LizzieD: 2014*1 (WINTER)

Happy New Year, dear friends!

,

(The view from the front windows in snow and not - as now)







(They're bookworms, of course.)

STATISTICS for 2013

90 books read for 36,289 pages. Book Goal: met! Page Goal: not....

71 Fiction: Orange 8; VMCs (or VMC authors) 8: Classics: 3; Science Fiction: 9; Fantasy: 5; Mystery: 5; Literary but no prize nomination: 20 + the rest
18 Non-Fiction: Biography: 3; History: 6; Memoir: 2; Diaries: 1; Letters:1; Science: 1; Religion: 2
1 Poetry
5 Early Reviewer

That's better than last year by 2 books and 1698 pages - not too shabby.

READ IN JANUARY

1. Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore
2. Egyptomania*
3. May We Be Forgiven
4. The Quiet Twin
5. Hospital Station
6. Elizabeth of York: A Tudor Queen and Her World*
7. Ursula Under

NEW TO MY HOUSE IN JANUARY

1. Elizabeth of York ✔ - ER ARC
2. Perla - PBS
3. The Good Lord Bird ✔ - Kindle - Thingaversary #1
4. Someone at a Distance - AMP
5. Ancillary Justice ✔ - ER ARC --- except that it's a nice trade pb
6. The Ruby in her Navel ✔- PBS
7. The Bat - Kindle - Thinga #2
8. Zoo City - Kindle Daily Deal (I refuse to count this toward my Thinga.)
9. Land of Marvels - PBS
10. Hydrogen Sonata - PBS
11. Tales of Sector General - AMP - Thinga #3

(Out of the House)
mine - 3 Ws' - 6

Currently Reading

Hi Peggy. I'm first! Happy Reading in 2014. I look forward to following your travels. Starred.

That's why I couldn't find you this morning! Peggy, I will always be a follower of your threads.
Have a wonderful 2014, my dear.

Just dropping a trail of breadcrumbs to your thread. Happy 2014 to you and yours.

Hi Peggy and happy new year!

Ah, another holdout until the day itself. Happy New Year!

Hi Peggy--
Good to see you back. Here's to a great reading year!

HERE you are... OK. Starred.

Love the pic with the snow. almost makes shoveling worthwhile, perchance?

Happy to see another hold out in not posting their thread until New Year Day!

Happy New Year to you, Peggy!

Yay, Beth, Paul, Helen, Diana, Katherine, Deborah, Suzanne, Lori, and Julia! You are more than welcome here - especially since I've done such a bad job of greeting in this holiday season. I do mean to try to read more and LT less frequently. But if I read more, I'll have more to say when I am here, right?
I wish you may come back soon and that I may have been able to write a little when you do visit. Right now, I wish I could put May We Be Forgiven in a deep, deep hole, but the reviews suggest that the book changes after the first couple of chapters. I devoutly hope so.

Happy New Year Peggy! I'm trying to think who read May We Be Forgiven but I'm drawing a blank. Maybe Darryl.

Happy New Year Peggy! Thanks for visiting my old and increasingly neglected thread in 2013. I have just started my 2014 one today (I held out like you). No promises about keeping up any better this year, but I'm trying to keep my own one simpler so there is less work to do in updating - hopefully that means more time for reading and the occasional visit to see what you are reading too!

Haven't tackled May we be forgiven so can offer no encouragement there.

May We Be Forgiven was one of my shamefully unreviewed books last year. Sorry to tell you, but I hated it. Hopefully it will get better for you.

Ooh, yummy winter photographs up top. Not at all like that here of course, where we are experiencing some yummy warm days and lush tree growth.

Happy (nearly belated by now) New Year!

Hi Peggy, Happy New Year! Needed to come by and drop a star : ).

Hi, Peggy. Looks like all our engines have started.

Happy New Year, Peggy! Just dropping by to add a star.

Here to drop my star, Peggy!! :)

Hi Peggy -- Happy New Year to you!

Here she is - HAPPY NEW YEAR, Peggy! Starred as always.

Happy new year Peggy!

Happy! Happy! Happy! It's great to see the familiar names. Thank you for coming by, Rhian, Nathalie, Anne, Tina, Colleen, Judy, Nancy, Megan, Deborah, Genny, and Bonnie!
May We Be Forgiven hasn't produced so much as the hint of a smile for me yet. I will read it just because I'm stubborn, but so far, I can encourage non-compulsive types to stay away - unless a mosh of madness, dysfunction, murder, and bumbling with children is your cup of tea.
On the other hand ------
Lucy and I declare that January is NaReSoMo = ♥ ♥ ♥ NATIONAL READ ON THE SOFA MONTH ♥ ♥ ♥
Feel free to join in as you can!

I'll go with that monthly theme, Peggy. NaReSoMo it is!

Yay, read-on-the-sofa is something I can do very well, so I'll join you! Thanks for not making it "National Read On The Treadmill/Stepper While Burning Holiday Calories Month". Much too early in the year to do that...

Hooray for Genny and Nathalie!!!! (Since I swim, I could hardly make it "National Read in the Lap Lane Month.")

So -----

♥ ♥ ♥ INTERNATIONAL READ ON THE SOFA MONTH ♥ ♥ ♥ InReSoMo

Lucy
Peggy
Genny
Nathalie
Liz
Anne (AMQS)
Faith
Helen
Anne (DC)
Suzanne
Nancy
Katie
Paul
Lori
Caroline
Terri (tymfos)
Tui
Donna
Heather

I'll just add that my ER ARC of Elizabeth of York just arrived, so I am putting that odd and unsatisfying *Forgiven* thing aside for this afternoon anyway.

Hi, Peggy!

>> ♥ ♥ ♥ INTERNATIONAL READ ON THE SOFA MONTH ♥ ♥ ♥ InReSoMo

OH YES!!!!

Hooray, Liz!

Ha! Great ideas catch on like wildfire!!!!!!!!!!

This looks like a nice sofa to sink into!

Oh my goodness!
That is a lovely sofa..... Mine is shabby without any chic at all. It was once rather elegant French Provincial, but it's been covered too many times and the last time was way too long ago. It is long though, as it houses a fold-out queen-sized bed. It's also too heavy to move. Anyway, it saw some page-turning action this afternoon. If only I didn't have to play bridge tomorrow, I'd really get into the season!

National Read On The Sofa Month...? I'M IN!!

Happy New Year, Peggy! And we're off!

Happy New Year, Peggy. I'm having my usual impossible time of keeping up with the threads. I kept looking for yours and didn't see it, and then missed it when it first appeared.

When I was growing up in Denver, it was always possible to figure out who was a native and who wasn't by a few give-away words. Couch vs. sofa was one of them (pop vs. soda was another). We always said "couch." I think the language is becoming more homogenized than it was a generation ago, so such words probably aren't the reliable test of one's geographical origins that they used to be. Although, while I'm about 50/50 on using soda instead of pop, I still never say sofa.

Have a lovely reading day, wherever you read! And bridge--enjoy your bridge.

Oh boy... I love the sound of InReSoMo! LOL.

Considering the couch is really the only place in our house to sit and read, I guess I'm in regardless...? Unfortunately, I also tend to fall asleep if I get too comfortable there (which is really annoying, let me tell you), so maybe my version will be InReNaSoMo -- International Read and Nap on the Sofa Month. Haha.

Welcome, Anne and Tui! We're off for sure!
Becky, I guess I sometimes say "couch," but I've never said "pop" or "soda" in my life. If I have to go generic, I say, "soft drink." So at least in the South we are still sort of ourselves. Bridge --- well, I enjoy the time with my friends.
Faith, if only I had been honest, it would definitely have been InReNaSoMo! Enjoy!

In South Wales when I was a child a fizzy soft drink was always 'pop'. I'd always assumed that was a particularly British expression! But if I said 'pop' to my son he wouldn't know what I meant - everyone says 'soft drinks' now or just uses the brand name.

You know about this regional dialect quiz (for the US)? The result is a map shaded per your probable place of origin. I answered a bunch of questions that individually were fairly general, but together located me in the vicinity of Philadelphia and Baltimore, with the darkest patch over Lancaster PA. Which is a tad disturbing considering that I didn't live here for 30 years. (I'm "sofa" and "soft drink".)

The Meme with Last Year's Books

Describe yourself: Explorer

Describe how you feel: Not So Quiet

Describe where you currently live: Embassytown

If you could go anywhere, where would you go: High Country

Your favorite form of transportation: Nine Coaches Waiting

Your best friend is: Straight Man

You and your friends are: The Daughters of Mars

What’s the weather like: The Shutter of Snow

You fear: Marking Time

What is the best advice you have to give: Books Do Furnish a Room

Thought for the day: There's Something About a Convent Girl

How I would like to die: Hearing Secret Harmonies

My soul’s present condition: Time Will Tell

It was always a chesterfield growing up but I think we say couch more now. Never sofa. I think we tended to say soft drink at home but Himself always said pop (southwestern Ontario, influenced by Detroit). The only soft drink we ever had in the house was Canada Dry Ginger Ale when someone was sick, so it got called ginger ale. I say windscreen too.

I'll happily join you on the sofa. I'm trying to be domestic & tidy up, but it's never my favourite occupation. The sofa is calling to me...

Interesting... In Germany we use both expressions, "Sofa" and "Couch", but Sofa is the "better" expression. Couch is also used in the dialects although it must be the newer word. Sofa is wonderfully international, it's also used in Italy. Somewhere I read years ago than in the UK it's also called "settee" or sth like that?

45> yes, settee or settle would be terms for a sofa as well.

Yes my parents and grand-parents said settee, but I say sofa!

Moving to rural Illinois at the age of 8 after being born and raised on Long Island was a baffling experience for me. Davenports not sofas, pop not soda, lunch meat not cold cuts, dinner at noon, and not a bagel to be found anywhere (this was the 1970s, mind). I felt like I'd been picked up and moved to a foreign country. Still do, sometimes.

Happy 2014! I love the idea of read on the sofa month (does that mean I can stay on the sofa all month long with a book?). We use sofa and couch interchangeably, for the most part, but I tend to think of the sofa as the furniture in the living room that rarely gets used, whereas the couch is in front of the TV. And now I'm remembering a word from my childhood--my grandmother used to call it the divan (pronounced die-van, not to be confused with anything French). I'm not really sure why, nor have I ever heard anyone else use it.

Sign me up!!! Especially if I can substitute the bed and the wing chair for the sofa. Sofa, you see, is parked under the window that leaks the most cold air...

I use sofa. The "fastest" word to say, somehow faster/easier to say than "couch".

Enjoyed your meme, Peggy! I did that one for the first time this year and it was fun : ).

I'm with you and the crew on sit on the sofa and read month! But I'll need to check with my boss about that, LOL.

I grew up with a couch but it turned into a sofa along the way, and I'm not sure when or why! I consciously started drinking soda instead of pop when I moved from the midwest to the east coast.

ETA: I just took the regional dialect quiz qebo linked to above. Apparently my transplant is complete -- over 30 years after leaving Ohio & Indiana and moving to the greater Philadelphia area, my speech is most similar to Philadelphia & New Jersey. Taking the quiz I was aware of changes since childhood.

I usually sit on a sofa but when I'm reading Jane Austen I like to sit on a sopha.

I was born in Philadelphia and lived there and then in Western New York State - but the darkest red is around Boston, western NH and Maine of all things although Vermont is fairly dark too..... I went to high school in Boston and I've lived in New England mostly since the age of 15...... but there were a lot of words and expressions I don't really use at all. I suspect a lot of my vocabulary is rather bland in a way, and garnered from reading.

Yeah Peggy I'm up for Sofa Month or should I say slightly more accurately slouched. I am a sofa or bed reader. I have two one very comfortable red one in my reading room and another near the piano and directly under a ceiling fan adjacent to the balcony. I can sit there and glance out and see what the weather has in store until the kids want to practise on the old Joanna.

Have a lovely weekend.

The sofa is my favorite place to read.

I took that quiz.. Sure there were some expressions or so-called "concepts" I didn't know, but in the end the only area in red color was Hawaii of all places! There was also a little red around San Francisco and New York and both coasts were slightly orange, with the middle of the US all in blue. So should I ever travel there I am more likely to be understood in the coastal regions :)

Thank you for the Dialect Map, Katherine. I think I had done it before, but it place me in Winston-Salem which is certainly in-state, so I applaud its accuracy. Nathalie, you will certainly be welcome on the east coast!!! Rhian, now that I think about it, my local grandmama said "settee" too, and I certainly heard "die-van" from my grandmother's generation, Anne. (And I'm especially happy to see you here after long absence!)
Lori, Paul, Nancy, Suzanne, Helen, and Anne, I've signed you all up.
Kerry - sopha! Great!!
Lucy, I suspect that my vocabulary is reading-generated too. In fact, I suspect that's true for most of us. Julia, it's even worse here. I say, "luncheon meat." Wonder why! And Tui, chesterfield is a mouthful but a little less than davenport. Laura and Julia, I hadn't thought of the change in vocabulary with a childhood move. That has to be unsettling to say the least!
So on this gray, chilly day, I hope to spend a lot of the afternoon on my chosen, relaxing, reading accommodation, and I sincerely wish the same for all of you!

>58 LizzieD:: Laura and Julia, I hadn't thought of the change in vocabulary with a childhood move.
Well, I was 22, so hopefully mature enough to cope with it :)

My kids moved across the Atlantic and back as children. It wasn't noticeable going over, because they were only 4 & 7, but on their return they had to make a few vocabulary changes. You risk funny looks if you ask the teacher for a rubber instead of an eraser ... :)

Oh that is funny/awful Laura!

I had a look at the dialect map and found it fascinating! Wish I could find one for Canada (of course, I'd have to look in order to find it, LOL).

Just dropping by to wish you a happy NaReSoMo month! :)

Since there is talk of where we read, it is bed for me. Sitting up if I am to have any hope of staying awake. (these early mornings the kids are doing are killing me lately! Personally I blame the dawn being so early and the dawn chorus of birds doesn't help)

>59 lauralkeet: we generally say rubber for eraser here. But I notice now on the school list of stuff to buy, it says eraser. Aw! I am going to say rubber still I think, just to hang on a bit longer ;)

Funny the different way we use words. One of our priests laughed telling us about a time he walked into a party while visiting England and said "Hi. I'm Randy". :)

>63 NanaCC:: ha ha ha ha ha! Yep, that's a good one.

Living up to NaReSoMo month right now...

