Thunder and
lightning woke me this morning. First time ever to experience that in February!
I hope all my readers are well and thriving. I’m typing this blog as a document
since my blog site is not functioning today. ☹
**My blog site was GONE when I tried to write my February Blog. So, I sent this blog as an email to all my subscribers. I’ve spent several hours with my blog site provider. The blogs for October, November and December-2023 have been lost, as well as January 2024. I was able to retrieve the July and August/September blogs, 2023 but they copied over in a very unsatisfactory format. If any of you have copies of the lost blogs, PLEASE send them to me. Thank you!
We spent
three weeks in Hilton Head, South Carolina since my January Blog. It was
relaxing and fun. During our travels we visited with my sister and her husband
in Columbia, Md and then they joined us for a week in Hilton Head. We had lunch
with my cousin and his son, then his son joined us for a week in HH with his
wonderful girlfriend. We had dinner on the way down and breakfast on the way home
with our granddaughter and her husband in Summerville, SC. They visited us in
HH the first Saturday and everyone had a great time. We had a three-bedroom
condo for the first week and moved to a one-bedroom for the last two weeks.
Jafar and Helga Hamidi, our dear friends spend winters there and we spent lots
of time with them, while the family was with us and then when it was just us.
It was a very relaxing and fun time. On
our way south. we also had lunch with dear friends from Bradford who relocated
to Summerville, SC about a year before our granddaughter moved there.
We arrived
home on Sun evening, Feb 18thand picked up our dog as soon as we
made enough room in the van for his crates, etc. He barely missed us, he had so
much fun with all his ‘dog cousins’, he stayed with family while we were away.
He’s much better behaved since we came home, I think it was good for him to be around
other dogs. We’ve been swamped with family activities since returning home, and
getting caught up with our life here at home.
*I will
be the Visiting Author at Bradford Public Library on Thursday evening, March 21
at 6:30. I’d love to see as many of you who can make it come join us for a fun
evening talking about reading, writing and books.
I’ve read
some good books this month, vacation allows me more reading time. Here are the
ones worth mentioning:
The
Excitements by CJ
Wray. 2024. Fiction. Publisher-HarperCollins. A British novel, full of humor
and suspense as two sisters, both WW II veterans in their late 90s, and always
looking for their next “excitement”. Their devoted great-nephew Archie, a
historian always believed his aunties had minor roles in the Women’s Royal
Naval Service and the Frist Aid Nursing Yeomanry, but that’s only half the
story. There’s a reason sweet Auntie Penny can dispatch a would-be mugger with
an umbrella. It’s a delightful entertaining quick read.
George
and Laura by
Chritopher Andersen. 2002. Nonfiction. Biography. Publisher-HarperCollins-Doubleday.
You don’t have to be a Republican to enjoy this book. It starts with parallel
stories of George and Laura’s childhoods and how they came to meet when in
their early 30s. It helps the reader understand
the pressures of life in a fish bowl. Being President and First Lady has its
upside and downside as well. Both sides are covered as well as many experiences
in between. I loved the first paragraph before the Preface. “The best decision
I ever made was asking Laura to marry me. I’m not sure the best decision she
ever made was saying yes. But I’m glad she did…” George W. Bush *Pertinent
and timely, this being an election year.
Never by Ken Follett. 2021. Fiction. Penguin.
(We listened to this on Audio while we traveled. We’d listened to this one a
couple years ago and loved it even more the second time around.) It’s a very
complicated story and requires careful listening. There are multiple
protagonists. Two in the Sahara in Northern Africa, both intelligence officers,
one French and the one USA. Another main one in Beijing, China. And another,
the first woman President of the USA. *A retired government official said it
was too real for comfort. I highly recommend this one, it’s a thriller suspense
novel…we loved it.
All Good
People Here by
Ashley Flowers. 2022. Fiction. Suspense. Publisher- Bantam. What are your
neighbors capable of when they think no one is watching? Everyone in Wakasa,
Indiana remembers the murder of January Jacobs, a six-year-old twin. No one was
charged. The town believed her mother got away with murder. The mother believed
her six-year-old son, the other twin, killed his sister. It’s an intense
page-turner. Protagonist Margot Davies, an investigative reporter, returned to
take care of her elderly widower Uncle Luke who had helped raise her. His dementia
had worsened considerably since his wife had died a year earlier. A cliff-hanger
ending. Excellent book!
Daylight by David Baldacci. 2022. Fiction. Thriller.
Grand Central Publishing. FBI Agent Atlee Pine’s search for her missing twin sister
clashes with military investigator Army CID’s John Puller’s parallel
investigation. Leading them both into international conspiracy from which
neither will escape unscathed. Atlee has been tormented for 30 years by her sister’s
kidnapping at age 6. She and Puller had worked on cases together in the past
and respected each other. It is a complicated, layered, page turning thriller.
A reader can’t go wrong with a Baldacci novel. Another excellent story!
We
also went to see four movies while on vacation. One was bad, I fell asleep
during the movie- not once but twice! And I’m not normally a napper. It was so
boring. But I won’t mention its name.
American
Fiction was a wonderful movie. About
a widowed mother’s dementia and her three accomplished adult children and their
dysfunctional family dynamics. Very well written and performed. This movie won
Best Feature, Best Screenplay, Best Director, Best Actor and Best Supporting
Actress for the 2024 Independent Spirit Awards. It’s expected to be nominated
for some Academy Awards this spring. Excellent movie!
Beekeeper,
an action thriller - we lost body
count within the first half hour. But then, “it was just a movie”, right? It
was a good movie in that it held our attention and almost kept us on the edge of
our seats. The plot was a bit original and the performers were excellent in
their roles.
One
Love, The Bob Marley Story,
was wonderful. Well-acted, good music and kept us interested. We were not
familiar with much of his music or his life. (His album, Exodus was
deemed the Best Album of the 20th Century by the NY Times.) It was
about his early life, his wife who was also one of his back-up singers, his relationship
with his band and managers. And then his rise to international fame. We will
definitely see this movie again. I highly recommend this movie.
We
also watched a couple Netflix movies that were okay but not worthy of my blog.
Till next time, please stay safe keep reading my friends.
Later, Ann