The Texicans

by Nina Vida

Here's the write-up from the back of the book:
Joseph, a Polish-Jewish schoolteacher, has become a rancher by chance. He marries Katrin, an orphaned immigrant from Alsace, to save her from an Indian chief, but he becomes obsessed with Aurelia, a Mexican girl who may be a witch. Together with two runaway slaves, and assorted Comanches, Tonkaways, and vaqueros, they struggle to settle in Texas.

The story is set in the mid-1800s and follows this disparate group who face many challenges making a place for themselves in the rugged plains of Texas.

The book starts out with Aurelia whose father earns money by selling healings. It seems young Aurelia can heal just by looking in the ill person's eyes. Then we leave Aurelia for awhile and are introduced to Joseph Kimmel. Both are interesting characters with human foibles and flaws, but very likeable. At least for most of the book. My heart ached for Katrin, though. None of these people had easy lives, but I thought Katrin silently endured the most.

I liked this description of Joseph - He hadn't made many friends at the school, preferring to be left alone with his books. It wasn't that he disliked people. It was more that with his somber personality, there was no sense inflicting himself on others.

Another time Joseph is visiting with a man named Castro, who tells him that he's done a good thing by helping so many people. Joseph's reply - I don't know that I have. I've been circumspect all my life. Unencumbered. solitary. Somehow I've lost sight of that in Texas. I've ruined my life. I'm a fool, an idiot caught by my own conscience and trapped by sympathies I never knew I had and I'm too stubborn to change my mind.

And when Joseph first met Captain Dawson, a Texas Ranger. Dawson kept talking even though he was reaching for the door knob and Joseph thought to himself - Some men just needed to linger, even when they were ready to go and there was nothing more for them to do. Isaac was like that. Joseph used to tell him that he'd get a lot more sewing done if he would't talk so much to his customers. You can fit them for their suits and talk to them at the same time, Joseph would tell him, but why do you have to keep talking when they're ready to leave and you can see in their eyes that they've got places to go? Why do you have to tell strangers everything you know in the world? Captain Dawson looked at Joseph that way now, as if he were going to plub his memory all the way back to the day he was born, was going to tell Joseph what the weather was like that day and how many glasses of water his mother drank before she squeezed him out.

I loved this book! And highly recommend it. I remember wondering during the first 30 pages if this was going to be a book I liked, but as the events progressed I found myself totally engrossed. And I loved the writing. It seemed to fit this place in history. I thought about holding a giveaway for this book but decided instead to pass it along to my mother.

1st To Die

by James Patterson

I've read a couple of books by Patterson over the years and have enjoyed them very much. One of my favorites was Suzanne's Diary for Nicholas.

Over the years I've read some good comments about his Women's Mystery Club series. So I jumped right in and started with the first book in the series.

Four women-four friends-share a determination to stop a killer who has been stalking newlyweds in San Francisco. Each one holds a piece of the puzzle: Lindsay Boxer is a homicide inspector in the San Francisco Police Department, Claire Washburn is a medical examiner, Jill Bernhardt is an assistant D.A., and Cindy Thomas just started working the crime desk of the San Francisco Chronicle.

I plan on reading the rest in the series so I'm going to list them in order here so I know where I'm going and what I've read. It helps that the titles include numbers.
1. 1st to Die
2. 2nd Chance
3. 3rd Degree
4. 4th of July
5. The 5th Horseman
6. The 6th Target
7. 7th Heaven
8. The 8th Confession

Is anyone else reading this series? What books have you read? Does the series hold up as new books are added?

I Did It!

In an earlier post I shared with you the activities required for my library's adult summer program. Activity #9 was 'Learn to Blog'. Since I had been blogging for over 3 years, I decided to do something else related to my blog - I designed my own layout and header. This July 4th layout is my own design. I'm quite tickled with it. Although I think the red star paper is a little too distracting when trying to read the posts. I'll look for 'quieter' paper to go behind the posts in my next layout.

I also designed the layout for one of my other blogs, In Season. It didn't turn out quite as well - the column lines don't measure up quite right. Something else to improve upon. I didn't get a header made for In Season, though. All-in-all I've had a lot of fun learning how to do this and I didn't have to buy a program to help me, just relied on some good online tutorials and my thimbleful of html knowledge.

***Note added later: I changed the red stars for a plainer paper which makes it easier to read the posts.

The Library's Summer Reading Program

Every summer my local library features a reading program, usually geared at young people, but they always have a program for adults, too. When teaching I always looked forward to joining because I was anxious to sit for hours and read - something I very seldom found the time to do with the rigors of lesson preparations. I wrote a post in 2006 explaining the program and what books I planned to read. (That was the first year of my blog.) In 2007 I didn't participate because Candleman and I took a 5 week trip in the summer. I know I blogged about the books I was reading for 2008, but I can't find that post so I can't include a link.

