The Library

[winsummm]

The Library Our library cafe is open 24/7, the welcome mat is  always out. Do come in from daily chores and spend some time with us. We look forward to hearing from you, about you and the books you are enjoying (or not). Let the book talk begin here!

Suggestion Box for Future Discussions

been reading too much I guess. my eyes hurt.  Have lots of TBR on m kindle HOME list. I'm getting bored with all of it though. so what's next???

 what if we were old cave people and couldn't read.  How would we pass the time.  cleaning cave?  many women clean house. just for that purpose.  what a waste. Friday a crew of two spent two hours doing that to mine depriving me of entertainment .
so I'm down today.  tomorrow will be another day. maybe it will get dirty here. . yeah

[JoanK]

Oh, Claire! We should all come and dirty it up for you.

[mabel1015j]

I'll come visit, Claire, dust follows me everywhere! And i'll bring cream donuts, i can't eat one w/out getting powdered sugar all over everything.......will that help? Actually i think i could find SOMETHING to do before i had to clean! I invite people to my house just to have a motivation to clean. My mother did that spring and fall thing, including the attic, i never felt the need to do that.................which means there are probably some parts of my house, including my attic that have never been touched by a duster!.......jean

[rosemarykaye]

Jean, someone once said to me, would you want your tombstone to say "Her house was always clean"?!! - I think of that when I am on the phone and idly run my finger along the kitchen shelves - it's not a pretty sight 

R

[Steph]

Many many years ago in the late 50's, we applied through the agency and started filling out papers,, then just after most of the testing ( they were very very thorough), I turned up pregnant after having been told by three different doctors it would not happen.. So we had our own, but the agency was wonderful to us.

[Babi]

 I just lost my post. Let me see how much I can remember...
  Uh, Netflix has Blackadder #III and IV, but not I and II.  Should I start in the middle?
 And Quanah Parker was a fascinating figure. I hope I can get my hands on that book.

   I have a bridge-playing crony whose goal in life is the 'spotless house'.  She has so much
energy her own house wasn't enough, so she started doing housework for others as well!
 I greatly enjoy playing bridge with her, ...but I'm not letting her see my home! 

[rosemarykaye]

Ooooh yes babi - I have friends whom I love dearly, but they are hardly allowed past the front door.  I meet them for coffee on neutral ground.  I find Aberdeen particularly bad for this - I was shocked, when I first moved into the city from the country, at just how fussy and houseproud everyone was - they are obsessed!  At least that is my excuse for being an utter slob.   One of my dearest friends used to come round every Monday evening for a while, during the time her son was having a music lesson nearby.  It was 5pm, just about the worse time for anyone with pre-school children.  Before she came, I used to clean the downstairs cloakroom and then vacuum up the stairs to what I assessed to be her eye level.  She wasn't allowed to go any further!

R

[ALF43]

Joan-

Ginny, thanks for bringing us the  New York Times list of Notable Books of 2010.  Sadly, I have been reading only the unremarkable books this year.  It is a good list - I like that it has comments telling about the books listed.

I agree with you Joan.  I've only read 5 of the many listed, this year and have two of them on order at our library.

[pedln]

Well, I haven't read five, but I've heard of some of them.  And one that I just got from the library is The Room, which is also on the NYT Best 10 Books of the year.  I spent an afternoon with The Room this week, the book that's told from the point of view of a 5-year-old who was born to a kidnapped, forced sex toy mother, and has never been out of the room.  I started it, I've scanned some, and am not sure I want to go back to it again.  It is a troubling book to read, and at times tedious.  Would like to hear what some of the rest of you think.

But there are a lot of titles there that I'd like to look at.  My son is reading Freedom.  Maybe the next time I visit there he and DIL will have finished it and I can bring it home.

[pedln]

Ladies, ladies -- what's that poem -- "Dust if you must, but .   .    .    .   .."

My understanding is that if you wear purple and red you don't have to worry about how clean your house is -- let the guests enter.

[maryz]

We live with the motto - love me, love my dust and clutter.  I figure people come to be with us, and if the dirt bothers them, they can stay home.

I've gotten the Quanah Parker book - I'm liking the beginning.

