What books by women are you reading now? December 2010.

Usually I wouldn't be so pushy (I know it's not December everywhere just yet), but I'm actually reading two books by women back-to-back! I'm feeling awfully proud of myself. :)

I finished The Etched City by K.J. Bishop and thought it was a very interesting read - if a bit overly wordy at times. (Possibly my bad, I thought it was going to be more of an adventurous romp.)

And have now moved on to The Women in Black by Madeleine St John. Her first novel, written when she was 53, it's been getting great comments in Australia (she's an ex-pat, part of a fascinating generation who all moved overseas in the 50s & 60s), and I'm looking forward to it. The publishers have also brought out her other novels over the past year (she wrote four in total), and if I like this one, I'm looking forward to the rest!

The Women in Black sounds really interesting. Too bad that, on Amazon, a paperback goes for over 30 dollars!

Her first novel written when she was 53? Glory hallelujah! Life does go on.

Her first novel written when she was 53? Glory hallelujah! Life does go on.

Indeed! But why not?

Anyway, I'm reading Love in a Cold Climate. It's entertaining, although pretty much plotless.

Edited to say: my "why not?" comment was rhetorical, not an actual question. No response required!

#2> Yeah, well, that's normal price for a book in Australia. This copy has a $32 price tag on it. :(

I am reading my first Anne Tyler Ladder of Years and enjoying it so far.

Madeleine St John was also shortlisted for the Booker in 1997 for The Essence of the Thing which I have in Mount TBR

I finished and reviewed At the Dark End of the Street: Black Women, Rape, and Resistance--A New History of the Civil Rights Movement from Rosa Parks to the Rise of Black Power by Danielle McGuire and was amazed, distressed and impressed. It's hard to imagine the amount of courage those women had and the fact that so many of them went unnoticed. Three cheers for McGuire for writing this book.

Now I'm starting Little Women for my RL book club. I hope I can take it without gagging, I don't do well with sainthood. Before reading March the very name "Marmee" made me gag. Now I'll just have to think Margaret Marie whenever I read it.

I got bored with Love in a Cold Climate, by Nancy Mitford, so I picked up Quiverfull: Inside the Christian Patriarchy Movement, by Kathryn Joyce. "Quiverfull" refers to some Old Testament passage that commands believers to have as many children as God blesses them with--these children will become God's arrows to wage war against Satan (who in this case is everyone who doesn't believe that woman should stay home popping out as many babies as possible and ministering to the lord through housework). Needless to say, my blood pressure is raised. Why do I do this to myself? Because high blood pressure beats boredom, of course!

Bookmark123 - I'm interested to hear your thoughts on Ladder of Years-- I liked it, but a lot of readers hated it.

I've been interested in the Quiverfull movement for a while. I even found a site that had a picture of a little girl who looks just like I did at that age, spooky. I can't find that site again, but I did find a review of your book, otherJoyce at Salon.com http://www.salon.com/life/feature/2009/03/14/joyce_quiverfull
and an interview on NPR http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=102005062 with this quote: The womb is such a powerful weapon; it's a weapon against the enemy
Submissive women pushing out babies for bombs, sounds like my idea of a loving family.

I started reading Little Women, argh, after 2 chapters I had to give myself a little break so began Not In Kansas Anymore: Dark Arts, Sex Spells, Money Magic, and Other Things Your Neighbors Aren't Telling You by Christine Wicker. I feel much better now, though plan to get back to Little Women a bit at a time.

Thanks for the links! I hadn't planned on reading this book now, but I came across this article the other day, and on thing led to another .. . .

http://www.alternet.org/reproductivejustice/149022/creepy_christian_patriarchy_m...

CitizenJoyce --- I just read the rather chilling Salon piece. There's a link in it to a blog by the women who escaped the movement. It says the blog has moved and then automatically goes to the new link . . . which says the blog has been deleted by the authors. That's sort of chilling, too.

