A Spool of Blue Thread

Sunrise was at 7:24, sunrise will be at 4:27.  Huh.  All the same numbers in those times.  It is rainy and blustery out there, Pooh.  Gray skies and very few leaves left on our old maple tree.

Oh, it's been so long since I last sat down to write about books (and the weather outside our windows).  I've been reading so much and in such small slivers of time (thank god for ferry time) that finding other time to sit and read is hard to do.

However!  The books I've been reading have been AMAZING!  Lots of YA, of course, and science fiction, mysteries, and I've been adding in a lot more books written for adults.  I haven't made "grown-up" books a priority in the past since I've been a children's book buyer and seller for most of my bookselling life.  But now, I am the "Adult Book Buyer" and, well, you can see what I need to do.  I've been collecting some of the best books our reps have recommended and have a nice stack to occupy my time during these long Pacific Northwest nights.

I just finished Anne Tyler’s new book, A Spool of Blue Thread, a story of family and home and what makes both: classic Anne Tyler. Abby and Red live and raise their family in a house built by hand by Red’s dad, a beautiful place with a wide porch, surrounded by poplars up on a small hill. 
 
The women (ditzy Abby, practical sisters Jeannie and Amanda, calm and inexplicable Nora, strong-willed Linnie Mae) and their men (quiet and hardworking Red, secretive Denny, steady Stem and bowled-over Junior) pull us back and forth in time from a cabin in Spruce Pine, Virginia, to the well-sanded, varnished, porch swing attached to the high-ceilinged Baltimore house the Whitshanks have lived in for three generations.

A Spool of Blue Thread is the story of a family but only as Anne Tyler can tell it:  humorous, sharp, with a sly insight into marriage and relationships. It is filled with hope and love and flawed people and I think you’re really going to like it, too.
     
Reading her books are like seeing a porch light in a storm: warm and familiar, never knowing quite what you’ll get when the door is opened, but looking forward to the visit.

(A Spool of Blue Thread will be available in February, 2015, and is published by Knopf.  $25.95.  Please read responsibly and support your local, independently owned bookstore.  If you don’t have one, call Eagle Harbor Books and you can use ours.)