[roshanarose]

I wonder what has become of Mrs Sherlock?  I miss her.

[Frybabe]

Well, I went and spent the B&N gift card I found on my shelf gathering dust. To keep down the number of books to add to my TBR pile, I bought a lovely set of bookends. Still, with money left over I acquired Daemon, Spook Country, Alexandria(Lindsey Davis), and nonfiction, Champlain's Dream. I still have Fischer's Washington's Crossing to read, for heavens sake.

I took Mankell's Return of the Dancing Master to read while waiting for an appointment yesterday. A rather brutal beginning (shouldn't be a surprise), I'm afraid. I don't think I am in the mood for that just now.

[serenesheila]

Thanks for your reccomendations, Rosemarykaye.  Neeither is being shown, here, currenrly.  I will be watching for both of them, though.  Do you know if Netflix offers either of them?

Sheila

[rosemarykaye]

Sheila - I am in Scotland, so I don't get Netflix I'm afraid, but I do know that they are both available on DVD here, so maybe Netflix will get them?  American DVDs don't work here, so I presume its the same the other way round - otherwise I could send them to you.

Rosemary

[Steph]

Mrs. Sherlock is Jackie, and you are right. I wondor if she is sick. No posts for a while and she always had interesting things to say.
Our hospice has an interesting program.. Coping with grief in the holidays. It is a four week, one night a week program and I have really found it helpful.. Puts into print how to decide what is best for you and the holidays. Plus of course, love the opinions from all of the people who come.Weare so very different.

[ginny]

I have also missed Mrs. Sherlock, hope she is OK.

Jonathan, I had not made that connection between the biographer of the new Pearl  Buck and one on Paul Scott!~  I can't wait to start the Pearl Buck, and if the Paul Scott is a brilliant piece of writing, I'll look it up too. I got  Staying On and it seems quite short, relatively speaking. I admire, and this is a strange thing since it takes me half a page to say hello, economy in writing, that's why I love Penelope Fitzgerald, or one reason anyway.

Frybabe, I loved your use of the gift card and I  think we must do a Pearl Buck!! But my goodness, which ONE? MaryPage, I just reread The Good Earth, nobody can put you in the mood like she does and her books are now required reading in China for their portrayal of life as it was.  I love the themes in the Good Earth Trilogy, they are universal and go beyond China I think.

Can't WAIT to read that book, and thank you,  Jean,  for the other biography. I lived 18 years within driving distance of her home, did I ever go there? No. Maybe now that I can appreciate things I'll take a nostalgia trip back to my home town,  and actually SEE what's there.

Still reading Clarissa Dickson Wright's book, finishing up the one on a day at Heathrow, really he needs to stop philosophizing tho I'm sure others love it, it's an airport. I never have time to philosophize, too busy having to overhear important conversations by cell phone shouted at the top of one's lungs.  Somebody ought to write a book about the conversations one overhears and why they are made.

A 30 minute delay? Call up somebody you have not seen in years and tell them, since the people right next to you are unlikely to care about your breakfast and your wait, about your day. Don't know who you are? You can remind them at megadecibels. You can even pace so we can all get an earful.

 How I hate cell phones. I don't mind them if you  keep it to yourself, but spare me, PLEASE, that's the most annoying thing. Let the plane LAND before you whip it out? Trust me, NOBODY CARES about your  experiences with the airport this morning. Or your important plans when you get there.

Perhaps I would care if it were not forced on me. If you politely shared a conversation, dialog, in a friendly way. But you are broadcasting and I'm the helpless audience, and so are the rest of us. Your moment in the sun.

In Europe there are rail cars where you can't use the phone, that's how bad it has become.

If we're 10 seconds late in landing the chorus as we taxi to the gate is like a competition, yes we're 10 seconds late, yes there was turbulence, or as the  Dutch pilot once said when the locker doors for the crew kept popping open: "TurbooLAHNCE." It's like a Greek Chorus, who can be the most important or loudest?  Just hate it.

