Space Station Mir

The books that sparked the most joy for me this year include a classic, a book published this year, two books in translation, and five works of nonfiction. It's been a year when I've sought diversion, too often in the form of Netflix, but when I have read, I've sometimes been fortunate enough to find escape and hope in stories both sprawling and small in scale. I don't think these books have anything in common except that they tell me that some people are who they are...and some people rise to the occasion.   Happy Top Ten Tuesday over at That Artsy Reader Girl! My Favorite Books Read in 2020 1.  Middlemarch by George Eliot My first George Eliot but it won't be my last. Kept me busy for the first few months of quarantine, especially when I didn't know what was happening with my job. Immersive and satisfyingly realistic. 2. Because Internet by Gretchen McCulloch Everyone should read this accessible fascinating book about how the Internet affects how we communicat

 Hanukkah is over, and I received a generous flood of books to curl up with this winter! However, I don't usually gift as many books as I receive, since the family members I gift for tend not to be as big readers as I am. I did get books for a couple people this year tailored to their interests, and at least one of them was a hit so far. I also apparently hit gold with a storytelling Thomas the tank engine for a toddler :-) When I do give books as gifts, I try to match the interests of the person I'm buying for. My friend also gave me a great tip that I haven't tried out yet, but she says she always buys new releases for people so she knows they don't have it yet! Genius! (Unless they've preordered, but still). But instead of trying to categorize everything (the-friend-who-has-all-the-books, the-friend-who-hates-reading, the-latest-WWII-books-for-dads), I wanted to share a list of books I love that I think would make great gifts in general, for any time of year. Boo

 Since I received an awesome book haul this Hanukkah (still three more nights to go!) it's an apt time to make my winter TBR! Lots of cookbooks on the list, plus some poetry and philosophy. Since I've got some time off from work, I can take time to go in-depth with my reading, if not my writing too! Happy Top Ten Tuesday over at That Artsy Reader Girl! Books on My Winter TBR Dessert Person by Claire Saffitz Walden by Henry David Thoreau (partial reread) Visible City by Tova Mirvis (book club) The Island of Sea Women by Lisa See (other book club) A Wizard's Guide to Defensive Baking by T. Kingfisher Devotions by Mary Oliver

 Even if it isn't technically winter yet, it's definitely starting to feel like it. I've read a number of books in the past few years that give off those cold wintry vibes--and even though I'm not usually such a fan of the cold, I've been embracing it! Happy Top Ten Tuesday over at That Artsy Reader Girl! Wintry Reads The Bear and the Nightingale by Katherine Arden Spinning Silver by Naomi Novik The Winter Palace by Eva Stachniak The Year of Living Danishly by Helen Russell Lab Girl by Hope Jahren The Sisters of the Winter Wood by Rena Rossner

It's been (another) long month. It was sweet having Thanksgiving at home, just us and the pups. We got a meal to heat up from Boston Market and I made a homemade apple pie with our synagogue's Zoom bake-a-long. Even with just heating up, it took over an hour and a half, and you put everything in your own dishes, so I can see how easy it is to make look like a homecooked meal! Reading this month was mostly for my book clubs, but I got in a couple of books I've wanted to read as well, like the new release from Modern Mrs. Darcy blogger Anne Bogel, Don't Overthink It, and Exit West , which was hugely popular a couple of years ago. I don't know that it lived it up to the hype, but certainly has a fascinating concept at its core: worth thinking about and quite topical.   Books Read This Month Small Great Things by Jodi Piccoult (book club) Don't Overthink It by Anne Bogel The Rent Collector by Cameron Wright (other book club) Exit West by Mohsin Hamid Watching Call

Happy Top Ten Tuesday! Hanukkah starts next Thursday night, so I decided to put this list out to the powers that be this week. I'd been carefully cultivating this list for a while, and then I added the last half of it in one go, and discovered that all I really want right now is cookbooks, or more accurately, food history. That might not have been all I wanted in the past or all I want in the future, but hey, all we have is the present. We are who we are right now, and if we didn't already know that, many of us have had to learn this year. Top Ten Books I'd Like for Hanukkah Deacon King Kong by James McBride Man Fast by Natasha Scripture The Raven Boys box set by Maggie Stiefvater Walden by Henry David Thoreau, a trade paperback so I can write in the margins Devotions by Mary Oliver The Jewish Cookbook by Leah Koenig and Julia Turshen Vegetable Kingdom by Bryant Terry Zahav by Michael Solomonov Sababa by Adeena Sussman The Jemima Code by Toni Tipton-Martin

