A reading list as we head into Labor Day weekend...

Happy early September all, and somehow we are moving into the weekend that heralds the unofficial end of summer. I will grant, this was the most emotionally exhausting summer of my life, and I'm thinking you all feel the same. I will admit to feeling a bit discouraged at this time. I'm trying not to dwell on it too much because there is literally nothing I can do about it that I'm not already doing. And getting myself re-upset is not helping me or anybody else. So I'm trying. 

I've been reading more, and as a librarian and lifetime lover of books, I realized how much I had gotten away from it since the pandemic started, yet how valuable it is for my mental health. It's like my brain has a harder time shutting real life down now so that I can escape to my happy cozy fiction worlds. I've been making more of an effort to do that, and keeping up with these little reading lists here on the blog is motivating me to keep moving through my Kindle queue (which is CONSIDERABLE :-0). 

So this week I finished Botched Butterscotch (which was a novella, so super short! Very cute too, involved a theft, not a murder), and embarked on the next book in the series (the newest installment!), which is Marshmallow Malice:

Caught in a sticky situation . . . 

With Juliet Brody and Reverend Brook tying the knot in Ohio’s Amish Country’s most anticipated nuptials of the year, Bailey King is determined to do everything in her power to make the event a sweet success. Except midsummer heat waves and outdoor ceremonies don’t mix, and an exasperated Bailey soon finds herself struggling to fulfill bridesmaid duties and keep her stunning marshmallow-frosted wedding cake from becoming a gooey disaster. Then much to everyone’s shock, the entire ceremony crumbles when a guest drops dead, and the cause isn’t sunstroke . . . 

Turns out, the uninvited victim came equipped with lots of dirt on the devout reverend’s hidden past. As Reverend Brook tops the murder suspect list on what should have been the happiest day of his life, Bailey and her sheriff’s deputy boyfriend vow to clear his name. Can the duo boil down a series of baffling clues before Juliet considers her marriage a bad mistake—or the killer whips up another deadly surprise? 

Recipe Included!

This book is just delightful. I love the setting and the characters. I'm already about 25% of the way through! 

Also this week, I have a new download, which is Grilled for Murder (a Country Store Mystery): 

Robbie Jordan may have had reservations about the murder victim, but she still needs to turn up the heat on a killer if she wants to keep her new restaurant open for business . . .

In the charming small town of South Lick, Indiana, Robbie has transformed a rundown country store into the runaway hit Pans ’N Pancakes. But the most popular destination for miles around can also invite trouble. Erica Shermer may be the widow of handsome local lawyer Jim Shermer’s brother, but she doesn’t appear to be in mourning. At a homecoming party held in Robbie’s store, Erica is alternately obnoxious and flirtatious—even batting her eyelashes at Jim. When Erica turns up dead in the store the next morning, apparently clobbered with cookware, the police suspect Robbie’s friend Phil, who closed up after the party. To clear Phil and calm her customers, Robbie needs to step out from behind the counter and find the real killer in short order . . .

This is just $1.99 right now for Kindle, and I found out about it via the Kindle Daily Deals newsletter, so if you're not signed up for those already, you may want to consider doing so. ;-) I love finding new books for less than $2!

Are you reading anything new this week? Have any plans for Labor Day weekend? I'm planning to plot our fall community novenas next week, so stay tuned for next Friday's post on that topic! :-)

A summer of reading the classics with my kids...or at least I hope so :0

You know how it goes. You have a picture in your mind of what it will be like to summer with your school aged children:

You will cavort barefoot in the yard while eating popsicles. Baby goats might be involved. You will take adventurous road trips in which the children will never whine that they are bored.You will lounge in bathing suits under the sprinkler. You will grill delicious food, and sit in the garden reading the classics while drinks adorned with fresh mint sit by your side.

Or, well, maybe your vision isn't EXACTLY like mine, but ultimately they all involve your kids being well behaved and great sports about all of the activities you really want to do/will really make you feel like a parent who achieves actual worthwhile parenting goals. But it never turns out  QUITE that way.

We don't have a pool, or even a yard that lends itself to easily playing with balls of any kind. We live on an urban postage stamp and space is at a premium. Although we've had a sprinkler, it does little more than make our uneven backyard a swamp. Balls go over the fence with reckless abandon. Lacking a back deck or easy access to the back yard, grilling only takes place in the kitchen and often involves the smoke detector going off. The kids still want to play video games far too much of the time. All road trips involve whining. And getting them to read over the summer is like pulling teeth.

