The Padded Cell - Bookmarque’s Undisciplined Reading Room 2015

Howdy Dragoneers!

While I love reading and discussing books, I hate restricting myself by challenges or goals. It turns reading into a chore for me, so I don’t do it. For that reason I’ve pretty much kept off the groups dedicated to these themes even though the individual threads are sometimes great places to discover books and interact with my fellow LT addicts.

Soooo, in an effort to create a space beyond my reviews, I’m going to try keeping a journal of unchallenged, unrestricted and largely cobbled-together reading. I read what I like when I like and avoid what I don’t. If something isn’t working for me, I give it up. Life is too short to read books that I don’t enjoy.

Last year’s reading list - http://www.librarything.com/list/1025/Bookmarque/

And I might throw in some other stuff, too, so here's a kitty -

Currently Reading

---

Lately I haven't been reading much non-fiction, so I started a book that's been on my virtual TBR shelf for over a year!

So far it's excellent. The writing flows really well and the interconnection of all the families both in Normandy, England and France is pretty clear and the family trees certainly help.

---

Is it weird that the Prey series are some of my go to comfort reads? It helps that I can't always remember details. - Haven't read this one since 09.

---

Started another audiobook So far so good. Rendell sure knows how to paint a sociopath.

Woo Hoo!

Great books go here.

1. Where'd You Go, Bernadette by Maria Semple - - REVIEW
2. Bird Box by Josh Malerman - - REVIEW
3. Swann by Carol Shields - - REVIEW
4. A Graveyard for Lunatics by Ray Bradbury - - REVIEW
5. The Collector by John Fowles - - REVIEW
6. As You Wish: Inconceivable Tales from the Making of the Princess Bride by Cary Elwes -
7. The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins - - REVIEW
8. Conspirata aka Lustrum by Robert Harris -
9. The Turn of the Screw by Henry James - - REVIEW
10. Wyllard's Weird by Mary Elizabeth Braddon - - REVIEW
11. Brazzaville Beach by William Boyd - - REVIEW
12. White Fire by Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child -
13. The Lady in the Lake by Raymond Chandler - - REVIEW
14. Our Game by John le Carre - - REVIEW
15. Say Goodbye by Lisa Gardner - - REVIEW
16. The Reckoning by Rennie Airth - - REVIEW
17. The Terror by Dan Simmons - - REVIEW
18. A Simple Plan by Scott Smith - - REVIEW
19. Run to Earth by Mary Elizabeth Braddon - - REVIEW
20. Fire from Heaven by Mary Renault -
21. The Sugar House by Laura Lippman -
22. Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro - - REVIEW

Middle of the road

1. The Neighbor by Lisa Gardner
2. The Third Victim by Lisa Gardner
3. The Next Accident by Lisa Gardner
4. Sweetland by Michael Crummey - - REVIEW
5. Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout - - REVIEW
6. Trauma by Patrick McGrath - - REVIEW
7. The Courtship Gift by Julie Parsons - - REVIEW
8. The Day of Atonement by David Liss - - REVIEW
9. Wolf Winter by Cecilia Ekback - REVIEW

Sad Trombone

1. Bowie by Wendy Leigh - - REVIEW
2. The Angel of Terror by Edgar Wallace - - REVIEW
3. The Franchise Affair by Josephine Tey - - REVIEW
4. The Fort by Bernard Cornwell - - REVIEW
5. Neanderthal by John Darnton -

DNF!! OMG, so bad I had to abandon ship.

1. Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden - I'm bored to tears by the quotidian detail, the endless cruelty and the repetition.
2. The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton - she may have won the Booker, but she's getting the Booby Prize from me. Meh.
3. The Perfect Husband by Lisa Gardner - forced romance, over-the-top-super-villain, stupid situation and predictable plot made me just walk away.
4. The Porcelain Thief
5. The Killing Hour by Lisa Gardner - can't stand Kimberly, the main character so I'm done.
6. To Rise Again at a Decent Hour by Joshua Ferris - I can only take so much pontificating bullshit.
7. Middlemarch by George Eliot - too mind-numbingly boring to put up with this much misogyny.

2015 Reading List

Last year we got 60-something participants, but I know we can do better.

http://www.librarything.com/list/10067/all/Books-Read-in-2015#

My list - http://www.librarything.com/list/10067/Bookmarque/

2014 Stats

Fresh, juicy stats. And charts & graphs! Who doesn't love a good chart?

That's a nice, stretchy kitty! I'm looking forward to seeing lots of pictures on your thread.

I have Where'd You Go, Bernadette on my TBR pile, so I'm interested in what you think of it.

Thanks Sylvia. The stretchy girl is Matilda, enjoying the fleeting winter sun.

I'm always dubious about books that get a lot of hype, especially those that are blatantly aimed at women. I don't know why, it's a thing. But Bernadette is very good. It could be the ending ruins it for me, but so far it's been terrific. It's hard to do farce well, but Semple pulls it off.

Matilda fascinates me. We are owned by (among others) Solomon, who is the identical colour and 17 years old. And for most of those 17 years he has chosen to sleep in a contortionist's pose a lot like Matilda.

Love the title of your thread, and your attitude about challenges. I tried a couple and, as you noted, they tended to turn reading into a chore rather than a pleasure. I also see that we share a lot of books. I plan to page through your reviews eventually to glean even more entries for Mount Tooby. Good reading this year!

I read what I like when I like and avoid what I don’t. If something isn’t working for me, I give it up. Life is too short to read books that I don’t enjoy.

Hear, hear!

Thanks Hugh, Jim and Marissa!

I see so many threads and blogs with reading plans.
Plans.
For reading.

I don't get it. To each her own, but darn if that doesn't just suck the joy out of the room, so here in the Rubber Room, we get to bounce around and go a little mental.

Hugh - Matilda was stretching in that shot, but she does tend to pretzel from time to time. Here's a shot of her being her being more lady-like.



Like the mercurial little imp she is, she has her eyes closed in every picture I have of her so far.

Jim - thanks for the Interesting Library add, right back atcha.

>13 Bookmarque: she's gorgeous! Sadly allergies prevent us from having a furry owner, but I do miss having a cat in the house. All the lovely photos in the GD do help make up for it :)

Thanks imyril, she's a cutie patootie. One more shot of her for today. Tomorrow her gorgeous mother, Bella.

Despite being a cat person, I have a somewhat jaded appetite for cuteness, but I love your pictures, Bookmarque. So I'll star your thread and tell myself I'm coming here just for the books.

That is a classic photo!

As a person who loves cats but is owned by none at the moment, I too will be visiting, and loving your kitty photos. Always enjoy your thoughts on books, too.

Thanks peeps. Our new girls are so lovely it's hard for me not to photograph them.

This post is about Literary Serendipity or The Stars Aligning in my Book Universe.

So a while back I put a book on my wishlist on the big A. It hung at $10 for the ebook version then shazam! went on sale for like $2 just before Christmas. I could have sworn that I clicked to buy it, but I forgot to check right away and by the time I noticed it was back up to $10. Bah. I blew it. Every time I looked at my wishlist it was there, staring at me, reminding me of my loserdom.

Then today as I was heading out of the grocery store, I stopped to check the charity book bin and remarked to my husband that there was always really weird stuff in it. Then - gasp, what did my wondering eyes behold?!!! Swann



My book! The book that escaped my clutches during the sale. It was here. In hardcover. First edition. For a dollar! Woo hoo!

What are the odds? Wow. This has never happened to me before, although I have gotten a couple of nice finds in that bin. Now I'm going to have to drop off some of my unwanted books just to pay that karma forward.

>19 Bookmarque: now there's a nice way to start off a new year! May the rest be full of positive serendipity.

I love opportunities like that. I like your reading philosophy too Bookmarque. I tried setting a goal last year, didn't reach it but was definitely not too disciplined about it either.

I'll be here, lurking.

>19 Bookmarque: Usually those finds show up after I've paid for the expensive copy.

SylviaC, you are so right. That's part of why I'm so flabbergasted about it and why I've started it already. It's like a fetish for me...I even took it with me in the car on an errand. Like it will disappear if I don't keep my eye on it. Crazy-talk!

And thanks katylit; I try to stay relaxed. Just above coma.

Bookmarque, I love the kitty pictures! Matilda reminds me of our little Russian Blue we had. He passed away a little over a year ago. He was an awesome cat! I look forward to more of you pics.

And I really enjoyed Bernadette. I read it a few years ago for a book club I was in. A fun read.

Matilda is part Russian Blue, her momma's part -


Isabella has pretty much all the markers of the breed except the eyes, but we don't hold it against her.

Where'd You Go Bernadette was more fun than I thought it would be even as an audio. It's hard to do epistolary as an audio (esp with email and texting), but Kathleen Wilhoite did an amazing job. So many female narrators get on my nerves after a while, but not her.

My Best Books of 2014 post if anyone's interested.

Cats, books, more cats ... what a great thread! Looking forward to following you throughout the year.

Add me to those who loved Bernadette. I'm a sucker for novels written in that style and the story and characters were great in this one too.

Thanks Sakerfalcon. I hope I don't become the Crazy Cat Lady of the Green Dragon!

Just posted my 2nd book for 2015 - Bird Box a dystopian novel where viewing some unknown creature causes people to become homicidal and suicidal and so survivors have to try to negotiate the world with blindfolds. It's told from the perspective of a pregnant survivor who alternates her back story and her present story, which is to paddle two 4-year-old children down a river while all are blindfolded. It's creepy and mostly pretty good.

