You think I'm hearty, right??

Because the only positive thing I can think of when spending January in Minnesota, are the bragging rights. You know, where the temperature is given this time of year as degrees above or below zero? Where this morning it was the coldest it has been since January of 2004 - that would be -18. Where we have to keep the water dripping in our upstairs bathroom or it will freeze. Where if I traveled further north, it'd be -40. This is temperature folks, not windchill. I haven't seen a temperature above 30 in weeks. Man, that would be balmy. Ahhh.

Anyway, on a more positive note, I have received not one, but two Butterfly Awards for having a cool blog!

I don't know how cool my blog is, but I sure live in a 'cool' place. Haha, I couldn't resist! Many thanks to Bonnie from Redlady's Reading Room and Rhapsody in Books. I give this right back to both of you, and to everyone else whom I read and correspond with in this great bloggy world. You're all cool!


I finished my first book of 2009 - Susan Hill's The Pure in Heart which is the second novel in the Simon Serrailler crime series. You might remember that I read the first book in this series, The Various Haunts of Men just last month and really liked it, despite it being not a traditional crime novel. The Pure in Heart is a bit more of a traditional crime novel but it many ways is really a novel with a mystery at its heart. There is much more about Simon in this book and while it was good to get to know him, I missed some of the voices from the first novel. What I liked about this book was learning more about the various characters. What I didn't like or should I say, what I found unsatisfying, is that the main storyline is not really wrapped up. I knew this going in from reading the Amazon reviews, but I didn't expect it to bother me so much. I also didn't expect to be bothered so much by the boy that goes missing in this book. His mother's grief and anguish were quite upsetting. I understand from the reviews that this storyline is wrapped up in the third book in the series. Because of this, and because I'm just drawn to this town and its people, I ordered the next two books in the series from Britain, as they don't seem readily available here. I'll be interested to see how I feel about these. I think I must be pretty drawn to Hill's writing to continue with the series after being a little bit let down with this installment.

P.S. Nuts! It seems in trying to change a few things on my blogroll, I've deleted the entire thing!! I'm really bad at keeping this current, so it's going to take me a while to build it again. So please don't take it personally if you're not there for while!!