Everybody's got to pllay in the puddles....

Much love,
PK the Bookeemonster

Waiting for Friday before a 3-day weekend....

I didn't get any reading done of the Penny book. Maybe it will happen tonight, eh? Definitely this weekend.

What is your "one perfect thing"? That something that if it were gone it could not be replaced and you would be devastated. This was a question posed on a writers' website that I thought was interesting. For one, it was her perfect coat; another it was the best teapot she ever had, and another it was the suitcase that was like Hermione's bottomless bag....  I thought of maybe my Kindle but truly I could live with just having books again though the convenience of the e-reader is fantastic. My "little black book" of what I've read since 2000? Hmmm. I may have to think about this some more.

Much love,
PK the Bookeemonster

Just darn pretty (though they're icky)

My Louise Penny book finally arrived last night ... at 8:00!! Not happy with UPS. And it's not even Christmas or any other excuse. Bah.

I have gotten hooked on the show, Who Do You Think You Are? on TLC. Not that I care about the celebrities that are participating but I like hearing the stories and mostly about how they are gathering the information, i.e., the archives here or the state documents there. But tonight I'm torn; it appears to be episodes I've not seen before so I could potential be planted in front of the TV for hours and I have the season finale of Motive ... but I wanna read.

Much love,
PK the Bookeemonster

I just wanna snuggle

I will be starting THE LONG WAY HOME by Louise Penny tonight. It is being delivered today. This is 10th of 10 in series featuring Armand Gamache, Chief Inspector of the Sûreté du Québec, in the village of Three Pines, in southern Quebec, Canada. Here is a description:

Happily retired in the village of Three Pines, Armand Gamache, former Chief Inspector of Homicide with the Sûreté du Québec, has found a peace he’d only imagined possible. On warm summer mornings he sits on a bench holding a small book, The Balm in Gilead, in his large hands. “There is a balm in Gilead,” his neighbor Clara Morrow reads from the dust jacket, “to make the wounded whole.” While Gamache doesn’t talk about his wounds and his balm, Clara tells him about hers. Peter, her artist husband, has failed to come home. Failed to show up as promised on the first anniversary of their separation. She wants Gamache’s help to find him. Having finally found sanctuary, Gamache feels a near revulsion at the thought of leaving Three Pines. “There’s power enough in Heaven,” he finishes the quote as he contemplates the quiet village, “to cure a sin-sick soul.” And then he gets up. And joins her. Together with his former second-in-command, Jean-Guy Beauvoir, and Myrna Landers, they journey deeper and deeper into Québec. And deeper and deeper into the soul of Peter Morrow. A man so desperate to recapture his fame as an artist, he would sell that soul. And may have. The journey takes them further and further from Three Pines, to the very mouth of the great St. Lawrence river.  To an area so desolate, so damned, the first mariners called it the land God gave to Cain. And there they discover the terrible damage done by a sin-sick soul.    

Published 2014, it has 384 pages. I'm happy happy happy to have this to read tonight! Love this series. She writes so beautifully.

On Kindle, I'm reading RED MARS by Kim Stanley Robinson. This is the first of a trilogy. Here's a description:

For eons, sandstorms have swept the barren desolate landscape of the red planet. For centuries, Mars has beckoned to mankind to come and conquer its hostile climate. Now, in the year 2026, a group of one hundred colonists is about to fulfill that destiny. John Boone, Maya Toitavna, Frank Chalmers, and Arkady Bogdanov lead a mission whose ultimate goal is the terraforming of Mars. For some, Mars will become a passion driving them to daring acts of courage and madness; for others it offers and opportunity to strip the planet of its riches. And for the genetic "alchemists," Mars presents a chance to create a biomedical miracle, a breakthrough that could change all we know about life...and death. The colonists place giant satellite mirrors in Martian orbit to reflect light to the planets surface. Black dust sprinkled on the polar caps will capture warmth and melt the ice. And massive tunnels, kilometers in depth, will be drilled into the Martian mantle to create stupendous vents of hot gases. Against this backdrop of epic upheaval, rivalries, loves, and friendships will form and fall to pieces--for there are those who will fight to the death to prevent Mars from ever being changed.

