Tag: readers

Sunday Bookends: cozy mysteries, regular mysteries, and swimming

On By Lisa R. HowelerIn everyday musings, Sunday Bookends4 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 and Kathyrn at The Book Date.


What I/we’ve been Reading

I finished Secrets of the Amish Letter by Rachael Phillips last week, staying up until 1 a.m. so I could take it back to the library the next morning when we went there for the Summer reading program. In the end, we didn’t actually go to the library that morning but I was able to return the book later in the day.

I enjoyed the book overall, but actually enjoyed book two in the series – Murder Simply Played — more.

I am still reading The Word is Murder by Anthony Horowitz and also started Elementary She Read by Vicki Delaney. 

I shared the description of The Word is Murder last week, but I thought I’d share the plot of Elementary She Read today:

When murder pays a visit to Sherlock Holmes Bookshop and Emporium, Gemma Doyle must use the powers of deduction to find the killer—and clear her own name.

Gemma Doyle, a transplanted Englishwoman, has returned to the quaint town of West London on Cape Cod to manage her Great Uncle Arthur’s Sherlock Holmes Bookshop and Emporium. The shop—located at 222 Baker Street—specializes in the Holmes canon and pastiche, and is also home to Moriarty the cat. When Gemma finds a rare and potentially valuable magazine containing the first Sherlock Homes story hidden in the bookshop, she and her friend Jayne (who runs the adjoining Mrs. Hudson’s Tea Room) set off to find the owner, only to stumble upon a dead body.
 
Gemma is the police’s first suspect, so she puts her consummate powers of deduction to work to clear her name, investigating a handsome rare books expert, the dead woman’s suspiciously unmoved son, and a whole family of greedy characters desperate to cash in on their inheritance. But when Gemma and Jayne accidentally place themselves at a second murder scene, it’s a race to uncover the truth before the detectives lock them up for good.

From what I’ve seen on her social media sites, Vicki is also Eva Gates, if you have ever read any of her books. That seems to be a common theme in cozy mysteries – authors who write under a few different names.

Little Miss and are reading the second book in the Boxcar Children series and Paddington Abroad right now and we have a stack of picture books from the library to read this week as well.

The Husband is reading Patriot Games by Tom Clancy.

What’s Been Occurring

Little Miss and I went swimming at my parents yesterday and I may have overdone it a bit.  I was in so much pain last night from actually using my arms to do something other than writing that I had trouble sleeping. It didn’t help that we were in the pool for almost two and a half hours. It felt good to exercise and to have fun with Little Miss, though, so it was sort of a good pain. I don’t know how to explain that. My muscles might suffer after I go swimming (thanks to whatever auto-immune ridiculousness I have going on) but my brain is more alert an hour or so after I get out and after I’ve had some food.

My mom, who will be 79 August 3, made us bacon for dinner and we added that to lettuce and tomato for me and bread, lettuce, tomato, and dressing for everyone else. When we came home, The Husband had also made us steaks so we had two meals, which was totally fine after all those calories we burned.

I wrote about our activities last week in my Saturday Afternoon Chat post yesterday. Bottom line? It was a busy week in many ways and there is another busy week coming up. You can read all about our busy summer so far HERE.

What We watched/are Watching

This past week we watched Newhart, which is a comfort watch for me, and I watched The Seven Year Itch with Marilyn Monroe, which I will be writing more about later in the week.

I didn’t watch as much as some weeks because I messed around with social media and how to promote my books and also with the new job stuff.

Yesterday and today I am watching some of my favorite YouTubers, including Just A Few Acres and Forgotten Way Farms.

What I’m Writing

I’m working on book two of the Gladwynn Grant Mystery series and this week I will also be writing more blog posts. In September I will be working on Cassie from the Apron Strings book series. That book comes out in August of 2024. If you are interested in knowing more about this series, you can join our readers group on Facebook, which you can find HERE.


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.

Sunday Bookends: Cozy mysteries, busy days, birthday parties, and flash flood watches

On By Lisa R. HowelerIn everyday musings10 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.

Today I am joining The Caffeinated Reviewer for the Sunday Post.


What I/we’ve Been Reading

Since last posting, I finished the Nancy Drew book I was reading – The Secret of the Old Clock. I enjoyed it very much, even though it was very simple.

Friday night I finished a book I was ready by an indie author for an endorsement. It was Christian Fiction and I will share more about it when it releases officially.

