kay's week - 5.24.19

Happenings this last week...

I've been busy this last few days with the usual pursuits and a few family things.  May is a big month for family birthdays and we've been together with relatives more than once.  Add to that Mother's Day and seems like there's a meal at someone's house or out each week.  One more on Sunday and then a break.  I enjoyed a late Mother's Day Lunch with my daughter last Friday.  She's often working on Mother's Day and so it was nice to get to chat and try a new salad place with just the two of us.

Yoga continues and my WW friends are showing up at the class more and more.  We joked with the teacher that we weren't exactly staging a coup, but...ha!  Not sure that yoga will suit all my friends, but I'm glad to encourage them to try something new (and the free class allowed helps with that).  As for myself, I do feel stronger already in my arms and shoulders - able to hold positions longer.  And more flexible in my hips.

My library volunteering life has also been busy.  Summer is coming and that's always a challenge for libraries everywhere.  Summer reading programs and just more people walking in the door.  I volunteer at two local libraries and my main job at one of them is assisting with processing new materials.  That has meant a lot of kid stuff especially in the last few weeks.  My tasks at the other library (my former workplace) are all over the map.  When I walk in the door I never know exactly what their staffing levels will be for the day and what they will need me to assist with.  I do shelving and process holds mostly, but I can step up in other ways as well.

I went to a book club discussion of Lawrence Wright's God Save Texas Tuesday.  As I had suspected, it was an interesting time talking about various aspects of the book.  I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that I had done a read/listen of it - the author narrates and does a decent job - and that I had agreed mostly and enjoyed parts and disagreed with a few conclusions.  The book group as a whole was OK with it, though there were several that became so angry with some of the government and political aspects that they were unaware of,  it colored their experience.  A couple of people wished that there had a been more discussion of Texas history (I would have liked that too) and some thought that it was too scattered and had little focus.  It was indeed filled with a lot of vignettes and took the reader from one side of the state to the other and from north to south.  I was glad that I read it and might check out other books by the author.


In upcoming days...

The book group I mentioned above will be discussing Naomi Alderman's book, The Power, in June.  We also received the schedule for the rest of 2019 at the meeting.  Some good books to come.  I volunteered to lead the discussion in July when the group will be reading The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane by Lisa See.  I've read other books by the author and have had this one on my list for a while.  Have you read it or other books by Lisa See?  I'd love to hear your thoughts.

I'm hoping to have 3 posts talking about our Colorado trip.  I've been a bit slow getting my thoughts together about them.  Maybe next week or maybe later in the summer.  I'll be out again for a bit, but when I return, I'll try to share a little more about my reading. 

Hope everyone has a very nice Memorial Day weekend! 

Visiting the Tattered Cover Bookstore in Denver...

As you guys know, visiting libraries and bookstores on vacations is a big fun event for me.  On our recent trip to Colorado, I got the chance to stop by the Colfax location of Denver's famous Tattered Cover Bookstore.  My first time at this independent bookstore - hopefully not my last.  The original Tattered Cover opened in 1971 and this particular location on Colfax opened in 2006.  It was an old theater that had been renovated.  There's a cafe and many events are scheduled at this and other locations as well.

This a nice seating area in the center of the store.  My husband sat there for a while with a cup of coffee and had fun with the 5G that was available.  Not sure if those theater seats are from the original here, but perhaps.  In any case, I took my time looking around.

As one might expect, I started my shelf-looking in this section.  I know.  You're shocked.  Ha!  The Tattered Cover reminded me a bit in some ways of Powell's in Portland, Oregon.  They sell both new and used books and shelve them together.  That's a nice feature which I always liked about Powell's.  I was so engrossed in the shelves that it took me a bit to realize that I spilled part of my latte down the front of my shirt.  Sigh.  Off to find the restrooms downstairs to clean myself off as much as possible.

