The hotel wifi wasn’t cooperating last night, so I missed posting. As predicted, I love the countryside of Spain more than Barcelona. On Wednesday we made our way to Costa Brava, stopping along the way in Girona, a smaller city. The view from my hotel room is a living postcard. It’s ocean view and there’s nothing like hearing the waves all night.
Today we saw the Salvador Dali museum and the villages of Callela de Palefrugell and Llafranc. The Dali museum was fascinating. Dali was so innovative and truly saw the world differently from the rest of us. He really stands out as an artist who enjoyed success in this lifetime. He loved his wife and muse, Gala, even signing her name in his signatures.
The main word today though was HOT, and it will only be hotter from here on out. While it was “only” 92, it felt much hotter. The return to the pool was heavenly. On to France tomorrow.
Today we went to two must see sights in Barcelona. We started the morning on a panoramic bus tour of the city. The highlight was Placa de Catalunya. It is the highest point in the city and has amazing views. During the Spanish Civil War and Franco’s rule, it was the sight of many deaths. The city has now taken it and made it place to celebrate peace and nature.
Later, we went to the La Sagrada Familia, the church designed by Gaudi has been under construction since 1852. No matter what your religious beliefs, it is an awe inspiring place. I took a lot of pictures, but they can’t do it justice. There is so much detail and symbolism in ever space.
Technically, this is my day two in Barcelona. But, the “touristy” part of the trip started today. Prepared to roast in the Mediterranean, I was pleasantly surprised. It was warm (low 80s), but there was a nice breeze. We started with a guided walking tour of the city. Even though I know this it’s still so striking to me whenever I visit other countries just how young the USA is compared to most countries. There are structures in tact from Ancient Rome. The architecture of the past is so much more ornate that it gives old cities much more character. A great start to the tour.
In other great news- I have a new suitcase, paid for by the airline. They emailed me the location today and I was able to make the exchange during our free time this afternoon.
As the title suggests, this is not what I was expecting my first post to be. I was going to skipt he travel time and begin tomorrow when the tour officially begins. But, the trip got off to a bit of a rocky start. Which lead me to think about the first thing I always tell people:you have to go in with the expectation that something will go wrong at some point.
Any large trip has so many flights and luggage transfers and reservations that there’s bound to be a hiccup somewhere, and that’s without factoring in weather. You can’t control any of that, but you can control how your attitude and how you react. So far, this trip is challenging me to practice what I preach.
I woke up Saturday to a text telling me that my twelve o’clock flight was now a 12:45 flight. Then shortly before leaving for airport, there was another message that it was now a 2:00 flight. It was going to make my layover tight, but the ticket agent thought I’d be able to make it when I checked in. Then, while waiting I got a message that it was now a 2:37 flight. That put my original flight landing at JFK at 4:01 and my connection leaving at 4:15. I rescheduled for a 9:45 PM flight. Longer delay than I would like but I went to a restaurant instead of food court, and had time to walk around, read and chat on the phone with my mom. Of course, during this time my Gate was changed three times. At least they were at the same terminal, unlike last time I was at JFK. The flight was smooth and it seemed the tide had turned. We even landed a little early. Then I saw my luggage coming down the conveyor belt. I’m not sure if the picture will post here. But, all I can say is no person could’ve done that kind of damage to a piece of luggage. The side was torn and dangling with wires hanging out. My best guess is it got caught in a conveyor belt.
This is where the attitude comes in. I was standing in line laughing at how ridiculous it looked and how much has already happened. At the end of the day, I made it to Barcelona, it’s beautiful and there’s lots of fun activities ahead in the next couple of weeks. I’m going to say the laughing is because of my positive attitude, and not because I haven’t slept at most an hour in the last 24 hours and am on the edge of insanity
This is a just a quick note to let you know that the content at Nicole’s Nook is going to be shifting over the next couple of weeks as I travel. Instead of keeping a journal like I normally do, I’m going to document the trip here. I don’t know how much time I’ll have, so it will probably just be brief snippets . The main focus of Nicole’s Nook will always be reading and writing. Therefore, I still have other literature based content written and scheduled to post too.
