Book Review: Snow Hunters

 Snow Hunters by Paul Yoon

This book is so well written! I often stopped just to soak in various passages due to the lovely writing. I loved the gentle pace and the way the characters went about observing their worlds and building their lives.

A young man grows up in North Korea, lives through the war, and spends some time in a POW camp. Later he makes a getaway on board a cargo ship, the only passenger among the paid crew. He disembarks in Brazil where he knows no one and speaks no Portuguese. His life carries on as he sorts out his war trauma and his new surroundings.

The writing is almost spare yet very poetic. The pace is steady; life goes on. I grew to love the characters.

my friend's grandchildren, twins, a couple of years ago

Trying to Clear my Brain

 Uffda.. 2020 has been hard. I'm mostly happy being at home on lock-down, but at the same time, my brain is frazzled. Times have been very stressful. I could list all the junk that has happened, but I won't. Most of it has been in national and world news anyway.

I'm still finding it hard to read, but I'm muddling through a little better than at first during the pandemic. I have done a LOT of sewing so I am going to try to catch up with some pictures of what I have made.

Just like my brain function lately, that one quilt pic decided to align itself to the left instead of to the center. There is no reason why, and no fixing it. Next time maybe I'll show you my ice dyed pieces.

That's enough for now. I don't want to bore you. And my brain is still as foggy as it was when I started.

Book Review: Open House

 Open House by Katie Sise

This one was an interesting story about a family whose daughter had died; ten years later it is still an unsolved mystery, and the younger sister, now an adult, deals with aftermath of the trauma.

The story started out strong; I thought I was in for a good read. However, before long it felt like a soap opera; a first-person account from the victim, explaining her life ten years before, went on for too long, right up to the very moment she vanished. A good story fell flat. I felt this book could have used some better editing.

Not my usual picture of someone reading.

Someone else posted this picture, and I borrowed it from Facebook.

I thought it made such a pretty winter picture.