I don't CARE about you and that's the truth, under these circumstances.  I don't WANT to hear your life story, I don't CARE if you cut the grass before you left and the person you have to keep explaining who you are to, doesn't either. Talk to your neighbor, read something, watch the news, just SHUT UP!~ Just sit quietly. Nobody is impressed with you or your importance.

sheesh.

You never hear this type of thing in the First Class Lounge, it's an oasis of quiet and civility.  But OH HO in the main gate. And the strange thing IS you don't forget these shouted conversations. Yes we know you could have sat in the first class lounge but you chose to be among we peons, how nice of you. Shut up.

Yes we know this is the 10th person you have frantically called while waiting for the plane. Who are you again? Tell the wife of your friend's brother in law one more time, she doesn't seem to know who you are.

There's an entire new culture morality, out there:  should I or should I not report to the stewardess the idiot next to me texting as the plane takes off or lands? Just so important they can't wait, I guess. Kill us all.

 I guess travel brings up all kinds of philosophizing, once you get thru the terror of the pat down or x ray search (which is new since he wrote the book) and the crowds, and the chaos. And the cell phones.

I sound like a Grinch. I guess I am. Let's indulge. What's the most annoying thing to YOU about the "holiday" season? Other than the pat down, or the person who was unaware of the 3 oz liquid thing and who holds up the entire line digging thru their stuff. Or the lines themselves and the indignity flying has become. Or the people since carry on is free (they really need to fix that item) carrying on 800 pounds of huge luggage which they then check at the door or take YOUR overhead space filling up.

Ho ho ho!

[MaryPage]

We are sooooo on the same page.  I can remember when only a very few people in town even HAD telephones, and everyone seemed to get by just fine, thank you very much.

Ours was down at the end of the front hall on a small table.  No dial.  No buttons.  You just picked it up and the operator came on and asked what number you wanted.

If you said long distance, you gave city and state and the number.  If you simply HAD to speak to just one person, could not leave a message with someone else, you paid extra for "person-to-person" and gave the name to the operator, as well as the number.  You paid X$ for 3 minutes, even if you only spoke for half a minute;  so you kept an eye on your watch or a clock.  After 3 minutes, it was so much per minute.

We were careful about long distance calls.

When I first got married, it was months before the phone company got around to hooking us up.  When we bought our first house in a brand new post WWII subdivision, it was just over a year before phones came (also before the roads were paved!), and there was a "call box" on a street corner several blocks away.

We survived.  I cannot relate to this generation.  I expect it may be this symbiontic relationship with cell phones is paving the way to every human having their own robot.  Will we wind up living round the clock in small dark rooms in front of computers while our robot does all of the physical labor and gathers supplies, etc.?

[Babi]

 The worst thing about the holiday season?  That's easy. The crowds! The
long lines at the register, the poor, tired, whiny kids, the fast emptying
shelves where you can't find anything you wanted!  Seriously, I'm too
old for this!     Still, it is a time when the family gets together to laugh and enjoy, and that makes up for a lot.

 ROSEMARY, I had a neighbor who kept the living room (the parlor) looking pristine. She shut the door and the family was not allowed in there. That's where she brought visitors and she wanted them to see only this perfect room. I suppose that's one way to do it, but I felt like the house was my family's home and they should have the full use of it.

  I sometimes think the most enjoyable time is the week between Christmas and New Year's.  The decorations are still up, and I can quietly
sit back and enjoy them, think about pleasant things, and not have to go
anywhere or do anything.  Ahhh...

[Frybabe]

I am not fond of cell phones either. I keep one to carry with me in case of emergency. The other thing I use it for is to call long distance because I dropped my land-line long distance. My long distance calls are mostly intrastate which aren't covered. I get one of those pre-paid phones with a year's worth of service. Since I don't use it that much, I have accumulated a hefty number of minutes over the years. I guess texting is a lot quieter, but I can't for the life of me, think why anyone would want to be constantly connected to the world (she who can't stay off the computer says) every place I go. Anyhow, I am waiting for an ansible where I will be connected to the world 24/7 via a computer chip inserted in my brain. Oh, yes, and I have also been holding out for Marvin Martian's Decintatrator (or however you spell it) Gun. 

[Tomereader1]

ansible?  Whaaaa?

