Genny's Hymn to Books, Verse 1

Here's where it all begins - a brand new year and a new challenge. Welcome to my thread!

A New Year's Day photo to start us off (sunset - I'm never up in time to see the sunrise!)



Here's a link to what I said about myself on the introductions thread, and my third and final thread from 2010 is here with links to previous ones for that year.

I'm looking forward to lots of great reading and discussion during 2011. Last year was my first year participating in the 75 books challenge and I managed to read a total 100 books, which I am sure is more than I have read most years previously (I didn't keep very accurate records). I'm not trying to exceed that necessarily in 2011 - it's not really about numbers but about enjoying the great variety of books new and old, fiction and non-fiction. Participating in this group is certainly a great way to inflate the TBR pile, so there is plenty to look forward to.

Some tickers to keep track of things:













I'm going to try to keep track of total pages read, not just number of books. And in order to keep an eye on my book buying habit, I'm going to track the total number of books arriving in the house whether new or second-hand (ie not library books/loans but permanent additions to the collection). Also tracking how many books from the pre-2011 TBR pile I manage to read.

Currently reading:

Planet Narnia - Michael Ward
We by John Dickinson
The picture of Dorian Grey by Oscar Wilde (ebook) - reading very intermittently
A short history of nearly everything by Bill Bryson (audiobook) - listening very intermittently
A Glastonbury Romance John Cowper Powys - seem to have stalled on this
Beowulf translated by Seamus Heaney - started a group read but never finished...
and several more which I started ages ago and for various reasons have abandoned - I will list them here when I remember what they all are, to remind me to get them finished!

List of books read

January

1 The White Witch - Elizabeth Goudge - finished 3.1.11 - post 35
2 Come dance with me - Russell Hoban - finished 5.1.11 - post 35
3 The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch - Philip K Dick - finished 8.1.11 - post 63
4 84, Charing Cross Road - Helene Hanff - finished 21.1.11
5 The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street - Helene Hanff - finished 22.1.11
6 Beyond Black - Hilary Mantel - finished 22.1.11
7 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen - finished 27.1.11
8 Roman Blood - Steven Saylor - finished 29.1.11

February
9 Flowers for the judge - Margery Allingham - finished 5.2.11
10 Moon Tiger - Penelope Lively - finished 17.2.11
11 Native Tongue - Suzette Elgin - finished 18.2.11
12 Wyrd Sisters - Terry Pratchett - finished 23.2.11
13 A Glass of Blessings - Barbara Pym - finished 25.2.11
14 The Ghost of Thomas Kempe - Penelope Lively - finished 26.2.11

March
15 The murder in the vicarage - Agatha Christie - finished 4.3.11
16 Jar city - Arnaldur Indridason - finished 8.3.11
17 Hypothermia - Arnaldur Indridason - finished 9.3.11
18 Bruno, Chief of Police - Martin Walker - finished 10.3.11
19 Dissolution - C J Sansom - finished 11.3.11
20 The Moving Toyshop - Edmund Crispin - finished 12.3.11
21 The China Governess - Margery Allingham - finished 17.3.11
22 The Eyre Affair - Jasper Fforde - finished 26.3.11
23 Whose Body? - Dorothy L Sayers - finished 26.3.11
24 Clouds of Witness - Dorothy L Sayers - finished 29.3.11
25 Murder in Mesopotamia - Agatha Christie - finished 30.3.11

April
26 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen - finished 3.4.11
27 The Murder of Roger Ackroyd - Agatha Christie - finished 4.4.11
28 The Homeward Bounders - Diana Wynn Jones - finished 5.4.11
29 The Help - Kathryn Stockett - finished 9.4.11
30 Pyramids - Terry Pratchett - finished 11.4.11
31 Mr Campion's Lucky Day - finished 13.4.11
32 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon - finished 18.4.11
33 The House in Norham Gardens - Penelope Lively - finished 19.4.11
34 Fingersmith - Sarah Waters - finished 27.4.11
35 Fire and Hemlock - Diana Wynne Jones - finished 28.4.11
36 Journey into Joy - Andrew Walker - finished 28.4.11

May
37 Lost in a Good Book - Jasper Fforde - finished 2.5.11
38 Southern Discomfort - Margaret Maron - finished 4.5.11
39 Shooting at Loons - Margaret Maron - finished 7.5.11
40 Unnatural Death - Dorothy L Sayers - finished 10.5.11
41 Mr Campion's Farthing - Youngman Carter - finished 13.5.11
42 Bury Your Dead - Louise Penny - finished 14.5.11
43 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee - finished 16.5.11
44
45
46
47
48

Genny, I am so glad to see you back with us again for another year!

Welcome back!

Happy New Year, Genny!

Happy New Year and finally I have hopped over the fence to 2011!

A couple more photos from my New Year's Day walk with Ty the dog on the nearby Town Moor, a large area of common land in the middle of the city of Newcastle.



(I did play around with the exposure a bit with one of these, but it was a spectacular sunset even before that!).

The observant will notice that our snow has all gone, though Ty has found a large iced-over puddle. I went for a drive yesterday in the Northumbrian hills, where the road were clear but the snow still lay thickly in hollows and verges, and in ridges across the fields, clearly marking the old medieval ridge and furrow farming patterns. It was beautiful, but what a tough life the farmers have who still cling to those exposed and remote hills.

I'm loving the photos! What a great way to start 2011. Have an amazing reading year, Genny!

Gorgeous photos - Happy New Year Genny and Ty!

I have posted a flurry of reviews/book reports at the end of my final thread for 2010. Now the decks are cleared to get on with new reads in 2011.

I love the pictures, Genny! Thanks for sharing them.

Nearly finished the year end transition stuff. I've put some summaries at the end of my final thread for last year - no fancy graphs, but some statistics about authors, genres etc for my 2010 reading which is helping to shape my vague goals for 2011.

I've now added my bit on the introductions thread, and put tickers and links at the top of this thread. Still to do: list my favourite reads for 2010 and decide on categories for the 11 in 11 challenge at which I hope to do better than the 10 10 one.

I also need to decide what reading I shall do this month for the January TIOLI (Take It Or Leave It) challenges. I'm still trying to read as many of my library books as possible, since I can't renew them any more and they are all due back on 6th January. I'm currently reading one (The White Witch by Elizabeth Goudge) and I've read four of the others, but that leaves another 10 or so unread, and I shan't manage more than one or two at most before Thursday.

White Witch is reminding me of an old favourite by Goudge, Towers in the Mist which I read many times in adolescence. This one is set during the English Civil War, while Towers was set in the previous century during the reign of Elizabeth I - both deal with ordinary people caught up in the religious and political turmoil of their day.

Lovely photos - and an intriguing current reading list above. I'm interested to know what you thought of the Bryson, especially.

Thanks Richard, Heather, Stasia and Sarah!

Sarah, I'll let you know about the Bryson. I'm very new to listening to audiobooks, and haven't got very far with this one yet, listening in small doses usually at bedtime. I'm not sure it's the best way for me to absorb all the extreme data about the size and age of the universe - I've had to rewind and listen again several times...

I was such a Goudge fan as a spratling, I wonder..... you make me think I should reread some of them.

Happy New Year, Genny! I glanced over your thoughts at the end of your other thread and decided I would need to go back when I have time and brain to process them. I'll do it!
Thanks for your lovely pictures!

Good stats there, I might use those as a template. 90 books isn't quite so easy. Good on you to read 100, makes things simple.

American women authors you might love would be Sarah Orne Jewett Country of the Pointed First, and anything by Jean Stafford and let me see..... ten million others..... ha ha ha. Those are entirely random out of my head, but based on some overlap we have.

They must adore you at the library -- our public libraries depend on stats of high book usage for funding -- (remember that all you readers -- take out LOTS of books every time you go!). Maybe it is different in the UK, but I hope not for your library's sake.

Checking in before the read-a-thon Genny! Great idea on keeping up with how many books you've bought, by the way. I'm wondering whether to do the same thing myself, but I'm not sure I could handle the figures! That and the fact that things are constantly coming in and out from the bookshop... *wanders off to ponder the matter a little more*

Oh Vicar, I have a notion for you!

On Facebook, where if you and your congregation aren't y'all should be, there is a wonderful organization called "Medievalists.net", where several times a day its fans get a short digest of and a link to articles on topics medieval. I confess that, since the articles tend towards the scholarly (read: poorly written and dense), I read the lengthy required abstracts and call it good more often than not. But the amount of fascinating and recondite information I've gotten, and the leads for further reading...!

http://www.medievalists.net/ also works, of course.

Thank you Richard, that looks like a useful site. I've now 'liked' it on Facebook so I should get those regular reminders of medieval topics, which might just prompt me to dig out and read some of my own unread stuff too occasionally. As for all those new articles, the abstracts will probably be more than enough for me too!

Happy New Year, Genny! I'm looking forward to following along to see what you're reading this year!

Lucy, I only read a few Goudge in my youth, but have very gradually been reading more of her grown up books over the past few decades. I guess one would say she is quite old-fashioned, and I'm noticing she tends to over-use certain descriptive turns of phrase (eg rather too many of her characters seem to have 'nut-brown hair'), but she writes sensitively about people's spiritual struggles in the midst of daily life, and makes goodness attractive.

Thanks for your suggestions for American women authors to try. I will look out for those - though the real challenge for me this year is to try to read more globally beyond the British, American and Canadian authors who formed 90% of last year's reads.

I'm not sure they adore me at my library. I've been taking more and more books out, renewing them repeatedly, and only reading them at a far slower rate. I missed a renewal deadline in December and now have a hefty fine to pay, which may be why they are not letting me renew any more until I have paid this. I hope at least that my fine will help keep the library afloat in this climate of cuts in public spending!

#18 Nice to see you here, Ellie. I think it would be tricky for you to keep track of all your book movements, what with the shop and all. With me it's much simpler. Books arrive and never leave!

I'll be checking your blog during the readathon, so see you a bit later...

#16 No rush Peggy - and they are for my benefit as much as anyone's, but if they are of any interest when you have a chance to look, then that's a bonus!

#21 Hello Lisa, thanks for visiting.

May I suggest a non-Anglophone woman author to investigate sooner rather than later? Assia Djebar, an Algerian woman, and the book I'd recommend of hers is Vast is the Prison. Thematically, I think it's a good fit for you, what with its spiritual/material conflicts explored in an increasingly hostile envirnoment.

I've been participating in the 24 hour Read-a-thon with elliepotten and others - well, sort of participating, as I joined in late and now am off to bed, and won't be able to do much tomorrow. I've stayed up half the night playing on LT a couple of times during the past week while I've been off work, but now I am meant to be back at work so can't afford to do that again.

But I did manage 1.5 hours of reading and finished The White Witch. Some thoughts to follow soon.

Hallo Genny - just dropping by to say Happy New Year!

hi Genny
Happy New year!!
May the year be filled with good books to read ;-)
I am also curious about your findings on the Bryson book, I read it in 2008.
Anita

Dang! I missed another Readathon! Where do you find the notifications for those? Are they generally open to the group or just something individuals organize with their particular thread regulars?

Thanks!

Hi, Genny! Just stopping by on my way through the 75-bookers. I'll be interested to see what you think about White Witch!

Karen O.

Hi Genny, love the pictures upthread. I need to take more scenery pics instead of posting grandchildren pictures all the time. ;-)

I look forward to following your reading in 2011. The Readathon was fun, wasn't it? I didn't get to participate very much either. Timing is everything.

>29 beserene:: Sarah, Ellie posted a Readathon thread which anybody could join. I believe there is also a Readathon link on the wiki. It's my understanding that we will have frequent 'thons' this year on different days to accommodate a variety of schedules. It's a great way to get some reading done and interact with other readers at the same time. I hope you and others get a chance to join in sometime.

Thanks, Donna. I'll have to keep a better eye on the Wiki. :)

The Picture of Dorian Grey is a favorite of mine. I'll be interested to see what you think!

Looking forward to your thoughts on The White Witch, Genny. I have not read that one of Goudge's yet.

Book no. 1 - The White Witch - Elizabeth Goudge


Library book
TIOLI challenge 8 - less popular book

As a child I loved The Little White Horse, and into my teens read and re-read Towers in the Mist. In adulthood I've read a few of Goudge's more contemporary adult novels including Bird in the Tree and Herb of Grace but this is the first book of hers with a historical setting that I've read for a long while.

It was first published in 1958, and is set in the 17th century, near the beginning of the English Civil War. It follows the fortunes of one local squire and his family, including his cousin who is half gypsy and the 'white witch' of the title. There is some action, including skirmishes and battles, but the main interest of the story lies in the motivation and inner life of the principle characters, in a world falling painfully apart into Royalist and Parliamentarian camps but filled as always with more local and personal conflicts too - a world in which loyalties and spiritual resources are tested.