I know I'm a little late to the game here, @Bookmarque, but can you explain the list in #6 (Books read in 2015) above? You indicated you had 60 participants last year. How do people participate?

Hi Jill. Just click on the first link and then click the link to add a book to the list. When you do that, you will get your personal list like in the second link. I enjoyed seeing what the participants were up to last year and makes a handy compilation for me, too. I hope you join us.

So making headway with The Luminaries. It's interesting, but not addicting if you know what I mean. Each of the characters affected by the crime (dead prospector, missing prospector, drugged prostitute, opium importing, blackmail) gets a big chunk of narrative which includes a lot of inner monologue and biography. None of them are particularly outstanding either as hero or villain. I'm only 1/4 of the way through.

Swann is similarly constructed in that each section of the book focuses on another person peripheral to Swann's life, either during or posthumously. The writing though is AMAZING. I don't quote books all that often, but in this one I found myself making note of especially sizzling lines. The first part, which deals with Sara Mahoney, a charmingly self-centered woman, is particularly fab.

And for those who are only here for the cat pictures, here are the l'infants terrible -

Your kitties are so beautiful! They do make me miss my Scooter, though. He was so loyal.

Thanks catzteach. They are purty.

The flip side of the Best books of 2014 is the dreck. Here it is including DNFs. Don't say you weren't warned.



http://thebookmarque.blogspot.com/2015/01/worst-books-2015.html

>31 Bookmarque: I have had The Luminaries on my digital shelf for a year now and consistently lacked the gumption to tackle it as it's so long and I'm yet to hear better than a lukewarm response. I'll be interested to hear your final comments on it.

Yeah, The Luminaries is about the process of telling the story more than the story. I think sometimes people with no affinity to write crime or thrillers think they can and use that as the pegboard to hang up all kinds of other stuff, to the detriment of the crime. With its current bulk, I'm not sure marketing it as a mystery (or similar) did it any favors. Holding that in mind (like I had to for An Instance of the Fingerpost), I'm trying to stay interested. It took me over a decade to finish Fingerpost, and I only did it when I stopped thinking of it as a 'who-dun-it' which is how it was originally marketed.

---

On another note - I completely agree with everything here, especially with Unique and Impacted - just stop it already!!! http://www.npr.org/2014/12/30/372495062/the-npr-grammar-hall-of-shame-opens-with...

oh and I got 5 out of 5 at the bottom. Yay me!

Finished Swann today while trapped under this little cutie -


heaviest 8 1/2 pounds ever.

Anyway, Swann surprised me in the end with some authorial chicanery. Just when I thought I knew where it was going, she did something very interesting that made me read faster than I had before. Overall the book is characterized as a mystery, but that's a very light wash. Mostly it deals with appearances and reality and how everyone connected to her basically created Swann and her poetic legacy. Fascinating, if a touch verbose.

added to the Woo hoo! list - http://www.librarything.com/topic/185777#4982312

That is a wonderful burden to carry. And useful, because you "had" to sit still and read, it would have been wrong to unburden yourself prematurely. :)

Onerous duty for sure.

My audiobook is really onerous though. It's Memoirs of a Geisha and I've just skipped an hour or so because it's just so relentlessly cruel. Everyone has given in to their inner psychopath and I just can't deal with it. Anyone remember it getting better?

>38 Bookmarque: I shall follow this for further news of Memoirs of a Geisha as this is high on my TBR - I'm not in the mood for relentlessly cruel.

>38 Bookmarque: I read that long ago, but cannot remember the ending. Went to read my review of it, but it didn't help. If I recall correctly, the ending is not happy, and not terrible, but more of an acceptance of life. However, I'm not sure. I did like the book, it felt like listening to a woman tell her story.

Ok, I'll stick with it. There are so many glowing reviews there must be a redeeming value to it. The narrative incorporates a lot of flashback so that while I don't know the fine details of the particular insult/beating/torture/lie, I can fill in well enough. If it gets to be too depressing I'll quit and it will become my first DNF for the year.

I read it in paper form, that may have made a difference, as I could skim disturbing scenes. I have noticed that I don't like to listen to audio books with lurid sex or violence in them, whereas I can sometimes read such books if they have other redeeming values by skimming the parts I don't care for.

Yeah, print allows for easier skimming. I'll keep going and skip what makes me too angry.

Here's a PSA -

One of my top five novels from last year is on sale on the kindle format for a dollar and also the next in the series. I just snagged A Graveyard for Lunatics which I hope will be as great as Death is a Lonely Business. Yay for Ray Bradbury detective novels!

Also got a Joyce Carol Oates Victorian pastiche for the same price! Woo hoo!

A few thoughts about the Bowie bio I'm reading - I’ve never been so bored and unenlightened by a biography in my life. At 130 pages in and 4 albums produced, all I know is that Bowie will screw anyone who comes into his orbit. Anytime, anyhow, anywhere. But nothing about the man as musician, composer or songwriter. Nothing about producing Lou Reed's most successful solo album. Collaborating with Iggy. Mick Ronson's contributions. Zip. Ziggy Stardust has been created and stormed the world, but we get 3 sentences about why and what Bowie thought about it then or now. It’s insane. Did the writer ever even talk to Bowie? Seems not.

I’m so disappointed. I've been a Bowie fan for decades and have over 2 dozen of his albums and believe me, the early ones are incredible and should have been given attention as to how they were created. Songs like The Man Who Sold the World, The Width of a Circle, Life on Mars?, Changes, All the Madmen...I could go on, but damn this biographer is a dope.

I'm curious as to which biography you're reading. I have David Bowie : Living on the Brink lined up for later this year, but it doesn't seem to have many stars on LT (only 2) and no reviews, so I feel a little unnerved that I'm heading into murky waters with that one as well.

It's in the 2nd post - the new one by Wendy Leigh. It's pretty bad.

>46 Bookmarque: I'll definitely give that a miss then. Isn't it strange how for some people there are masses of 'biographies' out there and yet they seem to tell very little about the actual person or the real events?

>44 Bookmarque: "I’ve never been so bored and unenlightened by a biography in my life."

This has made me shy away from most celebrity biographies. It seems the writers are capitalizing more on the name and trusting that to sell the book, whether there is substance to the person's life or not. The other hazard being that they were just a famous person, but not very interesting.

>43 Bookmarque: Ouch! At least it was an inexpensive BB. I didn't know that Bradbury wrote mysteries!

Did you grab one, MrsLee? They're definitely different and soooo Bradbury. If you've read a lot of his other work, you'll recognize the flow.

Yeah, I don't usually read this kind of thing, but I saw it and I am a fan so I went for it. My only guess is that because there are many Bowie biographies out there, this writer went for the salacious detail rather than artistic substance. I guess none of the other books had enough about his voracious sex life. It's the least interesting thing about him though, seriously. I know enough about some events in his life that should get more coverage. Like when he had his Berlin years, he quit drugs and booze (it was temporary, but a big step towards being clean) and that's about how much attention she gave it. One sentence. It's pathetic.

>44 Bookmarque:, >48 MrsLee: This is why I don't read very many of them either. Some of them are just plain boring people (Sean Connery), and their lives are generally so much about themselves and nothing else that you can't help feeling they've got all the admirers they need every time they look in a mirror. When it's an autobiography it can be even worse (Sidney Poitier) because it sounds so self-serving even while pretending to something like objective factuality. The one that surprised me was Elizabeth Taylor's. Wouldn't you think her story would be enough to keep you awake? It wasn't.

I liked Judi Dench's, though, and, unexpectedly, Adrienne Barbeau's (which I bought because I met her at a writer's conference). Both of them seem like real people for whom acting is a job and celebrity a side effect.

Oooh, I've always had a soft spot for Miss Adrienne. She was one of the reasons I watched Carnivale. I wish it had more than two seasons though. I heard she was writing novels, too. I wonder if they're good.

>52 Bookmarque: Here's the book: There Are Worse Things I Could Do. I really liked it, and my husband approved of the cover.

I liked Carnivale too (binge-watched on Netflix). They'd planned out several more seasons but lost their backing.

>50 Bookmarque: I grabbed two! At .99 each, how could I lose? :) I put them on my mom's Kindle first. She is always hungry for reading material, while I use my Kindle more as storage for good buys which I want to read someday (a secret TBR shelf)!

Oh sweet. They aren't everyone's cuppa, but I really like what Bradbury does with words to create particular atmospheres. And you can tell he's having fun somehow. There's glee squeezing between the words.

Yeah, Meredy, I heard that, too. Just put her book on my audible list - she reads it so that should be good. I think most men would approve of the cover. In decades before augmentation became mandatory in actresses, she grew those herself.

Am still working my way through all the books I'm into. Problem is none of them is really captivating me. I hate that, but will carry on. I don't hate any of them enough to totally give up yet.

And here's Matilda sitting at attention -

Your cats really are beautiful, and they don't seem to mind posing for photos either. Mine would rarely hold still long enough.

I seem to remember that the main character in Memoirs of a geisha does find some happiness; I remember it because it seemed so out of character with the previous miserable tone of the story. It is a very long time since I read it though, so I may have exaggerated some small event in my memory of the book.

>55 Bookmarque: There's glee squeezing between the words.

Oh, well said! [applauding]

Thanks Meredy - it's how I've always felt about Bradbury's writing.

Thanks Sakerfalcon, only Matilda, who is more standoffish, will pose. Bella pretty much comes running to me every time I look at her. Strange cats.

