Cushla's 2011 books - chapter 3

Welcome to my third thread!

Chapter 2 is back here.

Chapter 1 is here.

Currently reading:

A History of Modern Britain by Andrew Marr - p 160 of 600
The Calculus Gallery by William Dunham

____________________

I'm leaving in this list of books I made at the start of the year. I won't get through all of them this year, but they're on my radar.

War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy FINISHED JUNE 2011
The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann
A Place of Greater Safety by Hilary Mantel
Nixonland by Rick Perlstein
Rough Crossings by Simon Schama
Citizens by Simon Schama
This time is different by Carmen Reinhardt and Kenneth Rogoff
Life and Fate by Vassily Grossman
Testament of Experience by Vera Brittain
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
The rise and fall of the 3rd Reich by William Shirer
Germany 1945 by Richard Bessel
Masters and Commanders by Andrew Roberts
The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver
The Children's Book by A S Byatt
Death by a Thousand Cuts by Michael Graetz and Ian Shapiro READ IN DECEMBER 2010

January
1. Case Histories by Kate Atkinson - 4 1/2 stars - Orange January and TIOLI first in series
2. As Always, Julia by Joan Reardon - TIOLI Christmas present - 4 stars
3. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot - TIOLI top LT books of 2010 - 4 stars
4. A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers by Xiaolu Guo - 1 star
5. Manhattan, When I was Young by Mary Cantwell - 3 1/2 stars
6. Dissolution by CJ Sansom - 4 1/2 stars

February
7. Dark Fire by C J Sansom - 4 1/2 stars
8. A Fork in the Road: A Memoir by Andre Brink - 4 stars
9. An Unfinished Business by Boualem Sansal - 4 1/2 stars
10. God's Philosophers by James Hannam - 3 1/2 stars

March
11. Mornings in Jenin by Susan Abulhawa - 4 1/2 stars (TIOLI Middle East challenge)
12. Major Pettigrew's Last Stand by Helen Simonson - 4 1/2 stars - TIOLI City on p 17 (Split)
13. Black Mamba Boy by Nadifa Mohamed - 3 1/2 stars - TIOLI City on p 17 (Aden)
14. February by Lisa Moore - 4 1/2 stars

April
15. Sovereign by C J Sansom - 5 stars
16. Revelation by C J Sansom - 4 stars
17. The Secret Lives of Baba Segi's Wives - Lola Shoneyin - 3 1/2 stars - TIOLI Orange longlist
18. The Pleasure Seekers by Tishani Doshi - 4 stars - TIOLI Orange longlist
19. A Month in the Country by J L Carr - 4 stars
20. The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins - 4 1/2 stars
21. The Magician's Nephew by C.S. Lewis - 3 stars

May
22. Children of the Revolution - also known as The Beautiful Things that Heaven Bears - by Denaw Mengistu - 4 stars
23. The Terracotta Dog by Andrea Camilleri - 4 stars

June
24. War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy - 5 stars
25. Miss Buncle's Book by D E Stevenson - 5 stars
26. Henrietta's War by Joyce Dennys - 3 1/2 stars
27. The Imperfectionists by Tom Rachman - 4 stars
28. O Pioneers! by Willa Cather - 5 stars
29. Every Light in the House Burnin' by Andrea Levy - 3 1/2 stars
30. The Globalization Paradox by Dani Rodrik - 4 1/2 stars
31. Schachnovelle (Chess Story) by Stefan Zweig - 4 1/2 stars
32. Far to Go by Alison Pick (touchstone wonky) - 3 1/2 stars

July
33. Troubles by J.G. Farrell - 4 stars
34. The Snack Thief by Andrea Camilleri - 3 1/2 stars
35. Miss Ranskill Comes Home by Barbara Euphan Todd - 3 1/2 stars
36. The Solitary Summer by Elizabeth von Armin - 3 1/2 stars
37. Moonwalking with Einstein by Joshua Foer - 4 stars
38. The Warden by Anthony Trollope - 5 stars
39. The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid - 4 1/2 stars

Source of books:
1. Bought in 2010 - 4 books (1, 4, 8, 33)
2. Presents - 3 books (2,5, 21)
3. Bought in 2011 for book club - 1 book (3)
4. Bought in 2011 for no good reason... 24 books (6,7,9,10, 11,12,13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 22, 23, 25, 26, 27,28, 30, 31,32, 34,35,37,39)
5. Bought before 2010 - 5 books (19, 20, 24, 29, 36)
6. Free e-books - 1 book (38)

Favourite books read in the first half of the year:

Fiction:

Non-fiction:

Links to my other threads:

My Europe Endless Challenge: (and it really is endless for me, because I keep reading books set in England...) here.

My non-fiction thread: here.

The 50 states challenge: here.

and my Canadian challenge: here.

All of these prove the rule that as soon as I start a specific challenge, my brain will make me read anything else.

And now for some food and drink. I would plonk George Clooney and a Nespresso machine here, but I think that'd be breaching copyright.

I'll be back when I've found the thread on how to add photos... it's been a while since I did it.

These pics are from Lugano in the Italian part Switzerland, on my trip with Teresa a few weeks ago . we got off the train, and lo! The food was GOOD! And the coffee. The coffee alone was worth the 3 hour train trip.

Our railway station espresso:


Teresa eating pizza:


We didn't buy anything from here though... grosses me out and there have been a few times I've picked up meat in the supermarket to find that it's Pferd.

What is Pferd, Cushla?

Neigh neigh...

Found you and starred you, Cushla!

That coffee looks good indeed!

Great pictures! This looks just like the place where I was having pizza 2 years ago. Was it a piazza in the center of Lugano?

Where I live you can get fantastic pizza and espresso coffee everywhere, but so far I didn't see them selling Pferd! But back in Frankfurt in the great market halls there's a stand specialized on it. I never (knowingly) ate it in my life. But it can happen to you in Germany in the region around Cologne. Should you ever have a "Rheinischer Sauerbraten", better ask before ordering if it's Rind or Pferd... :-)

Hey Cushla in Switzerland! Love your pics! And I see you gave O Pioneers 5 stars - I LOVED that book - Willa Cather is one of the great discoveries I have made since joining LT. Here descriptions of the red fields and oh, just stunningly evocative. Congratulations on War and Peace - and on still managing to squeeze in other books in the same months! Most impressed. Gorgeous daughter you have...

#6: I think I am glad I am a vegetarian. . .

>11 alcottacre:: I didn't know you were, Stasia! So am I ! No Pferd-eaters here.
Cushla, the trip to Italy sounds fun. I agree it's worth traveling for good coffee. It sounds like you've found the food "less than good" in Switzerland -- is that true? I'm not sure why, but that surprises me.

#12: I am the only one in my family who is, Laura.

Oh! Pferd!!!! Ugh! Glad you explained that, Cushla!!!

#3 - I didn't know you had all these other threads, Cushla. I have found and starred them all now.

3: All of these prove the rule that as soon as I start a specific challenge, my brain will make me read anything else.

Heh. I created the non-fiction challenge in May and feel obligated to keep it alive, and yet, what do I have lined up for June? I'm midway through the first of 3 fiction books that I expect will occupy most of the month.

Ha, yes I thought there'd be a reaction to the horse meat!

Nathalie, you're lucky with the coffee down there! I will DEFINITELY remember that abuot the Rheinischersauerbraten and tell my husband. And yes it is a piazza in the middle of town - not on the huge square, but when you go down to the bottom of the cablecar up to the train station, you turn right and there's a square off there. (I'm not explaining this very well). And there's a horse butcher here on our tram line.

Laura, there is *some* fabulous food here - the bakeries are amazing and I must take some pics before we leave. Every gooey cake under the sun, beautifully decorated, tons of different bread, and of course chocolate things all over the place. But overall I do not love Swiss food. And I did a rant about the coffee over on Prue's thread this morning. The dinner kind of food tends to be more traditional and heavy than at home. We are spoiled in NZ with great ingredients (esp fresh fish and good meat) and imaginative cooking from all over the world, and here you can get it but you have to look harder and pay much more. We've found some very nice restaurants but the favourites list is much shorter list than in other cities. Mind you, we have 2 small kids and hardly go out at night! In the Italian part of Switzerland (where Lugano is) it was just like being back in Italy - fabulous food, really friendly people even when they didn't know you, and huge smiles at Teresa. I wasn't expecting such a big contrast. The service in shops and restaurants can be astoundingly rude compared to the average in NZ or the US, until they get to know you. But sometimes it's great - but I notice if it is!

Janet, you're not missing much on those threads because I usually paste a version of what's here on my main thread, but you might like qebo's NF group.

Qebo, I will have some new stuff for my thread over there but now I have THREE NFs on the go and all are going to be slow. Funny that you're reading 3 fictions this month! So I guess I'll be hanging out here talking about horsemeat for a while.

Hi Cushla, I'm glad I had time to check out your old thread which brought me here, whereby I learned a new word "pferd" and all I want to know is how can you tell. Must they indicate what it is before it is bought, is it less expensive..........egads! I think I need an expresso!

All the meat's labelled - but it looks kind of like... um... maybe venison or lamb? I haven't looked THAT hard because the couple of times I've picked it up I've put it straight back.
I will investigate more fully and report. I'm sure it's cheap. It's in my French supermarket too...

It's funny though - why do I think eating cow or pig is any better than horse? Actually we are probably going to go more vegetarian when the kids are a bit older. The more I read the less I like about meat. Spiegel had a big article this week about where your food's coming from and it's pretty offputting - a bit like Michael Pollan's article in the NYT about beef a few years back. We stopped eating beef in New York after that, unless we knew it was from a grass fed country (one day I succumbed and bought some steak at Agata and Valentina for a splurge, and came home and rang a farmer in the Midwest to see if the cows were grass or grain fed. He was lovely, and it was grass fed, but you could tell he thought "here is another of those East coast nutters!" (And the beef was nice.))

I've been veggie to varying degrees since high school, and much as I cringe at horse and dog and such, I figure we're in no position to criticize logically, it's a cultural thing.

The fiction is because I've been wanting to read The Sparrow and I completed several non-fiction books to free myself, and I got The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet for the group read, and while I was reading a book about Newton and Kepler and Tycho Brahe, I had a flash of memory about the Mushroom Planet books, which I read at the appropriate age in the late 1960s. And my reading pace is not up to 75 books per year so I'm aiming for 60...

Hi Cushla, I'm not much of a meat eater and I assure you that Pferd is on the VERBOTEN list! Now that pizza with it's meaty toppings definitely looks yummy. And, as always, Teresa is such a cutie-pie!

I imagine you got much satisfaction from crossing War and Peace off your list. I see The Magic Mountain is still there. Let me know when you start it and I'll join you. No rush! I've been thinking about reading it for two years now.

I'm glad you had fun at the London meetup. When you get back to New Zealand, you'll have to plan a gathering for the down-under LTers.

Thanks for the explanation about Swiss food, Cushla! Makes complete sense.

Hi Cushla, passing through on my way to see if I can make sense somewhere.

I so enjoy learning about areas other than the US! Thanks for all the information.

I too am very glad I'm a vegetarian.. love the picture of your daughter, very cute.

