I Love Books. Physical or digital on my Kindle. Have been reading since I was around 4 years old. Adore science fiction and historical fiction, thoroughly enjoy all the other genres. Except pure fantasy. Haven't found one, yet, that I could read all the way through. In a nutshell, I’ve been a retail sales pro, inside sales phenom, assistant director of non-profit, on numerous non-profit boards, event planner, robotic engineer, entrepreneur, pool player, writer, and trainer. I'm a slow thinker, bibliophile, and a philomath. I’m a USA native, have attended 4 grade schools, 4 high schools, 4 colleges. This year I am retiring from my business of 18+ years, playing more pool, enjoying time with husband as we explore small town squares and city markets.

"For a decade, codebreakers have tried—and failed—to solve the case of two crumpled papers that were found stuffed in a secret pocket under the bustle and inside the seams of a silk dress from the 1880s. Over the years, the mystery even earned its own moniker: The Silk Dress Cryptogram... Questions lingered over what “Bismark omit leafage buck bank,” “Calgary Cuba unguard confute duck fagan,” and “Spring wilderness lining one reading novice” could have possibly meant." Have a guess what the code might mean before you read the article. The answer is a tidbit of history I learned this week. A Crumpled Note Hidden in a Dress Became One of the World’s Most Elusive Codes. Then a Tiny Clue Solved It. What about you? Learned any historical tidbits lately?

Even well-loved, super-popular, award-winning books have their serious haters! 😂 This is historical fiction. All guesses are encouraged (no googling, though!). This is meant to be fun. Don't be dismayed if you disagree with the review. Any spelling, grammar, and punctuation errors are copied directly from the review. I’ll post the correct answer tomorrow (13th May 2026). ⭐ Tedious and pretentious, I consider this to be the ultimate “Oprah book.” (Not surprisingly, it was a reading group selection.) It has all the elements of Ms. Winfrey’s brand of rah-rah self esteem promotion, including a girl who heals herself of a congenital defect by determination, dammit; and pie-eyed “answers” to the meaning of life (we don’t really die, because our molecules live on and stuff!) Fellow members of a vegetarian discussion forum have told me that [Author] is smugly dismissive of vegetarianism in her book [Title] (an account of the author’s odyssey raising her own food—including animals). I can’t comment on this, because I have not read [Author's] more recent work. However, I daresay it wouldn’t surprise me after seeing the attitude displayed in [this book]. After an especially odious description of a tribal hunt, the whiniest and most unsympathetic sister briefly becomes a vegetarian. Meanwhile, the wisest and most mature sister takes it all in stride with “intellectual” omni arguments which essentially boil down to It’s the Circle of Life and Plants Have Feelings Too. Come on! I realize that this book is beloved by many; my book group couldn’t stop raving about it. Sorry, I just don’t get it. ⭐ What do think? What's the book? (In this case, if you can think of only the title, but not the author, that's ok!)

Is that everytime I see it I get the Beatles’ yesterday stuck in my head, and then my brain tries to make the rhymes fit. Tell me I’m not the only weirdo doing this.