Goudge is a romantic, and her sympathies lie clearly more with the Royalist side (memorably described by Sellar and Yeatman as Wrong but Wromantic) than with the Puritan ascetics, though the Christian spirituality underpinning her writing is not partisan. In her richly descriptive writing she dwells lovingly on the details of the natural world, and equally lovingly on those who respect and honour it, and also allows room for hints of the supernatural or magical. There is a sweetness in her writing, especially on the subject of young children and animals, which will not be to everyone's liking, but there is much wisdom and a toughness in her depiction of the very real spiritual struggles of her characters.

As a book-lover who takes for granted being able to have countless books at my fingertips, one of my favourite parts of this book was when the village parson, who possesses only a very few books and cannot afford more, is given a copy of George Herbert's The Temple.

The old man looked at the book as though it were a bag of gold. 'I can't deprive you, sir,' he whispered hoarsely. 'Your'e not depriving me,' said Francis. 'I've read it.' Parson Hawthyn blinked. Men who could so lightly part with their books were beyond his comprehension. ... 'You give me great wealth for the gift of a book is the gift of a human soul.'

I gave this book 4 stars and would recommend it to those who like their historical fiction to probe the depths a little,and don't mind a slightly old-fashioned style. One annoying feature was the number of typographical errors in this edition (Hodder, 2005).

Book no. 2 - Come Dance With Me - Russell Hoban


Library book
TIOLI challenge 1 - book rated on LT between 3.8 and 4.2

Russell Hoban is an intriguing writer - every book of his I've read is very different from the last. This was less fantastical than Pilgermann, and set in a recognisable contemporary world, unlike the distopian Riddley Walker, but the love story it tells is full of strange synchronicities. A fifty-something rock singer and a sixty-something diabetes specialist meet over a disturbing painting of the Cyclops at an exhibition; possible premonitions of death haunt their relationship, while music, paintings, poetry, bats and a bottle of ketchup all play a part in bringing them closer together.

This was not my favourite of Hoban's, but an unusual, quirky read nonetheless. 3.5 stars.

Happy Twelfth Night, one and all! (Thinks, too late, would have been a good day to re-read that play...)

Richard, thanks for the recommendation. I've added the Djebar to my wishlist.

Hello Fliss, Happy New Year to you too!

Anita, it will be a while before I finish the Bryson at this rate, but I'll certainly post some thoughts sooner or later.

Sarah, I'm glad Donna answered your question more quickly than I was able to. There is a general Readathon thread which it would be a good idea to star if you want to keep an eye on these. There is another planned already for this coming Friday/Saturday.

Karen, nice of you to drop in. Have you read any of Elizabeth Goudge?

Thanks Donna re the photos. As I don't have kids or grandchildren, most of my pictures are of scenery or the dog, except when I get to visit my godchildren. It's fun seeing what other people post by way of photos, and sharing a little glimpse of our different settings and the things we love. As for readathons, my effort in the first one was pathetic, but I hope to join in the one on Friday as it's my day off, and should manage a few hours more.

Krys, thank you for visiting. It will be a while yet before I finish Dorian Gray as I'm only dipping into it when away from home or whiling away a half hour in a cafe. Being familiar with the broad plot outline, I'm intrigued to see how it works out in detail.

Stasia, I'm sure you'd enjoy The White Witch. I must get round to finding a copy of The Joy of the Snow - I'd like to know more about Goudge's life.

Genny thanks for the link to the Readathon THread. I was way too overwhelmed with trying to catch up with this group to do any kind of organized reading. I think I'm getting settled down now, and will be able to sit back and enjoy reading again. So maybe for the next one.

Happy New Year to you dear one!

I send all good wishes for a wonderful year of reading.

Those are such beautiful photos you've posted Genny! Happy New Year. Also, glad you'll be joining us!



Welcome one and all! I've just posted our new thread for our Jan 7-8 read-a-thon
so come on over and join the discussion there!

Hi, Genny! I'm just now finding and catching up with this thread. You're off to a good start! Love your photos!

Yep, I really need to get to The White Witch. Thanks for the review, Genny!

Thanks Linda, Ilana, Terri. No prob, Stasia.

I'm just doing a few updates and catching up on a few threads before the start of the next Read-a-thon (mentioned by Ilana in post 39 above), which I'll be joining for the rest of this evening at least, possibly some hours tomorrow as well.

I've said I'm going to try to track (and cut down on) numbers of books coming into the house this year. Well I've just added quite a haul, but most of them arrived before the end of December so only 3 new ones this year to report:

Charity shop purchase just before Christmas (when I was looking for presents for other people):

Snow Orham Pamuk
Burning Bright and Remarkable Creatures Tracy Chevalier
Witches Abroad and Men at Arms Terry Pratchett
There've been lots of positive reviews on here of Remarkable Creatures, looking forward to that one in particular.

Book token acquisitions from Waterstones on 28th December (gift tokens I've had for a while)
The Death of King Arthur new translation of Malory by Peter Ackroyd
Rebels and Traitors Lindsey Davis
Dark Fire C J Sansom (for when I've read the first volume in the series)
Hypothermia Indridason - don't know why I got this as I haven't read the earlier volumes yet.

Christmas Gift to myself from Amazon:
Three very large volumes from the series The Saint John's Bible - reproductions of an amazing project in calligraphy, a full copy of the bible written and illuminated by hand by leading calligraphers, chiefly Donald Jackson, which was commissioned by Saint John's Benedictine Abbey and University, Collegeville. These are beautiful large art-books, about 60 cm in height, and normally retailing at about £50 per volume (there are 7 in total). I found them on Amazon priced at only £10 each, which considering you can almost that much for a new paperback is amazing, probably a mistake. These are not books for reading in the usual way, but will be lovely for contemplation/reflection on scriptures.

New books for 2011:
A Glastonbury Romance John Cowper Powys - arrived yesterday in time to join a group read
Sir Thursday and Lady Friday next two in a series by Garth Nix I'm slowly reading - Bookmooch.

Lots to keep me busy!

Update at the end of hour 2 of the latest Readathon. (It's 11.13pm GMT)

I've been reading: The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch by Philip K Dick
Books finished: 0
Pages read: 28
Reading time: 25 mins
Posting time: 30 mins + 5 mins making coffee

Total books read: 0
Total pages read: 84
Total time read: 1 hour 20 minutes
Total time posting: 35 minutes

I'm going to switch to a different book for the next hour, I think.

Good reading, Genny! (Just stopping by to cheer.) :)

#42: Wow! Some really nice books there, Genny. The Saint John's Bible sounds lovely.

Stasia, you can read more about the Saint John's Bible here.

Here's just one sample page, from the beginning of the Book of Acts (not the best quality image, it is not easy to extract images from their website. The text is actually very readable and clear.

Thanks, Genny! It looks lovely.

Great haul! And that's all I'll say, read read read!

Oh, the Saint John's Bible is beautiful. And I love what it says on the website about the illuminations being meditations on the text. I should think your volumes will be wonderful for contemplation.

A cross-post from the Readathon thread, to summarise what I managed in the past 24 hours.

24th hour update - my fifth hour:

I've been reading: The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch and A Glastonbury Romance
Books finished: 1 Three Stigmata
Pages read: 31+ 19 = 50
Reading time: 55 mins
Posting time: 5 mins

Total books read: 3 - 1 completed
Total pages read: 232
Total time read: 4 hours
Total time posting: 1 hour 25 mins

1. Which hour was most daunting for you?
Didn't do enough hours to find any daunting
2. Could you list a few high-interest books that you think could keep a reader engaged next time?
I think it depends very much on the reader, but in my experience fiction is easier than non fiction when very tired.
3. Do you have any suggestions for how to improve the next read-a-thon?
Not at present - it seemed to go well and have a good number of participants and some good support
4. How many books did you read?
Finished one and read parts of two others
5. What were the names of the books you read?
The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch by Philip K Dick - review to follow
Beowulf - the introduction to the Seamus Heaney translation
A Glastonbury Romance by John Cowper Powys (just 19 pages out of a 1100 page book!)
6. Which book did you enjoy most?
Thee Stigmata was interesting - didn't know what to expect before I read it
7. Which did you enjoy least?
Not far enough into the other two to comment.
8. How likely are you to participate in another read-a-thon?
Very likely

What I've learned
Among other things, that I read at approximately one page per minute - I had never calculated that before. Of course it depends on what I'm reading, and on the size of the print. A Glastonbury Romance has very tiny print (40 lines per page) as well as over a thousand pages, so it's going to take me a while!

Good job, Genny!

I'm glad you've made a good start. I'm finding aGR a lot easier than Wolf Solent. Porius had me enthralled from the get-go. Obviously he improves as he goes along?

>46 gennyt:: Temptation! I have several editions of Bibles and I don't need another one, but the Saint John's Bible looks absolutely divine. That image is filed away in my subconscious now so maybe someday...

Good showing on the readathon. I was sorry that I couldn't participate and I have a similar problem with Ellie's second readathon for tomorrow and Tuesday. Another 'someday" for me!

Not much reading in the past 48 hours - a busy Sunday as usual yesterday, and a day and evening full of meetings today. I started a new book, Beyond Black a couple of nights ago - my second Hilary Mantel - but have not got very far yet (30 or so pages). It has been described as being very funny and dark - potentially a good combination. No further with Beowulf or Glastonbury Romance, my group reads.

My laptop wireless internet connection is on a go-slow, with every thread taking an age to load, so I'm doing a bit of catching up tonight on the desktop computer in my study (and feeling guilty because I'm surrounded by work I should have finished already).

Lucy, I don't know Wolf Solent at all, and I can't remember if I finished Porius, though I think of it as a book I have read. The Brazen Head was the one I definitely read all through, and I started but never finished Maiden Castle. I found the first couple of pages of aGR a bit of a shock, as I'd forgotten quite how strange CP's writing is (all those cosmic forces swirling around on page 1), but I soon got into it more. I'm up to him dallying with his cousin before the funeral...

Donna, it's worth keeping the Saint John's Bible in mind for when you come across it at bargain prices, or someone offers to get you a really expensive gift! To buy all seven (eventually) volumes at full price would exhaust my book budget for the year! I may end up only ever having the three I've just got cheaply, but I shall be keeping an eye out...

I also can't do the current Readathon - I have a big meeting tomorrow night to prepare for, and a couple more meetings and a funeral during the day so I need my sleep tonight! One of these days the timing will be right to do a whole one, perhaps.

Genny, that bible does look gorgeous. I love it that people still take so much trouble to make beautiful things like this.

Do post about where you are over on the aGR thread when you have a chance. It helps everyone to keep at it, I think, the more they hear how others are doing. You could just copy and paste if you're in a rush!

#56 Have just done so!, thanks.

#55 Yes, Janet, it is a real labour of love and a major undertaking - they are still working on the final volume I think.

A little behind but I have wishlisted The White Witch and really should get round to trying Elizabeth Goudge book soon as I have 5 books by her wishlisted and I still haven't read any!

And The Saint John's Bible looks absolutely gorgeous. For £10 a volume how could you not buy them?

For £10 a volume how could you not buy them?
Indeed! :) I just wonder if I'll ever find the rest of the set at a cheap enough price to afford...
Do try one of the Goudge's soon - I'd love to know what you make of her. Reminds me, I've never read The Dean's Watch, though when I used to work in a Cathedral, the Dean there quoted some long passages from it during a sermon one Christmas so I've had a little taste of it.

Three more new books to report, making a total of 6 newly acquired this year, set against 3 read so far...

My bilingual copy of Beowulf has arrived
Also The Broken Sword by Poul Anderson (Bookmooch)
and Just My Type - a book about fonts which I saw while browsing in Waterstones in December and decided to order from Amazon where of course it is much cheaper. Looks fascinating!

Have had a week of very little reading so far, having had a major meeting to prepare for and recover from on Tuesday night...

#60 Genny, are you recovering OK? (Asked by one who knows how some of those major meetings can go in church work . . .)

Thanks Terri, yes I'm ok now, but yesterday I was quite wiped out, and slept a lot during the day. These meetings - the full church council meeting with about 20 people - come every two months and I always find them stressful. This one was about budget etc and was particularly tricky, so I'm glad to have it out of the way. Now I need to pick up all the urgent other work things that got neglected while I was worrying about that, so there's never a shortage of things to do. I hope to spend some of my day off on Friday escaping into a good book or three to aid recovery though.

Book no. 3 - The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch - Philip K Dick



Library book - on my shelf since October 2010
TIOLI challenge - book rated on LT between 3.8 and 4.2

Another of my occasional forays into classic Sci-Fi - picked up at random from the library as I recognised the author's name but knew nothing more about him or the book.

This 1960s novel is set in a future world where extreme global warming means no-one can bear the outdoor temperatures, and the very rich escape to the arctic regions for holidays, and pay for E-therapy to speed up their evolution. There are colonies on Mars and other planets, but so unpleasant that people need to be drafted as colonists. Earth-based corporations make their money selling the miserable colonists Barbie-doll type miniature worlds, into which, with help of illegal drugs, they can escape for a while into a virtual-reality version of life back on Earth. (This did seem rather prophetic of the popular contemporary escape into the miniature virtual worlds of Farmville etc). Then a competitor arrives on the scene in the form of the mysterious Palmer Eldritch, offering a more powerful drug and promising to change lives in more ways than one.