I am also reading Secrets of the Amish Diary by Rebecca Phillips and hope to jump back into The Word is Murder by Anthony Horowitz later this week.

I really enjoy the Amish Inn Mystery books by Phillips. They are relaxed and easy-going, but also full of murder and mystery. The characters are so loveable and I don’t mind that the pace is a little slow at times. It isn’t too slow but a little slower than some mysteries. I’m fine with that since that’s what cozy mysteries are too me.  The clues for the mystery don’t come out slowly, but the story itself does and I actually enjoy that about cozy mysteries.

What’s Been Occurring

Yesterday we took Little Miss to a birthday party. We weren’t going to stay long because the little girl wasn’t feeling well, but the party was outside so we stayed a little longer. Little Miss and The Husband hiked to a small stream and swimming hole behind the family’s house and Little Miss took a swim with her friend.

This swimming hole and waterfall are actually part of their property. Isn’t that awesome?

After we visited there, the entire family headed to the grocery store for our weekly groceries.

Right before we walked inside, though, The Boy came running to us in a panic because he had looked at the schedule at work wrong and it turns out he was supposed to be at work at that time. We were 30 minutes away so after a quick call to his boss, during which she reassured him he was okay and just to get in as soon as he could, The Husband did a dash through the store and we headed back home. After we unloaded the groceries and took The Boy to work, Little Miss and I headed to my parents for a swim in their pool.


Today, with the area under a flash flood watch, we stayed home to relax and for me to catch up on some work for the book that releases this week instead of next now (you heard it here first). I also have some journals I want to design and upload to our journal store on Amazon. Unfortunately, The Husband could not stay home and relax part of the time because he had to go to a political rally to cover it for work.

At least he was able to enjoy this view while there.

This week we have a couple of summer reading events, gymnastics, and lunch for The Husband and I for our anniversary.

Oh and Gladwynn Grant Gets Her Footing releases on Tuesday now instead of next Tuesday.

What We watched/are Watching

Last week we were in and out of the house a lot or I was busy with finishing up things for the release of Gladwynn and designing graphics to promote it so I didn’t watch as much as I do some weeks.

I even forgot to watch the Marilyn Monroe movie I had planned to watch to write about on Thursday. I didn’t even remember until Friday that I had not watched the movie. I will be watching it this week instead.

The Husband and I did watch a few episodes of Newhart and I rented Into the West, an Irish movie I really enjoy, but never got back to finishing before the rental ran out.

This week I hope to watch a couple of Marilyn Monroe movies and some documentaries on Ireland. Why Ireland? I have no idea, but I’ve always loved Ireland. This past week I started one and it was being narrated by an American who sounded like he was on an American news show. I just didn’t trust him is all I’m saying. I need a show about Ireland to be narrated by an Irish person. (*wink*)

What I’m Writing

I am working on book two for the Gladwynn Grant Mysteries and have already put it up for pre-order on Amazon. I already mentioned how busy I was last week so I did not have a lot of time to write blog posts. I only posted one yesterday about how busy I was.

What I’m Listening To

While writing this week, I listened to this:


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.

Sunday Bookends: Horowitz, overly descriptive mysteries and swimming weather

On By Lisa R. HowelerIn Sunday Bookends2 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, and some weeks I share what I am listening to. This week I’ve also decided to join up with Kimba at the Caffeinated Book Reviewer.


What I/we’ve been Reading

I finished A Novel Disguise by Samantha Larsen his week. Well, sort of. I more like skimmed the last half because I was exhausted with the tedious descriptions of the main character getting dressed as her dead half-brother. The plot was hanging by a thread as it was but then add in three-paragraph-long descriptions of the clothes she had to dress in to look like her brother and I was pretty much over it. I enjoyed the writing style but the further I got into the book the more it felt like the author was trying to show off the research she’d done about colonial clothing instead of getting to the point of the story.

It was fine when she explained what clothes she needed to put on to look like her half-brother in the beginning but to keep doing it, complete with all the terms for each piece of clothing, each time she got dressed really dragged the book down. The book was 40 chapters long and I think she could have written the book in half that many chapters and it would have been much better. I did like the characters and the mystery, though, so I’m not saying I’d never read anything by this author again.

To cleanse my pallet (though the book was not horrible. Truly!) I am reading a Nancy Drew book – the first in the original series – and I’m about to start a Anthony Horowitz book – The Word is Murder (A Hawthorne and Horowitz Mystery Book 1).

