Sepia Saturday

Sepia Saturday
Part of the prompt for today:
Be they old postcards, old family photographs or old book illustrations, it doesn't really matter: they all have a special attraction to us sepians.

I have a shoe box full of postcards so I thought I should start featuring them as they relate to our family history. 
My grandparents came to Canada, Montreal, in the mid 1960s from London (before that they raised their children in Dublin). All their children had emigrated by this time and were raising their own families. My grandmother passed away in 1970 but my grandfather went on to live until 1991. 
For all those years he lived on his own in Laval with my parents and aunts and uncles always close by.

He would go on motor trips with them. This is 1974 Squam Lake New Hampshire. I'm not sure who he was travelling with, obviously not my parents as this is addressed to them!!

My grandfather, Tom Swift, had lovely handwriting.

Sepia Saturday

This week's prompt for Sepia Saturday

Since I couldn't come up with any photos that had a mirror in them, I decided to go with adults dressing up.

This was a Halloween party I hosted in Montreal around 1974 or 1975.
That is my sister on the far left (cave woman) and my mother smoking the cigar in the bottom row.

My Dad, being molested, sitting on the couch.

My sister had brought her relatively new boyfriend, Tim to this party. Tim and I are recently back in touch and share memories of my sister. They didn't go out a long time but she was probably his first love and has very fond thoughts of her.

I shared this photo with Tim and he sent me his heart-felt memories of that evening.
I remember that night & party at your place very well. It sure was cool wearing that flimsy "Fred Flintstone" outfit. Urs and I spent that day at your folks making the outfits ourselves. I must have definitely been in love with your sister for her to convince me to wear that costume!! We did have a good laugh en route when we had to stop for gas looking like that!! We made a prior stop at my house in Beaconsfield to allow me the chance to introduce Urs to my parents for the first time (it was 1 of our first dates). I remember that she was so shy & embarrassed to meet my parents wearing her Wilma outfit.

It's Monday! What Are You Reading?

It's Monday! What are you reading? is hosted by Sheila at  Book Journey. For this meme, bloggers post what they finished last week, what they're currently reading, and what they plan to start this week. 

I've been on vacation (at a conference) so I didn't do as much reading as I had anticipated.

Finished this week:

:

Synopsis over here.

I enjoyed this book some may find it too gory. It has some fantastic prose and brilliant narrative flow. The research is detailed as all his books are. A supreme crime novel and set  in England in a period that I hadn't paid any attention to when growing up. Did I love the ending, no, I hate being left hanging and drawing my own conclusions. I am ready to move onto the next book in the series however!

Started this week:

From the book jacket:

Back in 1985, Frank Mackey was nineteen, growing up poor in Dublin's inner city, and living crammed into a small flat with his family on Faithful Place. But he had his sights set on a lot more. He and Rosie Daly were all ready to run away to London together, get married, get good jobs, break away from factory work and poverty and their old lives. 

But on the winter night when they were supposed to leave, Rosie didn't show. Frank took it for granted that she'd dumped him-probably because of his alcoholic father, nutcase mother, and generally dysfunctional family. He never went home again. 

Neither did Rosie. Everyone thought she had gone to England on her own and was over there living a shiny new life. Then, twenty-two years later, Rosie's suitcase shows up behind a fireplace in a derelict house on Faithful Place, and Frank is going home whether he likes it or not. 

Getting sucked in is a lot easier than getting out again. Frank finds himself straight back in the dark tangle of relationships he left behind. The cops working the case want him out of the way, in case loyalty to his family and community makes him a liability. Faithful Place wants him out because he's a detective now, and the Place has never liked cops. Frank just wants to find out what happened to Rosie Daly-and he's willing to do whatever it takes, to himself or anyone else, to get the job done.

2012 books read:
The Coast Road - John Brady
Still Midnight - Denise Mina
The Bulgari Connection - Fay Weldon
Good Bait - John Harvey
The Heretic's Treasure - Scott Mariani 
Dead I Well May Be - Adrian McKinty
The Devil's Elixir - Raymond Khoury 
A Darker Domain - Val McDermid
The Impossible Dead - Ian Rankin 
GB84 - David Peace 
The Emperor's Tomb - Steve Berry 
Stonehenge Legacy - Sam Christer
Inquisition - Alfredo Colitto ABANDONED!