I'm not a coffee drinker, and I definitely wouldn't be a Pferd eater but that pizza looks fantastic. Teresa certainly looks like she's enjoying it, what a cutie!

Just talked to my parents - we might meet in Lugano in 2 weeks! They are spending some days there with a friend and invited me to join them.

I am quite sure our restaurant was at least very close to yours, I clearly remember the cable car station. The pizza was really good, but they served a huge pizza bread for free (as appetizer??) before the real pizza, so we all couldn't finish.

I know what you mean about Swiss food, remembering my holidays in Switzerland. It's okay, but quite heavy and sometimes also quite bland. It's similar here where I live. Coming from a big, international city where you could get almost everything and fresh (the fish! the fruit!!), I moved to a place which offers a good, hearty, regional cuisine, but nothing else. I miss certain spices and herbs which are simply not available and some things I've really gotten used to, like sushi or mangoes. But on the plus-side: great coffee and pizza and applestrudel.

Found your new thread Cushla. Needless to say the calculus book has gone straight on my wishlist!

One of the things I love about Melbourne is the range of food that is available - even in Warrbambool I can get fresh coriander and fresh curry leaves, durian, bitter melon - and all kinds of asian staples, Italian foods - there is nothing I have needed to complete a recipe that I couldn't find - even buffalo milk mozzarella....

Calculus *shiver* in fact mathematics *shudder* gives me nightmares wherein I'm naked in front of a room full of porn stars required to solve a quadratic equation and they all know how to do it and I don't. Math *cringe* should not be taught by rigid, small-minded sadists who like to humiliate the innumerate. Yet it is, as it ever was.

Richard, spurred on by your comment about rigid, small-minded sadists, perhaps this is as good a moment as any to tell everyone that I am going to be applying to Teachers' College once we're home to retrain as a high school maths (and economics) teacher! I will make it my personal challenge to make you get how to solve a quadratic equation... and ENJOY IT!

Edited to add that I have not told my FB friends yet, well only some of them one by one, so please if you are talking to me over there do not blab - a few are going to be quite stunned.

Heather you would really like this book.

Prue, I know what you mean - Wellington is the same. And all of it is open on a Sunday too...

OK I have to go back to my Dani Rodrik book now - it's really good. And I'm meant to be doing this readathon and Suzanne might find me talking instead.

Cushla, GOOD! A teacher with some verve and a way of making difficult things interesting enough to care to solve will make a huge difference in Kiwiland's youth's horror and fear of mathematics. Plus you know how to laugh, which I suspect was a skill chemically removed from my algebra and trig teachers.

I had a geometry teacher who was like that. His class was th only one that didn't make me want to unswallow as I walked in the door, and faint with relief as I left.

Thanks, Richard! I hope it works out. I love teaching maths and am really looking forward to it. I'm glad you had at least one decent math teacher and I hate reading about smart people being turned off maths early.

Here's a clip that I played (very loudly in a big lecture theatre) to my calculus class at uni at the end of 6 weeks of derivatives and integrals:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P9dpTTpjymE

>33 cushlareads:: oh geeky math humor, I love it! It's great how they posted the lyrics with the video clip. They're very clever.
Why is it that the quadratic formula is still lodged in my brain even though I have no use for it?
I applaud your career decision, Cushla!

Cushla: I just returned from Budapest, Vienna and Prague. The food sounds like it is similar to Switzerland. Though it is good, it is so heavy that you can only eat it once in a while. We ended up eating pizza and shwarma a lot because we could not handle all the heavy food. For example Bavarian chicken, which was pounded chicken fried and covered with a garlic and sour cream sauce over an enormous bed of fries. Oh there was a salad with it. It included a piece of iceberg lettuce, two pieces of tomato and two pieces of cucmber. It was a huge meal and really good, but I just could not eat like that everyday.

32: I recall an English teacher with similar qualities who instilled in me a horror and fear of literature...
33: :-)
34: I OTOH use the quadratic formula regularly. Why do I still remember the name of Emily Dickinson's dog? I suppose that's why they trap us in school while our minds are still absorbent.

#33 Love the link, this one was my personal favourite from university. A capella group theory
:-)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BipvGD-LCjU

#31 - Cushla, just want to say "good for you" on the teacher thing. I have a fair few friends who have retrained as teachers, and every one of them is glad they did, and says they are much better teachers than they could have been in their 20's. I'm sure you would love it and be great at it.

Yes, echoing the 'good for you' about your decision. I hope your friends back home won't be too stunned by the news when they hear it.

I am another who is clueless about maths. Both those videos were like Greek to me. No, Greek I could cope with, they are like a language entirely outside the Indo-European family, without any familiar reference points for me.

Like Richard, geometry was the only bit of maths I enjoyed, and that was because it had immediate practical use for me. I liked making things, so being able to measure and draw angles, sub-divide circles with my compass etc were all useful skills. A teacher who could make the rest of it interesting, fun and/or relevant would have been great.

Yes, the world needs all the really good and passionate teachers we can get! Those youtube clips are funny, how do you find things like that?

Hello Cushla - good on you for the new career choice! Thank goodness there was English Literature - I would never have gone to University on a maths ticket. I've been over to your Reading Europe thread - note to self: must move the Phillip Kerr book (s) I have a bit further up the pile....

What a wonderful decision!!
I hated maths at school and really had bad marks until I got a new teacher for the last two years and somehow he was able to show us the beauty(!) of this subject. I finished school with '1' and '2' maths grades (which I guess are A and B in the US). A teacher can make all the difference, and I am sure you will be a great one!

What a great decision Cushla!
A good teacher makes a massive difference. I was always OK with maths, and lucky to have had a fantastic teacher in year 11, and he had a sense of humour too! But I had an awful teacher for year 13 calculus and I actually pretty much gave up on that class half way through the year.

Love the youtube videos :-)

I loved university calculus, wasn't a genius at it, but still was so drawn to the preciseness and "neat column-ness" of it all :-) (am not a genius at english either as you can see).

Have added O Pioneers! to my wishlist- looks like a goodie.

Cushla, I'm another one who is applauding your career decision. I had the Algebra teacher from Hell. No wonder I freaked out about mixing up my letters and numbers! Geometry was Paradise after that experience.

I think numbers are so cool after learning about the Fibonacci sequence. I recently saw a YouTube video on it. Mind blowing stuff!

Wow, a new thread and so many posts already!

I thought I'd come over here to respond to your comments on your previous thread. I think learning vocabulary is a lifelong process (even in your native tongue), but I bet you've picked up lots more than you realise, especially since you're immersed in German, even the strange, guttural, Swiss kind! I've never been to Basel, but I hear it's very beautiful and I hope you enjoy the rest of your time there. And it's great that you have exciting plans for when you get home.

I'm interested to see your many challenge threads. Challenges have the same effect on me - I'm doing the Five & Dime Challenge as a sort of alternative to the 11 in 11 and find I'm mostly reading books that don't fit my categories! Still, like you, I'm not putting a time-limit on it - I think we're much more likely to "succeed" that way.

OK, 46 messages and I haven't finished a book on this thread yet. But I am about to go to bed and finish reading The Globalisation Paradox - 100 pages left.

Thanks for all your lovely comments, it is so cool to see widespread approval! I will keep you posted. I have to apply by the start of December, and do an interview, but it should be ok... cross your fingers.

It also floors me how many of you didn't like maths - I know you are all smart and it just doesn't have to be hard. It's also funny that 3 of you have mentioned liking geometry most - my least favourite. I had 2 great high school maths teachers, and 2 terrible ones, but my Dad taught me tons and most importantly taught me to love the subject. Then at uni I had a couple of brilliant lecturers and some very mediocre teachers who were obviously geniuses but couldn't communicate...

And Megan, I know exactly what you mean about calculus - it is so beautiful so often. Not that most teenagers will believe me!

Heather, that a capella Group Theory video clip is fantastic - not much use for school but extremely funny. Especially the guy who sings "Group of Threeeeeeee" near the end! Leonie, I think I found the I will Derive one from a maths teaching website - there is some great stuff out there for serious teaching ideas and funny things now. I think if you were motivated now and had a bad teacher you could easily fix things up with Youtube vids of good math lessons.

#35 jmaloney, it is nice to see you back here! That meal sounds just like a typical Swiss one. And yes, the iceberg lettuce and slice of tasteless tomato is familiar too.

Prue, definitely move the Philip Kerr books up. I still haven't read past the first but it was really good and I have the next 5 here.

Rebeki, yes I think I am starting to accumulate vocab much faster than I was - i've just noticed that reading Spiegel etc I'm getting lots from the context. But it's mostly from reading - the spoken Swiss german is very hard, and we live in an expat bubble a bit with the kids at international school. I'll keep going.

Wonderful news about you and the teaching, Cushla! Congrats on that decision!

Thanks Stasia! Cross your fingers.

Fingers duly crossed!

Good for you Cushla. You'll be great! There is nothing like the total satisfaction of seeing a child "get" a difficult polynomial or, for me, the satisfaction of teaching a child to read for the first time. Bliss.

...p...p...poly...polynom...*flees screaming*

Good luck with the Maths teaching. I've just bought a book on how to help kids with their Maths homework. I wasn't bad at Maths at all but suspect I've forgotten most of it at the moment. I know this is rather far in advance but I can rarely resist buying something from the Book People leaving books in our office each month, and it's not as interesting a selection as in the catalogue, so I end up getting odd things.

I had the same teacher for three years of high school math. He used to collect our homework, assign new problems, then have us work on them in class while he sat at his desk reading romance novels. Sigh. I wish I could have had you as a teacher.

Congrats on the decision! Heartily approve -- for what that is worth!!

Throwing out a wild theory on the geometry -- I found as a non-math type that I could relate to it more readily in some areas. after all, I just had to look around to see angles and shapes of the kind geometry explores. I could see the applicability of this to real life in a way that was just missing from algebra as it was taught (or mis-taught). Math was the only class I ever did actively badly in in high school, and I got a 3 out of 7 on the IB exam -- and was relieved to get that!! (vs 6s in French, History, Social Anthropology; 7 in English, 5 in Biology...)

Maybe if I had taken other science courses, and been able to learn math and physics or chemistry simultaneously, that would have helped? Not sure, but I definitely have a math phobia. Don't get me wrong, I can look at a balance sheet and see if something is wacky; compute a price/earnings ratio, understand why short interest is relevant and what it is and all those applied things, but that's not really math. That's arithmetic applied to the financial world.

I love the new thread, and your decision to retrain as a maths teacher! If I didn't say so already, I also loved your review of Every Light in the House Burnin'.

Cushla: All this math talk is causing me heart burn. I strangely liked trig and algebra was fine. I HATED geometry and refused to learn calculus.

It must feel great to have made a decision on what you want though. Even if it involves making my brain hurt!

31: Congrats on the decision to transform into a HS math teacher. It's a route I tried myself, so I know from experience that it's really difficult and really important. I wish you well.

Curious the reactions people have to math in its various manifestations. I know someone who was mystified by fractions until algebra made sense of the procedures, someone who has trouble balancing an equation but is philosophically drawn to calculus, a bunch of people who fear algebra but enjoy the visual aspect of geometry, people who love proofs, people who hate proofs. I took awhile to get over the hurdle of calculus. I could do it perfectly well, but the applications are physics, which I viewed with suspicion. Only in recent years have I grasped how significant a conceptual breakthrough it was historically.

