Welcome Back It's Monday! What Are You Reading?

I am so glad to be posting to this favorite meme. I have been reading but did not post very often about what I was reading.

This coming week is the first meeting of my F2F book club after our summer vacation. We will discuss the following two books.

I am a bit behind. I am nearly done with this one and enjoying it a great deal. Check out the The Goodreads Page for the synopsis of this story. 

Goodreads Page

I have not started this one, but I will. I won't be much help in the discussion, but I will listen well. I really enjoyed this first one in this trilogy, The Ticket. 

Also this next week I hope to start The Bell Jar

This classic is one I have been meaning to read for some time. Last week as we stopped by the library, I looked for it and there it was on the shelf so I picked it up. 

In the car I have my copy of   Fire on the Mountain: The True Story of the South Canyon Fire

I have owned this book since 2000. I purchased a copy from the author when he spoke at a Fire Department Banquet that Mr Busy and I attended. At the time, Mr Busy was a volunteer fireman and was a member of the Honor Guard of his department. This Honor Guard presented flags at the dedication ceremony of the Fallen Firefighters Memorial in Glenwood Springs Colorado. It was a very emotional day. It has taken me this long to be able to read this tragic story. 

Until next time,

Stay Busy and Stay Happy

Wondrous Words Wednesday 5-27-15

Linking up at Kathy's blog - BermudaOnion's Weblog today to share a couple of words discovered as I finished reading Our Lady of the Lost and Found by Diane Schoemperlen.



verisimilitude  noun    -the quality of seeming real

When I taught writing, .............I would often emphasize how precision in the details helps create atmosphere, character and verisimilitude; how the color of a bedroom wall, the dirt on a third-floor window, the drape of a black silk skirt can all be used to draw the reader deeper into the fictional world, a world that should be, as John Gardner advised, a "vivid and continuous dream" in the reader's mind.


expiatory   adj     serving to expiate   (which led me to look up expiate)

expiate:
: to do something as a way to show that you are sorry about doing something bad
: to extinguish the guilt incurred by


I have never had a priest bestow absolution upon me and send me on my way with some expiatory homework: Say twelve Hail Marys.


What wondrous words have you discovered lately?


Stay Busy and Stay Happy

Although I am not linking up with Sheila at Book Journey this week, I am using her button. I hope that soon, Sheila will feel able to again to host her wonderful meme. I miss her, and my prayers to out daily to her and her family.

Again this week I have made no real reading progress. Mr. Busy and I drove to  Ft Collins and back and listened to an audio book during the trip. We have 3 more discs to finish:

This is not the cover on the audio case, but I cannot find the edition on Goodreads or the Recorded Books site.  Dale Brown is one of Mr Busy's favorite authors. When we drive we pick a book he is interested in. It would not due, for his mind to wander or to get sleepy!  I can take this one or leave it. It is heavy on the the airplane descriptions and the use of pilot language.  The back story is a bit weak in my opinion.

I am still working through

My F2F book club is meeting tomorrow night, and for the very first time, I have not read the book. GUILT abounds!  I really wanted to read the selected read, The Ticket by Karen Schutt. 

When Karl Kessel receives another man's ticket to emigrate from Germany he leaves behind his young wife and two small sons, all for the promise of the opportunity he covets. Arriving in America, Karl is obsessed with becoming the owner of a farm--to be his own man. When Karl's wife Katja steps off a train with their sons in the wilds of sparsely settled Wyoming, she questions, "Is this where I am to spend my life?" Katja soon discovers that it is not only the geography of her situation which will make her life difficult, as she gives everything her husband demands of her, but it is never enough.
In her debut novel, Karen Schutte spins a compelling family story, based on the true story of her own great grandparents' life in rural Wyoming. Her unvarnished narrative exposes the harsh realities of life in the last century.
"The Ticket" is an unforgettable and touching account of a true American family, filled with ambition, promises, love and loss, and ultimately, a legacy of survival. 

