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 19^th. 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 3^rd 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 19^th 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.

I believe this to be true



June column



Again I apologize for having to close my doors for a few days in May due to family illness. Family has to be my first priority. If you are driving very far please feel free to call first to be sure I am open.

I think I have mentioned before that I have never been a mystery reader. I guess that I am getting hooked, but not to much blood and guts please. I discovered a new author, at least new to me this last month. Ended up reading 3 of her books. Her name is Lisa Unger. Her books are classified as physiological thrillers.

Fragile

by

Lisa Unger

The setting is a small community outside of New York City, where everyone knows everyone and their business. It is a good place to raise children in this warm environment. Some leave to find more excitement but end up coming back. Old high school cliques are never quite forgotten. The students are just mature now and have mature roles to play. When psychologist Maggie Cooper returns with her family and sets up practice, her knowledge of local families give her insight into their lives. Her son's girlfriend disappears and her intuition is useful but also dangerous. There are parallels between this girls disappearance and the abduction of another local girl years before when Maggie was in school. Her husband Jones, local police officer has his own issues with the old case and with his son. When Maggie gets close to the truth she realizes it could tear her family apart. A great ending! A great read!

Darkness My Old Friend

by

Lisa Unger

This is another novel set in the same little community with Jones Cooper, now a semi retired cop back in the picture when he is visited by a psychic to tell him some predictions about his future, some of them dire. Michael, a mysterious young man has returned to seek answers about his mother's disappearance many years earlier, now that his cruel father is dead. He has hired a detective and a psychic to help him find out what happened to her.

Fifteen year old Willow is acting out as she resents being moved to this quiet town with her novelist mother. She has developed a friendship with a daughter of one of her mother's old high school classmates. This new friend has a way of bringing out the worse in Willow and she tendency to run away when things get tough. She witnesses Michael digging what looks like a grave in the woods. The twenty five year mystery of Michaels mother starts to unravel as Jones sees the predictions being fulfilled to his horror.

Black Out

by

Lisa Unger

A very carefully woven mystery about a wealthy suburban housewife named Annie living the perfect live in Florida with her husband Gray, and her daughter Victory. Annie's life begins to unravel when she starts feeling she is being stalked by someone from her past. Someone she has been told many times is dead and can't hurt her. She is seeing a therapist to help her heal from a tragic childhood. Her husband rescued her when she was still a teenage and became her protector. She knows she had a different name and life as Ophelia. But there is so much she can't remember. Under her therapy she starts to piece things together and realizes that maybe some of those closest to her are her enemies. A real psychological thriller that you really don't want to put down or you will forget who and what is real for Annie and what is just in her head. This was a real page turner.

May column



Are you looking for a little gift for someone special? Why not stop in to the book store in Granby and pick up a gift certificate? It can be redeemed for books or hand crafted items.

I have noticed that when I pick out a few books to read for the month that they end up having a general theme that will in someway connect the books. I do not do this intentional but it is just something I noticed. This month two of the books I choose have young teenagers that are learning to make their way in the world. My third book may not meet with approval of some people, but I read a wide variety of books and think that there is something for everyone, so I will report on it and you can decide.

The Secret Life of Bees

by

Sue Monk Kidd

I really love this book and hope to find some more of Kidd's writing soon. The setting is in South Carolina during the 1960's. Lily is 14 years old and carries a burden that she killed her mother when she was only 4. She has grown up with a cold, often abusive father. Her surrogate mother is their black maid, Rosaleen. Lily goes with Rosaleen when she tries to register to vote. (the first time for blacks in the south) Rosaleen gets into trouble and is arrested for spitting tobacco on the shoes of some guys who harass them. Later they come to the jail and beat her up. About this time Lily's father is threatening to do her harm for her involvement so she runs away and manages to sneak Rosaleen out of the hospital where she was taken for sutures. In their flight they end up about 100 miles away. Lily found the name on a picture of a bee keeper that was in the few possessions she had belonging to her mother. They are led to the home of three eccentric black sisters who take them in. Through their love and understanding Lily blossoms and you will have to read the book how the connection to her mother and these three ladies comes about. This book was made into a movie staring Dakota Fanning and Queen Latifah. I can certainly see them playing in these roles.

Thirteen Moons

by

Charles Frazier

Did you know there are thirteen moon cycles with 28 days in between? I didn't know that till I was about half way through this book that I figured out how the title fit perfectly.

The setting is in the mid nineteenth century in the raw country of the new America and the edge of what was then the Indian Nation in North Carolina just after the Revolutionary War.

