Writings, Wanderings

There are so many good books to read out there and so little time that choosing can be hard. I love following Instagram but I've noticed most of the books featured in those photos are fairly recent releases. While new books definitely deserve our attention, I also want to highlight books that have been around a bit longer that probably will never fall into the classics category but could be just the read someone is looking for. So read on for my first installment in Throwback Thursdays: Books. Dee Henderson is a well-known author in the Christian romantic suspense world but in the early 2000's, I had never heard of this author. My roommate bought the first book of her O'Malley series for me--in Spanish. I borrowed an English copy from the library to make the reading easier and soon fell in love with this family (I now own all the books in the series). These are my favorite books from Henderson. Kate is a fierce protagonist. She knows she is good at her job, is una...

Three novels read in the month of December! The ABC Murders by Agatha Christie was a smooth read and probably my favorite of the month. The characters were not overly developed but I read Christie for the plot, the mystery. As usual, I didn't guess the murderer, but it is always fun to see how the events tie together once the puzzle is laid out. The book also brought up the issue of mental illness and PTSD long before it was talked about in mainstream conversation which I found interesting. The Cost of Betrayal was a set of novellas by Dee Henderson, Dani Pettrey, and Lynette Eason. While I enjoyed these reads, I did not feel that they were of the same caliber as the full-length novels I have read by the first two writers. Reflecting a few days after wrapping up the book, I think my favorite novella ended up being "Betrayal" by Dee Henderson. I feel as though the blurb was a little misleading but the story was interesting. In both "Deadly Isle" by Dani P...

How did your November reading go? I finished four novels (one as an audiobook). My favorite one was the audiobook and happened to my book club's choice for the month which means I never would have picked this one up on my own. It is my favorite because the author did such a good job with her research but the book itself was gut-wrenching. Placed in the 1920's and 30's, Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America's Shining Women  by Kate Moore traces the struggle faced by the women who worked for the radium companies to have their health problems diagnosed and then compensated as the ugly truth surfaced that they had become sick through their jobs. I was amazed to learn how radium had been considered healthy enough to add to their water, paint on their faces, and put in sandboxes. With this public perception, it was not surprising that it took doctors so long to pinpoint the source of the women's problems, but the companies' avoidance of their responsibility an...

September has been a rough reading month for me. I've struggled to make time to read to start with, work, coaching, and marathon training eating up most of my energy. Adding to my low book count is the fact that I had not one but two books that went into my DNF pile. I try very hard to finish any book I start (there was one that took me two years but I finally finished it over this past summer). *My reviews may include spoilers.* I began the month by finishing Dark, Witch & Creamy, the first book in the Bewiched by Chocolate Series by H.Y. Hanna. This had been a free download to my Kindle and falls into the fluffy read category. I loved the chocolate connections and appreciated the overall clean feeling to the book. For some reason I expected more romance even though the blurb does not lean that direction. I would pick up the next book in the series if I saw it was available at the library. However, I could not get into my book club this month: Answer as a Man by Ta...