Welcome! More Books Added….

Welcome!   The pile of books next to my reading chair needs to be taken care of to make room for more new titles waiting to be read. So I am spending part of today adding more posts to this site of the recent books I have finished reading.

For those of you coming to the site for the first time I made a commitment to record the titles of the books that I read during the 2011 calendar year.  Back in January 2011 I was inspired by a post by Seth Godin about the average number of books that an American reads. I know that I am different than most folks so I was very curious to find out just how many books I actually read in a year. It’s almost a year later and I find that I have enjoyed keeping track. I have not been so good at posting the titles.  I have quite a number of posts to make so I’m going to spend more time each day during December to get all of the books posted so that I will have a total number. This has turned out to be fun project for me. I am toying with the idea to create a database of titles but am not sure if I really need to have a database since I can easily search for more specifics for each book.

How many books do you read in a year? Post a comment and let me know.

 

Added:

Match Game
Amazing Grace
Irresistible
Murder in the Hamptons
Star Flight
I Feel Bad About My Neck

The Rut and the Way Out

Leo Babuta of Zen Habits had a post  recently “The Rut and the Way Out” that really hit home with me. I have been trying to re-organize, re-align, and re-focus my consulting business and personal life and it has just felt like too massive an undertaking.  All I seemed to be able to do was to make lists, re-read my notes and end up taking a nap because it was just too tiring to try to tackle what appears to be a huge undertaking.

Quoting the post:

“…Here’s the thing: the first step wasn’t to take on a major challenge. It was simply announcing it.”.  —- Well I’ve announced it. Re-Align and Re-focus

“… Can you take an even smaller step? Sure: you can simply ask, “What if?” —- Well- yeah- I can.

…”What if you tossed out your to-do list and only did 1 important thing each day before doing the less important tasks?”  – yep – I can do that!

…”What if you tossed out your goals? What if you let go of your expectations? What if you got rid of everything you had?”

Well…. answering these questions worked for me!!

Announcing: breathing new life into this site

1 step at a time – as ittle as it may be…

Publish my goals

Let go of my expectations

I feel so much better. It really has helped me to move forward!! Thank you Leo!  Has this worked for anyone else? Post a comment below.

Photo Credit: Neckrein from http://mellinniumcowboy.blogspot.com/2011_05_01_archive.html

 

Then Comes Seduction

Then Comes Seduction by Mary Balogh Copyright 2009

ISBN 978-0-440-24423-3

From the back cover:

In a night of drunken revelry, Jasper Finley, Baron Montford, gambles his reputation as London’s most notorious lover on one woman. His challenge? To seduce the exquisite, virtuous Katherine Huxtable within a fortnight. But when his best-laid plans go awry, Jasper devises a wager of his own. For Katherine, already wildly attracted to him, Jasper’s offer is irresistible: to make London’s most dangerous rake fall in love with her. Then Jasper suddenly ups the ante. Katherine knows she should refuse. But with scandal brewing and her reputation in jeopardy, she reluctantly agrees to become his wife. Now, as passion ignites, the seduction really begins. And this time the prize is nothing less than both their hearts…..

Irresistible

Irresistible by Mary Balogh

From beloved New York Times best selling author Mary Balogh comes this passionate tale of a proper lady who discovers just how desirable she really is after one very improper night….It was unthinkable. It was irresponsible, It was…

IRRESISTIBLE

Sophia Armitage was a friend, indeed. She had agreed to help Sire Nathaniel Gascoigne find a husband for his cousin Lavinia in the glittering city of London – only half hoping that she’d find one for herself. Sophia knew the odds were against her. Men simply did not seem to be attracted to her – not that way. Even her late husband had treated Sophia more as a companion than a lover. But then something shocking happened in London – Sophia found herself in the arms of Nathaniel himself ! Not only did this act of indiscretion threaten their lifelong friendship, it revealed a depth of passion that defied everything Sophia believed about herself..

ISBN: 978-0-425-22103-7
Type: Historical Romance

Star Flight

Star Flight by Phyllis A. WhitneyStar Flight by Phyllis A. Whitney

From the inside jacket cover:

The hauntingly beautiful mountains of North Carolina provide the stunning back-drop for the latest novel from Phyllis Whitney. She spins a chilling tale of Lauren Castle’s search for the truth behind her husband’s accidental death and her famous grandmother’s suicide. Two generations divide these tragic events, yet both seem curiously and inextricably linked.

In 1938, two of Hollywood’s most glittering young stars, Victoria Frazer and Roger Brandt, were cast in a movie set in these mountains. Drawn to each other with a passion that was destined to cool, their ill-fated affair ended with the birth of an illegitimate daughter, Victoria’s death, and the end of Roger’s career. Ostracized by the movie industry, judged morally corrupt by fans, Roger Brandt stayed on in North Carolina, but still the scandal became the stuff of Hollywood legend.

Many years later, Lauren Castle is drawn into Brandt’s orbit by a more recent tragedy: the death of her filmmaker husband. Only Lauren  knows that she is the daughter of Roger and Victoria’s love child. As she begins to make sense of what happened to her husband and what happened in her family’s past, she risks exposing herself to an evil that reaches with undiminished virulence across two generations.

