• Books on my bedside table…

    July 15, 2014 / No Comments

    There are not enough hours in the day to read all the books I want to read.  Granted, I’m a fast reader…but still.  I love walking into the library and just standing there, taking it all in:  thousand of books lining the shelves on every topic imaginable.  No, there not enough hours in any given day.  There are other ways I want and need to fill the precious days as well:  spending time with my children and my grandchildren (which means I fly a lot), sewing, knitting, spending time outdoors when the weather is nice, working on ancestry.com and my family history book, managing to cook enough to “survive” and  taking care of this apartment to name a few of the things that keep me busy.

    Currently, I’m reading an old one by Mary Higgins Clark that I seemed to have actually missed:  No Place Like Home.  I have most of her books on my bookshelf except for this one.  It seems vaguely familiar but I don’t believe I’ve actually read it.  Just a few of my other favorite authors are Karen Harper, Patricia Cornwell, Catherine Coulter, Nevada Barr, Barbara Delinsky, Mary Jane Clark, Colleen Coble, and Dee Henderson.  I think I’ve read most of the works of each of these writers.  I especially liked the O’Malley series by Dee Henderson.

    I also just purchased a new one by another of my favorite authors, Karen White, entitled A Long Time Gone.  Can’t wait to make time for that one.

    So if you’re looking for a new book for your bedside table, check out one of the authors below.  You could not go wrong with any of them…

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  • Summer porch days…

    June 16, 2014 / 3 Comments

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    I was awake early this morning.  With the temp in the low 60’s, I enjoyed my coffee and the sound of songbirds on the porch.  On cooler afternoons, the porch is the scene for enjoying bowls of ice cream and playing a game with the grandchildren.  Right now, it is overcast with a temp in the 80’s and the porch is the place for drying my clothes on a folding rack (my dryer is broken but the repairman is due here tomorrow).

    I love the ferns.  They remind me of walks on the mountainside in Oregon where the ferns grew wild and plentiful.  The fuchsia plant sits on a $5 red garage sale table.  It’s a thirsty plant!  What would a porch garden be without herbs and petunias?  The only problem with the herbs (sage, sweet basil, rosemary and spearmint) is they’re challenged to get enough sun on this covered porch.  We’ll see how they do.  Hopefully, I will get enough to be able to cook with them occasionally.

    My next-door-neighbor was discarding the white rocker and asked me if I would like to have it.  I was delighted.  It needs a fresh coat of paint and a cushion in the soft sage green.  I saw one at Lowe’s the other day – just need to go buy it.  The settee, blue chair and green chair all came from Lowe’s.  The outdoor rug was a good buy at Bed, Bath & Beyond.  I think I paid about $37 for it and it’s one of the larger sizes.  My daughter found the cute Dragonfly table for me at Walmart.  It was one of my Mother’s Day presents this year and I love it!

    If it stays overcast and cools down a little this afternoon, I think I will curl up on the wicker settee and continue reading the third in a wonderful series entitled Alaskan Courage by Dani Pettrey, a great new author.

    How are things on your summer porch?

     

    Sorry the pics take so long to load!

    I’m working with a new camera & photo software

    and it’s not too user friendly!

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  • The time between…

    July 3, 2013 / 1 Comment

    I first picked up one of Karen White’s books in an airport gift shop on a flight a couple of years ago.  It was going to be a long flight and I needed something new and different.  I needed an author and a book that I had never read before to keep my mind off of my newly acquired dislike of flying.  I found The Beach Trees.  It totally held my interest as I flew South from the Pacific Northwest.

    Last night, I finished Karen’s newest book, The Time Between, set mostly on Edisto Island in the beautiful South Carolina lowcountry.  There aren’t many writers who can move me to tears – or laughter – with the written word, but Karen did both in this book.

    I also remembered the happy time spent with my husband and youngest child on Edisto Island many years ago.

     

    Here is the inside cover synopsis of The Time Between, just in case you’re interested in a good read…

    “New York Times bestselling author Karen White delivers a novel of two generations of sisters and secrets set in the stunning South Carolina lowcountry.”

    “Eleanor Murray will always remember her childhood on Edisto Island, where her late father, a local shrimper, shared her passion for music.  Now her memories of him are all that tempers the guilt she feels over the accident that put her sister in a wheelchair – and the feelings she harbors for her sister’s husband.

