LizzieD: 2014*6 (FALL/AUTUMN)

Books Out: Mine ~ 29 W's ~ 20

MOST SIGNIFICANT OF FIRST THREE QUARTERS OF 2014

Into the Silence
Ancillary Justice
Letters from Egypt
In Paradise
Just One Damned Thing After Another
Peter the Great
Blonde
The Crow Road
City of Stairs
A Gentle Madness
Aristocrats
Restless

NEW TO MY HOUSE IN OCTOBER
Deadline - AMP
A Madness of Angels - PBS
Love Songs from a Shallow Grave - Karen....thank you!
Anniversaries: From the Life of Gesine Cresspahl (1) - AMP
Anniversaries II: From the Life of Gesine Cresspahl - AMP
Sisters of Treason - Kindle Daily Deal
The Secret Rooms ✔ - PBS
The Hare with Amber Eyes ✔ - Karen (kaggsy)
City of Dark Magic - PBS
Learning to Walk in the Dark ✔ - Kindle (for my book group)
The Bolter - Karen again
All the Light We Cannot See ✔ - Kindle
Where the Shadows Lie - PBS
Mozart - PBS
Beethoven - PBS
Edward III: The Perfect King - Kindle Daily Deal

READ IN OCTOBER
The Shadow Rising (reread)
The Cat's Table
White Teeth
These Old Shades
The Sound of Broken Glass

NEW TO MY HOUSE IN NOVEMBER
Five Bells - PBS
The Classical World - PBS
The Chalk Circle Man - PBS
Gone Girl - Kindle Deal
Unbroken - Kindle Deal
Whispers Underground - PBS

READ IN NOVEMBER
Learning to Walk in the Dark
Decca: The Letters of Jessica Mitford
Demelza (reread)
The Martian
The Ruby in Her Navel
The Stranger House

NEW TO MY HOUSE IN DECEMBER
A Fine Old Conflict - AMP
Every Day Is Mother's Day - AMP
The Oblate's Confession - Elaine
Vacant Possession - Elaine through PBS
Miss Bunting - PBS
The Woodcutter - AMP
Elizabeth is Missing - Kindle deal
The Miss Dennis School of Writing - Christmas Gift!
Havisham - She doesn't mind if I don't wait!
The Passage ✔ - What a friend!
The Reformation: A History - VSS Kerry!
Bright Young Things - VSS
The Woman Upstairs - VSS
A Legacy - PBS
The Discovery of Middle Earth ✔ - Christmas Gift!
A Natural History of Dragons - What a friend!
Other People's Daughters ✔ - AMP
Doctor Sleep - Kindle...a good deal!
The Pumpkin Eater - AMP
A Killing Frost - AMP

READ IN DECEMBER
Fludd
A Symphony of Echoes
Our Iceberg Is Melting
Winter Frost
Through Connemara in a Governess Cart
A Long Time Dead
Moon Over Soho
*My Friend Says It's Bullet Proof
Cauldron
The Genesee Diary
Dead in the Scrub (reread)

READING IN NOVEMBER


It's the kiss of death to put a big book on here! Nevertheless-----

Oh, am I first? It's nice in here, isn't it. Lovely tree in the picture. I'm guessing an Acer or similar, otherwise I'll suspect someone of running amok with the spray paints or having over done the photoshop!

Oh, how beautiful. I love autumn and its colours. Happy New Thread, Peggy. :-)

Absolutely gorgeous tree, Peggy. Made my day!

Happy New Thread Peggy! I've had White Teeth on the tbr for ages and ages... but way overbooked already, or I'd gladly join you.

*tiptoes in*
*waves hello*
*tiptoes out again*

Hello Peggy, what a wonderful new thread. Looking forward to your reading exploits :)

Welcome, Helen #1! That's our neighbors' Japanese Maple, and I promise you that it is incandescent as it moves from orange to red - no retouching necessary. I'll pass along your compliments and Barbara's and Jan's too. You are both most welcome and I'm very happy to see Ilana, Suz, and Bianca here too.
Ilana, you have a copy of The Cat's Table on your TBR pile, I noticed earlier. I may join you in that one sooner rather than later, but I'd be very happy to have company with the ZS.
I guess that this should go on my old thread, but never mind.... I finally, really got into this tiny book, and I recommend Halfon as a challenging, beautiful writer.

MONASTERY by Eduardo Halfon

Eduardo Halfon, the narrator of Eduado Halfon's earlier novel The Polish Boxer, is back again, traveling again, searching for meaning again in his new, small book Monastery. He considers telling a customs officer on the border between Guatemala and Belize that, "...all our journeys are really one single journey, with multiple stops and layovers. That every journey, any journey, is not linear, and is not circular, and it never ends. That every journey is meaningless." Halfon shapes this book in a circle, and it really doesn't end. Each chapter is a layover only vaguely connected to the other stops. On the way, however, the reader visits many countries and encounters birds, which travel through their lives - a list of birds one may not eat recited by his future brother-in-law, an Orthodox Jew in Israel, a feisty red macaw in a tiny restaurant in a tiny village on the same Guatemalan-Belize border.
Halfon is an outsider seeking identity. In Israel he's a Jew who is ¾ Arab. In Guatemala people don't realize that he's Guatemalan. In New York he's one of the many just passing through on his own pilgrimage. Once again it is his Polish grandfather whose stories point him toward some resolution although he says, "In the end, no one is saved."
That may be, but Halfon is a beautiful writer worth reading and rereading. This should be a somber, dispiriting book, but somehow it is simply thoughtful. Like his grandfather, Eduardo is a liar, shaping truth by falsehood. I will be happy to travel with him the next time around.
(My thanks to Bellevue Press for an uncorrected proof of this book, given for an honest review, which this is to the best of my ability.)

Hi Peggy - What a beautiful tree! It almost makes me forget what comes after the leaves fall...

That's how I feel about it too, Beth.
I'm reading White Teeth. I know that Karen has said that she is not a great ZS fan. I'm finding the tone irritating. I am interested in the characters, and I don't particularly care for the way that their creator mocks (?) (I hope I find a better word) them. Has anybody else had this same trouble?

Oh, the autumn colours are beautiful, Peggy … if only they didn't mean leaving behind my favourite season. Happy new thread!

>12 LizzieD: I read On Beauty. Frankly, I prefer her essays and interviews. She has an intelligent engaging mind, and a charming personality. When she writes about writing, I find her quite convincing. A favorite of mine is an essay she wrote several years ago; I think it was titled something like "Why There are So Few Great Novels". I couldn't find an exact link, although there are essays online that relate to the topic. For her, it comes down to a question of the writer's character and how rare it is that a writer is capable of conveying or capturing herself sufficiently to transcend common good (ie. flawed) writing:

" Though we rarely say it publicly, we know that our fictions are not as disconnected from our selves as you like to imagine and we like to pretend. It is this intimate side of literary failure that is so interesting; the ways in which writers fail on their own terms: private, difficult to express, easy to ridicule, completely unsuited for either the regulatory atmosphere of reviews or the objective interrogation of seminars, and yet, despite all this, true." -- "Fail Better" (2007)

I like her comparing the experience of reading one's own writing to Eliot's line from Prufrock: "That is not it at all ... that is not what I meant, at all ..."

As far as On Beauty, it struck me as well crafted, well thought out, but with characters that didn't grab me, a lukewarm ending. It may be coincidence, but I couldn't help but consider ZS the academician and wonder whether the book was the outcome of the same analytical tools she has in such good measure. She would be the first to acknowledge that her own work too is subject to the limitations in personality and character that she perceives most everywhere.

Hi Peggy - I loved White Teeth, but the other members of my book club agreed with you.

I feel your pain, Nancy. I'm afraid I'll soon be feeling winter too, and that's NOT my favorite season.
Thanks for that, Rex. I think I might agree about her non-fiction. I love her appropriation of the Prufrock line! At any rate, I haven't read *WT* in a couple of days. Oh dear. Oh dear. Today it was The Cat's Table. This seems at the moment to be one that I can finish without discipline.
Beth, I want to love it. I'll still try.

I loved White Teeth Peggy and really liked On Beauty and NW but she does have a certain style that probably doesn't appeal to everyone. Happy new thread!

Thank you, Bonnie. I'm not willing to give up yet.

I'd love to feel winter. It was 90 degrees here today at the coast (100 inland) and supposed to be hotter tomorrow. Going to be a beach day

Happy new thread Peggy!

ZS is a writer I admire more than like - I've read White Teeth and On Beauty and can see that both are good books but I'm not sure I really enjoyed either.

These are all very good and thoughtful points about ZS. I enjoy her writing but it is, perhaps, a bit self-conscious or something....

Nice review of the Halfon, I've got to try out The Polish Boxer.

Lucy, I wish you would try The Polish Boxer...... It has depths for such a short little book. The first chapter felt very like a translation, but after that, the writing was lovely. He lives in Nebraska. I wonder why he doesn't translate himself. Oh well.
Heather, that sounds ominous. I've read so much this year that I've respected but haven't really loved. I'm keeping on keeping on - and spending a lot of time with the *Wheel*. The characters and writing are pretty deplorable, but the world is amazing. Also, once I relearn the vocabulary, it's a shame to stop and lose it again.
Roni, we're having our last day in the 80s for awhile. Really, summer here was startlingly bearable. I fear for the winter coming up.....
Lunch and bridge this afternoon. I wish I were as good at the latter as I am at the former.

I tried NW, I really did, but I couldn't even like it that much. Yes, the writing was fine, but self-conscious was just part of it. Honestly? I thought it was boring.

Hi Peggy - gorgeous Japanese Maple. A joy to look at. Thanks for sharing and kudos to your neighbors.

Have a lovely weekend. It may start being winterish here - same there? I fear for the winter coming up...... Very fuzzy caterpillars? Thick shelled nuts? Other hints and portents? Personally I prefer winter to summer except for fresh tomatoes, cucumbers, and blueberries. :)

Peggy, I wish you a gorgeous weekend.

I read Zadie Smith's On Beauty some years back, maybe around the time it came out, and can't say it excited me, but since it was my first book by her, I couldn't say whether it was her style or just that particular book, but it also didn't make me all that keen to run to White Teeth. I'll look forward to you final comments on it, but it's almost a sure thing that if they end up being any less than glowing, I won't rush to put it any higher on the tbr...

Hope you're having a great weekend Peggy.

That tree is a dream on the picture. Having to remove the leaves might be less of a dream for your neighbour, but so, so beautiful! (my dad only ever allowed needle trees in the garden for that reason... *grumble*)

Heavens, Nathalie! We planted a sycamore in Philadelphia in our back garden precisely so that it would grow quickly and we would be able to make big leaf piles for the LD 'help' rake up and then jump into! We also hung a swing on it - we carefully chose the tree which was already a five inch diameter and had a perfect swing branch. The people who bought our house had two boys and kept the tree for them - they have sold it, so who knows what will happen next.

Lovely, Lucy! Nathalie, our neighbor with the 2 sugar maples was like your father. He wore big circles in the lawn (that he had to reseed every year....duh) raking as the leaves fell. He would even try to use his rake to knock unfallen leaves off the tree. As for the Japanese maple, the leaves on the ground are also beautiful for a week or so.
Ilana, I'm glad you're in no hurry to get to White Teeth. Most of my reading time is going to *Wheel 4* which is way, way, way too long. And I know that *Wheel 5* is even bigger.

>30 LizzieD: Omigod - knocking unfallen leaves off a sugar maple????? Time for a mental health checkup, methinks.

Well, I must say I've never heard of anyone loving to rake leaves, LOL! My father planted maple seedlings on their property which grew to be gorgeous, huge trees. I remember thinking as a teenager that if I never raked another leaf, it would suit me fine, ha! He tapped those same trees for years, too. That was in Ontario, in maple country … still love maple syrup, but I have the real deal very rarely on the west coast.

That makes me think of an image from... I think?... Rumer Godden - of a nun walking across a perfectly groomed lawn in the convent and putting out her hand to catch a falling leaf which she then tucks into her pocket!

H Peggy~ Wow, what a gorgeous tree up top! We've had one or two days with some snow, but otherwise it's still summer around here.

I read On Beauty years ago and disliked it so much I've never been tempted by Zadie Smith since.

Oh, Nancy, I don't think that the neighbor loved to rake leaves. He looked rather grim in the process. He just couldn't stand all the clutter on the lawn. He even preferred his bare ground rings around the trees to the clutter of leaves. Yep, Suz, I don't think a mental health checkup would have been wasted on old Damon.
Maple syrup! YUM!
That's a memorable image, Lucy. I don't remember it in *House of Brede*. I may have to reread in order to be sure. (I do not need a mental health checkup.........at least not for that.)
Welcome, Anne! Snow - good grief!!! I wish for snow once a year, and that does it for me.
I now wish I had started something other than White Teeth. When I finally finish *Wheel 4*, I'll grit mine and read the thing. And, really, I don't dislike it as much as you did *OB* - at least not yet.
I failed to announce that our Archie Sparks had his little snip job done yesterday. We put him in Pussky Prison (the ell of their porch, isolated by a screen door) to keep him quieter than he might be out in tussle territory. The first time I walked out to check on him, he landed at my feet from the ledge above the lintel, which he had reached by climbing the door. Normally there is a kitty climbing ramp there, but DH had taken it away so as not to tempt him. By bedtime, we just released him, and this morning he's running around as usual. He has pain meds, but I doubt that he needs them. So that leaves only Lulu, who is still so little that I just can't quite make up my mind to put her under the knife.

Peggy, they are recommending that you do the surgery as soon as they reach 2 pounds--that's when all the foster kitties are done, before they are adopted out. Amazing, isn't it?

Holy Moly! She's not 5 pounds yet. Good grief!
Thanks for the info, Roni.

Nice thread-topper, Peggy. Fall. Gotta love it.

I'm a little behind but is Archie Sparks your new kitten? Roni is right; they are doing those surgeries so young these days! Modern techniques and all that. Anyway.... photos? :-)

I was not overly impressed with White Teeth when I read it several years ago. I have felt like I must have missed something that everyone else "got."