This series of books is unique because Horowitz has written himself into the books.

I’m starting his book because I picked up my husband’s library book — The Twist of A Knife — and got hooked. The only issue is that The Twist of A Knife was the latest book in the series and there are three others before it that The Husband feels I need to read first. So I am starting with The Word is Murder.

Little Miss is reading The Boxcar Children: Surprise Island. I haven’t been reading to her at night the last couple of nights because she’s been so tired she’s been passing out before we can get to the reading.

The Husband read at least four books on his vacation, including the Horowitz book and a Janet Evanovich book.

What’s Been Occurring

I wrote about what we’ve been up to in my post yesterday and nothing worth nothing has happened since then. We have a fairly relaxed week upcoming with one event for summer reading at the local library and gymnastics, but not much else, thankfully.

What We watched/are Watching

This past week The Husband and I watched a Midsomer Murders, a Shakespeare and Hathaway (which was not very good but none of them from the Covid area were), and a lot of Newhart. We also watched the movie Niagara with Marilyn Monroe, which I wrote about on the blog.

I’ll be watching Some Like It Hot this week.

I watched a lot of Just A Few Acres on YouTube as well.


What I’m Writing

I am still working on Gladwynn Grant Takes Center Stage and finished up corrections on Gladwynn Grant Gets Her Footing so I can get that ready for release the week after next. I’m so close to the release date! I’m excited to release Gladwynn into the world. In August I will be sharing some of book two on my Substack for paid subscribers.

This week on the blog I shared:



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.

Sunday Bookends: library visits, blooming flowers, books that make me cringe, and music to write to

On By Lisa R. HowelerIn everyday musings, Sunday Bookends8 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, and some weeks I share what I am listening to.


What I/we’ve been Reading

I will be finishing The Regal Pink by Jenny Knipfer today and I have really enjoyed it. I am not just saying this because I consider Jenny an author friend. I went into this book concerned I wouldn’t like it because I am not a fan of “fantasy” type books but, yet again, I was wrong to be concerned. This is the third Christian fantasy book I have read that has captured my heart. Much like two books by author Max Sternberg, I fell in love with the characters of this book and also Jenny’s writing style. I honestly think that fantasy is the genre she’s meant to write in.

I’ll ramble about the book a little bit more in a review later this week.

I started a Nora Roberts book yesterday because Little Miss picked it out for me at the library. I have never read Nora Roberts but have been told by a friend that once I read this one, I have read all of her books.

This is actually a pair of Christmas novellas combined and it looked like it would be a quick read, but after reading up to chapter four last night I just know I am not going to be able to get through this without cringing anymore than I already have. It is so ridiculous. Seriously.

The guy is gone for ten years, comes back for town to see the woman who he left behind but asked to wait for him. She married while he was gone though, crushing his spirits. When he comes back, though, he finds out that day that she’s divorced and seconds after he finds that out they are making out. Like — what???

And of course, he meets the woman’s daughter and of course, I already know the daughter is his. Such a cliché trope. No thank you. That book is currently in my DNF (did not finish) pile.

Little Miss had no idea what she was picking out. She said she thought it was a cozy mystery. She also picks out small, 5.5 x 7.5 books because they are cute and if she likes the cover. It is a cute cover. I felt bad telling her it was a bad pick but oh my — it is not my cup of tea.

I’ll be trying my library pick once I finish a couple on my Kindle. That pick was:

I’m still reading All That Really Matters by Nicole Deese and enjoying it, but I wanted to finish Jenny’s book so I set it aside for now.

And as if I didn’t have enough to read, I have a cozy mystery from Libby that came in much earlier than I thought so I may start that this week and still put All That Really Matters aside.

The book is A Novel Disguise by Samantha Larsen. I really enjoyed the sample I read and looked at it after someone on Instagram suggested it.

For anyone who might be interested, here is the description:

1784 London.Miss Tiffany Woodall didn’t murder her half-brother, but she did bury him in the back garden so that she could keep her cottage. Now, the confirmed spinster has to pretend to be Uriah and fulfill his duties as the Duke of Beaufort’s librarian while searching Astwell Palace for Uriah’s missing diamond pin, the only thing of value they own. Her ruse is almost up when she is discovered by Mr. Samir Lathrop, the local bookseller, who tries to save her from drowning while she’s actually just washing up in a lake after burying her brother.