I'm not buying very many books in print these days, but I make exceptions for independent bookstores.  These were my two purchases.  Girl In Snow by Danya Kukafka was on a shelf section with 'Local Authors' at the top.  Not sure if the author lives in the Denver area, but the book is set in Colorado and it's a debut novel.  One Small Sacrifice is by Hilary Davidson, an author that I met at Left Coast Crime in Phoenix a few years ago.  She was appearing at an event at the bookstore the night after we were there.  I wish I could have attended that event, but I convinced the staff to sell me a paperback copy of the book.  Then I just had to figure out how to get the books into my suitcase for the flight home.

If you ever get a chance to visit The Tattered Cover, it's worth it.  I hope to go back one day.

What our mystery book group will read for the second half of 2019...

I thought several of you might be interested in what is scheduled for our mystery book group reading pleasure in upcoming months.  We meet at a local library branch and have done so for over 11 years now.  It's fun to visit with other crime novel lovers and discuss what we've read - mysteries, thrillers, suspense, cozies, true crime, and TV and movie adaptations. 

July 2019 – NEED TO KNOW by Karen Cleveland

August 2019 – The ‘I’s’ Have It! – Reading books set in countries or states beginning with the letter ‘I’

September 2019 – THE ESCAPE ARTIST by Brad Meltzer

October 2019 – SHIRLEY JACKSON Month – Choose any of her books or short stories

November 2019 – KILLERS OF THE FLOWER MOON: THE OSAGE MURDERS AND THE BIRTH OF THE FBI by David Grann

December 2019 - Annual Christmas Party, Favorite Reads for the Year, and Book Swap

Have you read any of these books?  You're welcome to join with us virtually and read along. 

A little of this and that...yoga class and some book group reading...

So, I guess the question is, what have I been doing lately?  Well, several things.  Some more fun than others, but I was happy to find that my dentist appointment went very well on Wednesday.  They said I was taking good care of my teeth and they would see me in November.  Yay!  I'm good with that.  Ha!

I've continued my walking journey and have moved to the outside part of the time.  We're in storm season here in Central Texas right now.  May is usually a stormy month for us.  Rain, thunderstorms, even hail and tornadoes.  And then there is the flash flooding that accompanies those things.  Some days I walk outside and some days not.

I did come to realize that even though my legs and lower body strength is good from all the walking and some hiking, my upper body has lost not only weight but muscle mass.  I never thought of myself as particularly strong.  However, my age (61) and losing a lot of weight have taken a toll on my arms and shoulders.  I had heard about a very affordable and good yoga class at a local rec center from a friend at church.  I took the one free class offered, loved it, and have signed up for more.  I've now been to several classes of Gentle Flow Yoga and it's going to be very good for me.  I talked about it at my Weight Watchers meeting a couple of times and two of my friends there have also joined and another has been to her free class.  We hope she comes back.  I've done yoga in the past and it was good for me mentally.  This time it will be good both mentally and physically.  I go Tuesday and Thursday mornings and can also attend another class late Sunday afternoons if it works out.

Some have wondered about what I've been reading.  Well, I have been reading and listening to audios, but maybe not as much as usual.  I've listened to a few books that were rereads - always a fun thing for me.  I've listened to a lot of music during my walking as well and a few podcasts.  Right now, I'm working on reading a couple of books for the afternoon book group that I attend most of the time.  I had to miss May's mystery book group meeting because of our Colorado trip and I'll also have to miss June's meeting.  It's good for the group to fend for themselves now and then without me and I have a fabulous substitute by the name of Gayle.  Her blog is It's a Mystery!  You should visit Gayle.  They discussed Memory Man by David Baldacci and had a good time.

I'm about to finish God Save Texas: A Journey Into the Soul of the Lone Star State by Lawrence Wright for discussion in a couple of weeks.  I've been very glad to read this book as Nan had gifted me a copy last year when she came to Austin for a trip.  I've done a read/listen and enjoyed it very much.  I haven't agreed completely with all the author says, but I think any person who has lived in Texas for a long time or is a native Texan will recognize and nod their heads at many aspects of this non-fiction book.  I look forward to the discussion.  Many of the regular members of the group are not from this area originally and many have not lived here very long.  Should be a 'vivid' time.  Ha!

