2014 Reads Archives - Renaissance Granddad

Your Life Calling:Reimagining the Rest of Your Life – Jane Pauley

When I saw Jane Pauley’s book.Your Life Calling in the library last week it was like, yes! This is the right book at the right time! And while it was not exactly what I anticipated, it was nevertheless a good read. See two months ago, I applied for Social Security, more out of necessity than actually wanting to retire. Throughout this past year, the work that I have done for the last 34 years, has just not been there, and I have mostly been collecting unemployment and thinking about how I want to move forward with my life. I really don’t want to go out and find another job doing the same thing that I have done, so when my unemployment insurance ran out, rather than just take any job, I applied for my benefits and upped my hours at Target. So far,it has been a good thing, but I still keep wondering, is this all there really is, or is there something else out there that I would want to do!! This is what Your Life is Calling is all about, In the book Pauley provides ideas and thoughts about reimagining your life through the stories of those who have done it. Pauley in her Dateline voice, tells the stories of folks like Betsy McCarthy who traded her executive briefcase for knitting needles, Gid Pool, who launched a career as a stand-up comic, Richard Rittmaster, who joined the National Guard Chaplain Corps: Trudy Lundgren who took her home on…

Amanda Kyle Williams’ The Stranger You Seek’s strong ending leads to Book 2 of the series!

So last week I wrote that I was struggling through The Stranger You Seek the first of the Keye Street novels from Amanda Kyle Williams. Tonight I went to the library to get book 2 in the series Stranger in the Room! It’s easy to explain the reason , stealing and editing a line from Monty Python and the Holy Grail “It Got Better!! I guess that it took a while for the story to grab me, but once it did it didn’t let go until the last twist and turn in the plot! The protagonist of the book is Keye Street, an ex-FBI profiler who was a rising star in the agency, until her alcohol addiction brought her career crashing down. Now Keye is a working PI in Atlanta chasing down bail jumpers, catching adulterers, serving subpoenas, that is until her best friend Atlanta Police Detective Aaron Rauser calls her to help him out on a grisly murder case. The case’s profile quickly rises soon turning into a hunt, for the “Wishbone” killer. As the killer taunts Rauser and Street, the hunt turns personal, with Keye and Rauser in the killer’s crosshairs. Now, back to the problems that I see as minor and were overcome by the storyline. Elizabeth B. in her review at Goodreads didn’t see it that way though… she wrote…… … The main character was just the most annoying narrator ever. It was as if every problem a person could have was built in by the author….