And finally the weather cooperated and things are a bit more beautiful outside. It was snowing slightly so I went out to do some flowing water work, but nothing really went how I wanted, so I traveled to a nearby favorite forest. Instead of landscapes, I concentrated on smaller scenes. Here are some rock cap ferns on a snow-covered boulder. They're one of the few species to stay green throughout the year.



Hey, at least it's not a picture of a cat!

Oh and I've given up on Memoirs of a Geisha. Too boring. Too repetitive. Too quotidian. I actually returned it to Audible and am now enjoying Cary Elwes and cast talk about the making of Princess Bride. I've already smiled and laughed and so it's way better than the grinding drudgery of the geisha.

I love The Princess Bride! I think I had the entire movie memorized at one point. The book is good, too. Am I going to have to put another book on my TBR list?

You might. It's a memoir by Cary Elwes called As You Wish: Inconceivable Tales from the Making of The Princess Bride. I got it as an audio and Cary does most of the work himself, but has help from Robin, Chris, the other Chris, Rob, Billy and Carol. Unfortunately Mandy and Fred don't do theirs and of course neither do Peter, Andre or William himself. So far it's made me smile, laugh and do some of the lines out loud.

I think As You Wish is going to have to go on my Audible wishlist.

This one's been lurking on my acquire-sooner-or-later list...

Well, I think the bullet hit the target. I am trying to branch out and reading a memoir is on the list. So it'll be this one when I get around to it.

I listened to it a bit more in the car today and it's detailed and self-deprecating and overall interesting. Probably any fan of the movie will like it.

Had a bit of an adventure today. Went hiking on some trails I'm familiar with, then there was a new bridge and then another linking to trails I'd never been on before. They were well-marked and there was even a Lucite-covered map for me to reference. A loop trail all blazed in yellow. Easy enough. Until the yellow blazes ran out. Then it forked where it wasn't shown on the map. I followed the branch with the most footprints, but it was wrong and I ended up in a totally unknown place. At 3:30. An hour of daylight left. Tops.

Luckily across the brook I saw some houses and made my way to a neighborhood and found a house that looked like someone was home. Rang the doorbell. Barking dog. Man telling dog to chill. When we get to talk I explained my predicament and asked if I could use his address to direct a cab. After a few minutes, he thought it would be easier just to drive me over. Of course he has no GPS and neither of us are quite sure where my car is. I know the road though and with less than 20% battery on my phone, I get us there.

Phew! I haven't ever had to resort to help from a stranger before, but darn if he didn't build up karma points today!

Luckily I got one shot that was worth getting lost for -

Wow!

>65 Bookmarque: That's incredible! I'm very relieved that your adventure had a happy ending. It's alarming how quickly it gets dark at this time of year, even more so when you're not sure where you are.

Lovely shot, and we are all thankful for your kind stranger!

Hey thanks peeps.

I've been turned around in the woods a few times, but never so hopelessly or close to sunset. Being that I mostly hike in southern NH, it's hard to get really remote and over the years I've developed my sense of direction, but yesterday, ugh. Crazy. Plus I forgot to put my flashlight back in the pack after coming back from vacation. If I had that, I probably would have gone it alone, but I didn't. Better safe than wandering the dark when it's 15 degrees out.

Glad someone was willing to help. And love the picture! Wow.

thanks catzteach. Winter photography is always challenging, but finding ice formations is fun no matter what. I've only put my foot through once in the Pemigewasset river. No harm done.

So lately I'm in a reading slump. Nothing I'm into is engaging me enough to tear me away from this guy -



and the utter ridiculousness of The Blacklist. I roll my eyes a million times per episode and fast forward through the really dumb shit, but there's something about Reddington's character and the larger mystery arc that keeps me coming back. I'm not done the first season yet, so no spoilers please.

PSA time!

Let's All Kill Constance is on sale, kindle version again, for $4. It's the 3rd in the Crumley mystery series that Bradbury wrote in the 80s and 90s. If you grabbed Graveyard for Lunatics or Death is a Lonely Business you might want to snag it, too.

Oh and the kindle version of The Day of the Triffids is $2.

>72 Bookmarque: If only for the title, I must buy that book!

It is a great title, isn't it? And Constance is a heck of a character. I finished Graveyard yesterday and it wrapped much better than it started. I still need to put a review together, but my initial assessment is that it's still very personal and biographical on Bradbury's part, so much so that I feel a lot is lost on the reader. Very inside-jokey if you know what I mean. Sure, some parallels were obvious like one based on his real-life friend, Ray Harryhausen, but the J.C. character? Was that supposed to be an actual religious symbol or just the Hollywood version of it; all special effects and make up?

---

I finished the first season of The Blacklist and dammit, Netflix, get season two up NOW!!!

---

Anyway, I've decided to abandon yet another book that was contributing mightily to my reading slump - The Luminaries. How on earth did this win any prize, much less the Booker? I got through the whole tedious first part and the how and why of the elaborate crime has been revealed (in a Poirot-like summation by a similar stand-in character, her plot was so unfathomable it took like 10 pages to summarize, oy!), but to what import? No one in the story seems to care much, plus the main perpetrator is across an ocean and we've still got like 1000 pages left (well it feels that way). The author didn't make me care either and that is her downfall. It is banished to the Stuck in the Middle Collection and I fear it will never leave.

---

I found the book to break the reading slump even more - The Collector by John Fowles. It's been on my TBR shelf since July 2013. Mr. Fowles and I have a rocky relationship with The Magus being unreadable, A Maggot being readable, but a profound head-scratcher and The French Lieutenant's Woman being fantastic. I'm about 3/4 of the way through The Collector and if it ends well it will end up in the fantastic bucket, too.

Heh. I remember reading The Magus in high school and feeling like my head was going to explode.

>74 Bookmarque:, >75 Marissa_Doyle: I tried The Magus and didn't get very far. Will never forgive Fowles for the ending of The French Lieutenant's Woman and haven't been willing to give him another chance in the ensuing four decades.

Fowles is a trial sometimes, but I admire what he attempted with fiction, even if it doesn’t always work for me; that’s what keeps me coming back. His unconventionality and how it can surprise me. The fact that he didn’t feel he should tell his stories the same way everyone else would, or told their own. I know a lot of people were bothered by the fact that the end of The French Lieutenant’s Woman wasn’t sewn up neatly, but I feel that it was indicated by the narrative well in advance. He broke the fourth wall enough with editorial asides that the multi-ending intrigued rather than bothered me and I felt with the length of one of them, he tipped his hand as to which he wanted you to go with. I’ll probably continue reading him since it keeps me challenged, but by no means do I think I’ll love everything. The Collector was very good to the end though and I can see a lot of other writers in the story and the method; Highsmith and Rendell most of all.

Didja miss me? What, didn't even notice I've been a bit absent? Sob.

My laptop got a bit of malware I couldn't scrub, remove or shred so I basically had to abandon the machine for any and all internet use. Not exactly useful. So today my new one arrived. I love and hate getting a new computer. Love the newness and the speed. Hate setting it up in a way that's useful to me. Luckily a lot of what I do is online and logging into LastPass basically gets me everywhere. Still a pain in the butt though.

Anyway...there's still work to be done, like getting my Lightroom database back up and running. As soon as I can get that done, I can process and upload photos again.

In the meantime I have a couple of book reviews to write. Typing on the iPad is so bad that I didn't even try. I finished The Collector and it was great. Read The Angel of Terror and it wasn't. Also the Cary Elwes Memoir As You Wish - Inconceivable Tales from the Making of The Princess Bride which was a lot of fun, especially as much of the cast narrated the book personally. Alas, not Mandy Patinkin which was a bummer since he has such a great voice.

We most certainly DID miss you! Good to have you back.

Thanks MrsLee.

We're getting an ass ton of snow up this way today, so more time to play with my new PC. Now that I have a proper keyboard again, I put up my 2014 Reading stats blog post with a few more charts than the post above. Linky - http://thebookmarque.blogspot.com/2015/01/reading-stats-2014.html

I'll also probably kick out a couple of book reviews, too. I hate typing for long periods on the iPad, so they've been stacking up.

>74 Bookmarque: I loved The Collector and had been looking at The Magus as my next Fowles somewhere down the line... now I'm wondering if that's such a sensible choice!

The Magus gets such high marks that I persisted with it longer than I would have not knowing. I got bogged down in the pointless repetition. The concept and the author's conceit I was totally on board with, but the protagonist was beyond stupid. The same little scenes and set ups kept happening and he kept falling for them. I think the bookmark is still in my copy about 200 pages from the end. It's been there for years. lol.

---

On another note, my Lightroom software and catalog are fully operational on my new laptop. In celebration, here's a shot of Beard Brook from a couple of weeks ago. Of course now we have so much more snow that you probably can't see the water much at all. There's easily a foot out there and it's still falling.

>82 Bookmarque: so beautiful!

>82 Bookmarque: What a beautiful picture!

Pie Charts! And color and bars and everything! Shiny!

Love the black and whiteness of the photo along with all the curvy lines.

Thanks peeps. Winter water and snow just call out to be done in black and white. We have probably another couple of feet of it now, so I'm going to have to get some snow shoes if I want to go out again anytime soon. I do have a few shots from the weekend to post up though, so stay tuned. Sunny forests just enchant me. Tough to shoot, but lovely to walk in.

Yeah, pie charts. It's mental, right? I can't help it though.

Don't forget to check my lists and reviews if you're in the mood. I put a few up on this post - http://www.librarything.com/topic/185777#4982312

>82 Bookmarque: Great picture, it looks so peaceful.

