A few years ago, I ran a series of pictures with the view from my office window every Friday afternoon. I stopped because I thought there wasn’t enough change week to week to bear recording.

What I’ve decided to do now is to post a picture from the last Friday afternoon of each month.
We’ve had a milder winter than a lot of places but April has been cold and spring is still slow to come. I maintain that it’s only the first three weeks of May that are spring in Nova Scotia, anyway.

I’ll be in Ontario for a couple of weeks in May, so I’ll miss a lot of it. Buy–hey!–it’ll be summer when I come home!

And what a difference a day makes: this was yesterday.

How’s the weather where you are?

This week’s word comes from Death of a River Guide by Richard Flanagan, the author of Booker Prize winning The Narrow Road to the Deep North. Death of a River Guide is set in Tasmania and is told by Aljaz, said guide, who has a vision of his father:

(T)here it is, smoking and spluttering, Harry’s celebrated barbeque, spitting and flaring, the griddle full of roo patties on one side and cevapcici on the other(.)

Ćevapi is a grilled dish of minced meat, a type of skinless sausage, found traditionally in the countries of southeastern Europe (the Balkans), originating during the Ottoman Period. According to Wikipedia, they are considered a national dish in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Serbia and are also common in Croatia, Montenegro, Slovenia, as well as in Albania, Republic of Macedonia, Bulgaria, Romania. They are usually served 5–10 pieces on a plate or in a flatbread with chopped raw onions.

From Persian kebab, sometimes with the South Slavic diminutive ending -čići.

Wondrous Words Wednesday is a weekly meme where you can share new words that you’ve encountered or spotlight words you love. It’s hosted by Kathy at Bermuda Onion. Hop on over and see what wondrous words other bloggers have discovered this week.

P.S. The links are affiliate links so I will receive a small percentage of any purchase you make after clicking through from this blog.

I got books from all over last week: one win, one purchase new, one from the bring-some-take-some fundraiser at my dentist’s office, two library loans, two library sale items, and two from the bring-some-take-some fundraiser at our village post office. In total, I spent $7.00 on the used books.

The Day the Crayons Quit and The Day the Crayons Came Home, both by Drew Daywalt and illustrated by Oliver Jeffers are two delightful children’s picture books. I’d recommend them for ages 4-8. I borrowed these from my library.

Secret Paris by Zoe de Las Cases is a beautiful adult colouring book I bought from Amazon. It was strictly a cost-saving measure since I needed $10 to bring my order of a new ironing board cover to the free shipping level. Hey – why pay good money on shipping when we can pay the same $10 and get a book?

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Ann Morgan’s Beside Myself is a win from Bloomsburg Publishing via a TLC Book Tour post by Kelly of The Well-Read Redhead. I haven’t started this yet but it promises a whole lot of suspense.

From the boxes at my dentist’s office where the fundraiser benefits local hockey activities, I picked up a classic “dime novel”: Murder Racquet, edited by Alfred Hitchcock. I’m a sucker for Hitchcock mystery pulps, and those published under the auspices of ‘Ellery Queen’.

From the small sale table at the library, I bought The Little Old Lady Who Broke All the Rules by Catharina Ingelman-Sundberg, and Caro Peacock’s Foreign Affair:, which seems to be the first in the “Liberty Lane” series.

The former is meant for fans of The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared and The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, and the latter is set in 1837 when “Queen Victoria, barely eighteen, has just ascended to the throne”. The promise of a young Queen Victoria sold me on this book. These two books were .50 cents each.

The sale “table” at our post office has grown over time and actually occupies a couple of bookcases as well as the table and windowsills. The books there are gems but the prices are the highest of any the places I obtained books last week.

I spent $3 on Accordian Crimes by E. Annie Proulx. I read this story that follows the life of a “little green accordian” through a century of American history, about 20 years ago and have been wanting to reread it.

M.L. Stedman’s The Light Between Oceans needs no introduction and has been on my TBR list for a while now. It cost $2
 

Do any of these interest you? What was your favourite book acquisition this week?

Go on and visit Mailbox Monday and have a look at the wonderful goodies in other people’s mailboxes!
 

This post contains affiliate links. If you purchase after clicking through on them, I will earn a small percentage of the sale.

Book Beginnings on Friday is a weekly meme hosted by Gilion at Rose City Reader. Hop on over there to get a linky to share the first sentence (or so) of the book you are reading, along with your initial thoughts about the sentence, impressions of the book, or anything else the opener inspires.

