A New Venture ...

Dear Reader,

My days of Dick, Jane, and Sally are long past. I've worked my way from Laura Ingalls Wilder, Carolyn Keene, James Herriot, Stephen King, Marion Zimmer Bradley, J.R.R. Tolkien, J.D. Salinger, Edith Wharton, James Michener, and a host of others to Alice Hoffman, Dennis Lehane, Nathaniel Philbrick, Jane Austen, Morgan Llywelyn, Jodi Picoult, Edward Rutherford, Anthony Horowitz, William Styron and a continually changing cast of favorites. And still the authors keep coming ... and I keep welcoming them and their stories into my library and onto my bedside table.

This blog is a new venture for me. I've written a food blog for the past two years. The Spice Garden has been a joy to build. What started as a techno way of building a family cookbook and food diary turned into much more, though. I have branched out and posted on foods that I have always wanted to learn to make, written about food issues, ranted about topics that are food-related, joined other foodies in on-line blogshares, helped raise monies for charitable causes through on-line bake sales, and met an amazingly wonderful group of people through the blog! The problem with food blogs and foodies is that one consumes what one posts on and sooner or later, the scale tells you that you must cut back on consumption.

As I have cut back on eating sweets and rich foods, I have found that I need another outlet and consuming words and ideas is a much better practice. I have always enjoyed reading and writing and over the past few weeks, the seed of an idea for a literature-centered blog began to germinate.  Last evening, I happened to attend an author reading at a small indie bookshop in Brookline, MA.  Alice Hoffman was speaking about her latest book, The Dovekeepers. I thought to myself, "You could be posting on these kinds of experiences if you had a place for them!"  So ... I came home from the event with a bit of a fire under me.

Hence, Buch Handling. So, here I go! My plans are to give short book reviews, write on media that interests me, share stories and memories from my years as a reader, pop in posts on any future author events that I happen upon, and enjoy making some new friends. Come and visit when you can ... leave me your thoughts if you want to ... share any posts that you'd like to pass on by linking my post URL's or passing the word about the blog ... give me ideas for books to read ... critique what I've written and shared ... make yourself at home!

See you around the stacks ...

Susan