I was surprised by the amount of religious language, and discussion of religion, in this work - though I should have been alerted by the word 'stigmata' in the title. (Also, I realised, the name Palmer Eldritch itself gives some clues: 'palmer' is the old word for a pilgrim, while 'eldritch' means strange or weird). As the plot spirals through the drug-induced experiences of several characters increasingly unsure what is real and what is illusion, this uncertainty is sometimes couched in the language of 'accidents' versus 'essences', part of the classic Christian vocabulary to describe the change that happens in the Eucharist. Indeed this and other Christian ritual practices and beliefs become part of the discussion between characters trying to make sense of their experiences, though the conclusion of the novel reaches far beyond conventional religious beliefs, in the rather confusing metaphysical and spiritual paradoxes it poses. I have since discovered that Dick wrote this and other of his 1960s books while he was under the influence of hallucinogenic drugs himself, but also that this was one of the first of his books to explore religious themes which were to figure more in his later works.

The world Philip K Dick has imagined here, and the ideas he explores, were interesting and entertaining enough to keep me reading. I'm afraid when it comes to characterisation, it was a different matter. The male characters from whose point of view the story is told are flat and unsympathetic, and not very clearly distinguished from each other. The author's casual sexism, apparent in the way women characters cannot be mentioned without describing the size of their breasts, is probably only typical of this kind of genre writing in that era, but none the less off-putting.

I'm glad I read this, but Philip K Dick is very far from replacing Ursula LeGuin as my favourite among the few SF authors I've read so far. 3.5 stars.

I loved your review -- your background gives you an entry point I wouldn't have (accident vs essences for ex). It is frustrating how many of these older sf books while bursting with wonderful ideas are so off-puttingly sexist one can barely stand them! And he thought, probably, he was a cool dude, not all up-tight!

Great review. Bummer about the flawed characterization.

Philip K. Dick, while indicative of sexist tendencies in some of the SF of that era, is anything but typical. (If you like LeGuin you probably already know this, but at the same time PKD was referring to women's breast size, women SF writers were bringing feminist ideas to the genre in major ways.) He is definitely a polarizing figure, probably bat-s%&t crazy after all the drugs he took, and not exactly what I would call "well-adjusted" in the first place.

On the other hand, he did some crazy genius stuff in the realm of philosophical science fiction.

I do hope that experience with him doesn't put you off further exploration of the genre.

De-lurking to say thanks for reminding me about Elizabeth Goudge! I really enjoyed her novel about Lucy Walter, the mistress of Charles II, and I think Towers in the Mist was the other one that I loved as a child. (I started reading adult fiction around the age of 9...)

Hmm, maybe I should think about reading more sci-fi? There are some borderline/crossover titles that I have loved -- borderline dystopian stuff, in large part. Must muse over that a bit.

Love the pics, btw. Looks as if you were having fun with the camera!!

#64 Thanks Lucy. I was surprised at the amount of quite technical theological language (dating back to Aquinas, those accidents and essences) in the mix. But that alongside referring to a woman being 'huge in the balcony' (as if she were some lopsided apartment building) was a bizarre mix!

#65 Sarah, I certainly won't let this put me off. I'm just trying to get a feel for some of the different authors within SF, starting with some of the earlier 'classics'. My father read a great deal of SF and fantasy, and in my teens I used to creep into his study during the school holidays and try out various books from his shelf - but though I read a bit of Arthur C Clark, mostly I was drawn to the fantasy rather than the SF at that point (or SF that had a mainly fantasy and medieval feel like the Anne McCaffrey Dragon series). I discovered LeGuin through fantasy as well, growing up with the Earthsea books, and she's been a useful bridge into SF more recently - I loved The Left Hand of Darkness. So I'm just gradually trying a few different authors (I read Poul Anderson's Tau Zero last year - another one where interesting ideas were stronger than characterisation).

Nice to 'see' you Suzanne - and to find another Elizabeth Goudge fan. I don't know the Lucy Walter book, but Towers in the Mist was a firm favourite for me in childhood too - I was also reading adult fiction from an early age, though I now see that my copy of Towers is actually abridged for younger readers so I must get hold of another edition to see what was missed out! It was that book which gave me my dream (eventually realised) of becoming a student at Oxford. It had changed a bit since the first Elizabethan age, but still had some magical qualities as a place to live and study.

As for sci-fi, I think it's potentially a great genre for exploring ideas and 'what ifs' about social and political developments. Others who are better read in the genre will have better suggestions about what's really worth reading.

I'm plodding on through Beyond Black, my Orange January read - only up to about p 50 and it hasn't caught fire for me yet, but I'm reading it at bedtime and may be too tired. The main character Alison is a medium for whom the spirits of the dead are very real and present. I was amused by Alison's liking for historical documentary TV programmes where she recognises characters familiar to her from the spirit world -(quoting from memory) "Last time I saw Emily Pankhurst she wasn't wearing that hat."

Also making some progress with A Glastonbury Romance - finished Chapter 1 at last and wondering what will happen next after the reading of the will. (Thoughts on the aGR thread.)

Hi, Genny! I'm very behind on your thread! Love all of yout pictures:) Happy reading!!

Thanks Bente - don't worry about being behind, it's impossible to keep up isn't it, but we drop in to say hello when we can! Pictures are fun to add - it makes this reading diary a more general reminder of some of the other things going on in life too.

Beyond Black didn't ever really work for me. I just found it a bit odd, which is a shame as I know a lot of people have really enjoyed it. I hope you get into it better than I did.

#72 Well Katie, it is certainly a bit odd so far, but odd is not necessarily a bad thing. I'm just not sure where the story is going yet, it's too soon to get a feel for that.

Ummm.... somehow I seem to have acquired another 5 books today. Not doing so well on the cutting back on acquisitions front!

Two were late-arriving Christmas gifts. Having felt sorry for myself that I had not received any books for Christmas, now I do have some:
1 The Bodleian Murders - collection by a group of Oxford writers edited by a friend Jane Stemp who is one of the contributors also, given by my sister because it was on my Amazon wishlist.
2 Vulnerable Communion: a theology of disability and hospitality - from a friend who always gives me interesting, sometimes challenging books!
This friend has also sent me a jigsaw with this picture of a bookshelf:


The other new books were:
3 Everyday easy chicken - a half-price cookbook, because I always struggle with ideas for chicken. And as someone else has been saying on their thread recently, cookbooks really don't count as they are more like tools for cooking than books to read (certainly this one is no Elizabeth David).

The rest were from my local Oxfam shop. I allowed myself to go in with a promise that I would only buy one, instead of my usual 4 or 5 per visit. I took 4 or 5 off the shelves, and whittled them down to... not quite 1 but 2:
4 Unnatural Death Dorothy L Sayers - because I want to do a complete (re-)read of all hers soon, and I don't have this one.
5 84 Charing Cross Road because I must be the last person in the 75 group to read this, and it was only £1.45. Furthermore it has an inscription inside:

"To Aunt Edith, with love and best wishes from the producer of the TV show of the same name! Mark"

Having Googled this, I presume this must be Mark Cullingham who directed a 'Play for Today' BBC version of the book in 1975. He died in 1995 in LA, according to IMDB. I wonder how his aunt's copy of this book ended up in the Oxfam shop in Gosforth in 2011. Does she live locally, has she just died herself, or has it passed through several pairs of hands since hers? I like books with a bit of a history...

Nice haul, Genny!!:) And just for the record...I haven't read 84, Charing Cross Road either. Hopefully I'll get there soon. That little inscription is also the fun and beauty of buying used books. Sweet story:)

I love 84 Charing Cross Road: I hope you enjoy it, Genny.

How marvellous to be able to trace the ownership of that copy of the book in that way, and to someone with kind of connection to the book!

I love the jigsaw. And of course cookbooks don't count.

Vulnerable Communion sounds quite interesting to me. I look forward to your comments after you read it!

I love that jigsaw puzzle, Genny! That is great.

I am also one of the lovers of 84, Charing Cross Road so I hope you love it too, naturally.

>67 gennyt:: The Left Hand of Darkness is one of the books I assign in my science fiction class. It's extraordinary. Once you make it through the classics already on your radar, you might like a few others (if I may be so bold)...

The Stars My Destination by Alfred Bester (I think it was published as 'Tyger, Tyger' in the UK, believe it or not) is a sci-fi revenge narrative with deliberate allusions to The Count of Monte Cristo -- it's brilliant.

Alas, Babylon by Pat Frank was a product of American nuclear paranoia, but there are wonderful observations of human nature within it.

A much later (1990's) novel, Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson, is another one that I assign -- it's a postmodern classic of cyberpunk, rich (sometimes over-rich) with detail. I also like Stephenson's The Diamond Age.

I'll stop there, because I have a tendency to go overboard when others are exploring my favorite genres, but I hope you don't mind the recommendations. Happy reading!

#74 I'm glad I'm not the only one who hasn't read it yet, Bente - perhaps we'll both get round to it this year!

#75 Yes, re the inscription, that's why I don't object on principle to people writing in books, because I like to see the layers of connections and interpretations from previous owners that you can sometimes get from well-used copies with inscriptions or marginal comments.

#76 Yes it does look interesting, Terri. I shall try to get round to reading it sooner than some of my neglected theology titles, as it is a gift, so I'll let you know what I make of it. My friend (who is an academic specialising in literature and theology) had recommended it to win a popular theology prize last year. It didn't win, but clearly she thinks highly of it.

#77 The Jigsaw is a lovely old-fashioned wooden one Stasia, made by Wentworth. I've seen these before but don't own one. They are apparently extra tricky because they include straight edges on middle pieces, and include some "whimsy" pieces shaped to reflect the image theme (I'm guessing these might be book shaped in this puzzle).

#78 Sarah, thanks for those suggestions - I haven't heard of Bester or Frank, but will keep an eye out for them. I haven't read The Count of Monte Cristo so I might need to read that before the Bester to make the most of that. I have a copy of Cryptonomicon on its way to me which will be my first Neal Stephenson, so he's on my radar... I'll come back for more suggestions when I've had a chance to try some of these!

No more books completed, but I've been making progress with a Glastonbury Romance (will post an update on the shared read thread for that) and with Beyond Black, my Orange January read. The latter is taking a while to get going for me; some grimly funny descriptions of the lives of ordinary women in the outer suburban area around London, but I'm not sure where the story is going.

I have also made some progress with cataloguing this week. I've now (working at it on and off for the past 9 months or so) finished one complete bookcase (containing my small collection of Folio Society volumes, and other boxed sets, some medieval texts and text books, my poetry collection and a collection of small hardback Everyman editions of classics printed roughly in the 1900s-1920s, which I used to buy very cheaply when I was a student). It has taken me ages to enter all of these, because very many were pre-ISBN, lacked cover photos or presented other cataloguing complications. I do hope that when I move onto shelves full of more recently published books I shall make faster progress.

edited to close brackets!

Genny, you have been busy! If you start Cryptonomicon now, you will be really busy! It's my favorite Stephenson, but I had gotten a taste of his voice by reading Snow Crash and The Diamond Age first. I hope you like it! I'm interested to hear how you finally judge your H. Mantel. I need to reread Wolf Hall (and I hope I live long enough to do that) because I could never decide how pleased I truly was with her.

Well I loved Wolf Hall Peggy, and had no problem getting into that at all, though it was quite a dense read because I was stopping to think about things prompted by the ideas and language. But Beyond Black is not grabbing me in the same way at all so far.

I don't plan to start the Stephenson just yet, it's just that a copy came up on Bookmooch so I grabbed it! Maybe I should try Snow Crash first as you suggest.

Of the four "Mantels" I've read, Beyond Black was my least favourite. There was enough there to keep my interest for so long and then there wasn't and I gave up. I know Valerie/EnglishRose actually started to enjoy it halfway through though so you never know! I remember because we commented on our each liking different halves of the book.

Where is Valerie?!!

#81/82: I need to read Snow Crash too. It has been sitting on my nightstand forever!

Beyond Black and her memoir are the Mantels I most want to read - I heard some bits of Beyond Bleak on the radio last year.

Genny, I just read a sci-fi book I think you would like - Remnant Population by Elizabeth Moon. The main character is a strong-willed older woman, and the story revolves around her solo life on a planet everyone else has left, then around her encounter with another civilisation - no sexist language here. Completely different from the Dick style.

YAY, Janet! Remnant Population is a real favorite - even with all the klickkowwhirs or whatever. I love it because the protagonist considers herself just an ordinary woman when she is, in fact, extraordinary - as are we all! (I don't know what I was looking for when I opened *WH*, Genny, but certainly not exactly what I got. It took me forever to figure out that "he" was always Cromwell. I've said this elsewhere, so I guess it's time to stop until I have something different.)