Yes, I had the rubber/eraser stuff to unlearn when I was 12. Although I was in my 40s before I knew what the "American" was for an articulated lorry. And I still refer to a car boot; in fact, I had to stop just now to come up with the word "trunk".

An American-born girl at my school in England had an older brother named Randy -- we were too young and a bit too naive and sheltered to understand why he felt sheepish about it.

I put in a little sofa time this afternoon too with *Mr. Penumbra* - just the ticket for a palate cleanser!
So all you Brits and Territorials (Oh dear....is that PC? Was it ever?), you have reminded me of a question I've never been in a position to ask. What kind of disconnect allows English girls to be named Fanny? If Randy (Oh dear again. I'm really showing myself.....I almost wrote "gets a rise," and now I'm embarrassed to be telling you that I took it back) gets a laugh, why not Fanny? And HOW did H. James's Fanny Assingham get ignored?
I think I'll go write a limerick.
(And everybody has read enough American smut to know that saying "Could I borrow your rubber?" over here would force a high school girl to move to another school, right?)

I need to get my family to take a photo of me on my main reading sofa - it's a winter arrangement that I came up with because of the tree, but I love it! Incredible light during the day.

On the language front - I think I've been aware for most of my talking life that even English speaking people use different words for things. We lived in Italy for a year when I was around 6 and my best friend, from the international school I attended was English and I remember knowing that what I called a sweater, Peter called a jumper and the whole sneaker/plimsoll thing and that Peter's mother would ask me if I had to use the loo, but that I was American so I should use the American words. I was fascinated by it, still am, but I think it makes me tend to choose the most 'correct' word, which is what I meant by bland. One year when I worked as an aupair in France, the mother in an English family, visiting the French family I was working for, told me in this sort of sniffy way that I didn't sound particularly American to her. I was utterly nonplussed and I have no idea what she meant. I didn't have the courage to ask her what I did sound like! Ah well! Back to my sofa!

Lucy, I'm perplexed by the sniffy mother. Was she suggesting that you were lying about being American???

>66 LizzieD:: amused by your writing/taking back/and then writing again the phrase "gets a rise" ...
But I too wonder about "Fanny".

Fanny is not what you'd call a current choice of girl's name - checking latest data there were no more than 2 uses of Fanny as a first name in the UK in 2010 (last year I could quickly find data for). Going back to when it was used (19th & early 20th centuries) it seems to have generally been used as a diminutive, rather than being a given name. I suggest the adoption of it as a slang is an evolution of language - and probably mirrors the drop in popularity of it as a name.

>70 Helenliz:: was it a diminutive of Frances?

71> generally, yes, or any variation thereupon.

Happy New Year, Peggy! I'm making a futile attempt to "catch up" on the threads now that I am home. In central Kansas, it was definitely a couch. I took that quiz while home, and ended up in Arizona--probably the result of being in Kansas for the first 30 years of my life and in Southern California for the next! Although my sister ended up in Kansas/Nebraska and we only had a few responses that were different.

Helen, thank you very much for that answer! Of course, the use of the slang came after the popularity of the name! I wonder why I didn't think of that. I hadn't realized that it was a diminutive either, and Frances makes sense in that context.
(Laura, I hesitated to come back after that tasteless post of mine. I'm glad you weren't offended. I can't even defend myself on the basis of close contact with teen-age boys these days.)
Hi, Roni! Glad to see that you're home! Good luck on catching up. I've been here the whole time, and I've never been so far behind. This dialect business is endlessly fascinating, but your differences from your sister must have been important ones.
Off to celebrate the month with *Mr. Penumbra*!

For my geeky friends, the Joe Britt in this article is a favorite former Latin student.

DANGER

Well, that was what discombobulated me so - I was just 16, so what did I know about anything? Maybe she didn't really mean anything, or I misunderstood too? Even more odd was one of the couple of nights they were there we had this bonfire I played guitar( badly) and sang Peter Paul and Mary songs (I mean what can be more American than that I ask you???). She didn't think that was suitable at all and made us sing other things - you know - Sound of Music type things. I did get the impression that I was better educated and more sophisticated generally than she thought was 'normal' for an American? And I had the impression too that she thought me somehow potentially a 'bad influence' on her own children - who, I think, thought I was kind of cool! Which believe me, I was not.

>74 LizzieD:: I'm glad you weren't offended. Oh heavens, no. My mind lurks astonishingly close to the gutter most of the time. :)

Well Peggy, I just took the dialect quiz and no surprises. It was narrowed down to Buffalo, Rochester and Grand Rapids. I lived within 50 miles of my birthplace for my entire life except when I was in college.

I don't know, Lucy, I expect I'd think that you were kind of cool.
I'd never have guessed in a thousand years, Laura.
Bonnie, do you wonder whether we could understand each other?

MR. PENUMBRA'S 24-HOUR BOOKSTORE by Robin Sloan

Somebody might have advised me to start the year with a totally entertaining book if I wasn't going to start with something astonishingly lengthy, abstruse, and erudite. *Mr. P* was totally entertaining. I think that most of my friends have read it already, so once again I don't think I have to review it. I'll just say that I had fun with the characters, the quest, and the secret society. I wish that the books had been real books, but otherwise, I liked the mix of codex and electronics with feel-good humor. If Sloan's mission was to do more than that, he probably missed me, but today that feels like quite enough.
Many thanks to Stasia for lending it to me!

Peggy... I had to laugh at post 66. I think you are very amusing and not the least bit offensive!!! :D

So glad you enjoyed Mr. Penumbra!

Peggy, how delightful to start off the new year with a totally entertaining read! Mr Penumbra sounds wonderful!

I assure you I was. not. cool.

Anyway...... I thought Penumbra was maybe a winner - I 'handled' it the other day when I was working at our local library and was very tempted. Good beginning!

Nice review of "Mr. Penumbra", Peggy. I'm a bit embarrassed to say I got that one in the 2012 SantaThing and still have not managed to read it. But this year for sure (she said hopefully).

Tina, you are so welcome here! Nancy, Lucy, and Julie, if I had realized that three of my friends haven't read *Penumbra*, I would have written more. Meanwhile, I'm plugging along slowly with May We Be Forgiven. I don't absolutely hate it now - the main character is turning out to have some concern for his nephew and niece, and that makes him a bit more human. It's just that I don't think Homes is quite enough writer to pull off the blend of reality and spoof that she seems to be going for. It's almost magical realism without the magic - in any sense of the word. I will finish it because it won the Orange, and I'm a bit fanatical about reading their choices. That may have to change. Now that I think about it, I've disagreed about their their winner for the past three years. Nothing since The Lacuna seems to have been worthy to me.

Hi, Peggy! Count me in for International Read on the Sofa Month!

I'm afraid to take that regional dialect quiz. I've picked up so many different ways of saying things from the different places I've lived, I'm sure my results would be a muddle!

You're in, Terri! I was a good example for all of you today - decent sofa time in a couple of books. Hmmm. I don't have my other ER ARC up there, but it's Egyptomania, which I read in this afternoon. I'd never have bought it, but I might have checked it out of the library if I had a library where it might appear. It does have lovely color plates. I hope to finish tomorrow and get that review written.

I heard of *Mr. P* first on your thread, must have missed the hype during one of my absences last year. "Totally entertaining" is what I need this month to go along with all those war books. The Kindle sample just arrived.

Nathalie, I hope you won't be disappointed. I agree that a diet of war books can get a woman down.
I'd be glad for a diet of any kind of book today. I simply didn't get to the sofa. Bummer. Tomorrow should be a touch better but maybe not since my book club meets in the afternoon. I'm off to bed with the Homes. I don't actively hate it anymore, but it will have to improve enormously for me to like it at all. Bummer 2.

Glad you enjoyed Mr. Penumbra so much. I gave that book to my brother last year. I think I need to hunt down my own copy.

Anne, if you're the least bit geeky, I think you'll enjoy it!

EGYPTOMANIA by Bob Brier

I reviewed this one on the book page since it was an ER ARC. I would never have bought it for myself, but I would have picked it up in the library at least to look at the handsome color plates. It is what it says it is, an overview of our fascination with ancient Egypt and the stuff that entrepreneurs have made to cash in on that fascination.

#79: Glad that you enjoyed Mr. P!

Have a wonderful weekend, Peggy!

Thank you, Stasia and Diana. Wishing wonderful weekends all around!
And I'm STILL reading May We Be Forgiven, but I don't absolutely hate it now, so that's a step forward.

I'm struggling with a book too......

I signed up for InReSoMo above, but actually for me it should be InReRoMo (or InReNaRoMo) ie read (and nap) in the Rocking chair month. I don't currently have access to a sofa, settee, couch or anything that will accommodate more than one behind or allow one to put one's feet up while reading. But I do have a lovely rocking chair which I insisted on squeezing into my new little room, so that is where I do most of my reading. Previously on the sofa I was (once I'd put the feet up) in danger of doing more snoozing than reading, and even in the rocking chair I have been known to nod off and be woken by the clunk of the book falling to the floor, or if the book lands safely and quietly in my lap, I can sleep thus upright for hours!

On the language questions: sofa is my usual word, but I think growing up we used settee and sofa interchangeably. Couch is associated with therapists and potatoes (we use the expression couch-potato although we call them sofas), and by extension of the latter, with greyhounds who are sometimes referred to as 45mph couch potatoes. As for those sugary carbonated drinks, I rarely drink them so I don't really call them anything generic on a day to day basis. 'Soft drinks' would include fruit juices and those recent variations on mineral water flavoured with real or artificial fruit, so that isn't specific enough. I guess I would say carbonated drinks, or in my childhood we referred to 'fizzy drinks', or I would refer to the particular type or brand if that was what I meant.

I did that US dialect quiz a month or two back; not surprisingly, my results were off the map!

I am also doing quite well on the sofa this month so far Peggy. I am now eating into The Luminaries having bought a new smaller sized copy (ideal for the sofa) and I am working away at Novel on Yellow Paper and Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War together with plenty of poetry.

Have a lovely weekend.

Genny, I think that a nap while on the sofa (or rocking chair) is almost de rigueur. I'm amused that you took the US dialect quiz. I suspect that your actual speech would out you in a second. And I'm smiling at the 45mph couch potatoes. That's our May: on or off, no in-between.
Hi, Paul. Glad to hear that you're making the most of the month. Me too - at least yesterday! I finished my book and ended up giving it 3½ stars and shaking my head at my vulnerability to manipulation. I don't think that the last of the book was any better written than the first, but since good things were happening with the characters, I really warmed to it.

MAY WE BE FORGIVEN by A.M. Homes

I loathed the first third of the book. It is satire, and the norm is the narrator, Harold Silver, who was in bed with his sister-in-law when his brother came in and killed her. Homes takes on every nuance of 21st century American cultural insanity, but I never found her tropes particularly funny. The one time I possibly gave a wry grin was when Harold's contract with the college where he had been teaching American History was not renewed because "We've got this fellow who has a new way of teaching history, it's future-forward....Instead of studying the past, the students will be exploring the future - a world of possibility. We think it will be less depressing than watching reruns of the Zapruder films."
Harold turns out to be a decent guy struggling to do the right thing while he writes his book about Nixon, the embodiment of cultural change, and edits Nixon's short stories at the bidding of Julie N. Eisenhower, who is distantly related to the woman whom he picks up online............ It's a wild ride.
I guess I would have short-listed it for the Orange-that-was, but with Life After Life and even Flight Behavior in the mix, I would never have picked it as the winner.

Sounds like A.M Homes for sure! Her memoir was incredibly intense.

And Genny - We had to choose a word to convey 'ultimate comfortable reading location' - I actually have some of the same problem you do, if I put my feet up I tend to fall asleep sooner or later..... but a little napping never hurt anyone!

Hmm, I've not read May We Be Forgiven and I can't say I feel like I'm missing much. These literary prizes and prize winners confound me sometimes. Most recently, TransAtlantic did not even make the Booker SL. What's with that????

eta: twice, because I can't type this morning!

Fizzy drinks!! yes, Genny. That's what I called them for a long time. Then, because nobody knew what they are, I moved on to "pop", in Canada. Now it's "soda".

I fell asleep on my sofa, Kindle in hand, yesterday evening. I have my grandfather's wing chair (which was already in need of re-covering 27 years ago), which has once again become a favorite place to sit and watch television and, I hope, will also be a great reading spot. It's slightly warmer in winter than the sofa, and has a decent light, but I do need to replace the boxes of stuff on which the lamp rests with a real side/end table...

You might tempt me to seek out that Egyptomania tome at the library later this year. I have May We Be Forgiven on my Kindle.

I'm glad May We Be Forgiven got better for you--it never did for me. Although I've liked a couple of her other books and I have This Book Will Save Your Life on the TBR shelf.

Deborah, I can see why *MWBF* never changed for you - I blame myself for being so susceptible to feel-good (or at least feel-better) content; that is to say, I let myself be manipulated by a not-stellar writer. I'm not happy about it, but there it is.
Suzanne, a wing chair sounds lovely if it's big enough to curl up in. Please don't replace the boxes of stuff if you don't really want to. It wouldn't bother me at all. Fizzy drink is one syllable more than soft drink, which is already long enough. We just don't say "pop" around here, and soda is bicarbonate. Once more, the color plates are worth a look.
Nancy, I mean to go back to see exactly who was on the team that chose this book over some better ones. You will make me read TransAtlantic yet. I'd have it already, but I'm trying to spend my Thinga $ more carefully this year, and I may want something else right now more.
Meanwhile, I spent this afternoon's sofa time getting into The Quiet Twin. At 60 pp or so, I don't know what I think yet.

May We Be Forgiven does not sound like my cup of tea, but I'm glad you "warmed up" to it in the end.

Anne, if you're the least bit geeky, I think you'll enjoy it!

I'm a librarian -- of course I'm geeky!

Hope you're having a great weekend.

Tina, I'm a little miffed at myself for warming up to it, but it did make finishing it easier!
Thanks, Anne, it was a fine weekend, and this has been a pretty good Monday too!
I'm enjoying The Quiet Twin. I don't adore it - it's a bit too mannered for my taste. On the other hand, that feeling that it's a translation (but it's not) is just adding to the stifling, claustrophobic, scary atmosphere of Vienna in 1939......it rains a lot. There are murders and a beautiful, paralyzed woman and a precocious hunched-back child and some more characters living in an apartment building which has some really nice apartments and some really poor ones. Very strange!
Elizabeth of York isn't going so well. Weir is very helpful in keeping the ins and outs of the Yorks and Lancasters straight, and the detail is amazing. I'm astounded at the amount of money Edward IV had to spend. She gives modern equivalents for expenditure that she mentions. As an infant, her lady mistress (governess?) received a salary of £100 = £50,000. Mercy!

