Tag: Books

Enjoying The Lights and Sounds of the Season!

It’s Saturday already! Time flies when you all have the flu. Luckily we are now a germ free zone.

Yesterday I scrubbed everything with the Vinegar of the Four Thieves just to be sure. Then we read a story called The Green Ghost by Marion Dane Bauer. It came out in 2008 and is a good short chapter book for young readers. It’s a Christmas story told by two little girls. We laughed, we cried and then we laughed again. It is a lovely story to share this time of year! And the five year old asked if this was Fiction or Non-Fiction and my heart melted. He’s 5 and knows the difference. So proud.

The Green Ghost (A Stepping Stone Book(TM)) by [Bauer, Marion Dane]

In the afternoon we made more paper snowmen and they are now every place you look. Last night we all went to the light show at Regional Park. I’m pretty sure everyone in town had the same idea as traffic was moving at a snail’s pace. After that we went over to Santa’s Village and played around and took pictures. Then it was home for cocoa and a donut. By that time everyone was falling asleep on their feet so it was off to bed for them while we watched Vikings again.

I think everyone is over the worst of it. No more all day pajama days. So it’s back to work. Finalizing plans for our Christmas get away and finishing up the TBR pile.

I imagine everyone is busy running around doing last minute shopping and baking up a storm. I hope you have great weather and a good weekend!

xx Patricia

A Blogger Nomination Thingy

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Thank you to Cynthia for sharing this with us! Hop over and say hello to her Here   

She and her merry band of elves are building a home from scratch people! And she is a city girl up to her neck in the country learning everything about homesteading. She is my hero and the world is so much more interesting with her in it.  So Check One off. Thank the Blogger who nominated you. Thank you Cynthia!

Step Two:  A Brief History of your Blog

I started this blog about two years ago to share books with as many people as possible. Reading is my passion, talking about books is my obsession. Plus I love to throw in an opinion or two that no one in real life wants to hear.

As someone who has suffered with Anxiety all of her life, books were my refuge. In my real life I’m more the Greta Garbo type. I just want to be alone. But the blog lets my inner extrovert come out and play as well as help authors I love get the word out on their books. I also have a Tea blog over Here 

Over there we talk about tea in all of its glorious forms and lovely things to nosh on while we sip tea and tell outrageous tales!

Step Three: Two Pieces of Advice

  1. Be Nice. If you don’t like or agree with someone’s writing, move on. You don’t have to comment on it. Just move on. If you don’t agree with another bloggers Book Review, it doesn’t matter. We read books based on our understand of the topic, the location or the author, so no two people ever read the same story. You just do you and support the folks who do their best too.
  2. If You See Something, Say Something. NO, not like a pipe bomb! If you read something and think, “Oh, that was lovely ( insert any other descriptive words here)”go that extra click and tell them. Hey, that made me smile, or Wow, I did not know that, thanks for sharing!,or a simple That was lovely. And if you read a book, leave a review at least on Amazon. Do not be intimidated by those lengthy reviews that tell the entire book, a simple I really enjoyed this book and would recommend it to others.

Find your passion and share it with the world! There are so many interesting people writing interesting posts out there that I’m simply going to say, if you haven’t done this challenge before, have a go at it! It’s nice to share who you are with new readers.

Mad Love To Cynthia!  And as the seven-year old says….What do we want Grandma? Hint: The answer is always World Peace. You do your part, I’ll do mine.

xx Patricia on Sunday

It’s Sunday! What are you reading this week?

Happy Sunday! Here it is going to be a hot one again. I am reading Christmas books today and just couldn’t get into it. So I lit a Pine candle and now the house smells like a Christmas Tree and the reading is rolling along just fine.

Today is also my little munchkin Corbins fifth birthday! So this afternoon and into the night we will be celebrating him out at GiGi’s house in the country. With all the cousins and Aunts and Uncles. And of course, Spiderman! This little boy brings me more joy than I ever thought possible. He has the most incredible imagination and you are likely to find us wearing capes and running in the yard being superheroes or having chocolate milk mocktinis at tea time.

Like me, he is a solitary soul. He is totally happy playing by himself and making up stories about fairies or super heroes.

Happy Birthday my darling boy. I love you to the moon and back!

xx Patricia

September is giving us some seriously good books! Here are just a few!

Sing, Unburied, Sing  A searing and profound Southern odyssey by National Book Award winner Jesmyn Ward.

Lie to Me  They built a life on lies 

 

A Murder Too Soon: A Tudor Mystery  Jack Blackjack is ordered to eliminate a spy in Princess Elizabeth’s household in this engaging Tudor mystery. 

