The Library

[PatH]

The Library Our library  is open 24/7; the welcome mat is always out. Do come in from daily chores and spend some time with us.

Here's our new Fall Fun Challenge from RosemaryKay:

So -  for those who would like to have a go at this, here are the book prompts for The Thirty Day Book Challenge from  Professional Book Geeks. All you have to do is think of a book to fit each category - and if you can write a line or two about why you chose it, so very much the better!

The Thirty Day Book Challenge:

13. A quote from a book you know by heart:

14. A book you reread every year:

15. A  book with an unreliable narrator:

16. Anthology you love

17. A book cover you love

18. Book villain you actually love

[PatH]

Now I'm really laughing at your timing, Frybabe.  You must be psychic.  He just did win, but for physics, not literature.

https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/physics/2020/press-release/

[rosemarykaye]

Hi everyone - it's 7pm here and already dark, winter is definitely coming, and I know it is a sign of age that I feel it was only yesterday that we had 18 hours of daylight every day (it was of course June...)

Ginny - those flowers are gorgeous!  The red geraniums look to me like ones we have here every year?  They are called zonal geraniums I think - I love them, and when I lived in the flat and grew them on the communal landing outside my door, I could overwinter them quite easily as there was a glass cupola in the roof so it was always warm. In Aberdeen in the past I have never managed to keep any going outside all winter, but I occasionally did in East Lothian, which is much more sheltered. Now here in the shire, I am moving the ones in small pots to the greenhouse as soon as they 'go over', and hoping that that bit of protection may keep them alive. The ones in the big tubs will probably die off and need replacing next spring.  There is a great deal of snobbery amongst British gardeners re these geraniums - these ones are seen as showy and tacky, and 'real' gardeners only have the little perennial ones, also called cranesbill. They are pretty too, but I really enjoy the bright, exuberant colours of the annual ones - we can usually get them in red or white.

We had 24 hours of exceptionally heavy rain last Saturday/Sunday. Fortunately I moved all my small pots under cover in advance, and most of the rest seem to have survived, but things are very soggy and many flowers are battered beyond redemption. Down at the river the lower path was completely submerged and acres of fields (and the golf course) on the opposite bank were under water. I watched the burn at the end of my garden anxiously, but although it did turn into a raging torrent, and still hasn't returned to its usual quiet ways, it never rose to more than two feet below the garden, thank goodness. Today the river path is accessible again, though some parts have been badly eroded. Fortunately the village has a group of extremely enthusiastic retired men who maintain the river banks, and I think they will be delighted to have a new project to work on.

Audiobooks - I don't listen to that many, but I do recall that when the children and I went on long drives we enjoyed the Just William books, which are always read by the excellent Martin Jarvis - he has cornered the market somewhat here, though he also does 'proper' acting. I remember also having to stop one tape as none of us could stand the reader, but I can't remember who that was. It does make a huge difference though.

Ginny, I totally empathised with your rant!  All this nonsensical red tape drives me madder every day. And I find it especially annoying when the institution hides behind 'health and safety', 'data protection', or 'online security' when these are frequently nothing to do with it, they just don't have enough staff, or know how to process anything that isn't on their list of 'FAQs' . Even if there IS a number you can call, you are subject to endless repeats of a voice asking you if you knew you could do so many things on their website - do they think anybody would willingly hang on the phone for hours if the thing they wanted was on the website? Is it ever? My husband was denied access to his bank account recently because he had changed mobile phone numbers. This is the very thing he wanted to update, but the only way they can do it is by first texting you with a security code - a text to your OLD number, which is the one he no longer has....

I have just read Mary Stewart's Wildfire at Midnight for the #1956 Club. I enjoyed it very much and got through it in a day and a half as it was one of those very rare books that I really did not want to put down. She is underrated, I feel.

My next book really should be the last of the ones my son sent me, but I don't feel very enthusiastic about it. Might just skip it for a while and pick something I actually want to read. I've also offered to do some reviewing for Vertebrate Publishing, a small company based in Sheffield. They publish mainly 'outdoors' books - I've told them not to send me anything too keen, I know nothing about moutaineering so they had better stick to hillwalking or something similarly accessible!