Happy Top Ten Tuesday over at That Artsy Reader Girl ! I've decided to write on a theme of thankfulness for a number of books for different reasons. Happy Thanksgiving to everybody celebrating this week, and have a good week to everybody else! Tracks by Louise Erdrich           At first, I wanted to make a list of Native American authors, but I don't think I've read any but Louise   Erdrich. I'm grateful to have read her, and to have the chance to read more of her books, and more books    by different Native American authors. 2. The Nest by Cynthia D'Aprix Sweeney This is a surprisingly heartwarming book about a family that learns to be grateful for what they have. 3. Black Widow: A Sad-Funny Journey Through Grief for People Who Usually Avoid Books with Words Like 'Journey' in the Title by Leslie Gray Streeter I'm grateful for this book and for the author visiting our book club (virtually). 4. My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry by Fredr

 They're not book characters, but... My husband made this meme of our dogs and their namesakes, Star Trek captains Janeway and Picard.  Happy Top Ten Two Tuesday!

It's hard to decide what my favorite book was for October since they were all such enjoyable reads. Of the four books I managed to finish,  My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry  was the most entrancing and  Black Widow  (ironically) was the funniest. I read it for my book club, and it was picked because someone in my book club knows the author's brother-in-law. She's coming to our (virtual) meeting in December, and I'm looking forward to it! Books Finished This Month My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry by Fredrik Backman Around the World in 80 Dates by Jennifer Cox How to Think Like Shakespeare by Scott Newstok Black Widow: A Sad-Funny Journey Through Grief for People Who Normally Avoid Books with Words Like "Journey" in the Title by Leslie Gray Streeter Watched This Month      Netflix The Trial of the Chicago 7  This movie was fun, but hard to watch. Glad I watched it a couple weeks before the election, but still disturbing. Ple

Scott Newstok’s new book, How to Think Like Shakespeare: Lessons from a Renaissance Education, makes a seemingly radical proposition: what if we returned to the teaching methods of Shakespeare’s day? No, Newstok isn’t advocating corporal punishment, Greek and Latin translations, or the endless rote memorization that Shakespeare himself mocked. However, Shakespeare’ s genius, Newstok claims, can be nurtured, and he, professor of English and founding director of the Pearce Shakespeare Endowment at Rhodes College in Tennessee, knows how. The specious-sounding treatise examines less the brain waves in the Bard's head than the methods that shaped his education. Although organized into fourteen short chapters (a number upon which the introduction spends nearly two pages philosophizing), the book tends to hit you over the head with its erudition, but that's part of its charm. Newstok’s prodigious use of quotes, which extends from the Table of Contents to the Index, at first ca

 I haven't been into spooky stories in years (not since I got in trouble for scaring all the little girls at my sister's sleepover, ahem), but since we won't have traditional trick-or-treating or places to show off costumes, I'm trying to get into the Halloween spirit in other ways. I've made a whole tray of treat bags to mail out to the kiddos in my life, and the other day, I even voluntarily started reading a "scary" story--and I really enjoyed it. I like these kinds of softly haunting stories that get into the supernatural without being gory. So, here are a couple recent stories from Tor.com that helped me get into the Halloween atmosphere. 1. "Hearts in the Hard Ground" by G.V. Anderson Loved this softly haunting story about a house full of more or less harmless ghosts.  2. Placed into Abyss (Mise en Abyse) by Rachel Swirsky I love Rachel Swirsky's writing, though this is actually the least weird story by her that I've read. It's

 Okay, this Top Ten Tuesday , I am ready for! I don't intentionally search out books with long titles, but the end of year survey I do every year includes my longest and shortest book titles, so it's something I've thought about. Plus, I do occasionally read academic texts, which tend to have gloriously long titles and/or subtitles. All of the following books are what I could find in my physical library at home! The Jewish Feminist Movement in Germany: The Campaigns of the Judischer Frauenbund, 1904-1938 by Marion A. Kaplan Writing Across Contexts: Transfer, Composition, and Sites of Writing by Kathleen Blake Yancey, Liane Robertson, and Kara Taczak Naming What We Know: Threshold Concepts of Writing Studies ed. by Linda Adler-Kassner and Elizabeth Wardle Bread & Beauty: A Year in Montgomery County's Agricultural Reserve by Claudia Kousoluas and Ellen Letourneau My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry by Fredrik Backman American Sonnets for My Past and F

