Summer Reading List Book 2 of 10- Relentless Review

I lied. The next book I chose to read was Relentless by Dean Koontz. I finished it on 7/5/2010. I did actually start reading the Thai cookbook already, but I am having a hard time finishing it... It's not the best instructional cookbook and I'm finding it difficult to get through just reading the recipes rather than cooking them... I find myself thinking as I read it, what's the point? So my thought now is to still finish reading it, but at the end cook a fabulous Thai meal for my family with recipes from the book along with photos and my review. So that will be more time consuming than I had originally thought and I've put it on the back burner for a bit. 


Without giving too much away, the basic plot of Relentless is this: the main character is a well-renowned author. He gets a horrible review from a famous critic and is miffed about it, but under advisement of his wife and agent, doesn't do anything about it... Except show up to a place where he happens to know the critic will be having lunch. He runs into him in the bathroom and his son almost pees on the guy by accident, but nothing else is really said and there is no big confrontation. Well, it turns out that the critic is a major psychopath and he then goes on to terrorize the author throughout the book. You're not getting any more details out of me here! ;)


I liked this book. I definitely thought it took a while to get going in the beginning...in fact the first time I picked it up, I read 21 pages and didn't go any further with it for months until a week and a half ago- but after it got going, it was an interesting read overall. I find that Koontz in general is hard to put down once you get sucked into his plot line, and this one was no exception to that. It wasn't one of his best- it didn't grab me the way The Good Guy, False Memory, and From The Corner Of His Eye did- but I read it all in about two full evenings anyway, and it surely wasn't one of his worst, either. I found the last paragraph a little bit trite and semi-disappointing, but I can see how it would have felt like it was left hanging if he didn't put SOMETHING there... I just wish it would have felt more meaningful, or relevant to the overall story. A solid "B" :)

What She Says #5- Nuggets of Wisdom

(photo from last year on a hike)

"Monsters like to break things... And Daddies like to fix things."

-Ilyana Arana Shayla, 7/1/2010

Our Favorite Time To Play

Our favorite time to play lately is definitely dusk... we get home and unpack our days' lunches, purses, toys, get out of any uncomfy clothes we've been wearing, and then we inevitably start to hear the kids outside pushing toys around, and our new neighbors (who we've become fast friends with lately) son is outside our window screeching in his playful little boy laugh and yelling "Ee-yana? Ee-yana?" That's how we know it's time to go out and play.

It's wonderful when the sun starts to set, the days' heat starts to settle down, and the temperature is just right for running and dancing... And, while the bugs are out, we rarely notice due to the mad infestation of white spiders with creepy black stripes on their legs that has inhabited our porch. This is not my first choice of bug repellant, but we keep trying to get rid of the suckers and they just procreate more. We vacuumed them, then we squished them, and now, I think I'm starting to accept them since I don't know what else to do. I suppose if there comes a point that I can't walk outside without having one land on me, something will have to be done for good. Here are some of the latest photos of the Bend from one of our wonderful summer dusk evenings:

 

Dancing in the dusk...

 

This is her "pose" haha

Smooches for Momma :o)

Sometimes I feel like I just couldn't be any luckier... <3 xo