Rosemary

[ginny]

HAHAHAAAaaaaaa, Rosemary,  I KNEW it!!!!!  I truly just had a feeling that here I was going on and on about this rare geranium and it was a trashy tacky dime store thing! hahaha Except I can't get it here.  OH well,  one man's trash is another man's treasure.     So funny.  It's the not being able to get one, I think, which has frustrated me for a long time, but I've got them now.

My mother used to take the stalks and put them under the house (this is in Pennsylvania and New Jersey where it's quite cold) and the next year she'd section them off and plant them in pots and they kept right on.

I am sorry to hear about all the flooding!

Oh your husband, too, with the bank and the text to your old number which he no longer has!!!  He will have to file a CASE! Yes! 

I am sorry to report that despite being at my  sweetest soft spoken diplomatic best over the phone,  I got NOWHERE with the bank in question. At all.  It actually was quite depressing. The nice young man said what I was saying was logical but those  were their rules. When that bank was Wachovia, the myth of the Personal Banker was real. They knew who you were when you called,  and they would do anything they could to help you, it was like a small town bank.  They were bought out and now we are but a number which has to...how stupid is this...be verified by a cell phone text that anybody could snatch out of your hand  while on,  and have the number texted to.

I also sweetly and softly (truly)  said that if I have to come down there in a pandemic at my age, I will withdraw every cent. Apparently that's not much of a threat as my words  fell on empty ears, and the CASE where they allow my "new" phone number (apparently texting to the  landline didn't work hahaa)...to be "valid," is in progress.  I mean I've had this account for YEARS. But the cell phone will NOT receive every text, so there we are, back at square 1.

PS: But they just did write for feedback on the call so maybe there is hope, after all.


Oh well, every day seems to bring a new outrage coming from somewhere else to deal with so I guess this is the Summer of Our  Discontent instead of the Winter. It could be worse!

I think I'll start a new post for our Topic du Jour, so this is not so long.

[ginny]

Narrator's voices are really amazingly important to me. I can listen to the guy reading Barry Strauss on the Death of Caesar forever, I love his voice, I don't love what he's reading, however, but that voice could lull you into a coma. And I've mentioned Hugh Fraser (Hastings on the long running PBS Poirot series) who can also,  like Frybabe's narrator, do any voice and you'd think there were a cast of 20 or so!  But  it's all him, women and men and he does Poirot as well as Suchet, it's amazing.

And I do like Joan Hickson in anything she reads. There's something nice about being read to, isn't there? It's cozy or something. It takes me back. My father used to read to me,  as did my mother. He  had such a lovely  deep bass voice, I remember it well. Little House on the Prairie for some reason. I disliked the book but enjoyed the readings.

I like also the old radio mystery shows, they have their own channel on the car radio and I love the old dramas, how clever they were with the noises, I wish people would do radio dramas again. And of course Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce, and again many people very much disliked Nigel Bruce in the part of Watson, but I loved the pair of them and they were great friends in person.

Maybe that's why I  like Michael Portillo's shows so much, he starts  out by reading from Bradshaw's Guide, just a sentence or two but I like the way he does it. Today we learned where Cock and Bull originated and watched him make vellum, something I don't think I care to try.

As far as bad readers, I can't listen to them at all they really ruin the book for me, and I can't listen to it for any length of time, so  I don't recall any particular name.

And  am I the only one who sets out earnestly to listen to an audio when driving the car and find my mind wandering ALL the time and have to keep running it back and replaying it? Can't concentrate on it for some reason.

[Frybabe]

I was looking over the list and don't recall answering #5, Favorite Book not in a Series by Your Favorite Author, and I am too lazy to look that far back. So.....

Hugh Howey, The Shell Collector. I could list Beacon 23, but it is listed as a series. He serialized the book before it was published whole, but I don't know where he released the serialized "episodes".

Jack McDevitt, Eternity Road.

