Bay to Ocean 2019: The Year's Best Writing from the Eastern Shore Writers Association Paperback – September 13, 2019

This anthology is divided into Fiction, Poetry, and Nonfiction. I'm ignoring the Poetry section -- you'd have to pay me to read poetry! So we're left with Fiction and Nonfiction. What's odd is the amount of first person memoir in both. Even if the memoir stories in Fiction are exaggerated, they'd fit right in under the Nonfiction category.Among the stories I liked, I sometimes appreciated them for odd reasons. L.L. Powell's IN THE NEW BRIDGE'S SHADOW I liked for its data on bridge design, not necessarily the plot itself. I liked Dan Leventhal's THE MAKING OF A MARINER because, like the author, I attended the US Merchant Marine Academy. (I got kicked out for being dyslexic. Apparently, a ship's navigator has to be able to tell port from starboard!)Aside from those, I enjoyed Frank E. Hopkins' DELIVERING DESSERTS and Russell Reece's THE WHOPPER, both of which were amusing. But, by far, Sarah McGregor's excerpt from her novel HE LOVES ME KNOT was the best written. I not only enjoyed it, but I appreciated her writing skill. I'm not a fan of romance novels, but I can appreciate good writing.One note to the editors: when you design an anthology, you put the two best stories in the first and last spots. The first story should have a kick-ass opening, to encourage the casual shopper buy the book. The last story should be the best one, so the reader is left with a good feeling about the book.

I recently read A Gentleman In Moscow. In that novel - a treasure trove of delightful observations woven into an intricate plot - the protagonist comments that the pages of a book are numbered for a reason. He says (I'm paraphrasing) that a reader should not sit down and swallow the thing whole, but sample and savor a passage or chapter or scene, putting it down to enjoy a welcome interruption or simply to digest what was read.And that is exactly how I the 2019 Bay to Ocean collection of stories and poetry. My wheelhouse is losing myself in the world of a big heavy tome but I have stepped outside my comfort zone to enjoy snippets of genres I don't typically visit. So far I was touched by Caroline Kalfas' love letter to her grandmother in Knitting With My Grandmother, Claire McCabe's poem Under the Clootie Tree, and Adrianne Lasker's The Embrace, a one page glimpse into the grief and joy of parenting a child with autism.Read a few pages. Put it down. Ponder. Repeat.