Welcome to Sunday Bookends where I ramble about what I’ve been reading, doing, watching, writing, and listening to.

What I/we’ve been Reading

I finished Dead Sea Conspiracy by Jerry B. Jenkins Friday and enjoyed it a lot more as I got into it. I’m still not a fan of dual timeline books but I like how this one tied the two timelines together.

I do recommend it, especially if you like speculative fiction.

I also finished the first novella in a set of novellas called The 80s Rom Com Club by a few different authors. The novellas are all light and fluffy romances about a group of women who have a club that watches old 80s movies together.  I’ll probably stretch them out and read one or two a week and read them in the evenings because they are light.

I want to start a mystery or suspense book this week so for my choices I have:

•  What’s The Worst That Can Happen? by Donald Westlake,
• The Magpie Murders by Anthony Horowitz,
• the next book in the Joe Pickett series that I don’t know the name of and am too lazy to look up,
• or The Boomerang Clue by Agatha Christie, which I picked up at a book sale at the library in town.

Of course, by the time I post this, I could change my mind on all of my choices and choose something completely different. I’m really not sure at this point.

The Husband just finished The Identical by Scott Turrow and is reading The Enchantress of Florence by Salman Rushdie, which I found at the aforementioned book sale the morning Rushdie was stabbed. I saw the books by him, commented to the librarian about the stabbing (she then in turn asked me if I knew David McCullough had died) and then The Husband texted and asked if I found any books by him there. Weird timing.

Little Miss and I are reading Ramona, Age 8 by Beverly Cleary.

The Boy is reading War of the Worlds whenever he isn’t playing video games so he should finish that book by 2025 at this point.

What’s Been Occurring

On Monday I was prepared for a relaxed day where I would do some housework, but otherwise hide inside from what promised to be a humid, muggy day.

Then a friend sent a message and asked if the kids and I would like to go with her family to the local lake and state park we had visited at the end of June. I wanted to say ‘no’, in some ways, because the Weather Service had issued a heat advisory, but I knew it would be good for us all to get out, so I agreed.

In the end, the weather turned out not to be very hot and the predicted afternoon storms never came, even though the clouds kept threatening it.’

The kids had a blast.

My anti-social teenager even jumped into the lake with all his clothes on right before we left.

On Wednesday, Little Miss developed a sore throat and later in the day a fever. By Friday it was almost gone and on Saturday it was all the way gone. I’m not really sure what that was about. Every three or four months she seems to get a couple of days where she gets a brief sore throat, a low-grade fever and the sniffles for about three days and then moves on. Usually, it happens with weather changes so spring and fall are the worst times for it. The weather did get cooler this week, but not until after her brief illness.

The weather got so cool this week, I started thinking about fall, which I thought I was looking forward to until I thought about the lovely green leaves all falling off and it getting cold and dreary. I do like weather where I can curl up under a blanket but I also like temperatures that are just right so we can do outside activities without sweating through our clothes.

While I was outside thinking about fall I also thought about how our backyard could be a filming sight for National Geographic. Not only do we have a big woodchuck living under our shed, but she’s apparently had babies because I saw a mini-version of her run across our yard the other day. Now, in addition to trapping her, we have to trap her babies. Fun times.

The boy found a half-eaten rabbit in our yard last weekend – as in something bit it in a half and left the head. Our dog loves to chase those rabbits but she only gets as far as her lead and never catches one. She hadn’t been out there long enough to do that kind of damage so we knew it wasn’t her.

Long story short, I asked our neighbors if they had had their game camera up this year and if they had seen what was in our yard that could do that. From a quick search on the ole’ interwebs, I learned that fox, coyote, and racoon will all rip a rabbit in half and sometimes not eat all of it. It’s possible we interrupted their supper when I let the dog out that night. The neighbor had not had their camera out but they put it out this week and it appears our culprit is a fox, which doesn’t surprise us since we heard one screaming outside our house in the spring.

Luckily this summer we have not seen the skunks we saw last year. The deer have been out some, but not as much, and I finally saw a couple squirrels, which is weird because we were commenting one day recently how we don’t see squirrels here in the more rural setting when we saw them all the time when we lived in a bigger town. So far we have not heard of the bear returning since it visited our neighbor at the end of the street. Yes, we consider the houses up and down the street our neighbors. *wink*

Last night (Saturday) was the annual Outhouse Races, which we attended as a family.

I wrote about the outhouse races last year.

They are held as a charity event for the local Lions Club.

What We watched/are Watching

Continuing the Summer of Paul this week I watched half of Cool Hand Luke yesterday. I hope to finish it later today or tomorrow.

I didn’t take the time to watch any of his other movies during the week since Little Miss was so clingy and in between her clinging I had to cook dinner and work some on my book and try to figure out reels on Instagram, which I finally gave up on.

I’ll have more thoughts about Cool Hand Luke and Rachel Rachel later in the week, but I will say that I didn’t like to see John Walton being treated so poorly in Cool Hand Luke. One of the men was portrayed by the same actor who played John Walton, the patriarch on The Waltons.

Wayne Rogers, who played McIntyre on Mash, was also in the movie, but of course I was watching it to see Mr. Blue Eyes himself.

The Boy and I watched Raising Arizona with Nicholas Cage and Holly Hunt Friday night. I had seen it years ago, but he had never seen it and really enjoyed it. Here is a trailer for those of you who haven’t seen it.

The Husband and I also watched another episode of Harry Wild with Jane Seymour. I didn’t enjoy that on as much as the first episode. Then we watched another Brokenwood Mysteries.

What I’m Writing

I have been adding quite a bit to Mercy’s Shore as more ideas for it are starting to flow.

This week on the blog I shared:

• Fiction Friday: Mercy’s Shore Chapter 15
• The Summer of Paul: The Rack, The Hustler, and A New Kind of Love
• Faithfully Thinking: When your soul feels dry

What I’m Listening To

I wish I could say I am listening to a lot of music, but I really haven’t been, other than Matthew West. I also listened to Matthew’s podcast last week.

Now it’s your turn

Now it’s your turn. What have you been doing, watching, reading, listening to or writing? Let me know in the comments or leave a blog post link if you also write a weekly update like this.