Thanks Sakerfalcon. It was peaceful, actually. It was snowing and the sound of the water was muffled slightly. Hardly anyone goes out when something is falling from the sky and now I have a weather sealed camera, I can brave the elements a bit. Mostly I have to try not to be lazy. Like this weekend, I went out in the woods after going to the gym with my husband. I almost decided not to, but I did and even though it was wicked icy under the snow, which slowed my progress, I had a lovely time.

---

It's still early so check out the Books Read in 2015 list. It's fascinating to see what comes up every day - http://www.librarything.com/list/10067/all/Books-Read-in-2015

---

And speaking of the gym. Does anyone here strength train? Particularly women?

I do (strength training, that is). I go to a franchise gym for women, and the program is 1/2 hour strength training, 1/2 hour cardio, 3-4 days a week.

>88 Bookmarque: The closest I get to strength training is Curves. It's pretty darned dull (although the staff and other customers are nice) and the music can be annoying, but it's a convenient location, the workout is over in a half hour or so, and I figure it's better than nothing. I also do yoga (at work, 3 lunchtimes a week) and run about three times a week.

Oh hey, nice peeps. It must be different going to a women's gym. I go to a unisex gym and I lift very heavy for a woman and sometimes people watch me lift, mostly surreptitiously. Men in particular are pretty impressed, congratulatory or will engage me in conversation, but the women seem horrified. It's weird.

I probably lift the heaviest at my gym, and yeah, I get a lot of comments from the other clients (all women) about being "scary" and how they could never ever do that, which always kind of freaks me out (I mean, hello, isn't that why we're there? To get stronger and healthier?) Two of the three trainers are guys, and they are very encouraging and happy to push me to work harder.

Funny you should say that. I got to talking with one of the two women I chat with at the gym and she saw me pushing the sled and said she could never do that. This woman is clearly athletic and not built like a bunch of straws so I said she should go on and try. What's the worst that could happen? That I'd have to take a plate off? So what. So she did, she pushed it down to the other end of the astroturf. 340lbs, what I'd been pushing for a while. I hope she was proud of herself. I was. So today, just because I was feeling complacent, I put 410 on the sled (I'd pushed 390 before, but hadn't loaded it so much since) and guess what? I did 4 sets of up and back. I think women are a lot stronger than they give themselves credit for.

I would love to strength train more than I do. I do some exercises given to me by my physical therapist and my other half and I do the weight machines, but I'd like to do more. That said, I'm very self conscious when I work out. Probably because of all the teasing I got in high school during the weight class I had to take. I was about 95 lbs and couldn't lift squat. All the boys made fun of me. I hate the gym. I go anyway.

My first few years at the gym made me a little nervous, too, but I can imagine it might be worse if a woman isn’t 23. It might be hard to put the thoughts of childhood out of your mind, but if it’s getting in the way of your progress or satisfaction, you need to find a way. I can’t remember a single incident of anyone publicly ridiculing someone else at the gym. Even the ‘bros’, who are pretty funny most of the time. Maybe find a personal trainer who can acquaint you with more equipment and technique. A few sessions may help.

I would love to have a few sessions with a trainer. My gym just changed ownership. I need to check and see how much they charge now. Before it was way out of my budget. And in the meantime, I'll force myself to go and hopefully get over it.

Hopefully you can find something positive in it. I always feel good after I have a session. If I can be of any help, hit me up.

---

Reading update -
A trashy thriller binge is upon me so I’ve been reading some books by Lisa Gardner. Started out with the 3rd in the D.D. Warren series The Neighbor when in a review someone mentioned it was tied to the 5th book in her Quincy/FBI Profiler series, so I started in on that, but had to abandon the first book due to eye-rolling stupidity. Not to be intimidated, I started the 2nd and it was better. They’re thrillers and totally pointless, but sometimes that’s what I want. Now I’m into the 3rd in that series called The Next Accident and it’s entertaining. I’m reading them quickly so that I don’t forget what went on in The Neighbor when I finally read the book it connects to. Once I get this out of my system, it will be back to books of a little more substance. Try as I might, I just can’t kick my trashy thriller habit, and I don’t really want to. Thanks to the Airplane Lady and her 600 books, I have plenty to choose from.

---

Now my Lightroom house is in order, here's a recent photo. I just love finding little bits and pieces out there in the snow. This is a curl of sweet fern leaf in afternoon sun.

Your photos always amaze me. I wish I were so talented with a camera.

Thanks much. It was so cold and windy (making it below zero) that I didn't go out today. We're supposed to get another storm tomorrow night through Tuesday so I guess I'll have to get out on Monday if the temps cooperate. When it's that cold it's just not fun and my batteries really suffer.

Found a book in the charity bin at the grocery store again and started reading it immediately - Pulitzer Prize winner Olive Kitteridge which features a pretty crotchety woman, but interesting scenarios and characters. I've read the first two so far and while the stories are quite disconnected, apart from Olive's presence, I'm enjoying it.

January summary -

13 books read -


3 DNF -


7 by women, 6 by men (11 distinct authors)
6 from authors I’ve never read before, 6 I have
3 physical, 2 audio, 8 ebooks
Oldest book was from 1915 and the youngest is 100 years later

Phew!

Did you like The Girl on The Train? I happened to see a photo of folks lined up at ALA Midwinter to get copies of it signed by the author, so I'm curious about it. Is it a suspense/thriller kind of thing? Or is it a real murder mystery with clues and all? (I confess to being a bit biased against thrillers...)

On the whole it was decent, but not outstanding. For me, and I do read a lot of thrillers, it was hampered by the choice to stick with 1st person POV for all three women's narratives. It blunted a lot of the dread and did very little to show what danger the women faced. Also the limited cast of characters meant that the villain wasn't surprising. Great portrayal of alcohol abuse though. Rachel, the lead character, is an alcoholic who experiences frequent black outs. She's desperate to remember what happened on one of those occasions, and on this the plot turns.

Excellent feedback! Thank you.

You're very welcome. It was on sale for $6 in the kindle store a while back and since I already had it on my Audible wishlist, I got it that way since it was such short money. As thrillers go, it's ok, not breakneck pace or anything, but reasonably engrossing.

Since we're getting another big snow storm here in NH, I decided to stay inside and read. Not sure which thread got me to thinking about , but I found it on Project Gutenberg and read the whole thing today. Nicely paced with great little hints and teases about mysterious goings on. Does everyone have to read the ending like three times to get it straight? And when I say straight, I mean all bendy and weird and what??

Link to Review in post #3 http://www.librarything.com/topic/185777#4982312

I swear Amazon knows too much. Yesterday I put this on my wishlist and today it goes on sale for $4. Coincidence!? Muhahahaha.

I couldn't resist. Sigh. At least it isn't taking up space except as memory.

and what???!!! Harper Lee is coming out with a new book? A sequel, no less.

I'm excited about Harper Lee's new book! I loved To Kill a Mockingbird, despite a college professor making fun of me for loving it.

Is it the height of bookish offense to say that I don't really care about the new Harper Lee? Reason being that I don't remember much about To Kill a Mockingbird. Read it once eons ago and have no desire to return to it. Yeah, that probably makes me an instant outcast. It wasn't bad, I just didn't take it in deeply.

Anyway...I thought LT people (those that will still talk to me now) would really like this list of the most sought-after out-of-print books - http://www.bookfinder.com/books/bookfinder_report/BookFinder_Report_2014.mhtml

Some really strange stuff in there. The Bradbury has me all curious now.

>108 Bookmarque: May I come and join you in your corner? Can't say I've ever been inspired to give To Kill a Mockingbird a second look, much less read it.

And those out-of-print books are indeed interesting! many thanks for the link.

My question on the new Harper Lee novel is, if she didn't think it was good enough for release in her lifetime, why are they publishing it after? Just a money grab? I have to admit I haven't read the articles though. It may be that she wrote a wonderful novel but simply didn't want any additional publicity hassles in her lifetime. I have read other posthumous novels, for instance the Tolkien canon. They are certainly interesting, but I think there was a reason he didn't get them published. Same with Dorothy L. Sayers. Anyway, I am reserved about the thing.

>110 MrsLee: I share this sentiment. I loved to Kill a Mockingbird it's a marvellously well told story of life from a child's eye catching the absurdity of what we called normal in the 1930s. Lee's writing was so carefully crated that I am eager to see what else she has ever written. But at the same time I'm somewhat suspicious that it can't be as good, and because it was rejected for publication, hasn't had the same time devoted to it. (The tolkien cannon were all edited into books by Christopher, JRR intended to publish very little if anything beyond Hobbit and LotR. It shows).

I don't think she's dead. HL is alive I'm pretty sure. Or did you mean one of her sisters.

And you're welcome to join me in the naughty corner, Hugh.

>112 Bookmarque: Ah, my mistake. I thought I had heard that she died this last year.

There has been a lot of shenanigans with her estate and publishing rights in the last few years. Plus that underhanded book by a woman who insinuated herself into her life. Or maybe her sisters' lives, either way, HL has been through some bad times lately.

Sometimes I wonder if I’m a discerning reader or not. That other people can recognize true literary greatness and I can’t. Recently I abandoned a Man Booker prize winner because I was bored. What did other people see? And now I’ve finished Pulitzer prize winner Olive Kitteridge and wasn’t blown away by it. Then there’s Sweetland, a much lauded literary novel from last year that I felt was too meandering and I felt ambushed by a lot of the big moments in the book. Another literary wonder is Euphoria and again, I felt it was just ok. What am I missing?