 Happy Top Ten Tuesday over at That Artsy Reader Girl!  I'm not usually big on covers or illustrations,  but I've attempted to find some books on my TBR with covers that evoke fall to me! Book Covers with Fall Vibes 1. Etrog by David Z. Moster Since it's currently the Jewish holiday of Sukkot, this book on the etrog, a citrus fruit that's become a symbol of the holiday, has major fall vibes. 2. A Curse So Dark and Lonely  3. Forest of Souls by Lori M. Lee 4. The Lost Queen by Signe Pike 5. The Ethereal Squadron by Shami Stovall

I finished two books this week...but in two different months! I finished The Bookshop of Yesterdays before Oct. 1, and spent the rest of the week reading My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry, which definitely has me on the Fredrik Backman train, even though I just found out he's only a few years older than me, which is intimidating considering the number of books he's had published. Then again, I should have suspected with all the Harry Potter and X-Men references in these books.  Finished Reading  The Bookshop of Yesterdays by Amy Meyerson My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry by Fredrik Backman Watching I finally finished watching all of "The West Wing," for the first time. So astonishingly naive in 2020 hindsight, but I hope we move toward that (still flawed) picture of who we wished we were! I'm currently watching "The  Good Place," season 4.  I'm so glad "Sister, Sister" is on Netflix now. Such a comforting

I didn't initially think this would be a big reading month since I've been so busy with returning to work, which really cut down on my reading in August. It's still maybe nothing to brag about, but not only did I read more than last month, but I'm currently in the middle of a book I'm really enjoying, My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry by Fredrik Backman, and that's the best gift this month could give me! I finished FOUR book club reads this month, two for my clubs this month and two for next. T he Bookshop of Yesterdays was my own suggestion, since I loved the author's more recent The Imperfects . The latter book was definitely better as, you know, one would hope for a second book, but The Bookshop of Yesterdays was a fun read. I found the mystery element so predictable that it spoilt my enjoyment of the book, but in the end, who can't love a book with a protagonist Miranda, a Prospero Books, and endless circle of literary references to

 Since I missed last week's T op Ten Tuesday , I'm doing a combo edition today. Five bookish quotes for this week's prompt and five books I'm looking forward to reading this fall from last week's. Five Favorite Bookish Quotes 1. "All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us." -Gandalf, The Fellowship of the Ring by J.R. R. Tolkien This has been one of my favorite quotes for a long, long time, but fortunately or unfortunately, it's especially poignant in these pandemically and politically tumultuous times. 2. "Some worlds are built on a fault line of pain, held up by nightmares. Don't lament when those worlds fall. Rage that they were built doomed in the first place." -Hoa, The Stone Sky, by N.K. Jemisin So true of our world. We shouldn't lament what is falling. We should be thinking about building anew. 3.   “This is the trouble with history. You can't see what's not there. You can look at an empty space

Since I don't commute anymore, my life has been largely sans audiobooks for the past seven months. Really, before that, since I switched jobs to be much closer to home. I got into audiobooks when I had a long, at least 45-minute commute, each way (sometimes one, or on a couple memorable occasions, two hours, if I was unlucky). I'd never been much into them before, but I loved them for driving. Sometimes, I'd even stay in the car for a few minutes after I got home. But I don't read audiobooks much at home. I've tried a few over the past several months, usually because that's all I could get from the library digitally when there were long waits for ebooks, before my library started offering contactless pickup. Even now, I prefer borrowing ebooks when I can. But with all the audiobooks I tried, because I needed to get the read in before a book club meeting, I would keep following asleep. And missing things. And having a hell of a time finding out where I was suppos

