Weekend Update June 24, 2012

Since my last update:
Other than Wordless Wednesday I took this week off from the blog because we were on vacation.

I read Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn and enjoyed it. I still think her first one Sharp Objects was her best so far. She does delightfully disturbing so very well. I started Life Without Parole by Clare O’Donohue which is the second in her Kate Conway series. It’s a good second in a series so far. I’m also reading Hannah’s List by Debbie Macomber. It’s one that’s peripherally connected to her Blossom Street series and it’s predictably pleasant.

I spent the most of my vacation reading time alternating between two print books. I’m switching books every 50 pages (or nearest chapter break) and have found I enjoy that reading format. I’m going to see if continuing to do that once I’m back in a non-vacation routine works as well. It seems to appeal to my short attention span.

In audio, I put The Limpopo Academy of Private Detection by Alexander McCall Smith on hold until after vacation. The Hubster and I listened to two short audiobooks while we were gone. Both are first in a series books and we’ll definitely be getting more in each series for future road trip listening.

The Shape of Water by Andrea Camilleri is the first book in the Inspector Montalbano series. It’s a mystery series set in Sicily. Grover Gardner narrates it and he’s a favorite of both The Hubster and I. It was a bit confusing at first because of many characters and semi-confusing names but it settled in pretty quickly and we enjoyed it.

Casino Royale by Ian Fleming and read by Simon Vance was the other audiobook we listened to this week. It was our first experience listening to Simon Vance and I now understand all the praise. He’s really an excellent narrator. As for the book – Bond is just fun. Neither of us have seen the movie so we can’t really compare it to that but it was fun road trip fare.




Other than books and reading:
Vacation was fabulous! We were in Yachats, Oregon at the same rental house we’ve been going to for several years. I always overestimate how much reading I’ll get done while we’re over there. I’m too easily distracted by this . . .

Yes, that's right outside the window. The edge of the deck of our rental house is at the bottom of the video. 

We had a good mix weather on this trip. There were sunny days when we went out and explored and played. There were also days that were cloudy and kind of damp when we just hung around the house reading and staring at the ocean.

We also went up to Agate Beach to see the Japanese Dock that washed up there recently. It broke loose during the March 2012 tsunami and washed up in Oregon 15 months later.

They’ve been saying we would be getting tsunami debris on the Oregon Coast but they weren’t expecting much until sometime next year. Obviously this dock was designed to float so that probably had something to do with it washing up sooner than experts had expected us to see debris.


We were over at the coast earlier than normal this year so the seagulls that nest on the house next door didn’t have any babies yet, but they were keeping the eggs warm.

Hope you’re having a great weekend.