In other news, I’m reading the third volume in Wyllard’s Weird and it’s gone off the rails into the preeminent Victorian theme of the broken engagement. There is much wailing and gnashing of teeth over this romantic misunderstanding and I keep reminding myself who these novels were for and that reading about just this type of crisis was fascinating to them. I just want it to get back to the murder so I’m skimming a lot of the star-crossed romance bit.

There’s also an unspoken understanding in there somewhere that I’m not getting. Some social convention so thoroughly ingrained that nothing needed to be spelled out. It has to do with a woman who had a non-sexual affair with a man while she was married (he wasn’t). It was a very intense flirtation that went off the boil, the man fell in love with another woman and was released from his promises to marry the first woman once her husband died. So he engages to be married to the second woman and meanwhile the husband dies. Widow demands he take up his promises to her and goes so far as to meet with fiancee to wreck the engagement. It gets wrecked and the man is furious, vows to win fiancee back again. Widow stymied.

Phew. So what I don’t understand is her motive; can she expect him to come running back to her if she doesn’t have something to force him to do so, or is she just being vengeful because she can’t have him? If it isn’t revenge, if she does want the guy back, how is she going to get him? What can she possibly have on him? She’s already forced the fiancee to read the steamy love letters he wrote her in the past, and her husband, now dead, knew about the flirtation while he was alive. I can’t figure out what the hook is. Ah well, it may be just drama for the sake of it. It is a Victorian sensation novel after all.

>116 hfglen: If it makes you feel any better, with one exception that I can think of offhand, the message I receive when I see the words "shortlisted for the (blank) Prize" or similar in a blurb is "drop this book and run while you still can, before dying of boredom or worse". The exception, which I've not seen mentioned here in the GD, is The Bridge on the Drina by Ivo Andric, which won a Nobel Prize despite being a very good story.

I guess it happens to all of us, but it seems so inconsistent with me. For example, I loved The Orchardist and Everything I Never Told You which are both highly acclaimed novels that are character driven and fairly quiet. Another one I liked was The Woman Upstairs which got quite a bit of press after some doofus asked the author why she didn't make her main character likable and she told him to get stuffed. And some prize winners I love like Angle of Repose which won the Pulitzer back in the 70s and The Blind Assassin which won the Booker a decade ago. At least I think it was the Booker. That last one though took me three tries to get into, but I ended up enjoying it a lot. Sigh. No magic formula, right?

Anyway, finished my long, lovely Victorian Sensation novel and will be writing a tribute to it shortly. I love them.

Did you read The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton? Books of manners are sometimes incomprehensible to my modern sensibilities. The compulsions some of the characters have make me shake my head, unless I can bury myself in the times and moods of the day.

I hear you, MrsL. Some of the things people got bent around the axle over makes me scratch my head. I've never read any Wharton, although I probably will eventually.

The above scenario turned out to be drama for the sake of it and a touch of revenge, I suspect. Said widow is described later as having really loved the guy and was still in love with him long after the flames of passion went out for him. There isn't anything spelled out, but I took her actions to be just jealousy and spite.

>115 Bookmarque: I'm with you on Euphoria, reviewed here (good enough, but not amazing):
http://www.librarything.com/work/14603078/reviews/115237752

It doesn't bother me to hate things that "everybody" likes (The Doomsday Book, The Night Circus). I'm always certain there are others who share my feeling, even if silently. And if not--what does it matter? I'm sure I like some unpopular things too. I don't see popularity as an important indicator of quality. It's nice when something good is also popular--but lack of popularity means nothing.

(Edited to correct the touchstone.)

Oooh! High five, Meredy. The Doomsday Book was eye-rolling, wasn't it? Parts of it worked fine, but a lot of it was tedious and stupid. I still don't understand why people love it. I love my review of it though. It still makes me laugh. Haven't read The Night Circus, but it's not my cuppa so I won't bother. I just abandoned another uber popular book from a while back - Memoirs of a Geisha. It. is. awful.

I'm kind of with you on Euphoria, too, but it wasn't so much that the characters didn't endear me, but that their emotions were so muted. As if they were all on thorazine or something. So much of the text was devoted to their angst over the natives they lived with, but not about the romance. It was odd.

It's not the popularity thing that irks me, it's that some folks who presumably aren't dumb, laud a book so highly and I can't see why. Take A Sense of an Ending as another example. It won the Booker, but to me it was a story written by a whiny man with a faulty memory and a misplaced sense of injustice. Nice writing, I mean it is Julian Barnes and I really liked his earlier book Arthur and George.

Anyway, I guess I'm not the only one who doesn't 'get' books that others do.

Yay! My October Early Reviewers book finally came!



I'm so excited to get to reading this. Liss's last book didn't interest me at all, but this one does. Immensely. Because no one expects the Spanish Inquisition! And just like the last copy I received through the ER program, this is a finished first edition hard cover. Sweet. Now I gotta finish Brazzaville Beach pronto! Not too fast though, because Boyd's prose is too fabulous to skim.

His Conspiracy of Paper was good for two or three book discussion groups. I'll be interested in hearing what you think about The Day of Atonement.

Wonderful! If I can ever get to the post office with all this snow which hasn't been cleared yet maybe mine will be there! I really enjoy his books and was so looking forward to this one.

I hope it's waiting for you mysterymax!

Conspiracy was good, I agree jill. I've read the whole of the Weaver series and a couple of his other books so I'm pretty sure I'll like this one. So far the prologue (which really didn't need to be set up that way, but whatevs) and chapter one were good. No shilly-shallying, right to the plot. Wheels are turning, set ups are engaged. It reminds me of The Count of Monte Cristo in the fact that it's a long revenge tale, but it's set before Dumas was even born so it's a bit odd thinking of it that way.

---

In other news. I killed it in the gym today. Hit my all time personal best deadlift session - 5 sets of 5 at 225. Someone told me it was badass and I have to agree. Between that and the other stuff I did my endorphins were hitting so hard and I felt so good that I came home and immediately shoveled my back deck. All to get to the birdfeeder. I hope you appreciate it, birds!

Anyway...I'll be settling in with The Day of Atonement here in a few.

I used to have a thread on here about covers that caught my attention. I can't find it, but covers still call out to me. Sometimes because they're awesome, sometimes because they're terrible. Then there's this.



What the hell? I guess Forrest Gump was right!

That is, um, just, well, yeah.

I know, isn't it creepy?

What in the world is that book about!? That cover is disturbing.

It's about a girl who accuses two proper and impoverished women of the gentry of kidnapping her. Written in the 40s. No idea if a chocolate tray or severed heads figure largely in the plot.

I can authoritatively state that Josephine Tey's The Franchise Affair does not include any severed head. There is a biscuit tray that appears in the first chapter (rather than a chocolate tray).

Well that's a relief. I started it as an audio book last week. Crazy cover, man.

And speaking of crazy. I'm probably the only woman in the world who got this for Valentine's day -



And I'm thrilled! It's just published from Chicago University Press and has some AMAZING photography. With the next blizzard upon us, I'll have time to get into it this weekend.

Oh, the Bats book looks good! I love bats. I might have to look for it and show the kids the pictures when we learn about bats.

>132 Bookmarque: For about a year, when my daughter was between 2 and 5, bats were her absolute favorite animal, so I have a fondness in my heart for them. Her Sunday school teacher asked the children to dress as their favorite animal for the Nativity play. She had two bats in the nativity that year. :D

>132 Bookmarque: Well, you certainly might be, but I bet you'd envy my Valentine bat. For the last ten years of my office career, a standard part of my cubicle decor every February was my Valentine bat. I had one of those big cardboard bats from Halloween with tissue wings that unfolded and spread wide, and I decorated him tastefully with shiny heart stickers arranged in attractive patterns. I hung him above my desk, and every year somebody would ask, "What's that?" as if it weren't perfectly obvious, and I would answer, "It's my Valentine bat."

Oh, and I also had bells hanging from the tip of every digit.

Bats need love, too, Meredy. That's a great idea.
Bats in the manger...is that like bats in the belfry?

Surely there could have been bats in the stable, but not, I hope, right over the manger.

My bat had bells on it, though: it was not a bell-free bat.

Pleeeese!

Groan! lol

Lately my right wrist and elbow have been really sore and tight. Military press is an exercise only for the young. Ugh. Anyway, in an effort to reduce the fatigue, I've been making myself stay off my laptop because it makes it worse. That means I get a lot more reading done. As a result I finished White Fire, which like many other Pendergast fans, has brought me back into the fold after the slow spiral of awful that was the Helen trilogy. Phew. I really hated to abandon this series, but had written it off entirely until I spied this book in the bargain aisle at B&N. Am looking forward to picking up the latest one now. I love that feeling; anticipation of a new book in a favorite series. Kind of knowing what you'll get, but hoping there are some surprises for you. We should have a word for that.

Am onto the 4th novel in the Philip Marlowe series - The Lady in the Lake and it's shaping up to be as fabulous as a lot of the other books. I didn't really care for Farewell My Lovely, but The High Window made up for it. They're so much fun to read.

"I gobbled what they called the regular dinner, drank a brandy to sit on its chest and hold it down..." (p. 49)

So better late than never, for anyone who's interested, my best photographs of 2014 - http://wickeddark.smugmug.com/Portfolio/Best-of-2014/

I pick them based on the level of skill and/or luck needed and whether I achieved something memorable, different or just plain technically good. A lot of 'favorite' images didn't make it, but I confine myself to 12, sooo....

MY favorites are Sleep Paralysis and Beard Brook.