It is hard to pick out a favorite of John Scalzi's three stand-alones; Agent to the Stars, Fuzzy Nation or Redshirts, but if pressed, I would say Agent to the Stars. It was the first book I read by Scalzi, and was and still is (I've read it twice so far) hilarious.

It seems that many of today's authors like to do serials rather than singles. An early favorite from an author of mostly short stories, Rudyard Kipling's Kim. Marian Zimmer Bradley wrote The Door Through Space. While not a part of her Darkover series, she did mention Darkover and included some descriptions of places and things used in that series.

[Frybabe]

Come to think of it, I didn't answer 8 or 9 either.

#8, probably because I read so few biographies. But my most recent were Adrian Goldsworthy's Augustus and Caesar. Both are quite lengthy. Quite a few years ago I read David McCullough's John Adams. I am almost positive I read a biography of Thomas Jefferson but no longer know which author. I do have some languishing on my shelf that still need read: one on Lafayette, one about his wife Adrianne, then there are Horatio Nelson, Samuel Champlain,  Margaret Mead, Oliver Cromwell, Benjamin Franklin's autobiography, and Ron Chernow's Alexander Hamilton. Anyway, other than reading up on our founding fathers and reading some on the Greeks and Romans that inspired them, I can't recommend anything specific.

#9. Since I didn't read it, I can't say I hate it, but one I would never read is 50 Shades of Grey. Anyway, hate is a strong word. There are books I disliked and never finished, but the titles of anything recent have slipped my mind.

I am not sure I will be able to answer #11 either, but I'll think about it.

[PatH]

Frybabe, you brought up some interesting points, but first, I want to point out we've been missing a really good choice of author as dinner companion--Julia Child.  She was an interesting person, and certainly not a shy talker, and the food would be really good.

[PatH]

Favorite book, not part of a series, by your favorite author.  The author is easy enough, it's Jane Austen, but the book shifts back and forth between Pride and Prejudice and Persuasion.  At the moment I think I'm in mid leap back to P and P.

This circles back to Frybabe's comments on Disraeli as author, because Disraeli was a great admirer of Austen.  He claimed to have read Pride and Prejudice seventeen times.  I've probably beat him by now, since I reread it every few years.  The only one of his books I've tried to read is Sybil, or the Two Nations, and I got bogged down fairly early, before it even .got to the politics.

[Frybabe]

I rather suspect a biography about Disraeli would be more interesting. He really never struck me as being a writer of fiction.

[PatH]

So you were fond of Kim too, Frybabe.  I loved it when I was growing up, and am still fond of it, in spite of its faults.  I picked it for one of the first discussions I led, figuring it would be easier to do a good job with something I liked so much.

[ginny]

It's interesting to me to hear the authors being mentioned here, Jane Austen, Kipling, Disraeli. A roll call of the past. This morning over breakfast there was a segment in Michael Portillo's program on George  Elliot. I have to say I suddenly realized I have never read anything by her but I seem to remember her (and it is a she) with irritation because I used to confuse her with somebody else, could never get straight the woman with a man's name and there was another author who was the reverse or something. Most irritating to constantly mix them up.  We can see the impact my exposure to that genre (what DID she write about?) made on me.

Anyway the gentleman interviewed made a great case for her, saying that her works had humor, gentle humor and great insights before Freud,  and he himself seemed a thoughtful calm man, and I thought, well...maybe there is something in her works, after all. Such a fuss they used to make over her and this other author Whose Name is Now Forgotten. I  can't even hear her name without getting irritated.

Has anybody read her recently? Or at all?

Oh and Pat, Julia Child would be ideal as a dinner guest. I very much enjoyed her book on her life.  Except of course those of us who can't cook would be ashamed to put anything in front of her.

[PatH]

Ginny, question 6 doesn't say who is the host.  Julia Child is having you to dinner.

George Eliot wrote Middlemarch, which we discussed here when it was still SeniorNet.  I got stuck in the politics, and gave up, but the book is very good.  She also wrote Silas Marner, The Mill on the Floss, Daniel Deronda, and I'm too lazy to look up what else.  I've read Silas and Mill, but a long time ago.