Peggy, I am so in for InReSoMo. You and Lucy are brilliant to come up with this. I thought the writing in May We Be Forgiven was good but could have done with less sleaziness. I am getting used to my least-liked books winning the awards!

Hi Peggy. Just delurking to say hello. Elizabeth of York sounds interesting. I do love a good historical novel.

Donna, you are officially obliged to read on your sofa now - or wherever your go-to spot is. Congratulations!
Jan, it's a treat to see you here. Alison Weir has written at least a couple of novels, but this one is straight biography.
My unsettled mind is wishing I were reading a Shardlake, and I have Heartstone, so I wouldn't be surprised to find myself sofa-bound with it in hand. (heh heh heh)

I am starting the audio version of Heartstone today. I'm sad that it is the last one in the series.

May We Be Forgiven was good but could have done with less sleaziness. I remember thinking the same thing when I read Sarah's Key: it was a good story but the he grabbed her ass wore thin very quickly! WHY do authors do that?

>111 stellarexplorer: The unedited intrusion of the author's unconscious?

>108 LizzieD:, 109: I am going to read Heartstone very soon too -- It will probably be my next read. I'm going to cave and buy it for my Kindle.

Hi, Colleen, Nancy, Rex, and Laura! You are making it official: I will be starting Heartstone just as soon as I finish *Quiet Twin* or maybe before.
"The unedited intrusion of the author's unconscious?" Another heh heh heh.....
(That reminds me that I was a bit taken aback at a friend's laughing at her son's nightmare --- She had told him a bedtime story about a witch who went "heh heh heh." He woke up screaming that "a black HEH HEH" was chasing me!")

I'm an odd duck out on InReSoMo--most of my reading is done in the bathtub and the bed!

Hi Peggy! Found you and starred.

>105 LizzieD: "Elizabeth of York isn't going so well."

Could you please elaborate, Peggy? Your following sentence praises the book. I had been considering reading this. Am enjoying Thomas Penn's The Winter King: Henry VII and the Dawn of Tudor England, which may cover some of the same territory.

What a fabulous thread, Peggy. So many of these books sound wonderful. My TBR pile is just getting ridiculous! Happy Wednesday to you.

Rex, the *E of Y* is absolutely packed with detail, but I've always had trouble - because I haven't taken any trouble, I suppose - with the ins and outs of the York and Lancaster lines. Weir is wonderfully clear, but I have to keep looking at the family tree, which confuses me all over again. I should also make a list of titles and last names so that I'm sure who she's talking about every time. The other thing is that at 50 pages in, Elizabeth is still a child. I just need to stretch out on the sofa and concentrate. I say that you should go for it. Meanwhile, The Winter King looks good and goes on my wish list. Thanks!
Hi, Becky. Glad to see you and to wish you a Happy Wednesday back!

Thanks for the clarification Peggy, I was wondering the same thing. We have a slim book called The Royal Line of Succession which has been such a handy reference for both books and television shows.

That's the wrong touchstone but I'm on iPad so I can't easily find the correct one ... Just wanted to say I completely understand your predicament!

Hi! Starred you. Will lurk quietly. :)

How did I miss speaking to you, Roni and Barbara??? Forgive me!
I am respectful that you are able to read in the tub, Roni. I have visions of lots of water damage even with a tray, but I am a read-myself-to-sleep person. Barbara, it's a treat to have you over here. Come back!!
Laura, you remind me that I have quite a large chart that I should pull out before I go much farther along. Thanks!
Hi, Jenn. I'm glad to see you back and invite you to lurk or say anything at all that pleases you.
Speaking of being pleased, I am quite happy to have finished *Twin*.

THE QUIET TWIN by Dan Vyleta

What a strange, dark book! I hope never to come closer to the atmosphere of Vienna in 1939 than I have here. I think that feeling of claustrophobic, stifling anxiety is what will stay with me now that I'm through it. It's October and November and the leaves have fallen. It rains a lot, and everything is sodden and dirty and grim. The idea of a building with apartments for the relatively affluent and the very poor is foreign to me, but that's where the story is set. The renters are a rather macabre bunch; a disgraced professor and his neurasthenic niece, a psychiatrist reduced to general medical practice, a drunk and his hunch-backed little daughter, a mime, a Japanese trumpet-player are some of the denizens of the place. There are murders that may or may not be connected and a policeman who personifies the sly, plausible, rapacious, opportunistic opportunities in the Nazi regime.
It's not pleasant reading, but it's mesmerizing, and I have found myself thinking about these people for days now, so I may change my rating from 4 stars to 4½. It's not for the faint of heart or the weak of stomach!

A red letter day! My ER ARC from September was delivered this morning. YAY!!! The sofa and Ancillary Justice are calling to me. It's also lovely that a good enough PBS copy of The Ruby in her Navel also came in the mail.

Hooray for a red letter day!

Hi Peggy, congrats on getting the late-arriving ER book. It seems like that's happening more and more often.

Hi, Anne and Linda. I'm delighted that it came at all. I guess that it doesn't matter all that much when it came.....gave me something to look forward to for several months. I've had only one not show up, and I'm even O.K. with that because I didn't know anything about it - just asked for it on a whim. Sometimes that works; sometimes not.

Hi Peggy, glad your ER book finally arrived. The Quiet Twin sounds very good. I am almost always drawn to the dark and I think someone else just read it too. I think I may have to add that to the teetering tower.

Peggy, The Quiet Twin does sound mesmerizing. Dark, macabre, claustrophobic anxiety … book bullet! I have found myself thinking about these people for days now, so I may change my rating from 4 stars to 4½. Yes, I've done that too!

I probably will give The Quiet Twin a wide berth..... how did you end up with it, or did I miss that?

I had it on my wish list from somebody's review here, Lucy, and got it for Christmas! I do think that you should avoid it unless your curiosity about Vienna '39 outweighs all other considerations!
Bonnie and Nancy, I'm still thinking about those people. Disturbing!
Meanwhile, I had an hour or so on the sofa with Elizabeth of York. I've read enough to have figured that this is not really a biography of E'beth because we never get into her mind, and Weir is very careful to "suppose" rather than endow her with thoughts and feelings. I don't know much about the period, so this is an excellent, careful introduction. For example, I had no idea that Richard III seriously considered marrying her (she was his niece, and according to Weir's research, he almost certainly had her brothers murdered in the tower) just prior to and shortly after his wife's death.
I think I'll read something else for a bit!

Peggy, I read Weir's Eleanor of Aquitaine and had a similar feeling that "we never get into her mind." I think the problem is there is much more written history about the men (Richard III, Henry II et al) and the women's stories come from connecting dots and "supposing".

I'm sure that you're right, Laura. I simply wonder at the idea of trying to write a legitimate biography about somebody who left nothing of herself behind. (I have *E of A* and hope to read it sometime.....)

And yet we agreed (I think) on Schiff's Cleopatra: A Life, which perforce cannot get into Cleo's mind. But the book was a success, largely because the author's vision of the era and it's politics prevailed. Her hunches about the considerations in the Egyptian Queen's mind seemed well-considered and reasonable. How does that contrast with Weir's E of Y? Are you persuaded by her suppositions?

We are agreed about *Cleopatra*. I had thought about it in passing. Weir is making very bland and safe assumptions, but then, I think that Elizabeth was probably a pretty bland and safe person. Here's the whole paragraph about her reaction to the news of her brothers' murders:
"Elizabeth and her sisters were probably shocked witnesses to their mother's grief. Given Elizabeth's love for her siblings, the news would have hit her hard too. And soon would come the startling realization that she was now - or should have been - the rightful Queen of England."
Not much. Truly, it's a bit forced to consider this a bio of Elizabeth. As I say, it is a really good introduction in greater depth to the period.
I'll just add that I've read some of Ursula Under and like it a lot so far!

Thanks. That paragraph doesn't grab one by the throat and scream "Read me!" But charts and diagrams would be immensely helpful to me -- I have always had to work to retain any sense of the dramatis personae. I just saw Richard III, Shakespeare fictional version, and tried to cram for it, with only partial success!

I don't know I think the probably probably lies more with Ms. Weir than with the subjects themselves. I have a number of her books which put up the accepted Tudor views largely and require much less research. She is, of course, a scholar and I don't wish to attempt to demean her in the slightest but she is far too accepting of the anti-Ricardian tosh for my liking.

Have a lovely weekend, Peggy.

Hi Peggy! Just stopping by to wish you a Happy Sunday and let you know I'm lurking but also keeping up.

*Wave

Paul - I am so glad you spoke up!!!!!!! It is a fascinating and insolvable mystery!!! Certainly those boys were killed by someone, and I am inclined to suspect, not by Richard. And unlikely to be solved either. Funny how certain stories take hold and no amount of sensible scholarship can dislodge them.

Hi, Rex. Since I have an ARC, I don't have illustrations, and this one was sent out without even the listing of illustrations or an index. (Oh well) It does have a 2-page family tree which sometimes makes for clarity and sometimes for confusion. I think that I won't be recommending it warmly, at least not to such as you.
Hi, Paul and Lucy. I seem to have arrived in at least a warm place of Richard supporters. I don't have the least idea - Weir's scholarship seems solid to me. She is careful to identify Tudor historians as having that bias. Applying Ockham's Razor, I'd think it most likely that Richard ordered the deed done. On the other hand, I love J. Tey's The Daughter of Time, and I'd love to be convinced that Richard was much maligned. And I read on.......not quite half through, so I must step it up.
Hi, Pat! Hi, Jenn! Welcome to you both and thank you for dropping out of lurk!

I suspect that it was a Henry II/Becket kind of situation: Richard said something that someone interpreted as a command, or else someone wanted to set him up for the murders. Richard may have known who did it, and whoever did the deed or ordered it thought they were preventing a future challenge to his rule (as almost certainly would have occurred had the boys grown to maturity). But it's hard to find anything in his behavior or character suggesting he could have done so. Yes, he murdered Rivers, and Lord Hastings, but those were men whom he associated with his brother's decline, not children of his adored elder brother. It's very convenient to think that Henry VII did it or had it done -- on paper, he has the greater motive, since by legitimizing Elizabeth he legitimized her brothers -- but English history of the past century had seen plenty of examples of kings claiming the throne not by right of birth. Henry IV was unquestionably a usurper, and he and his heirs ruled for three generations. Even so, they had a better right than the Yorks to the crown. Richard II and his heirs (who would have been born when his young queen came of age) should have held onto the crown. Both York and Lancaster were usurpers in their turn, so why not Tudor in his?

Re research -- well, both sides had their own pet chroniclers. Now, if only time travel were possible, I could go back to 1483 and be an investigative reporter...

Back in the 1980s sometime (I think), they held a trial at the Old Bailey, with modern rules of jurisprudence, witnesses, etc. Richard was acquitted. I just founded a YouTube video of the intro to this, narrated by the current, Richard, Duke of Gloucester...

Re Weir as a biographer... Yes, she is careful to stick to the facts, even when there aren't enough facts from which to build a compelling narrative. I became weary of the endless lists of pensions and salaries and expenditures, too, but then I'm very weary of the over-imaginative fictional bios of her, too. I suspect by the time she married she was so fed up of power politics and the high toll it had taken on her family that she just said f*** it all, and retreated into domestic life. Weir's chronicle of the final days of Anne Boleyn, on the other hand, is very much worth reading.

Thank you, Suz. That's a good theory. Did R really adore Edward? I understand that he was adorable.... It's so hard to know what people in those rarefied positions felt. Elizabeth was supposed to have adored her siblings, but they were seldom if ever together. Weir's argument satisfied me at the time, but I'm blessed if I can recall the ins and outs although she did deal summarily with the idea that Henry might have instigated the murder. Henry did pardon (?) the alleged murderer. It's hard to go back and find this stuff without an index, but I guess I'll have to when it's time to review the book.
So far I'm less bothered by the financial records than by the repetition. It's not exactly padded. No. I take that back. She uses every single detail that she's researched, as for instance her discussion of the quality of marriage that E and Henry had (good but not happy). Every single outsider's pov is given equal time however little they differ, and there's nothing internal to suggest the real flavor of the relationship. No letters from E to H have survived even though at least a business one is recorded in the The Paston Papers. All in all, I'm losing hope for this one.

Suz, I wish you would go back to 1483 and sort it out for us. Although I never quite liked that Henry....

Excellently laid out, Suz!!!!!!

Now that would be a fun novel indeed. Let's all chip in and send Suz back to the 15th century!

Hi, Tui and Lucy. A very excellent idea. We'd have to be sure that she had all of her shots first. I confess myself to be taken with weir's lists of fabrics for the queen's coronation and especially for her confinement when Arthur was born. All that fur! I can't imagine how unsanitary the whole thing must have been - that whole mindset making it mandatory for our time traveler to have every inoculation possible. And I must say that I'm not particularly liking that Henry either.
Also Ursula Under is a pretty good novel and very readable. It was long-listed for Orange in 2005. More later!

I never liked that Henry myself. Let's do send Suz. It would be great. I will pitch in some antibiotics just in cases.

Hi Peggy. Just delurking to say hello.

Hi, Jenn and Thanks, Jan! I took time out to finish this little one!

HOSPITAL STATION by James White

Here's classic science fiction from 1962, the year I graduated from high school. Although I wasn't reading scifi then, I believe that I would have loved this one. It is a group of short stories featuring the same cast of human and alien medicos working in an inter-galactic hospital. It's just plain fun - and so completely good-spirited that I think almost anybody would be entertained and amused by the goings-on. I'm not sure that I can go on immediately to the next book. Surely the appeal of wildly unlikely life forms and their ailments must pall eventually, but maybe not. These first stories feature earth human doctors and their attempts to understand, treat with, and treat other life forms. I'm babbling. Just read it! Dated technology makes not the least bit of difference. Count me a fan.

Peggy, I envy you and Lucy and so many others who enjoy sci-fi. Sounds like you thoroughly enjoy Hospital Station.

Peggy, I'm looking forward to the "more later" from you about Ursula Under.

Oh, no, the White books actually get better, as they evolve beyond their beginnings as short stories in the pulp magazines collected into books into actual novels. The Galactic Gourmet is my absolute favorite! Think about the challenges of feeding hundreds of different alien beings a healthy diet in a hospital setting! These are great books.

