The Library

[jane]

Thanks, Barb.  I just do the prelim work...the registration, setting up the classes, etc.  Now it's ALL Ginny who has the task of balancing 19 classes....15 here and 4 at Furman Univ. 

jane

[Fran]

Hi Jane I so appreciated your help when I first started my Latin
study with Senior learn. I still enjoying Library discussions.I’m not active
In discussions but I enjoy reading as they keep mr company. It gets rather
Lonely during this Covid situation.

Fran

[jane]

Hi, Fran.... It's so good to see your post.  You're sure right about Covid and the effect it
had on us, whether we ever had the disease or not.  My whole view of things I used to enjoy has changed dramatically.  I tend to stay here in my small town and only go to the "city" for specialized medical doctors. 

Take care and stay safe...and come back often and join us here.

jane

[BarbStAubrey]

With all the news about the death of Queen Elizabeth and the crowning of now King Charles I almost forgot today is 9/11 - to think that was 21 years ago - kids in Collage were either just born or not yet born and for sure most High School students were not yet born - like most of us learning in school about WWI and for some even WWII - it is the feel of the time that cannot be shared reading about it and I guess we miss out on that aspect when we read historical novels - all we can do is compare what we are reading to what we know - this date of 9/11 among other things really brings that home - I keep thinking of Rosemary with the news of the death of Queen Elizabeth. Sent her an ecard but have no idea if the email address I have is still good... 

[Tomereader1]

yes, Barb, I have been thinking about Rosemary a great deal lately.  Let me know if her email address is still good.

[BarbStAubrey]

Not picked up but did find she has an Instagram account and when I googled her name adding in Scotland Rosemary is writing mostly book reviews for a couple of newspapers. Really prefer not writing a private message on her public page like Instagram - hadn't looked I wonder if she has a Facebook page because if so we could message her...

[PatH]

I'm not on Facebook, but she used to have one.  If she's writing a lot of reviews, that explains her silence, since she tended to drop other activities when she had a heavy writing load.  Anyway, we now know she's still around and active.

[ginny]

 Yes, Jane deserves every accolade and more!

Rosemary's reviews are beautiful, aren't they? Beautifully written,  and that's not easy to do.  After reading a couple of them I ordered two of the books. But I bet she writes better than they do.

I hope she someday writes a book, herself. She's certainly got a way with words.

Now that classes have started my reading has stopped dead. I hope to revive it. BUT I finally got in the mail yesterday  the long awaited  biography of  George Carman which is about as rare as hen's teeth,  from the UK which I am very excited to read,  as he was a Queen's Counsel and apparently IT at old Bailey for years, defending many of the rich and famous you have heard of, including  Tom Cruise and Richard  Branson among many,  against criminal charges.

 Not a very "nice" occupation but one he was very good at. His work is shown briefly in A Very British Scandal which is definitely XXXX rated, in defense of Jeremy Thorpe (starring Hugh  Grant and Adrian Scarborough), and the book by John Preston (who wrote The Dig) but this book is called No Ordinary Man by his son Dominick, and Carman himself, though a legend, was definitely not a saint either. In and out of jail,  himself,  constantly.  So it's interesting reading, especially in these times. Especially if you've ever been to Old Bailey, which is the chief criminal court,  I believe, in London, as I've mentioned before.

I have learned what a solicitor is too, and a barrister. Terms we don't use here.

Books books books, you can't have too many. I'm in the  mood for a David McCollough since his passing. I've got his The The Johnstown Flood, a book I never read and I think I will try it, in memory of all the great books he wrote and because of all the natural disasters we keep reading about.

But what are YOU reading?

[Frybabe]

I just got notice of an upcoming book by Jack McDevitt (one of my top favorite SciFi writers) which lists the pre-order hardcover for $50, but no listing for Kindle or audiobook. They sure don't want to sell it, do they? Return to Glory is a book of his short stories. Meanwhile, his website features a new Alex Benedict book to be released in January for much less and does have a Kindle edition. It is titled Village in the Sky. I was beginning fear I would never see another new Alex Benedict again. I am surprised and delighted about it.

Right now, I am reading a prequel to William Kent Krueger's Cork O'Connor mystery series called Lightning Strike while waiting (14 weeks) on the third in the series. It is a good police mystery series set in upper Minnesota in the Boundry Waters Canoe Area Wilderness area.

