The Weekend

Hello friends and fellow bloggers,

I hope you've had a great start to the weekend.  It's usually a time when I run some errands that require me to venture out a bit farther than my neighbourhood shops, go to the library and/or meet up with a friend.

This week and weekend, I'm trying to finish several books that are coming due soon.  The first one is called Embers in the London Sky by 'new to me' author, Sara Sundin.  Set in the 1940s during German invasion of the Netherlands, Aleida, the young mother in the story leaves the Netherlands with her abusive husband, Sebastien and their small child, Theo.  During their escape to London, Aleida falls asleep and while she is sleeping her husband gives Theo to complete strangers for 'safe keeping'.  

When Aleida wakes up she is horrified to learn about her child.  But before she can find out the details from her husband he is killed by a bomb blast. Upon arrival in London, Aleida does what she needs to do to survive but searching for her child is the single most important things to her. The book takes us on an intense journey of Aleida's search for her child and about finding real love along the way. 

Now I'm reading Hello Stranger by Katherine Center.  This is not the kind of book I typically pick up but I wanted what seemed to be a quick read. This one has all the markings of being about romance and indeed it is, but it's much more than that. 

The young protagonist, Sadie is a struggling, New York City painter. Early on in the novel she suffers a non-convulsive seizure and ends up in the hospital.  After diagnosis she learns she has a medical condition called prosopagnosia or facial blindness where you have difficulty recognizing people's faces. This is problematic since she is a painter and she has just been accepted into a competition in which Sadie has to paint someone.  Apparently, there's no treatment for the illness so the story takes us on a journey about how she copes with life and how she enters the competition despite being unable to paint faces. 

My weekend plans include the goal of finishing Hello Stranger and making good progress on the final novel in the stack, Digging Stars which I'll have more to say about once I've finished read it.  I'm enjoying it so far.

And what about you dear reader?  What are you weekend plans?

A Busy Week and Some Beautiful Skies

It's been a very busy week and I'm looking forward to a bit of rest over the weekend. It was also a very beautiful week weather wise with some fabulous skies.

 

I completed reading the next books a little quicker than I wanted because two of them were due at the library. They could not be renewed due to their tremendous popularity. I love using my library but sometimes it's difficult to read popular books when there are long wait lists for them.  If there is no wait list for a book, the library has increased renewal options to three times (9 weeks) rather than two (6 weeks).  I'm very happy about that.

The Dressmakers of Auschwitz introduced me to a new angle on the Holocaust.  Apparently there were many Jewish women who toiled and sewed for the wives and women who were part of the Nazi regime.  The author of the book painstakingly pieced together the story of these women and paid homage to their contributions to war resistance efforts. It was not an easy task since the Nazis burned a lot of the incriminating evidence when they realized they had lost the war.  This is definitely a very eye opening and interesting book which goes into considerable detail about the textile operations at Auschwitz.

 

 

The Man Who Died Twice is a very engaging book. It is a complicated murder mystery and I guess it is book #2 of a two part (to date) series. I didn't read book #1 and I think this book stands on it's own. It is described in part as a humorous book but it isn't "split a gut" or "laugh out loud" funny. Subtle humour is sprinkled throughout to balance the numerous murders. I understand that Steven Spielberg is turning this book into a major motion picture.

 

Wish You Were Here is another excellent read. I am surprised I enjoyed this book so much after reading several negative reviews. The book was written after the author's experience in contracting Covid-19 and it  deals with what a patient experiences after contracting and surviving Covid and having been put on a ventilator.  Perhaps it is too soon for most people to appreciate such a book but I was very engaged in the story line throughout.

The storytelling is top notch and besides the great story telling, I was very interested in the topic of lucid dreaming that many Covid survivors experience. Another tidbit I picked up from the book is the concept of generational trauma. This is a new to me concept,  having only just heard about it in the past month or two.  It is only mentioned in the novel and not discussed in any detail.

Apparently the Japanese have done research on the idea of generational trauma. The subject piques my interest due to the recent findings of several massive child burial plots at multiple Indian Residential School sites in Canada. The intergenerational trauma suffered by many residential school survivors is of keen interest to me and one I hope to learn more about.  I'm interested in better understanding the lingering affects of trauma, not just on the person directly traumatized but also on their descendants.

Besides reading, I recently enjoyed dinner out at a vintage restaurant (pictured below). Don't you love the individual booth jukeboxes? The play list is full of old hits and I often dance in my seat when I hear the songs start up.  It's fun!

I've also been busy this week with health issues, both mine and my "baby" brother's.   He had his second eye surgery on Wednesday.  He has now completed two eye surgeries and things seem to have gone successfully though it will take a few more days healing.  As for me, I finally have the 'go ahead' to do some treatments on my neck and back which are suffering after the accident I had in late September.  There are numerous reasons why the treatments didn't happen sooner. I won't go into details. It is good timing now for things to move forward since I'm currently experiencing a lot of neck and back issues.  As for my ear, I've been told that the hole or tear in the drum has miraculously healed itself. I don't know how it happened but the specialist said that once the ear canal environment is made more healthy, holes or tears can sometimes heal on their own. Just to be sure that things remain that way, I have a follow up appointment in 3 months. One thing she did tell me after reviewing the CT scan more closely is that it looks like I had a fracture in the back of my jaw. I'm not surprised because the impact I had was very significant. I also had the fracture in my cheek area. I'm not sure that it is fully healed but it looks a lot better. My cheek doesn't exactly look normal but the surgeon and I have agreed that I won't be moving ahead on any facial surgery due to possible complications, primarily infections.

I made another trip to the library to pick up a few more books. I forgot to get a photo of two other books I have in my stack so I actually have 6 books on the go.  That's a little too much for me. I wasn't going to read much this year and I'll reach my very modest target when I finish the current book,"Burke's Law:  A Life in Hockey" by Brian Burke.  Brian Burke is well known in the hockey field but I only heard of him when he married a local journalist, Jennifer Mather.  I think he met her after he was hired as the Director of Hockey Operations for the Vancouver Canucks. I'm not fully sure because I didn't get to that part of the story yet. I only know they married and lived here for awhile before moving to the USA (they are now divorced).  I only follow hockey a bit here and there but I am finding the book, and the man, very interesting.  The book is full of interesting hockey history too.

I will still be limiting my reading this year so I can focus on a few other things.  First I need to complete the current stack of books I'm reading.

Joining in with Skywatch Friday this week. Thank you for stopping by!