The Troubled Man - Henning Mankell

Nineteen Seventy-Four - David Peace

It's Monday! What Are You Reading?

It's Monday! What are you reading? is hosted by Sheila at  Book Journey. For this meme, bloggers post what they finished last week, what they're currently reading, and what they plan to start this week. 
I

Finished this week:

You can read the synopsis in last week's post. I also wrote about the book over here.

Started this week and abandoned:

I didn't get very far into this book to realize I hated it. I was drawn in by the Templar seal on the cover but it barely touches on them. It is set in the fourteenth century and I couldn't get interested in it. The characters are shallow and uninteresting.

Still on my reading agenda but will not get read this week as I will be away and this is a hard copy!!

Also finished this week:

From the book jacket:

On a winter day in 2008, Håkan von Enke, a retired high-ranking naval officer, vanishes during his daily walk in a forest near Stockholm. The investigation into his disappearance falls under the jurisdiction of the Stockholm police. It has nothing to do with Wallander—officially. But von Enke is his daughter’s future father-in-law. And so, with his inimitable disregard for normal procedure, Wallander is soon interfering in matters that are not his responsibility, making promises he won’t keep, telling lies when it suits him—and getting results. But the results hint at elaborate Cold War espionage activities that seem inextricably confounding, even to Wallander, who, in any case, is troubled in more personal ways as well. Negligent of his health, he’s become convinced that, having turned sixty, he is on the threshold of senility. Desperate to live up to the hope that a new granddaughter represents, he is continually haunted by his past. And looking toward the future with profound uncertainty, he will have no choice but to come face-to-face with his most intractable adversary: himself.

I enjoyed this book even though it is about spies, not one of ny favourite topics. However, I did find it extremely depressing how the main character laments constantly throughout  the book about being sixty years old and how old he is and dwelling on dying. I found this quite tiresome .

Started this week:

From the book jacket:

From the very first page of David Peace's first novel, 1974, it soon becomes clear that something is rotten in the state of Yorkshire: a young girl is missing. The Yorkshire Post's young but disillusioned crime correspondent, Edward Dunford, is assigned to the story, while also coping with the recent death of his father and his return to his native Yorkshire after a brief and unsuccessful stint in Fleet Street. For the jaded Dunford, it's just another story; the only intrigue is whether the girl will be found dead or alive before Christmas--that is, until she is discovered brutally murdered, face down in a ditch with a pair of swan's wings sewn into her back. As Dunford follows the case, he begins to make a series of terrifying connections with a string of child murders, plunging him into a gut-wrenching nightmare of corruption, violence, sadism, blackmail, and sexual obsession--from the upper echelons of local government to the tacky heart of Yorkshire darkness.

As Peace's tale of corruption and conspiracy unravels, it becomes clear that 1974 is as influenced by Orwell's own bleak vision of Britain in 1984as it is by the wonderfully evoked atmosphere of the mid '70s. The Bay City Rollers, Leeds United, It Ain't Half Hot Mum, and Vauxhall Viva'sall make an appearance. The novel works at several levels, from the brilliantly unsentimental homecoming of the gifted, alienated northern son to a terrifyingly accurate portrayal of an insular, tribal community. The plot is complex and frenetic, and Peace often neglects loose ends, especially as he builds to an extremely powerful climax. Yet the dialogue is fast, witty, and violent; a must-read for fans of Yorkshire Gothic. --Jerry Brotton

 I thoroughly had enjoyed reading GB84 that I want to read more of David Peace. This is the first book in the series of four.

2012 books read:
The Coast Road - John Brady
Still Midnight - Denise Mina
The Bulgari Connection - Fay Weldon
Good Bait - John Harvey
The Heretic's Treasure - Scott Mariani 
Dead I Well May Be - Adrian McKinty
The Devil's Elixir - Raymond Khoury 
A Darker Domain - Val McDermid
The Impossible Dead - Ian Rankin 
GB84 - David Peace 
The Emperor's Tomb - Steve Berry
Stonehenge Legacy - Sam Christer
Inquisition - Alfredo Colitto ABANDONED!