Her plan is going by the book, until the rector proposes marriage and she starts to develop feelings for Mr. Lathrop.  But when her childhood friend, Tess, comes to visit, Tiffany quickly realizes her secret isn’t the only one hidden within these walls.  The body of a servant is found, along with a collection of stolen items, and someone else grows mysteriously ill. Can Tiffany solve these mysteries without her own disguise  being discovered? If not, she’ll lose her cottage and possibly her life.

The Boy is not reading right now but this week I have to get him to finish Fellowship of the Ring so he can say he read it.

The Husband is reading —

Little Miss and I are reading Little House on Plum Creek and then I picked up a Boxcar Children book yesterday at the library so I hope we can start that this week.



What’s Been Occurring

I wrote a bit about last week in my Saturday Afternoon post yesterday. Mainly I wrote that our flowers are blooming and we visited my parents. Not a very exciting week overall.

I did take a few more photographs of the roses and peonies yesterday to share on here:

This week the local library’s Summer Reading program starts.

They are offering an open sidewalk chalk art event on Tuesday and on Wednesday they are doing a Lego-themed storytime.

On Saturday of next week, I am supposed to have a sleepover with Little Miss’s friends because they have been asking for one for forever. I am not really looking forward to it because there is no sleep had during a sleepover and the one who won’t sleep will most likely be me and I already don’t sleep so great.

Plus I snore and I am worried I will keep the kids awake, but we will see how it goes.

What I’m/We’re Watching

Last week I watched a lot of Forgotten Way Farms on YouTube.

The Husband and I didn’t have a lot of time to watch things together but did watch a Barnaby Jones episode, which I made a lot of fun of. We also watched some Newhart.

What I’m Writing

I have been working on book two of the Gladwynn Grant Mysteries.

On the blog this past week I shared:

What I’m Listening To

This week I listened to James Herriot’s Treasury for Children on Audible. We don’t have a membership to Audible but we did for a while, so we purchased several books on sale. This was one of them.

I loved the sweet stories with happy endings in this book. Each story is about a cat or dog that Alfred Wight took care of or met during his time as a vet.

When I write I also listen to a mix of music from the 1930s and 1940s, including this playlist on YouTube:

This week I also listened to Samantha Fish and Matthew West (yes. Two completely different artists.)

Blog Posts I Enjoyed This Past Week Or Recently

Mama’s Empty Nest: Birthday Joy

Scott Tirrell: Well, I’m Stumped (about his writing journey)

Katja: Notorious

Over the Teacups: Names of Jesus



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.

Sunday Bookends: My husband is a speed reader, finally enjoying Fellowship of the Ring, a DNF for Anne, and working on Gladwynn’s book

On By Lisa R. HowelerIn Sunday Bookends1 Comment

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, and some weeks I share what I am listening to.


What I/we’ve been Reading

It took until around Chapter 9, but I finally got into Fellowship of the Ring. Or it finally picked up, whichever. I mean, I guess I liked it before then but a character I remember from the movies showed up around Chapter 9 and that’s when things started to really pick up. Now I’m moving through it much faster and would love to be able to finish it by the end of the week, but I’m not sure I will. I have enjoyed listening to it some of the time on Audible and reading it part of the time. Friday night I sat on the back porch and read a couple of chapters of it, which took quite a while since the chapters are so long.

I also started reading Death of a Poison Pen by M.C. Beaton. It’s a Hamish Macbeth Mystery and takes place in Scotland. It’s a much lighter read than Fellowship of the Ring so I’m using it to break up the old style of Tolkien’s writing but I will probably focus on FOTR this week because I do want to know what happens. Yes, I did watch the movie but I sort of glazed over after hour two and got a bit lost. I’d rather read it.

I finally gave up on Anne’s House of Dreams by L.M. Montgomery. It was terribly depressing and I once heard a reader say life was too short to read a book you don’t enjoy so I finally put it back on the shelf. I’ll try some of the other books in the series at another time.

Little Miss and I are reading On The Other Side of the Hill by Roger Lea MacBride. Some nights we are reading The Miss Piggle Wiggle Treasury.

The Boy is reading Fellowship of the Ring.

The Husband was on vacation this week and even with taking kids to appointments, washing dishes, mowing the lawn, and helping to take care of a sick dog he managed to read six books and start a seventh.

The books he read:

The Infernals by John Connelly

Out of Range by CJ Box

The Scared Stiff by Donald Westlake

Bye-Bye, Baby by Ace Atkins

Number One is Walking by Steve Martin

Standing by the Wall by Mick Herron

The one he is reading now: Don’t Ask by Donald Westlake


What’s Been Occurring

I wrote yesterday about our drama last week with Zooma the Wonder Dog. You can read about it in this post.

