News
Have BFF; Will Travel!
In the March, 2022 issue of The Atlantic, Jennifer Senior (a journo I've ALWAYS aspired to BFF-ism with) wrote an article about female friendship.
The catchy headline read: "It's Your Friends Who Break Your Heart" but it was the sub-headline that gave me a shiver of recognition.
It said: "The older we get, the more we need our friends--and the harder it is to keep them."
From baton-twirling camp to four cross-country moves; from fulfilling and tumultuous career years to milestone celebrations, friends have always been the unwavering footing on which I stand in this world.
Husbands and partners are groovy but friends....!!
Writer Rebecca Traister wrote in the NYT in 2016: "Among the largely acknowledged truths of contemporary female life is that women's foundational relationships are as likely to be with one another as they are with the romantic partners who, we're told, are supposed to complete us."
All of this to say, girlfriends, that I think of a Chicks-Only Siren Sojourn as a kind of ceremony to honor the power and enrichment of female friendship.
Which is why you'll see more Chicks-Only expeditions landing on the Upcoming Adventures & Retreat page through the 2025 - 2027 season.
https://www.sirensojourns.com/upcoming-retreats
And to commemorate this Roaming & Reading issue devoted to female friendship, see below for four wonderful BFF must-read novels.
Gardens, Girlfriends & Great Books!
Some Breaking News:
I had originally planned a Book-Lover's Pilgrimage to Portland for 2025 but intel and advice from some trusted friends and acquaintances about the challenges that remain in downtown Portland has prompted me to make a change.
Portland must wait while we go to......Asheville, North Carolina in September, 2025!!!
Clear mountain air, beautiful autumn blooms, luscious wineries and terrific bookstores. And I have a one-of-a-kind meditative experience in a forest planned. It's going to be fantastic!
The itinerary is coming soon. If you are intrigued, just drop me a line at SirenSojourns@gmail.com and let me know you're interested.
Four Must-Reads About Female Friendship
Is there any novel more dedicated to the intricacies of female friendship than Elena Ferrante's "My Brilliant Friend"? Yes! The third novel in the quartet, "Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay." The volatile bond between Elena and Lila is frayed as they live with the choices they've made against the backdrop of an Italy in upheaval. And yet the reader knows that their friendship, forged in childhood, is only dormant, not finished.
"The Island of Sea Women" by Lisa See. A friend recommended this novel on our Siren Sojourn to Cuba and it embraces everything I love in a novel: foreign setting, a complex friendship that will be tested and the arc of history.
"Another Brooklyn" by Jacqueline Woodson. This novel is the first adult novel Woodson wrote after twenty years of YA writing and it's a humdinger. August, an accomplished academic, has returned to Brooklyn for her father's funeral and as she slips back into the familiar streets, memories of the three girls who shaped her adolescence rush up to meet her. "Sylvia, Angela, Gigi, August. We were four girls together, amazingly beautiful and terrifyingly alone."
Okay, this isn't a novel but I absolutely could not leave the great Ann Patchett's book "Truth & Beauty" off of this list. If you are joining me for the Pilgrimage to Parnassus, (Ann's bookstore in Nashville) it's on our reading list and we'll be discussing it on the trip. If you've never read it, put it on the top of your TBR list right now!
Siren Meet-up at Talking Volumes!
If you are a Siren Sojourner and joined me for an adventure in 2024, (Cuba, Ann Patchett's Nashville, Bhutan & Kerala) I have a ticket waiting for you for the Talking Volumes season launch on Sept. 17 with the incomparable Edwidge Danticat.
Email me at SirenSojourns@gmail.com for one or two tickets, and I'll put them under your name on Sept. 17th.
Women to Women: Friendship & Adventure in Cuba, March 2026
The March 2026 Cuba adventure is filling fast. And the itinerary is coming soon.
If the idea of traveling into the green heart of the island, meeting women naturalists, authors and artists and talking about books with a terrific cadre of adventurers enchants you, you're my kind of traveler! Please email me at SirenSojourns@gmail.com.
I'll hold a place for you as the trip approaches.
Bookstore Radar
Headed to Hollywood this autumn? Check out this CBS This Morning mini-movie of The Last Bookstore in LA.
https://www.lastbookstorela.com/about