Art and Culture Award, Blogger Award

What fun to have this Commemorative Trophy from Raquel Crusoe, who is celebrating her blog's first anniversary and reaching 1,000 friends. Raquel is a classical pianist and music professor from Minas Gerais, Brazil.

 Amigo de Arte e Cultura, Friend of Art and Culture:

Queridos amigos !

Eu não poderia deixar passar em branco esse momento em que alcançamos a marca dos 1 000 amigos e leitores. Agradeço a Deus, nosso maior e melhor Amigo, por termos encontrado um ao outro.

Obrigada pela presença de vocês em nossa vida e nesta jornada em prol da Arte e Cultura. Por esta razão, para estarmos cada vez mais juntos, ofereço este Troféu Comemorativo para registrarmos este momento ímpar.

Vocês valem Ouro !
Com muito carinho,
Raquel

"Cultural intelligence is the ability to interact effectively with people from other cultural histories." - Raquel Crusoe

I used Google Translator to translate from Portuguese to English. Raquel thanks her followers for celebrating art and culture and for being friends on her blog. Please check out her bio, music videos, and lots of artist performances and info on Raquel Crusoe - Arte e Cultura.



Equally nice is the Beautiful Blogger Award from Yvonne at  Socrates' Book Reviews. Thanks, Yvonne! To accept the award, I list seven things about myself, here, and pass on the award to some excellent blogs that are new to me. Here are a few:

Dust and Spores
The Printed Page
Color Online
Farm Lane Books Blog
S. Krishna's Books

Please check out these great blogs!

The Sunday Salon: Interview, Giveaway, Awards

   Welcome to the Sunday Salon! A Monday-Sunday wrap-up?  Let's see ...

1) Two reviews - Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen (excellent audio book), and The Risk of Infidelity Index, a detective crime novel by Christopher G. Moore, set in Bangkok.

2) An interview with Kristin Bair O'Keeffe, author of Thirsty: A Novel

3) Posted a blue-grey winter photo of my snowy backyard for Wordless Wednesday

4) Wrote on the prompt, fortune, for the 100-Word Writing Challenge

5) Posted a book giveaway  for the wine memoir, Corked.

6) Accepted two awards and passed them on: The Honest Scrap Award and the One Lovely Blog Award.

I wrested off part of my winter cocoon this weekend and ventured out after the sun came out and started to melt the foot of snow outside. I even did some chores, including opening a bunch of packages with books! that came in the mail, and updating the list of books to read and review. I love making that list, but Sigh! Do I really do this for free?  Yes, just because I love the 2 Rs - reading and writing. (I dropped the 3rd R - Rithmatic - some years ago.)

Am also getting more creative with food - Greek zuchini fritters with feta cheese; omlettes with cheese, parsley, onions, and watercress; fresh coconuts for the juice and soft meat.  Anything to get in the required servings of three veggies and three servings of fruit each day - healthy eating tips I got from Denise's Daily Dozen. It's becoming quite an adventure.

Forgot to mention I received the audio book I won, The Swan Thieves, and am setting aside some quiet time to listen to the 17 discs. Maybe I'll keep it for mid-March.

One more thing, we are enjoying the skiing, skating, bobsledding, and curling, yes curling! competitions in Vancouver. I think I'd like to try my hand at curling, though I'm sure it's not as easy as it looks. 

What did you do last week?

Awards

PattiKen and the Muses has passed on this interesting award! PattiKen is a new blogging and writing friend. Please check out her blog!

To accept the award, I have to give seven bits of information about myself and tag others. I haven't been passing on awards for a while though I always acknowledge them in the sidebar. The arm with the hammer means to me that we writers and bloggers work hard to pound out our words and posts, scrap or otherwise :)and deserve a gentle pat on the back every now and then. Thanks, PattiKen!

Bits of personal info? Here goes:

1. I live in a flat agricultural state in the Midwest USA though I grew up not far from mountains and the ocean. I miss both, expecially in the dead of winter!

2. I love dogs and would love to have a Rottweiler pup that I wouldn't be scared of when it grew up to be a huge force of nature :)

3. "Sunshine always makes me smile" (song).

4. I often add molasses, chocolate, and cinnamon to my coffee.

5. I often take home more library books than I can read before the due dates.

6. I'll only read ebooks if I want to really rush through a book. I can scan an ebook faster than a regular book - don't know why.

