We interrupt your reading....

...to bring you a cute baby picture. I am still working through my pile of library books and will post about them when I'm done with the whole list. For now I thought, "why should the readers of my family blog get to see all the cute pictures, why not my book blog friends?" LOL so here's a picture of my youngest daughter, taken on the evening of the day she was first placed in our arms (10/30/06 at age 12 months, 2 weeks, 5 days) - known in adoption circles as "Gotcha Day". It's a controversial term, some people don't like it, but I think it is just fine. I posted this picture on my family blog and I thought I would share it here too.

Have a great day!

Thanks! And Library Visit Review

Thank you all for your kind comments encouraging me to continue blogging! I think I will do that, and just post when I can. I decided to just make some time right now to post (even though I should be doing other things! like getting the girls teeth brushed and their hair combed - well at least they've had breakfast and got dressed! Fyi it's 9:27 a.m. as I type this.)

Anyway......I've been to the library a bunch of times since I posted my list on March 1, but I'll start with the ones I listed then. I'm not going to be able to go back and catch up on books I've checked out since then, but I'm hoping to get my act together and keep current on this from now on (no promises of course LOL). Here are the books I had just checked out at that time:

Year of Wonders by Geraldine Brooks
The Virgin Blue by Tracy Chevalier
Blessed are the Cheesemakers by Sarah-Kate Lynch
Girl Sleuth: Nancy Drew and the Women Who Created Her by Melanie Rehak
Peony in Love by Lisa See
Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden
Snitch by Rene Gutteridge
Paula Deen: It Ain't All About the Cookin' by Paula Deen with Sherry Suib Cohen
Knitspeak: an A to Z Guide to the Language of Knitting Patterns by Andrea Berman Price

I loved Year of Wonders and The Virgin Blue! YOW is probably the best book I've read so far this year. The Paula Deen book wasn't bad, I enjoyed that one fairly well. All the rest I scrapped after anywhere from 10-50 pages or so. I loved so many of Rene Gutteridge's books, especially the Boo series, and I liked Scoop (the book before Snitch). So I don't know why I didn't care for Snitch.

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I made it through the, I hate to say this, somewhat boring books of the OT in The Message Bible, and am now in Psalms. MUCH better!

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These are the library books I have in my TBR pile right now:

Emil and Karl by Yankev Glatshteyn
Sacred Cows by Karen E. Olson
The Chatham School Affair by Thomas H. Cook
March by Geraldine Brooks
A Vineyard in Tuscany by Ferenc Mate
The Book of Jane by Anne Dayton and May Vanderbilt (currently reading)
Gluten-free Girl by Shauna James Ahern (currently reading)

I WILL make time to report back on these books when I'm finished with all of them! :-)

Happy reading!

Still here!

Hi loyal readers! Are there any? If not I don't blame you for giving up on me! If you are there, can you let me know?

I am SO sorry I hardly post anymore. I do keep up with all your book blogs even if I rarely comment. I have been seriously thinking of ending all my blogs. But I can't quite bring myself to do it either. I type SO many posts in my head but they never end up on my blogs! I just rarely have the time/energy/ambition to actually post them. So I've been thinking of just scrapping everything. But I don't think I want to. I don't know! I guess for now you'll just have to settle for an occasional post and maybe some day I can get things going again. I have been keeping my sidebar current though with what I am reading and what I have read so far. I have read some great books this year.

I really do want to post about my library visits - what I check out and what I thought of those books. I was so excited to do that. But that fell by the wayside before I barely even got started. Again maybe someday! But for now, hang in there with me please! I will try to at least comment more often in other book blogs.

Happy reading!

Library Visits

Once in awhile I list the books I got from the library on my blog. I thought maybe I'd make that a regular thing - I'll post what I get each visit (well whenever I can, I may not always have time to do this). And then I'll post again and let you know what I thought of each book. It probably won't be more than a rating or a brief comment, but I'll do what I can.

The last time I listed my library books I had checked out:

Broken for You - Kallas
The Giver - Lowry
The Stone Diaries - Shields
Design on a Crime - Aiken
Desperate Pastors Wives - Kolbaba & Scannell
Julia's Chocolates - Lamb
Love Me if You Must - Young
The Horizontal World - Marquart
Hattie Big Sky - Larson
10-20-30 Minutes to Sew for Your Home - Nancy Zieman

It wasn't a very successful library trip! As I posted last time, I wasn't all that crazy about Broken for You. I liked The Giver well enough and rated it a 3.5/5. I didn't like The Stone Diaries, Design on a Crime, Desperate Pastors Wives, Julia's Chocolates, Love Me if You Must, The Horizontal World, OR Hattie Big Sky ! I only read anywhere from a few pages to up to 5o pages in each of these and then scrapped them. This one, 10-20-30 Minutes to Sew for Your Home, was just something to look through which I did and then returned it.