It's a keeping-it-real kind of post today. 😂

As a librarian, I take the reading thing pretty seriously. Henry has always been a great reader, but this past school year he has not read anything on his own, just things he had to read for school. Anne has struggled a bit with reading, and goes weekly to the school reading specialist. She has improved significantly, but it's especially important for her to keep reading over the summer. She, however, has decided that she only wants to read books that are well below her reading age level, probably because they are easier for her to read.

I read most of the C.S. Lewis Narnia series with Henry when he was Anne's age or a year or two older, and we both loved them. My attempt to start up The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe with Anne at bedtime ended in an attitude-y declaration that she wasn't enjoying the story. I've sent a bunch of samples to her Kindle, and I'm hoping to go through them with her to find something she is enthused by, though I sense that the problem is just her own stubbornness, which is tougher to fix than finding a story that catches her fancy. But at any rate, the selections include (she will be in 3rd grade in the fall):

Harriet the Spy
The Secret Garden (available for free on Kindle if you're a Prime member, fyi)
Charlotte's Web
The Princess and the Goblin
Five Little Peppers and How They Grew
Ballet Shoes

I remember several of these books from my own childhood, and they are quite nostalgic for me! I don't mind reading the fairy series that she favors, but goodness, I need a break from the monotonous, fixed plotlines you find in those books. :0 I like the summer to have a "theme," if you will, in terms of reading. Harry Potter, summer thrillers, maybe classical mysteries. For Anne, I want her to embark on books of substance, classics or otherwise nostalgic childhood reads from my own lifetime. For Henry, I just want him to read...something. Something that he enjoys, to get him back into reading for pleasure again. He read And Then There Were None with his literature class, and this morning expressed an interest in Murder on the Orient Express, which I immediately jumped on in full enthusiasm. :0

And Agatha Christie -along summer!

*party time!*

What are you planning to read this summer? Do you have suggestions for getting kids interested in reading more classical books? I'm all ears in the comments!

Crafting updates, and summer reading plans...

Hi everybody, and happy end-of-May! Ugh, how did that even happen? :-0 I love May, I really don't want it to be over, but there you have it. This year, more than ever, I'm actually looking forward to the summer. I don't like the hot and humid weather, but this was a LONG winter, and I'm excited about enjoying what the summer has to offer in terms of being outside, dance festivals, gatherings with friends and family, and lots of good grilled food!

Another thing I do every summer is craft, which is counter intuitive, since one would think that the heat would mean I wouldn't want yarn hanging out on my lap, but one would be wrong. :-0 I do tend to shift away from blankets and wool sweaters to socks, mittens, and garments made with cotton, but all the same, I love summertime knitting and crocheting. It's also a tradition that I plan out my Christmas crafting list, but I won't subject you to that just yet. ;-) That tends to be in July, so still some more time to procrastinate and work on finishing up works-in-progress! And I've been working hard on those wip's. In fact, I've been so good this year, I HAVEN'T BOUGHT ANY YARN.

*sharp intake of breath*

I know, right?

I came to the realization that I have a lot of yarn.

*delicate twitching of nose*

Yes, I'm aware that I have had a lot of yarn for approximately 10 years now, but that's neither here nor there. I've been motivated and angelic about the situation for *this year* so we'll take it. Plus, I know that come fall, there are yarn festivals and Thanksgiving sales that mean that the chances of me buying yarn are 100%, so I might as well keep my halo perched while I can!

😇

And in terms of works-in-progress, not buying new yarn makes one more productive with finishing those babies up! I recently finished the Sweet Pea blanket that I was working on all winter:

And now I'm back to a shawl that I'm calling my Wintry Clapotis, which obviously was NOT finished by this winter like I had originally intended. ;-) This is a great free pattern, one of the most prolific on Ravelry, which utilizes a drapey effect caused by purposely dropped stitches. Oh, the naughty feeling of deliberately freeing a stitch from your needles and helping it to pull all the way to the bottom! :-0 It's wonderful, I tell you. I've made one before, with the worsted weight yarn that the pattern calls for, but I've always wanted to make a fingering weight version so that it would drape even more freely, and I chose a gradiating yarn for it:

It has sort of a "Frozen" thing going on, and I really love it. I'm more then halfway finished, and am aiming to have this done by next week! I also made a Tunisian crochet hat and baby jacket for a friend who is due this summer:

So we're getting there! After I finish the Clapotis, I want to make a list for the summer! Cotton will abound, to be sure. And I need to get back to the Great Crafting Obstacles List!

