Tiffin One for 2011

I can't believe it's nearly 2011.
BOOKS READ:



EVALUATION SCHEME
0-1.5* = disgusting use of a perfectly good tree
2-2.5** = meh, don't bother
2.75 = somewhere between meh and ok
3-3.5*** = quite creditable and not a waste of time, liked it
3.75 = just a scritch more of *something* and it would have been really good
4-4.5**** = a really, really good read, enjoyed it thoroughly, would recommend it happily, wish I'd written it
5***** = knocked my socks off, blew me in to the next stratosphere, turned me into a molten puddle, sheer perfection and no you can't borrow it, this one stays right here

JANUARY
1. Major Pettigrew's Last Stand by Helen Simonson
2. The Waters Rising by Sherri S. Tepper
3. Travel Light by Naomi Mitchison My Review of Travel Light
4. A Sensible Life by Mary Wesley
5. The Bells, A Novel by Richard Harvell My Review of The Bells
6. A Book of Silence by Sara Maitland
7. Pepita by Vita Sackville-West

FEBRUARY
8. How to Paint a Dead Man by Sarah Hall
9. The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro
10. Elders and Betters by Quentin Bell
11. The Lost Garden by Helen Humphreys

MARCH
12. Just Kids by Patti Smith
13. August Folly by Angela Thirkell
14. Green Grows the City by Beverley Nichols
15. Henrietta Sees it Through by Joyce Dennys
16. The Skin Chairs by Barbara Comyns
17. Dissolution by C.J. Sansom
18. Henrietta's War by Joyce Dennys
19. The Children's Book by A.S. Byatt
20. Dark Fire by C.J. Sansom
21. Sovereign by C.J. Sansom

APRIL
22. Revelation by C.J. Sansom

Tui! I am so glad to have you back with us again!

Welcome back!

Hiya Stasia and Dr. N...hope I can make it to 75 this time but it's such a friendly group that I don't really care whether I do or not. I'm here to steal the book recommendations!

As are we all... :)

Hullo, Ms. Tiffin! Nice to see you 'round here! Looking forward to your brilliant book comments as always.

#4: hope I can make it to 75 this time but it's such a friendly group that I don't really care whether I do or not.

And we do not really care whether or not you make it to 75 either, Tui!

Hello Tui! I think I lost your thread at some point in 2010 but have starred this one so it won't happen in 2011!

Hi Ter and Soup...just as well you lost it, Dee, as I fell off a cliff at the end. Hope to get my reading mojo back in January!

I concur with you and Stasia:

#4: hope I can make it to 75 this time but it's such a friendly group that I don't really care whether I do or not.

I'm here for the friends too, and you're way up there on the list.

Happy New Year, Tui! I hope it will be full of good things!!! Getting your reading mojo back in January will be a good start.

Happy New Year, Tui!

So glad to see you back again, Tui! After you fell off the cliff, I was quite puzzled...but now you're here, and I hope 2011 is your best reading year to date!

Starred!

Hurrah! She's back!!

It's great to see you here, Tui!

aw you guys...

Tui, great to see your thread. Welcome back.

1. Major Pettigrew's Last Stand by Helen Simonson



A five star start to 2011! Let's hope this is auspicious.

I thought you might like this one! or, love it even!

I loved Major Pettigrew too, Tui! I am glad your reading year has gotten off to such a good start!

I'm glad that you loved it, Tui and Stasia. I didn't. I liked it O.K., but it wasn't love. Isn't personal taste a funny thing?

#22: Yeah, and if we all loved the same things, life would be boring :)

The Major's humour was very like my family's, so there was an instant connection that way. Also his sense of courtesy and politeness resonated, his ability to see people just as people. I loved the take on the egocentric selfish son. I thought the irony of the minister's wife being the worst racist and the terror of the golf club was perfectly done. It just had all the right ingredients for me. And it was a good story, which counts most of all.

Actually, I would probably give it 4.5 if I were really grading things. It was five star in terms of making me happy while reading it.

Great start to the reading year! I hope it's an omen of things to come.

I'm glad you enjoyed Major Pettigrew: I thought the characters in that one were wonderful.

2. The Waters Rising by Sheri S. Tepper



Set in a post-apocalyptic world, with earth's waters rising more and more rapidly, humankind looks to be doomed to die out. Aeons ago humanity destroyed the ecology of the earth...first the ozone went then the sun burned anything people tried to grow. The waters began to rise during this time. In this period referred to as the Before Time, as the character Precious Wind explains:
"humans everywhere had divided into tribes, clans, sects that were constantly at war with one another. Each group hated others because of the language they spoke or the god they worshipped or the color of their skin or the food they ate or their personal habits. Few of their hatreds were based on reality; many of them were brought into existence by people who used something called 'media' to whip people into frenzies of hatred. All these hatreds resulted in violence and death.

Yup, that would be us. Well the next step was the invention of machines by a certain tribe which smelled intelligence and specifically, intelligence which thought like that tribe. All others were to be hunted out and destroyed. These machines were called slaughterers. What they didn't understand was that intelligence exists in all things to a certain extent, so they killed everything from people to bees & ants. This period was called the Big Kill. 90% of all living creatures were eliminated; only a handful of those living on remote islands survived. So in addition to ecological mass destruction caused by our greed and selfishness, our innate savagery finished off the job.

Fast forward to the Now Time, with pockets of people living a feudal existence on the highest grounds on earth, while the Tingawa race from sea islands is working to save what is left of life on earth. The Tingawans have worked for over a century to destroy the slaughterers, a battle which still lingers on and hampers their race to save life on earth. Although certain elements of technology used in the novel are beyond anything we have today, the story was very much set in a world which relied on horses for transportation, birds for communication, walled towns and fortresses to live in, with very rudimentary agriculture.

Tepper's continuing interest in ecological responsibility, in humanity smartening up before it's too late while working in a hybrid of science fiction/fantasy/rollicking adventure sews the plot together for a fun read. She gives us Pandora's box but true to the myth, acknowledges the wisp of hope left in the bottom after the lid comes off.

3.5 stars for this reader.

I'm really excited to read that review, Tui, because I'm a Tepper fan from way back - think, After Long Silence. I have thought that her last few books since The Fresco have been among the weak ones, so I'm glad that this one is 3½ stars for you. I look forward to it. I love the way she pushes an idea or a cultural shibboleth to its logical, absurd conclusion. (I don't think I've ever used that word before. I'm so excited, assuming that I didn't misuse it!)