I will keep plugging along, but this has been a difficult week. But I will not get too guilt laden about it. It is more important to take care of myself and get back to normal.

Until next time
Stay Busy and Stay Happy

First Chapter First Paragraph Tuesday - Our Lady of the Lost and Found

 First Chapter First Paragraph Tuesday Intros is hosted by  Diane at Bibliophile By the Sea. It is a chance to share the first paragraph or two of your current read. It can even be the first paragraph of a book you hope to begin soon.  Today I am sharing the first paragraph of : 

Our Lady of the Lost and Found
Diane Schoemperlen
Penguin Group 2001


Signs

Looking back on it now, I can see there were signs. In the week before it happened, there was a string of unusual events that I noticed but did not recognize. Seemingly trivial, apparently unconnected, they were not even events really, so much as odd occurrences, whimsical coincidences, amusing quirks of nature or fate. It is only now, in retrospect, that I can see then for what they were: eclectic clues, humble omens, whispered heralds of the approach of the miraculous. 

I am already at the 7th chapter of this book. I am enjoying it so far. It was in a box of "please take one of these" from a member of my book club. When I asked her about it, she shrugged her shoulders and said, "It wasn't bad" .  Not a glowing review, but I like the way it is written (first person) and I like the language. Would you pick it out of a box or from a shelf? Would you keep reading?


I may not be back home by next Tuesday. We will be helping our granddaughter get her condo ready to sell, not sure if she had disconnected the internet yet. My phone is only 3G so it need WiFi too. We will see. Until then,



Stay Busy and Stay Happy

North of Beautiful by Justina Chen Headley

North of Beautiful is the story of Terra Cooper, high school senior who can't wait to graduate and leave her small town for college. The problem is her mom doesn't want her to go, her mom needs her to deflect the anger and cruel treatment from her father, and her father absolutely thinks she only needs to go to local Western Washington and refuses to allow talk of any other location.

This story is well told, and interesting in that all the chapter are named for mapping terms or cartography references. Chapter One is called Fate Maps,  there is on titled Here Be Dragons, and one titled Orienteering for Girls.  Another thing you need to know is that Terra is tall, blond and fit, but she also has a port-wine birthmark. That birthmark influences her whole life.

I loved that fact that this book was not dummied down for the YA genre. There are words I had to look up and words that were new to me. I hope that young people reading this book, take the time to look up the words that are new to them. The author does a good job of using the words in sentence structure that allows us to sort of know their meaning and in that way learn a new word. But I found the research of the words helped my understanding of the story too.

Terra makes an extraordinary discovery, that the Land of Beautiful is traversed with love, with acceptance and with understanding. I recommend this book for most of my friends, my husband however would not be a fan. Not enough action for him and way too many emotional thought provoking themes.

I gave it 5 Happy Hands! 

Wondrous Words Wednesday

Join us on Wednesdays to highlight words found while reading or even while listening. Kathy at BermudaOnion's Weblog gives us a place to share these Wondrous Words.

From North of Beautiful by Justine Chen Headley.

This is a YA novel. I wondered as I read it if the wondrous words I found there would also be words that the YA age group would know or wonder about. I don't have my finger on the pulse of 15-19 year olds. So I would welcome the input from anyone. here are a few of the words I found.



stigmata: a stigmata plural : bodily marks or pains resembling the wounds of the crucified Jesus and sometimes accompanying religious ecstasy

" How they'd comment offhandedly that sometime their birthmarks bled spontaneously, stigmata without any hope of redemption."


chagrin: noun - distress of mind caused by humiliation, disappointment, or failure

               intransitive verb - to vex or unsettle by disappointing or humiliating

"His chagrin turned into a full smile"


cartouche: noun-a scroll-like ornament or tablet, esp. as an architectural feature
on Egyptian monuments, an oval or oblong figure containing the hieroglyphs of the name of a ruler or deity

"I had yet to sign a single piece of my work, had never thought myself worthy of a cartouche, never claiming my creations."


inured: transitive verb - to accustom to accept something undesirable

"It was as she had become so accustomed to disappointment , so inured to people reneging on their promise, that she expected setbacks, heartbreak."



froment: to cause or try to cause the growth or development of (something bad or harmful)



" His lips thinned, reminiscent of Dad and his quiet fromenting rages.


