How I spent my summer vacation

There wasn’t a lot of quilting done this summer, but there was a LOT of this:

Toby is approaching the 9 month mark now, and is starting to be just a little less puppy and a little more dog, but not by much.

Without much quiet time to break out the needle and thread, I have turned to the written word for entertainment.  Here’s a few books I read a this summer that I thought were worth mentioning.

 

The first is “A Single Thread”  by Marie Bostwick.  The story is centered around the happenings at a quilt shop, and is told from the point of view of two different characters.  I found it to be a really enjoyable read, with characters you could care about, and, of course, Quilting!

 

Next was “Hooked on Murder” by Betty Hechtman.   As you might guess from the title, this one is a murder mystery.  The “hooked” part is because it concerns a group of ladies who crochet.  It was a pleasant enough read, but it felt a little bit like the crochet part was an afterthought to the story.  A good one to borrow from the library, but I wouldn’t buy it.

 

I’m a big fan of Jane Austen, and have read her books, listened to them on tape, and of course watched the movies.   There are a lot of writers who are offering alternative books for Austen fans, many claiming to be written “in the style” of Jane Austen.  Some do a better job than others, and so I usually read the book reviews carefully on Amazon before I decide to buy any of them.  This one, called “Confessions of a Jane Austen Addict” by Laurie Viera Rigler is about a modern girl who wakes up one day and finds herself living in the time of Jane Austen.  I enjoyed it not so much because the story was particularly engaging, but because it was fun to realize just how different the lifestyle of a young woman was from our modern experience, and yet how much the same are our feelings.  (Probably why Austen fans still find her books appealing.)

 

And while on the subject of Jane Austen, I also read “The Lost Memoirs of Jane Austen” by Syrie James.  The premise of this book is that Jane Austen’s memoirs turn up in an attic.   It’s written very well and loosely based on some of the things we know about Austen’s life.  The author makes connections between fictional events in the book to characters and events in Austen’s novels to try and show how Jane’s life may have inspired her writing.

 

Last, but certainly not least, is this series of “Monk” novels by Lee Goldberg.  They are like finding lost episodes of the “Monk” television series.  The author gets the tone of each character exactly right, and I read parts of them out loud to my family because I was enjoying them so much.  They are quick to read, and if you like the TV show, you are sure to like the books.

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Like so many, I can’t  look at the calendar today and not remember September 11th.  Toby and I recently visited the September 11th Memorial site in our town.  Very solemn.