Where Is Your Boomark? 11/04/2014)

Happy November! I hope you all are well and in the middle of reading some great books. Did you remember to turn back your clocks this weekend? Those of you who had to, anyway. I generally try to change my clocks that need changing the night before, but I forgot to do that this year. I woke up Sunday morning and thought it was later than it was at first. Then I groaned because it meant my daughter had gotten up at her usual time again.

Halloween was this past Friday and what a fun day it was.  The day would not have been even half as much fun if it weren't for my daughter. I got to help out at her school Halloween party (there were games, and then we went trick-or-treating around the school's neighborhood) and took her trick-or-treating in my office. She loved all the attention. I cannot tell you how many times I heard, "I love trick-or-treating" throughout the day. She got to go again with her father when he got home from work, and in the meantime helped me pass out candy, which she loved doing as well. Mouse dressed up as Queen Izzybella, one of Pirate Izzy's many personas on the cartoon series Jake and the Neverland Pirates show. It seemed quite fitting given last year my daughter was a pirate princess dressed in pirate garb.  This time she was a pirate queen dressed in a princess queen gown. She refused to wear her crown, but did carry around her sword this time around.

Since last we visited, I finished reading Jim Snowden's The Summer of Long Knives, which I reviewed yesterday. And tomorrow my review of Last Train to Babylon by Charlee Fam will go up. Two very different books. I decided I needed something uplifting to read next and so began The Art of Arranging Flowers by Lynne Branard, set in a small town in Washington.  Ruby Jewell owns a flower shop and has served the people of her town for over twenty years. She and her dog, Clementine are well known and well liked in the community. Ruby closed her heart long ago after the death of her sister, and now finds it opening with the help of those around her.  It just so happens qualifies for the What's In A Name Challenge which I'm sadly behind in completing.  I may just complete that challenge yet!

What are you reading at the moment?  Is it something you would recommend?

Every Tuesday Diane from Bibliophile By the Sea hosts 

First Chapter First Paragraph Tuesday Intros, where  

participants share the first paragraph (or a few) of a 

book they are reading or thinking about reading soon.

I am only a few chapters into The Art of Arranging Flowers by Lynne Branard, but am enjoying it so far. Here is the opening paragraph and part of the second:

Daisy was not crazy. At least not like they said. She wasn't unstable or paranoid. She wasn't disassociative or delusional, nor did she ever display homicidal tendencies. She didn't impost some means of self-mutilation or harbor a borderline personality. She did not require restraints or group therapy and she never intended harm. She took her meds and she was fine. She was not crazy.

The day she died, that cold gray day when I withdrew into myself, that day I cleaned the house from top to bottom, wiped down every wall, emptied every trash can and discarded most of my clothes, that day when I scrubbed and mopped and threw away the things of no matter, closed the curtains in the front room, unplugged all the clocks and disconnected my phone, put on my grandmother's only black suit, changed the sheets, and lay down on the bed, I was the one who was crazy. 

Would you continue reading?

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