Boxes of Books - jillmwo's reading in 2014

So it’s January 2 and we’re anticipating a snow storm by this evening. It’s cold so I’m wearing sweats; I’m not obliged to work today as our office won’t re-open until Monday of next week. I’ve checked and we’re not in desperate need of anything in particular (grocery-wise) in advance of the snowstorm. Assuming the storm’s accumulation doesn’t exceed twelve inches, I can manage on the food in the fridge and in the freezer.

Not feeling up to tackling the non-fiction volumes that I keep promising myself I will read in 2014, I plucked Jane Eyre off the shelf. I always associate Jane Eyre with January winter weather (that is, non-happy-holiday, cold, damp weather). When Mr. Brocklehurst comes to meet with her aunt, it’s the fifteenth of January and 10-year-old under-sized Jane is more worried about sharing the crumbs of her morning breakfast roll with a robin on the windowsill than she is about her own hostile environment. There’s a two paragraph portion of Chapter Four where we see Jane struggling with a frozen window sash in order to put crumbs out for the robin. She’s very focused and it’s a very visual moment. She’s not that concerned with the carriage coming up the drive because she’s pretty sure no one is coming to see her. She’s unimportant. Of course, up comes Bessie the nursery maid to get Jane redd up for presentation to Mr Brocklehurst. She scolds, hastily scrubs Jane’s face, whips the pinafore apron off of her, and pushes Jane towards the stairs. Jane is somewhat fearful of the room she’s got to enter and so stands outside the closed door for ten minutes, stalling her entrance until the breakfast room bell gets rung impatiently whereupon she (having already alienated her Aunt Reed by her behavior) enters the room to learn what’s to become of her.

I’m not sure why this is so striking a portion of Jane Eyre for me this am. Bronte describes it so clearly though. I suppose I could make a case that this is included in the text to make the point that Jane herself is more concerned with the robin’s welfare than anyone in that house is actually concerned with Jane’s welfare. Unfortunately, I identify more closely with Bessie who is man-handling the child without regard to her feelings in order to get tasks and chores done, get the child in the right place as called for and doing her best not to draw the ire of a difficult employer, Mrs. Reed.

It must be winter. I’m revisiting Jane Eyre

Titles To Be Read for my Library Book Discussion Group in 2014

January 27 -- Death Comes to Pemberley
February -- no meeting
March 31 -- Stealing Mona Lisa
April 28 -- Beautiful Mystery
May 19 -- Gone Girl
June 30 -- The Bones of Paris
July 28 --Sidney Chambers and the Shadow of Death
August -- no meeting
September 29 -- The Death Instinct
October 27 -- The Map of Lost Memories
November 24 -- A Fatal Winter
December 29 -- The Last Policeman

Jane is a good way to start off a cold, stormy January. Wrap yourself up and enjoy!

I see Gone Girl is your May read with the Discussion Group. A colleague recommended this to me and leant me his copy. independently my daughter recommended it also.

I shall endeavour to get it read by May so that I can share thoughts with you.

Of course, I will have to read Pride & Prejudice and Wuthering Heights before I can get to it. ;)

I hope the snow storm does not cause you too much trouble.

I will be interested to hear what your group thinks of Death Comes to Pemberley...

Another sweats and slippers day; the half foot of snow we got overnight pretty much precludes stepping outside of the house. We have everything we need (shelter, power, warmth, food) so no whining at this end.

With regard to reading, my husband has already finished the book he was given for Christmas, a historical mystery entitled Just Deceits. It’s a courtroom drama with Patrick Henry and John Marshall and the Randolph family of Virginia. He recommends it highly!

With regard to my own pursuits last night, I watched two episodes of the BBC Sherlock. I found that the Irene Adler one hung together well on a second viewing, but the Baskerville one did not. I did catch humor this viewing that I don’t recall from the last one.

Meanwhile, I’m eyeballing Sanderson’s The Rithmatist as I have a book group next week. Not much into YA coming-of-age stories at the moment. I could settle into For Common Things by Jedediah Purdy but that is one that requires real attention. I would never have picked it up if it weren’t for Aaron Sorkin’s The Newsroom. It was a running reference through the second season as it discusses snark as a permeating, poisonous aspect of current culture. I could instead pick up Empty Mansions which seems intriguing non-fiction.

Or I could go find more good bits from Jane Eyre. SO the question is whether I want to be comforted and unchallenged or if I want to begin getting some exercise for those flabby brain muscles. I am however quite comfy on the couch with a Chromebook in my lap so whatever direction we move in terms of reading should not require movement. (A contributing factor to the general flabbiness of the body as well as the brain.)

#6 but the Baskerville one did not

The Baskerville episode is my least favourite so far. I did not think much of it at all. It was more like a Moffat Dr Who episode that got misplaced in his Sherlock folder.

Considering the first two series, and the first episode of the third (but no spoilers here), I think Martin Freeman's characterisation of Watson is the strongest part of the entire show.

Jane Eyre is my all-time favourite book. I may have mentioned that before ... :-)

I have friends who strongly disliked Death comes to Pemberley and went into great detail about their reasons. I will be very interested to see what you and your group think of it. I haven't read the book but this Christmas the BBC showed a TV adaptation of it that I thought was excellent. It had a wonderful cast and the mystery was well paced over three episodes. I hope it will cross the Atlantic so that you can see it.

Obviously I will be following your reading journal this year!

Sakerfalcon, I imagine that I won't be entirely pleased with Death Comes to Pemberley, but I'm hoping to put aside my own expectations and just focus on how she handles the mystery.

I own two copies of Jane Eyre -- one is the New York Public Library’s Collector’s Edition published in 1997, which references items held within the NYPL pertaining to Bronte's work. That edition preserves the breaks from the original three-volume publication. As it happens, the three volume novel had its first break immediately after the attempt to burn Mr. Rochester in his bed, the second break at the point where Jane sinks down beside her bed after the truth of Mr. Rochester’s situation has been made clear, and the third volume naturally closes with a happy ending. Given what Bronte put her characters through, those breaks make good sense for allowing the reader to pause, regroup and get a cup of tea before picking up the thread of Jane’s first-person narrative.

By the time the reader gets to the third volume, Jane has established herself as a young woman possessed of strength and depth of character. In the first volume, we saw her lose Bessie and Helen -- the only two individuals who had seemed to have any genuine regard for her. In the second volume, we see her fall in love and then leave the man she loves on grounds of principle. In the third volume, she is confronted with St. John Rivers, an unhappy if highly disciplined individual. I can’t ever quite come to grips with St. John. He’s as deeply determined to have his own way as Mr. Rochester is and as principled as Jane in working out his own path but, not unlike Eliza Reed, he seems to be moving towards a commitment to ministry for all the wrong reasons. (For those who can’t remember, the generally-thwarted-in-life Eliza Reed converts to Roman Catholicism and enters a French convent, satisfying her own intellectual ambitions by eventually rising to the role of Superior. Charlotte Bronte doesn’t suggest that this is in any way an admirable thing.) Rivers rejects human feelings, believing that he is called to repudiate the woman he actually loves (and who seems as if she might love him in return) in order to pursue his calling in the furthest back of beyond (India, to be specific). He tries to drag Jane with him, believing that she’s formed to serve in much the same way he is. Jane rejects that idea but closes her narrative with a few paragraphs about what happens to Rivers. She actually seems to accord him respect in a way that she does not accord Eliza Reed’s similar choice respect. (Is this sexism or more of an indication of Bronte’s beliefs regarding the Church of Rome?)

In previous readings, I hadn’t really thought of St. John and Eliza as paralleling one another in the story but I could make a legitimate case for it. I wonder if Bronte intended it or if I’m just imposing my own thoughts.

One other thing I noticed in revisiting Jane Eyre. The real difference between Jane Austen and Charlotte Bronte as authors is that Austen sets her heroines in the context of a social network whereas Bronte seems to isolate her heroine. (Please note that I haven't read Shirley and only got part way through Villette before quitting so I may be making an entirely absurd statement.)

Quick: @pgmcc, go get started on Bronte's other stuff!

The comparison of Eliza and St. John is interesting. I hadn't paid much attention to Eliza in prior readings; maybe I'll notice her more the next time.

The only book on your list that I've read is The Beautiful Mystery. It's a wonderful book and would have been in my top tier of 2013 if the sequel, How the Light Gets In, hadn't been even better.

Can't wait to read your thoughts on The Beautiful Mystery (my feelings were mixed) and The Bones of Paris (again, mixed feelings).

I'll be stalking you all year, my dear.

#7 - Definitely agree, even without having seen anything of the third season yet.

*Hides a star among you boxes of books

Found you! Starred.

Definitely continuing to follow you, Jill.

I am here this morning to star your thread. Enjoying your thoughts on Jane Eyre. It has been half a century, at least, since I read the book. It is fun to think about a re-read, but I have a lot going on in the reading life right now, so I guess I'll have to pass.

Harkening back to a previous year when I was obsessing over various productions of Hamlet, look what news story came into my email today!

Benedict Cumberbatch to Star in Hamlet in London 2014 production
http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-dance/news/sherlock-star...

Oh. My. Talk about perfect for the role. I can't imagine a more appropriate piece of casting for the Prince of Denmark.

#19 If he is true to form he will insist on Martin Freeman playing Yorick.

#20 Yorick?!

#21 Yes, Yorick. I knew him well.

A fellow of infinite jest... (You have to work out whether we're talking about Yorick, Martin Freeman, or @pgmcc. Life is way too complex these days...)

But I'm distracted now, because the Folio Society just sent me one of their mailers to persuade me to spend big bucks on WORTHY TITLES in excellent bindings. Before you ask, no, I haven't the money to spend on such things, but the Folio Society assures me that I am a woman of refinement and taste and I deserve to have their products on my shelf. They're offering me Waverley by Sir Walter Scott at a pittance. Of course, modern society doesn't award extra points for having read Sir Walter Scott. Anyway, I'd be more tempted if they were offering Kenilworth. They also have on sale Angela Carter's The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories which actually is a tempting idea. (I only own that in mass market paperback and the acid content in the pages is beginning to show).

#23 ...the Folio Society assures me that I am a woman of refinement and taste ...

I am always amazed at how accurate these marketing documents are.

"WORTHY TITLES in excellent bindings!"

I will not look. I won't. I'm not refined enough.

#20 & #21 - Heh heh! How could they work Freeman in as Yorick unless they do a flashback montage sans dialogue?

#25 - Entirely doable, in these modern times, eh?!
I've watched plenty of theatre with flashbacks shown as video on some screen to think it possible ;-)

For me personally the nerd in me is looking forward to The Imitation Game... I'd go see ANY film about Turing. Having Cumberbatch appear as him is just icing on the cake!
I hope the script, the director and the cast will do Turing justice.

(Edited for clarity...)

For whatever reason 2014 has me more interested in modern Sherlock than historical Downton or even classic Austen.

I spent this weekend immersed in BBC Sherlock, but not necessarily in the way you might think. Yesterday, some station re-ran The Reichenbach Fall (final episode of Season 2 of Sherlock) and I thoroughly enjoyed watching it. At any rate, I own two books that pertain directly to this television show. The first is one of those peculiar merchandising titles that get published because a publisher wants to capitalize on social buzz about a show or a movie. In this instance The Sherlock Files is billed as the offical companion to the hit television series. It’s heavily visual (lots and lots of publicity photos) with relatively short chapters that recap episodes in the voices of Sherlock and John, a few articles that offer up background material on other adaptations of Holmes and the actors who played him, and bits regarding current VIPs from the series (Steven Moffatt, Mark Gatliss, Benedict Cumberbatch, Martin Freeman, etc.). So really not an intellectual read, but perhaps as useful as the Wikipedia articles that cover the BBC Sherlock.

On the other hand, I have on my Kindle a collection of essays entitled: Sherlock Holmes for the 21st Century: Essays on New Adaptations. It’s the kind of collection that emerges as a result of scholarship probing into popular culture; it covers not just the BBC Sherlock but also the Guy Ritchie movies. There’s a chapter about the Horowitz book, The House of Silk as well as a chapter on two short stories by Neil Gaiman that touch on Sherlock Holmes. As the book’s title suggests, the essays are about how the character of Sherlock Holmes gets refashioned for survival and acceptance in the modern world. Frankly, I bought it on the strength of one essay that discussed Sherlock’s capabilities in the context of information literacy as defined and outlined in a particular ACRL (Association of College & Research Libraries) 2000 white paper. That’s the kind of thing that convulses me with laughter even as I’m thinking about how and whether I can reference it in some way for my work. (The author concludes that Sherlock has some issues with regard to using information ethically and legally. Otherwise, he’s pretty good as a role model.)

Quote: The Sherlock series suggests the possibility that the integration of qualities of technological proficiency, cognitive brilliance, information literacy and concern for fellow humans might actually dwell in one person...Twenty-first century Holmes is a master of powerful technology (and the overwhelming information that it brings) that contemporary, ordinary humans attempt to tame and use.

I do get a kick out of this kind of scholarly foray into pop culture. I raise an eyebrow, but I do enjoy it.

That sounds like good geeky fun, Jill. Does it discuss the Laurie King Mary Russell novels?

Not in the collection I was reading today, but I know that there is an essay by Sabine Vanacker that discusses the work of Laurie King in a different collection -- Sherlock Holmes and Conan Doyle: Multi-media Afterlives. I haven't read it myself, but Vanacker wrote something entitled "Sherlock's Progress Through History: Feminist Revisions of Holmes". That talks about the books by both King as well as Carole Nelson Douglas. (I saw a review in Neo-Victorian Studies 5:2 (2012))

#27 I'll have to pass that one on to my sister, a philosophy professor who integrates popular culture into her classes. And see if I can find one for myself too.

#27 - I do get a kick out of this kind of scholarly foray into pop culture. I raise an eyebrow, but I do enjoy it.

Me too. Witness my collection of Trek-related books, crowned by Is Data human?, sub-titled Metaphysics of Star Trek. Maybe I should check out what other fandoms have spawned! ;-)

I really enjoyed this one, Busifer: Flirting with Pride and Prejudice--it managed to be both silly fun and thought-provoking. Of course, Jill will have no interest in it at all. ;)

I think for many of who are not part of the anglophone sphere Jane Austen isn't such an icon. For us in Sweden, for exampe, there are other "must read or die, uncultured scum"-authors. Such as August Strindberg, Karin Boye, Wilhelm Moberg, Harry Martinsson, et al, and I imagine there are others in turn if you're Dutch, or French, or Chinese or... You get it ;)

This is, in itself, quite an interesting topic - how literature have been used historically to reinforce a common national identity...

Actually, that sent me on a brief foray into the Web, @Busifer. I Googled Karin Boye to discover that she was a Swedish poet who lived a relatively short life, dying at age 41 by her own hand. Thank you Wikipedia. However, her poems have been translated into English by David MacDuff and his published translation can be had in Kindle form at a mere $2.99. I take it that this woman is well-known in Sweden? What makes her particularly good? Is her use of language particularly beautiful in her native tongue or is it that she particularly captures a particular mindset of Swedish thought? I am looking for more than Wikipedia will ever provide. (How does she reinforce the national identity?) How would you explain this to someone like me, someone educated in her own language but abysmally provincial otherwise? Boye sounds rather interesting but would I as an American ever be able to read her properly?