Nicole’s Nook is primarily a book blog. But, I also want to occasionally include some writing “talk”. I’m going to start out today by talking about the importance of finding writing groups.
By nature, writing is a solo activity. That’s why it’s so important to find your writing people. When I started writing, I didn’t talk about it. Then, I got an honorable mention in a writing contest, and told people close to me. After that, my mom spotted a sign at Barnes & Noble about a writing group. That then lead me to two other local writing groups. It’s very hard to make that first leap and put yourself out there. But it’s worth it. Here are some of the reasons aspiring writers should consider joining a writing group.
accountablility– it is very easy to find ways to procrastinate, but if you know you’re going to be meeting with other people who will ask how you’re writing is going, you’re much more likely to write
critiques– it’s one thing to have family and friends read your writing, but if they’re not writers themselves, it’s hard to get quality feedback. Fellow writers want you to improve and aren’t worried about hurting your feelings, like friends and family.
resources: other writers are great “resources for resources”, they can recommend classes, conferences, books, magazines and web sites to improve your writing.
presentations: most writing groups have guest speakers. They may not always apply to your writing, but it still expands your knowledge.
In conclusion, if you are interested in writing, finding other writers is essential. If there aren’t any writing groups in your area, there are plenty of forums and resources online as well.
Thank you NetGalley for a free ARC in exchange for an honest review.
Description
Fifi the raccoon is trying desperately to get her family to play with her. But everyone is too busy, busy, busy! What’s a girl to do? Together with her dog, Felix, Fifi comes up with an idea—one that will bring them all together and give them lots of time to play: it’s a lots-of-time machine! But what happens when Fifi’s brilliant idea doesn’t go quite as planned? Can Fifi and her family find a way to be busy…together? Find out in this endearing and relatable family story.
My Thoughts:
This is such a cute story that’s relatable to any kid/family. Fifi just wants to spend time with her family, but they’re all busy. There are few words per page that are written speech bubbles, making this easy for a beginning reader. The bright illustrations tell the story and keep you engaged.
“Lucifer, why did so many human emotions feel like physical illness? It was a wonder humans didn’t visit the doctor on an hourly basis.” ― Sarah Hawley, A Witch’s Guide to Fake Dating a Demon
Title: A Witch’s Guide to Fake Dating a Demon
Author: Sarah Hawley
Publisher: Berkley
Publication Date: March 7, 2023
Goodreads Synopsis:
Mariel Spark is prophesied to be the most powerful witch seen in centuries of the famed Spark family, but to the displeasure of her mother, she prefers baking to brewing potions and gardening to casting hexes. When a spell to summon flour goes very wrong, Mariel finds herself staring down a demon—one she inadvertently summoned for a soul bargain.
Ozroth the Ruthless is a legend among demons. Powerful and merciless, he drives hard bargains to collect mortal souls. But his reputation has suffered ever since a bargain went awry—if he can strike a bargain with Mariel, he will earn back his deadly reputation. Ozroth can’t leave Mariel’s side until they complete a bargain, which she refuses to do (turns out some humans are attached to their souls).
But the witch is funny. And curvy. And disgustingly yet endearingly cheerful. Becoming awkward roommates quickly escalates when Mariel, terrified to confess the inadvertent summoning to her mother, blurts out that she’s dating Ozroth. As Ozroth and Mariel struggle with their opposing goals and maintaining a fake relationship, real attraction blooms between them. But Ozroth has a limited amount of time to strike the deal, and if Mariel gives up her soul, she’ll lose all her emotions—including love—which will only spell disaster for them both.
My Thoughts:
A demon with a soul was such a fun premise. I loved the unique take on the demon plain. Even though the demons are evil, they’re just regular people doing their job. The jobs just happen to involve dasterdly deals and soul stealing. I didn’t give it a full five stars because the pacing seemed a little off at times.
A nice mix of historical, contempary, fantasy and mystery.
