Today is my birthday!

Happy Friday, Happy weekend and Happy Mother’s Day to all to whom this applies!

Since the “techie” blog I wanted to post is no where near done, I had to do something. (IDK, virtual cakes just don’t cut it for me. I’m thinking about something from Friendly’s though. Bet you can’t guess. )

Anyway, thought I’d do a quick share of some awesome music by an up and coming star! As life and a small world would have it, I went to school with his dad (who, I am VERY sad to say, passed about three years ago).

Tam’s dad was also very into his music. If memory serves me well, he loved his drums. What I remember most though, was a question he posed: if I had to lose one, would I give up my sight or my hearing?

Tam’s dad would rather not see than never be able to hear music again.

With that, I present to you Tam Justin Garcia. Take a few moments and listen to Liquid Universe. (You’ll be very glad you did!)  Then, if you would be so kind, visit his Facebook and Twitter pages and share about him some more? Thank you!

On a tennis note, Rafa Nadal topped David Ferrer in the quarterfinals at the Mutua Madrid Open! (Just cause it’s my b-day—of course! Last night my older son caught me watching another match and asked if it’s “tennis season” again. With the tennis channel, this is now a very welcome and fun year-round thing! Which also means, you may be constantly in-the-know about tennis whether you share the passion–or not! )

Have a great day all!

Joanna

Romance and Malware/Adware Removal

Good morning and happy Saturday everyone. Looking forward to the Madrid Tennis Open Championships getting underway! The top four men are scheduled to head up the draw. (That would be: Rafa, Roger, Nole and Andy.) VERY interested to see how it will be seeded; who will be the last man standing, as well as how it might impact Roland Garros (a.k.a., the French Open Tennis Championships) later this month. (It’s all hubby’s fault. He opted for a FIOS package that included Tennis Channel. )

Thanks to those of you who stopped in this past Monday! Here is a photo of the loverly flowers hunny surprised me with AFTER we promised each other no gifts, just a card. He NEVER listens and I should know better.

So go figure. Last night before going to bed I drafted a post. (It’s been relegated to the future.) As you’ve already figured I got sidetracked after I started working on removing the annoying Snap.Do toolbar and its default landing page. My older son must have inadvertently downloaded it while installing software for his friend’s iPhone. It looks like this and is ANNOYING AS ALL GET OUT. Not that it gave much return for taking up space, and I’ve learned it HIJACKS your browser. Kept redirecting me to its advertisers,  with some links to my queries at least halfway down the page. (I happen to like my Google, Bing! and Yahoo! search engines, thank you very much.)

Okay, no biggie, right? All I have to do is go into the Control Panel and uninstall the program.

NOT!!!!

I let the 16-y/o take over. He said something about custom, Advanced Settings and who knows what else under Control Panel then wielded some digital magic.

Or so he thought.

Now I’m irritated. Off to Google, where I typed in how to disable snap.do (or something similar). Yay! for auto-complete, at least in this instance, , and for REAL search engines, where anyone can find answers to any topic s/he can imagine.

I wound up Malwaretips.com.

I immediately found Stelian Pilici‘s rockin’, totally free and highly detailed how-to article. He made it easy for me to get right to work. (All steps to do so for each browser are listed with lots of screen shots to guide you. Takes a few minutes, plus time to run the adware cleaner.)

I had to try a few times b/c I neglected to follow ALL the steps. I’m thinking running the AdwCleaner was the magic, but only after I’d taken the time to tweak BOTH the browsers I have enabled. That would be Google Chrome and Internet Explorer.) BTW, Stelian made sure to include a direct link to the AdwCleaner in the article I sighted.

What are the morals of this story?

1. As tempting as it seems to click ACCEPT when installing software off the net, read the terms and conditions (or at least scroll through them) first! Often there are boxes to un/check that can save you the trouble of having to remove items you don’t want later on. (On the bright side, I am now empowered with a tool to handle this sort of nonsense in the future.)

2. Don’t be afraid to look for an answer to your problem on the internet, especially if you’ve learned one or two things along the way. Be prudent before you click away, but at least read a how-to article. You might be surprised at how much you can handle on your own. (Techie stuff often appears more overwhelming and complicated than it is. BUT: Most of what I’ve learned has built on itself and/or can often be generalized to solve many problems.)