The June selection for that book group is The Power by Naomi Alderman.  I'm going to do a read/listen of that one as well.  And I may just move right on into it because we have a busy early June.  We'll see how it goes.  I'll try to relate some of  the discussions of both of these books if I can.  Another group that I attend very sporadically is discussing The Dry by Jane Harper next week.  I've already read it as well as Force of Nature, the next book in the author's series.  Not sure I'll make that meeting, but I might try.

I'm going to attempt to get some posts written about our Colorado visit for next week.  Maybe 3 or 4 of them.  We shall see.  Those will have pictures.  I also would like to show you a couple of bookstores that I visited (well, a local one that I haven't made it to yet, but it's very new - plan to visit in the next few days).

Hope you all have a nice weekend and I'll see you soon!  And my plan for the blog here in upcoming days is to come and go as I have time.  I'll comment on your posts as I can and check them out event if I don't comment.     

Checking back in...

Hello book friends!  I'm checking back in for just a minute today.  I've been quite busy with lots of things and I'll be back in a day or so to share about some of them.  We've been out of town as well for a few days.  Above is a picture from our trip - that's Pikes Peak and the Garden of the Gods in Colorado Springs.  We had a great trip and I've got several posts in mind talking about it. 

However, today I am headed to the dentist - just a check-up and cleaning.  Hopefully, that's all.  Ha!  As I said, I'll be around a bit more for a while at least.  Have a good day and happy reading!!

Spring Break...you can find me walking outside...

Here's a lovely picture of a sunrise at my house - that means that I'm probably already off walking - I might be at the rec center on the indoor track or I might be preparing to head outside to walk my neighborhood or I might be on the park trails.  I've been busy indeed.

I'm going to take a pause here on the blog.  I've been busy in several ways and will continue to be for a while.  I'm also really not feeling the 'blog writing' vibe right now.  Will step away here, but will continue to stop by and comment on your blogs as I can.  Not sure how long this will last.  We shall see.  I'll cycle back around I'm sure. 

I have been reading and listening a lot.  Seem to have found my 'movement' mojo again and audiobooks always go along with that.  I'll be updating my 'Books Read' covers on the right side if you'd like to know what I've been reading/listening to.  Otherwise...happy spring! 

kay's week - 3.15.19

Reading this week...

I had a great week in the reading area.  I finally finished Kelley Armstrong's first book in her Rockton series - City of the Lost.  It's not that I wasn't enjoying it or absorbed in the story.  I just kept having to stop and read other things.  In any case, I did like it very much and have begun the second book, A Darkness Absolute.  This series takes place in the wilds of Canada.  Rockton is a small town that people come to when they are escaping from bad things in their regular life.  Casey Duncan was a homicide detective in her former life and she's one of three people who comprise the police in Rockton, a town definitely off the grid.  Interesting concept.

I listened to The Silent Patient, a debut thriller, by Alex Michaelides.  It was narrated very ably by Jack Hawkins and Louise Brealey.  It's about a woman artist who apparently kills her husband and then refuses to speak ever again.  She is placed in a secure unit and a therapist makes it his mission to get her story.  It's told by the therapist and also through the woman's diary.  I especially enjoyed the interview at the end of the book with the author.  He told of his upbringing in Cyprus and how this story is based on a Greek tragedy by Euripides.  I liked the story itself, though I did figure it out. 

The other two books I read were both compilations of short stories by P.D. James.  Both were published after her death, but the stories had been published previously.  They were Sleep No More and The Mistletoe Murder.  I always think that I don't really like short stories all that much.  However, as I was doing a read/listen of these books, I remembered that I've read every single short story written by Agatha Christie.  And liked them.  I have not read any of P.D. James books - and I'm not sure why - however, I'm going to change that.  I'll tell more below as I discussed the first book with a book group.  Both were narrated by Daniel Weyman and the second also included Jenny Agutter. 

Other stuff...