#87 - Yes, Peggy, I read it because you recommended it to me! I am going to give you all the credit when I get around to the review - next week, probably, at the rate I am going. I wasn't even going to mention having read it yet, but it seemed appropriate to suggest to Genny based on the conversation here. I really want to read more by her now.

I have several Elizabeth Moon's waiting in my book queue..... maybe that's what will jump out at me next!

Remnant Population looks interesting - have added it to my wishlist.

#83 Well it is picking up a bit for me now, so I'm not giving up, but it's still not really working wonders for me - but I am quite distracted at present which probably doesn't help. I don't know about Valerie/English Rose, I don't think I've come across her yet - is she another 75 group member?

#84 Stasia, you must have a large nightstand, with all the books waiting there to be read! :)

#85 'Beyond Bleak' was an appropriate typo, Luci, if that's what it was... If you've heard some on the radio you will have a flavour of the grim suburban misery with a twist... I don't know about Mantel's memoir.

#86-90 Thanks for that recommendation Janet, and to Peggy for suggesting it to you - I will certainly look out for that one, maybe in time to join Lucy and Fiona in reading it!

I've been procrastinating about work in a major way, at first diverting myself with reading, posting and cataloguing, but in the past 24 hours or so I've been feeling too guilty even to do that. The larger the pile of tasks I need to tackle, the smaller my inclination to get on with it, so only those with the most urgent and overdue deadline are getting done. I really need to get a grip and get some of those jobs done, so I can enjoy my free time properly.

Hence not having managed to finish a book for over a week, though I have been making some progress through aGR and Beyond Black.

I haven't read it although I heard extracts, Beyond Bleak was a typo! That's too funny. I rather like "beyond bleak" books though, at least sometimes I do (if they're any good).

>91 gennyt: You are in exactly my current mode, Genny. I'm sorry. Push is quickly coming to shove though, and I'll have one major worry out of the way tomorrow afternoon. I just want to sit and read though, and I haven't done it. *sigh*

#91: My nightstand is indeed piled high, Genny!

Another new book into the house: Mr Ives' Christmas, which came via Bookmooch so at least it didn't cost me any new money! I'll be saving this for a read nearer next Christmas.

So far the number of book in far outnumbers the books read...

But I started and finished a book last night (or rather, early this morning) as a break from my other reading - I couldn't put down 84, Charing Cross Road when I picked it up in the middle of the night. I'd previously fallen asleep downstairs over my other book during the current Readathon, and then woken up enough to go upstairs to bed at 5 am, and having woken up, then found I didn't want to sleep again until I'd finished this delightful little collection of letters.

I keep hearing good things about that book, Genny. I have it waiting on my shelves so perhaps I'll pick it up sooner rather than later. I'm glad you've found some time to read again after what sounds like a rather hectic time.

#95: I really need to get to 84, Charing Cross Road. I guess you are officially a fan, too, Genny?:)

Another thread I have somehow missed. Genny, hope your new year is going well.

I enjoyed 84, Charing Cross Road when I read it last summer. It was certainly a quick read. I think I read the whole thing on the bus on the way to a Cubs game (might've been to AND from the game).

Brief update - I really should be working, so don't have time to do reviews just yet, but I have now finished Beyond Black, having read quite a bit during the Readathon yesterday. I also read the sequel to 84, Charing Cross - The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street, which is part of the same volume in my edition.

Next up should be a re-read of Sense and Sensibility, for the Austenathon, but I also need to finish Beowulf, and I'd like to read start one of the new historical mystery series I've got lined up: either Dissolution by C J Sansom which will fit well with having recently read Wolf Hall set in the same period, or Roman Blood by Steven Saylor, recommended by several people when I said I enjoyed the Lindsey Davis Falco series set in ancient Rome.

#60 Ugh, for church meetings :-(

#63 Great review of The Three Stigmata Genny. He's an author I haven't read before although I do have a copy of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

#95 Glad you enjoyed 84, Charing Cross Road

#99 Congratulations on finishing Beyond Black :-)

Book no. 4 84, Charing Cross Road Helene Hanff


Bought second-hand in Oxfam bookshop last week
TIOLI challenge - book with a proper name in the title

I read this short book at one sitting (or rather lying down) in the middle of the night during the recent Readathon. I couldn't stop once I'd started. 'Charming' and 'delightful' seem to be words often used by people to describe this collection of letters between New York writer Helene Hanff and the staff of a London antiquarian bookshop. Like everyone else it seems, I loved this little book. It's not just because the letters demonstrate such a love of books, it's also the gradual building up of friendships as the correspondence continues over the years, and other practical kindnesses are shown beyond the business transactions. No wonder it's such a favourite with members of this group, who have also had the experience of joining LT perhaps for a practical purpose of cataloguing books, and gradually find ourselves making connections with people across the world because of our shared appreciation for books.

Highly recommended - 4.5 stars

Book no. 5 The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street

The 'sequel' to 84 Charing Cross Rd, in my edition bound in the same volume
Also fits TIOLI challenge for a book with proper name in title

So many had commented that this was a slight disappointment after 84, Charing Cross that my expectations were not very high - thus perhaps I enjoyed it more than I was expecting to. It certainly does not have quite the impact of the first book. This memoir, also short, takes the form of diary entries describing Hanff's long-anticipated first trip to London in the early 1970s, following the success of her book. There is much less about books, and not much about her previous correspondents at the bookshop, as some have by then died and others have moved away. But we hear of her meeting some of those long-standing friends and their relatives, and also many new friends and fans of the book, who take her out and about exploring London and the surrounding places, especially those with literary connections.

The main interest of this follow-up work lies in seeing how the writer reacts when finally confronted with the reality of a city she has loved from a distance and got to know only through books. The differences between London and New York and the subtle differences of idiom and expression between American and British English, are cause for comment and often sources of humour - though as an English reader, some of the things Hanff found amusingly different were of course normal to me (Hanff seems to find it strange when someone is described as being 'on holiday', whereas I found it hard to get used to her talking about being 'on line' rather than 'in a queue').

I did find it an interesting read, but probably would not have enjoyed it as a stand alone - the context of the long build up to her visit gives it a bitter-sweet significance, especially as the famous bookshop has closed down by this time. 3.75 stars for this one.

So funny that you just mentioned Dissolution. I had a rather serious lapse of my book buying ban yesterday whle in Zuerich (perhaps my worst ever in a bookshop... NINE new fiction books. Oops. But it is the biggest English bookshop in continental Europe and I was so happy to find it!) Anyway, at last I found Dissolution and started it this morning. It's really, really good, and would be even better soon after WH. I'm only a chapter in so far. I thought you'd recommended it to me, but I looked and it was Suzanne.

Glad you enjoyed the Helene Hanff books - me too, especially 84 Charing Cross Road.

Very pleased to hear that you enjoyed the Helene Hanff books so much, Genny. I love them, and I agree with you that Duchess is best as a direct follow-on to 84 when you really get the impact of her finally going to see the places and some of the people she has had contact with, and the poignancy of having never having been able to visit the shop or to meet Frank.

I enjoyed Dissolution, although I liked Dark Fire and Sovereign more. I must get round to pulling Revelation off the shelf and actually reading it. Hope you both enjoy Dissolution, Genny and Cushla.

Prompted by you saying you had read it I also picked up 84 Charing Cross Road yesterday and thought it was delightful, as you did. Like yours, my edition contained the sequel as well which was also very enjoyable. I only wish that more of the letters between Helene and the book shop had been saved.

I hope you plan to read Q's Legacy too, Genny!

I love Helene Hanff. I just got Q's Legacy last year and really want to read it. That would be an awesome group read, though there are so many group reads ongoing that it'll be 2012 before I have time for it. :)

Hi, Genny. Just speaking and looking a little longer, and then I'm off to Glastonbury!

Hi Genny, I'm finally getting round to sorting out various books that need a new home, including a spare copy of The Earth Hums in B Flat. I've listed it on Bookmooch with a reservation on it for you. Please let me know whether or not you still want it!

Taking a brief break from procrastinating about work to report another failure in the resolve to buy fewer books this year...

5 new books into the house in the past 2 days - 4 Penguin Classic Crime editions of various Agatha Christies (I don't own any of hers and have hardly read any ever, so I'm looking out for cheap copies on eBay/Abebooks so that I can get around to reading some soon). And from Denmark via Bookmooch, Remnant Population by Elizabeth Moon, which Janet recommended earlier up the thread, and which popped up on Bookmooch almost immediately.

Meanwhile I've finished my re-read of Sense and Sensibility for the Austenathon, and am over half way through Roman Blood by Stephen Saylor - I decided on this rather than Dissolution as the next read, as I'd already listed Roman Blood on the TIOLI wiki, though hearing Cushla's and Caty's recommendation for Dissolution I do hope to get to that one soon too.

I can't remember now who recommended the Saylor series to me when I mentioned last year that I enjoy the Lindsey Davis Falco series. (Was it Peggy?) Roman Blood is the first in a series which is also set in ancient Rome, though rather earlier (Falco is set in the 70s AD in imperial times, Saylor's series is set in Republican Rome c 80 BC). I'm enjoying it, and allowing myself to read too much when I should be working on other things...

I've been neglecting other threads, and am starting to get behind with my own thread too - I have a couple of reports/reviews to catch up on already.

Thanks to all who have stopped by with comments and encouragements. I feel as though there are lots of interrupted conversations going on and I'd like to pick up the threads again and respond - but it's late now and I should have gone to bed over an hour ago, so I promise to come back again soon and post some more, after (I really hope) a productive day's work tomorrow.

#109: Remnant Moon is a good one, so I hope you enjoy it, Genny!

Yes, Genny, I'm the Gordianus fan. I'm very happy that you like it because some people find the series - I don't know - too dark? Too historical? I've always been mesmerized, especially since he's done so much reading and research on Cicero. Enjoy!

Genny, Remnant Population is so good that I think it doesn't count as breaking the no book buying rule! I really hope you like it.

I'm another person who needs to read Dissolution. Will also be interested in hearing your thoughts on Roman Blood; I think I also wishlisted that one based on Peggy's recommendation.

Just spotted that my Thingaversary is coming up on Friday - it will be five years since I joined, so that means I get to buy six books!

Congratulations! Lots of good books under the bridge!

May I offer early congratuations and best wishes upon your 5th Thingaversary!

>114 gennyt:: A bonus book for Thingaversaries? I like this idea and will try and remember for my 4th Thingaversary in late March that I get five books. Here's to books and LT! Be sure and let us know what books you get.

I hope you had a productive work day today. I am behind on threads here, too, and I don't have a good excuse like you do.

Happy Thinga! Five books!

I'll add my voice to the Dissolution chorus! Sansom over Saylor is a no brainer, IMO...

You might also want to look out for Q's Legacy by Helene Hanff -- it digs into the reason she ended up in correspondence with the Marks & Co. bookstore in the first place. I still remember reading the original book, wayyyyy back in 1978, on an Easter holiday in Majorca!

Happy early Thingaversary, Genny! Mine is not until May. Rats. Not that it matters - Linda tells me I cannot buy any books for it.

I think I liked Dissolution more than Roman Blood but they're both well worth reading. Dissolution obviously has the church history, as it's set in a monastery at the time of their dissolution, hence the title.

A belated Happy Thingaversary! Let us know which books you get to celebrate.

Absent from my own thread as well as behind with everyone else's... I do hope to catch up soon but things are a bit pressured here.

Sorry to hear about the pressure Genny. Hugs.

#124 Thanks Heather - nothing particularly awful, just too much of everything to deal with plus ongoing fatigue, so it's all a bit overwhelming at times.

I'll report properly on books acquired for my Thingaversary soon - I ordered a few from AbeBooks etc which are gradually arriving in the post.

I'm four books behind in terms of reviewing/reporting - only completed one book so far this month (Flowers for the judge - one of the very few remaining Margery Allinghams to complete my read through all of hers). Towards the end of January I finished Beyond Black, re-read Sense and Sensibility and read Roman Blood. Comments to follow soon I hope.

Currently I've got several things on the go at once. I've started Native Tongue by Elgin for the Future Women group read - very interesting so far (dystopian patriarchal future chillingly conveyed in first chapter through all-male committee meeting discussing the fate of a woman), will be interesting to see how this develops and how it compares to The Handmaid's Tale with which at this point I can see some similarities.

I've got a bit behind on A Glastonbury Romance - will try to do some concentrated reading there to catch up soon with others on the group read (I'm not looking at that thread, Peggy and Lucy, until I've read a few more chapters: too many spoilers!).

I've also finally got round to starting a book of lit crit on C S Lewis - Planet Narnia by Michael Ward, which I've had out from the library for many months. The introduction read a bit too much like a doctoral thesis (which I think this book is based on) carefully covering every base but now I've got further in it's fascinating, although still the most heavily footnoted book I've read for ages. Against the often-made charge that the Narnia books are a bit of a hodge-podge of ideas and motifs from disparate sources - and a rather-too-crude-for-some Christian allegory - Ward is proposing that Lewis was using the pre-modern concept of the seven heavens - Jupiter, Mars, Venus, Mercury, Saturn, Sun and Moon - as a subtle underlying unifying symbolic framework for the seven chronicles. It sounds unlikely at first, but he shows how much Lewis used planetary symbolism and references in his other works too (not just his three sci-fi books which involve trips to Mars and Venus but also his poetry, and his critical writings), and it is making a surprising amount of sense so far.