7. I've run out of things to say about myself :)

I'd like to pass on this award to some who haven't received it as yet. There are so many people to choose from, but the award will be passed on, so ....

From my Google Reader:
a) Rose City Reader
b)Sheila Deeth Blog
c)The Reading Life
d)Fair Dinkum Book Reviews
e)Confessions of the Un-Published
f)Book Ends

Just a few of the many great blog sites...Please visit them!

I'd also like to thank Elena from All Booked Up for the One Lovely Blog Award! Please visit her wonderful book blog!

The bloggers tagged above are tagged for this award as well!

Have a great weekend, and keep on blogging!

Book Review: The Risk of Infidelity Index by Christopher G. Moore

The Risk of Infidelity Index: A Vincent Calvino Crime Novel by Christopher G. Moore

P.I. Calvino makes a surveillance video of an outfit manufacturing fake drugs in Bangkok, but the lawyer who hired him for the job dies from an apparent heart attack before paying Calvino for the video.

To find out more about his dead client, Calvino takes a job from three mem farangs, foreign women, whose husbands may know more about his client. The women hire Calvino to spy on their husbands for any signs of cheating. Bangkok has a high infidelity risk factor, according to a book the women have been reading, The Risk of Infidelity Index. Calvino wheedles information from the women about their husbands who knew his dead client, finds out who's behind the fake drug making scam, and finally gets paid for his work, all while risking his life many times over and barely escaping intact.

My favorite secondary characters in the novel are Colonel Pratt, a local police officer who helps keep Calvino alive, and Calvino's office assistant, Rachana. Both are staples in the suspenseful detective series.

Publisher's description: " Vincent Calvino, disbarred American lawyer turned Bangkok PI, comes to North America at long last with a gripping novel set in a superbly textured, masterfully rendered Bangkok." The ninth novel in the PI series, it's the first printed in the U.S.,Atlantic Monthly Press, 2007.

Recommendation: For those who like detective crime fiction in international settings. I rated this four out of five stars. I also gave 4 stars to the 11th Calvino book, Paying Back Jack.

Challenge: 100 + Reading Challenge, Support your Local Library Challenge, Thriller & Suspense Reading Challenge

Member of Amazon Associates 

GIVEAWAY: Corked, A Memoir by Kathryn Borel

I have an extra copy of
Corked: A Memoir by Kathryn Borel to give away. Travel with the author and her outrageous father through the wine vineyards of southern France.

"Corked is a fevered road trip that takes us deep into the heat of family mystery, emotional thirst, and, in luscious counterpoint, the vineyards of southern France. Kathryn Borel is a caustically witty companion, who writes with unsentimental, unsparing insight bout the distant, inscrutable father traveling beside her." - Leanne Shapton, author of Was She Pretty?

"A funny, quirky, bitersweet memoir full of wry wisdom on the subjects of wine, grief, memory, France, and family." - Jay McInerney, author of A Hedonist in the Cellar.

To enter the giveaway for this hardcover book, published 2009 by the Hachette Book Group:  1) leave a comment telling me briefly about a favorite wine, and leave your email address. 2) For an extra point, become a follower or let me know if you already follow.

U.S. addresses only, and no P.O. boxes, please. The giveaway contest runs through March 4; the winner will be notified by email and must reply by March 6. A new winner will be chosen after then.

Please enter, and good luck!

UPDATE: The winner chosen by Randomizer is Rose City Reader. Congrats!
Member of Amazon Associates

100-Word Writing Challenge: Fortune

The 100-Word Challenge is a weekly writing prompt exercise hosted by Verbal Verbosity; the challenge is to  write exactly 100 words on the given topic. This week's challenge word and my topic is: Fortune

My submission:

Ada looked quizzically at the woman behind the table. She had expected an old woman holding a crystal ball, but this fortune teller was no more than 40 years old.

"Show me your left hand," the woman whispered.

"I don't want to be told I'll meet a tall, dark, handsome man," Ada volunteered wryly.

The woman studied Ada's palm in the half light of the tent.

"You will have a long life," she said. Ada smiled.

"You will have two husbands," she added.

Ada withdrew her hand, surprised.

"Will either of them be tall, dark and handsome?" she asked breathlessly.

See other entries here. New word prompts given every Saturday.

Wordless Wednesday: Winter White

My backyard has a bluish-grey look from the overcast sky.

More WW entries: