Tag: books

Sunday Bookends: Cozy mysteries and planning for spring reads

On By Lisa R. HowelerIn Sunday Bookends17 Comments




It’s time for our Sunday morning chat. On Sundays, I ramble about what’s been going on, what the rest of the family and I have been reading and watching, and what I’ve been writing. Some weeks I share what I am listening to.

This week I’m joining up with Kimba at Caffeinated Reviewer, Deb at Readerbuzz, and Kathyrn at The Book Date.

What’s Been Occurring

 Yesterday we had dinner with my parents. We made homemade pizza and caught up and watched some Goes Wrong Show with them.

We usually visit them on Sundays but this week The Husband is going to the rehearsal for a play he’s going to be in so we decided to switch days.

The kids and I may go to see my parents again today as well or we may hang out at home and see them later in the week.

Our days have been fairly routine lately and you can read more about that in yesterday’s Saturday Afternoon Chat post.

What I/we’ve been Reading



I am still reading All The Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr but slowly. It’s a different type of book for me and the topics are a bit heavy so I haven’t been as eager to read it as other books. I do want to finish it, however, because it is a Pulitzer-winning book and my friend wants to know what I think of it. From what I have read so far, I think I will like it.

I also started a cozy mystery, Murder Plainly Read by Isabella Alan and so far I am enjoying it.

I was thrilled this past week to find the third book in the Magical Garden Series by Amanda Flowers on Hoopla. I’ve been wanting to read it but have been refusing to pay full price for it on Kindle. I know. I’m an author and I didn’t want to pay full price, but hear me out. I like these books but I don’t feel like I will read them over and over so buying them really didn’t appeal to me. I was able to read the first two books on Libby but they didn’t have the third book, which I could only find on Hoopla.

The downside of Hoopla is I can only read the book on my phone because their books can’t be transferred to a Kindle like Libby books can.

I don’t think I’ll be reading a ton of books through that app because my phone is not very big and reading books on it is not fun, but they do have a lot of books I would like to read.

So, anyhow, I am also reading Mums and Mayhem by Amanda Flowers.

Soon to be read:

Spring is coming so I hope to pick out some spring reads but probably later in March and early April, including The Secret Garden, which I have never read, and maybe The Wind in the Willows.  I also have a mystery book based on Beatrix Potter I want to try, even though I have heard mixed reviews on it. I would love to read through Winter Cottage by Carol Ryrie Brink but that may wait until next winter. We will see.

Recently Finished:

This past weekend I finished Miracles on Maple Hill by Virginia Sorensen and cried through the last three chapters.

It was a sweet book with a touching story. There were only a couple of disturbing scenes that I could have done without but I think the one was specifically put in there to show how some of the characters changed throughout the book. And by disturbing I just mean uncomfortable. Not “dirty”, of course.

DNF’d
I did not finish Blessed is the Busybody – for now at least. I may go back to it but I was ready for a cozy mystery and it started to get dark from the get-go. I also was hoping for a more faith-based read but this was more like “faith-based people and conservatives are stuck up” and I wasn’t in the mood for that. I read enough of the “we’re better than them” from both “sides” on the news today. I don’t need it in my books too.

That attitude may change as the book goes on, however, and the writing was really strong and entertaining, so I will probably return to this book at some later date – maybe in the spring.

What everyone else is reading:

When we went to my parents’ yesterday I was very impressed that everyone took a book with them. It’s not like we ever have time to read since we are busy visiting but I guess everyone feels more at home with a book with them, “just in case” they want to read.

The Husband is reading The Innocent by Harlan Coban

The Boy is reading Horus Rising (based on World of Warcraft)

Little Miss is reading Fortunately the Milk again but she and I are also reading Pocahontas by Jean Fritz for school.

What We watched/are Watching

I have been watching Lark Rise to Candleford on my own.

I was watching Miss Scarlet and the Duke but just found out the guy playing The Duke is leaving so I don’t really feel like watching the rest since I know there will be no satisfactory end to it.

The Husband and I finished up the first part of season one of CB Strike last night.

My sister-in-law told me eons ago I should watch The Gilded Age so I hope to start that this week.

I also watched this video with Just A Few Acres Farm which I really enjoyed. Pete talked a lot about the way of the world these days and how he isn’t sure how to fit in with it. I could truly relate.


What I’m Writing

I am plugging away at Cassie and hope to finish it in the next couple of weeks.

I plan to start writing book three in the Gladwynn Grant series once that book is finished.

This week on the blog I shared:

What I’m Listening To

I am listening to A Tale of Two Cities with The Boy for school.

I am listening to Caddie Woodlawn at night with Little Miss.

I am also listening to In This Mountain by Jan Karon when I do housework and I think I mentioned last week that it caused me to all out ugly cry while doing the dishes the week before last.

For music, I am listening to Shane Smith and The Saints and Needtobreathe.

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.