I've also been catching up a bit more with my audio book, A Short History of Nearly Everything. This has been an interesting experience - the first time I've tried listening to non-fiction rather than fiction, and whether it is because of the subject matter (cosmology, astronomy, geology, palaeontology so far) or because of the late hour at which I've mainly been listening (while getting ready for bed) - I find I have to keep rewinding and listening again because I have not really been following. I've had a couple of sessions listening during the day which have been a bit more succesful, but I still find it hard to concentrate. Bryson's whistlestop tour through the history of science is throwing a large number of big numbers, mind-boggling concepts, and unfamiliar names at me in rapid succession, and I think I struggle to take all this in aurally rather than visually. His brief pen-portraits of various hapless, eccentric or squabbling (mainly) eighteenth and nineteenth century scientists are entertaining and briefly informative, but they are all beginning to blur into each other in my memory already. Many more hours of listening - I'm only just over half way through the first of three parts, I think there are fifteen hours listening altogether. I may stick to fiction for my next audio book, or reserve this option for the rare occasions when I have long car journeys, rather than try to listen at night.

It's true that I do most of my audio listening in the morning when I am bright-eyed and bushy-tailed.......

I have posted quite a few links to pictures of things on aGR -- and Peggy has too -- you might want to breeze through some of those -- Wookey Hole and the like. The Mark Moor Court chapter is incredible, the best yet!

Courage, Jenny! You have read an amazing lot, it seems to me! You'll get back to aGR, and you'll be glad you did, I think!

Genny, I hope the overwhelming becomes underwhelming soon :)

Book acquisition confession time:

Since my last report on this topic, quite a number of books seem to have made their way into my house:

I picked up Native tongue from the library for the group read, and at the same time spotted Purple Hibiscus.

Love lies bleeding arrived via Bookmooch - my first Edmund Crispin mystery

For my 5 year Thingaversary I decided to treat myself to some Folio Society editions (second hand copies from eBay or Abebooks)
Framley Parsonage because I have copies of the rest of that series in the same edition and would like to re-read them all in nice editions on day.
some other Trollope: the first two Palliser novels: Can you forgive her? and Phineas Finn because I'd like to get round to that series eventually
and The two heroines of Plumplington- a collection of shorter stories by Trollope because it was cheap!
Also a fine 2 volume Folio edition of The Greek Myths by Robert Graves.
The 6th Thingaversary book is Moon Tiger by Penelope Lively which I need for RL book club next week. I've read this before, but could not find a copy at home.

And one more Bookmooch book has arrived today - The earth hums in B flat - thanks Luci!

So, with a total of 26 new acquisitions and two new library loans so far this year, and only 9 books read thus far, I really do need to call a moratorium on further purchases until I've read a few more. I have a few more Mooches in the pipeline, but after they have arrived, I will try very hard to restrain that collector's impulse for the next few months.

I think your reading/acquisition ratio is similar to mine (but I've acquired a lot more books and may not get to most of them any time soon!)

#129: I like the gifts you got for yourself on your Thingaversary, Genny! Nice haul!

A belated response to various comments above:

#102 I'm hoping to get to Dissolution soon, Cushla - glad to hear such good things about it.

#103 And glad to hear, Caty, that the series gets even better after the first one.

#104 I'm glad you enjoyed it too, Ygraine. I agree it's a shame that more letters were not preserved. Now that most correspondence and book ordering is carried out by email or simply automated online systems, I wonder if any such exchange is going on these days that might be published in future?

#105 I don't have a copy of Q's legacy yet, Stasia, but will certainly keep a look out for that.

#106 I'm not sure I'd manage another group read at present either Sarah - I'm not very good at keeping up with the ones I am already committed to. How long is Q's legacy?

#132: Q's Legacy is not a lengthy book, Genny, maybe 200 pages or so.

#107 Hoping to join you in Glastonbury later today and catch up a bit - I have to do some major house-tidying, and belated work on my accounts first though.

#108 I spotted your copy of The Earth Hums on bookmooch and mooched it before I saw your post here - thanks. Now it has safely arrived, all I need is the time to read it along with all the others in the TBR pile...

#110, 112 I am very much looking forward to Remnant Population thanks to all of your enthusiastic recommendations. I wonder if I can use that excuse again, about really good books not counting in terms of the book buying ban....

#111 I thought it was you Peggy. I didn't find the Saylor too dark myself. It was interesting to learn something about Cicero, about whom I knew next to nothing before. It seemed to take longer to get a sense of Gordianus' character but I thought that was beginning to emerge by the end, eg in his attitude and actions regarding the widow and her mute son. I've got the second book in the series now - just arrived today from bookmooch.

#113 Heather, I hope to get my recent book reports/reviews written soon, and to get to reading Dissolution when I've finished one or two of my current reads...

#115 Thank you mamzel, and thanks for visiting!

#116 Thanks Terri - and I've just realised I forgot to post on the Thingaversary thread when the date came...

#117 Yes indeed Donna, books to celebrate a Thingaversary is a great idea, especially the bonus book. I'll share your toast to books and LT. My anniversary purchases are finally listed above in post #129. It is hard keeping up with threads isn't it - my excuses are not very good, it's just the struggle of working from home and trying to concentrate. Sometimes thread-reading and posting act as a distraction (and I begin to get caught up), at other times I feel too bad about the fact that I'm not working when I should be, and don't feel able to enjoy LT either. I seem to lack the discipline to do a sensible amount of work first, then reward myself with time on LT. And there's always reading itself to fit in somewhere of course!

According to Amazon, Q's Legacy is 144 pages (I looked it up because I bought a copy recently and I didn't think it looked like a 200 pp book).

#118 Thanks Lucy. 6 actually - 5th anniverary...

#119 I'm hearing you Suzanne - Dissolution is moving to the top of the pile. And Q's Legacy is on my radar now at least. It's great to have memories of particular times and places when we first read certain books, isn't it. I remember reading The Master and Margarita on a very hot holiday in Tunisia, and The Leopard while staying on the Herbridean island of Iona. The locations had nothing to do with the book - were almost poles apart - but I guess because they were away from the usual home setting, they stuck in my mind and are associated now with those books.

#120 Not even Thingaversary books allowed? That woman is so strict! :)

#121 Looks like I've saved the best till last then - and I am looking forward to Dissolution especially following recent read of Wolf Hall.

#126, 127 Thanks for the pictures. I seem to remember visiting the Wookey Hole caves many years ago when we were on holiday in those parts, but I can only have been about 6 or 7 so don't remember much. I really am hoping to catch up soon, and looking forward to seeing where the story goes and how the arthurian motifs are used.

#128 I'm keeping my head above the water at least, Stasia!

#130 You do manage to read more than I do Luci, but i guess getting all those books for review doesn't help the book acquisition rate!

#131, 133 - Thanks, I think so too! And thanks for the info re Q's - it would be a short group read at least if we ever did that.

Well, all caught up with comments - just the book reports to do now, but that will have to wait until later on. Domestic chores and tax forms are refusing to go away...

#136 - An even shorter group read then!

Thinking of you and stopping by to wave hello.

Thanks Linda, hello to you too!

#137: Yes, she is strict, isn't she?

ETA: I guess it depends on what edition of Q's Legacy that you pick up as to the length. My copy is 192 pages long.

Apologies for dropping of the face of Planet LT without following up on the Q's Legacy idea, but I'm glad Stasia et al have you covered.

The book itself isn't long, but it is was inspired by Hanff's experience reading and learning from Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch's On the Art of Writing, which I would want to read in connection, and both books reference tons of classic literature.

My great vision of reading these two books side-by-side will, no doubt, turn into an experience the size of an undergraduate literature course as a result. And therefore, I realize, would be an insane undertaking even without trying to manage it as a group read.

But it sure as heck would be awesome to have that reading experience at the same time as others and be able to discuss it. :)

Hi. I meant to tell you how much I loved the photo of the Northumbrian coast on the card you sent with my book. I know that area a little bit, as we have had 4 or 5 holidays up there, always including the walk around to Warkworth castle. Your photo reminded me that we haven't been there in several years - I'm hoping to be well enough to be allowed holidays in the UK fairly soon (airplanes still some way off), so maybe that's where we'll go. Anyway, beautiful photo. If I were clever enough I could scan it and post it here, but I'm not, so.......

#143 I'm glad you liked the photo Janet - didn't realise that you had holidayed up here so that was especially appropriate. I do hope you manage to be well enough soon for some more local holidays - Northumberland is certainly beautiful and still too little known...

Here's the photo since I don't need to scan it in. I took it in September 2009, on a long walk on my day off on a beautiful sunny afternoon.


The Northumbrian coast north of Warkworth

And a couple more, as it is worth sharing how lovely this part of the world is...


Overlooking Alnmouth
Rocks, sand and sea...

Lovely photos. I made a point of visiting Northumberland (too briefly) when I came to the UK a couple of years ago.

I can but sigh. *sigh* Thanks for sharing the beauty!

Wow - beautiful photos!

Well I've been busy trying to work, and read, and not done much posting for the past 10 days or so.

#142 That does sound like an interesting but probably impossible to co-ordinate group read, Sarah - it would be more like a year-long syllabus; didn't Hanff herself said it took her ages to read Q's book because every time he referred to another book or author she had to get hold of that and read it before continuing.

146, 147, 148 - I'm glad you like the photos - and glad you got to visit Northumberland Kerry. I must get out for some more walks and appreciate my own surroundings more: I have several books of suggested walk routes which are currently underused...

Now for some reading updates - I'm over a month behind with these...

Book no. 6 - Beyond Black - Hilary Mantel

Own copy, bought second-hand May 2010
TIOLI challenge - name of colour in title

What's this book about? A fat middle-aged psychic and her brittle, pushy assistant. The suburban wastelands of outer London and the pretensions and delusions of lower middle-class life. Unpleasant ghosts and the haunting past of an abusive childhood.

It took me a long time to get into this book, and even by the end I could not say that I really enjoyed it, but I am glad that I read it. Mantel says in an interview printed at the back of my copy that 'good fiction expands our sympathies'. My sympathies took some stretching, and it was an uncomfortable read though beautifully written, but in the end I found I had come to care about the character of Alison the psychic.

I think I struggled with this because the world that Mantel is describing is so depressingly bleak and yet horribly familiar in some ways - the in-between world of suburbs linked by motorways, the new housing estates built on contaminated land. Mantel's opening sentences set the tone for the exterior setting which seems to be symbolic also of the state of the nation:

'Travelling: the dank oily days after Christmas. The motorway, its wastes looping London: the margin's scrub-grass flaring orange in the lights, and the leaves of the poisoned shrubs striped yellow-green like a cantaloupe melon. Four o'clock: light sinking over the orbital road. Teatime in Enfield, night falling on Potters Bar.'

I gave this 3.5 stars - the quality of the writing deserves more, but I felt I had to work too hard to appreciate the novel's other qualities. Maybe I was just in the wrong mood.

#144, 145: Nice photos Genny. They almost make me feel like heading back home!

Book no. 7 - Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen


Own copy, Folio Society illustrated edition, acquired by subscription c 2003
Group read, part of 'Austenathon'
Re-read


It's been a long while since I last read Sense and Sensibility, probably about 25 years, though having seen the Emma Thompson film since then makes it seem more recent.

I enjoyed this re-read, and it's the first time I've read my lovely hardback Folio edition which was a pleasure to handle and read from (I acquired a complete set of Austen some years ago ready for eventual re-reads).

I don't really know where I'd rank this among the Austen novels - perhaps will have to wait until I've re-read them all - but I've given it 4.5 stars. So much delicious characterisation conveyed through conversation and that cutting, ironic prose. I'm intending to add a few more comments on the relevant spoiler thread of the 'Austenathon'.

Book no. 8 - Roman Blood - Steven Saylor



Own book, second-hand, Bookmooch July 2010
TIOLI Challenge: first book in new series
Recommended by LizzieD


First in a new mystery series for me, and a chance to explore an earlier version of ancient Rome than the one I know from the Lindsey Davis Falco series (ie the late Republican period rather than Imperial Rome). This book introduces Gordianus the Finder, a kind of freelance investigator employed by lawyers to help them dig up evidence for their cases. Gordianus is asked by a young Cicero to help with a case apparently involving parricide, most heinous of crimes (with a horrific punishment to match).

I knew next to nothing about Cicero before reading this, so have enjoyed this fleshing out of his life and character. I think this first book does a better job of introducing Cicero than Gordianus himself, though by the end something of the latter's character is beginning to emerge a little more clearly. There is less light-hearted humour than in the Lindsey Davis books, and the overall mood is somewhat more serious (though I think both series, as far as I can tell, are equally thoroughly researched and serious in the sense of attempting to be historically accurate in their settings). I will be looking out for the next book to see how things develop.

