Author Archives: witchyrichy

Finally, I Finished a Book!

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Since my post on April 6, I haven’t been able to really concentrate on a book.  I read Charlotte Figg Takes Over Paradise, which turned out to be Christian fiction, a genre I have not read before.   It was fine…not so preachy but more about trusting God and being in community. Feisty, quirky characters, each with a secret.

Then, I stalled out.  Some of it certainly has to do with the it being Spring…there is a TON of gardening to do.  I am tackling a huge flower garden space and trying to help my husband with the vegetable farming as well.  I did listen to The Camel Club, the first book in Baldacci’s series.  I also listened to Messenger of Truth on my recent trip to Baltimore.

Balitmore Book Shopping on 365 ProjectI visited The Book Escape, the book store on Federal Hill that I visited last year.  This year, I snapped a picture.  And found some interesting books, too:

  • Angle of Repose, Wallace Stegner
  • Lyra’s Oxford, Philip Pullman
  • Building a Bridge to the 18th Century, Neil Postman
  • The Remains of the Day, Kazuo Ishiguro
  • Innocent Traitor, Alison Weir
It’s a great place to browse with treasures on every shelf.  And it’s that experience–browsing a bookstore–that digital editions cannot replace.  Scanning the shelves, taking in titles and authors, reaching up for a volume, skimming the book jacket, flipping through the pages.  Thinking about authors and series and then seeking them out.  No search function here and that’s a good thing since the pursuit may provide an interesting diversion.  The goal of bookstore browsing is not always to find the exact book but instead to find a book.  I had no intention of buying any of these books; instead, I found them, intrigued by titles or author names.  I’ve got rural writing on my mind and have been dabbling in Ivan Doig and Wendell Berry.  So, Stegner seemed a natural choice. And a serious one, compared to my more recent reading.
So, after nearly a month of just dabbling in books but not getting into anything, I picked up Baldacci’s Stone Cold last night and finished it about an hour ago.  My first full book in some time…and it didn’t last long enough to really answer the what next question?  It was a quick reading fix but still leaves me wondering where I want to head with my reading.  I have several of Ivan Doig’s books in both analog and digital format, ditto for Berry.  They would be a good fit with our current agricultural undertaking.
Or I could take the easy road and finish off the Camel Club series…

What to Read Next?

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Suddenly, there are books everywhere…audio books, free digital books, books from the book fair. And I just can’t decide what to read next.

After getting two teeth pulled Wednesday morning, I spent the rest of the day reading and managed to read Deep Dish by Mary Kay Andrews from start to finish. It was fun, if a little predictable, and reminded me a bit of Carl Hiassen without the really wickedly rude stuff. Southern chick lit would be the category, I suppose.  She has several other books and I’m putting them on the beach reading list.

I also finished up The Pale Horseman, the second in Bernard Cornwell’s Saxon series. I am enjoying this adventure series full of manly men, desperate battles, and glorious achievements. I bought the fifth one and can’t decide if I want to buy three and four or just wait until I can get them from the library. They don’t appear to be in any of the library databases of ebooks.

Belle Ruin by Martha Grimes featured Emma Graham, and the young narrator provides a lively view of the Hotel Paradise, its inhabitants as well as the local folk in the nearby towns. The ending came about somewhat abruptly, leaving lots of questions.  I’ve read the other books in the series and enjoyed them. This one had all the charm of those but lacked a bit of a story line.

The big surprise of the past few weeks has been how much I liked David Baldacci’s The Collectors.  I listened to it during a weekend road trip and was riveted to the story and the characters.  I went ahead and used Audible credits to buy the first book in the series, The Camel Club.  And I have three and four in the pile from the book fair.  I also bought the fourth book in the Maisie Dobbs series, Messenger of Truth, and Sacre Bleu: A Comedy d’Art by Christopher Moore.  The latter was recommended and it sounded good.  I’ve been feeling a little boxed in by the different series I’ve been reading and this one looks like a good romp as Toulouse-Lautrec and a Paris baker try to determine the real cause of Van Gogh’s death.  Audio books offer the possibility of doing two things at one time–gardening or sewing and reading. This time of year, I feel like I need to multitask even when it comes to the hobbies.