Oh dear, I'm reading The Downing Street Years still and I'm only on about p. 70... I do need to face up to Thatcher as have been reading a lot of recent political and social history recently, but it's hard to sit down to it. Does Thatcher count as a girly writer??!!

Loving my current Iris Murdoch A (2) Month (s) The Book and the Brotherhood and enjoying Bluestockings which is about the first women to get into Higher Education in the UK.

OtherJoyce, I noticed that too and decided to decide she'd moved on to more enjoyable pursuits.
LyzzyBee, this is the problem with the silly name we're stuck with. Certainly Thatcher was a woman, but I don't think "girly" fit into her persona.

I finished Madeleine St John's The Women in Black and I will be buying/borrowing her other books. It was a great little book, light and charming, but also with a streak of Barbara Pym-ish wit.

Have picked up Jane Eyre for a re-read, and am enjoying that.

And am also having a Harry Potter Festival - reading Prisoner of Azkaban to Mr Bear, and Chamber of Secrets to myself.

I'm reading Sourland: Stories by Joyce Carol Oates. A few of the stories are sticking to me thus far...

@14 >> Speaking of Jane Eyre, I'm doing a re-read right now of Shirley and liking it. Liking it, in fact, a whole lot more than Villette, and I really can't understand why Shirley ranks so relatively low in the Bronte canon. (I'm simultaneously reading Dudley Green's Patrick Bronte: Father of Genius.)

ETA @15 >> Sourland's in one of my TBR piles right now. I haven't read that much by Oates, mainly Black Girl/White Girl and A Fair Maiden.

Cleopatra: A Life anyone? Any comments?

The reviews are so mixed, but I'm wondering if it's a misunderstanding by readers expecting more Philippa Gregory than history? Which is not to denigrate Gregory, but she's more pop fiction than history. Whatever.

I've read the Schiff sample on my e-reader and am about to take the plunge....

Elizabeth Edwards just died, gracious to the end.

She had class . . . and a very sad past few years.

Nickelini--I finished Ladder of Years. Loved it right up to the ending which I thought was really weak. It was almost as if Anne Tyler got suddenly bored and just decided to take the easiest way out. However I will be reading more by her.

Now reading Water for Elephants and enjoying it so far.

Bookmark - if you're ready for more Anne Tyler, I recommend the only other one by her that I've read, which is Digging to America. I really liked how she crafted the characters in this one.

The Vows of Silence by Susan Hill

>17 dianaleez:: dianaleez, I'm intrigued by Cleopatra: A Life, having read a couple of good articles in the New York Times. I'll be interested to see in your thoughts on it!

I think Anne Tyler is one of those on and off writers, but I very much liked Digging to America in that she shows different ways of looking at a subject that I wouldn't even have thought of studying. I still think about it sometimes, and, coincidentally, my RL book club is planning to read it some time next year.

I finished Santa Clawed by Rita Mae Brown. Even though it's a little cat and dog mystery it has some good themes, it's feminist and pro gay, but almost evangelically southern. I get a whiff of that somewhat offputting personality that came through at her signing.

Now I'm started Religion, Myth, and Magic: The Anthropology of Religion (The Modern Scholar) which is a series of 14 lectures by Susan A. Johnston with a study guide, pretty interesting so far. I seem to be doing whatever I can to avoid Little Women, though I have to finish it by next Friday.

I finished and reviewed A Novel Bookstore by Laurence Cossé -- I enjoyed a lot of it but was ultimately frustrated and wished I liked it better.

I somehow got waylaid by Helen Hollick's The Forever Queen - a historical novel about Emma of Normandy.

Emma married both Ethelred the Unready (Ill Advised?) and Canute the Great.
And the poor woman was the mother of the wimpy Edward the Confessor.

Is the current term for a fictionalized yet not romanticized biography 'historical fiction'? How does one differentiate Sharon Penman from Philippa Gregory?

I think this is the problem that some readers of the new Cleopatra book must be having. They're expecting Gregory (who can be fun and is semi-accurate) and they're getting history instead.

Guess Cleo's next on my list.