[ginny]

Oh well, that's different,  then, I'm there if she is cooking and the same with Ina Garten who writes cookbooks only so far as I  know,  but they have lots of nice anecdotes in them.

Oh again, well,  having said that I have read Silas Marner and also The Mill on the Floss, probably thinking they were written by a man, so well did I do that period in literature. Don't remember either.

[PatH]

I do know of one author you wouldn't want to eat dinner with--Isaac Asimov.  He was one of the sci-fi giants, but his ego was as big as the galaxy.  It showed in the bits about himself he wrote in introductions and the like (when his published books got close to 200 in number, he remarked that at last his book count was approaching his IQ) and it was even worse in person.  I got to watch him once at a science fiction convention, and you wouldn't really want to be next to that for long.

[Frybabe]

I agree about Isaac Asimov, Pat.

Ginny, could you have confused George Elliot for the French writer Amantine Lucile Aurore Dupin who went by the name of George Sand? She wrote a ton of novels, a bunch of plays, and three auto-biographies. I remember reading a biography of her, but never read any of her books.

As for George Elliot, I read Silas Marner long, long ago for school. Middlemarch and Mill on the Floss are on my Kindle, but I have yet to read them.

 #12: I am thinking of some I have read:  The Scarlet Letter, The Scarlet Pimpernel, The Black Stallion, Black Beaury, Green Mansions, City of Gold. There are others, but the cats are pesting for their afternoon meal/snack.

[ginny]

hahaha Pat, there seems so much of that lately, I'll leave him off!

I bet I was, Frybabe! But I could have sworn it was  a man with a woman's name. But that makes sense. Lots of Georges!

OH a title with a color in it:

How Green Was My  Valley, The Color Purple, The Red Badge of Courage, The Yellow Wallpaper, the Scarlet Pimpernel.....

[PatH]

I’d better hurry before all the titles I know have been used. A Study in scarlet, the Red and the Black, Riders of the Purple Sage.

[rosemarykaye]

Goodness, we are moving on apace!

No 8 - the biography - I very much enjoyed Valerie Grove's biography of Dodie Smith (author of The Hundred and One Dalmatians and I Capture the Castle, among other things)  She's not the most famous subject Grove has tackled, but I found Smith's early years very interesting (she did not grow up with money, and worked in a shop for some time), and her later life was very typical of wealthy-ish people of that era, living in plush bungalows in the Home Counties. Another one I loved was Monica Dickens An Open Book - though that's an autobiography so not sure if it counts?  Dickens wrote One Pair of Hands, One Pair of Feet, etc about the various jobs she had before she married. Her later novels include Mariana, The Winds of Heaven, Joy and Josephine, The Listeners (the latter based on her time volunteering for the Samaritans), and she also wrote the Follyfoot Farm series for children. But I would hesitate to give a biography to someone unless I knew they were already very keen on the subject - I'd much rather fall back on that book I have mentioned many times, Alan Taylor's The Assassin's Creed, which has lots of excerpts from people's diaries and biographies, allowing the reader to pursue any writer that she finds interesting.

I think Julia Child would be one of the few people I would like to have dinner with, as if Meryl Streep's version of her was in any way accurate she could talk non-stop, was funny, interesting and self-deprecating. If she could bring Stanley Tucci (her husband in the film Julie & Julia) along with her, my evening would be complete    I think Katie Fforde (see below) would also be nice.

There are lots that I would never have dinner with in a million years. I went to an event at the Edinburgh Book Festival featuring Stuart MacBride (thriller writer) and he was awful, never stopped going on about himself, what a know-it-all. And at an event with Lindsey Davis (author of all those Roman mysteries) she actually shouted at me for taking a photo - this in front of the entire crowd, with no mention having been made of no photography, and I had taken one - one! - photo with my phone. I was supposed to be reviewing this event for the local news site. She didn't even say 'please can we not have photos' or something polite like that - it was more along the lines of 'will that woman please stop taking photos immediately!' - She was terribly arrogant and reminded me of my mother-in-law at her worst. Not only that, she was also nasty to other people in the audience - eg during the question time a man asked if she had ever thought about writing about such and such (can't remember what it was, but it wasn't a terrible idea and it was said in good faith) - now, I know authors do get fed up with these kind of questions, but most of them take them in good part, and Davis is hardly book royalty, but she snapped back at him 'I have quite enough ideas of my own not to need yours.' The rest of the time she just went on about how great she was. So definitely no dinner with her!

