My Two Blessings

  It's book week 30 in our 52 Books quest and I stumbled across this poem by Patrick Kavanaugh that I fell in like with: Inniskeen Road  The bicycles go by in twos and threes - There's a dance in Billy Brennan's barn tonight, And there's the half-talk code of mysteries And the wink-and-elbow language of delight. Half-past eight and there is not a spot Upon a mile of road, no shadow thrown That might turn out a man or woman, not A footfall tapping secrecies of stone. I have what every poet hates in spite Of all the solemn talk of contemplation. Of being king and government and nation. A road, a mile of kingdom. I am king Of banks and stones and every blooming thing. Oh, Alexander Selkirk knew the plight ***** R eading Nalini Singh’s  Last Guard  which makes me want to go back to the beginning and read the first four books again in the psy changeling trinity series.  “Termed merciless by some, and a robotic sociopath by others, Payal Rao is the perfect Psy: cardin...

  It's book week 29 in our 52 Books Quest and highlighted  William Makepeace Thackeray's The Cane Bottome Chair this week.  Reading the 14th and last book in the Wheel of Time series, A Memory of Light which will probably take me a while since it’s a chunky book.  I’m in a reread mood as well and just finished Cherry Adair’s Hush, which was just as good the second time. “Thrill seekers Zakary and Gideon Stark travel the globe in search of extreme adventure, but a trip to Venezuela to jump off the world’s highest falls catapults them into a perilous game of life or death—where they don’t know the rules. Kidnapped with a woman Zak knows nothing about, the brothers are held prisoner deep in the jungle. A risky, deathdefying escape separates them and nearly claims Zak’s life . . . until his recovery reveals a baffling new sixth sense. Now, to find his missing brother, Zak and the mysterious Acadia Gray will have to out-smart, out-gun, and out-maneuver not just the ...

  World of Harry Potter  It's week 28 in our 52 Books quest and this week we're talking about Maps. W hether you explore by foot, car, train, sailing ship or  space ship, authors and characters like to explore and helpfully provide us with maps of their worlds and their journeys.  Some fun links about maps: 20 Literary Maps 16 Essential Literary Maps for Bookworms   77 Best Cartography Books of All Time 10 Books for Map Enthusiasts to Read at Home Bookriot's  Grounds for Murder: Maps and Floor Plans in Mystery Novels. And last but not least, one of my favorite things is  creative cartography  which was introduced to me in a writing class and I thoroughly enjoyed exploring  Maps of the Imagination: The Writer as Cartographer . I finally started the 14th and last book in the Wheel of Time series, A Memory of Light. Which happens to have a beautiful map in the front of the book.  Also reading ebook Cogman’s 7th book in the Invisible Library...

  Saatchi Art Artist Georgiana Chitac "ABSENCE Looks like we are in for another heat wave.  I finished  The Little Paris Bookshop   which was so very good and also a two hankie read. Sniff sniff.  One of those books that's so full of  emotion and epiphanies,  and bookish advice, I'll have to read again.   It wasn't maudlin or dark. Yes, parts were sad, but full of hope as the characters worked through stages of love and loss and grief.    "What task do the departed want us to do?" "To carry them within us-that is our task. We carry them all inside us, all our dead and shattered loves.  Only they make us whole. If we begin to forget or cast aside those we've lost, then..then we are no longer present either.  All the love, all the dead, all the people we've known. They are the rivers that feed our sea of souls. If we refuse to remember them, that sea will dry up too." Went on to read Karen Hawkins 2nd book in ...

  It's week 27 in our 52 Books quest and the fictional librarian of the month is Israel Armstrong from Ian Sansom's Mobile Library Series.  Finished Kat French's cozy romance  -  Bed and Breakfast on the Beach .  A light hearted read for the most part. "Winnie, Stella and Frankie have been best friends forever. When their lives unexpectedly unravel, they spontaneously decide to buy a gorgeous B&B on a remote Greek island. Drenched in hot sun, Villa Valentina is the perfect escape from reality. But when Winnie meets Jesse, their brooding neighbour, she finds that Greece is full of its own complications – not least how attractive he is… Meanwhile, Frankie and Stella are discovering that Villa Valentina has its own secrets – starting with the large supply of gin in the cellar and the arrival of a famous rock band. A band with one very good-looking member who just might distract Frankie from thoughts of her husband…" In the middle of  The Case of the Missi...

  I just finished Matt Haig's  Midnight Library .  At first I thought it was going to be terribly depressing but turned out not to be. Nora's given up on life due to a series of disasters and ends up in the Midnight Library. Kind of a philosophical limbo in which she can choose from millions of books, filled with different scenarios to see what her life would have been like it she had made a different choice.  She takes a multi universe trip, stepping into her alternate selves, trying on different lives.   "Between life and death there is a library, and within that library, the shelves go on forever. Every book provides a chance to try another life you could have lived. To see how things would be if you had made other choices . . . Would you have done anything different, if you had the chance to undo your regrets? Somewhere out beyond the edge of the universe there is a library that contains an infinite number of books, each one the story of another reality...