[rosemarykaye]

I agree with all you say about cell phones - we have it on our commuter trains in London (where I thankfully no longer live) all the time - trains hugely overcrowded, people standing, no room to move a muscle - and every other person(at least) on a mobile telling someone or other that they are "on the train".  On long distance trains we do indeed have so-called "quiet carriages" in which you are not allowed to speak on phones, play music, etc - but do they work?  No they do not - the trains are so overcrowded that people sit just anywhere they can (including more often than not in my reserved seats because the train company hasn't put the reserved tickets on them).  They then purport not to know it's the Quiet Carriage and immediately get on the phone to tell all and sundry about how busy the train is.  The guard has so much grief (a) struggling through the train past all the standing people and luggage (luggage space having been cut down to practically nothing) and (b) having abuse hurled at him by the numerous idiots with the wrong or no tickets (- honestly, it's sometimes quite scary and on more than one occasion my husband, who travels on the train very frequently between Aberdeen and Edinburgh, has seen them have to stop the train at an unscheduled station and call the transport police in to remove someone) - that he either hasn't the time or hasn't the nerve to tell people to stop.

Of course the vast majority of people on the train are perfectly nice, but it is rare to get all the way from Aberdeen to Edinburgh without there being some sort of row with the guard or incident about the wrong tickets (our ticketing system is notoriously complicated and impenetrable).  People's tempers are definitely not improved by there being so little accommodation - I too would be mad if, like the lady on our train recently, I had paid £150 for a ticket to London and I was expected to stand up all the way (or at least until someone else got off).

When I was a child we had no phone in the house because my parents could not afford it.  Although I suppose it did make life more peaceful in some ways, I know that my mother still feels to this day that my father might have survived his fatal heart attack (this was 40+ years ago) if she had been able to call for an ambulance instead of first having to rush across the road, wake the neighbours, and borrow their phone.  These days we have "call display" - which is wonderful - if I don't see a name I recognise I just don't answer the phone, and wait to see if the caller leaves a message - cold callers and other pests never do.

Rosemary

[JoanK]

Important people in airports: ah yes, I wonder where they go after they leave. They seem to disappear.

I love the story someone here told (sorry, i don't remember who). The line was held up while the rude pompous man kept demanding special service of the clerk. Finally, he shouted angrily "DO YOU KNOW WHO I AM?"

"Just a minute" said the clerk, and picked up her microphone. "DOES ANYONE KNOW WHO THIS GENTLEMAN IS? HE WANTS TO KNOW."

[mabel1015j]

 

[roshanarose]

Yes.  JoanK I have heard that before.  Only the last line was "He is Lost". So cute.

My major gripe is PARKING in huge shopping centre car parks at Xmas.  The usually polite motorists, well there are some of them, become injected with some strange type of killer serum that changes them from suburban street crawlers into something out of Mad Max.  I have a disability sticker on my car, but it is VERY rare that I can find a park in a disability space at Xmas.  Most of the people who park in them do not have disability stickers.  Really gets my dander up.  Once when I was really annoyed I waited for one of the drivers to return so I could give him a piece of my mind.  He did return, eventually, and giving him the benefit of the doubt I asked if he had a disability.  He answered "No."  "Why?"  He got to know why in a few very well-chosen sentences.  Iidot!   

Ah.  That was very therapeutic.

[Frybabe]

Tomereader, ansible is a SciFi term that Ursula Le Guin coined. It got picked up by other SciFi writers. It mostly refers to a device that is implanted in one's brain that can communicate across the universe almost instantaneously. So, how would you like to talk to your friends and family in the next galaxy, or watch a news flash, or read your mail all from inside your head?

[kiwilady]

I hate the crowds at Christmas also! I am bracing myself to go out to the stores at 8am tomorrow with my daughter and granddaughters. Its not enjoyable to me at all as I absolutely hate crowded places.