Now on to books with colours - here are some that come to mind: The Woman in White, Black Beauty, Green Eggs and Ham, The Scarlet Pimpernel, Anne of Green Gables, The Color Purple, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, A Few Green Leaves, Eve Green, Rose Cottage...

Ginny - I remember Antonia Byatt, of all people, once saying that Eliot's Middlemarch was one of the best books written in the English language. Well I have read it, and also The Mill on the Floss, and I have to admit I did not enjoy either of them. I must have missed the point in Middlemarch - to me it just went on and on and on.  Byatt is far from the only acclaimed author who admires it, but I'm afraid it was wasted on me.

I'm reading a very light Katie Fforde at the moment. Two sisters receive a letter from their dead aunt - she of course being incredibly Bohemian and alternative (she was a rock journalist and Beatles' groupie - anyone else have an aunt like that? Thought not...) - instructing them to go to the antiques centre where she had a sort of shop. When they arrive they meet the owner of the centre, who - need I go on? - is tall, dark, brooding, bad-tempered, but easily softened up by the single one of the sisters, who has just moved to this idyllic part of the world to escape her disastrous love life in London. The centre is not doing well, and single sister is OF COURSE a PR person who knows exactly what it needs - but Mr Grumpy won't hear of it. The dead aunt has asked the sisters (the other one is a floaty artist happily married to another floaty artist, living in an idyllic cottage with their flaxen-haired twin babies and apparently existing on fresh air - but of course she's going to be awfully handy when it comes to tarting up the antiques place) to take over her stock and sell it for 6 months, meanwhile being taught the antiques trade by guess who? If they stick it out there will be 'a little more money' for them at the end of the trial period. I somehow think 'a little' is going to be an understatement...

And just for good measure, Mr Grumpy has a dog. An Irish wolfhound called Oscar. I am just waiting for Oscar to don his pinny and start making cupcakes.

Having said all of that, I like Katie Fforde and sometimes I enjoy just wallowing in this kind of nonsense. And KF does come across as an extremely nice person on twitter - she is in her 70s now I think, and always commenting on the trials of new technology, etc - and she even replies to some of my tweets. She's extremely popular here. After this I'll move on to something slightly more substantial...possibly.

By the way, haven't we got 'A series everyone should read' in the list twice? (Maybe that was an error in the original list?) Are we on to that one yet?

Rosemary

[ginny]

Yeah we need to redo that list, and perhaps just put up a couple at a time. I'll get right on it. The answers are really fascinating, though.

Well Lindsay Davis is now off my list and I include mentioning her detective stories based in Ancient Rome right along with that, included under Fiction, on all reading lists offered.

 I can't believe she said that. But I have seen similar exhibitions.  I once had a friend who was a rabid and I mean rabid fan of Martha Stewart when she was in her heyday, when she was attacking keeping chickens in  the same way she did everything else, including whitewashing the walls of the chicken house. Bet that kept her busy. hahahaa I will admit in advance I was and am not a fan. Little clever "thingies"  out of paper towels, clever reuse of paper bags,  that type of thing, obsessive compulsive handicrafts. All that cooking: this is what you should be doing all the time with little scraps type of thing,  when her own daughter revealed there was NEVER anything in the fridge to eat. And so on and so on.

She was to appear and engage with the audience at an event. It was specifically stated that she would answer questions and wanted to meet...I guess...her adoring public. No she didn't.  The audience hall was packed, must have been over 100 people.  She gave somewhat of a condescending presentation to her worshipers but one felt she would warm up and be personable  later.  The one poor soul who dared to ask a question during question time,  and I don't recall now what it was, this was  YEARS ago,  was met with the most hostile rejecting  reaction I think I've ever seen (until Lindsay Davis) and that kind of  killed the "caring and sharing" part of the program.  Perhaps she was having a bad day.

