A hodge-podge of miscellaneous including Fiona Fursday, Alex George and books

This is going to be a wildly disparate bunch of subject matter, but some of you are used to the occasional wacko post. First things first: I got to attend Alex George's signing of A Good American at Lemuria Books in Jackson (aka, "The Big City"), last night. Alex is an excellent speaker and every bit as charming in person as I've found him to be in our Twitter exchanges. I had a great time chatting with him and listening to his reading and discussion about the book.

Kiddo is officially on Spring Break, so this will be my last post for about 10 days. I'm planning to totally walk away from the internet. We'll see if that works. So, it's Fiona Fursday instead of Friday. Here is Fi in front of the shelf I call Grandpa's Shelf (because my grandfather built it):

I shared this photo -- one of my recent favorites -- on Facebook but I don't recall posting it here. It's one worth leaving up for a while. Every time I look at it, I can't help but grin.

And, one flower pic for the road. The wisteria is blooming all over town and it is breathtaking! I managed to spend some time in my church parking lot, beside which there is quite a lot of it growing.

My gerbera daisies are as big as saucers and about 90% of the trees are either budded or in full leaf. I still haven't planted a thing and I keep saying, "Soon, soon," but this may be another one of those years that I'm just too busy with the book purging (which is going very well) and spring cleaning (also plugging right along) to bother with the potted plants. I guess we'll see. I'm very happy with the improvements I've made in our living space, lately.

I've received quite a few books, this past 2 weeks, and I bought more than I should have (including a finished copy of A Good American, of course!) but I'll stick to just those that have arrived in the mail:

Each of the following were accepted for review by request from the author -- something I rarely do, but two of the authors are on my "Any time you ask," list:

• A Whisper of Rosemary by Colleen Gleason
• Akhmed and the Atomic Matzo Balls by Gary Buslik - (who managed to seduce me into reading his book by offering to share a photo of his cat, haha)
• Kitty Cornered by Bob Tarte

From Shelf Awareness:

• Next to Love by Ellen Feldman
• Horten's Miraculous Mechanisms by Lissa Evans
• The Reconstructionist by Nick Arvin

And, a bunch of children's books from 2 publishers. I'm considering hosting a Children's Week for these, although I usually just mix children's in with everything else:

• Pobble's Way by Van Booy and Edelson
• I Always, Always Get My Way by Krasnesky and Parkins
• I Need My Monster by Noll and McWilliam
• Zaira and the Dolphins by Pavon and Coco
• The Word Collector by Sonja Wimmer
• Drops of Life by Tiitinen and Tiitinen

The latter three are translations. I've received a few other titles I haven't mentioned but they went straight into my ARC piles, which are divided by release month, and they will be read so soon that I'm not going to go to the other room to haul them in here to list, although there aren't many. I'm reading one of them, The Land of Decoration by Grace McLeen (interesting book, so far). You can see why I have that note in my sidebar saying I'm not accepting books till further notice.

I wish you all a happy reading week! Again, I plan not to even get on the internet, so if it takes forever for me to approve a comment, don't fret. I'll be back in about 10 days and I always respond.

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