139: The Daughter of Time is the beginning and pretty near the end of my knowledge of Richard III.

Hospital Station sounds fun!

Terri, Hospital Station is fun. Nancy, I was kind-of sort-of hinting that this might be a fun book for people who don't read scifi but are a bit curious. It has all the stuff non-scifi readers suspect and dread (I know because I was one of them), but it's so good-natured and fun that I hope the suspicion and dread might just roll up and die for lack of nourishment......or maybe not.
Becky, I will hope to have some more to say about *Ursula* soon. I really like it. Her premise is that a story doesn't just start with the immediate story but involves ancestors as far back as possible. In this case the immediate story is about little Ursula Wong, who fell down an abandoned mine shaft in the UP of Michigan. Her father is Chinese American, so we get the story of his first known ancestor in some-hundred BC in China. Then back to her father rushing for help. Then to her mother's ancestor in Finland several hundred years later, and then some back-story of her mother waiting beside the hole. I don't find it scattered at all, and I like all of it. The writing isn't breath-taking, but it's very good.
Katherine, that was my position too before I started this book. I expect that I'll be following up on it with more biography. I don't know that I want to read more about Henry VII, but I likely will want to read a good Richard III bio. Suggestions?
Thanks a lot, Roni! I just spent too much $ on another Sector General omnibus which includes The Galactic Gourmet (also Final Diagnosis and Mind Changer. Well, it can be another Thinga obligatory purchase. That's all there is to it.

it's so good-natured and fun that I hope the suspicion and dread might just roll up and die for lack of nourishment … well, when you put it that way, sounds like a great intro to SF, Peggy. I didn't realize you had also been one of the dreads! Thank you : ).

I've just finished The Sunne in Splendour which is a fictionalized account of Richard's life. I was surprised by how much I liked it, so I feel I'm going to be heading off in an entirely new direction for me with historical fiction mixed with some biographies.

I will say that Penman took an entirely sympathetic view of Richard, to the extent I was crying at the end, and begging that he not be killed. Eliz. of York was also a prominent character in this book, and a very plausible explanation of the murder of the boys in the tower is presented (Richard didn't do it). I was influenced by the fact that the murders harmed Richard more than helped him. Although it's a tome, I highly recommend this book.

155: Oh, I'd completely forgotten about The Sunne in Splendour. I read it... 25 years ago? And a bunch of others by the same author. A phase, apparently in a region of my brain not easily retrieved.

I've heard others who loved The Sunne in Splendour. I'll have to check that out. Although if it's a tome, perhaps I'd better wait.

Oh yeah, Nancy. In my younger, snottier years, I wouldn't have been caught dead in a ditch with a scifi novel (although what I would have been doing with a book in a ditch doesn't bear thinking about). Now I'm sort of jazzed to be the only old lady in the scifi section with all the nerdy teen-aged boys.
Katherine, Deborah, and Beth, I've heard lots of Penman love here too. I always think I have The Sunne in Splendour, and when I look it always turns out to be Falls the Shadow. I swear I think I had that book somewhere, but it isn't listed here, and here is the best that I've done about keeping up. Deborah, you do make it sound appealing.
Anyway, Weir goes to a lot of trouble to support the Richard Done It - or had it done - theory. I was tending to believe her because of her exhaustive research, and then I read this sentence (and I'm such a language snob that her credibility plummeted): "Elizabeth was family orientated to a high degree." NOOOOoooooo!!!!! I will be curious to see whether that horror makes it into the final publication. Surely somebody will catch it if not AW herself.
I think I've had a long day and I've been fairly good, so I believe I'm going to be reading something else.

Peggy, do you mean the "orientated" bit? I think that's a very common Britishism, if I'm not mistaken. You know how funny those people talk. :-)

Another case of "you can wordify anything if you verb it"? Oriented. Period.

Oh, Peggy, you do make me smile. Now I'm sort of jazzed to be the only old lady in the scifi section with all the nerdy teen-aged boys. Thank you, my friend : ).

I think, strictly, "oriented" is wrong in this context too: oriented and orientated both mean "getting your bearings"; family orientation means what kind of family someone grew up in; I'm not sure "family oriented" is a correct usage at all.

I just snagged the new Penman novel from Amazon Vine -- it will be out in April. (It's about Richard I's final years, after the crusade).

I'd happily go back to that era. And I'm dithering about writing a novel based around sisters, Eleanor and Elizabeth Talbot. Daughters of the greatest war hero of their time, the first earl of Shrewsbury; Elizabeth, the younger, become the last Mowbray Duchess of Norfolk. What interests me is that Eleanor became the pretext or the cause to disinherit Edward IV's children: it was she who allegedly had been pre-contracted in some way to Edward before he married Elizabeth Woodville. Conveniently, Eleanor died in 1468. But what I find very interesting is the fact that Elizabeth Talbot's husband, the young duke of Norfolk, was a bosom buddy of George of Clarence; also, that after the duke's death, Elizabeth was basically forced to marry her young daughter, Anne Mowbray, to the younger of the two princes in the tower. Anne died while still a child, before Edward IV, and her grave was later found and her body exhumed. Elizabeth Talbot Mowbray, however, lived on and almost survived into the reign of Henry VIII, until 1507 or so. She would have witnessed the revolts against Henry VII, the arrival of Catherine of Aragon, the death of Prince Arthur. I can't help wondering what Henry VII, that notoriously paranoid man, felt about having someone who was so close to one of the central mysteries of the era hanging around. She did spend her final years in a convent, where her fellow residents included a sister in law, Jane Talbot and, interestingly, the daughter of Robert Brackenbury, who was governor of the Tower of London in Richard III's day and who died on the field at Bosworth... I can't imagine that Henry wouldn't have wanted to have a 16th century version of a bug in the walls of their chambers.

Hi Peggy! Just wanted to say hello and I know nothing at all about Richard. I'm good from about Henry VIII till Charles II. Somewhere here we have The Sunne in Splendour and I am going to have a look for it this weekend now.

Yay, visitors!
Cushla, I will wait to see what you think of *Sunne* before I put it on the Kindle. It's still a bit pricier than my normal buying. I suspect and fear that you're going to love it.
Suzanne, write the novel! That's almost as good as sending you back in time and a lot more doable from my perspective. The business about Eleanor I know from *E of Y* and now that you mention Anne Mowbray, I remember her too. The rest is fascinating, and you have my promise to buy a hardcover when it comes out, however pricey it may be.
Liz, Tui, and Julia, I'm relieved to find that "orientate" is an acceptable Britishism. I finally looked it up and found it in my 2nd college edition American Heritage Dictionary too. I have to say that I'm with Tui. I get the same visceral reaction as I do when I hear or read "crispy," which may be growing in acceptability everywhere but with me. (Oh....Liz, the *AHD* defines "orientate" as "orient" for what that's worth.)
Nancy, happy to be of service. If I didn't have to play bridge this afternoon, I'd consider my work done for the day and retire with a book.

One of the comments I read at a grammar site about "orientate" was that it's used by people who are trying to sound intelligent! Oh my. However, my OED does list it as meaning to orient but it's called a "back form(ation)".

Definition of back formation: The process of forming a new word (a neologism) by extracting actual or supposed affixes from another word; shortened words created from longer words. Verb: back-form (itself a back-formation). The term back-formation was coined by Scottish lexicographer James Murray, the primary editor of the Oxford English Dictionary from 1879 until 1915.

Example: "He spoke with a certain what-is-it in his voice, and I could see that, if not actually disgruntled, he was far from being gruntled, so I tactfully changed the subject."
(P.G. Wodehouse, The Code of the Woosters, 1938)

There is a whole interesting discussion of back formation which happily sidelined me for a while. Some say words are back formed to fill a void in our language (televise from television, etc.). I don't think that orientate fills any void but that's just me.

ETA: I should have credited my source for the definition and example above. Mea culpa.

>165 LizzieD:: I get the same visceral reaction as I do when I hear or read "crispy," which may be growing in acceptability everywhere but with me.?
Crispy? I'm missing something. Please educate me on its unacceptability!

Oooh, Peggy... I've added Hospital Station to my wish list and I am NOT a science fiction person! It might be my very first, but you made it sound fun!

I hate the word (non-word) "orientated". People use it all the time in nursing charting as in, "The patient is alert and orientated." Drives me nuts. Or more nuts than usual. I gave up a long time ago trying to educate folks on the proper word. It's all over the place here in the south.

When a language stops changing, it changes into a dead one. Just saying...

(Not that I don't love dead languages, mind...)

Amber, you just made me think that the English literature I love, with its well turned phrases and plays on words, may be a dead thing in a hundred years. At times I feel like the language is devolving, not evolving.

Laura, I think crispy is an advertising word, like Crispy Crunch. Something is crisp or it isn't.

Or the grammatical explanation: crisp is already an adjective. I'm not sure what adding an adjective suffix to an adjective makes a word....unwieldyy, maybe.
Amber, true for you. On the other hand, one short cut in post-apocalyptic writing is to devalue the language so that people are saying things without the slightest notion of what they mean --- an easy example is "Ellay," the name of that California metropolis in one of the early Tim Powers books - uh - Dinner at Deviant's Palace. *standing shoulder to shoulder with Tui and waving goodbye to the language I have known and loved* You couldn't call me gruntled either.
Tina, I'm pretty sure that it's past the tipping point for "orientated" especially if the Brits have been using it for some time. Meanwhile, I do love to listen to language trends develop although most of the new ones make me shudder. I can tell you, for example, that until roughly 8 years ago almost nobody said "as well" at the end of a sentence meaning "too." Think about it. Am I not right? I listened to people around here practice until they were saying it automatically.
Anyway, Tina, I do hope you have as much fun with Hospital Station as I did!
I'm back from bridge (I was low again - not much fun not to get cards at all) and hope to read a little tonight. I guess it will have to be *E of Y*.

Huh. Never thought about crispy that way before. Now I'm sure it will be one of those things I notice everywhere!

I'm sorry to tell you, Laura, that you will... You will.
It's cold by our standards, and our house is cold. We do have on the whole-house heat for almost the first time this winter to get it warmed back up. I'm going to be a cat and sit on a vent.

>172 lauralkeet: & 173: grinning!

Thank you, Nancy! My paws were never that dainty!
Grin away, Tui! Me too-y.

Finally stopping by to say wish you a happy 2014, Peggy!

#26 "Lucy and I declare that January is NaReSoMo = ♥ ♥ ♥ NATIONAL READ ON THE SOFA MONTH ♥ ♥ ♥" And I've been celebrating without knowing! What a good idea :-)

#97 Well done for finishing May We Be Forgiven and I'm glad you warmed to it in the end. I still think it's a book I'll avoid though.

Re Richard III, I'm embarrassed to admit that Shakespeare's Richard III is as far as my knowledge goes about this period of history but I have The Sunne in Splendour and The Daughter of Time on my bookshelves and one day I will read them...

175 - that's a fabulous picture. In the UK we tend to have radiators, not warm air heating, and the pipes run under the floor. our cat used to stretch out along the floor over the pipes from the boiler to the first radiator and be as long & straight as she could be, from tail to front paws all in alignment. I can see the benefit of that right now - it's been a bit cold & stormy here again. brrr.

Because I'm feeling naughty in a devil's advocate-y sort of way this morning (and because, well, I'll jump at any tiny reason to justify a Stephen Fry reference):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J7E-aoXLZGY

>179 scaifea:. The idea that it's somehow "elitist" to bother with language--wow, Fry hits that one on the head. Thanks for the link! Love the language discussion here. I gave up on "orientated" 30 years ago--used ad nauseam in nursing, as TinaV95 points out. Bleh!

And Hi Peggy, hope you're staying warm.

I love the back-form concept, tui.

The problem I have with orientate is that it is a longer word when a shorter one did the same thing perfectly well. Thus it smacks of pretentiousness.

I suppose crispy was invented by the advertising industry. The 'y' tacked on meaning to imply 'even more crisp'?? But I see your point. It's one that got by me, I have to admit.

Hi Peggy. Feeling woefully ignorant on the subject of Richard the III. I'm sure there's a book or 20 that could rectify that.

I think I had a similar reaction to May We Be Forgiven as you. I read it to complete the shortlist and was appalled at the beginning, but the narrator grew on me as did the book. Still, I would have placed it last on the list as I liked all of the shortlisted books better, and several of them I loved. Oh well.

That is one comfy cat. My terrier would do that, to--as it is he likes to curl up in a spot on the floor where the sun is shining.

Not something I’d noticed either, but here’s an entire conversation:
http://forum.wordreference.com/showthread.php?t=63904
The gist: some people are bothered by it, and some people aren’t. I’m in the not bothered camp. Regardless of origins, “crisp” and “crispy” have come to have different meanings.

Etymology:
http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=crisp
http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=crispy

What a happy thing to have company, Heather, Helen, Amber, Becky, Lucy, Anne and Katherine!
Heather, I have added you to the roll of honor of those who have celebrated the first InReSoMo! I am really ready to be finished with Elizabeth and all her family for quite a long time........ On the other hand, I've picked up interesting (but in this case unsavory) bits of information as this about Arthur, Prince of Wales: "Arthur's corpse - disemboweled, boiled, cered, and spiced - lay in state in the great hall of Ludlow Castle until it was carried with mournful pageantry to St. Laurence's Church nearby on April 20." Grisly. And then I have to ask what I've missed when I read, ""...setting an Anthem of Our Lady and St. Elizabeth, which would invoke not only the protection of the Virgin Mother but, unusually, also that of the mother of the Virgin." Wasn't Mary's mother's name Anne or Hannah? Oh well.
Helen, I feel sympathy with the long, skinny cat. Although it's 60+° right this minute, it's supposed to be below freezing here for the next few days, and we have SNOW!!!! - maybe 5"-8" - forecast starting tomorrow morning. OH MY GOODNESS!!!
Amber, I thoroughly enjoyed the clip by S. Fry. He nails us. I know that he is right, but I still cringe at what I cringe at, and I will defend until death my right to do it - and apparently to complain about it.
Anne, I'm glad to have somebody else agree with me about *Forgiven*. I've begun to think that my liking an Orange nominee spells the death of its chances. When I finally finish *E of Y*, I will jump back into Ursula Under, which I really, really like, and which didn't make the short list. It's not better than We Need to Talk about Kevin, the winner for that year, or maybe not of Old Filth, shortlisted, but it is a doggone good book.
Katherine, those are interesting discussions, and I agree that using "crispy" to describe anything other than food sounds weird, but I still don't acknowledge it as a word. So there.