You can also see some of our photos from the week there but I will share a few here too.

What We watched/are Watching

Little Miss and I found two other Mary Berry series on Tubi on the Roku this week so we watched those episodes throughout the week.

I watched My Favorite Wife for my Spring of Cary feature with Erin from Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs and decided it was not my favorite Cary movie.

An Affair to Remember is up for this week.

The Husband and I watched Oceans 11 this week. The original with the Rat Pack etc. That was some ending. Whew.

We also watched a super creepy episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents with Dick York from Bewitched. Yikes. He was a very good actor and very underrated.

We also started Carefree with Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, but both had to head to bed for some sleep so we will finish it later.

I also watched a few art videos and a couple of YouTubers this week but had to take a break from the YouTubers as some of them grate on me because after a bit they all start to sound the same. They talk about the same books and wear the same clothes and skip in the same fields and it is starting to get a bit weird. I’m sure I’ll still watch a few of them, including Forgotten Way Farms, which is different from all the other “Young Woman Reading Cottage Core Style Books and Filming Herself Wearing Old Clothes and Skipping through A Field of Flowers.”



What I’m Writing

I worked on finishing Gladwynn Grant Gets Her Footing every day this last week and hope to have it finished this upcoming week. You can pre-order it here:

It is coming out July 18th now instead of June 20th.

On the blog I shared:

What I’m Listening To

I am listening to an audiobook of Fellowship of the Ring and other times I am reading the book.

Blog Posts I Enjoyed This Past Week

Big Sky Buckeye, God’s quiet place:

https://bigskybuckeye.com/2023/04/19/gods-quiet-place/

Breath of Hallelujah: Pascha At Holy Trinity Cathedral Chicago

https://breathofhallelujah.com/2023/04/19/pascha-at-holy-trinity-cathedral-chicago/



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.




Sunday Bookends: Finding a YouTuber I thought I lost, finishing books (someday), still working on the book I’m writing

On By Lisa R. HowelerIn Sunday Bookends4 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, and some weeks I share what I am listening to.


What I/we’ve been reading


I am still reading Murder at the Vicarage by Agatha Christie because I worked on my book a lot last week instead of reading it. I hope to finish the book this week.

I am also reading Meant to Bee by Storm Shultz, a short romance novel. I plan to have that finished today.

The Boy and I are reading Fellowship of the Ring and we are not reading it as quickly as I think we should so this week I am telling him we need to set aside an hour a day for each of us just to finish it. Not an hour straight but maybe half an hour here and half an hour there. I hope to finish this book before the end of the school year, which will be June 3 for us.

Little Miss and I have been slow readers lately but I really would like to finish The Place of the Big Read Apples by Roger Lea MacBride this week and move on to something else.

What’s Been Occurring

I wrote about what we did last week in yesterday’s post. I mentioned that our temperature was close to 70 yesterday and was going to drop into the 30s overnight and it did, sadly. Yesterday we went outside without coats and today I woke up to snow on the ground. This week is supposed to warm up some, but not yet too close to 70.

This coming week the kids have classes – gymnastics for Little Miss and bass lessons for The Boy.

Little Miss usually has gymnastics on Saturdays but this past week she had an Easter egg hunt instead so we are making up her class tomorrow.

The bass lesson will be The Boy’s first and it’s about a 45-minute drive north so I am enlisting the help of my dad to take either Little Miss to her class or The Boy to his.

What’s planned for your week this week?

What We watched/are Watching

I was so excited this week when my friend Erin from Still Life, With Cookie Crumbs, told me she was watching a Youtuber I like. I was excited because I had lost this YouTuber in my list of subscriptions and it was driving me crazy! Little Miss sometimes watches kids’ shows on YouTube and she will subscribe to anything she watches so I had hundreds of subscriptions, many of which I did not want, and I could not find Forgotten Way Farms or remember it’s name! When Erin reminded me of the name I was so happy. Why was I happy? Well, because my life is a little sad and sometimes I enjoy an escape in videos that are fairly light, mundane, and calming.

This vlogger records her everyday life and cooks and has a very soothing voice, so I enjoy watching her. I am fairly certain I shared her on the blog before but when I went back to find the video I had shared to remind me of her channel name, I couldn’t find it.