Odd & True   Hunting Monsters!

Protocol (A Maggie O'Malley Mystery #1) “A page-turner! Smart, fast-paced and surprising.” – Hank Phillippi Ryan, Mary Higgins Clark Award-Winner, Author of Say No More

These are just a few of the many books coming out in September! I think I have a total of 20 reviewed. The first one Sing, Unburied, Sing was a difficult book for me to read. The truth often is. It is set in a place in Mississippi that I am very familiar with and know these things to be true. Ms. Ward is an amazing writer!

Have a good Saturday. Luckily, we only had leaks and line back ups to deal with up  here yesterday. But our hearts were with everyone in Texas and we will continue to keep you right there, close to us.

Rainy Days and Mondays…

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Rain,rain and more rain…while my allergies are screaming No!, the reader in me is saying Oh yes, please! There is just something calming in a nice hot beverage and hearing the rain on the roof. Having a cosy mystery to snuggle up with is a big bonus!

Today’s read is The Dark Lake by Sarah Baily. which is really good so far!

I’ve been doing the August Yoga Challenge and it has really helped my anxiety issues. Not to mention my bottom. I’m trying to get OU Boy involved but that man just is not limber in any way. Since I’m tall and fold up like a lawn chair, I can’t understand why he can’t either, but at least he is trying.

I hope you all have a great Monday. This is our Friday so we just have to make it through the day without anyone dying and we’re good!

In The End We All Become Stories..

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Thank you for the pity party support yesterday. Turns out they gave me the wrong date and time, so I didn’t have to go to the meeting until next week.

Then my Bestest Friend, OU Boy, took me for some retail therapy. Turns out I just needed a new swimsuit, running shoes and a hat. Who Knew?

I have a ton of reading to do over the next few days, plus finishing up a Human Resource Manual so I got up super early, I’m talking like 6 a.m. and did 6 loads of laundry and folded it and put it away. I have dinner in the crock pot. I’ve made two pitchers of Tea. One good old sweet tea and iced Tazo Sweet Orange. And the biggest thing of all…I ran a mile. I know that doesn’t sound like much, but when you have wonky vision from the corneal transplant still  and wear a cup over one eye, it was a lot. I may have looked like a drunk, since I do still have the depth perception and balance issues, but it felt good. I’ll be back to 5 miles in no time I’m sure.

Back to The Wilding Sisters….ooooh good!  What’s your story today?

xx Patricia  salad

The Perfect Stranger by Megan Miranda

The Perfect Stranger

In the masterful follow-up to the runaway hit All the Missing Girls, a journalist sets out to find a missing friend, a friend who may never have existed at all.

Confronted by a restraining order and the threat of a lawsuit, failed journalist Leah Stevens needs to get out of Boston when she runs into an old friend, Emmy Grey, who has just left a troubled relationship. Emmy proposes they move to rural Pennsylvania, where Leah can get a teaching position and both women can start again. But their new start is threatened when a woman with an eerie resemblance to Leah is assaulted by the lake, and Emmy disappears days later.

Determined to find Emmy, Leah cooperates with Kyle Donovan, a handsome young police officer on the case. As they investigate her friend’s life for clues, Leah begins to wonder: did she ever really know Emmy at all? With no friends, family, or a digital footprint, the police begin to suspect that there is no Emmy Grey. Soon Leah’s credibility is at stake, and she is forced to revisit her past: the article that ruined her career. To save herself, Leah must uncover the truth about Emmy Grey—and along the way, confront her old demons, find out who she can really trust, and clear her own name.

Everyone in this rural Pennsylvanian town has something to hide—including Leah herself. How do you uncover the truth when you are busy hiding your own?

 

Last year Megan Miranda blew us away with her thriller All The Missing Girls. A story told in reverse that kept me on the edge of my seat and with a great respect for this author.

When I received the email that her next book was coming out I was torn.  We all know that a lot of time the second book/album is never as good as the first. Knowing that didn’t stop me from putting all the other TBR books on hold so I could dive back into the twisty, dark world of Miranda! She is truly a master at Suspense!

And I will tell you right now, she has slammed it! This book is just as good as the first! Once you start you can’t stop reading, you just have to know! The suspense just keeps building until you are biting your lip and your fingernails!  Her characters are perfect, her writing always leaves me with a What?? at the end.

Did not see this ending coming at all.  Good Job Ms. Miranda!  Keep bringing us these creepy, twisted, palm sweating thrillers!

Thank you to Netgalley and Simon & Schuster for this great story!

