Art and Books

Hi everyone.
It's the weekend. I have 2 days to wrap up my grading (Monday, Tuesday) and then I am done. Done, done done! And ready for summer and life away from hours on end of computer teaching.
 And yesterday I had nice work  surprise. The yearbook was dedicated, and they way our school does it is that the 6 teachers with most senior votes get a dedication. And I got one!!! That's a nice gift as I say goodbye to my career.  I don't know when the yearbook will be released, but iI hope they send me a copy when it does.
And my other piece of good news is that my Mom tested covid negative this week, and she is now back in her apartment. Glad to be back and sounding really happy and healthy too.

I'll start today's post with another page for Halle's challenge at Art Journal Journey. This month the challenge is a Sitch In Time.

I started with a stenciled background made with Dina Wakely's spray paints and a stencil.
I forget I had this Wend Vecchi set of sewing stamps, but was glad to find them in my stash. They work perfect for this challenge. I stamped the page with them to make my background.  I die cut the sewing machine and used 2 other stamps from that set to decorate the page. The stitching at the  top of the page is from an old set of stamps, maybe from Autumn Leaves, but whoever made them they came in perfect here. Finally I had some left over pink die cut flowers on my work table  and I added them to my page.
The colors of this page make me happy.

It's also time for my latest book post. Once again, I write this for me and for those of you who like books recommendations. May was a month with a lot of reading but it wasn't a month with lots of different books.

I finished only 2 audio books this month. 

First I listened to book 5 in the Sookie Stackhouse series. I remembered as I listened that this was one of my least favorite of the 13 books in this series. Still a good story, but I like the ones with the vampires more than the ones with the shifters. This story focused more so on the shifter community, and I wonder if it was the author's rebuttal from the earlier book 3 where there was a nasty vampire rape scene. But it was still good to continue the series.

 And I also listened to this excellent mystery set in Galway, Ireland. Not only was it a really good story but the narrator was Irish so that really gave the story a lot of  atmosphere. This was not a cozy mystery,but was a bit more hard-boiled police procedural. It had some dark overtones in it, and was even a bit gritty in places.

I also listened to a 4 1/2 hour lecture on Prince Albert, Queen Victoria's husband. I belong to Audible and each month you get some freebies to listen to. Some months you are limited to 2 items from their selection, but since the virus appeared and people are home they have allowed to to take as many from their monthly free selections as you'd like.   This was one of those freebies, and I did enjoy it. I've read a few books and watched several shows about Victoria, so some of this wasn't new, but the perspective of Prince Albert did teach me some new thing and was an interesting view since so often he is just the accompaniment to the Queen. I also liked the  lecture format and think I'll listen to some more in the future.

And I read 3 books this month.

First of all, I finished this mystery I mentioned last month.

I'd also give this book high marks. It's the first in this detective series set in the Shetland Islands.  Not quite as gritty as the other one I listened to this month, but certainly not a cozy either.

 And I picked up this book off of Amazon as it is old and out of print. I was motivated to buy it because I own Bernard Clayton Jr's Complete Book of Breads which is an amazing baking book. And I noticed in the front of the book that he also wrote this book, which contains recipes and also travel stories of the author's travels in France in the 1970's. This book was published during that time period.  This book is as good as  his Complete Book of Breads. Now I just need to try some French breads.

And lastly I have wanted to get engrossed in a long interesting story for awhile now, and this is what my last book of the month was.

Exodus was published in 1958 and was the number one book of 1959 in the US. It is the fascinating story of the founding of Israel.  How did I come across this book?

Last fall the hubby and I watched Madmen, and in one season there was a show where this book was mentioned many times. And that reminded me of my mother's bookshelf as this book was on it. I learned a lot from reading this story and besides that, also gave me a little view of what my mother had enjoyed when she was a younger reading women. It was also a good book. Not the fastest read I have ever picked up, but that's ok because sometimes, when you get into a book, you just want to keep reading about that particular story. Of course this book is historical fiction, so the overall setting is true but I don't believe (but don't actually know) how many characters from this novel are real.

I did splurge back at the end of April  and order some book from my wish list off of Amazon. I also pulled a few off of my bookshelf that have been patiently been waiting to be read.

Some of these are oldies and many are non-fiction, but I will intersperse them with some more mysteries and fiction either from my shelf or from the library.

(The top book by the way says a Good Horse Has No Color)

More about these at another time. Once I get around to reading them.

That all for me today!