Life on the Vine

With only 10 days to spare I finished the 2021 Read Harder Challenge , making this the fourth year in a row that I've completed the challenge.  I've also been doing the monthly Unread Shelf challenge and Liz Gilbert's Onward Book Club .  At times it's felt like a lot of assigned homework but I've read some really great books.  I tried to read books that checked the block on more than one challenge but that only turned out to be a few.       So here are the 24 books I read for the Read Harder challenge with a bit of commentary below.  I hope that you'll be inspired to read a book or two.  If so, please leave me a comment and let me know which one you plan on reading.   Read Harder Challenge 2021 Read a book you've been intimidated to read: 'A Problem From Hell': America and the Age of Genocide by Samantha Power.  This book also took care of the Unread Shelf challenge in October:   Read a book you're secretly afraid of .  I have owned this book

It has been a very long time since I've done a wine-focused blog post.  Once again it's a holiday weekend and movement is restricted to essential travel (i.e. work, food shopping, medical, etc.).  So it seems like a good time to write a blog post and I thought it would be fun to do a wine post. My last blog post was about books keeping me sane in 2020.  Well I know one other thing that probably bonds us all in 2020 and that is alcohol.  We all probably imbibed a bit too much.  Living in Italy, I have certainly been drinking more than usual for 3.5 years.  But you toss in lockdown and the numerous challenges of 2020...I was having a drink nearly every night.  Although one of my co-workers laughed at me when I talked about how much I was drinking.  She said she was drinking a bottle every night!   So tell me...did you drink more in 2020?  Which camp were you in?  A glass a night or a bottle a night?  Inquiring minds want to know.  To rein it in a bit I did two dry months dur

I share this post today in full recognition that there are VERY serious things happening back home in the United States.  This is a time that requires honesty, truth tellers and some serious soul searching.  I have really thought of nothing else for days.  But today is Saturday and movement restrictions remain in place so what's a girl to do?  I'm going to finish up this blog post, which I began writing before the new year. So, like I said, restrictions continue here in Italy and for well over half of 2020, we were in varying degrees of lockdown.  MVPs of 2020 were certainly our medical professionals but the MVO (Most Valuable Object) has to be BOOKS!   With months of stay at home orders I delved into books.  That's probably evident when you look at my blog posts in 2020.  They are nearly all about books.  In 2020 I read more books from my personal library than ever before.  38 to be exact.  For comparison, I read a whole whopping seven (7!) last year.  It seems I'd dec