Books I Have Read

... or am reading, or will read again.

I love to read.  Oh yeah, reading a book, that's a perfect summer day activity.  Or a perfect winter day activity if you include an afghan or a quilt.  Snuggled up in the corner of the couch, reading away until someone interrupts with conversation or I have to go to the bathroom.  That's my idea of heaven.

I just finished reading Killing Lincoln by Bill O'Reilly and Martin Dugard.  (I wouldn't give you 2 cents for BO'R on Fox News Network.  I think he's a pompous you-know-what.  And I don't know how much is BO'R and how much is Martin Dugard.  I could hazard a guess.  Martin Dugard is a New York Times best selling author on his own and has written historical works before.  He plays nicely with others including James Patterson.)

Killing Lincoln reads with all the excitement and tension of a novel and whoever was the brains behind it knew their stuff.

My DD gave me that book and Killing Jesus for Christmas.  One guy at work saw me reading it and said he read it too.  He also read Killing Patton, Killing Kennedy and he's reading Killing Jesus.

Unfortunate titles, I guess.  I passed Killing Lincoln along to another coworker who is also anxious to read it.

I'm also listening to an Anne Perry novel on CD in the car.  I'm excessively fond of her Thomas and Charlotte Pitt, and her William Monk detective novels.  She also wrote a couple or three World War I novels, the first one of which is called No Graves As Yet.  That's the one on the CD in the car.  So far it's good, classic Anne Perry with lots of details and very accurate historically.

When you listen to books on CD you get an interesting perspective since a lot depends upon the skill of the reader.  If they have an accent, or if their inflection is good or not so good, it can change the whole experience.  The person who is reading No Graves is a man with a British accent, and he does subtle tone changes so you can follow who is speaking pretty well, even if he wouldn't be saying "said Joseph hurriedly".

This book is about the pre-war activities at Cambridge and the surrounding area.  It's so good that sometimes I want to just stay in the car and listen instead of coming into the office!

Thomas Pitt is a detective/commoner married to a gentleman's daughter in Victorian London.



William Monk is a policeman who lost his past memory, married to a nurse, also Victorian London.

I read book books, borrowed from the library or purchased.  I'll buy second hand books or as I call them "pre-read" books.  The words are all there after all!  I tried to list all the books I know I've read on Library Thing but I exceeded their free quantity so I stopped. 

On a recent Facebook challenge for how many a person read of the 100 on this list, I read over half.  Some I've read multiple times.  I have read Gone With The Wind at least three times.  Ditto Pride and Prejudice, The Hunt for Red October, and Black Beauty. 

 

I also read books on my Kindle, and I sometimes listen to them on CD in the car.  Lately I haven't listened to any in my sewing room because most books on CD are now MP3 files, and I evidently have an ancient CD player which doesn't 'read' the MP3 files.  Maybe time to start my Christmas wish list...


Here are some more authors I love and books I need to locate and put on my 'to-do' list:

A Jesse Stone novel, now I see Tom Selleck when I read them. RBP has passed away but the new writer is nearly as good.

Stephanie Plum, girl bail-bondsman, a riot and a half.  They made a movie of one of her novels and a friend of my son's from high school played one of the characters, Stephanie's cousin the cop.

Love JK novels, most of the feature Alex Delaware, a psychologist who works with the LA Police Dept.



Another favorite author, and a detective who is very flawed and human.



The newest Inspector Gamache novel.  Contemporary mystery, takes place in Canada.

If you see me near the book racks in my local Goodwill, please walk past quietly, I'm not supposed to be buying any more books.  I currently have 50 on my bookshelf that I should start reading.

But what the heck, they don't cost THAT much...

Read on...



UFOs - Gotta Get Busy!

I'm scheduling some vacation time around Labor Day... Lots of people go to their cabins for the last long weekend of summer, or plan some outdoor activities with family or friends. 

I plan time in the sewing room.

The pile of UFOs or Un-Finished Objects is getting large...

 

Top to Bottom:

1. Halloween Quilt
2. Jelly Roll Quilt
3. Red/white/blue quilt
4. Garden Florals
5. Poppies from the kit I found hidden
6. Almost Twighlight - quilted, just needs binding
7. Black/white/red stars from Buck a Block
8. Black/white/red/gray bow tie quilt that needs a border
9. Primary colors charm block quilt
10. Green and dark red borders that go on a quilt that's not on the pile
11. Two Christmas quilts, one is mine and one goes to my daughter

Not on the pile are two more, one is a panel for a blue baby quilt that is flannel and chenille with a large frog in one of the corners, and the other is the pink quilt with the panel of 2.5 inch squares in the center.

 

One the design wall are these string blocks:

 

They're six and a half inches square.  Somewhere not in the pile or on the wall is a partial top made with more string blocks alternating with squares of denim from old jeans.

If I live long enough to finish all my projects I'll be around to a ripe old age!

While cleaning up my sewing room on Sunday I noticed this on the wall near I desk I use for scrapbooking:

This is what Miss A does while I'm sewing... and this is the new math I guess.  You make lines for tens and dots for ones and then you count them all.  Wish they'd done it this way when I was young, I might not have memorized those math tables!

Looking forward to the long weekend of finishes coming up!

Sew on...

 

The Weekend

This weekend I didn't do much except communicate with grands... the Jackson grands came over on Saturday because DS was working on a tall building downtown.

It went something like this:

Them:  Hi Gramma, <smiles> Is Miss A here yet?
Me:      Not yet, it's kind of early.
Them:  Awww... <long faces> can we go get her?
Me:      Not yet, let her get ready, she'll be over when she is.
Them:  Ohhhh kayyy <more long faces>

Me to myself: What am I, chopped liver??  <long face>

When she did come over, Miss A made all the faces light up.  They played.  They made those little cups of mac and cheese with noodles shaped like SpongeBob.  I peeled carrots and cucumbers and made sandwiches.

J said "Gramma, your table always looks like this when we come over.  Lots of different foods."

Smiles.

Then they wanted to swim in the backyard.  Here's how it goes...

The trail starts with shoes

Clothes are everywhere



More shoes (boy shoes can't be near girl shoes)

"Don't get me wet!!"  Buddy, if you don't want to get wet you're in the wrong place...

The day was GORGEOUS... I didn't mind sitting on the patio watching the mermaids and man.  I read nearly all of the second half of the book I was reading, Killing Lincoln.  It's a good read, if you like history and especially if you like books about Lincoln.

Sunday was a lazy day.  We had rain in the morning.  Later in the afternoon Miss A was playing outside with the neighbors. 

A boat had recently been removed from the patio, so they had lots of room for scooters. 

Unfortunately DH discovered an insect nest of some kind and had to spray to remove them from the eaves of the house.  So late in the evening there was stinging and screaming and searching for bites and "GRAMMA WHY DID THEY STING ME ALL I WAS DOING WAS PLAYING I'VE NEVER BEEN STUNG BY A BEE BEFORE I WASN'T BOTHERING THEM AT ALL I DIDN'T DO ANYTHING!!!!"

You know what, sweetie, sometimes they just sting because they can.  It's what they do, they're bees.

Keep calm and carry on...