I have to admit I have dust too. Since I got this puppy a mini version of the famous Marley I hardly get anything done. She is such a thief I have everything I used to have on tables piled on the dining room table I can't leave anything lying around or she will destroy it or eat it. I should never have called her ChiChi should have called her Marlee. She is a bichon frise but unlike any other I have had. Not a lap dog by any means! The first few months I had her I felt like finding her a new home. But I have never given up on an animal yet so I gritted my teeth and persevered. I had to remove the cushions off the sofas as she was eating them. I have two left and nowhere to store them so they are in a shelf on the wall unit in the hope she will grow out of her fascination with wrecking my stuff.

We go for a massive walk every morning and she gets to run free Mon - Fri after school when I mind my grands at their house. My daughter has a large garden. However I have to supervise this also or she will eat poisonous plants. I have a pocket full of treats to call her to me every time she gets into something.


I should write a book about this dog!

[Steph]

Actually this year I love Christmas. It makes me part of the world again. I really needed it. Years ago, I never had enough time.. Now I dont bake cookies.. Noone to eat them.. But our widows is doing a pot luck on the 19th and I plan on making something special.. Enough people to eat it.. Hooray.

[ginny]

Ah the other shoppers, and aren't the people driving insanely out there?  Where I live it's normally very cordial on the road, people waving you in to a space in the traffic, all ho ho ho, something happened yesterday, maybe it was Roshanarose  "some strange type of killer serum," (you are such a hoot, you should write, you and Kiwi and her Marlee tales hahahaa), but it was every man for himself. It's bad this time of year because people are not concentrating.

I do a LOT of shopping online, yesterday I got a large child's riding John Deere Tractor online with free shipping from WalMart. It weighs a ton, why should I take a truck 30 minutes to the local store, beg somebody to load it and drag it home and try to get it  unloaded? Free to the door. I love online shopping.

Stephanie, good for you! I am glad you are enjoying Christmas, and I am glad you're here, too.

Rosemarykaye, boy your post brings back many many memories of European train travel. I've seen conductors remove people in France from the TGV, there's nothing like an officious French train conductor. Unless it's a German one which has people quaking in their boots. I have also stood the entire hour and a half from Naples to  Rome because (I learned better and from then on have paid for the reservation) I had not secured a reservation in the first class coach thinking nobody would be paying that for that time of day. Wrong! School had let out for some holiday and I was ejected by a grimly smiling woman whose name was on the seat!

I've not had, maybe I don't go to the popular places, but I have not had too many problems in the UK with seating but again I'm always going to strange out of the way hard to get to places. I like it best when I get way out and the train doors have to be opened as they are in the  old movies, crank down the window and stick out your hand and open the handle. Just like the Agatha  Christie movies.  And of course there's always a long line behind you waiting for YOU to open the door. Like the Metro in Paris. Train pulls up. Stops. Nothing happens. Line behind you. DO something! hahaha

 I love the UK. I love Italy too. In fact there have not been too many places I have been I did not enjoy. I like to travel. I love travel with or without others. Each way is different, and each has wonderful benefits.

This past summer for instance, at Highclere Castle (home of the Lord Carnarvon who helped discover  Tut's tomb) it began to rain as I left and stopped by the gate house to call a taxi from town, which was a long way off.  Those were the instructions that the email I got from the castle said. The gatekeepers wife invited me in, so there we sat snug and warm as it poured outside talking about our dogs, hers were right there. What a nice person and memory.



There's a group, very serious group called Andante who do archaeological tours and they are doing one walk next July  800 miles coast to coast of England, following Hadrian's Wall, 12.5 miles a day. With an archaeologist/ historian about Hadrian's Wall.  Boy would I love to do that, but I need to be realistic and say I probably can't. I  hate to even admit that.

 Even if I could do the first day somehow (by being carried the last 9 miles?) hahahaa I bet I would not be able to move the second day.  And they are almost boot camp militaristic about your fitness.

There's another group called the Wayfarers who also do Hadrian's Wall, they seem a lot more civilized and laid back,  and who seem to have the weather covered as well, and admit it can get nasty that time of year.  Since it froze me to death last July at Dover and the rain blew sideways when it had been a gorgeous sunny day at Hampton Court the day before, I have a lot of respect for British weather.

Can you imagine paying to walk 12.5 miles a day in howling cold rain? I mean can you? When you can walk a few feet of it yourself on a nice day alone? But without the tutoring in archaeology I guess.