Until next time
Stay Busy and Stay Happy

Book Beginnings on Friday and The Friday 56

I haven't played along in awhile, but here is the beginning and the "56" of my current read. If you want to join in, go to Rose City Reader and link up your Book Beginning and then share your page 56 or 56% at Freda's Voice.  There you will find a myriad of other bloggers who have shared their Book Beginnings on Fridays and their Friday 56. Fun!!

 Prologue

1979

Fifteen-year-old Winona Grey stared out at the waterfront ranch that had been in her family for four generations, looking for something that had changed.



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pg 56

Dad grunted something unintelligible and got up from the table. Without looking back, he headed into his study and closed the door behind him.

Winona sat there, irritated once again  that she'd let herself expect something from him. Gratitude at the very least.


I may be one of the few people who haven't read this book. I have read other of her titles, Firefly Lane, On Mystic Lake, Winter Garden, Night Road, so I am pretty sure I will enjoy this one as well.

For the next week or two I am going to concentrate on reading the titles I need to finish the Mega Mix Challenge II on Goodreads. You can check my progress HERE.

There are 6 books I need to read to complete the challenge. They are: Wildflower Hill, True Colors, Fifty Shades Freed, Our Lady of the Lost and Found, Cat Trick or The Three Kitties That Saved My Life, and Fire on the Mountain.

And then there will be life getting in the way too I am sure.

Stay Busy and Stay Happy

Already Home by Susan Mallery

Already Home by Susan Mallery
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I am a new Susan Mallery fan. So far this is my favorite.

Jenna's marriage has ended. Her ex, Aaron, though charming and good-looking, had systematically destroyed her self-confidence and her creativity. So she has left L.A. behind, returned home to Georgetown, Texas and bought a store front to open a cooking store, Grate Expectations. But she is terrified. What does she know about retail. She knows kitchen, but selling and customers, Yikes!

Just as she thinks she has a handle on the store, ( she hired a quirky woman, who seems to know people like the back of her hand), her birth parents show up on her doorstep.  Why now, why at this late date?

This story has family, love of good friends and a hint of romance. It is a story about starting over while going back to your roots. It is about how love can change a person's perspective. This is the first book I've shed a tear over in awhile.

Now, do you suppose there will be another, so I can find out if Jenna and Ellington continue to build a relationship? Does Grate Expectations actually expand and make a go of it?  Maybe Violet can finally let go of her demons and find true love. Let's hope!


View all my reviews

It's Monday! What Are You Reading? 3/30/15

Every Monday I try to join the many participants in this meme at Sheila's blog. It is a place to talk about the books you are reading or plan on reading in the coming week. So tell us about your current books, print, audio, or electronic and then link up at Book Journey .

This week I hope to finish Blind Your Ponies by Stanley Gordon West. It has been on my Kindle for nearly 2 years! I heard about it at my face to face book club and that is why I loaded it. I am really enjoying it, why did I wait so long? 

From Amazon

Hope is hard to come by in the hard-luck town of Willow Creek. Sam Pickett and five young men are about to change that.

Sam Pickett never expected to settle in this dried-up shell of a town on the western edge of the world. He's come here to hide from the violence and madness that have shattered his life, but what he finds is what he least expects. There's a spirit that endures in Willow Creek, Montana. It seems that every inhabitant of this forgotten outpost has a story, a reason for taking a detour to this place--or a reason for staying.

As the coach of the hapless high school basketball team (zero wins, ninety-three losses), Sam can't help but be moved by the bravery he witnesses in the everyday lives of people--including his own young players--bearing their sorrows and broken dreams. How do they carry on, believing in a future that seems to be based on the flimsiest of promises? Drawing on the strength of the boys on the team, sharing the hope they display despite insurmountable odds, Sam finally begins to see a future worth living.

