Thursday, December 08, 2016

Seven and Eight.

Here's my little snowman tart warmer I picked up at JoAnn's on Black Friday. I've always been a candle girl, and am new to the tart warmer, but I think I'm hooked.


And I took a close-up of our little tabletop tree. I got red tartan plaid bows at JoAnn's in the same Black Friday sale, so I decided to do the tree in red and gold. This required picking up some gold ornaments, gold snowflakes, red berry clusters and what not. The tree has red and white lights. And a big dark red bow on top. I don't love it like I did last year's, but it's quite pretty.


Also-rans, non-fiction.

Four-star non-fiction reads are still pretty awesome. Here are some of the ones I still remember and think about.

Catch a Wave: The Rise, Fall and Redemption of Brian Wilson, Peter Ames Carlin
The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio, Terry Ryan
The Glass Castle, Jeannette Walls
The Ghost Map: The Story of London's Most Terrifying Epidemic, Steven Johnson
The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid, Bill Bryson
An Autobiography, Agatha Christie
Picasso's War: The Destruction of Guernica and the Masterpiece that Changed the World, Russell Martin
Laurel Canyon: The Inside Story of Rock-and-Roll's Legendary Neighborhood, Michael Walker
The Year 1000: What Life Was Like at the End of the First Millennium, Robert Lacey
Never Have Your Dog Stuffed, and Other Things I've Learned, Alan Alda
Bing Crosby: A Pocketful of Dreams, Gary Giddons
The Perfect Summer: Dancing Into Shadow in 1911, Juliet Nicolson
Travel As a Political Act, Rick Steves
The Lincolns in the White House: Four Years That Shattered a Family, Jerrold M. Packard
King, Kaiser, Tsar: Three Royal Cousins Who Led the World to War, Catrine Clay
Richmond Burning: The Last Days of the Confederate Capital, Nelson D. Lankford
Anne Frank: The Book, the Life, the Afterlife, Francine Prose
The Day We Found the Universe, Marcia Bartusiak
About Town: The New Yorker and the World It Made, Ben Yagoda
Bossypants, Tina Fey
Little Girl Blue: The Life of Karen Carpenter, Randy L. Schmidt
Philip and Elizabeth: Portrait of a Royal Marriage, Gyles Brandreth
Van Gogh: The Life, Steven Naifeh
Vita and Harold: The Letters of Vita Sackville-West and Harold Nicolson, 1910-1962, Nigel Nicolson
A Thousand Lives: The Untold Story of Hope, Deception and Survival at Jonestown, Julia Scheeres
The Searchers: The Making of an American Legend, Glenn Frankel
The Lady in Gold: The Extraordinary Tale of Gustav Klimt's Masterpiece, Anne-Marie O'Connor
The Holy or the Broken: Leonard Cohen, Jeff Buckley, and the Unlikely Ascent of "Hallelujah," Alan Light
A Sting in the Tale: My Adventures with Bumblebees, Dave Goulson
Five Days at Memorial: Life and Death in a Storm-Ravaged Hospital, Sheri Fink
One Summer: America, 1927, Bill Bryson
The Real Jane Austen: A Life in Small Things, Paula Byrne
Digging for Richard III: The Search for the Lost King, Mike Pitts
Jane's Fame: How Jane Austen Conquered the World, Claire Harman
The Stranger Beside Me, Ann Rule
Lady Bird and Lyndon: The Hidden Story of a Marriage That Made a President, Betty Caroli

Five and six.

I'm getting behind in my journal because I'm having some snafus with my photo developing place. (Wal-Mart, of which I shall never darken the door again.) Here's the Christmas card we are sending to family and friends this year. (I had to chop it up to fit it on the page.)


And here's yesterday's entry, just a couple lines on the horrible weather and the coziness of having a tidy, dry, warm home. I put some tiny doilies on it to connote coziness!