It's Monday! What Are You Reading?

I am linking up late to Book Date's feature, It's Monday! What Are You Reading?


If I had written and posted this late Sunday, I could tell you I was reading Liar, Liar, Tabloid Writer 

by Suzy Quint.  But it is now 2:00 pm Monday and I just finished it. Rather abruptly too, I might add. It was coming to a conclusion, I thought. Annaliese has been arrested, Alec has just discovered the relationship between Annaliese and Cleo. And he was starting to have some real feelings for Cleo. Then the last sentence says, Cleo and Alec's story concludes in Liar, Liar, Heart's Desire.  Bummer!


So now I'll go on to reading the last of the 3 summer selections for my Face to Face book club. We meet again in September. We decided to pick 3 novel of Fredrik Backman. I have finished A Man Called Ove and My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry. So I will read
Britt- Marie Was Here  this week.

Because I like these books so much I may have to pick another before the week is over. If that happens, I guess I'll chose between Jane Green's The Beach House 

and Kristin Hannah's Between Sisters.  Any one have a favorite? 

Until next time, I'll be reading and putting a binding on a Christmas Wall Hanging. Maybe I'll even finish the place mats for the camper. Or maybe I'll just hang out on Facebook and wait for my son or daughter-in-law to post pictures of their new granddaughter.  She is our 5th great grandchild. She lives in Arizona, so I don't know when we will get to meet her in person. 

Stay Busy and Stay Happy

February Finishes - Book and Sewing Projects.

I only finished reading The Guilty by David Baldacci.

You can check out my review  here.

 I am still wading through the Karen Kingsbury collection on my Kindle.

That may be why it is taking me so long. That and the fact that I have been  nursing a sick Mr. Busy and I have been in my sewing room a great deal.

I have completed these, this month.

This was still in kit stage on Feb 1st. It still has to be quilted. I send mine to a longarmer. That requires a bit of saving, so it will wait for a complete finish for a bit. This was my February challenge for American Patchwork and Quilting's 2017 UFO Challenge.

And I did these little pillows for my 2 great grandchildren.

 This little pillow matches the quilt I made for Bella before she was born. I finally got around to making a label with her birth statistics and a little pillow I hope her mama will use when she is nursing. It has a handle for ease of caring to a rocking chair and a shallow pocket for breast shields or maybe mama's cell phone.

I couldn't let her big brother be forgotten, so I gathered some scraps from Mr Busy's airplane quilt and made Jojo a pillow too. His has a deeper pocket to hold a book, or more likely his iPad. A velcro strap will secure the tablet in the pocket when he carries it to and from "Gwamma and Pa's" house. He is a big fan of the movie "Planes" and know that Pa has a model of the Corsair F4U that is  on this bag...:Skipper" in the movie. 

I sent this one to our oldest great grandson for Valentine's Day. He lives in Arizona, he will be 7 in July. His grandpa, our son, is a Bronco fan. I got a "thumbs up" thank you from his mom. 

And one last finish: 

It's a Mondo Bag. Over 200,  2 1/2 inch squares sewed to an interfacing. It has batting too and is large and quite heavy. I hope I remember not to load it too heavy or I won't be able to lift it.  I love the colors though. 

That is it for February. Now on to March and it's challenges. I will be reading two books written in verse. 

 Out of the Dust by Karen Hesse

and Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson.  I am looking forward to this "new to me" format. 

Stay Busy and Stay Happy

Bake, Battle and Roll by Leighann Dobbs (2nd selection in the Cozy Mystery Collection)

Bake, Battle & Roll Guys by Leighann Dobbs
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Although I am a big fan of cozy mysteries, this one left me a bit wanting. I think it may be because it is #6 in the Lexy Baker series and I have not read the previous ones. I liked the characters of Nans, Lexy' s grandmother and her detective posse friends the best. Maybe all chefs are shallow, but I don't think so, and the bikers were just too cliche. I want to try to get a better feel for Lexy, and will go back and read the first in  he series. I have read another cozy by this author and liked it a lot.

To be fair, Lexy is a tenacious, nosy young lady. Anxious to enlist her grandmother's help in solving crimes that she feels most of the area detectives can't accomplish. She does love her fiance and police detective, Jack, but she even oversteps her bounds with him. And that's what cozy mysteries are all about. Nosy, buttinskis that can't leave the police work to the police.


View all my reviews

I am linking up this review to Yvonne's cozy challenge at Socrates' Book Reviews. 

It's Monday! What Are You Reading?

It's Monday! What Are You Reading?  is hosted by Kathryn at Book Date. Share what you are reading, what you read recently or what you hope to get to in the coming week and then link up with Kathryn at Book Date. It is a great place to see what is going on in the blogosphere and to add to your reading lists.