Will Cooper is a 12 years orphan living with relatives, when he is handed a map, keys, and a horse and “sold” into indentured service to find his way to the edge of the Cherokee Nation and run a trading post. The story progresses with his being adopted into the Cherokee Tribe and being a very smart young man who loves to read, he taught himself about the law. As a teenager he found the love of his life who would be an illusive figure throughout his life. He spends most of his life working to protect the rights of his “tribe” even though many where forced to move to Oklahoma. The ones who stayed were legal land owners and he helped them buy up mountain land, establish small towns and industries. As a lawyer and later a Senator, Will goes to Washington City many times to fight to preserve the Cherokee’s homeland and culture. Thirteen Moons is a great novel about a man’s passion for a woman, and how loss, longing and love can shape a man’s destiny over the many moons of a life.

Reincarnation

by

Suzanne Weyn

I like to think that all things are possible. When I read a book like this it resonates with me on a level that many may not agree with. The ultimate historical romance: one love story unfolds over many centuries and many lives.
From prehistory to the present, theirs was a love for the ages. It starts with a fight in a cave over an elusive green jewel . . . and then travels over time and lives to include Egyptian slaves, Greek temples, Massachusetts witch trials, Civil War battlefields, Paris on the eve of World War II, America in the 1960s . . . and a pair of modern-day teenagers. For readers who believe that love is stronger than time or death, this is a great novel suited for young adult reader. Weyn writes other books for teens and young adults.

New life for old stool

Had to share my little creation!  It is a stool that I bought last summer at a garage sale for 2$.  It is solid wood.  Put casters on the "top" making it the bottom, then little boards for shelves and my Watermelen pink paint.  Found the metal top at the Dollar store.  It all works perfect for me to display my table runners that I weave and a few mug rugs.  If I get bored can always find someone to play chinese checkers with me on the table top.


April column



I want to remind my readers that I still have some books by local authors. I have several books written by Randy Turner about the Joplin tornado. I also have several copies of High Grade, a novel by D Lincoln Jones who was born in Granby and grew up in Neosho. He is working on a sequel that I am looking forward to.

Sometimes people come into my store with a book in hand and tell me I just must read this book because they enjoyed it so much. Guess this is just the way it is with people who love to read, we just can't help but want others to find as much joy in reading it as we did.

A book by Barbara Kingsolver is what was shared with me. I read two of her books a couple years ago and reported on them. When I found out the newer book was actually a sequel to an older one I was excited to read it. So I will do a quick review of that first book then follow with this newer one.

The Bean Trees

by

Barbara Kingsolver

A young woman, Taylor, has decided to leave her poor area in Kentucky, sure that there is a better world waiting for her. Her friends are getting married and having babies and she wants none of that. So she takes off in a beat up Volkswagen and ends up in New Mexico where it breaks down next to a tire shop called Jesus Is Lord Used Tires. The woman there takes her in. Ends up this business is a sanctuary for Central American refugees. I forgot to mention that along the way in Oklahoma a woman came up to her car and gave her a 3 year old little girl to save her from the abuse she has endured. The rest of the story is very engaging as she struggles with being a “mother”, makes friends, and learns how new families can be born without giving up the old.

Pigs in Heaven

by

Barbara Kingsolver

This story starts out with Turtle, who is now 6 years old on vacation with her mother Taylor. They are at the Hoover Dam and she is the only one who sees a man fall down a big hole near the dam. You realize right away that there is a very special bond between Mother and daughter. Turtle got her name because of the way she latched on to Taylor when she was 3 years old. The girls aunt just gave her to Taylor in a parking lot in Oklahoma then vanished. Taylor never knew where she came from but was sure she was an Indian child. Through Turtles insistence they find someone to check out this pit and the man is rescued. As a result they become celebrities and a young Cherokee attorney sees them on TV and sets out to find them and reclaim this child who is obviously a “lost” Cherokee who should be returned to tribal family. After meeting with the attorney, Taylor flees to protect her daughter as she knows the emotional damage that will happen if Turtle is taken from her. I love the way the story winds and weaves the lives of Taylor, Turtle, a boyfriend, Taylors mother, and an old Cherokee man who finds his way into their hearts. A terrific ending and I highly recommend Kingsolver books.

Out Stealing Horses

by

Per Petterson

This book was written in Norway and translated for United States publishing. I really liked Petterson's style of writing. It starts out with 67 year old Trond Sanders, who has found a little cottage on a river to live out his life in peace and reflection. He remembers back to 1948 as a young 14 year old growing up along the Norway/Sweden border. His thoughts and feelings as a youth spending summers with his father in a cabin much like the one he has, come back to him with such clarity, then he meets his elderly neighbor and his identity makes him relive the event of that one summer when a new friend. took him out to steal horses. Actually they just pretended to steal them by being stealthy and getting on the horses and riding them across the horse lot. His friend has acted strange all day and later he learns that on the previous day his friend had left a loaded gun in the house and one of his younger brothers picked it up and accidentally killed his twin brother. Trond remembers back to conversations with a friend of his father, who reveals that his father was active in smuggling information during the war. All the lines of this story weave together in the end for an emotional ending that I didn't see coming.