I'm not sure it is in Brede, Peggy - I'm hoping someone else might remember that moment! It made an impression on me certainly!

Peggy, I got such a charge out of Pussky Prison and tussle territory. Doesn't sound like Sparks is any the worse for his recent surgery. Go, kitty cat, go!

Hi Peggy, I've lurked the past few times, so just thought I'd leave a sign of my passing this time and wish you a nice "Saturday". ;-)

Thank you, Ilana. It was a busier Saturday than I wanted. Tomorrow I swim and try to get a reasonable amount of volunteer stuff done. I hope that Saturday can turn into a real Saturday!
Nancy, we aim to please. (Doesn't Pussky Prison sound vaguely Soviet to you?)
Sparks is the new boy, Ellen, and he's charging around today in his normal crazy cat fashion. I don't think we'll give him pain killer tomorrow. DH has taken some new pictures, but he needs to put them on his computer so that I can get them to mine....unfortunately, that's how it works since I'm a computing dummy.
Lucy, I'm not sure that it's in *Brede* either. I confess to having read it multiple times. That leaves several possibilities, but I'm not quite as eager to get into them.
Maybe 150 more pages of *Wheel 4*. I do wish I had more reading time!

Pussky Prison -- Spassky something or other -- yup, definitely Russian.

And nope, that image isn't from "Brede". I've read it so many times over the years that I realized the last time I re-read, I knew it too well to read it ever again. And no, nothing like that happens. There's stuff about box hedges that is symbolic, and nettles, but not leaves floating from the sky.

Good morning, Peggy - I hope your Saturday is a true relaxing Saturday. We have a few errands, then lots of nothing. I might make beef stew.....

Love the stories of your kitties. We're down to two - Kitty William (12) and Inara Starbuck (7). They're great companions and so much fun to watch play with each other.

Peggy, I wish you a lovely weekend.

Thank you, Suz. Spassky it is! We didn't do it on purpose, but it does sound dire....... They all love to be in there when they can walk out, but it's another story when the door closes.
Karen, I wish you may find a charmer to increase your feline quotient. Two cats are always better than one.
Barbara, that's another gorgeous picture! Thank you!
And now ------- I did it. I finally finished *Wheel 4*, and I'll have to slap my hands to keep from jumping into *Wheel 5*. Obviously, everybody is in an interesting place at the moment. I just have to read something different though - always supposing I get an opportunity to read anything.

THE SHADOW RISING by Robert Jordan
What a bloated book! There's nothing wrong with his sentence structure or spelling (although a diligent proofreader should have found a few errors that slipped past), but the writing is terrible - repetitious beyond belief and formulaic. The characters are so cardboard as to make a reader reluctant to look at even the one side very closely. The vocabulary is of necessity from several languages, but there's no consistency in pronunciation within any one language, so you have to look up every word multiple times if you want to be accurate or simply forget it and decline to talk about it with any other reader. None of that matters. The world is complex and intricately detailed; plot action seldom flags.
My recollection is that the next few begin to be real disasters, but anybody who has invested the hours to get this far will find it hard to forego finding out how it ends. I think that I got into the 7th book before putting it on hold for 10 years or so. I hope to be in at the finish this time around.
Meanwhile, Rand has declared himself the Dragon Reborn and has a majority of the Aiel ready to follow him into battle. Mat remains with him reluctantly. Egwene is with the Aiel Wise Women learning how to be safe in Tel'aran'rhiod (Jordan is SO fond of apostrophes!), the dream world. Perrin and Faile have married and have made the Two Rivers safe from Trolloc attacks for the moment. Nynaeve and Elayne are in Tanchico, having successfully taken steps to dispose of an a'dam by which any of the Forsaken could have controlled Rand, but not having brought members of the Black Ajah to justice. Min has left Tar Valon with Siuan Sanche, the deposed Amyrlin Seat...... You get the idea. Lots going on and lots to work out.

I was thinking about trying to read the series now that it's complete, but I barely got through the first book way back when, and your comments strongly encourage me just to forget that ambition--there are many better books out there waiting for me.

No doubt about the better, Roni, but that world is so complete and creative that it's worth putting up with all the rest for me.
Right now I'm enjoying The Cat's Table. Talk about something completely different!

Happy Birthday, Peggy! Hope you have a great one.

I bring you: Autumnal cat ;)

lunacat - your Autumnal cat looks just like my Kitty William!

Hi Peggy. Happy Birthday? Happy Birthday! Hope it's a lovely day for you.

Thanks for the birthday wishes, Karen, Jenny, and Roni. Actually, it's tomorrow, but I like the practice. Many thanks for the autumnal kitty - she could be "A Sweet October Maiden, Rather Shy," also my favorite Storybook Doll --- except that I believe she is a he.

Well, now that it's today and I've been clued in, Happy Birthday!

Thank you, Judy!

Happy Birthday, Peggy.

Happy Birthday! I hope you have had/are having a lovely day :)

Happy Birthday Peggy! Hope it's been a good one.

Slipping in before midnight... happy birthday!

Many thanks, Beth, Jenny, Ilana, and Katherine. It's certainly been a day memorable for bad news --- a good friend in the hospital following a couple of falls, a cousin's wife with a heart attack and triple by-pass surgery, another cousin with cognitive impairment because of cholesterol (?), and a friend who had to put her beloved dog down today. Good grief! Honestly, I look forward to better tomorrow.

Oh my goodness, Peggy. It has been a birthday memorable for bad news, indeed! And I'm so sorry to hear that. Here's to a better tomorrow.

Happy belated Birthday, Peggy. I wish you all the best. I'm sorry to hear that a lot of sad things happened.

Oh no, that's not how you want your birthday to go. So sorry to hear of everyone's bad news.

Hopefully things will calm down on your birthday+1.

Goodness. Hoping for the best outcome in all of those situations ...

Your birthday! You poor dear!

And I am relieved that the Jordan is one I will never have to read!

Thank you, Nancy, Barbara, Jenny, Laura, and Lucy. Today was much better although I still didn't get to read any - maybe tonight!

Sorry to hear about the bad day yesterday, though happy today was better. Reading will come, no worries.

Belated birthday wishes and sorry to hear of all the bad news you received. I hope today is better.

I hope you've been getting some reading done. I am sorry to hear that you had so much bad news in one day, and your birthday at that.

Thank you, Ilana, Heather, and Karen. No reading at all, but no bad news either, so I guess it's a draw of some sort.

Urgh, I have to confess that I didn't enjoy City of Dark Magic at all. It was too over the top to take seriously (as seriously as one takes this type of urban fantasy) and did not for me succeed as a parody of it either. The bathroom scene after she first arrives at the castle, for example. Excuse ME!!

Hope each and every day is far better than your birthday this year, Peggy.

Oh dear. Oh dear. I have her in the castle, but either I haven't arrived at the bathroom scene or it eased right past me.
Thanks for the wishes. I'm looking forward to a day when I can stay home all day and do what I want. I know I'm spoiled, but this going and going is about to get me down.

GAG. Roni is exactly right. The bathroom scene was in the next chapter, and I've seldom read anything in such poor taste. What was my cousin thinking? Having said that, I will read a bit more for the Beethoven angle. I also have this book to thank for leading me to the standard Beethoven bio, which I didn't have, and from there to a standard Mozart bio - both of which I have requested from PBS.
And now for something completely different!

THE CAT'S TABLE by Michael Ondaatje

I really enjoyed this little book and would likely have enjoyed it even more if I had read it straight through instead of playing with it as I did. The passenger liner Oronsay is traveling from Ceylon to England and on board is 11 year-old Michael. He is assigned with 2 other boys, who become his intimate friends for the 3-week voyage, to the cat's table - the one farthest from the captain's table and, therefore, the least respectable. It's a coming of age story of sorts, not only for Michael and his friends, but also for his 17 year-old distant cousin Emily, who also happens to be on board. In fact, the voyage changes many lives. The adults at the cat's table must be much more interesting than anybody that the captain gets to dine with. Since Michael and friends have the run of the ship, they get to learn lots of secrets.
Oh boo. This is a bad review - too general where it should be specific, and vice versa. I feel as though I'm the last person to read the book, so I'm just going to quit. I liked it and will read more Ondaaje.

Not the last person. The Cat's Table is still among my bedroom tbr piles and I was enjoying your review till the 'oh boo' part! :-)

>73 LizzieD: Yes, I would say that particular scene is unmissable. ;-P

And I had just read a book that does the general plot so much better, Coronets and Steel by Sherwood Smith--that didn't help...

I haven't read The Cat's Table either, but you just put it on my wish list!

Roni, the whole chapter is icky. I don't know what I'll do if more of the same pops up. I have a couple of Sherwood Smiths - Inda and The Fox that I just haven't gotten to. As I say, I'm reading for Beethoven right now.
I'm sorry to have frustrated you and Ilana. I apparently don't have the patience to think and write these days. Do try *Cat's Table* though. The weirdness of seeing the world through an 11 year-old boy's eyes is nicely balanced by his adult reflections.
I've started back with White Teeth, and right now (in WWII in Bulgaria), I'm reading with more relish than earlier.

Peggy, I thoroughly enjoyed your review of The Cat's Table. Nothing oh boo about it! I've been on the fence with this one since it first appeared here on LT. I think you may have convinced me to give it a read!

>73 LizzieD: Not the last person to read The Cat's Table and not a bad review either - it's on my list too.

Peggy, just finished watching Lost in Austen, which was an idea I picked up from you on someone's thread. I very much enjoyed! Light, charming, well acted entertainment. I've recommended the DVD to my sisters as well.

I think, Nancy and Heather, that you are very nice people! *Cat's Table* was my first Ondaatji. but it won't be my last.
Nancy, I'm tickled that you enjoyed Lost in Austen. It might be about time for me to watch it again. I intend to do nothing much tomorrow, and *LiA* would fit in perfectly.
Meanwhile, I'm liking White Teeth more than I did at first even though I think I value her characters more than Smith does. I find myself saying "Ick-Ball" to myself many times a day.
I'm adding Learning to Walk in the Dark not because I'm reading it, but because I must read it for my theology group that meets in early November.

Peggy, I wish you a fantastic weekend.

Hi Peggy! Happy Saturday. I'm loving our weather here in central NC, hope it's as gorgeous near I-95.

Hi, Karen! Oh yes, I-95 south is enjoying lovely weather at last!
Many thanks for the kitty in stealth mode, Barbara!
All the Light We Cannot See is $4.99 for Kindle USA. Yay! And thanks to the book bargain thread. These Old Shades is today's Kindle Daily Deal too for $1.99.

Love that peek-a-book cat too!

The Kindle offers often transfer to Amazon.ca too, but unfortunately AtLWCS isn't a Canadian deal today. Ah well. I can always get it at the library.

Happy Saturday Peggy.

Hi Peggy,

I had to laugh about your review of the 4th book of Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time. I managed to read the first 3 and then I grew very tired and uninterested. Considering that they are such tombs, really, there isn't happening that much at all. Also I do enjoy complicated politics and worlds this series just didn't work for me. So, I am surprised that you actually finished the book.

On another note - HAPPY BELATED BIRTHDAY! I hope you had a fantastic day :)

These Old Shades is one of my 3 favorite Georgette Heyer romances - Devil's Cub about their son and Faro's Daughter, the first one I ever read, are the other two. But I really do love them all.

All The Light We Cannot See is on our bookclub list for next May. I'm looking forward to reading it in April (so I can remember enough to try to talk intelligently about it in May!)

Bianca, I'm a fool for Jordan, I guess. I'll move on to the next book eventually, but reading something different - anything different has been a breath of fresh air. Many thanks for the birthday wish! My ma took me out to lunch today for our celebration, and I'm still stuffed with onion soup, chicken piccata, a salad, and bread pudding with rum sauce. Big yum! After that huge meal I snoozed more than read this afternoon. *sigh*
Karen, I love all Heyer too and have many more to read or reread. I read Faro's Daughter last year and didn't love it as much as some, but I'm sure that many feel that way about False Colours, one of my early favorites. For the record, right now my top 3 are Frederica, The Unknown Ajax, and The Talisman Ring, but the numbers two and three are subject to change at any time.
I don't know when I'll get to *All Light*, and I also have A Constellation of Vital Phenomena calling to me, which I think you just picked up at a library sale.

Gosh, I've accumulated so much Georgette Heyer on the tbr this year. No less than 10 works, I see. So far, I've loved one (These Old Shades) and abandoned the other a third of the way in (Frederica). I guess I should make some time for her, eh? Just need to be in the right mood to read any sort of romance. That being said, I had lots of fun reading the first part of Love Letters Between a Nobleman and His Sister with Heather and Liz et al. Seems we're moving on to the second part now.

I think you mean Frederica? And are you making any progress on A Madness of Angels? You need to get through the first 50 pages or so for the story to settle down and the sense of disorientation to subside, and find out why it is so strong.

The Reluctant Widow was the first Heyer I ever read, and is my favourite. A wonderful combination of characters, tomfoolery, spies, adventure and intrigue with the obligatory dash of romance and pragmatism thrown in for good measure :)

Oh, Jenny, I love The Reluctant Widow too! And The Grand Sophie. And the sort of peculiar one about the plain woman who marries the man of her dreams who doesn't love her..........(I'll see if I can't come up with a title.)
Honestly, Roni. Of course, I mean Frederica. Where on earth did *Francesca* come from? (No fever, no alcohol --- dementia???) I think I'm past 50 pages of *Madness* and enjoying it when I pick it up. I read it instead of that Prague one today. I expect that will continue to be the case.
Ilana, the Behn has been on Mt. Bookpile for quite a long time. If you don't like *Frederica*, you don't. I love the younger siblings and the Baluchistan Hound.

ETA: A Civil Contract is the strange one that I was mentioning to Jenny.
Also, everybody knows that there is a Heyer group called Almack's, don't you? You are all invited to join and infuse some life into the old place!

A Civil Contract.

Hi, Peggy! Whoops, cross-post! :)

Hi, Liz. Glad to see you!

Hugely behind with everyone who matters to me at LT, so trying to do a bit of catching up. What a magnificent tree!

