Recent Read

Defiant by Patricia Potter

Why this one:  I’m still into the Western

Steam Level: Warm

Genre: Western

My Thoughts: The length of time it took me to read this book should not affect the grade.  Even though it took several weeks, I still enjoyed it quite a bit.  The main problem was I have it on my KOBO app and that app keeps crashing on me, then I get frustrated and stick more with Kindle or Ibooks.

This is a reread of a book I first read years ago and it was so long ago I only vaguely remember it so bonus for me.  This is the story of Mary Jo Williamson, her son Jeff and Wade Foster.

Mary Jo is the widow of a Texas Ranger.  She was being courted by another Texas Ranger who was killed in action.  He left her a ranch in Colorado and she decided to try her hand at ranching.  But she’s been running into difficulties as no one wants to work for a woman.  She and Jeff are struggling along when Jeff comes across a stranger almost dead.  They bring him home, patch him up and though he comes across as rather a tough hombre, she asks if he would be willing to stay and help for a few months, long enough to hire some hands and get things up and running.

But Wade wants no part of it.  He has a tragic past and he doesn’t really care if he lives or dies and the last thing he wants to do is get tangled up with the young widow he has a very strong attachment to and her hero worshiping son.  His family were murdered by Jayhawkers years before and as a result he joined the Bushwhackers and in time was just as bad.  But he’d had enough after the infamous attack in Centralia and headed to the mountains to get away from all society.  He met and became friends with the Ute Indian tribe to the point of marrying a young woman and becoming a father.  But his wife and son are murdered and he spends the next couple of years tracking down the ones who murdered them and making sure they would never kill again.  He finally tracked down the last of them and before he shot and killed the last thug, Wade was shot himself.

This is the point he was at when he was found by Jeff.  He has little interest in even living now that he has finished his mission of revenge.  All he really wants is to go away somewhere.  But he has no means of leaving as his horse was shot and he is in such bad shape himself.  Eventually he has no choice to agree to Mary Jo’s offer.  He wants to stay aloof but he can’t.  The attraction between he and Mary Jo only grows and he’s very drawn to Jeff after losing his own son so tragically.

I sound like a broken record with so many books, I know, but dang I enjoyed this book.  Wade was the strong, silent, Clint Eastwood or hello, Scott Eastwood type. 

 He really isn’t a bad man, but a good man who was drawn into bad things and hated himself for it.  He’s the perfect Western hero and a good example of why I adore this genre.

Mary Jo is a good heroine.  She’s tough and strong and not afraid to go after what she wants – like Wade.

And Ms. Potter also writes them good and gritty.  Not quite as much as Rosanne Bittner, but very true to life I think.  I’ve got a number of her backlist now as ebooks and there are a few more I really hope come out as ebooks sooner rather than later *cough - Notorious and Renegade – cough*

 I’m still in a big Western phase though I have read a few contemporaries in between that I’ve enjoyed.  But I keep being drawn back to the strong, silent, working class with a bit of a bad boy, Western hero and I’m quite happy to live there for a while longer.

I just started another older Western book by her, Diablo and I only vaguely remember it either.  I’m barely into it but it’s bringing back good feelings.

 Grade: 4 out of 5

 

Would I read it again?  I already have and I would again.

 

'til later

 

Thought for the Day

I’m off and on with Twitter.  I’ve been off for quite a while and started making a comeback.  When did adds become such a big thing on Twitter?  I’m getting tweets for all kinds of products and I KNOW beyond a shadow of a doubt I never signed up for any of them.

Is there any way I can block them?  I find them annoying and they clog up my twitter feed.  And I just ‘followed’ Sam Heughan.  I can’t have any tweets other than those I choose to follow come between me and Sam!!