Still listening to (actually started over) Powers and Thrones by Dan Jones. He also narrates it and sure knows how to keep you interested. Also, I finished listening to another of John Scalzi's short books in his Dispatcher series. The Dispatcher and its sequels are only a few hours long. They follow a guy (the Dispatcher), a legal and licensed killer who often works with hospitals and the police. Because of some odd quirk in this world people can, under certain circumstances, be killed with their consent. After death the body disappears and pops back to life somewhere else in good health. There is a big market for it among those suffering grave injury or disease, and of course on the shadier side, criminals and others on the run.

[ginny]

Sometimes you wonder about Si-Fi, don't you? Sometimes it seems that we're getting closer and closer to what we once thought impossible...think of R.U.R., the first fiction (play) about robots and about robots who develop feelings. I've got a robot vacuum, I hope it doesn't develop any signs of thinking although sometimes I wonder. (They did suggest we name the things). 

We live in that world now, in some respects, according to what I read in the news. Of course the "news" may itself be fiction, it's getting hard to tell sometimes.

When the air gets crisp in the fall I always want to read Dickens. I always start a Dickens and never finish it. Maybe this year will be different.

Is there any book that you never read for whatever reason you sometimes think of trying? Is there a book you didn't get around to that everybody else has read, and you feel a little embarrassed that you didn't? How do you feel about it now?

I never read any Jack Kerouac.  Great influencer of the Beat Generation, Bob Dylan, etc. Still have no desire to read him. Have any of you read anything he wrote?

[Frybabe]

No to Kerouac. I don't think there is anything of his I am interested in. Died early. Drank himself to death, essentially.

Speaking of Dickens, I've occasionally thought to pick up one of his many books I have not read. First to mind is The Old Curiosity Shop and then there is Little Dorrit. I started Pickwick Papers but never finished it. I missed Bleak House when the discussion was going. Can't remember why, but it wasn't about the book. I remember reading Baroness Orczy's The Scarlet Pimpernel, but don't recall reading A Tale of Two Cities. There are a couple of Dickens books in his bibliography that I never heard of before. Mostly they are Christmas stories.

There are a number of books I want to reread but keep putting off including, The Three Musketeers (the adult version this time), The Count of Monte Cristo, and The Virginian. Once in a while I manage to dig into my TBR books for books I have had for a long time. In fact, that might be a good idea now, because I just finished a library read and my other holds will be a while coming. Most recently, I have been trying to pare down that list.

[BarbStAubrey]

Well the house is under contract or rather pending - he has till the end of the month to have all his inspections finished and decide to go forward or bail with no consequences and so I'm in limbo - cannot put an offer on a house till I'm sure and then it is still contingent on his closing which is supposed to happen October 28 - looks like the end of next week I go to Magnolia and find a house in a day or two - can't think ahead or I get overwhelmed - so many ends to connect... not much time for reading for the next month and more -

However, I've been reading Hannah Arendt On Violence - her take is man has always been violent and when there is peace we are preparing for violence and this written some years ago in 1970 she is saying because of 'the bomb' all out war among large wealthy nations is no longer a threat since no nation wants the results of a nuclear war leaving only poor countries to fight it out on the ground. Next she sees wars will be fought using and within the parameters of technology. Talk about foresight...

Here is a quote from the book...

"Moreover, we know that “a few weapons could wipe out all other sources of national power in a few moments,” that biological weapons have been devised which would enable “small groups of individuals . . . to upset the strategic balance” and would be cheap enough to be produced by “nations unable to develop nuclear striking forces,” that “within a very few years” robot soldiers will have made “human soldiers completely obsolete,” and that, finally, in conventional warfare the poor countries are much less vulnerable than the great powers precisely because they are “underdeveloped,” and because technical superiority can “be much more of a liability than an asset” in guerrilla wars.

What all these uncomfortable novelties add up to is a complete reversal in the relationship between power and violence, foreshadowing another reversal in the future relationship between small and great powers. The amount of violence at the disposal of any given country may soon not be a reliable indication of the country’s strength or a reliable guarantee against destruction by a substantially smaller and weaker power. And this bears an ominous similarity to one of political science’s oldest insights, namely that power cannot be measured in terms of wealth, that an abundance of wealth may erode power, that riches are particularly dangerous to the power and well-being of republics—an insight that does not lose in validity because it has been forgotten, especially at a time when its truth has acquired a new dimension of validity by becoming applicable to the arsenal of violence as well.

The more dubious and uncertain an instrument violence has become in international relations, the more it has gained in reputation and appeal in domestic affairs, specifically in the matter of revolution."

[ginny]

Barbara, what good news, I hope, and I hope it goes through. That was quick! I had to look  up Magnolia, for some reason I thought it was somehow connected with the Gaines duo who restore houses, etc.