Published in 1993, it has 519 pages. This is a digital loan from the library.  I started to read this a way long time ago but I would say I wasn't ready for it. Maybe now is the time.

Speaking of big books, my digital loan of ATLAS SHRUGGED expired so I have set that aside for the moment until it comes around again. I do have it in book form but at over 1000 pages, I would rather not haul that around when the Kindle is so much easier.

Much love,
PK the Bookeemonster

Go away, kids, ya bother me ... rahr!

Oh what a lovely, dark, rainy day. Brilliant.

And the books keep stacking up. I received an order from Amazon yesterday, the new Susanna Gregory featuring Matthew Bartholomew, physician, and his colleague Brother Michael, titled DEATH OF A SCHOLAR. It wasn't due for release until September 1st, but occasionally publishers are early and here it is. I expect to hear tomorrow that the new Louise Penny, THE LONG WAY HOME, has shipped and will arrive on Tuesday.

So in the immediate TBR, from the library, I have:

VISIONS by Kelley Armstrong
THE DEVIL'S WORKSHOP by Alex Grecian
MAISIE DOBBS by Jacqueline Winspear
THE LAST KASHMIRI ROSE by Barbara Cleverly
DIVING INTO THE WRECK by Kristine Katheryn Rusch
THE AMERICAN HEIRESS by Daisy Goodwin
LORD JOHN AND THE BROTHERHOOD OF THE BLADE by Diana Gabaldon

Much love,
PK the Bookeemonster

Oh hi. Nothing. Doing nothing.

It got to be a little dark and rainy today. Hooray!!  Supposed to be that way on Saturday too.

And along those lines ... when it rains it pours ... when it comes to the library. I have three books from the digital loan -- they are all 14-day loans in various stages of having to be done. and I have three 14-day regular books to read. And my TBR. Something has to give .... sleep or work? Hmmmm.

Much love,
PK the Bookeemonster

Hey, can someone help me get this off?

Change of reading plan. A hold from the library came up. AN UNWILLING ACCOMPLICE by Charles Todd. This is 6th of 6 in series featuring Bess Crawford, a British army nurse in WWI. Here's a description:

 Home on leave, Bess Crawford is asked to accompany a wounded soldier confined to a wheelchair to Buckingham Palace, where he’s to be decorated by the King. The next morning when Bess goes to collect Wilkins, he has vanished. Both the Army and the nursing service hold Bess negligent for losing the war hero, and there will be an inquiry. Then comes disturbing word from the Shropshire police, complicating the already difficult situation: Wilkins has been spotted, and he’s killed a man. If Bess is to save her own reputation, she must find Wilkins and uncover the truth. But the elusive soldier has disappeared again and even the Shropshire police have lost him. Suddenly, the moral implications of what has happened—that a patient in her charge has committed murder—become more important to Bess than her own future.

Published in 2014, it has 352 pages.

I may end up watching So Who Do You Think You Are tonight on TV, we'll see.

Much love,
PK the Bookeemonster

Stop moving! I'm trying to sleep here.

About to start THE DEVIL'S WORKSHOP by Alex Grecian. This is 3rd of 3 in series featuring nspector Walter Day and Sergeant Nevil Hammersmith, of the Scotland Yard Murder Squad, in 1890s London. Here's a description:

London, 1890. A small group of the city’s elite, fed up with the murder rate, have made it their business to capture violent criminals and mete out their own terrible brand of retribution. Now they are taking it a step further: They have arranged for four murderers to escape from prison, and into the group’s hands. But the plan goes wrong. The killers elude them, and now it is up to Walter Day, Nevil Hammersmith, and the rest of Scotland Yard’s Murder Squad to hunt the convicts down before they can resume their bloody spree. But the Murder Squad may already be too late. The killers have retribution in mind, and one of them is heading straight toward a member of the Murder Squad, and his family. And that isn’t even the worst of it. During the escape, one of the killers has stumbled upon the location of another notorious murderer, one thought gone for good, but who is now prepared to join forces with them.