I'm also thinking about summer reading, because summertime seems to have it's own flavor for that, right? Sort of like Christmastime, I have specific types of books that I read in that season. This year, I'm continuing my summer Harry Potter tradition with "The Half-Blood Prince," and also planning to read lots of the light-hearted Love Inspired titles that I enjoy so much, and that I have *ah hem* many of on my Kindle. Seems that buying yarn and buying books are related in a way, yes? ;-)

What is on your reading and crafting list this summer? I'd love to hear about it in the comments!

Ongoing summer reading, and sometimes we all need to challenge ourselves to try new things...

Well, isn't it just a splendid June day! The weather has been perfectly lovely here (by which I mean sunny and pleasant, sometimes cloudy, seasonal temperatures, and no scorching humidity that causes my hair to balloon or my skin to break out in a bumpy heat rash. Gross :0) and I'm reveling in the quiet serenity that the summer provides. My kids finish up school next week (they go late here, indeed), and are both excited by a few summer road trips they have coming their way with both us and their grandparents.

For my part, I've been enjoying the increased quiet time with more reading and crafting than I can normally manage during the academic year. If you're looking for some recommendations, I have your back! As always. 😇

I recently finished up reading Flowers and Foul Play, by Amanda Flower:

I read this with Sam, and we both absolutely LOVED IT. It's a cozy fantasy/mystery set in Scotland, and it has me dreaming of windswept coastlines, and knitting rugged cabled sweaters (we'll come back to that shortly :0). I highly recommend this author, I just love her! I pre-order all of her books, I enjoy them that much and want to support her!

I'm currently in a small aviation-related book club with my new friend Janel, and we are reading Scapegoat, by Emilio Corsetti:

This is INTERESTING. It's about TWA flight 841, which plunged from 39,000 feet inexplicably, and nearly crashed, in 1979. It was saved by it's crew within a few thousand feet from the ground, and this book details the incident from multiple perspectives, as well as the investigation and the dramatic saga of the crew afterwards. A fascinating non-fiction read!

As ever in the summertime, I have also picked back up with the Harry Potter series. I'm currently on Order of the Phoenix:

It may take me all summer just to read this particular volume in the series. :0 It's a long book, and as you know, I'm always reading other things as well! I am not monogamous when it comes to book reading. ;-)

Based upon the above (plus one previously read title), I'd say I ticked off 3 items on my Summer Reading List! Memoir, contemporary secular fiction, and historical non-fiction. Boo-yah! I just need historical fiction, and SNORT. That's easy. I have like 30 titles on my Kindle that fit the bill. :0

In other news, my crafting continues to bring me solace and joy. Never a gal to leave well enough alone and make things easy on myself, I have decided to issue a challenge. I have been crocheting since my teens, and knitting since I was pregnant with Henry (who is now 12). I've got a lot of experience under my belt. And it's not that I've gotten into a rut, but there are certain types of projects that are my comfort zone. I like my comfort zone. It's safe there. :0

But there are certain techniques that I have either never tried, or have attempted only rarely with mixed success. I think there is a greater life lesson in here that extends WAY beyond my humble crafting world. We often fall into comfortable habits without our hobbies and activities. After a time, we cease trying new things and motivating ourselves to improve beyond what we can already do well. This summer I have resolved that I'd like to challenge myself again. Try projects that intimidate me, and techniques that make me whimper to think of them. I'm hoping that all of this brain power will mean I'm less likely to develop dementia many decades from now like the research promises. 😁

I am actually so excited about this undertaking that I am merely teasing it in this week's post. Next week, I am working on a full-on list, with pattern links and pictures, and an accompanying bingo-like graphic, of the projects I'd like to challenge myself with over the course of the next year. It is complete and utter ridiculousness, and I am LOVING IT!!

