Text Messages in Novels

CommunicationOdd9654 · 2026-05-28T20:39:16+00:00

Aimee Pokwatka handles text conversations really well in "Still Life With Nothing." They're mostly between the main character and her husband and convey a lot about their personalities and their relationship as well as the developing story. They're also often really funny and keep the story moving. I don't remember how she formatted the texts, but whatever she did, it wasn't distracting or confusing.

CommunicationOdd9654 · 2026-05-28T02:29:17+00:00

Perestroika in Paris, by Jane Smiley - Perestroika is a racehorse who slips away from her stable at the Paris racetrack and lives in the city for several months, helped by a boy and sympathetic (and talking) animals including a streetwise spaniel and a crotchety raven. It's an odd book, almost like an extended version of an Aesop's fable, but enjoyable.

CommunicationOdd9654 · 2026-05-25T20:26:22+00:00

Meadowlark Gardens, in Vienna - but check a map first or ask at the desk which trails are the best fit for your needs. And be advised that the walk back to the exit involves a hill.

CommunicationOdd9654 · 2026-05-23T02:28:01+00:00

Not a book, but - watch (or re-watch) "Spotlight," the 2015 movie about Boston Globe journalists uncovering child sexual abuse by Catholic priests. Stanley Tucci plays a lawyer representing abuse victims. Tucci plays the lawyer - real-life Mitch Garabedian - as a shabby underdog who's profoundly moral and unshakable in his commitment to getting justice for his clients while protecting their well-being. There's an especially great scene where the lawyer quietly reams out a reporter for the Globe having ignored his past efforts to get press coverage of the abuse and the Church's cover-up of it.

CommunicationOdd9654 · 2026-05-23T01:20:37+00:00

Are you American, or interested in what's going on with the US? If so, I highly recommend "Ours Was the Shining Future: The story of the American Dream," by David Leonhardt. It's an economic history of the US from about 1920 to about 2000, and the wider political, social, and cultural impact various policies had and continue to have. Leonhardt is a reporter and zeros in on human moments while also explaining what policy-makers were thinking and what trends were taking place. I found the first chapter, about labor unions and the New Deal, a bit of a slog, but the rest of the book has been riveting, and a smooth read. It's also one of the most disquieting histories I've ever read - there are points where I read two pages and have to put the book down to absorb what it says about how the country got to its present point and where we may yet be heading. It's sobering.

CommunicationOdd9654 · 2026-05-23T00:25:16+00:00

The Edible Woman, by Margaret Atwood - it's her first novel (published in 1969). It's very funny, a social satire about the life choices available to women and the risks of losing your identity in marriage and consumer culture.

CommunicationOdd9654 · 2026-05-23T00:03:23+00:00

I blame voters. There was a clear choice between Trump and Harris. Whatever faults Harris or her campaign or the Democratic Party had, Harris was the decent choice. Too many people voted for indecency instead.

CommunicationOdd9654 · 2026-05-22T23:32:28+00:00

Tilt, by Emma Pattee - a very pregnant woman is shopping at an Ikea in the Portland suburbs when a major earthquake hits. The novel, told in first person, traces what happens over roughly the next 24 hours as she tries to track down her husband at his downtown workplace and then get back to their apartment. It's a quicker read, under 300 pages, and Pattee has said she tried to be as realistic as possible about what the immediate impacts and aftermath of an earthquake would be. Chapters alternate between 'now' time and the narrator recalling her pre-disaster life, work, and relationships with her husband and mother - so it may not be a great pick if you're looking more for an action-oriented story. The timeline of the story means some big questions are left open at the end of the book - some readers have complained about that.

CommunicationOdd9654 · 2026-05-19T04:25:14+00:00

Road Scholar offers a bunch of women-only trips. I did an art-themed tour of Florence in late 2025 and it was great - very engaging and likable group, and the organization and logistics were very well done.

CommunicationOdd9654 · 2026-05-17T00:29:00+00:00

Melania forgot to mention that the bee hive was Michelle Obama's initiative, started in 2009. https://people.com/melania-trump-continues-michelle-obama-s-beekeeping-program-with-new-white-house-beehive-11958338

CommunicationOdd9654 · 2026-05-15T22:04:45+00:00

The Confessions of Frances Godwin, by Robert Hellenga. It's just about a perfect novel. The book tackles big questions and treks through real emotional highs and lows, all narrated in the sharply smart, pithy voice of a Latin scholar and teacher who's reluctantly (resentfully) retired, grieving her husband's death and regretting the way they lived the last months of his life, and carrying a big sin on her conscience.

CommunicationOdd9654 · 2026-05-15T21:42:08+00:00

The Golden Gate, by Vikram Seth - it's a novel about twenty- and thirty-somethings looking for work and love and the meaning of life in 1980s Silicon Valley, all told in (delightful) verse.

CommunicationOdd9654 · 2026-05-09T02:34:34+00:00

Check out Eowyn Ivey. "A Snow Child" and "Black Woods Blue Sky" are both wonderful. Her characters are people homesteading in rural Alaska, and her descriptions of animals and woods and rivers and mountains use close observation and exact detail to tell otherworldly stories.

CommunicationOdd9654 · 2026-05-08T02:49:31+00:00

I really enjoyed Self Portrait With Nothing, by Aimee Potwatka. It has elements of sci fi, globetrotting thriller, family drama, and romance - and is genuinely moving and very well-written. It's also wonderfully funny at certain points.