("Please note that we only get Strindberg over here in theater classes," she says as a sweeping generalization). I don't recognize the other two male writers at all. Martinsson is a poet? Moberg is billed as Sweden's greatest author? Again, Wikipedia to the rescue.

As for the French, I can claim a passing knowledge of the novels of Victor Hugo and Alexandre Dumas (although admittedly not in the original language of the author). I know nothing about the Dutch or the Chinese.

Well this is embarrassing. I seem to be the living proof of Busifer's point.

Oh, and @Marissa_Doyle? I apparently did once buy that book (based on Amazon's records) but I believe I passed it on to someone else (who has never returned it so I guess she agrees with you re its value). I seem to have deleted it from my library here on LT (another embarrassment to be caught out in).

#34 - Ah, so many threads to pick up!

Karin Boye is famous for her painful, beautifully written, poetry, but she also wrote Kallocain, a dystopia set in the future and therefore labelled as science fiction. The times she lived in didn't fit who she was - she was bisexual, which was then a crime in Sweden - and it is apparent in her writings that.
I don't think she was used consciously to form the national identity but her importance is in giving voice to the non-conformist part of society and she has been posthumously recognised as one of our greatest poets and for many she is a prime interpreter of what we nationally think of as "the Swedish melancholia" (which is seen as a national character trait).

Wilhelm Moberg, on the other hand, has probably been used to defined national identity quite consciously. His most important work is the Emigrant series which all kids are forced to read in school. He gave voice to the labouring classes, the landless and exploited, and has been an important inspiration, or so I judge, to a flood of later writers. A major theme seems to have been (I must confess to not having read all of his novels) escape from the rural hinterlands, something which coincides with a similar movement in real time, as industrialisation screamed for a workforce.

Strindberg is a most revered national poet of ours, writing both about moral dilemmas. Also a forced read in school. My relationship to his writings are too complex to make me fit for a objective statement ;-)

Harry Martinsson was part of a literary group where most think his wife, Moa Martinsson, was far superior to him but as women often did during the 30's and 40's she stood in his shadow and it was he that was awarded the Nobel Prize for his literature. Also part of the canon, ie something no Swedish kid can evade.

Of these I think perhaps Boye and maybe Moberg can have a wider interest. Moberg was very interested in what happened to the Swedish emigrants once they arrived in the US and researched on location (mainly Minnesota, I think) while doing most of his writing while in California. So there's a kind of link there. Boye could be interesting for her poetry and the moral conflicts and pains she gives voice to.

Now see, that's enough for me to go on. You've given enough background on each to pique my curiosity. Certainly I'm interested in Boye and Moberg. Although when you reference "the Swedish melancholia", it does set me back a bit.

Well, that part was a bit tongue in cheek - we use it depreciatingly ;-)

"the Swedish melancholia"

Isn't that a bit like cauliflower and cheese?

:-)

;P

In reality I think its roots are in our strong Lutheran tradition - "don't put yourself forward, don't think you're worth anything", (because if you do God's wrath will be upon you). That last part is nothing our modern secular society even thinks about in a conscious way any more, but it's ingrained, at least in those born prior to, say, 1980's. The effect is a kind of bleak outlook on life. Viola, "Swedish melancholia".

#39

It sounds like the Irish Catholic guilt which would apply to the same age group. We don't have a nice term for it. :-(

Is it Friday yet? I need a weekend.

It is coming, it is coming.... the weekend, I mean.

As an American I have been friends with people from many different cultural backgrounds and it is interesting to look for those "national personalities". My general impression of the Swedish-Americans I've known is that they have a very steady, seemingly nonemotional, outlook. Unlike my Italian-American friend who, as he describes it, "leads with his feelings" all the time. Interesting.

I'm often accused of being "Italian", which in Sweden mean you can't speak without using your hands ;-)
US people often come through as pushy compared to us here - natives behaving that way are often labelled "un-Swedish", "alien".
As you say - interesting!

Hey, I had a teacher once require me in class to sit on my hands while responding to a series of questions. It was a very tough thing! But useful.

I remember catching part of a Rocky movie on TV that was dubbed in a foreign language. It took me a while to figure out it was dubbed in Italian, because there was no extra hand waving to go with the dubbing. Interesting what things we learn to associate together, without realizing it.

#45 A friend once gave me a CD of historic recordings of star performers at the Mariinksy Theatre 100 years ago. It took me some time to realize that the Magic Flute arias sounded odd because they were sung in Russian.

If I appear to be disorganized and discombobulated in my reading selections, it’s because I have too many choices and too few leisure hours. I started this week reading mysteries -- two Anne Perry Christmas novellas (both short and each with a morally edifying ending, given the seasonal requirements) and P.D. James’ Death Comes to Pemberley which is paced rather on the slow side but which has been interesting so far. Wickham found drunk over a dead body? No doubt in my mind but that he did it! Entirely plausible! Hang him, I say! (No, not really. I’m not advocating we go that route in real life.)

But then I have some other non-fiction stacked up in the TBR that is (um, like, um, y’know) actually challenging. A book about Hamlet by an actor who has actually played him, a book about the influence of the Book of Common Prayer on Shakespeare’s work, and so forth. But at the moment, I don’t have the mind for Shakespeare.

Then there’s that whole scurrilous book about Jeff Bezos and Amazon -- The Everything Store that’s causing a bit of a ruckus in the industry. Do I really want to know why I shouldn’t be shopping at Amazon? I don’t really have to read it for work if I don’t want to; I just bought it in a fit of guilt over an extended stretch of work-avoidance-syndrome.

There’s the book I got because I was intrigued by the initial coverage in the New York Times. Empty Mansions is about a woman who inherited the main part of a Gilded Age Fortune and then spent the rest of her life doing exactly what she wanted to do. She was incredibly generous to many people she knew, but she also withdrew from society in general (well, at least in terms of her own physical presence anywhere). It’s kind of horrifying and kind of pitiable. Yet she clearly wasn’t unhappy. (Her relatives were in terms of picking the bones off of her fortune, but that’s another can of worms.)

Do I want to re-read The Silmarillion? Or do I want to plow into The Children of Hurin that's sitting on my ottoman?

Then we must blame @MrsLee for pointing me to the first book in the Aubrey-Maturin series by Patrick O’Brien. She said I should read it because of Jane Austen which I totally get, because the British Navy is all over Persuasion (so clearly we could get away with calling it research if I were really writing that murder mystery where we off Sir Walter Eliot) And it’s dirt cheap this weekend if I get it in a Kindle edition. (Which I totally did, because after all @MrsLee told me to get right on that. There may even have been a finger wag involved, but I couldn't be sure)

The rest of you have been babbling on about Mr. Penumbra and Ancillary Justice and other titles. And even though I’ve only got about $40 dollars left in Amazon gift cards left from Christmas, I could *easily* spend $100 on Shakespeare productions on DVD. Let’s be honest; sometimes it’s easier to watch than it is to read…

Didn’t someone on LT invest a random generator of some sort that picks books for you? I don’t mean the recommendation engine; I mean one that pulls the book out of the pile you already own and shoves it under your nose...

I have too many choices and too few leisure hours.

I can identify! FWIW, I found Children of Hurin quite a tough slog. There was just about nobody that I liked.

My solution is to pack all my owned books away and move from one house into a motel and wait to move into another house. Then I join several groups which have suggested books to read - my real life, face to face, book group; the WWI group reading going on in the 75 Book Challenge group; and Mark's American Authors Challenge. Bingo, I buy more books (spent all my Birthday and Christmas gift cards) and I have books to read. I ignore the FACT that I own a whole ton of books. I will live to be 125 I swear becaue I want to read all these books!

in short, you have my sympathy, and empathy. I know of what you speak.

Empty Mansions looks both intriguing and disturbing. I wonder how to pronounce Huguette?

Guessing: "you-GET"?

#47 - I don’t really have to read it for work if I don’t want to; I just bought it in a fit of guilt over an extended stretch of work-avoidance-syndrome.

Ha. Been there! I often end up both reading and enjoying those books, when I finally get there. I'm pretty sure reading that book would have me dislike Amazon as much as I disliked Google after having read In the plex (which, incidentally, was a good read - I tend to read Steven Levy's books, whatever the topic).

Edited to fix some, hrm, spell-errors ;)

Re #50 and #51, according to the New York Times obituary for her, it's hyoo-GETT. So Meredy's pretty much on the money.

Re: #52, I know I should be wary of all of the various Internet giants and their "free" services, but to be fair, with only one exception in the past 20 years, I have never had a real problem. Anyway, it is too late to put those genies back in the bottle. Our world is changing and we're going to have to come to better grips with the change. And really, if I read the book and can get the mental space to put it into proper context, I probably will be better at translating the change for the member organizations I'm supposed to be helping. It's finding the time to read and finding the space to think.

@maggie1944, I know you understand and @jim53, thanks for that input. I will factor it in.

I've continued reading Death Comes to Pemberley and I'm trying to work out a couple of things. I think P.D. James was trying to capture Austen's style of telling a story. There's a surprising lack of dialogue between characters which is probably why the casual readers of P&P were not particularly enamoured of this. That said, I find the conflicts that she's focusing on to be of particular interest. Is Wickham (as bad as we know him to be) capable of murder or is he simply the easy choice for murderer? And in that context, is Darcy capable of overcoming his distaste for Wickham when he knows the man to be a blackguard in his relations with women? Those I think are rather good points to be pulling out of P&P. Still, I think James found she would have to futz about a bit with our understanding of such characters as Colonel Fitzwilliam and Georgiana Darcy in order to frame her crime novel. (And really, the forensic examination of the body as delivered by the two medical men she presents was in my estimation a bit more modern than two such practitioners would perhaps have been. But I think she actually did some research into this period for another book of hers so perhaps I'm wrong and the scientific understandings of that time might have been further along than I believed.)

Pronunciation of Huguette - it is french, and the hint of the h before the "you" sound is vital.

I loved the book. I thought it was very interesting how a naturally introverted, and perhaps not intellectually gifted, person would spend oodles of money; and how low her "never met her" relatives could go in trying to get her money after she died.

I have a friend, who at the age of 78, acts as an advocate for elderly people who can not advocate for themselves any longer. She is absolutely livid about the concept of Caregivers who gain profits beyond normal professional compensation for the care they give elderly, wealthy people. She is unshakable in the idea that if you take gifts of money from such people you are diminishing their dignity. The person, no matter how intellectually "gone" they might be, probably realizes at some level that they are having to pay for someone to care for them.

As a single, never married, "older" person I recognize how often I am ignored by life and folks as it all rushes past me. I especially hate it when a young female clerk looks over my head (I'm 5 feet tall) and asks a late arriving, young male what he would like. I like the people who remember me when I come into their store, but I also recognize these folks are not friends. I don't make many new friends these days, and I cherish the people I count as friends, and who have been in my life for years.

Lucky for me, I do not have oddles of money.

#53 - I definitely agree with you - no way putting the genie back, and as our tools change so do we. And our society. I has always been such and will continue that way, regardless of what some people would like or not.
The thing for me with the Google book was that many people champion Google over for example Apple, which they perceive as evil and closed, were Google are supposed to be open and openminded. Well, that last part certainly is true if you include "don't care about consistency or how our decisions may affect other peoples' lives" into the the defintion of openminded.

So, it gave me ammunition to argue with the blue-eyed believers ;)

I do use Apple, Google, and Microsoft products both for work and play. So there, no way of escaping. But it doesn't make sense to idolise companies whose core business is to stay profitable, regardless of the ethics involved. Was what I meant.

I'll probably read the Bezos book at some point, for curiosity... and for the same reasons that you have :)

@jillmwo and @Busifer, I strongly recommend Nick Harkaway's non-fiction book, The Blind Giant: Being Human in a Digital World, for an excellent discussion on how the technology of the world affects us and how we must consciously decide how we want to use the tools and capabilities the new technology provide before we are swept along by the commercial entities that seem to be dictating how we live our lives. It is a marvellous book and it needs to be read to the end to get the benefit of the arguments presented. I know I may sound like I am standing on a soap box (I am actually sitting on quite a small chair) but I cannot recommend this book strongly enough if you want an insight into how technology is affecting global society.

Hmn, how tech affects individuals and society as a whole is part of my job description so it's not like I'm not thinking about those matters daily. Hadn't heard about that book, though. Thanks for the tip :)

*wagging finger*

I would never wish to be accused of being unclear. :D

People who love Austen do tend to become a bit odd about her novels. If you get the basics wrong, there are those fans who will string you up without even the briefest hesitation. When you muddle the names of the two unmarried sisters from the end of Pride & Prejudice -- that is, Mary and Kitty -- many Janeites will find it unforgivable. We know that it was Kitty who marries the clergyman and Mary who is left to be the comfort of her mother. So when P.D. James appears to flub something so very basic in the beginning of her sequel to Jane Austen’s masterpiece, it’s hard to know how to respond. James is a great fan of Austen herself and Death Comes to Pemberley is clearly her homage to the novelist. So did she simply set her “sequel” in an alternate universe? It’s possible. Because in this one, not only does Mary Bennett end up married to an officious member of the clergy, Colonel Fitzwilliam is not the charming military man of P&P but is instead a more brooding, older man who has inherited a title and fortune but who may not be able to charm and win the heart of his ward, Georgiana Darcy. (It has just struck me that James’ characterization of Colonel Fitzwilliam isn’t that far removed from the way Alan Rickman played Colonel Brandon in the 1995 version of Sense & Sensibility. That is, Brandon before it all turns out okay. Hmmm. Now, there’s something to think about.)

P.D. James has said in the past that the motives for murder boil down to “love, lust, lucre, and loathing”. Death Comes to Pemberley features all four. What it also does is revisit the mistakes that Darcy and Colonel Fitzwilliam make in their guardianship of Georgiana just as it reflects the struggle for upward mobility in the class hierarchy of the time. While not the very best of her work, there’s nothing wrong with James’ sequel to Pride and Prejudice if you are willing to recognize it as being primarily an entertaining homage rather than an obsequious one. At any rate, I’m keeping it on my shelf and there aren’t many Austen sequels that have made that cut.

Shifting gears now and reading all about the bombing of Wall Street in 1920. (But don't tell MrsLee that!)

8> I too watched this adaptation having disliked the book intensely. I was fascinated to find that a poor book made a good TV show, helped by a great cast and good production values. It was also very well photographed.

59: How is Mrs. Darcy (Elizabeth Bennet) in Death comes to Pemberley, @jillmwo? I didn't read the book, but I saw there's a BBC series about this book, and it struck me how Elizabeth seems to have lost her youthful exuberance and quirkyness. The bits I saw had her looking serious all the time. Ok, someone got murdered and all, but it still seems out of character. How is this in the book?

