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| Hosted by The Book Date |
It was mostly a quiet catch-up day at home this week. My health is still up and down, but I had some good days last week and was even able to do a tiny bit of weeding in the gardens.
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| Enjoying the screened porch before it got too hot! |
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| Nothing blooming here now but it looks better cleaned up! |
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| Tickseed is starting to bloom, with one stubborn iris hanging on! |
The highlight of our week was the weekend when both of our sons were here for Father's Day weekend. We just love spending time together. We ate a lot of good meals, took a short hike, played with our son's puppy, and talked and laughed a lot!
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| Our sons & Chester |
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| Lovely creek on a summer day |
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| Chester checks out the creek |
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| So happy to all be together! |
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| We finally got Chester to turn around & he went into a licking frenzy! |
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| We wore him out! |
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| Such a cute puppy! |
After the "boys" left yesterday, my husband and I were missing our own dads, so we watched old home videos of when our youngest son was a newborn, and all the 6 grandparents came to visit, in turn (with a little overlap). We were both laughing and crying to see our dads holding our babies, the antics of our 3 1/2-year-old son, and the amazing development as our younger son grew to 6 months and learned all sorts of "baby tricks"! I posted some video clips to Facebook for our family, including some hilarious ones. When my mom brought our older son to the hospital to visit me and his new baby brother, they saw the baby yawning, and our son said, "I think he's tired from the hatch"!! He was really into dinosaurs at the time and clearly didn't understand that human biology is a bit different!
(These are photos of the old VHS tap, so the quality isn't great.)
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| My dad holding my baby! ❤️ |
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| Our younger son at 6 months |
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| Our older son going through a pile of books (some things don't change!) |
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Role of a Booktuber Tag - In this thoughtful tag, I consider the role that Booktube and blogs play in the book review world, and how that world is changing. Since I used to work as a professional book reviewer and also have a blog (20 years) and a Booktube channel (5 years), I had an interesting perspective on the questions.
Weekly Reading Update - Big Book Summer continues in our house, with several excellent novels.
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I'm still reading my next Big Book Summer selection, The Shell Seekers by Rosamunde Pilcher. For years, other readers have been recommending this book to me, so I'm glad to finally be reading it. It's a family drama, set in the UK in the 1980's, with flashbacks to earlier periods. Penelope Keeling is the matriarch of her family. Her father was a famous Victorian painter whose works are still in demand, and Penelope is very much an artist's daughter, a free spirit who loves to garden and cook for friends and family. At 64, she recently had a minor health scare, so her three adult children are worried about her living alone, but she loves her independence. Nancy is the oldest and is married with two children, trying to keep up appearances among the wealthy class and thus struggling with finances. Olivia is the middle sibling and the most successful, editor of a major women's magazine in London. Noel, their brother, has always sort of slid by in life. Like Nancy, he also likes to live a life of luxury among the wealthy but approaches it differently, using his charm to gain access to wealthy friends and friends-of-friends. Gradually, the reader learns more about each character and their past and present-day lives, as well as others: Penelope's parents, an old lover of Olivia's, Penelope's ex-husband, and more. I'm enjoying this engrossing family saga so far, especially the flashbacks to earlier periods, including WWII.
I finally started my next audio book for Big Book Summer, Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe by Fannie Flagg. This is the second-quarter readalong for the Book Cougars podcast, in their year of page-to-screen reading (it's the 25th anniversary of the movie adaptation). I read the paperback, back in the late 80's or early 90's, so this time I am listening to it on audio. It's absolutely delightful! The very talented narrator, Lorna Raver, makes it sound like a full-cast audio. I had forgotten much of the story and am thoroughly enjoying being back among the vibrant characters in the tiny town of Whistle Stop, Alabama. The narrative takes place in the late 80's, with an older woman recounting everything that happened and flashbacks and hilarious newsletter outtakes from the 1920's on. The story is full of heart and humor, joys and tragedies. I'm really enjoying revisiting this old favorite and plan to rewatch the movie when I finish.
My husband, Ken, was about to read Dead Man's Walk (prequel to Lonesome Dove) for his next big book, but I asked him to read The Testaments by Margaret Atwood first because he said he wanted to read it before watching the new TV adaptation, and I'm dying to watch it after finishing the novel! He's enjoying it so far.
I finally got a reading update from our older son, 31, while he was visiting this weekend. He finished re-reading Rhythm of War by Brandon Sanderson, book 4 of his famed Stormlight Archive series, in preparation for reading book 5, which he got for Christmas. He's now fully immersed in book 5, Wind and Truth, and loving it! He said he loves the way that Sanderson weaves connections among all of his Cosmere books. This one is 1344 pages long, so he said he'll read a "short" book next, under 600 pages! It's always Big Book Summer for him!
Our daughter-in-law-to-be is enjoying Shift by High Howey, book two in his Silo series that began with Wool (my reviews at the links). I'm happy she's enjoying this series as much as we did, and she was excited to hear there's an excellent TV adaptation (we're about to start season 3). She didn't have much reading time last week, between working 12-hour shifts as a physician's assistant and helping to care for the puppy!
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