I only spent two full days in Ottawa last fall, but it was enough to capture my heart. I didn’t get to see all that the city has to offer, but I really enjoyed what I saw and it gave me a new appreciation for and understanding of the city. I’ll share my two-day itinerary in my next post about Ottawa–it was perfect if you only have a short amount of time. Today I’m sharing a roundup of all the places I visited while I was there.
Note – Some of the links in this post may contain affiliate links. This means that if you make a purchase using one of those links I’ll earn a small commission on the purchase at no extra cost to you. All thoughts and opinions are my own. Thank you for supporting Dreams, etc.!
Happy Tuesday!
The last two months… they’ve been a whirlwind. If I were to describe them in one word March would be turbulent and April would be hectic. I never got a March in Photos post up, so I thought I’d combine both March and April for today’s post, so… there are a lot of pictures here. In the mix you’ll find some photos of pups (of course), a sneak peak at some pictures from Colombia and look at some of the literary events I attended recently.
As I said, I’d describe March as turbulent. I probably went through a mid-life crisis that month and there was a lot that annoyed me. One day I came home from work and had a package in the mail from Kendra Castillo–I had ordered a painting from her. One look at the painting totally calmed me down.
“Do you want to have a picture or a moment?”
Last October I attended NerdCon: Stories in Minneapolis and one of the authors in attendance was Patrick Rothfuss. He went to college in my hometown, so I knew I wanted to meet him. I attended his first scheduled signing and sat in the crowd of devoted fans. When he came in, he stopped to thank us for coming and told us how the signing would work. And he said, (paraphrased, because it was back in October, #oldage): “People are often so focused on getting a picture. While signing your books, I have about 30 seconds to spend with you. In that 30 seconds I can sign your books and we can chat and have a moment, or we can take a picture. If you want a picture, that’s totally fine and legitimate. But decide if you’d like to have a moment, or if you’d like to have a picture.”
I recently watched the first three seasons of The Affair. For those who aren’t familiar with the show, it’s about a novelist named Noah who is married with four children. He has an affair with a married woman he encounters while visiting his in-laws for the summer and the show “examines the psychological and emotional fallout” of the affair. There’s also a mystery that keeps everyone together.
I found the show to be incredibly fascinating and could write a more in depth post about what I like and what I didn’t like (because there is one aspect to the show that I really didn’t care for), but today I want to talk about one detail that caught my eye in season two. Like, I was on Instagram while I watched the episode and I put my phone down when I saw this particular detail and watched with rapt attention.
Note – I received a copy of the book from the publisher through TLC Book Tours in exchange for an honest review. No affiliate links were used in this post. All thoughts and opinions are my own.
Paperback: 448 pages
Publisher: William Morrow Paperbacks; Reissue edition (April 11, 2017)
In the tradition of Ira Levin’s A Kiss Before Dying and Donna Tartt’s The Secret History comes a suspenseful thriller from the international bestselling author of The Bronze Horseman–an utterly captivating story about four Ivy League students whose bizarre friendship leads to a twisted maze of secrets, lies, betrayal, and murder.
As the star player of Dartmouth College’s women’s basketball team, Kristina Kim is beautiful, intelligent, and fearless. But though she’s just 21, Kristina has already had her share of heartache, loss, and dark secrets that haunt her. She’s best friends with Conni, Albert, and Jim, but the only one who seems to really know her is Albert. With long dark hair, tattoos, and a rebellious streak, Albert doesn’t fit in with the rest of the clean-cut Ivy Leaguers. Like Kristina, he has his share of secrets–secrets that are beginning to unravel this intimate circle of friends.
Happy Monday, friends!
It feels like it’s been awhile since I wrote a blog post… and even longer since I wrote a blog post that wasn’t a book review. To get back into the blogging groove, I thought I’d write a little update. I also thought I’d do it #The100DayProject-style, because…
I’m doing the #The100DayProject! I thought I’d hold off on announcing it because I wasn’t exactly sure what I wanted to do or if I’d even stick with it. But, as of yesterday I’ve consistently done my creative project every day, so… let’s hope I don’t completely fall off the bandwagon now! 😂
When I was trying to decide what to do for the project I couldn’t decide between 100 Days of Mornings or 100 Days of Poetry, so I decided to do both and see what stuck. (Not gonna lie, part of me thought it would be really cool if I did both every day for 100 days.) I think a poem a day for 100 days is a bit ambitious… at least for me, right now. I have written quite a few throughout the last 13 days, but I don’t have one for each day. I absolutely love the poems I’ve written, though, and it’s definitely put me in the mindset of keeping an eye out for poetic inspiration, so I consider it a success anyway.