 

The Devil’s Country by Harry Hunsicker

Mr. Hunsicker brings us The Devil’s Country..The Drifter along with publishers Thomas & Mercer.

The Devil's Country

Former Texas Ranger Arlo Baines didn’t come to the tiny West Texas town of Piedra Springs to cause trouble. After his wife and children were murdered, Arlo just wants to be left alone. Moving from place to place seems to be the only thing that eases the pain of his family’s violent end.

But a chance encounter outside a bar forces him to rescue a terrified woman and her children from mysterious attackers. When the woman turns up murdered the next day—her children missing—Arlo becomes the primary suspect in exactly the same type of crime he is trying desperately to forget.

Haunted by the fate of his family, and with the police questioning the existence of the dead woman’s children, Arlo decides it’s his duty to find them. The question is, just how deep will he have to sink into the dusty secrets of Piedra Springs to save them and clear his name?

Arlo really just wants to be left alone to read his book and enjoy a drink. He doesn’t have any business here in Piedra Springs. It’s just another spot the bus stopped and he got off for a bit.

He’s not a Texas Ranger anymore and since his family was murdered as well as the crooked cops who killed them the last thing he wants to do is get involved in the shady business going on in this little nowhere of a town.

But with the chance encounter with Molly and her children he knows he can’t leave until those children are found. When he is joined by a sort of disgraced former reporter, trying desperately  to find her own niece who she knows is with a very strange cult which has set up shop in a former prison, they join forces.

To me the best suspense thrillers are the ones that when you are finished you can say Whoa! this could actually be happening right now and probably is. The character development is great. I wanted these two and the few helping them to succeed.

This is the first Hunsicker book I have read, but it will not be the last!!

P

Every Thing Belongs To Us By Yoojin Grace Wuertz Book Release Day!!

Everything Belongs to Us

Seoul, 1978. At South Korea s top university, the nation s best and brightest compete to join the professional elite of an authoritarian regime. Success could lead to a life of rarefied privilege and wealth; failure means being left irrevocably behind.

For childhood friends Jisun and Namin, the stakes couldn t be more different. Jisun, the daughter of a powerful business mogul, grew up on a mountainside estate with lush gardens and a dedicated chauffeur. Namin s parents run a tented food cart from dawn to curfew; her sister works in a shoe factory. Now Jisun wants as little to do with her father s world as possible, abandoning her schoolwork in favor of the underground activist movement, while Namin studies tirelessly in the service of one goal: to launch herself and her family out of poverty.

But everything changes when Jisun and Namin meet an ambitious, charming student named Sunam, whose need to please his family has led him to a prestigious club: the Circle. Under the influence of his mentor, Juno, a manipulative social climber, Sunam becomes entangled with both women, as they all make choices that will change their lives forever.

In this sweeping yet intimate debut, Yoojin Grace Wuertz details four intertwining lives that are rife with turmoil and desire, private anxieties and public betrayals, dashed hopes and broken dreams while a nation moves toward prosperity at any cost.

Set in a time of great upheaval and change, protests and women living at the bottom rung of society, this book explores the relationships between the haves and the have nots as well as family structures in this time and place.

Jisun and Namin are total opposites socially but they both know they want more.

Everything Namin does is to further her goal of becoming a doctor and getting her family out of poverty. She is exceptionally bright, which affords her more access to education than most in her town.

Jisun is rebelling against her father and his wealth and power not only in businesss but over her as well.

I would like to have heard more in the end from Namin’s point of view.

I really liked the look at the part Americans have played in this country for years and the animosity towards them and the women who dared to love them.

It was a good story.

Thank you to Netgalley and Random House for this one! Release is Today!

You Know You Want One

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Thursday!  Release day for Blink. I’ll repost that review today also.Bookouture is coming out with even more thriller stories like Little Girl Lost by Carole Wyer. I’m really liking this companies books.

The above books are ones we have read and enjoyed. Thre is SYFY, Romance, Historical Fiction, Spooky Southern mysteries and Witches! What’s not to love.

We are over here reading The Hope Chest by Viola Shipman, coming out in March and it is every bit as moving and lovely as The Charm Bracelet from last year. Since surgery is one week away I am trying to get a lot done. Like finishing 7 books in one week. #goals

Happy Thurday to you wonderful, talented and funny people of WordPress! Especiallly kelleysdiy.com who has nominated me for a Blogger Award. She is always making something clever and gorgeous from nothing but dollar store stuff. She’s magic definitely. The reason I don’t do Awards is because I have a stalker and I prefer she not have any more information about me than she already does. So while I’m honored, I just don’t do them!

Since surgery is one week away I am trying to get a lot done.