Lest I digress, Emma had balls - which is more than can be said of Ethelred and Edward and lots of folks who came into contact with Cnut.

I finally finished Love in a Cold Climate, by Nancy Mitford. It was basically more of what I found back in 2007 in In Pursuit of Love, and I started finding it all a bit tedious. The end of the book picked up though, and I can say I enjoyed it overall. Anyway, now I'm on to Pride and Prejudice--my last Jane Austen. Not expecting much of a surprise since I know the story by heart.

Just finished Room by Emma Donoghue. Not a surprise that it was generally well-liked by this group. Simultaneously a horrible story and a wonderful story. Among my best for 2010.

Reading Frankenstein. I know -- an odd choice for the holiday season, but there ya go!

k4k

Well, mine's an odd choice for the holiday season too: Affinity by Sarah Waters. It's about a women's prison.

I loved Affinity. Not so jolly, but a great read.

Affinity was a great read. I was just thinking about it today, in relation to "those whacky Victorians", given the amusing level of belief in phrenology in my current read, Jane Eyre. Affinity wasn't about phrenology, but my other favourite Victorian interest, which I shall not mention in case of spoilerphobics.

Jane Eyre is another great read, this is my third time through, and I'm enjoying myself immensely. It's taking me a while to read (nearly two weeks), but instead of the whole "can't wait for a new book" feeling I get after a week or so of reading one book (I'm fickle), I'm really regretting the imminent end of the story.

(Edited to fix typo.)

I finished Kate Atkinson's Case Histories, a crime novel that really captured my attention with an intriguing set of linked murder/missing persons cases spanning 30 years.

Next up is Rose Tremain's Music and Silence.

I just finished The Children's Book by A.S. Byatt. It was amazing! I highly recommend it. It has some very interesting observations about feminism and the women's movement in England at the turn of the century, but really it's a book about everything. You can read my review of it here:
http://readingwhilefemale.blogspot.com/2010/12/childrens-book-by-as-byatt.html

I also read The Passion by Jeanette Winterson. It was pretty bad. I felt like she really wanted to be profound, and just came off as someone who was trying too hard.

I am about to start Prodigal Summer by Barbara Kingsolver, The Art of Devotion by Samantha Bruce-Benjamin, and Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte. I will be flying or the holidays and hope to start them on the plane. I've heard good things about all of them, so I'm very excited!

Finished Jane Eyre. I'm sad to no longer be hanging out with her and Mr Rochester. *sigh* I really should read this one more often than once a decade.

Onto some Bloke Books that are due back at the library sooner rather than later. I'm sure I'll be reading another girlybook before the end of the year!

(And: oooh! I loved Music and Silence! And The Children's Book!)

#35 & 36> I am happy you both loved The Children's Book!! :-))

The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton. I love it - her characterization, her short, sharp witty deconstructions of the essence of a person or situation. She's skyrocketed to the top of my favorites list.

Reading "Doc" by Mary Doria Russell currently.

#34 I enjoyed Case Histories too - have you read others of hers? There are now several more featuring Jackson Brodie. Music and Silence is wonderful - enjoy it!

#35 The Children's Book is very impressive and fascinating. For me, sometimes the story got a little swamped by the historical background detail, but that was so interesting I didn't mind too much. I hope you enjoy Prodigal Summer - another great book.

I'm currently reading Changing Planes a book of interlinked short sci-fi stories by Ursula Le Guin - and also The White Witch by Elizabeth Gouge, set during the English Civil War.

I've just finished and reviewed the beautifully written and deeply insightful School for Love by Olivia Manning, a gem of a coming-of-age story.

I just finish, and absolutely hated, Little Women. Now I'll get to read a book that looks interesting Not In Kansas Anymore: Dark Arts, Sex Spells, Money Magic, and Other Things Your Neighbors Aren't Telling You by Christine Wicker which I'm expecting to be much better. I saw a documentary based on her book Lily Dale: The True Story of the Town that Talks to the Dead that was very good, informative yet not condescending.

