Jennifer says:

Someone Not Really Her Mother by Harriet Scott Chessman

Read by Myra Platt

Hannah Pearl is forgetting everything. Her life is as good as can be expected, given the advanced stage of her dementia: she lives in a high quality elder care home, and is well taken care of by its staff; her family dotes on her and visits often; she can talk with friends, enjoy food, and dress herself. She just doesn’t know who she is. What flashes through her mind, instead, are vivid memories, both beautiful and terrible, of her life before she emigrated to America. The man in England who she loved, and who gave her a daughter; the dear family she left behind in France, who perished in the Holocaust. Hannah was also a poet, and her instinct for metaphor has been retained — we learn this from her thoughts, which, scattered as they are, also give us a strong sense of who she once was. The arc of her life also plays out through her daughter, now grown, and her granddaughters, one a poet, one a new mother. Affection and joy in the present are the only things that bridge the gulf between those who still know themselves, and the one who can no longer find herself. Gorgeously written and read clearly and simply by Myra Platt, this is an audiobook that will stay with you.

Currently Reading:
She Got Up Off the Couch, by Haven Kimmel
I’m Every Woman: Remixed Stories of Marriage, Motherhood, and Work by Lonnae O’Neal Parker
Ella Minnow Pea, by Mark Dunn

Suzanne says:

“Kerplunk!”
Patrick McManus’ collection of short stories describes, with self depricating humor, how I imagined many boys grew up in the 50’s and 60’s:
Huntin’, fishin’ and living moments that later become tall, tall tales.

“The Book of General Ignorance“
A fun read full of trivia snippets, it’s written by John Lloyd and John
Mitchinson and challenges many well know cultural “facts”. While it is
classified as nonfiction, the authors do not cite their sources. This leads
me to the question the veracity of the book’s factual content. Whether true
or not, the authors entertain and amuse.

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Signed, A Curious Librarian