Loved your review of "Monastery": you made me want to read it.

>12 LizzieD:: as a general rule, I dislike those books where the author mocks his or her creations. As a humble example, E.F. Benson in his Mapp & Lucia books wrote characters whose habits and traits were risible and yet he never mocked them, he merely described them and let us delight in the circumstances which resulted. In fact, he gave us the sense that he quite loved his creations, foibles and all.

Nothing to contribute to the Jordan or Heyer conversations, so I think I'm all caught up. Hooray!

*waving* at Peggy

Tui, I'm thrilled that you think you might want to read Monastery. I think that Halfon is amazing, and I wish that here were better known.
When I try to pin down a reference that shows ZS mocking one of her characters, I don't find one. My uneasiness remains. You are exactly right about EFB and his characters, and I love them with him although I'm happy that I don't have to live with most of them.
*ENTHUSIASTIC WAVE* back to Stasia! I'm very happy to see your presence back on the boards!!!!!

Your review was JUST FINE!!! I don't know what you are thinking it ought to be!!!

That's nice of you, Lucy, but it doesn't begin to hint at the richness of characterization or of the mysterious otherness of being 3 weeks in transit or all the things I missed.
But. Today I got to sit (well, lounge, really) and read for more than an hour! And I'm more invested in White Teeth now. I guess I'm projecting my experience with smart, under-educated, under-employed men onto Iqbal, and I'd treat him more sensitively if he were mine. Now I've met the solid, well educated RC/Jewish couple, and they too are taking their knocks from ZS. 307/448. Read, Peggy, read.

Crawling out from under the rock known as Real Life. Trying to catch up on the threads, which is daunting, so I thought I would simply plop down right here. I see yo have Constellation of Vital Phenomena on tap. I was quite moved by it and am eager to hear your thoughts when you get to it.

Marianne, it's a treat to see you here! I'm not sure whether it will be *Constellation* or *All Light* next, but I think those are the two contenders.

I'm #56 on the wait list at the local library for All the light we cannot see. Hope those ahead of me read quickly!

Marianne, I have *All Light* because it's $4.99 for Kindle and in my price range. Good luck on getting it soon.

WHITE TEETH by Zadie Smith

In the end I like this better than I expected to when I was 100 pages into it. To my surprise, it has elements of being a well-made book, and ZS is occasionally "writerly" with mixed results for my taste. It should be great stuff. The characters are a Bangladeshi, Muslim, ex-WWII soldier, who ends up in London with a wife and twin sons and his best friend from the war, an ordinary Brit with a much younger Jamaican wife and their daughter. I've tried and tried to pin down why these characters never become living, breathing entities for me. I think it's because ZS is not particularly fascinated with them herself. I feel (and I can't point to any particular passage to back up a thought, so it's just a feeling) that she knows them so well and is in such command of them that they don't hold any surprises for her. Too bad. I'm not sorry I read it, but I won't leap to read On Beauty, which I also own.

Peggy, What an incredible opening photo!!!!!

You know, I think I haven't read White Teeth - only On Beauty and a book of short stories. On reflection I have a feeling you wouldn't care any more for OB.... but what do I know. It's interesting your sense of Smith's lack of emotional investment (or whatever you want to call it) in her characters. I have a feeling she does it on purpose, why I can't say.

Peggy, I wish you a fantastic weekend.

Every time I think of a favorite Heyer, someone mentions another one and I remember how much I loved that one. Several more that come to mind are The Quiet Gentleman, Regency Buck, Black Sheep, The Nonesuch..... sigh. Might be time to pick up one again.

I am quite moved by A Constellation of Vital Phenomena by Anthony Marra. It's not my typical kind of book. I am an Anglophile and this is about Chechnya. It's fascinating and wise and has some beautifully written passages and emotions. It's the kind of book that, for me, seems to require chunks of time instead of dipping in and out of it. Since today's Saturday and it's only a bit of laundry, errands and lunch with husband, and EARLY VOTING, this afternoon is promising for some reading time in the library with one or more kitties to keep me company.

I hope you have a lovely weekend, Peggy - our weather is gorgeous and I think yours is too.....

My mouse is getting tetchy and I double posted.....

Oh dear a tetchy mouse instead of a techy mouse is not a good thing. I appreciate the advice for reading *Constellation*. I haven't started it yet. And I don't believe I've read any of your list of second-list favorite Heyers even though they're in my collection. Fun times! These Old Shades is obviously an early novel, but no less charming for that - or at least, I'm quite willing to be charmed. Our weather is gorgeous! This is how it was supposed to be on my birthday and wasn't quite. I'd like to go ahead and vote too, but I have to get a better handle on the judges before I do;
Many thanks for another lovely image, Barbara. A happy weekend to you too!
Lucy, I believe you said that you were not a great ZS fan either. If I were writing, it would be because I was interested in how my characters dealt with their situation. I guess I have a hard time imagining other reasons for general fiction. Anyway, I'm happy to have checked that one off my list.

Lovely review of White Teeth, Peggy. Not sure exactly why, but Zadie Smith has never appealed to me. Maybe one day ...

Interesting review of White Teeth, Peggy. I held her books so many times in my hand and somehow they also never appealed to me either.
However, I finished The Bone Clocks and loved it, I know the book didn't quite work for you and Nathalie for various reasons and when I started listening to the audio I actually was a bit anxious to start off with. In the end I got really caught up in the storyline and enjoyed the stories quite a bit. Also my fave character wasn't Holly, but Marinus and I would have liked if he would have had a greater presence than he did.
I also just finished Strange Weather in Tokyo which was recommended by Joe. A rather quiet, but incredible entertaining book which I think you probably would enjoy.

Happy Sunday Peggy!

The fall in PA is glorious!

Gorgeous leaves, Linda!

I absolutely loved The Cat's Table when I read it about the time it first appeared, and I think it remains one of my fave Ondaatje novels. I definitely preferred it to Anil's Ghost, and it's less elliptical than The English Patient.

So City of Dark Magic is unreadable? Pity - Beethoven AND Prague?? Sigh... I may have to try it just because of the combination. Music and Prague and fantasy?? *whimper*

Happy belated b-day. Sorry it was such a crap day, but hopefully you've made up for it with lots of good reading and lots of lovely book gifts since then.

Hmmm, you never mentioned finishing City of Dark Magic, did you, Peggy?

I requested it from the library; no harm; no foul. I see the author also writes under the name Meg Howrey and I had read another book by her, so...

Bianca, I'm delighted that The Bone Clocks delighted you; it's such a big investment of time that it should be rewarding! A thumb for your review of The Briefcase! It does look good.
Ummm. Thank you for those gorgeous leaves, Linda! Our fall here has been a bit mistimed. The neighbors' sugar maples dropped their leaves too soon, so we didn't get the blaze of gold. The Japanese maple in the top picture is still green. We'll see.
Many thanks for the b-day wish, Suz. No lovely book gifts, I'm sorry to say, but I'm likely to treat myself one of these days - even more than I normally do. I wouldn't say that City of Dark Magic is unreadable, but I find the heroine's libido a trifle distasteful, and I would if she were the hero. You're right, Roni. I haven't finished it. I put it aside for A Madness of Angels which I put aside for the Heyer I just finished and will now comment on! I really haven't gotten into the Beethoven bits, so I'll persevere with it soon and *AMoA* too.

THESE OLD SHADES by Georgette Heyer
Was this a reread for me? I can't remember, but it doesn't matter because it's completely predictable and completely charming anyway. This is early Heyer (my copy says 1926) and not a Regency. The heroine is French and very like Eustacie in The Talisman Ring except that she is smarter. There's a May/Late November romance and none of Heyer's trademark sparkling dialogue. It doesn't matter. I read and enjoyed and look forward to another in a few months.

Hi Peggy! Husband and I early voted on Saturday. Daughter unexpectedly and happily wanted to spend the weekend with us, so after she had been home for a couple of hours I drove HER over to the early voting offices and she voted too. Yay for her. We all have very strong political opinions and it was a good day to express them.

Constellation was eminently readable and very moving. I hope you like it as much as I did.

You're right about These Old Shades. It's Georgian, and the sense I have always gotten from the book was of the Duke's sheer unmitigated power and the shocking sense of vulnerability that love brought to both of them. I particularly like Hugh Davenant, too, for being a check on Alastair's ego and arrogance.

And you now HAVE to read Devil's Cub very shortly! Perhaps Heyer's only true sequel, it reprises some of TOS' best moments. Don't wait until you forget what went on in TOS for maximum enjoyment.

Peggy, Georgette Heyer is another author who was recommended to me here on LT. What gifts! Haven't yet read These Old Shades, but I will. So far, and I've only read a few of her novels, my favourite is The Grand Sophy.

I loved These Old Shades too - really the only non-regency one I liked!

Peggy, if you feel so inclined and have the time, etc, I've listed The Ruby in Her Navel by Barry Unsworth under challenge #14 in the November TIOLI. Can you help me recall who else expressed an interested in reading along? I was under the impression it might be Kerry, but I did a search on her thread and don't see a trace of that book or author there, so must be someone else. Lucy maybe? My memory is defaulting as usual.

Golly, Ilana.......... I think the discussion might have been on Suzanne's thread when she read it. I'll check the conversations. That might be the very thing for me in November. I'll get back to you on your thread.

Strangely I was never that much of a fan of These Old Shades (I think I found Leonie just too annoying). I think The Masqueraders is my favourite Georgian and I don't think I've read enough of the Regencies to decide on a favourite (yet).

Hi, Heather. I'd never claim *TOS* as a favorite, but it's Heyer, so I'm charmed.
I decided that if I read something I liked to balance my theology discussion group's book which I don't like, that I could read 2 more in October. I love Deborah Crombie, and The Sound of Broken Glass isn't doing a thing to change my mind. I feel that Gemma James and Duncan Kincaid are personal friends, and the other characters are interesting. And the mystery is good. Yay!
Learning to Walk in the Dark is another story. It's not bad, I guess. It's pleasant enough reading, but I just can't feel that she's going anywhere with her thesis. Her thesis is that we cheat ourselves of a great portion of what life's about if we avoid life's negatives/dark. Fair enough, but I'm at the half-way point, and she's still discussing physical darkness and its effects on us. Oh well.
The other thing I had been reading lately - 10 or 12 pages a day - was Constantine's Sword. I'm finally getting into the history as opposed to a look at James Carroll's personal history. I like it. Roni, I think you'd enjoy it too......
So off to bed to read!

I can't believe I missed 3 weeks "just like that". And I am sorry I missed your birthday - wishing you a very belated Happy Birthday today.

My main excuse for being away: I am still drowning in Jahrestage - I'll definitely buy my own copy and reread, one diary entry per day or so, over a year. Certainly among the most important and - despite being set in 1968 - politically relevant books I've read in the past years. And I've never read a book that demanded that much time and attention. I hope to be back here in normal LT form once I return my copy to the library.

I maybe liked White Teeth better than you did, but what you say in your review about ZS knowing her characters almost too well might be just the element I found strange. Something wasn't right/ missing and I think you found it.

Amazing how time and threads fly, isn't it, Nathalie? You're always welcome, and I look forward to your more steady presence.

THE SOUND OF BROKEN GLASS by Deborah Crombie

As I've said, I like the continuing characters. I also like the fact that while Crombie's books are in no way cozy or facile, they are a little less searing than E. George's. Crombie had an opportunity in this one to show a character scarred by some unspeakable experience in his childhood. She backed off from that even though what did happen was bad enough. Anyway, in this one a couple of barristers are strangled in the Crystal Palace area of London. The only connection seems to be a young guitarist, who appeared briefly in another book. This is Gemma James's case while her husband, also a police officer, takes time off to look after their children. I was entertained 4 stars worth.

I like continuing characters, too, Peggy. Sounds like worthwhile entertainment from Crombie.

She's good, Nancy. I read her break out book first, Dreaming of the Bones, or I might not have been so impressed. Then I went back and got the back story. Her first novels were pretty good but nothing special, so I find her to be a writer who paid attention and improved - a good thing in my book!

Will you play along Peggy? http://www.librarything.com/topic/182420#4902314

Yikes I realized I called you Lizzie on my thread Peggy. I will go back and change that. :)

Will be curious to see what your thoughts are on Veronica as A Trip to the Stars was probably my biggest surprise read of the year. Totally unexpected and out of the blue!

Peggy, I wish you a lovely weekend.

As you see, Ilana, I was most pleased to play along! Hope you enjoy The Brontes Went to Woolworths!
Valerie, I answer to Lizzie almost as easily as to Peggy....it was my name at The Reading Vine. I doubt that I get to Veronica soon. If you read it before I do and like it as much as A Trip to the Stars, please let me know at once! What a nifty book!
Thank you for the fall flowers, Barbara. They're lovely!
I am excited to get to pick out something new to read, but I have to finish the *Dark* book first, doggone it. I just didn't read yesterday, but I have less than 20% to go, and it's a short book. I know I'll be reading The Ruby in her Navel with Ilana, so I'll put that one up now. Then we'll have to see..... If I'm going to make 75, I'll have to ditch some of those huge ones, and I don't know whether I want to even though I haven't been reading them..... Natter Natter Think Think.

Deborah Crombie -- discovered her almost 20 years ago, when her books began being published as paperback originals. Really loved the first few, then they started to flag, I thought, around the time Duncan and Gemma became very domesticated. There was a lack of impetus to the plots and i felt as if the plots were wearily going around in circles, going over old ground. The last few -- starting with the one about competitive rowers? -- have been better, so I'm back to reading them, though they come from the library and aren't being purchased any more!

Thanks for picking out The Brontes Went to Woolworths for me Peggy, it really appealed to me when I first heard about it and I've been wanting to read it ever since. That's what I like about this challenge—gives me an opportunity to finally read some of my books sooner than later, because of course I want to read all the books I own but can't possibly get to them all at once.

I've given myself lots of reading goals this month, as always, but will make room for those books I really want to make sure to get to earlier in the month, including The Ruby in Her Navel. Kerry will be joining us after all it seems

Ah well, Suz, I'm smiling wryly at our different takes on Crombie. This one was maybe not the best in the series but still really solid.
Yay, Ilana! I'll put *Ruby* up soon too. Meanwhile, I picked up the Decca letters instead of *Dark*, so maybe I'll be reading those at last - or maybe not. Back to the DARK.