Sunday Bookends: Relaxing in front of the fire, middle grade books, disappointing mystery books

On By Lisa R. HowelerIn everyday musings, Sunday Bookends11 Comments

It’s time for our Sunday morning chat. On Sundays, I ramble about what’s been going on, what the rest of the family and I have been reading and watching, and what I’ve been writing. Some weeks I share what I am listening to.

This week I’m joining up with Kimba at Caffeinated Reviewer, Deb at Readerbuzz, and Kathyrn at The Book Date.



The weather was 22 degrees (F) with a wind chill of 12 and the fire lit on the first try for me. I was thrilled and since I couldn’t feel my toes at that point because I hadn’t wanted to turn the heat up and use up heating oil, I stuck my feet out toward the woodstove, opened the book I started this week – Miracle on Maple Hill by Virginia Sorensen – and proceeded to read for the next 90 minutes. I also made myself some hot cocoa and a type of Chex Mix concoction with sugar, cinnamon, and maple syrup, baked in the oven.


After I read some, I worked a bit on my novel, cooked some steaks and roasted potatoes for me and my daughter since The Boy was at a friend’s house and The Husband was at a work event. It was a very relaxing day and it was mainly relaxing because I shut social media completely off and was more intentional about doing the things that help to relax me.

My week wasn’t super busy this past week. I had dinner with my parents on Wednesday when my mom made dinner for Little Miss and I because we were borrowing their car to take Little Miss to Kid’s Club at a local church. Our headlights are still out on the car that hit a deer ran into in October.

On Thursday I planned to take them sone dinner I had cooked and return the car but as I headed out, the rain we’d been having all day turned into snow. No warning. Just snow and it started piling up. I thought it would be a brief snow, but instead, the roads became slick and I ended up staying home.

I took them lunch the next day instead when I took their car back, grabbed my car, and headed 20 minutes north to pick up the groceries from Aldi.

It looks like Saturday will be the last super cold day for the week, even though night temps will be low. Day temps, however, will be in the mid-40s to mid-50s starting Monday.

Today we are all staying home and having a family day because my husband has been working so much. We plan to make pizzas. usually visit my parents on Sunday but the kids and I will see them tomorrow most likely. I have been having Little Miss interview her grandma for history and I think we will do that again this week and add her grandpa in as well.

What I/we’ve been Reading
 

I finished Hell is Empty by Craig Johnson and while Craig is a great writer, I will be taking a break from his books for a while. I was very annoyed with this one and how I had it figured out way before it finished. I’m not a fan of books where part of the characters are ghosts and I know they are but the author tries to pretend I don’t know. Plus, almost the entire book was “in Longmire’s head” and not really action, like the other books have been. That was disappointing because it was almost like Johnson ran out of things to write about and it was only the seventh book in the series. I will read other books in the series later, but for now, I need to read some books that are a little less dark and … well, strange.

Saying the above sentence may be fairly ironic when I say that the next book I am reading, at the urging of a friend, is about World War II, but it’s a different kind of dark, okay?

I am reading All The Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr because a friend read it and wants to know what I think. It’s not my usual read, but I’m giving it a try. It’s interesting so far but it is a little jarring because you only read about a character for about two pages and it switches to another character or place and it does that throughout the whole book.

It is a Pulitzer-winning book and was recently made into a movie on Netflix, though, so what might be a bit jarring to me apparently didn’t matter to a lot of other people.

I mentioned above I am also reading Miracles on Maple Hill, which is a middle-grade level book but something I feel like I needed this winter.

I liked that the beginning of the book featured a story about collecting sap and making maple syrup because we are in that season in Pennsylvania right now and my husband just visited a large maple syrup operation at a farm near us. Oh, and I forgot to mention that the book’s setting is Pennsylvania. Because the family comes to the rural area from the city it makes me think of the many people who visit our area from Philadelphia.

Up Next (or soon):

Blessed Is the Busy Body by Emilie Richards

Fields of Fire by Ryan Steck

I know I’ve mentioned before that I am a mood reader so I like to have a couple of books going so that I can pick whichever one my mood fits at that time. I have to say that I am finding it a little stressful to have more than two books going at a time so I have decided to only switch between two books – one a little lighter and one a little heavier.

I am not a fast reader and do not usually have a high read count at the end of the year but I am proud of myself that I have read nine books so far this year. I think that is the most I have ever read in two months. At least one of those was a carryover from 2023 and two of them were middle grade reads, but still, better than other years and I’m glad I’m reading more and watching things less.

What We watched/are Watching

This past week I watched a lot of Lark Rise to Candleford. I also watched a couple of YouTubers, but I read more than I watched this week, which is an unusual thing for me.

This week I hope to catch up on All Creatures Great and Small and Miss Scarlet and The Duke.


What I’m Writing

I made a lot of progress this week on Cassie, which releases in August.

On the blog I shared:

What I’m Listening to

Little Miss and I are listening to Caddie Woodlawn by Carol Ryrie Brink on Audible. I am listening to In this Mountain by Jan Karon (A Mitford Series book) and crying through it. I’ve read this book before but somehow having it read to me by an amazing narrator (John McDonough) makes it even more emotional. It is also emotional because since I first read the book something happened in my family that makes it easier to relate to Father Tim’s tragic situation. There is nothing like standing over one’s dirty dishes and sobbing to make that person (me) realize how much I’ve shoved down over the last decade of my life.