Now that I found it again, I have the notifications set that it will tell me every time she posts.

This week I also watched Darling Desi who has now moved from Utah to Connecticut but still vlogs about cottage core-type stuff and fluffy books she reads.

The Husband and I didn’t have as much time to watch things this week but we did watch the final episode of the first season of Miss Scarlet and The Duke. We are behind because there are three seasons of the show.

We also watched Yes, Minister which is a British sitcom from the 1970s and is very witty and funny. Sometimes it is too witty because I don’t even get it. It’s sort of an elite comedy with references to politics that go right over my head at times.

The man who stars in Yes, Minister played the vicar in a Miss Marple episode I watched once and started to rewatch recently. Luckily, I didn’t watch the end of it because it is now the book I am reading and I’m not sure if the show will keep to the book or not. The issue is that now when I think of the vicar, who is the narrator of the book, I picture and hear the actor from Yes, Minister.

This week I’ll be watching Houseboat with Cary Grant for my Spring of Cary feature and will write about it on Thursday. Go ahead and jump in if you want to.


What I’m Writing

I’ve been mentioning that I have been working on Gladwynn Grant Gets Her Footing, which I hope to release June 20th. This will be the first book in a new cozy mystery series.

I worked on the book a lot this past week, which gave me less time to write blog posts.

I have started to offer paid subscriptions to my newsletter and I will be offering the chapters for this book as I write them to paid subscribers on Substack.

However, I will be setting up subscriptions for longtime readers of my blogs that allows them access to this feature for free. If you are someone who has been following me for a long time and would like a sneak peek of this first book, send me your email through my contact form and I will add you to that exclusive subscriber group. I’ll start offering the chapters later this week.

I only wrote two blog posts this past week on the blog:

Saturday Afternoon Tea: Book sales, good food, and impatiently waiting for spring

The Spring of Cary Grant

Blog Posts I Enjoyed This Past Week

I Smell Like a Shamrock by Various Ramblings of a Nostalgic Italian

Tuesday Tour Oh Henry by Mama’s Empty Nest

Seeing and Believing by Welcome to My Hearts Cry

Books That Feel Like Spring by Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs


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.

My To Be Read list just grows and grows and grows

On By Lisa R. HowelerIn books and reading, everyday musings11 Comments

As I’ve mentioned before on this blog, I started reading books more (again) in the last couple of years. Before that I was always too busy with raising my son, blogging and photography. And before that time period, I was too busy working at smalltown newspapers. When you’re busy writing words, you don’t always enjoy reading them in your down time.

In high school I read a lot, almost all fiction.

When I started reading again I started hearing the acronym TBR. I had no idea what that meant and then someone finally let me know it meant “To be read.”

Oh.

I’m a bit embarrassed by how large my TBR list is.

There are simply too many books out there and I’m not a super fast reader.

I thought I’d list some of my current TBR list, but let’s be honest, our list will always grow because there are simply so many good books out in the world to read. There is a mix of Christian fiction, non-fiction, and general fiction (mysteries, thrillers, etc.) here:

My (partial) list so far:

The Heart Knows the Way Home by Christy Distler

Lavender Tears Sandra Cunningham

The Love Coward by Naomi Musch

More Than Honor by Carol Ashby

Sarah’s Choice by Pegg Thomas

Fortitude: American Resilience in the Age of Outrage by Dan Crenshaw

So This Is Goodbye by Jodi Allen Brice

Relative Silence by Carrie Stuart Parks

Leora’s Letters by Joy Neal Kidney

The Number of Love Roseanna M. White

Another Man’s Moccasins by Craig Johnson

Ready to Trust by Tina Radcliff

Distortion by Terri Blackstock

The Black Echo by Michael Connelly

When Jesus Wept by Bodie and Brock Thoene

The World Ending Fire by Wendell Berry

What Is True? by Charles Martin

The Five Times I Met Myself by James L. Rubart

Beyond Order: 12 More Rules for Life by Jordan Peterson

The Mysterious Affair At Styles by Agatha Christie

I also have a stack of Coleen Coble books that are currently at my mom’s house that I want to dig into at some point this summer. So, fellow readers, how large is your TBR list? No need to list them all for me, but give me a round about number in the comments.

Sunday Bookends: The Biggest Little Farm, Comfort reading, and apparently it’s spring in winter

On By Lisa R. HowelerIn everyday musings, Sunday Bookends28 Comments

This is part of Readerbuzz’s Sunday Salon.