July 1
Daughters of Olympus by Hannah Lynn
Goodreads Description;
A daughter pulled between two worlds and a mother willing destroy both to protect her…
Gods and men wage their petty wars, but it is the women of spring who will have the last word…
Demeter did not always live in fear. Once, the goddess of spring loved the world and the humans who inhabited it. After a devastating assault, though, she becomes a shell of herself. Her only solace is her daughter, Persephone.
A balm to her mother’s pain, Persephone grows among wildflowers, never leaving the sanctuary Demeter built for them. But she aches to explore the mortal world–to gain her own experiences. Naïve but determined, she secretly builds a life of her own under her mother’s watchful gaze. But as she does so, she catches the eye of Hades, and is kidnapped…
Forced into a role she never wanted, Persephone learns that power suits her. In the land of the living, though, Demeter is willing to destroy the humans she once held dear–anything to protect her family. A mother who has lost everything and a daughter with more to gain than she ever realized, their story will irrevocably shape the world.
I gave the first book I read by Hannah Lynn three stars. I knew I had to give her another try when I read this description.
July 2
The Cliffs by J. Courtney Sullivan
Goodreads description;
On a secluded bluff overlooking the ocean sits a Victorian house, lavender with gingerbread trim, a home that contains a century’s worth of secrets. By the time Jane Flanagan discovers the house as a teenager, it has long been abandoned. The place is an irresistible mystery to Jane. There are still clothes in the closets, marbles rolling across the floors, and dishes in the cupboards, even though no one has set foot there in decades. The house becomes a hideaway for Jane, a place to escape her volatile mother.
Twenty years later, now a Harvard archivist, she returns home to Maine following a terrible mistake that threatens both her career and her marriage. Jane is horrified to find the Victorian is now barely recognizable. The new owner, Genevieve, a summer person from Beacon Hill, has gutted it, transforming the house into a glossy white monstrosity straight out of a shelter magazine. Strangely, Genevieve is convinced that the house is haunted—perhaps the product of something troubling Genevieve herself has done. She hires Jane to research the history of the place and the women who lived there. The story Jane uncovers—of lovers lost at sea, romantic longing, shattering loss, artistic awakening, historical artifacts stolen and sold, and the long shadow of colonialism—is even older than Maine itself.
Enthralling, richly imagined, filled with psychic mediums and charlatans, spirits and past lives, mothers, marriage, and the legacy of alcoholism, this is a deeply moving novel about the land we inhabit, the women who came before us, and the ways in which none of us will ever truly leave this earth.
Goodreads had an article with recommendations for books set in each state. That prompted me to look at books I’ve read from different states. Maine was one of the states I was surprised I didn’t have more from.
July 9
The Briar Club by Kate QuinnGoodreads description:
Washington, D.C., 1950. Everyone keeps to themselves at Briarwood House, a down-at-the-heels all-female boardinghouse in the heart of the nation’s capital, where secrets hide behind white picket fences. But when the lovely, mysterious widow Grace March moves into the attic, she draws her oddball collection of neighbors into unlikely friendship: poised English beauty Fliss whose facade of perfect wife and mother covers gaping inner wounds; police officer’s daughter Nora, who is entangled with a shadowy gangster; frustrated baseball star Bea, whose career has ended along with the women’s baseball league of WWII; and poisonous, gung-ho Arlene, who has thrown herself into McCarthy’s Red Scare.
Grace’s weekly attic-room dinner parties and window-brewed sun tea become a healing balm on all their lives, but she hides a terrible secret of her own. When a shocking act of violence tears apart the house, the Briar Club women must decide once and for all: Who is the true enemy in their midst?
Kate Quinn has never disappointed me. This sounds like another winner.
The Sawmill Book Club by Carolyn Brown
Goodreads Description:
A restless woman discovers the comforts of small-town Texas—and more—in a bighearted novel about the next chapters in life by New York Times bestselling author Carolyn Brown.
