My First Book Arrived

The first of the books I won arrived at the end of last week, and I dedicated some time this weekend to read it. It was amazing! Check out my review, which I posted on Goodreads:

The Expats: A Novel by Chris Pavone

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


I received this book for free through Goodreads First Reads.

The Expats is a fantastic spy thriller that kept me hooked from beginning to end. I was initially unconvinced by the flashback/flashforward presentation of the story, however as the story went on this helped to clarify the situation Kate was in while still allowing the author to throwing twist after twist at the reader, until the ending was as unpredictable as anything that came before it.

Kate and Dexter are your average American couple, raising 2 young boys and struggling to make ends meet, until Dexter informs Kate that they are moving to Luxembourg where he has unexpectedly received a lucrative job offering. Having known she wanted something different in her life, without quite knowing what that is, Kate agrees and begins tying up loose ends. Although it's a littler harder for her than it would be for most wives, considering that her loose ends revolve around a 15-year career at the CIA.

As we follow Kate's journey across the ocean and into a new country, we soon learn, as does she, that nothing is as it seems. Sweet unassuming Dexter has more than one secret he is keeping and some of the Expat wives Kate meets and befriends are not at all what they seem to be on the surface. In fact soon Kate finds herself embroiled in a mystery that rivals anything she encountered in her years with the CIA. She'll need to brush off her rusty field skills to figure this one out before it destroys her family.

My only reservation about this book is the very very end - literally the last 2 pages. The rest was pure enjoyment, with fleshed out characters, interesting twists and turns in the storyline, and a heroine that readers are invested in. Kate is smart and funny and determined and dedicated to her family and not at all perfect, which makes her relatable and easy to spend time with - and spend time with her I did, once I sat down with this book it was very hard to get back up!



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Back and Better Than Ever

Not me, silly.  I'm talking about E-Scape and Scrap, Julie Mead's Digital Scrapbook Boutique.  (I'm on the Creative Team at E-Scape and Scrap.)  At the end of June the store was forced offline due to fraud at their server host.  All changes made to the site and the gallery since April were suddenly gone, with no way to recover them.  That included the custom design of Julie site.  It was obviously devestating but Julie preservered.  Throughout July she worked tirelessly to restore the site, and when that was not possible she worked to rebuild.  The site is now back online, with the added bonus of being available both at .com and .net addresses.  Designers are reloading their products and there might be a surprise or two on the way (don't tell her I told you ;-)).  Also, the designers have created a collaboration kit called "Hot Mess," available free on the blog, as a call-out against the crimes committed here.  Check it out!

In the meantime, the Creative Team is back to work.  Here are the first couple of layouts I completed since the site was up, these are using Cheryl McCain's new Mosaic kit, which she designed in celebration of the reopening of the store.

She Waits
We recently had the opportunity (Lisa, Tabatha and I) to attend a book signing at the Romance Writer's of America Annual Conference at Disney's Dolphin Resort.  Approximately 500 authors were available to sign books, and books were available to purchase.  We found out about it because two authors that we love were a part of the book signing - Maria V Snyder (Poison Study) and Melissa de la Cruz (Blue Boods).  One of them sent it to Lisa in their monthly newsletter.  It's a good thing one of us is reading newsletters.  Here is Tabatha as we waited in line for the conference arena to open - she missed the parade of authors (and Melissa de la Cruz) but she did get to meet and talk with her after we were inside.

Maria V Snyder
Once inside we made a beeline for the authors we knew before wandering around to see who else was there.  Maria V Snyder had one of her new books for sale, Inside Out (which is amazing).  She also had news on her newest of the Glass series books, Spy Glass.  She assured me we'd see plenty of Valek in that book.  Yay!  She was super-nice and talked to us for a while.

I'll see you again soon!  In the meantime, check out the restored E-Scape and Scrap Boutique as well as a couple of my favorite authors.

And She's Back... With Birthday Wishes

Well, that was quite the hiaitus.  Sorry about that!  July was a very busy month for us - we took a second Disney cruise, among other fun activities.

Today is Ranger's birthday!  If that doesn't mean anything to you then I'd say you are missing out on one of the funnest (and funniest) series around - Janet Evanovich's Stephanie Plum series.  Beginning with One for the Money and most recently with Sizzling Sixteen, Janet Evanovich has captivated audiences everywhere with her wit and humor, and with the girl-next-door turned bounty hunter character Stephanie Plum.  Her books are laugh out loud funny - I've successfully gotten a number of people hooked on them - will you be next?  I hope so!

Getting back to the point - Ranger is one of two love interests for Stephanie in the series; he's also her bounty hunter mentor.  He owns and runs RangeMan, a security firm.  He's the best of the best and we love him.  Personally I love him more when he's not trying to steal Stephanie away from Joe Morelli, her rightful boyfriend, but Ranger is Batman so you can't hold too much against him.  Janet Evanovich sent Lisa an email (OK, she sent an email out to her fan distribution list, but according to Lisa these are direct links between her and the author, lol) to remind her that Ranger's birthday is August 12 and that we should celebrate with cake.  We already knew Ranger's birthday was coming up because Tabatha had added it to the MyFamily site calendar. 