Peggy - You were right to spot me as something of a Ricardian, although I must say that Suz's Thomas a Becket parallel may hold water. There is certainly plentiful evidence of Richard's affection for and loyalty to Edward.
Deborah's enjoyment of The Sunne in Splendour made me smile as it has long been a favourite of mine.

Suz is right of course that Henry Bolingbroke was a usurper. Even Shakespeare, twister of historical tales that he was, didn't try to hide that fact. He was of course murdered in Pontefract Castle in 1400 and was without issue. Tracing back to Edward III, son number three was Lionel, Duke of Clarence. It is from this line that Edward (iv) and Richard could claim legitimacy. Present inheritance of titles in England would bestow the crown that way.

Paul--I think my reason to even try Sunne in Splendour despite what I thought was my dislike of the genre was your high praise of the book.

BTW, the remains of Richard have recently been discovered, and there's a whole lot of reconsideration of his reputation going on.

Deborah, I read your last sentence to refer to the 75ers Richard and wondered what had happened until I clicked on the link to Sunne in Splendour!

Hi Peggy! I'm here and keeping up as best I can.

Paul, I probably want to make you smile too, so I'll read *Sunne* one of these days, I hope. I must say that with only my reading of Weir, my jury is still out in Richard's case. Deborah, I thought that there had always been discussion about his reputation. Can you point me anywhere specific?
Hi, Pat! You're welcome here whether you keep up or not!
I came by to announce that I'm lucky enough to have snagged an ER ARC copy of A Burnable Book. I just can't stop requesting them. And, finally, maybe, I'll get to the end of *E of Y* and have something to say about her today.
On the winter weather front, it's been sleeting lightly since 3:00 and the temps have dropped below freezing, so it's getting icy out there, and I am certainly planning to stay in here!

ELIZABETH OF YORK by Alison Weir

I did it! I did it! I finished *E of Y* and wrote my pitiful little review, and NOW I can turn my attention to something that doesn't feel so much like work. Honestly, I enjoyed some of it, but mostly I read it like a textbook - and more carefully, maybe, than I should have. I am not ever, ever going to have to know the names and stations of Elizabeth's attendants or how much she paid them or to which of them Henry gave gifts. I believe I'm going to be happy to read in the present or beyond for a bit until my new ARC arrives, so that means that I won't be getting into Shardlake after all.
I should have said that illustrations, not included in this ARC, would have been an immense help - as would an index. I'll read more Weir; I'll even read more Weir biography, but not right now!

Hmm, mostly I read it like a textbook. I doubt I'd even have gotten through it, Peggy, so well done on putting Elizabeth of York to rest.

You're having snow! Good grief! Time to make like a cat and stretch on on a heat register again.

Hooray! You're done!

Don't think I'm going to read Elizabeth of York.

Peggy, here is a recent article about finding Richard's remains:
http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/magazine/battle-over-the-burial-richard-iii-be...

I had bookmarked this to refer to on my thread when I review Sunne in Splendour, and I haven't read it that closely.

LOL--I can see how you could be taken aback Pat.

Oh Wow - I bet it is snowing chez vous right this minute - just checked your weather. I hope it isn't too bad. It's going to be cold too. 19 F. That's cold by anyone's standards!

Well done to finish such a difficult book, Peggy!

Crispy! Interesting. (#170-180) I had no idea, probably as its use was in full swing before I heard the legitimate form was enough.....and orientated....what does that even mean in a nursing situation? That they are able to position themselves....see something...sheesh, I have no idea :)

>189 LizzieD: I think it is safe to say that I won't read *E of Y* ;)

189: I am not ever, ever going to have to know the names and stations of Elizabeth's attendants
Useful information to demonstrate research, and the detail behind a summary, but only if clearly separate from the main text. Congrats on finishing.

Glad you finished *E of Y* Peggy -- you really took one for the team.

Many thanks for the visits and the congratulations, Laura, Katherine, Megan, Julia, Deborah, Lucy, and Nancy! I was excited to read *E of Y* because Suz gave it 4.1 stars last year. I just found and copied this from her review for those of you who might have read Weir if I hadn't found her such a slog:
"After a lot of revisionist history, it's interesting to see Weir take the more traditional line -- Richard III dunnit (the murder of the princes) and Elizabeth was a loving and deferential queen. Weir's attitude is one of "when you hear hoofbeats, think horses, not unicorns", but she has come by her conclusions (ultimately unproveable beyond a shadow of a doubt) with both evidence and reason. I did get tired of all the detailed analysis of her gifts to this person and that person, and her visit to this or that shrine, but hey, that's part of what being the first Tudor Queen was all about. Ultimately, The Winter King by Thomas Penn was a more compelling and fluid read, but it's always simpler to write about the person who is the prime actor (Henry VII) rather than the woman following in his shadow."
Deborah, thank you for the Richard III article. I'll read it tomorrow while I'm homebound in the snow.......well, I hope we get some snow. Right now it's only sleet.
(Megan, I'm not sure, but I bet nurses say that a patient is orientated as to time and place when he knows the date and where he is.......)

Congratulations on finishing E of Y. Good work. :)

My husband was "orientated" the first week of his new job here in NZ. My son was orientated on the first day of school.

Hi, Jenn. Congratulations to both your husband and your son! I'm sorry that you don't get to be orientated too - maybe soon.
We got our snow, but it started last night and snowed too finely to see except in the street light, and the room where I can see the street light was cold. *sigh* This morning it's mighty pretty, but we didn't get more than 3" if that. There's a chance for another flurry or two, but I doubt them because the sun is trying to break through. At any rate, our neighbors' children and dog are having a great time, and I'm enjoying watching them from my warm place. (This, btw, is the most snow we've seen in 5 years.)

Oh. My. Goodness. This is the funniest thing I've read in years. Go down to the January 24th entry......
(I understood it all. Does anybody want to defend this as acceptable development of language?)

acyrologia

#201 LOL!! … curled up in the feeble position.

I am star-craving mad myself......
Glad you enjoyed it, Nancy.

#201 - 203 Very good!

Yep that just about sautes that duck.

>195 LovingLit:. and orientated....what does that even mean in a nursing situation

As in, "The new nurse needs to be orientated to the procedures on the unit." It's used constantly and will never, ever, evah be fixed.

Hi Peggy - Sorry your weather is so bad -- at least you're above zero. Good job finishing the Weir book; I think I'll pass. Thanks for taking one for the team.

Peggy, so funny. I think I"m surfing from dramatic stress syndrome at the moment!

Hello Dear Peggy!

HI, Heather, Lucy, Becky, Beth, Jan, and Linda! I'm glad for visits and hoping that none of us makes a big missed ape today.

OOO! Look at this site! You listen to a short clip and identify the language, multiple choice. I'm lousy. 300 was my score. I'll be some of you metropolitan sophisticates do better!

The Language Game

That's funny, but difficult Peggy! My score was 600.

Hi, Diana! I would expect you to do well.....
I just came by to say that today is Angela Thirkell's birthday - 1890 - Happy B'day, Ms. T!

Hi Peggy, I have pretty much given up on ordering non-fiction ER books for just the reason you stated---no pictures or maps (or very few) and I am a huge map person. I love to see where everything happened. That said, I am excited to have received A Burnable Book too:-)

Off to explore the Language Game...

Congratulations to us, Bonnie!
I did look at online images of Elizabeth and her family, but I didn't take time to hunt out specific ones mentioned in the text.

I know I'm too tired to try that game tonight, but tomorrow, can't wait!

Peggy, my score was similar to yours: 350. Fun game!

I'm likely to enjoy it again, Lucy. I love the different sounds, and you get several chances with different languages each time. Glad you visited and enjoyed, Jan!

URSULA UNDER by Ingrid Hill

I loved this book. When I think about Orange material, this has just the feeling that I'm after. Ursula Wong, 2 years old, child of a mostly Chinese father and a Finnish mother, has fallen down a mine shaft in the UP of Michigan. A woman viewing her rescue on TV is disgusted that the state is wasting so many resources on half-breed trailer trash. The omniscient narrator goes back to Ursula's early ancestors to show just who this child is, and how valuable as the culmination of so many unique lives. Ancestors' lives alternate with the American family's life and give the book its structure.
Ms. Hill is a writer, and many phrases sing on the page. The characters, especially the modern ones, are immediately accessible. Nothing structural seems forced or artificial. On the other hand, Ms. Hill pushes some nebulous theme of harmony through the generations just a little too hard for my taste. I would have been better pleased had she refrained from pointing out parallels. Otherwise, this is a solid 4-star book for me, and I recommend it highly.

Nice review of Ursula, Under, Peggy. I had the pleasure of interviewing Ingrid Hill for a feature story when I worked at the Iowa City newspaper (she was living here at the time, though I'm not sure if she still does). She was a deeply interesting woman, and the interview went far beyond what I needed for the story. I still think about some of the things she told me, and wonder if they were true or if she was test-driving possible future plots on me. Either way, it was a fascinating experience.

Now that is interesting, Julia (with a thank you for the "nice"). Did you read *Ursula*? I find it hard to believe that she went back to grad school with 11 (!) children after her husband left her. She must have some superior support system.
I would so like to finish Ancillary Justice today. It's really, really, really good, so I might do it if I could stay in and read. The sun has come out, however, and I have errands and swimming to do. We'll see.

Ursula Under sounds excellent, Peggy!

Waving, Peggy--cannot keep up with these threads!

Peggy, I have not yet read Ursula but it's on my wishlist. And especially so after reading your review. I cannot imagine getting out of bed in the morning with 11 children, let alone going to grad school. :-)

Hi, Nancy, Becky, and Julia! I think that she ended up with 12 kids, having remarried --- a couple of sets of twins boosted the number.
I won't finish anything today, so I believe I'll give myself permission to start something new. Yippee!!

Just boggled at going to grad school with eleven children. I did my Master's thesis with three year old twins and a full-time job, and that nearly did me right in. Eleven kids is just unthinkable.

OK, Peggy, I'm counting on you. Enough of this January couch potato stuff. February is Celebration of Chocolate Month!



This recipe is from one of my favorite chefs, Rocco DiSpirito. It can be found in his book, Now Eat This!.

Here's a link to the recipe: Rocco's Chocolate Brownies

Or make your own favorite brownie recipe, and enjoy Chocolate February!

Oh, my goodness! WHY are they using the shortest month of the year for Chocolate????
Those are fabulous looking brownies, Becky, and I appreciate the recipe - amazing!
Tui, you are a hero for sure! I still wonder whether I. Hill was maybe born independently wealthy.

Hi Peggy - Ursula Under sounds great. Onto the humongous wish list it goes. Brownies! Chocolate! This is an all-purpose thread.

NEW IN FEBRUARY

1. A Question of Identity ✔ - Thingaversary #4
2. Hild ✔ - Kindle - Thingaversary #5
3. A Burnable Book ✔ - ER ARC
4. Journeys on the Silk Road - Kindle Daily Deal
5. Primary Inversion ✔ - PBS
6. The Fires of Vesuvius ✔ - PBS
7. The Post Office Girl - PBS
8. The Sound of Broken Glass - Kindle Daily Deal

READ IN FEBRUARY

1. Country of the Blind
2. *Ancillary Justice
3. The Garden of Evening Mists
4. Venetia
5. Letters from Egypt
6. Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day

COUNTRY OF THE BLIND by Christopher Brookmyre

Here I am with Jack Parlabane #2 - and I must say that the way for me to want to read a book is to keep it on the "Currently Reading" page for a couple of months and then to remove it because I'm not reading it. I read it and it was fun.
Jack Parlabane is politically left wing Scot and works as a free-lance journalist who investigates right-wing shenanigans creatively, efficiently, and often illegally. In this one he is engaged to marry his doctor friend and has promised her to stay out of trouble. Ha! A right-wing media mogul has been murdered, and then Jack's friend, who was head of security at the house where the mogul was staying, seems to have committed suicide. What follows is a sort of brutal romp through the Scottish countryside with lots of Scottish slang, lots of action, and a mostly feel-good ending. The thing is that it's laugh-out-loud funny, and I will certainly read Brookmyre again. (Please note that it's not for the faint of heart, but neither does he dwell on the blood that flows in great plenty.)

Celebration of Chocolate month, Yummee!

Peggy, There is a Ricardian Society (and no, Pat, Mr. Derus is not being celebrated there as yet although it is not "mayperhaps" such a bad idea).

It has quite a list of books on the site, many of which, are supportive. http://www.richardiii.net/2_8_2_riii_bibliography.php

What a fabulous bibliography, Paul - bookmarked!

Thank you for that great site, Paul. I believe that fabulous is the word, Lucy!
I'm excited that my Thingaversary Book #4 arrived today from England, Simon Serrailler #7. Reviews say that it's not as good as some of the others, but I'm looking forward to it anyway.

I'm drooling at the brownies and I can't -- one brownie = one migraine. Grrr.

Simon Serailler #8 will be out in October, I just discovered.

Re Paul's point earlier about descent via Lionel of Clarence: while today we'd consider that legitimate, it's important to point out that back then, it was kind of up in the air. Had Richard II lived, he may well have fathered sons. But Lionel's sole child was a daughter. At that point, there was still an aversion to a woman inheriting the crown, which could (and was) extended to the right being transmitted through the women heirs. So, while Philippa of Clarence's son was treated as Richard II's heir presumptive, Parliament decided to bypass him in favor of a clear line of descent via the male line & son 3, John of Gaunt. It was very convenient for Henry IV that Edmund Mortimer, earl of March, ended up siding with Owain Glendower's Welsh rebellion (one could argue Henry even ensured that he did) and ended up imprisoned until Henry V succeeded. He died without children, and so the "right" once again reverted to the female line, and Edmund's sister, Anne, who became the grandmother of Edward IV, Richard III, etc. So the Yorks had not one, but two women transmitting their right to the throne. I'd even argue that all three -- Henry IV, Edward IV and Henry VII -- were clearly usurpers. Of the three, Henry VII (Henry Tudor) clearly had the least right to the crown. His royal blood was only on his mother's side, and even then, he was descended from a bastard son of John of Gaunt (father of Henry IV) who hadn't been legitimized until he was an adult, and then only in such a way that he and his descendants were barred from the throne. When Henry IV died, he must have thought it was all sorted: he had four surviving adult sons, all healthy. Two were to die without any heirs; Henry V had only a single son and died when he was a baby, and Humphrey of Gloucester had only two illegitimate children; his bastard son died at about the same time he did.