After that visit I picked up a few other books: Catch a Rising Star by Tracey Bateman. It was...."eh". I loved her Claire series but I wasn't really crazy about this one. I read it all in one day, toward the end just to get it over with. Also when I was getting a parenting book off the shelf, I saw the pretty pink cover of a book so I took it off the shelf to look, never heard of it before. It was called You'll Never Nanny in This Town Again by Suzanne Hansen. She was a "nanny to the stars" in Hollywood. I loved the book! I thought it was so interesting and well written.

I had reserved a few books for my son's research paper from another library, and when I went to pick them up when they came in, of course I had to get some books for me. LOL They are:

Year of Wonders by Geraldine Brooks
The Virgin Blue by Tracy Chevalier
Blessed are the Cheesemakers by Sarah-Kate Lynch
Girl Sleuth: Nancy Drew and the Women Who Created Her by Melanie Rehak
Peony in Love by Lisa See
Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden

So far I haven't started any of them except Year of Wonders. I am about halfway done with it and I LOVE it! I will be rating it a 5/5 at the end of the month.

Yesterday I was at the library again. Since I still have that stack of books waiting to be read, I only picked up a few that I had placed holds on:

Snitch by Rene Gutteridge
Paula Deen: It Ain't All About the Cookin' by Paula Deen with Sherry Suib Cohen
Knitspeak: an A to Z Guide to the Language of Knitting Patterns by Andrea Berman Price

I'll do an update on all these books after I'm done with them. Whew!

Edited 3/2: Yesterday we had family over for my husband's 45th! birthday. My fellow bookaholic sister told me that I called the book by Rene Gutteridge "Stitch" and it is actually "Snitch" (I have knitting on my mind all the time, what can I say?) As she said that I was taking a bite of pizza and I laughed and a whole section of cheese and sauce (HOT!) flipped off and landed on my chin. Owwww! Don't know why I shared that but it is sort of related to books. LOL)

Broken for You

Broken for You by Stephanie Kallos was loved by Small World and Mommy Brain and Musings of a Bookish Kitty. I liked it in some ways, but overall I didn't care for it that much! I thought it was sort of strange, I didn't quite "get" most of the characters, I couldn't relate to them. When I had just over 100 pages left, I just wanted to finish. I give it a 3.5/5 stars. I like so many of the books the above bloggers recommend, I don't know why I have such a different opinion this time. I guess we can't always agree.

I started a more fluffy book this morning, well fluffier than Broken for You anyway - Catch a Rising Star by Tracey Bateman. I loved her Claire series, so far so good with this one (but I'm only on page 26).

Perfect day for reading today, they are predicting blizzard-like conditions today with up to a foot of snow. Just want I want after a very long winter already. Yeah right. Gotta just hang in there a little while longer! Spring will come eventually.

Have a great day!

Winter Wonderland

Here's what my street looked like after the snow we got yesterday, the snow that was falling when I went to the library. Isn't it pretty? (But I'm ready for it to all go away! Spring can't come fast enough this year!)

1 Kings and Library Visit

So I finally finished 1 Kings. Of course then ahead of me is 2 Kings and 1 & 2 Chronicles. Can't say I'm super excited about this! I know all of the Bible has value and there are parts of these books that are very interesting. But there are other parts, well not so much! But I plod on.

I am really enjoying Split Ends.

I went to the library today and checked out 10 books - 8 fiction and 2 non-fiction. They are:

Broken for You - Kallas
The Giver - Lowry
The Stone Diaries - Shields
Design on a Crime - Aiken
Desperate Pastors Wives - Kolbaba & Scannell
Julia's Chocolates - Lamb
Love Me if You Must - Young (eeek, sounds like a trashy romance novel but it's not, LOL. It's a mystery written by a Christian author)
The Horizontal World - Marquart
Hattie Big Sky - Larson
10-20-30 Minutes to Sew for Your Home - Nancy Zieman

Most of these were recommended on various book blogs and a few of them I saw in CBD's Christian fiction catalog.

If you've read any of these books, tell me what you thought!

I actually made 2 trips into the library, first time I've ever done that. First I loaded up my book bag with books to read to my girls, and a few CDs for Lindsey. I checked those out, took them back to my car, then went back in and loaded my book bag up with books for myself. The same guy checked me out both times. He noticed it was me again the second time, LOL.

I had to laugh, as I was driving there I was thinking of my southern friends, and how the tiniest bit of snow shuts everything down. Here, it was snowing pretty good, and there was just as much traffic as always. It certainly wasn't going to stop me from making a trip to the library by myself! (HEAVEN!!!) When I got to the library I couldn't even find a place to park! It was packed! No, things do not shut down here in Wisconsin unless it's a blizzard. LOL

Happy reading!