The slideshow below includes 1. Flame Lillies in the Isimangaliso Wetlands 2. Male kudu eating in the Isimangaliso Wetlands 3. pink roses and the country club 4. red wild rose at the country club
I’m sharing my photographs from Brussels of Neuhaus. This chocolatier claims to be the inventor of the praline.
The slideshow below includes pictures of Neuhaus in Brussels, Gallery Royal Saint Hubert, the inventors of the praline. I’ve also included my photograph of Neuhaus moulded in chocolate and also three large chocolate smurfs. Smurfs are very big in Brussels.
I am behind with writing and posting book reviews, so I am posting three together today. All are excellent in their different ways. I have two more poetry book reviews to go and then I’m caught up for this month.
The Cielonaut: Lost in a poetry of stars (Picture poetry) by Frank Prem
Picture caption: Cover of The Cielonaut by Frank Prem
This is an extraordinary collection of poetry. I have read many of this poet’s collections and they are all thoughtful and unusual, but this one had a powerful effect of me as a reader. It contemplates the intense and unsolvable loneliness of life alone in a spaceship lost among the unimaginable beauty and grandeur of the stars and galaxies. It entwines the awe and amazement of the voyage with the despair and isolation of the sole survivor’s situation in a profound and emotion filled way.
The poems are accompanied by gorgeous images taken from the NASA Image and Video Library. The combination is an incredibly visual poetic adventure.
The poet engages all of the senses in this collection to pull the reader into the survivor’s world. This extract from ‘the sound’ demonstrates the engagement of the sense of hearing: “silence is not an absence of sound
silence is noise
a static pushing through the background nothing”
‘knight move’ engages, inter alia, the sense of sight: “a pattern of squares in three dimensions on a wall indicates a knight move”
The sense of smell in the survivor’s travelling coffin as highlighted in ‘a song: an epilogue’: “why breathe the acrid sharpness of unfiltered air”
There is no gravity in space as demonstrated in this extract from ‘gravity’: “no light but starlight no weight at all”
I highly recommend this fascinating poetic journey through time and space.
Vengeance of a Slave (A Family Through The Ages Book 1) by V.M. Sang
Picture caption: Cover of Vengeance of a Slave featuring two crossed swords against a fiery background
My review
As a young boy, Adelbehrt, later renamed Ailbert, and his even younger sister, Avelina, later renamed Awena, are forced to watch their father crucified by the Roman soldiers. Adelbehrt knows his father was not a party to the uprising for which his village, and his father, were being punished. As a further punishment, Adelbehrt and Avelina, both very blonde and attractive children, are taken from their mother and forced into slavery. While waiting to be sold, Adelbehrt is witness to the sexual exploitation of several young girls taken from his village. His young heart hardens against the Romans and he nurtures a deep grudge against them. He and his sister are sold to a Roman trader living in Londinium. The Roman is not unkind to them but he treats them like an acquisition. Avelina is given to his young daughter as her personal slave and Adelbehrt is given to his wife, a Briton who has betrayed her own people and converted to Roman citizenship, and who treats him like a pet puppy.
This is a fascinating coming-of-age story which follows the stories of both Avelina and Adelbehrt and how they transition from their loving home to a life of slavery albeit living in luxurious circumstances, and then to escaped slaves on the run. In many ways, Adelbehrt’s hatred of the Roman’s is justified and his views are not softened until late in the story when he discovers that no nation of people is all bad, there are always good and bad people, those who treat others with compassion and those who succumb to propaganda and beliefs of superiority to other cultures. It was interesting to watch Adelbehrt’s journey alongside his sister’s and to see how motherhood softens women much quicker than any other situation or circumstance.
This story has an interesting ending which reminded me a bit of the original ending of Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations where everything doesn’t turn out perfectly with a young couple in love riding off into the sunset. The ending was satisfactory and realistic.
I have some knowledge of the Roman Empire and have visited Bath and other historical Roman places in the United Kingdom. I’ve read and seen enough to know this book is well researched and a good reflection of life for Romans, slaves, and Britons during this period of history.
I enjoyed this story a great deal and recommend it to people who enjoy character driven stories in a fascinating historical setting.
Robbie has been reading Resonant Blue and Other Stories by Mary Vensel White.
Every now and then, I like to read a collection of well crafted short stories and this book fitted the bill. Each story is beautifully written about a thought provoking topic that will make you think.
Below is a short overview of my favourite stories in the collection.
1. Griffin: This short story starts off fairly innocuously, with an older couple anticipating a visit from their married daughter who they haven’t seen for a year. As the couple converse, a sense of anxiety develops and the reader gets the sense that the couple’s relationship with their daughter is a little tense. The husband, Alan, is trying a bit to hard to make everything perfect for the visit and it feels a little desperate.
Their daughter arrives and as the story unfolds the reason for the earlier tension is slowly revealed culminating in a rather startling event. This was an interesting tale about family relationships and secrets and just how much a wife is prepared to tolerate from her spouse.
My apologies, work has been crazy for the past two weeks so I got a bit behind with posting these episodes. I am posting two today, episodes 14 and 15.