This week I will set In This Mountain aside and start listening to A Tale of Two Cities because The Boy and I are reading/listening to it for English. We set it aside for a couple of months but are going back to it.

Photos from Last Week

I haven’t touched the Nikon in more than a month but I hope to change that as the weather warms up. Here are a few photos from the new cellphone instead.

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.

Mid Week Catch Up: The weather, homeschool update, books, and other ramblings

On By Lisa R. HowelerIn everyday musings9 Comments

The fire in the woodstove just would not cooperate Monday morning when I tried to get it to light. I am convinced something is wrong with our draft, like maybe it is stuck or something. I gently wiggled it a few times and the fire finally started to take off after burning up a ton of cardboard, papers, and even the box for some caffeine-free Diet Pepsi my son picked up the other day.

We will have to light a fire all week with the cold temperatures but soon we will be able to light a fire less and still turn the heat down. Having the fire helps us not to have to use as much heating oil and kept our heating oil usage down from mid-October through last week.

It is actually progress that my son purchased that soda I mentioned above since in the past he wouldn’t pick it up because it reminded him too much of his great-aunt, my aunt Dianne, who he loved immensely. She passed away in 2018. Talking about her was very painful for years but now he’s able to talk about her more, sharing the good and happy memories he has of her with his sister.

Buying the Pepsi was a chance for him to show Little Miss a version of Dianne’s favorite drink. Dianne drank Pepsi for years, partially because it was what she was used to since my grandfather worked for Pepsi in North Carolina for 30 years.

It’s Monday when I am starting this post and I have given Little Miss the day off from school since her brother had it off from the technical school he attends for President’s Day.

Tomorrow we will be back to our regular lessons.

This year she and I have been studying a lot of history through a variety of different ways, including a textbook through The Story of Our World. Like last year we are learning about history through historical fiction as well.

This week we will be starting a historical fiction book about Pocahontas.

I actually have two books about Pocahontas but decided that the one book may be for older children so have decided to go to one written by Jean Fritz, who we have read books by before, including The Cabin Faced West, which we finished a couple of weeks ago. The other book is written by Joseph Bruchac, who wrote Children of the Longhouse, which Little Miss absolutely loved, but seems to be written for teenagers. I am sure it is a clean book but it just seems a little older so I decided I am going to read it this spring and see if it is something Little Miss will like.

Reading historical fiction books helps us to branch out into other topics that are brought up in the stories, including information about historical figures or events. The textbook provides us with fairly dry facts only.

The subject I have struggled with the most this year for Little Miss has been science because I’m never happy with the science curriculum we have. I also never have the supplies we need for experiments. I always feel like I’m not teaching her enough science or the right science. She, however, has learned a lot of science from the educational shows she watches so I often find her correcting me when I am teaching her science from a book.

We really liked The Good and the Beautiful science but it is a bit expensive so I have decided to wait until we have that extra money to purchase curriculum and will probably purchase from there toward the end of our school year and then finish up the curriculum in our next school year. While their sets are expensive, they are nice and thorough.

We have used their energy, birds, and ecosystem curriculum and enjoyed them all.

Homeschool for The Boy is more stressful for me these days because he will be a senior next year and I feel like I have taught him nothing this school year.

For him it’s English where I feel like I have really dropped the ball. We have bailed on almost every book we have started this year because it has either been too wordy, too old-fashioned, or just didn’t hold our attention. That will change next week because I have decided we are starting A Tale of Two Cities and plowing through the difficult beginning and flowery writing to get to the story.

That way I can at least feel like I have exposed him to some more classic writers.

We have already read books by George Eliott, J.R.R. Tolkien, Stephen Crane, William Golding, and Mark Twain.

I hope before I am done with him (so to speak) we will read books by Dickens, Steinbeck, and maybe George Orwell. I’d really like to add Austen in there as well but we will see. We will be starting, or re-starting, A Tale of Two Cities next week.

For history I decided to purchase a book called A History of the Twentieth Century by Martin Gilbert. This has a comprehensive list of facts that will provide us a look at history that we can then use to jump off from with videos and further study.

The Boy will be a senior next year as I just mentioned and I’m having a hard time wrapping  my mind around it. He’s already checked out of schoolwork pretty much but I’m not ready to let him go. How is it possible he will be 18 in November? The thought has me weepy beyond belief these days. How does the time go by so fast? I should probably stop thinking about it or my computer screen is going to be soaked with my tears in a moment.

This is totally a topic shift again, but do you ever find yourself without a pen and paper or your phone and you have to remember something for like, say, your grocery list and you keep repeating what you need to add to the list because you’re afraid you’ll forget it?

Well, I have because for about half an hour this morning, I found myself repeating “maple syrup and hot dog buns” as I did other tasks around the house. I didn’t have my phone next to me to add it to my Instacart list.

