Day: June 11, 2017

Sunday Post: hot and windy

Sunday-Post

Kimberly hosts the Sunday Post each week. I like to take part because it gives me an opportunity to look back at last week and forward to next week in both my personal life and my blog and book life! I also love to see what other people are doing and what books everyone is reading.

Home and Blog

It’s supposed to get into the 90’s during the weekend. And those temperatures will last most of the week. Before Saturday the humidity hadn’t really arrived this summer, but this weekend that changes! It’s also been very windy on Saturday which made the Garden Walk comfortable.

Garden walk

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My husband and I went on a garden walk on Saturday. We got there just a few minutes after it started in the morning since it’s going to be hot all weekend. There were eight gardens to visit. The thing I noticed the most was all the garden art. That was really fun to see. Lots of beautiful plants, too. One garden had lots of clematis; another had over 100 hostas. Two gardens also had chickens and another had raised beds growing vegetables in the entire backyard. I got so many great ideas of things we could do in our yard. By the time we left a little before 11 a.m. it was 87 degrees. And it got up to 96 degrees before the end of the day.

Blogging

Some blogging done this week and I visited a few blogs as I tried to catch up with some of my blog friends. It’s good to see what people are doing as summer arrives.

Blog posts
Blog posts planned
  • WWW Wednesday
  • Review
  • Sunday Post

My books

What I’m reading

Queen of Hearts by Rhys Bowen

But for the Grace by Peter Grainger

What I’ve read

A Second Chance by Jody Taylor

Some books I got recently

The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula LeGuin

Telepath by Janet Edwards

Deadly Crimes by Michael Hambling

A Trail Through Time by Jodi Taylor

The Trumpet Shall Sound by Aline Templeton

Cop Hater by Ed McBain

The Beach House by Mary Alice Monroe

Interesting on the Internet

Sync Audiobooks

Every week until August 16 two young adult audiobooks are free to download. These books are young adult titles so if that’s your favorite genre check them out.

Audiobooks available June 8 – 14

Plus One by Elizabeth Fama | Read by Julia Whelan

Published by Elizabeth Fama

A dying wish. A family divided. A love that defies the law. Sol Le Coeur is a Smudge—a night dweller in an America rigidly divided between people who wake, live, and work during the hours of darkness and those known as Rays, who live and work during daylight. Impulsive, passionate, and brave, Sol concocts a plan to kidnap her newborn niece—a Ray—in order to take the baby to visit her dying grandfather. Sol’s violation of the day/night curfew is already a serious crime, but when her kidnap attempt goes awry, she stumbles on a government conspiracy to manipulate the Smudge population. Sol escapes the authorities with an unexpected ally: a Ray who gets in her way, a boy she might have hated if fate hadn’t forced them on the run together—a boy the world now tells her she can’t love. Set in a vivid alternate reality and peopled with complex, deeply human characters on both sides of the day/night divide, Elizabeth Fama’s Plus One is a brilliantly imagined drama of individual liberty and civil rights, and a fast-paced romantic adventure story.

If I Run by Terri Blackstock | Read by Nan Gurley

Published by Zondervan

Casey Cox’s DNA is all over the crime scene. There’s no use talking to police; they’ve failed her abysmally before. She has to flee before she’s arrested . . . or worse. The truth doesn’t matter anymore. But what is the truth? That’s the question haunting Dylan Roberts, the war-weary veteran hired to find Casey. PTSD has marked him damaged goods, but bringing Casey back can redeem him. Though the crime scene seems to tell the whole story, details of the murder aren’t adding up. Casey Cox doesn’t fit the profile of a killer. But are Dylan’s skewed perceptions keeping him from being objective? If she isn’t guilty, why did she run? Unraveling her past and the evidence that condemns her will take more time than he has, but as Dylan’s damaged soul intersects with hers, he is faced with two choices: the girl who occupies his every thought is a psychopathic killer . . . or a selfless hero. And the truth could be the most deadly weapon yet.

The Red Umbrella by Christina Diaz Gonzalez | Read by Kyla Garcia

Published by Ideal Audiobooks

The Red Umbrella is a moving tale of a 14-year-old girl’s journey from Cuba to America as part of Operation Pedro Pan—an organized exodus of more than 14,000 unaccompanied children, whose parents sent them away to escape Fidel Castro’s revolution.

In 1961, two years after the Communist revolution, Lucía Álvarez still leads a carefree life, dreaming of parties and her first crush. But when the soldiers come to her sleepy Cuban town, everything begins to change. Freedoms are stripped away. Neighbors disappear. And soon, Lucía’s parents make the heart-wrenching decision to send her and her little brother to the United States—on their own.

Suddenly plunked down in Nebraska with well-meaning strangers, Lucía struggles to adapt to a new country, a new language, a new way of life. But what of her old life? Will she ever see her home or her parents again? And if she does, will she still be the same girl?

The Red Umbrella is a touching story of country, culture, family, and the true meaning of home.

The Souls of Black Folk by W.E.B. Du Bois | Read by Rodney Gardiner

Published by Dreamscape Media

A cornerstone of African-American literary history, The Souls of Black Folk is a classic work by W. E. B. Du Bois. Originally published in 1903, it contains many essays on race and equality, but is also a piece of seminal history as laying the groundwork for the field of sociology. Some of the essays in the novel were even previously published by the Atlantic Monthly magazine. When writing, Du Bois drew from his personal experiences as an African-American in America to highlight the issues of prejudice that were still going on into the 20th century.

What did you do last week? What did you read? What books did you collect? What are you planning?