Published 2014, it has 400 pages.  This is another 14-day book from the library.

Much love,
PK the Bookeemonster

I'm up; I'm here.

I'm currently reading DESIGNATED DAUGHTERS by Margaret Maron. This is 19th of 19 in series featuring Deborah Knott, district judge in North Carolina. Here's a description:

When Judge Deborah Knott is summoned to her ailing Aunt Rachel's bedside, she assumes the worst. Thankfully when she arrives at the hospice center she learns that Rachel hasn't passed; in fact, the dying woman is awake. Surrounded by her children, her extended family, and what seems like half of Colleton County, a semi-conscious Rachel breaks weeks of pained silence with snippets of stories as randomly pieced together as a well-worn patchwork quilt. But the Knott family's joy quickly gives way to shock: less than an hour later, Aunt Rachel is found dead in her bed, smothered with a pillow. 

Published 2014, it has 320 pages. I don't read mysteries to try to figure whodunnit before the end but I pretty much feel I know who it is in this one. We'll see. What I do love about this series is the interactions and the "southern-ness" with her huge extended family. This is a loan from the library.

The weekend was okay. I finally watched the Divergent movie via On Demand. It was all right. Of course, the book (and trilogy) was way better.

Nothing really on TV for me tonight (that will change big time sometime in September) so I'm hoping I can read. I have several library books out, both book and digital, right now.

Much love,
PK the Bookeemonster

Friday .... yeah....

Woot! The weekend at last!

I was thinking about memories and that I don't really have great details of memories of kidhood. My kidhood was the 70s. Here's some visuals of what I do remember:

This owl seemed to be EVERYWHERE:

I loved Shawn Cassidy (and Leif Garret who is oh so gross now so I don't like to think about it) (and Erik Estrada ... never mind) and if you were cool you had a satin jacket like this (baby blue was the best):

 

 My sister had one of these radios, orange:

 

The makers of this show must have been on serious drugs:

 

The perfumes:

Actually one of the best sets of curlers:

 

I wasn't allowed to watch this show because it was considered too racy:

This was MY 8-track and I loved it:

 

This was on in between cartoons on Saturdays and we learned stuff (I still love them):

 

This came out and everybody was talking about it when I was in the 5th grade:

 

I read this in the 5th grade (my mom didn't know about it):

Phyllis Whitney and Victoria Holt were mostly approved:

This was the best TV dinner:

This was very popular:

 We had a set just like this (didn't everybody?):

 Remember doing Iowa Basics in school? Or SRA reading program?

I had that flavor.

I was a Campfire girl with my friends and worked toward earning beads to put on a vest:

Puffy stickers

.... and I'm spent.

Much love,
PK the Bookeemonster

Privacy? But I missed you!

On Kindle, I'm reading LOVE & WAR: Twenty Years, Three Presidents, Two Daughters and One Louisiana Home by Mary Matalin and James Carville. Here is a description:

For twenty years, James Carville and Mary Matalin have held the mantle of the nation’s most politically opposed, ideologically mismatched, and intensely opinionated couple. In this follow-up to their groundbreaking All’s Fair: Love, War, and Running for President, Carville and Matalin take a look at how they—and America—have changed in the last two decades. If nothing else, this new collaboration proves that after twenty years of marriage they can still manage to agree on a few things. Love & War traces, in their two distinct voices, James and Mary’s story from the end of the 1992 presidential campaign—where he managed Bill Clinton’s electoral triumph while she suffered defeat as George H. W. Bush’s key strategist—till now. Mary focuses on issues of family, faith, and foreign enemies and offers insights from her kitchen table as well as the White House Cabinet Room, while James’s concentration is politics and love—the triumphant and troubled Clinton era, George W. Bush’s complicated presidency, the election of Barack Obama, the rise of the corrosive partisanship that dominates political life in Washington today, and the overriding abiding romance he holds for his native Louisiana and his wife and children. Together, the Carville-Matalins reflect on raising two daughters in the pressure cooker of the nation’s capital, and their momentous 2008 decision to leave D.C. and move their family to New Orleans. Post-Katrina, James and Mary’s efforts to rebuild and promote that city have become a central part of their lives—and a poignant metaphor for moving the nation forward.

