We do not care that we were home tonight,not at a sports event, when we ate the unhealthy dinner of hot dogs, baked beans, potato chips & soda! #WDNCW
#WeeklyForecast
A few days late.
Top Row: #sundaybuddyread #shesaid
Mid Row: #AgathaChristieBookClubR3 #fiction #deadlyseries #audiobook
Last Row: #readyourkindle #InspectorBanksNovel #literarypoliceprocedural
Starting today. #AgathaChristieClubR3 #ChristieCapers
Between the smoke/haze & allergies - high, suggesting that “sensitive groups” stay inside, that is where I will be today.
pickI wish there was a rating between a Pick & a So-So. If there was,I would put this book in that category, because it was slow for me to get into.
A friend of Brunetti‘s wife asks his help in determining if her tern son uses drugs.Almost immediately after this request,his father is found unconscious on a bridge that results in a life altering brain injury.Brunetti investigates. Are these crimes connected?The ending result is a surprise for me.
We ended our day in Madison, CT by swimming at Hammonasset Beach.The ocean was warm enough for us to dive right in.It was quite refreshing so we spent over an hour delighting it.The haiku above was inspired by the beach. I think it‘s my 2nd attempt at creating a haiku.The “high” of the day inspired me.
Before dinner libation & snack. This coffee table book is fun to peruse in adjacent to The Small and the Mighty. #porchlife
Pictured are my August reads, minus my #ThematicCozies & #FictionalTraveler picks.
#OhCanada #AgathaChristieClubR3 #CommissiarioBrunettiSeries #literaryCrew #hashtagbrigade2025 #sundaybuddyread #SheSaid
#adventuresinphilosophy #preorderbookclub #Camplitsy
Probably overreaching,but I am on track with several of the buddyreads. I go back to work 8/24 which obviously will hugely impact my reading time.
Next to my porch in my garden while I was reading, a monarch butterfly visited my bee balm & milkweed! My neighbor has seen monarchs, & yellow & black swallowtails. When I stopped by for a chat, I had the privilege of seeing all three visit her garden. 🦋
Another beautiful day on my porch! #sundaybuddyread #coffeeandbooks #porchlfe #birdsong
Before dinner reading and libation. 75 degrees,soft breeze,sunshine,blue skies,birdsong-so peaceful.Time to contemplate on the day. #porchlife #serenity
#booksandlibation #HappyFridaydrinks #HappyFridayReadingHour
#5JoysFriday
1) Rainy for 2 days- we so need this water! Plus it has cooled from high 90s to 58 degrees this morning ; high 78 today!
2) My Indie bookshop visit yesterday
3) Libraries!
4) always Litsy!
5) always coffee!
🌧️☔️📚🤗👯☕️
Anyone want to join in?
The August 4, 2025 issue of The New Yorker arrived today. I love the cover featuring the steps of the MET. Below are 3 previous issues: 1955, 1977, 2007 whose covers featured the MET. Just “for fun” post. I feel blessed that we are but a train ride away from this museum, with all it‘s beauty for us to peruse.
Went to Riverbend Bookshop, my local Indie store to pick up my 2 preorders for July: the tagged book & The Listeners. Of course I chose 2 more books to bring home ( top 2 books pictured). #RiverbendBookshop #preorderbookclub #July
Mid-day coffee and a book. #coffeeandbooks
The faces of the 25 books I read this month. I have the summer off work ; obviously spent that time reading!
Stats:
16 mysteries - of the 16: 2 cozies, 2 historical mysteries, 3 Diverse mysteries,2 kindle, 2 audio. Others, no sub
category.
7 Nonfiction- if these: 2 memoirs
1 Poetry
1 fFiction
My month of July, 2025 Reading Stats. Mystery books the most read (no surprise, my escape) but more non-fiction than usual. Like to keep that up- #July2025Stats
A wonderful article on 5 women who sang protests songs during their career, published in Teen Vogue. ❤️✊🏻👏🏻👏🏻🎶
https://www.teenvogue.com/story/women-musicians-protest-songs-joan-baez-the-chic...