Oof - I'm so behind! But tracked you down :) Congrats on the teaching decision by the way - if I wouldn't have to go to the UK for a year I'd love to train for upper school English teaching. May pass on the maths though - quadratics was about as far as I got though I do deal with quite a lot of accounts (yuck) these days.

Starred your new thread...
I hope you LOVE your new career!

I also suffered math(s) teachers without communication skills. Cushla, you definitely have those skills- I think you will be a fantastic teacher!

Sorry for neglecting my own thread - I have had a crazy week with my husband away and end of year school things for the kids and the school fair yesterday. I think I've got my breath back now!

More awful maths teacher stories...Lisa yours sounds especially awful! Suze, interesting theory about geometry being easier to relate to in real life. I think there's something in that, and I definitely think doing science at the same time does help with maths. But the apps for maths aren't just hard sciences - there are some good economics and medicine examples once you get into a bit of calculus - although I am trying to work through a 7th form physics textbook before the start of next year, because it has so many good applications if I'm teaching senior school maths to students who do like science. I did no science past 4th form (grade 9 I think - 14 years old) but that was unusual, but it didn't hold me back. I did find some of the things in 2nd year calculus at university pretty abstract without physics though (Qebo - line integrals and Green's Theorem in the plane... I still remember something about trying to measure the circumference of the earth, taught by a prof who was not good at explaining, and I really did not care. As you said about calculus, I could do it but I didn't get it .)

Bekka it's a shame you'd have to go back to England for a year and there's no online option because you'd be great! I could do most of my training (except the placements in schools) online if I wanted but the Faculty of Ed is a 5 minute drive from our house at home, past my favourite caramel-slice-and-latte-making deli.

jmaloney, yes it does feel great to have decided, even if it makes people shudder when they hear my choice!

Anyway, I finished a book, and it was a solid one too. I'd had trouble finding the touchstone till I realised I was doing English English spelling. Book 30 was The Globalization Paradox by Dani Rodrik , which is the book I went up a ladder in the London Review Bookshop to find and it cost a whole 16 pounds, so it's a good thing it was worth 4 1/2 stars! I'll post some comments tomorrow - I'm trying to get dinner on the table at the moment but didn't want to ignore my own thread any longer...

Sounds really interesting! *timorously* It...it...doesn't have...equations...does it?

Richard - not an equation to be seen!!

*boldly tromps to Amazon to get book*

Hi Cushla.

I'm interested in learning your comments re. your most recent read.

Hi Cushla, so school holidays started in Switzerland as well? In Italy they started on Thursday last week and they will last 3 full months (German school children with their 6 weeks would be terribly jealous if they knew). Any nice holiday plans?

I am reading The God Delusion right now and it is a very intense experience. I am highlighting whole sections and yesterday I spent half of the day thinking about my own not so consistent approach to faith and religion. I have no idea how I will ever be able to write a review for that book.

Linda, comments on Dani Rodrik's book coming but not today because I have *got* to clean the apartment up and do some German homework!

Nathalie, the kids are at the international school so our holidays are slightly different, but we have 8 weeks off starting next Wednesday. We're having a week in Graubuenden, over in the east of Switzerland, in a Reka holiday place in early July - it has the same kind of set-up as the one we stayed in for our skiing trip in December. Then 10 days later - gulp - I am taking the kids on my own to Paris and London for 8 nights!! We're getting the train, and hopefully my ipad will arrive before then... we are very excited. I don't expect to see many bookshops or cafes but we should have lots of fun. In August we'll probably do another week away in Germany at a Centerparcs, but I have yet to book it so it might not happen.

I know what you mean about The God Delusion. It was hard to be coherent about what I thought.

Similar experience with The God Delusion here. I'm moving through it very slowly but it's really making me think.

67,68,69: Grrr, you folks have persuaded me to order The God Delusion...

>70 qebo: You will not be sorry. It's an important book.

71: Important why? I'm not a super fan of the "new atheists" in general, find them a tad too convinced of their own rationality, but this opinion is formed from bits and pieces picked up over the years, and I figure I ought to read a whole entire book.

>72 qebo: Important because his refutation of the Designer Conundrum (who designed the designer? who designed that designer? etc etc ad infinitum) is not simply a refutation, but also an offering of an alternative explanation for the improbability of the existence of any given individual that is grounded in observed reality, not in Categorical Denials of Improbable Answers. It's non-theism, not atheism.

#73: Wow, what a sentence (almost too much for my poor brain to process)! :-)
But I agree, and I am finding this book really helpful, although it forces me out of my comfort zone of not believing/ practising, but still using some of the 'goodies'. I fear I will have to let go of those as well.

And I like the expression 'non-theism'.

>74 Deern: LOL Too much for your brain LOL Like I could confuse *you*!

I think "atheism" is so closely linked to "GAWDLESSNESS!!!!!" in public discourse that it's just counterproductive to use the term. "Non-theism" won't catch on because it's so awkward, but the cognoscenti need a self-reference, IM(not-so)HO. "Dawkinsian" is too easily mistaken for *shudder* "Dickensian" *retch*; after that, I got nothin'.

73: Could you split that into a few sentences of explanation? After the first comma (I get the who designed the designer part). Also, I'd suppose a distinction between "non-theism" and "atheism" might be non-necessity vs rejection?

>76 qebo:: re: theisms in general, it might help to refer back to Cushla's review on her previous thread (here), where she restates Dawkins' "spectrum of belief". Richard, does that address what you described as "non-theism, not atheism"? Or are you just looking for a synonym for atheism that doesn't trigger an emotional reaction? If the latter, good luck with that ... :)

77: Yeah, I saw the spectrum of belief, and I'm not wild about it as a concept, as I'd mentioned somewhere, but she says it's less prominent in the book.

>76 qebo: Important because his refutation of the Designer Conundrum (who designed the designer? who designed that designer? etc etc ad infinitum) is more than just a refutation. Dawkins offers an alternative explanation for the essential issue addressed by religion, the improbability of the existence of any given individual...why am I here? why am *I* here? what does this *mean*? His counter-statement, that one is here because there is no reason one shouldn't be (to flippantly paraphrase) is grounded in observed reality, not in Categorical Denials of Improbable Answers, which traditional Atheism a la Madalyn Murray O'Hair and her ilk purveyed. I characterize them as the "THERE IS A GOD!" "NO THERE ISN'T!" etc etc ad infinitum arguments.

>77 lauralkeet: The latter, Laura, so I am doomed. Doomed. For all eternity, DOOMED.

>78 qebo: It isn't a huge part of the argument. It's sort of like the Kinsey 10%...yeah, okay, whatever, we got work to do, belt up Dr. Kinsey.

The issue that boils down to that irritating (to me) phrase: "everything happens for a reason"? Which I think puts it backwards. Anyway, "important" depends on what one is bringing to the book, but there's so much commentary in this group recently that I'm inclined to see what's having such an effect.

Hello Cushla: Hating to throw in something different to such a lively discourse, but I was wondering if you have got to O Pioneers yet? I was completely transported by My Antonia - Willa Cather is not well-known here at all - and have a clutch of her books on rthe Shelves of Shame as a result...so I would love to know what you think of OP.

Prue, I loved O Pioneers! - it was discussed back on the last thread, at the end. I had read Alexander's Bridge and been disappointed, but now I'm going to be looking out for My Antonia. I bet you'll love it!

Qebo, I don't have much to add to Richard's comments. For me it was a book that made me think hard and important in that it has made me want to read a lot more on both sides of the debate. I put the spectrum of belief into my review because it struck me as one of the parts of the book I could easily write about. I didn't even attempt to summarise his argument for the non-existence of God but it took up way more space than the spectrum did. I guess you'll have to read it to see if you get much out of it - hope it arrives soon.

Saying you're an atheist in NZ gets much less (overt, at least) emotional reaction than it seems to in the US. There's plenty of religion in our society, but it's much less out there - and i don't think being an atheist would stop someone becoming Prime Minister, for example.

#82 Bizarrely, I think in the UK we would struggle more with a Catholic PM than with an atheist as PM (which was why there was so much media attention when Tony Blair took communion at a Catholic church). In fact, I have no idea what the current PM thinks about religion/God and I think we actually prefer it that way.

In the UK religion is not a topic for polite conversation. Announcing any sort of strong religious belief or no religious belief generally leads to some swift attempts to change the conversation.

In Italy it would probably be unthinkable to have a non-Catholic president, but that's hardly surprising. And the actual one is not really behaving as should be expected from a Christian. But hey - at least he went to confession (and told the papers about it) after his relationship with an 18year old girl was found out and his wife filed for divorce! Confession didn't help him much in the case of the underage prostitute though, he is currently on trial for that.

In Germany we had the strange situation that religion is basically unimportant for the voters, but two of the main parties have "Christian" in their name and the parties wouldn't accept a minister or candidate for chancellor who claims to be an atheist. Religion plays no role in politics, but people have to pay church tax and most of them silently accept that. You can leave church to avoid those payments, but from then on you are something like an official atheist. You can imagine that every raise in church tax results in many new atheists.

#83 I totally agree - it's def one of those things British people get very British about and don't like to talk about!

I loved it when my hubby and I were over in Djerba (the big island off Tunisia) - there are mosques and temples and various other churches etc and they all got on. Lovely feeling place.

#82 I have only read one Willa Cather - discovered her last year when I read The Professor's House which is on the 1,001 list. It's an interesting read.

Bekka, I meant to find my electronic version of the old 1001 list where I'm recording what I've read - I was hoping that O Pioneers! might be on it. I guess not. But you've reminded me that I've forgotten to cross W&P off the list! Just read the reviews of The Professor's House and it sounds like My Antonia is more popular.

Nathalie, I still find it weird when I read Spiegel articles about the CDU and CSU. Apart from a few fringe groups in NZ who embarrassed all the Christians I know (anyone remember the Christian Heritage Party and their leader, who got done for really nasty sex crimes? ugh), religion's treated a lot like it is in England.

In book news, I am nearly finished my first German novel for the year - Schachnovelle (Chess Story) by Stefan Zweig. I can't put it down and it helps that it's only 110 pages. Poor Andrew Marr is being abandoned yet again.

I am so jealous that you are reading Zweig in German. This is one of my pipe dreams. Maybe next year.....

Janet, it is cool to read it in the original. It still feels like I'm missing a bit though - I don't use a dictionary till I'm finished, and I can get the meaning of all the sentences even with a few missing words of vocab on each page, but I feel like I'm missing an appreciation for the writing because I'm so busy just getting the meaning out. Now I'm planning on going back through it to pull out the vocab.

I have been really busy with end of year stuff and now tomorrow I'm off to Geneva and Vevey till Tuesday to visit friends there. School holidays start Wednesday so it's going to be a while till I have peaceful time on LT again! So, my reviews for the last 2 books are going to be very short.

Book 30 was Dani Rodrik's latest book, The Globalization Paradox: Why Global Markets, States and Democracy can't exist. I gave it 4 stars (was 4 1/2, but a few days of pondering have dinged it a half star).