Elizabeth isn't the primary protagonist in this, even though the story opens with James' aligning us with Elizabeth's views on what has happened so far. In chapters two, three and four, she provides us with a sense of how the current problem/situation is viewed from several other characters' points of view (thereby establishing an overall sense of the conflict), but really the reader spends more time with Darcy than with Elizabeth. I do think James' sequel suffers from a lack of that sparkling dialogue with which Austen imbues Elizabeth.

I am looking forward to seeing the BBC version on PBS here in the states later this year.

62: Ah, thanks, @jillmwo. It's a pity Elizabeth doesn't have a larger role...

Well, I'm picking up Master and Commander to give O'Brian a second chance. Not very far along, perhaps just two or three pages into Chapter Three. But I'm finding the two male leads to be intriguing and if O'Brian doesn't frighten me away with the bewildering variety of technical names of the sails on board the Sophie, I'll enjoy this.

Can't you just let that stuff whistle through your brain, like the cetacean bits in Moby Dick?

??? Why is the touchstone not pointing to Herman Melville's book????? It's not even showing up on the list unless I chose a specific edition. (Like "Herman Melville's Moby Dick by Herman Melville.")

Some of you above (early in the year) asked me to let you know how the library book discussion group felt about Death Comes to Pemberley. Due to bad weather, we didn't have a high turn-out this evening. Only four of my regulars showed up. Of those four, two had *never* read Pride and Prejudice and the other two had read it decades ago. It quickly became clear that even though James outlined the basic necessary details from P&P in Chapter One of this book, the group felt that the author had assumed too great a knowledge of the original source material. What had occurred between Wickham and Darcy that had caused so much anger and disdain? One woman felt that there were too many characters and it was terribly confusing. Another felt that the author (whose work she was familiar with) had been too rushed in writing the book and that another revision was needed. Marge, who had been suffering from a dreadful respiratory illness while she was trying to read and who was one of the ones who had never read P&P in the first place, said she gave up. She didn't just didn't get it.

A bit later, I was explaining some of the background and tossed off something on the order of how fond I was of Austen's six novels. One of the women elbowed her companion and grinned and said she'd NEVER have guessed.

So I think everyone agrees that this is imperfect as a mystery (murderer makes a deathbed confession but it's not a character you've seen "on-stage") and while it may work as an homage to Austen, it still doesn't work if you're not deeply familiar with the source material. They are hoping that March's selection will be an easier read.

By the way, I saw Abby and Kate today at ALA Midwinter. Librarything is blessed with lovely staff members.

Oh, jealous--I got to do ALA Midwinter when it was in Boston a few years back.

>66 jillmwo:: Thanks for sharing! It's interesting to hear the reactions of people who hadn't read P & P; clearly Pemberley doesn't stand alone (but then, I think the writers of this sort of thing are aiming at fans of the original). It sounds as though the TV version adapted the story to make it work better as a mystery.

Jilmwo, the primary thrust ofO'Brien's Master and Commander is the interaction between the characters, not so much the direct action, so if you are intrigued with the people already, you should do fine with it.

66: thanks, @jillmwo, that's interesting to read! I imagine a great deal of the fun is due to knowing P&P, so I can see why your group was not so enthusiastic. Still, I'm not sure if it is my kind of book, I think I'd prefer to reread P&P.

66> what a pity your group was a bit smaller than usual on this occasion Jillmwo,; In a way though lack of knowledge of Austen could be a bit of an advantage. As a long time devotee of the novels I was supremely irritated by the disservice done to poor Colonel Fitzwilliam, a most amiable character in Pride and Prejudice and I thought that poor Elizabeth completely lacked the sparkle of the original. This last is forgivable as her creation is a very hard act to follow. Not knowing the novel would save one from being critical.

However what really got my goat was the gratuitous insertion of characters from some of Jane Austen's other novels. Why for goodness sake! I would feel a total curmudgeon here were it not for the many LT reviews supporting my low opinion of this novel. I speak moreover as a great admirer of P.D James. She is an impeccable stylist in her own right .

She did shift his personality, but James gave some rationale for it -- suddenly the Colonel had a title and serious responsibilities. That might be sufficient reason for him to become more sober and moody. But this raises a question about literary sequels in context of genre expectations.

In P&P, who *would* you pick as a potential murderer? Wickham? Plausible but obvious, as James makes clear. What about Mr. Collins? He'd be desirable as a victim, but could you make him into a plausible murderer? Is he capable of that or is he too stupid? What about Caroline Bingley? Or Charlotte or Lydia? Any (actually, all) of them have a dark streak to their personality, but would they be capable of murder? Austen's original novel didn't really present them in that light. But she was doing light and sparkling -- not noir.

I think it's a problem for anyone trying to write a sequel to a well-known literary novel. There is an obligation to maintain the recognizability of the original characters but at the same time, there is an obligation to create something new and entertaining. Not too predictable but not too far afield either.

But it would be an interesting exercise to consider which famous literary characters could be made believable as murderers. Anyone want to make nominations?

James Steerforth. Heathcliff. Hester Prynne. First three that came to mind. And of course all those that already are murderers: Raskolnikov...Mr. Hyde...

Jo March might murder someone who was threatening to expose a youthful indiscretion of Meg's.

72: I take it we're not counting duels? Because in that case, I'd say Mr. Darcy. To defend his sister's honor, he might kill someone, if it were withing the bounds of society...

Wickham isn't quite there yet, I think, but I could see him murder someone if he in more trouble than he already was... And Lydia is so incredibly self-centered and stupid that I could envision her as a murderess as well.

I can see Marianne Dashwood murdering someone in a fit of passion, to protect someone she loves. She would be appalled and remorse-ridden afterwards, but she does lead with her heart.

#76 I wonder about her sister-in-law Fanny. She's certainly conniving, and her reaction to Lucy's secret is pretty strong.

In conjunction with reading Master and Commander, I've been reading PD James' The Maul and the Pear Tree which is a non-fiction title dealing with the historical investigation of a brutal family murder that took place in 1811. What makes it interesting is that the crime takes place in a London neighborhood near the docks and therefore frequented by sailors so I can imagine what Aubrey and Maturin might encounter when they return to England. There are also some interesting discussions of the "Law-and-Order" structures that supported and impeded criminal investigations of the period. With regard to M&C, I am not quite as engaged by O'Brien as I had hoped I might be but it's interesting enough (in between the lessons on English naval practice and equipment). I agree with Janny above in #69 that focusing on the character interaction is the key.

Between reading Austen, watching movies set during the period and dipping into criticism and history, it feels in some respects as if I have embarked on a graduate level study of the period. I can't think why, although I do think it's easier to retain information if there's a sufficient quantity of related materials to keep everything hung together in the brain.

BTW, regarding the ideas you've floated above about the potential for murder by some literary characters, I like Heathcliff as a murderer although I think the use of him as a murderer has the same problem as with Wickham. Just a bit too easy to believe. OTOH, I rather like Hester Prynne as a suspect.

I also like the idea of Mr. Darcy accused of murder. Of Marianne and Lydia, I will only say that both seem far too emotional to be able to conceal any crime they'd committed. Although it might be fun to read something in which we watch Lydia move from being a thoughtless, harum-scarum idiot of a teenager to developing into a truly cold and calculating adult bent on eliminating those who represent a threat to her well-being.

Fanny Dashwood? Ever since I read this (www.jasna.org/film/fannystory.pdf), I've had way too much sympathy for her as a victim of the cultural norms of her time...

BTW, I watched a portion yesterday of Death Comes to Pemberley on YouTube. I do hope it will come to the US sometime soon. I think I'm right that it was filmed at Chatsworth? Anyone know for sure?

Thanks. I chose Heathcliff and Hester as people who could believably be driven to extremes by passion. I see what you mean about Heathcliff, though.

>79 jillmwo:: Yes, it was Chatsworth, maybe to provide some continuity with the last movie version which also used it for Pemberly. Or perhaps it's just that the Duchess needs some cash!

I'm huddling under the covers, worrying about tomorrow's ice storms and power outages. This is when Master and Commander works for me. Mediterranean seas, blue skies and really basic surgical approaches.

I think I would prefer to do without the really basic surgical approaches.

I'm with Sylvia on this one.

How basic? Rusty knives, leeches and dirty linen?

And brandy. Lots of brandy. :)

Saws for sure.

Hi, I'm trying to catch up on threads today and I confess it has been way too long since last I visited here. I hope you will forgive me.

Hope the weather blues are gone away.

Okay, it’s been a month since I’ve posted and my mind has been wandering about looking for something that will adequately engage it. It is true that I’ve actually finished only one book in that time frame. That was Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Sign of Four. The only rationale I can give is that it was Sherlock Holmes, one of the four novels which I hadn’t ever finished reading, I was driven to it by the BBC Sherlock, trying to figure out if there was some kind of parallel or common thread. The commonality was Sholto, a military figure in both versions, but beyond that, I didn’t discern much connection. In the novel, the story is a rather rolicking adventure, with a climax of Holmes and Watson speeding along on a water way after the bad guys. In the BBC version with Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman, it’s a wedding with no great chase scene whatsoever. Harrumph.

Meanwhile I’m reading Study in Scarlet as I have seen indications on threads that there will be a group read somewhere.

Other books residing on the ottoman
(1) The Invention of Murder by Judith Flanders
(2) The Maul and the Pear Tree by P.D. James and T.A. Critchley (mentioned somewhere above)

Those two are related in the sense that Invention of Murder opens with a chapter about the crime featured in Maul and the Pear Tree. (Edited to clarify here: The real connection in my mind is that the Marr murder discussed in both of these books took place during the time of Jane Austen and that's how I wound up with them. The connection was through me thinking about a murder mystery set in one of Austen's novels.)

(3) The Book of Common Prayer: A Biography by Alan Jacobs, an author whose name you may remember from that fabulous love letter to reading, The Pleasures of Reading in An Age of Distraction. This is tied to another book I think I mentioned somewhere to someone, (4) Shakespeare’s Common Prayers: The Book of Common Prayer and the Elizabethan Age. The latter is a discussion of literary allusions to the BCP as they appear in many of Shakespeare’s works. The so-called biography is more historical in nature, tracing the political tugs of war that have shaped the BCP.

I set aside Master and Commander because I kept getting interrupted, but I do intend to return to it. It will just require an act of re-orientation to get back into the flow.

Finally, my treat to myself this year in the wake of my Annual Conference was the Folio Society edition of Jane Austen’s Letters -- the pretty version recommended by @Maura49. I may not see it for a week or so (as it is a used copy, that isn’t eligible for Amazon Prime shipping), but when it arrives I am hoping the lovely end papers will satisfy my need for flowery embellishments in the wake of this stressful winter.

Because (and can you believe this?) they say we might have another six inches of snow this weekend. No wonder I'm lacing my homemade evening eggnog with bourbon.

Here you go, Jill:

Group read of Sherlock Holmes in GD
http://www.librarything.com/topic/170096

Welcome back.

Welcome back, jill--you've been missed.

Thank you, Meredy, and Jill, I hope you will join us. Those are the two books I've read so far, but I haven't posted much about The Sign of Four. If you go first, I'll post some too. There is no order or organization as to which Holmes story we are reading, everyone is dipping in as they please and posting thoughts.

Well, it appears there were more parallels between the BBC Sherlock Sign of Three and Doyle's The Sign of Four than I'd initially thought. I went over to the thread (thank you, @Meredy) and contributed there about what I saw, so now the ball is back in your court, @MrsLee !!

Good to have you back, Jill. :o)
I'm working on Study in Scarlet as well. I'm sure I've read it before. Either that or I've seen so many different adaptations over the years that I just think I've read it. I haven't decided if I'll keep going on with the Holmes or not.

I am told by "friends and lovers" that my continuing levels of distraction are a by-product of stress from work (changing boss, changing job title, changing responsibilities), from the winter (anxiety over managing snow and ice) and from other events in the past six months. It's certainly remains a challenge. I have been soldiering through the titles I mentioned earlier - The Invention of Murder is fascinating but rather on the long side and some of the others, while having the benefit of being short, are not really as engaging as I'd like.

To combat this to some extent, I've been trying to stick with Rapt: Attention and the Focused Life which actually was pulled from one of the many boxes of books I have sitting about. It's an encouragement to try to keep a positive outlook as narrowing one's focus tends to bring one's mental outlook down. It's also kind of interesting as it confirms some of what I've heard in watching Sherlock. You know that bit where Sherlock is talking to his brother about loneliness and about the two of them making assumptions about each other and about the larger world because they had no frame of reference.

I think that the problem with Winifred Gallagher's book is that I am afraid it is a little too bright and sunny in outlook. She wrote it in the wake of her own bout with a cancer diagnosis, so I may be selling her short, but it seems to me that she's not granting sufficient weight to the barriers that face those with challenges. For some demographics of the population (white wealthy professionals), telling others to expand their outlook without acknowledging that sometimes there's no happy ending strikes me as a bit facile.

One update -- I have come to the conclusion that PD James really did know what she was doing in Death Comes to Pemberley from the perspective of medical examinations and in terms of diagnosing what the real challenge for Darcy would have been when faced with the chance to readily dispose of Willoughby. The Maul and the Pear Tree throws a lot of light onto various social aspects of the time period, the kind of things that don't come up in run-of-the-mill Jane Austen sequels.

I knew there was something I was forgetting. This past week, I did a discussion with one of my book groups about The Death Instinct. The group was relatively divided in its views. Two felt it was too analytical in its approach to telling a tale of murder and suspense while Didi and I both liked it because it was clear the author was making an historical point. Specifically, the book is set around the Wall Street Bombing of 1920 -- in the wake of World War I and in the shadow of Freudian analysis. I felt the book was about corruption (not just about the corruption of money and of human lives, but also about the corruption that seeps into human behavior if issues aren't exposed and discussed honestly.) Didi saw similar patterns in the story, although she didn't couch her ideas in vocabulary like mine.

It's not a bad book although it wasn't a best seller like Rubenfeld's debut mystery with these two sleuths, which was The Interpretation of Murder. What was humorous was that in an interview that the author gave to Publishers Weekly, he said that one of the characters was supposed to be him (dark, handsome and brooding) while the second sleuth was supposed to be a cross between Jimmy Stewart and Columbo. When I shared that with the group, they just couldn't see it. Frankly, neither could I. (Although we don't know the author so maybe he really is dark, handsome and brooding, but write-ups characterize him as being a beloved professor at Yale Law School. Somehow that doesn't quite sound likely...)

...a cross between Jimmy Stewart and Columbo.

That is an interesting concept. I am intrigued just thinking about that combination. I find Jimmy Stewart's voice in my head saying, "Weh, weh, well, ju, ju, just one thing before I go. Oh, I'm sorry, could I use your telephone? Is that a picture of you and the murder victim?"

Oh dear. Now I have to go track down a copy of The Maul and the Pear Tree.

For all of those fans of George R.R. Martin out there: http://www.fastcocreate.com/3027447/game-of-thrones-brings-a-dizzying-virtual-re...