I am really into this story now. Willa Chance just keeps getting into trouble. And Sheriff Eddie Striker seems to be there at every turn. Who will find out first, who killed Lavinia.

I have just started this library book.  I know I will enjoy this story as much as I enjoyed the ones that preceded it. 


I have this in the audio version and I am listening to it as I get my early morning steps in walking around our neighborhood and while stitching on a couple of recent projects. Multi-tasking is something that gives me a chance to do two things I enjoy or at the least to get into a story as I get some exercise
. 

I am loving the narrator in this one. Very engaging. 


Have you read any of these books?  Happy 4th of July to my American friends and Happy 1st week of July to others. We are still waiting for the new addition to our family. Mama is so ready to be "not pregnant".  Baby is just taking her time deciding to arrive. 


Stay Busy and Stay Happy

First Chapter First Paragraph Tuesday Intros. 6-28-16

Diane at Bibliophile By the Sea hosts this Tuesday meme. It is a place to share the first paragraph in the first chapter of a book you are reading or hope to get to soon. It is a great place to see what others are reading and add to your ever growing list of title to explore. So let's share. Write a post and then go link up at Diane's blog.

Glory Over Everything: Beyond The Kitchen House
Kathleen Grissom
Simon & Schuster  April 2016


Part One
Chapter One

March 1830
Philadelphia

James

     Robert's familiar rap on the door came as I was studying a miniature portrait of myself. The small painting, meant as a parting gift to my beloved, had just been delivered, and I was debating the artist's interpretation. I had to admit that Miss Peale's suggestion to paint my face in profile, and thus avoid the black patch covering my left eye, was a good idea. Too, she had captured my features well in this, my thirty-third year: the length of my oval face, my aquiline nose, and the cleft in my square cut jaw. But I disliked the distinct set she had given my mouth.
     Robert knocked again.
     "Yes", I called, and my butler entered. 


I read The Kitchen House and loved it. So I had to download this audio book so I could again go back and find out what's next.  This is a stand alone novel but brings us again to 1830, the Underground Railroad and life on the plantations of the South. I am looking forward to this one, would you read on? 


Stay Busy and Stay Happy

It's Monday! What Are You Reading? 5-16-16

It's Monday What Are You Reading is hosted by Kathryn at Book Date. Share what you are reading, what you read recently or what you hope to get to in the coming week and then link up with Kathryn at Book Date. It is a great place to see what is going on in the blogosphere and to add to your reading lists.

Still on my phone/Kindle:  I probably would have finished this one, but there was a bit of a snafu regarding listening while driving. Traveling with Mr Busy dictated that he listen and I re-listen to Ready Player One. Not that I minded, but it did cut into my own personal listening time. 

  

Really enjoying this one. It is so fun to hear her own voice and the voices of her guests. There is a lot of name dropping, but she is in show business and it is all about who and when and with whom. I love it. Must speak to my inner voyeur! 

On my nightstand:

Tamra Wells has loved Charles Lane since her early teens, and he has loved her. The only child of a school principal and his socially ambitious wife, Tamra didn't let love keep her from her goal to become a scientist. She went on to college and then to Paris where she worked for five years before returning home, a beautiful and worldly woman ready to marry Charles, a brilliant young man in a family that owns more land than any other African-American family in Nanticoke, Maryland. This passionate and elegantly written novel is the story of a man and a woman who love each other and have everything except what they really want: a happy marriage. It is also the story of two families that are strong and loving, yet have their problems. Seth Wells, Tamra's father, is a respected school principal whose drinking habits create tension at home. The family stays together, but Tamra like many children of alcoholic parents, suppresses an anger that she can't verbalize. Charles's father, Harlen Lane, is a man of tradition who expects his sons to follow him, and Charles does, forsaking his own dreams of becoming a major league baseball player, to run the family farm. He takes on the task with a vengeance, determined to expand the modest business into a major agricultural complex. Two successful people raised in stable families, neither Charles nor Tamra see how closely they mirror the patterns of their parents' successes and failures. Despite their early - and continuing - passion over the thirteen years of their marriage they find themselves too often angry and resentful to see their own children frightened by the tensions of their otherwise comfortable household. Does their failure stem from Charles's relentless drive to succeed in business? Does it take its toll from a death in the family? Is a lecherous relative a contributing factor? Or is it all simply the let down of a college-educated woman who fears becoming "just a housewife"? 


I finished The Hurricane Sisters and will have a review after my book clubs meets tomorrow evening.  Then next up is a collection of Cozy Mysteries from Leighann Dobbs.  There are four titles; Ghostly Paws, Bake, Battle and Roll,  A Zen for Murder, and Dead and Buried.  I am really looking forward to starting these. 

