My Two Blessings

  It's book week 5 in our 52 Books Quest and our fictional librarian is Aurora Teagarden created by  Charlaine Harris.  We were up until 2 last night watching another spider man movie, this one animated - Spiderman into the Spider Verse which turned out to be pretty good. Then reading until really late. It's amazing how much reading gets down when you go on a news diet and unplug from the internet. I decided at the beginning of the year to declare 2021 the year of Nora. After I organized and reorganized my shelves, bringing Nora and her alter ego J.D. Robb's books front and center, I began by rereading the  Key trilogy , then dove into her Ireland Trilogies  Gallaghers of Ardmore  and  Born in . What is it about Robert's books? Her writing, the unique characters,  the world building, and stories all work together to entertain and pull me in.  Every time I sit down to study her writing, to help improve my own, I get drawn in, and forget about ...

  I unplugged for a couple days and basically read, well reread Nora Robert's  Born in trilogy . Just now seeing the news that  Sharon Kay Penman passed away  last week at the age of 75.  I was just about to set aside  When Christ and his Saints Slept  to concentrate on the Count.  Now I feel like I need to finish.   Hubby bought me Volume III of ColorIt and I'm having fun with it.  I have multiple coloring books including Into the Garden, Country Charm, and an animals one that I can't remember the name of right this moment.  James loves to share youtube reviews with me of video games, comic books, etc and some of the video is so repetitive that I listen more than watch and need something to do with my hands so I don't fall asleep. 

  It's book week 4 in our 52 Books quest and this week begins our 52 Books readalong of The Count of Monte Cristo.   I didn’t know what to expect about the Count of Monte Cristo. All I knew was that it was about a man in prison and it was a classic.  While putting together the 52 Books post, enjoyed learning about the story and now I’m even more eager to begin reading it. Plus watching and comparing the two different movies. I finished  Dragons of Dorcastle , the 1 st  book in the Pillars of Realty series by Jack Campbell.    There was a lot of talk about dragons but nary a one to be seen until the next to last chapter and its presence was short lived.    The focus was on the two young main characters:    A young man raised as a Mage and taught to ignore all emotion and think of the rest of the world as an illusion, and people are shadows, nonexistent to his reality.    And a young woman, the youngest Master Mechanic,...

  A placeholder to remember this vibrant young woman and her encouraging poetry.  “The Hill We Climb” by Amanda Gorman When day comes we ask ourselves, where can we find light in this never-ending shade? The loss we carry, a sea we must wade. We’ve braved the belly of the beast, we’ve learned that quiet isn’t always peace and the norms and notions of what just is, isn’t always justice. And yet the dawn is ours before we knew it, somehow we do it, somehow we’ve weathered and witnessed a nation that isn’t broken but simply unfinished. We, the successors of a country and a time where a skinny black girl descended from slaves and raised by a single mother can dream of becoming president only to find herself reciting for one. And, yes, we are far from polished, far from pristine, but that doesn’t mean we are striving to form a union that is perfect, we are striving to forge a union with purpose, to compose a country committed to all cultures, colors, characters and conditions of ma...

I was industrious today. Did four loads of laundry. Cleaned out bookshelves in my bedroom, packed up two boxes of books from the shelves I know I probably won't read again, plus I finally got rid of two long plastic storage totes filled with books that have been taking up floor space all so I could replace with two boxes of Nora Roberts books. Oh, and alphabetized them as well. LOL! At least the shelves and my room looks neater. Defrosting hamburgers for dinner. I finished Dragons in Dorcastle and don't think I'll be reading the rest of the series. The dragon finally showed up in the last chapter, but it was an evil dragon so didn't last long and I didn't particularly like the characters. Good premises but oh well. 

  It's book week 3 in our 52 Books quest and the beginning of exploring stories and books influenced by the Nine Muses of Greek mythology, the Goddesses of the arts and sciences, who loved to sing and dance. I’m currently sipping on multiple books and making some progress in my main A to Z read,  The Dragons of Dorcastle  by Jack Campbell, in which there are about 100 pages left in the book and they finally mentioned dragons but have yet to see them.   Slowly rereading  Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone  and picking up on details never noticed before.    I had forgotten about the extent Mr. Dursley went to keep Harry from receiving his Hogwarts letter and Hagrid’s anger.    In  When Christ and his Saints Slept , I really dislike Maude’s husband, Geoffrey but she’s feisty enough not to let him run all over her.   I started listening to Christopher Paolini’s  To Sleep in a Sea of Stars  and the narrator makes the st...

  Well this is timely and I'm a huge believer in synchronicity:   Currently reading Fathers of the Church  by Mike Aquilina and the Apostolic father I'm reading about  this week is St Clement of Rome who wrote the Letter to the Corinthians.  I highlighted a few things but the entire text of the letter can be read on New Advent In it he writes: "Owing, dear brethren, to the sudden and successive calamitous events which have happened to ourselves, we feel that we have been somewhat tardy in turning our attention to the points respecting which you consulted us; and especially to that shameful and detestable sedition, utterly abhorrent to the elect of God, which a few rash and self-confident persons have kindled to such a pitch of frenzy, that your venerable and illustrious name, worthy to be universally loved, has suffered grievous injury. We Should Obey God Rather Than the Authors of Sedition:  It is right and holy therefore, men and brethren, rather to...

  Knight of Night   When the Knight of night,  decided to reign,  who would believe it'd affect him so and change the effect  of the rain? He was awed even though she was odd, and allowed him to speak aloud.    When the scent of the horse made his voice hoarse, the boy was rather coarse  while he showed her the course. He didn't like being told to  fold his cards or fold his clothes. He preferred to bail out the boat  rather than to bail out his brother.     Who was she to wave away the waves? Who was she to meddle with the medal? She preferred to ignore all common sense and count out her cents while in the inn,  jammed in the door jamb.     When he asked for cash and  she handed him her cache  of keys,  he couldn’t decide  if he was right  to write  the tail of the tale. When the knight came in the night  to  pick up the lone male   to discover it was o...