LEARNING TO WALK IN THE DARK by Barbara Brown Taylor

I read this for a local discussion group, and while it was worth my time (it's short), I didn't think it was worth the $12+ I paid to put it on my Kindle (the cheapest way to go). From now on if they want to read a book I'm not sure about, I'll either try ILL or borrow it. There. That's off my chest.
Taylor makes a case for entering the dark, both physically and spiritually. She ties the two together, and that takes a good half the book. I have to say that her discussion of losing some of the key words in the Western approach to Christianity resonated with me even though the words that we each are uncomfortable with didn't overlap very much. She writes, "...things changed, those same words began to sound more like stuffed pillows - things to be placed between a person and the hard bones of life so that less bruising occurred. Although I know what 'sin' meant, there were other words with more nuance in them that struck with more force: 'betrayal,' 'brokenness,' 'forgetfulness,'.... I could never figure out what made these words less meaningful to people of faith than the word 'sin,'...." That's not my thought, but that's a sample of her writing and a feeling I can identify with.
What I didn't get at all were some of her practices - as coloring page after page to express emotions and then sorting them and putting them up and looking at them. Do real people do that? If somebody forced me to, I could do a crazy good job of exasperation, but that's about it.
So while I'm looking forward to the discussion, I'm past ready to move on. ***

I'm shuffling around and feeling old because I pulled my lower back Friday afternoon. It doesn't hurt all the time (and again, I can identify with the stress of those of you who deal with constant pain), but I can be perfectly still and it will catch again. I shuffled around church today like an old woman, but right now it's pretty good.
I also got to read some this afternoon and at last got a good bit into Decca Mitford's letters. I enjoy her. In 1941 she wrote "...we had a lunch pty of ... and a rather dull girl called Ladybird Johnson..." That was to her husband. She also said that when she told her mother that Lyndon and Lady Bird Johnson had come to tea, her mother wrote back, "Who is Lady Bird? I looked her up in the Peerage, but could find no trace." That amuses this old fan of Caro's LBJ a lot.

The Brontes Went to Woolworths is a wonderful book!

Wasn't me re the Ruby/Navel/Unsworth novel. I have one Unsworth, pathetically waiting to be read. Nelson's something-or-other. (The title I mean). My memory is worse than yours.

Hi Peggy - so sorry about your back! I've had intermittent back problems for 40 years (car accident) and can relate. Hope your back stops hurting soonest.

I have read Land of Marvels by Unsworth and absolutely adored it. It was about a time period and geographical area I love, and it was beautifully and powerfully written. I have 5 other books by him but haven't opened any of them yet. Perhaps another nudge by your thread. :)

It's your fault - now I'm on a Georgette Heyer tear and have re-read The Devil's Cub and The Quiet Gentleman and am halfway through Regency Buck. Remarkable Creatures is languishing upstairs, a third of the way read.

It's gorgous here in central NC, hope it's the same out I-95 way!

I definitely need a new mouse. This one is double posting everywhere!

Argh, sorry to hear about your back, Peggy. Hope it smartens up pronto!

Oh, a bad back is never fun. Fingers crossed it loosens up a little and behaves.

>136 LizzieD: I do something to my back every year or so, and indeed it is a preview of old age, hunched over, tiny cautious steps; realize how important a functional back is to daily existence.

So sorry about the bad back Peggy. No fun at all. I feel you pain I do. Let's hope it heals asap.

I picked up The Ruby in Her Navel yesterday (as I said, I wanted to pick it up early in the month to make sure I would indeed fit it in), and am now 5 or 6 chapters in and really loving it. What an amazing writer Unsworth was. Glad we're making it a shared read, which somehow makes it that much more special, though I couldn't exactly say why.

Thank you for sympathy, Ilana, Katherine, Jenny, Nancy, and Karen Doublemouse. Only one bad twinge this morning, so things are looking up! I expect to swim sometime today and hope that will loosen up things. Yow.
I'll try to get into *Ruby* this week too, Ilana. I'm glad that you're loving it; I certainly loved Sacred Hunger, my only Unsworth so far. And reading together is special. We each may value our own insights most, but having somebody else's at the right time is always enriching.

Oh poor lady, so sorry to hear about your back. I hope it's getting better soon.

Feel better soon Peggy. I've had back pain ever since being pregnant with my two munchkins. I had been seeing a chiropractor for a bit between the 2 kids and it seemed to provide some much needed relief. Now I just need to find time to go see the doc and hopefully get it under control again!

Oh m'dear, how I sympathise with back aches and twinges. My gardening style has been severely cramped for several months and I fear this is the wave of the future. I have one of those microwaveable bags with some kind of grain in it which I heat up at bedtime, lying on it until the heat dissipates. It might be all in my head but I think it has helped enormously. Other than regular visits to the chiropractor to keep things held together, I don't have any other suggestions.

I did smile at Lady Bird being looked up in the Peerage, with no success.

I appreciate all sympathy, Barbara, Valerie, and Tui. I now have a back brace which is helping and am taking Ibuprofen to combat inflamation. Swimming itself was fine, but turning my head to breathe pulled the worst place in my back, so I had to resort to walking or bicycling up and down the pool. I guess that was helpful.... Bridge tomorrow. With no exercise, I am quickly regaining the few pounds that I had lost.
On the other hand, Decca Mitford's letters continue to entertain me. Here's one to her MIL about getting her daughter into Sarah Lawrence. I copied it for Lucy, so it seemed like a good use of typing time to paste it here too.

Dear Aranka,
...We are having such a time with Dinky's college applications. The latest, to Sarah Lawrence, requires a parent's statement and a great deal about her forebears, their education, employment, etc. Since both Esmond's parents and mine were quite uneducated and unemployed, that part of the form is full of dreary blanks. I thought it necessary to add a note of explanation, as follows:
"The education and occupations of Constancia's forebears unfortunately do not make a very good showing. We were uncertain as to what occupation to list for her maternal grandfather, as he never worked. However, from time to time he was fairly active in the House of Lords; and once he invented and patented a special kind of garage door. The female forebears did not attend school as education was considered unnecessary for girls in those days."
Do you think that will help? I could have put down about my father's gold mine, where he went to mine occasionally, but as there was never any gold in it thought it best not to mention it...
Love from Decca

Love the letter! Thanks for sharing, and I hope the back gets better quickly.

I keep forgetting to ask if the daughter went to Sarah Lawrence?!

Thanks, Roni. Love that tabby - almost a Phoebe look-alike, and I adored my Phoebe.
Lucy, she did go, but she wasn't very happy - didn't make friends..........not many Communist off-spring at SLC in 1960, I guess. I think that she eventually dropped out to work in the South for civil rights.

Peggy, how I sympathise with being unable to turn your head to breathe. Mine is permanently that way. Several other oldsters (including myself in that, not you) at the Y use snorkels, which allow them to do many laps. I'm thinking of investing in one. Otherwise, it's lengths of the breast stroke, backstroke, or variations of the two with a flutterboard. I do enjoy the Mitford letters in all their forms.

>152 tiffin: echoing. When I was most seriously affected with TMJ, I had much the same problem. My chiropractor spent a lot of time working on my trapezius (sp?), that big muscle that extends from the tailbone, it seems, to the cranium. I still have some restriction on the left. And in the pool, I generally resort to the backstroke, too. At least I can get across the pool.

Oh good grief, so sorry to hear about your back Peggy. I think I got away with it so well thanks to the acupuncture treatments probably. Going to what I think is the last of them today at midday. Have you tried that? It's worked quite well for me. Hope you get all better soon.

The letter by Decca Mitford is indeed delightful. Still smiling about it. The goldmine especially.

Sorry to hear about your back Peggy :-( That does sound uncomfortable. I hope the back brace and ibuprofen helps.

>148 LizzieD: I love the letter you shared! The Mitfords: Letters Between Six Sisters is on my wishlist and it sounds like I also need to add Decca: The Letters of Jessica Mitford. Who or what was Decca? Was that Jessica's nickname?

Sorry to hear about your back, Peggy. I hope you feel better soon.

Many thanks for all the sympathy! How long does it take an older person to heal???? I'm already very tired of this. I can't remember why the backstroke didn't work for me; I'll try that again tomorrow. Maybe I can learn to breathe to the left. For some reason I've never been able to coordinate that. I do so hate to take the snorkel route --- breath control is one of the fun things about swimming laps for me. (Don't laugh. I can't swim the length of the pool on one breath as I did last year, but breathing on the 8th stroke is my default at the moment, or was before the back struck.) Judy, I had no idea that head and back were that closely connected! I don't want to resort to chiropractors. Ilana, this is the boonies of NC - no acupuncturists, and I'm not sure I'd trust one who came here anyway! I'm hoping that if I'm very good, the thing will heal and I'll be able to go back to the way it was or almost the way it was. Thank you both too, Heather and Beth!
Heather, Decca was Jessica's nickname, but I'm not sure why. I'd guess that it's a child's attempt to pronounce "Jessica." I loved *Letters Between 6* even though there weren't as many from Decca as Nancy, Diana, and Debo. She was not "speakers" or "writers" with Unity and Diana for most of their adult lives. Just to remind you of more for the wish list, I read Nancy's correspondence with Evelyn Waugh last year and roared (another Mitford word) through the whole thing. AND I have a copy of Debo's correspondence with Patrick Leigh Fermor too, which should be another excellent one. Decca was such a character! Also a completely dedicated worker for the betterment of poor folks. Also a very readable writer. I confess myself the typical target of the Mitford Industry.

>155 souloftherose:: I read every blessed letter in that book and loved it. I shall forever think of the Queen Mum as "Cake"

Goodness, sorry to hear that your back is still being a troublemaker, Peggy. Hoping for healing soon! I admire you your swimming laps. Well done!

>157 LizzieD: How long does it take an older person to heal???
Longer and longer...

>157 LizzieD: I really like Decca as a nickname for Jessica, but maybe I'm just weird like that.

Hmm, maybe that's the way for me to be able to swim - a snorkel! I can never do the sideways breathing at all. Plus I don't like water splashing in my face, and I can't do breaststroke because I sink. I don't mind water on my face if it's a constant, and I like swimming underwater, but not knowing exactly when the water is going to hit isn't pleasant to me.

I should do more swimming as it would be a good way for me to exercise without putting strain on my joints.

Hopefully your back will begin to feel better soon.

>160 qebo: Agree, very much with it.

However Peggy, as this has been going on for some time already you might want to get that checked out with your "GP" do you use this term in the States? Sometimes, all it needs is some proper pain relief and good Physio excercises to get those problems sorted. Myself being someone who has plenty of experience with this kind of staff, because of several congenital spinal deformities and chronic pain since childhood. As far as I know, they don't really recommend braces over here in the UK, nor in Germany. Short term, they can reduce pain but they also initiate muscle wasting and don't get rid of the problem. I do hope you feel better soon.

>148 LizzieD: Love that letter, it made me seriously giggle.

I am going to join you and Ilhana in reading The Ruby in her Navel which I picked up in a charity shop recently. I probably going to start this once I finished A Tale For The Time Being and Gretel and the Dark. Two books which I really enjoy. I also started on The Underground Girls of Kabul which is also quite interesting.

Peggy, I wish you a healing and relaxed weekend.

Heavens! No one has stopped in to see you since Saturday. Well here I am darlin'.

Thank you kindly, Ms. Lucy. I 'spect that if I paid more attention to my own thread, my dear guests might be more frequent.
Barbara, you're a wonder to find such lovely individual pictures for us all! I look forward to mine every week.
Bianca, I'm tickled that you're going to read *Ruby* too. I read a little more last night. I think I'll really like it when I get into it. I'm just devoting my precious reading time to Jessica Mitford right now so that I'll be sure to finish her letters this month. She's well worth the time. I'm happy that Tui thinks so too. I certainly won't skip anything!
Thank you and Nancy and Katherine and Jenny for back sympathy. It seems as though it's been forever, but it's only a week and a half, and I am making progress. All the pain and stress are now confined to one spot which pulls and twinges and catches at inopportune moments throughout the day. It is so much better than it was that I feel silly even mentioning it anymore - except that it's not right yet, and I have to move very, very slowly. (I used to have 2 settings - off and full steam ahead. It's hard to learn to go slow and think about every move.

*lurk*

So glad to hear your back is improving, Peggy. Although I can understand the challenges of needing to move slowly and think about every move. I also have two speeds: marathon and full stop. I get that from my mother.

Btw, if you need some good fun in the way of a light book, The Rosie Effect is now out. I'm not enjoying it as much as its predecessor, but it is good, light entertainment.

Hi, Roni the Lurk!
Nancy, going at it hard has always worked, but I saw with my granny how it became detrimental. I'm trying to learn before I have to.
Thanks for the advice about *Rosie Effect*. I know I'll get to it eventually. I got to nothing today except for hosting the study club. I've been so nice for so long that I'm pretty sick of it. I'll come back later when I'm closer to normal!

Ack to problems of the back. The other morning I was lying on my side, and I tried to turn over to look behind me, and felt an ominous sharp pain. THe bak has been ok once I have got moving, but first thing it is stiff and giving off premonitions of worse things to come.
I have rarely suffered back pain, but boy, is it a stinker.

>165 LizzieD: precious reading time....indeed!!

Glad you are getting better, Peggy. I had back surgery a few years ago (successful) after a period of extreme pain. The older I get, the more I'm aware that health is everything. I hope you continue to improve.
>168 LizzieD: Somehow I can't imagine you not being nice!

Peggy, I wish you a lovely weekend.