3. Save Malwaretips.com in your favorites! And don’t forget  to thank the guys, SHARE and/or even donate to help keep their VERY VALUABLE efforts going.

4. PC users in particular, run your malware and antispyware programs. Regularly! (Okay, I’m as guilty as the next person.) Dump cookies and run Disk Cleanup  And keep your anti-virus software up to date. (I’m seeing a short Part 2 to this article evolve here. Hope to have it written and up by next week.) I might actually be done!

Thanks, folks, and have a wonderful weekend!

Joanna

Red Velvet Pancakes At Home?

Hi all,

Trying to get myself back into a routine. I am so good at getting in my own way.

Wow. We may have entered a new era in clay court tennis. (View the winner of “The Little French Open” here.) So mad I missed the match! (Yes, I know I can find it somewhere on line. We’ll see what time–and overloaded memory–allow.)

Let’s move on. Last week older son said something about a renowned pancake chain and a new (?) red velvet variety. Mom thinks: Hmm. Can we make this for son at home?

Anyone who REALLY knows me is in on the fact that I don’t necessarily like to cook. I do, however, enjoy trying new recipes and getting creative with adapting them.   I have a special place in my heart too, for recipes that look complicated and elegant when done, but are actually quite easy. (Make the “chef” look amazing, know what I mean? ).

So I hit up the internet and found a few recipes. (I SO love the world wide web.)  I wound up going with this one that I found at recipegirl.com. I invite you to go to Lori Lange’s blog for the recipe (which, actually, came from a guest blogger, Tidy Mom, a.k.a., Cheryl). Are you all with me?

Here I’ll list the two minor changes I made to Tidy Mom’s recipe. (Hubby thinks I should follow a recipe to the letter, but those who spend a lot of time in the kitchen know tweaking is often what makes a certain recipe our own.) I also went with a basic cream cheese glaze. (That recipe follows.)

Tidy Mom’s recipe calls for 2 ½ cups of flour. I’m thinking I used about 2/3 white whole wheat and 1/3 white flour.

As per Cheryl, I also used a “buttermilk substitute,” (1 ½ cups of plain non-fat yogurt mixed with 3 tbsp of milk). She linked to here for this one and other alternatives. My choice worked really well.

Finally, I added a bit more milk to thin the batter to my liking—not unusual for any pancake recipe.

Note: I saw no significant difference using liquid food coloring (less than the 1 tbsp called for, since I ran out). Some recipes suggest red food paste gives a deeper red. IDK as I have no experience to fall back on.

I happen to like preparing pancakes on a griddle, but a good (preferably non-stick) frying pan works every bit as well. Also, rubbing the griddle with a canola oiled-napkin worked better than spraying it with cooking spray. I’ve never liked the speckled appearance pancakes get with that.)

Basic cream cheese glaze (easily increased as needed):

4 oz. cream cheese* (softened)

4 oz. butter* (softened)

2-3 tbsp milk

½ cup confectioners sugar

(*I use the whipped versions. Think it makes for a lighter glaze.)

Using an electric mixer (or by hand) cream together cream cheese and butter until smooth. Add milk and confectioners sugar. Continue mixing until glaze is as smooth as you want it. Serve over warm pancakes. Refrigerate (or try freezing) leftover glaze.

There you have it! These really were excellent, rich with flavor and brought together perfectly by the cream cheese topping—my favorite part of anything red velvet, hands down.

The finished product. Yum.

The finished product. Yum.

So, where do you stand on cooking? Do you follow recipes to the letter or does your brain start tweaking whenever you read one the first time? Are you a fan of pancakes? If so, what’s your favorite kind? Would you rather make reservations?

Have a great day and ttfn,

Joanna

Post #300–Wow! How Did I Get Here? and THANK YOU!

Am I out of my mind? (Answers do not have to be recorded for my reading pleasure, thank you! )

Believe it or not–I certainly don’t–this is post #300! Had I been paying attention I probably would have gotten it up sooner.

Yes, friends, you’ve dealt with me for close to three years and 300 incidents of my musings, opinions, recipes and reflections (and surprisingly close to the three-year anniversary of my first post–so not planned). Every now and again, I’ve hopefully taught something, got you thinking, elicited a smile or chuckle or turned you on to a recipe you’ll use for years to come.

One could also hope I’ve created the desire for you to come back, despite the inconsistency of my posting at times, as well as the seemingly random subjects I’ve touched upon. I truly wish I had more time (and better focus and organizational skills) to really explore or chat about everything that interests me in some shape or form.