This week, I finally finished a couple of books I'd been reading for a while, and finally watched something other than The West Wing!  Finished Reading A Bend in the Stars by Rachel Barenbaum The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek by Kim Michele Richardson "Speech Sounds" by Octavia Butler (short story)-glad she finally made the bestseller list but seriously can't believe she hadn't already/while she was still alive.  Real Simple magazine-I'm loving this new subscription. it's the oerfect antidote to the world right now, focusing on what we can control. Hadassah magazine--reflections on getting ready for Rosh Hashanah and lots of book recs! Watched Love, Guaranteed Netflix movie--This one was cute though unrealistic (suing a dating site). <3 Damon Wayans Jr.  Seasons 5 and half season 6 of The West Wing Other Things Socially distanced walks with friends are fun, and I'm taking advantage while the weather is nice. I had a great walk with a friend yester

I didn't finish many books in August, but the two I did were excellent. I also spent plenty of time prepping for my online courses, and starting them at the end of the month!   Books Read This Month The Stars and the Blackness Between Them by Junauda Petrus The Gilded Wolves by Roshani Chokshi Shows Watched This Month A lot, a lot, a lot of The West Wing... I'm in season 5 now. It's such a (necessary) jarring dissonance with today's political landscape. Things were bad then but there were still boundaries. Concerns about not catering to campaign donors. Worrying about lying to the public. Scruples about separation of church and state. Even if they didn't always get it right, they at least tried to do what was right, and that is what is lacking right now. And yes, I know it's a TV show, but it reflected the moral values of the time. Less than 20 years ago. Other Things I'm back at work, so that's why you're seeing less of me here. I'm enjoying tea

 With all the Netflix watching I've been doing this summer and generally in quarantine, this should be my jam! In the past, I've probably spent more time critiquing movie adaptations and less thinking of new ones that might be mangled, but perhaps I should put my mind to adapting more books into shows, since I do think Netflix often does a pretty good job! 1. Your Perfect Year by Charlotte Lucas This one would fit well for the first season of a show--it's got two leading characters  and a mysterious connection between them that could definitely be played up. Plus, I loved finding out what the planner was going to have Jonathan do next! 2. The Gilded Wolves by Roshani Chokshi This one would be so much fun to see on screen. All of the heists have The   Italian Job and Ocean's Eleven vibes, and it's such a lusciously described alternate history/fantasy world. It would be a wonderful opportunity to showcase all the diverse actors they would need. Finally, there's a

 Reading This Week (and Last) Last week, I finished The Stars and the Blackness Between Them by Junauda Petrus. My husband bought me it for my birthday since it was on my summer TBR and I'm glad he did! Audre, a girl from Trinidad, is sent to live with her father in Michigan after her mother catches her en flagrante with another girl from their church. Mabel, from Minneapolis, where Audre lands, becomes her lifeline in her new American world. The story is told from the viewpoint of both girls. Audre speaks in Trinidadian English Creole and Mabel in Black English. Honestly, it's the first book I've ever read written entirely in these dialects, and I love it. As a "standard American English" speaker (realizing that the standard part of that is a myth; it's just another dialect), it was easy to understand for the most part, but I did have fun looking up some words I either didn't know or that were used in an unfamiliar way. It was altogether a captivating, t

 Reviewed is a strong word. I've mostly stopped doing formal book reviews except for author requests and/or when I feel like it, but I usually give some description and or opinions of books I'm reading, usually multiple times, through weekly and monthly wrap-ups. I do find that it' s more difficult to review my absolute favorite books than books I either disliked or engaged with strongly on an intellectual rather than emotional level. For example, I rarely review poetry beyond "I loved it'" or "Meh." It's much easier to explain criticism of vocabulary usage or a plot device than explain how the book felt like a snug little snow globe. So, for this Top Ten Tuesday , I'm listing books that I loved, didn't give a formal review, and (I think) didn't discuss too much.  Books I Loved But Never Reviewed A Closed and Common Orbit by Becky Chambers Tess of the Road by Rachel Hartman We Are Okay by Nina LaCour The Broken Earth Trilogy by N.K. J

July was a productive reading month for me! I finished  Middlemarch , which I will definitely be reading again. Then, I read  Blink  for one of my book clubs. It isn't the type of book I would normally read, but it was interesting, even though the whole book was mainly illustrating Gladwell's two points about how instant decisions can be accurate if based in expertise but can also have dire consequences, like police shootings, if based in stereotype.  Giovanni's Room  is a book I've had on my physical TBR shelf for a while, and I decided to pick it up. It was totally not what I thought! It was my first James Baldwin book, and I know he was a Black gay man, so I was surprised that he's writing about two white gay men in the book. Or, well, they could be bi, since both have female lovers as well. It was a wonderful book though, highly recommend.  Your Perfect Year  was a fun, early #WIT read, and I'm excited to read a couple more #WIT books this month.  So You Wan