The library has a new children/teen reading director this year who has completely changed the adult program. I can't say that I like it better or worse - it's just different. This year there are 12 learning activities that we are to choose and do eight. Some of these fit well into my Vigorous Mind paths of cross-training and some were new ideas that were fun to do and provided further cross-training for me.

Here's the program and the 8 activities I chose:
1. Learn to use Picasa digital photo editing. My daughter had given me PhotoShop a few years ago so I decided I should concentrate on learning that program instead of downloading something different. I figured that would be just too confusing for me. I have followed several tutorials offered online, inculding one from my daughter on inked edges. She has a couple more tutorials and there are loads more on other sites. I'm looking forward to doing many more of these.

2. Learn to Twitter or how to use Facebook. I had already signed up to use Facebook, but I don't use it very often. I did do some searching on features and learned to play Farkle, but I'm not really "into it". So I joined Twitter. I totally don't know what to do there. I'm all the time seeing on blogs requests to Twitter about a book giveaway. I still don't see how anyone would every find out about those giveaways from Twitter. Guess I better search for a Twitter tutorial.

3. Try a new recipe from a a library book. This one was easy. I made a recipe on page 81 of Taste of Home Ground Beef cookbook. Can you believe that's all I recorded - not the name of the recipe or how we liked it?! I guess I wasn't all that impressed.

4. Go on a "Staycation" see one of our local history sites. I didn't do this one, although I plan to attend the quilt show in August at the museum. The library's summer program will be over by then, so this won't count.

5. Download a book from the libtrary's Overdrive digital media collection. I spent hours and hours on this simple sounding activity. I've been downloading audio books for years onto my computer and then transferring them onto the iPod. I ran into problems finding a book, but there was a security line that was wrong in my version of Windows Media Player. I ended up searching for an update that still didn't work. Finally, on an obscure little question an answer page set up by someone else having the same problem I found several 'possible' solutions. The last one finally worked. Someone had written to the company and they had sent him a little bit of html to fix the problem. Good grief! I'll just check out audio books from my library!

6. Paint something. Check out a book from the library and be creative. I'm passing on this one.

7. Learn how to do Zentangles. The library is offering a class on these, but I didn't want to wait so I searched them online and found several tutorials, including videos, that provided sufficient instruction. I was quite tickled with my first attempt at this art form. My daughter decided to try her hand at it and created 2 very lovely zentangles - one is actually a zendala. If i can learn how to photcopy hers and transfer them to the computer I'll post pictures. If you want to see others' pictures just search images using the word zentangle. So many and some are very amazing.

8. Learn a foreign language with interactive audio using Mango. This program is free but I think you need to get to it from your library and using your library card number. What a magnificent site. Mango offers 12 foreign languages. Initially I wanted to learn Latin, but that was not an option so I chose French, a language I've wanted to learn since I was young. It wasn't offerend in my schools. I've spent hours working on the first lesson. I can sit at the computer and see the words, hear them pronounced, see the pronunciation hints and still not speak it as well as my husband and daughter who are only listening! Grrrr! Besides I've spent more hours doing it they have. I'm presently working on lesson two out of 100 lessons offered.

9. Learn to Blog! Since I've been doing this blog for 3 years I just about skipped this one, but then I decided there were many things I could do to improve my blog. I decided to add some pertinent ads. I've always wanted to learn how to design my own page layout. So I've been reading tutorials. I am to the point that I think I'll need to purchase a program before I can design anything that will satisfy me. I've picked up a basic knowledge of html - very basic. I will be spending many hours still on this activity.

10. Attend a library sponsored program. Last night I attended the library's book club. They discussed A Thousand Splendid Suns. It had been two years since I read it so my memory wasn't allowing me to make many meaningful comments, but I enjoyed those refreshed by others' comments.

11. Learn your family history by using ancestry.com at the library. This is another one that I'm skipping for the time being. Before I had children I spent hours and hours doing genealogy. It was fun, but so compelling. I know that once I start up again, I will be consumed with the desire to spend most of my days doing it. So this one's going on hold for awhile.

12. Learn to make a folded book for our display at the library. There's a class this afternoon that my daughter and I are going to attend. The library will provide 2 books for each patron and teach us how to fold the pages so they can be folded artistically. I've looked at some that have already been done and they are quite fascinating. The finished display promises to be quite spectacular. I'll try to get pictures.

As you can see the Adult Summer Reading Program is not really about reading but about life-long learning. Great idea! I still thing I will do the old reading program as well. Hopefully I will get my books chosen for the different categories and post them soon.

Split Second

by David Baldacci

I read Hour Game by Baldacci back in January without realizing it was book 2 in a series. It could have been a good stand-alone, but I was delighted to find out there were more books featuring former Secret Service agents Sean King and Michelle Maxwell.

It was fun going back to book one, Split Second, and learning how King and Maxwell met each other and became partners. In addition, it was a gripping, page turning mystery. I look forward to reading book three.