Finished In the Last  Week

 After a rolicking reading week last time, I was back to just finishing one book.

 

 

I have an excuse this time though.  On Saturday, we had my parents’ 50th wedding anniversary party.  It turned out to be a big shindig.  I didn’t get a final turnout but we were expecting about 75 people.  People came in from all over the U.S.  They all kept congratulating me on being able to pull off a party of that size and getting all those people there.  This confused me.  I literally sent one group message to any relatives I’ve friended on Facebook and followed that with a mailed invitation.  That was the extent of my involvement in who showed up.  It was all of them to decided to book plane tickets and come. 

I spent the day monitoring the food and explaining who people were.  Since it was both my mom’s and dad’s side of the family, people would sidle up and try to figure out if other people were distant relatives they didn’t remember or if they weren’t related to these people at all.  My dad’s family was made up of 9 kids with over 30 years between the oldest and youngest.  So many nieces and nephews are younger than uncles, etc.  To outsiders it looks like generational chaos, so I was fielding all the “Now, which ones are your dad’s brothers?” questions.

And, you know what is coming up this week?

via GIPHY

Yep, Thursday night!

 

What Am I Reading?

“Adèle has only one goal: catch the purple-haired thief who broke into her home and stole her exocore, thus proving herself to her new police team. Little does she know, her thief is also the local baker.

Claire owns the Croissant-toi, but while her days are filled with pastries and customers, her nights are dedicated to stealing exocores. These new red gems are heralded as the energy of the future, but she knows the truth: they are made of witches’ souls.

When her twin—a powerful witch and prime exocore material—disappears, Claire redoubles in her efforts to investigate. She keeps running into Adèle, however, and whether or not she can save her sister might depend on their conflicted, unstable, but deepening relationship.”

 

 

What Am I Listening To

 

 

“Whales are among the largest, most intelligent, deepest diving species to have ever lived on our planet. They evolved from land-roaming, dog-like creatures into animals that move like fish, breathe like us, can grow to 300,000 pounds, live 200 years and roam entire ocean basins. Whales fill us with terror, awe, and affection–yet we know hardly anything about them, and they only enter our awareness when they die, struck by a ship or stranded in the surf. Why did it take whales over 50 million years to evolve to such big sizes, and how do they eat enough to stay that big? How did their ancestors return from land to the sea? Why do they beach themselves? What do their lives tell us about our oceans, and evolution as a whole? Importantly, in the sweepstakes of human-driven habitat and climate change, will whales survive?

Nick Pyenson’s research has given us the answers to some of our biggest questions about whales. Nick’s rich storytelling takes us to the cool halls deep inside the Smithsonian’s priceless fossil collection, to the frigid fishing decks on Antarctic whaling stations, and to the blazing hot desert of Chile where scientists race against time to document the largest fossil whalebone site on earth. Spying on Whales is science writing at its best: an author who is an incredible, passionate writer, at the forefront of his field, on a topic that invokes deep fascination.”

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