Oh dear, MEGAN. DO be careful. In fact, EVERYBODY, BE CAREFUL WITH YOUR BACK. You are allotted only one, and it's so easy to do damage. Mine started when I tried to pick up a box of textbooks that I had filled to the halfway point on purpose but somebody "helped" by filling the rest of the way unbeknownst to me. (Isn't "fill" a frustrating word? Something is full or it's not, but there's no word in English that I can think of that means "to put stuff in a container without using all the space.")
I am improving, Jan, and trust that you are feeling stronger every day yourself. Nice? I try to be, but I've gotten spoiled in my retirement with enjoying a lot of down/alone time. When other people go on too long, the effort gets to be an effort.
Barbara, thank you again for another lovely fall scene. Same to you!
More Decca on deck for me! She is so readable that I think I'll have to go on to her memoirs when I finish the letters.

Hi Peggy! I hope your back is continuing to improve. You're right, we only get one.

I only spent about 5 minutes at it, but couldn't find a word for "to put stuff in a container without using all the space."

Books, our lovelies, can be deadly when having to be moved. Especially textbooks. I still have perhaps 5 of my college textbooks (graduated 1975!) and they are the heaviest books I own except for my atlases and dictionaries.

24F here this a.m., looks like your part of I-95 wasn't quite so cold. The leaves are all falling like mad now.

I hope your weekend is fun, relaxing, and interesting.

Hi, Peggy. I'm very sorry to hear about the back problems. I hope they clear up soon, as they can be maddening while they continue.

I love me some Mitfords too. Decca was really something else. I just scored an obscure book by her from our library bookstore.

And "the effort gets to be an effort": amen.

I'm glad you were thinking of me Peggy, and though I was here, I was only lurking, and I think you meant to address Megan when you named me in >172 LizzieD: maybe? My back is much better after several acupuncture treatments, but I'm being a bad girl and putting off starting on my exercise regimen. Sorry to hear yours is taking a long while to get better. I'm not sure what I need to do to get started, because I know when I DO do the exercises I enjoy doing them; have these DVD series I really like a lot with great instructors, easy to follow instruction, nice background music and gorgeous settings so they're actually pleasant to look at too (important for me, who is so attune to visual language) but it's just getting there, as with anything. In this case, it's just right here in my living room, but I still have to make the mental space for it, and somehow, that isn't easy. So many other things I'd rather be doing!

Haven't heard about Ruby from you for a while. Are you still reading or have you stalled in favour of Decca? Not a judgment, a genuine question. Decca sounds great, so I would completely understand I promise!

I'm reading along, Peggy, but whether it's the dark or the cold, I'm sort of seized up without a thing to say.

Hello Peggy,

just stopping by to wish you a wonderful Sunday!

I also wanted to say that I think you might want to give Land of Green Plums a go. Actually, I am pretty sure that you would enjoy this book as you do appreciate language very much :) k

I hope your back is getting better soon. As you say you only have one. I have quite severe congenital back problems so my whole life mission is to preserve whatever possible, that's why I am such a fan of exercises *grin*, well at least the kind the Physios give me.

Started to read Ruby today :)

Just stopping by.... I know you're better and I'm glad!

Hi, Lucy. I AM better, thank you! Bianca, I will keep the Muller in mind because you're right: I do love language well-used. I'm sorry about your back. Mine is a lot better. I'm trying to balance moving with not moving! Gail! It's such a great treat to see you here!!!
Hi, Tui. I rarely let having nothing to say get in my way of saying something. Alas. Yours is the better way! Hi, Ilana. I visited your thread earlier today, and now I will get on with *Ruby* because --- And, Karen, I've had a great weekend because --- I finished the Decca letters!!!!

DECCA: THE LETTERS OF JESSICA MITFORD edited by Peter Y. Sussman

This is such a great compilation, so effectively edited. I'll write more tomorrow. *****

Well, YOU DIDN'T EVEN HAVE TO POST A REVIEW. All I needed was the darn touchstone. I added it to the wishlist, and then just out of curiosity, went and looked-see what was available out there, and sure enough, can get it at the library, but just to look-see some more, had a look on Amazon, and Book Outlet was offering a deeply discounted NEW copy at less than $9, whereas it's around $40 with shipping everywhere else. On their own site, the shipping was cheaper than on Amazon's, so less than $14 in total. So guess what? It's my T-aversary in about a week right? So it's now #4 on the list.

eta: there are 2-3 copies left, if anyone else is interested: http://bookoutlet.com/Store/Details/_/R-9780375410321B

Yay, Ilana! On Amazon US, the nice, used, old hardcover is 1¢ + shipping. That's what I have although mine came without a dust jacket, I'm sorry to say. So ----

DECCA: THE LETTERS OF JESSICA MITFORD edited by Peter Y. Sussman

I have indicated from time to time that I loved these letters, right? She was so funny, complicated, direct, buoyant, sensitive, etc. She didn't have the easiest life - her first husband dying in WWII, their baby dying, her first son dying at 11, her on-again/off-again relationship with her sisters, but her letters rarely show any lasting depression. I was amused and touched when she and the youngest sister disagreed about the publication of the oldest sister's letters. She said in effect (I'm not going to track down the actual quotation), "How does Debo get to be arbiter of what gets published? I'm older than she is!" (Pam and Diana were older yet, but they didn't figure in the debate as far as Decca was concerned.)
Man. I can't review this. It was a lot of fun.
Here's the YouTube "Decca and the Dectones" singing "Maxwell's Silver Hammer," but it's not the one I found a couple of years ago....... Hmm. Let me hunt. Jessica (The clip with video has been removed, I'm sorry to say. Here is a link to Becky's Mitford Thread.)

>181 LizzieD: I've just gone to Amazon UK and bought a penny copy. It will go with my other Mitford biographies and collections of letters.

I'm pretty sure you'll be happy when you get to it, Kerry. I'll be interested to see what you make of the American Mitford. The sisters agree about her vulgarity in the C. Mosley collection of letters, I recall. When Debo holds back some of Nancy's comments about her in the Nancy collection, Decca rebukes her. She remains my favorite.

Ah well, likely I'll get sucked back into the Mitford vortex sooner or later. For now I am resisting!

I don't know what it is about the Mitfords - so many of them? so blond? more or less aristocratic? so varied? I'm a sucker for the industry.

DEMELZA by Winston Graham
I'm a sucker for this series too, and I've read them all at least a couple of times. Here we have adventure, romance, late 18th century history, pretty good writing. I'm happy. I'm amazed to see that other people don't find this a 5 star read. What do they want from a book written for entertainment? I'm entertained.
For those of you not familiar with this series, the setting is Cornwall after the American Revolution. Ross Poldark, minor gentry, has returned to set his house and mine in order and has married his maid, vibrant and earthy Demelza. She is learning to be acceptable in society while Ross is rebelling against his peers who have no compassion for the starving miners, fishermen, and farmers in their midst. Ross is also in more open conflict with George Warleggan, the man with the money and the grandson of a blacksmith. Both men have loved Elizabeth, now married to Ross's cousin Francis. Then there's a love triangle and a prison break-in and rival copper smelters and sickness and medicine and just one plot complication after the other. I love it. It won't be long before I'm on to book 3 of 13, Jeremy Poldark.

Peggy, I wish you a lovely weekend.

OOoooo, thank you, Barbara. That's especially lovely!

Hi Peggy,

just stopping by to wish you a wonderful weekend! Nothing to contribute on the reading front! I am about 1/3 into The Ruby in her Navel and quite enjoy the story so far.
How are you getting on with the book?

I'm not quite half through and also enjoying it!

I am sorry about the back problems - good to see you're feeling better again. I am so impressed with your swimming routine. I'm a terrible swimmer although I took some lessons just 3 years ago, no improvement.

The wonderful Decca is on my WL now... Sadly no good deals for me here yet. But it reminded me that I still have one or two of the Mitford novels to read in my Kindle to get into the mood.

Thanks, Nathalie for good wishes and compliment. In fact, when I started, I'd swim the length of the pool and stop to adjust all my equipment (mask and ear plugs and swim cap!) and puff before heading back the other way. I took the build-up easy, but now I do O.K. for a young/old lady.
As to Decca, you'd get a better impression of her life by reading Hons and Rebels, the first volume of her memoirs. It might be more available as a deal than her letters.

Hi Peggy, I was under the impression that Hons and Rebels was a novel and as such more or less a piece of fiction, but you've set me right. Got her letters in any case. It's an impressive volume, and might take me a while to get to it as such, but I'm sure I'll enjoy it tremendously when I do. Ross Poldark is firmly on the wishlist and I'm staring at a copy to purchase, just waiting on the Black Friday deals to hit for further bargains so I can hit the switch on a dozen other books or so presently sitting in that particular shopping cart...

Wishing you a good weekful of Saturdays!

Oh, a good wakeful of Saturdays! sounds just lovely! I'll wish you the same, Peggy.

Many thanks for the good wishes, Ilana and Nancy! Monday was a lovely Saturday. I look forward to Tuesday.
Ilana, I'm excited that you're going to get Ross Poldark. I hope you'll love it half as much as I do. I also love the video series from Masterpiece Theater. It's a bit different from the books, but it's also wonderful. I'm not a huge Robin Ellis fan, but Angharad Rees was wonderful as Demelza (even if she didn't look like her). And Jill Townsend as Elizabeth was the most perfect piece of casting that I've ever seen.
I'm tickled that you have the Decca letters, and I hope you get to them sooner than you think you may.

>181 LizzieD: Well, Decca has dropped on to the wishlist. The library has a copy but not of Hons and Rebels which I feel like I'd like to read first. (Actually, having checked out Becky's thread I see I should read the Mary Lovell biography and then Letters Between Six Sisters first).

>185 LizzieD: The Poldark series is already on the wishlist :-)

Hi, Heather. Let's see. I've read the sisters' letters, but Decca didn't agree to let them publish hers, so there aren't many in there. That was one of the reasons I wanted to read her letters. I have the Mary Lovell bio on my READ NOW table. As it happened, when I was stricken with Mitford lust, I ordered hers and the nephew Guinness's, and the Guinness arrived first. It was - interesting - and dealt very kindly with Diana and Unity. (Some of the early letters, especially one from Nancy to Unity, are absolutely creepy. I'd like to read the Unity bio, but I'm not sure that I could stomach it.)
I hope that you get to Poldark when you're in need of something highly entertaining! Did I mention that I love the series more than I should???

THE MARTIAN by Andy Weir
I love this book too! The ending was nail-biting, so I stayed awake and read it in bed anyway, and then settled right down to sleep. I'm sure that you've read the good reviews of it. I'll simply say that it's a series of problems in surviving alone on Mars. Mark Watney, the stranded astronaut, is a botanist, an engineer, and a plain old good, good guy. The whole world is rooting for him, and so will you if you read the book.

Ha! So you did stay up!

Yes, The Martian definitely had nail biting moments and moments where I was like..is this for real?? :)

Yay for The Martian! Such a good book, and I love its history. Shows that self-publication can be of quality stuff.

Welcome, Martian Lovers Lucy, Valerie, and Roni! I did stay up, and I'm glad!
I've gotten back into The Ruby in her Navel today. How's that for something completely different?
And I started The Stranger House yesterday. It sort of jumped off the shelf at me after having sat there quietly for 8 or 9 years. Not a typical Reginald Hill by any means!

Well you know I'm a Martian fan as well. AND a fan of Decca & the Mitfords. I supposed Nancy is my second least favourite: although she is funny, she is also cutting and acerbic. I sense a tremendous sadness in her, though, to be fair. The one I liked the least was Unity, the one who stomped off to Germany to hero worship Hitler. Debo, Diana, Decca and even sweet Pamela, were quite wonderful.

Haven't read Demelza in yonks, although I did reread Poldark this past summer. Good stuff!

Hi, Tui. I'm glad that you mentioned Pam. Some of her pictures are more beautiful to me than Diana, the beauty. From Decca's letters she was a strange one. After their mother's death she accused Decca of stealing a family photo album, and when it eventually turned up in Debo's stuff, she never apologized. I think that Decca made allowances. Unity was even weirder. I agree about Nancy - lots of pain there. Obviously, I remain fascinated by them.

I hope you had a good Thanksgiving, Peggy!

Thank you, Terri! That's a hope I have for all my LT friends, including you.

Peggy I want to give my own little blessings for the joy and warmth you bring to the group as you celebrate the Thanksgiving holidays.

Hi Peggy,
I hope the back is workable now. I was thinking just today to be more grateful for my health, you really miss it when it's absent! I think it is Thanksgiving or something...I am reminded to be thankful- which can't be bad!

Hi Peggy - I hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving. Your comments on The Martian are tempting me...

Peggy, I wish you a fabulous weekend.

Where have I been? Pretty much right here but not posting on my own thread. I do appreciate your visits, Paul, Ilana, Beth, and Barbara! Again, you hit me exactly right with a lake and a dock with lights! My DH has driven down to the coast to check on our place which has a deck but no lights . *sigh* Somebody had to stay to take out the dog, who gets carsick after a half hour, and feed all the cats.
But I do get to read!

THE RUBY IN HER NAVEL by Barry Unsworth
This is such a good book! I didn't love it quite as much as his Sacred Hunger, but I really, really, really, really liked it a lot and enjoyed it too.
I like most what he did with his protagonist, young Thurstan Beauchamp, son of a Saxon mother and a Norman father, who works in the Diwan of Control of the King of Sicily, Roger of Hauteville. This is, therefore, the 12th century, and Roger is trying to balance the Christian and Muslim influences in his kingdom and use the special talents of each. Thurstan is at once naive and devious, ambitious and disappointed, sensitive and self-absorbed, and drawn to two wildly different women. He is by turns deplorable and admirable. I can't say that I "like" him, but I was always fascinated as Unsworth works out his story.
I gave this 4 stars, but I suspect that I may up that by another ½ as I think more about the complexities of themes and Unsworth's beautiful writing.

Hi Peggy!

I hope you are liking The Stranger House. After reading what you posted about it, It sort of jumped off the shelf at me after having sat there quietly for 8 or 9 years., I checked to see if I had it - you never know! - and there it was, on shelf S16, a scoot of the office chair about 8 feet over. I added it to LT in Dec 2010, so probably got it at one of the thrift stores in town. I've pulled it, and will start it after I finish the book I'm on, Fly Away Home by Jennifer Weiner.

Hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving and are recovered from your back problems.