OK, I clearly know too much about this. Although, not the names and positions of all the beneficiaries of Henry VII's pensions. To be fair, however, if one was going to write a historical novel about the era, that is just the kind of info that you need to make connections, spot anomalies and be able to speculate intelligently about what may have been going on. For instance, what if one of the women had received a bigger pension than the others, or some other special treatment?

Many thanks, Suzanne. That's very clear, clearer than I've found anywhere else. Start that novel at once!!!! That is to say, choose from among the possibilities and start the novel at once.
I'm happy to have #7 here!
Today, I've read here and there and this and that. I need some solid fiction to act as an anchor for everything else, so I've been trying The Garden of Evening Mists and The Vicar of Sorrows. I have no idea which I'll choose - if either --- and this is one reason that I read relatively fewer books than some of you. I did, though, get into Lucie Duff Gordon's Letters from Egypt, and I must say that she seems a remarkable woman on first acquaintance - able to see the person behind the skin and religion. She's interested in and interesting about the Copts. They don't seem to recognize her as a co-religionist although she's ready to extend that acceptance to them, much to their surprise. They ask her if it's not true that English Christian men marry their brothers (I think that's right; I can't find the place now, of course). She also remarks that it will be easy to learn street Arabic, a thing that doesn't occur to some other 19th century English women-travelers whom I've read.
Also reading Ancillary Justice, which is as good as I hoped it would be!

235: Lucie Duff Gordon's Letters from Egypt
Oh that looks interesting. What prompted you to read it?

Hi, Katherine. It's a Virago/Beacon Traveler, and I had been longing to add it to my collection when the lovely Miss Read (my Virago Secret Santa) gave it to me for Christmas 2011. There are 24 books in that edition, and I've been reading one a year on average. Most of them are from the 19th century, but some are early 20th. Wait. I'll get you a list!
And here it is!

Barker Lady - Station Life in New Zealand
Bell Gertrude - The Desert and the Sown
Bird isabella - Journeys to Persia and Kurdistan Vols 1 & 2
Bird Isabella - Unbeaten Tracks in Japan ✔
Bird Isabella -A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains
Bird Isabella - The Yangtze Valley and Beyond
Birtles, Dora - North-West by North ✔
Cable Mildred - The Gobi Desert ✔
David-Neel Alexandra - My Journey to Lhasa
Duff-Gordon, Lucie - Letters from Egypt ✔
Durham Edith - High Albania
Eberhardt Isabelle -The Passionate Nomad - Diaries
of Isabella Eberhardt
Eden Emily - Letters from India ✔
Edwards Amelia - Untrodden Peaks & Unfrequented Valleys ✔
Hahn, Emily - China to Me ✔
Kingsley, Mary - Travels in West Africa
Maillart Ella K - The Cruel Way
Markham Beryl - West with the Night
Montagu Lady - The Turkish Embassy Letters
Moodie Susanna - Roughing it in the Bush
O'Brien Kate - Farewell Spain
Sommerville E G & Moss V M - Through Connemarra in a Cart ✔
Tristan Flora - Peregrinations of a Pariah
Tristan Flora - The London Journal of Flora Tristan ✔
Woolsey, Gamel - Death’s Other Kingdom

(I've checked the ones I've read for my own information.) (I don't think I realized that the Beryl Markham was a V/B Traveler, so there are 25.)

I very much enjoyed The Garden of Evening Mists; will be curious to know what you think of it should you decide to choose it.

I chose it, Nancy, and I think that I'm going to like it.
I'm not getting much reading (or anything else) done, but I have to say that Ancillary Justice is a winner. It is fresh and engaging. The main character is an ancillary (a human from a defeated army, frozen, thawed, slaved to a troop ship) - what's left of a ship's AI. He/she/it is on the trail of a weapon to bring down at least part of the intelligence that led to her near destruction. I'm not saying it very well, but it's very readable and I'm enjoying it more and more the more I read. Now if only I could get on with it!

Ancillary has been popped onto the list! Looks very cool!

I am a big fan of A.N. Wilson, so I would read The Vicar of Sorrows!

I still have *Vicar* out, Lucy, but I'm committed to *Garden/Mists* right now. Sometimes the writing is breathtaking and sometimes a bit over the top. I've only just gotten into the story, so we'll see. I also found a bunch of stuff is due this week rather than next ---- when the 1st is on Sunday, I get confused, so I don't know how much reading or LTing I'll get to today. *sigh*

I too am in the middle of AJ -- not as much time for it as I'd like, as I'm engaged in other projects, but I agree: it's fresh with a confident voice. Nice to see someone new with skills on the SF scene.

Contrary to my normal practice, I'm not pushing on this one - just enjoying, Rex! Glad you're liking it too.

I have gotten a little farther into Egypt with Lucie Duff Gordon. What a marvelous woman she was! How many upper-class British women (she married a baronet) would write like this today, I wonder.
"The Europeans resent being called 'Nazarnee' as a genteel Hebrew gentleman may shrink from 'Jew.' But I said boldly, 'Ana Nazraneeh. Alhamdulillah!' (I am a Nazranee. Praise be to God), and found that it was much approved by the Muslims as well as the Copts."
"...and as all Muslims are ipso facto equal; money and rank are looked on as mere accidents, and my savoir vivre was highly thought of because I sat down with Fellaheen and treated everyone as they treat each other."

The library has Ancillary Justice so I've put a hold on it!

Hi, Roni! You'll be glad that you did. If I had been here today, I would have finished it. If I were going to be here tomorrow, I'd finish it. Maybe Monday. *sigh*

The MENSA thing had me rolling, Peggy!! That is fantastic!!

The other use I was referencing specifically in nursing homes for orientated is this...

When a nurse or social worker is referencing how alert a person is, we talk about orientation to spheres. A fully oriented person is called "alert & oriented times four"... meaning he or she is alert to all spheres of
1. Person
2. Place
3. Time &
4. Situation

SO ... that's the other way the word is killed for me. I'm going to go mourn the official death of "oriented" now that I've heard the OTHER word is commonly used elsewhere. ;)

Mmmmm, an entire (although short) month devoted to chocolate. Sounds good to me! Peggy, I see you bought Hild for the Kindle. I have been waiting for months for my name to come up for it at the library. We only have one copy so I have to be patient.

I hope you like The Garden of Evening Mists. There is a lot of love for it on LT, including mine. Enjoy your Sunday.

Peggy, you make Ursula, Under sound very enticing and I'm glad because it's been sitting on my bookshelf waiting for me to read it for years. It was a random charity shop pick long before I'd heard about the Orange prize or found LT.

You're also tempting me with Letters from Egypt....

>249 Donna828:. Hild wishlisted. Check.

Finally played the language game - got fooled by a second use of Swedish with, I forget what, Latvian or something .... 350!

Peggy, it was your thread that the Language Game was on! I did it, and then lost what thread I had originally started from. I got 600, but did have the advantage of recognising Welsh which is probably one of the more obscure ones. I was caught out in the end by Romanian, which was irritating as that is one I can recognise at times.

Hi, Rhian and Lucy - glad that you enjoyed the Language Game too. Recognizing Welsh would be really nifty, I think.
Becky, I'm looking forward to Hild. I liked N. Griffith's Ammonite but not Slow River so much. This one will be completely different.
Heather, I'd had a copy of *Ursula* for a couple of years- not really long by my standards. I hope you like it. the Lucie D.G. is really good in that it's more about the people whom she encounters than about traveling in Egypt; she does do some travel descriptions well too.
Donna, I'm glad to see another one devoted to *Garden/Mists*. I've set it aside for a bit since I haven't had any real reading time this past week. I live in hope.
Tina, may you and I never become so disoriented that we don't resent "orientated"!

ANCILLARY JUSTICE by Ann Leckie

This is an ER ARC, so if you're interested, you should look for a review on the book page. I really enjoyed it and wish I had had time to read it in less time. I see that it's the first of a trilogy, so I am definitely looking forward to the nest one. Meanwhile, I'm not sure whether I can write a review. SNOW in N.C.!!! And it's beautiful, and I'm rapt watching it from the warmth with a window between me and it. I'm afraid it will be followed by ice, and I dread the thought of losing power. What a year!

Still Snowing!!! Unbelievable!!!
I've camped out on the sofa most of the day. I read a page and then glance out to be sure that it's still coming down and have to watch. Needless to say, I'm not making much book progress. Just moments ago a male oriole and a male cardinal were perched on the lee side of my window oak - two improbable patches of color in this gray and white world.
Back to watch!

two improbable patches of color in this gray and white world.

What a lovely image to start my tropical day.

More snow! How unusual for your area, but I guess you are in the same storm system that is hitting Georgia south of you. Enjoy and stay warm and at home!

Hi Peggy. I just heard of the dire weather forecast for North Carolina on the evening news. Hope you don't lose power. I know what you mean about how pretty it is when it falls.

Hi Paul, Roni, and Pat! Today's snow was beautiful. Perfect! Tomorrow??? We're scared of losing power. They're predicting ice and then more snow on top of that. It certainly is unusual. Two snows with accumulation in one year - rare and strange!
I did eventually read some in The Garden of Evening Mist. I'm a liker-a-lot so far, not quite a lover, but time may change that. The man can certainly turn a beautiful phrase!

Hi Peggy. I have no idea which I'll choose - if either --- and this is one reason that I read relatively fewer books than some of you. Maybe I'll try to use that excuse instead of the real reason which is that I am a really s-l-o-w reader.

I was a liker-a-lot reader of The Garden of Evening Mist too. I hope the ice doesn't pose too many difficulties for you tomorrow and by that I definitely mean loss of power. That is a miserable way to spend time.

Hi, Bonnie! SNOW mixed with SLEET falling as I type. So far, so good. But it's supposed to change to freezing rain with the possibility of the accumulation of an inch of ice. I do not look forward to that. I must say that this is the first time in a Long time - maybe ever - that I remember two consecutive days of snow. Peculiar!
You read more than I do, Bonnie, so I can't believe that you're such a slow reader.

Hmmm I didn't even get Welsh when I played it...... I wonder if it is different every time? Probably.

It is different every time, Lucy. I think that they say that they have 80 languages recorded. Last time I tried, I got 300 again, but if I had not 2nd-guessed myself, I would have gotten 400. Of course, I am secretly considering that my high score is now 400. I wonder how I'm guessing since I have heard very few of these languages.
So cold.....I don't see anything falling right now, but the roads and walks are now covered, and they weren't before. I dread, dread, dread the frozen rain that is supposed to come next. Maybe it will stay cold enough for it to be sleet and snow. I wish. I wish.
Meanwhile, today's Kindle Daily Deal is Journeys on the Silk Road which I downloaded immediately. It's lendable if anybody would like to borrow my "copy."

Hope you continue to stay warm and dry, Peggy. It's a nice day to hunker down with a new impulse purchase.

So the pictures on the news tonight show cars parked on the interstate in North Carolina like we saw in Atlanta a week or so ago. I'm glad to think that you are safely at home and not out on the roads.

Thank you, Laura and Roni. I can't believe that the people in the Triangle area didn't learn a thing from Atlanta's experience. It was exactly the same thing. They planned a half-day of school, and started sending the kids home just as it started snowing. The DOT trucks couldn't get out to treat the roads because of the gridlock...... I've heard from one set of cousins who were fine, but not the others.
We still have power, thank goodness, but we are expecting one more swipe of frozen precip before it starts to melt in earnest tomorrow. Paired with wind, limbs and lines may go at last. Right now though, life is good. I had a scare with my old Kindle, but a tech helped fix it. I am, therefore, feeling really good. Back to *Garden/Mists*.

I hope you keep your power on, Peggy. I loathe and detest ice storms. They are destructive and dangerous. It took weeks of stubborn and persistent chopping to free our drive of an accumulation of 3" of ice after the ice storm we had. Folks in Toronto were without power for a week. Pah.

Oh, Peggy, what a time you've had with weather. Ice storms are indeed destructive and dangerous. Glad your Kindle is fixed for the duration. Take care.

Thinking of you in this crazy winter weather. Glad you were able to keep your Kindle glowing!

I've had fun with the language game, too! My top score was 800, with the final blow having been, of all things, Assyrian. Confess I didn't even know it was still spoken. I find myself listening for rhythms and similarities to language families, word endings, etc.

Glad you enjoyed the language game, Suzanne. You certainly have the high score that I know about. Assyrian!?!?! That didn't show up for me. I tried to zero in on the the locale that I thought the language sounded like - as if I'd know,
never having been west of the Appalachians, east of the NC coast, south of Key Biscayne, or north of NYC. *sigh*
Hi, Becky! I put it to good use today and would probably finish *Garden/Mists* tomorrow if I didn't have to play bridge all afternoon. *sigh* again
Tui and Nancy, we have gotten away with one so far. It snowed again for an hour at noon, but all is quiet now; also the temps remained just above freezing all day. We are supposed to get some wind tonight though, and I'd be glad if that skipped us. I have put in my request for no more real winter weather.

I'm glad that you still have power, Peggy! Let's hope it stays that way until the melting starts.

Hooray for intact power lines!

Hi, Peggy! Did the power stay on?

Just dropping by for a quick hello for now Peggy. I'm still finding I've neglected some threads, even though I'm really trying to follow up on my resolution to be more present in the group this year. I'll be back to see what I've missed. I really loved starting the year with Garden of Evening Mists. Worthy of at least one reread. Hope you're having a great weekend!

Thanks for the powerful wishes, Julia, Lucy, and Terri. We never lost power although we're not far from folks who did. Most of the snow is gone as it's supposed to be in a well-regulated Southland. I got my ma out for the first time today - into the pool for some exercise and then to a restaurant for some seafood. I'm well-stuffed with oysters, deviled crab, and shrimp. Yum!
Hi, Ilana. I follow you around the threads, but I'm always behind and sighing. Glad to see you here. Actually, you're another who has made me feel either dumb or stubborn or guilty. I liked The Garden of Evening Mists a lot, but I didn't love it. See below....

