ALT="Cardthartic Little Reminders card with children reading books" Nov. 19, 2020 — “We can’t have too many good ones, and the best we keep for life.” That’s how the inside of this Little Reminders friendship card reads, and isn’t it true!? It’s one of the many things that delights us about our Cardie community, how so many of us share a love of reading. Especially in stressful times, books can be our great escape, our way to fill back up again, and a connection of sorts with the people on those pages.  😍

One of the most fun, informed and prolific writers we know — and, come to think of it, one you may wish to follow — Sarah Schwartz aka The Paper Nerd was recently working on a story and asked us, “What’s Your Favorite Indulgence?” Without hesitation, my answer from here on Miami Beach was, “To start a good book at the shore Friday evening, and finish it there with my little dog on my lap as the sun slips into the sea Sunday night. Heaven on Earth for me.”

Countless are the times I’ve contentedly ended a book along with a weekend and looked up the shore to see my longtime neighbor, friend and Contributing Cardie Marianne Meischeid enjoying a tome of her own. Last Sunday eve, I had just finished the quick, mindless beach read When We Believed in Mermaids when I spotted Marianne, en masque, half-way through the great and weighty Where the Crawdads Sing.

This evening I’m going to start Sailing True North: Ten Admirals and the Voyage of Character by James Stavridis, former Supreme Allied Commander of NATO. I loved this from its preface, “A physical voyage at sea is a demanding undertaking, requiring intensity, energy, forehandedness, and intelligence … but it is vastly easier than the inner voyage we all must take every day of our lives. That voyage of character is the most important journey each of us ever makes.” Looking forward!

Our Marketing Director Jayme says she has two books going: “The Book of Lost Friends, an historical novel that jumps back and forth between a modern-day teacher and  three young women searching for family amid the destruction of the post-Civil War South; as well as the Pendergast series, a crime and historical fiction series written in exquisite detail.”

CEO Ana just started “A Lupita le Gustaba Planchar (en inglés that is Lupita Always Liked to Iron ) because I so loved author Laura Esquivel’s Like Water for Chocolate.” Having grown up in Venezuela and then earning a Masters in Spanish literature here in the States, Ana is reading the Spanish edition as, “I always love reading in the author’s native language, if I can.”

Our new Cardie Community Manager Felicia is re-reading Italo Calvino’s If on a winter’s night a traveler after  first enjoying it 15 years ago. “It’s narrated in the second person,” Felicia explains, “so it addresses ‘you, the Reader’ as its main character, with events written as if happening to you. I especially love how it begins: ‘You are about to begin reading Italo Calvino’s new novel, If on a winter’s night a traveler. Relax. Concentrate. Dispel every other thought. Let the world around you fade.’”

We’re all for that! And, in true Cardie Community Manager fashion, Felicia asks, “What will you be reading this weekend?”

Jodee Stevens
Founder & Chief Creative