Peggy, I don't know if 3.5 is a bit high but I too am a Tepper fan, right back to Mavin Manyshaped days, so maybe the extra .5 for loyalty. I especially loved Northshore, Southshore. There's nothing new here in the message but she writes a good story...for when you don't want to strain too hard.

#27: Nice review, Tui. I already have that one in the BlackHole. I picked up the first book in the series, A Plague of Angels, at the Joplin meet up last year. Hopefully I will get to both of the books soon.

>27 tiffin:: That's one I've had on the list for a while. While I find some of Tepper's politics far too extreme and even strident, her ecology-centered ones always sit well with me.

Hmmm.....I don't think I'll be able to resist a post-apocalyptic book......onto the wishlist it goes. Thanks for the review :)

3. Travel Light by Naomi Mitchison



This is a compilation of several old myths and tales, with the main character, the princess Halla of Holmgard, being threatened with death by her new stepmother but rescued in the nick of time by her faithful nurse. The nurse Matulli, being from Finmark, is able to change her shape to a bear so Halla is raised as a bear for the earliest part of her life. Hibernation presents a problem, however, so Halla is passed along to a dragon to care for and is raised with dragon ideals and values.

But the world of man intrudes, as always. Mitchison takes the normal perception of valour and heroism, gives it a twist, showing things from the dragons' side of things so that Halla grows up with a profound distaste for heroes. She becomes an interpreter, with the gift of communicating with any person no matter their language and with any animal.

It's a sweet book which can be read in one sitting. It would be a mistake to dismiss it as a "only" fantasy because of appearances from Valkyries, the All-Father (quite Norse), unicorns and the like for it contains several quiet morals in it, as do all of the best myths and fairy tales. It also has the influence of its author who was a widely travelled amateur cultural anthropologist of decidedly socialist leanings, with a lifelong interest in politics.

#33: I enjoyed Mitchison's Black Sparta when I read it several years ago, so I will give Travel Light a shot too. Thanks for the review and recommendation, Tui!

Oh, I have Travel Light on my TBR pile- well not literally, it's actually on my Virago shelf! I'm in the mood for some intelligent fantasy so may well give it a go!

#33

Don't you love it when you go to put something on your wishlist and discover that it is already sitting comfortably in your mother's LT library, and therefore on her shelves at home. So it is with Travel Light :)

4. A Sensible Life by Mary Wesley



A really good story well told. Set between the wars and continuing to post WWII, this is the story of Flora Trevelyan, honest and reserved even at the age of ten, across the span of perhaps 30 years. Hers is the life lived sensibly, despite having two ghastly self-centred shallow parents who scarper off to India abandoning her to a boarding school and whatever situation will take her. It is also the story of her friendships, loves, lost loves, found loves as she grows and matures, of her unusual solution to the predicament forced on her by the complete lack of parental support and care.

I love Wesley's observant eye, her wry tone, her occasionally acid wit. Her look into the dynamics of various families was spot on, I think, as was the effect of the war.

#37: You might check out The Camomile Lawn, Tui.

Adding A Sensible Life to the BlackHole. Thanks for the recommendation.

Thanks, Stasia...I have the Camomile Lawn on the tbr shelf here. (Shelf...who am I kidding...it's an entire bookcase!)

#39: I know that feeling :)

Ok, the old memory loss thing kicked in there: I read the Camomile Lawn last September. This was niggling at me and I checked last year's lists...yup, September! It's sometimes a bit of a bummer having come from almost eidetic recall to a struggle to remember ... one of a small percentage of the population to react to a heart medication with loss of memory.

ETA: also read "Not That Sort of Girl" at the same time. So I've now read 3 Wesleys.

#41: It is funny, Tui, because when I mentioned The Camomile Lawn, I was sure that the reason I read it was because you recommended it and then I decided I must have been mistaken. I am sorry to hear about your memory lapses. My sister has the same problem because of a medication that she takes, so I understand.

Yikes---I almost missed your last two entries, because I was reading your thread, and had gotten as far as Message 32, or so, when I absentmindedly navigated away from it without finishing all the entries. ERGO---next time I looked at my TBR threads, yours had no "unread" posts on it. Good thing I clicked in again anyway...

I think Travel Light was the very first Virago I read. And I passed it on to the estimable Holly Wendt a/k/a geatland, who I knew would love it for all the reasons you mention.

5. The Bells, A Novel by Richard Harvell



An Early Reviewer novel.

I wanted to like this book better, I really did. All the elements were there: the interesting period of the mid 1700s, glorious music, a glimpse into the lives of the castrati, power, greed, and love.

The story of Moses Froben, the by-blow of a licentious priest who repeatedly sexually abused his mother, a “deaf-mute”* outcast who rang the bells in an obscure Swiss church, and his rise to triumph because of his astonishing voice could have been a captivating one. The book is written as though it is Moses’ memoir left for his “son”, Nicolai. Through this memoir we follow Moses in his early days of deprivation and extreme impoverishment to his young life in the Abbey of St. Gall and the discovery of his talent. There he becomes the victim of one man’s slightly insane dream of glory and perfection, who wants to preserve Moses’ voice by making him a musico.

When love sweeps him away, Moses’ life is altered forever. It sends him on a pilgrimage to Vienna where he gets pulled under the wing of the famous singer, Gaetano Guadagni, another of the castrati. The music of the time, particularly that of Gluck, the theatre(s) and their workings, the glittering world of the titled and fabulously wealthy are all well and carefully woven into the tale. Moses’ friendship with two homosexual monks, Nicolai and Remus, as well as with the dwarf, Tasso, are worked into the story at this point.

The chronology of the story was good, the historical aspects were very well done, the pace moved well. So where did it go wrong for me? Frankly, with the writing itself. It was overwrought to the point of distracting at times. High Drama doesn’t always have to happen. Sometimes a sense of silence, of reserve, both in the dialogue and the action, can make the tension more acute and profound. Having Amalia dash through a door so precipitously that she knocks Moses on his backside makes the action seem like the Keystone Cops when it should have been an extraordinary moment as they see each other again after more than a year. This distanced me from the story instead of pulling me right in to it, losing that magic of being right there, believing.

I feel that with more judicious editing this tendency to over-descriptiveness could have been reined in a bit and what would have come out as a result would have been a story that could have won my heart. It came so close to being right.

*Note: “Deaf-mute” is the term on the back cover and is no longer used in polite company. The preferred term is non-verbal hearing disabled... although I guess it likely would have been “deaf-mute” - or worse - in the mid 1700s.

