Hollywood, MD    Sunday Travel Section

I was reading the Washington Post last week which I try to read every Sunday.  Several sections of the Post are my favorite.  I love the travel section because I am thinking that one day soon I will get a week or more off and my husband will be able to take a break at the same time and we will go on a great vacation. The day is coming.

So I am reading the travel section and one of the articles is about Hollywood, MD.  Yes there is a Hollywood, MD.  It is located about 50 miles southeast of Washington DC off of Maryland Route 5.  Our adopted family and great friends have a house there that has been in their family for a long time and we were lucky enough to spend many weekends during the summer with them having a great time.  There is nothing like taking your morning coffee out to the dock and enjoying the peace of a summer morning.

One of the things I missed when going there was Sotterly Plantation which is apparently a living history site.  The Post did a good job talking about its owners and one of the things I found interesting was that the front of the house was facing the river.  I noticed this about Mount Vernon as well.  The reason given was that the river at that time was the road.  Much of the traffic was on the river.  Makes sense to me.  Next time I am in Hollywood, Sotterley is the first thing to see on my to do list.

One of the other things mentioned in the article was Clarke’s Landing Restaurant.  I really enjoyed eating here, casual dining with great crab cakes and great margaritas.  If you end up going, get a table on the deck facing the water.  It is a great place to watch the sun set.   www.clrestaurant.com/

Sotterly Plantation

Wicked Appetite   by Janet Evanovich

So I am planning to make a quick trip to New Jersey.  There and back in twenty four hours.  Now for all of you who have ever made this trip or one similar to it you know how ABSOLUTLEY BORING it is, especially the New Jersey Turnpike.  Solution, once again books on CD.  Since I do need to watch where I am going, because I do not want to cause any accidents, I usually try to pick something light and easy to follow.  Any of you who have read my blog before know that Janet Evanovich for me is a fun author to listen to while I drive.  Lorelei King is the actress reading the book and I think she does a great job doing the voices.  When I hear her changing from voice to voice I can’t help but remember the line in the movie Mrs Doubtfire when the social worker asks Daniel played by Robin Williams what he does and he says “I do voices”.  She looked at him like what kind of job is that but actually it’s a pretty great job if you do it well like him. Robin Williams is so out there anyway. After all he’s lived on another planet Nano Nano.

Anyway a colleague of mine lent me the CD Wicked Appetite and it did not disappoint although I must say that the humor in this book was not as good as the Stefanie Plum novels.  This one is about Lizzy a pastry chef who left Virginia to live in Massachusetts when her great Aunt dies and leaves her this very cool historic house.  The house just so happens to be close to Salem, Mass and you all know what happened there in 1692, Yup the Salem Witch Trials.  Personally I think if you have a good witch for a friend it’s a good thing not a bad thing, but people at that time didn’t share my opinion.  So of course Lizzy has special powers, but she is not actually a witch.  One day this hunky guy also with special powers comes in to ask for her help and the fun begins.  You will have to read the book to find out what happens.  The book is by no means a great work of fiction but it is fun. Another good beach read. Enjoy!

And by the way Janet Evanovich just released another book in this series  called Wicked Business.  I will keep it in mind for my next quick trip.

The Gilly Salt Sisters   by Tiffany Baker

It is no surprise that this book is about the Gilly Salt sisters given the name of course.  One sister knows that her life will be spent on their farm, one knows her life will be anywhere but. The farm is located in an isolated village on Cape Cod.  Joanna, Claire and their mother live and work on their salt farm. No man seems to be able to survive on this farm.  Their brother Henry died at an early age and their father ran off never to be seen or heard from again. The salt produced on the farm has a very strong effect on these women and the people living in the village.  In fact, every December the town holds a big bonfire and one of the Gilly Girls throw salt on the fire.  The color of the flames determines a lot of what will happen in the next year. The salt has also had an effect on the economy of the businesses in town.  Those businesses that sold or used the salt seem to do well.  If they turned their back on the salt there were consequences.

I really don’t want to say too much about the book because I would give the whole thing away and then what fun would that be.  All I will say is that the story had some surprising twists.  Some of them I admit I figured out but some took me till the end of the book to see where the author was going.  It still was a great summer read.

MWF Seeking BFF: My Yearlong Search for a New Best Friend  by Rachel Bertsche

This book had me at hello so to speak.  I read the title and I couldn’t resist picking up the book.  The theme of this book is finding a gal pal, that person or persons you can call up and just talk on the phone with or make plans to do a girls night etc.  Most importantly it is someone who you trust, someone who you share a piece of yourself with. They are your people like Meredith and Christina in Grey’s Anatomy. The author takes you on her year long journey to find a new BFF.  Actually she is looking for several.  Why is she doing this?  She lived in New York and had two best friends who she had known practically forever but while in college she met a guy.  After college he ended up living in Chicago and she decided to move in with him. She ended up marrying him and lleaving her gal pals in the big NY.  While she loved her husband she felt she was missing something, a best girlfriend(s).

As she finds out and many of you out there already know, it is not easy to find friends who you connect with once you leave high school and college. In today’s world it can be even harder because women are juggling so many things at one time, relationship, motherhood, often jobs leaving little time for you. It’s not like you can walk into a bar, go up to the bartender and say I am looking for a new BFF do you know anyone who would fit the bill?  

