Bucket lists of various lengths have gotten a lot of hype since the movie back in 2007. My very short bucket list contained important items. My husband Al and I completed the first item of visiting all fifty states several years ago. Yesterday was a big day as proof came early and late that an even more important item could get that marvelous checkmark.

Erika Bolstad begins her eight-year memoir with curiosity about her great-grandmother. “Her name was Anna Josephine Sletvold. That’s about all I knew when all of this began during the darkest days of the Great Recession.”

The mail still runs. Stores are open. Nobody gets cake. Still, today, we are celebrating a day that is dear to my heart. Read Aloud Day has been official for only 14 years, but reading aloud became a favorite activity for me by the time I was ten years old. My nine-years-younger sister Ruth became my willing audience.

In case you’ve ever wanted to read a story that you’ve already read, but told from a different viewpoint, this is your chance. Little Women, written by Louisa Mae Alcott, told her story based largely on her own family from Jo’s viewpoint. Since she was the model for Jo, she knew the narrator well. In Marmee, Sarah Miller returns to the setting with the same story but told from the viewpoint of Jo’s mother who is Marmee in Little Women.

Following has become a big thing on social media platforms, but it has been around in other forms for a long time. I can’t even guess how many times I’ve heard people talk about “following the career” of someone who started as a barely known and moved on to great success. I’m using this meaning for my blog today.

In Rough Sleepers, Tracy Kidder follows the career of Dr. Jim O’Connell who devoted his life to homeless people who frequently slept on the street. Dr. Jim’s career began with an early choice as he neared the end of his residency and was challenged by the chief of medicine to postpone an impressive fellowship to spend a year creating a health organization for homeless citizens.

It’s not the first time my words have been repeated back to me, but it may have been the most pleasant. About fifteen years of life had happened since I first said them to my friend, Karen Konnerth.

I wish I could remember who recommended that I read Prairie Fires so I could do a proper thanks. If you have ever loved the Little House books by Laura Ingalls Wilder in any format from the books to the TV show that was based on them, you will want to read this account of how they came to be.

One of my professors used to alert us that he was “making up history” when he gave logical explanations that could not be proven. I’ve thought about his words as I’ve considered the Southern tradition of eating black-eyed peas and cabbage (or collard greens) on New Year’s Day to ensure luck and money for the coming year.

Leonard Marcus, in his nonfiction account for middle graders, Mr. Lincoln Sits for His Portrait, looks at a different side of Abraham Lincoln. In this book, an account is given of how Lincoln used photography in his runs for office and in creating the image he wanted after he was elected.

As is my custom, I’ve taken in college football playoff and bowl games with some real cliff-hangers this season. I love college football. Heightened interest comes if either I or one of our children is an alumnus of the school – even accidentally – which brings me to the North Dakota State/University of the Incarnate Word (UIW) game.

In her book, Wildseed Witch, Marti Dumas skillfully weaves a modern-day teenager’s obsession with establishing a makeup YouTube channel with an unexpected scholarship to a fancy finishing school for young witches.

Joseph has lost his staff. The moss on the manger roof is splotchy. The donkey has no ears and the cow only one of her horns. Since the nativity scene came from Sears and was inexpensive in the first place, why don’t we just replace it?

I’ve suggested a new and a middle-aged Christmas book, but we mustn’t leave out the standard so I will add an age-old classic. My first memory of A Christmas Carol was a production by Hardy Baptist Church at Christmas.

The medical technician paused as she turned to leave after checking my left eye’s dilation for cataract surgery. Her eye caught on my hand resting on the arm of the patient’s chair. “My,” she said, “that’s such a pretty ring.”

Last week, I reviewed a new Christmas book. This week I am reviewing one that has been out a since 2001. I am labelling it a “middle-aged” book. My Mississippi Book Club chose it as our December selection.

My Mississippi role model, Eudora Welty, interspersed writing with gardening or vice versa. Two of my current writer friends, Kimberly Willis Holt and Jo Hackl do, too. I am in good company as I take a break from putting words on a page to dig in the dirt.

In Dashing through the Snowbirds by Donna Andrews, Christmas in Caerphilly already has enough going on for Meg Langslow. The Canadians, a group of a dozen programmers, who are doing forensic genealogy and DNA are stuck far from home and family with an unreasonable boss named Ian Meredith.

I don’t take every writing challenge I see, but sometimes I can’t resist. The prompt said, “Tell about a group you were in where you felt like you did not belong.” The best I can remember, I joined Biographers International Organization (Bio) about ten years ago when I first began work on telling Ezra Jack Keats’s story. Their website said they were for a worldwide membership of biographers.

Now and again, a reader needs a respite with a cozy mystery. The generally accepted definition has these mysteries with a woman sleuthing around as an amateur who is probably dismissed by the professional detectives and police. Usually, the murder takes place only to be discovered after the fact in a small village or community with lots of gossips.