Hi Tui

Congratulations on reading five books thus far. I'm sorry to learn of your memory loss. I can relate. I have a birth defect called an Arnold Chiari Malformation, it manifests itself in wicked migraine headaches, tremors in my hands and forgetfulness. It really is difficult to have memory loss.

Hugs to you.

It's hard when you can remember having a stellar one, eh Whisp?

Finally got my review done for book # 5:

My Review of The Bells

I also posted the review above with the book. I gave it three stars because for a first novel it was a good effort. His writing shows potential. And my reaction to certain overwrought aspects might just be subjective. Perhaps someone else might love this about it. I tend to like a certain crisp understatement rather than florid over-abundance.

#48: I already had the Harvell book on my 'Do Not Read' list. Your review just confirms its place there.

I hope your next read is a better one for you, Tui!

Thanks, Stasia. It was a "have to", being an ER book. I had been struggling to read it since before Christmas and was determined to get it off of my conscience. I did wonder if he was trying to create something of a verbal opera with the heightened sense of drama but if so, it didn't work for me. So onwards and upwards!

An excellent review, Tui, of what sounds like a potentially great book. But editing, I'm afeerd, is going by the wayside.

What bothers me are authors who never met an adverb or adjective they didn't like.

Charlie, I KNOW!!! That's it exactly. But there was the sense there that he could write well, if only he put the brakes on a bit more.

It appears, then, that verbosity and overblown drama is not a strike against being published. Stieg Larrsson is another example. I read the first 600-page "thumper" of his tattoo trilogy and that was enough: It could easily have been half the size.

I wonder if these people get paid by the word like Henry James did.

I thought that was Dickens. (Oooops! Did I step on a toe, there?)

Well now I liked the Stieg Larsson books but I got caught up in the action of the story enough to plough through all three. I can't remember...I might have sped read in parts but I don't think I did. It's so subjective, isn't it. Some of the reviews about "The Bells" just raved about it.

Sadly, nobody gets paid by the word... in the world of books, at least. When I DO get paid by the word, and overrun my allotted wordage, they just slash me right back to 600 or 800 words or whatever. Sigh.

I also found Stieg Larsson not too long for me; ditto Julie Orringer's book The Invisible Bridge, which felt longer. In contrast, Connie Willis's two most recent books, which need to be read, felt endless. Not bad, just that at times I was definitely plodding along.

#54: Har! Fooled you! I wear a pith helmet and steel-toed slippers whenever I think you might be lurking around.

#55 & 56: I should have qualified my comment about Larsson: for me, he is way too long for the mystery genre.

>57 BrainFlakes:: Charlie, I don't know beans about the mystery genre. Oh I've read Poirot and Miss Marple and Peter Wimsey and some Ian Rankin but I'm not an afficionado by any stretch. So I didn't even know the Larsson books were considered mysteries. It was something else for me, kind of a merger of adventure, spy, quasi feminist stuff with some cliff-hanger thrown in.

I read The Bells and thought that there was too much melodrama. The potential was there ( I love a good opera) but not taken.

Thank you, Cyrel...I wondered if I was being too critical and harsh. I love a good opera too!

Tui - Since you enjoyed A Sensible Life, be sure to pick up Harnessing Peacocks as well.

I will try to find that one, wee Camel Caroline. Thank you!

Nice review of The Bells, Tui; I'll avoid it, though.

Hi There Tui

I'm not sure if I have your birthday.

I'm compiling a list of birthdays of our group members. If you haven't done so already, would you mind stopping by this thread and posting yours.

Thanks.

http://www.librarything.com/topic/105833

6. A Book of Silence by Sara Maitland



My Review

I have been reading this one for close to two months. A memoir, it is also a meditation and as such, I found I needed to read it in sips, contemplating each morsel, each concept and discovery.

Sara Maitland finds herself increasingly in need of and drawn to places of quiet. At first she thought it was because she is a writer so she was searching out that perfect quiet in which to create. She moves to live separately from her High Anglican clergyman husband, leaving London to move to a quiet village. But as she progresses in her study of silence, she finds the village isn't quiet enough as its daily noises and interruptions intrude. So she rents a place on the Isle of Skye for several months, which forms the real leaping off point for her further explorations.

She reads constantly throughout her "journey", which takes her on explorations of moors, forests, the desert, mountains and eventually back to southwest Scotland, her birthplace, where she builds a home to embrace the need for that silence which her soul seems to need. At times I was astonished at her fearlessness as she embarked on this and that method of exploring silence, for she is not a young woman and she did it alone. And while I do not share her religious perspective, it never intrudes to make one uncomfortable nor does she proselytize, despite her in-depth look at religious hermits, saints and the like because when she discusses things of that ilk, she does so from a basis of research and history. It allowed me to keep a comfortable distance.

This isn't a polished book of pat conclusions but very much a work in progress, as she thinks and works her way through ideas and emotions. As she says herself, she didn't know how to end the book because she didn't feel that she is at the end of anything. But it is a book with a rare honesty and certainly an erudite, critical mind at work in it. I felt at times that I would like to discuss, even argue about, the concept of silence with her. Most of all she left me with a profound admiration for someone who acknowledged an aspect of herself and rather than leaving it unexplored, stood up to the challenge of it, taking herself off to look into it as thoroughly as possible. Not for her the unexamined life, the faint niggling sense of a self dissatisfied and shoved to the background.

When she finds her place at last, I couldn't help a pang of envy:
"Like Anthony, here was the place that fed my 'appetite for the absolute' that would place me, as his wood and pond had placed Thoreau, in a 'naked condition in front of the universe'..."
I think this book would speak powerfully to anyone still searching out that place where their soul feels at home, as a guide and a record of one woman's journey to find hers.

7. Pepita by Vita Sackville-West



Ok, Vita, you win. Your grandmother is far more interesting than mine...although how a stodgy Victorian could ever compete with a flamenco dancing Spaniard of astonishing beauty who became the mistress of Lionel Sackville-West, producing 6 living children for him, is quite beyond me. There were actually 7 children but that last one died at childbirth, taking Pepita with him.

This is Vita Sackville-West's loving look at her redoubtable grandmother, followed by an equally doting look at her mother, Victoria, in the second half of the book. It evidently required a bit of research and a good bit of digging about in Spain for her to get at the facts. Although the focus was on the two women, both of the Lionels connected to them were interesting for their apparently total disregard for social conventions and mores. A whacky, curious and somewhat fascinating family, which goes a long way to explaining Vita herself.

A light but loamish read.

A nice balance there, with your last two. I quest for silence myself, but in a much less intense and courageous way. I suppose we all do. I'd be happy if the "mute" button on my remote control would just work when I hit it!