The lovely Folio Society edition of Jane Austen's Letters arrived today and it is GORGEOUS. I love it when they make books beautiful. Flowers on the cover, clear printing on smooth quality stock, and it has *pictures* which I did not know when I ordered it. Pictures in color! Sigh. I am clearly using Austen to distract me from the more serious issues, but oh, this is a lovely thing. Thank you @Maura49 for bringing that edition to my attention. I am about to go wallow in Jane Austen's wit. For example, "Mr. Richard Harvey is going to be married, but as it is a great secret & only known to half the neighborhood, you must not mention it."

I don't always read Jane Austen, but when I do, I wallow.

>99 jillmwo: That is just too cool, Jill!

It was my pleasure. You inspire me to go and take another look at my copy. I must admit that it has been sitting, unread, on my bookshelf for some time.

#99 by @jillmwo> oh thanks for posting that!

I *love* the Oxford University Press blog. Today's entry is about Jane Austen's Letters (http://blog.oup.com/2014/03/jane-austen-letter-writing/) Oh, and for no good reason today, I ordered a copy of John Halperin's biography of Austen.

Would anyone buy the idea that I had to buy the book because after all, today it SNOWED again? Or would you all see that for the wicked rationalization that it is?

what will you buy the next time it snows?

>104 jillmwo: Have you ever pretended it was snowing when you spotted a book you wanted to buy?

I remember watching an American comedienne (whose name I forget) and she had a story about how she used to buy herself a nice new dress any time she broke up with a boyfriend. She admitted to breaking up with boyfriends when she spotted a nice dress she wanted. (I remember. It is Rita Rudner. She is brilliant.)

This isn’t about books I have read, but more about a set of books I can’t make up my mind to read. This past weekend, my husband and I watched the 2005 PBS mini-series, To The Ends of the Earth. It is based on a trilogy of titles by William Golding, specifically Rites of Passage, Close Quarters, and Fire Down Below. The trilogy was written (so Wikipedia tells me) over the course of 13 years so the perspective of author as well as protagonist matures over time.

If you’re thinking that watching Benedict Cumberbatch and Sam Neill would make up for the grim aspects of a sea-going tale in the early 19th century, let me disabuse you. Both actors are wonderful in their roles, as is Victoria Hamilton playing the only sensible female on board, but we see all the unsanitized aspects of life spent in close quarters. Vomit. Blood. Bile. Man has a very thin veneer of civilization here -- a very thin veneer.

The main character is a young man, Edmund Talbot, who sets off on a sea voyage in 1815, en-route to a position in the government of Australia. Despite his affluent background, the ship he’s on is neither the biggest nor the most comfortable. It’s cramped and perpetually damp, and over the course of the three books, it becomes increasingly less sea-worthy. There are other passengers on board, but Edmund’s background means that he outranks all of them socially. Edmund has to learn how to navigate the tricky social hierarchy aboard ship as well as the consequences that may be suffered by others due to his failure to regard such niceties. He has to act as a go-between between ship’s personnel and the cranky community of passengers, all of whom are older than Edmund if lower on the social rung. As one might expect of a series written by the author of Lord of the Flies, no one on board behaves well. For those of you who successfully avoided reading Lord of the Flies in high school, Golding didn’t have a very high opinion of the general run of humanity. Still, we are led to believe that Edmund eventually matures, learns to respect quality in others regardless of status, and begins to assume responsibility for ensuring a greater good to the community. (That is, unless they cleaned up the ending in order to please the television viewing audience...)

I went to Google Books to metaphorically flip through the pages of the books. As they’re supposed to be Edmund Talbot’s journals, each is written in a first-person perspective with a mock early-nineteenth-century style. Between the language, the highly masculine narrative, and Golding’s general attitude towards humanity, I doubt I’ll read the trilogy even though the first one won the Man Booker prize in 1980. So my question to the rest of you is, has viewing something on screen ever prompted you to choose NOT to read a title generally designated as high quality literature?

>104 jillmwo: There are books that you must buy when it snows. There are also books that you must buy when it doesn't snow. Sometimes when you squint a little and hold the book at an angle, it looks like it's on both lists. Anybody could make a little mistake about a thing like that.

@Meredy, you made me chortle out loud with that. (Because you know, it's snowing outside right this minute! No, seriously! Snowing in March, and there's a credit sitting there in my Amazon account. Do I want something written in the 1920's? Or do I want science fiction?)

>107 jillmwo: - Yes, I'm sure I have. But I'll have to think about it for a while and then come back.

All I could come up with was Howards End, Jill.

So let me tell you a little bit about a mystery we read for my library discussion group tonight. It's not a traditional murder mystery at all; it's a "caper" novel. A charming little group of con men, pickpockets, and forgers come together to steal a painting in 1911. They decide to steal the Mona Lisa. Now this really happened back in 1911. It was quite the news sensation of the year. All kinds of people (including Pablo Picasso) were taken into custody and questioned about their whereabouts, etc. Finally, the French police decided that a lower-class Italian janitor who had worked at the Louvre was the guilty party. He in turn suggested that he was a patriot rather than a common thief; the real thief was Napoleon who had plundered Italy and stolen its cultural heritage. The book I read is called Stealing Mona Lisa and it's actually quite fun. It's a fast read, well-paced and marvellously crafted around the various theories regarding the theft. (It was the theft that catapulted the Mona Lisa to fame. Prior to that, it hadn't been considered to be of much interest). But Carson Morton turns the story of the theft into a meditation on celebrity, on the value and appreciation of art, and on the nature of honesty and deceit. The library group loved the book (*whew*) and were intrigued by how much of the history had been incorporated into the fiction.

Honestly, in my opinion, first go google the theft of the Mona Lisa and see what you can learn. Then go read this delightful and gently humorous book. You'll get a kick out of it.

>>111 clamairy:, seriously? What was it about Howards End? I loved Emma Thompson in that role.

Jill, that book sounds way fun!

>112 jillmwo: that sounds like a lot of fun, and... yes! my library has it.

>113 jillmwo: - She was awesome. but she was rather ill-used by her husband, I thought. I'll probably read it eventually. But I wasn't in a real hurry to get to it after seeing the film, like I was with A Room with a View.

>112 jillmwo: - That looks great!

And just when I begin to think that life will be returning to some level of routine, we discover that raccoons have taken up residence in our garage.

Isn't nature wonderful!

>117 jillmwo: Well at least our monkeys live somewhere else! (Actually, we seem to have found a solution to that problem: Better Half saw a bazooka-sized water pistol in the hardware shop. The "ammunition" is a litre bottle of water; we tried it out a week ago, and the monkeys haven't been seen since.)

>119 hfglen: Beware, Hugh. The monkeys are building a water cannon.

>117 jillmwo: What type damage can the raccoons do? Are they vicious? Would they be nice with some plumb sauce?

>121 pgmcc: Raccoons can be vicious. If they are amorous, it sounds like an invasion of pig aliens has landed. It is a freaky sound. They also love to clean out fish ponds, and can be mean/dangerous to cats, deadly to chickens and other fowl. Their cuteness is a cover-up.

...but we who won't have to live with them think them VERY cute, to compensate for their general evilness ;-)

>120 pgmcc: I fear you may be right, Pete. While we were out this morning, they snuck into the garage and stole the gardener's lunch :(

>124 hfglen: That sounds more like guerrilla tactics, not monkey tactics.
;-)

>125 pgmcc: groan!

Well at least they didn't go ape and steal everything ;)

>126 Jim53: My work here is done.

>125 pgmcc: *snork* :o)

>117 jillmwo: That happened to us in our last house. We had to hire several people to take care of it. Luckily it wasn't a family, just a singleton. Once it had been scared off by one specialist we had to have the opening it had made quickly repaired before it moved back in. Not fun, but we were very successful. Best of luck to you!

So it's raccoons that gets this group going? Who'd have thought. You must understand that we were made aware of the possible visit by a raccoon about a month ago when my husband noted that they'd been in the garbage. We changed our practice of when the garbage got put out and thought nothing more of it. If you don't feed the wild life, it goes away or so we thought.

Then earlier this week, I heard my spouse cuss (loudly and with great feeling) and race out the back door. He had seen a raccoon get his hands underneath a slight gap between the garage door and the cement floor and LIFT the garage door high enough for the little critter to slip inside. Imagine a raccoon lying on its back and pushing UP an aluminum garage door. Well, Patrick immediately opened up the garage and sees a *second* one. Now I'm as liberal as the next woman when it comes to protecting wildlife, but they don't get to just waltz in and appropriate a portion of the property. It's spring and they're wildlife and they have the whole backyard available to them. There's sunshine and a creek just one house away. They really don't need my garage. (The undomesticated bunnies are perfectly happy out in the yard and I'm sure would willingly share with the undomesticated raccoons.)

So yes, they're cute. Yes, they are smart. (And to answer @pgmcc's question, they might well be tasty with a side of plum sauce.) But they are prone to carry rabies so one doesn't want to be bitten by an irate raccoon. Additionally, they're destructive little buggers and my brother (with a Masters in animal science from Virginia Tech) tells me that if I saw two, then it's likely I have more in there as well. He calmly recommended that I check with wildlife control in my local vicinity and explained about how the nice men would come and put out humane traps baited with tuna fish and then relocate the captured raccoons to a more appropriate environment. Nobody thinks we're in danger -- just that we should recognize the drawbacks of allowing them to stay if they aren't going to pay rent. In the meantime, where can I get one of those water-bazooka thingies? I don't want the raccoons to have time to figure out how to build a water cannon.

(And @MrsLee, my brother didn't think to mention the noise factor contributed by two amorous racoons. Either he thought I'd be happier not knowing or he thinks it would be a grand joke that he'd hear about later. I am now a bit worried. )

Really, @hfglen, @Jim53 and @pgmcc, those PUNS!!!

Maybe chainsaws?

Are you suggesting that the raccoons get them? Or my spouse? In neither instance would that seem to be a good solution.

Was it @2wonderY that was taking chainsaw lessons? I thought she could help rather than trying to find water cannons.

2wonderY should teach the raccoons to use chainsaws? I'm sure they're ingenious enough to figure it out for themselves.

>130 jillmwo: We got ours from the local hardware store. A toy shop might also have them. The object itself claims it's made in China (where else?), but the tag attached gives a distributor address here in Durban -- which won't be enormously helpful elsewhere!

Well, we must have very *smart* raccoons. They haven't fallen for the bait. Patrick (still fuming and muttering the occasional epithet) believes they may have left of their own accord, but we've paid for the trap to be in the garage for 14 days and he's bent on getting our money's worth. (I'm wondering if this is the hunter instinct emerging from its dormant state in my spouse. He seems to be overly offended by the animal presence.)

Meanwhile, having pulled a muscle in cleaning out the office yesterday, I've got one leg propped up on the ottoman. I'm reading Out of Africa and I think the appeal is the sense of the isolated woman walking around as "The Other" in an alien landscape. She's not African even as she lives there for years. She is observing culture and customs as she moves among the natives (Masai, Kikuyu, Somali, etc.), but her participation in the Kikuyu society is limited. She's never entirely part of their world; she's similar to the antelope, Lulu, a wild animal who lives for a time in both the wild and in Dinesen's house. The language is poetic and paced in a more sedate fashion in keeping with the pace of the life there. I'm not entirely done reading it, but am hoping that I'll make it through before the end of the day.

Once upon a time, many years ago I was awakened out of dead sleep by a loud, and truly frightening noise, or racket, screaming. I lived on my favorite island near Seattle, surrounded by trees, and blackberries, and space for wild life. Yup! Raccoons in the middle of the night having a party! I actually got out of bed, into shoes, grabbed the broom and went to see if I could see them. Nope. But I knew where they were, and yes, it was the most awful noise I've heard from an animal in my life.

I have no good feelings towards raccoons. I don't even think they are cute.

The Laundry List of Reading (or Those books you pull out of the box or off a shelf in the interest of airing 'em out and giving 'em a fair shake only to discover that the various titles still fail to adequately satisfy.)

(1) Larklight by Philip Reeve. This was for Didi's book group. Too lightweight and frivolous to be able to satisfy my current mood. The humor is good, but I didn't find this YA steampunk novel to be particularly memorable. That said, I know it's in @Marissa_Doyle's library so maybe she has some good thoughts to share about it. One thing I can note about it (in the interests of preserving my credentials as a reader of science fiction) is that there is a tremendous literary debt paid to Philip K. Dick in this.

(2) Clouds of Witness - for me at least one of the least satisfying Wimsey novels. The last chapter where Sugg has to put Lord Peter and Inspector Parker into a cab because they are both outlandishly drunk in having saved various parties just struck me as over the top. I thought that the humor might charm me but it really didn't work for me. Wimsey's sister, Mary, is just too much of an idiot.

(3) Dance With Dragons - I did try to revisit Westoros in anticipation of the opening episode of Game of Thrones this past weekend. But let's be honest and admit that George R.R. Martin isn't a soothing read. Diverting, yes, but not soothing. You're always wondering who he might be about to kill off next.

On the other hand, I know there have been others here in the pub who have recommended DuMaurier's The Scapegoat so I'm giving that one a whirl. Her writing has sufficient complexity and style that I might be satisfied with it. Besides, it involves a doppelganger. Where's my doppelganger now that I need her?

Clouds of Witness was not a favourite of mine. It's not one of the ones that I actively dislike, though. I haven't reread in a very long time, so I don't remember a lot of details. I do recall that Mary's idiocy was one of the most irksome things about it.

I confess to being happily back engaged in the Game of Thrones TV series. I did find Dance with Dragons to be the least satisfying of the books, but I'm not minding that Martin lost the magic touch in that book as the story on the TV is still great!

I agree about Clouds of Witness, although I find Wimsey's understanding of her idiocy touching. Although I was quite annoyed with her, I found it to be realistic, having known several women of that age to be just as deluded in their relationships and loyalties.

Again, one for the Game of Thrones cohort! You'll want to read this: http://www.salon.com/2014/04/09/against_genre_biases/. Strikes me as so very true for so many readers.

Deception at Lyme

Not anywhere near Austen herself, but this series has moved through all six Austen novels with Darcy and Elizabeth being the sleuths. (Frankly, P.D. James’ Death Comes to Pemberley was far more plausible with regard to that aspect.) The thing that saved this book from being flung at the wall is that the characters borrowed by the author from Persuasion still have some correlation to their antecedents. I can believe Bebris’ rendering of the various Elliotts. The tone is right. Her renderings of Darcy and Elizabeth are (at least, to my internal ear) less convincing.

The plot was better than I had anticipated. It took me a bit to see how the convoluted relationships led to the victim’s death. But it does bring up another question: do we read sequels because we miss the novelty and pleasure of the experience from reading the original work for the first time? The language, the pacing, etc. all in one delightful package. OR do we just like the re-arranging of paper doll characters to tell new stories to while away the time?

Part of my issue with this is due to the author’s need to wrap in a subplot surrounding the death of another Austen character. I imagine this is a requirement of modern publishers who believe that the pacing and patterns of the original don’t hold adequate excitement for modern readers. Therefore, something else must be added to engage such readers.

