It got to a point that I would not allow myself to read any beading books before bedtime. Worse than electronic interaction where people do not watch TV at bedtime, the beading books got my mind whirring so swiftly that I could not sleep.  Or I would finally get myself to sleep and then I would wake up two hours later to jot down ideas.

It’s nice to be obsessed!  Oh my, another stash opportunity! With beads being so less expensive than skeins of yarn, it is a frightening thought! I. Must. Contain. Myself. at least until I have a direction. Which I Am Working Toward.

Thus said, you may not be surprised with the April Books Purchased Assortment. “Damn Interweave Press!”  They had some April 15th sales going on, and as you may recall from the Holiday season, I find their sales very hard to resist.

Books Bought

My mother told me about an email service called Book Bub, where you get daily emails about book bargains for your e-book provider.  Stolen is the first that I found and bought from this source.  I’ve never heard of the author, Susan Lewis, though I now see that she is very prolific.

Books Read

I enjoyed Plainsong by Kent Haruf.  Amazon has placed it in a category which I feel is an oxymoron – Vintage Contemporary.  (What is that? Like wearing a 1980’s dress?  It’s still vintage, worn by a contemporary. But I digress.)  This is a story about a pregnant teenager who is taken in by two older bachelor brothers.  I love stories about relationships, and this one abounds with people and how they interact with each other.  At one point, where the girl goes off with the boy who impregnated her, I had to put the book down because I didn’t want to read about the brothers’ reaction of what I expected to be disappointment and confusion.  It really is a lovely book.

I have The Mathematician’s Shiva in paperback next to my favorite chair in the living room. I pick it up sporadically and am slowly wending my way through it.  It’s good enough for me to keep picking it up and returning to it, but it hasn’t drawn me in to think about it all day and rush to get home to see what happens next.

I thoroughly enjoyed our Book Club Selection, The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry by Gabrielle Zevin.  Our discussion was relatively short because we all loved it. There were no heated discussions of what was unbelievable or boring, or disengaging.  We understood the characters, they were believable, and we were all in agreement that it was a good book. While I like good books, I was disappointed (for many reasons) that the conversation veered to a discussion about many of the book club members’ pet dogs.

The Storied Life set such a high standard that it was difficult to find another book on its heels.  I tossed multiple library books, then finally got through Cecilia Ahern’s The Book of Tomorrow, a very contrived story about a girl who finds a book that has diary entries for the next day.  Admittedly, the author uses the first chapter to tell the reader to suspend reality but even so it wasn’t that great, and initially I thought I may have read it before until I realized that I was getting it confused with JoJo Moye’s Me Before You because there’s a castle in each story!  When I finished it, I gave it two stars on Amazon.  That meant “well, there must have been something there because I finished it, but I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone.”

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