I finally added it to my list but now I’m still singing “maple syrup and hot dog buns” to myself.

What I should probably add to that list is mouse traps, but I am hoping our hunter cats will finally get all the mice out of our house this week. A few months ago Scout (our youngest) had a mouse pinned in our heating vent but never got to it. This weekend The Boy reported a mouse ran across his feet while he was playing a video game because both cats were chasing it. He then watched them double up on this mouse with one of them hiding under the couch to scare it and the other one waiting at the end to grab it. Then they batted the thing around for a while and apparently lost it because they were more interested in toying with it.

Sunday we left them in the house together while we went to visit my parents and when we came back I joked with them that they had better have caught that mouse. I was saying all this while I was reaching for the light. It was dark in the kitchen and when I felt something squish under my boot while joking, I thought, “Oh, Lord, let that be a grape we dropped earlier in the week.”

It was not a grape and I was very glad I hadn’t kicked my boots off yet because it was indeed a dead mouse and my foot on it made sure it was even more dead – let’s just leave it at that.

That wasn’t the end of the story though, because yesterday Scout was chasing another mouse and it came running toward me, resulting in a lot of screaming from me because I didn’t want it to scamper across my bare feet like it had my son’s the other day.

I can’t believe it but the intrepid huntress lost this mouse too and as far as I know it is now hiding under our stove and The Husband has declared he’s searching the house this weekend to “find where these creatures are coming from.”

As I write this, the sun is pouring in our windows and the temperature outside is the warmest it has been in a week, but still at a chilly 40 degrees.

I’ll be lighting the fire before I get ready to take Little Miss to Awana at a church 20 minutes away to try to stretch what wood we have left into March, since Pennsylvania doesn’t believe in early springs no matter what the groundhog says.

So how is your week going so far?

I hope it is going well.

Let me know in the comments, even if it isn’t going well.

Sunday Bookends: A surprise snow day and heavy and light reading mixed

On By Lisa R. HowelerIn Sunday Bookends, Sunday Salon9 Comments

It’s time for our Sunday morning chat. On Sundays, I ramble about what’s been going on, what the rest of the family and I have been reading and watching, and what I’ve been writing.

This week I’m joining up with Kimba at Caffeinated Reviewer, Deb at Readerbuzz, and Kathyrn at The Book Date for this post.

I’ve just sat down to start this post after watching Little Miss and The Husband sled down the hill behind our house after an unexpected snowfall. I’m not sure why I didn’t gather wood today to start a fire since it would have been the perfect day for it, but instead, I sat under a big fluffy blanket and read a book, watched some Lark Rise to Candleford, and watched others out in the snow while I sipped tea. I also cooked some roasted potatoes to go with small steaks The Husband cooked. It was the first time we’d been able to eat roasted potatoes in probably a year since our oven had been broken. It’s been nice to have it fixed.

We added a salad with red peppers to it and it was the perfect dinner.

Later today we plan to have lunch with my parents and then come home to light the fire and have a cozy night before the week starts over again.

What I/we’ve been Reading

Currently Reading:

What book was I reading yesterday? Not really a cozy one, but still very well written – A Walt Longmire Mystery: Hell is Empty by Craig Johnson. I read a couple chapters of it and then moved on to a cozier read in Nellie by Amy Walsh.

Nellie officially released Thursday and is a sweet, cute book about a young woman who pretends to be a cook to get a job to help her family.

Here is a quick description:

Finances are tight for the O’Dwyer family who live on a mountain outside of Scranton, Pennsylvania in 1931. Life gets even harder when their beloved Dadaí must cease work as a coal miner to become a patient at the West Mountain Sanitarium.

Nellie is her preferred name, but family and friends have heard Mam shout “Fenella Aileen O’Dwyer!” all too often with the countless predicaments she got herself into throughout childhood. So, it’s not altogether surprising when Nellie impulsively accepts a job as an assistant cook at the Clarinda House in a case of mistaken identity — though she’s the last person her family would ask to prepare a meal.

Fortunately, along with determination, a talent for acting, and the gift of blarney, Nellie has Mrs. Canfield’s Cookery Book, a treasure she discovered at a Red Cross drought relief sale. As her reluctant admiration for her employer grows, Nellie wishes she could be the truthful woman of faith that Mr. Mason Peale esteems. If she confesses all, will she lose her job along with the friendships she’s formed at Clarinda House?

You can find out more about it HERE    

I should have Nellie finished this week and I will probably start another cozy mystery to offset the darkness of the Longmire book. I forgot that I had planned to start Blessed Is the Busybody by Emilie Richards in early February so I think I will start that this week. I also want to try The Tale of Hill Top Farm by Susan Wittig Albert, but will probably hold off on that one until Spring. It feels more like a spring book.

Recently Finished:

The Cat Who Went Into the Closet by Lilian Jackson Braun

These books can be hit or miss at times but this one, though not heavy-hitting at all, was actually very good.

Up Soon:

Miracles on Maple Hill by Virginia Sorenson

Pocahontas by  Joseph Bruchac (previewing it for Little Miss for school. I also have a choice on the same topic by Jean Fritz.)