Karen, great to see you here! *Stranger House* is not your typical Reg. Hill......... Creepy village in Cumberland but with a Spanish/English failed priest who attracts ghosts. It sucked me right in and has been entertaining me well since I started it. I should wind it up tonight or tomorrow. Looking at Amazon to see whether this was his last book, I see that I've missed at least one Pascoe/Dalziel. Credit card, here I come!

Amazon just makes it too easy, doesn't it? Prime makes it even easier.

I've only read the first Dalziel & Pascoe, A Clubbable Woman and another by him - Who Guards a Prince. I really liked both. The Stranger House is the only other Reginald Hill I own.

I'm about halfway through the book I'm reading and really enjoying it.

The message below was a double-tap of the mouse.....

Hi Peggy - The Unsworth sounds great. I added it to my list. I expect I will try Sacred Hunger first. I hope you're having a marvelous weekend.

Peggy, The Ruby in Her Navel sounds fabulous! I am not familiar with Barry Unsworth, but I suspect that will have to change, particularly after your endorsement of his fine writing.

Hi, Karen and Beth! When I think about how self-indulgent I am, I immediately consider how self-indulgent I could be with Amazon and credit card. I end up considering myself a model of self-restraint. For example, today the only Kindle deal I downloaded was the $1.99 standard bio of Teddy Roosevelt from birth to White House, Edmund Morris's The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt.

THE STRANGER HOUSE by Reginald Hill
The blurb on the back quoted from Pittsburgh Post-Gazette says, "A story with ghosts, passion (sexual and religious), torture, rape, murder, secret rooms and codes, hidden and stolen manuscripts and enough plot twists to please Da Vinci Code enthusiasts." Well, yes. But it's not written for sensation seekers. All this stuff grows naturally out of character and situation. If the reader can come to terms with the failed RC novice priest who has had the stigmata annually and sees ghosts (and the other characters in the book have to deal with that one too), the rest follows naturally. The historical bits are probably accurate and the characters are engaging - sort of like acquaintances that you might spend an hour or two with now and then, knowing them but not really knowing them.
I was thoroughly entertained.

The Rise and Fall of Theodore Roosevelt is a very good book - I read it last year. It was good prep for the Ken Burns series The Roosevelts which was fantastic.

Umm. Thanks for the info, Karen! I look forward to it. Did he write the second volume?
Meanwhile, here are a couple of recent pictures of the new cats. I don't know why they aren't clear.


That's Sparks, May, completely dead shoe string, Willow and Lulu, who is approaching from the hall, in front of my childhood spinet that I can't bear to get rid of.


Lulu on May's bunk, which is airing on their porch

>218 LizzieD: That's a houseful. :-)

That's only half the cats - who still aren't positive that the other half exists.

Oh, what wonderful photos of Sparks, May, Willow, and Lulu, Peggy! And, of course, the completely dead shoe string, LOL! May looks like a lovely girl and very patient of the cats? I love an orange tabby; have thought about getting company for Cairo ...

It's like looking at my house! Only yours is neater. And we don't have a dog - but if you put a guinea pig in that spot, it's pretty close to it. Five cats and they are ALWAYS in the way!

May is a darling, Nancy, and for some reason cats love her. When we walk, cats come out of people's yards to speak to May. She is very patient.
Jenny, DH and I were talking about how the camera made our house look cleaner and neater than it is. That's how I dared show them to you!
We have a song (To "Ezekiel Saw the Wheel"): "The Tully Cat sat down, smack dab in the middle of the way/ He rolled and then he flopped - right in the middle of the way./ And when he got up/ (smack dab in the middle of the way)/ He moved and then he flopped - right in the middle of the way."
Sorry.

Don't mind my germs as I visit, Lizzie!

What a full house you've got there! :)

I'm off to check out The Ruby in Her Navel. Just the title of that one sounds intriguing. Hope you are doing well.

>196 LizzieD: Adding my yay for The Martian. That's probably top of my list of most enjoyable reads this year.

>209 LizzieD: I think Ilana had already made me put The Ruby in The Navel on my list but now a double recommendation is even better :-)

>218 LizzieD: Yay for pictures of pets! Lulu looks very comfortable.

I have finally picked Martin Chuzzlewit up again - hoping to get it finished this month.

I want Lulu. She looks like my Magic, who was the sweetest puppy cat in the world (he would race after us on walks just like a puppy!)

Delurking to day I love the pet photos and your silly song! We have quirky family songs and catchphrases too.

Well, my computer wouldn't let me post my message when I was here a while ago, so we'll try again.

I love the great pictures of your fur-people, Peggy, and one should NEVER discard a childhood spinet!

Glad to receive the pet love!
Roni, the problem with my spinet is that it's warn completely out. It had a lovely tone when it was a new instrument, but it's a Lester from the early 50s when they used plastic elbows to hold the hammers together. The plastic is now disintegrating and I don't have enough replacements for the whole piano, and I'm not sure that anybody makes them now. I don't even know whether Lester is still in business. DH is glad to keep it though because with the little Chickering grand, there's no room to entertain!
Laura, I'm glad we aren't the only people who sing silly stuff to our pets. I have quite a repertoire.
Karen, you can't have Lulu or Sparks (or Willow, Elle, Tully, Hilfy Bit). The 2 Red Meesles look very much alike except that Lulu is even smaller than her brother. I call my boys "puppy" about half the time. I do love to have cats run to meet me when I come home!
Glad to hear more *Martian* love, Heather. Also glad to add my bit to Ilana's praise of *Ruby*. I think you'll love it. If only I could get Martin and Mark back in England, I'd make better progress in *MC*. I am very weary of the American section and cant' make myself read it.
Val, you and your germs are welcome any time at all, but I do hope you are mending! Read *Ruby*! It has made me pick up my copy of Alison Weir's Eleanor of Aquitaine, which I've started happily and should put on my current list.

We sing 'cat songs' as well, but they very rarely have any discernible tune!

We also make up ridiculous games that we play with each one. At the moment we have 'wobble the Bobble', which involves Bobble sitting on a shoulder parrot-style and being taken around the house while we do chores. And 'Bash the Tash' (his name is Tashi) where we bop him on the head and he bops us back. He is by far the most obnoxious of the cats as we suspect he was separated from his mother too soon and doesn't really understand appropriate cat behaviour. He is also our noisiest and expresses his opinion often. If he is somewhere he shouldn't be and we go anywhere near him he will grumble, hiss and yowl at us long before we actually touch him to move him. Hence 'bash the Tash' is usually played with a cushion or oven glove as we try to get him to move, without getting scratched!!

It's strange, because he is both our worst cat - we often joke that his name is double barreled to Tashi-no - and our cuddliest and most loving, who gives the best under the duvet cuddles and nose kisses, and who will wake us up in the night for cuddles by trying to sit on your head.

Said cat is currently shut in our lean-to because he wouldn't come back into the kitchen and lashed out when I tried to get him off the windowsill. So if he won't come down when I tell him, he has to stay out there in the cold until I'm ready for him to come back in!

Hi Peggy,

great to see that you enjoyed The Ruby in her Navel as much. Unfortunately, I am still only 1/3 in as I had an incredible busy week of work.
I only recently aquired The Martian which is now waiting on my TBR to be read at one point.

Love the cat photos+ that beautiful dog :)

Jenny, I love Wobble the Bobble and Bash the Tash! Our Tully adores to be dabbed with a blown-up plastic bag; the rest of them more or less tolerate it. We have lots of alternate names for the pets too - including "Don't Lick" for a couple of the dear departed dogs.
Here's my favorite cat song (to the tune of "Brush up Your Shakespeare" from Kiss Me, Kate) (highly derivative as you see:
Feed up your kitties!
Start dishing out now!
Feed up your kitties -
They could use some kitten chow.
They might prefer tuna or turkey,
Roast beef or even beef jerky.
But feed up your kitties,
Or they'll all MEOW!
Bianca, I hope this week calms down so that you get a lot of reading done. Hope you're enjoying *Ruby* as much as I did and will do the same with *Martian*. I agree that May is a beauty; that picture doesn't do her justice.
These kittens, btw, have very foxy faces. We should have named them Reynard and Vixen. I'm glad that we didn't.

>229 LizzieD: 'If only I could get Martin and Mark back in England, I'd make better progress in *MC*. I am very weary of the American section and cant' make myself read it.'

Thankfully I'm past that and they're now back in England but I agree that the American sections are my least favourite.

I Love your songs, of course!

>230 lunacat: - Tash sounds a bit like our Simon who was abandoned very young and found by our then babysitter under a car on her street - he was the size of a .... a ..... well a three or four week old kitten, that's what. Too little to be out there. He does have some weird behaviours - our little demon cat, he is, and he is also our most vocal, funny, attached and loving cat. He doesn't do the biting or lashing out, thank goodness! But he does yowl at night all around the house, very annoying, but I sleep right threw it now.

Hi, Heather and Lucy!
I've decided that there must be something about feline males. Our current two, Tully and Sparks, are the vocal ones and the cuddling ones. Neither of them was deprived of Mom as kittens - Mom is right there with them all the time. They are also huge lickers. Tully licked most of his own hair off this summer, and it's just now growing back. Sparks licks hands, face, shoes, clothes - anything he can get his tongue on!
In my effort to reach the 75 number before year's end (and I'm not sure that I'm committed to the idea), I have read another Hilary Mantel. I'm thinking the woman can do no wrong.

FLUDD by Hilary Mantel
This book is so much fun that it's churlish, but impossible not, to wonder what else is going on. The year is 1956, the place, the most benighted village in the north of England. It's cold and sour, and the RC priest has lost his faith, despises the fat little bishop, and has settled into an acceptance of the superstition and narrowness of his parish. Into the mix comes Fludd, who may be the curate assigned to help Father Angwin by the bishop or possibly a 16th century alchemist there for his own mysterious purposes. At any rate, Fetherhoughton (and its even less appealing over-the-hill relative Netherhoughton) is likely closer to the 16th century than to the rest of mid-century Britain. The residents are not quite caricatures. Mother Purpit (that's Perpetua) the head of the nunnery and the school is closer to the devil than the tobacconist that Father Angwin is convinced is a devil. It's funny and touching, and I wish somebody would give me a hint about dealing with the picture of Virgin and Child in the last two pages.

I haven't read any Mantel yet but she is on slate for next year! :)

I have Fludd sitting here tbr, Peggy. I'll move it up to the top of the pile vis the last two pages and we'll see what strikes tiny brain.

>234 sibylline: They sound very similar! Tashi was thrown out of a moving car as a kitten, and the same as your Simon in that he was too young to be away from mum really. His biting and lashing out aren't vindictive in any way, he gets very apologetic if he lands a blow but he feels like he needs to show his opinions.

He is also our grubbiest cat - I've never known anything like it. He'll come home really dirty and simply stay like that, not feeling the need to wash himself at all! He might eventually give a quick clean to his paws but they, and his nose, are usually grubby. Bizarre, and not helpful when he is ginger and white!

>235 LizzieD: I remember enjoying Fludd but definitely felt I hadn't understood a lot of it.

Val and Tui, I hope that you enjoy Fludd or whatever your first Mantel is, Val. It is certainly unlike her historicals, which were the only ones I had read to this point. Heather, thanks for reassuring me that I'm not just dumb when it comes to Fludd.
A grubby cat, Jenny? Goodness! Sparks is a hand-grabber, but I can't tell even now whether he's resisting petting or just anxious to lick.
Now, even though I say I'm reading *E of A*, I'm really settling into St. Mary's #2. So much fun! I have another couple on deck that I should list, so I guess I'll do that.

Very interesting comments on Fludd, Peggy. Can't help you with it though; I've only read her historicalsWolf's Hall and Bring Up the Bodies. Must look into the third in this trilogy ... is it out?

Interesting indeed that Tashi doesn't keep himself clean and neat. Very unusual in a cat! I'm going to have to find Fludd!

*sigh* Nancy, the third Cromwell book hasn't appeared yet. I will be all over it when it does come.
I agree with Lucy that Tashi is very un-cat-like. Even Tully stays clean, and he is more like a puppy than a cat.
Off to bed and more happy reading!

Peggy, I wish you a fabulous weekend.

Hi Peggy, it's been a long while since I've done the rounds and left messages here on LT, but it's been a pleasure catching up with you again. I'm thrilled you enjoyed The Ruby in Her Navel of course. I've since ordered Sacred Hunger as you know and also gotten it's sequel, The Quality of Mercy. Barry Unsworth is easily turning into one of my favourite authors. Love the cats & dog pics of course. It should have occurred to me that some people sing songs to their pets—I'm not among those, as I don't sing much in general but it warms my cockles to know that you are. Also glad you enjoyed Fludd and enjoyed your description of it. I plan for there to be lots more Hilary Mantel in my future as well, and Fludd has been on my wishlist for quite a while now. I'm listening to the audio sample again right now and really enjoy the narrator to bits, so I may just as well go ahead and spend an Audible credit on it.

I'm glad to see you here, Ilana, and I'm warmed to know that your cockles are warmed!
How did I not know that Unsworth had written a sequel to *SH*??? I'm off this very minute to seek it out. I can imagine how good Fludd is with a good narrator. My only problem with the book is that it couldn't go on longer.

>245 Smiler69: I didn't know there was a sequel, either. Sacred Hunger was excellent!

Hi, Laura!

A SYMPHONY OF ECHOES by Jodi Taylor

Too much fun! Max and crew are at it again, and adventure follows adventure follows adventure with a bit of romantic angst thrown in for good measure. How can you not love a book that takes on Jack the Ripper, Mary Queen of Scots, Beckett, and dodos? Well, I loved it anyway, and look forward to #3 but not immediately.

>248 LizzieD: I wasn't wild about #1 in the series, but the dodos might get me to read #2.

I read too many Ffordes all at once, so I am going to take Jodi Taylor slowly too.

Well, K, if you weren't crazy about #1, it's really more of the same. The dodo episode is pretty amusing, but it's only one episode. Lucy, I was never drawn back to Fforde after the first one although I enjoyed it. I try not to overdose too, sometimes to my detriment.
I've started Winter Frost, which isn't as short as I need it to be. That devil Jack Frost is readable though. And I'm wondering why they're referring to prostitutes as "Toms" in 1999. Is that slang now completely dated?
I'm also taking Through Connemara in a Governess Cart to bed with me, and it's plenty short!

