Bookish Miscellany

Welcome to my weekly update for December 4, 2022! I hope everyone who celebrates had a wonderful Thanksgiving! My husband and I were on our own on Thanksgiving day but we flew down to San Diego the following Saturday to spend a long weekend with his cousin. They've taken us in and treated us like royalty for a lot of holidays since we started traveling in early 2019. If you like reading Sarah Addison Allen's books (as I do), you should check her out on Instagram this month. Last year she shared a tiny Christmas story every day in December on that platform as a sort of virtual advent calendar. The stories were delightful. I was so excited to see that she's doing it again this year! We felt late to the party but we drove in to Sacramento just before Thanksgiving to see Beyond Van Gogh: The Immersive Experience. We loved it! There were actually two different immersive van Gogh shows in town at the same time but this one was rated slightly better. The display is on about an hourlong loop. It was magical to watch his artwork come to life all around us. The soundtrack was fantastic too. We loved it so much that we hung around and watched it twice. I can't speak for all the different immersive shows but we highly recommend this one if you like van Gogh's art! These shows travel all over the country so if you haven't seen one yet, check the website I linked to or do a search and I bet one will be coming to your area soon. Slideshow: I love walking along the Embarcadero in San Diego. This day was cloudy but these sunbeams broke through in the late afternoon. The Star of India, the world's oldest…

Welcome to my weekly update for November 20, 2022! Well hello there! Long time, no see! My last update was on August 28. I wrote in that post that my husband and I were coming out of a quiet few weeks just hanging around Billings, Montana and we had a couple of busy weekends planned. I did not intend to disappear for almost three months! We finished up our time in Billings on September 10 and took a couple of weeks to sightsee and get to my husband's next work assignment in Lodi, California. (If you're new here, he's a traveling healthcare professional and works about three months at a time at different hospitals around the country) Lodi isn't the most exciting location, though it is actually more beautiful than we expected with all the wineries and roses still blooming everywhere. But what drew us here is all the national parks and other scenic areas within about a three-hour drive. And you know we love our national parks! Since I last posted, we visited these national parks: Glacier, Theodore Roosevelt, Yellowstone (yes, again), Grand Teton, Crater Lake, Lassen Volcanic, Yosemite, Sequoia & Kings Canyon. We also visited Craters of the Moon National Monument in Idaho, Lake Tahoe in California and Nevada, and just spent a weekend exploring Mendocino and Point Reyes National Seashore here in California. We've been super busy and super blessed to see so many amazing places! Our internet connection is not good at our current location so it's been hard for me to post and read blogs. I try to only indulge my blog habit while my husband is at work. At this job, his days off completely overlap with my usual days to visit your blogs. So here we are. I should be able to make…

Welcome to my weekly update for August 28, 2022! Three weeks in a row with no real adventures to report. This must be some sort of record for me! My husband has had to work a lot of call shifts recently so that ties us down within 30 minutes of the hospital. We'll be out exploring again soon though! Posted: A Cuban Girl’s Guide to Tea and Tomorrow by Laura Taylor Namey, read by Frankie Corzo 🌟🌟🌟🌟 Ten Completed Series That I Wish Had More Books Wild Rover No More: Being the Last Recorded Account of the Life & Times of Jacky Faber by L. A. Meyer, read by Katherine Kellgren 🌟🌟🌟 Read: 20,000 Leagues under the Sea by Jules Verne, translated by Anthony Bonner 🌟🌟🌟 Currently Reading: Other Birds by Sarah Addison Allen--You read that right. I finished reading this last week but I inhaled it. I'm re-reading it more slowly now so I can actually take notes for a review (I'm hoping to post about it this week since it's released on August 30). Case Histories (Jackson Brodie #1) by Kate Atkinson, read by Susan Jameson Through the Language Glass: Why the World Looks Different in Other Languages by Guy Deutscher Up Next: I would like to read The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie for Banned Books Week (September 18-24) but it feels like I'm currently on the hold list at my libraries along with every other reader in the country. I'll probably check out The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas while I'm waiting. What did your week look like? Hosts: Deb Nance at Readerbuzz hosts The Sunday Salon and Kimberly at Caffeinated Book Reviewer hosts Sunday Post. Kathryn at Book Date hosts It's Monday! What Are You Reading?