Unsure of the future but ready for risks, Libby O’Dell trades big-city life for whatever the back roads hold. In this case it’s the small community of Sawmill, Texas, where Libby’s taken a temporary job putting an antique store in order. Her new boss, Benny Taylor, a handsome charmer with a three-legged dog named Elvis, isn’t a bad change of scenery, either.
Across the street Benny’s surrogate grandmothers—the widows Minilee and Opal—are ready with homemade corn bread, sweet tea, and an invitation for Libby to join their book club. Even if it is mostly a gathering for local gossip and meddling. The ladies’ main agenda: find Benny a wife. Except Benny’s not looking, and Libby’s only passing through until she decides what direction she’s headed next.
Truth is, Sawmill is starting to feel pretty nice. Benny, even nicer. Time will tell if this meantime job in a stopover town is just what Libby’s been looking for—and where she belongs.
Brown’s Cadillac Texas series is so much fun and this seems like a similar vibe.
July 16
Black Bird Oracle by Deborah Harkness
Goodreads Synopsis
Deborah Harkness first introduced the world to Diana Bishop, Oxford scholar and witch, and vampire geneticist Matthew de Clairmont in A Discovery of Witches. Drawn to each other despite long-standing taboos, these two otherworldly beings found themselves at the center of a battle for a lost, enchanted manuscript known as Ashmole 782. Since then, they have fallen in love, traveled to Elizabethan England, dissolved the Covenant between the three species, and awoken the dark powers within Diana’s family line.
Now, Diana and Matthew receive a formal demand from the Congregation: They must test the magic of their seven-year-old twins, Pip and Rebecca. Concerned with their safety and desperate to avoid the same fate that led her parents to spellbind her, Diana decides to forge a different path for her family’s future and answers a message from a great-aunt she never knew existed, Gwyneth Proctor, whose invitation simply reads: It’s time you came home, Diana.
On the hallowed ground of Ravenswood, the Proctor family home, and under the tutelage of Gwyneth, a talented witch grounded in higher magic, a new era begins for Diana: a confrontation with her family’s dark past, and a reckoning for her own desire for even greater power—if she can let go, finally, of her fear of wielding it.
I love the world Harkness has created in this series and I’m excited to return to it.
July 23
The Haunting of Hecate Cavendish by Paula Brackston
Goodreads description;
New York Times bestselling author Paula Brackston returns with a new, magic-infused series about Hecate Cavendish, an eccentric and feisty young woman who can see ghostsEngland, 1881. Hereford cathedral stands sentinel over the city, keeping its secrets, holding long forgotten souls in its stony embrace. Hecate Cavendish speeds through the cobbled streets on her bicycle, skirts hitched daringly high, heading for her new life as Assistant Librarian. But this is no ordinary collection of books. The cathedral houses an ancient chained library, wisdom guarded for centuries, mysteries and stories locked onto its worn, humble shelves. The most prized artifact, however, is the medieval world map which hangs next to Hecate’s desk. Little does she know how much the curious people and mythical creatures depicted on it will come to mean to her. Nor does she suspect that there are lost souls waiting for her in the haunted cathedral. Some will become her dearest friends. Some will seek her help in finding peace. Others will put her in great peril, and, as she quickly learns, threaten the lives of everyone she loves
This sounds like a fascinating series. I love stories of librarians/bookstore owners who get dragged into intriquing situations.
July 30
Like Mother, Like Daughter by Kimberly McCreight
Goodreads Description:
A daughter races to uncover her mother’s secret life in the wake of her disappearance in this thriller.
When Cleo, a student at NYU, arrives late for dinner at her childhood home in Brooklyn, she finds food burning in the oven and no sign of her mother, Kat. Then Cleo discovers her mom’s bloody shoe under the sofa. Something terrible has happened.
But what? The polar opposite of Cleo, whose “out of control” emotions and “unsafe” behavior have created a seemingly unbridgeable rift between mother and daughter, Kat is the essence of Park Slope perfection: a happily married, successful corporate lawyer. Or so Cleo thinks.