 

****warning – gratuitous pictures below*****

 

And in the same vein – while I will be watching, part of me is dreading watching the season finale.  I’ve been telling my fellow work/Outlander peeps that I’m going to find this the most terrifying hour and a half of TV – ever.  It’s really going to beat those flying monkeys from The Wizard of Oz. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I take these things too seriously and already a fellow watcher is trying to calm and reassure me it’s only a television show.  I just need to remember that around 10:30 ish when I'm white knuckling through the Outlander finale and poor, poor Jamie

 

'til later

Recent Read

Reforming Jake by Leslie Kelly

 Why This One:  I enjoyed the first book in this new series by Leslie Kelly, BringingDown Sam, that I knew that it was a no brainer that I’d be getting and reading this one too.  I’ve read and enjoyed a number of her books over the years.  She’s written some good book for the Temptation and Blaze lines with Harlequin, but this is a single title book.

 Genre: Contemporary

 Steam Level: Quite hot

 My Thoughts: We meet both the title characters of this book, Jake and Leanne in BDS, but it’s not necessary to have read that one first.  Jake is the 2 day older brother of the hero Sam of the first book.  He’s pretty bitter and with reason.  His mother was the mistress of Sam’s father who was married to Sam’s mother.  He married Jake’s mother off to a real SOB who had no qualms in letting Jake know he was unwanted.  While part of him resents Sam for being the son with the golden goose, part of him also knows that Sam had nothing to do with circumstances.  Indeed, when Jake announced who he was, Sam broke of the relationship with his father.  This all happened in the first book.

This book opens up just after the wedding of Sam and Eve from the first book.  Jake was a jerk and gave a not so brotherly kiss to Eve and Sam had punched him.  Eve’s best friend Leanne followed him outside to ring a peal over his head for being such a jerk at his brother’s wedding and makes him leave.  But not before he flirts outrageously with her.  Of course this even steams her more, but she does admit, if only to herself, that while he is a pain in the ass, he is one fine looking pain.

They next run into each other when Jake has been arrested and called Sam to come bail him out.  Sam is still on his honeymoon, but Leanne gets the message as she’s doing a bit of cat sitting and comes to bail him out.  Again he flirts outrageously with him and while she finds him disturbingly good looking, she still doesn’t jump at his charms.  But when he keeps popping up to rescue her from attacks and stuff, she does admit to the attraction between them and it isn’t long before nature takes its course.

 

I really, really liked this book too.  Jake is about as opposite as they come from Sam.  Sam is relaxed and easy going whereas Jake is more of the bad boy kind of hero, though he isn’t a bad boy at all.  He had a rough upbringing and joined the army.  After his stint there, he became a cop until he moved to the town as Sam and opened up his own private detective agency.  He and Sam are still working on their relationship and at this point they seem to relate more by Jake getting punched by Sam for various offenses.  But Jake figures he deserves most of them, the chip on his shoulder being what it is.

He’s gone for Leanne in a very short period time but doesn’t feel like he’s good enough for her, though he will take what he can get and be grateful for it.  He sees through her mask more than most people though he’s still taken in at first.

Leanne makes for a great heroine in her own right.  She also had a lousy childhood.  Her mother was a flaky single mother and Leanne was more the mother role. She holds no bitterness, in fact is grateful to her mother for passing on a passion for color and design.  Leanne is a successful interior decorator, though she works for a real prince of a fellow – not.  She’s kind of going out with him though it’s not serious at all and as time goes on and she begins to compare him to Jake, she sees she has to write him off.  He doesn’t seem to care about her and all and undermines her constantly.

Growing up poor, she has a certain picture in her head of what she wants and Jake’s not it.  But she does see him for the great hero he really has turned out to be.

This was a nice light read with very likeable characters.  I’m so glad I’ve found Leslie Kelly again and I do believe I will be doing some ‘shopping’ to get more of her backlist.  I can’t ask for anything better than that.

Grade: 4.5 out of 5

 Is this a reread book?  Yes

'til later

 

Random Ramblings

 

Work still hasn’t picked up and someone needed to work the early shift so I said I’d switch and work the later shift for her.  So you know what that means…..

 

Yep, you get a glance into the inner workings of my mind and the randomness of my ramblings.

There are very few things I’m vain about.  I used to be somewhat over my use of language but now with age and the decreasing capacities I’m noticing in my abilities to write, sometimes I have to sit for a length of time trying to remember the word I had in mind only seconds before that.  So I’m not so much anymore.  But I still have quite a streak of vanity about my hair.  I check the roots daily trying to make sure it’s not getting to thin.  My hairdresser constantly reassured my it’s fine, but I’m not sure I really believe her.

