Theme Thursdays -- I'd Know You Anywhere by Laura Lippman

Theme Thursdays is a fun weekly event that will be open from one Thursday to the next. Anyone can participate in it. The rules are simple:

• A theme will be posted each week (on Thursdays)
• Select a conversation/snippet/sentence from the current book you are reading
• Mention the author and the title of the book along with your post
• It is important that the theme is conveyed in the sentence (you don’t necessarily need to have the word).
  

This week's theme is:  building:  

Cover of I'd Know You Anywhere: A Novel

Security at the Greenville facility was even stricter than at Sussex, with checkpoint after checkpoint, search after search.  That was to be expected, Eliza supposed, when someone was visiting a place known as the Death House.

But the building itself was a stark contrast to the grimly named facility, a small jailhouse, with a deputy at a desk and just one cell.

p.341, I'd Know You Anywhere by Laura Lippman

Just finished this one up.  So-so -- definitely airport fiction.  And not topics for the faint-of-heart.

Book Beginnings and Friday 56 -- The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss

Book Beginnings on Friday is a meme hosted by A Few More Pages. Anyone can participate; just share the opening sentence, or two, of your current read, making sure that you include the title and author so others know what you're reading.

It was night again.  The Waystone Inn lay in silence, and it was a silence of three parts.

The Friday 56 is a weekly meme hosted by Freda's Voice. Check out the rules and join in the fun.

Grab the book nearest you. Right now.
Turn to page 56.
Find the fifth sentence.
Post that sentence (plus one or two others if you like) along with these instructions on your blog or (if you do not have your own blog) in the comments section of this blog. Post a link along with your post back to this blog.

Before we begin, you must remember that I am of the Edema Ruh.  We were telling stories before Caluptena burned.  Before there were books to write in.

 My sister Kristal recommended this book to me -- and she's never given me a book rec before so I knew I needed to pick it up and give it a try.  Rothfuss opens the story in The Waystone Inn, as the bartender begins to tell his life story to a man who has come to the inn for that very purpose.  This story within a story works very well -- the reader is drawn into the barkeep's story in such a way that, when the narrative pulls back out into the inn, it takes some re-orienting to remember that the events he is sharing with the Chronicler actually transpired long ago.  As the back cover says, "So begins a tale unequaled in fantasy literature -- the story of a hero told in his own voice.  It is a tale of sorrow, a tale of survival, a tale of one man's search for meaning in his universe, and how that search, and the indomitable will that drove it, gave birth to a legend."

The Name of the Wind is the first in a series and the next, A Wise Man's Fear, is already out.  I'll look forward to continuing with the saga (The Name of the Wind is 722 pages long).

Happy 7th Birthday, My Dear Fiona

At almost exactly this time seven years ago, my daughter was born in our little second floor apartment in Indiana.  She is a lovely human being -- generous, quirky, and quick-witted.

A lot has happened in these first seven years of her life.  She's spent most of them here in Colorado, what still feels in many ways like a "new" state to her dad and I but feels like home to her. She's made friendships here that are an important part of her life.  She's stopped wearing diapers, stopped nursing, started reading, cut her own hair, lost her first two teeth, and started going to a school she adores.  Not necessarily in that order, mind you.  :)

Her dad and I are in the process of divorcing and we are sad that this means a lot of hard stuff for Fio.  At the same time, I want to believe that life has lots of goodness out there for us and that we are walking towards that goodness and peace, even if it's hard to know at this instant what that will look like, for any of us.



I'm so happy she is my daughter and I cherish the time I have with her.  I want today to be a celebration of her, for her to feel loved and surrounded by goodness.  That's all any of us can ask for in this life, isn't it?

Fiona Coleen, you are an amazing person and I'm so glad I got you for my daughter.  I'm sorry things are so crazy complicated right now and I know we will keep figuring it all out.  Happy birthday my lovely seven-year-old.  Happy birthday.

Quote of the day

There was, in Josse's experience, nothing more guaranteed to lower the spirits than uncertainty about the future.

~p.82, Fortune Like the Moon by Alys Clare

Around the house in February and March

Jumping Fiona

Snuggly Mark

Fiona went sledding with Amy, Tim, Mark, and Lilly

Lilly really likes Fiona's carseat

Eating snow

13 at Dinner by Agatha Christie

Another one for the Vintage Mystery Challenge.  From the back cover:
It was absolutely indecent!  It was also highly irregular, completely illegal, and dangerous.  What the beautiful actresss had actually suggested to Hercule Poirot was that he plan the perfect way to get rid of her husband. 

Of course the idea of Poirot being involved in such a scheme was absurd -- that is, until the husband turned up dead, and the actress turned up with the most perfect alibi ever invented....

Two fun bits, full of typical Christie humor:

For the first half of the meal he sat in gloomy silence.  Toward the latter half he unbosomed himself to me, apparently under the impression that I was one of his oldest friends. (p.21)

I'd never heard the word "unbosomed" in this context before and it amused me.

"Are we proposing to call at Buckingham Palace?"  I inquired  sarcastically. 

"No.  But I saw in the newspaper this morning that the Duke of Merton had returned to Merton House.  I understand he is a premier member of the English aristocracy.  I wish to do him all honor."

There is nothing of the Socialist about Poirot. (p.138)

Good old Hastings -- the master of understatement. :)

Cosmic by Frank Cottrell Boyce

This was a very fun book.  From the front flap: 

Liam has always felt a bit like he's stuck  between two worlds.  This is primarily because he's  twelve-year-old kid who looks like he's about thirty.  Sometimes it's not so bad, like when his new principal mistakes him for a teacher on the first day of school or when he convinces a car dealer to let him take a Porsche out on a test drive.  But mostly it's just frustrating, being a kid trapped in an adult world.  And so he decides to flip things around. Liam cons his way onto the first spaceship to take civilians into space, a special flight for a group of kids and and an adult chaperone, and he is going as the adult chaperone.  It's not long before Liam, along with his friends, is stuck between two worlds again --- only this time he's 239,000 miles from home.


I appreciated the humor in the book.  Liam is a big World of Warcraft fan/player and if you have any experience with that kind of game (or know a child who does) I have a feeling you will appreciate that part of Cosmic.