Foto Finish

 
Cat Patches hosts this weekly meme. Her theme this week is ANIMALS!

Taken at the Honolulu Zoo in Hawaii.

Springdale

Irises from my garden.

Floral Friday Fotos

I'm posting at Floral Friday Fotos today!

Bleeding hearts from my garden last year.

Friday Favorite Finds - Recipes

Please link up to a post containing your list of recipes to try -- do not link up individual recipes please, save those for other linkys.  Be sure to leave a link back here to Finding Joy in my Kitchen.

Lasagne di pollo e Funghi Misti


Source - The Spice Garden

Shrimp crunch buns

 

Source - The Kitchen Witch

English scones

Source - Anula's Kitchen

Pumpkin cranberry bread

Source - Better than Burgers

Meyer lemon curd

Source - Girlichef

Last minute chocolate cake with mocha icing and to think this uses coffee in the icing, one of my favourite flavours.

Source - Food for a Hungry Soul

Mini elephant ears - another recipe from one of my favourite bloggers and probably one of the original bloggers I found when first reading blogs.

Source - Food for a Hungry Soul

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.
You might also like to check out my Friday Finds highlighting new reads I discovered during last week that got added to my TBR (to be read) list over at Goodreads.

Finished this week:

Synopsis over here.

So I persevered with this choice.  I was tempted to give up at one point especially when he goes on and on about physics and other scientific jargon. I stayed with it, albeit skimming certain sections and am glad I finished it. The parts I really enjoyed were the history of the French castles and then researching which castles still exist to add to my Bucket List along with Carcassonne  which I discovered when I read Labyrinth by Kate Mosse several years ago.

I thought the characters were flat, I wasn't drawn to any of them.  Knights, castles, fighting and suspense should have drawn me in but alas...

Also finished this week:

Synopsis here.

This was my first JG Ballard book and I liked it. I do think a Nick Horby  book is much more fun to read on this type of topic.

I know Ballard's point is the shallowness of middle class society but I just couldn't get into any of the characters especially the film lecturer who despises Hollywood cinema so much she organizes the burning  down of the NFT.

I did enjoy the geographical references to London and could relate to all the places that the protests were held in.

Also finished this week:

From the book jacket:

Could you survive on your own, in the wild, with everyone out to make sure you don't live to see the morning?
In the ruins of a place once known as North America lies the nation of Panem, a shining Capitol surrounded by twelve outlying districts. The Capitol is harsh and cruel and keeps the districts in line by forcing them all to send one boy and one girl between the ages of twelve and eighteen to participate in the annual Hunger Games, a fight to the death on live TV. Sixteen-year-old Katniss Everdeen, who lives alone with her mother and younger sister, regards it as a death sentence when she is forced to represent her district in the Games. But Katniss has been close to dead before-and survival.


I realize I'm late jumping onto the band-wagon, I had bought this for my 17 year old nephew at Christmas and assumed it was a YA book. As well I am not usually a big fan of dystopian novels (see Timeline above). I bought it because Kobo where I buy my e-reader books had a special for the trilogy.
Boy, was I wrong. From the first page I couldn't put it down!!!
There were times I could have cried, there were I gasped as the plot turned and twisted. 
We will be going to see the movie very soon as I am curious to see how it is done. 


Started this week:

From the book jacket:
Against all odds, Katniss has won the Hunger Games. She and fellow District 12 tribute Peeta Mellark are miraculously still alive. Katniss should be relieved, happy even. After all, she has returned to her family and longtime friend, Gale. Yet nothing is the way Katniss wishes it to be. Gale holds her at an icy distance. Peeta has turned his back on her completely. And there are whispers of a rebellion against the Capitol - a rebellion that Katniss and Peeta may have helped create.
Much to her shock, Katniss has fueled an unrest she's afraid she cannot stop. And what scares her even more is that she's not entirely convinced she should try. As time draws near for Katniss and Peeta to visit the districts on the Capitol's cruel Victory Tour, the stakes are higher than ever. If they can't prove, without a shadow of a doubt, that they are lost in their love for each other, the consequences will be horrifying.

I am still captivated!

Plan to start reading this week:

I'm not going to include the synopsis here as I don't want to know!!!

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

Faithful Place - Tana French

Dead Like You - Peter James

Brother and Sister - Joanna Trollope

The Forgotten Garden - Kate Morton ABANDONED!

A Beginner's Guide to Acting English -Shappi Khorsandi

The Snowman - Jo Nesbo

The Leopard - Jo Nesbo

The Stone Cutter - Camilla Lackberg

Miramar - Naguib Mahfouz
The Gallow's Bird - Camilla Lackberg
Nineteen Seventy- Seven - David Peace

Timeline - Michael Crichton

Millennium People - JG Ballard

The Hunger Games - Suzanne Collins 

Foto Finish

Cat Patches hosts this weekly meme. Her theme this week is FLOWERS!


From my garden last August -  big and showy and a delight when she appears in August!!
The hardy hibiscus grows the largest flowers, with blooms that can get to be 8 inches across. Although each flower lives only for one day, the plant generally produces hundreds in one season.

Scenic Sunday

Scenic Sunday is hosting this meme. 

Taken at Montezuma in Arizona when we were staying in Sedona one November.
Montezuma was our first encounter with the Sinagua Indian people and it blew me away!!!

Montezuma Castle is one of a number of well-preserved ancient dwellings in north central Arizona, including the Wupatki, Tonto, Walnut Canyon, andTuzigoot national monuments. It is probably the most spectacular; an imposing 20 room, 5-storey structure built into a recess in a white limestone cliff about 70 feet above the ground. When first (re)discovered the ruins were thought to be Aztec in origin, hence the name bestowed on them by early explorers, but they are now known to belong to the Sinagua Indian peoples who farmed the surrounding land between the twelfth and fourteenth centuries, before abandoning the area. The good state of preservation of the ruins is due in part to their protected location, shielded from rain and sun, and also the relatively early designation of the site as a national monument (in 1906).