First Chapter First Paragraph Tuesday Intros : Half Broke Horses

 First Chapter First Paragraph Tuesday Intros is hosted by Diane at Bibliophile By the Sea. Join us in sharing the first chapter or a few, of your current read.

Half Broke Horses

A True-life Novel

Jeannette Walls

2009 - Scribner/a division of Simon and Schuster

Those old cows knew trouble was coming before we did.
   It was late on an August afternoon, the air hot and heavy like it usually was in the rainy season. Earlier we'd seen some thunderheads near the Burnt Spring Hills, but they'd passed way up to the north. I'd mostly finished my chores for the day and was heading down to the pasture with my brother, Buster, and my sister, Helen, to bring the cows in for their milking. But when we got there, those girls were acting all bothered. Instead of milling around the gate, like they usually did at milking time, they were standing stiff-legged and straight-tailed, twitching their heads around, listening.
   Buster and Helen looked up at me, and without a word, I knelt down and pressed my ear to the hard-packed dirt. There was a rumbling, so faint and low that you felt it more than you heard it. Then I knew what the cows knew - a flash flood was coming. 

What do you think? Would you read on?  Have you already read this one?
I am reading it so I can discuss with my book club. They read it several years ago before I joined and they have chosen to read another of her books, The Silver Star in January.  I just want to be informed if they make comparisons or references. I an excited to read it.



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

Saturday Snapshots - October 11 - NEW Quilt Show

Saturday Snapshot is hosted by Melinda at West Metro Mommy Reads. It is a place to share photos taken by you, a friend or family  member, not random ones found on the web. They must be appropriate for all eyes. 

Last Saturday I attended our local Quilt Show. This year I was not on the committee, so I just enjoyed the creativity of the people in our community. Below are some of the entries that caught my eye. 

Small memory crazy quilt by Barb B. This was an original design for her granddaughter. Lots of scraps and embroidered memories on this one!

Lynn's fabulous quilt with embroidery and pieced blossoms. Crabapple Hill pattern

Over the River and Through the Woods in teal and cream instead of the traditional black and beige. 

Close up of an embroidered snowflake, blinged and beaded on Lynn's Snow Flurries quilt.  

A different take on a regular T-shirt quilt. It was made for a member of the Rodeo Club and used some of his western type rodeo shirts that are sometimes won along with a ribbon and bragging rights. 

This one doesn't show up well, but it was grey, cream/yellow and aqua. Very pretty in person. 

Needle-turned applique album quilt, in saturated pastels.

Some of the pictures are quilts made by people I did not know. Saturday during judging, the name of the quilt was not revealed. Only after judging and awarding ribbons, was the information tag opened so you could see who made the quilt and if it was professionally quilted or quilted on a home machine. 

I entered some projects but none were winners. I did not expect them to be, but wanted to support the committee and bring entries. It makes for a good quilt show if there are lots of things to look at. 

Until next time

Stay Busy and Stay Happy

Judy

Review: Black Roses by Jenn Brink

Another Ebook to post to this challenge hosted by Sarah  at Workaday Reads. I signed up at the DVD Level which is 25 ebooks. Not a difficult challenge I didn't think. I need to get a move on, this is only #12. I have lots of books downloaded, but I have been reading print books too.


Black Roses by Jenn Brink
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Jess is in over her head, and yet she believes she can handle her situation. When she picks her fiance up at Sea-Tac airport, she notices a buxom blond at his side. He almost makes it to the car, when some guys from the company say they need him at the office. This begins her adventure!

This book had a lot going for it. Strong willed female protagonist, a mystery stalker, funny one-liners, lots of sexual tension, and a beautiful setting. But this particular Kindle edition was hard to read. Chapter Four was a duplicate of Chapter Three. I don't think I missed anything, it was just a duplicate. There were sentences that did not make sense due to missing words, or duplicated words. This took away from my enjoyment of the book. This was downloaded from the author, I wonder if there is a better edition available now? Maybe it was an ARC and now there is a final revised version. Hmmmm?


View all my reviews

First Chapter First Paragraph Tuesday Intros - Brink

Each Tuesday, Diane at Bibliophile By the Sea host this meme as a place to share the first chapter and first paragraph ( or a few) from  your current read or one you hope to start soon.

Black Roses

Jenn Brink

Book 1 in the Jessica Hart series

May 2013

Downloaded free from the author

My name is Jessica, but only my mother calls me that, everyone else just calls me Jessie. My birthday is in a few days, the big three-o. Yeah, I'm not looking forward to that. Thankfully, most people guess that I'm about twenty-five. On a good day, I still get carded. On a bad day, I get a muffin top, probably the result of too many muffins. I have green eyes (which I love), freckles on my nose, cheeks, shoulders, and everywhere else (which I hate), and dark auburn hair that causes me more pain than it's worth most days. Some days it's wavy and some days it's straight. Today, it in ponytail.

So, what do you think?  Would you keep reading? 