IBM 0-517-59499-4

Murder In the Hamptons

Murder in the Hamptons by Amy GarveyMurder in the Hamptons by Amy Garvey

From the back cover:

Maggie Harding has a few rules for living. Order, control, and carefully checked-off to do-lists equal a safe life. Safe is good. What’s not good is, oh, hmmm, maybe having a wild, passionate, naked pizza-eating weekend fling with type A  Brody, the kind of guy who leaves a girl shaken and stirred, deep down. Bad. Bad, bad, bad. What to do? Run away. Constraint is better than chaos. Right?

So what’s that same girl to do when she runs into the guy five years later at a big Hamptons bash, and he’s staring at her with that naughty, right-here-right-now grin, while she’s trying not to make an idiot of herself in front of lots of rich people and “It” list Hollywood stars? Make another run for it. Except that she can’t. Because somebody’s dead on the lawn and “house party” has just become “house arrest”. The only way out of this insanity is for Maggie to find the murderer herself, even if the biggest mystery is why she ever belived that saying good-bye to Tyler was the right thing to do…

ISBN 0-7582-1041-8

The Undomestic Goddess

The Undomestic Goddess coverThe Undomestic Goddess by Sophie Kinsella  Copyright 2005 ISBN 978-0-440-24238-3

The Undomestic Goddess is a genuinely funny sweet book. Kinsella is a comic whiz who consistently delivers what her readers crave.

Workaholic attorney Samantha Sweeting has just done the unthinkable. She’s made a mistake so huge, it’ll wreck any chance of partnership.

Going into utter meltdown, she walks out of her London office, gets on a train, and ends up in the middle of nowhere. Asking for directions at a big beautiful house, she’s mistaken for an interviewee and finds herself being offered a job as a housekeeper.

Her employers have no idea they’ve hired a lawyer – and Samantha has no idea how to work the oven. she can’t sew on a button, bake a potato, or get the #ing ironing board to open. How she takes a deep breath and begins to cope – and finds love – is a story as delicious as the bread she learns to bake.

But will her old life ever catch up with her? and if it does, does she want it back?

Hunting Season

Hunting Season by Nevada BarrHunting Season by Nevada Barr Copyright 2002 ISBN 0-425-18878-7

Park Ranger Anna Pigeon returns to face her most duplicitous for – human nature- in the latest entry in Nevada Barr’s series….

The quiet beauty of t autumn on Mississippi’s Natchez Trace is swiftly shattered when Anna answers a call to Mt. Locust, once a working plantation and inn, now a tourist spot. But the man Anna finds in an old bedroom is no tourist in distress.  He’s nearly naked and very dead – his body bearing marks consistent with sex games gone awry. On a writing table nearby is an open Bible with ominous passages circled in red.

There are secrets that prominent men in this God-fearing country wish to keep under wraps – and Anna has stumbled into a nest of them.

 

Dare To Die – A Death on Demand Mystery

 

Dare to Die by Carolyn HartDare to Die by Carolyn Hart copyright 2009 ISBN 978-0-06-145305-2
She came in the rain. Alone. On a bicycle. After more than a decade Iris Tilford is back in Broward’s Rock – and her return has nasty and unexpected repercussions that are rocking Annie and Max Darling’s sea island hometown. Years ago Iris disappeared after a fatal high school tragedy. Now that she’s home again, Annie’s extending the hand of friendship by inviting the sad, beautiful, and mysterious stranger to the Darling’s party at the pavilion.

But Death, as it turns out, is an uninvited guest at their gala. Suddenly Max and Annie are in the middle of a devastating storm of rage, secrets, and murder that they don’t understand. All they do know is that now someone is trying to kill them- an it’s someone they call their friend.

Shattered

Shattered by Karen Robards

Shattered by Karen Robards Copyright 2010 ISBN 978-0-399-15627-4
The past is never over. It just gets dusty.

Lisa Grant was a rising star in a prestigious law firm in Lexington, Kentucky when the firm went bankrupt and she lost her job. With an ailing mother to care for, she takes the first job she can find: research assistant to District Attorney Scott Buchanan. Scott is a disagreeable as he is sexy, and Lisa suspects the only reason she got the job was Scott’s fond feelings for her mother, who treated him well when he was just a farmhand on the Grants’ large farm while Lisa was growing up.

After she misses an important court date, Lisa doesn’t get any specail treatment from Scott. As punishment, he send her to organize cold-case files in the basement of the courthouse. What Lisa expects to be a mind-numbingly boring task turns into anything but that when a missing-persons case draws her attention. The details of the case are engrossing: an entire family – father-mother, and two children – disappeared without a trace more than twenty-eight years ago. Except that’s not all the mother in a photo Lisa find could be her own twin.

Before Lisa can learn more, a series of catastrophes strikes close to home, and she realizes that finding the photo has put her in terrible danger. Determined to uncover the truth, she confides in Scott, and their relationship develops into something beyond that of employer and employee. Together they unravel a terrifying web of criminal connections that could shatter what Lisa know of her past. And it’s clear someone ill go to shocking lengths to make sure certain secrets stay hidden.

Source: Book jacket (front/back)