I pay big bucks for getting my hair done, not so much for the cut, but for the colour and highlights/lowlights and stuff.  The time before last,  paid more than ever and because I only got a short amount cut, nobody at work really noticed.

I went again just this past Saturday and told my hair dresser I wanted to go quite a bit shorter this time.  I wanted people to notice it was different (since I was paying so much but I didn’t add the last part).  It was down past my shoulders, I’ve been letting it grow for quite some time now.  Now it’s just past my ears.  Now I don’t know whether it’s cause I’m not used to it this short and haven’t adjusted, or it’s a bad cut or what – but I’m finding it VERY hard to get used to.  To me it looks like a cross between HeMan’s haircut and the little girl from the Buster Brown logo from years past.

 

 

There’s also a bit of Bozo the Clown look to it.  The hair is quite red as it’s brand new.  It will dye (get it – hah, hah) a bit and it’s not that I don’t like the colour, but a week or so away will give me and the hair time to get used to each other.  What I would really like to do is have some of it a lovely lavender colour.  Some of the stylists have some of that colour in their hair and it’s so pretty. 

I’m not sure if I have the courage to go that drastic or not.  If I was still in my 20’s it would already be that colour but there is something scary about some women who try and make themselves look decades younger than they are.  But my goodness, it sure is pretty. isn't it?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Speaking of that logo (because I looked it up to add to this post) is that one hellova scary looking dog or what??  I don’t remember having Buster Brown shoes when I was little, but that dog is truly nightmarish looking.  What a thing to do to impressionable little kids.

 

 

I’m in that hoping around stage book wise.  I just finished rereading Morning Glory and nothing is quite grabbing my interest at the moment.  I hate when that happens.  I’m waiting for a book to call me again like Morning Glory and it doesn’t always happen like that.  I know Outlaw Hearts is calling me but I can’t answer its call for another few weeks.  I was looking through GoodReads and apparently the last time I read it was in March of 2014.

 

I have myself in one of those Kristie circles I manage to get into every so often.  I have the first version of the IPad and it’s getting pretty obsolete now.  I was in the gym the other day.  I’d already worked out for almost an hour and was waiting for my trainer to finish up and desperately needing a rest so I was reading on my IPad in the dressing room.  One of the female employees came to me and said I couldn’t read it in the dressing room.  I had no issue with that but thought it a bit odd until she said the rules were no electronic devises with cameras allowed.  And I can certainly see why.  Some members are quite happily walking around naked as jaybirds but I’ll never be one of those.  It hadn’t occurred to me since my IPad is version 1, it doesn’t have a camera.

I downloaded a trial app for fit brain – to exercise it hoping words will stop disappearing on my and it seemed to be working so I ordered the app at a cost.  Then I got an update and without thinking, just updated it.  The updated version is too powerful for my IPad and it crashes every time I try opening it.  I’m limited on the YouTube videos I want to watch.  Some say my device can’t support them.  On top of that, when I went to the gym and didn’t take pictures of naked women, I did put it into my gym bag along with an almost full bottle of water.

Yep

You got it.  It damaged my IPad.  It’s so weird looking now.  Half of the screen looks wet and the other half looks dry.  I figure it’s going to short completely soon.  But here comes the problem.  I’m all set to get another one, probably an IPad mini, but I can’t remember my IPad password.  And until I find that out again, there is no sense getting a new IPad.  I did do some shopping on The Shopping Channel a few months ago knowing my IPad was out of date and bought an Acer tablet but…… the password thing.  I can read on the Acer, take pictures and play a few cheapo games and take pictures of naked women if I so chose – before getting banned from the gym completely.  But I need Wifi for the good stuff.  We have Wifi at work, so I bring in the Acer every so often to update both Kindle and Kobo for the books I bought on the Wifi.  And it gets more complicated because I can’t remember my password for my email either.  It automatically comes up on the IPad but I can’t get in from any other computer/tablet.  When I get an updated IPad, that will be a problem.  Another issue with the Acer is I kind of um dropped it and the screen is cracked. 