OUR ICEBERG IS MELTING by John Kotter

Ordinarily, I wouldn't list this tiny book, but I'm trying to get to 75 this year, and it is a book and I did read it. So! Our interim minister asked us to read it (the subtitle is Changing and Succeeding Under Any Conditions) when we were in a financial crisis. I read most of it this summer and polished off the rest today. It's a fable involving a colony of penguins who need to move because --- their iceberg is melting. The process is pretty straightforward and pretty effective. I guess I recommend it to anybody who needs to deal with folks who are happier to go down doing the same old stuff than to change and succeed. On my list at PBS!

Edited to make sense. That was some pretty creative punctuation there.

>251 LizzieD: Strangely, I'm the opposite - can't get enough of Fforde's books but couldn't finish the first Jodi Taylor.

Good luck with getting to 75! Please feel free to ditch Chuzzlewit until the New Year if you need to.

I probably will ditch *MC*, Heather. I am averaging 2 pages a day, and I don't even have them in Eden yet. Good grief! I'm looking forward to getting back to London and meeting Dick S though. And yes, even though we agree on most things, will have to disagree on our fluff.

I'm awful when it comes to series. I just have to dive into the next one to find out what happens next. Admiring your fortitude in standing back for a breather, Peggy. I'm trying to get to 75 too.

Good luck, Tui! Hope you're getting better reading time than I am.

Not with Christmas coming. Next week is baking week. One final sock to knit. But all the books are wrapped and under the tree *arm pump*!

I've read a couple of other books by John Kotter. At least he's readable eh? Was the book helpful to your church? "Folks happier to go down the same..." is something I've dealt with in both church and professional settings.

Laura, I suppose that the book was helpful. It at least gained the interim enough support that he was able to appoint a steering committee whose recommendations got the ball rolling toward a solution.
Yay for wrapped books, Tui! Your energy with a week of baking and knitting put me to shame.
>255 tiffin: Honestly, my reading is so scattered that it's no sacrifice to forgo immediate sequels. I also tire easily of the same author if I read too much at once - so no delayed gratification here, not really.

Fludd sounds like a book that would be great on audio with a good narrator who can do those quirky characters. Just decided I want it as one of my December reads/ listens.
Edit 11/12: bought it as audio

Love the picture - nice cats, friendly doggy, shoestring... and then books on bookshelf and elsewhere, wooden floors and I wanted to say piano, but is it really a spinet? Wow! Anyway, it looks cosy and inviting!

We used to sing to our cocker spaniel who absolutely loved it. The next dog, a jack russel, didn't care at all. The CS especially loved it when we sang Christmas carols for her, also in summer. Something about those sweetish tunes?

Stopping by to say hello, my friend!

Hello right back, Lucy!
Nathalie, I think you'll have a fine time with Fludd on audio. Hope the narrator proves to be good. I just picked up another H. Mantel (Every Day Is Mother's Day), which I hope to get to soon - maybe even this month. It's another short one, and I am needing short ones.
Glad you like our sitting room where nobody can sit because of the 2 pianos. In my book a piano that size is a spinet....mine even says "Betsy Ross Spinet" on it. I do love our wooden floors in this old house - heart of pine. We have my DH's grandmother's recipe for floor stain, which is interesting enough for me to copy for you.
Mr. Harper's Floors -
1 gal gasoline
1 gal turpentine
1 lb. burnt sienna
1 pt linseed oil
Stain floor with above mixture, let dry, varnish with two coats of clear varnish.
(We aren't using that recipe now.....)
Singing to the animals makes us happy whether they're particularly responsive or not.
I'm on a roll. I just added a verse to another cat song, and I won't subject you to any more of them!

(To the tune of "wrap your troubles in dreams and dream your troubles away")
When cats are tabby and gray,
It's likely that they'll stay that way.
So give your kitty some love - invite your kitty to play.

But if the tabby on hand
Is orange - that tabby is grand.
So give your kitty some love - invite your kitty to play.

Gasoline! You wouldn't want to drop a candle or an ember on that floor. My mother made her own furniture polish out of turpentine and beeswax. It was the most waterproof stuff so she used it on the old dining table that her great grandfather had made. It had to be rubbed in with much elbow grease and then she polished things with the floor polisher until they gleamed. Only the rustic pioneer stuff got this treatment, not the finer furniture.

I sing to the dog who tolerates it but looks faintly embarrassed.

Peggy, I wish you a fabulous weekend.

Hi, Tui. I can't imagine the smell of the gasoline/turpentine stain, never mind the dropped match here in tobacco land! I have a bit of experience with the turps/beeswax/elbow grease too. It does make a rich shine.
Good for your dog for accepting you!
Many thanks for candles, Barbara.

WINTER FROST by R.D. Wingfield
In my effort to reach 75 for the year, I concentrated on this one and enjoyed it a lot. I haven't ever watched the Frost series on video, but I sort of think that David Jason is too elegant to be Jack Frost. He should be little, scruffy, dirty, chain-smoking, and a wee bit venal and hunch-driven. At the same time he is also street smart and big hearted. His team looks to him for answers, and eventually he has them.
This is a 1999 police procedural in which Frost is in charge of bringing to justice a serial child killer, a serial prostitute killer, and of identifying an old skeleton. It's gritty but not too gritty, and all ends as well as it can.
I have happily ordered the last of the series, A Killing Frost. Unhappily, Wingfield died in 2007.

Happy Sunday, Peggy! It's a beautiful clear day here in central NC, hoping your end of NC is the same.

Hi Peggy, love Mr Harper's floor stain and the new verse to your delectable cat song! Since I've had Cairo in my life, I find myself talking to him all day long when I'm home.

Well done on the effort to reach your 75-books goal! Is Winter Frost it then? Btw, just noticed Elizabeth Jane Howard's Confusion at the top of your thread. This is a series I picked up on Elizabeth's thread which I am going to listen to eventually; I'm collecting the audiobooks and have had my library order paper copies (was surprised library had none of the Cazalets series).

You've got some serious readin' to do! Just pick those under 250 pagers! No typing, no cooking, no present wrapping or any extraneous activity and you might just make it!

I could add your cat song to my book of cat carols!

Cat Carols! YAY!! Will you post some on your thread, Roni?
Lucy, I did spend some time today with Ross & Somerville touring Connemara in a governess cart. That is VERY short! If I finish it tomorrow, I will be half through the necessary at the half-way mark of the month. The only trouble is that longer stuff is growing more insistent. We'll see. Meanwhile, bridge tomorrow, so I'll be hard put to read anything, even S&R.
Nancy, Winter Frost is only #69. *SIGH* On the other hand, the cats are all very encouraging. Oops! I think it's bedtime. The 3 grays just trotted through on their way to their bedtime snack.

You can do it! I'm here to cheer you on.

Posted, Peggy!

Thanks for the cheers, Lucy. I finished #70 only moments ago. Since it took 5 minutes for me to get the code right on my profile page, I'm delaying my comments about it until tomorrow.
Besides, I have to sing through some cat carols. Thanks, Roni!

Through Connemara in a Governess Cart by Somerville and Ross

I'm such a fan of The Irish RM that I knew I was going to enjoy this little book. I did! In June of 1890, the two of them climbed into a little open cart with their belongings, gingered up Sibbie the jinnet, and began a leisurely trip through lovely Connemara, Ireland. They were Anglo-Irish gentry, and they expected and received reverent treatment from the peasants on their way. That's just how it was. I got over it and completely relaxed into their personalities and minor adventures.
Honestly, not much happens.... They are set upon by a dog and a goose and fleas, Sibbie has her moments, they get wet, they see a lot of scenery, deprecate the passion of fly-fishermen, eat a lot, and have a good time. Here are a couple of little appetite whetters.....
"'...no picnic should be without a dog. When I was a child we used always to wipe the knives on the dogs' backs between the courses at a picnic, and then the dogs used to try and lick that spot on their backs---'
I am not squeamish, but I checked my cousin's recital at this point..."
"...the intense blue of the lakes, even the yellow whiteness of the slow-climbing road, all combined to fill us with that vague delightful yearning which can only be satisfied by lunch half an hour earlier than usual."

If this is your cup of tea, it's a very little cup. Enjoy!

>274 LizzieD: very little cup
Little is the trick to 75 this time of year.

>223 LizzieD: smack dab in the middle of the way
I generally just grumble to my cats when they twine around me on the stairs. Singing doesn't appear to be any more effective, but probably it'd be more fun.

Go Peggy Go!
Although if you don't make it...no biggie. We celebrate the journey, not just the destination. :)

Hi, Katherine and Valerie! I am going! I am going! (And singing isn't effective at all. It just makes me feel better - especially when sweeping with cat on back slapping at the broom.)
I think I'll list my last little books here rather than add them to the post at the top of the page. I hope that some of them will go so quickly that it's not worth typing the code for the cover pic!
Moon Over Soho
Long Time Dead
Genesee Diary
Cauldron (maybe
Sleepless Nights (maybe)
That will make 75!
Off to read myself to sleep.

You have the Genesee Diary! I keep meaning to acquire that and READ it. I have attended the Xmas midnight mass that is open to the public at the monastery which is near to where I spent many of my growing up years when I lived about 200 or 300 yards from the great Genesee river and ate Monk's Bread when they were actually baking it themselves (later they sold it to Pepp. Farm and then it was just bread). One branch of my fam. is v. Catholic and were very involved in various ways.

Go, Peggy, go, go, go, go. You can do it!

Hi, Lucy. I remembered that you had ties to the Genesee area. If I had been thoughtful, I would have sent you a copy for Christmas. I'm not, so I didn't. (They were still baking the bread for sale when Nouwen was there.)
Thanks, Nancy. I'm going!

>281 ffortsa: Genessee as in upstate NY? Or someplace else?

>277 LizzieD:, >278 sibylline:, ?281 You have the Genesee Diary!
Huh. I do too. I clicked through re ffortsa's question (answer: yes), and there it is in my catalog. Sometimes my books surprise me.

I'm with Valerie, i.e. journey being more important than destination. That being said, go Peggy go, if you can reach 75, then I'm with you all the way, but if you can't make it for any reason, I'll still be one of your most ardent supporters! :-)

Cheering along with the others :)

>282 qebo: I knew that spelling looked wrong! sigh. I spent 4 years in Rochester by the beautiful Genesee, but I didn't know there was a book on the river.

Happy greetings, Judy, Katherine, Ilana, and Nathalie!
Judy, Henri Nouwen was a RC priest whose diary of the 7 months he spent at the Trappist monastery on the Genesee is what I'm reading..... Well, I'm sort of reading it. Right now I'm trying to finish my Sheri Tepper mystery. This is one in her Jason Lynx books. I don't like him as well as I do Shirley McClintock, and those are the only two mystery series that she wrote as far as I know. On the other hand, it's keeping me quite happy - not complaining at all.

I'm transcribing another cat carol on my thread, Peggy! If you can spare the time from your race to 75, of course. ;-)

A LONG TIME DEAD by A.J. Orde who is really Sheri S. Tepper

This is the last but one, as far as I know, of Tepper's Jason Lynx mystery series. Jason is a 30-something antiques dealer in Denver, who loves a police woman, Grace Willis, and solves murders on the side. Grace's n'er do well younger brother comes home to Grace to die of AIDS, but somebody kills him before he can. Grace says that she won't marry Jason until he discovers who killed Ron. At the same time Jason is studying a site for a wealthy woman who wants to build a center for an environmental think tank, helping her equally wealthy friend deal with the Victorian excesses of his inherited castle, and aiding an acquaintance in sprucing up her apartment to entertain her very wealthy (again) in-laws-to-be. All this activity is brought together in a fairly satisfying whole.
My notes here say that I had read this one before, but I don't remember it, so I believe I was wrong. At any rate, some of the mystery is not mysterious to an average reader and some was pretty decent. I've never been convinced by Grace as a character, and her obtuseness with Jason in this one left me a bit perplexed. On the whole, however, I was entertained by number 71 and rank it a bit better than average - maybe because I'm such a Tepper fan.
On to 72 - Moon Over Soho!!!

Peggy, I wish you a lovely weekend and Merry Christmas.

Hi Peggy! I'd never heard of the Jason Lynx series - the only Sheri Tepper I've read is The Family Tree for bookclub, which I remember liking a great deal.

So I was able to mooch the first in the Jason Lynx series just now - exciting.

Good luck on your quest for 75!

Oh, Peggy, you are on a roll! Off to 72 … you'll make your target! I'm rootin' for you!

We all are! I haven't heard of Jason Lynx either and I am going to pretend I still haven't! At least for now.

Heh, Lucy....... Remember, I think that the Shirley McClintock series (starting with Dead in the Scrub is the better series, but Jason & Co. is really good too. He reminds me a bit of Alex Benedict in the Jack McDevitt series - not shabby! Karen, I hope you enjoy Jason. I am glad that you liked The Family Tree. It's good but not among her very best in my list. I was such a Tepper fan when I discovered her that I read most of her copious output. I've held back a few - early fantasies, an early horror, a couple of her main not-quite-scifi novels, and one more Jason Lynx.
Nancy, thanks! I just polished off #72, so it's on to 73 which may be My Friend Says It's Bullet-Proof, a super-slim VMC. Or I may try to find another light scifi. The McDevitt that I had pulled may be too long to be practical. I do finally have to get some Christmas stuff done.

MOON OVER SOHO by Ben Aaronovitch
In this one our apprentice wizard/London policeman Peter Grant is attempting to deal with some very nasty murders (vagina dentata should be clue enough to even Latin-deficient) and another series of unexplained deaths of jazz musicians immediately after a performance. I enjoyed it but it wasn't as good as London Riot or Rivers of London or whatever your copy may say. I could have done without the all-consuming sex (to the participants, not me) in this one, and I thought that the trouble with one major character was suggested too strongly. I do have book 3, but if it doesn't revert in excellence to #1, I suspect I'll not read any more. As Lucy suggests, too many series jostle for attention.
On to 73 - WHEE!