I just finish, and absolutely hated, Little Women.

Thanks for screening that one for us, Joyce. That's one book I've never, ever felt the slightest desire to read. I know that there's some pressure for people who live in the US to read it--historically or culturally significant or something. But as someone who has never lived in the US, I can ignore that pressure without a smidgen of guilt. And I don't feel any literary guilt, either.

Was it very didactic or extremely didactic?

#43> I read Little Women as a child and enjoyed it. Not sure I'd have the same feelings about it now. :) I'm guessing it's sentimental, which I loved as a kid, but run away from as an adult.

In Little Women Jo, everyone's favorite, is full of intelligence, energy, talent and ready anger. She is constantly reminded by everyone not to be such a tomboy. At one point Jo's beautiful little sister does something really horrendous, burns a book Jo has been working on for a year. Jo is understandably very angry, her mother urges her to forgive her sisters little indiscretion. Jo won't, and the form her anger takes is to ignore her sister, who stupidly gets herself into trouble and almost drowns. Jo, feeling terribly remorseful and almost like a murderer goes to her mother and asks how she can control her anger. (Note, she didn't do anything to her sister. She merely felt anger.) Her mother tells her, "I have been angry every day of my life, but I have learned to control it." In real life Alcott's father lost the family fortune by loaning it to someone who doesn't repay it, the daughters and wife work ceaselessly to support themselves and his schemes. He, of course, is nearly saintly in his devotion to transcendentalism. With some other followers he started a utopian community in which everyone was strictly not only vegetarian, but almost starved since no one knew how to farm. Mostly they ate apples for 8 months and lived in unheated houses, he, his wife and children. This was supposed to feed their spirits. He got to do the thinking and preaching, his wife and children got to do all the hard work of finding a way to keep them alive. So when Marmee (the worst name in the world) says she's angry every day, I say, of course you are, leave the idiot. But no. He is the adored, the saintly father. While the novel doesn't give the specifics of her background it does at every turn show that women should be hard working, obedient, and self denying and that when they pursue their own desires they get into trouble. Perhaps I overreacted, Gloria Steinem is a fan, I think. But I can't. Oh one other horrendous part, when Jo goes to New York and finally is able to make some money writing stories, dark stories about wayward people, the man she has found to take her father's place finds out what kind of stories she writes. They're not the fine moral tales Little Women is. He tells her he'd rather she swept the street than wrote such things. And Jo, rather than smacking him in the face, feels ashamed and vows never to write such stories again. (Which vow Alcott did not make, and she continued to write stories about wayward people under a pseudonym.) She wrote Little Women only to make money, which it certainly did; but I don't see why the rest of us should find anything moral about it. If you never feel the need to read it, you're doing yourself no harm what so ever.

>42 Citizenjoyce:-45, Interesting reactions to Little Women. It was my favorite book when I was young - what shy, bookish, non-girly-girl doesn't see herself in Jo March? - but I found that I was disappointed by how preachy and judgmental it seemed upon re-read as an adult. Honestly, I identified more with "shallow" Meg and Amy - their struggles with materialism still ring true today, I think. I didn't have quite the violent reaction that citizenjoyce had, and I'm not quite sure how Alcott's father's shortcomings are relevant to the book's literary value; however, I definitely found that the book did NOT improve with age. :)

ETA: Actually, here's a somewhat relevant article from last week's NYT book review: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/12/books/review/Price-t.html?

I didn't add the discussion of Alcott's own life as any commentary on the books literary value, but to show that while Little Women shows a strong value in submission of a woman's will, Alcott herself did not espouse this idea. She wrote it because she thought it would sell, and it certainly did.

Good article, the idea that Little Women was written as a way to get her father's work published is new to me. I have only read, and seen in a PBS documentary, that it was written as part of her children's literature on the request for a longer work.

Well, on the subject of Little Women, I've learned more tonight than I ever have. All very interesting, but I'm going to let that be it and let the book itself stay in the public library. Thanks for all your comments though.