Wonderful reading that you're doing, Tui! Of course, I'm off to wish list both of them. The contemplative life always beckons, doesn't it? And I always resist!

Wow, both of those sound good!

>67 laytonwoman3rd:: Yes, that's it exactly: "in a much less intense and courageous way". As long as I have an approximation of a room of one's own, I'm ok.

>68 LizzieD:: Peggy, that's funny. I meditate while I'm knitting...until I drop a stitch.
>69 lauralkeet:: Laura, I think you would enjoy Pepita...and it IS a Virago!

Ouch, the Sara Maitland book bullet struck home. It will be arriving chez moi on Monday...

Adding A Book of Silence to the BlackHole as well as another of Maitland's I stumbled across that is available for my Nook, A Joyful Theology.

I like your reviews!

Well thank you, Angela. Very kind of you.

8. How to Paint a Dead Man by Sarah Hall



Just not quite sure where we are going with this one. It wasn't riffling through the four distinct characters - the famous landscape artist; the blind girl, Annette Tambroni; the English artist, Peter; his daughter Susan - that caused the...the what? the disassociation? Got them and their links to each other just fine. It wasn't the fifth character, death, who skulked and hovered and threatened and actually killed who made me metaphysically scratch my head, puzzled. Nor was it the writing which caused the feeling of detachment, because the writing was beautiful, as writing. Wait, that's it: it was writing, as in I'm doing a creative writing exercise.

I kept thinking, "really, what's your point here, Ms. Hall?". Is this a series of paintings with words? Is this art for art's sake? The book just didn't hook into me, pick me up and carry me with it. I guess I'm just an old crank of middling years who wants to be told a rip snorting good story at this stage of my life. I was left with the sensation that sugar-free chocolate gives: nearly, but I need that kick. I may have to read it again...but somehow I suspect I won't ever quite get around to it.

----neither will I. Thanks!

#76: Hmm, someone in the group must have recommended that one since I already have it in the BlackHole. I will bump it down some though.

Hmmm, I'll take a pass on that one!

I think Darryl quite enjoyed it...it may have been his appreciation of it which led me to it. I don't want to put anyone else off of it because it could be someone else's book of the year but for me it was too artsy and I really am done with those. I just want to be told a good story now.

There is a wonderful discussion going on over at LizzieD's thread about how and when we learned to read. It's one of those fun discussions that pops up at LT amongst fellow readers.

Further to that, I have a very clear memory of my first library. It had glass in the floors of the upper level through which you could see the main floor, which always creeped me out a bit as a kid. I was allowed to check out as many books as I could carry at a time...I quickly learned to take my doll carriage with me so that I could carry more. This was when I was 3. This meant I was averaging about 20 books a week so by 4 I had exhausted what I was interested in in the children's section.

Mom took me to the librarian to get me an adult borrowing card. No, the age limit was 7. She has read everything of interest to her in the children's section, Mom pressed. I couldn't wait 3 more years! The librarian walked over to the adult shelves, grabbed any book off the shelf, handed it to me and said let me hear you read that. So I read the first page of Dostoyevsky's "The Idiot" to her and got my adult library card. (I had to wait until I was in my teens to actually read the book.)

That kindly librarian and several other splendid librarians have assisted, recommended, helped and shaped my reading, in no small way making me the reader (and perhaps the person) I am today. I have had the most profound regard for good librarians ever since.

Pepita sounds absolutely fascinating!

What a classic, wonderful, beautiful story, Tui. 1 wise mom + 1 wise librarian +1 bright child = 1 happy reading life.

Well, with the plight of libraries everywhere right now, Linda, I thought I should put my oar in. They DO make a difference.

There wasn't a genre called Y.A. back then. There were very young kids' books and then what we would think of as Y.A. got put in the adult section. So to have access to that gold mine, I had to have an adult card. I certainly wasn't reading Dostoyevsky at 5! But the Enid Blytons (Island of Adventure, Mountain of Adventure...etc.) and all of that ilk, I sure gulped those down as fast as I could.

ETA: Carly, Vita's whole family was fascinating!

That's so lovely, Tui. Let me tell you my library story, which went a little differently, but at least was very quick. The public library let me read whatever I wanted when I wanted it with no more than an occasional question. The school librarian, on the other hand, forced me to read the Pooh books and a few others for "babies" when I was in the second grade before she would allow me over to the 6th grade section where I wanted to be. I finally appreciated Pooh when I was in college, so no lasting harm was done, but more wasted time, I thought!

When I went up to middle school at 9, we were only allowed to read from one particular set of shelves in the school library, specially set aside for Year 5 students. We had to wait to get to year 6 before being let loose. I'd read all the books in the first three weeks, and my mum had to write a letter to ask for me to be allowed to read from anywhere.

Interesting... I was having a debate about YA earlier this week with a friend who reads largely in this genre. I was making the case you make, Tui, that there really weren't great YA novels at this time -- there were classic yarns, like Kidnapped, there were children's books (often very good ones, in England) and then there were books for adults. I graduated to those by about eight or nine. I had read my way through Enid Blyton by then as well as pretty much everything else. The London librarians wouldn't allow me to use the adult library (I don't know what the age was, just that at nearly 12, I still hadn't hit it) but I lived a half-block from Harrod's, and all my pocket money was spent in their book department on Saturdays. (I can STILL find my way to that department, blindfolded, nearly four decades later.) Then, when we moved back to Ottawa, I had free run of the library there. We lived only a few blocks from the Ottawa South branch, and on weekends I'd take the bus downtown to what was then (1974) a fancy new main branch. Still have affection for that building.

I don't know when I learned to read -- I have no memory of that. I do know that I became an avid reader shortly before my 7th birthday. We had just moved to London; my brother had developed mumps and we were in quarantine in a nasty B&B, waiting until we could move into our new flat. Books saved my sanity in those weeks and months...

Great reviews and great comments found here!

Hi Tui.

I learned to read at an early age. Actually, my first books were the Dick and Jane ones. My beautiful, spunky great grandmother was from the mountains of West Virginia. Her family was poor and at that time, she did not learn to read.

She was 80 and I was five and we learned together. Later in life as I pursued book after book, course after college course and thirsted for knowledge, I realized that her example paved the way for me on a very deep level.

I was very blessed by 80 year old Lena Corell and her incredible impact on my life.

Linda, I'm sitting here with my eyes all teared up at that image of a five year old you and an 80 year old her sitting learning to read together. What a LOVELY and incredible story. Thank you!

