Before there was binge TV watching, there was binge reading. Since I have started a new binge set, I’ve been thinking about some binge reading from my past.

Normally, I do not look for books with more than one author, but Break to You publicity had an intriguing topic for me – two teens in juvenile detention. Break to You has three authors: Neal Shusterman, Debra Young, and Michelle Knowlden. As a writer, I can’t figure out how you even write with one other person, much less two, but these three have figured it out.

Just when you were sure Romeo and Juliet died tragic deaths because of love, here comes their daughter Rosaline Montague to straighten out the story in A Fair Daughter of Verona by Christina Dodd.

Okay, so I borrowed the title of this blog from the current issue of Thema. There is a reason for that. More than a year ago I saw the invitation on the Thema website to write with this theme. Probably a year before that I had written a poem triggered by seeing the wood violets blooming beneath the trees in my yard.

I became intrigued with John Cochran’s account in Writer’s Digest in the “Breaking In” column with his move from journalism to writing a novel for middle graders and requested an Advance Reading Copy of Breaking Into Sunlight from Net Galley. Two things that he noted struck a chord with me.

I saw the notice that today was National Sewing Machine Day – an appliance that has always been dear to my heart. Google says that June 13th honors the invention of the sewing machine and the people who have improved it over the years.

Sometimes a reader has trouble figuring out when a writer is telling the truth and when she (or he) is making things up. I thought I would help you with that by labelling what I am and am not making up.

In The Last Twelve Miles that goes on sale today, Erika Robuck begins with the true story of two women on opposite sides of the Prohibition Rum Wars in the early twentieth century and weaves a compelling novel around them.

In a hot, un-airconditioned, lovely brick building, sixty-six years ago today, Furrs Baptist Church in Pontotoc County, Mississippi was filled to capacity for a special event. The church pianist was marrying the pastor’s oldest daughter.

All right, I don’t normally put that first adjective in front of snake, but this was an exception. I was walking along, taking care of business, headed to the mailbox to see what kind of junk mail we got today. I was paying so little attention that I almost stepped on her (or him – didn’t cozy up close enough to tell).

One of my favorite kinds of books is fiction based on facts or a real happening. Sasha Vasilyuk, in her debut novel, includes both a real happening that led her to discover facts to flesh out her work of fiction.

Blossoming of my blue hydrangeas this spring triggered a trip down Memory Lane. When I was ten years old, we lived catty-cornered across from Mrs. Birdie and Mr. Amos, an old grandparent couple (probably in their fifties). A green lawn spread in front of their white Mississippi home, complete with front porch and rocking chairs.

I could name a number of good mothers here, as I have in the past. My own family is full of them as I think of my mother and mother-in-law who were the subject of another blog, my three sisters, along with my daughter and daughters-in-law who have done a fine job with my grandchildren. There are also those who choose a mother responsibility.

It couldn’t have looked that promising on May 1, 1937. Even their first meeting brought mixed reactions. Appropriately, that meeting was at Virginia’s home church. Berton returned to lunch with the “cousins” he was visiting – actually the family of his mother’s first husband with whom she remained close even after he died. He told them he had met the woman he would marry. She gave a different report at her family dinner table saying she had met the ugliest man she had ever seen.

Lois Lowry is known for putting real life issues into a wonderful storyline. Her newest book, Tree. Table. Book., lives up to that reputation. In an interview about the upcoming book, she notes how often she writes about the relationship between the elderly and the young.

If you don’t know that the Fay B. Kaigler Book Festival is a highlight of my year and that I use the pronoun “our” when I speak of what is in de Grummond Children’s Literature Collection, I can assume that you have not often read this blog. Sometimes, I get surprised myself about the connections I find there.

Colleen Cambridge in her historical fiction cozy mystery takes the reader back to the aftermath of World War II with her protagonist Tabitha Knight. Tabitha may be an aspiring cook (chef would be overstating her skill) for her grandfather and his partner with Julia Child as her best friend. An American in Paris, she speaks fluent French which will help with both her missions in the book.

Bibliophagist or bibliophage. Call me either or both. The title has fit since my mother, concerned that she had an illiterate five-year-old on her hands, taught me to read before I went to school. Mama had instilled the love of words and story long before she embarked on teaching me to read. This new skill just meant I could read by myself.

You may be like me and have Amy Tan nicely cubbyholed into a novelist that writes from her cultural heritage. I have certainly enjoyed her string of books – The Kitchen God’s Wife, The Joy Luck Club, and The Bonesetter’s Daughter – to name a few. Now she has done something entirely different and worth reading.

I’ve been a subscriber to A Word A Day for at least twenty-five years. If you love new words, I recommend it, and it’s free though they are open to contributions in appreciation for the new words you learn. Sometimes a word strikes a chord as one did this last week. The word was “heightism.”