 I can still do everything, but with a crack going down the side of everything, well, the perfection is gone  So, I have to track down some kind of number that is on the router (I think that's what is is) and then go from there.  I'm keeping my fingers crossed that my two tablets don't go completely before I'm ready.

 

 

 

Well, tonight turned out to be quite busy so I didn't ramble as much as I could have.  Time to turn out my lights and head home.

 

'til later.

Recent Read

Morning Glory by LaVyrle Spencer

Why this one:  A friend on GoodReads reviewed it just recently and it called to me

Setting: Georgia just before WWII

Steam Level: Beautifully perfectly perfect warm

My Thoughts:  There are classics in literature, Moby Dick, War and Peace, Oliver Twist and many, many more.  I think the romances of yesteryear have their classics too, Pride and Prejudice, Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights and more. Modern day romance – not so sure if they have what would be considered classics yet or not, it may be too soon, but if they did, I’m sure they would have a book or two by Georgette Heyer, Kathleen Woodiwiss.  And then we come to another author who has written some of what I consider modern day romance classics and that’s LaVryle Spencer.  I’ve read most of her books except for perhaps her last couple before she retired and of all that I’ve read, I truly believe Morning Glory needs to be added to the classics of romance.  I first read this book more years ago than I can remember and I’ve reread it every year or two since then.  I can’t quite remember the last time but I have it on my Ipad and I know I’ve read it since I bought it but when I saw a friend recently post a review on GoodReads, it got the need to reread it again stirring.  And heaven knows when a book starts calling, there is no relief until you answer it.

 This is a beautiful moving story of two very sad and lonely people, how they come together in an enduring gentle love and heal each other with that love.  Will Parker and Elly Dinsmore are characters that have stayed with me since the first time I read this book probably more than 20 years ago.  It’s almost like I’ve absorbed them.

The book opens with Will Parker working at a lumber mill.  He’s only been there 3 days and he’s literally starving.  The book opens just before the second World War and Will has just been released from prison for murdering a prostitute.  We find out details later in the story.  His bully boss finds out this info and dismisses Will on the spot.  Will has just been wandering around the countryside trying to find work and now he’s out of yet another job.  The men laughingly tell him that maybe crazy Elly Dunsmore will take him in.  She has an add up advertising for a husband to help work her farm.  She is known as the local crazy widow woman and her story is just as sad as Will’s.  She was the bastard granddaughter of the town’s religious zealots and was practically locked into the family home with the blinds drawn.  Only after the truant officer found out about her was she allowed out but only to go to school, then back to her prison.  She somehow managed to escape long enough to meet and marry.  But her husband was died in an accident and she has two young boys and is pregnant with her third child and is in desperate circumstances.  Her only option was to look for a husband.  After some thought and due to his own desperate circumstances, Will does go see Elly to check things out.  It’s an awkward meeting, neither one of them real comfortable in dealing with others, Elly because of the isolated way she was raised and Will because of his prison record.  But they manage to come to an agreement and thus starts the most poignant, tender, beautiful, tear inducing books I’ve ever read.  Seriously, I mean it.  If I only had one word – the story is beautiful.

Will has never known love and he sees all he’s ever wanted in the mother that Ellie is.  He falls in love with her partly because of that.  He was an orphan who never knew parents, doesn’t even know his own birthday.  His only friend betrayed him, resulting in his prison sentence.  I think he’s the loneliest, saddest hero I’ve read at the beginning of the book.

Elly is also sad and lonely but not so much.  She has her children and she had a good husband.  Despite or maybe because of her lonely upbringing, Elly has quite a streak of whimsy to her.  She’s actually rather upbeat all things considered and this is just what someone in such a dark place as Will is needs.

Throughout the story, they heal each other.  While she had loved her husband, Will is different.  He’s young, and strong and determined and handsome and he has beautiful eyes.  He loves her two sons and is a wonderful father figure to them. He is loving and very appreciative of everything Elly does both for him and her children.  He never takes anything for granted.  Who wouldn’t fall in love with someone like Will?

