The Medium Life

I've just finished this fabulous book from Debbie Macomber. I'm not a love-all-of-Debbie's stuff reader at all, but this was a terrific story. Our heroine Shay is a girl with a past who has just been released from prison and finds herself in a church one  day, just sitting there to get out of the Seattle cold. The pastor, Drew, offers to help her and she ends up in a programme to get her life on track. Drew's wife died a few years earlier and he's raising two kids on his own, but he finds himself drawn to Shay and drawn to her resilience to get her life on track, to get a job and a place of her own, and to take classes to move ahead into a future she could only dream about. What did I like about this story? Pretty much everything, actually.  There were really likeable and relateable characters, a heroine who really has a good heart and is determined to try and make a go of life. A hero who sees beyond her gruff exterior and finds himself attracted to a woma...

Posting excerpts cos its an excerpt kind of season. Here's one from All About Sage . The reception was informal, with finger foods and desserts, waiters serving champagne, and a jazz trio playing softly in the background. Sage spent some time talking with Mrs Parker, Jack’s housekeeper, who was running through the details of a murderer who had appealed to a higher court for a retrial. “ So how do you know Robyn?” Mrs Parker asked when she’d finished listing the reasons why he was so clearly guilty and wasting taxpayer money on a joke retrial. “ We’re neighbours. She rented the house next door to me when her marriage broke up. We’ve been neighbours for just a couple of years but it feels like forever. We’ve become—” She held up her fingers knotted together. “Like that.” “ I see.” Mrs Parker nodded sympathetically. Strands of her wild grey hair escaped from her bun. “You lose your friend and you end up getting new neighbours. Good luck with that.” Sage exhaled....

Love this.

I have been quite inspired to go and read some of the classics, following an article in one of the local papers about a father reading books with heroic girl characters, with his own daughters.  It so happened that I was away for a few days this past week and in the collection of books in the house, I found an old 1956 (from memory) copy of  The Secret Garden. So I decided to read it. Now, two things struck me, One was that I don't recall ever having read the story at all before. And the second was that... I absolutely loved it. From beginning to end and in the middle, I loved it. I did skip over some of the garden description because, you know, short attention span and all that, quite unlike (I am sure) my grandmother who probably read this book when she was a girl and did no such thing as skip pages of botannical description. It was actually a perfect few days to read something like this.  The weather was grand in that cold, early-winter way where the days are l...

I have taken it upon myself to invent recipes, mainly because, let's face it, half the recipes you read are just dumb. As in, who has these ingredients in the house? Plus one gets a bit bored, no matter how much one just adores lasagne. So the other night I was thinking what to have, and I sat there with my cook books (note that most of them were thanks to the library book sale, ridiculously great books at absurdly low prices - bliss!) and nothing jumped out as such, but I did have a brainwave. Here is what I did; I marinated sliced schnitzel in garlic, soy and a bit of peanut oil. I chopped up pumpkin, carrots, an onion or two, discovered I had a lone choko, so added that in and roasted this with paprika, some sugar, (yes, a dash of sugar, oh the sin), some oil and I think that was it. Half way through I had another brain wave, and chucked in a can of brown lentils. To be fair, lentils could be one of those naff ingredients you don't have, but am a bit of a fan of them, s...

Last week I gave a library talk on the romance genre titled " You Read That Trash?"  as part of a heritage talk series. Romance novels of course are loaded with fabulous heritage aspects, from the amazing covers themselves, to the social history of women  through the century. One fascinating aspect was the popularity of medical romances and how, according to one commentator, it was because many of the writers were nurses, and as the National Health Service  came into being in the 1950s, these women were keen to promote it amidst the changing landscape of health. On the cover art front, several of the covers were designed by artist Jack B. Faulks who produced a lot of pop-culture covers. He often had the man standing just behind the heroine, as in the Nora Sanderson cover and the Essie Summers. It was also an opportunity to look into the Mills and Boon company and see how they came to be publishers of romance novels; originally they were general fiction and non fi...

This past month (that would be March) was pretty pathetic in the reading stakes I was pleased to see one of the books I judged for the Romance Writers of America RITA awards that I gave high scores to had finalled. Always nice to know that what I think is a really great romance novel is backed up by a finals placing. I did read Shopaholic to the Stars but have to say that I am kind of over the series. The first few Shopaholic books I just raved about but now, am not so sure.  I do, however, just love Sophie Kinsella's single title novels to bits (The Undomestic Goddess, Can You Keep A Secret? and Remember Me), so will stick with those in future. While Becky always manages to redeem herself, she is, let's face it, an unbelievably annoying character. I read an old David Baldacci, perfect for my recent flight down country - Stone Cold, part of the Camel Club series. A fast paced thriller sure has its place on the reading pile. I currently have a stack of good old fashion...