I’ve also been spending the fast few weeks collecting books, especially on the Kindle.  Between a conference, Kindle Daily Deals, and free Kindle book emails, my TBR list got a lot longer.  Here’s a bulleted list of the new stuff on the Kindle:

Quite a list and most cost nothing or at the most 99 cents!
So, what to read? Something old? Something new? Last night, I tried to dig into Ellis’s biography of Jefferson.  It’s been on the Nook for some time now but I’ve only just made it through the introduction.  There’s Proust, a Harper bio of Mary Boleyn, William Least Heat Moon and Wendell Berry, and so much more.

 

 

 

 

 

Friday Finds At A Favorite Book Store

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I headed across the state to Harrisonburg for a workshop and left early enough to have time to stop into the Green Valley Book Fair. Off the beaten path, this warehouse is a book lover’s dream…sprawling shelves and tables with a wide variety of books.  It is only open for several weeks at a time and you can find deals everywhere.  I limit myself to one basket of books and walked away with a nice stack.

The two by David Baldacci–Stone Cold and Divine Justice–would not normally have interested me, but I started listening to The Collectors as I drove and was happy to discover this is a series.  Two more–The Best of Virginia Farms and Self-Sufficiency–will be added to the farming shelf.  I really don’t need another book that tells me how to do everything as Self-Sufficiency promises, but I opened it right to an easy recipe for strawberry jam and with strawberries coming in very soon, it just seemed destiny.  I added Bernard Cornwell’s The Burning Land, the 5th books in the Alfred the Great series, which means I still have 3 to go before I can read it.  (The Pale Horseman is waiting on my Nook once I finish this post.)  And, finally, a new edition of Let Us Now Praise Famous Men by James Agee and Walker Evans, will join the southern writing shelf.

100_0001I LOVE this part of Virginia. The landscape reminds me so much of Lancaster County in Pennsylvania, where I grew up.  The hills roll a bit more but the dairy farms with their silos and neat farmsteads are similar. When I left the bookstore, I chose the third route suggestion on my map app as it took me over the dirt roads rather than putting me back on Route 81.  I was rewarded with gorgeous views of farms and cloud-filled skies.

The Maeve Binchy Binge is Over

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Just finished Quentins, fourth in a series of novels by Maeve Binchy set in Dublin.  I liked the way the threads of the three previous novels came together around the story of the restaurant although I found the main character incredibly frustrating. There were times when I just wanted to shake her.

The three previous books were Scarlet Feather, Evening Class, and Tara Road.  The first two were my favorites: they all had some quirky characters woven into the story that kept me interested.  Tara Road was a little predictable but a good story of women learning independence.  None of them were great literature and I don’t feel the need to read any more Binchy.  But they were a nice diversion and I loved the Dublin setting.

I’ve moved on to Martha Grimes.  Belle Ruin is the third in her series about 12-year-old Ellen Graham. I read the other two a long time ago so I’m a little hazy on the story but it doesn’t really matter. Ellen’s narration is insightful and delightful at the same time as she describes the cast of characters in and around the Hotel Paradise.  Her curiosity seems insatiable.

My last road trip gave me time to listen to The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield.  I was riveted by this heart breaking story full of history, family secrets and an old book store.

The good news is that the only one of these books that I bought was Belle Ruin and it was part of a $2 bag from the library so it hardly counts, right?

Green

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We had a lovely day yesterday and I spent time “opening” the front porch for the season. I swept, washed the furniture and filled the hummingbird feeders. This table was one of our finds last year when we moved in, tucked away in a barn, completely rusted. I sanded it and then painted it a lovely shade of green. The chairs came from the local dump.

Green on 365 Project