What with interest rates rising, houses may not move as fast as they were there for a while, so I hope it goes through.

I'm reading John Preston, the author of The Dig's book on Jeremy Thorpe and his scandal case and he sure does write well.  I think when I finish this one and The Dig (which I loved on TV but everybody said was boring, HE'S not boring and I think I might enjoy that)... but I think I'll see what else he's written. I like his style of writing, and there was a lot the Hugh Grant movie left out, as good as  Grant  was in that part.

I may be over my Covid Induced Agatha Christie Bookathon, but I sure did devour them for a while. I have read she was one of the most popular authors IN the pandemic. I wonder why.  Possibly because she presented a problem and you knew she would solve it?  Kind of like reading Caesar, actually. Same thing, when you think about it.

The grapes have come in, and it's not as crazy today as it usually is, so I thought I'd come by and see what everybody is reading? Looks like we have a new Si Fi fan in the Sci Fi area, that's exciting. Most Latin students are big readers, I hope that some of them may drop  by and tell us what THEY are reading.

And it's FALL at last and it's getting cooler, too.

Nothing like a good book in front of the fire!

What are YOU reading?

[Dana]

A neighbour gave me Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout which I thought was a bit depressing but  read  anyway.  She has a gripping style. It's about an old lady who lives in a small town in Maine, but it's a series of short stories about her neighbours and sometimes she appears and stars and sometimes not, maybe one line about her.  I have to say I got more attached as I read on.....then I read an article about the author who is up for a Booker or some such with Lucy by the Sea...which I may or may not read, but my neighbour has given me already Olive Again....so....I'm hooked to this somewhat objectionable but completely understandable old lady.....the guy who gave me it said he  thought it was my kind of book.......go figure!!!

[Frybabe]

Barb, I hope you find something you like as quickly as you got the offer on your house. 

Someone, I forget (naturally) who, put me onto Christopher Fowler's Bryant and May series. I finally downloaded the first of that series yesterday. So, a new read starting today.

Also, I am back to reading more of Grey Lady after neglecting it for several weeks.

Agatha Christie must be in vogue right now. Several weeks ago, I began to notice many of my book newsletters/promos have been including Agatha Christie books.

At six or seven years old, my poor paperwhite is showing its age. I've been debating replacing it soon.

[BarbStAubrey]

frybabe I remember you mentioning Grey Lady in earlier posts but forgot - is the subject Lady Jane Grey or there is a mystery series that one of the books is Grey Lady - the Christopher Fowler's Bryant and May series looks like it would be a fun series to read or at least the cover illustrations appear haphazard and light. Went ahead and ordered the kindle version of the last book - sounds like a case involving current issues of the day.

Dana glad you explained that the stories were centered around an old lady living in Maine - I remember starting this and just could not get into it - Packed now but your explanation will have me reading it probably next year some time.

Yes, Ginny east of Austin and north of Houston, actually next to the Woodlands - Conroe is just a bit further north and from what I gather must be the county seat however, it is where the eye doctor I will be going to has her office. It was really rural when Paul and Sally moved there 10 years ago but like all communities within easy driving of a larger Texas city they are all mushrooming in growth - more German and Czech heritage celebrated in the area where as, early Austin started as a Swedish community before Austin became the state capitol - the capitol and UT have been the driving force till the early Tech companies found Austin to their liking 40 and 50 years ago and the rest is history where as, Magnolia is still a community with only three high schools similar to Georgetown, half hour north of Austin and the county seat for Williamson County.  Waco, home of the Gaines' is another hour north of Georgetown

Thanks for the good wishes that I am successful finding something where I will enjoy living... getting anxious with currently so little on the market that fits my needs - many that are larger than i want or have no trees and at my age I cannot wait 10 years for a tree to grow tall enough to offer shade. Magnolia is on the edge of the Piney Woods of East Texas and so few Live Oak as here but Maple and various kinds of huge Pine trees.

[Frybabe]

No, not Lady Jane Grey and not part of a series. This grey lady is a rich, older lady who has a habit of dressing in grey. The plot seems familiar. The cast of characters include: the forementioned "grey lady" who holds the purse strings to an inheritance which she is denying to one twin brother because he failed to pass exams to become a Naval officer, a young woman of marriageable age, a couple of conniving old ladies (including her mother), and a man (a Count?) living in Spain  but whose main estate is in Majorca  and semi-frequent visitor to the lady's English estate.  I have no idea what he is up to - yet.

[ginny]

Dana, I read the first one, too. I had thought originally she was old and bitter, but now I wonder if I might have been off track a  bit? How did you find her?