My only rule for 100 Days of Mornings is that I need to take the photo before noon. Initially I anticipated taking these with my DSLR most of the time, but after a week of carrying around my camera and only taking pictures on my phone I realized that, for me, the point of this was just to see what my mornings look like. Where am I, what am I doing, what’s the world around me like, what changes will take place over the span of 100 days? So pictures with my phone are totally acceptable. I haven’t posted any of these on Insta yet, but I’ll start today and will use the hashtag #100daysofdreamermornings. If you want to follow along be sure to follow me and/or search the hashtag!
Note – I received a copy of the book in exchange for an honest review from the publisher through TLC Book Tours. All thoughts and opinions are my own. No affiliate links were used in this post.
Paperback: 432 pages
Publisher: William Morrow Paperbacks (April 11, 2017)
From the award-winning author of Little Pretty Things comes this gripping, unforgettable tale of a mother’s desperate search for a lost boy.
Anna Winger can know people better than they know themselves with only a glance–at their handwriting. Hired out by companies wanting to land trustworthy employees and by the lovelorn hoping to find happiness, Anna likes to keep the real-life mess of other people at arm’s length and on paper. But when she is called to use her expertise on a note left behind at a murder scene in the small town she and her son have recently moved to, the crime gets under Anna’s skin and rips open her narrow life for all to see. To save her son–and herself–once and for all, Anna will face her every fear, her every mistake, and the past she thought she’d rewritten.
Note – I received a copy of the book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. All thoughts and opinions are my own.
I have a book by Amy Hatvany sitting on my bookshelf and it regularly comes to mind as a book I should read. I don’t know why I haven’t read it yet; I’ve had it for at least a year. So when I was asked if I’d like to read Hatvany’s newest book, I jumped at the chance. Not only am I already interested in the author, this book sounds like one that needs to be read.
From master storyteller Amy Hatvany—whose writing has been hailed as “gripping and emotionally honest” (Stephanie Evanovich, New York Times bestselling author)—comes a provocative and compelling novel about two friends whose lives are changed by a drunken kiss.
I want to rewind the clock, take back the night when the world shattered. I want to erase everything that went wrong.
Note – I received a copy of the book from the publisher through TLC Book Tours in exchange for an honest review. All thoughts and opinions are my own. No affiliate links were used in this post.
In the final installment of Sally Christie’s “tantalizing” (New York Daily News) Mistresses of Versailles trilogy, Jeanne Becu, a woman of astounding beauty but humble birth, works her way from the grimy back streets of Paris to the palace of Versailles, where the aging King Louis XV has become a jaded and bitter old philanderer. Jeanne bursts into his life and, as the Comtesse du Barry, quickly becomes his official mistress.
“That beastly bourgeois Pompadour was one thing; a common prostitute is quite another kettle of fish.”
After decades of suffering the King’s endless stream of Royal Favorites, the princesses of the Court have reached a breaking point. Horrified that he would bring the lowborn Comtesse du Barry into the hallowed halls of Versailles, Louis XV’s daughters, led by the indomitable Madame Adelaide, vow eternal enmity and enlist the young dauphiness Marie Antoinette in their fight against the new mistress. But as tensions rise and the French Revolution draws closer, a prostitute in the palace soon becomes the least of the nobility’s concerns.
Told in Christie’s witty and engaging style, the final book in The Mistresses of Versailles trilogy will delight and entrance fans as it once again brings to life the sumptuous and cruel world of eighteenth century Versailles, and France as it approaches irrevocable change.
Note – I received a copy of Mississippi Blood from the publisher through TLC Book Tours in exchange for an honest review. All thoughts and opinions are my own. No affiliate links were used in this post.
Hardcover: 704 pages
Publisher: William Morrow (March 21, 2017)
#1 New York Times Bestselling Author
The endgame is at hand for Penn Cage, his family, and the enemies bent on destroying them in this revelatory volume in the epic trilogy set in modern-day Natchez, Mississippi–Greg Iles’s epic tale of love and honor, hatred and revenge that explores how the sins of the past continue to haunt the present.
Shattered by grief and dreaming of vengeance, Penn Cage sees his family and his world collapsing around him. The woman he loves is gone, his principles have been irrevocably compromised, and his father, once a paragon of the community that Penn leads as mayor, is about to be tried for the murder of a former lover. Most terrifying of all, Dr. Cage seems bent on self-destruction. Despite Penn’s experience as a prosecutor in major murder trials, his father has frozen him out of the trial preparations–preferring to risk dying in prison to revealing the truth of the crime to his son.