4 stars - a good readable mystery with plenty of interesting historical detail.

Hm. I really need to read some Saylor at some point, especially if he includes Cicero as a character - I'm a bit smitten with him (read: obsessed; just ask my students!).

I'm so glad that you enjoyed Roman Blood, Genny! I find both Falco and Gordianus modern figures wearing togas, but especially in the case of Gordianus, I don't mind at all. I think I read so many cute mysteries while I was teaching that I sort of topped out. I wouldn't say that I was ever smitten with Cicero, Amber, but I do feel as though I know him better than I know a lot of currently fleshed people because of his writing. What a complex person he was!

My biggest reason for not having read any of Saylor's books - or others like them set in ancient Rome - is that I find the real history of the times and the real people already so fascinating that I'm not really sure why we need fictionalized versions of them. Anyway, I'll probably eventually give them a try.

#153 Roman Blood does sound interesting and you've reminded me that I also have the Lindsay Davis series on my wishlist.

My husband has a couple of Robert Harris books about Cicero which I've been meaning to read. Imperium is the first followed by Lustrum and I think there's a third volume planned at some point. I haven't read either of them (yet) or his book set in Pompeii but I have read and enjoyed his 20th century books (Enigma, Fatherland and Archangel)

I would definitely vote for Harris over Saylor. I agree with Peggy that Saylor's characters don't really seem of their time while, for me, non-expert that I am, Harris' by and large do. I have read Imperium, Lustrum and Pompeii and found them all unputdownable.

Hope March is treating you well Genny. We have had some sunshine, there are daffodils starting to show and some of the trees are starting to blossom. I am always surprised by how much better things seem when there is some sun and some flowers starting to show.

#154, 156 - Worth trying at least one I guess, Amber - if it's not to your liking you can cross off the rest of the series.

#155 Having recently heard a Raymond Chandler story dramatised on the radio, I realised again how much Lindsey Davis' Falco is a deliberate tongue-in-cheek sort of parody of the hard-boiled private eye character. The humour in Davis' series, with a self-deprecating and self-mocking character who is trying to be cynical but who is really quite soft hearted and romantic, is one of the things I enjoy about it. In that sense, Falco is deliberately very much a modern figure in a toga. That element of humour was lacking in Gordianus, so to me he seemed a little less modern, but then it's easy to overlook ways in which a historical character is anachronistic if you don't know the period yourself so well...

#157, 158 I haven't read any Robert Harris yet, so hopefully I'll enjoy those too when I get round to them. Thanks for the recommendation, Janet. More to add to the TBR warehouse.

#159 March has been ok - the sunshine has helped, though not today with heavy fog! I've been very much absent from my own thread and other people's partly because I've been a bit better about getting on with work, and thus am too busy to deal with threads. Fatigue continues to be a problem, and a bad cough and cold (second of the year) for the last nearly 3 weeks has not helped. So I find I either have energy to work, and nothing else, or if not managing work then I spend more time on here.

But I have been managing more reading this month that last, and badly need to write some reports/reviews as I'm over a month behind with those. May have to do very brief ones just to prevent this becoming another backlog task which I procrastinate about.

I was prompted to get back to posting again on here because I wanted to share something about one of my Lent disciplines. Lent started last week with Ash Wednesday, and will continue till Easter which is late this year (24th April) and I am trying to observe some good habits of self-discipline (which is not my strong point) like getting down to some serious study and reflection, and giving up meat except on Sundays.

Anyway, one other thing I am doing is following a challenge called 'Count Your Blessings' organised by the development charity Christian Aid. This presents a daily challenge to reflect on things we take for granted in our lives that are very much less readily available in developing countries, and asks for a relevant donation in thanksgiving for our 'blessings'. For example, reflecting that each person in Britain eats on average 3kg of chocolate each year, while farmers who grown cocoa beans often have never tasted chocolate at all, and suggests you give 10 pence for every bar of chocolate you've eaten in the past week...

So the theme for this week is learning, and the challenges to do with books and literacy are particularly poignant:

Monday 14th: £2.50 will pay for a textbook for two students to share in southern Sudan where Christian Aid partners are supporting schooling for children. Give 10p for every book you have read since the beginning of this year. I have read 20 so far, thus £2.00 - some of you fast readers would be a lot worse off!

Thursday 17th: In Mali, only one in four people can read. Give 10p for every unread book in your house. I have no idea how many unread books there are in total in my house, as I have no-where near finished cataloguing them, but even if I only take the catalogued ones, that comes to 279, which would be a donation of £27.90. Having so many books waiting to be read is a blessing indeed - though lacking the leisure to read them all is a problem - and I know that books are my principal self indulgence, so it is good to be challenged not to give them up (God forbid!) but to give something to help others have access to the world of books which I take so much for granted.

If anyone is interested in seeing the other 'Count Your Blessings' challenges, the website with dowloadable resources is here.

"Count your Blessings" sounds like a lovely Lenten discipline, Genny! The link you gave was obviously geared to British donors and currency, but I imagine there are comparable programs out there for folks on our side of the pond.

I know what you mean about coughs and colds; I've had a dose of the flu and developed bronchitis. Finally went to the doctor today. I hope you feel better soon!

Hi Genny

I'm way behind on the threads. Returning to work after surgeries is challenging. Then, a few days ago my youngest daughter had her gall bladder removed and I've been helping her.

I think of you and hope you are well.

Hey Genny! What a cool idea for lent. :) It is very thought provoking when we take a look around us and see how many things we do take for granted or things we just plain waste. I need to remind myself of this next time I'm at a bookstore to be just grateful that I can actually afford a TBR shelf where in other country, a single book is considered a unaffordable luxury. Thanks for the reminder!

Hi Genny! Thanks so much for visiting my thread! Thanks for your comments on the The Stone Diaries, which I finished, and gave 4 stars too! It was an excelent read - though I felt the ending fell a little flat. Meantime, I've just finished a short book, The Bookshop by Penelope Fitzgerald , which only rated 3 stars, in my opinion!

I see that you have read Hypothermia by Arnold Idriason - and I've read all of the books previous -and I have Hypothermia on hand - but I've yet to decide what to read next. I see you've also read 84, Charing Cross which like wonderful read! So far that is just on my wishlist!!

What a wonderful idea - the Count Your Blessing for Lent.

#163 Still coughing I'm afraid, Terri, I hope you are on the mend soon too.

#164 Linda, so sorry to hear about your daughter - not only recovering from surgery yourself but helping other family members do so too, that's quite a challenge indeed. Thank you for your thoughts - I'm bearing up ok though could be better.

#165 Thanks for dropping in, jolerie (actually, I see you are Valerie, sorry). I agree, we all too easily forget what a luxury our groaning TBR shelves are. For me it means, if I can't stop myself buying yet more books when I have so many unread already, I should be willing to give quite generously to bring some of the many benefits of books to those who have too few.

#166 Glad you enjoyed The Stone Diaries, Deborah. I can't remember the ending particularly myself (it was 3 or 4 years ago I read it). I've also read The Bookshop, quite a while ago, and didn't think too much of it either. Hypothermia funnily enough was for my real life book group, which actually met this afternoon. I was hoping to read the series in order, and had got a copy of Jar City the first book ready to read, when the group chose Hypothermia because it was on some list of 'best of summer reads' last year. I did manage to read Jar City first, but then had to skip straight onto Hypothermia which was a bit of a shame. I think I liked the book more than most did in my book group, but it may have helped that I'd read at least one more in the series, which none of the others had. Anyway, at some point now I'll have to go back and fill in the gaps between...

Thanks for the link to the Lent challenges, Genny- what a great way to think about what and why we are giving.

I read Jar City a while back and remember it as a superior kind of police procedural but haven't read any of the others. I think the second one is on my TBR shelf.

Hi, Genny! Just checking in, wondering how you're doing.

*waves*

Genny, I can't believe it's taken me this long to come across and star your thread! I'm just slow this year, I guess. I am a big Elizabeth Goudge fan--read and acquired all of her books I could find over here in the 70s. Although I have somehow misplaced the Henrietta trilogy, alas--some of my favorites. The Dean's Watch is another favorite which I reread at Christmastime.

It's been so long since I read The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch that I remember nothing of it but the cover. I'm another Le Guin fan, as you probably already know, and also read 84, Charing Cross Road last year for the first time.

My husband just passed his virus on to me, so I also have a bad cough. I went to the Wiki and found your thread when I saw you commenting on having finished a Jasper Fforde book, as I wanted to see what you thought of it. I just finished reading the newest one.

Oh I am so far behind with my own thread, it is ridiculous! I've been avoiding reporting on my reading for the past two months, partly by trying to catch up on other people's threads instead, partly by just doing more reading and putting off the reviews. (I've also continuing to be not very well and struggling to keep up with things at work and generally avoiding things...)

Thanks for those who have been calling in to my thread.
Dee, there seem to be quite a few of us who have started that Icelandic series by Indridason. I will get round to book 2 some time, I hope.
Terri - doing all the better for a friendly visit, thanks!
Roni - nice to see you here and glad to find another Goudge fan. I see we also have a few Peter Dickinson books in common - I have enjoyed finding more of his to read in recent years, having read lots in my childhood/teens already. I've also met him a few times (his son John is a good friend of mine). As for the Fforde, I've now finished it and that's one of the many I need to write up a few comments on now! I did enjoy it, but not as much perhaps as some have: it took me a while to get into it. I need to think a bit more about what I did/didn't like about it.

Anyway, I have decided I should post my books read in Feb and March without any reviews/comments to start with, and then come back to add any thoughts if/when I am inspired.

And I have a large number of new acquisitions to confess to...

Hi Genny. Nice to meet you . . . I will be reading from your tag cloud/ tag mirror for the April TIOLI challenge #4. I have to admit I was a little nervous about signing up for this challenge given the unknowns, but am very pleased to find your page and profile. Having studied your library and lists, I think I will read 84 Charing Cross Road and possibly, Once and Future King since it is one of your favorites.
I hope you are also fortunate enough to read from the collection of a Librarything member whose books you will enjoy!
Have a great day, and
Happy reading. . .

Out with them, Genny! I love your reviews, but I need to see your new books list so I'll know how envious to be! (I'm not sure that came out right.)
Peter Dickinson???!!!??? Dorothy Dunnett's favorite mystery writer Peter Dickinson? Of The Glass-sided Ant's Nest and The Lively Dead and The Lizard in the Cup fame? I ♥LOVE♥ Peter Dickinson and ration myself so that I'll always have another unread one. If I were not so overly burdened, I'd think it was time to start another one now.
Since I had to edit to get my heart code right, I'll just add that I have read one Fforde, and while I found it clever enough, I was never moved to read another one. It's a relief to be able to excuse myself from something.

Aargh - I had just started a post with book covers etc, a bit fiddly, and managed to do that thing where you highlight and delete the whole thing by mistake. Off now to compose my 'books read' entries in a Word document first and only post them here when they are finished, to avoid further frustrations :(

Ooh, waiting to see what you've been reading! Will do the dishes first.

#172 Brenda, I'm hopeful you will enjoy 84 Charing Cross Road - it seems to be a firm favourite with all members of this group who've read it so far! The Once and Future King I have not re-read for many years, but was influential in my childhood (the first book - The Sword in the Stone) and teens (the remaining books which are a little more adult in tone).

#173 Peggy I have not been hiding them from you, really. They are all listed up at the top of my thread if you want a preview of what I've read. And yes, it is the same Peter Dickinson, but the other half of his oeuvre: I have mainly read his children's/young adult fiction, favourites among which in childhood were The Blue Hawk and The Dancing Bear with historical settings, and The Weathermonger and the rest of the Changes series with a contemporary, something-weird-going-on setting (specifically a late 20th century world where almost everyone has turned against machinery and technology and regards it all as witchcraft). I've only read one of his mysteries, so that's a whole new area to explore still!

Right - here are the first three read at the beginning of February (that was a slow month for me, as for many of us it seems).

Book no. 9 – Flowers for the Judge – Margery Allingham


Own book – bought secondhand (eBay) June 2010
Off the TBR shelf!
Finished 5th Feb
Book no 7 in the Albert Campion series – almost the last one in my out of sequence (re)-read
3.5 stars

Comments to follow.

Book no. 10 – Moon Tiger – Penelope Lively


Own book, bought used (amazon marketplace) Feb 2011
Finished 17th Feb
Read for Book Group 17th Feb
4.5 stars

Comments to follow.

Book no. 11 – Native Tongue – Suzette Haden-Elgin


Library book
Finished 18th Feb
TIOLI challenge: book with ‘wrong’ touchstone
Group read: Future Women
3.5 stars

Comments to follow.

