Curling my toes is quite a feat. ;)
“What the everlasting f*** are you doing here?”
~Raphael in Dancing with Danger by Kerrigan Byrne
I admit it. I love when a hero gets all angry and protective because his heroine has done something dangerous and reckless. This line curled my toes. The heroine is risking her safety for something important to her, sacrificing to ensure the welfare of those she cares about as best she can. And what does the handsome, sexy hero see? The threat to her, the one he cares about—the one he loves, whether he sees it yet or not—about to lose the things he wants for her: a safe life, security in following the rules of society.
When the two characters collide, the passion is delicious. Dancing With Danger has such lush prose it’s like biting down on a never-ending piece of chocolate cake. I’m 85% through it. It’s the fourth book in Byrne’s A Goode Girls Romance series, and I plan to go back and read the all the others. (I started with this one. Yes, out of order.)
I feel like my blog is probably also saying “what the everlasting f*** are you doing here?” Followed by, “I thought you’d abandoned me.” I haven’t abandoned you, lonely blog. In fact, I’ve thought about you quite a lot. Much like I’ve thought about cleaning my house, eating healthier, getting on the scale.
Thought about it.
Didn’t get much further.
The last months (and months and months), I’ve discarded most ideas about making actual progress on anything. This pandemic has put me in lockdown in more ways than one.
Anyone else?
So it’s quite a feat that Kerrigan Byrne’s book is holding my attention. You know life is strange when a romance reader struggles to read romance novels for months and months. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve persevered and managed to get quite a few titles under my belt. I would tell you about them, but I can’t remember very many of them. The pandemic has confiscated that, too. (Also, Kindle Unlimited doesn’t help because I have to return the books. Can I blame Amazon for my poor memory?)
So this year, I’m keeping better track of what I read. Manually. ‘Cause I love my calendar, and the more things I have to write in it, the more fun I have! Here’s a pic of what I’ve got so far. And nerd that I am, getting to add to this list is a reason to keep reading. It’s the little things, right? And I’m all for those little things to keep us going as we (hopefully) get to safer times this summer.
What are you reading? And what little things are keeping you going right now?
P.S. Did you see the cleverness in that headline? “Curling my toes is quite a feat.” Feat…feet…toes. Okay. I know. It’s bad. I’m leaving now….
Seeking Temptation
A couple of weeks ago Kid 1 brought home a trophy for her cookies. I have to say, I was puffed up with pride. I have a big box of blue ribbons--now crisp and creased with a great deal of age--from cooking in years of 4-H. Kid 1 would likely squint her eyes ever so slightly in gentle dismay if I mentioned how she's a chip off the old block.
The cookie recipe came from one of my favorite cookbooks, The King Arthur Flour Baker's Companion. Flipping through the book with Kid 1, I realized it's been quite awhile since I've pulled out a cookbook to simply browse and seek temptation. For a very long time, life's been too busy to give much attention to anything cooking-related besides thinking up the quickest meals possible, but skimming through cookbooks used to be a favorite pastime. It's a refreshing hobby to rediscover.
In fact, I used to ponder choosing one cookbook from my collection and working my way through it to make every recipe in it. In the dust of life, I'd forgotten that had been a potential goal. Like most of my favorite cookbooks, I'd already started on that endeavor in the Baker's Companion, adding my comments as I made each recipe and dating it as if it were my chemistry lab notebook. I have a number of favorites in here and a number of pages dog-eared to make in the future…bagels, crepes, breads. And now that I've pulled it out, I'm loath to put it away. I'm afraid I'll forget this rediscovered pleasure all too quickly. Alas, my house is up for sale and I never know when it's going to be shown. It's an absolute violation of the "Make Your House Look Like It Stays Effortlessly Clean" Rule to leave anything laying out. So back on the shelf goes the Companion until temptation raises its luscious form yet again. I'm betting it will be in the guise of crepes.