05/31/24
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General
Posted by:
Ann @ 10:46 am
Greetings to my blog-reading friends, I hope the last few weeks have been good to you. My life continues to roll on at what often feels like a frantic speed. My husband celebrated another BIG birthday this month, one of our dear friends planned a dinner party for the day after; I asked her if she could include a bit of a celebration of his life at the party. She was more than happy to. I asked for no gifts, just all his friends stand and share a favorite memory with him. It was a wonderful evening for him…and I think everyone else too. Then there were several small family gatherings to wish him well. Our granddaughter, her husband and the new baby were home from SC and we
met sweet little two month old Noah, our newest great-grandchild. Such a
cuddly beautiful baby boy! Another granddaughter is engaged, wedding plans for June 2025. Plus May birthdays celebrated for my daughter, a grandson, a grandson-in-law, a granddaughter, and a daughter-in-law. My mom has been gone for 14 years and I still miss her, especially every May - buying gifts for her birthday and Mother’s Day. (I went to the cemetery and placed flowers on her and Dad’s marker, as well as my brother Bobby’s. He’s been gone for more than 50 years, and still dearly missed by all his siblings.)
We’ve had several small dinner parties this month, and some wonderful overnight house-guests, too. My credit card was hacked and I had to get new one. What a world we live in! I multi-task as much as possible, as I’m typing this, I’m also vacuuming our bedroom with my little round robot sweeper. Whatever it takes… I’ve made three batches of strawberry jam so far this spring. Sometimes my husband asks me how I manage to do everything, I just smile and tell him, “One foot in front of the other and the tasks at hand get done.” I’ve also potted most of my summer plants.
I’ve read several books but will only mention the better ones. A couple I gave up on and didn’t bother to finish. One of the last things my mom told me was, “Life is too short for bad books.” She was an avid reader her entire life.
One Blood, by Denine Millner, 2023. This was an engrossing book about a young black girl’s survival from tension-filled post-segregation Virginia, raised by her grandmother is shipped north after her grandmother’s passing to live with an ambitious aunt who she never met before. She becomes pregnant, her aunt sells her baby, who is adopted and that child grows up and begins to look for here roots. It’s a powerful story spanning the great migration to the civil unrest of the 1960s to the quest for women’s equality in the early 2000s. I highly recommend this novel. It helps the reader understand the plight of so many blacks…and probably anyone trapped in poverty.
Rain Breaks No Bones, By Barbara J. Taylor, 2024. This is the third in her Scranton Trilogy. The novel is a page-turner, well-researched with wonderful well-developed characters. (This author stayed with us a couple nights while on a book tour for her first novel, Sing in the Morning, Cry at Night. She’s a lovely person and such a great writer. We were blessed.) Rain Breaks No Bones is set in Scranton in 1955. The protagonists are a mother and young-adult daughter, Violet and Daisy. Their bond is deep but often tense. It includes a flash flood that is horrifically depicted. A bi-racial couple, madly in love in a relatively small Pennsylvania town in the 1950s. The comradery of women working in glove factory. A widowed grandmother, raising her grandson - she’s also a seer who listens to the voices of the dead and arranges seances for those desperate to speak with their loved ones. Family secrets are painfully revealed. I especially loved the fragments of old hymns that pop up just when the characters need them most.The books are not necessary to read in order, but I think reading them in order adds depth to the poignancy of the stories. The second in the trilogy is All Waiting Is Long. I highly recommend these thought-provoking books with characters who remain with the reader long after the last pages. They are wonderful books.
Kingdom of the Blind, by Louise Penny. 2018. (I found this book at our local bookstore, On The Side Books - new and used books, bigger and better than ever- recently reopened,(WOOHOO!!), it’s been closed since Covid.) Louise Penny’s books are always a good read. Her characters are well-developed,with plot twists and enough tension to keep readers turning the pages. This one has two simultaneous unrelated plots, one a lost dangerous new street drug shipment. The other Inspector Gamache and a neighbor Myrna, are named as executors on an estate of a complete stranger. Nothing is ever easy for Gamache as he learns that even he has blind spots. I highly recommend Penny’s books if you haven’t read any yet, you are missing some great stories. Always set in Three Pines, Quebec, Canada.
Behind the Frame, by Tracy Gardner. 2020. (A Shepherd Sisters Mystery from Hallmark Publishing. I found this book at Barnes & Nobles in S.C. last winter. I was not aware that Hallmark had started its own publishing company and wanted to sample one of their books. If you like Hallmark movies, this would be just your cup of tea.) There is a series of Shepherd Sister Murder Mysteries. But this one easily stands alone, I had no trouble following the characters. From the back cover: “When art in the park leads to murder in the dark, the Shepherd sister have another crime to solve.” Savanna Shepherd, an art expert turned elementary art teacher, is planning and art festival for their small town. She and her sisters are convinced the arrested suspect did not do it, they uncover hidden resentments and find several people could have had motives to murder the victim. It’s a quick easy read with a good little mystery and likable characters.
The Chaos Agent by Mark Greany. 2024. (Amazon: Best mystery, thriller and Suspense.) This was my book club’s choice for this month. It generated an interesting discussion. Artificial intelligence leads to shockingly real devastation. Someone is killing the world’s leading experts on robotics and computers. A desperate Russian scientist approaches Court Gentry and Zoya to ask for their protection, but before they can help, they are attacked by a team of professional assassins. They escape, but wherever they turn, it’s clear that whoever’s tracking them is always going to be one step ahead. With danger at this level, there’s no choice but to attack. There is one man who may hold the answers to all their questions. But he’s gone to ground in a fortress surrounded by a veritable army in Cuba. If that’s not bad enough, he has a new chief of security—Court’s old comrade.
We also have watched a few good movies, but the only one I will mention is… Larry and Marge Go Large with Annette Benning and Bryan Cranston. We watched it twice more this month with our house-guests and friends. It’s so entertaining and well done. I highly recommend this one again. I’d be happy to watch it a couple more times!
Stay safe and well, and keep reading, my friends.
Later, Ann
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