Books, Rain, Sun, Rain, Sun, Wind, Sun.......

Sunrise was at 7:45, sunset will be at 4:18.

I just looked ahead to the next few days of sunrises and sunsets and noticed that while the morning times continue to get later, the sunsets read 4:18 for days! Without checking the details it looks like the earth just doesn’t tip any deeper for awhile. The details off to the side of the times show the difference in daylight between one day and the next; tomorrow’s light will be 5 seconds shorter than today’s, Friday’s daylight will be 6 seconds shorter than tomorrow’s…. Solstice is on its way and I can’t wait to watch the distancing between these numbers as we head into February, the single most difficult month to get through.

We had a real emergency broadcast today! Massive thunderstorms in Snohomish county, winds up to 60 miles per hour. In Seattle, we had a little breeziness before the sun came up, pewter gray skies over Beacon Hill, houses and buildings glowing against the dark, and, through a slip of sky in the south, watery sunlight turning the windows on the hill a silvery pale blue.

By the time the first thunder in Seattle hit, we had downpours of rain that actually hurt when it hit. It was much like driving through a carwash, rain bouncing as high as bumpers, the streets became 3 inch deep rivers, nowhere for the rain to go, and I saw a man in a camel colored jacket and no hat at the corner of Boren and Jefferson skipping across the street in the rain.

I grew up where it rains really hard but I was pretty surprised by the intensity of this rainfall. I wish I’d had a rain collector set up today.

Now, half an hour later, big swathes of blue sky, no rain, and the little birds are taking advantage of the break to scavenge for seed in the shelter of the bushes. Wow! We have real sunshine!

I finished She’s Gone Country, by Jane Porter, and thoroughly enjoyed it. Everything went the way I wanted it to. Sometimes, I just want to read happy stuff. I listen to the radio too much to want to spend my leisure time feeling bad while doing something I like. If any of you have sisters or friends who like to read a little fluff, books about women who are often like us, women who do stupid things and then have to deal with the repercussions, then Jane Porter is a good choice. And she’s FUNNY! (Hachette. $13.99. Available now.)

I went from She’s Gone Country to Torment, by Lauren Kate, the sequel to Fallen, a teen paranormal romance between an angel and the girl he has found and loved through millennia. Very much a good way to spend some hours. (Delacorte. $17.99. Available now.)

And from Torment I dove right into The Extraordinary Secrets of April, May and June, by Robin Benway who wrote another one of my favorite books, Audrey, Wait!. I think Robin Benway has an amazing flair for dialogue. Her banter between the sisters, the sarcasm, the humor, she gets it so right. TESofAM&J is the story of three sisters who, all of a sudden, develop powers that they are unsure how to use. There is mind reading, seeing the future and invisibility and no way of learning from anyone how to deal with them. Add to the mix a few boys and new relationships, a newly divorced set of parents and all the stress that comes with those things and you have a pretty good backdrop for a grand story. I laughed out loud a lot during the reading of this book, I remember being taken by surprise and snorting. Once. I just unearthed the book from a forgotten pile of books in the hall and I am so sorry I didn’t read it long ago. Or maybe not-With all the time away from work, the weather, the hectic time of year, this may have been exactly the perfect time for a book that lightened my mood and got the endorphins flowing! (Razorbill. $16.99. Available now.)

I am a quarter of an inch from finishing Rick Riordan’s Lost Hero, a kind of sideways continuation of the Percy Jackson books featuring Roman gods and goddesses. It’s really good but it’s the book I read in bed or pick up between finishing and starting something else.

I have just started reading Gail Caldwell’s Let’s Take the Long Way Home and it is so beautiful. It’s the memoir of a friendship and I am looking forward to reading more of it. I’ll let you know more when I get farther along than the first couple of chapters.