Another busy week - reading and other stuff...

Greetings, book friends!  Hope all of you are doing OK and managing through winter, complicated times, and also in your health.  I am doing fine and have been busy.  I'm trying to think about how to construct these 'weekly' posts.  Think I won't worry about whether they are actually about a 7-day week or just what's been going on since I last posted.  I don't seem to be able to plan to write this on a certain day.  Anyway, I'm sure you don't care about that.  Ha!  Well, let's see what I can share:

Reading:

I've finished two more books since we last visited together.  I liked both of them, one more than the other.  

Saving Meghan by D.J. Palmer 

A Flicker In The Dark by Stacy Willingham

Saving Meghan was a book I'd had on my Kindle for well over a year.  Written by D.J. Palmer (who is also Daniel Palmer), it was what I'd call a medical thriller.  I used to really like those types of books - like what Robin Cook has written.  I finished this one, but wasn't quite as pleased.  Featuring a teenage daughter with an 'unknown' illness, a mother who teetered on the edge of way too overly involved in her daughter's life, and a father that I didn't like at all, this book kind of got on my nerves.  I will probably not read any more books by this author.

A Flicker In The Dark was one that I did like quite a bit.  It's a dark story with a theme about missing teenage girls in the past, in the current day, and a female psychologist who has family secrets about the past and perhaps about the present.  It's gotten a lot of notice and the blurbs were by big-name authors.  Think it has also been sold already for TV adaptation.  It's Stacy Willingham's debut novel and I think she's definitely got talent.  A few annoyances about the protagonist and I did figure out most of the twists, but that's not unusual for me.  I can recommend this one and would be interested in what others think about it. 

'Brown Bag' Book Group:

The 'Brown Bag' book group is one I've attended before here in Kerrville and it's the 2nd week of the month book 'club'.  We read and discussed The Midnight Library by Matt Haig.  I liked the book a lot and thought it was quite interesting in the ways it made me think about my life and what might have been different had I chosen another path.  Most in the group liked it, though there were a couple who were not as impressed.  I think it was quite a 'change-up' for several with the meta-physical aspects included.  Our librarian moderator mentioned several things about the author and his struggles with mental health.  We thought that he did a good job with including some aspects of that personal challenge through the story.  Several said that they would try other books by him.

Our selection for February is Lorna Landvik's Chronicles of a Radical Hag (With Recipes).  I'm reading that one right now.

Regular Life:

In 'non-book' life, we met with our contractor to do some more planning for our upcoming renovations inside our house.  Those will include the kitchen and bathrooms.  He made the suggestion that we should go ahead and pick out the counters, tile, appliances, etc., because of a need to get orders in.  Yes, there are supply chain issues and material holdups.  Right now, windows that he had ordered for another job are 21 weeks out.  Whew!  We did go and take a look at a couple of showrooms and made our selections.  We'll see how it goes when orders are placed.  The contractor and his staff won't be starting here for several more weeks, but we'll get there eventually.  

Otherwise, it's cold today with bits of sleet spitting down.  Not much and don't think it will be enough to mess up the roads.  It was well over 70 yesterday and the ground is warm.  That's January in Texas.  You never know what you'll get from day to day.  As I said last week, I'm ready for the wildflowers.  Have a good week!