Opening sentences from Swann: A Literary Mystery by Carol Shields:

As recently as two years ago, when I was twenty-six, I dressed in ratty jeans and a sweatshirt with lettering across the chest. That’s where I was. Now I own six pairs of beautiful shoes, which I keep, when I’m not wearing them, swathed in tissue paper in their original boxes. Not one of these pairs of shoes cost less than a hundred dollars.

My thoughts: I’m so curious to find out how the narrator got from point A to point B! Would you read on?

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The Friday 56 is hosted by Freda’s Voice.The only rules are to grab a book (any book), turn to page 56 (or 56% in your ereader) and find any sentence or a few (no spoilers) that grabs you and post it.

Here’s an entry from page 56 of Swann: A Literary Mystery:

The news they imparted was good, wholly positive, in fact: the lump removed from my mother’s side this morning was not, as they had feared, the pulpy sponge of cancer but a compacted little bundle of bone and hair, which, they told me, was a fossilized fetus, my mother’s twin sibling who somehow, in the months before her own birth, became absorbed into her body. A genuine medical curiosity, one of the devilish pranks the human body plays on itself from time to time.

Shades of My Big Fat Greek Wedding! (Swann  predated the movie by 15 years.) What do you think?

P.S. The links are affiliate links so I will receive a small percentage of any purchase you make after clicking through from this blog.

I ran across this week’s words while reading the latest installment in Julie Mulhern’s Country Club Murders, Clouds in My Coffee. The protagonist, Ellison Russell, is an artist living in 1974 Kansas City, Missouri.

The world around us faded like a watercolor painting left in the rain. The soot, the brilliant leaves–burnt umber, orange-red, gamboge, and the Tyrian purple of the now-trampled pansies in my hosta beds dimmed.
gamboge: a gum resin from various Asian trees of the genus Garcinia, used as a yellow pigment; yellow or yellow-orange.

From New Latin gambog-, variant of cambog-, after Cambodia

Tyrian purple: a crimson or purple dye obtained by the ancient Phoenicians from gastropod mollusks (sea snails); also known as Tyrian red, royal purple, imperial purple.

Phoenicia, which roughly corresponded to modern-day Lebanon, was noted for its Tyrian purple dye, named after the city of Tyre, a maritime city of ancient Phoenicia. Tyrian purple was the most precious dye of its time, in large part because of the labor required to produce it.

Wondrous Words Wednesday is a weekly meme where you can share new words that you’ve encountered or spotlight words you love. It’s hosted by Kathy at Bermuda Onion. Hop on over and see what wondrous words other bloggers have discovered this week.

P.S. The links are affiliate links so I will receive a small percentage of any purchase you make after clicking through from this blog.

Everything that landed in my mailbox this week was ebooks: one ARC from NetGalley and two purchases.
 

I was most excited about Julie Mulhern’s Clouds in My Coffee, due for release on May 10, 2016. This is the third installment in the Country Club Murder series set in 1974 Kansas City, Missouri.

The protagonist, Ellison Russell, widowed and “on the cusp of 40”, is smart and funny; and the electricity between her and Homicide Detective Anarchy Jones could run the lights in my house for a year. This time out, it seems someone is trying to kill Ellison, although no one can figure out why.

Wednesday’s BookBub mailing tipped me off to to Michael Alvear’s Eat it Later: Mastering Self-Control and the Slimming Power of Postponement on sale for $1. Although the title makes this sounds like a diet book, the author insists that it’s not, and I think he’s right. No doubt putting into practice what he advises will result in weight loss in the long run; but the goal, as Alvear say, is well-being.

I should write these things down because I’m getting old and forgetful: I can’t remember what twigged my attention to Karen Charlton’s Detective Lavender mystery series, set in Northumberland England in the early 19th century. Whoever it was, was talking about Charlton’s second or third book but intrigued me enough that I actually bought (at full Kindle price!) the first in the series, The Heiress of Linn Hagh.

 
Go on and visit Mailbox Monday and have a look at the wonderful goodies in other people’s mailboxes!

P.S. The links are affiliate links so I will receive a small percentage of any purchase you make after clicking through from this blog.

 
Weekend Cooking 16Apr16, sponsored by Candace at Beth Fish Reads, is a chance to share the food love. Follow the link to see what delish dishes other bloggers are talking about this week.
 