The touchstone doesn't work, but here's the page link:
http://www.librarything.com/work/10557069

Dani Rodrik is a development economist at Harvard who writes an excellent blog, http://rodrik.typepad.com/ if you're interested in development economics. In this book he argues that attempts to push free trade any further through the WTO are ill-advised (and unlikely to succeed). He starts out with a really good discussion of how the current international financial system developed. Once he's finished with the financial system (by which I mean movements of capital from one country to another and exchange rates), he goes on to international trade. If I were still lecturing economics I'd be recommending this to really good first year students who want some summer reading after they've learnt the basics about comparative advantage.

His main argument is that international trade is hugely beneficial in many situations, but that the benefits of freeing up trade from where we're at are heavily outweighed by the distribtuional problems that come with it, and that the WTO rules are not consistent with letting countries determine their own standards (eg on product safety, food standards, etc). He argues that the rules as they stand currently aren't sustainable, and getting a bit more slack into the system would mean more trade in the long run, rather than resentment building and countries becoming more protectionist. He also argues that a bit less capital mobility (in the form of a financial transactions tax) would be a good thing and has some interesting case studies of countries that have had exchange rate crises brought on after they've done every single thing the IMF required.

Thought-provoking, and better than the Stiglitz book I read last year. (My comments above don't really do it justice, but I did not take any notes when I was going through and I should have!) I'm going to look for his earlier books.

Book 31 was the first book I've read by Stefan Zweig: Schachnovelle (Chess Story). It was really fast to read because I couldn't put it down. I'm not going to give away anything, but the story takes place on a ship soon after World War 2. A chess grand master is on the ship, and ends up agreeing to play one of the other passengers, a wealthy American who isn't in his league. A group of passengers gathers to watch, and the story takes off from there.

I'm going to look for Zweig's other books soon. I gave this one 4 1/2 stars and it has been stuck in my brain for days. If you haven't read this yet, I recommend not reading the reviews because they give a lot away!

I just finished listening to O Pioneers! and updated the TiOLI wiki. As I listened, I realized that I had seen the movie version on television so I knew what to expect. My recollection of the movie is that it was pretty faithful to the book. The reader was a good fit for the book. Her delivery was precise and unrushed, and I thought it fit Alexandra's personality. I hated for it to end! I'll have to add more of Cather's books to my TBR list.

I'm tremendoulsy enjoying the conversations on your thread Cushla. I hope you are having a wonderful vacation with your famiy.

Hi Cushla. The Globalization Paradox looks good--I'm going to add it to my list. I also wanted to say thank you for posting a review of The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears a while back. I think that's what brought it to my attention, when I was looking for a book set in Washington DC, and I've just finished it. It was actually set very very close to where I live, and that made reading it even more special.

The math(s) teacher decision is very exciting--best of luck with that. (My favorite math was always algebra.)

Hi Linda and Carrie - thanks for visiting! Linda, our holidays start on Wednesday and we have a pretty full 8 weeks lined up. I get back on Tuesday, then on Saturday we go to Graubuenden for a week of doing nothing except hanging out at the pool. They speak Romansh over there so it's going to be interesting! (I'm sure they speak German and Italian too so it will be ok.)

>88 cushlareads: Hiya Cushla...link in post #88 is broken, takes one to a "no author selected" screen I've never seen before...loved the review, though!

Anne, I was posting from a window I'd left open for ages so I missed your post. I think you'd really like the Rodrik book too. I just went off to look for your review of The Beautiful Things that H B and couldn't find it yet, but now I re-read your post and see that you've just finished it! Books set really close to home are so special when they're good.

Hi Cushla,

I loved your review of Chess Story. I've had it on my wish list for awhile -- your review makes me determined to find a copy!

Hi Cushla - Chess Story sounds excellent and yours is not the first glowing review I've seen for that book. I think I saw a copy last time I went to the library so I will have to grab it next time.

Very interesting review of The Globalization Paradox - you mentioned you'd recommend it to strong first year students. Are there any economics books you can think of which would be suitable for someone who hasn't really read anything about economics before? The only thing I've read is Freakonomics) by Stephen Levitt.

Hope you have some fantastic holidays!

I, too, added Chess Story to my list. It will be my first Zweig.

Oooh - Chess Story is on the 1,001. Excellent. But unfortunately not on the 500 odd 1,001 e-books I downloaded the other day. Hmmmm... am off to see if my lib has it!

Hey Cushla - going to try and add Chess Story to the WL if it's on BD and Anne! The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears is also going on there, too!

Hi- just cruising by!

Getting caught up with you is a joy, Cushla. Much interesting discussion here.... math, God - or ???, and even some Willa Cather. I must get hold of a Zweig book (in English) and add another author to my repertoire. Are all his books as short as the only one I've seen which was around 100 pages? I can't recall the title; I just remember being surprised by the length.

Oooh - bonus. Library have it. It's far too hot for Will outside today so may saunter over and pick it up after his nap. If I don't melt first...

Chess Story does look really good, I love it when you read the words: I couldn't put it down.

>102 Donna828: Donna, I think his only true novel is Beware of Pity but I could be wrong.

Hi Cushla, I had the same response to Chess Story and even now, many months after reading it, I get chills.

Wish I could read in German...

Have you read The Post Office Girl? Think that I liked that even more. Memo to self: read more Zweig.

>106 Chatterbox:: * copies Suzanne's memo *

I'm back from Geneva and Vevey, and trying to catch up on here...thanks for visiting and I hope you all like Chess Story. Bekka, did you end up getting it from the library? And I'm glad it's on the 1001 - I still haven't found my spreadsheet on the computer!

Heather, I will try to think of some economics books that would be good. The only ones coming to mind at the moment are first year textbooks to understand the exchange rate/macro stuff. Most more interesting things will be much easier to follow if you've worked through a few chapters of textbook first...

Suzanne, I haven't read The Post Office Girl but am going to look for it.

Richard, I'll try to fix that pesky touchstone... Edited to say that I've put in a link to the work page.

Hi Cushla, did you enjoy your trip? I've never been to Vevey, but once went on business to Geneva for a few days and liked it a lot. I wouldn't want to live there though, can't really say why.

I'm glad you liked Chess Story. I read it for the first time app. 25 years ago and since then revisited it every few years. I read other short stories by Stefan Zweig, and though I liked them all (and found them just as intense), Chess Story so far remains my favorite.

Nathalie, I had a really good trip - caught up with 3 friends - but I think I missed Geneva's charms. My main day there was Sunday, and as usual it was almost all shut, plus it was stinking hot. I liked it less than the other Swiss cities I've been to. I've got so spoilt with Basel's trams that turn up every 7 minutes and its cleanliness - Geneva was much grubbier and had buses that I kept getting lost on! (I did love that it was a bit more multicultural than Basel though - it is *very* white here!) Vevey was gorgeous though, absolutely stunning lake and big but not too big. It was weird speaking French again.

The book I've just finished, Far to Go, had me thinking of your Kindertransport book. I'll do a quick review later on but first I need to go and scour the bookshelves for the July TIOLIs!

I really like Zweig, too, and have read nearly all his stories/novellas over the last 2 years (but not the biographies of famous people). Chess Story is probably my favorite, and the only one I didn't like was Fear, but I think it was just because I had overdosed on him at that point. I hope you enjoy Post Office Girl.

I also like Vevey! I used to go there around once a month on business - you can probably guess who I went to see. Usually it was just (very long) day trips, with the only highlight being the lovely train journey along the lake from Geneva airport. But once we stayed overnight in the very posh hotel (4 Crowns, maybe??) overlooking the lake. Wow. Sadly, when I eventually go back to work I probably won't get to do that again, as other people are now completely ensconced in my old role.

Janet I stayed in the 3 Crowns this time!! (With my friend there on business...) And yes I can guess, ha ha. I hope when you get back to work you get some exciting trips somewhere else instead... not that work travel is fun all that often.

I used to visit Geneva frequently on business. But I didn't really experience it. I could have walked from airport to hotel if it weren't for a motorway in between, and it was an easy walk from hotel to office. My visits were usually quite short, an overnight or even a day trip, so I did not need a car and there was little opportunity for sightseeing. I recall going into the city once, and another time staying somewhere on a lake (yeah, I know, that doesn't exactly narrow it down).

OK, I have been through the shelves to hunt for TIOLIs. I don't just read books for the challenges but I do find it a great way to make me pick up some of the books that have been on the bookshelves the longest.

So here's what I'm looking at for this month... I won't get to all of them but hopefully will knock off a few.

#3 - the double double letter challenge - my current book, Troubles by J. G. Farrell fits this one, YAY!

#4 summer - Janet Frame's Towards another summer that I bought in London last month

#5 the no cover art challenge - any of my Persephones fit, I think!! so maybe Miss Ranskill comes Home

#9 the "should read"challenge - Under an English Heaven, borrowed from my friend Georgia (who is on here in the 25 books group :
http://www.librarything.com/topic/106277) back in February!!

#17 - written by a woman, nominated for a prize - The Swimmer by Roma Tearne, on this year's Orange LL

That's it so far... having trouble with the other ones!!

Laura, it's pretty around the lake. I am so affected by my tummy and the weather - I spent the day being a bit hungry and too hot! And I was just thinking of you - I read your 2 1/2 star review of Troubles and Darryl's and Bonnie's 5 star ones. I'm 200 pages in, and I don't know which end I'm heading to yet. I had trouble starting it last year and gave up after 50 pages, but got really into it on the train trip at the weekend. But I feel very able to put it down at the moment, and don't like any of the characters much... so we'll see.

Ooh, I just found a book for Darryl's hot author challenge: Jonathan Foer, author of Moonwalking with Einstein.

I was thinking about Simon Schama or Andrew Roberts, but neither really worked... I don't usually look at photos of authors!

Hey Cushla - I have Troubles on my Shelves of Shame - so I will be very keen to see what you make of it in the end!

Stinking hot. In SWITZERLAND. And some fools think that climate change is a myth.

Richard, FB ate my post the other day when you were talking about Texas! But it's not that unusual for this time of year - apparently one year it got up to 39... um hang on... 102. The other day was *only* 95. Ugh. (But I agree about climate change... just that this isn't much evidence.)

Prue, I have the other 2 in the trilogy waiting too. It's dense and I can almost picture the hotel it's set in, so there's a lot to like, but the main character feels really distant.

Maybe I should just copy your TIOLI list, apart from Miss Ranskill (read) and Under an English Heaven - which may be wonderful but if I don't own it or have it out from the library, and haven't heard of it, it probably doesn't fit in that challenge for me.

Yuk at the hot weather though, maybe in August I will post a challenge to read books that make you feel cooler.

>115 cushlareads:: I liked The Siege of Krishnapur a lot more.
>117 PrueGallagher:: "Shelves of Shame" -- I like that!

>119 cushlareads: FB is doing that a lot, lately. I am a little unnerved, since I've come to depend on it for so much of my news-gathering and gossip-mongering.

39. EW. No matter what scale we're using, EW. It's 21 here now, and that suits me *fine*!

I'm glad you had a good trip Cushla. Oh and yes - Chess Story is sitting waiting for me to read it. It's tiny!

Whenever I see Chess Story talked about I cant help think that it must be about the musical Chess! (I take it it's not :-))

Richard I hope your run of cool weather lasts a while. It's much better here now - 22 today.

