Sandra Dallas Fan

So, everyone knows I am a bookworm nerd.  I’ve been trying to read books that I actually own (as opposed to getting them from the library) because I’m trying to slow down my reading pace and actually get something done around my house.  It was working until I started reading a couple of Sandra Dallas books that I wanted to review from my LibraryThing account.  I read the first (Buster Midnight’s Cafe) which I quite enjoyed.  Then I read the second (The Diary of Mattie Spenser) which was so good.  I was quite enjoying myself.  Then I picked up the third (Tallgrass).  All of sudden there were these names showing up from the first two books – just brief references, but still …  So I got curious.  I read Alice Tulips – there were references to Mattie Spenser.  I skimmed The Chili Queen – Mattie Spenser is there again, as well as Alice’s brother.  I read The Persian Pickle Club which doesn’t have any cross-over characters, but a couple of the characters leave Kansas towards the end of the book to go to Butte, Montana (scene of Buster Midnight) and one of them goes to work at the same place as one of the characters in said book.  Then I got online (because I AM a book nerd) to see if this was some series that I had somehow not noticed.  No series references out there, but Ms. Dallas talks about her newest book Prayers for Sale (which I had just read – but DID NOT recognize all the names) and how characters from many of her other books make appearances.  Now I’m thinking I’ll have to go and check it out again!  All this has absolutely NOTHING to do with anything, except I think it is cool that Ms. Dallas has created this wide-ranging fictional world.  AND you can see what a time-sink my reading can be (I read all those books in just a couple of days once I got this bee in my bonnet).  What am I reading now??  The Problem of Pain by CS Lewis.  If anything can slow down my rate of reading, it would have to be a theological book.  So far I’m enjoying it.  But I have also gotten some housework done today, which was not the case earlier in the week.  Beware – reading can be addictive!!