Pemberley Shades

This book (at least back in the ‘90’s when I was initially introduced to it) was shared with me by a friend who had a photocopied set of pages of the text. You had to be a real Janeite even then to know of this book’s existence, as it was originally written and published back in 1949. (Not exactly a front list title) When it was originally composed, while it wasn’t unheard of to encounter sequels to the classic romance, there wasn’t nearly the proliferation of material now found on Amazon.

I’m not sure why we have the subtitle, “A lightly Gothic tale of Mr. and Mrs. Darcy”. There’s not much that qualifies as Gothic, at least as I understand the term. Elizabeth Bennett and Fitzwilliam Darcy have been married for 2 or 3 years and that relationship continues to be healthy. There is a slight mystery driving the plot, but it exists primarily as a device for developing the romances for unmarried females -- specifically Kitty, Georgiana, and Anne de Bourgh. Darcy is dealing with his own responsibilities to both family and county in finding a new vicar for the local parish (which happens to be within his gift). Assessing the character of pleasing if despicable fortune hunters, members of the clergy and various other candidates falls to him and to his wife.

The pacing and the language operate in tandem for making this novel work. I will say that there are some marvellously funny scenes in this. Bonavia-Hunt excelled at presenting scenes where one party is particularly obtuse to unspoken communication while everyone else in the room understands. The characters that she adds to the pre-existing Austen characters are actually more lively than those she borrows.

No, this isn’t Austen. But Pemberley Shades is not a bad stopgap solution if you’re craving something in that vein. (And it is blessedly free of those kinds of modern sensibilities which don’t suit voices from the early 19th century…) And it actually works more successfully for me than did Deception at Lyme.

This one is for both @MrsLee and @pgmcc as we were talking about identity in the context of Daphne du Maurier's novel, The Scapegoat. I had referenced Josephine Tey's novel Brat Farrar as being relevant to that theme. Brat Farrar is, fundamentally, a story of an imposter assuming the identity of an older brother -- the heir -- just in time to do the second-born out of his wealth. The property is a well-established farm with a good horse breeding business. We learn very early on that Brat, the title character, is not so very principled that he won’t take on the role of imposter when the idea is put to him by another individual. But Tey’s novel has more to do with the emotional depth of Brat's loneliness rather than his moral character (although the one feeds the other.)

Actually, I would suggest that the real similarity between Brat Farrar and The Scapegoat is the thematic question of whether any good can come from a lie. I think both authors indicate that it can but how you interact with others will always be just that bit different from the way your doppelganger interacts with them. When you assume the identity of another living person, you change the group dynamic. And there are consequences to that.

Brat is a charming American with some knowledge of horses gleaned from time spent in our Western states. He develops a real interest in the horse breeding business at Latchetts. By contrast, his twin, Simon, is a more of a fast-living type. He prefers racing horses to breeding them. In The Scapegoat, our narrator, John, is a rather dull academic who is not living either a meaningful or exciting life. His counterpart, Jean, le Comte, in fact is leading far too adventurous of one.

Brat is not tricked into doing anything. He chooses to participate in this impersonation whereas that’s not the case for the narrator in The Scapegoat. John (in The Scapegoat) is enroute to a French monastery in order to see what the monks there can teach him about living with being a failure. His doppelganger, Jean, actually slips him a Finn and makes away with John’s British identity.

Tey’s mystery novel is certainly a lighter read than Du Maurier’s. But it’s a warmer one, showing how affection grows between Brat and Bea (and others within the family circle). It’s about discovering one’s place in a family -- bringing that someone in. Conversely, The Scapegoat is more about an outsider entering the family circle and improving the group dynamic. But again, no matter who you are, there are consequences to the actions taken when you assume an identity not your own. Brat Farrar is a comfortable read where The Scapegoat is intended to provoke a challenge.

Spoiler Tag: Simon and Jean are actually cut out of the same cloth. Simon is a “bad ‘un” from the age of 13; one has a sense that Jean probably went wrong at about the same age. Neither values the family of which they are a part. Also Simon is likened to Timber the horse. Smart rogue's who need to be taught a lesson. In The Scapegoat, Jean will be getting the lesson when he returns to the life that John has turned on its head. But John has a surprise awaiting him at the end of the road as well.

I note this quote from Jo Walton’s write-up of The Scapegoat because the final sentence really could apply to both of these novels:

The story takes place over one very intense week, in which everything changes. The details are wonderful—daily life, the house and food, and the characters of Jean’s family, all of whom have secrets. This is a book about getting what you want and coping with it, about identity, about belonging. John is a colourless man forced to take on colour and animation—a man forced into life. But John deals better with Jean’s life than Jean has been dealing with it, while Jean—well, Jean had his own reasons for disappearing and leaving an imposter in his place. This is a character study of two men, of what you can learn through presence and absence, light and shadow, love and hate. See
http://www.tor.com/blogs/2010/09/youre-not-the-devil-by-any-chance-daphne-du-mau...

>145 jillmwo: Nice comparison of the two books. I must keep my eyes open for Brat Farrar.

You might find The Return interesting. While it is usually billed as a ghost story it is much more. I did feel the earlier chapters could have been a bit more proactive, but when I saw the broader themes of the story it really took off for me. Identity is a big part of the novel but there is much more.

By the way, I am currently less than an hour's drive from the area du Maurier set The Scapegoat. :-) There are many chateaux around here and the area still has many reminders of WWII and the Nazi occupation.

>145 jillmwo: - I have been meaning to read Brat Farrar for some time, it is somewhere on my shelves, but I never seem to get to it. I'll have to unearth it. Also feeling that I might be due a reread of The Scapegoat.

>146 pgmcc: - Will you go there? I have been reading of an Australian couple's efforts to restore an ancient chateaux. Also read a short story by Doyle about a French nobleman who lived in a chateaux and sought revenge on some German soldiers for what they did to his son as a prisoner during WWI. Funny little threads in life all running together.

>147 MrsLee: Will you go there?

I believe the village of St. Gilles in the novel is fictional but it is near Le Mans which we pass on our journey from and to the ferry. This area is full of chateaux and many of them will have had a local village with traditional industries, usually wine making. Goats' cheese is produced in this area. The area described in The Scapegoat is typical of the area we are in. There is a chateau in Brittany which used its land for toursit camping. We stayed there twice. The grounds are lovely and the owner arrives every so often in his private helicopter.

Many of the bigger chateaux are open to the public as museums and have beautiful grounds, some with historically important plant collections. The craftsmanship is wonderful.

One thing I thought interesting about the journey being taken by the main character in The Scapegoat was the change in the journey from the 1960s to now. He had been in the area we are in (we visited the Chateau in Blois only last year; it is about twenty minutes away. This is the chateau he describes visiting in the first chapter.) and was obviously taking several days to drive up to the ferry. We did that journey in 4.5 hours last Thursday. In 1960 he would only have had the old roads. Nowadays the motorways in France are fantastic.

Wonderful! So, now you will have to find The Glassblowers. It is historical fiction, but about du Maurier's family in France just before the Revolution. I'm thinking it is in that same area and the reason I think so is because of the setting for The Scapegoat.

@jillmwo, I would like to report @MrsLee for hitting me with a book-bullet on your thread. I suspect you will take no action with regards to this event as you probably approve of MrsLee firing book-bullets at me and scoring a hit.

Have you read, The Glassblowers? (Yes, a feeble attempt at scoring a hit from a ricochet. I am sure @MrsLee would be delighted to hit two birds with one stone.)

Just call me Annie Oakley!

>151 MrsLee: Yea! Rigth between the eyes!

>142 jillmwo: Great piece. And the Dowd one they linked to was fun, too. :o)

>150 pgmcc: We only object to book bullets on this thread if they go astray. If she hits you fair and square, then @MrsLee wins. (Besides, what have you to complain of, really? You're in France on fabulous roadways with wine and goat cheese. Suck it up and go buy a book.)

@MrsLee, please be nice to @pgmcc. It's probably his turn to hit YOU with a book bullet.

Sheesh! Kids....

>154 jillmwo: Suck it up and go buy a book.

Due for delivery next Tuesday, when I will not be in France.

*Quietly plots book-bullet attack on @MrsLee. Ponders tactics and bullet to use.

HA! Take your best shot! Besides, jillmwo and others have hit me with so many bullets, most recent of which was in the discussion of Agatha Christie, that my wishlist is sagging, my shelves are full and the stack of books which "I must read very soon" is toppling. What's one more? Best way to get shot in the whole wide world.

>156 MrsLee: Best way to get shot in the whole wide world.

Amen!

Having finished The Beautiful Mystery by Louise Penny, it seems clear to me that this book had two purposes. (1) It allowed Louise Penny to more clearly delineate character, specifcally the characters of Gamache and Beauvoir. One is a figure of light -- a man who operates successfully by listening to the emotions of the witnesses he speaks to in the daily course of his work. The other is a figure of shadow, a man who has been severely wounded by his work (PTSD) and who can’t eliminate the dark awareness of evil from his thinking. Gamache believes in the good of people whereas Beauvoir is a skeptic about that aspect of mankind. (2) It allowed Louise Penny examine internal beliefs of Man (as a species) and how those beliefs shape motive and behavior in the committing of a murder. Those are two *very* big goals for a novel and for many people, Penny didn’t quite do it successfully.

The prior of a monastery secluded in the wilderness of Quebec is found murdered in a garden accessible by just one door. This is a kind of locked door mystery. The two men, who have worked together since the first book in Penny’s series Still Life, are locked in the monastery in order to solve the mystery. There are 23 monks to choose from as suspects and only a few of them emerge as three-dimensional beings. It’s less important to see who dunnit than it is to see that the act of murder is a sign of a wounded humanity. There is a tremendously well done bit halfway through when Beauvoir is speaking with a suspect who is a reflection physically of the DI himself and we see Beauvoir wonder how someone so like himself could choose to be a part of the Church in such a demanding role, indeed how someone could choose to be a part of the Church at all. It’s a tremendously important chapter in the book and will be echoed later in an incident with Gamache at the high point of confrontation with the character most associated with evil in the novel.

At any rate, The Beautiful Mystery is all about stark contrasts in character development. For the record, yes, Louise Penny does play fast and loose with both history and monastic practice, but I didn’t find what she did to be offensive. There are those who found the revelation of the murderer accomplished through an idiot ploy but I’m not sure I agree. I think Gamache is correct in his statement that the governing passion within the heart of the murderer is such that the same rage would flare a second time, given the appropriate provocation.

We're talking about this book at the library tomorrow evening so I'll let you know if the ladies in the group disagree with my assessment or are as forgiving of the book's shortcomings.

>158 jillmwo: - I loved the setting and the pace of this story. I loved so much, and yet this is my overall final thought, "When I read a mystery, I read it because I want justice. I want things to wrap up neatly. I want everyone to go home satisfied, if not happy. The mystery wrapped up neatly in this, but the rest of the story was a depressing mess."

It made me not want to go back and read the first stories. So, I guess I would be one of the ones who is not as forgiving of the book as you are. :)

>159 MrsLee: The mysteries themselves are quite good, but the multi-volume interpersonal arcs are what makes this series one of my favorites. The high points would be pretty meaningless if we took out all the low points.

>158 jillmwo: One of the things I liked about this one goes back to a point that the authors of Conundrums for the Long Weekend make about Sayers: she insisted that the solution come not just from facts, but from the characters of the people involved. I see the same approach in Gamache.

>159 MrsLee: The ladies at the library really liked this one. And while I agree that not everyone goes home happy in this, I do think that Louise Penny was making a point about choosing (for good or ill) and the satisfaction for me in reading this came from the assortment of conscious choices made and the characters' capacity for accepting the consequences of those choices. If you can live with your choices and with the consequences that go along with those choices, then you still have a happy ending. Don't you?

>160 Jim53: I agree that this is about deepening characterization. I haven't read everything in her series, but I can see where following the full character arc of Gamache and Beauvoir throughout the series would provide some real enjoyment.

On another note entirely, I tried a recipe for making rice pudding in a crockpot today and it didn't turn out. Bleh!

Better go back to the baked oatmeal!

Well, this week was the beginning of my telecommuting full time. Three days into it, I'm feeling quite happy about this. I don't have to worry about unexpected appearances of colleagues popping into my doorway to interrupt me when I'm suddenly making great progress on a project. However, I can stop for coffee breaks conveniently and I could (if I chose) wear PJs all day. (I haven't done that and don't really see myself doing it in future, but it is an enormously relaxing thought to realize that I could.)

And, a real plus given today's weather I didn't have to set foot outside in the pouring rain! *happy dance*

Very happy to hear you're adjusting! That's quite a change to adapt to, I must say.

Should we start a pool about how long before @jillmwo works all day in PJs?

Hope it continues to go well for you, Jill. I worked almost completely at home for several years, and got tired of never seeing anyone. Now I have a mix of going into the office and working at home when I choose, and it's working pretty well.

I loved the WAH option. During my last few years in the workplace, I was permitted up to three days a week telecommuting, and I took them gladly.

It was a high-tech company that wanted employees to be able to work anywhere (on the train, in restrooms, in dentists' chairs) and made it easy to log in, call in, and dial in to meetings remotely. Employees carried their laptops with them everywhere. I saw people typing while on the elevator and while walking across to the cafeteria.

I never worked in PJs, but I stayed in my slippers all day. WAH days were always the most productive. And I had the freedom to keep an appointment during the day and make up the time at night. Very nice to be treated like a grownup.

The down side for some people was that they really could never get away from work. But I never had that affliction.

Faye Weldon’s Letters To Alice: On First Reading Jane Austen

What returned me to this book was not a continuing Jane-Austen binge, but a discovery that this book is now considered suitable for inclusion in Australian advanced placement high school English courses. Now, wait a minute! This book was published in 1984. Not only am I older than this book, I was an adult married woman expecting her first child when it was initially published. And it’s already been accepted as sufficiently classic to be incorporated into the curriculum? I’m not THAT old. Hmmm. Something has certainly changed…

Most particularly irritating were the number of web-based commentaries that refer to this as a NOVEL. Letters to Alice: On First Reading Jane Austen is most certainly not fiction. (I even went so far as to check in WorldCat to verify this fact with the global cataloging community.) The fact that the letters are written to an imaginary recipient does not make the work a novel. (Snapped the old grey harpy) To borrow the words from XKCD, someone on the Internet is WRONG.

Letters to Alice is actually a series of essays (presented in the form of letters from an aunt to a college-age niece) wherein Faye Weldon presents a case for why we still read Jane Austen. In the process she examines the life of Jane Austen and her works, the status of women generally in a male dominated environment, literature and the creative act of writing (and how those two feed into each other) and finally some brief examinations of writing as a modern profession. The book is a fantastic instance of presenting literary criticism in a readable as opposed to academic fashion. While a re-read of this book didn’t have nearly the impact on me as the initial reading did (‘way back when), there are some seriously good bits in this. For example, this:

(It is observable in Jane Austen’s novels that it is the women who have moral struggles, rather than the men. This may, of course, be a reflection of life. It is because I make this sort of remark that your father will not have me in the house — that and the matter of the bread rolls, of course.) Letter Seven, page 82 in my edition.

