A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle
New York, Square Fish, 2007
256 pages, ages 10 and up

Meg Murray is at that frustrating age. She is not a child anymore, but she isn't a grown-up. She doesn't fit in with the kids at school, and her beloved family is suddenly no longer stable. Her scientist father has gone missing, and her genius little brother, Charles Wallace, gets teased for being stupid. Her grades are failing and she is getting in fights with the other kids at school.  If only Meg could find some balance!

Then one dark and stormy night, Mrs. Whatsit comes to the door and everything changes. Soon Meg, Charles Wallace, and their new friend Calvin find themselves traveling through space and time to try and find Mr. Murray. They are accompanied by Mrs. Whatsit, Mrs. Who, and Mrs. Which and all those who fight for the light against the powers of darkness.

I have a confession. As a child I was scared to read A Wrinkle in Time. It had this retro cover with a winged centaur and a scary man's face with red eyes. That cover. It was the stuff of nightmare to me.

My older brother had read it. My mom had tried to read it to us multiple times. But not only was there that man with the red eyes, but there was a character named Mrs. Which. I thought she was Mrs. Witch, and witches are scary.

It wasn't until I was seventeen or eighteen that I finally decided that I needed to read this Newberry Award winning book. I was hooked immediately. I felt like Meg. Her awkwardness, her fierce love of family, and her stubbornness all appealed to me. Her friendship with Calvin, a popular kid on the basketball team, gave me hope that popular kids actually had a heart.

Madeleine L'Engle soon became my favorite author. I scoured the local bookstores and thrift shops for her books. I searched the internet and found copies of the ones that were out of print. I tried to read everything she had ever written. Then I became Facebook friends with her granddaughter Lena Roy, who is delightful, and my life seemed complete. I cried the day that Madeleine died.

A Wrinkle in Time has been made into a stage play, a TV movie, and now a major motion picture. I was concerned that any adaptation would mess with my vision of this beloved book. But, you know, I was really pleased with Ava DeVernay's handling of the story. It is an update. Things are different. There are things that were left out. But I cried all the way through it. In a good way. Really. The themes that Madeleine wrote about, the themes that I loved about the book, they were all there. Tonight I am running a book club about the book for my neighborhood. This book that couldn't seem to find a place of its own in the sixties is still applicable to what is going on in our world today. If you haven't read it, give it a try. If you have, read it again and go see the movie. Let me know what you think!

Emergency Contact

Emergency Contact
By Mary H. K. Choi
New York, Simon & Schuster, 2018.
400 pgs Young Adult

 What do you do when your best friend is someone you’ve only “met” twice but text with for hours?

For Penny Lee, Sam Becker is much more than words on a screen. He is more than her college roommate’s young, erstwhile uncle. He is also more than just a sexy, tattooed, wanna-be-filmmaker barista who has anxiety attacks and bakes. He is her person, someone with whom she shares her deepest anxieties and darkest secrets. Her emergency contact.

 As two lonely and complicated people, they begin to build a friendship and maybe something more.

But this book isn’t just about relationships in the cell phone age. It's about art. Sam and Penny are both creatives, Sam longing to go to film school and Penny determined to become a writer. They both have to decide who they want to be as artists and how to build their craft.

 Mary H. K. Choi’s debut novel is complex; poignant while being funny, romantic yet awkward, serious and silly. I was expecting all the cliches. They were there, but they were handled so honestly and with such humor that they didn’t feel cliche. Choi creates quirky and endearing characters who show real growth and self-awareness. I couldn’t put it down.

Adult Situations
Adult Language

Sourdough by Robin Sloan

Sourdough
by Robin Sloan
MCD, 272 pages, 2017

Lois Clary is used to being wooed. As a female programmer, she gets recruited to work for General Dexterity, a San Francisco based company that specializes in robotics and changing the world. But soon Lois finds her work/life balance thrown off by her soul-sucking work. Her stomach hurts all the time. She's not eating well. She's not sleeping well. But things begin to look up when she finds the magical "Double Spicy" soup and sandwich combo from Clement's Street Soup and Sourdough. The food feeds her soul as well as her body, as does the friendship of the the charming brothers who own the restaurant. When the brothers are forced to leave the country, they give Lois the Clement's Street sourdough starter. Though Lois never bakes, she has resorted to drinking nutritive gel to avoid it, she decides to learn how to make sourdough bread. In her adventures with the mysterious and idiosyncratic Clement's Street starter, Lois not only finds a talent for baking bread, but she finds herself being wooed again.

This is a delightful and quick read. I start it and couldn't put it down. Not only did I crave spongey carbohydrates the whole time I was reading, but I also thought about my own work/life balance and what I could do to add more joy to my life.

Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail

Cheryl Strayed was lost. Set adrift by her mother's death and the sad dissolution of her own
marriage, Cheryl is desperate to find the woman her mother raised her to be. With no
experience or training, she would hike alone starting in the Mojave Desert through
California and Oregon and into Washington State on a mission to find herself again.

Through sheer determination and stubbornness, Cheryl pushes through when other more
experienced hikers decide to quit. Strayed's account on her experience and interaction on
the PCT are interwoven with her memories of her family and especially her mother's
influence. As Cheryl hikes, she works through the grief she feels for her mother and the loss
of her family. Ultimately, she is able to make peace with the ghost of her mother and the
ghost of past decisions.

This memoir is gritty and gorgeously dense with description of Strayed's inner turmoil and
the outward peace of the countryside. Both a mediation on grief and loss and a celebration of
the human spirit, Wild is a harrowing and humorous tale of finding oneself in the
wilderness.

This book contains adult language and situations. You have been warned.