It's amazing, too, though, in retrospect,  the characteristics we for some reason want to endow these people with.  But one would hope for an inkling of how she portrayed herself then on the screen. But again, I've never been a fan.

I am definitely going to have to get this book The  Assassins Creed!


Oh and on colors in titles,  The Golden Child  by Penelope Fitzgerald.  Review: "What a fun book and quite extraordinarily different from the last one of hers which I read. The Golden Child is part comedy, part murder mystery and a sly parody of the hierarchy of an Art/Historical Museum. Ms. Fitzgerald also gets a few pokes in at the various secret services of the world..."

Of all of her books I've read, I've never read that one, I think I'll try it, it sounds fabulous. But I love her writing anyway.


I must schedule at least an hour on my off days to  just relax and read, because I miss it.

Putting up a couple of new book categories. Let's  take them one by one with some time in between  so we can discuss the responses.

[ginny]

I've put up some new categories, we're at the end of the list of 30 that Rosemary sent.  Our numbers are different.   Let's discuss 13  today: A book quote you know by heart.

I love that one, and the answers should really be interesting!  And we can add a poem, too, if you like. Let's see what first comes to mind.

[Frybabe]

Well, Rosemary, I am not happy to hear that Lindsey Davis was being such a snot.

I thought Fforde was such an unusual spelling that I looked her up. Her husband, Desmond, is a cousin of writer Jasper Fforde whose Tuesday Next series I adored.

Did you by chance mean The Assassin's Cloak? The only Assassin's Creed I know is the video game and it's offshoots. Don't play the games, but I did like the movie.

[Frybabe]

#13:  "All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others"
                     George Orwell, from Animal Farm.

[PatH]

#13: This illustrates why Nestor is the character I identify with in the Iliad: (Lombardo's translation)

Nestor, old sir!  If only your knees
Were as strong as your spirit

[rosemarykaye]

You are absolutely right Frybabe, and it’s a mistake I make far too often - the book is of course The Assassin’s Cloak - thanks for noticing that.

My quote is from The Towers of Trebizond:

‘“Take my camel dear” said Aunt Dot, as she descended from that animal on her return from High Mass.’

Another one is:

‘The past is a foreign country they do things differently there.’ (The Go Between)

[rosemarykaye]

And Pat, I love that quote! - I think quite a few of us can probably identify with Nestor on that one.

[Frybabe]

I love The Go Between quote, RosemarKaye. I have a mind to go find the book after reading a plot summary. Oh, I just discovered it is one of the free to watch movies on my Amazon Prime. Next time I put the TV on I will have to look for it.

[rosemarykaye]

I loved the film Pat - though I saw it when I was in 6th year at school, so I have no idea if it’s aged well. Julie Christie and Alan Bates at their best.

I hope you enjoy it. The book was wonderful of course (though again I haven’t read it for many years.)

[PatH]

I love both your quotes, Rosemary--one profound, one whimsical.  And Frybabe, you beat me to my first choice.

[rosemarykaye]

Sorry Pat and Frybabe, I think I got you muddled up....my brain seems exceptionally addled lately!

Anyway, I hope each of you enjoys The Go Between if you watch it!

I have just read on a friend's blog that there is a documentary about Daphne du Maurier on TV this Friday. It's called In Rebecca's Footsteps and it's on PBS America, which is a free channel here. I don't know if that means you will also be able to see it? I have seen another (very good) documentary about Du Maurier, but I think this one may be different, so I'm going to try to remember to record it. It's on at 7.15pm UK time so I suppose that is 2.15pm in New York. I will never get my head round the idea that one country has lots of different times - how do you know what time it is if you are near the line marking the end of one time zone and the start of another? 

Hope everyone is having a good day,

Rosemary

[PatH]

From the lack of posts, it looks like nobody is having a good day, or else they're all ut somewhere having one.  I'm dealing with profound internet glitches, but will try to post a little later today.

Is everyone OK?