*trumpets blare*

I feel strongly that as a child and young woman, I did not challenge myself all that often. I was shy and reserved, and even making a new friend was putting myself WAY out there. In a sense, this time of my life is making up for lost time. One of the biggest leaps I took in my life was in my very late 20's, when I left my legal career and went back to graduate school for librarianship. I didn't start taking belly dance lessons until I was in my 30's, and that's also when I learned to knit (which bears no resemblance to crocheting, despite them both using yarn, so it was a totally new skill). More recently, I became a professional belly dancer and learned to drive a stick shift, two things that I thought I would never have the courage to do. These are healthy things on which to challenge myself, and I want to continue that trend.

So. Next week. Dun dun DUN! The big crafting challenge list! I'm super excited. I can make it a little saga as we travel through the year together, with accompanying graphics and see how I do, lol. Do you have a bucket list of sorts? Generally, or within a specific hobby? I'd love to hear about it in the comments!

Writing has picked up again, and summer reading lists...

Happy Feast of the Ascension, everybody! I'm in one of the few dioceses that does not transfer this feast to the following Sunday, so I scrambled about this morning in order to make it to 8 am Mass. *halo* I felt all rushy rushy, but I have to say, it was very worth it. I felt like a million bucks when I got back into my little Honda Fit afterwards.

And speaking of good things...I'm definitely in full-out summer mode, and this year in particular, that is ALL FANTASTIC STUFF.

Is the winter finally over? Let me just check outside again, because you never know, given the way things have gone this year. It may go from sunny and mild, to complete squalling snowstorm during the time it takes me to do a spin in a dance choreography I'm practicing on my lunch break, like it did just a few weeks ago.

😳

After what we went through this year, I give you my word that I will not complain about being hot this summer. I may crack jokes about how large my hair expands in the humidity, but I will not complain, no sir.

And this summer will be LOVELY. Lots of fun dance events and gigs. A few short road trips with Mike and the kids. Visits with family and friends. Life is good.

I've also been hard at work on a long-term project! Remember, oh, sometime last year (actually maybe it was closer to 2 years ago 😶) I first mentioned that I was involved in writing a scripture study for women? Well, that is finally going to be a reality!

*trumpets blare!*

I wrote a full draft of my part of the series (focusing on the spiritual classics) last summer, and I know I talked about it then, but it had sat in it's draft form since August 2017. The editor (our beloved Allison Gingras!) was working on firming up a publisher, and I was so busy teaching I did not even look at it until my classes wrapped up this spring.

Things are finally in go-mode now, and there are three of us ready with the first installments in the series: Stay Connected: A Faith Sharing Journal Series. It will be published by Gracewatch Media, and we're optimistic that these first three books will be out this coming fall 2018! So much excitement!

We've been busily editing our own work, as well as going through the feedback we receive from additional sets of eyes. It's been intense, but a *tremendous* blessing. I have been filled with such a sense of peace since we picked this back up after my teaching was finished for the semester. I will keep you apprised of publication details as they become available to me!

Working on a writing project again, along with more room in my brain to *think* with no teaching for the next few months, has also brought my mind back to reading. Obviously, you know that I am a prolific reader. I tend, though, to read a lot of the same types of books: inspirational and/or cozy fiction. I love those books. However, every once in awhile, it's good to branch out and challenge ourselves. So, this summer, I made myself a list:

• Historical Fiction
• Contemporary secular fiction
• Historical non-fiction
• Memoir

These are all genres that I do not often read, but I want to read more often! Already, I have embarked on a memoir: Highest Duty: My Search for What Really Matters, by Capt. Chesley Sullenberger. This is about that United flight 1549 that lots both engines after takeoff from La Guardian airport back in 2009, and landed on the Hudson River, with all passengers and crew surviving.

I have to say, I'm *really* enjoying it! I'm reading it along with an online friend from a podcast community we're both a part of. It volleys back and forth in time from that fateful trip back into his childhood and training as a military pilot, and also his family life. It's absolutely fascinating, and I'm so glad that I branched out! We also have our Summer Book Club coming up, and that is also a memoir.  I'm thinking we'll tackle that in July, and I'll post about it more in a few weeks. Anticipation! :0

Historical fiction is pretty easy, I have several books meeting that criteria on my Kindle. Secular fiction, I'm certain I will find something to catch my fancy. I've been using the public library's ebook system more to borrow books, and it's been saving me a lot of money. 😂 They have a ton of books in this category. The toughie is historical non-fiction. I do not do well with long, dry reads, hee! Does anybody have any recommendations? I'd love to hear them!

Also, do you have your own summer reading list? If so, please share!