Author Stanley Gordon West has filled the town of Willow Creek with characters so vividly cast that they become real as relatives, and their stories--so full of humor and passion, loss and determination--illuminate a path into the human heart.

Next up will be The Courage Tree by Diane Chambelain.

From Goodreads:

 Eight-year-old Sophie Donohue just wanted to be like every other little girl. Which is why her mother, Janine, reluctantly agreed to let her go on the weekend camping trip with her Brownie troop. But when Janine arrives to pick up Sophie after the trip, her daughter is not among the others. Somehow, along the forested route from West Virginia, Sophie has disappeared.Sophie is no ordinary 8 year old. She suffers from a rare disease, and Janine has recently enrolled her in an experimental treatment as a last effort to save her life - despite the vehement objections of her ex-husband, Joe, who believes conventional medicine is the only route to take. The only person to support Janine in her decision is Lucas Trowell, someone familiar with the herbs used in the treatment. Lucas has been encouraging Janine to keep Sophie in the program, and, indeed, the little girl has been showing remarkable improvement.
All her mother's instincts tell Janine that Sophie is alive, but time is running out. Without her treatment, it's only a matter of days before Sophie's illness will claim her life. As Janine, Joe and Lucas embark on a desperate search to find Sophie, envy and suspicion grow between the two men, casting doubts on each other's true motives for helping Janine.
Deep in the forest, another drama unfolds. Sophie has found refuge in a remote cabin inhabited by a woman who wants nothing to do with the little girl. She's desperate to help her own daughter, who has been wrongly imprisoned for murder and who, after escaping, is on her way to join her mother. Sophie's arrival puts in jeopardy her daughter's future, but the mysterious woman is as determined to save her daughter as Janine is to save Sophie. 

 Only one of them can succeed.

I chose this book for a challenge on Goodreads. I was to pick a title from another member's TBR shelf on Goodreads. I chose this one, because I had not read it and had heard so many good reviews of her other books. I also have liked many books on Noleen's list, so after checking the synopsis , I included it in the challenge. I know I will be keeping a box of tissue near. 

Both of these books, and a current sewing project, plus housework and cooking will fill my week. Next weekend is Easter and my grandson-in-law's 30th birthday. I will bake a GF cake and then they will be here on Saturday for a pre-Easter dinner as they are going to his grandmother's for Easter Sunday.

 Busy, Busy, Busy, Happy, Happy, Happy

Yellow Crocus - a story worth telling

This is my 14th entry to the 2014 Ebook Reading Challenge. Hosted by Sarah at  Workaday Reads.

Yellow Crocus by Laila Ibrahim
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I've given 5 stars to a lot of books lately. Maybe I should be more selective, but they are all really good.

The first paragraph drew me in. I already felt bad for Mattie. How could the plantation owner expect her to just leave her own baby, to be the wet nurse to their new daughter? How could the Missus not want to hold and nurse her own child?

Elizabeth attaches quickly  to her nurse, preferring Mattie to her own mother. Mattie keeps an eye on her own son by watching out the window of the nursery. Luckily, because the quarters are close, when Lisbeth is finally old enough to be without Mattie for a few hours, Mattie is allowed to visit Samuel, and keep a relationship with him as he grows.

As Mattie transitions into becoming Lisbeth's maid, Lisbeth changes. As she grows into a young woman and then becomes betrothed, she ponders the way of her life. A disturbing event makes her really consider her future and she makes a courageous decision.

I really enjoyed the storytelling in this book. I hope Laila  Ibrahim writes again.


View all my reviews


Until next time
Stay Busy and Stay Happy

First Chapter First Paragraph Tuesday Intros - Yellow Crocus

 Every Tuesday Diane at Bibliophile By the Sea hosts this meme. It is a place to share the first chapter and first paragraph or a few, of a current read or one you hope to start soon.