Published 2014, it has 353 pages. This is a digital loan from the library. 

I hope to do some office cleaning this evening and I have Motive at 9 to watch.

Hot, hot, hot. Almost 100 again today. Blech. It didn't even feel very cool this morning when I walked
the boys. Fall, where are you??

Much love,
PK the Bookeemonster

Some mornings are easier than others

And ... this human is ours....

I'm only on chapter three of my re-read of ATLAS SHRUGGED by Ayn Rand. It is amazing how she captured in 1957 (date of publish) the attitudes of the progressives and those who stick their head in the sand so perfectly and it is what we are seeing today. Sadly.

Much love,
PK the Bookeemonster

Equal opportunity Shark Week.

I think I will be re-reading ATLAS SHRUGGED by Ayn Rand. Here's a description:

This book takes place probably around the 1950s. It is centered around the industrial sector of the U.S., the only government that has not become a People's State. Dagny Taggart is a no-nonsense VP of Operations for the largest railroad in the world. She is intelligent and is solely driven to keeping her RR as the best. The times are dim and getting dimmer. In the beginning the country is in a recession of sorts and it is up to Taggart and others like her to save the country. There are two problems that are preventing her from doing this. One, the government seeks more and more control when it should be stepping away. Second, the men of industry are disappearing one by one just when they are critically needed. No one knows where they go off to. The theme of Atlas Shrugged, as Rand described it, is "the role of man's mind in existence". The book explores a number of philosophical themes from which Rand would subsequently develop Objectivism. In doing so, it expresses the advocacy of reason, individualism, capitalism, and the failures of governmental coercion.

Published in 1957, it is 1200 pages.  I first read this a little over twenty years ago when I was the stage manager for a show in Virginia City (MT). My job required me to have the Brewery open for tourists in the afternoons; I was there by myself. It was a cool and rainy early summer and very few people came by. It was an amazing experience -- reading this epic book, listening to classic music on my boombox, in a dimly lit cold 100+ year old building. I was in my early 20s. I am thinking that a lot of it probably didn't mean much to me at the time, philosophically. Now, twenty something years later, as I approach my 50th in a couple years and life experience under my belt, and our world has become entrenched in government control and very similar to this fictional dystopia, I want to re-read this to see how it holds up. It is, as you can see, a "honkin'-huge" book so we'll see if I can keep with it.

Much love,
PK the Bookeemonster

Say! Is that the weekend again?

We're having dinner this evening with Steve's mom and sister. On one hand it is nice to not have to deal with making dinner .... on the other..... (sigh)

I'm also reading a digital loan called PANIC by Lauren Oliver. She is the author of the dystopian Delirium trilogy which wasn't bad. This book is a present-day teen angst. I was hoping for another dystopian, but there it is. Here's a description:

Panic began as so many things do in Carp, a poor town of twelve thousand people in the middle of nowhere: because it was summer, and there was nothing else to do. Heather never thought she would compete in panic, a legendary game played by graduating seniors. She'd never thought of herself as fearless, the kind of person who would fight to stand out. But when she finds something, and someone, to fight for, she will discover that she is braver than she ever thought.
Dodge has never been afraid of panic. His secret will fuel him, and get him all the way through the game; he's sure of it. But what he doesn't know is that he's not the only one with a secret. Everyone has something to play for. For Heather and Dodge, the game will bring new alliances, unexpected revelations, and the possibility of first love for each of them—and the knowledge that sometimes the very things we fear are those we need the most. 

Published 2014, it has 421 pages. 

Glad it's almost the weekend.

Much love,
PK the Bookeemonster

Well, you haven't provided a kiddie pool, have you

The day didn't start out great. I broke the right arm of my glasses as I was putting them on this morning. Snick. No, I wasn't bending them or anything. So I rummaged for an old pair that I could see enough to drive with but they weren't bifocals so I was definitely having a problem at work trying to see the computer and papers on my desk. Luckily, when I went to my optician when they opened, they had the style of frameless glasses I have so they fixed them in a half hour. Not an expense I needed but one does have to see.