And for Will, Elly is everything he couldn’t even have imagined he wanted and needed.  She meets the mothering role he has longed for all his life.  There is a scene where she cuts his hair and one is almost in tears reading just that scene alone.

Slowly, Will gains a sense of pride.  When he first comes to Elly, he’s a broken man.  But with Elly’s help along with Ms. Beasley gets self-respect.  Ms Beasley is the local librarian who helps him when he wants to learn more on different things he fixes around the farm, plumbing, bees, a number of different things.  Ms Beasley is another wonderful character.  She’s starchy and she’s tough and she’s opinionated and she has such a soft heart for Will.  He’s like the son she’s never had and she is a lion in defense of him and when she offers him a job as library custodian, he gains a pride he’s never had before.

And of course there is conflict that comes along in this book.  It takes place in 1941 and the threat of war hangs in the air.  Will knows he is a prime candidate to be called up and wants it to be on his terms.  But Elly is terrified and would rather keep her head in the sand.  Finally the inevitable happens and Will must leave and he joins the Marines.  It turns out that he completely becomes the person he was meant to be.

This part of the book, told through letters, is as wonderful and poignant as the rest of the book and it marks a turning point.  Will comes back but not quite the same person he left.  But now there is another block.  He is being stalked by a woman who refuses to accept the fact he’s not interested.

I really don’t have the words or confidence to completely explain how truly wonderful this book is and how I think it needs to be read at least once by every reader who loves this genre.  Ms. Spencer makes us feel every emotion that Elly and Will in particular experience.  We feel the betrayal that Will feels when his best friend testifies against him during the trial that sends him to jail.  We feel his despair and shame when he brings up the green apples he ate because that was the only thing he could find.  We feel his wonderment over his growing relationship with Ellie’s two boys.  We feel his panic when Ellie insists he be the one to help her give birth and we feel his pride when Ellie gives her new-born daughter his last name.

This is a book that shows, not tells the story and because of that she makes us feel like we are right there with them during their journey to healing and love.  If you check reviews for this book on GoodReads and or Amazon, many reviewers give this higher than 5 stars even though that’s the highest grade allowed.

I might have done a review on Morning Glory before - I can't remember but having just recently read this book again, it’s timeless, it’s a classic and it only gets better with each reading.

Grade: 5+++ out of 5

Recent Reads

Desperate Hearts by Rosanne Bittner

Why this one:  I answer this question further down

Genre: Western

Steam Level: Warm, but not too warm

My Thoughts:

My favourite book by this author and one of my top 10 all-time favourite reads and top 3 Western reads (if not the top) is coming out as an ebook in a few short weeks so I wanted to immerse myself in her world once again.  I’ve read quite a few of her books but I think this one is fairly new and I hadn’t read it before so it was a natural fit.

The book opens with a bang.  Elizabeth Wainright is escaping something bad.  She is fleeing west on a stage coach when it’s attacked by thieves.  All on board except for Elizabeth are killed but she is saved when lawman and vigilante Mitch Brady, who patrols the area as part of his job, rescues her, kills some of the outlaws and captures the others.  He’s taken with Elizabeth right from the beginning; with her beauty and her innocence and he knows she’s running away from something.  He takes her under his wing, seeing she gets help with her injuries, her lodging and her looking for a job.  He wants her to trust him with her secrets as he knows instinctively that she is innocent of whatever she is running from but she is so scared she won’t trust him, especially at first, with even her real age.

But slowly over time and as she begins to see what kind of man he really is, Elizabeth begins to trust Mitch and return his feelings, and finally tells him all, including her real name, Emma.  She’s running from her step father who is framing her for the recent death of her mother in order to claim a family heirloom because of his gambling habits.

While not as emotionally draining as some of her earlier stories, I still really enjoyed this book.  Ms. Bittner really does write great Westerns, she really seems to have a feel for the time and the setting.  Her books, including Desperate Hearts, are gritty and as the old west was a gritty time, so they should be.  I found the fact that Mitch was part of a vigilante group interesting.  The setting is Montana before it was a state and there was no official “law” in the territory.  And they enacted vigilante justice in the book.