    To help support her sister, Eleanor works at a Charleston investment firm during the day, but she escapes into her music, playing piano at a neighborhood bar.  Until the night her enigmatic boss walks in and offers her a part-time job caring for his elderly aunt Helena back on Edisto.  For Eleanor, it’s a chance to revisit the place where she was her happiest – and to share her love of music with grieving Helena, whose sister recently died under mysterious circumstances.

    An island lush with sweetgrass and salt marshes, Edisto has been a peaceful refuge for Helena, who escaped with her sister from war-torn Hungary in 1944.  The sisters were well-known on the island, there they volunteered in their church and community.  But now Eleanor will finally learn the truth about their past:  secrets that will help heal her relationship with her own sister – and set Eleanor free…”

     

    I remember the Botany Bay road below.  An amazing place…

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    Edisto Island images here.  Photos above from the Edisto Island, S.C. promotional site.

  • The body in the suitcase…

    June 22, 2013 / 10 Comments

    One Sunday not long ago, I heard laughter coming from my living room as my daughter and I were in the kitchen putting the finishing touches on Sunday lunch.  I found my grandchildren reading aloud the titles of all my books in my living room library.  They were obviously entertaining themselves.  They were stuck on the books by one of my favorite cozy-mystery authors, Katherine Hall Page.  Each book title (and I have all of her books) begins with “The Body in…”.  My shelves are filled with all types of books – from English and American literature (I was a college senior and an English major prior to switching to Nursing!), mysteries (especially FBI mysteries), poetry, sewing, painting, romance, romantic comedies and many others.  However, they were drawn to “the body” books!  I love the cozy-mysteries – especially those by Katherine Hall Page.

    This suitcase is well traveled…it has been many places.  Unfortunately, it is broken beyond repair and it’s time for a new one…and, hopefully, lots of new places to go along with it!

    This morning as I was cleaning the apartment,  I decided that my now deceased suitcase (the zipper finally broke beyond repair on my last trip to Florida) would make a good container to carry empty boxes and other things to the large trash container – two flights down, across the tarmac and beside the garages.  I would deposit everything – suitcase included – into the trash.  Clearly, the suitcase was heavy and I wondered if anyone else in the building had as vivid an imagination as I do?!

    As I hauled the suitcase down the stairs, I was reminded of one of my all-time favorite classic movies:  Rear Window!  I loved Jimmy Stewart and he was wonderful in this film.  Raymond Burr was also memorable as Lars Thorwald…the no-good husband who really does put a body (well, okay, if you want to get technical, parts of a body in a suitcase).  😉  All done in the classic good taste of the 1950’s.  Come to think of it, I think it is time to see this movie again.

    Lots of empty boxes made the trip to the dumpster in the old suitcase…I wonder if Katherine Hall Page has ever considered a book about The Body in the Suitcase?!?  Hmmm….

  • The books on my bedside table…

    February 13, 2013 / 10 Comments

    If you have followed my blogs for a while, then you know that I love to read.  Granted, these days I do watch more television than I have in the past, but I still read a lot too.  My television viewing consists mostly of FBI mysteries (Criminal Minds, Cold Case Files and Law & Order:  Criminal Intent).  I’m a big fan of Vincent D’Onofrio.  At one point in my life, I looked into the FBI (seriously), only to discover that I was too old!  Stop laughing.  My daughter said just last week that I should have been a detective.  I’m really good at solving mysteries.

    My bedside table always has a stack of books.  Always.  In the past, that stack of books often included cookbooks.  (My daughter’s does now.)  Not anymore.

    In the photo above, you’ll see just a few of my favorite authors represented:  Karen White, Irene Hannon, Karen Harper, Mindy Starns Clark and Randy Singer.  Usually when I find an author that I really like, I read everything he or she has written.  I’m seldom disappointed.

    When I finish my stack of books, I check out my personal library for something I have yet to read or head to the local library.  All the libraries here are excellent and I have a card for each one!

    My living room “library”…

    Resting on the books on my bedside table in the top photo, you will see my little bluebird of happiness…an adorable McCarty pottery bluebird and a precious gift from my late sister, Gerry.  It’s one of my treasures.