The Mystery At Lilac Inn by Carolyn Keene.

The Husband is reading a book by Dean Koontz, or was at least.

The Boy is reading Horus Rising by Dan Abott.

Little Miss and I finished The Borrowers this past week. I hope to start another book with her soon but we haven’t decided on which one. We started listening to Caddie Woodlawn by Carold Ryrie Brink the other day on our way to pick up groceries and she is enjoying it but I don’t think it will replace our bedtime listening of The Great Christmas Pageant Ever or Fortunately the Milk.

Friday night she asked me to read to her before bedtime because we’ve been listening to audiobooks. She asked if I would read her part of my book, Gladwynn Grant Gets Her Footing.

I did but found myself critiquing my writing so it wasn’t as much fun for me. I think tonight I’ll suggest I read her something written by someone else. I’ll even read her The Long Winter by Laura Ingalls Wilder again! (If you’re new here, this is a bit of a joke because she wanted me to read her the Little House and Paddington books over and over again last year and the year before.

What We watched/are Watching

This past week I watched the French film Amelie as a buddy watch with Erin at Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs.

I also watched Lark Rise to Candleford but actually read more this week than watched things.
What I’m Writing

I am continuing to work on Cassie, which releases in August of 2024.

If you want a little sneak peek, you can check out my blog on Friday. I think I might have a little tidbit to offer up from it.

On the blog,I shared:

What I’m Listening to

This week I’ve been listening to Needtobreathe’s Caves.

An audiobook version of In This Mountain by Jan Karon.

A podcast featuring old Jack Benny radio shows.

Photos from Last Week

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.

Fiction Friday: Reintroducing Gladwynn Grant

On By Lisa R. HowelerIn Fiction Friday7 Comments

I’ve had a few new visitors to the blog lately so I thought I would bring back my Fiction Friday feature for this week to reintroduce Gladwynn Grant, the main character of my cozy mystery series.

There are only two books in the series so far, with both of them currently on Kindle Unlimited, which is an ebook subscription service through Amazon for those who aren’t familiar with it. It is also available for sale as an ebook on Amazon and as paperbacks on Amazon and Barnes and Noble.

Gladwynn Grant is a young woman who has moved in with her eccentric grandmother after being laid off from her job as a research librarian at a community college. Let’s be honest, she also moves to her grandmother’s small town to get away from her ex-boyfriend, Bennet Steele.

She used to visit her grandparents in Brookstone as a child and teenager and always thought the town was fairly quiet. Her image of the place is shattered, though, when she finds out in the first book that someone may have tampered with the brakes on the local bank loan manager’s car and again when someone drops a car on a disagreeable resident in the county.

The first book, Gladwynn Grant Gets Her Footing, will be part of a blog tour with Celebrate Lit beginning March 12.

You can learn a bit more about the book, the tour, and the stops for the tour here: https://www.celebratelit.com/gladwynn-grant-gets-her-footing-celebration-tour/

 For the blog tour, I shared a bit about how I came up with Gladwynn’s name and personality so I thought I’d share that here today too.

I can’t say that Gladwynn Grant’s character is based completely on my grandmother, but, in some ways, I did. I named her Gladwynn after my paternal grandmother whom I grew up living over the creek and through the woods from.

Gladwynn was her middle name but I’m not really sure how she spelled it because she never really used it. She usually just wrote G. as the middle initial. When we did a search on Ancestry, we saw that some spellings on her documents were Gladwin and some were Gladwyn. I guess her family wasn’t sure either, but if I remember right (I don’t have the document right in front of me) on her birth certificate it was spelled Gladwin.

I liked the spelling of Gladwynn with a “y” and two “n’s” though so that is how I spelled Gladwynn’s name for the books.

My grandmother was tough and to the point. She wasn’t mean but she didn’t pull punches. She was not super maternal or affectionate. Again, though, she was not mean.

She lived through the Great Depression and raised children during World War II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War.

Her youngest, my dad, was in the Air Force when Vietnam broke out. He was never sent overseas but he helped build bombs and work on airplanes during that time.

She knew about hardship, trials, and heartbreak. Her husband died of cancer when he was in his 60s and she spent the next 35 years without him. She began to lose her eyesight to macular degeneration in her 80s.

None of what life threw at her stopped her from living her best life.

She still traveled and kept her house and property up. At the age of 86 I caught her on a ladder cleaning out the gutters. Around the same age she marched down the dirt road in front of her house with a walking stick and told the township road workers to make sure the drainage pipe they were putting in didn’t run into her field and flood it.

If she was afraid of things, she didn’t show it very often.

My family lived with her while I was in college and I learned so much about how to preserve and live a happy and fulfilled life despite the tragedies or trials of my life.

When I started thinking about writing a cozy mystery series, I wanted the main character to be a lot like grandma, but also more affectionate and sentimental than my grandmother seemed at times.

I only remember my grandmother telling me she loved me once or twice in my life, but I know she did because she showed it in her actions toward me.

