New Special Friend

For my special friend.

She got a little camera shy in the end. By the way, the cell phone did it’s thing again. That hair is supposed to be magenta. Now I just need to figure out how to get these special friends together. I made her using LoomaHat’s Tiny Doll pattern and YouTube.

Stream of Consciousness Saturday–Projects

Sorry I’m late to the SOCS, Linda G Hill, I was busy with all my PROJECTS. Yes, all those knitting projects have kept me going all day. I am nearly finished with one or two but they take the kind of concentration one needs as they learn new stitches. YouTube tutoring included. I’ll share again when finished.

Part of the reason I am late to the party was the weather. Yep, we got snow again, but with this system rolling in the bones and fibromyalgia knocked me for a loop and when I get to that stage the only thing I can do is nap and hope to wake with less pain. And that did work. Of course that means I may be up for another hour or so catching up on everything I should have been doing at naptime.

If it helps, I am reading your book: All Good Stories, now and hope to be finished tomorrow some time. It is fun.

Well, that’s all I got for now.

 

Review: The Shadow Land by Elizabeth Kostova

The Shadow Land by Elizabeth Kostova

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

THIS is my kind of book! Okay, it isn’t fantasy or sci-fi but the elements I love in those stories are here. Adventure, new horizons, philosophies, some things to learn and think about. Those are all present in this book. I am sad that it has ended and think I may have to read it again sometime with Audible version. The text-to-speech was great but with this taking place in Bulgaria, I needed someone to pronounce words better than the British female robot. Which usually works quite well for me, but there were some names that when I was reading with my eyes too, I could see they were not pronounced anywhere NEAR right.

The main character is well developed, the secondaries not as deeply but the story wasn’t about them so that was okay by me. With the person so developed and the world so real I felt I was watching a movie. In fact, this would make a marvelous movie, there is just so much depth here!

The time of the book moves back and forth from about WWII and now. The political themes presented seem very poignant, and apropos warnings to our current system and how delicate it is.

But my favorite part of the book, though the saddest, was how music played a part in the day to day survival of the musician. I don’t want to expound on this as it would be a spoiler. Needless to say, it gave me the unavoidable courage to face the cold of my studio and play the piano for as long as my fingers could move, and then left me with a fire to get back in there as soon and as often as I can as Spring brings warmer weather.

Oh, how I wish there were a book two. I don’t know how it could be done as none of the situations or people remain in the right places for that. But I did want to see what happens now that the main character has made friends with the musician’s son. What could they give each other? Will they become more than friends? And what about the taxi driver? Is there happiness in his future? What a cool guy he was! Like I said, I am left wanting more and that may have to happen by re-reading with audio.

By the way, I was given this version for review by NetGalley dot com. Please, if you get the chance to read this, do. I hope you love it as I did.

View all my reviews