[nlhome]

PatH, all is ok, just not reading right now. It's hard to concentrate. Plus, it's fall, with winter approaching, so I try to grab each reasonably nice day and be outside. Someone here mentioned the Churchill book by Erik Larson, and that's sitting on my table now, in case I feel like reading.

[Frybabe]

I generally leave all my Scifi reading comments in the Science Fiction section. I will only mention that I just finished listening to Hannu Rajaniemi's Quantum Thief and started on his second of the trilogy, Fractal Prince this morning. These stories are difficult to follow but absolutely mesmerizing to listen to. Also, I am about 20 pages into C. J. Cherryh's Hellbender.

For non-SciFi reading I am into a freebie I picked up called Windrush by Malcolm Archibald. The first of a series, most of the action takes place in India and Burma, at least so far, in the mid 1800's. It started out a little less than interesting but soon picked up enough for me to go on with it. And, I managed another chapter or two of the Silk Roads audio book.

My reading, etc. has been interrupted lately by a certain critter (Shan) insisting I play with him. I got a new fishing-pole type toy and he is nuts over it. So is Lucy, apparently. They both play at the same time, often taking turns. Oscar has also joined in on occasion. Speaking of Oscar his is up here to let me know he wants attention or lunch now. He can be almost as insistant as Shan.

[rosemarykaye]

Good afternoon all - I am still here!

I’m glad at least some of you are here too. Ginny - I hoe you are OK, just busy?

I have just finished that Katie Fforde book, A French Affair, but I’m sorry to say it was not great. Like many authors whose earlier books I loved, I feel Katie has started to write to a formula - maybe her publishers are pushing her to churn then out? Also she seemed to be making efforts to be ‘modern’ by throwing in swear words, which I am not bothered by at all if they are in the right context, but here they sounded wrong and out of place. Gina, the ‘heroine’, was supposed to be an independent woman, but as per usual she just didn’t realise she needed grumpy, troubled, (aka immature pain the in the neck!) Matthew - at least she didn’t for the first 2 chapters, after that it was all she ever talked about. And their on/off relationship was just plain irritating. And the way everyone’s problems were solved in the end was SO unconvincing/annoying.

Sometimes I feel I am just too old for all this nonsense!  I can still enjoy a Mary Stewart novel with a feisty heroine, even if the woman does end up with a man in the end - but these novels are so much better written, and her heroines do at least just get on with solving the mystery instead of complaining all day!

So now I have moved on to a Dorford Yates mystery, Blind Corner, first published in 1927. Several bloggers have recommended Yates’ books, so as I had a few on my shelves I thought I’d give him a try. This one is all about hidden treasure, murderers, ex Secret Service men (or are they?), fresh young graduates just down from Oxford, Rolls Royces, abandoned estates in the Black Forest.....yes, I know, also ridiculous, but I find it far easier to suspend disbelief with this one, and the plot is racing along. I’ve just been sitting by the river to read, and I ended up frozen as I couldn’t stop. It was very quiet down there, just me and a heron who, after spending some time sitting on the opposite bank, took it into his/her head to make a noisy fly-past, then settled down in the same spot for another marathon wait. I wonder why? But as Jim Crumley says, just because we can’t see a reason for something an animal or bird does doesn’t mean there isn’t a reason.

I hope everyone is having a good and peaceful Sunday. My friend in Philadelphia says she is unable to sleep for worrying about your election. I even feel worried about it myself, and that’s the first time I have ever given an election over which I have no sway any thought at all.

Take care everyone,

Rosemary

[ginny]

So good to see everybody here, I'm not reading, either,  busy with the 24 Latin classes and outside, children, grandchild, lots going on. Loading material for 4 zoom classes takes a LOT of preparation.

But I actually had gotten AHEAD with the Latin and so I got 15 minutes of Bill Bryson again and lo and behold it's like watching Michael Portillo but with a twist. Where Portillo went to Saltaire, all so interesting, so did Bryson but Bryson pointed out (don't you love his grumpy hilarious bent on everything) the parts not mentioned,  but I'm not sure that Bryson has the entire picture. I have read that 3,000 people attended Titus Salt's  50th birthday party and 5,000 attended his 70th. Think on THAT one for a minute.   Nobody can deny the glory of his workers homes which still exist today and his vision of what could be, astounding for his time, and that he thought he was doing the best that could be offered. It is said that more than 100,000 lined his funeral route. Think of that.