I wrote Gladwynn to be bold and tough, but also to be affectionate and open with her feelings – a lot like my grandmother, but also a little different.

I think my grandmother would love the idea that I am writing a series of books based on her name and partially on her personality.

I will be sharing about the tour again when it comes closer to the actual launch date for it. If you would like to check out the books from the Gladwynn Grant Mysteries, you can find them here, Gladwynn Grant Gets Her Footing:    https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0C1KSQJXP         and Gladwynn Grant Takes Center Stage: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CB74L7TQ

Sunday Bookends: Books with no plot, Lark Rise to Candleford, and praise music

On By Lisa R. HowelerIn Sunday Bookends20 Comments

It’s time for our Sunday morning chat. On Sundays, I ramble about what’s been going on, what the rest of the family and I have been reading and watching, and what I’ve been writing. Some weeks I share what I am listening to.

This week I’m joining up with Kimba at Caffeinated Reviewer, Deb at Readerbuzz, and Kathyrn at The Book Date.


What I/we’ve been Reading

Currently Reading:

The Cat Who Went Into The Closet by Lilian Jackson Braun

Hell is Empty by Craig Johnson

Do The New You by Steven Furtick

Recently Finished:

Sisterchicks Do the Hula by Robin Jones Gunn

This book wasn’t horrible but there wasn’t really an actual plot and that annoyed me. I kept waiting for something to happen – like a mystery or a trial they had to overcome or .. well, anything really. Like a plot maybe. Once I decided and accepted that was never going to happen it was much easier to skim ahead and just see what happened at the end and move on to the next book.

Update: I went back and read some of the parts I had skimmed and decided the book is actually very sweet. A bit slow but sweet and relaxing. I think I’m going to try the first book in the series, which I heard was better, and other books in the series as well. I was excited to see that they are now on Kindle Unlimited and it looks like the author updated some terms, etc. for now.

Up Next or Soon:

Hidden Figures by Margot Lee Shetterly

Bury Your Dead by Louise Penny

Bats Fly At Dusk by Erle Stanley Gardner

This week Little Miss and I finished The Cabin Faced West by Jean Fritz. I hope to finish The Borrowers with her this week but she’s been reading Fortunatly the Milk by Neil Gaiman to me.

What We watched/are Watching

This past week I watched Miss Austen Regrets and wrote about it on the blog. I really enjoyed it. The rest of the week I watched Lark Rise to Candleford and Miss Scarlet and the Duke.
What I’m Writing

I’m plugging away on Cassie and hope to have it finished at the end of this month so I can start the third book in the Gladwynn Grant series.

Last week on the blog I shared:

What I’m Listening To

This week I listened to this song on repeat:

And loved this version of it:


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.

Sunday Bookends: Miss Marple, Little Women (yes, still!), Lark Rise To Candleford and the cold weather returns

On By Lisa R. HowelerIn Sunday Bookends10 Comments




It’s time for our Sunday morning chat. On Sundays, I ramble about what’s been going on, what the rest of the family and I have been reading and watching, and what I’ve been writing. Some weeks I share what I am listening to.

This week I’m joining up with Kimba at Caffeinated Reviewer, Deb at Readerbuzz, and Kathyrn at The Book Date.

What’s Been Occurring

I rambled about last week in yesterday’s Saturday Afternoon Chat post if you would like to catch up there. I will mention that today our weather doesn’t know what it wants to do as it is snowing and raining and switching back and forth. The weather has been warm this week so the ground isn’t as cold as it could be. It remains to see how much of the stuff will actually stick

What I/we’ve been Reading

Currently Reading:

Little Women by Louisa Mae Alcott and Sisterchicks Do The Hula by Robin Jones Gunn

Little Women is relaxing and enjoyable and I will have it done this week. I’ve been reading it very, very slow and only a chapter or two a day, in case you’re wondering why I keep saying I’m STILL reading it. (Since the end of November! Ha!). This week I’m just going to read it through and finish it up so I can move to another classic – which one I don’t know yet.

The Sisterchicks book is just a light, fun read that is a very nice distraction from life. I’m reading through it quickly so I will probably have it done this week as well.

Recently Finished:

Dysfunction Junction by Robin W. Pearson

Up Next or Soon:

The Cat Who Went Into The Closet by Lilian Jackson Braun

Hell is Empty by Craig Johnson

The Bungalow Mystery (A Nancy Drew Mystery) by Carolyn Keene

Little Miss and I are reading: The Borrowers by Mary Norton and The Cabin Faced West by Jean Fritz

The Boy is reading: Lost Names: Stories from a Korean Boyhood by Richard Kim

The Husband is reading: Fury by Salaman Rushdie

What We watched/are Watching

Yesterday I started Agatha Christie’s Marple, the BBC show that ran from 2004 to 2013 and was based on the Miss Marple books by Agatha Christie. I have never wanted to watch anyone as Miss Marple other than Joan Hickson but after someone mentioned the show to me on Instagram, I decided to give it a try since The Husband  had to work and the kids were doing other things.