A friend of mine posted photos on Facebook of their time at the Paul McCartney concert in Missoula. The seats were such nosebleeds that it appeared the only way to see him was on the jumbotron screens on either side of the stage. I'm glad I didn't want to go. One can "say" they went to the concert but to really only view it on screens? Stupid. There's great footage on youtube of various concerts that are better and free. Really, the McCartney concert I would have liked to see was with Wings in the 70s. Just need a time machine and I'm ready to go. 

Steve has a get together dinner after work a guy associated with the gun club. I indicated that if I didn't have to go, I wasn't so inclined. Really, an evening of gun enthusiasts I try to limit to the "have-to's".  And I agreed to dinner with his mom and sister tomorrow evening so it's not like I'm home free.

So I plan to do some reading this evening. Yeah, something different. (snark)

Stay cool!

Much love,
PK the Bookeemonster

I don't wanna go to bed! I'm not tir ... zzzzzz

Have a great Wednesday!

Much love,
PK the Bookeemonster

The tail knows self defense

I'm about to start THE MARK OF THE MIDNIGHT MANZANILLA by Lauren Willig. This is 11th of 11 in series featuring in the present, Eloise Kelly, a Harvard grad student writing her Ph.D. dissertation on spies of the late 18th and early 19th century and  in the early 1800s, the spies of the Pink Carnation. Here's a description:

In October of 1806, the Little Season is in full swing, and Sally Fitzhugh has had enough of the endless parties and balls. With a rampant vampire craze sparked by the novel The Convent of Orsino, it seems no one can speak of anything else. But when Sally hears a rumor that the reclusive Duke of Belliston is an actual vampire, she cannot resist the challenge of proving such nonsense false. At a ball in Belliston Square, she ventures across the gardens and encounters the mysterious Duke. Lucien, Duke of Belliston, is well versed in the trouble gossip can bring. He’s returned home to dispel the rumors of scandal surrounding his parents’ deaths, which hint at everything from treason to dark sorcery. While he searches for the truth, he welcomes his fearsome reputation—until a woman is found dead in Richmond. Her blood drained from her throat. Lucien and Sally join forces to stop the so-called vampire from killing again. Someone managed to get away with killing the last Duke of Belliston. But they won’t kill this duke—not if Sally has anything to say about it.

 Published August 2014, it has 496 pages. 

On Kindle, I'm reading THE HONOR OF THE QUEEN by David Weber. This is 2nd of 13 in series featuring Honor Harrington, a military space opera series. Here is a description:

RIGHT WOMAN, WRONG PLACE
It's hard to give peace a chance when the other side regards war as the necessary prelude to conquest, and a sneak attack as the best means to that end. That's why the Kingdom of Manticore needs allies against the so-called ""Republic"" of Haven--and the planet Grayson is just the right strategic place to make a very good ally indeed. But Her Majesty's Foreign Office had overlooked a ""minor cultural difference"" when they chose Honor Harrington to carry the flag: women on the planet Grayson are without rank or rights; Honor's very presence is an intolerable affront to every male on the planet. At first Honor doesn't take it personally; where she comes from gender discrimination is barely a historical memory, right up there in significance to fear of the left-handed. But in time such treatment as she receives from the Graysonites does become wearing, and Honor would withdraw if she could--but then Grayson's fratricidal sister planet attacks without warning and she must stay and prevail, not just for Honor's honor, but for her sovereign's.

It was published in 1993 and has 393 pages.

Steve has a board meeting tonight; I'm gonna read.

Much love,
PK the Bookeemonster 

It's the weekend at last

Ryker has for the second time shredded the bottom sheet on our bed so I have to get new sheet set tomorrow. The boy has claws on him.

Tonight on TV is Cold Justice, otherwise I hope to do some reading for falling asleep. Last night, I had to go to Walmart after work which is just exhausting so I didn't get a whole lot accomplished after that beyond dinner.

Supposed to be in the 90s all weekend so the boys and I will be hunkering down for most of it after morning walks. :)

Much love,
PK the Bookeemonster