It's Monday What are you reading? This Dark Road to Mercy

I just finished reading "This dark road to Mercy, Wiley Cash" .  I pretty much read it in one day, (S. Vincent was marking exams/essays or something and I had to be quiet, so no vacuuming or anything going).  It was good.

from amazon, book description
After their mother's unexpected death, twelve-year-old Easter and her six-year-old sister Ruby are adjusting to life in foster care when their errant father, Wade, suddenly appears. Since Wade signed away his legal rights, the only way he can get his daughters back is to steal them away in the night.
Brady Weller, the girls' court-appointed guardian, begins looking for Wade, and he quickly turns up unsettling information linking Wade to a recent armored car heist, one with a whopping $14.5 million missing. But Brady Weller isn't the only one hunting the desperate father. Robert Pruitt, a shady and mercurial man nursing a years-old vendetta, is also determined to find Wade and claim his due.

Now I'm saying it was good but,  I have a few questions, I almost need to re-read it, did I miss something.  O.k.  I got the Brady Weller background and the Wade background, but Pruit? not sure where all the anger came from.  Did I miss something? And what happened to Marcus?in the end. 

I loved Easter and Ruby, what a couple of sweethearts.  And I liked the ending, I didn't believe that Brady would do what Easter thought he did, either.  I mean really, sometimes the law is not always good for the kids, and sometimes it fails them miserably. The ending I liked was Wade doing what he did.

I didn't read this book for any particular challenge, it was just a good book, a few loose ends for me, but good.  I'd recommend with a 4 star rating.

Up next:  The Painted Girls.

It's Monday what are you reading...

Sheila at Book Journey hosts this weekly event where we celebrate what we are reading for the week as well as books completed the previous week.

Although I got a nice little delivery last week, I didn't receive any books this week.  I'm trying to clear up my stack of books from the library.

Up next is The Welsh Girl:

Summary

Set in the stunning landscape of North Wales just after D-Day, Peter Ho Davies's profoundly moving first novel traces the intersection of disparate lives in wartime. When a POW camp is established near her village, seventeen-year-old barmaid Esther Evans finds herself strangely drawn to the camp and its forlorn captives. She is exploring the camp boundary when the astonishing occurs: Karsten, a young German corporal, calls out to her from behind the fence. From that moment on, the two foster a secret relationship that will ultimately put them both at risk. Meanwhile, another foreigner, the German-Jewish interrogator Rotherham, travels to Wales to investigate Britain's most notorious Nazi prisoner, Rudolf Hess. In this richly drawn and thought-provoking work, all will come to question where they belong and where their loyalties lie. (from library description)

I just finished reading Once, Morris Gleitzman.  This is a short YA novel, written from the point of view of a young boy, who apparently has no clue that there is a war on.  His parents have placed him in a Catholic orphanage to hide him from the Nazi's.  One day he gets a whole carrot in his soup, this is very unusual, and he takes this as a sign that he is to search out and find his parents.  As he sets out to do so, he encounters the war elements and is soon engaged in survival tactics.

my thoughts:  I enjoyed this short novel.  Perhaps enjoyed is the wrong word, but I suppose we never think of how young children view the horrors they witnessed and how did this affect them.  I am always amazed at the strength that comes forth in these difficult times.  I'm also always amazed at how uncivilized some behavior becomes in difficult times.  Fighting for survival is ugly, no two ways about it. I saw the review for this book on one of the book blogs, and thought I'd give it a try.  When my mom and I visited Poland we walked through the area known as the Warsaw Ghetto, it's hard to believe such things existed, but they did. 

Sunday Salon...

Sunday Salon finds me feeling like crap.  I've gotten this cold back again, and can't seem to shake it.  I ache, and blow my nose most of the day and night. I sound like I'm going to cough up a lung. 

It's a beautiful day here in Ontario, and I'm going to catch my breath and get out there.  I'd love to cut my hydrangeas for a door wreath, but last time I did that my plant didn't bloom for several years.  We are at the end of September, when did that happen?  

The books I enjoyed this week were Chains, and I'm presently reading Once.  Once is a short little book, written from the perspective of a Jewish child in Poland.  I'm about half way through and with coughing and such, am having a difficult time reading, but maybe today.  

I'm getting old.  On Tuesday I returned to my furniture refinishing class and I have a locker there, can't remember the combination, isn't that silly.  I had it written down someplace if I could only remember where?  I'll be chopping off that lock, and getting another. 

My companion in the "sick room" is looking out and keeping the birds in check.  He's such a sissy, the birds could have their way with him any day of the week.
Have a good week, I'm going to try.

P.S. I've been down and out for about 3 days now, and never in my married life have I sat/layed around not worrying about "stuff", it's a wonderful feeling.