Yellow Crocus

Laila Ibrahim

Lake Union, Seattle - 2014

Chapter 1

April 14, 1837

Mattie lay curled around the the warm shape of her son when the unwanted messenger knocked. She stayed on her pallet, reluctant to end this precious time, and listened to the sound of quiet snores coming from her grandfather. She gazed at Samuel, pressed her nose close against his soft neck to take in his sweet baby scent. She gently wiped the glistening sweat away from his damp forehead and gave him a tender kiss upon his temple. Another intrusive knock struck the door. Mattie got up. Cradling Samuel so close that she could feel warm puffs against her breast, she shuffled across the packed dirt floor. Though she expected this visitor, had anticipated a knock for weeks, she dreaded this moment.
Once she opened the door, her life would be forever divided into before and after.

_________________________________________________________________________________

What do you think?   Would you read on.


Until next time,
Stay Busy and Stay Happy

It's Monday!. What Are You Reading? Yellow Crocus & The Little Bookstore in Big Stone Gap

It's Monday! What Are You Reading is a fun weekly meme hosted by Sheila at Book Journey. Join us and link up your current reading list. I guarantee you'll add to your reading lists.

Saturday I started two new books. The Little Bookstore of Big Stone Gap is the November selection of my F2F book club. It was recommended by the daughters of our oldest member. So we decided it might be worth a look. I put on hold a copy from our library and when I picked it up, it was a Big Print edition. Yea for me! I don't normally find books I want to read in Large Print, but sometimes it a rest for these old tired eyes. And I am really liking the story so far.

A book about losing your place, finding your purpose, and immersing yourself in what holds community, and humanity, together—books

Wendy Welch and her husband had always dreamed of owning a bookstore. When the opportunity to escape a toxic work environment and run to a struggling Virginia coal mining town presented itself, they took it. And took the plunge into starting their dream as well. They chose to ignore the “death of the book,” the closing of bookstores across the nation, and the difficult economic environment, and six years later they have carved a bookstore—and a life—out of an Appalachian mountain community.

A story of beating bad odds with grace, ingenuity, good books, and single malt, this memoir chronicles two bibliophiles discovering unlikely ways in which daily living and literature intertwine. Their customers—"Bob the Mad Irishman," "Wee Willie," and "The Lady Who Liked Romances," to name a few—come to the shop looking for the kind of interactive wisdom Kindles don't spark, and they find friendship, community, and the uncommon pleasure of a good book in good company.
The Little Bookstore of Big Stone Gap will make you want to run to the local bookstore, and curl up in an arm chair with a treasure in bound pages.

And I downloaded Yellow Crocus on my Kindle back in August. I was needing to read a book whose title started with Y as part of The Mega Mix II Challenge on Goodreads. I know, I know but I like this particular challenge. It stretches me. I have read lots of books I would never have tried with out the challenges that I participate in. I had no real idea what this book was about, but it had a gorgeous cover and the title started with Y and it was not expensive to download. I am really enjoying it, so I guess I "did good"!!

Mattie was never truly mine. That knowledge must have filled me as quickly and surely as the milk from her breasts. Although my family ‘owned’ her, although she occupied the center of my universe, her deepest affections lay elsewhere. So along with the comfort of her came the fear that I would lose her some day. This is our story...

So begins Lisbeth Wainwright’s compelling tale of coming-of-age in antebellum Virginia. Born to white plantation owners but raised by her enslaved black wet nurse, Mattie, Lisbeth’s childhood unfolds on the line between two very different worlds.
Growing up under the tender care of Mattie, Lisbeth adopts her surrogate mother’s deep-seated faith in God, her love of music and black-eyed peas, and the tradition of hunting for yellow crocuses in the early days of spring. In time, Lisbeth realizes she has freedoms and opportunities that Mattie does not have, though she’s confined by the societal expectations placed on women born to privilege. As Lisbeth grows up, she struggles to reconcile her love for her caregiver with her parents’ expectations, a task made all the more difficult as she becomes increasingly aware of the ugly realities of the American slavery system. When Lisbeth bears witness to a shockingly brutal act, the final vestiges of her naiveté crumble around her. Lisbeth realizes she must make a choice, one that will require every ounce of the courage she learned from her beloved Mattie.