Faye Weldon has a real appreciation for Austen(*). Letters to Alice is literary criticism. While some of Weldon’s observations have roots in the women’s movement of the time, the bulk of this book discusses what makes Austen’s novels worthwhile reading for women even when women no longer need depend on marriage for their economic survival.

One thing that struck me was Weldon’s remark that Austen’s wrote her novels (given the practices of that culture and in that time) with the idea that they would be read aloud as commonly as they might be read silently. There was no competition for human attention from the Internet, the television, or radio. People read aloud back then in groups in the evenings as a matter of course. Austen’s prose is geared to that practice. Can we all go back to the olden days and read Austen aloud to one another? It might be the gateway to world peace...

(*) For those who may not remember it, she wrote an adaptation of Pride and Prejudice for BBC television back in 1980. David Rintoul made a marvelously formal Darcy.

>165 suitable1: I will be interested in hearing the size of the pool on that one!

>166 Jim53: I suspect that I too will dislike the sense of isolation that this may create. I have every intention of setting up lunches and attending conferences on-site.

>167 Meredy: Seriously? People typing in elevators? (I'm assuming you don't mean on their phones?) The worst I've ever seen was the woman who wouldn't quit typing on her MacBook even as we were all trying to exit the plane. Just an observation: some people really can't type and walk at the same time.

>169 jillmwo: Yes, truly. They're standing there waiting for the elevator, holding the laptop in one hand, chest height, typing, and continue to type for the few seconds it takes to get to the third floor. Most buildings on that campus were three stories; a few were four. No elevator ride took very long. But the really hardcore guys kept typing.

I also saw some women carry their laptops with them to the bathroom.

Bet all that zeal didn't save them at layoff time, though.

The day I am so dedicated to work that I take the laptop into the bathroom, someone is invited to put me out of my misery. That's wrong on so many levels, I can't even begin to cover it.

But on another topic...

Quality Street by J.M. Barrie

One of the things I picked up today at Books and Bakes (local FoTL event) was a 1945 edition of the plays of J.M. Barrie. Now I don’t care so much about Peter Pan, but I do have a soft spot for The Admirable Crichton (having watched a Hallmark Hall of Fame production from the ‘60’s) and a perfectly dreadful old Katherine Hepburn flick, Quality Street (1937). This last is usually shown on TCM once a year on Hepburn’s birthday and then generally in the wee small hours of the morning (4am). It’s *not* a good vehicle for her talents. If you have read the play, you will undoubtedly recall that it's not politically correct with regard to the capabilities of women (Miss Susan finds that algebra is hard...) but one must remember that there are women who do find algebra to be daunting. (I'm one of those women.)

By today’s standards, Quality Street is a sit-com. Not to be taken any more seriously than Big Bang Theory or How I Met Your Mother. One thing I read suggested that the reason the Hepburn flick doesn’t work in the 1927 production is because we see Hepburn as Phoebe/Livvy in screen close-ups. As with any sit-com, an impersonation may be plausible if you’re viewing it far away from up in the nose-bleed seats, but if you’re seeing the character close-up through a gentle coating of vasoline on a camera lens, the absurdity of an ardent male not recognizing the face of his beloved -- well, nobody’s buying it.

Quality Street is what critics might characterize as a meringue of a play. Lightly whipped without much substance. But I’ve included below some links that chart how the play itself became such a classic property that it became a name brand of chocolate with the costumed characters becoming a branded part of the packaging.

See the charming illustrations from this 1913 edition of the play
http://www.rookebooks.com/product?prod_id=24378

On Hepburn’s film
http://thefilmexperience.net/blog/2014/3/19/a-year-with-kate-quality-street-1937...

From a Food Blog:
http://lukehoney.typepad.com/the_greasy_spoon/2012/11/on-quality-street.html

More on how Quality Street characters are used in marketing of chocolate:
http://www.slideshare.net/guest8572555/quality-street-presentation

So there, you see?! You know more now than when you first walked in...

Postscript: Edited to add the thought that I read an awful lot of Signet Regency Romances back during the '80's that had strikingly similar plotlines to Quality Street. Just sayin'

Judgment Night - novella by C.L. Moore

You want apocalyptic? I’ll show you apocalyptic…

Is there a reason why none of you are reading C.L. Moore? I first encountered her work back in the late ‘70’s when I picked up a mass market paperback The Best of C.L. Moore and found the stories of Shambleau and No Woman Born. Shambleau, of course, features Northwest Smith, the forerunner of Han Solo. And to say that No Woman Born is about robotics is an incredible understatement, but one that I cannot expand upon without ruining its impact for the reader. Then I discovered her Jirel of Joiry stories. Back in the early days of the modern women’s movement, guys, this was fairly heady stuff. Unfortunately, due to the vagaries of copyright and publishing markets, etc., there has been fairly limited access to much of her work. But at some point within the past four or five years, a specialty press in New York released a facsimile edition of her 1943 novella, Judgment Night. I just finished reading it and wow. I was thoroughly engrossed, irritated when spouse's concerns about dinner and lawn mowers meant I had to put it down. Even with those interruptions, I finished it in less than 24 hours.

Just when I think that fiction has become too predictable and that I can predict a plot twist ten feet out, I read something like Judgment Night and I realize that I’m just wrong. Some books really can still surprise me. C.L. Moore creates marvelous images, prose images that cry out for 21st century CGI to be brought forth on screen. Her plots wouldn’t require much adaptation to appeal to modern movie-goers. They are complex; her aliens have the necessary quality of “otherness” to them.

What makes Judgment Night stand out for me is its depiction of an epic event -- the fall of an empire. It is apocalyptic in scope. Destruction of planets, weapons of mass destruction. There are instances both of love and of war. There’s betrayal. There’s a creepy recognition of all of humankind’s addictions and perversions. This might read like space opera but there’s really rather more to it.

So you really need to go out and track down this novella. (You can get it used in print form on Amazon at a range of prices or you can get it digitally in iTunes.) If you’ve not yet read C.L. Moore, you need to add her to your summer reading list.

>171 jillmwo: I've never been able to bring myself to read any more J.M. Barrie after I read Neverland: J.M. Barrie, the Du Mauriers, and the Dark Side of Peter Pan. It just creeped me out far too much.

>172 jillmwo:: I have a collection of C.L. Moore's stories, Black gods and scarlet dreams. I don't think it includes Judgement night, but I will check (and read it anyway while checking!)

I don't think it's included in that one, @Sakerfalcon. But reading Judgment Night did cause me to go dig out a volume of Northwest Smith stories, specifically Northwest of Earth!

Oh, and I have discovered the fly in the ointment with regard to telecommuting. My husband is adopting the stance that I should do take-out with him where possible. I haven't had a Big Mac in heaven knows how long, but that is what he's out getting for me right now. (I can't recall the last time I ate something from MickeyDee's.) This has *got* to stop before it becomes ingrained as a habit.

>173 Marissa_Doyle: I can't necessarily agree with you on that one. Not because the potential child abuse doesn't creep me out, but because we won't know the truth of the matter until someone unlocks Daphne DuMaurier's literary estate in 20-30 years. Until then, as the NYTimes review of Neverland pointed out, it's an awful lot of speculation with little hard evidence for sure.

The only Moore I ever tried was the Jirel stories, which left me unimpressed many years ago. I didn't like her husband's stuff much, either.

>175 jillmwo:

You can use the drive-through in your PJs!

>175 jillmwo: The company cafeteria was one of the two things I missed most when I worked at home--and after I retired. I would never have enough different things at home to make a salad with sixteen ingredients, when all I want is a little of each one. And to be able to choose among your-choice-of-filling tacos and burritos, Mongolian stir-fry, pasta with three kinds of sauce, pizza, soup, and some kind of hot entree with assorted side dishes--that was luxury. Mmm, lunch was the best part of the day.

>177 Jim53: Was the problem her use of language? The lush prose and the slow build can become repetitive from tale to tale, if you read too many of them in a row. Her pacing can be slow because she's building up the prose images. That said, I think the later stories got away from that.

>178 suitable1:, >179 Meredy:, I can't afford the calories. At least when I worked in the city, lunch was just a hard-boiled egg supported by one or two lattes. But how can one cope with breakfast of chocolate croissant with coffee followed by a lunch of a Big Mac and fries? I had to have vegetable soup for dinner to offset the two earlier meals!

>180 jillmwo: This is why I give up one of my days off a week to cook like a maniac for the rest of the week. I find if the healthy alternatives are at hand and easy, they are the option chosen. I focus on veggies, because those are the things I'm most likely to go without if I have to stop and prepare them.

Don't worry, you will find your balance in your own way, because being aware there is a problem is the first step. :)

Okay, so we did an experiment yesterday evening with rice pudding. I did mine in the oven rather than on top of the stove. I used 3/4 of a cup of minute rice, 3 eggs, a can of condensed milk, a quarter cup of sugar, a teaspoon of vanilla, and then rounded out the whole with about a cup - maybe a cup and a half -- of 2% milk. The cinnamon, nutmeg and raisins were added during the hour the thing spent in a 325 degree oven. It came out with a good texture of cooked rice and just the right amount of egg and milk solidifying the pudding. Spouse pronounced it a success and I'll probably eat a dish of it for lunch.

Any of you experts on best results for rice pudding? It is said that this is one of those ubiquitous recipes found in some form or other around the globe. So how are the rest of you making rice pudding? Do you adhere to the school where it's dry and can hold its shape when cut into squares or are you of the school of thought that says rice pudding should be a bit on the "goopy" side? I will confess that the crockpot version I did last week was a real disaster; neither the rice nor the pudding worked well.

Rice pudding has never really appealed to me, because I don't think I've ever tasted a well-made one. The ones in restaurants just look sort of pallid and icky. The last one I tasted seemed to be vanilla pudding with rice mixed into it.

Goopy! But I'll admit mine usually comes out of a tin, although I'm game to have a go at making it while I'm off work :)

I prefer it on the slightly goopier side...and the Greek version, which has lemon in it.

I don't think that's very popular in the Netherlands, but I lived in Germany for a few years, and there you get the goopy version, either with cinnamon or with 'rote Grütze', sort of gelatinous red fruits. That combines really well! I didn't realize it could also be so dry you could cut it...

>186 zjakkelien: Theoretically, if you bake it in the oven, the result is drier than the stove-cooked kind. In the US, southern tradition has it that you go for the drier kind. So Paula Deen's version (http://www.pauladeen.com/recipes/recipe_view/baked_rice_pudding/) references being cut into squares as does this version (http://foodviva.com/rice-recipes/baked-rice-pudding-recipe/). That said, lots of us who ate in diners as undergrads got the goopy kind which more sophisticated cooks refer to as being "creamy". If you look around for older recipes, you can see that a lot depended on what the frugal housewife might have had on hand that needed to be used up.

For example, I have a digital version of a cookbook that dates back to 1917 and the recipe for a small pan of rice pudding involves a mere cup and a quarter of milk with a single egg and 1 teaspoon of butter to moisten up a full cup of cooked rice while baking in an oven. That would come out fairly dry in my estimation. Most current recipes actually suggest that you use a ratio closer to 3 cups of milk to 1 cup of rice.

goopy?

Merriam-Webster:

goop
: a sticky or greasy substance

So, which is it, sticky or greasy?

In this context, I think "goopy" means a softer substance that is not quite liquid but thicker.

I would consider it all a matter of viscosity.

Well, here's a tempting option: http://www.tolkienprofessor.com/wp/lectures/courses/
A graduate level course on The Silmarillion. Someone should talk me out of it.

>193 jillmwo: Yeah, right. Like this bunch of enablers is going to talk you out of a Tolkien course.

>194 SylviaC: Enablers, us? But we'd never talk up the delights to be found in the comparative cultures of Gondolin, Nargothrond and Doriath as expressed through their poetry, military tactics and sadly overlooked fashions.

...ahem, I'm going to stop right there. Sorry.

I knew the foolishness of the post when I suggested that one of you would try to talk me out of it.

In the meantime, I am wondering why G.K. Chesterton *wrote* The Club of Queer Trades. Why did I suggest to one of my book groups that it wasn't that bad? They are going to flay me alive. There's very broad humor and I'm not in the mood to just roll with it.

So the ladies in the Library book group talked about Gone Girl this evening. I was actually quite taken by the general reaction to it which boils down to enthusiasm about the work, but absolutely no interest in reading a second one by this author. (I had to wonder how one builds a brand if the public only buys just one title from an author....) One of the women was horrified by the idea that this novel was going to be made into a movie; she really didn't think this was (or ought to be treated as) entertainment. They could see the book as a carefully constructed work, but didn't want to accept it as either great literature or as a great fun book to read.

I am always so impressed by these participants who will wade through books they don't like just so that they can come to book group and vociferously air their objections. I love that they come with notes. One woman even had sat down and written a "statement" of her reaction!

Fascinating.

Meanwhile, work is absorbing much time. When I can, I'm also reading a fascinating history of the clerical profession in the UK between 1680-1840. You'd think it would be dry but it's actually quite well-written. Oh, and I found it because I bought two academic essays about Jane Austen for my Kindle. (It was referenced in a trio of titles which the scholar particularly commended for their depth, one of which I already owned, one of which was the author's own book (so not an objective assessment), and this one..)

Oh, yeah, and I've been rummaging about in cookbooks. Baked custards are of great interest.

>197 jillmwo: "Baked custards are of great interest."

Oh, yes. When you find a recipe you like please do share it.

>198 clamairy: A hearty second to that. I still have my mother's old Pyrex custard cups and use them all the time, but I have never actually put custard in them.

We used to pour a little topping of Vermont maple syrup on our baked vanilla custard. I grew up thinking everyone ate it that way.

Baked custards interest me, too! I have lots of eggs.

>197 jillmwo: Perhaps I missed it but what was your reaction to Gone Girl? Did you go along with the general feeling?

>199 Meredy: I'm laughing because I use my cups for various other things all the time. (They're great for melting butter in for artichokes.) I don't believe I've used them for custard even once. The few times I have made it I just made one huge batch.

>201 pgmcc: You are quite right pgmcc. I didn’t go into detail about Gone Girl and I should, although it’s difficult without spoilers. It was not a particularly enjoyable read for me. On the one hand, in terms of execution, it was cleverly -- perhaps brilliantly --done. On the other hand, it creeped me out. You meet Nick and Amy, presenting their alternate viewpoints, and by fifty pages in, you know it is not a happy marriage. We have two fairly dysfunctional human beings, sadly warped by their respective upbringings. As you read, you come to the conclusion that one or the other of these two people is an unreliable narrator. Not only are they lying to each other, one of the two must be lying to you as the reader. That’s unsettling. I reminded the women last night of when we read My Cousin, Rachel where you can’t be sure whether the charming woman is a murderous black widow. You are entirely dependent upon Philip’s understanding as you move through the narrative and not until the end, do you fully realize the damage that will be caused by his bias.

But the initial reading experience of Gone Girl is beyond that. To be clear, it’s not that this book is gory or violent. It’s just uncomfortably creepy. You reach the end and the first thought you have is what a distastefully twisted mind the author must have to be able to imagine this scenario with these characters. These aren’t “nice” people. Amy’s parents are idiots. Nick’s family is abusive. Nick avoids responsibility and commitment. Amy avoids reality. And then you get to the end and you realize just what a horrifying cycle is going to be repeated.