I liked all of them, but, if forced to pick a favorite, would go with Unbroken Solitude. Good for you, @Bookmarque!!! You and @Tane should get together.

>140 Bookmarque: This may surprise you, because you probably know my phobia or at least extreme discomfort around anything that smacks of snakiness, but I love your snake photo. I think because of the awesomeness of getting it in one shot, and garter snakes are the least offensive of them all.

>142 jillmwo: Are you trying to make trouble dear? Tane and Bookmarque each have significant others already! ;)

Ha! What a mind you have, @MrsLee? I was innocently envisioning two talented photographers bonding together over a common interest, developing an online exhibit of their work and then having it GO VIRAL, bringing fame to them and to the Green Dragon. Does that sound like the dream of a homewrecker? I am WOUNDED.

*frail flower of southern womanhood sinks onto a conveniently placed fainting couch and weeps copiously*

*snort* Don't mind me, I have very juvenile humor. It was all I could do not to make a remark on a thread titled "Performance issues when adding a book" over in the Talk about LibraryThing group. That's what comes of sorting through my spam mail folder. :D

I think Campton Bog is my favourite, but they are all wonderful. And I have to agree with MrsLee - the garter snake is one of the only snake photos I've seen that didn't make me recoil in horror. He looks curious rather than scary.

Awww, thanks everyone.

And get silly and bawdy all you want. I've got some smelling salts for the vapors! I'd take the opportunity to shoot with Scott anytime. He's got a great eye and lives in a place of great beauty and mystery (ruins!!!).

Campton bog was the most perfect kayaking experience for me. Prior I'd only walked on it in the frozen winter, but that day! Fall colors at their peak. Perfect temperatures. Solitude. I think I spent more time with the camera in my hands than the paddle. lol

That little garter snake was not the only one I've shot (unlike you crowd, I love snakes), but it held that pose long enough for me to change lenses and get that one image. I was in a new nature preserve for me too, so that and finding a flower I'd never seen before made it special.

Sleep Paralysis was shot from the balcony of the hotel room on Big Sur for my husband's 50th birthday. The fog there is amazing and my husband is very used to watching me ooh and ahh and set up my tripod. Sunset over the pacific is amazing anytime, but that was special.

Beard Brook was a combination of experience and amazing timing. It's a VERY popular spot with photographers and I wound up there accidentally on purpose. The foliage was the point and to have the earth rotate to the perfect spot to light up the trees and not the water was astoundingly good luck.

Unbroken solitude was a shot I grabbed while waiting for the light to cooperate for the waterfall shot in the same best of group. I drove out to shoot the falls with cloud cover and it broke up during the 90 minutes it takes to get there. So disappointing. But, I stayed to see what I could find and hoped the clouds would return. Who knew I'd get two of my best photographs in the same day.

Another bit of literary serendipity. I feel another book purge coming on and took a book down off my shelf to re-read. Turns out I’ve done that once before. I started it yesterday and also exactly three years ago to the day. February 18. Weird.

And I opened another book that I’ve never managed to read and found a statement for a long-gone credit card from February of 1995. Also weird.

So does anyone else do this? Re-read books before deciding to keep them or not, or do you just pitch them unread? I do that for books that I’m never gonna read no matter what. Books I’ve dragged from house to house unopened and unloved. But the books I’ve cracked, or even tried to read get a second chance.

What are your rules of the purge?

I rarely dispose of a book without at least attempting to read it unless it is a sequel and the earlier book(s) has(have) been ditched after an attempt due to not being suitable - happened earlier this year - I had two attempts at the first book in a trilogy before deciding I really couldn't make it through and so the whole trilogy went out. The only other books I've got rid of without cracking are duplicates - unbelievably I got given three copies of The Life of Pi and haven't managed to make it through one yet. I was also given three copies of The Book Thief, so read one and then gave it away (was on holiday at the time), gave another away and kept an immaculate copy on my shelf. It's a real surprise as I'm rarely given books at all, so on those occasions to be given multiple copies of the same one!!! I'm not sure what to say about it (although it's the one thing that keeps me coming back and trying The Life of Pi - if I was given three copies, surely that means it's good, but I just keep on failing to get into it).

People hardly ever give me books either. Funny you got so many of one title though.

Good for you for giving books chances. Sometimes that's worked out for me, too. Two that come to mind are The Blind Assassin and An Instance of the Fingerpost both of which took me over a decade to finish, but when I did I really liked them.

I went through an intense purge when we had to downsize, and I took a firm line: if I didn't feel a stir of desire to reread at some point, it went out. It turns out that decisions on rereading made under pressure when stressed aren't always accurate ;) Worse, I didn't keep notes of what went out, which means I sometimes go looking for a book only to find I don't own it - with no idea on whether I gave it away or whether it's a loan that never came home.

...these days, everything is logged here on LT. I've started a little spring clean recently, but I am struggling over what to discard!

I do love your photographs. They're all gorgeous - you capture the colours so well! - but I think my favourite is the ladybug.

oh no! That's bad. When I was about 19, a lot of my books were stolen and I didn't have a list either. There's stuff that I couldn't replace since I couldn't remember everything. All pre-internet. I remember when Amazon first came into being, I put the character name I could remember from some books into the search and it came up so I probably will never be able to get rid of my Adrian Mole books.

So long as you have room for what you have, don't worry about discarding. Then you only have to purge when your shelves don't magically expand! lol

And thanks about the photos. The ladybug was a treat. I was up on a big granite ledge looking for a strange forest shot when I spied it. I didn't notice it was eating another bug until I got it into Lightroom for processing. Sort of a bonus.

---

And speaking of bonus. I got under the bar and did 5 sets of 2 bench press at 135. The most I've ever benched. My husband was there in case things got squiffy, but I didn't struggle, even at the end. I'm so jazzed about it. Crazy, I know.

Ya know, between this thread, and one about personal libraries, I've been thinking about my collection as a whole, and my childhood. When I was in elementary and jr. high, I bought lots of book through Scholastic, all paperback. I don't have any of them and I have no recollection of where they went. :/

I sort my books as soon as I read them. I only keep those I love or might want to share. Sometimes, if I hate a book bad enough, like the last one I read, I will search my bookshelves and get rid of all the books I have by that author whether I've read them or not. I have a lot of books I will part with when we finally get around to moving to a smaller house. I will be OK with that. A lot of them I am only keeping until my children are full adults and decide whether they want them or not. They won't know until they have their own spaces sorted out.

Most of my childhood books went to my brother then to yard sales, or just straight to yard sales if they were too girly or whatever. I kind of wish I had some of them, too. Oh that little Scholastic sales sheet with the strip on the side you'd cut out and turn in with your selections! My parents could only afford me to do this maybe once or twice a year so it was like an extra Christmas.

Purging sometimes feels really good. Like when I got rid of books I'd dragged around with me for no reason other than 'someday' and 'I might'.

Ok, you people like stories, right? So how many of you are addicted to ? It's a podcast about a man convicted of his girlfriend's murder back in 1999, but the investigator has turned up some things that, if presented in court, could have created some serious doubt. Instead the high school kid was convicted and is still locked up in Maryland.

It's great story telling with audio interviews and summarizations by the creator. Very professionally edited and mixed. I listened to about 1/2 dozen episodes all in one go yesterday. NO IDEA where the story will go, but next year we get a new one. I resisted listening, but now I'm glad although soon I'll be in the same boat as everyone else - waiting for new episodes!

Check it out here >>>>>> http://serialpodcast.org/

Ok, I guess no one is addicted to Serial. You all should be though. I resisted listening, but when I did I burned through all the episodes in a couple of days.

Anyway...here's how last month shaped up -

February Summary

15 Books Read -


2 DNF (one was an Early Reviewer book, sad to say)


6 by women, 9 by men (15 distinct authors)
5 by authors I’ve never read before, 9 I have
9 physical books, 4 ebook and 2 audio
Oldest book was from 1886 and the youngest from 2014

Come on and join the list while it's still early! http://www.librarything.com/list/10067/all/Books-Read-in-2015

PSA time!

New Stephen King story up at the New Yorker - http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/03/09/a-death-stephen-king

That was a decent story. It has a lot to say, quietly, about reader manipulation.

Anyway...sorry for the dearth of photos lately. It's just been too miserable/cold/snowy to go outside and without snowshoes, darn near impossible. I really just need to friggin' buy some. But I have been getting a lot of reading done and spending time with my girls -

Thank you for the photos of the girls. They make my heart feel peaceful. :)

Thanks Mrs. L. Mostly they are good girls and entertaining company.

And very beautiful too. They look as though they are enjoying soaking up the sunshine.

>158 Bookmarque: Nice! I like how well the eyes came out in the second picture.

Thanks everyone...they are some pretty kitties and when they’re not barfing, I’m glad to have them.

Everyone has pet peeves about things and around here they’re probably about books or writing and so I’d like to present one of mine - Gray Eyes.

WTF? Why does everyone have to have gray eyes? I’ve never met a single human being with gray eyes in all my nearly 47 years. Is there a secret continent of the gray-eyed ones that only authors are allowed to visit?

It only started to be glaring to me recently and I’ve been loosely keeping track of the gray eye phenomenon. But seriously...what gives? In fiction it seems gray eyes have trumped us brownies for genetic dominance. It drives me nutty. Anyone else notice this or is it just me?

Feel free to chime in with your favorite abomination!

>163 Bookmarque: Maybe gray eyes are the new violet eyes, now that violet eyes are on all of the cliche lists?

