gilded Age is a grand retelling of the history of Egyptology through the work that women did.

Enter the drawing to win one of three copies of Women in the Valley of the Kings. Send an email with your preferred shipping address (in case you're a winner) to: [email protected]

Welcome to the book club, Kathleen...

She'll Have Fun, Fun, Fun...Or Will She?

For some, running is a type-2 kind of fun. You know the kind: you don't like it while you're doing it, but you have good memories once it's over. For me, running is a mix of type-2 and type-1 fun. It is the kind of activity that you enjoy in the moment (which makes you want to keep doing it), but it can also make you miserable. So, I keep running both for the pleasure of it and the stories to tell later.

One of my favorite running events is a four-day series of races, beginning with a 5K the first day, then a 10K, then a half marathon, then a full marathon on the last day, for a total of 48.6 miles run in four days. Called the Dopey Challenge, the event is associated with a major theme park in Florida (ahem) and their tagline is "Every Mile is Magic." Despite the completely 'accurate' moniker and the outright lies in the tagline, I've done this series twice, 10 years apart. I was far too tired after the first time to try it again too soon. Was it dopey to do? Twice? Yes, probably. Will I do it again? Yes, probably.

Where else would you find yourself slogging through a two-mile loop in a desolate parking lot with no cover during a torrential downpour, only to have the skies clear for your run up Main Street, USA, while a princess castle looks down on you? In what other race could you high-five an anthropomorphized mouse, only to cross the finish line carrying a pretzel shaped like said mouse's head while a church choir belts out songs from beloved children's films?

Toward the end of the marathon this year, I was at mile 45 out of 48.6 total for the weekend, and I saw a sign that asked, "Is every mile still magic?" I made eye contact with the person holding the sign, laughed, and said: "Absolutely not." The person nodded solemnly and replied: "I knew it."

But each mile really was magic, in its own way. True to type-2 fun, I've sort of forgotten about the misery and only remember the good times, and I hope to be that way about most things.

-- Kathleen Sheppard

Thanks for reading with me. It's so good to read with friends.

Enter the drawing to win one of three copies of Women in the Valley of the Kings. Send an email with your preferred shipping address (in case you're a winner) to: [email protected]

Suzanne Beecher
[email protected] 

Dear Reader Column - July 9, 2024

Dear Reader,

It's a Classics day!

Today you can sample this month's Penguin Classic and enter the drawing to win your own copy. This month's Penguin Classic is The Girls' Guide to Hunting and Fishing 25th-Anniversary Edition (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition) by Melissa Bank, Foreword by Nick Hornby.

Start reading (below) and enter for your chance to win. 

(From the Publisher:)

The New York Times bestselling classic of a young woman's journey in work, love, and life… 

Generous-hearted and wickedly insightful, The Girls' Guide to Hunting and Fishing maps the progress of Jane Rosenal as she sets out on a personal and spirited expedition through the perilous terrain of sex, love, relationships, and the treacherous waters of the workplace. Soon Jane is swept off her feet by an older man and into a Fitzgeraldesque whirl of cocktail parties, country houses, and rules that were made to be broken, but comes to realize that it's a world where the stakes are much too high for comfort. With an unforgettable comic touch, Bank skillfully teases out universal issues, puts a clever new spin on the mating dance, and captures in perfect pitch what it's like to come of age as a young woman.

Start reading this month’s Penguin Classic and enter to win your own copy.

 

Today I'm sharing one of my favorite columns…

Four years ago a hungry, tuckered-out, feral, orange tabby showed up on my porch. He was a feisty little guy but with good reason. Somewhere along the way folks had let him down. The pain and mistreatment he'd suffered, I could see it in his eyes. He kept his distance, but soon…

To read the rest of today's heartfelt Goldie column and to see photos, go to: https://www.dearreader.com/goldie/

Thanks for reading with me. It’s so good to read with friends.

Suzanne Beecher
[email protected]