You're going to make it, I can tell!

You're definitely making it, woo!

eta: I'm currently listening to Fludd, which I bought and chose to listen to because of your review and glad to say am enjoying a lot. I looked on the TIOLI wiki to see where you'd listed it and didn't find it there, so fyi, listed it under challenge #8 if you want to list it too.

I think most readers think that Book 3, Whispers Underground, is stronger than book 2, Peggy. You've got it made now. I'm strongly recommending Miracle and Other Christmas Stories for seasonal reading.

Cheering you on, Peggy! :)

I'd be starting 72 if I could figure out what I feel like reading. Go you!

Many thanks for the encouragement, Lucy, Ilana, Roni, Val, and Tui! (Ilana, I have doubled you on TIOLI, and I'm glad that you're enjoying the book too......perfect placement!) I'm happy to hear the Aaronovitch 3 is thought better than A2, Roni!
I have to say that I struck a winner with *Bullet Proof*. Mortimer is a wonderful writer, so while the subject isn't the most inspiring (!) (a 60's feminist coming to terms with her single mastectomy), I'm enjoying the writing...........page 80-something of 200 & a few. Read, Lizzie, Read!

Go Peggy!

>293 LizzieD: I thought Moon Over Soho was the weakest of the series so far and Whispers Underground was much better. Too much sex and general weirdness in Moon Over Soho for me. Also, I don't know much about jazz.

And I had no idea Sheri Tepper wrote mysteries.

Yes yes - Whispers was good!

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year, Peggy!

Merry Christmas, Peggy. Thanks for being one of the originals to welcome me to this wonderful group!


glitter-graphics.com

Peggy, it's Chrismas Eve's eve, and so I am starting the rounds of wishing my 75er friends the merriest of Christmases or whatever the solstice celebration of their choice is.

Merry Christmas, Peggy. See you around the threads next year.

Peggy, thank you so much for your support and the cheering-up in 2014!
I wish you and your family a very Happy Christmas and all the best for 2015!

Doing the rounds with a festive Connie to wish you a very Merry Christmas full of joy, love and books.

Just checking up on your 75 challenge....

Hi Peggy, just stopping by to wish you a very merry Christmas!!

Oh, thank you for the Christmas cheer! I'll be back to thank you all later - and perhaps to spread some of my own. Meantime ---

MY FRIEND SAYS IT'S BULLET PROOF by Penelope Mortimer
I'm so glad that this lovely green VMC, moved from shelf to shelf for some 15+ years, caught my eye. It's solid middle-brow, which is pretty much where mine stays. Muriel Rowbridge, a journalist for a woman's magazine 5 months after her single mastectomy, flies from England to Canada with a group of male journalists. Muriel has been instructed to enjoy herself, become involved in the group, and not (in her own mind) to drift away Virginia Woolfishly. She writes in her journal a lot as she becomes more or less involved with two men: one with whom she has sex and one with whom she falls in love.
Mortimer is a beautiful writer. Muriel's musings are her consciousness stream, revealing her continuing confusion, anger, and hurt but also often very funny commentary. The humor brings the 60s back to me immediately, and I still think it's funny. Prime example: Muriel is whisked away for "'a little get-together with some of the girls from our top women's journals...they are, of course, just fascinated to meet a real working press woman like themselves, with the same problems and the same, well, background. They're all college girls, of course - I expect you're a college girl yourself, Muriel?'
She nodded, dumb. Words started going through her brain like a tune: Lord support us all the day long of this troublous life till the shadows lengthen and the evening comes..." Muriel, wisely, flees.
A controlling motif is the fable of the scorpion and the frog, and Muriel does remain herself to the end. Recommended! (And SHORT!!)

Wishing you and yours a happy Christmas, Peggy, and a thoroughly good 2015!

Happy Holidays!

From our family to yours!

Happy Christmas Peggy!

Peggy, best wishes to you for a very Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas, Peggy!

I hope you're having a lovely Carolina Christmas, Peggy.

Peggy, wishing you and your family a wonderful Christmas season and a very Happy New Year!

Merry Christmas!
On the eve: Do I smell turkey?
During: Worn out:

Ah, Lucy, it's a treat to see your critters enjoying the day. Thank you!!
Oh dear visitors, we have had a very lovely Christmas. It started last night with a Christmas Eve 11:00 candlelight service and we're not through yet. AND tomorrow is our 44th wedding anniversary. Amazing!

44 years! How fabulous! A very happy anniversary, Peggy : ).

Wishing you a very happy anniversary. 😀

Happy Anniversary, Peggy!!

Oh, how wonderful! Happy 44th Anniversary, Peggy!

44th Anniversary!! What a milestone and wonderful reason to celebrate. I hope you are enjoying something extra special today, Peggy!

Nancy, Barbara, Roni, Nathalie, and Valerie - many thanks for the anniversary wishes. We haven't done anything special. Honestly, at this point I am realizing that the most ordinary day is special. Unfortunately, no reading today either. I don't have a long way to go to wrap up the 75, but I do have to sit at some point and flip a few pages. (hmm. I guess that's what has been wrong with this reading year.) Tomorrow!

Happy Anniverary, Peggy!

Thank you for visits and good wishes, Paul and Darryl.
I should have done this yesterday. Here's Christmas, 1972 at Grandmama's house, when we were both young and pretty. DH is in the corner, and I'm the one talking to cousin Gail and her hunky husband Doug. That's Aunt Mary in the foreground. Happy Times! I do miss Aunt Mary and Gail.

Peggy, I have been lurking along with you this year. Maybe I'll pop and and say more in 2015! Belated anniversary wishes from another one with a long and happy marriage. Forty-seven years for us in July. You are so close to the 75-book goal. I know you can do it. I am one away from my 100th book which was my goal for the year. Now that the family has gone as of this morning, I should have no trouble reading The Uncommon Reader. I saved a short one for the end!

I love the family photo at Grandmama's house, Peggy. Lovely to look back on and ponder over, aren't they?

Peggy, I must congratulate you on your 44th. No such records are likely to be set by anyone in my family, and it's nice to know people do stick together through good and bad and keep their promises to one another, very heartening indeed.

I finished Fludd on the 24th and while I enjoyed it, I think a lot of it went over my head and I caught a lot less of it than you did, so I'm in no position at all to explain any of the finer points of it to you. I really enjoyed the narrator, and I'll definitely have to listen to it again, as I didn't at all catch that Fludd might be a 16th century alchemist—in fact, I had no idea at all who he might be and it helped me to reread the review you wrote here.

I've lost track—is it just one more you've got to go or two now?

Happy Anniversary, Peggy! How wonderful. 44 years - I'm just a bit halfway over that mark at 23.

Good luck completing the 75 Book Challenge, too.

Peggy, I wish you a lovely weekend.

Thank you, Barbara, and a happy weekend to you! (I've always been a bit squirrely!)
Ilana, the explanation of the alchemist is given in a forward or something before the book begins - I don't have my copy at hand at the moment. Your narrator might not have read it. She doesn't spell it out in the text at all, but knowing her intention makes some things clear that wouldn't be otherwise. I'm at a bit less than 100 pages in both #s 74 and 75, so barring catastrophe, I should finish in good time. Now I want to hit 30,000 pages read though, so I'll need to squeeze in one more short one. I'm hopeless.
Thank you, Karen. Gail's son made a CD of his family's pics at Grandmama's house, and sent me this one and another one that will NOT show up here!!! We watched the CD (and he sent a copy to Mama) at our little reunion earlier in the year. I was not the only one teary-eyed.
Donna, I lurk on your thread too. It's nice to see you speak up! And 46 going on 47 is perfectly wonderful! I would so like to get to 100 books a year, but I don't see that happening. I do hope to do better in 2015 than this year though. Enjoy The Uncommon Reader. It is a favorite for sure.

CAULDRON by Jack McDevitt

I enjoy McDevitt. He's not profound. He pretty much falls into a formula in both of his series, one apiece. His characters have no depth. I don't care. He does everything well enough to entertain me for a few hundred pages, and I appreciate that. This is the last of the Priscilla Hutchins series. Some 250 years into the future, very few corporations still send out superluminals, and the government is out of the business altogether, devoting its resources to climate and environmental concerns. Hutch is a widow who works for Prometheus Foundation, which still has 2 starships at the beginning of the book. A young physicist has completed the development of an even faster FTL drive than the Hazeltine and is desperate for somebody to test it. Hutch believes in him and is able to convince Prometheus to take it on. Eventually, she and a crew get back into space and solve the mystery of the omega clouds and find the homeworlds of the chindi and of the first alien signals to reach earth. For an old Hutch fan, this one was pretty satisfying, but I wouldn't start the series here.

THE GENESEE DIARY: REPORT FROM A TRAPPIST MONASTERY by Henri Nouwen

This is a wonderful and profound little book in which Henri Nouwen records his experiences of the seven months he spent in the Trappist Monastery of the Genesee in 1974. Anybody who wants to know what spirituality is about could profit from reading this, but it is especially meaningful for Christians. Nouwen quotes a French priest who summed up his 15 years of hearing confessions by saying, "People are not very happy, and we never grow up." Nouwen is honest about his failings and his desires and also about his joy and peace. He realizes early that he could never be a contemplative, but he immerses himself in the life of the monastery and returns to his own life, not changed, but more aware of himself and of the grace of God.

And that's 75!!!!!
I was going to jump into next year's books, but I've decided to read one more so that I can have 30,000 pages too. It will be a reread of Sheri Tepper/B.J. Oliphant's Dead in the Scrub, the first of her Shirley McClintock mysteries. Like first books in other series, it's a little long and sometimes unfocused, but I look forward to it, and I'm off to read!

Awesome sauce, Peggy! :D

Congratulations, Peggy!! And with time to spare, too!

Yay - congratulations, Peggy!!

Congrats, Peggy, on reaching your target. Well done!!! :-)

Belated Christmas wishes and happy anniversary Peggy! And congratulations on reading 75 books!!

>310 LizzieD: My Friend Says Its Bulletproof has gone on my wishlist. I think you should post your review on the bookpage as there's only one very brief review there.

>338 LizzieD: I also enjoyed The Genesee Diary - I always find Nouwen's writing very profound.

Well done, Peggy!

Congratulations on 75 Peggy!

Yay, well done on 75!

Congrats!

Congrats!

Yay, Peggy! Congratulations on a job well done.

Happy New Year 2015, too.

75!!!!!!!

Peggy, I have been away visiting the in-laws so am late with my congratulations for your 44th anniversary. And well done for reaching 75! I'll make 73 for certain but 75 is iffy at this point. I look forward to another year of following your reading and thoughts about life and all that good stuff.

Woot! Fabulously done, Peggy!

Bliss to find visits from friends! Thank you, Nancy, Tui, Lucy and corgis, Karen, Katherine, Jim, Jenny, Laura, Darryl, Heather, Barbara, Nathalie, Roni, and Valerie! Wow!
Heather, I don't need much encouragement; I put my comments about *MFTIBP* on the book page. I wanted more Penelope Mortimer, and my copy of The Pumpkin Eater arrived in the mail today.
Tui, I expect visiting with in-laws is several magnitudes of importance greater than reading 75. I do seriously think that you'd enjoy the Shirley McClintock mysteries. She is a character, and Tepper is able to get all her digs in at American absurdities. I'm closing in on the end of this one and may have to reread the rest. Anyway, I will get my 30,000 pages and maybe have two days to take a few new books for a test read!

Happy 75, Peggy.

I'll see if there are any Kindle downloads of the McClintock mysteries, Peggy, thank you!

Hope you enjoy them, Tui. For me they really pick up after the third book, but I won't give you any spoilers.
At last! The goals that I can meet are met, and I can enjoy a day and a half of browsing and deciding how to start the new year. I'm happy.

DEAD IN THE SCRUB by B.J. Oliphant who is really Sheri S. Tepper
This is maybe the third time I've read this little mystery, but I left it long enough that while I remembered who, I didn't precisely remember why. Shirley McClintock, twice widowed and also childless, has retired to her family's Colorado ranch after a career at the Bureau in Washington. She lives with her old school friend J.Q. in a genuinely loving but apparently non-sexual relationship. Shirley sees directly to the heart of things and never hesitates to speak her mind. In fact, at the beginning of the book, she is aggressive in taking on fools picketing an abortion/woman's health clinic and proselytizing for their church. She tracks a deer, wounded by a bow-hunter who doesn't feel responsible for the animal's suffering, and when she finally runs the deer to ground in the scrub, she also finds a human skeleton. The plot thickens. It's a pretty good mystery, but I really love old Shirley and J.Q. and an 11 year-old named Allison. 'Nuff said.

Now I'm off to swim and then back home to browse and read!

I've just learned that I won a copy of Against the Country - Southern Gothic and metafiction. I hope I'll be impressed!

Stopping in for ONE LAST TIME in 2014. A great reading year!

I have enjoyed sharing your thoughts and reading along with you, Peggy, and look forward to more of the same for 2015. A very happy new year to you and yours, with special wishes for good health. xo

Good morning, Peggy! It is still morning here. I'm making my last pass through the 2014 threads. It's chilly here after a rainy night, just 45 degrees, but a good day to stay in and try to get situated between the 2014 and 2015 threads. It's been lovely sharing 2014 with you, and I look forward to 2015.

ETA I like that phrasing. I think I'll copy it to use on the other threads, but remember, I wrote it to you, here, first!

Happy New Year, Peggy!

Peggy, you are a dear for leaving a message on my moribund thread. All good wishes for a joyful New Year to you! I will probably return to the 75 in 2015. I have a lot to catch up on here first, like what everyone has been reading. All the best to you!

Becky, it's amazing to see you here!!!! Thank you for stopping in. I will look forward to following your reading and cooking again in 2015 for sure.
HAPPY NEW YEAR to you and your family!
Judy, Tui, Roni, Jenny, and Lucy, I look forward to more time with you in the new year too. Thank you very much for dropping by!
Although I think everybody is pretty much gone from here, my new thread is up and running.