>47 Citizenjoyce:, Ah, I see. Well, regardless, some interesting info on her life in that post. Her father sounds like a real piece of work.

>48 Nickelini:, And Joyce, I think it's probably for the best. I think there are some books that need to be read at a certain point in one's life (i.e., childhood) and if one doesn't read them then, there's almost no hope for them later. :D

I just got Room by Emma Donohue from a secret santa swap, and I can't wait to start it! Everyone keeps saying that it's the best book of the year. I also got Mr. Rosenblum Dreams in English, which sounds really good. It will be interesting to read a book on immigration and culture that isn't set in America for once. I'll be starting that after I finish the other books I have waiting on my list.

I'm a little worried that I won't have as much time to read pleasure books next semester. I'm going to be starting an English degree, and I'm taking three literature classes. I know that I'll be reading lots of exciting books for class (that is kind of the point of an English degree) but I'm just a little scared that I won't have time for the books I have on my TBR list. Do any of you have experience with English degrees? How did you feel about it?

I read Little Women earlier this year. I didn't really like it either. I found it to be very preachy. That said, I feel like I would have liked it better if I had read it at the right age.

#50 - I just graduated with an English degree this past June. I rarely took three classes at once (I was a mature student with a busy family that school had to fit around), but even with one or two classes I didn't have a lot of time for extra reading. So I always tried to take classes with the most interesting reading lists! That is the pleasure of the English degree, although at the end of term I was always really excited to read something that I picked myself and that I didn't have to make intelligent comments on!

I just finished two, Bad Marie by Marcy Dermansky and From the land of the Moon by Milena Agus. Both were very good in different ways. Bad Marie was a page-turner with literary characteristics, and Moon was an Italian novel that was more straightforward in its literary leanings. I liked them both in different ways. Moon was a slower read; Bad Marie flew by.

#50 My degrees are in English Literature too. It's a degree that you take with you for the rest of your life whether or not it's part of your employment. Like all good educations, it affects how you think and who you are. And even if you choose not to teach, your reasoning, writing, and verbal skills are always an asset. (I taught on the university level then became an executive with the Girl Scouts for a number of years, a career change that I enjoyed.)

I was never smart enough to realize that I should only take one novels course per quarter in graduate school - duh - and at one point actually read myself into the ophthalmologist's office.

Literature remains my passion - along with all the other interests that time brings.

I seem to be currently reading my way through the complete works of Louise Penny. I 'think' I'm on number six of seven...or is it, five of six?

>50 ReadingWhileFemale:-53: interesting discussion of English degrees. My daughter will start university next autumn (gulp) and plans to major in English. I enjoyed reading about your experiences.

>40 gennyt:: gennyt, sorry, I got behind on this thread! I read the second Jackson Brodie book (One Good Turn) a few years ago, not knowing it was part of a series. So of course I had to go back and read the first one, especially after it jumped into my shopping bag at a used bookstore. And now I'll need to read the more recent books. I understand a 4th is due to be published in early 2011.

I'm enjoying Music and Silence now, too. It was a difficult transition from gritty 20th-century Cambridge murders to 1630s Denmark, but now that I'm there, I'm liking it.

English degree here too. I also did not have much time to read what I liked during my university years (other country, different system, but same big load of work).
So, now I do read what I like!

#55 "So, now I do read what I like!"

My favorite words in the world!

followed by: All books are not for all readers. (This translates to 'don't waste time complaining, just put it down.' )

Absolutely! I learned to let go of a book I don't like (but it took me quite a while).

I have become the biggest whiner in the world about books. I'll lay the blame at my RL bookclub, but it's probably just an overactive whine gene. I do hope to be able to "just put it down". I've begun to be more selective on books I start, but just putting them aside if they don't please is more difficult.

Joyce, 'they' have a right to write them, but they can't make you read them.

I know it's hard to pay for a book and not finish it, but I ask myself how much my time is worth. And if I need all the negative thoughts. (I'll save those for the neighbor who piles his trash in our yard.)