Sunday Salon... Cee Cee Honeycut

Sunday Salon finds me feeling a little under the weather, heck it's been summer, spring and winter all in the same month.  Mostly winter.  Can't think of how to dress each morning.  

I finished reading Saving Cee Cee Honeycut, Beth Hoffman, good book.  Cee Cee is a young girl who's mom has some mental health issues.  She is killed by a truck.  Her dad, a traveling salesman, signs over custody of Cee Cee to a grand aunt.  And you can guess the rest, she loves her new digs, and the ladies around her grand aunt, she adjusts beautifully to the new community.  Would that all children who suffer such trauma could rely on such a wonderful future.  While the book was very good, and I loved Cee Cee's mom, she was extravagant, I think the book could have been great, if some of these mental health issues were dealt with before the untimely elimination of Cee Cees mom.  I just recently lost my mom, so I know the adjustment is not so easy... and for a young child, it must be devastating. Definitely fiction.   The book was an enjoyable read, but it could have been better.  I didn't hate it, but I didn't love it either.  I give it a 3.5 out of 5 stars.

Beyond that, I got really far along in my upholstery of a wing back chair, and discovered I had enough fabric to boot.  I haven't worked on it for awhile so I had forgotten how far I had gotten.  I'll have only a couple of hours to work on it this week, but... it is coming along.  I find with these projects you seem to be going along very slowly and then suddenly it starts looking like you are achieving results.  It's a good feeling.  I had switched my workshop days from Tuesday to Thursday, and it's just so much more civilized.  So now on Tuesdays, I build up the frames of my furniture pieces, found a really cool, unusual chair (AGAIN), I'll need a new leg, but the back is really lovely.  Another beauty saved from the dumpster.  I may need to get my beads out again.

I'm baking banana bread as I post, it smells wonderful.  I was out of chocolate chips so I chopped some chocolate up, it will be chocolatey. Haven't kept up with my 12km effort, I'm not even up to a full km a day, it's just such crappy weather. Tuesday when I headed out, did my 1km. came home sopping wet, and cold.  Time to postpone the effort until better weather is here.   Up next week, I'm reading The Best Man, for now, it's not looking like more than the usual romance, and I'm just not into that, but I thought I'd just take a break from the heavy, emotional books.  Monday evening I'll creating some button flowers, for the Creative Festival, hopefully my Big Shot will work out for the cork petals I plan on including.  In the off times, I've been working on purging my book, magazine collection.  I'm doing VERY POORLY, I manage to sort out 1 magazine that I didn't think I needed to keep.  Then when I passed it along to a fellow painter, I asked her to give it back when she was finished.  Suddenly I had a scathingly brilliant idea.  

My youngest has been coming home exhausted.  He works at Home Depot, and it's spring, and he's hauling dirt, lumber, and trees.  Poor kid, guess he'll be looking for a school program more enthusiastically. 

That's it for this Sunday, hope you have a great week.  I'm going to eat some banana bread.

Sunday Salon... Snow day again...

from this 

to this in 90 min. 

Sunday Salon finds me looking out the window in a earnest attempt to participate in the Global Backyard Bird Count.  Not a single bird, it's so cold... maybe tomorrow? 

I finished Fatherland, Robert Harris this week, and remember how I said I was thinking of not voting ever again, no way, VOTE, make your voice heard or else... Fatherland was a wild ride, historical fiction of sorts, very unsettling, and to my surprise a quite believable storyline.  It's a murder mystery, set in post WWII (almost current time) Germany, the Nazi's were victorious in the WWII, Hitler is alive and celebrating his 75th birthday.  It's quite a scenario. Corruption, bribery, propaganda, and love all rolled into one.  Money and selfishness is also prime. Next up is Among Others, Jo Walton, Winner of the Nebula Award.  I'm not very far into it, it seems pretty good, this was a gift from my youngest son (the author) he thought I should read it.  Sometimes when it's his turn to pick up library books he's having to hide the titles, just in case someone thinks he's reading Maeve Binchy or something. He takes a not see through bag to carry these things home in. I on the other hand must look pretty out of mind when I'm picking up his anime movies.  Tomorrow is family day here in Ontario, I'm making a turkey dinner, I may be the only one eating it, but I just need some cranberry sauce, and mushroom gravy, and stuffing.  I'll be thinking of creative leftover ideas.  Turkey pot pie, turkey wraps, don't really like turkey soup, turkey sandwiches, hot turkey sandwiches... stir fry turkey... maybe I'll freeze a serving of turkey or two. 

Fatherland was a recommendation by Margaret at Books Please,  thanks Margaret.