Prue, I think you might want to push Troubles a bit further back on the shelves - definitely not a 5 star read for me. I'm almost finished and I just want it to end. Laura, I grabbed the Siege of Krishnapur this morning and can see it's only 306 pages, which is good!

Luci, it's cooled down thank goodness - and next week where we're going (Graubuenden) is forecast to be a chilly 16. That's a bit too cold for summer...

Bekka, don't start reading Chess Story if you're up in the night because you might not be able to get back to sleep.

Megan, I haven't seen Chess but One Night in Bangkok was my favourite song way back in Form 4 or 5. It came on the other day when we were in the car and the kids had to listen to it up loud with me singing (as usual they said "Mum DON'T SING").

as usual they said "Mum DON'T SING

Boy does that sound familiar! Okay, I can't sing worth toffee, but so what!

Cushla, I enjoyed Siege of Krishnapur much more than Troubles, so maybe you will, too - I hope so.

Well I like to think I can, but only in front of my husband and kids, so perhaps that is the problem!! Janet maybe we should start a band of Mothers Who Can't Really Sing.

Finished Troubles,yay, and it got a tiny bit better. Review coming, but so's Christmas...

LOL about Mothers Who Can't Really Sing. I'm thinking there will be plenty of applicants - we'll have to hold auditions.

I used to encourage my mother to sing. She couldn't carry a tune in a bucket, but she had a nice contralto. Her laugh was deep and dark, too.

Your 16 summer day sounds lovely, we're back up to 29.

Book 32: Far to Go by Alison Pick - 3 1/2 stars

http://www.librarything.com/work/10166055


Far to Go is set mainly in the Sudetenland (the areas in Czechoslovakia near the border with Germany) and Prague in 1937 and 1938. It's written by a Canadian author, Alison Pick, and is based on her grandparents' lives. The main character, Marta, is nanny to Pepik Bauer, and very close to him - closer than his mother, almost. His parents, Pavel and Anneliese Bauer, are wealthy Jews in the Sudetenland, where Pavel owns a textile factory. As the novel progresses, Pavel changes from being a secular Jew who knows very little about his religious background to being much more observant. The novel is about life closing in on the family (and to a lesser extent Marta) as Hitler first takes over the Sudetenland then Prague. The detailed part of the story stops before World War 2 starts.

I really liked how Pick showed that a series of small decisions were crucial to what happened to the family, and Marta 's dilemmas were quite convincing. What I didn't like was the way she had a modern looking back story line woven through the book - it felt like a creative writing course device, and the twist wasn't necessary for a good story. A few too many sentences like "The moon rubbed the river's back" early on didn't help. I enjoyed Simon Mawer's The Glass Room more, mainly for his better writing, but this one made me cry.

Overall I found it good, with a different perspective from other Holocaust books I've read, and it would fit really well with the book Nathalie (Deern) recently read about the Kindertransport children.

I beat you over to the book's review page, intending to give the review a thumbs-upping...

Ha, I haven't posted it! Will do on orders though. Hang on. Ygraine's review is excellent, thumb hers instead. I bought it on impulse at Bider and Tanner a while back, and grabbed it when I saw that she'd just finished it.

Uh-huh, Ygraine's review is quite thorough, but I thumbed yours because it's a capsule of impressions, not a thorough dissection of the book. I like REVIEWS, am less eager to read book reports.

Cushla, found you again! Thanks for wonderful reviews : ). O Pioneers! looks fab! And you finished War and Peace - tada!!!

#133 Thanks Richard - I like book dissections too though.

#134 Lit_chick I have lost you and am going to find you now!

Book 33: Troubles by J. G. Farrell - upgraded from 3 to 4 stars
http://www.librarything.com/work/98357


For once I managed to read something I bought last year off the bookshelf!!

I first heard about Farrell's Empire trilogy here on LT, then in 2010 this book won the Lost Booker Prize, awarded for a book that would have been eligibile for the Booker back in 1970 but for a change of rules. This is the first in the trilogy, and it's set in Kilnalough, Ireland between 1919 and 1922.

Major Brendan Archer ("the Major") served in France in World War One, and after the war he goes to visit his fiancee, Angela Spencer. He got engaged to her back in 1916 on a trip home, then they wrote each other lots of letters while he was at the front, but he hardly knew her in real life. But he feels like he already knows her family and the Majestic Hotel that her father Edward owns. Anyway, as soon as he gets to the hotel it's clear that everything's a bit off. The family ignore him, he spends an afternoon desperate for someone to look after him and take his bag and get him some food, and once he finds Angela he can't manage to have a good talk to her. In the mean time, he gets to know the hotel and its residents, lots of whom are old women who don't pay their bills on time. It goes on like this for 450 pages and some of it is very funny in a dry way. The hotel is already in a state of neglect, and it gets worse as the book progresses. The Major stays and ends up more and more involved in helping Edward with the hotel as the Troubles (civil war) in Ireland gets worse and worse. I am pretty useless at spotting metaphors, but even I couldn't miss that the hotel can be taken to represent the British Empire.

I'm not going to give away the plot - we learn right at the start that the Majestic eventually collapses. By the end of the book I felt like I almost knew the characters, the hotel's layout and some of the hundreds of rooms. The description of Ireland was fantastic, and the different perspectives on what was happening in Ireland (Catholic vs. Protestant, English vs. local Irish) were great and convincingly written. The characters were really well described and now that I've finished it, I feel like it was a better book than when I was in the middle of it desperately wanting it to move along a bit faster. I found the Major frustratingly uptight and couldn't relate to Sarah, one of Angela's friends who turns out to be an important character. And as Laura said in her review, there was violence to animals - I am not a huge animal lover but it was really awful, stomach-churningly awful. Richard, you should avoid it because the hotel's cat population grows and grows (also awful).

Yesterday I gave it 3 stars but I've upgraded it to 4 because I think it's going to be one I remember for a long time.

And now I have to go and pack for our holiday! We are taking the laptop, but my husband is going to give me a 10-trip internet ticket (my idea, he is not a total control freak in case you're suspicious) so that I don't spend our week of being At One With Nature In Rural Switzerland online.

Hmmmm - I might give that one a miss for now. Enjoy your hols.

>135 cushlareads:: great review, Cushla. Sounds like we had similar views of this book although you've been kinder in your rating than I was.
I am pretty useless at spotting metaphors Me, too!
Richard, you should avoid it because... LOL!

Great review, Cushla...I think I will get to reading Troubles eventually (well, I like to THINK I will get to all the books on the Shelves of Shame EVENTUALLY) but maybe not for a while...enjoy your holidays!

#135 Great review, Cushla. Make me smile with so that I don't spend our week of being At One With Nature In Rural Switzerland online. Yes - I get that!

Prue, I like to think I'll read all my Shelves of Shame too but I suspect nobody believes me!

Well we made it to Disentis and it is the most remote part of Switzerland we've been to. It's gorgeous too - looks like Heidi was set here, photos coming next week - and totally shut on Sundays, as is most of the country, but Disentis today makes Basel looks like New York City. We've got just enough food till the supermarket opens in the morning... The holiday village we're staying in has a great indoor pool and playground and the biggest noise (apart from children) comes from the 2 goats and their goat bells.

Happily the 3rd Montalbano mystery (The Snack Thief) turned up in the mail right before we left, and I'm getting tons of reading time while the kids are playing so I should finish it today or tomorrow. I brought a huge pile of books with us. I hope you're all having good weekends, and Happy July 4 to the Americans!

>140 cushlareads:: oh my Disentis sounds rather idyllic for a "get away from it all" sort of holiday.

#140 Sounds like my kind of holiday. Enjoy : ) Can't wait to see pics.

Well I guess I should chime in here on Troubles since I did give it 5 stars (so did Darryl, btw) and I guess at the time, it just resonated with me. I never felt that it dragged at all. And yes the cruelty to animals part was hard to take but I guess in my mind they weren't actually being cruel. I just viewed it as part of a fictional story. The ever increasing number of cats was just plain disturbing. I thought it was just brilliant the way he interspersed actual news clippings of the demise of the British Empire. I'm glad, Cushla, that you're finding the more you think about the book, the more you think of the book. That happens to me and often. And guess what? I'm now really looking forward to The Siege of Krishnapur, which is sitting on my shelf. And double bonus, your mention of The Glass Room which is also on my shelf. So I guess you managed to push a couple of books up the stack. LOL.

>143 brenzi:: I'd forgotten how much you liked Troubles, Bonnie. I was mostly blaming Darryl for making me read it :) Seriously, I think you'll enjoy The Siege of Krishnapur as well.

Hi Cushla, I wish you a great holiday in Heidiland!
I liked your review, but I think I'll give Troubles a pass, at least for now. But I might put Disentis on my "places to see" list.

Hope you're having a wonderful time in Switzerland, Cushla. Had I checked your thread sooner I would have hijacked in you pocket again but now I see you've gone without me. Please send pics!

I hope to one day visit Switzerland where some of my maternal ancestors lived.

Troubles was my least favorite of the trilogy. I really like Seige of Krishnapur. I remember really liking The Singapore Grip, but read it so long ago that I can't remember much of it.

I'm vicariously enjoying your European travels. You're certainly making the most of your stay there. When are you returning to NZ? I'm thrilled that we are taking a trip to Australia and New Zealand in October. I'm beginning to get into some reading to prepare. I have Robert Hughs' The Fatal Shore and Bruce Chatwin's The Songlines. Is there anything you can recommend about New Zealand (or Australia)?

#148 I love that you're doing reading to prepare for your travels, that's so cool. If I may make some suggestions....

Jasper Jones by Craig Silvey is a great Australian one. Tim Winton is an Australian author who writes fantastically about real life.
The 10pm Question by Kate De Goldi is a great NZ one.

Im sure Cushla has some recommendations too :-)

I'm here - for another 9 minutes! My husband has been quite shocked that I really have kept away from the computer, and our son doesn't even know that it's here - in the end we left the laptop at home so that he had a week away from the computer.

Bonnie, congrats on your retirement - I hope the first few days off have been very relaxing! (I'm about to catch up on threads so will see in a minute.) I'm looking forward to reading The Siege of Krishnapur too and almost brought it with me. Farrell could really write, and I liked the newspaper cuttings too, and felt like he did an excellent job of showing the situation in Ireland. Hopefully I'll like the other 2 more.

Pics on Saturday, because this stupid computer is so locked down that a) I can't recharge my ipod - no USB port, b) I can't upload photos - no USB port and c) I can't look at Kerry's thread or Luci's because of a kid-proof filter! Now I really want to know what they said. But it is nice and fast. Lori, do you know which part of Switzerland your ancestors are from? It is a stunning country.

Deborah, I am sad that you're going to be in NZ just before we come back but thrilled that you're going there! We leave here at the end of Nov. I loved The Fatal Shore when I read it for a legal history class 20 years ago. I'm hopeless on NZ stuff. Michael King's Penguin History of New Zealand is pretty good and readable though. Anything by Jamie Belich on the Maori Land Wars would also be a good non-fiction book (one of them would be in line for the longest-unread-book-in-my-collection prize.)Ummmmm... I will think and come up with some more ideas. There is a NZ group on here, New Zealand Thingamabrians, that is worth browsing in too.