Darn.

I've been to Hadrian's Wall, Vindolanda, Housesteads, we took a week once and stayed in the area, three of us, rented car, will never forget it, but I guess it's the cachet of saying one walked across England (one barely gets to the mailbox so one is definitely dreaming here), but a man's reach should exceed his grasp, right? hahahaha Or what's a heaven for!

I came IN to say that last night I "discovered" Louise Penny by picking up for some reason A Fatal Grace.  It's a mystery which so far takes place at Christmas!

I had bought it some time ago, it was on my TBR stacks (plural and in triplicate) , and it fell actually while trying to straighten up the piles and stacks of books which are MY hidden lot here, and I read the first page and was hooked.

I love the way she starts the book, and the way she writes. No cutsey Christmassy  puns here, and the characters, SO well written, leap off the page at you. It's set in Montreal, I've not read any book set in Montreal, have never been there, looks like I missed something. She won an award for her first novel, Still Life. This is apparently her second novel, but you don't need to have read the first one to enjoy it, I haven't. Her detective is called (he's yet to show up, we're getting characters just like Agatha Christie, it's very Christie like in its literate  writing and character development) but apparently he's called Chief Inspector Gamache.  We touched on it here a LONG way back, have any of you read her books?

It's GOOD and so is she and since it IS a Christmas mystery I wanted to bring it here so if you like well written literate "Christmas mysteries," you won't want to miss this one. I think I have more of hers, didn't she just write one everybody is hollering about? I need all of hers  now.

The Holiday Memories discussion, by the way, has a beautiful Pearl Buck short story, made me tear up, but HEY!   One has become a blubbering idiot at Hallmark commercials.

If you can get your hands on Christmas Crimes at Puzzel Manor and it's spelled that way deliberately, by Simon Brett, it's my all time favorite Christmas Mystery.

In it the author challenges the reader with a puzzle at the end of each chapter for the guests at the manor Puzzel Manor to solve. A lot of people don't like it because he never solves the last one and leaves it to YOU and he's...CLEVER.... very very clever.  But I love it. And I did NOT solve the last one, not smart enough, until the third year I read it with a friend and SHE got it. It's a perfect book to give to a friend and discuss the chapters  as you go. I guarantee  you there will be ONE you can't get.

Joan K, LOVE that and hope to remember it for the future!

  Ho ho ho!

[MaryPage]

Oh! Oh! Oh!  Charlotte Macleod's REST YOU MERRY.

One of the funniest books I've ever read in my entire life, and all about Christmas and a mystery.

Fun!  How COULD I have forgotten that one?

Does anyone else remember some extremely funny books written decades and decades ago by a (then) famous woman, one of which was titled, I think:  Our Hearts Were Young and Gay?

OK;  I just looked it up.  Cornelia Otis Skinner.  Funny, funny book.  As I remember, quite loosely, it was about their travels in Europe.

That was back when "gay" meant jolly and happy.

[ginny]

Oh yes, YES,  Charlotte MacLeod,  and her first one Rest You Merry is the best, I loved that whole series, you are right!

Oh, I must find  Our  Hearts Were Young and Gay, it sounds wonderful!! THANK you!

Best travel book I ever read was Down the Nile  by the woman who rowed down the Nile by  herself, can't think of her name now, young woman, just out of this world interesting.

[Babi]

  I think I've read "Rest You Merry".  I'd have to take a look at it to be sure.
 I think I've read some of Louise Perry, too.  My rememberer doesn't work so good. Ah, so sad when a great mind begins to go. 