Frybabe, yes, Christie has had a tremendous draw during the pandemic. There was a wonderful article explaining why in The New York Times last year: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/27/magazine/agatha-christie-books-death.html

Two quotes of interest:

"It is probably coincidental that Poirot was first introduced in 1920, on the tail end of the great influenza pandemic; Christie wrote “The Mysterious Affair at Styles” four years earlier, while nursing soldiers in Devon. But Poirot is the patron saint for the world of soul-numbing procedural care we found ourselves in last year, and might find ourselves in for the foreseeable future. His watchwords are “order and method.” The more time I spent with him, the more our pandemic routines started to seem less like boring compulsions and more like apprentice detective work. If I was fussing over hand-washing procedures, or eyeing every slightly crooked mask with suspicion, maybe I was just a Poirot in the making."


and


"And yet Poirot, like Sisyphus, is happy. His world is utter hooey, but he finds satisfaction in small pleasures, like a properly dusted mantelpiece. There’s something both deluded and encouraging about this; I wanted to roll my eyes at Poirot, but I also found myself turning to him as a spiritual teacher. What could he teach me about coping with a world that didn’t make sense? And later, as vaccines rolled out: What he could teach me about trying to return to a world we can’t trust? Two world wars and a pandemic elbowed their way into Christie’s life, and then everyone was expected to go on working and gardening and buying cans of condensed milk as if the world hadn’t recently been set on fire. That bipolarity is embedded in Christie’s books. Life magazine wrote admiringly of “the unruffled cheerfulness of these doomed people.” In writing “quiet, domestic” murders, Christie warned us that our quiet domesticity can be interrupted at any time, but she also held out hope that it might return, perhaps in the epilogue."

It's interesting, why we read.

Barbara, I hope everything is going to turn out perfectly for you, including trees. I'm a tree person myself, have to have trees and a fireplace.

[Dana]

Yes I thought Olive Kitteridge was old and bitter, too, and I don't know why I read it all really, except they were short stories and I liked the author's style if not the content.  But I did get hooked by one of the later stories when she goes to visit her son in NY .....I began to think, this one is going to work, she's going to bring it off...a successful visit.....I got quite excited.....

[Frybabe]

That reminds me. I downloaded an audiobook of all the Poirot short stories narrated by David Suchet, Hugh Fraser, Nigel Hawthorne, Ilsa Blair, and Simon Vance, thirty-five hours' worth of listening.

Well, here is something pretty cool. Schooling like it used to be.  https://www.oldscoolacademy.com/

[PatH]

We have now lost Hilary Mantel, author of Wolf Hall, Bring Up the Bodies, etc.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/obituaries/2022/09/23/hilary-mantel-wolf-hall-novelist-dead/

Her books were the sort of gripping thing that really brings a period alive, and this obit praises her accuracy.  But occasionally she slipped.  The reason I never tried her books was a review which pointed out an invented historical character character she put in one of them.  I probably lost out with my pickiness.

[BarbStAubrey]

Wow Pat and I just saw a recent Youtube interview with here saying she was working on the final book that she saw as a trilogy for Wolf Hall 

[BarbStAubrey]

Checked and since the trilogy was completed the interview must have been just before the Pandemic - the news of her death does not say the cause does it... do you know was she a Cancer patient or something as life threatening - 70 seems too young

[jane]

Barb....It doesn't really say the cause of her death here:

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2022/sep/23/hilary-mantel-author-wolf-hall-dies

"HarperCollins confirmed she had died on Thursday “suddenly yet peacefully”, surrounded by close family and friends."

"The author experienced chronic illness throughout her adult life, having a severe form of endometriosis, surgery for which left her unable to have children."

[PatH]

Barb, my Washington Post link quotes her literary agent as saying she died of a stroke, and said the same things you quoted, Jane, implying more bad health, and adds that she was in pain most of her life.  It shows some gumption to write those good books under such conditions.

[PatH]

Ginny, how will Hurricane Ian affect you?  What a mess.

[ginny]

Thank you for asking, don't know yet. Dana is the one it appears to have come right in on, on the coast of SC. At present the projected path is to the right of Charlotte and if that happens we MAY not have too much to worry about, being on the West side of it, other than wind and rain so far.

 I wish the THING would turn around and go out to sea and not endanger half of the country as it appears to be trying to do, I've seen projections through Virginia going north.

OUT TO SEA!!

[ginny]

 And it did, it came in well to  the right of Charlotte and we had just wind and rain here, nothing much, we've still even got grapes, so all is well.