THE GARDEN OF EVENING MISTS by Tan Twan Eng
I had expected to love and adore this book which most people, and people whom I respect, are praising to the skies. I didn't love it that much - liked it worth 4 stars, but didn't love it. (If I could have given it 3 2/3, that would have been accurate.) I'm afraid that my reasons for withholding the love are mostly subjective and niggling. And I'm worried. I didn't like The Luminaries much at all and only liked this one. Am I now so curmudgeonly that nothing is going to work for me? Oh dear oh dear oh dear.
O.K. The writing! Sometimes the writing is breath-taking. I love and adore "---the scent of pine resin sticking to the air...." Given the nature of pine resin, that's brilliant. "Birdcalls hammered sharp, shiny nails into the air." That's very good too. But --- "The skies were cloudless, the clear air polishing the light to a high sheen." Wouldn't that work just as well if it read, "The skies were cloudless, the clear light polishing the air to a high sheen,"? If the second is equally possible, that won't do. And I just don't like, "A shoal of carp swims out to us, a tattered orange and white banner pulling through the murky water." I don't know that I've ever seen a banner pull anything anywhere. So, I have to say that I think he tried too hard. If I'm going to be stopped by beautiful language, I want it to be genuinely beautiful every time or at least, 90% of the time.
The other thing that annoyed me was the lack of transitions - not between present and past; he did that well - but between this past event and the next past event. Again, if it had happened a time or two, I wouldn't complain, but it became noticeable, and such a polished writer could have taken more pains.
And finally the characters remain strange to me in a way that doesn't charm. I finally see the reason for the whole tattoo thing (not to spoil, please), but it just feels creepy.
So. 4 stars for me. Amazing story! Intriguing characters! Exotic setting, well-explored! All of that is true, but somehow I don't have the mental money to buy the whole thing, and so I slink off to try again.

Peggy, I know only too well how you feel about only liking a book that everyone else seems to have loved, but I wouldn't worry about it too much if I were you. It happens to me quite often. For the record, I wasn't that enamoured with The Luminaries, and I know you and I are among a minority regarding that book. Just a couple of days ago, I panned the latest literary darling, An Unnecessary Woman which I couldn't bring myself to finish, even if readers whose opinion I often agree with adored it, and am not too worried about being one of very few dissenters there again. We each bring our entire self—including our life experiences, our character, our foibles and quirks, not to forget: moods—to the page, which is why we experience each novel in a very individual way, and not going with the general consensus on any particular title doesn't mean there's anything wrong with you, only that the book wasn't a good fit for you at the time you read it.

I was also grabbed by some of the beautiful imagery in his writing, but listening to it on audio, I didn't take the time to figure out what made sense or not. I remember these excerpts you've quoted here; there was also one on the theme of butterflies that I thought was quite gorgeous, though it's gone from memory since I didn't note it down, so I would like to get this novel in print so I can read over portions of it. Great review!

277: Am I now so curmudgeonly that nothing is going to work for me?
Your comments about The Garden of Evening Mists are nowhere near as curmudgeonly as mine about Shards of Honor, another book (and series) that is beloved by people I respect. I’ve gone through agonies wondering what’s wrong with me. Might make an interesting thread – what books did you hate / love in opposition to “everyone” else, and why?

>279 qebo: Katherine, if you start it, I will gladly contribute! Glad to see one dissenting voice on the Shards of Honor books. The whole notion of 'Space Opera' sort of repels me, though I like the reading tastes of some of the most outspoken admirers of the genre.

280: Hmm, I'm tempted. It needs a name. At the moment though, I'm off to watch the Olympics.

curmudgeonly? Definitely not, Peggy. Your 4* rating of The Garden of Evening Mists is, to me, an excellent read! (despite its language/writing shortcomings). I also wasn't enamoured with The Luminaries, and I've felt curmudgeonly on several other occasions too: Cutting for Stone and Middlesex come to mind. In fact, now that I think about it, I am just old enough and cranky enough to say, Let's hear it for curmudgeonly-ness! … I know there's a better way to say that, but that's all the time I have presently : ).

Ilana, Katherine, and Nancy, you make me feel much better, thank you! And I'm giggling a bit because I have loved everything that you've mentioned disliking in the face of almost universal worship except *Unnecessary Woman*, and I don't feel pulled toward it. And I remind myself that I did bow down with the rest of the world to The Daughters of Mars just lately.
(Ilana, "postage stamps scattered by the winds" and then they fly through the rainbow cast by the waterfall and are even more brilliant? Oh yes. Some beautiful and thoughtful writing there.)
Anyway, I will join you as founding mothers of Curmudgeons Whatever....and I'm not about to give up reading!

I was like that about Song of Achilles. Everyone else was in raptures about it but, oh I don't know, it just didn't get there for me. Like you, a good four star but not a Kermit arm waving five.

>284 tiffin:: "a Kermit arm waving five" -- love that!

Peggy, I felt much like you did about The Garden of Evening Mists and really identified with your review. So much so, that I went off to find mine which concludes with this paragraph:

I was expecting a 5-star read, which is probably unfair. The writing was beautiful and poetic, but it wasn't "unputdownable," and I always felt at a slight distance from the characters and the plot. Nevertheless, I recommend this book for those who like quiet, slow-paced, character-driven novels.

4 stars is not too shabby (I gave it the same, btw), but I completely relate to the disappointment and wondering, "is it me?"

I also gave Song of Achilles a 4, not a "kermit arm waving 5" (ace description, BTW!). But I rarely give out 5 stars, and have wondered if I mark "hard". I had 5 books I rated 5 stars last year, out of over 100 read. So I wonder if some of the raving about books is just a different score scheme rather than a fundamental disagreement about the merits of a book. But there are some reviews that just gush and give you nothing concrete about the book at all - I'm less likely to read them or to get anything from them than a more carefully reasonsed more moderate scored review.

So, no, I don't think you're a curmudgeon. Or if you are I will be joining you in that corner.

Here you go: Curmudgeons unite!

The Song of Achilles was a 4-star book for me too. I very rarely hand out 5 stars; 9 out of 158 books last year, but it was also an exceptionally good year.

Hi Peggy! Checking in and relieved to find you survived the southern snow and ice storms safely. I also hate feeling that I've missed something when I don't love a book others have raved about. I will definitely be heading over to the curmudgeons thread...

Well, Tui and Helen and Ilana, I was that way about *Achilles* too. It seems to me that I haven't liked a number of the books that most other people have raved about in the past few years. I'm off to the Curmudgeon thread to unite (thank you, Katherine) and complain about the Orange Prize judges. Good grief!
Hi, Heather! See you among the Mudgies.
(I should have spent the whole afternoon reading Venetia, but instead I tried to make some headway in my Mallory/War/Everest book. It is quite graphic about the surgeons' lot in WWI in the first few pages. True horror.

I'd just like to announce that my mother saw her GP today. Her blood work looks (and I quote) "like a healthy 18 year-old." Yay, Mama!

Great results for your mom, Peggy! Venetia sound like a lot more fun--I'm sure Damerel is much more entertaining.

#291 Hooray for Peggy's Mama!

#291 Woot! That's amazing, Peggy!

Great news for Peggy's mom!

That's great news about your mom, Peggy. She's a lucky woman to be so healthy.

I thank you, and my mama thanks you, Roni, Heather, Nancy, Julia, and Laura. She's lucky to have good genes, but otherwise she works to keep herself in good shape. I'm the lucky one to have her!
(And Damerel is more entertaining that just about anybody!)

Thumbs up for your ma!

Oooo I like that 'mental money' metaphor!! Great review, Peggy.

Yes, and definitely thumbs up for your ma!

Many thanks, Becky and Lucy.
I am yielding to temptation to stop reading what I'm reading (except for Venetia, which I see I haven't posted above) and start Primary Inversion, which just arrived from PBS. I think I will.......I'm in the mood for some sp/op.

While I loved The Luminaries (maybe because I read it very early before the hype started, so without expectations), I also was never ecstatic about TGoEM. I really liked it, but for me it almost "died in beauty", stayed too much on the surface in order to look pretty. And 1.5 years later I don't remember much of it.
And don't get me started on *Achilles* again which got my usual "written with good intentions" 3 star rating. :-)

Great news about your mom!

Hi Nathalie. Two hearts that beat almost as one! Thanks for enjoying Mama's good health with me.
Nothing going on in my brain. I'm moving on.

Ancillary Justice came home with me today. I'm trying to decide whether to start it ahead of The Player of Games, which I also just got and is for the February group read. Decisions, decisions!

Well, Roni. I've read them both, and *Player* is not one of my favorite Culture novels, which is not to say that it's anything but very, very good. Enjoy!
No reading time. No reading time. I'm down to the Egypt letters and Venetia. Maybe today I can actually place person on sofa and read.

Back to say that PaperBackSwap is almost as good as LT. Just received an unread (but ex-library; never mind. I was able to get the spine sticker off cleanly) copy of Mary Beard's The Fires of Vesuvius in exchange for a silly mystery or something. I am thrilled to my booky core!

>301 Deern:: I do like that "written with good intentions" descriptor! I'm going to plagiarise that.

>305 LizzieD:: Peggy, I got a whole slough of Viragos from a library sale once and I have never been able to remove those spine stickers without taking off half the spine. However did you do it?

Tui, I agree that "written with good intentions" is classic. I'm not so sure that *Achilles* was, but I love the description.
And as to the tape, it pulled off nicely and so did the sticker that it covered. Maybe technology has improved the quality of tape since you got your VMCs. And how I wish my library sale offered such goodies!

VENETIA by Georgette Heyer
This is definitely one of the good ones - not that I've read a bad one yet. My initial reaction was that Venetia was a modern young woman in regency dress. Now I'm so charmed by her and by her Damerel that I don't know and I don't care. This one has everything that Heyer's readers desire. I'm sorry it took me so long to get to it. If you haven't read it, remedy that omission at once.

#306> When it comes to removing sticky stuff there is a miracle substance called "Goo Gone" that works a treat. Though I've never tried to use it on a book spine, so you would want to read the label carefully to be sure it wouldn't cause damage.

I like Venetia, I think because it's one of the books featuring an older heroine, and I think this allows Heyer to have a more wry voice.

Re acclaimed books. Hmm. I just react to the book I read, not whether or not it's a literary darling. For instance, I'm about 2/3 of the way through The Goldfinch, and I can't see why one friend calls it the best book she's read in the last five years. It's probably going to be a thumping good read, but unless something changes in the final third of the book, it doesn't ignite something in me and blot out the rest of the world in the way that a book I love does. And yes, that's a subjective and VERY hard to describe characteristic. I think what worked with Tan Twan Eng was that I knew the Cameron Highlands -- the landscape he set it in -- and the history. And it felt unlike anything else I had ever read. I'll have to get back to you about The Luminaries, although I had been wanting to read it since discovering Catton via her previous novel, The Rehearsal. I actually had to put that one down because it had too strong an impact on me partway through.

I don't really care what the consensus is or whether I'm supposed to love something or not. I have a visceral response to a book. I loved An Unnecessary Woman because I loved the voice of the main character, Aaliyah. That and Longbourn are easily my two favorite novels of the year so far, with "favorite" being defined as the combination of my personal reading experience and my view of their merits. I've probably read others that were "better" but where the reading experience wasn't as fascinating. I don't think I've given a 5-star rating yet this year. But ultimately, I don't worry about whether others share my view of a book, although when I love a book, I logically hope that my friends will share that view. Not because it validates my view, but because it means that they've had a great reading experience, too.

Well, there speaks the voice of rationality. I can only say how I feel about a book, but I also wonder what I've missed when I disagree with people I respect. I must say that the Cameron Highlands sound exotic and marvelous..... The google images are gorgeous.
Nothing else going on with me. I'll finish Lady Duff Gordon Monday most likely. Meanwhile, I'm also being charmed by Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day. Comfort reading! Feel-good reading!

#310: Miss Pettigrew is a good one! I expect you will enjoy it very much, Peggy :)

Miss Pettigrew is delightful! Enjoy.

We've got Miss Pettigrew as a book club choice later in the year. I shall look forward to it.

#310 Comfort reading is always good and Miss Pettigrew is lovely. I've just finished a reread of Diary of a Provincial Lady which was another lovely comfort read.

Comfort read = good!

Oh yes! Miss Pettigrew is a great favourite of mine too! I promised myself I'd reread it often as soon as I finished it. I actually landed on the movie adaptation with Frances McDormand sort of by accident on TV one day without knowing anything about the book, and it was great. Then I found she'd narrated the audiobook version too. Lovely.

Looking forward to Diary of a Provincial Lady. I hunted down a lovely Virago Designer edition of that one which should make for extra cozy comfort reading.

I am happy to report that I have a lovely Persephone copy of Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day, Peggy and am now really looking forward to it. Comfort read sounds wonderful. We DVR'd the Frances McDormand movie a couple of years ago but I won't watch it until I read the book:)

Look at the Miss Pettigrew lovers and potential lovers! I sort of guess that if you own the book, you're going to love it. Anyway, I'm glad to have struck a happy chord with Stasia, Laura, Heather, and Ilana. Helen and Bonnie, you're in for a treat - which I am stretching out as long as I can.
Comfort read always = good, Lucy. And I'm happy to say that I am the proud owner of a lovely Persephone copy too, a gift from a wonderful Virago Secret Santa!
I'll keep my eye out for the Frances McDormand movie, but I'm not sure that a movie can capture Miss P's shock and delight with herself.
This was a big church Sunday, so I haven't settled down to reading anything. Oh well.

*putting on my curmudgeon hat* I wanted to like Miss Pettigrew very much but there were a couple of things in the book which jarred badly. I won't say what these were until you read the book, Peggy, but they bugged me enough to not make it a first class read for me.

#310 I also wonder what I've missed when I disagree with people I respect.

I'm the same. I've just read Harvest which has loads of very good reviews but I just can't see it myself. I do think I'm missing something but I can't see what!

I'm another fan of Miss Pettigrew by the way.

Hi, Tumudgeon and Rhian.
I wonder --- I've just met Michael and don't particularly care for the way that he disciplines Miss LaFosse. I'm reminded of the delightful Rose Birkett and her Lieutenant Fairweather in Angela Thirkell's books, and I must say that I prefer her tone. On the other hand, Miss LaFosse is no Rose, and I'm willing to take the whole thing as is because I'm very happy to see Miss P. blossoming.

Peggy, I've seen the Miss Pettigrew movie, which I enjoyed, and hadn't thought about reading the book but I'm adding it to my list. After your mention of Venetia, you reminded me of how comforting Heyer is in busy times so I headed for The Corinthian, which is one of the funnier ones.

#322 I've just read The Corinthian, as I needed a comfort read at the weekend. It was funny and Pen is a wonderful heroine. I've got Miss Pettigrew on my TBR pile, too.

