Eagles, Cranes, Turtles and Before I Go to Sleep

I went on my usual Friday walk around Seward Park, it was warm but the wind was cool. There was a swimmer heading into shore and a woman with her dog just ahead on the trail. I was playing the "how quickly can I catch up to her" game and just started reading Before I Go to Sleep, by S. J. Watson when I heard an odd sound and looked up and saw an eagle heading out over the lake, chased by crows. It dove down and hit the water and shook the crows off for a second or two and then headed back into the forest. We (I caught up to the woman and her dog) stood and watched for a bit and then walked on when TWO eagles made their aerial mating dance over the lake. So absolutely amazing, such an unusual event! I've never seen that before, only in pictures.

Finished the round (and spent some time watching the turtles) and found an open bench where I sat to finish the book I started at the beginning of the walk. Did you know that cranes sound like ducks when they make their cries? One kept flying away and then coming back to stand on a limb in the lake in front of me, I assume it was looking for lunch. A juvenile eagle had everyone oohing and aahing as it headed towards a boat dock.

Before I Go to Sleep was a thriller of a mystery. Every morning Christine wakes up and goes into the bathroom with no memory of the man in the bed next to her. She doesn't know who the woman in the mirror is, either. Every morning the man who says he is her husband fills her in on her past with photos stuck to the wall and a scrapbook and every next morning he does it all again. Until the day she gets a phone call from a doctor who convinces her to look in the closet for the diary she has been keeping during the days before she goes to sleep. The first words in the book are DON'T TRUST BEN!

Not a book you want to start when you have to do something else. Go to the park, start it in bed on a weekend night, take a long bath, but give yourself permission to read it from the start to the finish. And then just try to stop thinking about it and her life. (HarperCollins. $25.99. Grown-up book. It has just come out.)