As I was searching for a cover that I could share, I discovered that a couple of these titles are not the first in the series. That may be a problem for my OCD self. I will see!!

It's Monday! What Are You Reading? 4/18/16

It's Monday What Are You Reading is hosted by Kathryn at Book Date. Share what you are reading, what you read recently or what you hope to get to in the coming week and then link up with Kathryn at Book Date. It is a great place to see what is going on in the blogosphere and to add to your reading lists.


Listening to:

Goodreads Synopsis:
It's the year 2044, and the real world is an ugly place.

Like most of humanity, Wade Watts escapes his grim surroundings by spending his waking hours jacked into the OASIS, a sprawling virtual utopia that lets you be anything you want to be, a place where you can live and play and fall in love on any of ten thousand planets.

And like most of humanity, Wade dreams of being the one to discover the ultimate lottery ticket that lies concealed within this virtual world. For somewhere inside this giant networked playground, OASIS creator James Halliday has hidden a series of fiendish puzzles that will yield massive fortune--and remarkable power--to whoever can unlock them.

For years, millions have struggled fruitlessly to attain this prize, knowing only that Halliday's riddles are based in the pop culture he loved--that of the late twentieth century. And for years, millions have found in this quest another means of escape, retreating into happy, obsessive study of Halliday's icons. Like many of his contemporaries, Wade is as comfortable debating the finer points of John Hughes's oeuvre, playing Pac-Man, or reciting Devo lyrics as he is scrounging power to run his OASIS rig.

And then Wade stumbles upon the first puzzle.

Suddenly the whole world is watching, and thousands of competitors join the hunt--among them certain powerful players who are willing to commit very real murder to beat Wade to this prize. Now the only way for Wade to survive and preserve everything he knows is to win. But to do so, he may have to leave behind his oh-so-perfect virtual existence and face up to life--and love--in the real world he's always been so desperate to escape.

A world at stake.
A quest for the ultimate prize.
Are you ready? 

Normally I do not read or listen to fantasy/science fiction. I am a fan of science fiction movies however. And I am enjoying this audio of Ready Player One narrated by Wil Wheaton!!!  Wil Wheaton!!  (do I sound like Sheldon Cooper?). 

On my Kindle:

Goodreads Synopsis:

When the going gets tough...
Private investigator, Jill Gooder, has been hired to find a serial killer because, as usual, the police can't buy a clue. Jill, the not so proud owner of a crazy, one-eyed cat, probably can't expect too much help from her PA/Secretary, Mrs V, who spends all day knitting.
And just in case all of that wasn't bad enough, Jill's just about to discover she's a witch.
...break out the custard creams. 


I am anxious to get back to reading some cozy mysteries and this looks like it might be a good one. 





Stay Busy and Stay Happy

TBR Triple Dog Dare vs Read The Books You Buy -

       Either way I am a Winner!!





Yesterday, after reading Laurel-Rain Snow's post about Reading The Books You Buy, I had to double check a couple of the titles I included on my list. As it turns out, several of the books on my Kindle were purchased before June 2015. Thanks Amazon for keeping track for me. The titles will work to complete the TBR Triple Dog Dare of only reading books already owned from January 1st until April 1st. But they are too old to be included on Kathryn's Read The Books You Buy Challenge. So check the corrections on my pages tab, 2016 Challenges.


I am going to continue to read some of my old titles whether they fit a challenge or not. Some will work for Women's Fiction Challenge and maybe I can even find one that fits a category in What's In A Name 2016. Maybe I'll start my own personal EBook challenge!


Stay Busy and Stay Happy

First Chapter First Paragraph Tuesday Intros- The Littlest Cowboy ( The Texas Brands Book #1)

I am linking up this morning with Diane at Bibliophile By the Sea. Every Tuesday she hosts a  place to share a book you are currently reading or one you plan to start soon. Write a post about your current read and then link up at Diane's blog. From there, you can check on what others are reading or hoping to read soon.

The Littlest Cowboy

Maggie Shayne

Published 1996

Chapter 1



Garrett Brand awoke in a cold sweat, some foreign kind of dread gnawing at his stomach. Heart pounding, he sat up fast and wide-eyed, his fist clenching defensively before he got hold of himself. Blinking the sleep haze from his eyes and taking a few deep breaths, he let his tense muscles relax and unclenched his fists. There was nothing wrong. There was no reason for that panicky feeling that had slipped through him like a ghost slipping through a wall. No reason at all.  

This has been on my Kindle for some time. I must admit, the cover won me over and the price. I believe it was 99 cents  on Amazon. What do you think?  Would you read more? I was wondering how the cover connects with the story but if you check the synopsis on Goodreads, it will give you a clue.



Stay Busy and Stay Happy