I THANK EACH OF YOU WITH ALL MY HEART for taking the time to visit and making me feel I am not alone here in cyberspace. (Giant hugs go out to those who comment regularly and to those of you who share my content.)

There are no words for how humbled one feels.

My sincerest gratitude,

Joanna

Did The Kids Figure This One Out on Their Own?

Or do they just “get” something the rest of us don’t?

Happy Thursday after Easter, friends!

I apologize for not getting this up last week. Impending Spring Break messes with timelines for school-related paperwork, which has to take priority. (I always wonder though: God-forbid something serious happened to the person doing the write-up a few days prior–i.e., an injury–doesn’t the paperwork NOT get in on time? Does life stop because of that? Just sayin’… )

Anyway, these thoughts were inspired by a conversation between me and my older guy a few weeks ago.

Most Friday mornings I drop my sixteen year-old son off at school. Our other regular passenger is his ‘girlfriend.’ I keep asking myself why I still put quotes around that word; they haven’t broken up once, and she’s been around three years (plus).

Yep. 1/26/10: that used to be part of my older guy’s text signature. This year, that date fell on a Saturday. It wasn’t until AFTER I picked them up at The Olive Garden that I realized why they’d made dinner plans and just assumed someone would drop them off and pick them up. (Yeah, the mommy in me got a little cranky with them doing that, but I’d missed the bigger picture up front. I got over it soon enough. And I got on my kid’s case about getting her flowers. Won’t tell you he’s lazy, but he can be a bit lackadaisical when it comes to doing things.)

Back to Friday mornings. He was doing his hair for school—I swear he’s the daughter I never had when it comes to his appearance—and I happened to ask about a woman who is best friends with the girlfriend’s mother. (Names are made up.)

“How’s Melanie?”

“She’s good.”

“Did she and Henry get back together?”

“Yeah. They’re back and forth all the time. They fight over stupid stuff. They’re like teenagers.”

“Have you and Fiona ever have a fight?”

“Not really. Her mom and Melanie are envious of us. They want to know what our secret is.”

I laughed. “I’ll tell you the secret: control. You and Fiona don’t try to do that to each other. You let each other be.”

“Yeah. I guess.”

Funny. I’ve got a pair of teen sweethearts who inherently get that. (Hubby and I do okay in that department, but every now and again it creeps up. Then we deal and hopefully have learned something new about each other, eighteen years down the married line.)

I’ve watched these kids in action over the past three years. Like her mom who grew up the youngest of five and the only girl, Fiona’s friends are mostly boys, the same ones who are my son’s core group. (Doesn’t seem to phase him none, to his credit.) Her appearance matters but she’s no diva, which is nice.

She and my son spend a ton of time together, but neither cares if one does something without the other. And—thank God!—there’s NONE of the ridiculous, “You can’t talk to that girl” or vice versa. (I’d probably bean either or both if they did. Can’t stand that nonsense.)

We’ve spent vacation time with her family and she’s come away with us. Spend that much time with someone, s/he’s bound to get on one’s nerves. Not so with this girl. They’re a lot alike—even resemble each other a bit—in how overall easygoing each one is.

Got me thinking about how much control gets in the way of having ANY relationship, and not necessarily a romantic one.

When one lives and lets live, life is so much easier on both sides. I can be me without worrying about feeling judged. Disagreements are seen as differences of opinion and not as a personal affront (most of the time anyway). I can do what I need to do without worrying someone else is going to get bent out of shape. When that goes both ways with a spouse, parent, child or friend, I’m can pretty much guarantee a respectful, peaceful and mutually satisfying relationship where two-way interaction just flows naturally.

What are your thoughts on this? Any experiences come to mind that you’d care to share? If positive, what made them so? And if not, how did you deal?

My little home in the woods. Water to go on in about a week–that means we can actually start going again! I’m psyched!

Have a great day, all!

Joanna

Risotto: Joanna style!

Hi all,

Working on getting back in the blogging game and picking up where I left off last time.

What’s awesome about risotto is that you truly can easily create quite the elegant dish while having some creative fun with pretty much anything edible sitting in your fridge or kitchen. My trial approach—with white long grain rice, heaven forbid!—is proof! (Never occurred to me to take a picture of it done. Sorry! Please don’t ask what’s up with the formatting on this particular paragraph of text. I am clueless.)

