My Reading Blog

Today we celebrate Memorial Day - May 28, 2012.  A day of remembrance, a day of reflection, a day of thanks, a day of celebration. When I was growing up, we called it "Decoration Day" (it officially changed to Memorial Day in 1967) and we always celebrated it on May 30th. (in 1971, it was changed to the last Monday in May).   My parents were very involved in the American Legion and Auxiliary.  Every year to honor those who died serving our country and all veterans, the Auxiliary made wreaths for the soldiers' graves (a sprig of evergreen, a handmade poppy tied with red, white and blue ribbon).  Along with these wreaths, an American flag was placed on each grave.  I remember helping my Dad locate all of the graves in our local cemetery and putting out the flags the Friday before Memorial Day.  And then, on Memorial Day, there was a special service at the cemetery honoring those heroes with speeches, music, a 21 gun salute and playing of the taps. My Da...

Book cover:  "Meet Willy Finneran, washed-up genre novelist with an espresso maker that just won't die and a habit of avoiding conflict, even if it means putting the truth on a sliding scale. Ozena Webb, customer service rep and single mother of a mentally handicapped (from an early childhood accident) twelve-year-old boy.  She spends every evening playing board games with her son. And Shaq, a small and scraggy homeless man with trauma-induced blank spots on his memory, trying to piece together the story of his life while assisting Father Joe at the Mercy Mission. As their stories intersect, the narrative vacillates between hope and naivete, comic relief and postmodern ennui.  Startling in its authenticity, this unforgettable novel reveals that no matter how far one has strayed from hope, there is always a way to return."  This was a difficult book to get into, in fact I put it aside for over two months and then finally decided to finish it - not because I enjoye...

Book Cover:  "A bittersweet story of recaptured youth and reclaimed love, with all the honed-steel suspense that signifies the trademark of this author. Keith Landry has lived long enough to have seen the end of the cold war; a war fought without uniforms or rules, a war that has claimed his career and his soul.  Now, he has come home to Spencerville, a town in the American heartland that is both familiar and strange, a town as tarnished as Landry himself. But for Landry, Spencerville has one attraction that time has not corrupted.  Her name is Annie Prentis, and she had been the one pure love of his youth.  Then came Vietnam, and a world gone crazy separated them.  Annie had long since married Cliff Baxter, the town's chief of police and its most powerful man, an unfaithful, net brutally possessive husband, a force more dangerous than any Landry has met on the fields of battle. Landry has vowed:  No more violence, No more killing.  But now he ha...

Is it a beautiful flower growing along the roadside or is it "just another weed"? When I was growing up, we called it a "carrot top", but I later found out it was also called "Queen Anne's Lace" - it's a "wild carrot" or it formal name is Daucus carota. Wikipedia states:  "Wild carrot was introduced and naturalized in North America, where it is often known as " Queen Anne 's lace".  It is so called because the flower resembles lace; the red flower in the center represents a blood droplet where Queen Anne pricked herself with a needle when she was making the lace. The function of the tiny red flower is to attract insects. Take a close look at the intricate white flower and you see that indeed it does look like white lace.  It is so delicate and beautiful and abundant in our Arkansas ditches.  I once again marvel at the beautiful wild flowers that God has created for us to enjoy. Is it a beautiful flower ...

Synopsis Shelfari " Alone . . . Massachusetts State Trooper Bobby Dodge watches a tense hostage standoff unfold through the scope of his sniper rifle. Just across the street, in wealthy Back Bay, Boston, an armed man has barricaded himself with his wife and child. The man’s finger tightens on the trigger and Dodge has only a split second to react . . . and forever pay the consequences. Alone . . . that’s where the nightmare began for cool, beautiful, and dangerously sexy Catherine Rose Gagnon. Twenty-five years ago, she was buried underground during a month-long nightmare of abduction and abuse. Now her husband has just been killed. Her father-in-law, the powerful Judge Gagnon, blames Catherine for his son’s death . . . and for the series of unexplained illnesses that have sent her own young son repeatedly to the hospital. Alone . . . a madman survived solitary confinement in a maximum security prison where he’d done hard time for the most sadistic of crimes. Now he walks the stre...

Synopsis from Shelfari:  "From the world's #1 bestselling crime writer comes the extraordinary new Kay Scarpetta novel. Port Mortuary, the title of Patricia Cornwell's 18th Scarpetta novel, is literally a port for the dead. In this fast-paced story, a treacherous path from Scarpetta's past merges with the high tech highway she now finds herself on. We travel back to the beginning of her professional career, when she enlisted in the Air Force to pay off her medical school debt and found herself ensnared in a gruesome case of what seemed to be vicious, racially motivated hate crimes against two Americans in South Africa. Now, more than twenty years and many career successes later, her secret military ties have drawn her to Dover Air Force Base, where she has been immersed in a training fellowship to master the art of CT-assisted virtual autopsy--a procedure the White House has mandated that she introduce in the private sector. As the chief of the new Cambridge Forensic C...

 Upon arriving home from our trip last week, my husband pulled into the drive, stopped half way to the house and proceeded to back up.  I thought to myself - Whatever are you doing now? He said, "Something is laying in the grass".  I couldn't imagine what he was talking about.  Then he pointed and told me to look.  I released my seat belt so I could look out of his window. What to my surprise I saw this tiny, little faun - all curled up.  No mama to be seen.  I asked, "Is she alive?"  My husband said yes and that she looked okay. We continued to the garage and I got Max in the house, so he wouldn't go check it out.  I wondered if something was wrong and mama just left it.  We proceeded to unload the car and get unpacked.  I looked out the window and there walking across the front yard was mama with baby following close behind.  It was no bigger than a small puppy.  At the edge of the woods, mama stopped and baby st...

It's ELMO everywhere!!!  We celebrated the twins second birthday!  What fun!!!  Shy at first, but then really got into the party mood. We had:     Elmo cupcakes     Elmo cake     Elmo veggie tray     Elmo fruit tray     Elmo streamers     Elmo balloons     Elmo lanterns     Pin the nose on Elmo     Elmo cards     Elmo dolls          Elmo, Elmo everywhere They both looked at the cupcakes, gingerly putting a finger in the frosting and then.... M ate the whole thing - P just kept checking out the people and everything going on and wasn't interested in eating. They started opening presents and then more and more and more - they went from one gift to the next,.   At the end of the day, we had two very tired little girls who promptly fell asleep and I'm sure they were dreaming of Elmo, Elmo everywhere.

Today is M & P's second birthday - where did these two years go? Wasn't it just yesterday when Mamma called to say they were going to the hospital?      And today, you're two years old. Wasn't it just yesterday that we were swaddling you in blankets for your nap?      And today, you're wrapping your baby dolls. Wasn't it just yesterday that we were trying to figure out how to feed you at the same time?      And today, you feed yourselves. Wasn't it just yesterday that M started standing by herself?     And today, she won't stand still. Wasn't it just yesterday that P got her first tooth?      And today, she has all of her baby teeth. Wasn't it just yesterday that there were two naps and a full night's sleep?      And today, only an afternoon nap (but still a full night's sleep). Wasn't it just yesterday M & P would sit quietly in Grandma's lap?      And today,...