As the year begins to wind down I thought it would be interesting to reflect back and share with one another how our reading year was. Let’s start with did you discover a new author this year? As I looked at my list I believe I read about two dozen new to me authors this year. I was pleasantly surprised with Shadow Of Turning by Valerie Hansen as it is a Love Inspired Suspense, and that’s not a line I normally read. I also was totally hooked on Running Scared by Cheryl Norman. Of course there were a couple of books in the new author tryouts that didn’t please me much, but I’ve decided to only focus on my favorites. What book do you think was the best one you read this year? Can you really limit yourself to only one? I of course cannot name just one. I loved everything I read by Susan Wiggs, and Robyn Carr. Both had books that had moments that made me cry. The Friday Night Knitting Club by Kate Jacobs was a discovery that I wish I had been warned about because it also had me crying. Can’t even think about closing out…

Christmas is Thursday. Can you believe that? Are you ready? Is the tree decorated to perfection? The presents bought and wrapped in such a way that no one wants to unwrap the gorgeous packages, or if they do they go so slowly in an effort to save the packaging just to get crumpled in the attic later? Is the grocery shopping done, and the meal preparations begun? If the above describes you in any way then I need an invitation to spend the day at your house! My house has no tree, and the only reason I have any sort of decoration up is because I just bought some new ones, and as I unpacked them to show my husband he strung them on the credenza and china cabinet. I also have no Christmas baking happening as I’m so not a cook, and therefore there will also be no lovely smells coming from the kitchen on Christmas morning. So you may ask what have I done since I’ve so obviously done nothing? I entertained my friend Yvonne from England. We scoured the bookstores, had some great meals, and went to see ICE at the Gaylord Texan. Now she’s gone, and…

This week my friend Yvonne has been visiting from England. One of the things that we try to accomplish when she visits is to see how many bookstores we can peruse in the Dallas area. Often while we are in the bookstore Yvonne’s cell phone will ring, and it will be another friend of ours from Hawaii.The conversation almost always starts with what book are you looking at? Does it look good? Oh, I think I might want a copy of it too. Yvonne being the generous sort is always willing to contribute to someone else’s tbr pile, so we add book upon book to the basket we’re toting, and eventually try to head to the checkout stand. So last spring Yvonne is in Dallas visiting, and the phone call comes. This time it’s slightly different. I’d like a book that I think is red, it might have heart in the title and might have been written by someone named Kane, or is it Cain, is that a first or last name? She had no clue! How in the world did she expect us to find this book? Well, Yvonne is nothing if not determined, and I’m not far behind…

Last week I talked about reading while you’re sick, and this week I want to talk about what happens if insomnia hits. I really don’t want to sound like I’m a complainer or a hypochondriac, but I’m curious! I’m of an age where insomnia hits me on a fairly regular schedule. Some nights of course are better than others. Those are the nights I wake up squint at the clock (it’s across the room and without my glasses on I’m totally unable to see) and lie back down and immediately sleep comes back to me. Other nights I squint at the clock lie down again and it seems like 10 minutes later I’m still wide awake. When I first started contributing to this blog and insomnia hit I opened up my laptop and made a whole list of topics I thought might be interesting. I felt like a real writer having to get up and put my inspirations down before they became something I just wished I had remembered. Like I’m sure many authors feel I’m wondering now if those topics are as good as I imagined them to be at 2 AM! I know that some of my fellow…

I hope that everyone who is in the United States enjoyed their Thanksgiving, and had plenty leftovers so that there was plenty of time to curl up and read. My family always does Thanksgiving with Elizabeth, a long time friend. Since she’s the better cook all the cleaning and prepping is at her house, so I have plenty of time to read should I so desire or be able to. However, as I write this I am stuck with a home in need of some good cleaning, and a cold attacking me and not letting me out of its nasty grip. My email often brings a message of someone’s illness and that the good thing that came out of it was how much they read. I think if you’re sick and can read it’s fantastic. I however only want to hide under the nearest blanket and burrow into the best pillow and sleep until the illness has given up hope of something exciting happening, and moves on to its next victim. Are you like me…a sleeping sick person or are you like others who can gobble up one book after another while fighting the cold, flu or other nasty ailments…

This last Wednesday our book dinner group got together. As always is there any better way to forget the horrors of the day job than by getting together with some of your closest friends to discuss not only the book or author of the night, but also what made the day so horrific. This time our author of the hour was Linda Howard. Of course who can resist Linda Howard and the chance to visit with her even if it’s over the phone, so we had new members to join our group for dinner. Overall the group tried really hard to be on their best behavior so that the newbies wouldn’t be scared off. I would say that for the most part we were very well behaved, though I can only behave for so long before I just have to blurt something! O.K. I digress Linda Howard was awesome. How could she not have been? I think it’s really hard to find an author who really appeals to a group as diverse as ours, and if I remember correctly everyone in the group had something they wanted to ask or just tell Linda. Every time I leave the book dinner…

Over the course of the last few weeks we’ve discussed many different things, and hopefully they’ve been as entertaining for you as they have been for me, but what’s on my mind this week might be a tad depressing. At the beginning of a new month my yahoo groups discuss what they read the previous month, and what new books they’re anticipating during the current month. It’s one of my favorite times to see what books I might have missed out on, and what books I might not be aware are coming.For October I only read four books. To me that’s a tad depressing. I know I can read more than that. Why didn’t I? The only thing I know for sure about that is that you don’t know because you’re not me, and weren’t there for my various moods, real life moments, and perhaps poor book choices. Do four books when I can read perhaps as many as 10 in a month constitute a slump?Of course I want you to say no…four books is great you’re not in a slump. I only read three books, so you did one better than me, but realistically that’s not going to happen,…

I think that sometime in the last week or so Oprah Winfrey was peeking at my list of topics I had written for this blog. One of my ideas was about e-readers. Now she’s made Amazon’s Kindle one of her favorite new things. Am I surprised? A little but only because it means she has now limited herself to purchasing books from Amazon, so I would have thought she’d like the Sony e-reader instead.I have a Kindle and have had it for about seven months now. Yes, the downside is if I want an electronic book I have to order it from Amazon, but that doesn’t bother me. It also doesn’t have the backlight feature that many people like, but I’m typically in bed and asleep well before my husband, so the lack of a backlight doesn’t bother me. I had seriously considered the Sony e-reader and well as another e-reader that many of my friends prefer, the E-Bookwise. However, the Sony wasn’t compatible with my MAC, so that eliminated that. Then I decided to get smart and compare the book prices between the E-Bookwise and the Kindle. That comparison helped to cinch my decision. I would be able to…

This week I broke one of my cardinal book rules. I bought a book that I’ve already read, and I plan on keeping it. In case you don’t know I don’t keep books nor do I reread books. This being the case why then would I purposely buy a book I’ve already read? The answer is easy…due to the Readers-n-Ritas event I attended a few weekends back I was able to get two autographed books from the Virgin River series by Robyn Carr. I being the book fanatic than decided to see if Ms. Carr would be nice enough to autograph the third and return to me, and she agreed. So naturally I needed the book. The trip to the bookstore went smoothly enough, but I didn’t walk out with just the one book. Does a book fanatic ever walk out with just one? I ended up buying the reissues of the Grace Valley books because of the beautiful covers. It didn’t matter that those books in their original covers are sitting on my shelf waiting to be read, the new covers call my name, and I had to have them! I couldn’t believe I was carrying those books to…