Friday Finds | June 12, 2020 Books - BBQ - Fluid Art

The Friday Finds | June 12, 2020 edition is all about Books, BBQs, and a bit of painting. Let me know what you think of the variety of items in today’s roundup post.

Friday Finds | June 12, 2020 – Books

Making Monster Soup by Beth Cusack

Want to put more creativity and spontaneity into family time in the kitchen? No need to buy special items or follow recipes to begin. Just some cheap ingredients already in the kitchen seasoned with imagination. In this book, silly monsters demonstrate the steps from start to clean up. Action-packed rhymes are enjoyable to read out loud to children. Even modeling good manners and cleanup chores look like fun. Make this simple family tradition one of your own.

Witch’s Jewel (Kit Melbourne Book 1) by Kater Cheek

A sorcerous jewel. A mysterious uncle. Can a barista keep her magical heirloom safe from murderous crooks?

Kit Melbourne longs to quit her brother’s coffee shop to pursue her artistic dreams. And despite the temptation to sell the sought-after enchanted gem she inherited from her uncle, she promises her family to protect it at all costs. But when her brother’s tea-leaf reading predicts her imminent death, she’s terrified to discover those who want it will kill to make it theirs.

Forced to dig into her late relative’s murky past, Kit is doubly shocked when she learns the artifact’s mighty power cannot be transferred unless its caretaker is dead. But despite her command of karate and fierce vampiric allies, her attackers show no sign of giving up their relentless lethal pursuit.

Has Kit’s vow not to sell sealed her doom?

Witch’s Jewel is the first book in the engrossing Kit Melbourne urban fantasy series. If you like strong female leads, high-stakes action, and nail-biting plots, you’ll love Kater Cheek’s enthralling tale.

Zoon Garden: The Decline of a Nation by Jordan O’Donnell

Jordan O’Donnell strikes the heart of the American public with his salient debut novel. A disturbingly brilliant satire in the vein of Orwell’s Animal Farm, Zoon Garden tells the story of Clarendon Zoo and the dogmatic wolf and sheep tribes that trigger its downfall.

When the mysterious zookeeper of Clarendon Zoo grants his animals freedom to govern themselves, the creatures create a new land founded upon life, liberty, and happiness for all animals. Though the land seems to function well, each species soon realizes they have differing visions for how the land should be governed. With the help of Eagle and Owl’s propaganda, the traditional wolves and the progressive sheep quickly emerge as leaders. The two species fight to spread their contradictory visions, pitting the animals against one another, and inadvertently throw the zoo into chaos. Fact becomes fiction, fiction becomes fact, truth becomes impossible to discern. The wolves and sheep slowly destroy the very land they claim to lead…

Timely, convicting, wickedly creative, Zoon Garden is the warning our fiercely divided nation needs to hear. It will leave you asking: What is the truth? Who is to blame? What is the world’s future?

GenderQueer, A Story from a Different Closet by Allan D. Hunter

Derek is a girl. He wasn’t one of the boys as a kid. He admired, befriended, and socialized with the girls and always knew he was one of them, despite being male. That wasn’t always accepted or understood, but he didn’t care—he knew who he was. Now he’s a teenager and boys and girls are flirting and dating and his identity has become a lot more complicated: he’s attracted to the girls. The other girls. The female ones. This is Derek’s story, the story of a different kind of male hero—a genderqueer person’s tale. It follows Derek from his debut as an eighth-grader in Los Alamos, New Mexico until his unorthodox coming out at the age of twenty-one on the University of New Mexico campus in Albuquerque. This century’s first decade saw many LGBT centers and services rebranding themselves as LGBTQ. The “Q” in LGBTQ is a new addition. It represents other forms of “queer” in an inclusive wave-of-the hand toward folks claiming to vary from conventional gender and orientation, such as genderqueer people. People who are affirmatively tolerant on gay, lesbian, and transgender issues still ask “Why do we need to add another letter to the acronym? Isn’t anyone who isn’t mainstream already covered by ‘gay’ or ‘lesbian’ or ‘bisexual’ or ‘trans’? I’m all in favor of people having the right to call themselves whatever they want, but seriously, do we need this term?”

Derek’s tale testifies to the real-life relevance of that “Q.” This is a genderqueer coming-of-age and coming-out story from an era long before genderqueer was trending.

Embers Drift by Simon Williams

THE ENGINEER – defined by logic and ruled by routine, she helps keep the lights on for the teeming millions. She craves nothing but anonymity. But her quietly ordered life is about to fall apart.

THE VOICE – highest servant of the Mothers, he incarcerates and executes at will. He revels in the void eating him from the inside out. But his privileged and carefully controlled existence will change forever after an apparently chance meeting.

THE DARK RIVER – a troubled wanderer, inside whom impossible forces rage, she has seen the hidden inner life of the Citadel. She knows that another world touches this one, and the barrier grows thin.

THE FINDER – with deep insight and startling visions, he is familiar with unusual investigations. A new case will send him on a journey that unlocks a forgotten past, a revelation that will change his world forever.

In the black and winding alleyways of the Citadel, industrial metropolis and home to ten million citizens, anomalies stir. Things that should be impossible, show themselves to those few who are vessels of the Great Power.

The Mothers, immortal rulers of this vast city-state, are desperate to die. Through stirring the world into chaos, they hope beyond hope that despite the miraculous healing that condemned them to an eternity of misery, they might be granted oblivion at last.

“Things are only deities if you let them be…”

Friday Finds | June 12, 2020 – Recipes

It’s time to start planning for your Father’s Day menu. Even if you aren’t celebrating Father’s Day, this Mix & Match BBQ menu planner from Rock Recipes is still perfect. to plan any BBQ menu.

Gina's Friday Finds | June 12, 2020 | FATHER’S DAY BARBECUE MENUS - Mix & Match — Photo Courtesy of RockRecipes.com

Friday Finds | June 12, 2020 – Creative Project

Friday Finds | June 12, 2020 | Fluid Art Painting Kit — Photo Credit: MaizenLife

Fluid Art Painting Kit from MaizenLife

Fluid art painting is an abstract form of art that involves pouring and swirling paint to achieve a marbling effect. Many see this type of painting as a form of art therapy as you may find yourself mesmerized by the movement of the paint patterns as you tilt the canvas.