I finished The Snack Thief and enjoyed it. Now I've picked up a book in the library here (books in at least 4 languages!) called Imprimatur by Monaldi and Sorti , translated from Italian and maybe really good, maybe not. It's 650 pages of historical fiction about Pope Innocent XI and Louis XIV and was very controversial in Italy when it came out. I'm 100 pages in and am not sure what to think yet... hmm, just had a look and there are pretty mixed reviews on here too. So far, a hostel has been quarantined on suspicion of plague but it looks like it might be a murder instead. More needs to happen soon.

Edited to add that Nathalie, somewhere on your thread it says 'n&ked lady' so I am not allowed to view it. And I just remembered in time not to type that on my thread, or I'd be locked out of here till Sunday too...

Oops, the n*ked lady referred to a dog... I'd never thought this could be filtered out, stupid me! I'll go and edit it!
Have a good time!

I'm loving all this discussion about Troubles. I had a quest to find the trilogy and succeeded, but now it sits ignored and forlorn on the shelf. I will read this someday (after I forget about the abused animals), though. Right now, it sounds like the Farrell trilogy will make good winter reading.

Laughing about the n#ked lady! Sometimes I think I need a kiddie filter on the books I read, although I'm getting good about ignoring the ef-word, especially if it fits the story. When it's just thrown in there to be 'cool' is when it gets my dander up!

Hi Cushla...reading something I wonder if you'd like...Everything Beautiful Began After by one Simon Van Booy...extremely pretty writing, very disturbingly sad stories.

I shudder at the thought of being blocked from my own thread ... yikes!

Heh, Laura, I got back in ok!

Donna, I hope you like Troubleswhen you have time - it is well worth reading even if I didn't love it.

Richard, that book looks interesting from the couple of reviews that are there - looking forward to reading your review.

I've nearly finished Miss Ranskill Comes Home, a Persephone book that I bought in London. There are some bits of lovely writing in it, but I have had to suspend disbelief too many times to want to recommend it. Miss Ranskill has been on a desert island since World War 2 started. She survived there for 4 years after she fell out of a cruise ship. Also on the island was another survivor, the Carpenter, who dies at the very start of the book. She makes it back to England thanks to a boat that he'd built and a Navy convoy picking her up.

When she gets back she is so utterly clueless - I could understand if she was just clueless about the war, which is the main part of the story, but she does not do the BLINDINGLY OBVIOUS THING and report herself at the local police station. Instead she leaves her naval escort in a coffee shop and takes off to find an old school friend. Trouble ensues. Plus, you would think that when she finds the old school friend (who is a total pain in the butt) that she'd manage to explain her predicament instead of letting the friend rabbit on for ages.

Nathalie, great, I will try again soon! (Money about to run out.) It's 7.30 and I'm about to go for a big walk - there are Nordic walking tracks everywhere. I didn't bring my poles (60 francs, used once so far...) but some of the walks are pretty easy.

Oh I so wanted to be Heidi! Can't wait to see your pics, Cushla - sounds picture postcard perfect

Eek, timed internet usage. I dont like the sound of limits!

>115 cushlareads: I had to laugh about n*ked lady being blocked. It's also the name of an amaryllis that blooms without any leaves showing.

Mamzel, those flowers are weird but pretty! And well done on remembering a *.

Finished Miss Ranskill Comes Home and will write a quick review once we're back next week (before the Big Trip To London And Paris On My Own with the kids the following week. Gulp.) And now I've nearly finished The Solitary Summer by Elizabeth von Armin - it seems that once kids are big enough you do get time to read books again... and it helps not having the internet too.

Off to catch up on threads now, before time's up again!

So when will you get proper internet access? I feel your pain :-0

Heh - we're home and I'm just typing up some reviews! Got home on Saturday and this morning I picked up the ipad from the post office, so I have RECLAIMED THE LAPTOP from my son.

The ibooks thing on the ipad looks excellent - I can't believe how easy it is... accidentally downloaded 1308 pages of Germinal in French, and it took a while to work out how to get it off the screen.

Wow, an ipad! I want one, too!

My notebook is a Mac, but it doesn't allow the use of ibooks. Too old already, obviously.

#158 I had a suimilar experience of being 'censored' on a site recently...I was talking via an msn-type system with a student that I mentor online. We were talking about pets, and I said I had a 'shi tzu' - and it blacked out the word completely...had to explain to the administrator that I was not being inappropriate!

Prue that is funny!

Two reviews, two more to come:

Book 34 - The Snack Thief by Andrea Camilleri - 3 1/2 stars
(TIOLI letters-in-order challenge)



This is the third in Camilleri's Inspector Montalbano series and it was a great book to start the holiday with - Camilleri really makes you feel as if you're in Sicily, and it's an corrupt, unsettling place (with fantastic food - don't read this if you're on a diet). In this episode a businessman is found dead in the lift of his apartment building and a man gets shot on a fishing boat somewhere between Sicily and Tunisia. There's more development of Montalbano, his girlfriend Livia, and his colleagues, and I will be buying the 4th in the series soon.

Book 35 - Miss Ranskill Comes Home by Barbara Euphan Todd - 3 1/2 stars
(TIOLI typography challenge)



Miss Nona Ranskill went on a cruise in 1939 and tried to rescue her hat. She washes up on a desert island and finds another survivor there, called the Carpenter. They live on the island for four years, then he dies. She rows home in a boat they'd made together, and gets picked up by a convoy of destroyers - England is at war and it's 1943. Miss Ranskill is clueless about what's happened to her country, and her homecoming is nothing like what she expected.

She goes to stay with an old school friend, Marjorie, who represents the worst aspects of British busy-bodiness, gung-ho patriotism and snobbishness, then moves on to find her sister, who's had to leave their house because it's in a sensitive area for the war. Eventually she tracks down the Carpenter's wife and son.

Some of the writing is beautiful, and if you like satire, books about World War 2 and what it was like in England this is well worth reading. It paints a much nastier picture than Mrs Miniver or the Diary of a Provincial Lady - lots of pointless one-upmanship and dobbing others in for breaches of rules. But - and for me it was a big but - I found the plot really contrived. (And yes I know it was satirical!) The book would have been much better if some of the more far-fetched bits had been reworked. If you came off a navy ship after 4 years of being shipwrecked, wouldn't you think that maybe you should report yourself to the police so that they could get on with sorting out your status, not do a runner from the Naval Officer who'd been looking after you for the last few weeks on board the destroyer? And then when you did track down your school friend, who'd remained an overbearing cow, wouldn't you manage to get her shut up long enough to tell her you had just been shipwrecked on a desert island for 4 years and just got back to England 7 hours ago? I really wanted to scream at her a few times.

The author was the author of Worzel Gummidge, which got turned into a popular TV series when I was a kid.

Angry birds is addictive...back when we have finished another level!

Wow, I'm wondering what I posted on my own thread now! Maybe it's the words in the description of the Natasha Walter book.

I am only 100+ messages behind. How did that happen? Oh, well.

Cushla - just popping by to say I loved Cutting For Stone! It was one of my favourites a year or so ago when I read it! I've got Far to Go on my shelves -but I'm busy reading some Orange Prize challenges -and you know how one book leads to another!!! ;) It's difficult to keep up with everything!

Lucky you, getting to play with your iPad. I have now taken the Miss Ranskell off my tbr list, any excuse to lighten my reading load.

I don't need an iPad -- do I? Surely not. Not with my Kindle. Whimper, whimper.

Kerry and Luci I still haven't been back to your threads since we've been back to see what the offending words were!

Stasia, I think I am abuot 100 threads behind with you, not 100 messages. Today might be catch up day if I again let the kids onto the ipad and get the laptop back!

Deb, I am curious about what I'll think of Cutting for Stone when I get to it - most people here seem to have loved it like you. I love it how we don't all like the same books.

Kerry - happy to lighten your TBR load.

Suze - the ipad is wonderful, life-changingly wonderful!!! Only thing is I am spending more money... and not even on Kindle books. The Financial Times app is fantastic and all the newspapers are somehow much better to read than on the laptop. So yesterday I was happily reading the FT for free on it (the FT till now has been a splurge if I see if at the magazine kiosk at the train station, and a regular fun Saturday mission to go and get the weekend edition). After about an hour I hit the 10 articles per 30 days, and I just *had to* upgrade to the full version. 4 francs a week - and now I've just read the paper with my breakfast. Also have paid for the Guardian which is I think 5 francs for 6 months, so pretty cheap.

I've downloaded my first e-book to try out the Kindle app on the ipad - The Warden - for one of the TIOLI Challenges (the one where you look the books you should borrow from someone. I got Genny which gave me a great choice!)

"the ipad is wonderful, life-changingly wonderful!!!"

trying hard to ignore this. I don't need an ipad, I don't need an ipad.....

Sorry Nathalie. Neither did I till 2 days ago...

What Nathalie said. I am going to resist with all my might. Plan to mutter "i can't read on a backlit screen; I loathe touchscreens with a passion" repeatedly until the craving passes.

I think it might have been about Living Dolls - I'm worried about repeating the offending words, I don't want you locked out of your own thread.

Luci I'm home now, no filter software here! I haven't had a look yet. It was picking up all kinds of bizarre stuff on lots of threads!

I'm still wondering - iPad or Kindle? Think the iPad is ahead by a whisker....some great reviews Cushla. Love Inspector Montalbano - in the TV series, the lesser characters are really amusing.

I've only mentioned s*x in a couple of reviews, just to say that a book overdoes it on occasion. I know I did in my comments on Montenegro and Moon over Soho.
In my house it's purely theoretical but it would be the iPad as it seems to be more versatile and I'm not in the market for a straightout e-reader.
Cushla, have you looked at the app for TS Eliot's The Wasteland - it got a lot of blog coverage a couple of weeks ago.

I do not have to worry about the tempation to get an iPad. I cannot afford one! lol

If you can afford the iPad, go for it!

One of the subjects of Living Dolls is the sex industry.

Thanks for the input, everyone.....Cushla - I think your comments may have sealed the deal for me *waving hello, too*

I lost my own thread and just saw the last five comments!

Prue, I wouldn't have bought a Kindle yet - I have so many unread books still, I love the feel of the real thing, and I think their book prices are too high for me, especially once we are home in NZ next year with brilliant second hand bookshops and a great library system. I'm quite enjoying the Kindle app on the ipad, and am reading Trollope for the first time ever (free). I can't read it in my favourite spot though when the sun is shining on the screen, but otherwise the reading experience is pretty good. The other apps are what I'm loving - Flipboard is a lovely way to view Twitter and FB links, and you can customise the news really easily. And I've wasted hours and hours on playing games with the kids. If you get one I think you'll love it.

I've been meaning to post quick comments on the last 2 books I finished.

Book 36 - The Solitary Summer


The Solitary Summer is the sequel to Elizabeth and her German Garden by Elizabeth von Armin, who married a German count in the 1890s and lived on their estate in what was then Prussia. I had a pretty similar reaction to both of them. I loved the first half of this, then wanted to get on with something else. Elizabeth convinces her husband that they should spend the summer on the estate without visitors or going anywhere, and spends lots of time in her garden contemplating life and reading. The chapters cover the months from May to September and are really four essays. If you like gardening and books, you'll probably enjoy it. As in the first book, she gets a visitor - they have to billet officers from the army - and wants to get rid of him. A week after I've read it though, it hasn't left much impression on me. 3 1/'2 stars. TIOLI summer challenge.

