A Family Matter by Claire Lynch
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
This is the story of a family where the mom falls in love with another woman and in the 1980s, in their community and in the eyes of the law, that’s not acceptable. So Dawn has to make hard choices. Terrible choices. And her husband also makes terrible choices. Choices that hurt them and their beautiful daughter.
This quiet, short booked packed a lot in. I loved the quiet writing even if the topic was devastating. I didn’t think the characters were developed enough for me to feel like I was empathizing. I wanted to follow along more, I wanted to root for them all even though they were caught in a terrible situation. But I felt like I was watching it all from a distance.
I was terrified to read how much of the law was anti-LGBTQ only 40 years ago and it’s terrifying what can happen to families if this becomes true again.
with gratitude to netgalley and Scribner for an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.
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If You Love It, Let It Kill You by Hannah Pittard
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
If you’ve read Pittard’s previous book, this one will not come as a major surprise. It has a similar choppy style where the story is shared in bits and pieces and also the story won’t be a surprise to you because it’s the same plot her previous book was about. Obviously it’s the next phase but, to me, it felt mostly repetitive and there was noting revelatory in it.
I like her writing style and enjoy reading it but I did not really enjoy this mesh of real life/fiction and the characters/life she shared. I felt nothing was as deeply explored as I would have liked.
with gratitude to netgalley and Henry Holt & Company for an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.
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The Satisfaction Café by Kathy Wang
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
This is a quiet, lovely book that started out with focusing on family and wealth and what it meant to enter a family as a third wife when your husband already has grown children. And there were bits that made me mad when she didn’t stand up for herself and bit that made me feel devastated.
But then the book moved to being about community, creating your own community and the loneliness so many of us carry in so many ways and how we can help each other and how most of us just need to talk to someone.
It was a warm and surprising book and I really enjoyed my time with it.
with gratitude to netgalley and Scribner for an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.
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Practicing my sketching.
“Within you there is a stillness and a sanctuary to which you can retreat at any time.”
I somehow used the same quote twice in a row!!
#sketching #art #urbansketching #watercolorjournal #watercolors #drawing #illustration #artistsoninstagram #sketchbook #creativity #artwork #inspirationalart #aradillapatreon
Practicing my sketching.
“Within you there is a stillness and a sanctuary to which you can retreat at any time.”
#sketching #art #urbansketching #watercolorjournal #watercolors #drawing #illustration #artistsoninstagram #sketchbook #creativity #artwork #inspirationalart #aradillapatreon
Practicing my sketching.
“There are only two
people whose pride should truly matter to you – not your parents, not your friends, not even your mentors.
Just two: the 8-year-old you, full of dreams, and the 80-year-old you, full of memories.
Both are watching you now. The child you once were is still inside you, filled with wonder and hope, waiting to see if you’ll chase the dreams they once believed in….And then, there’s the older you – the one who’s lived through it all and knows how quickly time passes”
#sketching #art #urbansketching #watercolorjournal #watercolors #drawing #illustration #artistsoninstagram #sketchbook #creativity #artwork #inspirationalart
Practicing my sketching.
“Between what is said and not meant and what is meant and not said, most of love is lost.”
#sketching #art #urbansketching #watercolorjournal #watercolors #drawing #illustration #artistsoninstagram #sketchbook #creativity #artwork #inspirationalart #aradillapatreon
Practicing my sketching.
“I could tell you my adventures, beginning from this morning. But it is no use going back to yesterday because i was a different person then.”
#sketching #art #urbansketching #watercolorjournal #watercolors #drawing #illustration #artistsoninstagram #sketchbook #creativity #artwork #inspirationalart #aradillapatreon
Practicing my sketching.
to live in this world
you must be able
to do three things
to love what is mortal;
to hold it
against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it go,
to let it go
#sketching #art #urbansketching #watercolorjournal #watercolors #drawing #illustration #artistsoninstagram #sketchbook #creativity #artwork #inspirationalart #aradillapatreon
Practicing my sketching.
This morning
the beautiful white heron
was floating along above the water
and then into the sky of this
the one world
we all belong to
where everything
sooner or later
is a part of everything else
which thought made me feel
for a little while
quite beautiful myself.
#sketching #art #urbansketching #watercolorjournal #watercolors #drawing #illustration #artistsoninstagram #sketchbook #creativity #artwork #inspirationalart #aradillapatreon
Practicing my sketching.
“When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.
#sketching #art #urbansketching #watercolorjournal #watercolors #drawing #illustration #artistsoninstagram #sketchbook #creativity #artwork #inspirationalart #aradillapatreon
Practicing my sketching.
“It is impossible to be lonely when you’re zesting an orange. Scrape the soft rind once and the whole room fills with fruit. Look around: you have more than enough. Always have. You just didn’t notice until now.”
#sketching #art #urbansketching #watercolorjournal #watercolors #drawing #illustration #artistsoninstagram #sketchbook #creativity #artwork #inspirationalart
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projects for twenty twenty-five
projects for twenty twenty-four
projects for twenty twenty-three
projects for twenty twenty-two
projects for twenty twenty-one
projects for twenty nineteen
projects for twenty eighteen
projects from twenty seventeen
monthly projects from previous years
some of my previous projects
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