CB, yes, those were the kinds of books...I read the Rudyard Kipling Jungle series at about 5 (we had it at home), as well as the Robert Louis Stevenson stuff. I also loved poetry! All the poetry was in the adult section, even if it was more geared to younger folk, such as Walter de la Mare.

Do you mean the library on Bank Street? My grandparents lived in the Glebe near the canal, not far from the frog ponds along the canal. I used to go to a library on Bank Street with Mom.

Yes, Tui -- it was/is on Bank Street, just the other side of the bridge over the canal from the Ex grounds and the stadium. We used to live on Echo Drive, just a few blocks down, and facing the canal. Lovely... I miss that house so much! I spent a year at Glebe HS before we moved to Belgium.

We were on the other side of the canal from you then. We used to walk a couple of blocks to Lansdowne Park, my grandfather and I, to watch baseball. We could hear the frogs in the ponds at night. And skating on the canal! Beautiful old houses.

Oh, how I miss skating on the canal! Although apparently they've had a hard time this year; not consistently cold enough to flood it properly. We could hear the cheers from Lansdowne during the CFL season!

I do not remember ever having to ask for an 'adult' library card at my childhood library. Of course, I was 12 when we finally landed in a place long enough for me to actually get a library card, so maybe that is why.

Same here, Stasia--at least I was about 10 years old before I went to the "big school" in the town where the public library was. I remember reading a lot of biographies for book reports from the "junior" section, but I was always allowed to take out anything by saying it was for my mother! My library "card" in those days was an index card in a box on the librarian's desk. You signed your name on the removable card in the book, which then got filed in another box according to the due date, until you returned the book. A little manila pocket was pasted into the book, for the card to live in, and the due date was stamped onto a grid on that pocket. You still find these in ex-library books sometimes at used book sales, but I'll bet a lot of people under a certain age never encountered that check-out system.

Lovely review of A Book of Silence, Tui. I'll add that to my wish list.

I did like How to Paint a Dead Man, as I got caught up on Sarah Hall's wild ride that seemed to end without going anywhere.

Unfortunately I don't remember when I first started reading, although I do remember getting my first library card, and how proud I was to be able to borrow books under my own name. I also remember racing home from school whenever I was expecting an order from the Scholastic Book Club, being bitterly disappointed when it hadn't yet come, and being almost deliriously happy when it finally arrived.

>76 tiffin: I guess I'm just an old crank of middling years who wants to be told a rip snorting good story at this stage of my life.

Seconded. Motion passes to floor for a vote. All those in favor, signify by saying "aye."

Tui my dear, and I do mean "MY dear" because you're one of my treasures on LT, I read your stories and snippets and opinons and occasional unladylike snorts with such warm anticipation that it feels like a long conversation with a close friend, had in bits and snatches, and all the better for its casual pick-up put-down freedom.

What fun it is to get to know people via Internet! Thanks for allowing it to be easy.

I want a "LIKE-ALOT" button for Post #96. Treasure indeed, our Tui.

Migosh, thank you, Richard and Linda. What a heart warming thing to read on this snowy Sunday morning. As Pooh says, I've come over all funny.

In that case, you must go heffalump hunting. It is the only solution to coming over all funny. Or eat a pot of honey. Your choice.

Tui, I would opt for both. Heffalump hunting is just a whale of a lot of fun, and who could pass up a pot of organic honey?

>97 laytonwoman3rd:: ditto!
>99 lunacat:: *snort*

Re How to Paint a Dead Man...a friend whose reading opinion I respect has just started this and is loving it. The reviewer who reviewed it for Belletrista loved it too. So I may need to give this one a second chance at some point to see if it really wasn't my cuppa or I was in a mood.

>97 laytonwoman3rd: third
>95 kidzdoc: It's not from Scholastic anymore, but my inner life does sort of focus on the mail box with the same reactions depending on book package or no book package.

"oh you people", as my mother-in-law would say when given a compliment or a gift

I'm the same re book packages, Peggy. Living in the country, I keep an eye keeked out the window around the time the mail van should be coming by. I have the best mail people: they pull into the drive and honk if there are parcels too big to fit into the box. It saves me the drive into the city to pick them up.

"Oh you people' = "Aw shah" - compliments of my granny

You're Siddhartha!

by Hermann Hesse

You simply don't know what to believe, but you're willing to try
anything once. Western values, Eastern values, hedonism and minimalism, you've spent
some time in every camp. But you still don't have any idea what camp you belong in.
This makes you an individualist of the highest order, but also really lonely. It's
time to chill out under a tree. And realize that at least you believe in
ferries.


Take the Book Quiz
at the Blue Pyramid.

Ferries? FERRIES? Of course I believe in ferries. I've ridden on a few. Across broad expanses of water. In perfect safety. Dry feet. Even a dry car. What's not to believe?

LOL!!!!

I'm too old for this.

It's pathetic, isn't it, Peggy. *grin*

Ferries. What a hoot.

#106: I got that I am Siddharta too, Tui. I guess we can believe in 'ferries' together :)

9. The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro



Simply stunning.

10. Elders and Betters by Quentin Bell



Can we ever get enough of Bloomsbury?

>112 tiffin:: isn't it? So glad you loved it Tui!

It broke my heart and left me gobsmacked all at the same time. If my shoulder could handle it, I'd write a review but that will have to do for now.

>113 tiffin: ---- The answer is "no."

#112: The Remains of the Day is one of the top 10 novels I've read since 2000. I completely agree with your comments about it, and I'm glad that you also loved it.

#113: Not me!

Ah, geez...how I wish I had lots of time to read all the books I want to read. Last year I was able to purchase The Remains of the Day for .10 at my local library sale table. I vow to read this book in 2011.

11. The Lost Garden by Helen Humphreys



I am going to write a review for this later today. A wonderful book which deserves a word about it.

Oh, oh---I feel another purchase coming on.

#120: Looking forward to that review, Tui!

Me too. I can't order The Lost Garden right now, but I did pay $1.91 to put her Coventry: A Novel on my Kindle. It's short, so I may get to it soon.

Here we go then:

My Review of The Lost Garden by Helen Humphreys

The combination of a story set between the wars in England and into the early years of the Second World War, with a writer who doesn’t seem to misstep as she writes of fragile things like longing, loss and love, promised to be a good read. "The Lost Garden" by Helen Humphreys didn’t disappoint.

Gwen Davis is leaving London, driven out by the death of her mother and the bombs constantly removing sections of the city, to work with the Women’s Land Army growing potatoes on an old estate, Mosel, in the west of England. She leaves on the same day that her favourite author, Virginia Woolf, has gone missing, her treasured copy of “To the Lighthouse” packed in her luggage. Shy and awkward, with only her skills and degree in horticulture to recommend her, Gwen is ill prepared to be the leader of a disparate group of young women who are also displaced as a result of the war.