Wisest words I know: Don't let anyone steal your joy.

Snowed in with Twilight Hour by Carol Smith

>45 Citizenjoyce: Tell us how you really feel, Joyce:-)

You might enjoy Joyce Carol Oates's A Bloodsmoor Romance which is part homage, part spoof of early American literature and Little Women in particular. I loved it.

I have had a great interest in the Alcott family and have read many books on the family and its various members, including one on Abby Alcott (yes, I too have felt that anger on behalf of Abby and the girls). I have also studied early American literature as part of my English degree. It's a complex story and one must understand the family in the context of when and where they lived. It is a sometimes infuriating, sometimes admirable, but an always fascinating story.*

Sadly, I find Little Women too sentimental a read these days but my great young love for it still lingers.

*and here I have to admit to living very near the Alcott's home (actually, several of them), Fruitlands (site of Bronson's utopian community), and Sleepy Hollow cemetery where they all are buried (great place for a lovely autumn walk).

I find Little Women too sentimental a read these days but my great young love for it still lingers

I could not agree more, Lois.

# 62 Me too. I was handed Little Women by my mother who said - "I loved this book. Your grandmother did too and she gave it to me." And I passed it on to my daughter with the same words.

It's an interesting view of life and women in its time but in no way a guide for modern readers. As a child I wondered how anyone could want to be that good. I surely didn't. But I did try sucking on limes and carrying a handkerchief; failed at both. But even as a child I was impressed that Alcott managed a career.

I'm still involved with Louise Penny's The Brutal Telling. She is taking major risks with her novels and doing it well.

>62 aluvalibri:, 63 and not just sentimental, but moral, a characteristic of early American literature (which is so wonderfully parodied by Oates with her terribly moral, woman-of-a-certain-age narrator of Bloodsmoor)

I was browsing through Seattle librarian Nancy Pearl's Book Lust this morning and came across this:

One of my strongest-held beliefs is that no one should ever finish a book that they're not enjoying no matter how popular or well received the book is....I live by what I call "the rule of fifty," which acknowledges that time is short and the world of books is immense. If you're fifty years old or younger, give every book about fifty pages before you decide to commit yourself to reading it, or give it up. If you're over fifty, which is when time gets even shorter, subtract your age from 100--the result is the number of pages you should read before deciding.

I may soon be allowed to quit after only looking at the covers!

I may soon be allowed to quit after only looking at the covers!

Tell me about it!

I just finished one by an author I will be touring with this spring, Garden Spells by Sarah Addison Allen.

Good advice, dianaleez, though I have read some books that I finally enjoyed even after not liking the first 50 pages. I will keep the advice to heart though. Time grows shorter, the number of books I want to read sure doesn't.

I have Garden Spells and have heard mixed reviews. What do you think, megwaiteclayton? And why will you be touring with her? Oh, I just bought your book The Wednesday Sisters, will you be touring with that?

I finished Not In Kansas Anymore: A Curious Tale of How Magic Is Transforming America and found it pretty informative, not the romp through craziness I was expecting. Christine Wicker says that Aleister Crowley and Gerald Gardner (I think), two of the people responsible for the modern witchcraft movement were themselves misogynistic and sadistic yet they helped found a religion that is women centered and has possibly influenced mainstream churches to put more authority in women. The book doesn't have an index, horrors, but is a pretty quick and worthwhile read.

Now I start on I'm Perfect, You're Doomed: Tales from a Jehovah's Witness Upbringing by Kyria Abrahams, which I think will be my last book about religion this month.

Just finished Through a Glass Darkly by Karleen Koen, which I enjoyed a lot, and started All Passion Spent by Vita Sackville-West, a writer I really like.

I see that Koen has a new book coming out in June. One more for the wishlist.

I agree about VS-W. An intriguing woman.

I just finished Louise Penny's Bury Your Dead - it's a tour de force. It may well be the best written novel in the mystery/detective genre that I've encountered. She manages to maintain suspense on three different interwoven threads as well as giving enough series background to catch up new readers. Watching her keep all those balls in the air at once was a joy.

