What if your best friend vanished and nobody would listen to you?

Latest audiobook: Elizabeth is Missing by Emma Healey

Maude is an elderly woman you meet on page 1. She is telling everyone who will listen to her that her friend Elizabeth is missing. She's missing! And nobody seems to be taking her seriously, which is frustrating to her and to you, as the reader. Why won't they listen? Elizabeth is missing.

As you spend more time with Maude, you realize that dementia is setting in and she's a very unreliable narrator. The fact that Elizabeth has gone missing has stirred up some long-buried memories of a trauma in her family when she was a teenager, and the author expertly carries you along as Maude's thoughts weave in between the past and present. What happened to Elizabeth? And what happened in the past?

This book was disorienting and suspenseful. It was made even better by the fact that it was on audio, and the narrator did an amazing job. Davina Porter's voice and skill made Maude come to life for me. Your heart will break for her when you realize how quickly she's losing her grasp on reality, and you'll want to step into her world and tell someone, "Just tell her what happened to Elizabeth!"

This book is a great combination of a thriller and a heartbreaking family story.

Happy Birthday, Beverly Cleary!

Yesterday the beloved children's author turned 103 years old, which is an amazing feat all by itself. In an interview on the Today Show on her 100th birthday, she said, "Well, I didn't do it on purpose!"

In honor of her birthday I wanted to read one of her books, but I don't own any. Well, I have one of the Ramona books in my classroom, but I didn't think to bring it home for the weekend. However, I read an article on Slate about her memoir A Girl from Yamhill, and I decided to see if my town library had it. They do, but it's out. However, her subsequent memoir, My Own Two Feet was on the shelf, so I brought it home.

It was surprisingly hard to put down. During the Depression, California was offering free community college to all of its residents. Beverly lived in Oregon, but she had relatives in California who invited her to live with them so she could get an education. She wasn't asked to do anything but keep her bedroom neat and bake two cakes each week for the family. Her grandfather sent her $5 every month, which was a big help back then. After her first year, she had to find other living arrangements because her relatives had an elderly grandmother move in and take over her bedroom. However, she proved in this book that she's nothing if not resourceful. She found a roommate and they rented a space in an old woman's home where they shared a pull-out couch bed. Whens he graduated, she moved on to a four-year school and hemmed skirts and knitted in order to make money for her room and board.

Other fun facts about Beverly Clearly:

• She got a D in botany and decided to retake it. Her subsequent A made her grade average out to a B.
• She took geology and loved it.
• She needed glasses but her mother absolutely refused to pay for them, saying that men wouldn't find her as attractive if she was wearing them.
• She took a fencing class during her junior year (epee, in case my fellow fencers were wondering).
• She and her husband eloped because her parents wouldn't approve of her marrying a Catholic.

The book ends with the publication of her first book, Henry Huggins. She wanted to write books for the children she knew when she was a children's librarian, who didn't want to read the classics. They just wanted to read stories about kids they could relate to. 

The first book I ever read by her was Ramona and her Mother, which my mom picked out for me at the Enfield Public Library here in Connecticut. I remember the story as well as the cover, which was yellow and had the two of them blowing on dandelions on it.

Beverly Cleary, like Judy Blume and Lois Lowry, is one of those authors who has just always been around for me. It was really fun to read more about her real life and family and see what obstacles she had to overcome in order to achieve her two main goals: to become a librarian and to write children's books.

What if you knew how much time you had?

This is a new answer to an age-old question: Would you ever want to know the exact date that you were going to die? And if so, how would you use that information?

Enter the Gold family. When the four children are young, they hear about a mysterious woman in their neighborhood who can tell anyone the exact date of his or her death, and they can't help themselves. They go.

What follows are four chapters that tell the life journeys of the siblings. For some it means seizing the day, living in the moment, and taking risks. For others, it's an almost tangible reminder that life is finite and we need to plan, focus, and be as productive as possible.

One of the sisters becomes a magician. She has been working on this goal since she was a young child, creating illusions but also wanting to suspend disbelief and find magic everywhere around her. On a family beach trip, she is amazed by the red water on the Jersey shore.

"Years later in school, Klara learned of a phenomenon called red tide; algae blooms multiply, making coastal waters toxic and discolored. This knowledge made her feel curiously empty. She no longer had reason to wonder about the red sea or marvel at its mystery. She recognized that something had been given to her, but something else - the magic of the transformation - had been taken away."

I can relate to this. One bucket list item I haven't crossed off yet is to see the northern lights. I have a basic understanding of what they are, but honestly, it doesn't matter much to me. I just want to see them and admire them. I don't want to know the logical explanation.

I remember the day that I realized that someday I'm going to die too. I was about four years old, playing in the playroom my parents set up in our basement. I have no idea why it dawned on me. I just know that it did, and I freaked out. I remember running up the stairs to my mother weeping about the fact that I didn't want to die.  She had no idea why I was telling her this; I wasn't sick, we hadn't had any recent deaths in the family. She assured me that it wouldn't happen for a very, very long time. That didn't really help, though. I wanted it to never happen. I don't know how my parents distracted me and got me to move on to other things, but it was definitely a Moment, with a capital M. I'd still rather not know what day it's coming. I just hope that it's still not for a very long time.

This book is a 5/5 for me. The characters were beautifully drawn and their reactions to the predictions were varied but realistic. There is great fodder here for a book club discussion.

There is a great interview with the author on the Just the Right Book podcast. That's how I found it in the first place!