pick#libraryfind #coffeeandbooks 1891. Set in NYC & the Berkshires(MA). Pamela Thompson,intelligent,gutsy, & bold,lost everything,is in debt due to her husband‘s bad investments,& resulting suicide.She is hired by her lawyer Prescott, to catch suspecting thieving at Macy jewelry counter.A success,she is placed with the wife of a ruthless robber baron, H.Jennings, to investigate threats to her life.Complicated shenanigans & red herrings go on ⬇️
We do not care that we have bags of bottles & cans stacked high so the cats think its a jungle gym because it‘s too hot to do the work of taking to recycling. We do do not care that the cats HATE air conditioning so refuse to leave the un air conditioned kitchen so we have bowls of water everywhere that I persist on kicking over even though I know they are there. 🔥🥵😻🐾
Visited my library today & came home with all these books. Chose the tagged book to read- something light after all my heavy reading this week! #libraryfinds
pick“Every witness is unique,a living protest of sorts against the abject annihilation of the memory of his assassinated Jewish neighbors”(145).Why have I read this month 3 books addressing the holocaust,1 through a photograph,a 2nd,historical fiction following a real child,& this one, through bullets? I think I am seeing so many parallels to our president‘s attempt to turn this country into a dictatorship-I need the concrete.#MondayMood 🤬😡😢😭
Father Patrick Desbois‘s passionate commitment to honoring the 1.5 million Jews who died by bullets.
Early morning coffee, a book & my snuggly cats. What a satisfying way to start my day. ☕️📙😻😻
#MondayMood
My #HyggehourReadathon plans. Snuggling with my cats, my new obsession, Whole Foods ice cream sandwiches, & a book.
This is a library book that was referred to in the book Ravine by Wendy Lower. Started it today. Like her book, it is a record of a holocaust by bullets rather than death camps, mostly in Eastern Europe. #toomanybookstoolittletime #libraryhold
pickThis is based loosely on a real life Underground Library established in Bethnal Green station,& all the community building activities /events that occurred there.The “found family” group of women the novel follows over the course of a year (1939-1940), are transformed by the challenges of the bombing during the Blitz,sustaining the library underground,reading aloud as a community bookclub,& as a consequence,creating an ever expanding community.
#JulyJazz #Kittens
We got our “ babies” from a shelter when they were 6 months old, in 2011 (top picture). 13 years later they have gray/white hair in their coats ( not unlike their parents). They are such joy! All the snuggles & love they give us…Emmy follows my husband around like a duckling; Poe snuggles me & sleeps next to me. Anytime, day or night, if I am prone, he appears, like magic.
#5JoysFriday
1)taking the train to NYC to see the John Singer Sargent exhibition at the MET
2) hiking with my son
3)COFFEE
4)LITSY! all the camaraderie, support, friendship, love, etc. etc. makes for joy!
5) my porch & garden
Tagging any Litten who wants to play!
Joining @mcctrish @Aims42 @Tamra in their #FridayHappyReadibgHour It‘s raining (relief from the heat 🔥🔥) so My husband & I had Campari & soda with lime while reading indoors.
Jonsey speaks to the unbearable anguish of generations of Native American tribes indigenous to the Americas,who lost their land, their way of life, their culture, their language, their children, and their families to the imperialism, persecution, and genocide perpetuated by the invading White Europeans.
This book is much more than a murder mystery.
The writing in this novel is spare, elegant, gritty.
Cash is so easy to love.
Slept in late, was tired after yesterday‘s hike & a trip to Wegmans- opening day in Norwalk, CT but about an hour + ride so it became a day trip. of course we came home with many delights!
Having coffee on the porch before it hits the 90s in late afternoon. A soft breeze, how refreshing! - hoping to see my hummingbird friend- usually it‘s early morning when I spot him. #coffeeandbooks #porchlife
More hiking the Wagner Woods Preserve. It was once farmland, ages ago. We have a bear bell from my brother/sister-in-law attached to my son‘s backpack to announce our presence, & I had an ammonia soaked cloth in my pants pocket. Simsbury has a high bear population. 🐻
At 7:30 this morning my son & I went on an almost 2 mile hike in Wagner Woods, a Simsbury Land Trust Preserve. Such magnificent beauty: forest, woodlands, wetlands,grassy knolls, bogs, a vernal pool, wild flowers, birds. Being immersed in nature‘s bounty on a sunny breezy morning is pure bliss.
pickCOTR:An indigent ex-college professor, who 40 yrs ago was dismissed for alleged sexual misconduct, is found dead,with $$$ in his picket.Suspicious,DCI Banks investigates.The case takes him to past politics & militant protests of the 60s/70s & to the current upper echelon of society. ITDP:Body counts are high in this dark, gruesome tale.2 young men go missing. A truck goes down an embankment,revealing a corpse in bags. Banks & his team are 🔽
pickBB:After a neighbor of DCI Banks reports her daughter Erin has a gun in her home,a shocking death occurs.Erin‘s best friend is Bank‘s daughter Tracy,who is missing along with a psychopath “Bad Boy”.Enraged,with his heart in his throat,Banks & DI Cabbot are on the hunt.Cabbot gets caught up in the crossfire,with dark consequences.
WTD:while investigating a murder of a fellow officer, Banks travels a circuitous route to Estonia.He confronts human ⬇️
