more books, no sewing

This past week has not been a good one on the sewing front.  I keep thinking about things I'd like to try or work on, but have not gotten the motivation to DO any of them.

Lily is helping keep me sidetracked...

She's ON a quilt - does that count for anything?

(She's also on my lap.)

Aside from work, I've just been mostly curled up under quilts, trying to stay warm.  The worst of the cold is coming yet this week, but my job requiring me to take dogs outside to do their business means I get cold a lot at work.  And no matter how much you bundle up, after about 5 dogs, you're pretty darn cold!

While under quilts, I can read!  Bonus, I'm distracted enough with the stories that I forget if I'm cold...

This is the third book in a series of three - I read number two back in August last year - and as with the previous book, I felt like the author did a good job reintroducing characters so I wasn't missing out by not having read these one after another.

Like the last one, this is a romance, but there was enough other stuff going on that it wasn't overwhelming.  Set hundreds of years ago, a former witch hunter (he kinda still is) and a daughter of the earth (she insists she is not a witch, but I think daughter of the earth is basically a good witch) team up to defeat the Silver Rose, surprise, surprise, a witch!

It seemed to take a while to get going, but I know that has a lot to do with reintroducing characters.  And I kinda remembered a lot of them, but almost felt like it could have done with less of that because I was trying to remember things about side characters that turned out to be not important in this story at all.

Not a bad book.  I did enjoy it, for the most part.  I doubt I'll pick up any other books by this author, though.  Romance for the sake of romance with a side of story to break things up isn't my thing.  (I need to learn to read those blurbs more carefully!)

Next up!

At the start, I could have sworn this author was ripping off "Little Women."  But I kept reading because what publisher would allow that?  Set a few decades after that book, this one takes a turn when the main character attends an artist's "salon" at the home of a wealthy man on Fifth Avenue.  (This reminds me of another story that I cannot put my finger on and it is driving me nuts.)  A gathering of artists of all sorts, it is a place where peers can meet and encourage each other.

As you might imagine, there are undercurrents of unsavory behavior, but the main character seems relatively oblivious to this.  As readers, we see things sooner than she does, but eventually she pulls her head out of the sand.

I enjoyed the story, but felt it a little unlikely.  Almost all of the male characters are (or turn out to be) not good people.  The women of her family seem to have no ambition other than their arts, despite their money woes.

Despite my frustrations, I did enjoy the book.  I wish I'd had more stories behind the other artists at the salon and their struggles and successes and I'd like to know if the main character ever achieved the literary greatness she aspired to, but I suppose it's up to me to imagine it.

I've started the next book - over 100 pages in - but I really do need to figure out how to motivate myself to do some sewing or something...

Happy quilting...and reading...

Katie