I plan to get this one finished this week and to get some binding ready for a quilt that is at the quilter and maybe finish a summer table topper that was in a kit I bought on clearance, 2 years ago!!! 

Until next time, 

Stay Busy and Stay Happy

Review: Dream New Dreams by Jai Pausch

I just finished this book this afternoon. I read most of the afternoon away. That is a treat for me, I normally feel pulled in different " but first, I have to ....." directions.  I first put this book on my TBR list, shortly after I read Randy Pausch's  The Last Lecture. I don't know why I put off reading Jai's book until now.  I am sharing my review as I posted it to Goodreads.

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Dream New Dreams: Reimagining My Life After Loss by Jai Pausch
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I could not put it down.

As a cancer survivor myself, I now know that the role of caregiver is a difficult one. In reading Jai Pausch's memoir I relived my cancer treatment journey.

In a lot of respect's Jai's journey was atypical. She had a strong husband, who had an amazing ability to set the stage for her and her children. They had plenty of financial stability, they had strong family and friend support, they had opportunities and options because of Randy Pausch's notoriety. That being said, I don't mean to downplay her grief, or her fear in raising her children.  She still had to face her alone demons all alone. And she shared what worked for her, thereby giving others at least the opportunity to consider an idea.

I enjoyed her book very much. I am glad she is dreaming new dreams, and I am glad she is giving back to the community that supported her.



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In closing, I only have a few other comments. Jai's book is not necessarily written chronologically. Basically it is, but in each chapter to goes back to talking about Randy and his cancer fight and then discusses her dealing with that part of their lives. It was a little disconcerting at first.  But I think she intended to put her life into specific chapters and ideas, ie Shattered Dreams, Cancer Blindsides Us Again, Talking to Children about Cancer and Death. In each of these chapters she relives the parts of their lives that comprise these ideas.

I do recommend it to all. One in three of us will experience cancer somehow. That means we may very well be a patient or a caregiver. I helps to know that we are not alone and that there are a myriad of ways to battle this awful disease.

It's Monday! What Are You Reading? Pausch, Brink and Morrison

Sheila at Book Journey hosts a weekly meme to share what you reading this week and encourages all of us to visit others participating. Fair warning - this tends to add to your reading list! ;)



This week I am in the middle of

from Goodreads:

"Jai is such a giver that she often forgets to take care of herself," Randy Pausch wrote about his wife. "Jai knows that she’ll have to give herself permission to make herself a priority."
In Dream New Dreams, Jai Pausch shares her own story for the first time: her emotional journey from wife and mother to full-time caregiver, shuttling between her three young children and Randy’s bedside as he sought treatment far from home; and then to widow and single parent, fighting to preserve a sense of stability for her family, while coping with her own grief and the challenges of running a household without a partner.
Jai paints a vivid, honest portrait of a vital, challenging relationship between two strong people who faced a grim prognosis and the self-sacrificing decisions it often required. As she faced life without the husband she called her “magic man,” Jai learned to make herself a priority to create a new life of hope and happiness—as she puts it, to “feel a spark of my own magic beginning to flicker.”
Dream New Dreams is a powerful story of grief, healing, and newfound independence. With advice artfully woven into an intimate, beautifully written narrative, Jai’s story will inspire not only the legions of readers who made The Last Lecture a bestseller, but also those who are embarking on a journey of loss and renewal themselves.

And I will start tonight: on my Kindle-

From Goodreads:

Jessica Hart is new to Seattle, days away from the big Three-O, and just months away from marrying the perfect man. But, when her fiancé, Jim Carozza, gets into a car with a creepy stranger who looks like a Vegas pit boss her perfect life takes a bizarre turn.
Her brother tells her to go home. The police tell her to go home. Her inner voice even tells her to go home. Unfortunately, Jessica has never been the kind of girl to do as she’s told. Instead, she jumps feet first into trouble looking for answers just to find out that every answer leads her into more trouble.

Before she knows it, her world has turned upside down. Jim is missing and he’s got secrets. Greg has moved in and he’s got secrets. Her new friend, smoking hot and mysteriously irresistible Eric Wolf, even has secrets.
Now, a crazed killer is stalking Jessica and he wants something that she doesn't have. Wolf wants something that she knows she shouldn't give. And, the police, the FBI, the mob and a bunch of scary looking mercenaries are watching her every move.

Greg thinks she needs to let the police handle things.
Her best friend thinks she needs to let Wolf seduce her. Jessica thinks she needs some retail therapy, a manicure, and a margarita.

And I hope to start:

I did not get to this one during Banned Books Week, and the copy I borrowed from my public library looks different that this, but the page numbers and the ISBN match. It has been on my TBR list for some time. I am anxious to get to it, hope I can get through it.

I finished The Book of Ruth and had trouble finishing it. It was hard to read and very depressing. If you are interested my Goodreads review is here.



Until next time
Stay Busy and Stay Happy