Yes, we are living in puzzling times, and I have, for the past several weeks, shamelessly immersed myself in puzzles. In fact, I just finished my third 1000 piece puzzle on Sunday. I need to credit, or blame, my husband for this fairly new past time of mine. While he grew up puzzling with his family, my family did not. Every year of our marriage I would buy him a new puzzle for Christmas, every year he would encourage me to help him with his new puzzle, and every year I would roll my eyes and spout that I would rather watch paint dry than work on a puzzle. Subsequently 20 years of marriage and 20+ puzzles later, I finally succumbed to the task. After some strategy sharing and lots of patience, I can now proudly say that I enjoy working on puzzles as a past time. Here are some benefits of puzzling that might surprise you: jigsaw puzzles are especially good for improving short term memory, jigsaw puzzles exercise the left and right sides of your brain at once, jigsaw puzzles improve your visual-spatial learning, and most important for right now, jigsaw puzzles are a great meditation tool and stress reliever. My most recent puzzle completion was a puzzle titled Bibliophile Book Club Darlings.
The white edges were a bear but I loved piecing together some of my favorite titles. If I have not said enough to encourage you to start working on a puzzle, at the very least, pick ANY book title from this puzzle, and I guarantee you will enjoy the book. After all, these books are Book Club Darlings!
Read it or Weep 