Welcome to my weekly update for August 21, 2022! We had another quiet week here. My husband is on call again this weekend so we have to stay within 30 minutes of the hospital. But that gives us time to recover from all our activity this summer so that's fine by me! The organizers of the Cybils Awards are recruiting judges now through September 9! If you review books for kids anywhere on the internet (picture and board books all the way to young adult books and everything in between), you should consider applying. I was a round one panelist for the high school nonfiction category last year and thoroughly enjoyed it! I read books I would never had read on my own and learned so much, I feel that the pool of knowledge I bring to the table as a reader has grown tremendously. It's a lot of fun! I haven't decided if I'm going to apply this year simply because I have so many other projects I want to work on but I encourage anyone who's interested to go for it! Posted: The Feast of Roses by Indu Sundaresan, read by Sneha Mathan: Book Review 🌟🌟🌟🌟 Read: I have an affiliate relationship with Malaprop’s Bookstore/Cafe in beautiful Asheville, NC. I will earn a small commission at no additional cost to you if you purchase merchandise through links on my site.  Other Birds by Sarah Addison Allen 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟 I may turn around and read this again as soon as I finish my current Kindle book. It was that good. If any of you are in the Asheville, NC area, Ms. Allen is launching this book in an event with Wiley Cash at UNC-Asheville on August 30. If flights weren't so expensive right now, I'd be tempted to go home for this signing.…

Welcome to my weekly update for August 14, 2022! This was a quiet week. My husband was on call at work last weekend and really just wanted to relax this weekend. I planned to read less last week so I could sort through all my Montana pictures (why take one picture when I can take four marginally different photos?) but that didn't happen. I dropped my phone and cracked it across the camera lens. Luckily I have a protection plan that allowed me to get a replacement but I've been transferring everything over and setting that up. I don't usually mind that task but since I just got this phone in April, I do not find it enjoyable now. *sigh* I'm just thankful I only had to pay a relatively small deductible. I don't have any travel photos to share this week so here are pictures of my sister's two cute doggos and our beautiful farmer's market bounty. Slideshow: Posted: Love is a Mix Tape: Life and Loss, One Song at a Time, written and read by Rob Sheffield Dark Waters (Small Spaces #3) by Katherine Arden, read by Renee Dorian Hilarious Book Titles Read: I have an affiliate relationship with Malaprop’s Bookstore/Cafe in beautiful Asheville, NC. I will earn a small commission at no additional cost to you if you purchase merchandise through links on my site.  A River Runs Through It and Other Stories by Norman Maclean 🌟🌟🌟🌟 Best Kept Secret (Clifton Chronicles #3) by Jeffrey Archer, read by Alex Jennings 🌟🌟🌟🌟 Allow Me to Retort: A Black Guy’s Guide to the Constitution by Elie Mystal 🌟🌟🌟🌟 Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life by Amy Krouse Rosenthal 🌟🌟🌟🌟 Currently Reading: Other Birds by Sarah Addison Allen (A huge thank you to Katie at Doing Dewey! She sent me an ARC when she saw this…

Welcome to my weekly update for August 7, 2022! My sister flew home yesterday after a fabulous visit. We all drove the Beartooth Highway on Saturday (we saw mountain goats)!) and then on Sunday my sister and I took off to spend three nights in Yellowstone. I've only visited the south loop on my other visits because of weather events, but this time we were able to do the entire figure 8 drive. Woohoo! (The north and northeast entrance roads are still closed so we weren't able to visit those.) Summer flowers were probably at their peak both on the Beartooth Highway and throughout Yellowstone. They were so beautiful! We had the iconic experience of getting caught in a mercifully brief "bison jam" as a small herd of those ruminants took their time wandering down the road and bringing traffic to a halt. We also stumbled onto Grand Geyser's eruption. It is predictable but the predicted time is +/- 90 minutes and I am not patient enough to sit for 3 hours waiting for it. We arrived toward the end of the window and only waited about 30 minutes or so. It's taller and lasts longer than Old Faithful. Very impressive! One of my good friends was supposed to fly in for a weeklong visit the same day that my sister left but some things came up so she had to cancel. ☹️ Slideshow: View from the Beartooth Highway. You might be able to see the road snaking down the mountainside.Lupine blooming beside the Beartooth HighwayMountain goats on the Beartooth HighwayMammoth Hot SpringsBison jam. Everyone stayed in their cars, tried to give the animals space, and mostly kept moving, surprisingly enough. I had my phone out the window while the cars in front of me were stopped but pulled it…