Friday, August 8, 2014

August column for newspaper


New things happening at Read Again Book store in Granby. I am in the process of culling out many books and have them on sale for 50cents and hardbacks for $1, and many large sacks for $3. When I get enough sold I plan to remove a few shelves to make room to expand my weaving studio into the store. I will have my floor looms here and will be offering classes. More about this coming later. So come stock up on my garage sale prices!
I regret that I had to be closed some again in July due to family health issues. And now I have tentative plans to take a little vacation the first week of September . Again if my flag is out I am here and feel free to call to make sure I am open. Things are getting better.

I got to do my first sales at Webb City Farmers Market on July 19th. What fun that was. I set up a table to sell my woven rugs, bags, and table runners. I really enjoyed meeting some great folks and sold a few rugs. They allow crafters that meet their criteria the 3rd Saturday of each month. I sure hope to go back in August with more new “stuff” I even found a few folks interested in learning to weave.

I will be officially teaching my first weaving class at Fiber Daze in Mt. Vernon September 19th and 20th You can find all the details at our website: fiberfolksofswmo.com I have all the info at my store. We even have scholarships available to cover some classes, so you can check that out and apply if you want. The event is free and open to the public. The website will lead you to the classes available and the cost for them. Please get registered early as the classes do fill up. There will be an assortment of vendors there for you to browse and shop.

I did manage to get a couple good books read recently. Found another new author that I enjoyed very much and then a Nora Roberts book that I had not seen before and it was a great mystery novel.

Cavedweller
by
Dorothy Allison
Ten years ago Delia abandoned her family, took off with a rock and roll band and ended up in California, living the wild life of a rock stars girl. They had a child, Cissy, who at age 10 loses her famous father in a wild motor cycle accident. Delia is on her own and haunted by memories of her 2 daughters she left behind as toddlers when she ran to avoid abuse at the hands of their father Clint. She loads a kicking Cissy in her old car and head for Georgia to try to put her live back on track. When she gets there she finds herself shunned by most who knew her story. She worked at menial jobs to survive
and ended up making a bargain with her ex husband to care for him in his terminal condition if he would help her bring her girls home from an emotionally abusive grandmother who raised them. Allison does such a great job of pulling this book together that makes a wonderful story of a mother's love, with characters who are flawed, prickly, and also very human.

The Witness
by
Nora Roberts

This was a real page turner from the start. Elizabeth is the more than a perfect daughter of a mother with steel for a spine and no love in her heart. An over achiever who has had her life directed since birth she finally rebells and meets up with a friend at a mall and from there things get out of control for her as she makes fake ID's for them so they can go to a night club. Here they meet some very sophisticated young men and are lead astray in a big way. The book fast forwards 12 years and this girl now has taken a new identity and her name is now Abigail. She has to be very careful to not find any attachments with others as it could cost her her life. She is a brilliant woman who designs special security systems. She has secluded herself in a small rural town with an arsenal of fire arms and a fierce dog to protect her. But would the romantic interest of the new police chief reveal her secrets and put her back in the cross hairs of the Russian Mofia?? Great read.

July column


As if I don't keep busy enough I have joined a sweet bunch of ladies here in Granby for a little sewing a couple times a month. I was happy to find it was not just quilting but learning how to do many projects to create useful things for the home or gifts. It is very motivating to me as I love to learn new things. Thanks, Tammy, Amy, Debbie, and Mary, plus a couple I have not met.
I had to be closed another week in May due to family illness, but hang in there with me. When my flag and sign is out I am here and most days come in much earlier than my posted hours.

I did not get much reading done this month, but did read another Lisa Unger book and found another “favorite” author.

Heartbroken
by
Lisa Unger

Heart Island is a privately owned small island in the middle of a huge lake in the Adirondacks, owned for generations by Birdie Burke's family. Birdy is truly a crusty old bird that seems to love her island more than her husband and grown children. Each summer they are to show up for a week together on the island. This year her daughter Kate, an aspiring author who has used old family journals to write her first novel is a source of irritation to Birdy. Kate's book is fiction, but based on facts from the journals left to her by Birdie's sister. Is there really a ghost on the island? Enter in the mix is Emily. You wonder for awhile where she came from and how she fits in with this family. She is young and struggling and has hooked up with a guy who is obviously no good. He uses her to help commit petty crimes and she hates it. Then she is forced to help with an armed robbery and they end up on the island. The linking together of the characters was done very well and in the end family ghosts are put to rest. I like the way Unger slips in characters from her previous books. It makes you think she loves them and has to keep them alive. Unger has become a favorite author of mine.

The Chimney Sweeper's Boy
by
Barbara Vine

I throughly enjoyed this book!

Writing as Barbara Vine, Britain's mystery novelist Ruth Rendell writes this literary suspense of the highest order. With this truly absorbing page-turner, Vine developes her characters in a way that makes you feel what they feel and have empathy even for Gerald Candless, a bestselling novelist who dies suddenly, and leaves behind a wife and two doting daughters. To sort through her grief, his daughter Sarah puts aside her university studies and agrees to write a biography of her famous father. But as she begins her research and pulls back the veil of his past, her life is slowly torn apart: a terrible logic begins to unfold that explains her mother's remoteness, as she learns that her father took on a new identity before he married and had two daughters. So if he wasn't Gerald then who was he and what could have made him take on a new identity? She also sheds shocking light on a long-forgotten London murder. To quote from the back of the book: “The mystery of Gerald Candless is so ingeniously constructed, its truth and falsehoods are so deftly and convincingly interwoven, that its solution...is as jolting as a flash of lightning”
I would definitely read more books by this author.