[bellemere]

Yesterday was my Book Club's annual Christmas luncheoun, and my "secret Santa" gave me "Little Bee"; said she had heard me say I had to buy it for my Seniorlearn book discussion group. Another member, my "Nuyorican" friend, received Isabel Allende's "Island Beneath the Sea" which looked fascinaing.  Her secret Santa got a version in Spainsh and she was grateful, says she knows she needs to work at keeping it.
So I am all set for January.  Meanwhile, I am howling at another Pym: :Crampton Hodnet"  and finishing the Aiice Munro stories, some a little bizarre, but all unforgettable. 
Still debatinjg about an ereader, specifically The Nook.  What is the difference between the two models?  The more expensive one is designated "3G"
Does that refer to addtional memory capability?  I though the books were not stored in a traditional computer way, but stored "out there" somewhere, on the Net, and just downloaded. Am I wrong? is the extra fifty dollars or so really justified?
Oh, and Iwas a secret Santa, giving Kristin Lavransdatter: The Bridal Wreath to my fellow member.  She has been reading "Pillars of the Earth" and says she is in a medieval mood. 
Way to go, Steph!  Get everything out of these holidays that can help you.  We happen to have been struck with some health probems, nothing too serious yet, but kind of casting a shadow over the holidays.

[MaryPage]

Basically, to nudge memories, REST YOU MERRY is about decorating the outside of homes until it gets beyond ridiculous;  but it is also a murder mystery.  I seem to recall the "detective" or, more properly in this case, sleuth, is a college professor and it all takes place in an imaginary college town.  Roar out loud all alone by yourself kind of funny, I guarantee.

[pedln]

It's Louise Penny, not Perry.  Oh I wish I had time to start the Christmas titles recommened here, but Little Bee, from the library, is sitting unopened, while I read and enjoy Major Pettegrews Last Stand (DILs book that I can keep forever) and The Naked Gardener by LB Gschwandtner -- a .99 bargain for my Kindle that I started while travelling at Thanksgiving, and am enjoying -- a contemporary novel about an intergenerational group of  women and their relationships with the men in their lives (or not in their lives).  To marry or not, to have children or not, how to feel good about themselves, how to be independent, what can they do to save their small Vermont town.

Bellemere, I had to laugh about your "Nuyorican" friend.  I haven't heard that word for a long time. When we lived in Puerto Rico in the 60's and early 70's there was great concern among educators about the number of  "Nuyorican" children and teenagers returning to the island unable to read or write Spanish.  I love the secret Santa idea.  

MaryPage, I think I saw the movie Our Hearts Were  Young and Gay way back when -- my mother must have taken me.  Why am I thinking that one of them (Cornelia or Emily) played herself in the film -- or is that just the kid thinking.

Bellemere -- re:3G, 4G -- means you can download your book from anywhere there is cell phone activity.  Wi-fi -- (I have this) -- can download wherever there are wireless connections -- Panera, McDonalds, the library, I have it at home, Starbucks, etc.  I don't think it has anything to do with memory.

[Tomereader1]

I think the spelling, Penny was correct, and oh, yes, her books are a delight to read.  She is Canadian, and her books come out under different titles in the U.K. so if you're buying, be careful of that.

[ginny]

Yes Penny is definitely correct, I don't know what little devil made me spell it Perry but I did and I changed it and isn't she wonderful? I want to read everything she wrote, she just WRITES so well.

Oh gosh she's so pretty! They have her photo in the back of the book. Her first book, Still Life, won the Anthony,  the New Blood Dagger, the Arthur Ellis, and Barry and the Dilys awards. This book, A Fatal Grace, won the 2007 Agatha Award for Best Novel. She does live in Montreal. Oh gosh she's gorgeous in this photo.  She has a website: www.louisepenny.com.

[Tomereader1]

You can sign up to receive her monthly blog at her website!  She talks to you just like you were a dear friend!

[ginny]

Oh and her latest Bury Your Dead which is why I started reading her, I've got but on an e reader, I need to hold it in my hand.

It's won according to her website, "We've had some wonderful news. THE BRUTAL TELLING (book 5 in the Gamache series) has won the 2010 Anthony Award for Best Crime Novel in the United States! What an astonishing moment that was. And continues to be.

THE BRUTAL TELLING has also won the Agatha Award for Best Traditional Mystery in the US (the first series in history to win three Agathas in a row). "

I am so a fan.

[serenesheila]

PEDLIN, The most enjoyable book that I read this year was:  "Major Pattigrew's Last Stand".  I feel sure that I could reread it yearly, and enjoy it.  It is a simple, quiet book, with a great message, IMO.

Sheila