Hi, Genny! Finally made it back here. Just stopping by to say hello:)

Hey Genny. I know what it's like to get behind here on LT. If I don't post my comments right after reading the book, I usually don't remember (or care) enough to come back later with my thoughts. Sometimes I think I rush in too quickly to let the book settle. I'm sure there must be a happy medium.

I'm waiting to see what you've bought recently. I 'fessed up on my thread!

Hmm, still not getting on very fast with posting about books read or acquired - and it's too late (after an hour or two of posting on other people's threads) to do anything more tonight, so I must leave that for another day. Time to sleep!

Not going to try and catch up, but I hope to stay current, Genny :)

Just now catching up on your thread, Genny, and I enjoy your reviews. You have added greatly to my wishlist! Have a nice weekend!
--BJ

Thanks for the great posts, Genny. Moon Tiger has got my attention : ).

Catching up on your thread Genny -- and thanks for visiting mine. I never did get to the Elgin book, even though I ordered it and it is still awaiting me at the bookstore. I am curious about your thoughts on it.

Hope all is well and that the sun is coming in your windows today.

Thanks for all the visits. I'm just back from a busy morning at church, with it being 'Mothering Sunday' in the UK. Everyone has gone off to their family meals with mothers and grandmothers being made a fuss of. I'm on my own with the dog as usual, but enjoying a large gin and tonic while waiting for lunch to cook, and planning to ring my own mother shortly and find out whether my flowers have reached her on time (I fear not, I was late in ordering them...).

Time to join in a bit of the current Readathon while dinner is cooking, and again after eating until afternoon duties call. On therefore with (re-read of) Pride and Prejudice to try to finish that.

Hi Genny. Catching up with your thread.

I share your pain in not knowing whether to

a) read a book
b) write reviews of previously read books
c) reply to messages on own thread
d) read and post on other people's threads

and I suppose there's always

e) do something unrelated to books, reading or LT (gasp!)

Whichever option I choose I feel guilt at not having done one of the others which I think partly is as much a sign of tiredness/other life stress at the moment (for me anyway).

Anyway, I suppose what I am trying to say is try not to worry or stress too much about keeping up with LT (pot, kettle, black?). Hope you enjoy your P&P readathon and get some rest in the middle of a busy Sunday.

#185 Genny, "Mothering Sunday" sounds a lot like "Mothers' Day" in the US -- the 2nd Sunday in May for us. And your lateness in ordering flowers sounds a lot like me. :)

#186 Hey, that sounds like me, too! ;)

Promising myself that I will return here tomorrow (my day off) and do some serious up-dating. Meanwhile it is such lovely weather here that I'd really rather be out enjoying the sunshine, but I have work to do and a group to prepare for tonight.

A colleague of mine went out with the local Ramblers group yesterday on her day off, and this morning had a bright red face from the combination of unexpectedly strong sunshine and a stiff breeze all day.

I hope you continue to enjoy lovely weather, Genny!

I always find the beginning of spring, when it really arrives, incredibly unsettling.

Go out into the sun, dear Genny! Wear a lot of sun screen though. We don't want you with a bright red face!
I'm so glad that you liked Moon Tiger because I got it from PBS last year, hoping that I hadn't made a mistake.

attempting to upgrade my broadband I have ended up with no connection at all over the weekend. I foolishly thought they would just flip a switch or something, not make me install new equipment and reconfigure everything, which has proven beyond my skills. Only access to internet (and LT!) is via my phone which is v slow and fiddle, so my updates and other posts will be delayed until I 'm connected again.

Had a great 'Quiet Day' today with parish members, on the theme of Transitions, and led by an outside speaker so I could relax and enjoy the day, especially the quiet times sitting in the sun in a beautiful spring garden.

Sorry to hear about the internet problems, Genny. I hope you can get it all figured out soon.

The weather has been glorious hasn't it? I think I've managed to spend some time outside but not so much that I've gone red (which is a particular problem with my colouring).

Sorry to hear about your internet problems. I only realise how ridiculously reliant I am on our internet connection when there's a problem with it.

Internet back at last! Broadband all upgraded. More posts soon...

Congrats!

Woot!

A busy day off so far, and it's only half over.

I got up early to finish the church newsletter and send it to the office to be printed, then had to meet with representatives of the Diocese (who are the landlords of my house), the local Council conservation area enforcement officers, and the tree surgeon who recently did some work on my garden. Because of complaints from neighbours about shrubs and tree branches overhanging the pavement, the Diocese had instructed the tree surgeon back in December to remove some of the offending branches from the corner of my garden, which meant in effect cutting back a large number of rather overgrown suckers from a large acer - some of them getting on for tree size in their own right.

Well, the paths have been clear for neighbours to walk along since then, but clearly others have been upset by the loss of the greenery in that corner, and complained to the council, who claim we have committed an offence by removing trees from a conservation area without permission. So the site meeting today was to try to resolve this - lots of quoting of bylaws and arguing of grey areas when shrubs or suckers become trees, and an eventual promise from the tree surgeon to plant a new (smaller) tree to replace the lost greenery.

After all that fun (and taking the opportunity to clear some of the rubbish out of said corner of the garden, which is used by inconsiderate passers by to toss their empty cans and cigarette packets) I had a quick breakfast, then off on my bicycle to the High Street to have my hair cut. My hairdresser is looking forward to having the day off in a fortnight to watch the Royal Wedding. I can't say I share his enthusiasm!

Next door to the hairdresser is a new little deli selling fine wines (about which I know too little) and quality bread and cheeses (which is more my area). So I purchased a lovely loaf of rye bread, some goats cheese and some Dutch Gouda with cumin seeds (one of my favourites from when I lived in Holland), and a small stilton and asparagus tartlet for my lunch. Also called in at an italian deli and bought some olives and sundried tomatoes (rather expensive), and stopped at a cafe for a latte and lemon and poppy seed muffin.

I should have come straight home at that point, but I could not resist checking the Oxfam charity shop because its selection of used books is always so good. 8 books heavier and £20 lighter, I cycled home, and have been busy adding the new books to LT for the past half hour.

So it's confession time re these latest purchases:

The History of Danish Dreams by Peter Høeg, because I enjoyed Miss Smilla
From the Holy Mountain by William Dalrymple, which I've been meaning to read for about 10 years!
Summer Cooking by Elizabeth DAvid, because her cookbooks are classic...
The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga, Booker winner about which I know nothing
Depths by Henning Mankell, a non-Wallander thriller set during WWI in Sweden
Cloud Atlas, because I've yet to read any David Mitchell and everyone keeps recommending it
The Scent of the Night by Andrea Camilleri, because once I've read book 1 I'll probably want to get round to the rest of the series eventually.
Restless by William Boyd, because we decided yesterday at my bookgroup to read another of Boyds and I've never read anything by him.

I've also just received a long-awaited Early Reviewer book: Divinity Road by Martin Pevsner, a first novel set in Oxford and Africa. I guess that one had better go near the top of the TBR pile.

I have many, many more purchases to confess to from the past few weeks, as well as some reading to update on, but it is high time I went to eat my asparagus tartlet with some rye bread and goats cheese...

It's good to hear your broadband is up and running again - it's amazing how much we use it! Great purchases from Oxfam - I loved The White Tiger and I enjoyed David Mitchell's Black Swan Green although I haven't read Cloud Atlas. I currently have his newest one waiting to read on the weekend. I hope you get your trees sorted out - it sounds like a case of not being able to please any of the people any of the time ;-)

What a to do about your shrubbery! People can get so crazed about silly things. It does all GROW BACK and rather quickly. And ironic that people throw little bits of rubbish in there as it is/was handy.....

Great purchases!

Glad you had fun in Oxfam. 3 books there that I have owned for a while but not got round to reading. I'm not interested in Kate & William but having the extra day off appeals - we won't be trying to go to central London though that day!

ARRRGGGHHHhh. Council meeting. I'm sorry you have to get into that, Genny. On the other hand, your menu sounds lovely, and your books are enviable. I have From the Holy Mountain on my PBS wishlist. Maybe someday!

Hi, Genny! Trying to catch up. Hope your day is good:)

Hi Genny, sounds like you had a busy day. I hope that's not typical. I've read Cloud Atlas and Restless and enjoyed them both. You have some good reading ahead.

Sorry to hear about all the stress surrounding your garden. The bookshop trip and deli store sound fantastic though. Hope they helped you to relax a little.

From the Holy Mountain by Dalrymple definitely looks like an interesting read, I don't think I'd heard of that one before.

That meeting about the trees sounds awful, but the rest of the day sounds lovely! I am a big Elizabeth David fan too - I have a French cookbook and Italian one by her. Her writing is so beautiful and the recipes are great.

My brother-in-law loves William Boyd, so I bought one by him last year when the BIL was here... hang on I will see which one... it's the same one - Restless! Cool. You might make me read it soon-ish.

I'm doing the same thing collecting the Camilleri books so that I can go in order, but with not much success. I liked the first book but am kind of trying to be good with not buying too much new (I'm failing). I found the 9th in a school book sale here but think I'll be waiting till we're home next year to find the others.

Good grief---I'm gone for a few days and come back to find not 1, not 2 but 3 more to add to the teetering pile. You have also inspired me to go bake some rye bread-perfect to go with the Easter ham.

1. William Boyd - I have one of his On the Yankee Stationsitting here on my shelf and have ignored it. So your mention has jumped it up in the queue.
2. Dalrymple - that one sounds like it might be worth tracking down a used copy as I suspect it will be one to be read and savored slowly.
3. The White Tiger - the buzz has been growing and it's time to see what it's all about and my local library has it AVAILABLE in audio download.

Off to hit the download button....

Happy Easter to all who celebrate it! And Happy Spring to all!

Happy Easter to you, too! Hope you had a wonderful day!
--BJ

A belated Happy Easter to you too Genny. Hope you can enjoy your time off and get some rest.

Happy Easter, Genny! I imagine this is a busy time of year for you?!

Ok, the countdown to time off begins. Some admin to do, some home visits to do, some tidying of the house and packing to do (which books to take being obviously the most important question) and then off with the dog for a few days to stay in a cottage by the sea further up the coast. I hope the glorious weather continues...

I won't have wi-fi connnection in the cottage, but will take my laptop as I may be able to connect in one of the pubs in the village, so I hope to have a daily dose of LT updates. While I'm offline I suppose I can finally write some of those overdue reviews I've been promising...

Your upcoming vacation sounds absolutely wonderful! Hope you have a really relaxing and refreshing time away and of course hope you get some good reading squeezed in! :)

Dear Genny, blessings on you and enjoy your much-deserved rest! The sea, books, dog, rest! Sounds idyllic!!!!

Thank you for good wishes, one and all. Still fiddling around with finishing off overdue admin before I go - the perils of working from home... But I really can't do much more before I pack up and leave, else I'll not get to the cottage before dark.

A cottage by the sea sounds absolutely divine. I hope your good weather continues, Genny, and that you have a restful time.

I finished and loved my first William Boyd book, Any Human Heart. He's a great writer that I anticipate reading more of in the future.

Genny.....review writing is work....You are supposed to read, relax, read, relax ...maybe take a few notes, but reviews can wait. Do enjoy the peace of the season.

I hope your time away is wonderful Genny.

Enjoy your rest Genny. I look forward to hearing about what you read!

Have a wonderful time away, Genny! Happy reading!

Back from my cottage and just off for 24 hours down to my sister in Lincolnshire. A 3.5 hour drive each way, and I need to come back tomorrow, but I didn't get to see her and her family at Christmas as normal since the weather was so bad and I didn't feel up to the drive, so I'm taking this brief opportunity as I have a rare Sunday off tomorrow.

Meanwhile I finished reading Fingersmith and Fire and Hemlock while away, and am half-way through Lost in a good book which I hope to finish before the end of the day if I don't stay up too late talking to my sister. (It will count for a TIOLI challange if I get it finished on time).

Long promised book updates will have to wait a bit longer!

Hope you have a good time with your sister Genny. Drive safely!

Well I've arrived safely, driving on this very hot sunny day. One niece is out visiting friends overnight, I hope to see her tomorrow. The other one has just shown me her stop-animation film made with Playmobil figures - great fun! My dog is playing with my sister's dog, and I'm catching up.

Sounds like a lot of fun. Have a safe trip back home tomorrow.

Isn't Fire and Hemlock a retelling of Tam Lin? Ye gawds an' li'l fishies! Tha's a looooooooooong ballad, tha' is. I remember it mostly for having a naked man in it. And the fact that the myth it retells sounds to me like the myth of Proteus, with a Scots accent.

Back from trips away, the only problem being that the car died on the way home and I had to be towed the last 108 miles back up the A1! Waiting for the verdict from the garage to see whether it is repairable or whether I'll need to get a new one...

I am so behind with book reports, the current aim is to finish adding brief reports without review of everything read up to the end of April on this thread, and then start a new thread for May reads, and try to keep more current with that so that it does not become such a chore. Whether I'll ever go back and add reviews/comments on what I've read so far, I'm not sure - but if anyone is interested in my thoughts on a particular book, do ask...