My daughter has grey eyes. But yeah, I don't see them often. Of course, I had to confess to my fiance that I had no idea what color his eyes were (brown). We were listening to a Jim Croce song I believe (33 years ago). I'm not on the A list for my ability to notice details. I always like reading about green eyed characters (because I have green eyes) but I think they are generally not nice.

>163 Bookmarque: Now that you mention it, I've noticed a lot of gray-eyed characters too (and then there's Pendergast with his "silver" eyes: can I see a picture of that?).

It's possible that I might be one. I usually put "blue" on forms, but my mother said my eyes were blue-gray-green. (She romanticized it a bit for me, calling them the color of the sea in winter.) As far as I can tell, they're just sort of an indeterminate light color, definitely not the pronounced blue that anyone ever says "wow" over. My husband has real blue eyes, but I don't. Maybe that's what they mean by gray?

Maybe it is the new violet, I don't see that one so much.
And yeah, silver eyes, right ho.
Maybe it's a trick of the light. I was watching TV a minute ago and a character with normally bright blue eyes was in a subdued light and they looked gray-ish. Sometimes my husband's do, too, but only in certain lights. Ah well. I guess it isn't just me!

---

Have to take a break with The Terror tonight. I've been reading it pretty much non-stop for 3 days and it's getting to me. It's never-ending - the starvation, the violence, the hopelessness, being trapped, betrayal, cruelty, murder, the ravening bug-blatter beast or whatever is out there eating them one by one, oh and yah, the bitter, bitter, bone-chilling minus 100 degrees cold. Yeah that. Plus it's gory. Graphic. Ultra descriptive in regard to all of the above.

Phew. I had to put it down for a while. I needed a remedy. Something soft and heartfelt and springy. Warm. Yeah. Warm. So I found this on my shelves - - it's called Gathering Moss and is a scientific narrative about the study of mosses and their ecology. It's a bit touchy-feely, dreamy, spiritual, but it feels pretty good at the moment. Oh I can't wait for spring!

Phew. I'm done with The Terror by Dan Simmons. I doubt I'll ever read it again, but it was worth the time to read it once. It's truly and epic tale, if one where pretty much everyone dies a horribly grisly death. Engrossing more than enjoyable, you know what I mean? Here's my review - http://www.librarything.com/work/1499548/reviews/116608838

I've got another palate cleanser on the go in addition to the moss book. Short books both of them, not like the monster that was The Terror.

>168 Bookmarque: Engrossing more than enjoyable Yup, that's just about right!

Mr B has eyes that change colour. Someone told me this isn't possible, so I offered to introduce them to him... it's not just a trick of the light, it appears to be related to mood. When he's tired and stressed, definitely grey. When he's happy and calm, very very blue.

Silver, on the other hand... never seen that :)

I've just finished Emily St. John Mandel's compelling The Singer's Gun, a strong four-star read.

Page 91: "She was pretty, with short blond-brown hair and gray eyes."

Page 130: "The first one ever was a red-haired girl with still gray eyes..."

>3 Bookmarque: I like your review of The Turn of the Screw. I am afraid it is the only book on your list that I have read. I have The Terror but have not reached it yet so I will save your review until afterwards.

>116 hfglen: I think The Bridge on the Drina is wonderful. Andric deserved the Nobel Prize for it. It was a wonderful description of how people of different origin mixed, co-existed, warred with one another, in the same place over time.

Peter, I agree with you.. My point was that most prizewinning books aren't nearly that good.

>174 hfglen: I agree with your point, but I had to praise The Bridge...

drneutron - Yeah, The Terror is in my bag of books to donate. It was so bleak that I can’t read it again, but Simmons did a good job with some surprises, foreshadowing and characterization.

Phew! It’s not just me about the gray eyes thing. Once I started noticing, it was everywhere! Not sure about the changing eye color thing. All the good science I found with a quick Google search says it’s not possible. But the eye of the beholder and all…

pgmcc - glad you liked the review for Turn of the Screw. It’s sometimes hard to add something to a pile of reviews on a popular work! The Terror, as I said above, is a rough read in many respects, but good solid storytelling with an unusual setting.

And prize-winners, I think we’re back to the eye of the beholder thing again. Lol.

None of my in-progress books are really calling to me right now. Don't you hate that? Especially after something like The Terror which despite its grisly horror, was a magnet for me. I started To Rise Again at a Decent Hour which has a nice, cynical voice and some great turns of phrase, but white man angst in NYC is just so...I don’t know. Not uninteresting, it is in a prurient sort of way. I guess it’s that I don’t think I can champion the guy. I think the major action of the novel is that his identity gets stolen and really, who would want it? It’s hard for me to care, you know? But the writing is entertaining and I hope they’ll be something of substance soon.

And my moss book is a little too touchy feely for me to really like it. I thought it would have more hard science in it; the way the woman works, her processes and procedures, etc. What I get is a lot of mumbo-jumbo about her spiritual connection to moss. Oy. I love moss myself, but I don’t think it has a soul or intent or anything mystical about it. I am learning new things about moss though, and that’s good. For example, moss is so primitive it doesn’t have the same structures that more advanced plants have so that it depends on being totally wet to perform photosynthesis. It needs water on leaves to help dissolve carbon dioxide so it can be absorbed and converted to energy and the leaves have evolved in different ways so as to capture and retain as much water as possible. Also that if moss dries out, even 98%, it will come back to life when saturated; even decades later!

>176 Bookmarque: "my moss book is a little too touchy feely for me to really like it"

Too bad it isn't a literal touch and feel book. That would be cool for moss.

Oh that would be SO MUCH BETTER! I didn't even realize my bad pun either.

Yeah, I'm one of those people who stops on the trail to pat little tuffets of moss. It's crazy, but it does fascinate me. Maybe not in a spiritually uplifting way, but in an appreciation of the virtually invisible. The author says that her husband once said that moss was the wallpaper of the forest; it was in the background (now ex, no wonder given what he said) and I agree. It's one of the reasons I love to do microscapes on the forest floor. To make visible the invisible. Like sporophytes!



Am planning to go out into the woods today, but moss will probably be hard to come by under all our snow.

I got out today! In the woods! Snow! Up to my knees if I went off trail where it was very packed down. Beautiful shadows on the smooth surface of the snow. Irresistible.



I also went a bit bananas with beech leaves, something I often do this time of year. None processed yet though.

Both those photos are great, in very different ways. I love the alien look of the moss and the lush green. And in the snowy pic, the contrast between the vertical trunks and the almost horizontal shadows is so striking.

>163 Bookmarque: Oops, just found this in George Eliot's Middlemarch (1874): "...the brilliancy was all in his quick gray eyes" (Chapter IV of Book II). A search on "gray eyes" turned up more than 30 instances across this Kindle set of Eliot's novels. Maybe it's all her fault and not something recent at all. Could it have become embedded in the romantic literary consciousness just like "unruly dark curls"?

(I'm also wondering if this Kindle set has been Americanized. Wouldn't she have said "grey"? I do not like to be condescended to by book publishers. I can handle a little spelling variation--especially since the actual variation occurred on this side of the Atlantic.)

Meredy, I suspect it's a default setting on the programs in use at publishing houses for purposes of content management. Tick one box you get American spellings; tick a different one and you get the British spellings. Then shove it off into whatever processes result in an ebook. I agree that it's unnecessary.

On the other hand, in my Kindle edition of some of the Agatha Christie titles, the excited expressions used by Poirot are still shown as French. In some of the print editions being sold, those expressions have been translated into English. I assume this is done because the Christie titles are used for purposes of instructing in English as a second language, but it's still annoying.

(And I'm supposed to be working, not scribbling updates on other people's reading threads. The Orcs are snapping the whips and they want me to get back to those salt mines.)

Sakerfalcon - thanks so much! I was caught by the same contrast with the lines and sporophytes always look like little aliens to me!

Ugh! I guess the gray eyes thing isn't new. I just caught it in a Mary Elizabeth Braddon book from the 1860s. Crazy.

Lovely photos! I just want to stop and keep looking at the trees in the snow, all those fascinating shadows. Beautiful.

Great photos! Thank you!

Thanks so much. It's been ages since I shot anything and managed to somehow screw up my focus settings yesterday with no idea how I'd done it. Oy. Then I figured it out and put it the way I usually have it. Oh technology. I love it, but stuff like this never happened when I shot a purely mechanical, all manual 35mm.

Oh and the gray eyes deal just popped up in Middlemarch - think it's the same as you just listed up there, Meredy - Mr. Ladislaw's eyes. OMG. What is it with the gray eyes thing???

>186 Bookmarque: No, this is Mr. Farebrother. Maybe it's supposed to be an unusual characteristic, and all these authors are using it to confer uniqueness...?

Not so rare in fictionland I guess.

We need a new word. You know that sinking sensation you get when the main character in your book gets himself/herself into a situation that you can see has a hopeless conclusion? That they keep compounding their problem with one bad decision after another? Really they should cut their losses and get out of it, but they don't. Spiraling the drain I guess.

That's what's going on with my latest audiobook, A Simple Plan. Granted, I knew going in that it wasn't a happy story full of altruism, but it's such a constant downhill slide that each new level they sink to is another kick in the gut.

Maybe the folks on the authors' side have a word for it. I attend writers' club meetings and have heard many speakers on craft. A mystery writer who spoke to us said that one principle she follows is to put your character into the worst situation she can think of, and then make it worse. And then worse still. The author who was speaking had roped her own sleuth character to a piling and left her to drown as the tide came in, while the other good guys had no idea where she was. And not only that, but the character was wearing her brand new suede shoes.

