My Two Blessings

  It's book week 44 in our 52 Books Quest and this month's theme is an international crime spree. I finished Nalini Singh’s Archangel’s Resurrection about Zanaya and Alexander, two Archangels whose love affair lasted eons so it covered vast periods of time. Many, but not all of the other characters made appearances. It was different with a lot more telling than showing and angst over the relationship.  Not one I’d be eager to reread over and over again,  but good nonetheless. I love reading translated books and Carlos Ruiz Zafon’s Cemetery of Forgotten Books are on my ebook nightstand.   Already read Shadow of the Wind so next up is The Angel’s Game. It’s now 12:30 p.m. and its the first time I had to sit down all evening. Movie night was called on account of a plumbing emergency.   Hubby decided to use Liquid Plumber, even though a plumber told him in the past never to use.  He used it on the slow draining kitchen sink and snaked the outside drai...

  It's book week 43 in our 52 book quest and continuing our October Spooktacular.  I've been thoroughly enjoying M.L. Buchman's Miranda Chase series about an autistic NTSB agent and her cohorts.  I caught up with the series just in the time for book #11 Skibird which is being released tuesday. "Those who work there call Antarctica “The Ice.” A secret Russian cargo jet crashes into a crevasse near an Australian Station. The Aussies call in the top air-crash investigators on the planet. The best of them all, Miranda Chase, must face the Russians, Chinese, and use her own autistic abilities to keep her team alive. As the battle spreads across The Ice, are even her incredible skills enough? Or will they all be buried in the frozen wasteland?" And excited for the new release of Nalini Singh's 15th book in the Guild Hunter series "Archangel's Resurrection on the 25th as well.  Tonight our family movie choice was Replicas with Keenu Reeves. It was quite inte...

  Sorry about this, IDW Sonic fans, been a while since we last did a review of IDW Sonic comics. I'm back now, with a review of issue 1 of the new Scrapnik Island horror miniseries. So, what's the story? Scrapnik Island is a horror anthology miniseries about Sonic and Tails fighting to survive on an island filled with old Badniks from their past and they must battle an old enemy: Mecha Knuckles, who was last seen in the GBA game Sonic Advance. The story is written by Daniel Barnes, who previously wrote a story about Omega and Gemerl battling it out in a story of the IDW Sonic 2022 annual.  Issue one showcases the duo making an emergency landing on the island and discovering the ruins of the Death Egg, they're surrounded by Badniks and then run into an E series robot whom fans initially mistook for Gamma. But this is not Gamma, this robot is E-117 Sigma (who was previously mentioned in Archie Sonic somewhere, making him the latest Archie Sonic-made character to finally be ut...

  T oday is Noah Webster's birthday, the father of the American Dictionary. October 16 is named Dictionary Day in honor of Webster.  We have the second edition unabridged Webster's dictionary which is humongous at 3194 pages, and a slightly smaller fifth edition collegiate edition at 1274.  It's interesting to compare them to the modern 2022 edition of the Merriam Webster dictionary, a mere 960 pages.  I prefer the older versions which are much more fun to peruse. But I’d also like to get my hands on an Oxford English Dictionary one of these days.  When I'm writing, I always have Dictionary.com or Thesaurus.com tabs open in my computer and explored different words. I prefer the online versions over the current Merriam Webster edition which has definitely been dumbed down.   Noah Webster's Story Noah Webster and the Dream of a Common Language  Noah Webster’s Impact on Education An Inconvenient Alphabet: Ben Franklin & Noah Webster’s Spelli...

  Vampires, Werewolves, and Ghosts!  Oh My! Our spooktacular reading month continues and it isn't all about horror.  Oh no! Especially since I'm not into blood and guts violence.  I like the type of books that get your adrenaline going, keeps you guessing, finger nail biting, keep you up all night reading suspense.  There are a number of ways to go with psychological thrillers, gothic, paranormal reads that run the gamut from the supernatural to urban fantasies. Books full of bad guys, ghosts, and scary as well as delicious vampires, and werewolves.   Clearing my palate with a fluffy romance before I dive back into James Rollin's thriller Kingdom of Bones.  Also on the nightstand is the suspense novel The Last Second by Catherine Coulter and J.T. Ellison.  I like one author's writing and the other's not so much and I can tell the difference in their writing so expect I'll like only half of the book. LOL!  "Galactus, France’s answer to Sp...

 ******************* I wasn't ready to leave the world of Keri Arthur's Lizzie Grace series plus it is spooktacular so read the whole series again, delightfully finding there were one or two books I hadn't read in the mix.  We watched Marvel's Werewolf by Night last night. A one hour special on Disney +.  I'd seen the previews and decided it was too scary for me. James insisted we watch it and held my hand. Turned out not to be so bad. It was scary mixed with humor. Enjoyed it. 

October Spooktacular and the Unreliable Narrator It's book week 40 in our 52 Books Quest and this month October's spooktacular is all about the unreliable narrator.  This month is full of chills and thrills, spine tingling adventure stories, and unexpected, jump out and surprise you, don't turn the lights off reads. If you are anything like me, gruesome horror isn't your thing. However, psychological, mind bending, Hitchcock type thrillers full of suspense are my favorite type of reads, along with paranormal, ghosts, vampires, were wolves and the weird. If you haven't read the classics, now would be a good time to read Frankenstein or Dracula, Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, The Picture of Dorian Grey or Something Wicked This Way Comes to name a few. Put away your expectations because you may be surprised when they don't turn out how you suspect they will.  And this month's crime spree category fits the bill with the Unreliable Narrator. The first rule of reading boo...