Oh, Yeah! This is FINALLY Happening!

So yes.  After all the moaning I did about not finding Nevada Barr's Endangered Species (Anna Pigeon #5), in town, I just shut up and ordered it.  A Barnes & Noble 20% coupon was expiring in hours, and being a member, shipping is free.  Double NO-EXCUSE!

The excitement to continue Anna's murder-solving, park ranger adventures are continuing forward.

PS: My bemoaning recent post where I mention the series is HERE.

Me waiting on Thursday, 5/12:

I Wanna Buy This Book Butttt...

…Just about every review on Amazon claims this woman is a narcissistic.  Okay.  That's fine with me.  But then they also claim she went to court for tax evasion, stemming back from her early 2000s tax returns.  Trialed in 2010, she was convicted then subsequently deported.  Oh MY!  It actually makes me want to go back and pick the book up, though.  But the reason I point this out is because it's touted as an inspirational autobiography, but told by a woman driven by greed.

Heh.  And still I think I want to go back and get this book!

For the sake of providing a synopsis…

"When Diana Lu was three years old, her family was forced to leave their comfortable middle class life in the city to live an impoverished coal-mining village at the edge of the Gobi Desert for China s culture revolution "reeducation." Life in that remote place was a constant struggle against hunger and fear. Passionate & determined, Diana resolved to create a better life based on her own talents and dreams; she turned down prestigious job after medical school. Overcoming parental & societal objections, she explored university teaching, real estate, and other fields before finding her niche as a top executive in the optical fiber industry. In 1997 Diana moved to the United States, and launched her own international enterprise, melding the Western & Chinese business cultures to work with clients globally. Operating in a competitive, male-dominated high-tech field, she achieved astounding success from earning $30 a month in 1993 to in ten years making sales worth hundreds of millions of dollars. This inspirational book part memoir, part guidebook to personal and business success illustrates her remarkable journey."

What do you think?

Naoko Takeuchi's Original Manga Scans

Public Library Used Bookstore Hustle

While reading may be a little slow this week (spending over a week with a book that’s good, but can’t quite intercede the distractions that make up life), I’ve decided to stop over-browsing my public library’s used bookstore and actually buy something.  These two books (and many more left abandoned) have been in my hands throughout each of my visits there.  And both for good reason.

My Top 5 Favorite Crystals & Stones

Crystals, stones, rocks, and gemstones.  One of the clearest symbolic gateways into New Age and metaphysical studies.  And as these studies and philosophies go, these minerals come charged with energetic healing properties direct from within our planet.  They’re constructed through a variety of temperatures and pressures–straight out of the Earth’s crust.  Some even emerging from cooled lava.  But as a whole, they’re comprised of compacted plant and animal life, squashed by a multitude of adjoining layers.  Heck, the first layer started probably as far back as the Paleozoic Era.  Of course certainly beyond then as well.  Nonetheless, the processing of minerals into the crystals and stones we know now are compounded with stories of life connected to the earth.  And it's these stories of life that serves us through the stone's energetic vibrations.  It sounds super esoteric at its best, I know.  But have you ever picked up a penny dated 1980, and studied it in concerns to the year it was made?  Have you ever wondered whose hand it first crossed?  What store and till it was first dropped in?  And who was the last to have slipped it into his or her pocket?  And how did it end up at your feet?  Would its previous owner even miss it?  Or need it as they come up short at his or her trip to the convenient store?  

Now take all those thoughts and imagine how for the 36 years that penny has been in existent, each time it changed hands it sipped something energetic from its handler.  Then imagine how holding that penny makes you feel?  Sad?  Happy?  Alive?  Where do those feelings come from?

That's how I believe crystals work.  Except you're holding something harboring energy from the earth from possibly over 252 million years ago!

Now I don’t claim to have a handle on the subject of crystals/stones and their energetic vibrations.  However, placebo effect or not, I do appreciate the gesture that comes with believing in the power of crystals.  And like many things I appreciate, I've come to research as much as I can to discover how close are the theories true for myself.  So I won't sit here and claim to have all the answers, especially when some of my research has led me to believe I don’t always work closely enough with my crystals for them to be effective, exactly.  So if any progress has arrived over the years, it's probably more subtle than I've come to realize.  

However, I like them.  Some I’ve been carrying in a pouch in my pocket for four years.  Some I occasionally pile underneath my pillow at night.  And when it comes to cleansing, I give them the proper sea salt bath before allowing them to dry in direct sunlight.  Others, I smudge to “reset” their vibrational frequency after a long day of absorbing others’ energy myself.

Researched and accepting of their individual purposes in fulfilling my personal intents over the years, here are my Top 5 Favorite Crystals & Stones that I never leave home without.

Deserving a Re-Read? Victoria Beckham's Learning to Fly

So I was digging through my tote of older books–as in books with zero chance of acquiring some real estate on my shelves–and came across this one.  It’s been a good ten years since I read Victoria Beckham’s autobiography, Learning to Fly.  And this minor rediscovery comes begging for me to read her story again.  As in a little sooner than now.  I mean, really.  Posh Spice was and always will be my favorite Spice Girl. 

 







So while my R. L. Stine Fear Street series won’t find its way out of that tote any time soon, and nor will all those old middle school reads, I kind of think Posh wins the bid for a space on the shelves.

My Kim Harrison Reads Are Suffering...

If only I could find my way back to this series.  Especially considering it ended back in 2014.  You'd think I would run to wrap it up–you know, having read 9 out of the 13 books in the series.  But I just can't seem to get with Rachel Morgan again.  Yet, as this post may indicate, she keeps crossing my mind.  Over and over again.  Her voice speaks from the bookshelf grave, asking me to pick up book 10.  And actually get past the first twenty pages.  The echo of her voice is desperate for me to finish her bounty hunter/witch/demon story.  I sigh in a mix of pain and relief of my escape.  But I'll never forget those 2007 afternoons where I had an hour or two between school and work.  I would sit down at McDonald's and read these books.  Actually, I would gobble them up!  If only Rachel spent a little less time negotiating over her hormones, then things would've turned out differently.

Oh well.  Maybe this summer I'll finally pick up the series where I (swiftly) jumped ship from.  And... well... try again.  Maybe with a glass of wine to go along with the reading.  A sip for every occasion Rachel slobs all over herself over a shirtless man.  Who happens to be an elf-thing.  Who happens to be a killer somehow in need of the reader's sympathy.  The details get fuzzy as the years go by, but the inner ache remains the same.

Aw, hell.  Forget that noise!  Maybe I'll try again when I have nothing else available to read.  (Ah, let's go to Barnes & Nobles and order books today!)

R.I.P RACHEL MORGAN

(FOR NOW!)