Soup Dish: on my mind this week...
✽Last Sunday's Soup was pre-empted by a very hot, very dusty day at the local Renaissance festival. Although we don't go all out with costume and accessories and fake accents, as a family we make it a point to go every year, have a bottle of sarsaparilla soda, buy a trinket or two, and watch the spectacles.
✽I've also been doing a bit of handyman stuff around our house this summer-- painting rooms and installing dimmer switches and new outlets. Stuff like that. I'm feeling very pleased with myself, but the blog has been part of the time tradeoff there.
✽I've also been in the midst of changing some things up personally, nothing bad, but it's had me unsettled and distracted. All of which is not to be defensive about not posting more, but just chatting about what I've been doing instead.
What I'm reading
There is a lot to catch up on, given my negligent posting, but I think the theme for this week's reading is FABULOUS CONTEMPS! Some really good stuff here:
✽Currently in the middle of Skinny Dipping, from Connie Brockway's backlist. So funny. I wish she had done (or would do) more contemporaries.
✽If I Stay, by Tamara Morgan. I got this one from Carina Press at RT. I think I saw a mention of the author on Twitter, and that was enough to tip me into trying out the title, and I'm really glad I did. I'm always interested in finding new contemporary authors, and I really loved this one. The style reminds me a little bit of Kristan Higgins, without the dogs. I'll absolutely be reading more from Morgan.
✽When I heard Victoria Dahl's latest Jackson Hole title, Looking for Trouble, was out, I hit it like it owed me money (or something like that.) Dahl's contemporaries are getting hotter and hotter and this one scorches. I love how she takes a near-fantasy encounter for both of them and pushes it into a Happily Ever After.
✽I picked up Beauty from Pain by Georgia Cates, based entirely on the title (make of that what you will). Well, that and the freebie pricing, I suppose. It turned out to be not quite what I expected. Overall I didn't love it, but it had some good moments. It had a cliff-hanger ending which annoyed me, a la 50SoG, and I probably won't pick up the follow-up.
In non-contemp reading...
✽The Sekhmet Bed, by L.M. Ironside. I picked this up because a friend of mine knows the author, and told me, "she writes your kind of books." I was sort of expecting a romance, which this wasn't, exactly, but I did like it quite a lot. There are three more books in the series, but this one chronicles the marriage and rise to power of a particular Pharoah's wife. I am not at all an expert on Egyptology, but the author writes convincingly of everyday life in 1500 BC Egypt.
✽ Beyond Addiction. Kit Rocha delivers again. I can't say enough good things about this series. If I gave ratings, I'd give the whole series six out of five stars.
Outlander Watch... Och. Jamie and Claire onscreen-- it's here, it's here!!
Would you laugh at me if I told you that part of my home-improvement spate this summer is about getting the TV room into a condition that I can stand, so that I could watch this show? Well, go ahead and laugh. ;-)
I've fixed up the lighting, cleaned up a mess of accumulated junk, done a long-overdue update/swap of our cable boxes, added a console table behind the sofa (because the configuration of the room doesn't really allow for a coffee table, and bought a rug. We have a wire storage shelf in the room with a collection of things with no better home, and I very cleverly attached a pretty shower curtain all around the edges with S-hooks. It sort of looks like we have a shower stall in the corner of the room now, but at least the junk is hidden. Also I stole the matching ottoman back out of my husband's office. Next up, is a good scrub of the floor, adding in the rug pad (it arrived 4 days after the rug), and putting up some art on the wall.
I'm finding that I don't really need to dissect and analyze and share about watching this show. I'm enjoying it tremendously. I'm glad I re-read the book last month and I think the casting and the chemistry is amazing. I don't want to dissect it and nitpick it. I don't want to argue with people who aren't enjoying it; I'm sure there are faults to be found, but DON'T CARE. I'm not interested in rational, measured discussion and really, I'm not particularly interested in OMG SQUEEEE DON'T YOU LOVE IT TOO!?
So if you've been wondering what I think of the show, now you know. And you know where I'll be at 9:00 pm on Saturdays for the next few weeks.
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