New Activity – From Glamour Girl to Gin Game – Mary Tyler Moore

We have started going to a group that brings in professional “book reviewers” and this time we were looking forward to hearing about Mary Tyler Moore. We have fond memories of watching the Dick Van Dyke Show and then the Mary Tyler Moore Show and most recently watched Gin Game, a play with both Dick and Mary. The talented Kathleen Cunningham presented Mary’s life as written in The Mary Tyler Moore Story. There was so much we didn’t know about her life and sort of want to keep some of this new information repressed (e.g. alcoholism). But Kathleen was so entertaining; she really brought one into the pages of the book.

Reading Challenge – F and G

Continuing with our alphabetical reading challenge from Book Riot, we were tasked this month with “randomly picking a location on Google Maps anywhere in the world and then reading a book either that takes place there or contains the history and culture of that location.” Barbara’s finger randomly landed on Romania and we fortunately found a novel that we both enjoyed. I Must Betray You by Ruta Sepetys is an historical thriller about communist Romania. It follows a young student’s experiences during this time and the twists and turns of betrayal and violence that occur. This #1 New York Times and national bestseller is powerful and thought-provoking, and we both learned a lot about an area and an era typically overlooked by many. Eventually when our TBR lists allow, another Ruth Sepetys book will be tackled.

We also made up for the fact that we missed our “F” reading challenge which was: Write a fan letter to your favorite author. Know that no matter what nice things you say, it’s going to make their day, week, month, or maybe even their year. We didn’t think anyone really wrote actual fan letters anymore but Barbara posted a note to one of her favorite authors, Alice Hoffman, and her agent assured her it would be passed on to Alice.

New Author – Elly Griffiths

Laura: A little known fact about me (in fact, I didn’t even know it until about two years ago) is that I am fascinated by forensic anthropology. I discovered my interest by watching 12 delightful seasons of the crime procedural comedy-drama tv show Bones, which is based on true stories. So I was intrigued when I saw that Kindle Unlimited was featuring a debut novel, The Crossing Places, by Elly Griffiths. The story line concerns a quirky archaeologist, Ruth Galloway, as she investigates human bones found on a nearby beach. I really liked the characters, the author’s style and the flow of the book and I anticipate reading the other 14 books in this series. (Really? Now I just have to find the time. Yikes!)