Kat has been lying. She’s not just a lawyer; she’s her firm’s fixer. She’s damn good at it, too. Growing up in a dangerous group home taught her how to think fast, stay calm under pressure, and recognize a real threat when she sees one. And in the days leading up her disappearance, Kat has become aware of multiple threats: demands for money from her unfaithful soon-to-be ex-husband; evidence that Cleo has slipped back into a relationship that’s far riskier than she understands; and menacing anonymous messages from her past—all of which she’s kept hidden from Cleo . . .
Like Mother, Like Daughter is a thrilling novel of emotional suspense that questions the damaging fictions we cling to and the hard truths we avoid. Above all, it’s a love story between a mother and a daughter, each determined to save the other before it’s too late.
I like that even though this is a thriller, it seems like the focus will be on secrets and family relationships versus violence,
Maria by Michelle Moran
Goodreads Description:
In the 1950s, Oscar Hammerstein is asked to write the lyrics to a musical based on the life of a woman named Maria von Trapp. He’s intrigued to learn that she was once a novice who hoped to live quietly as an Austrian nun before her abbey sent her away to teach a widowed baron’s sickly child. What should have been a ten-month assignment, however, unexpectedly turned into a marriage proposal. And when the family was forced to flee their home to escape the Nazis, it was Maria who instructed them on how to survive using nothing but the power of their voices.
It’s an inspirational story, to be sure, and as half of the famous Rodgers & Hammerstein duo, Hammerstein knows it has big Broadway potential. Yet much of Maria’s life will have to be reinvented for the stage, and with the horrors of war still fresh in people’s minds, Hammerstein can’t let audiences see just how close the von Trapps came to losing their lives.
But when Maria sees the script that is supposedly based on her life, she becomes so incensed that she sets off to confront Hammerstein in person. Told that he’s busy, she is asked to express her concerns to his secretary, Fran, instead. The pair strike up an unlikely friendship as Maria tells Fran about her life, contradicting much of what will eventually appear in The Sound of Music.
A tale of love, loss, and the difficult choices that we are often forced to make, Maria is a powerful reminder that the truth is usually more complicated—and certainly more compelling—than the stories immortalized by Hollywood.
Every time I watch The Sound of Music, I wonder how much is fictionalized. Obviously, this is fiction as well, but it should be an interesting insight to the real woman.
Fantasy is another of my favorite genres. Instead of sharing my favorite fantasy novels, I thought I’d talk about what I look for in a fantasy novel.
World Building
This is a term I didn’t really think about a lot until I started writing myself. For any book, I want to feel it is a complete universe. Even if it’s realistic fiction, I want I understand those characters world. It’s that much more important with fantasy. Hogwarts is not just a modern boarding school that teaches magic. It has a long history built on tradition. In order for fantasy to work for me, I need to understand how the it is different from our world. The rules of the world can be nonsensical, but a great writer will show us how they make sense. This makes fantasy perfect for the writer who is looking to escape into a book.
Retellings
I love books that put a twist on familar stories. Often this is a contemporary or mystery novel. But, my favorites are based in mythology and fairy tales. I love the combination of familiar mixed with new ideas. There are so many different approaches. These classic stories hold timeless themes that can hold true in many different settings. You can also take antiquated ideas and modify them to modern morals.
Good vs. Evil
We all want to see good prevail over evil. Fantasy lends itself to clear heros and villians. Even though it might take a few books, we know that in the end good will win. That being send, fantasy also lends itself to complex characters where good and evil isn’t obvious. In series like A Court of Thorn and Roses the outside appearance of characters is often decieving, making the reader change their mind about who is good and who is evil.
Deeper Meaning
Fantasy also lends itself to touching on controversial topics without feeling threatening. Fantasy worlds can make statements about society through metaphor and symbolism. It makes it more palatable for people to face their prejudices when it’s presented as a magical creature versus a person.
Fun
Not all fantasy has to be epic. Some of my favorites are fun chick lit or cozy series like Enchanted Inc. When you add an element of magic, there are so many possibilities to put the characters in crazy situations.