Oh, Jan and Kerry! The Corinthian is one I haven't read since I don't recognize Pen's name. What happiness to have more Heyer on hand!
And oh dear, I'm less than happy with Miss P's racism, but I'm still charmed even so. It is hard to step back into the time and allow otherwise decent people to have the prejudices of their culture.

LETTERS FROM EGYPT by Lucie Duff Gordon

Virago friend Kasthu has written a very helpful review of the letters on the book page, and I happily refer potential readers to it. This would have been a 5-star experience for me had the letters not been so repetitious eventually. LDG was separated from her family for nearly seven years by her consumption. She found relief during the summer in the dry heat of Luxor, and while she obviously yearned for her husband and children, she lived well, both happily and usefully among the natives. I read her last letters in tears when she knew that she was dying but couldn't bear to say good-bye to her husband again in person.
She was more at pains to talk about people than scenery, so this is not really a travel book. On the other hand, she makes several points about Egypt in the 1860s again and again. She felt as though she were living still in The Arabian Nights or even in an earlier time. She learned much about the real religion of the people, especially of the women, that she did not write down and felt that she should have. She believed that the religion of the best Muslims and the best Christians was so close as to have no real difference between them. She was devoted to the people and they were devoted to her.
I'm glad that I have her letters from South Africa because I will miss her voice.

I like that review a lot Peggy.

Why thank you, ma'am.

324: She was more at pains to talk about people than scenery, so this is not really a travel book.
Or it's the best kind of travel book. Wishlisted, though goodness knows when I'll get to it.

#327 What qebo said - that's the sort of travel book I like too. Is her Letters from South Africa a Virago too?

Heather, the South African book is not a Virago/Beacon. I got it free for my Kindle, and I think another something of hers might be available there. I just haven't checked. Katherine, it's well worth reading. My only caveat is that since it's a book of letters, the meeting this scheyck and that scheyck (I think that's her spelling) eventually gets repetitious. That said, I found so much other variety that I didn't have any trouble adding the half star to the four.
Meanwhile, I jumped the gun and started The Jewel in the Crown last night for the Raj Quartet Group Read. I was a little worried that it wouldn't live up to my memory. I shouldn't have been. Paul Scott is the real thing. I was sucked in immediately. I'll also add that he was apparently a reprehensible human being who treated his wife about as badly as possible. I'm sorry, but these books live.

I'm posting this as much for myself as for you....
Enjoy!

500 Years of Women in Great Art

Lovely review of Letters from Egypt, Peggy. Glad The Jewel in the Crown is living up to your memory, at least thus far, in spite of its author's inhumanity. I've not read the Raj Quartet and always seem too rushed presently for a GR, but it sounds up my alley, so I'll be following along.

329: since it's a book of letters
I like the immediacy of letters though, don't mind the repetition so much because it's understandable.

Raj Quartet Group Read
Damn. I read it long ago, and it's faded from memory, but I'm not quite prepared to take on a series, especially as a reread.

Peggy, I originally noticed a mention of the Raj Quartet group read on Bonnie's thread, and since I got a volume containing the first two books last year, would love to join along. Do you know if there'll be a group thread for discussion?

eta: it was nice to see that video or women in art again. Very gripping, thanks for posting the link.

Raj Quartet, hmmm. I know I bought those books in the 1980s, but never read 'em. No idea if I still own them.

Best travel books, IMHO, combine people and places to create what I think of as a "spirit of place & time".

People are sh*ts, including authors. I'm not sure why we expect them -- or the characters in our books -- to be any the less so! Caravaggio was a murderer; Wagner, a racist. But both geniuses in their fields. Von Karajan joined the Nazi party in 1933, and played music for them right up to 1945. Of course, we can't work backwards & then declare them spotless & incapable of sin because of their artistic achievements...

There is a thread for the first in the Raj Quartet books here:

Helen, thank you very much for that link. I looked earlier this morning and didn't find it!
Ilana, do join the group if you have time. Nancy and Suzanne, please put these books on your TBR. If they are half as wonderful as I remember, they are worth your time. I have read another couple of his novels that didn't impress me as much, but that may be because at the time they didn't have the extra gilding of the Granada video production.
I know that we can't expect all authors to be saints. I have an LT friend who refuses to read Scott, but I say again that the pain of that relationship is dead, but the books still live.
Katherine, I think Lucie Duff Gordon was meant for you then. I didn't ever see Egypt from her writing, but I certainly feel it.
Meanwhile, I've spent a little more time with Into the Silence, and I'm pretty sure that I'm going to love it. The chapter that deals with the battle of the Somme from the pov of 2 of the surgeons later part of the Everest parties (Somervel and Wakefield) is the most graphic distillation of that war that I've ever read. I hope never to read anything more graphic. Now I'm safely back in history reading about the Great Trigonometrical Survey of India that led to the British discovery of Everest and figuring its height (only 28 feet off) in the 1850s and British interest in Tibet. Good stuff! And I just found that the geographer for whom they named the mountain pronounced his name "Eave-rest" and was a pretty miserable human being. I'll refrain from continuing the blow by blow.
And I'm happy again because I'm going to receive a copy of Peter Matthiessen's In Paradise. One new one a month is just right for me!
And to natter on, I'm currently reading A Burnable Book, which I like so far, but which hasn't grabbed me.

I'm so glad you're enjoying Into the Silence. I bought that after reading Above All Things last year and I've been meaning to get it but it looks so intimidating up there on my shelf that I've been avoiding it. Hopefully, you're positive comments will get me to give it a try.

Pat, it was Above All Things that set me on the Davis trail too. It's solid stuff. I hope I continue to be in love with it.

MISS PETTIGREW LIVES FOR A DAY by Winifred Watson

This is a tasty little bon bon of a book, a fairy tale from 1938 when the men were virile and a little wicked and the women were exquisite and also a little wicked. Miss Pettigrew has been good all her life, but at 40 she has an opportunity to live a little, and to her credit, she jumps right in.
I'm ready to hear what you have to say, Tui. You can count me among the lovers who ignore the morality of it and just enjoy.

Loved the 500 years link - sent it off to various rellies and friends!

Peggy, I am one who can enjoy a book despite the flaws I see in it, much as you seemed to do with The Garden of Evening Mists. Right now, I am reading another book that has been praised to the winds…The Goldfinch. There's much to love about it but also much to wonder about what the author was thinking. There are few books that garner a 5-star rating from me, and these have to have that elusive something that 'ignites' a personal reaction in me that Suzanne refers to upthread. We can only relate what our reactions are to the books we read. That's what makes reading these threads about books so interesting to me.

I am looking forward to continuing with the Raj Quartet. I will jump in with the second book as my memory of The Jewel in the Crown is quite clear. Another sign of an excellent book.

Hi, Lucy. I had seen that morphing done with movie stars, but the art knocked me out.
Donna, you are making me warier of *Goldfinch*. I'm still going to try it, but I'm not chafing to get to it as I was earlier. I think the *Raj* books get better ---- no, that's not quite right. I enjoyed each book more than the one before because I had more invested in the characters each time.

Rejoice, US-based mystery fans! Deborah Crombie's latest Duncan Kincaid/Gemma James novel, The Sound of Broken Glass is today's Kindle Daily Deal. I have mine!

Well, Peggy, it kind of just stopped dead for me when Delysia (sp?) got slapped to "knock some sense into her" and then went all sweet and submissive after. I also found the anti-Semitism grating. The fun and fluff on the surface couldn't hold up for me as a result. Too much like the 50s and a lot of the 60s for me, I guess.

>340 Donna828:, 341. I guess that's what makes me wary of "overdoing" my praise for a particular book (e.g. The Goldfinch), because I sometimes fear my enthusiasms might lead others astray. I've even recently thought that I might stop the "star" rating system altogether. And yet, isn't there always a corrective backlash in the threads for a book that's been highly praised? I think so. Tartt's book certainly isn't perfect, but it's one of the most interesting and unforgettable reads I've had in a long time. Oh dear, there I go again--ha.

Hi, Peggy! I've been lurking along in your thread but am now surfacing to say that while The Goldfinch was not a 5-star read for me it was awfully darn good. I agree with Becky that it was one of the more unforgettable reads I've had lately. I'm still thinking about it several weeks after finishing it. I think it's a good idea to go into any book not expecting a 5-star read because there aren't many books that won't disappoint those sorts of expectations. Just my two cents' worth.

*back to lurking*

Tui, I honestly don't remember Delysia being slapped - just shaken, as if that were not bad enough. And I also hated the easy racism, both anti-Semitic and anti-Italian. But it was 1938, so I'm going to give myself permission to enjoy Miss P. anyway.
Becky, some books just hit us, and we can't (and shouldn't) help it. I'd hate for you to be less than honest about what you thought. (And there's always the danger of your pulling punches, right?) I'll read it for sure, but I'm not going to push as I thought I would when I put it on the Kindle.
Julia, that's probably good advice. I wonder whether I open every book hoping for/expecting a 5 star experience and then reduce as I read. That would be a little sad.

It's hard sometimes to adjust our 21st century sensibilities when reading older works, but I'm usually able to do this, or I try to anyway, otherwise there are too many great novels (and minor jewels) I'd be cutting myself off from. Sometimes it's harder to adjust. I know the first time I reread Oliver Twist as an adult, I gave it quite a low rating because of the way Fagin is portrayed, though the novel and story remain in my memory as one I actually quite enjoyed on the whole, and I'm sure when I reread it I'll be able to put things into context again, however hateful the standard attitudes towards Jews were in those days.

I find, when I am able, that some novels give me the opportunity to enter into someone else's head, in the sense that I am able to forget who I am and what my own beliefs are, which I guess is a form of suspension of disbelief, and when that happens, I get the most out of my reading experience. Unfortunately, my credulity isn't all that easily stretched, so that lots of fantasy is beyond my reach or appreciation, but I keep trying all the same!

Ilana, that's very interesting, and I realize that the kind of putting aside my own inclinations (prejudices seems too harsh a word....) is what I aim for. My hope is that when I finish, I can then reflect on what I really think. I used to be able to do it more often than I do now. I'm not sure what that betokens. Then too, I grew up in the racist South, and I know what growing up in a particular culture does to a young mind maybe more than people who were reared in more tolerant circles. (I wonder whether that's really true.) I will say that the book that made the greatest impact on me lately in this regard is Our Hidden Lives, those diaries from post-WWII Britain. Every single one of those estimable people - well, one wasn't quite so estimable - was blindly anti-Semitic. I truly had no idea.
Although I'm a Dickens Disciple, I find Oliver Twist hard to take. It remains very near the bottom of my list.

The Mallory/War/Everest book (Into the Silence) continues to fascinate when I have time to read it. Here's a google image of a white rainbow, which is a "fog bow" in very cold climates like the poles and the Himalayas.

>349 LizzieD: That sounds like I good read. I am (in a completely armchair way) fascinated by people who climb mountains. The motivation to do something like that is amazing.

>348 LizzieD: You've raised a point that I'm curious to see you talk more about when you said I grew up in the racist South, and I know what growing up in a particular culture does to a young mind maybe more than people who were reared in more tolerant circles. (I wonder whether that's really true.)

I was reared in what you'd call a tolerant circle, bohemians and liberals, but I'm still filled with prejudices, and I believe LOTS of people who consider themselves open-minded are also filled with them, just different ones.

Anyway, I'm glad you were able to get past the 21st c sticking points for Miss P, because I find the overall message so rewarding. When I made my comment in >347 Smiler69:, I was thinking of a book I read this month, which I thought was really great, and during the reading of which I had a real revelation because truly amazed that I was able to identify with a character with views opposite to my own. I was going to mention it then, but then I thought "must write that review" and wanted to point you to it. But I'll write it soon, today maybe and let you know when it's up.

eta: typos galore, as always.

I agree 100%, Helen. Davis is already (100+ pages in) linking the motivation to climb Everest with the experiences in the trenches of WWI - very, very interesting. I am very taken with this book. It's a fascinating part of the world, and one I know very little about. I want to google every place name, which would mean that I didn't read very much.
Ilana, that's very interesting. I didn't question my racial prejudice until I was well into my teens. I didn't know any black people except the women who worked for my mother and grandmother, and I didn't see them as real people. If someone had suggested that their children should be my friends, I would have been appalled. Then a friend from another town expressed her disappointment in my narrow-mindedness, and I made a point of getting to know some people of color as soon as I got away from home. The thing is that without Patsy or somebody like her, I would never have questioned my world view, and I suppose that nobody challenged Winifred Watson about hers. Anyway, I'll be eager to see your review, and I LOVE the new feature!
(My first lesson in feminism came from my aunt recounting an incident when she was in her 20s. My unmarried father came in late for Sunday dinner, and Grandmother told my aunt to get up and fix her brother a plate. Aunt replied, "Tom knows what time dinner is served. I have worked 6 days this week just like he has AND helped prepare and clean up after dinner. I need some time to myself. He can fix his own plate." Grandmother agreed. Wow! Paradigm shift!)

>352 LizzieD: Wow! Paradigm shift!

Super! She obviously has personality! My mum was probably burning her bras in the late 60s. Of course I had to do all I could to drive her crazy so I became a... *hem*... inappropriate to share here. :-o

Been lurking here without anything to contribute to the conversation, Peggy.

I'm going to be getting the new Peter Mathiessen tome too! From Amazon Vine, those lovely people...

Now, I need to see if I "Kindled" the first of the Raj Quartet books...

>352 LizzieD:. He can fix his own plate.

Good for her. I would have been afraid if I'd said something like that to my mother, the ground would have opened and swallowed me whole. She made me make my three brothers' beds every morning--and I did it, without even thinking to say No. Good grief.

Becky, I'm pretty sure that my aunt was in her 20s, and that was the first time in her life that she ever challenged her mother. It was an event for both of them, and shows character in both of them too, I think.
Yay for us both, Suz! Have you read A Burnable Book? I'll have to check the reviews. It's quite O.K., but I have some really good stuff going now, so it's hard to get to it.
Hi, Roni. I know that lurking game well. Thanks for speaking!
Ilana, you became --- what? A debutante? President of the church youth group? My mind boggles!
O.K. I guess it's time for a new thread....

Happy March Peggy! I saw from a post on Facebook that March is National Bed month so thought I would come over to share as reading in bed is one of my favourite activities, particularly when it's cold.

>351 Smiler69: On prejudice, I completely agree we must all have them and I think what scares me is knowing that I may not know what my prejudices are. There was an interesting article in the Guardian this week on political bias which made me stop and wonder about that (article here).

hi dude

or are you a girl