Art and Books-What Could be Better?

Hi everyone. Thanks for visiting my blog today. Another weekend has buzzed right by and it is almost time for another week to begin. But wasn't it just September 1? Now we are almost half way through the month.

  I have some art for you and also a book post for those of you who may want to see what's been on my nightstand.

Here's my latest pattern page for Art Journal Journey. This month the challenge at polka-dots, stripes, plaids or patterns (PSPP for short). 

I began my page with a paint brush clean up watercolor page.  I stenciled a design using a lace image stencil  with some black  paint onto some thin white paper. Once dry,  I tore that paper into some bits and attached those pieces randomly to my watercolor base, and then I went back over part of the page and stenciled over some of my page with some soft modeling paste.

Originally I thought of coloring the  modeling paste part, but then I decided I liked the white color and left it. I finished off the page with a bit of stamping and finally coloring along with fussy cutting some stamped dragonflies from another sheet of paper.

And for those of you who are readers and may enjoy a book review, here's my last month and a half  reading/listening list. 

I share these mostly so I can keep track of what I have read, but I know I enjoy book recommendations and I believe some of you do also.

My goal is this year is to listen to all 7 Harry Potter books, and I am doing pretty well with it. I finished book 5 and now I am working on book 6.   Jim Dale, the narrator of these books, has an amazing voice range also, and he is  great to listen to.  I think I  prefer the stories being read to me rather than  reading them myself. It certainly makes my daily commutes much more enjoyable. Go Harry!

And my latest book club book was the Great Alone. I would probably never have picked up this book but I am glad I did. It is set in Alaska, and I found it quite an emotional thrill to read. I will say however, it seems a few of our book club choices lately have had an abusive male in them, as did this one, and I am ready for some nicer male main characters. But it was an easy read and I could read it quite quickly.  I do recommend it.

And below is another oldie, reread for me. The Historian is long ( a 28 hour listen), but I enjoyed it the second time around as much as the first. This time I did listen to it rather than read it in book form, but it is a great suspenseful story about the search for Dracula by 2 historians who believe there is enough evidence that he still lives in the mid-20th century. It is fiction, but I enjoyed the romp around Europe in the 1950's and 1970's. My only complaint is some of the story is the reading of letters by one of the historians, and maybe it could have been written more in real time, but that is a small complaint. I like its suspense and gothic (in the traditional sense) feel. It is not full of blood and gore, although there are a few random deaths, but for me a good fall read/listen. I don't know why but I always have an urge to read some good old fashion style gothic tales as the leaves begin to turn.
And do they find Dracula? I will leave that to you if you want to know I guess you will need to read the book.

And another listened to story was this children's classic.

I had never read the books, and of course books are often better than films, so I decided to listen to the Anne Hathaway version. I must say I really enjoyed it. And definitely not the film either. How much not like the film really surprised me.

Now my reading book mood lately has been mysteries, and I have been racking them up.

I am only showing only one of this Dr. Ruth Galloway series, but I am hooked on these. This is the last of 3 I've read since early August..(This is the 8th book in the series and I started with #1 in January.)  Ruth Galloway is an archeologist who assisted the police with investigations, and there is a whole cast of characters which are really nicely done. They show up in all the books and I think some of my addiction to this series is I like to see what everyone has been up to. But I do suggest you start at the beginning to get to know the characters as you go.

I also read the last couple of Louise Penny's  Armand Gamache mysteries so I am all caught up for the latest which recently came out. I haven't read that one yet,  but I think these are some of the best written mysteries around, not quite as easy a read as the Elly Griffiths one but just as good.

And (ha-ha), I keep working on my husband so he might become a bit more like Armand Gamache.
There's been a few other light and fluffy listens/reads, including the non-political book by the Bush twins and  a pie baking cookbook.
And there's a couple more mysteries on my nightstand to read (including the latest Louise Penny) and also my latest bookclub book by Barbara Kingsolver. All of which I look forward to.

Thanks for visiting.