Mirkwood Reflections

The Light Princess by George MacDonald 1/1/2015 Excellent - Children's - 110 pages (Print) A princess is cursed with a lack of gravity. I assigned this to Emily to read and decided to read it myself as well. I've always wanted to read MacDonald, but a difficult reading experience with one of his books when I was a teenager had prejudiced me against him. However, this wasn't at all hard to read! Very simple, but deep. Season of Storms  by Susanna Kearsley 1/11/2015 Good - Chick Lit - 501 pages (Print) Young actress Celia Sands is offered the lead in a play in Italy because she shares the name of the actress for whom the play was written. A couple friends rave about Kearsley and I've read two of her so far, both entertaining and light. Slim by Design: Mindless Eating Solutions for Everyday Life  by Brian Wansink 1/16/2015 Excellent - Non-fiction - 320 pages (Print) How to set up your living environments so that you naturally lose weight. Interesting ideas on...

W is for Wasted by Sue Grafton - 1/11/2014 Good - Mystery - 497 pages (Kindle) Kinsey finds she is distantly related to a recently deceased homeless man I've always enjoyed reading about Kinsey Millhone's private investigations. This latest in the alphabet-named series was quite enjoyable. Takedown Twenty by Janet Evanovich -1/26/2014 Good - Mystery - 337 pages (Print) Dead old ladies are being found in dumpsters and Stephanie and Lula keep seeing a giraffe running the city streets. Another long-running series about an investigator - Stephanie Plum, inept bounty hunter. This one did not disappoint! Lots of Ranger. Yes ! The Annotated Sense and Sensibility edited by David M. Shapard, original text by Jane Austen - 1/31/2014 Excellent - Classic - 709 pages (Print and audio) I listened to the book but read the annotations in the print version. Sense and Sensibility is not my favorite Austen. I have no patience at all for the idealist heroine, Marianne. This is my 3...

Guess I never did a January or February post! Will remedy that now.   Beguiled by Deeanne Gist & J. Mark Bertrand - 1/2/2011 Good - Inspirational Suspense Dogwalker Rylee finds herself in the middle of a Robin Hood robbery and is implicated. Will reporter Logan Woods be an ally or an enemy? Not my favorite Deeanne Gist novel.   Sala's Gift: My Mother's Holocaust Story by Ann Kirschner - 1/3/2011 Good - Nonfiction As a young woman during WW2, Sala was placed in a Nazi work camp. She survived but never talked about her experiences until she gave letters she had saved for 50+ years to her adult daughter who then researched her mother's story. I never knew much about the WW2 work camps - very interesting and sad part of WW2 history.   The Mysteries of Udolpho by Ann Radcliffe - 1/18/2011 Good - Gothic Romance Emily St. Aubert is orphaned and taken from France to Italy by her aunt and eventually to the castle of Udolpho where strange things occur. Read this to bet...

Eight books in January and most of them very satisfying! The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde - 1/7/2010 Good - Sci-fi Thursday Next, a British literary detective, has to track down the thief of a stolen Dickens manuscript. Darlene told me about this series and it sounded intriguing. I enjoyed it, mostly because of all the literary references and how the story sets itself on its ear. Nanny Returns by Emma McLaughlin & Nicola Kraus - 1/8/20 10 Good - Fiction Twelve years after Nan was fired, Grayer comes back into her life as a troubled sixteen-year-old who asks her to help his seven-year-old brother. I chose this because I'd read The Nanny Diaries and found it horrifyingly mesmerizing, mostly because of the way the family treated their son. Now the family has two sons, but I found this story much less believable, though still in teresting. A Bride in the Bargain by Deanne Gist - 1/11/2010 Excellent - Inspirational Romance Joe Denton needs a wife to keep his land in 1860's ...

I've been neglecting this poor blog! I'll try harder in the future! Just four books in January. I tried hard, but reading time was scarce! I did write 27,000 words on my novel in January though! The Falcon and the Sparrow by M.L. Tyndall - 01/13/09 Good - Inspirational Regency (999 Category: Serendipity – Unplanned books I want to read ) Dominique is hired as a governess to the son of an English admiral but has a hidden agenda as a French spy, a task she is forced into to save her brother's life. I really enjoyed this Christian Regency romance! (Regencies are set at the beginning of the 19th century in England.) Far from your typical sappy Christian novel, this one dealt squarely with issues of faith and morality, rather than presenting a sanitized view of life. Both main characters were believable and likable. Plum Spooky by Janet Evanovich - 01/14/09 Good - Fiction (999 Category: Kindred Spirits - Books By Favorite Authors) An FTA has absconded with a magnetometer and ...