I attended a book group that I rarely go to this week and it was a kind of funny experience.  I saw a former colleague at another local library and she asked if I was coming to book group.  They were reading a short story collection by P.D. James.  She knows about my mystery love.  I've attended her group now and then, but it's hard to keep up with the reading for too many groups.  Anyway, I decided to try the book and go.  I'm good friends with the leader and worked with her in the past.  She does a good job of moderating.  The group is nice and I recognized a few faces.  However, they do not read mysteries very much.  I rather silently giggled as they related their views about British mysteries (don't like them much), about Agatha Christie (she 'tricks' the reader), and about having a hard time keeping up with characters even though these were short stories.  One lady took copious notes of each story and another said she found it completely obvious deciding who committed the crimes because the story was too short.  The people were too 'stiff upper lip' and not emotional enough.  Justice wasn't served.  There were no thrills.  As I said - I giggled inside.  I did share a bit from the beginning of The Mistletoe Murder, which was not the book we were discussing.  In it, Val McDermid writes the forward and tells of her admiration for P.D. James.  The prologue of that book is by James herself and she relates how writing short stories is different and challenging for an author.  Well, different strokes for different folks.  Everyone has their own 'comfort zone' in reading.  Mine usually involve crime and bodies.  Ha!

Wild Horses in New Mexico

I'll share a picture here that I've meant to share since last summer.  The Ruidoso area of New Mexico has some wild horses that live up in the mountains.  These lovely creatures will come down for a bit now and then.  Other creatures come down too - bears, mountain lions, elk - it's hard to catch the horses though and, when my husband and I saw these in someone's yard, we snapped a picture.  Yes, these horses are a wild herd that roam in the Ruidoso/Alto area.  Sometimes, we get lucky and see them.  Cool, right?

Hope you all have a good weekend!  Just keep repeating - spring is coming, spring is coming!

First Chapter First Paragraph - '...And Ladies Of The Club'

I am linking up with Vicki @ I’d Rather Be At The Beach who hosts a meme every Tuesday to share the First Chapter First Paragraph or two of the book you are currently reading or plan to read soon.

The book I'm going to share today is one that I read originally in the 1980's soon after it was published.  It's quite long and it has not been available in e-book format until recently.  I was delighted to find that Ohio State University Press has made it available that way.  I bet this is a book that some of you have heard of or read in the past.  The author, Helen Hooven Santmyer, was 86 or 87 when this book originally came out in 1982.  Wow!  Here's a small sample:

'...And Ladies of the Club'

by Helen Hooven Santmyer

First Paragraph(s):

*1868*

'The formation of the Waynesboro Woman's Club was first proposed in the early summer of 1868.'

The Waynesboro Female College in the eighteen fifties and sixties was a fitting subject, along with the Court House, the churches, the 'gentlemen's mansions,' for a steel engraving of the sort then fashionable.  The two College buildings were well back from the street behind an iron fence and a wide, deeply shaded campus.  A brick wall led from the gate; it divided midway in its course, one branch leading straight to the dormitory, the other turning right to the classroom building.  From the gate the two looked to be identical: severely rectangular facades, entrance doors deeply recessed above a half-dozen granite steps with iron handrails, the windows of three floors set in exact pairs, one pair above another up to the wooden cornices and the brackets supporting the wide overhang of almost flat roofs.  But one of these College buildings, as an engraving must have shown, was larger than the other: the classroom hall was cubical, with one chimney towering above each corner of the roof; the dormitory had much more depth than width, and along the edge of the roof on both sides, front to back, stood rows of double chimneys, evidence of coal fireplaces in every room.  The house where the owner of the school lived with his family was back and behind and out of sight of any possible engraver, unless he wandered down the side street that it faced.  But it was not worth an artist's pencil--rather small and rather shabby, and fortunately out of sight of the school's front gate.  As a matter of fact, the College buildings themselves clearly to be seen only part of the year, concealed as they were behind low-hanging branches of primeval trees; an artist who wanted a little human life in his picture could have included, in among the tree trunks, the figures of young ladies in hoop skirts playing croquet.

