Quilts and Books

I actually remember where and when I bought this book. I was in Pittsburgh with my sister in May 2009 attending Quilt Market , the quilting industry's trade show. There was a book store near our hotel and while I had, up to that point, read books 2 and 3 in Pamela Clare's I-Team series, I had never read the first one. So I snapped it up, intending to read it right away. OK, so that plan didn't work so well. But since this is PNR/RS month, it was clearly time to read Kara and Reece's story. Kara McMillan works as an investigative reporter for a Denver newspaper. Clare writes what she knows here, as a former reporter herself. The inside look at journalism in this book, and the whole series, is interesting and Clare manages to incorporate the details without going overboard. Anyhow, as the book opens Kara meets State Senator Reece Sheridan at a bar that she goes to with a friend one evening after work. Despite the influence of too many margaritas, Kara makes quite an...

Things are usually pretty slow here at Phyl's Quilts and Books. They've been slower than usual of late because I badly pinched a nerve in my lower back in mid-August. Pain, drugs, and physical therapy have dominated my landscape since then. The good news is that I'm way better than I was a month ago. The bad news is that I'm still dealing with some pain, weird nerve activity, and weakness in my right leg. The goal is to avoid back surgery at all costs, so I've been faithful with my exercise routine. I'm glad to be resuming most of my normal activities, including sewing, but at the risk of being repetitive, it's slow. So very slow. Fortunately I actually wrote a couple of these (#5 and #3) right after I read those books, before the pinched nerve. I read #1 and #4 while I was stuck in bed. Frankly, I'm amazed I remember anything from the "Vicodin is my best friend" days. But here we go: 5.  The Chocolate Thief  by Laura Florand . I've bee...

I'm bending the rules a little this month. This book was not in my personal TBR pile. It was a library book I'd picked up at the urging of my QBFFs who had read and loved this book. Since they often read the romances I recommend to them, it seemed only fair to follow up on a rec from them. It was almost due and I needed a non-romance for this month, so I decided to write about Sarah Dunant's rich historical novel set in Florence during the turbulent 1490s. Dunant is apparently well-known for her suspense novels, including a series of crime novels with the recurring character, Hannah Wolfe. The Birth of Venus  was her first historical novel. She's since gone on to write a few more. At any rate, I found this to be a very interesting novel, full of details about the art and politics of Florence during a time when a monk named Savonarola temporarily wrested power from the Medicis and preached a very puritanical gospel. He defied the Pope and claimed to have visions t...

5. The Age of Miracles by Karen Thompson Walker . I wish I knew where I saw a recommendation for this book. It's YA, I genre I really tend to avoid. But the story intrigued me so much I had to read it and once I started I couldn't put it down. This is the story of Julia, an 11-12 year-old girl who writes about the year the Earth's rotation began to slow down. The earth's 24 hour rotation slows to over 72 hours by the end of the book. The magnetic fields of the earth have shifted, people's circadian rhythms are disturbed, and the world slowly begins to die. Be warned, this is not a book with a sudden miraculous happy ending. Julia, already a lonely only child, finds ways to cope with the changes around her. She's resilient and determined to move forward. This first novel by Walker is compelling and emotional. Thank you to whoever mentioned it online. I'm so glad I read this. 4. Wool Omnibus by Hugh Howey . This dystopian story is set on earth at an unspec...

This month's TBR theme is something steamy. You can usually rely on an HP to provide the heat, so I decided to finally read this RITA winner by  Sarah Morgan . This is one of several books that caught my eye when the RITA nominations were announced last spring because I remembered reading some positive reviews of it. I found  this one here at Dear Author  and another at The Good, the Bad, and the Unread . Polly Prince may be "just" an assistant in her father's marketing firm, but in truth she's the inspiration behind their successful campaigns, and the glue holding the foundering company together. Damon Doukakis is a self-made, successful businessman with an ax to grind against both Polly and her father. As the book opens, Damon has purchased the smaller company and Polly is desperate to do what she can to save everyone's jobs. The board of directors has bled the company dry, while taking credit for any success Polly and her team have had. Damon already ...

Since school let out for both my husband and son a little over 9 weeks ago, I was home alone for 5 of those weeks. I had to work while they were busy being camp counselors or driving out west for our vacation  (I flew out on July 4th and we all drove back home together, after our tour of Oregon). When I wasn't at work I was busy working on a graduation present for the youngest son of a very good friend of mine. She sent me a box of her son's favorite t-shirts from middle and high school and I turned them into this: His high school colors are orange and black, so those were the colors I used for the background. I began cutting apart the t-shirts in very late June, about a week before I left home. In that week I fused the stabilizer onto the back and cut the blocks to size, deciding on a final layout. I didn't do any sewing until after our return on July 21. This morning I mailed it off to him. It took a total of 3 weeks (just 21 days!) to sew the top together, quilt it, ...

Hello to you, my poor neglected blog readers. I keep thinking of lots of things I'd like to write about, only it seems I'm caught up doing other things instead. So much going on: It's been a hot, hot summer. We enjoyed a delightfully cool vacation in the Pacific Northwest  that included another trip to the Sisters Outdoor Quilt Show . I've been sewing like a mad woman and so I'm almost finished with a t-shirt quilt. It will be a gift for my godson who heads off to college in little more than a week. I'm also working on what (I think) will be a very cool baby quilt. And Olympics! I love to watch Olympics. I'm reading. But not quite as much as usual. My last two monthly reading lists have been a bit shorter and here it is the 12th of August and I've finished just 3 books. That's a very low total for me. At any rate, here's what ended up being the top of the heap for June: 5. Overseas by Beatriz Williams . Based on comments I saw around the web...