Here’s Jake again–to make up for the food pic I should have taken–he’s so much cuter than a bowl of rice, don’t you think?

Back to the post!

Here’s what I used to make ‘risotto’:

One small to medium onion, finely chopped

One small zucchini, chopped

One clove of garlic, coarsely chopped

About 3 tbsp of olive oil

One tbsp or so of butter/margarine

1-1/2 cups of long grain white rice

One quart of chicken broth

½ cup white wine (I had chardonnay in the fridge—BTW, you can adjust to taste here)

pepper to taste

a few slivers of dried rosemary

Here’s what I did (in a 12-inch, heavy-based non-stick frying pan):

Sautéed the onions and zucchini in the olive oil until tender;

Added the garlic and cooked until golden;

Added the rice and stirred to coat it.

Slowly poured in one cup of broth, stirring lovingly until the rice absorbed it; repeated this process until I used up the wine and 3 cups of broth total. (Somewhere along the way I added the margarine, a dash of pepper and crumbled in the rosemary.) According to the online recipe, I should have been almost done, about 25 minutes in after having added the rice to the veggies.

My rice, however, seemed to have alternate ideas about getting soft. Forget al dente; the grains were downright crunchy. So here’s where I let instinct take over: I added the rest of the broth (about a cup), raised the heat to high and let the liquid come to a boil. I immediately reduced the heat to low and covered the pan tightly, letting it simmer about 15-20 minutes total, and stirring once or twice. Afterward, I took the pan off the heat. Still covered, I set it aside another 10 minutes.

The result was quite delicious. I mean, every single grain of rice was ridiculously infused with flavor. Me, the non-rice girl having seconds AND thirds? Yes, I’ll have to further up the walks and exercise/dance sessions to make up for the extra calories…

Luckily, I’m a lazy kind of cook so I might not make this all that often.  Then again, texture and gusto-wise it was so good, the time, effort and resulting carpal tunnel syndrome may be worth the yumminess of this dish. Add a little meat and you’ve got a one-dish meal. For me, the veggie route is perfect for keeping it a side dish.

Leftovers:  James suggests frying them up as patties or rissoles. I reheated on a lower setting in the microwave–still good! If need be, one can add a bit more broth to smooth out the remains and serve as an even tastier side dish–that’s one less part of a meal I have to cook!

Have a great day and even greater weekend,

Joanna

Checking Back In and Catching Up

Hi all. Hope all of you are well. Sorry. Went a bit MIA these past weeks. Between feeling lousy (sinusitis and a nasty antibiotic that made me a tired insomniac—yes, in that order); some family matters to attend to and work beginning the end of winter-into-spring-paperwork rise, life just got in the way—again.

I am glad to be back, though. Ironically enough I recently read a wonderful post about procrastination by Darlene Steelman. Yep! Spent the rest of that day avoiding the laptop but finally parked my back end at the darn thing around 9 PM to draft this write up.

Isn’t Jake the sweetest thing? He’s my son’s girlfriend’s pitbull, 4-5 months old. Love him and I promise my son was playing with him in the gentlest way!

In other Joanna news, I’ve been working on getting back into a routine that includes some ramped-up exercise. It’s way too easy to go slack after not feeling well for close to a month. Recently finished Larry Brooks’ Story Engineering, too. Now there’s an awesome resource for plotters and pantsers alike. More on that in another post. A must-read book for anyone trying to find their way to story constructing nirvana.

And I finally made risotto! (Did you catch that, Dr. Stratford?) Got up the nerve last Friday evening. (Parts one and two of the post that inspired me went up last month.) Won’t tell you I followed James’ recipe but I could see his line about ‘stirring it lovingly’ throughout. (Truth is, I hunted down an alternate recipe b/c I committed risotto sacrilege and used long grain white rice. Sorry James, I didn’t have Arborio and was too lazy to go out and round some up. I found a recipe that fit the bill online, doctored it a bit and fell back on instinct to reach the finish line. It worked out, too. Well enough that I’m sharing my take on it.)

I am, however, running longer than I should so I’ll share the recipe later this week. (Besides, this lets me sneak in an extra blog post, as I am nearing the 300 mark!)

Catch y’all later!

Have a great day,

Joanna

Craziest Coincidence?