But if you stop and think, (and this is where I have to consider use of the spoiler tag), this author sat down and worked out the most effective way in which one might frame one’s spouse for murder. And she did so marvelously, with cold logic and barbarous precision. That’s amazing if you view it purely as an intellectual puzzle, but knowing she's capable of that leap of imagination, I’m not sure I’d be sufficiently comfortable to sit down and have coffee with her. There is also no justice in her final outcome. This just wasn't a fun read for me. Of course, OTOH, I can make a case that this is exactly how one should write a murder mystery because Flynn's writing manipulates the reader into experiencing the sense of horror that we should feel in the face of such devastating acts.

@Meredy said in her review that she enjoyed the hair-pin turns in this book and that she went out and found the author’s other novels as soon as she’d finished Gone Girl. I can see why she might do so. I just don’t have the mental wherewithal for it myself.

But you should read it for yourself, @pgmcc, and make up your own mind.

>198 clamairy:, >199 Meredy:, >200 SylviaC: I am working on writing something about what I've learned about making a baked custard. But really, the cups in the water bath thing is really not as hard as one might imagine. (In fact, I'm embarrassed to admit that I waited so long to play with making this dessert.) You just have to pay attention to the proportion of egg to sugar to milk.

>203 jillmwo: I did read the book. One of the reasons I read it was that you had mentioned it was your May read. I "live blogged" on my reading thread as I read it. (Post start at 195 and go on to 212).

In summary I have much the same assessment as yourself. A very clever book but I am not encouraged to seek out more of her books. My overriding feeling was that this author must never have met any nice people. All the characters were dubious in one way or another.

>205 pgmcc: I just went back and reviewed your thread. I must have read your comments at the time, but I suspect the topsy-turvy nature of life over March and April caused me to forget that I had done so. (And I struggled so to avoid all kinds of spoilers in my post.) But I must say that I find it reassuring in re-reading your comments now to see that we reacted so similarly. One has to remain objective in presenting a book like this to a group for discussion, but my internal marshmallow filling was still quivering.

By the way, you should all be aware that coming up soon is Queen Victoria's Birthday. @Marissa_Doyle wrote about it on her blog today: http://nineteenteen.blogspot.com/2014/05/happy-195th-birthday-to-you.html
What makes it relevant to my current discussion of Gone Girl is that, just like Amy, she wrote a quiz about it.

What I Now Know About Making Baked Custard

I started out looking at a recipe for two. My rationale was that it minimized waste and the proportions looked right as a base. The recipe as written was one egg, one cup of milk, three tablespoons of sugar, and three-quarters of a teaspoon of vanilla extract. You beat those all together, divide the mixture between two 6-oz custard cups, sprinkle a little nutmeg on top of both, and stick them in a 350 degree oven in a hot-water bath (bain-marie) for 35 minutes. (Older recipes call for scalding the milk and using boiling water to fill the bain marie. Newer recipes don’t require that because our ovens are better and more precise than stoves of 30 years ago.)

Confession time: I didn’t exactly follow the recipe. I added one egg, cut back on the sugar -- using only two tablespoons of sugar -- and slightly increased the amount of milk to one and a quarter cups. And for the record, the custard still came out.

What did I learn?
1. You want to use whole milk or half-and-half. I used 2% because that was what I had in the house and I think it makes the custard thin.
2. The addition of an egg didn’t present a problem (perhaps it even helped offset the lack of fat in the milk). I did read in a variety of recipes that dividing whites and yolks is a technique that can also impact the viscosity of your custard. Whites increase the stiffness of the custard. Yolks may be added to enrich the custard. The issue naturally is how skilled you are in separating your eggs.
3. The vanilla extract is there for flavoring. You want good quality vanilla extract; a lot of the more modern recipes use scrapings from vanilla beans, but I stuck with boring old McCormick. When I couldn’t immediately find the vanilla, I thought about using bourbon for flavoring. It probably would have worked, but then I spotted the brand-new bottle of extract that was hiding in the pantry. Phew!
4. The baking time was about right. You test it by inserting a knife blade in the custard. If it comes out clean, the custard is done. You can’t go by appearances of “jiggling”. If your custard has developed cracks on the surface, it’s been in too long.

Honestly, the trickiest part of this is lifting hot custard cups out of the hot water. One recipe suggested using tongs to do so, but my tongs wouldn’t work in gripping the cup. So those flexible silicon pot holders might be a better way to go.

I scarfed this down as my lunch. Light, high-protein meal, and kept me going through the afternoon. So off you go and don't forget to report back on any successes.

>208 jillmwo: That looks attainable. And it's a small enough batch that it won't matter that I'm the only person in the family who would eat it.

>208 jillmwo: Sounds awesome, but I must wait for a day when I won't mind having the over on. (Either a cool wet one, or a hot one when the AC is blasting.)

>208 jillmwo: Thanks so much!

As for separating whites and yolks, the water bottle trick really works. I've tried it. Here's one YouTube version of many:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dSaskAB3j28
Once you've separated them, though, what then, as far as custard is concerned?

Well there is this recipe which wants just the yolks for the custard: http://thenourishingcook.com/baked-custard-recipe/ The yolk enriches the custard.

There's this one that wants 2 whole eggs and 2 yolks: https://food52.com/recipes/15314-nutmeggy-baked-custard

The whites by themselves firm up the custard so it can stand on its own, as in the instance of flan. The Incredible Egg site was a useful resource: https://www.incredibleegg.org/egg-facts/eggcyclopedia/c/custard

As for the maple syrup part, you might take a look at this: http://www.thehealthyhomeeconomist.com/traditional-egg-custard-pudding/

BTW, thank you for that bit about the water bottle trick. I'd seen something like that and wondered if it really worked!!

>212 jillmwo: Thanks for the link to the yolks-only custard. That's exactly what I was looking for last month, and none of my egg cookbooks had it. I'll use it if I ever try to make an angel cake again. Cooking note: Dropping an angel cake right after taking it out of the oven is not a good idea. Even if it is only a little drop.

One note about baking, and then I'll write about books again, but today I learned something so amazing that I have to share. For decades I've read about the British putting jam on their cake. I always thought that such a practice would be a tad excessive. A cake (at least American cake) has a sufficient quantity of sugar such that I couldn't imagine adding more to a light fluffy cake. Besides which, the cake would disintegrate under the jam assault.

Well, I made a Madeira cake today and, finding it a little dense and dry, I sliced a small wedge of cake in half (longitudinally) and then put a bit of raspberry jam from the tale-end of a jar on to the cake. OMG. It was exactly what was needed! I had heard about British sponge cakes where you put jam and whipped cream in between two layers of cake and this was exactly the purpose for this cake. If I'd had a bit of lemon curd sitting about, I'd have done that. The issue is avoiding eating any more of this cake. I mean, this is a dangerous thing to learn about when you have any kind of a sedentary lifestyle. But OMG. One should also note that two whole sticks of butter in a cake makes for a lovely, lovely taste. OMG.

I'm afraid to make myself a pot of tea at this point, because I'd be scarfing down the cake alongside of it. Can we call this dinner and be done with it?

Now back to reading Maggie Lane's Jane Austen and Food!! The first chapter alone has been most educational...

>214 jillmwo:
"One note about baking, and then I'll write about books again,"

"Now back to reading Maggie Lane's Jane Austen and Food!! "

I am not sure your last line is a total fulfilment of your first line.

BTW Yes, jam and cream between two slabs of madeira cake would be common on this side of the Atlantic...but only, of course, if one didn't have a bottle of Madeira to hand.

>215 pgmcc: It was really too early in the day to begin drinking. I'm sure well-bred Edwardian ladies (no matter how bored they might be with their embroidery) didn't begin nipping at the Madeira until tea time. My cake was done by 2:30 in the afternoon.

I am also afraid that I didn't have any Madeira in the house. FWIW, I did consider the sherry (4 bottles given me in as many months...) Which brings me to the next question -- will the one do for the other? Shall I try that experiment this evening when I have more cake before bedtime?

Did I say I loved the cake? Next up is Marmalade and Buttermilk Pound Cake. (It's a three-day weekend and I'll have time...)

Have you run across any recipes for savory custards, jill? Quiche without the pastry, I suppose...

>217 Marissa_Doyle: MMMM, that sounds even better than the sweet kind to me. Okay, maybe not better, but definitely just as good.

>217 Marissa_Doyle: and >218 clamairy: Did you mean something like this? This one is from the New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/04/dining/043mrex.html?_r=0
I've not done anything in that vein, but the basic premise of an egg custard is that it's entirely dependent upon additions and seasonings for flavor. Quiche without the crust might be a valid analogy. (Unfortunately, you still need to concern yourself with the water bath.)

But this leads nicely into a discussion of Jane Austen and Food. I picked up a cheap Kindle edition of this title, not expecting much, but it has proven to be a most worthwhile expenditure of $2.99. For one thing, Maggie Lane covers in depth some of the particulars of daily habits, housekeeping and organization that the more general companions to Jane Austen do not. Her discussion of the meaning of "morning" and "evening" in the context of Georgian agrarian society is one of the clearest I've ever encountered. That type of division leads into a sensible ordering of food events in the context of that life and period. The Madeira cake that @pgmcc and I have been chatting about? Well, it appears that in Austen's time, wine was particularly viewed as being something served primarily in the context of dessert. It was imbibed late in the evening with such cakes and not with the usual heavy meal of the day. (Had I been drinking wine at 2:30 in the afternoon during Jane Austen's time period, I most certainly would have been accused of "vulgarity".) Education is a wonderful thing.

Note to @pgmcc - I have discovered where I may obtain Malmsey locally, and if the cake lasts long enough for me to get there, I shall most assuredly do the thing properly. I understand the cake freezes well, so there's hope.

At any rate, the amount of forethought that went into housekeeping during Austen's time is staggering. Food preparation was largely consolidated into a single push that would allow for one big hot meal in what we would call late afternoon, with cold food being made available at other times of the day. That large meal was called dinner but depending upon one’s rank in the social structure, might be eaten earlier (say at 4pm) to avoid the need for candles if one was poor. The same meal might otherwise be served at 6 pm if one was wealthy enough to not worry about that kind of thing and Lane notes that the wealthy might thoughtlessly interrupt the meal of the working class by stopping in just when the food was hot, simply because the wealthy wouldn’t even begin dressing for dinner until 5pm.

Breakfast (for the greater part of the population) was actually rather minimal. Lane goes into detail about the allocation of household responsibilities during various phases of Jane Austen's life and at one point, Jane was given the responsibility of preparing breakfast because it took the least amount of effort in some respects and therefore would free her up to do other tasks (writing of novels, etc.) the rest of the day. For middle-class families, breakfast wouldn’t extend to pound cake or similarly fancy items. For Jane and her mother, it would be tea and toast.

What reading this has made me consider is the way in which our working lives shape our eating patterns as well as how our tastes have changed. Reading Lane’s description of negus does cause my 21st century eyebrows to go up, but it was quite the popular beverage to drink before one set out for home after a ball.

I may have to spend a small fortune to get this book in hardcover. It's that worthwhile.

Updated to add that even when Lane shifts attention away from documented historical fact to bring in understanding of the social history lent by Austen's novels, the information is solid. Really worthwhile reading.

Thanks a lot. Now I had to get Jane Austen and Food, too. I'm not even all that into Jane Austen, but I am interested in food history.

>219 jillmwo: >220 SylviaC: I can borrow it for free, for as long as I want. w0000h0000!

>221 clamairy: How do you manage to do that?

>222 SylviaC: I have Amazon Prime. I can't borrow anything else from them until I give it back, though. There is that catch. Plus I think I can only borrow one book a month from Amazon. I can get four every three weeks from OverDrive.

>223 clamairy: Ahh, probably quite useful, if you buy much from Amazon.

>224 SylviaC: We do. My kids get many of their textbooks from there. Some they buy used and some they rent for the term.

I just bought it on Kindle, $2.99. I think my mom will enjoy it too, and we can share easier from the Kindle.

For a complete change of pace, I actually read The Everything Store this weekend. As it was an initial read, you're not getting much analysis from me as I write this. I just kind of swallowed the book whole and haven't really digested it to any extent. I read this in the wake of attending a publishing conference for work last week where someone mentioned it in passing during a discussion in the bar. For some reason, that was all it took for me to pick it up once I got home and speed through it.

On the one hand, I can honestly say that I would not want to work at Amazon, based on what I've read, and on the other hand, my first reaction to the stories told about Jeff Bezos in this book suggest to me that he's another Andrew Carnegie. Based on what I've read here, Jeff Bezos might consider that a compliment. He's a tough man to work for, as was Carnegie, but he's brilliant in so many ways in thinking about doing things differently. He gets things about algorithms and application of data that the vast majority of us simply do *not* yet grasp. He has never gotten the same credit that Steve Jobs has gotten, but Bezos is definitely one of the giants of our time. Before anyone yells at me, I'm aware of abuses (the One-Click patent, the fulfillment center working conditions, etc.) but I am also aware of the boost that Amazon Web Services has given to many start-ups. I also can't forget that by launching the Kindle way back in 2008, Bezos delivered the necessary kick in the pants to the trade publishing world that they needed to ramp up efforts in digital publishing. (One brief side note: I had an opportunity to sit down and speak with an Amazon executive at a conference for about 20 minutes some 5-6 years back. The man is mentioned frequently in these pages. Had I had any notion of just how important he was at the time, I would have said far more to him about the Kindle than I actually did.)

This book came out last October so I'm eight months behind in reading it. It's not directly relevant to my corner of the publishing world, but it's a really, really interesting read.

Edited to Add: Of course, then someone sent me this link: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/02/business/media/amazon-and-a-mattel-unit-plan-a... which does tend to give one pause. On one hand, it's not that worrisome, but I do wonder if it couldn't become worrisome quickly. Product placements are less and less subtle in my experience.

>106 pgmcc: Have you ever pretended it was snowing when you spotted a book you wanted to buy?

Um, actually that is what I'm claiming this week after an unwarranted buying binge. That's right. It was snowing earlier this week and that's why I went and binged on books. I've been excessively profligate.

Maybe it was more like what @Meredy put forward up there in >108 Meredy:. I was squinting and I think all those books I bought might have been on both lists that Meredy noted.

Be that as it may, I've been so wicked that I will likely have to forego my Thingaversary.

>228 jillmwo: I've been so wicked that I will likely have to forego my Thingaversary.

We will have less of this treasonous talk on LT. You are deemed to have taken the oath and come June 29th you will be expected to identify your Thingaversary books: 8 for the 8 years, 1 extra as a celebration of the day that's in it, and another one for, whatever. Any balking on your responsibilities in this regard will be taken as an act of betrayal. We will be hurt. We will be watching you.

>229 pgmcc: I've heard rumors that Tim has a secret elite enforcer team that ensures you observe your Thingaversary in the proper fashion. You don't want a knock on your door from the LibraryThing Strike Force at 3 am some morning, do you?

