Book Review: Hole in My Life

Hole in My Life by Jack Gantos

A young adult book, this was a quick and interesting read. In this memoir Gantos tells of his foolish mistakes made as a young man, leading to time spent in prison. I felt sad for him, as I can remember making decisions just as impulsively and with lack of forethought at the same young age. Executive reasoning just is not yet well enough developed. Gantos seems almost oblivious to the fact that using (experimenting with?) drugs could lead him down a bad road. It's too bad he didn't snap out of that stage in time. He grows and learns about himself while in prison, and his life eventually leads him to becoming a writer of children's books (and this young adult memoir). His intelligence and interest in books came to his rescue, to the literary world's benefit.

pictures of a few Little Free Libraries

Road Trip to Nebraska, Missouri - Part 1

Last week my cousin and I traveled to Lincoln and Omaha, Nebraska where we visited two friends: one in Lincoln, one in Omaha. We hit some quilt shops and the Quilt Museum in Lincoln. The museum is really good; if you get a chance, go see it. They are working on rotating more exhibits through there so that people can go more often and see new displays. This is what we saw:

plus one more exhibit called Man-Made - quilts all made by male quilters.

Here are a few shots from the museum. I can't show you much, because my photos from inside turned out really bad, with the colors of the quilts very much off their true colors. This will give you an idea, however.

(the above blue one was part of the Blue Echoes exhibit. All of those were stupendous, made by a quilter from Japan.)

From these you might get an idea of my color distortion. In the above grouping, two and three are the same quilt. Bah! I'm so disappointed with the bad coloring in my photos. Even editing them didn't help much. The last photo in this grouping is from Gees Bend.

This one is from the Man-Made exhibit. It depicts a space station and includes a whole story about the people and their community in space. Very imaginative. My colors in this photo are also inaccurate.

This is a couple of shots showing the museum itself.

Above: quilt shop "Cosmic Cow" in Lincoln, my friend's place of employment, and the Little Free Library (LFL) outside her work building. I like to visit LFLs when I travel.

After visiting Omaha, we landed at our retreat center... the Carol Joy Holling Retreat Center. This is the building we stayed in. Isn't it beautiful? (This picture is taken from their website.)

Various shots taken during the retreat. I'm working on my words quilt! Some of you may remember that. I started it for my 60th birthday, with your help. I'm determined to finish it before my 64th birthday which is next fall.

above: a couple of LFLs in Lincoln, and interesting sky when we were on the road from Nebraska to Missouri. See the continuing saga in my Road Trip Part 2 post which is coming soon!

Little Free Library Love

You probably know what Little Free Libraries are... little boxes or containers which contain free books. People can take a book, read it, return it if they want, or return another one, or put a book in another Little Free Library in another location. I love stopping at other LFLs. Now that I'm a steward of one at our church (I take care of loading and organizing it), I notice other LFLs all over the place. I love to stop at them and see what they have. Sometimes I share our overflow with those other libraries.

I decided that the month of May will be "Minnesota Authors Month." I filled it (already, even though it's still April) with a bunch of really good books by really good Minnesota authors. I have overflow of these, too, which will be placed in the library as time goes by this month.

Today after work I took a "scenic route" home, and noticed three or four other LFLs! It was a beautiful day, a perfect day to stop spontaneously at other LFLs. I even found a couple of books I want, and I gave them some of my overflow books. Fun, fun, fun. This one was cute. It matches the house it stands in front of, and I loved the cute little bench. I am hoping we can some time soon have a bench installed near our LFL at church.