Sunday Bookends: ‘Is that you spring?’ The ever growing To Be Read pile and Maverick

Welcome to my weekly post where I recap my week by writing about what I’ve been reading, watching, writing, doing, and sometimes what I’ve been listening to.

This post is going up late today (Sunday) because I completely forgot yesterday was Saturday. I don’t know how to explain that really. My family and I went on a small outing Friday and then again yesterday and in between I became obsessed with rewriting A Story To Tell, my first book, to republish it with a new cover on Amazon. I became so obsessed I totally lost track of time. I don’t plan to spend a lot of time “rewriting” it because I have set up an actual deadline to finish The Farmers’ Sons and I want to stick to that.

Our outings this week weren’t super exciting by most standards but at least we left the house. Friday we took Zooma the Wonder Dog to be groomed and while she was being groomed we visited Books-A-Million again, like we did a few weeks ago. They were having an outside used book sale so I snatched up a few Christian fiction authors I’ve been wanting to read. Christian fiction with a little more edge than an Amish romance (good grief, there are way too many of those out there).

I also found Agatha Raisin Mysteries book by M.C. Beaton in the bargain bin. After getting a few pages in, I think I know why it was in the bargain bin. Not only is it not the best written book, but there was at least one, maybe two typos in the first chapter. The typos made me feel a little better about my own typos since the book was published by a well-known New York Publishing House and still had typos!

I will probably still finish the book, but it wasn’t what I expected. More on this book and the other books I found in the next section.

Zooma looked beautiful after her grooming session, but apparently she did not like the heavy duty blow dryer and bit at the air. When I first came in the woman made it sound like she’d bit her, but thankfully she only bit at the air. Zooma is not a fan of hot hair being blown at her, I guess, but I don’t know a lot of dogs (or people) who are.

They put a complimentary bandana on her which I knew I had to get a couple photos of her in as soon as I could because she wouldn’t want to keep it on. I was able to grab a few photographs of her looking regal before, I’m sure, she found some deer poo to roll in. There is so much deer poo in our backyard left over from the winter and she loves to roll all in it. Apparently, there wasn’t enough space in the woods for the deer to do their business so they used our backyard as their toilet.

Yesterday we drove an hour to find a Chick-fil-A in the dining hall of a local campus. That is literally the only Chick-fil-A near us, with the other ones being about three hours south. My son has wanted to go to a Chick-fi-A for years so a couple of months ago my husband took him to one, but yesterday he took the whole family. I can’t eat any of the food there because of my various food issues, but they had a salad place next door, inside the student dining hall, so I grabbed a salad for myself.

Then, because our day just couldn’t get any more exciting, we stopped at Wal-Mart and Aldis for groceries. I know. We are some crazy, crazy partiers. But at least we did it all on the first official day of spring and it acted like the first day of spring, for the most part, with sunny, yet chilly, weather.

What I’m Reading

I am still a bit behind on my reading. Last week I finished Death Without Company by Craig Johnson and continued reading Dark of Night by Indie author Carrie Cotton.

I also continued reading You Belong with Me by Tari Farris, but it’s not really holding my interest as much. It’s a pretty standard romance at this point.

I also continued King of the Wind with Little Miss and we will probably finish that this week. This book has been a little more depressing than the other Marquerite Henry books, but it is still good.

At Books-A-Million I snatched up a couple of Colleen Coble books because I’ve been wanting to read her but her books are pretty expensive in paperback and on Kindle. I also grabbed a Francine Rivers book I haven’t read yet.

I grabbed the first book of a Ted Dekker series that I already had the second book of. Both were bought at two different places, both on clearance.

All the books, except two, were hardcovers.

A run down of the books I grabbed:

  • The 49th Mystic by Ted Dekker (to join Rise of the Mystics)
  • Strands of Truth by Colleen Coble
  • One Little Lie by Colleen Coble
  • And the Shofar Blew by Francine Rivers
  • The Ezekiel Option by Joel Rosenberg
  • The Dead Ringer by M.C. Beaton

I’m not sure when I will get to all of those books, but I’m sure I’ll be passing them on to my mom first because she reads faster than me.

As for The Dead Ringer by M.C. Beaton (as mentioned above), this is the 28th book in the series, written right before she died in her mid-80s, so it is possible that this book wasn’t even written by her. It would probably be a better idea for me to read a couple of the earlier books in the series, when she was in her prime. Right now the book reads more like a how-to narrative. I don’t know how else to explain it. I’m pretty certain I will still read it, though.

On our way to the groomer Friday, the local library called and left a voicemail on my cellphone to let me know the library is open again. I thought it was funny they said they were calling their most loyal patrons and I’ve actually only been to the library twice in a year.

I’m sure I will wander down there soon but for now I have to finish a couple of books I promised two indie authors I would finish.

What I’m Watching

I’m still working my way through the Agatha Raisin movies, and still making fun of them, but still enjoying them.

This week we also watched an episode of the old Maverick show with James Gardner and then, since I had never seen it all the way through (that I can remember), we watched Maverick with Gardner and Mel Gibson. We watched it with our son and had to explain to him that when we were teenagers Mel Gibson was the hottest actor around.

We did fill him in on Mel’s fall from grace as well and I pointed out it happened after Passion of the Christ, which he himself had predicted it would. Mel told Jim Cavaziel when they started filming Passion of the Christ that forces would come against them and he was right.

What I’m Listening To

I’m still listening to Needtobreathe and since Zach Williams dropped a new single, I’ve been listening to him as well.

What I’m Writing

Last week I rambled about my insomnia battle, which I thought I’d let you know cleared up after I stopped taking the magnesium glycinate at night. I have no idea why I can’t take magnesium glycinate at night, but I can’t. It did, however, make me feel very good the next day, even when I didn’t have a lot of sleep. I tried taking it during the day this week but found, ironically, it made me sleepy during the day. Or, I could have simply been tired during the day because I was actually getting sleep and my body was completely confused.

I also shared some random thoughts, as one does here on my blog.

On Friday, I shared a short section of Lily, a novella or novel (haven’t decided which yet) that I will be working on sometime in the future.

I hope to share more from The Farmers’ Sons this Friday.

So that’s my week in review, how about yours? What have you been reading, watching, listening to or doing? Let me know in the comments.

4 thoughts on “Sunday Bookends: ‘Is that you spring?’ The ever growing To Be Read pile and Maverick

  1. Your “crazy,” adventurous outings sound a lot like ours. 😉 Anyway, Happy Spring! I think it’s really coming – our crocuses are blooming too. I’m sorry you can’t enjoy the awesomeness of Chick-fil-A. We love it and our big excitement was learning a new one opened closer to us (about 30 minutes away as opposed to 45 min to an hour). Of course, it is swamped now with tons of frenzied customers, so we will wait awhile before we eat there.

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  2. I am so glad that you are getting some sleep!!

    I love that pop of purple little flower. And I know I say this all the time but Zooma is so darn cute. I want to give her lots of hugs, but maybe not after she rolls in deer poo. Lol.

    And now I want chicken nuggets. And I realize that this is the second time in like three days I have told you about wanting to eat after reading something of yours. I must be super suggestible to that sort of thing.

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    • I really don’t know that she rolls in that often because she doesn’t smell like it but guaranteed if we give her a bath or get her groomed she’s going to.

      As for the food issue, maybe you’ll have to have to same rule for reading my blog as we do for grocery shopping: don’t read my blog when hungry. Lol.

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