And I have a new respect for Quebec winters. (I've only been there in the warmer months and will stick to that.)

I am going to get a copy of the follow up to Through a Glass Darkly, as I want to see what happens to Barbara next.

I'm still ploughing on with Mrs Thatcher, but have recently enjoyed Kate Chopin's The Awakening and Alexa Thomson's Antarctica on a Plate

I finished I'm Perfect, You're Doomed, by a woman who was raised by a very dysfunctional Jehovah's Witness family. While it starts full of humor it degenerates into a whiny, poor me, why can't I have what I want kind of book. It seems that one is captivated by the stories of children who are mistreated, but when these children grow to be damaged, nonfunctional adults their stories are very off putting. Abrahams seems to blame all her problems on her religious upbringing, but it seems the religious people who counseled her gave her very good advice. Maybe if she'd been raised on the Little House on the Prairie she would have turned out fine.

Now I'll start on Lottery by Patricia Wood.

I am reading The Collected Stories of Jean Stafford, a writer I was thrilled to discover by reading her novel The Mountain Lion earlier this year, but I am not enjoying it as much as I hoped.

Was unexpectedly given some reading time this morning (Miss Boo opted for a cafe outing after a nice rummage around the local junk shop looking for stuff for arts & crafts). And hadn't put my current read in my bag! And there were no newspapers at the newsagency!! The HORROR!!!

Luckily the cafe has a free books shelf, and they're happy for books to go wandering so long as they get replaced (and they know I'm good for replacing books), so I got stuck into Missus by Ruth Park, an Australian author who died just this month. I'd been meaning to read this trilogy for years, so was very happy to have the first land in my lap. And it's an excellent read.

What a great cafe. Anyplace with a book exchange shelf has my vote.

Joyce, it is a fabulous cafe. Great coffee, great food, nice service. My husband spends far too much time (and money) there, chatting with the other regulars and drinking coffee. (We have a deal: he doesn't tell me how much he spends at the cafe; I don't tell him how much I spend on books.)

Best of all, to us, they've opened up the upstairs rooms, put in toys and games (and the free bookshelves), and made them into a great place for parents to turn up and have cafe time, with amusements for the kids. (Miss Boo spent her time up there playing with a toy castle, while I sat in the nice breeze by the window, drinking my tea and reading my book.) The books (and toys) are all a little scruffy and pre-loved, but no one minds much.

And, it being the very quiet time between Christmas and New Year's, we had it all to ourselves today. Nice!

Someone needs to put that place in a book, I can imagine so many scenes...

Jumping in very late on the Little Women thread, I was a great fan of it as a child – and I even read the sequels with pleasure if I remember correctly. It came to my attention again a few years ago when Geraldine Brooks published March, which described Marmee's (shudder) husband's doings while he was fighting in the civil war. I wasn't too impressed by March although I found the concept interesting, but (to keep this on track) it did lead me to start to re-read Little Women. But I found I couldn't. The positives I'd seen in it as a child became sentimental and cloying. I wanted to slap Amy, kick Laurie: they were the two caricatures who irritated me the most, apart from the too-good-to-be-true Beth, who was clearly destined to die from page 1. (I had the same reaction to the film with the young Kiera Knightly as Amy too.)
I think it's true that some books are best left in the ideal world of one's childhood.

(Literature was one of my majors too. One of the good things about that was it gave me a huge start on 1001 books you must read before you die list.)

I just started the Ian Rutledge mystery series written by the mother-son writing team of Caroline and Charles Todd, but published as Charles Todd.

Finished A Test of Wills and am well into Wings of Fire.

#79 " think it's true that some books are best left in the ideal world of one's childhood." I totally agree. After all, not everything holds up as well as Goodnight Moon.

I assume that I'm at the end of the year's thread, so I hope you all had a good one and a happy 2011 to come with lots of big dense lyrical books written by women in your futures!