News
Jane Eyre's England: Two Spots Available!
The best thing I did on my summer vacation was to scout next spring's Jane Eyre's England trip.
And, Readers, it was FABULOUS!
I hiked the pink- heathered moors. I explored the Old Bronte Parsonage for hours. And I walked the Bronte Way, listening to the audio book of "Jane Eyre."
Two guests have had to cancel their reservation for the trip, which means there are two spots available. And friends, if you love books this is a wonderful trip.
https://www.sirensojourns.com/england
Interested? Drop me a line at SirenSojourns@gmail.com
The Novels I Loved This Summer!
Maybe I spent too much time on planes. Or sprawled on a backyard lounger. Or ignoring Cookie's pleas to play Frisbee (for the umpteenth time in a given day.)
Whatever it is, I had a stellar summer of reading. Tons of novels that were absorbing and fulfilling. Don't you love a summer like that?
Here are a few of my very faves:
"Blunt Instrument" by Amy Bloom. I'm inclined to love anything Bloom writes--her memoir, "In Love" was a life-changing book for me-- But I wondered if she'd bring anything fresh to the amateur detective novel. YES! Each time I opened the novel, I couldn't wait to spend more time with her central character, Dell Chandler, who undertakes a murder investigation on a college campus replete with quirky, ego-maniacal nutballs. It's great!
"The Haul" by Gary Phillips: Next to spy novels, I adore a good heist novel and this one is delish. Master-thief O'Connor is living the good life when he is, you guessed it!, lured out of retirement for one last score. The architectural details of the heist are fun and convincing and the surprise waiting for the thieves is one more reason I finished this novel in just a couple of days.
"Land" by Maggie O'Farrell. Yes, I'm an unabashed Maggie fan but who else can write so gorgeously of a homeland's gravitational pull on a family's identity? It's full of folklore and mysticism and serendipity.
And if you're signed up for my Bayfield Book Retreat, you'll be talking about this novel with me in late October!
The "Wild Dark Shore" of Tasmania
Charlotte McConaghy made up the island upon which "Wild Dark Shore," with all of its mystery and beauty, unfolds.
Shearwater Island (as she named it) is based on Macquarie Island, a UNESCO site governed as a nature preserve by Tasmania, which McConaghy visited as she researched the novel.
Our naturalist guide will teach us about the birds and flowers, animals and sea life on Tasmania that served as an inspiration to McConaghy.
The "Wild Dark Shore" adventure launches in November, 2028 and although that is still more than a year away, the trip is filling fast. If you'd like to join our expedition, drop me a line at SirenSojourns@gmail.com.
https://www.sirensojourns.com/tasmania
Read Book. Will Travel!
We'd finished our wine and tagine one night in a lodge in the Atlas Mountain foothills of Morocco when I asked my Siren travelers to name a novel with a setting so alluring that you would step into it and live there for a fortnight.
I like this exercise. I get a sense of the kind of curiosity a traveler might bring to their reading. And what nudges the door open to imagination.
Patricia, born and raised in Colombia, was eager to step into the lush and wild world that Pulitzer Prize winning icon Gabriel Garcia Marquez had created in "One Hundred Years of Solitude."
Kathy imagined herself catapulted into outer space with Nell and Chie and the other astronauts in Samantha Harvey's "Orbital" spacecraft.
Time travel to Korea was intriguing to my readers. Jenny wants to explore the Jeju Island of Lisa See's "Island of the Sea Women," Tricia wanted to learn more about the Korea in Barbara Demick's "Nothing to Envy" and Stephani wanted to step back into the world of Min Jin Lee's "Pachinko."
FUN FACTS: I have a 2028 SirenSojourns adventure to Jeju & beyond. And Min Jin Lee is coming to Talking Volumes on October 4th! Tickets at MPR.org.
Roberto imagined himself dancing along the ocean floor with the sea creature at the center of "The Soul of the Octopus" and Malisa was ready to strike out on the Appalachian Trail of "Heartwood."
Annie chose the Afghanistan of "The Kite Runner," Rima chose the Naples of "My Brilliant Friend," Kim would go to the Mont St. Michel of "All the Light You Cannot See."
Julie would walk willingly through a portal into ancient Norway portrayed in the trilogy of "Kristin Lavransdatter." And Laila Lalami's Andalusia invited Howie into its world.
Play the game with a group of friends. And then here's the next question: Have you ever been to the far off setting of a novel you love? What was the experience like?
The End of Reading? Not So Fast!
Okay–I knew the headline was click-bait aimed right at people like me–people who love books and who read a lot.
But I opened The Atlantic’s article proclaiming that “The End of Reading is Here”--anyway. Because I’ve wondered if people are reading less….And I’ve worried that when we DO read, we’re reading deep in our comfort zone.
Here’s a couple of bite-size morsels from the article written by Rose Horowich: When over 230,000 Americans estimated the way they used their time in 2023–quote–”the proportion of Americans who read for pleasure on any given day fell from 28 percent in 2004 to 16 percent in 2023. …Gambling has become a more common leisure activity than reading a book”
And this: The books that people do read are simpler than they used to be. New York Times best sellers today have sentences that are about one-third shorter than they were a century ago. Longer sentences aren’t inherently better. But their former ubiquity suggests an age when Americans had the inclination and ability to read serious works of literature.
The End of Reading Is Here Optimists once believed that universal literacy was inevitable. Now it seems that the age of reading might be a short anomaly in human history.
I hosted a 9am Minnesota Public Radio conversation about this and our guests—Natalie Wexler, who studies and writes about education and reading; and Naomi Baron, professor emerita from American U—did not pour cold water on the argument at the center of The Atlantic article.
Wexler says it’s not that we Americans aren’t reading. We are! It’s just that we’re reading snippets of texts and posts and emails and captions. She adds: “People aren’t engaging in the kind of reading that demands sustained attention and the ability to absorb complex ideas.”
Think of it like your biceps. The more you exercise your biceps, the heavier the barbells you can pump. The more your reading demands comprehension skills, the less difficult it is to summon that comprehension.
Naomi Baron believes that unless educators prepare young students now for the effects of AI, where any child’s question has an instantaneous answer, cognitive comprehension will languish.
So what to do? Rose Horowich (who also wrote a 2025 viral article about how elite college students were no longer reading books) writes that there’s a movement to bring whole book reading back to some elementary and middle schools.
How about for adults? I call this The Reading Reach. Choose a book (audio, print, Kindle) in which the setting, the narrative conflict, the ideas are far outside your comfort zone.
Grab a few friends to read the same book and then plan a discussion over coffee or cocktails. Assign each friend to bring three knotty questions about what the book is saying and then let her rip. You are now reading with excellent comprehension!
Want a couple of book ideas to get started? Drop me an email!
Books for Bayfield!
If you are accompanying me to Bayfield in October for my (sold out!) book retreat, the books we'll be discussing have been announced! Please find them on the Upcoming Adventures page at SirenSojourns.com.
And if you missed the sign-up for this year, have faith, dear readers. I'm doing it again in October, 2027!