But Bryson is in his own world, this  morning for 15 minutes Bryson  did a riff on shopping with his wife which was absolutely hilarious. He's just a HOOT, when he's not being grumpy,  and it's nice to read something funny on occasion and go to bed with a smile and wake up with one.

Other than press releases which I wish I hadn't, that's all I've read! No fiction.

[ginny]

Let's try this one for today, have we done this one? I don't think we have:


14. A book you reread every year:

Notice that says REread, not THINK about rereading. That later category with me is high but I never seem to fill it out.   hahaha and that  goes for those cross stitched ornaments I plan to make every year and never do. And that actually goes for a lot of plans I never do.


IS there,  in fact, a book you actually DO reread every year and if so why? And what IS it?

[rosemarykaye]

So glad you are still with us Ginny!!

I don't really re-read, though like you I think about it often.

I have lately re-read some of the books from my childhood, but I certainly don't read the annually. The Wind in the Willows is probably the one I've re-read most often.

I feel I have so many unread books waiting for my attention that I just don't have time to re-read, but I know many people feel they get more out of a book each time. Come to think of it, I actually have re-read my favourite Barbara Pyms several times, and I must admit I do find new things to make me laugh on each reading of Excellent Women, Some Tame Gazelle and A Glass of Blessings. Sometimes it's not so much 'laugh' as 'smile in recognition' - her social observation skills are sharp as a razor.

[rosemarykaye]

And by the way, I read somewhere that Bill Bryson has announced his retirement?  I didn't think people like him ever retired!

[ginny]

I like that expression, . Sometimes it's not so much 'laugh' as 'smile in recognition' - her social observation skills are sharp as a razor.

I can't think of any I reread yearly but I do reread Bryson for that very quality  you cite. And in fact what with the pandemic and no travel (which I REALLY miss) he's the equivalent. But BOY does he walk prodigious amounts. If he's retiring from writing about all that walking I can certainly see it.  He literally walks from village to village if he misses a train and seems to think nothing of it. Walks all day long, too, thinks nothing of it.

I really must get back out there, now that it's not 100 degrees, and walk again.

I am somewhat shocked to see my fiction reading down to zero.

 There's a recent article in the Guardian (which I do read) about this guy who spent $7,000 on a one way flight from Australia to Paris? London? I can't recall, and who said he wished he had his $7000 back.  He whinged about the trip the whole time. The Reader's Comments were pretty spot on, I thought, but essentially (he's a young man and he normally travels super economy) he felt the experience removed all the hassle and stress and put you isolated from everybody else, and made you think the world was your oyster for that short time so that you arrived refreshed and that was bad.

Again the Reader's Comments Section was  pretty interesting. Australia is a long way away and I  know it's expensive and since I've never gone there much less paid for first class to get there (but he kept referring to it as business) so I can't reflect on that part of it. It was not an emergency, he just couldn't get a seat in coach economy and wanted to go. I have no idea what it might take to fly to Australia from London on any class,  but no hassle, arrive refreshed, pampered and free of stress sounds pretty good to these old bones. hahahaa  I hope he frames that article and pulls it out when he's in his 70's.

I bet there will be a change of heart. And as crass as it may be to bring up "money," I don't know anybody who pays full price for an airline ticket.

[Tomereader1]

Ginny, in case I haven't asked already, please tell me how I might enjoy Michael Portillo.  Is he on TV, Radio, Podcast?  Also, Bryson; same question.  I've read many of his books and enjoyed!

I cannot fathom 24 Latin Classes...are you teaching that many, just organizing curriculum, what?  You are awesome in any case!

The only thing I've re-read, on a semi-regular basis, is Ann Patchett's "Bel Canto".  Not every year for sure, but often enough that I think I've now read it 6 or 7 times.  Could not in a million years explain why I'm so drawn to it, maybe the opera singer character.  But all the characters are intriguing to me.