#39

Read a wonderful novel by Patricia Falvey titled "The Yellow House." Set in Ireland in the early 1900's it covers the fictional O'Neill family and Eileen in particular. Growing up in Ulster with all the tension between the Catholics and the Protestants created a great backdrop for this story. Her family is torn apart early and her goal is to bring them back together and to live once again in the yellow house. Loved it!

#38

Finished Steve Berry's "The Jefferson Key." Good book but was a little hard to follow with every couple of paragraphs changing to a different person, location and event. Started with the attempted assassination of the President and our hero, Cotton Malone, shows up in time to stop it. From there he ends up in the Oval Office along with his female companion to stop modern day pirates from continuing what has been allowed since the revolutionary times. Freedom to privateer for America and give back a portion to the country but pocket the rest, known as Letters of Marque. All presidents that have tried to interfere with them have ended up assassinated. Good read! Anxious to get into some of my new box load of books that arrived this week.

Totally tired of work and the nasty customers who can't crack a smile if their lives depended on it. If I have to be nice then it would be great if it was returned. Don't even get one day off over the holiday weekend. Good thing we weren't invited anywhere anyway.

#37

Finished James Patterson's "10th Anniversary." This was the 10th of in the series of the Women's Murder Club. Good fast read which is pretty typical of Patterson and whoever is his coauthor of the month. Several stories running side by side to help keep all the members of the club busy. We covered rape, murder, incest, and infidelity. Yep! That was it in a nut shell.

#36

I forget how I stumbled across "One Second After" by William R. Forstchen, but it was a very thought provoking read. It's been recommended as reading material for all of Congress. Electromagnetic Pulse is the reason. "They say" that it could be our country's destruction. We've apparently known about it for a long time and haven't taken precautions to prevent the consequences. In Forstchen's novel, an ex military man turned professor has moved to a small town in the mountains of the Carolinas to takes his dying wife back to her family. He's established himself and his family there when all power stops. He's aware of what has probably happened when he realizes that all cars models after 1980 have stopped dead, cell phones are dead, computers are dead, and our world as we know it is forever changed. Everything that we've put a computer chip into is now gone. Planes have fallen out of the sky. Within days martial law is enforced. No contact with the outside world is taking place to find out what has happened and who's attacked us. Now they have to figure out how to keep surviving. His daughter is a diabetic and has been given just a few vials of insulin. No means to get more. The nursing home is a mess of filth within two days. Elderly dying without help. In weeks they have people starving and fighting each other for food. Strangers are swarming the countryside in search of food so they have to form their own army to protect their residents. A trip to the grocery store while reading this book made me want to stock up on a year's worth of food and water. Definitely an interesting read.

#35

Took me ages to finish my latest book. Partly because I couldn't get into it and partly because I was working on ancestry.com. Jeffrey Deaver's "The Lesson of Her Death" is an old novel of his and not one of his Lincoln Rhyme's stories. It isn't really that it wasn't a good book; I just find that I'm feeling less moved by murder mysteries. This murder happened in a small town and it involved a college coed. She was found strangled and raped. The suspects were all over the place. Was it a professor or a local youth? Was it a cult killing? More deaths take place and finally it wraps up.

Uploaded my ancestry research onto the ancestry.com website and decided to add all the old family pictures that I have sitting in 7 albums in a trunk. Why keep them to myself when others can benefit from them. Lots of people are scuffing them up so it's a good thing. I figure I'll keep my subscription active for a couple weeks then cut it off again. Did meet (online) a wife of a distant cousin who lives locally and we've decided we'll do a cemetery walk in my home town and check out her husband's and my ancestors. I do find it interesting to read all the different names and places that my ancestors have come from.

Managed to get 6 days off. Asked for last Friday off as a vacation day and then asked off for Saturday and Sunday (Mother's Day). Was scheduled for work yesterday and scheduled off Tuesday and Wednesday. Decided that Monday was a good day to take a personal day and ended up with the time off. It's been great and much needed. Still have a week and a half of vacation to use up before the beginning of September. We can't decide what to do.