Back from Florida

We had a great vacation using our retirement home in Florida. In two more years we'll be there for seven months each year. It was even hotter than usual last week but we rented a boat for four days and that made it bearable.

Our friends, Dottie and Stan, went with us and Dottie and I took off without the guys one day and found a Barnes & Noble where I bought a magazine on DSLR photography, a package of multi-colored stationery, a book of poetry called Ballistics by Billy Collins, and Thirteen Reasons Why by Jay Asher, a YA novel.

I read Cry Mercy all the way down in the plane and at the airport. This is the second in a series; I didn't read the first one but I don't think that matters because each one centers on different characters who work at Mercy House, which is an organization set up to find missing persons. In this one, their new investigator, Emme, is tryng to find a missing college student but she has secrets of her own. Namely, her name isn't Emme and she's hiding from the father of her adopted daughter. This was a quick and enjoyable read.

For a change of pace, I read this book of poetry by Alison Townsend. It was so mesmerizing! She writes about very personal subjects and the poems are easy to understand on a first reading but open like flowers on a second reading.

This is another paperback I picked up for our vacation. This one is also part of a series and I haven't read the beginning ones but, again, it didn't matter. Sean King and Michelle Maxwell are private investigators looking into the death of a matematician that took place on CIA-owned land. What had the victim discovered there and what secret had he shared with his eleven-year-old autistic genius daughter? I finished this one yesterday at the beach back up here in Maine.

The morning after we went to the bookstore, I woke up early and took this book of poetry outside on the porch to read it while the sun rose. I love Billy Collins. Like one of the characters in 10 Things I Hate About You says about Shakespeare, "We're involved." I really like his poetry that much!

And this volume is no exception. It hits with the velocity of a bullet and your brain explodes with images and truths. I'll definitely be rereading this one several times.

It's nice to be back in our summer home. It's a fifth-wheel camper in a campground about a mile and a half from the beach and I hop on my bicycle almost every day and pedal there. Doesn't get much better than that!

Happy reading everyone!