Blurb:

This New York Times best seller by Helen Hooven Santmyer recounts the lives of a group of women who start a study club in a small town in southwestern Ohio in 1868. Over the years, the club evolves into an influential community service organization in the town. Numerous characters are introduced in the course of the novel but primary are Anne Gordon and Sally Rausch who, as the book begins, are new graduates of the Waynesboro Female Seminary. The novel covers decades of their lives—chronicling the two women’s marriages and those of their children and grandchildren. Santmyer focuses not just on the lives of the women in the club, but also their families and friends and the politics and developments in their small town and the larger world.

In this longest and most ambitious of Santmyer’s books, there is—as with all of her previous work—a poignant sense of a past made present again through an acute sensibility, of human life and experience as somehow cumulative, and of lives and events, largely fugitive and forgotten, as captured and transformed as the stuff of her poetry.

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Would you continue reading?  The beginning may not be the most 'interest-grabbing' that I've ever shared.  However, this book is one that certain readers will say is on their 'all time favorite' list or that's how they remember it.  I do know that I plan to try it again and am curious whether I'll love it has much as I did in my late 20's.  Have you read this one and what did you think if you did? 

kay's week - 3.8.19

As I am changing a few things around for a time on this blog, I'm going to return to some weekly updates on my reading and other life events.  Not sure how long this will suit me, but it will be perfect right now.

Reading this week... 

I finished reading The Eating Instinct by Virginia Sole-Smith and liked it very much.  I didn't agree with all her musings, but I did find the whole book very thought-provoking.  Especially about the issues between each of us and our body size and feelings about food.  The author started the book by telling about Violet, her little girl, who stopped eating due to a medical problem when she was a tiny infant.  She had a heart issue and did have surgery, but required a feeding tube for a long time and had to be retrained to eat anything.  Very traumatic also for her parents and scary.  She interviewed a bunch of people and talked with them about various eating behaviors, etc.  As I noted, I was quite interested in what she shared about our current society's food 'rules' and placing guilt on almost all of us for how we eat.

I also read Deep in the Valley by Robyn Carr, which was a reread for me.  This is the first book in Carr's Grace Valley Trilogy and I'll probably read the other two books as well in upcoming days.  It was written prior to the Virgin River books, but some of the characters have cameos in those as well.  June Hudson is a small town doctor, like her father, and the trilogy is about their town of Grace Valley and June and her friends.  Robyn Carr is on my comfort list of authors.

I listened to David Grann's Killers of the Flower Moon on audio for an upcoming book group discussion.  I'm not going to talk about it right now, but will share more after the meeting in a couple of weeks.  The only thing I'll say is that there were three narrators - two were lovely - one was beyond tiresome.  Ha! 

Other Stuff...

Our mystery book group met Wednesday evening and we discussed The Woman In The Window by A.J. Finn (aka Dan Mallory).  I wrote my thoughts on this book last year here.  We talked about the book itself, which most everyone liked or even loved.  I had enjoyed it a lot when I read it.  A couple felt it was a little long and drawn out, but mostly positive responses.  Then we talked about the author and the recent revelations about him and his personality in several articles, primarily one in The New Yorker in February.  Wow.  I won't share much other than to say that it kind of soured all of our feelings about his work.  We did actually talk about whether we could, as readers, separate a 'not very nice' author from their writings - deplore the one and love the other.  Most of us said 'yes'.  There will be a movie in the fall based on The Woman In The Window.  I'll have to consider whether I want to read more of his books when they are published.  Maybe, maybe not.

On the home front, we've had a couple of family gatherings in the last two weeks.  Those are always fun.  We went out with everyone for Mexican food last Saturday and celebrated a family birthday.  Our daughter made some delicious cupcakes to share with all of us - one of them pictured below.  It's red velvet with cream cheese icing.  Yum!  I actually ate and enjoyed most of one and only left a little icing (my tummy doesn't like too much fat in food these days).  It's nice to be able to enjoy some treats without feeling guilty (see why the food book was interesting to me?).
 

