June books and flowers

 Reading and plants

The caladiums were a surprise in two ways.  Last year they were stunning but died off when we had temps below 40 F/3C.  Honestly, I thought they were gone and Doug was going to plant bushes when they were - suddenly they emerged. Also did not know they blossomed with pods.  There other photo is a Strawberry Candy Day Lily. That one was expected.

June reading was quite varied in location and genres. This month I did not have a single DNF and completed five books.  Yea!

Here's Loki, my reading buddy 🐕

📚📚   Books read  📚📚

Dear Edward by Ann Napolitano

Major Pettigrew's Last Stand by Helen Simonson

Whale Fall by Elizabeth O'Connor 

Forgotten on Sunday by Valerie Perrin

The Road from Belhaven by Margot Livesey 👇

I enjoyed The Flight of Gemma Hardy much more than this one by Livesey

June book travel took me to New Jersey, Manhattan, England, Wales, Scotland and France.

 That's it for the June round up.   Looking forward to more good reading in July. I'd love to know what books you favored this month.  Hope life is good for you all :-)

Sharing with:

Joy's Book Blog for British Isles Friday. and Deb at Readerbuzz for Sunday Salon.

📚📚📚📚📚📚

Dear Edward and Major Pettigrew

What's new here is...not much.  Our quest to find a good pizza to bring home for takeaway night is proving fruitless. There is one more place to try and then...guess I will make it here at home. My 68th birthday was good and uneventful - as I like it. The pizza wasn't great but the movie Chef was fabulous.  Great foodie movie.

North Florida heat has me settled in most afternoons so I am getting reading done.   I have read two of the books on my summer reading list.  Off to a good start :-)

I loved Napolitano's book Hello Beautiful and she does not disappoint with this novel. Wonderful writing. It was hard for me to put this down and I liked how she let us get into Edward's thought process while he responded to people about how he was doing.

How does one express their feelings and thoughts to someone who has zero point of reference? While everyone wanted to help Edward there are some things in life that you just can't "fix".

This book was inspired and loosely based on a Afriqiyah Airlines flight which crashed and had one survivor -a nine year old boy. I wonder what that boy is doing now? The fictional boy Edward was the only survivor of a crash taking the lives of 191 people. This is a study of how he tries to handle grief, survivor's guilt and a completely upturned life.

I know it sounds like it would be depressing but it's not. You get some back story on other passengers and crew interspersed in this book. It was interesting.

What a delightful book. Reading this I found Major Pettigrew to be one of my all time favorite characters and I would love to be his friend.  The setting is a small English village where widower Ernest Pettigrew develops a charming friendship with Mrs. Ali, owner of the Pakistani run grocery store.

Prejudices and gossip run deep with some of the characters ( I didn't care for them as much) but the overall interactions are marvelous. There is quite a bit of humor and an edgy situation near the end which shows a clash of cultures. It has a good ending and if a sequel was written I would most certainly read it.

So that's two for two and I haven't had a DNF from my list so far.  Would love to know what you are reading and any challenge plans you may have.

Sharing with:

Joy's Book Blog for British Isles Friday. and Deb at Readerbuzz for Sunday Salon.

📚📚📚📚📚📚