Today's Top Ten Tuesday is a freebie topic, but I saw the Chocolate Lady doing book to movie adaptations, so I decided to list my favorite book to screen adaptations, which are often TV series. However, I won't get into the ones I hate, which my husband finds an endless source of amusement. Happy Top Ten Tuesday over at That Artsy Reader Girl ! My Favorite Book to Screen Adaptations The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society-Netflix's adaptation is quite true to the story, leaving out only some extraneous details and characters, and upping the gorgeous Guernsey scenery! Game of Thrones/A Song Ice and Fire-I know people are divided on this, especially since the book series isn't finished, but having read all of the books, I frankly thought the TV series was better and much less convoluted. The Witcher-I've only read one of the Witcher books, but I loved the Netflix adaptation and hope there's more. To All the Boys I've Loved Before-I LOVED

Reading This Week I finished So You Want to Talk About Race by Ijeoma Oluo, which I bought from the Black-owned Mahogany Books in D.C. during the #BestsellerBlackout. Highly recommend as a helpful guidebook to racial issues in the United States. Chapters cover definitions of racism, intersectionality, privilege, police brutality, cultural appropriation, and more. I was familiar with the concepts, but Oluo explains them fully, illustrating with her lived experience as well as research. This is definitely the kind of book that makes me feel like I need to learn more though, kind of like bell hooks' Feminism is for Everybody. This week, I also got the third magazine that I subscribed to in a deal with magazines.com, Martha Stewart Living . I've never been a Martha Stewart fan (or hater), but it seemed like the kind of comforting content I would appreciate these days, and I was absolutely right. Plus, it has a surprising number of book recommendations! Watching This Week

I've had the good fortune to attend a lot of dream book festivals, namely the National Book Festival in DC, since I live so close, which always has an incredible lineup of headliners, even though it's gotten way more crowded in recent years! Sadly, I'm sure it will not take place this year. I'm also lucky enough to live close to the Baltimore Book Festival, which is always a fun local event with authors I love and lots of new local authors to meet and books to buy. If that weren't enough, I've also been spoiled enough to be close to the Gaithersburg Book Festival, which often draws some big names due to its proximity to the capital as well as lots of local organizations and booksellers. I lived in Boston when the first annual Boston Book Festival occurred, and I also got to attend the Chicago Humanities Festival when I lived there. I'd highly recommend all of those events and definitely want to attend them again, but I still do have some dream bookish events

I've done a fair amount of reading this week, but, most exciting, I finished the first draft of my book yesterday! Reading This Week Finished Your Perfect Year by Charlotte Lucas. I got the ebook for free from Amazon on World Book Day. I got started on #WIT (Women in Translation) month a little early this year. This book is translated from German and takes place in Hamburg, and I really enjoyed it. The story centers around a pre-filled planner for a perfect year, discovered by a man named Jonathan, who finds himself drawn to following the events written out in the planner. Meanwhile, we also see the story of Hannah, whose place in the story gradually becomes clear. I love this idea of a pre-planned year and it's definitely a fun and thoughtful read.  This week, I also finally got a couple of new-to-me magazines that I subscribed to recently, Real Simple and Better Homes & Gardens. Although I probably wouldn't have had time for them in the pre-pandemic era, I real

I read a lot more books that make me think rather than smile. Not that there aren't plenty of giggles in Middlemarch , but it doesn't have the enchantment of middle grade fantasy or the belly laughs of full-grown adults aware of their mistakes. The latter are the books that have made me laugh the most in recent years: memoirs by David Lebovitz and Jen Lancaster have carried me through some rough times. And the former will always bring a smile to my face. Happy Top Ten Tuesday over at That Artsy Reader Girl! Books That Make Me Smile The Sweet Life in Paris by David Lebovitz Bitter is the New Black by Jen Lancaster Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert Tuesdays at the Castle by Jessica Day George Brave New Girls ed. Mary Fan and Paige Daniels-these anthologies are full of stories about girls and women winning science fiction! very uplifting, Star Trek-style scifi! Cinder by Marissa Meyer American Cake by Anne Byrn-who doesn't love learning about cake?! The 100 M