This compelling historical novel is a richly evocative tale of love, loss, and redemption set during one of the most sinister chapters of American history.

This week I also will put the finishing touches on a quilt for a challenge in my quilt group. I will post a picture after I do "show and tell" on November 2nd. 


Until next time, 
Stay Busy and Stay Happy

Review : The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison

The Bluest Eye
Toni Morrison
Originally published in 1970
5 of 5 Stars




    This is the first Toni Morrison book I have read. It is her first novel, I don't know why I never read it in the past. The story is told by narrator, Claudia, a young black girl living in Lorain, Ohio in 1941. Lorain OH is the girlhood hometown of the author. Claudia tells the story of eleven year-old   Pecola Breedlove.

    Pecola knows that she is ugly. She knows this because her peers at school tell her. She knows because her family tells her. She know because the world around her tells her so. She longs to be beautiful and beloved like the blond and blue-eyed little girls who live in the big white houses in the other part of town. The houses like the one where her mother, Mrs Breedlove works. She prays and longs for a miracle to change her eyes to blue. The bluest of blue. 

   In that late summer of 1941, when the marigolds in the Breedlove's garden do not bloom, and indeed the marigolds in the whole town do not bloom, Pecola's life changes in a devastating and painful way. 

In Toni Morrison's afterword, she tells of how she first started the story and how it developed into a book. In early 1960, the black community was going through great social upheaval. They were developing the thought that "Black is Beautiful", but there were struggles toward that end. As Ms. Morrison exposed the aggression that could cause a child to literally fall apart, she struggled with the voices of Pecola, Claudia and Pecola's family. She struggled not to dehumanize the characters that tore at Pecola and ultimately caused her collapse. She tried to give voice to the mother, who thought she was doing all the right things, she struggled to understand a father who had no self-worth, and she struggled to give voice to a brother who rather than face his future, just disappeared. In the author's words she was not pleased with the voices that she heard. I however, think she did a courageous and wonderful job of allowing us to hear them.  I was moved, I was touched. I want to read more.   

I gave this book 5 stars.  The story is not a beautiful one, but the language used to tell the story is beautiful.  I will read more Toni Morrison.



Until next time
Stay Busy and Stay Happy

It's Monday. What Are You Reading? Walls & Walter

This meme is brought to you by Sheila at Book Journey.  Click on over and join us in sharing the book were are reading this week, or at least hope to get read.



I finished reading :

I have not written a review as yet. It is still swimming around in my head. I did like it a lot, not because the story was wonderful but because the writing was beautiful.




This week I will start a print book, that I picked up from the library. Half Broke Horses by Jeannette Walls .

Lily Casey Smith, this novel's feisty Texas protagonist, is a frontier teacher, a rancher, a rodeo rider, a poker player, and bootlegger. In Half Broke Horses, she survives droughts, tornados, floods, poverty, and whatever else fate can throw against her.
Based on author Jeannette Walls's grandmother, Lily is a plausible character because she has a voice that synchronizes with her history.

This novel lives up to the still gathering acclaim for Walls's novel The Glass Castle.

On my Kindle, I will be reading Beautiful Ruins by Jess Walter.

The story begins in 1962. On a rocky patch of the sun-drenched Italian coastline, a young innkeeper, chest-deep in daydreams, looks out over the incandescent waters of the Ligurian Sea and spies an apparition: a tall, thin woman, a vision in white, approaching him on a boat. She is an actress, he soon learns, an American starlet, and she is dying.

And the story begins again today, half a world away, when an elderly Italian man shows up on a movie studio's back lot—searching for the mysterious woman he last saw at his hotel decades earlier.