Hope all is well with everyone. Has anyone taken on James Stratford’s risotto yet? I’m hoping to do so sometime soon.

Every now and again a JFF (Just For Fun) is in order. Not sure if anything remotely similar to this will happen again in this lifetime, to me and my hunny anyway.

Over the weekend I went to a shopping town in PA. In a small shop I overheard a woman talk about having recently run into her nurse practitioner at the airport in North Carolina. Not the kind of thing that happens every day (unless you commute regularly with the same people via air) but not totally off the map unusual, right?

Brought to mind an incident that took place on my honeymoon. Hubby and I flew to Mexico and checked into our hotel. Being a rather considerate smoker, my hunny did all his puffing on the balcony attached to our room, hanging his arm over the rail and tapping the ash onto the ground. He happened to look down and realized his ashes were falling on someone’s feet on the balcony below. (I’ll assume he started using the ashtray immediately after that. )

We settled in and went poolside first. There hubby ran into our neighbor’s brother, a guy hubby knew since his twenties or even before that. And go figure, the guy was staying at the same hotel.

The men start chatting. Hubby offers his friend a cigarette. That led to hubby telling him about tapping the ashes onto the feet below our balcony.

Yep! You know it. That same guy belonged to the feet on the balcony below.

Now is THAT a coinkidink or what?

Your turn!

Joanna

Pizzaiola! A.k.a. ‘Pizza Meat’ at my house!

Happy first Friday of the new year, everyone! May God bless all of us with peace and health as the days of 2013 unfold!

This is up there with the awesome rosemary-wine chicken recipe at my website. Beyond easy but elegant and flavor-loaded to the point people will think you were cooking all day. (My favorite kind of recipe!) Just a note: this was the ONLY meat my older son would eat when he actually started touching meat at about 12 years old. There is hope for those fussy guys, folks!

To serve four you’ll need:

1-1/2 lb of top sirloin steak—if possible, have a butcher cut it as thin as humanly possible then pound it even thinner at home.

1 8 oz. can tomato sauce (or use your own)

3-4 cloves of garlic, coarsely chopped

Fresh parsley, coarsely chopped

salt/pepper/oregano to taste

oil (I sauté the meat in canola then use extra-virgin (EVOO) for the garlic—more detail below)

In your largest fry-pan (I’m a fan of non-stick), heat some oil—just enough to cover the surface of the pan when you swirl it around over medium-high heat. Quickly brown the meat on both sides for up to a minute each. Don’t worry if it doesn’t seem done it will cook through later. Work in batches as needed, placing the browned pieces in a shallow bowl. Reserve the juices in between batches.

After you’ve browned the meat, wipe out the pan and add a few tablespoons of EVOO (or more, depending on your taste). The pan is hot, so you’ll be working faster and using a lower flame/heat setting (medium, I’d say). Heat the oil a little then stir in the garlic; sauté until golden. (Don’t let it burn!) Stir in the tomato sauce, oregano, salt and pepper and allow the sauce to heat a bit, even bubble a little. Add the reserved juices and stir. One piece at a time, add the meat to the sauce, turning to coat on both sides and tucking one piece under another as needed. Add parsley and some extra EVOO here too, if you like; cover, reduce heat to low and heat through. (Don’t overcook or the meat may get tough.)

Keep warm in pan or transfer to a serving plate and done! Sometimes, I just put the pan on a trivet and serve from there. Make sure you’ve got crusty Italian or Portuguese bread to sop up the awesome beefy sauce you get from this one. Pair with a green salad and/or pasta and dinner is ready. BTW, leftovers—assuming you’ll have any—are even more amazing b/c the flavors have had time to come together better, and any extra sauce can be used over pasta or even stirred up with browned ground beef.

Enjoy and happy weekend!

Joanna

More Than a Weekend Read–The Distant Hours

Happy first Friday of 2013, friends. Special thanks to Carrie Rubin for all the love that came this way after she linked blogs with me earlier this week, and to all those who’ve come by since! So nice to have company!

Warning: this post runs a bit longer than normal but I hope you stick it out. Couldn’t figure out the best way to break it down.

Moving on:

I’m a reader. Surprise, right? Maybe not as dedicated or ardent as some, but I love a good story.  And I’ve read many books.

I recently posted my take on author Carrie Rubin’s debut, The Seneca Scourge. Before that, I’m pretty sure the last books I talked about were Karen Kingsbury’s One Tuesday Morning and its sequel, Beyond Tuesday Morning. The former changed me, in a way. Resonates with me still.