What unfolds is a beautiful story of friendship, love, the tremendous loss that war and death bring, of finding something enormously important in the process of connecting with others who are left as ravaged by war and death as is Gwen herself. The lost garden is the metaphor for longing, loss and love which forms the heart of the story, as well as for the characters themselves. In Humphreys’ hands this doesn’t feel hackneyed but is exquisitely drawn and lucidly real.

I love this writer’s ‘voice’. She doesn’t seem to indulge in overwrought or superfluous language but has a quiet trueness about her, even when writing of the most momentous things where a few pyrotechnics might be excused. You know that feeling as a reader when you sense a falseness, when you know something wouldn’t have happened a certain way or the characters wouldn’t have felt like that? There wasn't a moment of that for this reader.

The story had a special resonance with me: a couple of years ago I visited the Lost Gardens of Heligon near St. Austell, in Cornwall, gardens which had been lost, rediscovered, and beautifully restored. It was a paradise of flora and fauna, of purpose and design. I learned then that the gardens had employed about 100 full-time gardeners in their heyday but after WWI there weren’t enough skilled men left alive to carry them on. The great house which had created them had to give them up and they got forgotten by subsequent generations. I read my experience of this extraordinary place into “The Lost Garden”, fleshing out Gwen’s experience with what my own eyes had seen, what I, as a gardener, had felt witnessing this rebirth. So I can’t speak to whether this aspect of the book would hold the same meaning for another reader as it did for me. However, the story itself speaks beautifully, powerfully and needs no specialised awareness to appreciate it. Recommended.

From pages 181-2 in A Lost Garden: thoughts on the creative process of writing, of reading

The book is the shared experience, the shared intimacy. There is Virginia Woolf, dipping her pen in ink, looking up from the page with Lily on the lawn, to the view from her window. Here am I, looking across the room to the summer dark beating against these mullioned panes. There is Jane reading the words aloud to a young soldier sitting beside her. It is a place we have all arrived at, this book. The characters fixed on the page. The author who is only ever writing the book, not gardening or walking or talking, and while the reader is reading, the author is always here, writing. The author is at one end of the experience of writing and the reader is at the other, and the book is the contract between you. And this is what you're doing, being in the book, entering it as one enters a room and sees there, through the French doors to the garden, Lily Briscoe painting on the lawn.

When a writer writes, it's as if she holds the sides of her chest apart, exposes her beating heart. And even though everything wants to heal, to close over and protect the heart, the writer must keep it bare, exposed. And in doing this, all of life is kept back, all the petty demands of the day-to-day. The heart is a river. The act of writing is the moving water that holds the banks apart, keeps the muscle of words flexing so that the reader can be carried along by this movement. To be given space and the chance to leave one's earthly world. Is there any greater freedom than this?

Beautiful review- I read that book a few years ago and have followed Humphreys since then.

I went to add The Lost Garden to the BlackHole and discovered it was already there. Hmmmph.

ETA: Lovely review, Tui! Thanks.

Now Stasia, why am I not surprised? And thank you, Cyrel and Stasia. Cyrel, it was her Frozen Thames for me. I'm going to hunt down more of her work.

I don't know what to read next. I'm doing the tbr shelf dither: pick one up, read first page, stick it back on shelf....

>128 tiffin:: Oh, she wrote Frozen Thames? Hmmm, that one intrigued me also but I've not yet read it. Now I really must discover this author!

#128: I don't know, Tui. Why are you not surprised? lol

Hi Tui - somehow your thread must have come "unstarred", because I am just finding it now (despite having posted waaay up in message 14....how did that happen?). Anyway, I will be here from this moment on! I really enjoyed your review of Pepita, and I think I need to check out the Virago group - I don't think I've ever read any of them. I also have How to Paint a Dead Man sitting on my shelves, and based on the conversation here about it, I'm eager to push it up the TBR pile.

Did you finally settle on a book to read?

Cait, the Virago group is two things: a lovely group of bright, well-read women AND a gold mine of information about the whole Virago collection, one of the richest motherlodes of reading you'll ever excavate. Do join in! You'd be welcome and your reading will go into whole new places.

I'm pothering about in the Bachelor Brothers' Bedside book as I fall asleep and have started The Children's Book by Byatt (a kitchen table read because it's such a thumper).

Oh, I loved The Children's Book - but it is definitely a kitchen table book!

>132 tiffin:: there are a few bright well-read men in the Virago group as well! :)
Cait, I'll second Tui's recommendation regarding the group. It's very active and social (well, not as social as this group but that's OK!). And discovering Virago literature is a treat.

Oh Laura, you are so right! Thanks for saying that. Sorry, lads!

#134, 135 - OK, I joined :) Looking forward to jumping in - I have Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier, or The Sugar Mother by Elizabeth Jolley, or The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton to start with...

I'm glad I have The Lost Garden to look forward to; I'm reading The Frozen Thames but not particularly enjoying the vignette format, although her writing is good. It feels too disjointed for me -- I feel the lack of some kind of narrative arc (and nope, I really don't see one) and the device of writing about years when the Thames froze over is a clever one, but almost too clever. Sigh.

Aw heck, that's too bad CB...chacun à son goût rides again? I loved the Frozen Thames and read each one as I thought (hoped) she intended, as a meditation on what ice is and its importance in our world. I carted it around in my handbag and read it in sips. Not every one resonated but most did and some of them even almost made me cry (that rarely happens). But there is indeed a narrative arc in The Lost Garden.

Just stopping by to say Hi! :)

"...chacun à son goût..."

?

I'm sorry to report that I am familiar with only one language, and I have a lot of trouble with it...

Sorry, Charlie: each to his own taste. It's a common expression in Canuckistan and CB is an ex-pat Canadian.

Canuckistan...I shall have to remember that when I'm up there this summer. Anything to abuse the locals who have plenty of ammo to abuse me...

Well, we're your commie pinko socialist friends to the north, Tad!

12. Just Kids by Patti Smith



Superb writing from one of the iconic artists from the 70s, Just Kids is the story of Patti Smith and Robert Mapplethorpe's love and life together from the time of their meeting to his death from AIDS. Robert asked her to write their story as his life neared its end and she did, she really did. Highly recommended.

That does it. Must read this one. I thought so, and now I'm sure.

It was a four and a half star read for me, Linda. And such an exciting look at an enormous era for those of us in our middling years. She writes like a dream.

