Help, bird watchers! (Identified!)

We found this nest in our hanging flowers this morning. It's very small, palm sized. The eggs are maybe half an inch long, pale blue. The mama bird is small and fluttery, but very fast so I didn't get a good look. (To be honest, I wasn't expecting her to fly out of the flowers!)

Edited: it has been identified as a House Finch- sounds like they have a couple broods a year. How exciting!

I can't wait to see if they hatch!
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Whiskey Beach by Nora Roberts (briefly)

As I'm sitting down to write up this book, all I can really think is that I've done this. I've written a similar review about a Nora Roberts book. Don't get me wrong, Whiskey Beach is a perfectly fine book, but there's really not a lot of new things to say about it. To condense a 500 page book into a list of bullet points seems a bit silly, but here you go:

Whiskey Beach is/has:

• Exactly what you'd expect from Nora Roberts.
• Easy to read, with a touch of not-really-dramatic suspense. She doesn't hide who-done-it. As usual.
• Filled with likeable characters, mostly stereotypes. This one has the Lawyer whose heart wasn't in it (-in hindsight), the Earthy Yoga Mama, and the Police Detective Who Knows He's Right, Even if He Isn't.
• Good, readable, but not particularly memorable.
• The romance is better than in most Roberts stand-alones, and I particularly enjoyed Abra's honesty, but it wasn't one that had me sighing in happiness at the end. 
• Has a terrific cover.

And there ya go. I will, of course, continue to read Nora Roberts, but I admit a preference for her 3 and 4 book series to the stand alone titles.

Mother's Day weekend

I had The Best weekend. For Mother's Day Mike got me an empty hotel room! It was glorious. No one asked me for a single thing.



Then we hung out in the backyard, mostly playing flip the hammock.



The Princess and I played with paper doll style barbies and took selfies in the sun.




Mike and I cleaned the car and washed the windows. We bought flowers for the hanging pots.




And I planted herbs in my big planter, instead of flowers.( There isn't really obvious garden space at the new house. )




I found some cute plates at the thrift store- there were five of them, so it seemed meant to be.



I hope you all had as lovely of a weekend.





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Book Report 1

I haven't blogged much lately, and honestly I don't mind. I'm not writing a post to apologize. Life is crazy busy these days as we try to figure out our new routines. Mike seems to be out of town more than he is IN town, and even on their best days three kids are a lot of work. But I do miss being able to go back and look at what I've been reading week to week. In an effort to help myself remember, I’m instituting a new recurring blog post- the Book Report. I’d like to do it weekly, but honestly, it may be less often. It’ll be pretty fluid, depending on what happened in my reading life, but I do love to go back and look at what I was reading, so I don’t forget.

Currently Reading:

A Week to Be Wicked by Tessa Dare. I’m totally reading this series out of order, but I have it on good authority it won’t matter. Dare’s style is witty and humorous without being completely slapstick. Minerva is smart and not afraid to be different.

Whiskey Beach by Nora Roberts. I wasn’t expecting to be reading this chunkster just now, but it came up at the library and of course it has a wait list, so I am. I am nearly done, and enjoying it tremendously.

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone by J K Rowling. The boys and I are reading this at bedtime. They both know the story fairly well, thanks to the movies and the Wii games, but this is the first time we’ve attempted the books. 

American Savage by Dan Savage. This one is about sex, faith, and politics. I'm reading it on the Nook during my work breaks and it's a bit of a disconnect to read about s-e-x at work! Thankfully, it's not a how-to!

Recently Finished:

All He Ever Dreamed by Shannon Stacey- review here

The Madness Underneath by Maureen Johnson. Another unrenewable library book. Didn't enjoy it quite as much as book one, but can't wait to see where she goes with the ending.

Coming up next!

 By the Shores of Silver Lake by Laura Ingalls Wilder. For the Read-a-long, which I think is dying a slow, quiet death, but I feel like I should read the South Dakota ones! This one should have already been read, but it didn't happen.  See: Currently Reading.

I have a ton of other interesting NetGalley books waiting in the wings, but I just ran out of time before I could decide what might be next, whoops! Sorry for the lack of pictures, but at least you go links!

What are you reading? Have you read any of these? What are you reading next?

Sadly, two DNFs

First, The Honest Toddler. I wanted to love this, I did. I love @HonestToddler on Twitter. I like humor. I typically enjoy parenting memoirs. So why didn't I? Because an entire book of it is just overwhelming. I imagine that a lot of people are going to find this incredibly funny, and the book will do well, but I will not be part of that group.

The Honest Toddler: A Child's Guide to Parenting will be published on May 7, 2013. My copy provided by NetGalley.

The second, Midnight Secrets by Ella Grace. Even my romance loving heart couldn't take the writing in this one. 70 pages of backstory before the real story begins, lots of clunky foreshadowing and repetition, but it doesn't really go anywhere (at least to the point where I stopped.) Our hero and heroine had a great relationship in those 70 pages, but once we got to current day it was all badly written sexual tension, and eh, I'd rather read someone who does it well. But, to be completely honest, I may go back to this one. If it were a paper copy I'd have skipped the middle and read the last few chapters to see how the suspense portions end, but that's tricky in an ebook. I wouldn't mind knowing how the suspense plays out, but not enough to keep reading a boring book.