I wrote this, however, on the heels of having finished Aussie author Kate Morton’s The Distant Hours, the first and only of hers I’ve read so far. (Disclaimer: I share these thoughts because I choose to, not because I was paid to do so in any way. As with so many others, this book found me. My friend thought I’d enjoy it.) 

My friend was oh-so-right.

Honestly, I’ve never felt so humbled by the scope and magnitude of a wordsmith’s work, doubt I’ll ever equal this one’s ability to develop and then tell a story of such quality. Maybe I haven’t read enough, but I’ve never before experienced a tale so intricately and profoundly layered. Every thread, every detail accounted for before expertly woven and seamlessly sewn together; a multitude of puzzle pieces gathered into a final story portrait of near perfection.

I say ‘near’ for these reasons:

The story starts slowly. We meet Edie Burchill, whose mother, Meredith, receives a letter that should have been delivered fifty years earlier. Her enigmatic ways and decision not to share details of the letter pique Edie’s curiosity. Driven by a force she can’t explain, Edie finds herself literally stepping into her mother’s past, meeting face-to-face the spinster sisters who took in thirteen year-old Meredith as an evacuee from London during WWII.  Edie also winds up learning a whole lot more about the book that inspired her as a child, its author, his family and the story events that led to the creation of a renowned and revered best seller. (FYI, Ms. Morton starts you off at a leisurely pace, but she picks up momentum steadily and takes you full-throttle into a climax laden with twists that surprised me with their brilliance and not a loose thread left hanging.)

The protagonist’s viewpoint (and main story mood) waxed a bit boggy, at times slowing the pace when I liked the way the story was gaining speed. This, however, tied into the framing of the account; important to the protagonist unraveling the mystery, but a little frustrating when jump-cutting between Edie’s contemporary present (set in London, England) and the WWII background against which the mystery played out (set in London and a fictional castle along the English countryside). At times, the jump-cuts in time made it a bit difficult to pick up where I’d left off at that part of the story. The breaks, however, resulted in a place to take a well-needed breather, and to digest all that had transpired in that section.

Perhaps one or two story details felt a hair contrived—and possibly the ending to some degree, but the author used each in a way that revealed character and/or motivation, or to bring full circle key elements used throughout the story. Abundant use of detail also had me looking back on many occasions; to be sure I hadn’t missed anything, or that I fully understood how every minute facet related to any particular part of the story at any given point.

Having shared all that, let me tell you what I liked!

The author’s voice worked effortlessly into tangible descriptions of abstract concepts to develop each character, regardless of the point of view (POV).  A simple action: a haircut, knitted and crafted to deliver deep insight to character—brilliant! (p. 257-258). Some examples:

“Other people, Daddy’s pompous friends…, just seemed to take up more air than they should.” (p. 303)

“Her skin felt tighter than usual.” (p. 310)

“She was less of a girl, taller, stretched, anxiously filling her extra inches.” (p. 411)

Ms. Morton’s fresh use of metaphor resulted in vivid mind pictures and associations as I read:

“Juniper was rather catlike, after all: the wide-apart set eyes with their fixed gaze, the lightness of foot, the resistance to attention she hadn’t sought.” (p. 123)

“…the autumn of discarded papers on the floor.” (p. 122)

The author’s way of showing tangled, honest emotion(s):

“Mum and Dad were snobs. I felt embarrassed for them and embarrassed for me, and then, confusingly, angry with Rita for saying it and ashamed of myself for encouraging her to do so.” (p. 192)

And back to Kate Morton’s voice, probably the strongest—yet equally gentle—I’ve read in a long time. I’m thinking her view of the world is unexpectedly embedded in each of the characters she brings to life.

“John Keats said that nothing became real until it is experienced.” (p. 295)

“He would be a different person by then, inexorably altered, …as damaged as the city around him…. He would know that while John Keats was correct, that experience was indeed truth, there were some things it was well not to know firsthand.” (p. 303)

“Happiness in life is not a given. It must be seized.” (p. 352)

 I could go on.

I won’t.

Guess what I’m saying is this: if you want an awesome read and are willing to go the circa 600-page marathon, The Distant Hours may be just your cup of tea. Make sure to grab a scone or two before you cuddle up.

Have a great weekend,

Joanna