>144 tiffin:: most intrigued now.

Hmm, I keep wavering about that. I'm not that interested in either of them as people, so it would be a bit of a leap of faith for me. Perhaps a library choice later in the year...?

Very much my era and I have some of her records, so it resonated.

13. August Folly by Angela Thirkell



Just what the doctor ordered. Great fun!

148, Suzanne, I didn't think I was interested in them as people either, but I loved Just Kids because it is beautifully written and informative about the New York art scene, especially in the 1970s, and most of all because of the deep insight it gives into the drive to be an artist.

Patti Smith is a poet as well as a singer and artist. She made me see and feel the streets of New York, the art scene, the people. It was an extraordinary era, those early 70s, and nowhere more central to it than New York. The book is also a tribute to the human spirit, to courage and creativity. That part of me which would create responded very deeply to this. I completely agree, Rebecca.

>150 tiffin:: August Folly and Wild Strawberries are the only two Thirkell's I've read so far, but I do love her take on Barsetshire.

I do too, Tad. I find that era between the wars so soothing, for some strange reason.

14. Green Grows the City by Beverley Nichols



Beverley Nicols was a gardener extraordinaire. Untrained except through his own experience, fearless and passionate about it, he soothed this gardener's heart with this story of building a garden in an unhelpful triangle of a London back yard. This is one of the Timber Press rereleases of his work. My guilty pleasure!

What a beautiful cover for Green Grows the City.

I'm catching up on your thread. I love the writing of Helen Humphreys. Thanks for your great review of The Lost Garden. I loved The Frozen Thames and Wild Dogs. I couldn't relate to Afterimage

15. Henrietta Sees It Through: More News From the Home Front 1942-1945 by Joyce Dennys



There is more to this book than meets the eye, although the humour is delightful.

My Review Here

*touchstones not working

>156 Whisper1:: Hi Whisp, you've read more Humphreys than I have! Must search out more of her work.

>157 tiffin:: Sounds great, Tui.

I'm definitely adding this one (and the others) to my wishlist. Sounds really good!

And I'm rushing off to order the first one, Henrietta's War! Thanks, Tad and Cush. I don't know what it is about English books written between the wars or in the war, but they just captivate me.

ETA: ordered and on the way from the BookDepository!

Nice review, Tui! I'll add that to my wish list, too.

Darryl, I would read them in order if I had a choice (which I didn't, getting the 2nd one to review first). I suspect the first one sets up the characters and setting so that you wouldn't just be diving in. The humour is delightful but wry, wry, wry...which I love.

I snagged a copy of Henrietta's War over the weekend at good old Otto's, my favorite bookstore of all time, because I've been going there since 1969, whenever I have occasion to be in Williamsport, PA.

16. The Skin Chairs by Barbara Comyns



What a treasure of a book. I like Barbara Comyns' writing so much.

Written in the first person by ten year old Frances, a child possessed of a singular imagination with a propensity for getting herself into unusual situations, her perspective on her family's poverty brought on by the untimely death of her father is strangely luminous and innocent. Frances and her six siblings, as well as their beloved mother, are forced rather unwillingly into the care of their wealthy horse breeding relatives, Aunt and Uncle Lawrence. Aunt Lawrence, in particular, is a snobbish tyrant who dictates how the young widow must live, riding roughshod over Frances' family as well members of as her own.

We see mental illness, alcoholism, child abuse, and other unpleasant adult phenomena through the eyes of a child who struggles to come to grips with these things and yet it is not an unhappy book for she and her siblings are loved fiercely by their mother and also love each other a good deal. It all works out in the end in a very satisfactory way with the good folk getting their happy endings and the unpleasant folk getting their just desserts. I couldn't put it down.

Everyone's reading Comyns around here these days. She's on my list for April now.

#165 Isn't it nice to have friends who cater to our cravings, Tui? (See, I know where you got that book.)

Very belatedly reading your thread, I was pleased to read your review of Maitland's book on silence, which I'd heard discussed round the time she published it, but haven't got round to reading yet. I've read a couple of earlier books of hers (novels) but this sounds very interesting too.

And I have August Folly in my TBR pile - I've not read any Thirkell yet, heard about her on here and am looking forward to that one.

Hi Genny, welcome. Thirkell's Barsetshire series does have a certain chronology to it, with characters growing up or aging, many of the books interconnected. So I would start with some of the earlier ones ad read forward, if possible. Moyer Bell began reissuing them in a beautiful set but there seem to be gaps (perhaps some of the titles aren't free to be reprinted yet...this happened with the reissue of the Barbara Pym oeuvre they did as well).

I don't know if the Maitland book would be to everyone's taste or not but I enjoy that kind of exploratory, contemplative journey, particularly in the hands of someone who really can write.

17. Dissolution by C.J. Sansom



Oh yes, I am really going to love this series. What a wonderful debut novel, a mystery and historical novel combined into an enthralling tale of a powerful time in English history. So glad the rest of the books are on their way.

Oooey, and I'm in line for this one! Glad to see that you enjoyed it!

#170 I've just finished that one too, and really enjoyed it. On to Dark Fire next! Re Thirkell, August Folly is the only one I've got hold of so far; I've got the rest on my Bookmooch wishlist but nothing else has come up yet. If reading chronologically is important, I'm happy to wait until I've got the first book.

Yay, glad you loevd Dissolution! I'm about to start Book 3, Sovereign.

Dark Fire should be here any day now so I'll be diving in the minute it does. In the last 1/4 of The Children's Book so hopefully that will be done so I can have a Shardlake-fest.

You've been reading such great stuff -- many books too that I've read and loved in the last year -- Humphreys, Comyns - and some old favorites. I went on a Thirkell RAMPAGE in the 70's, I don't even remember how I found her but once I did I had to HAVE THEM ALL -- I had so much fun ransacking used bookshops. Then the Virago craze hit, probably a direct development.......

Anyhow, I lost a lot of threads, yours being one, in January and am only just getting my act together, thread-wise. I used to worry more about this, but it seems to happen to everyone..... so forgive me.

Ooh, looking forward to seeing what you thought of the Children's Book. I have it here and from what I've read on here think I'll like it, but it's been sitting on the shelf for ages.

Cush, I was jus talking about it with someone else who has read it. She said she felt like she had finished an assignment, although she did like it. I said that it was as though Byatt had done such a phenomenal amount of research that she couldn't let any of it go, so there are pockets where you feel like you are at a uni lecture. I read it in chunks on the kitchen table, where it has lived for a couple of weeks. It is too dense - in every sense of the word - to read it any other way.