Jake Tanner
Letter from Private Jake Tanner to his fiancée, Kate Henderson 30 November 1917
My dearest Kate
I often wonder how you are and how your job at the factory is going. I can’t believe you’ve been working there for nearly three months already.
Yesterday was Thanksgiving, and the army celebrated in style. We were given the day off as a holiday and had an excellent dinner of turkey, cranberry sauce, asparagus, corn, sweet potato, apple pie, cake, and coffee. It was nice of the government to make sure we had such a good meal.
The weather has turned cold, and it snowed a little yesterday and last night. Our winter uniforms have still not arrived, and our current ones are quickly wearing out. My boots are also in a bad state because they are constantly wet, and it is impossible to dry, clean, or oil them.
Most of the men embraced training in gas discipline with enthusiasm.
“It’s a step closer to the front,” said Robson.
“What are you in such a rush to get to the front for?” asked Big Mouth. Jake noted a reduction in Big Mouth’s enthusiasm for the front since Mike died. The death of one of their own lay heavily on all the men’s hearts.
Jake examined the scary-looking gas mask he’d been issued.
“You must wear your helmet and carry your mask with you at all times,” ordered Sarge.
“Again,” ordered Capitaine Moreau. “You must learn to put your gas mask on in six seconds.”
Gas mask on, gas mask off. The practice went on and on for hours. When the men finally mastered putting on their own masks to Capitaine Moreau’s satisfaction, they practiced putting masks on horses.
Once again, Jake’s platoon spent the day digging. Boredom, the physical effort, and the weather colluded, and the men were edgy and bad-tempered.
“The Tommies broke through the Hinderberg line at Cambrai yesterday,” said Big Mouth.
“I heard the Tommies used tanks for the assault. I’d love to see a tank,” said Joe, his eyes alight with enthusiasm.
“Yeah, I also read they used tanks.” Big Mouth stopped work and leaned on his spade. “The USA 11th, 12th, and 14th Engineer Regiments supported the British troops by doing railway construction work behind the trenches. Lucky bastards.”
As with every stop along the way of the tour, you get a chance at a free digital copy of The Ones Who Stayed With Me just be leaving a comment. So, please don’t leave without saying ‘hello’.
Giveaway
Leave a comment for a chance to win a free digital copy of The Ones Who Stayed With Me By Nurse Sammy One entry per stop.
Winners are chosen in a random drawing.
Sponsored by WordCrafter Press.
About Nurse Sammy
Nurse Sammy has spent her life walking the quiet edges of human suffering and human grace. Long before she ever wore scrubs, she learned how to read a room by the way someone breathed and how to steady a shaking hand. How to listen to the stories people only tell when they think it might be their last night to say them. Nursing wasn’t a career she chose; it was the language her heart was already speaking.
She has worked in places where life is beginning, and in places where life is ending; in rooms lit by hope, and in rooms where grief hangs heavy in the doorway. Rehab centers, memory care halls, pediatric units, assisted living, private homes, wherever someone needed gentleness, she went. She became the one who held vigil, the one who noticed the quiet details, the one who stayed.
Her personal life has carried its own ache, abuse survived, love lost, a marriage that bruised the soul, another built from healing, and a grief that still hums beneath her ribs. She writes from the tender, broken places, from the nights she rebuilt herself alone, from the mornings she rose anyway. Her words are shaped by both the wounds and the resilience that followed.
The Ones Who Stayed With Me is her first published work, a collection of truths disguised as stories, honoring the people who left fingerprints on her life in ways they never saw. Her writing is soft but unflinching, honest but merciful, threaded with the belief that even in darkness, someone is always holding a light.
Nurse Sammy lives in the Pacific Northwest, where she continues to care, to witness, to learn, and to turn the hardest parts of her journey into something that might help someone else breathe a little easier.
Picture caption: Nurse Sammy
Chapter Excerpt Reading of “Is It B.M. or Chocolate Pudding?”, by Nurse Sammy
About The Ones Who Stayed With Me
Picture caption: Cover of The Ones Who Stayed With Me by Nurse Sammy
Chronicles of the journey into the medical field as a young nurse and beyond, told with raw sensitivity and compassion. The Ones Who Stayed with Me offers small glimpses into the world of an L.P.N. put in difficult, often touching or humorous, situations—and Nurse Sammy’s courage, vulnerability, and insight are a gift to us all. In these pages, Nurse Sammy tells her story and that of those she met along the way.
That’s all for today’s stop. I do hope you enjoyed our interview and have a better idea of the amazing young woman who shares her story with raw honesty in The Ones Who Stayed With Me. Join us tomorrow, over at Undawnted, which you’ll be able to find through the link, which will be there once it posts. You can’t comment there, but if you want to get into the giveaway for that stop, Kaye Lynne Booth will reblog it on “Writing to be Read”, and you can leave your comments on that post here.
Tour Schedule
Mon. 12 – Poetry by Mich, Hotel by Masticadores & Masticadores Phillipines
roberta-writes.com 