dear reader

March 2026

Last month, I found myself traveling. The grass across four states was still yellow and crumbly. I drove through the aftermath of the large winter storm and saw the carnage of tree limbs snapped by the cold. I can remember the sound of the cracking from a different storm in 2022 and still hear the booms in the gloom. Yet there were early spring blossoms even though another front bringing freezing temperatures was on the way.

I read all three books that make up Phillip Pullman’s His Dark Materials series in less than a week. It was my second time, and I think the first time I finished them over a weekend. I can only seem to devour his sentences. The strength he feeds the characters was much needed, and I’m facing nothing near…well, I was going to say world annihilation. But, well!

I also read Sally Rooney’s Intermezzo because I had requested it at the library some time ago. What a sexy book, aside from the mourning and confusion and all the rest (!). Then I read An Everlasting Meal by Tamar Adler and have a new way to look at the starts and ends of meals and everything in between. I read a couple of other books for light research that may not amount to much of anything. And isn’t that what life is, though? A search that may amount to nothing. May we eat succulent meals through it all.

With love,

Thao

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