Midnight Secrets: The Wildefire Series by Ella Grace will be published on April 30, 2013. My copy provided by NetGalley.

All He Ever Dreamed by Shannon Stacey

Josh Kowalski is finally breaking free of the family lodge. His siblings all found a  way to get away and start lives of their owns, but as the baby of the family he was the last one there, and never got his chance. Now he’s 30 years old and has never lived anywhere else or done anything else. After an honest discussion with his family last summer, he finally came clean about how much he wanted a chance at getting free, and the lodge is prepared for such an event.  Katie has been his best friend forever. As the daughter of the housekeeper, and de-facto mother to the Kowalskis, Katie has always been there, and always been in love with Josh. Everyone knows it. Everyone knows they are destined to be together as well, except Josh.  As Josh’s big break approaches will be realize his true feelings or will he leave Katie behind with the inn?

Friends to lovers, top of my list, right?  After reading Ryan and Lauren’s story (All He Ever Desired), I was pretty ambivalent about picking up another Shannon Stacey. I mean, it was good, but not terrific, and perhaps a bit predictable. But I’m a sucker for a book in a series (see also: Nora Roberts, Susan Mallery, Jill Shalvis) so when I saw it was available for request at NetGalley I asked for it. I read it pretty quickly, despite the craziness of my life. It was exactly what you’d expect it to be from the description and there were absolutely no surprises. The writing is not knock your socks off great, and the plot isn’t anything you couldn’t think up on your own. Josh and Katie aren’t surprising in any way, and honestly, the moment they “cross the line” is pretty sloppily done (and since this is my favorite bit of a friends to lovers story, it was disappointing to me.)  I’d love to have seen more of Josh’s thought process as he realized he was in love with her, but except for him suddenly noticing she was hot, there wasn’t much of that. The author tells us several times that he can’t talk about his feelings, that Josh just doesn’t DO that, but it almost seemed an excuse for him not to have any introspection. For Katie, she just loved him, period.  The more I write about this book the worse it sounds!  It wasn’t bad, honest, it just wasn’t really GOOD either, if you know what I mean?

At this point I wouldn’t recommend the series to anyone else, but I will likely request the next one if I see it come up on NetGalley. I find that I am fairly curious about the sister’s story.


All He Ever Dreamed will be published on April 30, 2013.
Review copy courtesy of NetGalley.

Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell

There has been a lot of buzz lately about how terrific Eleanor & Park is lately, including this terrific review by John Green.  I am almost embarrassed to admit how long I sat on this one before finally settling down to read it. I requested it from NetGalley on October 14! Once it’s publication date drew near I started to think about getting it read (it’s hard to tell, but I am making an effort to read my NetGalley books as they are released, or just before. Or I was, before the move and all.)  I started it in earnest before I started working, but it wasn’t long before I was distracted by the stack of paper library books. But then, once I went to work, things changed. I started taking my Nook every day, because it’s so much easier to read in short bursts. So … wait, why do I explain myself like this EVERY SINGLE BOOK? Onward!

Eleanor is new in school. Her history is a bit unknown, she dresses funny, her hair is very very red, and she is not petite. On her first day she rides the bus and is forced to sit by Park, who doesn’t talk to her. Park reads comics and listens to music and while he isn’t disliked, he isn’t exactly popular either. Park just IS. Over time, Park begins to share his comics with her, and discovers a witty, sarcastic personality in Eleanor. He begins to look forward to their time together on the bus and to miss her when they are apart. He can’t stop thinking about her or watching her at school and is soon completely smitten. Eleanor is a bit more hesitant. She doesn’t trust people and is all too aware of the things that make her different.  She finds it impossible to believe that someone as beautiful as Park would find anything at all appealing about her, and while she’s much less willing to admit her feelings to him, she’s willing to admit them to herself. The falling in love- the delicious tension and suspense-  is so well done. This is, more than anything else, a story about falling in love for the first time.  Oh there are bits of the 80s here, and a good bit of the awful home life Eleanor has, but really, it’s the wonder of completely falling for someone else. Of being nearly unable to stand being near to them, just the slightest touch feeling like an electric shock. Every word you speak has meaning and feeling and at the same time you just can’t stop talking.

The back story of Eleanor’s home life is left to the shadows, and there are some creepy bits that are never really explained, but I think in hindsight this works well, because the story isn’t really about that. It’s about the feeling of falling in love, even when everything else is going bad, and you realize things aren’t stable. Eleanor is always hesitant to make a bad move, lest everything fall down and it eventually all does. I have a few little quibbles about the ending, and how prettily most of it is tied up, but overall I really enjoyed this one.

(PS. I notice as of the time of this writing you can get it for Kindle for $4.99)

Disclosure: I received a copy of this for review from NetGalley.