While The Dog's Away...

...the cat commandeers the Queen-for-a-day bed....

Though, with her being so tiny in that big bed, "commandeers" hardly seems the right term.  And I feel the need to point out, again, that her nice comfy catnip-scented-i-might-add bed is right there. Mandy went to dog camp (the kennel) while we went to Maryland for a race.  Phoebe, therefore, had the run of the house and made herself quite comfortable the minute Mandy was out the door.

Then Mandy came home and the commandeering pretty much went out the window...

But that didn't last long...

Back to their usual posts. (With that HUGE beg, Mandy has still managed to figure out how to make it look too small....)

On to book reviews!
Gone Girl: A Novel by Gillian Flynn (click there to buy from Amazon):  Another page-turner-couldn't-put-it-down-I-can't-believe-that-happened book.  So great, right from the beginning.  In a nutshell.... Amy goes missing on her 5th wedding anniversary.  All signs point to something horrible happening to her and her husband, Nick, is a suspect.  He insists he is innocent but his lying, evasiveness and strange behavior don't help any.  The author is excellent and laying out this story and making it into a turn twisting thriller.   Loved. It.

Testimony by Anita Shreve (click there to buy from Amazon):  I really enjoyed this one too.... At a boarding school in New England, a sex scandal (one in which the acts are caught on tape) is about to go public.   The story is relayed from the points of view of the various people involved (students, headmaster, police, parents)    and shows how lives can be drastically changed in the blink of an eye.  You might remember I reviewed another of Anita Shreve's books here.

The Next Best Thing: A Novel by Jennifer Weiner (click there to buy from Amazon): Another good one by Jennifer!  Definitely a different tone than the other two.  Not the edge-of-your-seat type book, but a really nice story of a young writer, Ruth, hoping to make it big in Hollywood.  Having moved there from Massachusetts with her grandmother 6 years earlier, she finally gets the call for the sitcom she wrote to be produced.  What follows are the ups and downs of this process.  Intertwined is Ruth's struggles with her self-esteem due to a childhood accident disfiguring her, as well as her love life.  As usual, lots of witty parts, which I love.

If you've read any of these, or plan to, please comment!  I'd love to hear what you think.