The author discusses her strategy for identifying candidates who might be new gal pal material including advertising for MWF Seeking BFF. She goes on a yearlong quest to find new good friends.  She shares her “girl dates” with the reader.  In addition, she shares her research about how friends can have an effect your self-esteem, coping mechanisms and morale.  She also discusses the statistics on types and number of friends a person tends to have and she categorizes them into three categories.  For example, you might typically have 100 or more acquaintances.  These are people that you know through organizations, maybe work that you chat with if you see them in the grocery store or around town. That is the extent of the contact.  You really don’t interact with them socially.  So I shared one category but I will let you read the book to get the skinny on the other two.

While I sometimes found the author to be a little whiney and needy, overall I really enjoyed the book and all the research she did on friendship and its importance. I consider myself extremely fortunate for all the friends in my life.  Life would be so dull without you all. 

The Book Thief  by Marcus Zusak

This book has been on amazon’s top one hundred list for over 668 days.  There has to be a good reason and there is.  This book is fascinating to read.  It was written for young adults but I enjoyed it and as much as I wish i was a young adult, it was definitely a great read. It is well written  The most fascinating things about this book is the reader is lead through the story by “Death” who becomes a character in the book.

The setting of the book is World War II in Nazi Germany.  Europe just reeks from death and yet this character Death does not appear harsh rather it feels resigned to do its jobs in the kindest most humane way possible.  That in itself is an interesting concept after all death comes to a person and robs them of the one thing they cherish the most, life.

We meet Liesel on a train with her mother and brother.  Her brother is very ill and as mentioned Death comes to take hime away.  Liesel's mom can not take care of her and she is left with a Foster familyactually a childless couple.  The story revolves around this family and i found that the relationship between the foster Dad and Liesel to be the most interesting.  He is the one who teaches her to read and begins her path to become The Book Thief.

Coming Up For Air

You are forty‑eight. You’re an artist preparing for your very first gallery showing, an exhibit pointedly titled Forty Eight for Forty Eight. And who’s responsible for pulling this whole thing together? Your mother. Yes, that mother — the one with whom your relationship is, shall we say, complicated at best. This is where the book opens and how we first meet Ellie, our main character.

A little side note: on the very first page, the author mentions the language of flowers when she explains that Ellie’s mother, Lily, carries a name meaning innocence, purity, and beauty. If you haven’t read my post on the Language of Flowers, you might want to check it out. It’s astonishing how many books weave in floral symbolism, and how completely unaware I was of these meanings until I read that book.

The morning after the exhibit, Ellie gets a phone call from her father telling her that her mother is dead. She can’t take it in. She had just seen her mother — how could this be real? In the days that follow, her father asks her to pack up her mother’s things because he can’t bear to face it himself. While sorting through drawers, Ellie discovers her mother’s journal tucked away behind a lock. Inside, she meets a version of her mother she never knew — a woman shattered by a lost love, who locked her own soul away along with every want and desire she once had. As Ellie reads, she begins to understand something chilling: her mother had spent Ellie’s entire life training her to do the very same thing.

She begins to drift back to memories of her first true love — the very same man she had, coincidentally (or perhaps not), crossed paths with again at her exhibit. As those feelings resurface, she takes a long, unflinching look at her marriage and realizes she’s standing at a crossroads. Does she keep walking the path she’s been on for years, or does she dare to choose a new one?

I really enjoyed this book and its journey toward self‑realization. It turned out to be so much more layered than I expected. The story moves fluidly between the present day and the turbulent 1960s, weaving in themes of desegregation, identity, and the quiet ways we inherit our parents’ unfinished stories. It’s the perfect summer read.

No Coincidences: How One Book Shifted My Perspective

The Celestine Prophecy 

In February of 2012, a friend and I were talking about spirituality, and she mentioned a book she felt I needed to read. She lent me her copy, but at the time I already had two books I needed to finish first. She told me there was no rush, so it sat on my bookshelf for about three weeks. When I finally picked it up, my world seemed to tilt. At first, I wondered what on earth was happening, but then I realized I was experiencing the First Insight — and that my delay in reading the book had been purposeful.

I’ll briefly share the First Insight with you, but only briefly, because you really must read the book to understand the remaining eight.

Before I get to the Insights, I want to give you a quick overview of the story. The main character meets an old acquaintance during a two‑hour layover. She tells him about an ancient manuscript discovered in the rainforests of Peru. Its contents reveal nine insights into life itself. The insights are sequential — you need to read and reflect on them in order to truly understand them and move forward on your own spiritual path. Those who represent organized religion fear the manuscript’s message and try to destroy it. The author takes you on a vivid adventure, but in my opinion, the journey to understand the Insights doesn’t interfere with any religious belief. Instead, it opens your mind to possibility.

Now, about that First Insight — my favorite, and the one that has helped me navigate the last several months. It deals with coincidences, or rather, the idea that there are no coincidences. Life unfolds as a sequence of events. Something happens, or someone reappears in your life after years of silence, and suddenly things begin to shift. You might question whether it’s all random, but deep down you sense it isn’t. My mantra has always been that things happen for a reason and a purpose. People move in and out of your life for a reason and a purpose. To me, that is the essence of the First Insight: nothing is accidental.

What I love most about the book is that it makes you think. It’s written like a parable — a story designed to illuminate deeper truths. If you decide to read it, I would genuinely love to hear your thoughts.

My questions are these:

Do you believe in spirituality, and did this book make you reflect on your own perceptions? Or did you read it and feel nothing at all? I’d love to know.