Thankfully Mitch is an honest man, albeit a hard one.  He’s so gone for Elizabeth/Emma and so protective of her.  I love that kind of hero.  He is one heck of a yummy hero.  And I liked Emma also, though I did find her a bit slow to trust Mitch.  But then considering what she has gone through, it’s not really surprising.  She was raised in a privileged and wealthy home in New York and she was so out of her element in the old west it was almost a different planet.  Everything she knew was different.  She makes friends with a woman of ill repute.  She’s still in deep mourning over the death of her mother, a death she knows she is being accused of.  Her dealings with her step-father were horrifying.  So I didn’t wonder that she almost didn’t know which way to turn.

As I said, it’s not the best I’ve read by her, but I still enjoyed it quite a lot, look forward to seeing more of her older books being reissued and ebooks and I’m in countdown mode now for Outlaw Hearts

Grade: 4 out of 5

 

~*~*~*~

 

 

Trust Me by Ella Sheridan

Why this one:  I loved the first book in the series and it was a given I'd try this one.

 

Genre: Romantic Suspense

 

Steam Level: Very, very hot!

My Thoughts:  The first book in this new series, Teach Me, was such a great find, that I was excited to read the next one, Trust Me.  I read it and now I’m trying to put my thoughts into words and sometimes it isn’t so easy is it?   This book gets the dreaded – “it was OK.”  I don’t know if it was because I had such high expectations after the first book, whether this one was too similar or what exactly, but I wasn’t nearly as impressed.

It was a good book, don’t get me wrong, but it suffered from “but quite as good as”.  I really liked Jack – but he was not quite as good as Con for me.  The heroine, Maddie, was not bad once we got to know her though she was kind of tough for me to like at first as she came across as rather cold and emotionless.  But she wasn’t quite as good as Jess from the first book.  The stories were very similar (too similar) but the one in Trust Me wasn’t quite as good as Teach Me.

We first met Jack in Teach Me.  He is a very good friend and business partner of Con from book one.  This takes place a little while after the first and Con and Jess are happily married.  Jack is feeling somewhat left out and envious of his friend.  He’s at his local watering hole, in a real shitty mood when a ruckus breaks out and the newest bartender he hasn’t yet met gets involved.  This of course, is Maddie.  When she takes on the customer harassing one of the waitresses, Jack thinks this is hot, while at the same time wanting to take on the situation himself.  He and Con run a detective type agency and they specialize in women in distress. And it doesn’t take him long to figure out that Maddie is in distress though she comes across as tough as nails and not needing anyone.

As the book continues on, we discover she has been horribly abused by her husband and she’s deep in hiding.   She knows he’s trying to find her and she’s terrified that he will.  At the same time, she is trying to find a young teenage girl who she figures has been taken by her ex and his cronies and she wants to find and rescue this girl.  By a strong coincidence, Jack is doing the same thing though they don’t realize it until much later in the book.  They finally join forces and try and catch the bad guy with the help of Con and another buddy who is being set up for his story next book.

This is too similar to the first one – poor but brave heroine who has suffered major abuse at the hands of an ex, rescued by a caring, wonderful hero.  While the villain in book #1 was chilling, villain in book #2 is almost cartoonish in his evilness.  Maybe I’m being too harsh, but this one just didn’t work like the first book I read by this author.

And I read the synopsis of the next book and the hero of that book has a twin brother and it seems they both share the love of the same woman and if it goes where I’m wondering if it might, I just won’t be going on that journey.  It’s a little bit too much for me if that is the set-up.

Grade: 3 out of  5

 

and more to come

'til later

Thought for the Day.......

 

 

Still at work, still bored and still thinking.