There were so many actors in Season 1 Episode 3 who I recognized from other shows. The episodes, like the episodes from the Miss Marple series, were like mini-movies at 90 minutes each. Episode 3 was called What Mrs. McGillicuddy Saw but was based on the novel 4.50 from Paddington.

The one actress I was most surprised to see in his episode was Amanda Holden who I’ve only seen as a judge on Britain’s Got Talent. I always wondered what the woman actually did to land her on that show as a judge. I had no idea she was an actual actress. I thought she was a talking head on a news show in addition to being a judge.

She wasn’t too bad of an actress but I kept waiting for her to say, “That was lovely. Good job.” And push the golden buzzer.

I also recognized Michale Landes who  played an American in the British sitcom Miranda. When I saw him in that show, I thought he was British doing a horrible American accent. I looked him up while watching this because he was playing an American again and it turns out he has a horrible American accent despite being an American.

He has been acting since the late 1980s and has been on several shows, often as secondary or one-off characters.

He was really the weak link in this episode.

After I watched Marple, I watched a couple episodes of Lark Rise To Candleford. I had started to watch this show years ago but only made it to season three, I’m not sure why. I think there was some cast change I didn’t like. I don’t remember a lot of it so I am rewatching it and plan to go through all four seasons.

It’s a very nice distraction from life.

This upcoming week I will be watching Miss Austen Regrets for our last movie for Jane Austen January. The link up for Jane Austen January will still be up until Saturday if you want to add a post.


What I’m Writing

This week I worked on Cassie, which comes out in August of 2024. On the blog I shared:

What I’m Listening to

A Tale of Two Cities on Audible

New audible books I hope to listen to soon:

Moonflower Murders by Anthony Horowitz, The Jane Austen Collection by Jane Austen and In This Mountain by Jan Karon.

Blog Posts I Enjoyed This Past Week

Emma Film by Joy’s Book Blog

I love it when Joy writes about the real-life places you can visit in the Jane Austen movies.

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.

Books I want to read for the remainder of the winter

On By Lisa R. HowelerIn books and reading, everyday musings10 Comments

Winter can last a long time in Northern Pennsylvania, which is why choosing what I want to read for the rest of winter here means I am choosing books for the rest of January, all of February, and a good portion of March. It has even been known to snow in April and the first week of May here, but I still consider the end of March and all of April to be spring, so that will require a new list.

I always list a lot of books I plan to read, or want to read, knowing full well I will not get them all read and will probably become distracted in the middle by another read.

For example, this week I am reading Little Women and finished another book I’d been reading for a bit but I got distracted by a lighter read called Sisterchicks Do the Hula by Robin Jones Gunn. After finishing the one book, I needed something lighter. Little Women is lighter but I like to read that book before bed as my nightly routine. I’m a bit of a creature of habit sometimes. I would, however, like to finish Little Women since I’ve been reading it leisurely since the end of November, so I will probably start reading it at other times as well. Anytime I need a bit of downtime and breather from life, I think.

Anyhow, enough rambling. Here are the books on my winter to be read list (subject to change):

The Bungalow Mystery and The Mystery At Lilac Inn (Nancy Drew Mysteries) by Carolyn Keene.

These two came together in one volume from Thriftbooks. I enjoy disappearing into these light, sometimes silly mysteries as a way to escape my worries.

Can I tell you how stupid I felt this week when I read that these books were written by several authors, just like the Hardy Boys? Talk about a facepalm moment. I had heard that years ago and then completely forgot that Carolyn Keene was simply a pen name.

Well, it doesn’t really matter. These classics are still a nice escape.

The Cat Who Went Into The Closet by Lillian Jackson Braun.

Braun’s books are a comfort read for me. I’ve already started this one and will probably continue it this week or next since I did get distracted by the fun Sisterchicks book. It will be a perfect read for the darkness of February – the month that seems like it will never end even though it is shorter than other months of the year.

Blessed Is the Busybody by Emilie Richards

This is a cozy mystery I picked up. It looked like it might have some faith elements but after reading part of Chapter 1 I see that the main character is a member of a Unitarian Universalist church and . . . well, I won’t comment here but that’s probably not the type of faith book I’m looking for. I don’t think? Still, most cozy mysteries I pick up have been clean and fun so I’m sure this one will be too.

I doubt it will be preachy because most cozy mysteries I’ve read aren’t, even if they are in the Christian fiction category. I only picked up one that went off about breast cancer and the importance of getting checked for a few pages, which totally threw me off since I read books to escape and this book read like a non-fiction book. I put that one aside and haven’t read anything by that author since, just as a way to protect myself from finding non-fiction subjects shoved at me in my fiction.

A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens

My son and I started this classic in the fall, became very bored and disenchanted and set it aside but now I am listening to it on Audible and it is making more sense. I am going to try to finish it and then he and I will “read it” (probably listen to it) again in March or April as part of his English course. This way I’ll have more of an idea of what is happening and can explain it to him instead of us both wandering around in the dark looking for a clue.

