Some of my best summer memories were long hours curled up with a book. That season is just about upon us here in the Northern Hemisphere and I’d love to recapture some of those childhood memories by making more time to read. The past two months of LWD Book Club selections were non-fiction so I think it’s time for fiction, don’t you? I’ve seen “Rules For Visiting” recommended in a variety of places and it just feels like the right time for it.
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Rules For Visiting
by Jessica Francis Kane
The pandemic has taken its toll on in-person connections for many of us. We learned to make do with virtual events and other digital means of staying connected. “Rules For Visiting” explores friendship in an analog fashion.
Rules For Visiting by Jessica Francis Kane
At forty, May Attaway is more at home with plants than people. Over the years, she’s turned inward, finding pleasure in language, her work as a gardener, and keeping her neighbors at arm’s length while keenly observing them. But when she is unexpectedly granted some leave from her job, May is inspired to reconnect with four once close friends. She knows they will never have a proper reunion, so she goes, one-by-one, to each of them. A student of the classics, May considers her journey a female Odyssey. What might the world have had if, instead of waiting, Penelope had set out on an adventure of her own?
RULES FOR VISITING is a woman’s exploration of friendship in the digital age. Deeply alert to the nobility and the ridiculousness of ordinary people, May savors the pleasures along the way—afternoon ice cream with a long-lost friend, surprise postcards from an unexpected crush, and a moving encounter with ancient beauty. Though she gets a taste of viral online fame, May chooses to bypass her friends’ perfectly cultivated online lives to instead meet them in their messy analog ones.
Ultimately, May learns that a best friend is someone who knows your story—and she inspires us all to master the art of visiting.
WHAT ARE YOU READING LATELY?
Other LWD Book Club Selections:
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Don’t know that I’ll get to it this month, but I might check this one out at some point. It’s going on my to-read list for sure.
I recently finished reading “The Chocolate Cat Caper” (Chocaholic mystery, #1) by JoAnna Carl, and started “The Chocolate Bear Burglary” (the second book in the same series) which is the series we’re currently doing for the ACB Crafters bookclub. I also re-read Villette” by Charlotte Bronte, read both “Shadebound” and Bloodbound” (books 1 and 2 in the “Last King” series) by David Estes and G.D. Penman, as well as “Radioactive” and “Fallout” (books 9 and 10 in the “Hell Divers” series) by Nicholas Sansbury Smith. And I’m still officially reading “The Borrowers Avenged” and the Harry Potter books in braille, but haven’t picked those up in a couple of weeks due to reading other things. Oh, and I need to do this week’s reading for “False Colours” by Georgette Heyer, which is this month’s book for the 18th and 19th century bookclub.
It sounds like you’ve got a lot of reading done lately!
I’ve never read “Villette”. I should add that to my to-read list!
Yes. I’m actually ahead on my reading goal by quite a few books… I think 11? I’ve definitely been reading a lot recently. Would like to read more of my braille books though, where I actually sit down and focus on just the reading.
It’s not my favourite of the Brontes’ books, but it’s a reasonably good read.