OK, that's good to know. I have 2 chunky books lined up (W&P at the moment, then The Magic Mountain next) so it's going to take me a while to be in the mood for it.

18. Henrietta's War by Joyce Dennys



Just a treat - although I wish I had read them in order as I liked the second book slightly more than this first one. They do belong together (I wonder why they weren't released as one book?). Again, I thoroughly enjoyed Dennys' insightful look at the war from the perspective of those keeping the home fires burning.

>178 cushlareads:: Cush, perhaps I seemed to damn with faint praise. I am really, really enjoying The Children's Book. She has captured the era so thoroughly - all the intellectual foment, the challenge by women of the societal limitations imposed on them, the rise of the working class as a power to be reckoned with. But she also gives us several Victorian families, with wonderful characterisation. It is like being told a vast, rambling tale, evolving and morphing as time goes on. A modern epic, really.

My experience of Byatt is that it is kind of an adventure and my mood, while reading, ebbs and flows.... but that I'm always glad to have read the novel when I finish.

I've been reading Henrietta's War during lunch times at work this week. It is a treat, and I will have to get my hands on the second one.

#180 I agree about the Children's Book, her not being able to leave out any of the research. It was all fascinating stuff, but sometimes the novel did turn into a fascinating lecture!

19. The Children's Book by A.S. Byatt



Finished it, all 617 pages of it! A wonderful, epic and engrossing read. Still debating about doing a review or not, but for now, highly recommended.

20. Dark Fire by C.J. Sansom



When 501 pages can hold you enthralled, reading every word and not skipping a thing, you know you've found a good one. Thank goodness I have the next book in the series because I am loving Matthew Shardlake and company.

Sansom brings the period to life: you can smell the stink of London, from the people to the cesspits, feel the crowds, the mud in the streets. Best of all, you can experience the danger of a very dangerous time with a now impotent king unable to conceive a male heir, powerful men like Cromwell and Norfolk jockeying for position, the religious tensions as the papists try futilely to hold on to their lost power, all of it without having to leave the safety of your armchair (thank goodness!) except between your ears.

This man can tell a heckuva good story.

ETA: can't get the cover pic to load...t'ings isn't right

*whew* finally! Not touching that post again in case I mess things up.

I'm fretting that my copy of Dissolution isn't here yet. It was mailed last week. Come on, USPS!!!

#179: I own that one. I really need to get around to reading it!

Tui, your cover is nicer than mine for Dark Fire. I'm 300 pages through the 3rd and still loving the series - the next one is set in York and he is really bringing the city to life for me. I have book 4 here, but not 5... eek!

I will really keep my eye open for this series. I have it already on my list of wishes.

21. Sovereign by C.J. Sansom



Another 579 pages of sheer delight and incredible relief that I didn't live back then. The next two books in the series are on their way or I'd be diving into the next one. Guess I'll go read an Angela Thirkell instead.

My goodness, you're tearing through those chunksters!

Linda, I love the historical aspect of it...I mean the guy has his Ph.D. in history so it's GOOD (well researched, accurate, with bibliographies and endnotes)! And the characters are so well drawn, so utterly believable. That mean, porcine face of Henry on the cover captures so much of the book. I haven't felt so well and thoroughly entertained by writing in a long while.

I really have got to get back to the Shardlake series!

Hi There.

Simply stopping by to see what you are reading, and as usual, I'm adding some to the tbr pile.

Book#19, 20 and 21 are now on the pile.

Hi Whisp...have you read Dissolution? I am liking the character of Matthew Shardlake so much.

#194 and previous: Well, you have me convinced. That period of history has fascinated me since I was a teenager, so I'm pretty certain to get to that series one of these days.

I am waiting for the latest Shardlake book to come out in paperback. I have sent on my copies of the series to my brother and then they go to my niece!

Linda, I found them "unputdownable", which is why I devoured them so quickly. However, the laundry has stacked up and the place is a mess.

Cyrel, the next two books are on the way to me from the BookDepository - I dove on them when they had a 10% off sale for one day only!

Tui, I finished Sovereign yesterday too and loved it even more than the first 2. I've started Revelation today and bought Heartstone in PB in Zuerich yesterday - Book Depository would have been cheaper, but I don't want to wait 10 days and I knew they'd have it. I didn't even read the blurb on the back in case it gives away any of Book 4's plot.

One very funny (totally un-spoilerish) thing in book 4... a gross description of false teeth in the 1500s. Eeew!!

I know -- and we so take having decent teeth that last a long time for granted in the US now. I groan about the dentist, but we're so lucky!

I really have to try the Shardlake series! You make them sound like books I'd enjoy. :)

I bought the first one this weekend and I'm really looking forward to it.

Our main computer got hit with a vicious virus which mimics the Windows XP shield and throws up a popup saying you have umpteen viruses. I'm on my husband's laptop (which I can barely type on).

If anyone gets this, DO NOT CLICK ON THE POPUP!!!! It says if you want to purchase the "fix" to click on this button but there is another button which says "begin repair". Yeah, right. Before my brain engaged, I clicked on begin repair...trying to get the screen to move as it froze everything AND booted me out of all the programs I was in. I couldn't run my virus scans and it went through the firewall.

It seemed to activate when I used Google search. Now how often do we all do that!

So I'm not posting much for a while, won't be updating here and starting the new thread I know I need, until I get my regular computer back. It got right in to the operating system and the whole computer has to be wiped.

So beware, chums. And backup! I had just got some new memory sticks to do a massive backup when this happened. Hopefully they can save all my pics.

Oh, Tui, that's disgusting and disheartening, and downright scary. I certainly wish you well in the recovery department. Many thanks for the warning, and we'll be glad when you're back to your old posting schedule (which wasn't nearly often enough if you ask me).

Oh Tui you poor thing!

I had a similar computer virus last year and it was horrible. You have my deepest sympathies...hope it gets straightened out with minimal frustration. I have a backup hard drive now so if it happens again I won't lose everything.

Sorry to hear about the computer problems, Tui! I hope you get them fixed as quickly as possible.

So sorry to hear of your computer problems. And a salutary reminder to everyone to back up regularly - it's so easy to neglect that.

I'm pleased to hear that the Shardlake series continues to be gripping - I really enjoyed the first book and have the next two lined up to read soon.

22. Revelation by C.J. Sansom



Another brilliant one from Sansom. I could not put it down until it was finished...another 600+ page read! One more left and it's enormous.

Computer fixed!

New thread here: http://www.librarything.com/topic/114313