Hello there, book friends! Hope you are having a good start to July and enjoying whatever weather you are experiencing. We have been having the hot, hots, but Texas has also had the visit from Hurricane Beryl. The forecast went back and forth as to what impacts Central Texas might have, but our area was on the 'dry' side and so not much here. The Gulf Coast however was inundated with rain, flooding, wind, etc., and this was a storm that arrived as a Level 1. Kind of gives you a sense of what a Level 5 might bring. Certainly not the first time for this, nor will it be the last. However, I hope that all get the help they need and can recover soon. I do know that there are several of our blogging friends that live in that area and I am thinking about them.
Another area to be thinking about is pictured above. Ruidoso, New Mexico has been a favorite vacation spot of ours for many years. I used a Ruidoso area picture as my header photo for a long time. Anyway, they have experienced wildfires in the last few weeks. Two fires started on June 17th and the whole area was under mandatory evacuation. Tens of thousands of acres were burned and the fire came very, very close to the town itself including the central part. Then there were heavy thunderstorms that dropped a lot of rain very quickly. This helped the fires, but there was a lot of flash flooding and that was in the central part of town. We have friends who live there and they evacuated to Roswell for over a week. Their house was not burned, but many, many more were. I know there are other parts of the country that experience these fires, people in California especially. So, so sad. The whole region is quite popular with tourists in the summer, but it's been complicated whether this is the best time for people to visit or not. We have chosen 'not' for this year.
We had a quiet July 4th. My husband played golf and I just enjoyed a 'reading day'. Other family were on trips and so we didn't get together with anyone. We'll be taking a vacation later in the summer hopefully and possibly also in late fall. We shall see. Reading is good. I had a great time talking mysteries with my favorite Mystery Book Group and hearing what everyone had been reading as well as discussing Fiona Barton's
Local Gone Missing. There will be another book featuring the protagonist of this one coming out in late August. I'll probably share that one next week for my 'Waiting On Wednesday' post. One of the group members was telling me that she had recently read Ruth Ware's first book,
In A Dark, Dark Wood, and enjoyed it very much. She knew that I liked Ruth Ware's writing. Made me think I might want to reread it and so I've been doing that. Yes, it's a good one. Have you tried it? And Linda Castillo's new Kate Burkholder book,
The Burning, came out today. I shared about anticipating this one
here. Am I excited to try it? Yes, yes, I am! Ha!
Think that's about all I have to share. I think I mentioned that we would be having some new landscaping done on our yard and that got started last week. Hopefully, I'll have some finished pictures to share in a few weeks. What have you been reading lately? I'd love to hear. Take care!