What unfolds is a dazzling, yet deeply human, roller coaster of a novel, spanning fifty years and nearly as many lives. From the lavish set ofCleopatra to the shabby revelry of the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Walter introduces us to the tangled lives of a dozen unforgettable characters: the starstruck Italian innkeeper and his long-lost love; the heroically preserved producer who once brought them together and his idealistic young assistant; the army veteran turned fledgling novelist and the rakish Richard Burton himself, whose appetites set the whole story in motion—along with the husbands and wives, lovers and dreamers, superstars and losers, who populate their world in the decades that follow.

Gloriously inventive, constantly surprising, Beautiful Ruins is a story of flawed yet fascinating people, navigating the rocky shores of their lives while clinging to their improbable dreams.

Until next time, 

Stay Busy and Stay Happy

Wondrous Words Wednesday - from Blogland and 11-22-63

Kathy at BermudaOnion's Weblog host this Wednesday meme, where you can share a word you encountered in your reading or just highlight a word that you like. Join us "wordies" and share your new favorite word.

From a review of Bergdorf Blonds by Plum Sykes posted by Kristen BookNAround



celebutante : I don't exactly get the whole celebutante thing.


A young, fashionable, and usually wealthy person who is the subject of frequent media attention.



Origin of celebutante

Blend of celebrity and debutante.


I sort of had this one figured out, but I really like the way is sounds. A little more "now" than debutante. Thanks Kristen.




From 11-22-63 by Stephen King Mr. King uses lots of words that I did not know or were unfamiliar. Some I could not find in any online dictionary.


obdurate : I'd test-fired it in a gravel pit on the outskirts of town, and it seemed fine...but the past is obdurate. It doesn't want to be changed.


adjective
1. not easily moved to pity or sympathy; hardhearted
2. hardened and unrepenting; impenitent
2. not giving in readily; stubborn; obstinate; inflexible



amorphous : He was wearing an old black overcoat that puddled around him like an amorphous shadow


adjective
1. without definite form; shapeless
1. of no definite type; anomalous
2. unorganized; vague
BIOL. without definite or specialized structure, as some lower forms of life
CHEM., MINERALOGY not crystalline

What words did you find in your reading this week?

Until next time

Stay Busy and Stay Happy

First Chapter First Paragraph Tuesday Intros - 50 Shades Darker

Diane at Bibliophile By the Sea host First Chapter First Paragraph Tuesdays. It is a chance to read and share the first paragraph or two of your current read or maybe one you hope to start soon. Join us and grab the button at Diane's Blog, then link back your current read's first paragraph of the first chapter. Then look to see what the rest of us are reading. 

This week I will start 

but I shared the first paragraph back in June of 2013. I did not pick it up again, but it is on the list of my books to read for the Mega Mix II Challenge on Goodreads. It fits the new author section of that challenge. So I will share with you the first chapter first paragraph of another book I am reading to work at completing #3 in the challenge - "Finish a Series".

 I read the 1st one and own the set of 3. I am sharing them with my oldest granddaughter, and before you "gasp", I will tell you that she is married and 29 years old. Here is the excerpt. 

I have survived Day Three Post-Christian, and my first day at work. It has been a welcome distraction. The time has flown by in a haze of new faces, work to do, and Mr. Jack Hyde. Mr. Jack Hyde....he smiles down at me, his blue eyes twinkling, as he leans against my desk.
"Excellent work, Ana. I think we're going to make a great team."
Somehow I manage to curl my lips upward in a semblance of a smile.

So would you read on, have you read the series? 


Today I did laundry and began again to work on a quilt that I started a year ago. It is called Snow Flurries and it is a Crabapple Hill pattern. Lot of small pieces, some embroidery, and some beads. Shades of aqua, green, pink and blue. Very cool colors. Some of my friends who also chose to do the pattern are way ahead of me, one for sure has it completed and a couple haven't started yet. I hope to have some pictures soon. Maybe they will be only "in progress", but you can see what it is starting to look like. 



Until next time, 
Stay Busy and Stay Happy