Turn the Page..Tuesday

It's time once again for Turn the Page...Tuesday hosted by Adrienne from Some of a Kind.  Pop on over to see what others have been reading this past month.  
I have been to a lighthouse in the Carolina's, canoed the mighty Columbia River, danced in the bayou with the Ya-Ya's and spent some time in Alabama with an aging beauty queen.  Where has your reading taken you  this month?

Voyage of a Summer Sun: Canoeing the Columbia River by Robin Cody

I was a bit aprehensive about reading this book, just because I thought that it may be a bit dry. Instead it was a completely delightful read and really interesting. I loved the way the author eased his way into the actual canoe trip by giving the reader a background of his family and his Dads love of the river. Robin Cody gives a wonderful history of the Columbia river and the dam's that provide the Pacific Northwest with power, as well as colorful accounts of his trip and the characters he meets along the way as he paddles his way from the source of the Columbia River to the mouth where it spills out into the Pacific Ocean. This book is really eye-opening and heart-breaking in many ways; the loss of native life-styles up and down the river as the dam's went in; the change of landscape as these dam's backed up creating reservoirs and leveling age-old falls.
If you have a connection with the Pacific Northwest or a love of rivers and wildlife, I would definately recommend this book.

A couple of my favorite passages from Voyage of a Summer Sun -
"From my mother came a strong sense that it mattered who came before us, and how they did it."


On witnessing a family of geese in spring on the river -
"Adult geese lose their flight feathers soon after the goslings hatch in spring.  The adults can't fly until the little guys can, which is nature's way of keeping the family together."

The Language of Sand: A Novel by Ellen Block

This was a very quick read with enjoyable characters and a wonderful setting.


After losing her husband and young son in a tragic fire, Abigail has moved to Chapel Isle off the North Carolina coast as the caretaker for a lighthouse, hoping to connect in someway with the island that her late husband loved as a boy. When she arrives, she finds the lighthouse possibly haunted and quite run-down; the town full of colorful characters and herself changing from the Abigail she has always known into simply Abby.

I found it an enjoyable read, one that kept me turning the pages but left me in the end wishing that there had  been more depth to many of the characters and more story behind the haunting of the lighthouse. It did feel as if the last 1/4 of the book was rushed a bit and could have been played out with more depth, but all in all a nice light read.


One of my favorite quotes from The Language of Sand was from a scene where Abigail was unpacking all of her books that she had brought to the island with her:
"As she organized, she allowed herself to read the first few pages of each book, tasting the story or sampling a morsel from a text.  It was as if she were bumping into an aquaintance on the street-Abigail couldn't simply pass them by."


Happy Reading!

Don't forget to pop over to Adrienne's place for more reading fun!