Yes. That would be so much fun. An impromptu party!

>230 Marissa_Doyle:

The LT thugs

It's all right, >228 jillmwo: you can have my credit. I stopped by the library a couple of days ago to pick up my holds, and they were having a book sale, and I didn't stop.

>230 Marissa_Doyle: There are things that we should not discuss in public. Meet me behind the bicycle shed.

;-)

>234 pgmcc: Oops!

No one heard me say that, right?

NOT I! Nope, nosirree. Cotton in my ears, yep.

Okay I feel threatened here. I am told that I will be visited by LT “thugs” if I don’t properly observe my Thingaversary which is in just about three weeks. Ten books, they tell me I have to buy. Eight books for each year I’ve already been a member, one book for the coming year, and another one as a punishment for suggesting that one could do such a thing as “buy too many books”. Okay. Hmm. Ten titles. Given that my Amazon wish list currently consists of more than 200 titles, I’m thinking we have some decent raw material to work with in terms of coming up with a list.

So what might I start with?

(1) Among Others - Jo Walton
(2) A Passage to India - E.M. Forster (but may be too dark a read for my current mindset)
(3) The List Lover’s Guide to Jane Austen
(4) Black Sun Rising - C.S. Friedman
(5) Crusoe: Daniel Defoe, Robert Knox and the Creation of a Myth
(6) The Haunted Looking Glass by Edward Gorey
(7) The Country House Revealed: A Secret History of the British Ancestral Home
(8) Morgue Drawer Four (@Busifer’s recommendation)
(9) The Gone Away World (@PGMCC’s recommendation)
(10) Ancillary Justice (everybody’s recommendation)
(11) The Rise and Fall of the Stately Home
(12) Anything written by D.E. Stevenson

And you’ll note I’m already past the 10 item limit. (And that’s without looking at what I could buy for the Kindle, since Kindle editions don’t count towards a Thingaversary because they are not *physical* books. There are at least three Kage Baker books for the Kindle that have captured my interest. And if each one is under $5.00, then buying three books is really like only buying one. Didja see the whole financial finagling in my brain there?)

Now am I permitted as part of the whole thingaversary “thing” to buy DVD productions of great literary works? Because there is a newly released DVD of David Tennant playing Richard II which would be really tempting to watch. (You may remember I liked watching The Iron Crown last fall.) And I still haven’t plunked down the money for the BBC Shakespeare Histories with Derek Jacobi playing Richard II. OOoooh! I could do a whole compare-and-contrast thing on Richard II. And since I know absolutely *nothing* about the man, it could open up whole new horizons for me (historically speaking). So you see there’s the educational benefit to be considered.

Do I have to actually wait for the date of my thingaversary to place the order? You know, I’m a busy woman and I would hate to have it slip past me (as has happened frequently before). Or will the thugs visit and make me buy even more for making that admission?

I will say that an impromptu 3am party with this crowd sounds like a delightful idea.

Eight books for each year? So, sixty-four, for starters? That'll make a nice preliminary dent in your list.

I'd say you ought to place the order a.s.a.p. You could reason that it's so you'll have them in hand by your 'versary, but that also gives you time to forget you did it and place another one by mistake.

And then, it might be snowing.

>237 jillmwo: I'm getting giddy just thinking about it, and it isn't even my Thingaversary!

I like Meredy's reasoning. And hey, you need to have the books in hand just in case the LT Enforcers show up wanting proof...

>237 jillmwo: "... since Kindle editions don’t count towards a Thingaversary because they are not *physical* books."

Says you! That's all I got for mine. And some of them were free. Don't even try to tell me those didn't count. You... you enabler, you!

>237 jillmwo: - An admirable list. I also recommend Morgue Drawer Four, and my mother enjoyed it, even though it was outside of her normal reading likes.

>237 jillmwo: Thugs? Intimidation? Where?
You let me know who they are and I'll sort them out.

Nice list, by the way.

#227 I just finished reading The Everything Store too.
Found it very interesting also, though it does seem to confirm that you need to be slightly insane to start an Internet business. But I wouldn't want to work for them - too adversial and work obsessed for me.

As a contrast, I also recently read In the plex about Google which is also fascinating and scary. It’s also interesting to see the seeming contrast in company culture between 2 web giants. Amazon seems to be run on traditional lines – hierarchies and committees with Bezos as final power.
Google seems to have tried to keep its university roots as a culture – less hierarchy and its engineers as the power.

I am also going to recommend,
Among Others - Jo Walton
Black Sun Rising - C.S. Friedman
Ancillary Justice

Jill, it's good to see you embracing the Thingaversary spirit so whole-heartedly! Some excellent choices on your list.

Sometimes when you re-read a book, you read it more successfully. The first (and as it happens, the last) time I read Touchstone I had just gotten my first Kindle (2008) and was reading with as much attention to the reading process on that device as to the plot of the book itself. So I was distracted somewhat -- perhaps a little disengaged from the emotional impact a book like this offers.

I am a fan of Laurie R. King. She writes with sensitivity about the impact of traumatic experience. She does this in some of her stand-alone novels (like A Darker Place), in the Kate Martinelli series (in books like With Child and To Play The Fool), and in her more recent Grey-Stuyvesant novels. I have to talk about The Bones of Paris with the library book group at the end of the month so I thought I would revisit Touchstone to re-orient myself with the two main characters,

Touchstone is set in between the Wars in Great Britain. King is telling a story about human beings manipulating others in the context of wielding political power. It’s a slow-build of a book as Harris Stuyvesant (a wandering FBI agent operating on his own agenda) becomes entangled with two uncomfortable personalities. Aldous Carstairs is one of those mysterious government men who manages much but always within the shadows and anonymity of the great bureaucracy. Bennett Grey is a badly shell-shocked individual whose war wound has essentially ripped off the top layer of his emotional skin, exposing raw areas of psychological pain in himself and in others. He has the capacity to sense the veracity of the stories others tell; Carstairs wants that skill under his control for purposes of political “necessity”. The key focus here is the result of trauma that Bennett Grey experienced in the trenches of the Somme and the result of trauma that Harris Stuyvesant has experienced in the wake of bombings set off in the U.S. There are two women -- Laura Hurleigh and Sarah Grey -- who are also drawn into the machinations of these three men.

It’s a powerful novel because King is so very good at portraying mental pain. How can King do this? I can’t figure out what makes her so good at this. Is it really just a case of her capacity to pick the right vocabulary? Is it that she understands how to draw out a line of suspense? I don’t know but she’s undoubtedly of the caliber of P.D. James and Sayers. Now I have to go begin Bones of Paris.

I read other books this past week or two (note that I am realizing that my new rule must be one book at a time. Otherwise the attention gets dissipated without any result of either comprehension or retention). But those other titles were deliberately frothy in nature. They did however have something in common across the board. I realized this morning that I had spent the last two or three weeks focused on work by women writers, trying to recollect who I am supposed to be, and trying to re-energize myself by reading about competent women.

Well, now you've gone and done it! After eight or nine years of not observing my Thingaversary with any real sense of commitment, I have made up for it in all kinds of ways. There's an order with Amazon en-route. There was a trip to a Barnes and Noble this afternoon and I may be able to make it to the independent bookshop in the city before next Sunday, that day being the *actual* date of my Thingaversary.

Of course, I did have to force my husband to buy three hefty volumes for his own reading in order to dismiss the incipient guilt caused by my own activity. Oh, my dear, you should get all three of those. You deserve it! And you know I've read very good reviews of that particular one. I can't figure out how quite it worked this way, but he even paid for my book. Maybe he thought I was being restrained.

At any rate, everything should be in hand before my Thingaversary and before I abandon my desk to enjoy a week of vacation time.

PS. I plan on starting the continuation of this reading thread on a new thread next weekend as well. It's all going to be quite tidy.

Those books don't count since you bought them before your Thingaversary. You'll have to buy another nine.

@suitable1 is right. Books acquired or ordered before your Thingaversary don't count. Now you have to start all over again.

>248 suitable1: and >249 SylviaC: As I understand it, my Thingaversary purchases (as outlined above) are covered under the following LT provisos:
--Banns announcing intent to purchase Thingaversary volumes publicly posted to LT two weeks prior (thereby allowing ample time to make up various lists of books to purchase and add to the TBR pile)
--Said purchase orders were not placed until ten days before date of Thingaversary, thereby prolonging the agony of happy anticipation
--Boxes of books when delivered to home have not been opened and will not be opened until date of Thingaversary (thereby impressing upon on-lookers the extent of my iron self-control)
--Mom said I could do whatever I want ‘cuz it’s MY Thingaversary.

This being the case, I do not need to start all over again in purchasing books. Not while there is a box from Amazon sitting in the living room and while there is a bag from Barnes and Noble also sitting in the living room. I even went so far as to explain to my husband what a Thingaversary was and why it is so important to properly observe the associated rituals.

Me thinks the lady doth protest too much!

Jill, do you savour the thought of starting over again? How many people have begged for that very thing? A second change? More books?

ETA: How did your husband react to the explanation?

We may need to have The Clam make a decision. She is the arbitrator of the rules guidelines. (Of course, "Mom said so" is a pretty persuasive argument)

Much more persuasive than "But all the other kids are allowed to."

The Thingaversary Enforcers are on standby...

A seriously tempting course on gaming, new media and narrative. Look at the syllabus here: http://gamemooc.wordpress.com/2014/06/20/syllabus-summer-2014/ I think it's fascinating that the student is reading a variety of epic poetry (as well as the first volume of LOTR) while dabbling in the online environment and moving about in a virtual literary universe as a created character. It's only a two month course (although it looks like a relatively challenging one). I really am tempted.

Even more interesting, read the interview with the guy teaching the course: http://inventorspot.com/articles/gaming_lotr_and_new_media_interview_professor_j.... Why he chose LOTR as a primary text for this MOOC is -- well, not surprising perhaps -- but certainly engaging as a starting point for the class before you move on to read all the other more traditional epic poetry, etc.

My son is quite intrigued by this, but we have no computer that would be capable of running the online game. Anything that involves a combination of gaming, reading and fantasy is right up his alley.

>252 suitable1: I think Jill should do whatever will make her the happiest. ;o)

>255 jillmwo:
That does look interesting. I've finished a couple of Coursera classes and enjoyed them. This one would be quite different for me. I've not done any on-line games.

Well, okay, the iron-like self control broke a little today. I *opened* the box from Amazon, just to satisfy my concern that Amazon hadn't somehow totally lost it and shipped me things that I would never read in a million years. How to Create Origami from Polymer Sheets in 10 Easy Lessons or the like. (And yes, I was relieved that the touchstone didn't work there...)

At any rate, all the nice books are there. I still however have managed the self control not to open and flip through them. Pick them up and fondle the bindings, yes, but I didn't flip through them. And they are still in the box. Where I can see them -- kind of like unopened Christmas presents under the tree. Still have to get through two more work days before I'm officially on vacation and can take the time to read the books though!

You iron woman, you. I think a little binding fondling is permissable.

I suddenly feel a little voyeuristic, but I can't look away. I'm partial to some binding fondling myself.

They are not like unopened Christmas presents. Unopened Christmas presents are, by definition, unopened. These are not merely opened, but fondled. For shame!

255 - Thanks for that link, sent it to my son.

>262 SylviaC: Well, in all fairness, the package wasn't unopened, but the books were...

>264 zjakkelien: Technicality.

Many a unopened Christmas present has been fondled.

>265 SylviaC: Yeah, who wants to be fair... *snickers*

The last posting on this thread represents reading from recent weeks:

Let’s begin with Unlocked: An Oral History of Haden’s Syndrome. This one is by John Scalzi who you may remember wrote Red Shirts which my whole family devoured during one recent Christmas break. Scalzi wrote Unlocked as the backstory for his new book Lock-In due out in August of this year. Unlocked is primarily being made available as an ebook from Tor (Scalzi’s publisher) although a limited print edition will be coming out from Subterranean Press in September. Unlocked is intended to whet the appetite for Lock-In and it does that very, very well.

In terms of narrative style, Unlocked is ALOT like World War Z - that oral history, somewhat epistolary type of jumping from pov to pov. Like World War Z, this story is about a global pandemic. What makes it interesting to my mind is two fold. (1) The impact of the disease on its victims is that horrific condition where the human is alive inside his or her brain, but all mechanisms for speech or movement are paralyzed. (2) The response to this condition emerges from a mix of both robotics and neurological conditioning. There’s a bit of virtual gaming environments as well. Put that way, it doesn’t sound that interesting or new, but Scalzi moves through time so quickly in Unlocked that you are captured by the story of how a society has had to make an abrupt left turn in its progress. (Haden’s Syndrome is a global phenomenon, but Scalzi is focused on the US experience.)

I found it to be most enjoyable and I’m definitely pre-ordering Lock In on the basis of having read this one.

Then there was the quick and entirely frivolous Phryne Fisher novel, Unnatural Habits. The point of Phryne Fisher as a heroine is that she is a more-than-competent female who manages to persuade everyone in her orbit to do what she needs them to do in order for her to solve whatever case she’s working. This includes cab-drivers, constables, children and members of her highly diverse household. Phryne merely crooks her finger and everyone dutifully does as told. One doesn’t read one of these for realistic portrayals of human nature, but for the pure vicarious pleasure derived from Phryne’s charmed existence. She’s always smarter than those around her, unhampered by the common prejudices of the average citizen of the 1920s. Unnatural Habits uses as it’s backdrop (spoiler tag) the Magdelen Laundries of that period and, of course, Phryne is not supportive of such prison-like settings.

The Bones of Paris is less impressive than Touchstone in many respects. Touchstone was all about the psychological make-up of its main characters. There is less time given over to that in Bones of Paris. It is overwhelmed instead by its setting - Paris in the ‘twenties. So think jazz age, Surrealism, cafe society and the dark corners created by our own human behavior. I think it was MrsLee who described this book as being on the Gothic end of things and she’s right. The market materials describe this more as a thriller or novel of surprise than as a mystery -- which is actually a fairly accurate description. There is danger to the female, there are both real and imaginary deaths, and there is distinct unease throughout.

And now off to celebrate the thingaversary in a new thread adjoined to this one!

I haven't read it yet, but Unlocked is available to be read on the Tor.com site. I find Scalzi a bit like eating chocolate almonds. I start off by reading slowly, trying to enjoy every word and make it last, but before I can help myself I'm tearing through the pages in huge bites. Much too soon, I've finished the book and am left with a fleeting memory of what I'd just read too quickly.

>268 jillmwo: I'm currently reading Old man's war, one of the books I postponed reading for quite a while, because then I knew I would always have something good waiting for me when I needed it... I'm sorry to loose it in that respect, but I'm also glad I'm reading it, because I'm really enjoying it. So far it's feeling a lot like the 75+ version of Ender's game... Anyhow, I just read the blurb for Redshirts, and that sounds very good as well (reminded me quite a bit of Star Trek, I wonder if it's related (but don't tell me!)), so that's gone on the wishlist, thanks for the recommendation! Definitely not sorry to get hit by this kind of book bullet...