That's not the case with many of our members here, though, and I hope they are all OK, terrible damage in Florida, but have heard from a couple of our students in a different part of Florida  that they are OK. What a freak thing that was.

[jane]

Good to hear you and family are safe and well and no damage to the vineyard. 

[ginny]

Thank you. Only a few limbs down, very much unlike Hugo and were up near the NC Mountains, not the coast. I hope everybody here is OK as well. Poor Florida.

[Frybabe]

Morning everyone! It seems we have finally seen the last of the rain from hurricane Ian and will enjoy actual sunshine today. I hope everyone is doing well.

Is anyone else having trouble getting into Seniors and Friends? It has been acting up for several days now, but today I can, after a long wait, only get the main page. Everything else just spins away until I get a Gateway Error.

The other day I finished the first of Christopher Fowler's' Bryant and May series. The next one is in my library wish list, but I haven't downloaded it yet because I want to finish a SciFi and the several times interrupted The Grey Lady that I am reading.

Dan Jones and his Powers and Thrones continues to be quite interesting. Right now I am on chapter 12 which pretty much covers castles and cathedrals. I was delighted that he started with the Welsh castles. Earlier, he went over the demise of the Templars, and other church related infighting including some I recognized from my recent re-reading of The Name of the Rose.

[PatH]

Frybabe, I just checked S & F.  It's slow as molasses, and at first would only give me stuff I had already viewed, but eventually I got some current posts.  I'm not quite sure where to report it.

[PatH]

Now I'm getting "504 gateway timeout"

[Frybabe]

PatH, I had Patricia's email addy, so checked with her. She had Oldieman's email address and informed him. This morning it looks like it is back up and running well.

[Tomereader1]

Just for fun here's the list of books my f2f book club has on our agenda through February: December - A Christmas Carol; January - All the Light You Cannot See; February - The Night Watchman; Louise Erdrich.  We also have two alternates in case the moderators can't be found (LOL); The Anomaly by Herve LeTellerin; or the play "Uncle Vanya" I think The Anomaly sounds like something MarsGal might like.

[PatH]

Tomereader, that looks like a good list for discussion, meaty and likeable.  But I hope you don't have to swap in The Anomaly.  From its description, I would spend the whole discussion trying to figure out what on earth it means.

[Frybabe]

Now reading Midnight Palace by Carlos Ruiz Zafon. One of his early novels. he originally wrote it for YA readers. Just great for Halloween time, it is a spooky tale of murderous revenge, of friendship, and of family lost and found. I am enjoying it.

The Grey Lady bit the dust at about 41%. It just got too boring, kind of two-dimensional. It did not conjure up any real emotional feel or sense of action. It was just plain "flat".

[jane]

Frybabe..."got too boring, kind of two-dimensional."   Hurrah for you ditching it.  Life is too short to read that kind of boring stuff. 

jane

[Tomereader1]

Boring and two dimensional is coming into Senior Learn and seeing no one has posted in practically the "sole surviving boards".  I feel like an orphan!  I know most, if not all, of us are busy with real life, and can't take the time to post messages on our boards (or any boards for that matter).

HELP!  Someone say something !

[Frybabe]

I just tried to post but my power cut out on me for a half minute. Grrrrr!

Anyway, Tome, I was saying that I made a post over on Seniors and Friends about my current reads, but I can post it here too, so the others can see it.

What I am reading now is Proof by Dick Francis. He was a British steeplechase jockey with over 350 wins who used his knowledge of horses and racing as a venue for his novels, many of which were stand alones. He seems to have led and interesting life which included becoming jockey to Elizabeth, The Queen Mother. I've bookmarked his autobiography on Internet Archive to read. Wikipedia has an interesting bio of him and in it states that a British TV and film production company has optioned the rights for his works. So, if you like horses and horse racing, you might want to keep and eye out. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dick_Francis

Just started the Great Courses lecture series, Masters of War: History's Greatest Strategic Thinkers. It isn't what I had planned on listening to next, but since it becomes unavailable at the end of the month I need listen to in next. So far, it is a most interesting history and comes with an outline and suggested reading which of course had me off looking for some of those books. Like I need more to read, but there I go. I just bought A War Like No Other  by Victor David Hanson which is one of recommended reading books that the lecturer had listed. I will probably read it after I finish my current reading and, probably, the library borrows listed below.

Other than that, I started the latest MarKo Kloos release, Centers of Gravity. Coming up in a few weeks I expect to get my next library borrow which is Alastair Reynolds' Eversion. followed by about three weeks later William Kent Krueger's Purgatory Ridge.