A Taste of Fame by Linda Evans  Shepherd and Eva Marie Everson

This is a Christian fiction/cozy mystery and is part of a series of books. I’ve never read any books from these authors so I’m looking forward to seeing if the book is good or not.

Midwinter Murder by Agatha Christie

I have been saying I would read this book for the last two years and I am determined to do it this year. This is a collection of stories from Agatha, I believe.

Hell Is Empty by Craig Johnson

I didn’t read one Longmire Mystery book last year so I hope to remedy that this year. Johnson’s books are pretty dark but also have some humor in them. Still, the darkness is what often keeps me away from them in winter (when I deal with some seasonal depression but better than in the past) so I will probably read this one toward the end of the winter.

Do The New You by Steven Furtick

I’ve already started this book and hope to continue reading it and I know I’ll be reading it with my online Bible study group through February.

Under the Magnolias by T.I. Lowe

I heard about this book when it first came out a couple of years ago and I’m finally deciding to tackle it now. This may end up getting pushed into the spring, though.

Have you read any of these books? What did you think of them if you did?

Saturday Afternoon Chat: Cold weather, a warm fire, and making myself sit down and read.

On By Lisa R. HowelerIn Saturday Afternoon Tea9 Comments

The fire is still burning away today in our woodstove, orange and yellow merging together in a cacophony of raging warmth to chase away the insanely bitter cold outside. All week the family has been stuck inside because of the fall in the thermometer and the additional lower temperature brought by the windchill.

The fun of playing in fallen snow by the youngest was stolen by the cold. She lasted about ten minutes outside before she announced she couldn’t feel her face, her fingers, or her toes, even with all her thick winter gear on.

Zooma the Wonder Dog was quite depressed that the ground was white with snow but she and her favorite playmate weren’t out, rolling in it, tossing it in the air, and catching snowballs.

Instead, we had to find inside activities to do. I tried to read and work on my book. Little Miss was able to talk to her friends on the phone and play online games with them. The cats slept almost all day every day, especially when the fire was roaring. The Boy played some video games, did some homework and helped bring in wood to keep the fire going.

He also walked to the neighbor’s house one day and helped clean the snow off her steps and car. He only had one day of school again this week. He attends the morning session of a vocational school and if the local school district calls for a two-hour delay then the morning session is canceled.

He has been enjoying his time off and is a bit disappointed that the weather looks better next week and he’ll have to go back. We encouraged him to take a building and construction course at the local trade school as part of his education but so far it is not his favorite thing to do. He might change his course next year or try something else, but at least he has some experience and knows more what he doesn’t want to do when he gets out of school.

I’ve been missing going to my parents but either our driveway was slippery or it was super cold outside. I mentioned in the Sunday Bookends last week that I had tried to go to my parents on Sunday afternoon but there were tree branches in the road and ice forming as the temperatures dropped as we tried to drive there so I turned around. It will still be cold this Saturday but it shouldn’t be slippery or windy so we will be heading there for lunch and maybe a movie and a game of cards.

A couple of days this week I forced myself to sit down in front of our woodstove with a book to feel the warmth and enjoy some quiet time. I don’t sit down and just read like I want to very often so I have to say to myself, “No. You’re not going to pick up the room.  You’re not going to wash dishes. You’re not going to work on your book or scroll through Instagram. You’re going to sit on this floor and read this book and lose yourself in it.”

It’s like I feel like it is wrong to just be sitting and reading but really, there are times we need to do that. We need to sit and take even 15 minutes to ourselves to settle our brains and calm our souls. We can either read a book we like, read the Bible, read a verse, listen to an encouraging sermon, worship music, or journal but we need to take that time for ourselves more than most of us do.

I don’t know why we don’t take the time we should for ourselves but I say this year work to feel less guilt when you sit in some quiet for yourself. I know that’s a goal for me.

I had to laugh the one night because both of my kids kept talking to me as I tried to read, as if I wasn’t sitting there, on the floor, with a physical book opened, clearly reading.

“Oh. You’re trying to read, aren’t you?” asked my son.

“No. No. I’m just holding this book to make myself look smarter,” is what I could have said, but what I really said was, “Yes, but it is okay. I like to talk to you.”

And I do like to talk to him because soon he will be grown up and out of the house and I won’t have as many opportunities to talk to him. He and I are both night owls who open up at night. I am not as much of a night owl as I used to be because I am old and start to fade by 11. If I get a second wind, though, I’m often up until 1 a.m. reading. After 11 is the only quiet time I get to read unless I wake up early to do so instead.

The Boy might not talk to me all day but when midnight hits that’s when he wants to talk so that’s when we talk. I’m fine with it unless I’m fading and feel guilty because I am not really listening.

How was the weather where you were this week? I know most of the United States was thrown into an arctic freeze and I think most of us will be out of it next week.

Have you been trying any new teas?

This week I drank my regular tea and some hot cocoa. I have tried a new probiotic tea and that was okay. What I hope to get some more of soon is some elderberry tea.

Let me know how you’ve been in the comments and I’ll see you again tomorrow for Sunday Bookends.