I tried to distract myself from the stress of life this week by choosing a documentary to watch, but I’m not sure my stress was relieved watching a farming couple almost crumble under stress. Truthfully, the documentary, The Biggest Little Farm, which I found on Hulu this time (see, it’s not always Amazon), has both bitter and sweet moments and was nicely put together.

MV5BMjQ1MjM0OTE2Ml5BMl5BanBnXkFtZTgwMzgwMDY4NzM@._V1_The documentary follows the journey of a couple who starts a diverse farm in a fairly deserted area of California. Under the guidance of a consultant, they not only plant diverse crops but also begin raising various livestock, including sheep and chickens and one fat, pregnant pig. The couple started the farm to give their rescue dog a place to roam and soon learn their family dream will cost them a lot of pain, emotionally, physically and financially. There is a lot of bad (coyotes come to visit; there are other unexpected challenges) but there is also a lot of good (a booming egg business for one).

The documentary is also beautifully photographed, probably because one of the subjects of it started out as a wildlife videographer. After wiping my tears over that one (both from a little sadness and a lot of sweetness), I turned to comfort reading via one of The Cat Who books by Lillian Jackson Braun. I load one of Braun’s books into my Kindle anytime the outside world or my world gets too overwhelming (which seems to be often lately, honestly).

Right now I am reading The Cat Who Lived High. According to the description on Good Reads: “The colorful Casablanca apartment building is in danger of demolition–but not if Jim Qwilleran can help it. He’s determined to restore the building to its original grandeur. So he moves in with Koko and Yum Yum–and discovers that the Casablanca is steeped in history…and mystery. In Qwill’s very apartment, a glamorous art dealer met an untimely fate, and the veteran journalist and his crime-solving cats are about to reach new heights in detection as the evidence builds up…and the Casablanca threatens to crumble down around them!”

51B5fG9dybL._SX307_BO1,204,203,200_I like the predictability of the Cat Who books. I don’t always know who committed the crime but I know what the pattern will be to solve it. Qwill’s mustache is going to quiver and hum, alerting him to something that has gone amiss, but he’s still going to walk himself right into something questionable and his cat KoKo is going to help solve the crime with his uncanny ability to feel (and signal Qwill) when something is off. Also, a few women will fall all over the retired crime reporter and he will return some of that affection but he’s going to back away from the woman, choosing instead the comfort of the reserved librarian Polly Duncan from the small town of Pickax.

Some readers may find this routine stale after a few books, but in a world where the news and life is unpredictable, I welcome that familiar routine. There are two things that don’t change in my world: God and the plot devices of Lillian Jackson Braun’s The Cat Who books and I like it that way.

Other news in the book world is that my mom, who I share a Kindle account with, has recommended I read a new-to-is author, Chris Fabry, so I plan to start one of his this week. I’ll probably start with Looking Into You, which Mom said is a good one and is available through Kindle Unlimited. Fabry, according to his site, has written 81 books, mainly in the Christian fiction drama. I’m looking forward to seeing what he has to offer in capturing my attention.

In other news, it is no secret that we are way beyond ready to sell our current house and get out of Dodge, so to speak. This week house showings slowed down, which was a welcome respite, partially because I’m burned out on holding showings and getting no one to buy and partially because our son came down with a cold this week and was fairly miserable.

On top of his cold, he choked on steak this weekend and almost died. My husband says I’m being dramatic but when one hears “oh my, God,” and runs into the dining room to see their husband giving their son the Heimlich maneuver, and then their son throws up the steak caught in his throat, one feels they can say their husband saved their son’s life.

My husband was cool as a cucumber and I was a blubbering mess after it was all over, which was actually in less than a minute but felt like forever. I guess it just hit me what could have happened and it shook me up pretty bad. I didn’t bug my son to eat his veggies for dinner like I usually do that night.

We are enjoying some warmer weather this weekend and expect to have it through part of this week before the temps crash again. The cold temperatures really wreak havoc on my muscles, dry skin, and ears/sinuses so this respite has been very welcome. We were so excited to have temperatures in the 50s we flung our windows open and simply put on a sweater if we felt chilly.

The warmer weather also helped my son’s sinuses issues from the cold, another reason we were happy to have it.

So how about you? How is the weather where you are? What are you reading or watching or up to? Let me know in the comments.