  I was in the mood for a cozy romance and what I got instead was a poignant story about two characters, singers from different cultures, both affected by long term grief, brought together to create a Christmas song.  Cara, who was injured in the car accident where her mother and sister died years ago at Christmas time, struggles with anxiety and self consciousness about her scars and prosthetic foot.  Javi, who has a playboy reputation, a failed marriage, a daughter who doesn't like him, and is still holding on to the grief when his brother died around Christmas time.  The two are brought together, the English Songwriter and the Latin playboy, when Cara's record label contract requires her to record a single written by another artist on the label.  Cara expects it to be quick.  She'll record the song, go back home and the song will die from obscurity and she can go back to ignoring Christmas and dealing with her life the best she knows how.  Little do...

  It's book week 2 in our 52 Books quest and  I have  anti-heroes  on my mind today and have been thinking about the differences between the antihero and the villain, or between the  hero and the anti-hero .  My son and I have been watching you-tube videos by  Harry Potter Theory  about the Harry Potter series and they've posted several videos discussing Severus Snape. You never quite know whether to trust the man. What are his motives?  Is he good or bad, working for or against Harry?   Joe Bunting from the  Write Practice  says:  "Snape, like all Anti-Heroes, represents what society detests: cruelty, cowardice, self-interest, and dishonesty. He is the opposite of the hero, a villain, and yet somehow he’s a villain on the good guys’ side."    We love to hate them, but then again we have to trust that the  good side will outweigh the bad  side and they'll redeem themselves in the end.  *******...

A friend gifted me with Baking Bad by Kim M. Watt at Christmas; a different kind of mystery she said.  It certainly is.  It's a cozy mystery with a twist set in a little fictional town called Toot Hansell in England somewhere between Shipton and Leeds. The vicar is poisoned and the ladies of the women's guild, the Women's Institute take it upon themselves to investigate with the help of special friends, the High Lord of the Cloverly Dragons, Beaufort Scales, and his sidekick Mortimer.   Yep, dragons.  The story is told from multiple points of view including the two dragons.  The foursome get themselves into all kinds of trouble when the Detective Inspector who arrives to investigate. She can't exactly see the dragons but keeps seeing something strange that makes her vision wonky and reminds her of a past experience she'd rather forget.  There's plenty of mayhem and misdirection before the mystery of the murder is finally solved.  Baking Bad is hu...

  Jane Christmas has a fiancée who knows her well and is full of patience.  Perhaps because he's known her so long, it's the reason he waits for her to decide what she wants to do with her life.  For she has had a life long desire to become a nun. A cloistered one at that.  She desires to spend her days in contemplation and prayer, listening to God.  Or so she thought. Was she seeking fulfillment and faith or something else.  Little did she realize that falling into silence and routine would awaken the trauma of a past sexual assault, buried so deep, it'd become part of her soul and she needed to face it and work out the pain of the past.  As Jane battles her personal demons and tries to fit into the life of a cloistered community, she learns quite a bit about herself.   While developing a closer relationship with God, she learns about the needs within a religious community, the differences between the Anglican and Catholic church and what re...

  Happy New Year!  It's that time of the year again in which I recommit to my writing life and set goals and intentions.   "#25 Failing Better - There's no clear path, no road without potholes, toward a piece of writing that says exactly what you mean to say in language that's clear and fresh.  A couple of writers I know have a quote by Samuel Becket about failing better hanging over their desks. My personal favorite failure quote is by Thomas Edison. 'I didn't fail one thousand times. The light bulb was an invention with one thousand steps.' What we need to do is think of all our failed drafts as simple steps toward the final one, the one that works."  Year of Writing Dangerously .  Last year I had the 'eyes are bigger than my stomach syndrome' and yes, failed better.  All the intentions I set went by the wayside except the big one.  I successfully revised about a third of my current WIP-RT and am happy with the direction the story is taking...

  This year I read   111 books which included 10 Nonfiction and 101 fiction. My intent to read from my physical shelves went by the way side and I ended up reading    38 physical, while my Ipad and I were joined at the hip and read 70 Ebooks.    I did manage to listen to 3 audiobooks. I think my son and I also listened to 2 or 3 star wars books which I forgot to list. Statwise, 53 female, 15, and 25 were new to me authors. I made progress this year  with my Wheel of Time read by Robert Jordan and finished #11, 12, and 13.    Oh my gosh, # 13  Towers of Midnight  brought so many answers and so many characters back together again and I’m looking forward to reading the last book soon.    It may have taken me a few years reading only one or two books a year, but it’s been worth it.    Great series. I really enjoyed my 10 x 10  reads immersing myself in dragons, space operas, fantasy, and science fiction, de...

  It's book week one in our 52 Books quest and  I'm excited this year since our armchair travels are taking us around, over, and across the world again as we fly above the seven seas, through the infinite, clear blue sky on the good ship  Pumdeg Dau o Lyfrau airship , for another round of read 52 books in 52 weeks.  We'll be taking advantage of Hermione Granger's  Time Turner ,  Well's  Time machine  as well as  Doctor Who's Tardis,  all without upsetting the space time continuum of course, in our travels to go hither, thither, and yon.   I'm starting off the year in the 12th Century with the first book in Sharon Kay Penman's Plantagenet series -  When Christ and His Saints Slept.   Also the memoir -  And Then There were Nuns: Adventures in a Cloistered Life  by Jane Christmas which so far is humorous as well as enlightening.  Plus  Light the Dark: Writers on Creativity, Inspiration, and the Artist...