The thought for the day – am I a reader snob?  I started thinking this when I mentioned in my review of The Longest Ride that I’d never read a Nicolas Sparks book and had no intention of ever reading a Nicolas Sparks book.  I wondered why really and the “other” voice in my head answered “it’s ‘cause you be a snob beyotch!” (she sometimes talks to me like that – I really should teach her respect)

But I had to admit she might have a point.  Since I’ve never even tried one, how can I turn my nose up at this author’s whole body of work?  I like, and even love some of his movies though I haven’t seen them all.  I’m still a bit reluctant after watching Message in a Bottle.  I’ve heard his books aren’t well written and not all of them have happy endings and I’ve read where many question whether his books should even be called romances but maybe instead they should be qualified as romantic.

I’m the same way with Danielle Steele.  I think I read one of her book years ago and was less than impressed and scorned her too as “not a real romance writer.”  But she does seem to be popular.  They turned some of her books in to television movies and I think I might have started watching one once and thought “blech” and turned it off.  This is another author I’m a snob about.

Then we have Jackie Collins.  Now her books were popular back in the 70’s and 80’s.  I read one.  Once.  And that was quite enough thank you.  At the time I was also reading Mary Stewart, Daphne Du Maurier, Anya Seton so when I read Jackie Colllins, well, her book really was sleazy trash.

(OMG!! Squeak -  I sound like my mother.)

E.L. James is another author I can be accused of being snobby about, and probably with just cause.  I haven’t read the 50 Shades books, have no intentions of it, haven’t seen the movie and have no intentions in that either.  I’ve read and heard enough that the writing amateurish and the subject matter not true to life and not something I want to read about in any case.  I don’t really understand pain and sex together.

I have read so called racy books. I read quite a few Harold Robbins and Sidney Sheldon and I don’t have a problem with them.  I think, in my own convoluted mind that holds at least two people, that since they weren’t marketed as romance then I’m OK is their books are somewhat tasteless

I do believe it’s because I’m protective of the romance genre.  It’s my genre of choice and one of the big reasons is the quality of many of its authors.  I’ve read all genres and the authors themselves who write romance are some of the best actual writers and I don’t want what I consider ‘posers’ mixed into the genre – like fake chocolate chips mixed in with real chocolate chips.  They may look the same and at first glance they seem real, but the quality just isn’t the same.

But in my defense of romance authors, have I strayed too far into snobishood?

 

‘til later



A Tale from my Childhood

 

I think the commercials are getting to me.  I’m becoming conscious of “coffee breath”.  I don’t if I have it or not, but to make sure I’ve started either having mints or chewing gum to eliminate it.  I bought a number of different kinds the other day so I’d have a choice and one of the brands I got was Juicy Fruit.  I very seldom chew gum – except lately when I’ve become paranoid about “coffee breath” – must be an aging thing. 

Anyway, I’d no sooner started chewing my first stick when I was transported back to a much (much) younger me.  Every Sunday afternoon, my best friend and I would go ice skating at a local arena.  I never really much cared for it to be honest, but a boy I had a crush on would be there every Sunday too and every  week I waited for him to ask me to skate.  Alas, I waited every week in vain.  But my bestie and I always filled our pockets with Juicy Fruit gum they sold at the arena and we would skate and chew and chew and skate  to the tunes of Glad All Over by The Dave Clark 5, Get Off Of My Cloud by The Rolling Stones, So Happy Together by The Turtles, and of course many a tune by Paul Revere and the Raiders and I’d hope a boy would ask me to skate with him.

I just finished my morning wake up coffee and I picked Juicy Fruit today.

 

Don’t you love it when I’m bored at work?

 

‘til later

Recent Movie

 

I don’t do a lot of these ‘cause I don’t go to the movies very often, only about once or twice a year.  It’s not so much the price of the movie that keeps me from seeing more –it’s the cost of the pop and popcorn.  One simply can not go to a movie without getting them and when the charge more for the popcorn than they do for the movie – POPCORN for pete’s sake – well, I boycott the movies unless it’s a special occasion or a movie I can’t wait to come out on DVD (notice I don’t say Neflix – I’ve no idea how that works really)

Such was the case yesterday, my day off from working the weekend,  when I went to see The Longest Ride – it was both.  A neighbor took me as a long delayed birthday present and – hello – Scott Eastwood.