Book 37 - Moonwalking with Einstein - 4 stars


Moonwalking with Einstein was one of those "It's for you, honest" presents to my husband earlier this year. It's really well written and the content is fascinating. Joshua Foer used to write for Slate.com and went along to the 2005 US Memory Championship finals to write an article. He ended up entering the 2006 competition - I won't tell you what happens because the main thread of the book is about the competition. By the end of the book Foer can memorise the order of a pack of cards in well under 2 minutes. The book has a great mix of material about people who're obssessed with memorisation, techniques for memorising everything from numbers to playing cards, discussion of the research on how our memories work, and how memorisation used to be so much more important for surviving and enjoying life than it is now. There's also a really sad chapter about EP, whose brain had 2 chunks eaten away by a virus and now has long term memory but no short term memory (very similar to the main character in The Housekeeper and The Professor).

One of the most common techniques the competitors in the memorisation competition use is the memory palace. I've heard of it before but hadn't used it till I tried it with this book. You take a place you know really, really well - I used the house we lived in when I was a child - and put things from your list, or numbers, or whatever, into different places in the house. It works because our ability to visualise is stronger than other ways to remember. The other system for digits from 0 to 99 involves giving every 2 digit number a person, action and object, the weirder the better, e.g. 15 might be Nathalie eating a tub of strawberry icecream, 78 might be Suzanne driving a Lamborghini and 97 might be Heather sleeping in the bath. If you had to learn the phone number 971578 you combine them to get a picture of Heather eating a Lamborghini. Then again you could just rote learn the phone number... Foer makes the point that even though he is fantastic at memorisation by the end of his year, the techniques are a huge investment for not particularly practical gain. And he still forgets where he left his keys.

Recommended if you like popular science/psych books.

Moonwalking with Einstein looks like one I would enjoy. Thanks for the recommendation, Cushla!

Stasia I hope you like it!

My local library has it, but both copies are checked out. Hopefully I can get to it soon though.

For a moment I thought the first book was written by Bettina von Arnim (born Elisabeth Brentano), but then I noticed that your author was living more than 50 years later. I am not into gardening, so I'll give it a pass.
The second one however clearly is one for me!

Just stopping by to wave a big HI!

I heard an interview with Joshua Foer on public radio. He was very interesting, but I began to feel like such a slouch for not doing a better job at attending and remembering. :-)

Hi Nathalie, Deb and Lisa. Lisa, thanks for the link to the interview. Yes Nathalie I think you'd enjoy Moonwalking with Einstein - it's a pretty quick read too.

I have finished my first ever book by Trollope - The Warden - and I loved it!!! I signed up for the TIOLI challenge where you get someone else's library and have to use the "What books should you borrow" feature. Happily, I got Genny and a long list of good books, but I am being GOOD and not buying any so I went for The Warden, the first in the Barchester Chronicles, because it was free on my Kindle. I will write a quick review later today because I have just promised my son some Nickolodeon website...

I have enjoyed all of the Barchester books, Cushla. Congratulations on a successful introduction to Trollope!

Stasia, I've just downloaded barcHester towers and it's going to last me a while... Tomorrow I'm taking the kids to Paris then London for 8 days away. It's weird not packing a pile of books. I have Emma and Hospital Sketches downloaded too in case I feel like something different.

I hope you and the kids have a wonderful time! I know what you mean about it feeling weird not packing a pile of books :)

You're back in London again?

If you have the chance with the kids, Coram's Fields is well worth checking out - it's a children's park, you can't go in without children. It's just round the corner from Persephone Books, we walked past on our way there.

Sadly we're away Thursday through to Tuesday.

Have a lovely time.

It's easier on the back though isn't it! I also love having about a hundred books on hand even in the airport so I can pick and choose what I feel like at the time.

Have a great trip - good luck with the kids :)

Have fun in London and Paris, and please let us know what you do there.

Thanks everyone - if the ipad works in London (there should be wifi in the apartment we're staying in) then I'll be on here for sanity at night...

Luci, I remember Coram's Fields from when we walked past and if we're nearby I'll take the kids. Good idea - thanks.

The main things on our list are the science museum, the natural history and the British museum, none of them for too long. We have friends meeting us every day for one thing or another and will be going to playgrounds, riding the double decker buses and generally hanging out, and mabye a movie (Mr Popper's Penguins) in ENGLISH!! We're staying in Earl's Court, so pretty close to Hyde Park and the museums.

It may be just as well to have lots of indoor plans - the weather forecast is a bit grim at the moment.

Have a wonderful time Cushla!

Enjoy your time in London and Paris, Cushla!

Moonwalking with Einstein sounds like the sort of book my fiance would love. I've added it to my list of future present ideas.

Have a great time in London with your family!

Have a great trip Cushla, sounds lovely, especially all the museums. Moonwalking with Einstein looks good and also one I'd probably say the 'It's for you, honest' line as well. Loved that. It doesn't work anymore though as my husband got himself a kindle and all paper books are very obviously just for me from this point onwards.

Ohhh I'm way behind on your thread - but a quick read leads me to congragulate you on your decision to go back to school to teach Math !! And eating horse and dog. Oh no! I would think that horse would be pretty tough to eat. Dog -well -I have a little bichon friese. No eating dog for me. But I do understand that it is a cultural thing. I suppose in some countries -and I'm thinking of China - some of the people are so poor that you eat any animal that you can -and you eat pretty much all of the animal. There is a large chinese population in my area - which is wonderful - but I do see a lot interesting types of " meat " for sale. I understand that for some, eating the eyeballs of a fish is considered a real delicacy.

Enjoy your trip, Cushla! I'm rather jealous of all your lovely European wanderings :-)

Hi everyone!

Deb, I did not eat horse or dog!! I just took photos of the horse butcher. ut I 'm laughing about the fish eyeballs because my son is very proud that he ate some. We bought a whole fish and my husband cooked it and told F that he could eat the eyeballs if he wanted. (He is standing here watching me type and said "they tasted like eyeballs Mum")

we're here and had fun in Paris. It's funny the things kids love. Yesterday's highlight was all the escalators at Chatelet-Les Halles metro. It was bucketing with rain all morning so we were like drowned rats by the time we got to Notre Dame, which they also found "good".

today we're off to the natural history museum. No reading getting done at all!

Who needs reading when you are in Paris?!

>205 alcottacre:: absolutely. What a wonderful city!
If you are over on Ile Saint-Louis, or even if you're not, be sure to stop by Maison Berthillon for some truly fabulous ice cream! Click on "Plan d'accès" for map, address, metro stops, etc.

Yuk at the eyeballs - and did you ask your son how he knew that the eyeballs tasted like eyeballs?

Sounds like you guys are under the same rain system as us - it just will not stop.

Have fun - make sure you visit lots of patiserries as well as museums :)

Your son is a hoot, Cushla. I must remember that eyeballs taste like eyeballs! What a funny line.

Your trip sounds amazing. I'm glad you didn't have to pack a lot of books, although it sounds like your reading time is limited. I'm taking my iPad on our mini vacation to Colorado in a few days and look forward to the ease of reading on it. I haven't thought of reading newspapers on the iPad. It
would keep my hands clean!

My husbands father swears by the eyeballs and he likes that he doesn't have to fight anybody over who gets them. Must mention the eyeball taste to to him. Enjoy all those lovely London museums Cushla.

>204 cushlareads: Your son is absolutely correct - they do taste just as you would expect eyeballs to taste! (kind of squidgy and slightly sour, in a fishy sort of way) I tried some when travelling in China and they totally lived up/down to my expectations!! :o)

Have a lovely time in London.

The young will try anything I think. They haven't developed rigorous tastes like us oldsters. I'm not sure I could swallow an eyeball. Have fun Cushla!

#205, I dont know stasia, I wouldnt mind casually pulling a paper back out of my handbag at a Parisian cafe and having a coffee whilst reading and glancing at the crowd.....sigh...sounds heavenly

And...Eyeballs!??! I dont think so :-(
*shudder shudder*

#213: I would not mind just being in the Parisian cafe, Megan!

Megan and Stasia, we did go to a cafe the other morning but I spent most of my time spreading jam on the kids' bread, watering down the lemon juice that F ordered (he likes lemons but not that much... They thought it was pretty funny how sour it was), and generally NOT reading even a paper!! we are having fun but it is pretty full on. London is great and we're doing lots of double decker buses. We've done the London transport museum and the science museum, both fantastic for the kids, and spent tons of time hanging out with friends. I can't get over how relaxed and friendly and LOUD the museums are, and the people generally. It is so much more fun having the kids out and about than in Basel. Today is another buzzing day once they wake up. We still haven't seen big Ben, houses of parliament etc so that's first up, then mayyyyybe a trip to a bookshop.

Leonie and Athabasca, finally somebody else has eaten a fish eye ball. Thanks for visiting!! My husband has but I wont't be going near them. The most adventurous I get is chicken feet at yum char, which are called Phoenix claws and are quite nice if you just eat them.

Laura I am going to write down your ice cream place for my next kid-free trip to Paris. fletch can't eat milk products for patisseries and ice cream parlours are not much fun. Luckily the French bread is delicious.

Reading your posts makes me miss the big cities! I'd love to go to London once again, and can you imagine that I've never been to Paris, except for a stop at a station to change trains on my way to Bretagne? I also have great memories of the London museums I visited. Friendly and relaxed is correct.

Have a great time with the kids!

>215 cushlareads:: Ah, sorry Cushla, I forget about Fletch's diet restrictions! Another time perhaps ...
London sounds like tons of fun too. Enjoy !!

Hope the kids are letting you read at least a little bit. ANd get to do some book shopping.

I'm prob over in London in the next few weeks, but unfortunately only for one day on business - don't think I'll get much time to breathe let alone the museums. Sulk... Or the books shops. Double sulk.

I love loud interactive museums. They rule.

It has been decades since I was in London...you make me long to return! Glad to hear you are having such a grand time...

Ah well, there are several marvellous creperies on the ile St Louis -- you can enjoy yours with Berthillon ice cream and Fletch can have his with jam!

One minor kvetch -- the nearest green space to me (by miles) is a little tiny parkette. But it features a sandpit and swings, so it's now restricted to only people with kids. I can't go and sit there with a book any more -- and it's about 2 miles to green spaces with no such restrictions. I know that kids need to be protected from predators, but... (prompted by the Coram's Fields mention.) Shouldn't there be spaces for the community as a whole to enjoy?? For instance, there's a senior residence further down the same block -- they now have nowhere they can get to in wheelchairs that they are allowed into because they aren't going with a child.

Speaking of interactive museums -- I loved the Science Museum in London. My fave exhibit was one where I could play around with the lighting in a miniature theater. I swear, I nearly became a lighting director on the strength of that, and am still fascinated by it. The only reason I never did any was that in high school, it was the domain of the boys -- the lighting booth in our theater -- and girlz weren't allowed!

I'm rambling. Blame the heat. Off to see if the library has that memory book.