What I’ve been reading (suspense and meandering southern tales), and watching (vets in the English country side), and doing (not much)

On By Lisa R. HowelerIn Sunday Salon15 Comments

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I usually read something light before bed but I’ve been having a hard time putting down Taken by Dee Henderson. It’s listed as a Christian suspense novel but the faith conversations are not too overt or cheesy. The story is captivating, yet also hard to read because of the subject. It surrounds the story of a 27-year old woman who was held captive for 11 years after being kidnapped at the age of 16 near her home in Chicago. She enlists the help of a retired Boston police officer, now private investigator, Matthew Danes, whose own daughter was kidnapped at one point and returned to him eight years later.

Together the two try to bring down the people who kidnapped her and also ran a child abduction and burglary ring. The story definitely isn’t light as Shannon, the woman, deals with her abduction but also some surprises in her family since she’s been missing. I found myself both disturbed and intrigued by the story but learned I needed to put it down before bed or I would have unpleasant dreams. Or more unpleasant than other nights. However, one night this week I didn’t read it before bed and I dreamt I was hanging out with Paris Hilton, so maybe I shouldn’t read lighter things at night.

As a writer myself, I don’t like to be critical of books, knowing a lot of hard work put into them but honestly there were entire chapters I would have completely dropped from Taken. There were definitely unnecessary parts written that did not move the story forward. One of those was a huge, unrealistic section about how much money a person could make from photographs of landscapes. Take it from this photographer, very few photographers are raking in millions for landscape images. The author probably should have done a little more research there. Or she did do some research and there is an untapped market out there that I’m completely missing out on because I don’t have an art agent. That’s always a possibility.

All in all it was a good book, but I’ll be cleaning my pallet with some different types of books this week – mainly The Hobbit, which my son and I are reading for his homeschool. I’m very behind on that but he’s cheating by listening to a reading of it I found on YouTube while reading along.

68251I’m also still in book two of the James Herriott books and watching the BBC show All Creatures Great and Small, which Amazon just included with our Britbox subscription. I haven’t watched the show since I was a teen so it’s fun for me to watch now that I’m older, though the makers of the show definitely made the show very realistic and graphic when it came to caring for the animals. I’m going to have to Google and see if those actors actually had to stick their hands up the rear ends of cows and pigs and horses for some of those scenes. While looking for a photo to go with this post, I saw that they are rebooting the series for PBS. I don’t plan to watch it as I think the original was so true to the books, especially the actor who played Siegfried.

I finished Book 6 of the Mitford Series, In This Mountain, and still have two books in the series that I haven’t read – Light From Heaven and Home to Holly Springs. Like I’ve said before I enjoy the Mitford books because they really are a meandering walk through the lives of the people of Mitford. Jan Karon really takes her time building up her characters through little snippets of their lives. There are a lot of characters too; so many that sometimes it is a little hard to keep up with them. I like having so many characters to get to know, though. My mom once said you can pick up a Mitford book and feel almost like you are coming home because of how endearing the characters are. You can also pick up any of the books and read them again and again and see something new every time because they are so dense.

In between reading books and watching shows based off books, I’m in the midst of rewriting and tightening my novel ‘A Story to Tell‘ which I have been featuring on the blog on Fridays and plan to publish for fun on Kindle next week. I’m also working on the follow-up to the story which I’ve tentatively entitled “Waking Up.” Soon someone will come across my writing and do to it what I just did to Dee Henderson’s. Ouch. I probably won’t enjoy that but I also recognize we have different tastes and just because we don’t like one aspect of a person’s writing style, doesn’t mean we don’t like their work overall. I should remind myself that I didn’t say I didn’t like Dee’s writing – I do like it. I just felt part of the descriptions and long pieces of dialogue were unnecessary but others may have found it was needed.

In between writing and reading (and watching) I’ve also been homeschooling my children (as mentioned above) and editing photos for my stock photography accounts (of which I make a little money with so I keep plugging away at it).

On my reading list for the next couple of weeks (a bit eclectic):

  • Fear is A Liar by Dr. Daniel B. Lancaster
  • Of Windmills and War by Diane Moody
  • Lead Me, Holy Spirit: Longing to Hear the Voice of God by Stormie Omartian
  • The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien
  • The Cuckoo’s Calling by Robert Galbraith (J.K. Rowling).

Some of the posts I’ve featured since I last posted an update for Sunday Salon include:

So how about all of you? What are you reading, watching, or up to these days? Let me know in the comments and if you are participating in the Sunday Salon on Readerbuzz’s blog (which this post is part of) leave me your link.