There was a time when I wrote everything by hand. As a university student in the early 1970s, while most of my peers were cranking out essays on manual or electric typewriters, every paper that I submitted was handwritten. It wasn’t because I didn’t know how to type. My mother had insisted that typing was a skill that every girl should have, so I had taken typing classes in high school. I just preferred to write by hand. My early freelance articles were handwritten, but I typed a final copy for submission because that was required by most publications. Then came computers and the ease of word processing. I made the transition to writing on a keyboard and never looked back.
There are, however, some areas where I have intentionally hung onto vestiges of the past.
In a world where it seems that we’re constantly glued to screens, I still prefer a physical, paper calendar that gives me a visual overview of upcoming appointments and events. One hangs on our kitchen wall and I carry a smaller version in my purse.
I also use a simple paper planner where I write my daily to-do list. Putting pen to paper and actually writing down my intentions and placing them where I will see them multiple times throughout the day keeps me focused on accomplishing them and there’s something deeply satisfying about crossing off each item as it’s completed. Unlike digital alerts that disappear once they’re completed, a handwritten paper planner also provides a record of tasks completed and gives me a greater sense of accomplishment. Ultimately though, the best calendar or planner is the one that a person will use consistently and for me, that’s paper.
Then there’s books. When we travel, I absolutely love the convenience of the e-reader that my daughter gave me for Christmas a couple of years ago, but at home I still prefer to immerse myself in the pages of an actual, physical book.
What about you? Have you completely joined the digital world or are you like me, still a little bit old-school?
Buying a Piece of Paris is a charming memoir about the Australian author’s humorous and challenging quest to find and purchase an apartment in Paris. With only two weeks to locate and secure the apartment of her dreams, something exuding character and Parisian chic, Ellie embarks on what seems an almost impossible pursuit. Armed with only a cursory grasp of the language, she finds herself trying to navigate the bewildering French real estate market with its unique customs, quirky agents, and unexpected cultural hurdles. All in all, a very entertaining read and especially so since, although I’ve only spent five days in Paris, I could visualize many of the places that she mentioned and the kind of buildings she visited in her frantic and sometimes hilarious search for the perfect place to call home.
After moving with her husband to the tiny, bustling city of Macau, across the Pearl River delta from Hong Kong, Grace Miller finds herself a stranger in a very foreign land. Facing the devastating news of her infertility and a marriage in crisis, Grace resolves to do something bold, something that her impetuous mother might have done. Turning to her love of baking, she opens Lillian’s, a café specializing in coffee, tea, and delicate French macarons. In this story of love, friendship, and renewal, Lillian’s quickly becomes a sanctuary where women from different cultural backgrounds come together to support one another.
When Jennifer Connolly of 
In this international bestseller, renowned mental health expert and speaker, Dr. Gabor Maté, provides insight into the critical role that stress and emotions play in the development of many common diseases.
At seven years old, Suzanne Heywood set sail from England with her parents and younger brother on what was supposed to be a three-year trip around the world retracing one of Captain Cook’s voyages. What followed was a decade of isolation on a 70-foot sailboat crossing some of the world’s most dangerous oceans and surviving horrendous storms, shipwrecks, and reefs. What sounded like the romantic adventure of a lifetime became a child’s worst nightmare “trapped inside someone else’s dream”.
The book opens with an elderly Jewish woman sitting in the elegant dining room of a posh hotel on the French Riviera. Suddenly and quite seamlessly it transitions to the dark Ghetto of Kraków, Poland during World War II and I was hooked!
If I didn’t know that this novel was was a well-researched, but fictionalized retelling of a true story I would have thought it a bit far-fetched. A father giving his 16-year-old daughter control of three family plantations in South Carolina while he leaves the country to secure his political position on the Caribbean island of Antigua would be remarkable at any time, but this was 1738! At a time when the role of women was purely domestic, intelligent and headstrong Eliza Lucas was determined to find a cash crop to pull the plantations out of debt, pay for their upkeep, and support her family.
This book is really three stories in one, each distinct, but all connected. Deborah Birch is a seasoned hospice nurse assigned to care for an embittered and lonely history professor whose career ended in academic scandal. As his life slowly ebbs away, the professor, an expert in the Pacific Theater of World War II, begrudgingly puts his trust in Deborah and begins to share with her an unpublished book that he wrote. As she reads to him from his story about a Japanese fighter pilot who dropped bombs on the coastline of Oregon, he challenges her to decide if it is true or not.
I’ve been avoiding books set during World War II lately. Over the past year or so I’d read so many of that popular genre that I was growing weary of them, but The Book Thief was different from most.
Following Augustine 