#225 Yes, Fire and Hemlock is based on Tam Lin/Thomas the Rhymer, two ballads that tell the similar story in different ways. There are quotations from one or other of the ballads at the head of each chapter, so the reader is encouraged to recognise the connection early on...

Book no. 12 – Wyrd Sisters – Terry Pratchett


Own book, acquired used (Bookmooch), Sept 2010
Finished 23rd Feb
4 stars

Book no. 13– A Glass of Blessings – Barbara Pym


Source: own book, from Bookmooch, May 2010
Finished: 25th Feb
4 stars

Book no.14 – The Ghost of Thomas Kempe – Penelope Lively


Source: Own book, used, Amazon marketplace, February 2011
Finished: 26th Feb
4.5stars

Oh no! I'm sorry to hear about your car. I can't imagine being towed on the A1 is a particularly pleasurable experience either. I'm not sure I'd have the nerves. Fingers crossed it is repairable for not too much money.

On the upside, I know how cheaply you can pick up a car now. My best friend has had two £500 cars in the last four years, and each has passed an MOT once before needing to be replaced, and she sold both for £400 each on ebay. Not bad depreciation really!

#227 I think the dog had a worse journey that I did. The car was loaded onto the back of a rescue truck, and I rode in the truck with the driver, but the poor dog had to stay in the car on his own. He doesn't like long car journeys at the best of times, so I imagine he was pretty miserable for the two hours it took to get home.

The rescue man thought it might cost at least £800 to repair the engine, so it is probably going to be better value to invest in a replacement car. It will be another used one, I can get a reasonable value loan through work but it means I have to get a car not more than 4 years old, so I probably won't get one as cheap as £500 (which was what my first car cost). It should then last me a good few years though. I'm just frustrated with all the hassle as I'm not at all interested in cars and hate having to make decisions about what to get. (Something small, economical and environmentally friendly to run, but with room enough for a large greyhound in the back, and luggage room for camping equipment and/or a guitar case as required. Also preferably 5 doors not three for when I'm giving lifts to elderly parishioners who can't easily get into the back seats!).

Don't you just love the different criteria people have to purchase a new car. There would be absolutely no point me buying a car under 4 years old because the interiors get so trashed with straw/hay/shavings/dust/dirt/the occasional mud smear.

Poor dog :( I think all the dogs I know would be very upset by having to be in a car on their own as well. I'm glad you weren't pulled along behind though but went on a tow truck.

What a shabby end to a wonderful few days! I'm sorry, Genny. Pat the pup for all of us. And maybe you'll enjoy the new car when you've jumped through the hoops to get it.
I'm glad to see that you've read or reread another Pym. I won't ask you what you thought. I think I know!

I can't recommend From the Holy Mountain highly enough. It's easily my fave of his, the first that I read by him after hearing an excerpt on the BBC when I was living in London -- 98 or 99? Anyway, I thought it was brilliant. Even made me head out to Cappadocia for a short vacation a few months after I read it AND plan a trip to Syria and Jordan in '00. (Which was also great) Vivid and fascinating. I envy you reading it for the first time!

Re William Boyd, I have several of his here so far unread; must make some inroads into them soon...

Sorry to hear about your car troubles, Genny! Hope you have an easy time finding another that will meet your needs.

Hi Genny! Glad to see you on LT after your trip although boooo to the car troubles at the end.

#226 Eek - sorry to hear your car died. That can't have been fun for you or your dog.

Kind friend has lent her car while she is on holiday for three weeks, so that gives me time to sort out the car. I must ring the garage and find out the verdict...

Dog has recovered. I have finished another book - Unnatural Death - and still have about 25 reports to catch up on!

I hope you get the car situation squared away soon, Genny. Sorry to hear about it, but glad someone has loaned you a car in the interim.

235 Kind friend, indeed, Genny! I'm glad you have at least a temporary solution for your car woes to buy some time.

Car troubles are the worst, especially when your dog was with you. So glad you have a good friend and a 'loaner' so that you can take your time in finding a replacement vehicle.

As for the 25 book reports... Why not make a list of them and start fresh with your current read? Just a suggestion. Take care, Genny.

Thanks for all your good wishes re the car. I'm actually wondering about not buying a new car at all now, but investigating joining a 'car club' which gives me access to a car located a few minutes walk away from me, if I book it in advance when I need it. It's a 'pay as you use it' system, which would spare me the cost of buying, insuring and maintaining a vehicle the whole time. This may work for me, as there are days, sometimes whole weeks, when I don't use the car at all, and often only use it for short local journeys when I do. This scheme would encourage me to use my bike more which would be good for my fitness too. Living in a city with access to good local transport certainly makes this a real possibility.

Anyway, back to books. I'm going to take up Donna's suggestion (#238) and just list all the books read over the past few months that I've not yet reviewed/reported. Catching up on the backlog has been getting me down, and that is not the point of it. So the briefest possible list will follow to bring me up to date and stop fretting about it...

In my previous attempts to list books read, I'd got as far as the end of February. So here are those that I read in March:
15 The murder in the vicarage - Agatha Christie - finished 4.3.11
16 Jar city - Arnaldur Indridason - finished 8.3.11
17 Hypothermia - Arnaldur Indridason - finished 9.3.11 Book Group read
18 Bruno, Chief of Police - Martin Walker - finished 10.3.11
19 Dissolution - C J Sansom - finished 11.3.11
20 The Moving Toyshop - Edmund Crispin - finished 12.3.11
21 The China Governess - Margery Allingham - finished 17.3.11
22 The Eyre Affair - Jasper Fforde - finished 26.3.11
23 Whose Body? - Dorothy L Sayers - finished 26.3.11 - re-read
24 Clouds of Witness - Dorothy L Sayers - finished 29.3.11
25 Murder in Mesopotamia - Agatha Christie - finished 30.3.11

(Can't you tell that was Mystery March?!).
Five of the authors were new to me (Indridason, Walker, Sansom, Crispin and Fforde) and it was the first time I'd read any Christie for about 30 years (and then only one or two) so she was almost a new author; certainly the particular books were new to me.

My favourite for the month was definitely Dissolution - I must get round to the rest of that series soon. But I enjoyed ranging over different countries and different time periods while staying with the mystery genre, from the chilly brooding Icelandic setting of Indridason (where sheep's head is the takeaway delicacy of choice) to the warmer and more sophisticated (at least in culinary terms) Provencal setting of Martin Walker's Bruno, Chief of Police. And I loved re-reading the first Sayers Lord Peter Wimsey - the first one I ever read in fact - and am looking forward to (re)reading through the whole series.

No non-fiction at all in March, I notice...

Genny

I'm sorry that you have car woes. I hate car shopping. Though, the process is easier now that I found an economical car that is maintenance free with the exception of regular items like oil change, new tires and brakes. I love my Hyandai Elantra!

I'm sorry your lovely vacation ended with problems.

All the best,

And here are my April reads:

26 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen - finished 3.4.11 - re-read
27 The Murder of Roger Ackroyd - Agatha Christie - finished 4.4.11
28 The Homeward Bounders - Diana Wynn Jones - finished 5.4.11
29 The Help - Kathryn Stockett - finished 9.4.11 - Book Group read
30 Pyramids - Terry Pratchett - finished 11.4.11
31 Mr Campion's Lucky Day - finished 13.4.11
32 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon - finished 18.4.11
33 The House in Norham Gardens - Penelope Lively - finished 19.4.11 - re-read
34 Fingersmith - Sarah Waters - finished 27.4.11
35 Fire and Hemlock - Diana Wynne Jones - finished 28.4.11 re-read
36 Journey into Joy - Andrew Walker - finished 28.4.11

This was a slightly more varied month, genre-wise, than March. It has been many years since I read Pride and Prejudice, so that was fun. Since re-reading Moon Tiger for my book group earlier this year, I've been searching out more Penelope Lively, including the children's book The House in Norham Gardens which I think was a re-read but if so I have forgotten the detail of the book entirely. I certainly came across it 20 years ago when I lived in Oxford in a house very like, and in the same street as, the house in the title, and I was sure I had read it then, but memory plays funny tricks. Central to the plot of Fire and Hemlock is how memory can play funny tricks; oddly, this was another book I'd read but largely forgotten; even more strangely, it opens with someone reading a book and realising she'd read it before, only it was not as she had remembered it...

My favourite reads in April were probably The Help and Fingersmith. What a range of women's experience is covered between those two very different books!

One non-fiction book in the mix: Journey into Joy is a series of Easter meditations, reflections on the different post-resurrection appearances of Jesus, illustrated with medieval, renaissance and 19th century art, and with an interesting selection of poetry. I was using this as a source book for a service on the evening of Easter Day, and found I had to take it away with me after Easter to re-read it at more leisure and with time to reflect more on the poems and images.

And finally, here are the reads so far for May:

37 Lost in a Good Book - Jasper Fforde - finished 2.5.11
38 Southern Discomfort - Margaret Maron - finished 4.5.11
39 Shooting at Loons - Margaret Maron - finished 7.5.11
40 Unnatural Death - Dorothy L Sayers - finished 10.5.11
41 Mr Campion's Farthing - Youngman Carter - finished 13.5.11
42 Bury Your Dead - Louise Penny - finished 14.5.11
43 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee - finished 16.5.11

I think I enjoyed the second Jasper Fforde 'Thursday Next' book more than the first. Reading The Help last month made me determined finally to get around to reading To Kill a Mockingbird (it's not standard high school reading in the UK as it is in the US, but even so I am surprised it has taken me so long to get round to reading it). Together with the two Margaret Maron mysteries (numbers 2 and 3 in the Judge Deborah series) it has given a distinct Southern flavour to my reading recently, and all these have sent me scurrying a few times to google the meaning of unfamiliar words, mostly items of food or flora/fauna which are unknown in the UK, eg lane cake, live oaks and plenty more. I'm very glad I've finally read Mockingbird, and also greatly enjoyed the latest Louise Penny, not least because it was great to learn so much about bits of Canadian history of which I was almost totally ignorant.

Some fun contrasts in reading those two books one after the other: in the icy winter of Penny's Quebec, cold and snow are a way of life which people take for granted and which most would not swap for a warmer climate, however much they daydream of cruises in sunny climes; while in To Kill a Mockingbird one of the many unexpected funny scenes was when, during an unusually cold winter, Scout is at first terrified that the world is coming to end when she encounters the never-before-experienced phenomenon of snow, and later with great ingenuity she and her brother manage to create a snowman from the sparse falling of snow only by building a mud framework and coating it with snow they have scraped up from their neighbour's yard.

Genny, I'll offer my services any time you need to know about things Southern - especially N.C. I met Margaret Maron after a reading and had a little correspondence with her years ago - Shooting with Loons was her latest at that time - and she was a delightful person, as you might imagine. ----but lane cake???--- What's that? (And I have to add that much as I enjoy Deborah, I liked Sigrid Harold in her first series more.)

(ETA: Oh I see. Lane Cake must be from *Mockingbird*.)

Enjoying your lists, Genny.

Several of our friends in Philadelphia have given up having cars and do one of the two car share options. If they have a longer drive outside the range of the car share they just rent. They come out ahead, easily. It can't hurt to try it.

Just checking in, Genny! Sounds like the 'car club' scheme might be a good deal for you.

What a lot of good reading, Genny! I am curious as to what you thought of The Shadow of the Wind, as it is on my shelf and I am debating how high up the TBR list to push it.

I like that car share idea, Genny!

Some great reading Genny. I like the sound of the car sharing idea. Some friends in Bristol belong to a car sharing scheme in Bristol (City Car Club I think) and have found it works really well for them. Again, they cycle and use buses where possible.

I love the idea of car sharing so I hope that works out for you. Sadly, living in the countryside (complete with hay in my hair) it just doesn't work. None of the buses ever go where I want them too, and at the grand old age of 25, my knees won't hold up to bike riding. I've spent far too long horse-riding and it's messed them up!

Hope things work out for you though.

#244 Lucky you to meet Margaret Maron, Peggy, she must be an interesting person. And yes, Lane cake was from Mockingbird. Apparently it's a cake well doused in alcohol!

#245 That's what I'm thinking, Lucy - I can always decide to get my own again if it does not work out.

#246 Nice to hear from you Stasia. Must call by your thread again soon - I'm way behind!

#247 Hi Janet! Shadow of the Wind was interesting, I wasn't sure what to expect. Certainly worth the read but I don't know if I'd rush to read anything else by the author.

#248, 249, 250 Thanks Linda, Heather, Jenny, yes it is sounding like a good option for me. It certainly would not work for anyone living in the country, but in more densely populated areas it seems to be a practical solution for those who don't need a car every day. As for the bike, in theory I already use mine to get around the parish, and if in the past I have been tempted to use the car to get to meetings etc when late or if it's a little bit further to go, it can only do my general fitness good to be forced to use the bike a bit more often from now on... I only learned to drive when I was 27, and before that I was a lot slimmer and fitter!

I've started a new thread over here. Do come and join me!