Rose Under Fire by Elizabeth Wein

I read this on the plane ride home from Seattle. When we got home, I brought my suitcase in, set it in my bedroom, and picked up this book to keep reading. The next morning I finished the book. Then I unpacked.

I loved this book. It's by the same author as Code Name Verity, which I also loved. (It turns out that not everyone I know also loved that book.) Rose is an Air Transport pilot in WWII, and ends up in a concentration camp for six months. You know from the beginning that she makes it, because she is telling the story herself.

It has a little profanity - a few F bombs in the Concentration Camp era of the book. Really just a few. (Which does make me sad in a young adult book.) It's not a light read, but I felt like it was uplifting.

I recommend it!

Call the Midwife by Jennifer Worth

This series is all the rage on PBS. I haven't seen it yet. I heard about the book, and thought I'd read it before I watch any of the series.

Jennifer Worth was a midwife in the East End area of London in the 1950's. This book tells of some of her "adventures" as a midwife there.

I liked the book. It reminded me a lot of the Irish Country Doctor series by Patrick Taylor that I like so well.  Taylor's books are fiction, based on medical practices at the time (the 1930's, and 1960's). Jennifer Worth's books are nonfiction. The two series are very similar from the aspect of seeing the medical world at that time.

I prefer Taylor's books. That's not to say this one wasn't good. It was just so similar I don't feel like I need to read both. I probably won't read the next two in this series.

I probably will try watching the PBS series though.

Remembering Isaac by Ben Behunin

I read this book for my book group. It was okay, but it didn't just set me on fire. The author is meeting with our group when we have the discussion, and I'm hopeful that it makes the book seem better.

Isaac was the potter of Niederbipp. He died, and Jake takes over as town potter. The town residents come in and talk to Jake about Isaac and how wonderful he was, and how he changed and improved everyone's lives. And of course how humble he was.

About half way through the book I thought, "Okay, Isaac was a great guy. Now let's move on."

This is the first in a series. I really don't have any desire to read any more of the books.

Library Book Rant

I started reading the book Quiet by Susan Cain. After about 25 pages I had to stop and return it to the library. I requested the audio book instead, and I'm waiting for it.

The reason I had to stop reading the book was someone had written notes all over the book. Not just underlined, which in itself is offensive enough in a library book, but comments in the margins, and all over the place. At the beginning there is a little quiz you take to see if you are an introvert or not. That person's answers were right there for all of us future readers to see, in addition to his/her comments about that quiz.

When I own a book, I feel free to make notes and highlight parts of it. But never a library book. It was so distracting I could not read the book. It is so maddening to me. Who in the world thinks that is okay?

Now I'm even further away from getting this book read. I hope the audio version becomes available soon.

First Family by David Baldacci

No, this is not the book about John and Abigail Adams (that book is sitting on my bookshelf waiting to be read). This one is the next in the King and Maxwell series.

I enjoy these fast action books. They catch you on the first page, and keep you involved until the end. There are only a couple more in the series. I'll be a little sad when I'm done with them.

January Report

Two things:
1. I can't believe it's February already!
2. At my current rate of blogging for the year, I'll have about 20 posts for the whole year, 12 of which will be monthly reports. I need to carve out more time for recording in my blog.

January started off with a bang. Our son got married on January 4, and we had our daughter Debra and her family here with us for a week during that time. Here are a couple informal shots of the wedding time:

Four of my granddaughters: Elizabeth (4), Rachel (4), Madeleine (6), and Diane (3)

Me and my son Ray on his wedding day

But I digress. Back to the matter at hand--my January report.

1. First Things First. Coming along. I have committed to increasing my exercise and taking a strength building class at my gym three days a week for the next two months. I'm hoping that will be enough time to show a little benefit and give me time to learn to enjoy it. If after two months I hate it, I will try something different.  All other aspects of this goal are marching along.

2. Personal History. Scanning photos has gone great guns this month. Most of it has been helping my sisters-in-law, but I've done some of my own, and they are on tap to help me next time around. The journal writing has not improved yet.

3. Temples. We went to the Jordan River Temple and the Draper Temple this month. They are nearby, and that worked well for us.

4. Home Projects.
Cleaning: My goal for January was my kitchen, top to bottom. I didn't get it top to bottom, but I sure made great progress. I think I went through all but one cupboard, and two drawers. I cleaned them, reorganized, and purged lots of stuff we no longer use. I had hoped to scrub all the outsides of the cabinets, but that didn't happen. At least the insides got scrubbed.
Projects: Reorganize my dad's files. Ha! I completely forgot about this one. I'll roll it over into February.

I feel like I did pretty well on making some progress on most of these goals. If I can keep this up, by December there will definitely be an improvement over the year. Feels pretty good.

For February: clean our master bedroom top to bottom. Ray went through his stuff a couple of weeks ago, so I'm itching to get mine taken care of too. I'll also work on reorganizing my dad's files.