That's about it for this week.  Our temperatures have finally warmed up a bit.  As I'm writing this on Thursday afternoon, it's lovely outside and 73 degrees.  It was 25 earlier this week.  Yes, spring comes to Texas!  Bluebonnets have been spotted and I'll maybe have a wildflower picture to share in the next week or two.  Have a good weekend everyone!

First Chapter First Paragraph - The Eating Instinct

I am linking up with Vicki @ I’d Rather Be At The Beach who hosts a meme every Tuesday to share the First Chapter First Paragraph or two of the book you are currently reading or plan to read soon.

The book I'm sharing this week is one that I picked up randomly from the new books at a local library.  The title made me curious and I found myself quite interested as I stood there reading.  Finally, I got myself together and went to check it out.  As someone who has been on a 'getting healthier' quest - stepping up my activity and also changing a lot of my eating habits, I'm discovering things about my own 'eating instinct'.  Here's a sample of the book:

The Eating Instinct

by Virginia Sole-Smith

First Paragraph(s):

What does it mean to learn to eat, in a world that's constantly telling us not to eat?  It's a question I started asking five years ago, when my daughter Violet stopped eating as a result of severe medical trauma.  Suddenly, we had to begin again, to forget all the normal rules about breast-feeding and spoon-feeding, and gingerly pick our way through a surreal new world where food was simultaneously the enemy and our salvation.  But in many ways, this is also a question I've been asking my whole life, as a woman who came of age at the intersection of the alternative-food movement and the war on obesity.  As a skinny kid growing up in the 1980s, I thought processed foods were great; I felt sorry for my friends whose moms bought only weird brown bread for their peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches.  I'm not saying we never thought about healthy eating--the 1970s and 1980s also saw the birth of modern diet culture, with the rise of aerobics videos and fat-free everything.  And I certainly understood that fat was bad, and that was why we bought skim milk and diet soda.  But this was a more straightforward time for dieting; you joined Weight Watchers and ate SnackWell's if you needed to get thin.  You didn't have to reject an entire food-industrial complex or introduce exotic new ingredients into your diet.  Quinoa was still relegated to the dusty bin in a corner of our town's one hippie-run health food store.  

     But by the time I graduated from high school in 1999, we were buying mesclun greens and whole-grain pasta.  Obesity had become an official public health crisis.  Carbohydrates were the new 'bad food,' though fat was far from vindicated.  We were still a few years away from the landmark publication of Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma, but the conversation was beginning--on the coasts, at least--about the importance of organic farming and the need to eat 'whole foods' instead of processed ones.  As I'll explore in the chapters ahead, these twin anxieties about obesity and about the eco-health implications of our modern food system have transformed American food and diet culture.  Eating well has become wildly more complicated; it's now about 'eating clean,' it's about being a socially responsible consumer and an accomplished home chef.  Thinness has become our main measure of health, but also of personal virtue, of having the right kind of education, politics, and morality.

Blurb:

Food is supposed to sustain and nourish us. Eating well, any doctor will tell you, is the best way to take care of yourself. Feeding well, any human will tell you, is the most important job a mother has. But for too many of us, food now feels dangerous. We parse every bite we eat as good or bad, and judge our own worth accordingly. When her newborn daughter stopped eating after a medical crisis, Virginia Sole-Smith spent two years teaching her how to feel safe around food again — and in the process, realized just how many of us are struggling to do the same thing.

The Eating Instinct visits kitchen tables around America to tell Sole-Smith’s own story, as well as the stories of women recovering from weight loss surgery, of people who eat only nine foods, of families with unlimited grocery budgets and those on food stamps. Every struggle is unique. But Sole-Smith shows how they’re also all products of our modern food culture. And they’re all asking the same questions: How did we learn to eat this way? Why is it so hard to feel good about food? And how can we make it better?

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Would you continue reading?  I'm finding this book fairly fascinating in many aspects.