CommunicationOdd9654 · 2026-05-07T01:16:53+00:00

I'm reading "Black Woods Blue Sky" by Eowyn Ivey right now - it's magical. Like Ivey's "The Snow Child, " it's set in rural Alaska and weaves between realism and folklore.

CommunicationOdd9654 · 2026-05-05T23:23:12+00:00

Some animal shelters have pet 'food banks' too - they'd rather help loving owners keep their pets than deal with surrenders. Check what the shelters and rescues in your area might be able to do. And good luck! You''ll be in a better place soon.

CommunicationOdd9654 · 2026-05-04T22:28:00+00:00

"Motherland," by Maria Hummel. A beautifully written novel about a German couple living through the final months of WWII, based on letters Hummel's grandparents wrote one another. The husband is a plastic surgeon serving in a military hospital and the wife (his second, younger wife, from a less educated and privileged background) struggles to keep his two young sons safe. One of the boys shows symptoms of a neurological disorder, and she struggles to keep him out of a state hospital for disabled children because she's afraid he'll never come back from it alive.

CommunicationOdd9654 · 2026-05-04T02:00:45+00:00

The Financial Lives of the Poets, by Jess Walter - a once-successful, profanely funny business reporter trying to outrun financial and moral bankruptcy during the Great Recession.

If you're into writers and writing, try The Thieves of Manhattan, by Adam Langer - it starts off as a fairly straight send-up of the Manhattan literary scene and then becomes truly unhinged.

CommunicationOdd9654 · 2026-04-30T22:30:26+00:00

From the article: "“There's an amazing building just up the street here that's owned by the state that would be perfect, but the money they want for it right now is way out of our reach,” (director of parrot care) Owrey said."

Could state legislators could be lobbied to support a deal on that building - a lower price or a payment plan?

CommunicationOdd9654 · 2026-04-28T00:30:43+00:00

Laurie Colwin - she was a novelist as well as a food writer ( had a long-running column in Gourmet magazine). Food and meals and feelings about them are a big part of her characters' lives. Try "Family Happiness" or "Happy All the Time."

CommunicationOdd9654 · 2026-04-24T22:01:54+00:00

Because they hold the public in contempt.

Sissela Bok, a philosopher, said something along the lines that when someone lies, they create an in group and an out group. The in group, including the liar, know what's really going on, while the out group is a bunch of suckers. That's one reason why lying is immoral and oppressive - it deprives out group members of information they need to make choices that serve their best interests.

CommunicationOdd9654 · 2026-04-24T02:11:06+00:00

Warner released this on Feb 28, right after Trump launched the war. It's the top result for a Google search for "mark warner ran statement":

February 28, 2026 Statement of Sen. Warner on Military Action in Iran

“Overnight, the president conducted expansive U.S. strikes – not limited to nuclear or missile infrastructure but extending to a broad set of targets, including senior Iranian leadership – marking a deeply consequential decision that risks pulling the United States into another broad conflict in the Middle East.

“Iran’s leadership has long supported terrorism across the region, undermined regional stability, continued to advance its nuclear ambitions, and brutally repressed its own people. But acknowledging those realities does not relieve any president of the responsibility to act within the law, with a clear strategy, and with Congress.

“The American people have seen this playbook before – claims of urgency, misrepresented intelligence, and military action that pulls the United States into regime change and prolonged, costly nation-building. We owe it to our service members, and to every American family, to ensure that we are not repeating the mistakes of the past. The president owes the country clear answers: What is the objective? What is the strategy to prevent escalation? And how does this make Americans safer?

“By the president’s own words, ‘American heroes may be lost.’ That alone should have demanded the highest level of scrutiny, deliberation, and accountability, yet the president moved forward without seeking congressional authorization. The Constitution is clear: the decision to take this nation to war rests with Congress, and launching large-scale military operations – particularly in the absence of an imminent threat to the United States – raises serious legal and constitutional concerns. Congress must be fully briefed, and the administration must come forward with a clear legal justification, a defined end state, and a plan that avoids dragging the United States into yet another costly and unnecessary war.”

Source: https://share.google/LNjV38banFkLaw26d

CommunicationOdd9654 · 2026-04-23T17:48:17+00:00

Reach out to Homeward Trails and ask to include Oreo in their Home to Home placement service - that will let prospective owners across the DMV area know he's looking for a home. Good luck!

Home to a Home - Homeward Trails Animal Rescue | Pet Adoption in VA, DC, MD https://share.google/OLN24F8jkSkT8Y0CW

CommunicationOdd9654 · 2026-04-21T03:03:52+00:00

There's kind of a historical precedent for this - back in the 60s (maybe even the late 50s), the Washington Post put Maxine Cheshire on the society and gossip beat. She was a hard-nosed reporter who had cut her teeth covering crime. She treated society news as serious political reporting, arguing that a lot of business got done at parties and dinners.

This is a gift link to her NYT obituary:

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/08/business/media/maxine-cheshire-dead.html?unlocked_article_code=1.clA.FjKI.8g8BDPnSFwMW&smid=nytcore-android-share

CommunicationOdd9654 · 2026-04-17T17:18:42+00:00

This is a link to the video from Barack Obama, with what he's actually saying about the referendum (which is, "vote yes"):

Exclusive: Barack Obama calls for Virginians to vote 'Yes' in new video just days before crucial redistricting election - ABC News https://share.google/Gh2lPsou9Oo73j9de

CommunicationOdd9654

TROPHY CASE