Ok, I have bookshop withdrawal and cafe withdrawal symptoms. We leave here for Paris today and I am even looking forward to the WH Smith that is sure to be at St Pancras station. IT's been really nice having you all commenting, feels like I have a suitcase of friends here! I haven't read a thing because I just brought the iPad and it has been in heavy use with the kids. They have been up till TEN every night... (not on the iPad).

Had a great day out of London yesterday, first at my cousins in Reading (30 minutes out on the train) then at a friend's parents' place in Berkshire. The day before we saw big Ben and the houses of parliament then went round the supreme court by accident. We could go into the courtrooms and sit in the chairs and F was really interested, and the security guards were so friendly and took pictures. After that we spent a few hours in St James' park, which is beautiful and made for kids to run around in and feed ducks and squirrels. Saw some of the horse guard at buckingham palace then I dragged them to the British museum for 15 whole minutes to see the mummies and the Sutton Hoo treasure on the way to them.

when we get home we are going to have at least 2 days where they sit in front of screens while I drink coffee and read...

Bekka I hope you can sneak a bookshop trip in some time on your business trip!

suze we were cross posting! Ha, nice idea about the crepe but no go. Crepes have milk and egg in them. Eating out is quite challenging and you should see the stash of things I have in my backpack to feed the munchkins! It's not helped by Teresa proclaiming her lack of allergies at any opportunity... "MUm I can eat that but he can't!"

I agree with you about kids' playgrounds actually, I would find that irritating. You need to come to nz where there is no shortage of green space and you would never be furred out for sitting in a play area reading a book.

That's a nice story about the science museum. We were in there 4 hours and could have done another day easily.

>222 cushlareads: It may be too late, but there is also a Foyles bookshop in St Pancras station, Cushla.

I'm home at last and I have even finished a book!! Darryl - thanks for the message about Foyles. I saw it in the station but we'd already been to WH Smith. By the time I saw Foyles, we were heading for the Eurostar check in and I was trying to keep the kids from running off.

I help in the school library here and had been given a 50 pound voucher to spend at WH Smith. I loaded up on kids' art magazines and lollies for the train ride, but I also grabbed 2 books for me: The Reluctant Fundamentalist and The Return of Captain John Emmett by Elizabeth Speller. I knew I'd seen the Elizabeth Speller book on here somewhere, and sure enough when I logged in Suzanne had given it 4+ stars. Thanks Suz!

I read The Reluctant Fundamentalist and thought it was excellent, and will be back later with a quick review, and I am 50 pages into The Return of Captain John Emmett and enjoying it a lot.

It is so nice to be home to Tim, the apartment, my Nespresso machine and a decent keyboard instead of the ipad's screen. We are doing absolutely nothing this morning and might walk a whole 500m to a playground this afternoon! I will put a couple of pics up later on.

Doing absolutely nothing sounds like a good plan for your morning, Cushla!

Yup Stasia. It's 1.00 nearly here and I am still sitting like a stunned mullet. I have managed to upload some pics though!



We had 4 full days in London, and the weather worked out really well: grey skies for the first two, and some rain, when we were doing museum-y things anyway. Then 2 perfect days in the low 20s when we were doing outside things!



These are some of the mummies at the British Museum.



This is outside a shop near the British Museum, and we spent as long taking photos of Paddington Bear here as we did at the museum...

The kids were wildly excited to see the Eiffel Tower, which made me happy that our Usborne book of famous buildings is having an impression - I must have read it with them 30 times. This is the the view from Palais de Chaillot. We went twice, both times about 8 pm when the crowds were not bad at all. (We didn't go up.)

This is the carousel near the Eiffel Tower. Europe is full of these, and Fletcher is just young enough to love going on them still.



And this is inside Galeries Lafayette - a fabulous shop if you are loaded with Euros! We escaped with 20 Euros each on toys... but I will be going back to have a better look if I get back to Paris before we head home in November.

Love the pictures, Cushla, especially the Paddington one. How cute! Thanks for sharing them.

As station bookshops go, there are usually some good things at W H Smiths in London, though I visit Kings Cross rather than St Pancras and check out the bargains - lots last year, this year frequently nothing I want at all.

I've just spotted that Far to Go is on the Booker shortlist - I'm going to have to get my skates on with my library copy because I might not be able to renew now. I can't believe I didn't spot it on the longer Vine list last month, and the Booker announcement may well mean remaining copies go fast tomorrow, and I might not be able to pick as I have an outstanding review and there's a delay in it counting. I know you had some criticisms, but I can't seem to resist books about the 1930s and WWII. Bizarrely, and I didn't realise until I collected them, two library reservations came through at the same time with Kindertransport stories. I also borrowed The English German Girl by Jake Wallis Simons.

Great pictures Cushla, what a lovely trip and I even know exactly which carousel that is in Paris. Now that is spooky.

That's funny Leonie!

Luci, I hope you like Far to Go and can get hold of it. I did like it, especially the WW2 thread, but not enough to want to see it win. Haven't read anything else on the shortlist yet but have joined the Booker group that Darryl's set up and will be having a good look at what everyone else is recommending.

Oh, and re Suzanne's comments about parks. I do think it's a problem if it's the only park space around. Coram's Fields isn't, anyone can use Brunswick Square Gardens next door, and there are quite a few smaller green spaces around Bloomsbury - some public, some for the use of residents of a particular square. All the local playgrounds we go to are inside parks and the non playground space is available to everyone. My local area is quite well served by parks, we have two about 5 minutes walk from home in different directions, and my local council thankfully invested lots of money into doing them all up and considerably improving play and other facilities before the general election last year (I'm sure this wouldn't have happened under the current government). Not just for kids either, several new cafes, picnic areas and other nice places to hang out for all.

Those are some terrific pictures, Cushla. It sounds like your trip was a fun time for the family. I hope you get settled in back home soon. It takes awhile to return to normal after you've been seeing the sights of London and Paris. Thanks for taking us along with you!

Sigh, I love London and Paris. I'm green with envy! But also happy for you that you had such a good time.

Fun photos!

Nice photos, Cushla! I'm glad that you & the kids had a great time in London and Paris.

*adding 'stunned mullet' to my vocabulary*

Love your photos, Cushla, looks like you all had a fantastic time!

Glad you had such a nice trip! And glad you liked The Reluctant Fundamentalist - I thought it was great when I read it (last year??)

I liked The Reluctant Fundamentalist too--it may end up being one of my favorites for the year. Your trip to London and Paris looks fabulous. St. James Park is one of my very favorite places in London.

Hi Cushla, just catching up. It's lovely to read about what you got up to in London and Paris. Lots of people seem to think London is no place to bring up children, so it's nice to hear about the good things it has to offer! I'm looking forward to taking my little one to the museums when he's older (the fact that they're free means you can spend all of 15 minutes in there and not mind too much!), and am delighted that I'm now eligible to enter Coram's Fields!

Cool holiday!
when we get home we are going to have at least 2 days where they sit in front of screens while I drink coffee and read..
I hope that worked out for you, sounded like a great plan!

Hi Cushla, great pictures! And it sounds like you all had great fun. Add me to the list of those who enjoyed The Reluctant Fundamentalist.

I am the dissenter regarding The Reluctant Fundamentalist, I guess. The book did not work for me. Oh well.

Lots of people seem to think London is no place to bring up children
They are wrong. My kids have grown up independent, able to negotiate their way around the big city, tolerant, with vast experience of music, art, theater, museums, etc., etc., and NEVER bored. Sure, some parts aren't as nice, and some can be dangerous, but I'm pretty sure even the smallest towns have some elements that are less than perfect.

Great pic, great holiday, great envy!

Eek, lots of messages!! Glad you all liked the pics.

Rebeki, I think bringing up kids in London will be fantastic, but hard work at times. But you'll have so much on your doorstep. It's such a great city! and going back to your own thread, I think you might get more read than you expect once your baby's not brand new. I remember reading The Mitford Girls when my son was tiny and then Stalingrad. With my daughter I managed parting the waters and a big chunk of battle cry of freedom. It made middle of the night feeds much better!

I am getting used to the iPad keyboard... Except its spell check is ghastly. It just put an apostrophe into its and eek was eel.

The other reason I've been neglecting my own thread is that I can't put down my new Kindle book, The Stranger's Child by Alan Hollinghurst. I'm 200 pages in out of 584 and unless it goes bad I will be gutted if it doesn't make the Booker shortlist. (It's on the long list.) The plot and characters and setting have sucked me in - it starts off in England (Brits don't ask me where exactly, but not too far from London) in 1913 when George brings his friend Cecil home for a long weekend from Cambridge, where George is studying and Cecil is a recent graduate. It"s reminding me a lot of Brideshead Revisited.

I'll write down some comments on the R F soon. Stasia, I tried to see your thread when you discussed it, but there are so many conversations about it that I couldn't see it.

I read RF last year, Cushla, so I am sure that there have been a ton of conversations on the book since!

#245 Janet, I'm inclined to agree. I grew up in a picturesque town in a rural setting and was lucky in many ways. However, by my mid- to late teens, I was fed up with the narrow-mindedness of many people around me and itching to move somewhere bigger/more exciting.

#247 Cushla, I'm encouraged to hear that. A few women I know have commented that they couldn't concentrate on reading at all once they'd had a baby, but I think they possibly didn't read all that much beforehand. I'm happy to say that I am able to concentrate enough to read and, like you, find it makes the night-time feeds more bearable, although I am using my new circumstances as an excuse to read some of the more "fun" books on my TBR pile!

Edited to add: I haven't read any Alan Hollinghurst (yet), but you make The Stranger's Child sound very appealing!

I'm glad to hear that you're enjoying The Stranger's Child. I'll start reading it tomorrow.

A good holiday! I like the pictures. And Hollinghurst...well, The Swimming Pool Library has always been a blow-away read for me.

The spiffy obsequies being over, one is compelled to put on one's Thread Police hat and remind one Cushla the Reader that Internet politesse urges the creation of a new thread around about this time....

Richard I know, but not on the ipad! I'm waiting till I get some laptop time...

Cushla, which Amazon store do you download from?

.com I think Luci. But it keeps encouraging me to use .de.

*New thread over here:*

http://www.librarything.com/topic/121308

Have tremendously enjoyed catching up on your thread, Cushla! London, Paris, an iPad, Trollope, and other such wonderful goods!

I know this is the old thread, but I just wanted to let you know I've been so much enjoying reading my way slowly through it, and the mix of discussions about books, London, children, parks, museums and more! The museum talk reminded me of when I visited the Science Museum with my goddaughter and her younger brother, when they were both toddlers and living in a small flat in Clapham. Never mind the hands-on, interactive exhibits, they just loved running up and down the long, long corridors and hallways - access to so much safe, open space to run and shout must have been a wonderful feeling for them at the time! Now, on to latest thread...

Mike and my dad are taking the boys to the Science Museum tomorrow. They have a fantastic soft play area, and I hate commercial soft play places but this is much nicer, and it's free, I just wish it was nearer to me than South Kensington! You'd have to be pretty wealthy to actually live near the Science Museum.

Hi Nancy, Genny and Luci! Luci, I hope the boys had fun at the Science Museum. And Genny that was what our kids did at the London Transport Museum - it was amazing to see them running around inside a "museum" and being smiled at by the staff. Switzerland is not like that...