The fireworks seem to have calmed down in my neighborhood this week--I'm almost afraid to write this lest I jinx it. Since they started on Memorial Day, I was not hopeful they would end with the Fourth of July, but they do seem to have slowed down for now at least. Hopefully, they emptied their stashes on the Fourth. My poor puppy hid under the couch in the basement for most of that night; we could just barely see his snout. My other dog will bark back, but she doesn't really care that much. In terms of reading, it's been a somewhat productive week. In terms of writing, less so. Reading This Week I've been reading Blink by Malcolm Gladwell for one of my book clubs. I've never read a Malcolm Gladwell book before, although I've heard of him. I also did not realize he was half Black, as he alludes in the book. I thought he was White. The book is a set of premises with an extended parade of supporting anecdotes, some of which were more interesting than othe

When I have a favorite author, I tend to go all in, and some of my favorites have quite substantial oeuvres. Most of my most-read authors are still from children's book series, but I'm starting to build libraries of my adult favorites too! Authors I've Read The Most Books By William Shakespeare- 25 plays, two epic poems, and a lot of sonnets --------------------------having attended grade school where I was required to read at least one Shakespeare play a year since seventh grade and been an English major in college, it's not surprising that Shakespeare is my most-read author. What is surprising is, I still have more to go Marilyn Kaye-the  Replica  series- 24ish books  (I think I skipped one or two)--------------------------I read this series completely from beginning to end. I think there were was maybe a second series later but I didn't read any of those. I loved these science fiction-y books centering a preteen girl who finds out she's a genetically

I've decided to try making my weekly wrap-up into a Sunday Salon so I can link up with others doing Sunday Salon posts.  We'll see how this goes! Reading This Week I finished Middlemarch!  I've  been reading this one almost since we started staying home in mid-March. I loved it. I'd never read Eliot before, but wow! She's such a talented, insightful writer, she just gets human nature and relationships and she's so well-read--the metaphors, the similes, the allusions...the book is a masterclass. And I love, love, love the ending. She wraps it up for the characters to give a sense of closure but it's also satisfyingly realistic. No perfect HEAs here. I'm sure I'll be talking about this more! I just started reading Blink by Malcolm Gladwell for one of my book clubs. If you haven't heard of it, it's about the science behind how we make snap judgments and how we can use that to our advantage. Not a book I would have picked, but interestin

When I started reading Fleishman Is In Trouble for my book club, it struck me as problematic immediately. At first, I was bothered by the opening scene, where a rich cishet White man objectifies women on a dating app. Soon, however, it began to bother me in an entirely different way. The entire premise of the book upsets me, and I'm not sure if that's because it reveals an uncomfortable truth (I lean away from this one) or distorts an uncomfortable truth (I lean toward this). The narrator of the novel, Toby Fleishman's female friend Elizabeth, explicitly posits that readers are more interested in men, who appear to live meaningfully, while women and minorities' lives are circumscribed by their oppression. She suggests that one would have to "Trojan horse" writing about a woman by writing about it as the life of a man. Enter Toby Fleishman. A sensitive, caring father significantly out-earned by his ambitious, hardworking wife Rachel, Toby's own divorce

I finished more books in June, although one of them I'd been reading for a long time and several were rereads. A lot of poetry this month. Books Finished in June Wherever You Go, There You Are by Jon Kabat-Zinn The Art of Showing Up: How To Be There for Yourself and Other People by Rachel Wilkerson Miller You Are a Badass by Jen Sincero (reread) Blue Horses by Mary Oliver (reread) Diving Into the Wreck by Adrienne Rich (reread) Fleishman Is In Trouble by Taffy Brodesser-Akner American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin by Terrance Hayes Thoughts I've been reading Wherever You Go, There You Are since March when we first started staying home due to COVID19. At first, I strongly disagreed with Kabat-Zinn's insistence on the unimportance of spirituality in meditation (he doth protest too much), but I found the meditations and writing practices helpful, of which I did one per day over the course of several weeks. Kabat-Zinn specializes in pain managemen