Lisa thought the cake was an excellent idea so she went to the Publix bakery to see what they could do for her.  She ordered a Batman chocolate birthday cake that said "Happy Birthday Ranger" and the rest is, as they say, history.  We all dressed up in black shirts (that's the official RangeMan uniform, all black) with Lisa wearing the actual RangeMan shirt that I'd given her for her birthday.  It was my opportunity to wear one of the Oakley shirts I'd gotten as an early birthday present from Dad.  Even Trinity wanted to get into the picture so Lisa put a Twilight shirt on her and turned it backwards so you couldn't see the logo, lol.  Mom helped us out by manning the photo shoot, and we taught Lisa how to smile (she hates having her picture taken, so now you know how much she loves Ranger).  Afterwards we ate cake, and it was awesome.  Take a look (yes, I did indeed throw together a scrapbook layout of the event and we sent it to Janet Evanovich via her Facebook page):

Supplies used here were Katie the Scrapbook Lady's Visual Stories - Comic Book Templates and Bella Gypsy Design's Drops of Jupiter 2.0.

For the Love of Books

I love to read, and I love books. I love the feel of books, I love the smell of books, I love to page through them slowly and devour every word on the page. Recently someone was asking about e-book devices, and while the concept is interesting (so many books at your fingertips wherever you go), I just don't see myself moving away from having that book in my hand to see and smell and feel. While hardback books look best on the bookshelf, the truth is I'm partial to paperbacks. One of my favorite scenes in Ever After (the Cinderella movie with Drew Barrymore) is when she is lovingly holding the paperback copy of Utopia* in her hand, a gift she received from her father. I can't really explain it, but there's something comforting in the bend of the book and the smallness of it. Hardback books are just so darn big. I do love the teeny tiny hardbacks, though, teeny tiny books are just adorable. My grandmother gave us small copies of a few of the classics when we were kids and I still have them - Jane Eyre and Anne of Green Gables.

So imagine my delight when a friend recently (ok, yesterday) introduced me to Goodreads, a web site dedicated to books and reading. This website allows you to search their book collection, rate the books you've read, write reviews and save it all to your own book profile. You can also read the reviews other people have written, review lists that people have created (and create your own lists), and much much more. There are author bios and links to other book sites. I've already rated over 200 books and posted 10 reviews. This was made a little easier since I've started keeping a book journal in 2007 to track the books I've read and what I thought of them. Just like on Netflix, you can have friends and recommend books to them (or have them recommend books to you). I'm in the process of getting Sandy, Lisa and Tabatha to join, they are my book buddies.

I love books so much I've even scrapbooked about them. Case in point, a layout about my all-time favorite book, King of the Wind by Marguerite Henry, and how it's forever tied to my memories of my all-time favorite horse, Copper. It was actually for a theme challenge (the theme was your favorite book) held by ACOT in November 2007. I scanned and printed out the book cover (my copy is a large paperback) to use on the page along with a picture of Copper and me. I used the We R Memory Keepers Urban Window Collection because the colors coordinated with the book cover and my picture. The quote is one I'd been saving from a package of canvas stickers by Paper House Productions.

In 2008 I created a layout about some more of my favorite books, the Little House on the Prairie series by Laura Ingalls Wilder. I found images of the book covers online and included them in this digital layout using Kathryn Balint's Farm Kid kit. I believe that reading these books is why I have fond memories of maple sugar candy, which I found at this year's Food & Wine Festival at Epcot (Canada was selling this yummy dessert in the shape of a Canada Maple Leaf). And I know that reading these books inspired my love of the old west and the life of a settler. I also know that as romantic as it sounds in the book, suffering through droughts and cold winters and Indian raids would not have been the ideal life for me, but it's certainly fun to read about.

In 2008 I met author Beverly Lewis at book signing at the local Christian bookstore (which has since unfortunately gone out of business). She has written many fictional Amish accounts including the Abram's Daughters series. Here's a layout I created this year (2009) showcasing the picture of Beverly Lewis and I taken during the event. I cut a tree shape out of patterned paper from a DCWV stack and used plenty of American Crafts flowers and Creating Keepsakes brads to embellish the page. I was also able to use this fun book tag by Daisy D's that I've been holding onto forever. The buttons are Bo Bunny and the letters are All My Memories and EK Success.

Putting up my bookshelves earlier this year was a dream come true, as now my favorite books are out of the boxes and on the shelves where they belong. Since my bookshelves are almost full, I usually choose to find new books to read from the library and only buy the books I'm in love with and plan to read over and over (like the Twilight series by Stephenie Meyer, a gift from Lisa for my last birthday). Right now I'm reading several books, some are mine and some are borrowed from Lisa and Tabatha, who are still in the beginning stages of growing their book collections. I'm halfway through Native Dancer: Thoroughbred Legend by Eva J Boyd. I've read the first chapter of Marked (book 1 in the House of Night series) by P.C. Cast and Kristin Cast, a mother-daughter writing duo. And of course I'm chomping at the bit to read Sea Glass (book 2 in the Glass series, a spin-off of the Study series) by Maria V Snyder. I would be much farther along on all 3 of these if I didn't keep stopping to reread parts of New Moon in anticipation of the New Moon movie that comes out November 20!

I hope this post inspires all of you to pick up a good book today!

* By the way, as proof you never stop learning, by looking up the link for Utopia to include in this blog post I learned that the man who wrote Utopia in 1516, Thomas More, is the same Thomas More I've read about in the many books I've read on the Tudor reign and Anne Boleyn.