 

So about this

 I may be old but I’m surely not dead.  Scott Eastwood – hello – (sorry – I just can’t type his name without the hello added to it)plays the role of Luke Collins a cowboy and bull rider.  He suffered a deadly injury and shouldn’t be bull riding anymore but he’s a stubborn one and is mounting a comeback on the bull riding circuit.  He meets Sophia Danko an art student at the local college when she and a bunch of her sorority sisters head to the local rodeo even though initially she doesn’t really want to go.  Their eyes meet when he’s bucked off a bull and his hat is knocked off and she hands it to him and he tells her to keep it.  They meet up again at the local watering hole and can we say – SPARKS FLY.  Heck, even I thought her gorgeous and sweet and wished we could hang together.  The only thing keeping me from developing a deeper girl crush was hello- Scott Eastwood.  Sophia is reluctant to get involved though as she has her life planned out and that means she is leaving the college in a couple of months to take an internship in New York City and any potential relationship would be so hard to maintain.  But she does agree to go out with him and can I just say that EVERY GIRL should have that kind of first date.  Talk about romantic.  And when this really hot cowboy – hello – Scott Eastwood –

is walking across this university campus – well, my heart went pitty pat.

There is such a real connection but again – timing sucks.  They are on their home from the date and it’s pouring rain when Luke spies something on the side of the road and discovers there was an accident.  Ira Levinson, played brilliantly by Alan Alda is rescued by Luke and Sophia but he also wants a box saved.  When he gets to the hospital, Sophia wants to stay to make sure he’s OK (see – girl crush).  When he wakes she shows him the box of letters she’s saved but he’s too old and his sight too bad to read them so she begins reading them and thus begins a series of flashbacks of a young Ira and his love Ruth and their story set in the 1940’s.  The actors who played a young Ira and a young Ruth were perfectly cast, especially I think Oona Chaplin who played Ruth.   It was sweet and tender and sad and it really added a lot to the movie.  I didn’t realize it going it, but this is actually a two story movie, half of it between Luke and Sophia and who they can overcome their difficulties and half between Ira and Ruth and overcoming their difficulties.  It’s sad in places, real sad in a couple, but it does have a very good happy ending.  A coworker had seen it and recommended it to me.  I asked her if it had a happy ending – not how it ended or that I wouldn’t see it if it didn’t –just that if it wasn’t a happy ending I needed to brace myself.  And myself didn’t need bracing so that’s a good thing for the romance lover in me.  The love scenes in this movie *sigh* well – I have a mood calendar at my desk that I change every day depending on how I’m feeling when I come into work.  Today I chose Addled and showed my coworker who recommended the movie.  Even though she’s just newly married, she got it – heh, heh, heh.

This is another Nicolas Sparks movie.  I’ve never read his books – and don’t intend to start, but I’ve seen some of his movies and they can be quite wonderful.  I liked the Notebook, have Safe Harbor downloaded in my Ipad though I haven’t watched it yet and LOOVVEDD The Lucky One – very romantic and who doesn’t find Zac Ephron easy on the eyes – though not as easy as- hello- Scott Eastwood.

I think part of my fascination with Scott is he‘s the son of Clint Eastwood and my oh my did I have a crush on him when I was just a young thing and he played Rowdy Yates, the strong silent type cowboy on Rawhide.  Combined with the awesomeness of the theme song, it was a great show for its time and helped lead me to my lifelong love of Westerns.  And after a brief sojourn into other genres, I’m back with the westerns.  Back in the days of Rawhide, believe it or not you young’uns, TV was black and white so we didn’t get to see the piercing blue eyes of the Eastwood men, but oh my stars were they on full display in The Longest Ride (and let’s not even get started on the PERFECT chest with PERFECT manly chest hair.)

For me, this was the PERFECT romance movie and I’ll be getting a copy as soon as I can when it comes out.  I think it’s almost finished it’s run with all the summer movies coming out, but if not, I urge the romantic in everyone to check this movie out.  It gets a very, very well deserved and hearty thumbs up from me.

 

 

And one more for the road – hello- Scott Eastwood.

 

 

 

 

 

 

'til later