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Happy Friday! This has been a long, long week. Why does it feel so long? Could it be, the impending office move and my need to pack boxes when I still don’t even know where I am going? Could be.

Today, I packed up my Murakami collection. Let me tell you, that hurt a little bit. I’ve been gazing at those titles and news articles for some time now. They were just above eye level and while working, I would occasionally raise my gaze to say hi. See that picture below? Trish sent me that article. Thanks, Trish.

Murakami

And then, there are photos like this one:

The Kids

I have been working here a really long time! Going on twenty-one years to be exact. I am going to miss this space for many reasons. I still don’t know the exact location of where I will be, but I know the area and it’s sterile. Very sterile and… lacking character. I don’t think I will be able to display my things like I did here. I am going to have to have a renegade shelf for my prized possessions.

Going through all of this stuff makes for dusty work so I am a weepy sneezy mess. I am not a keeper of things but some things, because of my line of work require me to hang onto stuff longer than say the average employee. If it were up to me, I’d dump half of it.

But, it’s Friday and I am having lunch with a work bud which improves the day quite a bit. Tonight The Teen has his last driving lesson on the freeway! Give me strength.

Tomorrow we have a track meet at a high school far away. The Girl chose to drop an event so that we can get home at a decent hour so she is only doing high jump, long jump and 4×100 relay. The Teen and his girlfriend have a date at the zoo and then later the Observatory but that is on the opposite side of where we will be for track so we are trying to figure out how to get them there and back.

I think the read-a-thon is this weekend, right? Maybe I can get some reading in at the meet but I doubt it. If you are participating in the read-a-thon, what are you planning to read? If I can get any reading in, I want to finish Blood on Snow and The Children’s Crusade.

Oh! I just remembered that the LA Festival of Books is this weekend. I sometimes go but the venue just doesn’t do it for me. I probably won’t go this weekend since I am totally booked Saturday, but I will take a look to see which authors I’ll be missing. Any of you going?

The Bullet
By Mary Louise Kelly
(Gallery Books, Hardcover, 9781476769813, March 17, 2015, 368pp.)

The Short of It:

Interesting premise but the execution was a little heavy-handed and the outcome, predictable.

The Rest of It:

Caroline Cashion is a 37-year-old professor at a university. She’s got a slew of brothers and is very close to her parents so she’s rather surprised to find out that the pain in her wrist is due to a bullet that is lodged in her neck. An MRI and CT scan reveal what is absolutely impossible for her to believe. Shot? How could she have been shot? There’s no scar to indicate an entry point and yet, there it is, the bullet, clear as day.

The bulk of the story centers around how this bullet managed to find its way to her neck. This alone, makes for an interesting read. It started off slow for me but mid-way through, I was pretty curious to know the scoop and the writing, which started off a little forced, seemed to even out and become more fluid. I enjoyed this middle section quite a bit.

By the last third of the story, I was bothered by the romantic interest. It seemed a little out-of-place, given Caroline’s preoccupation with discovering the truth. As for the ending, it was predictable but given where the story was going, I feel that the author did the best she could with the ending. I think for it to have been any different, something should have happened much earlier on to change the outcome.

I wanted it to be more suspenseful than it was and maybe include more forensics than it did but overall, it wasn’t a bad way to spend an evening.

Source: Sent to me by the publisher via Edelweiss
Disclosure: This post contains Indiebound affiliate links.

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