Patty at Books, Thoughts and a Few Adventures has mentioned the wonderful recipes in the cookbook Sheet Pan Suppers by Molly Gilbert a few times over the last few months. So when I saw a copy of it discounted at Book Closeouts, I snapped it up.

Sheet Pan Suppers is a beautiful book to behold: all glossy photos and heavyweight papers, although I do wish it would lay flat so that I could more easily stay on the recipe. But, of course, the true test of any cookbook is the recipes. And the recipes look wonderful!

The first recipe I tried was Lemon & Herb Sole on Crispy Potato Rafts. Gilbert notes that haddock, halibut and cod are also good choices for this dish so I used the wonderful frozen cod I get from the “fish guys” who come to my door in their truck once a month. I substituted dried thyme for the fresh and I skipped the capers because I didn’t have any on hand. I’m sure that made some difference in the finished product but the recipe still came out a keeper.

My seven-year-old grandson whose usual comment on my cooking for the past year-and-a-half has been consistently only “good”, pronounced these potatoes as “GREAT”. I’d have to agree. As Gilbert says: “They’re hot and crisp and supremely garlickly, a noble base for the delicately light, flaky, herb-, lemon-, and butter-flavored fish fillets.”

You can find the recipe here.

P.S. The links are affiliate links so I will receive a small percentage of any purchase you make after clicking through from this blog.

It was a strange week last week: I brought home no library books, I didn’t download any ebooks (nearly unheard of!), and I didn’t have one book come in the mail. It’s mainly because I’m trying to read my own books this year, but still – when I have had this kind of willpower before?

But, just as I was coming up empty for Mailbox Monday, I visited our local Caper Cafe where there is a bookshelf of “bring some, take some” books in support of an insect rescue/restoration fund. There I found this paperback. Look! Carol Shields? Check. Mystery? Check. Literary? Check. All my boxes were ticked before I even got to the cover: a vintage fountain pen, with a journal and a leather-bound book(!!)

There was no question I had to make a donation and bring this book home and, what’s more, begin reading it immediately!

Go on and visit Mailbox Monday and have a look at the wonderful goodies in other people’s mailboxes!

P.S. This post contains affiliate links. If you purchase after clicking through on them, I will earn a small percentage of the sale.

This is the first time I’ve joined in this meme. It’s hosted by Books Are My Favourite and Best, and was inspired by Hungarian writer and poet Frigyes Karinthy. In his 1929 short story, “Chains”, Karinthy coined the phrase ‘six degrees of separation’. The phrase was popularized by a 1990 play written by John Guare, which was later made into a film starring Stockard Channing.

On the first Saturday of every month, Kate chooses a book as a starting point and links that book to six others forming a chain. Bloggers and readers are invited to join in and the beauty of this mini-challenge is that I can decide how and why I make the links in my chain.

April’s starting book is A Prayer for Owen Meany. The Vietnam War plays a large part in the adult lives of the two main characters John & Owen, and I haven’t yet read a better book to explain (from the side that wasn’t protesting for peace) the emotions and politics of that war in the USA than Altamont Augie. It’s nothing if not thought-provoking.

The Headmaster’s Wager shows the life of the South Vietnamese people during that War, particularly the headmaster of an elite school. Seeing troubles on the horizon Percival Chen, said headmaster, sends his son to live in China, from where his parents emigrated decades earlier, not realizing that China is undergoing even greater change under Mao than Vietnam.

Those changes are only alluded to at the end of Pearl S. Buck’s Pulitzer prizewinning novel, The Good Earth set in mid-twentieth century China. Peasant Wang Lung’s very life is tied up in cycles of that earth that he works so diligently to acquire.

That same question of whether a person owns the land, or vice versa, is a central theme in The Meadow set in the Rocky Mountains on the Colorado/Wyoming border. The author, James Galvin, brings home the hardship of winter, a theme addressed more comedically, in Cathie Pelletier’s The Weight of Winter. It’s the third book in her Mattagash, Maine trilogy. I’ve just finished reading the first title: The Funeral Makers. (I hate reading books out of order, but this just happened.) That finishes up my version of this month’s Six Degrees of Separation – in Maine, next door to Irving’s New Hampshire where we began our journey.

So what six connections can you make from A Prayer for Owen Meany? Visit Kate’s blog and see how she got to Fates and Furies.

P.S. This post contains affiliate links. If you purchase after clicking through on them, I will earn a small percentage of the sale.