Quilts and Books

This month's theme is friends to lovers or unrequited love and this book fits in the latter category. I've had it for years now, having picked it up somewhere when I was trying to get my hands on Connie Brockway's backlist. Interesting timing to read it now, too. Having just had a hero with Asperger's, now I have a hero with Dyslexia. And sitting on the TBR pile is the brand new Erin McCarthy, another with a dyslexic hero. Of course in a contemporary, we "get" dyslexia. But in a historical no one understands dyslexia, so our hero Harry Braxton, an otherwise brilliant man, has suffered the stigma of being labelled retarded because he cannot read and write. From an intellectual point of view, this is quite an interesting book because of how it treats Harry's condition. Added to that, Harry is paired with an equally brilliant heroine who can read a dozen languages, but can only speak English. (Lest you scoff, as a former linguistics major I assure you this is...

When I signed up for my guild UFO challenge last November, I listed 28 projects that I would attempt to finish within the year. It is now 6 months later. I have finished 5. Five. I have a lot of work to do. In fairness to me I spent quite a bit of time on Springing Up Fun . Hey! Go bid on it! Meanwhile, here's the latest I've finished. This is my Flower Pot wall hanging that was a challenge with two friends. We each made 2 sets of 3 identical blocks and swapped them. It came from a pattern I found in the June 2008 issue of American Patchwork & Quilting magazine. We did start with coordinated pink & orange batiks to use for the flowers. I'm giving serious thought to entering mine into the state fair. One of my UFOs is a 9-patch flower sampler. Below is block number 5. This block was, to put it crudely, a bitch. I swear the pattern instructions were wrong in more than one place. I did more unsewing to get this finished... OK, yes, the whole idea of a UFO focus is to...

Late again! 5. Scandal by Amanda Quick . This is considered a classic Amanda Quick and I gave it a quickie review here back when I read it. I really liked the heroine in this book as well as the quick-witted dialogue between her and Simon. I read a copy from the library, but I wouldn't mind buying it if were ever issued as an ebook. 4. Vision in White by Nora Roberts . I just reviewed this here . It was so nice to read a Nora Roberts book that was a straight romance. She does all things well, but I do love a character-driven story and this was it in spades. 3. Never Resist Temptation by Miranda Neville . This also got a mini review . I was pleasantly surprised by how much I liked this book. This was an interesting story of a young French woman hiding herself from her nasty guardian by working as a pastry chef. On the surface, the story seemed unlikely, which is why I was initially reluctant to read it. But Ms. Neville made it plausible and the well-written dialogue moved ...