Welcome to Love + Travel where exploration meets self-discovery.
In my latest, I wrote a Letter To My Son as a reminder not to let good be the enemy of great. You can also check out my compilation of 365 Haikus, or the entirety of my writing, here.
I got a library card late last year and immediately said: run it up!
I’m letting my taxes be my book budget especially since I’m reading a lot more during this season of life.
I can count on my fingers the numbers of times I’ve left the house in the past month and between downtime while pumping, and doing me while tagged out of parenting, I’ve been able to spend time with a book in my hand at least once a day.
It’s a simple joy. A way to be still and present with my thoughts. It’s something I’ve enjoyed since I was a kid. For better or worse, I feel most comfortable alone and in my head.
By extension, that makes the library a safe haven for me too.
There’s irony to enjoying solitude in a place filled with other people’s thoughts, however it does provide an escape - the chance to step into another’s shoes, the opportunity to enter another world.
It’s human nature to seek belonging. To long for spaces where you are known and can have peace of mind. These three books The Catch, Perfection, and The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store all reflect the importance of that connection to self. Their plots center the comfort that comes with being aligned with a place, a person, or a time period.
To me, that’s the magic of reading. You’re never truly alone.
Enjoy the escape,
R.
About
30 year old estranged twins Clara and Dempsey are content living seperate lives until a woman who looks exactly like their mother pops up and in pursuit of figuring out if she is real or a con-woman forces them to confront their shared past and their hopes for the future. What unfolds is a dark, genre defying, drama filled story that asks how far one is willing to go to find out the truth.
My Thoughts
If you think your life is a mess this book might reel your perspective in a bit. It is both a relatable family drama and an escape from reality with its time traveling elements. What the author gets so right is the human need for belonging and the lengths we are willing to go to have a point of origin. Parentage, as a starting point, gives us grounding.. Without it we become unmoored. Adrift in the world and constantly looking back even when moving forward. It makes sense then the lengths these sisters go to find answers, and also, the level of dysfunction present in their day to day lives when first introduced to them
Best part
The dagger-like insults thrown around that only siblings can come up with.
About
On the surface Vincenzo Latronico’s “Perfection” is a third-person telling of a couples everyday life. On a deeper level it is a critique on the ways globalization, technology, and indvidualism create a hollow existance. By following millenial ex-pats Anna and Tom, the reader is given the chance to reconsider what a perfect life is by witnessing the ways convenience and accessability - what’s thought of as idyllic - can become monotone. We’re reminded perfection, in any form, only exists for a limited time.
My Thoughts
I finished this book a minute ago and I still think about it.
It’s a reminder that if you look closely at even the most beautiful of circumstances you will find a blemish. Telling this story in third person was the only way to ensure life wouldl lack the nuance and context that a first person telling would include. Void of sentiment things become very black and white. It causes the reader to view their life in the third person. And in taking a bird’s eye view there’s nowhere to hide. You get a full picture of your circumstances. It makes one’s own similarities and differences to Anna and Tom all that more striking. It affirms youth is fleeting and the sole purpose of most things is to distract us from the inevitability of mortality.
Ultimately, this book is less of an indictment of modern existence and more of a perspective check on how time is spent.
Best Part
The narrator delivers a gut punch by describing the couple’s use of social media as having a “double life.”
About
When a skeleton is found in a well in 1972, the authorities hope to get to the bottom of the mystery but, before they can, a hurricane blows in and washes away any semblence of evidence. The novel then jumps back a half century and through James McBride’s character and place development, “The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store” delivers a slow burning masterpiece that reveals not only the culprit but the fabric of America through the Chicken Hill neighborhood in Pottstown, Pennsylvania.
My Thoughts
The story of Black America is the story of America itsef.
As the text progresses and Chicken Hill turns into a predominantly Black neighborhood, residents at the bottom of the hill, outside of the opportunity for covenience or personal gain, turn a blind eye to their Black neighbors, while those on the hill, quite literally have an undisrupted view of how their White counterparts live. As always, those religated to the margin have the clearest lay of the land. It’s ironic that the residents of Chicken Hill live above the people who look down on their existence.
Best part
A character named Paper has forever changed what’s possible when having a conversation over coffee and pie.
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In anticpation of the Metropolitan Opera’s premiere of El Último Sueño de Frida y Diego (May 14–June 5, 2026), the Museum of Modern Art presents Frida & Diego: The Last Dream from March 21st - September 12th, 2026.
Jon Bausor, the stage set and co-costume designer of the opera, curated the art exhibit to include portraits of the artists themselves and canvases of their most compelling works.
- Are you a fan of the library? When’s the last time you went?
- What’s your favorite genre to read?
-Book? Article? Op-Ed? What was the last really good thing you read?
- What’s on your To Be Read (TBR) list?
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