Extreme Cakeovers: Making Showstopping Desserts from Store-Bought Ingredients, by Rick and Sasha Reichart, is just that ... cakes taken so far away from 'cake' you might not believe what you see ... well, at least for the early ones! Check out the cheeseburger and fries! While I will admit to mostly looking at the pictures and not reading the recipes, I actually did so here to be sure this was really done with cake! Don't miss the 'neon' jukebox or the motherboard! I enjoyed looking through this book, I cannot say how easy (or not) making these creations is. ;-)

Footnotes from the World's Greatest Bookstores: True Tales and Lost Moments from Book Buyers, Booksellers, and Book Lovers, by Bob Eckstein is an armchair tour of wonderful and quirky bookstores from, well, as the title suggests, all over the world. There's a bookstore in a mini-van, and one in what used to be a theater (think the Mt. Baker theater, like that), and one in a private house. There are some so tiny just one person can enter at a time, and others than can house hundreds at once. Loved the stories as to just who buys books (there are names you will recognize). :-)

Tall Reader recently loaned me the first of the Susan Elia Macneal Maggie Hope mysteries: Mr. Churchill's Secretary, and what a read it was! I started with a later book (see post for June 6, 2017) so it was nice to go back and see how everything got started. Again, there are spies, but also this time secret codes (in ads in newspapers of all places) and a father long thought to be dead. Good descriptions of London during the war, I thought.

Reading Hermit With Dog