If nobody made any mistakes, there'd be no story.

So true, but sometimes I wonder...don't these people watch TV?

Exactly. Everybody knows what to expect the minute somebody says "Let's split up."

(I also assume all the modern-day characters have been to the movies. That's how they know what to do when they meet a vampire.)

Right. It's like everyone in fiction lives in a vacuum.

Now things in the book have gotten much worse. The only thing left is for the husband or wife to shoot the other then the dog. It's mental. And they're keeping the loot under their bed. With a newborn in the house. Granted, the untrustworthy co-conspirators are dead now, but what a senseless risk! Ugh.

And the husband is written in a not-so-attractive-way that seems dated in the sense that I doubt that an editor would permit a man who is repulsed by his pregnant and subsequently nursing wife. I mean, I get it, pregnant women give me the willies, but it's so incorrect to voice that these days. Especially if it's one's own wife. And now the kid is born, he's none to attached to it. Odd in today's ultra-sensitive man era.

Well, they could do what someone I knew did and keep the loot in the newborn's crib, under (or was it in?) the baby's mattress. "They'll never look there."

They did.

I'm just getting caught up on my reading threads. So...

As to the eye thing. I don't have grey eyes. I have blue. Sometimes they look a little more green, sometimes they look really, really blue. And once, they looked a bit on the lavender side. It depends on what I am wearing and what makeup/eyeshadow I have on.

And, I love the snow picture!! I automatically went into "that would be a cool quilt" mode. :)

Us brown-eyed girls have one look pretty much. lol.
Thanks. Didn't you do a quilt from a similar picture of mine? Trees in the snow and fog? I liked it when it was completed. My mom's a quilter, but she doesn't do anything so free-form and organic as that. I kind of wish she would.

This shot isn't as quilt-worthy, but I like it for the light and the shapes. The forest is a soothing and ever-changing landscape that never gets old for me.



This particular nature preserve is mountain laurel rich and I'm making plans to go when they're blooming to catch them in their glory. Not to mention it has a favorite brook and some old mill ruins that I somehow missed.

>196 Bookmarque: You think so? I'd have said it was a very broad range, from golden to too black to distinguish the pupil. Or did you mean that one person's color doesn't usually seem to change?

I don't know how one can look objectively at one's own eyes anyhow. Especially not someone who wears glasses. My drawing teacher said to use yourself as a model and practice drawing your own eyes with the help of a mirror, and I just can't do that.

I do love your seasonal photos.

I did make a quilt out of your foggy aspen picture. It's one of my favorites.

I'm so glad you like what you made. I remember seeing pictures of it and thought it would look great as a wall hanging.

---

Totally off topic, but omg I'm so psyched.

Milestone hit!! Woo hoo!!
Who says women can’t do pullups? Not me.

I did a whole bunch of them today. Totally unassisted. Just me and my bod. Of course I can only do two at a time before I’m pooped, but give me a few minutes and I can do two more. Then two more. I kept going back to the bar to do them. So much fun!

Now I just want to keep doing them. I guess I will every time I go to the gym. With some training I can move onto regular grip pullups, but I’m pretty darn psyched about the neutral grip. It’s easier on my very sore elbow, too.

Ok...back to your regularly scheduled bookish things.

I would love to be able to do a pull up! What's the difference between grips? Does one make a pull up a bit easier than the other?

Normal pullup grip is wider than your shoulders, overhand. I'm doing them hands close together, palms facing. It puts less stress on the elbow than regular and right now that's great. I was training them doing negatives with the regular grip though, so I should be able to do them with some work.

I'm so psyched. Upper body strength is such a hard fight for women, but I'm winning!

Proud of you too! I don't think I've been able to do them since high school, but back then I could beat most of the boys at it. Comes of lifting hay bales and sacks of potatoes and grain on the farm maybe. I remember it felt great.

Thanks MrsL. Hay bales and potatoes! That's perfect. I kinda wish I had some manual labor to do. Gym training and work are two different things. Alas, I don't live on a farm.

Funny thing is, I can feel that I did them across my upper back. Rhomboids are tight. Should be OK though. Am going to try getting out into the woods again today since tomorrow is going to be crap.

Oh and my husband just booked tickets to Brussels in late June. We'll be spending 10 days in Belgium, The Netherlands and maybe somewhere else. Woo hoo!!!

>203 Bookmarque: Excellent! Going to Bruges, yes? Oh, the pictures, the pictures.

>203 Bookmarque: And meeting up with Dragoneers?

Not sure about any meetups, but I wouldn't rule it out if my husband is willing. And yeah, the pictures. I think I might have to pack some Valium or something so I don't hyperventilate. Bruges will be on the itinerary so we can be total tourist twits. It will definitely be different than my usual which goes a lot like this -



I love heat sinks around trees, especially this time of year when it seems like a harbinger for spring.

OMG!! I just started Fire From Heaven and there it is again. Gray eyes. Both Alexander and his mother have them. Ugh. This is a menace.

>206 Bookmarque: Love that shot! Both the black and white bark against the snow, and the fall of shadows.

Well, I just Googled images for "gray eyes," and I think many of them are pretty unequivocally blue--and the B&W photos don't count; but I'd have to agree that these are gray (assuming the photo is honest).

Those are pretty close, Meredy. Monitor calibration may have a lot to do with why they look green to me...not wicked green, but a little.

Thanks SylviaC. I had a great time with birch trees and snow yesterday. There's another similar shot in the works. This time of year photographers are dying for spring and sometimes it takes extra effort to find something that arrests your eye. My habit of looking for the very small found me this the other day -



It will have to do until wildflower and waterfall season, which with this snowpack, should be AMAZING. I'm already scheming and scouting.

PSA time!

This is on sale in the Kindle store for $3



I've never read Ishiguro and so I snapped it up.

Still plugging away reading and it’s finally warm and reasonable weather-wise so I’ve also been getting out with the camera. Phew.



Read Fire from Heaven which is the first in Mary Renault’s trilogy about Alexander the Great. Years ago I read the 2nd in the series without realizing it was and so now I’m getting to all of them in order. It’s full of allegory and allusion, but quite plausible if you think about how boys and boys who would be king were raised in ancient Greece and Macedon. Harsh is too mild a word. And I’m not talking discipline only here. There are some homey little scenes between Alexander and Hephaistion where they’re checking each other for lice. Another where they have a conversation about fleas and the best methods of killing them. Then there’s the no central heating thing. Ugh. If it was that bad to be the ruling class, I can only imagine the peasants. Then again, the peasants didn’t live in giant marble edifices incapable of being warmed.

After that I took a break with some Tess Monaghan and read The Sugar House which is an older book in that series by Laura Lippman. Unfortunately she went back to her dipshit boyfriend Crow, but he’s not in it too much which made it bearable. Mystery-wise it was pretty good. I like Tess’s methods even though she’s about as polished as a pinecone sometimes.

My audio, which I hope to get through more of today in the woods, is Wolf Winter by Cecelia Ekback with a little umlaut dealie over the a in her last name. She’s Finnish or Swedish I believe and this is a novel in translation. Overall it’s pretty grim. Another book making me glad to have been born in the US in the latter half of the 20th century. It is making me lose patience though with the mystical/magical elements. A ghost stalking, threatening and actually injuring a young woman in an effort to get her to finger his killer. As if reality isn’t bad enough. It takes place in Swedish Lapland and makes our current temperatures seem downright tropical. What is it with me and frozen books about starvation lately?

One parallel between Wolf Winter and a scene in Fire from Heaven is the idea of forced or coerced colonization. Some of the settlers in Swedish Lapland are there against their wills, mostly to get them out of the way, but also to establish mainstream religion and get the Laps to stop worshipping their old gods of the snow and ice or whatever. In Fire from Heaven Alexander goes off and fights a war, wins and names a town after himself (shocking yes, I know). He goes back to dad who says he’ll find 20 men to colonize the place if it’s the last thing he’ll do. I forget where it is, but it’s the equivalent of Swedish Lapland and the men he picks won’t want to go. Being an American, I’ve always thought of colonization as a largely voluntary thing. It’s as if being a colonist was a mild form of punishment. Transportation light I guess. I wouldn’t mind reading more about the concept.

My PSA the other day was about Never Let Me Go being on sale and I’m reading it now. I wonder if it would have been more affecting had I not known the central idea of the novel going in...that the kids in the special schools exist only to provide organs and tissues for their more socially viable counterparts on the outside. Still it’s well-written and even though it’s about kids it isn’t annoying me.

So that’s my update. Next; breakfast and then a new nature preserve I’ve been living near for close on 20 years and never knew it was there. Doh!

What is it about a stack of new books? That sense of a future waiting for me. Unsecured time. The anticipation of a new story from a favorite author. Discovering a new author who will become a favorite, maybe. Just looking at them there, stacked up neatly, makes me smile. It’s not like looking at my library; the books I already own and have read. That’s a different pleasure; the fondness found in reminiscence. But new books, now, that’s something else. Untouched. Unheld. Unbeloved. They have hidden worlds, undiscovered depths. Will I dive in or wade in, slowly? Getting used to the tickle of the words between my day-to-day thoughts. Letting them wash away obsessive tracks and nagging concerns. Maybe there will be a plunge instead; a shock of otherness to jar me out of my preconceptions. Ah new books...such potential just within reach.

March Summary
11 books read -



6 by men, 5 by women (11 distinct authors)
3 by authors I’ve never read before, 8 I have
4 physical books, 3 audio and 4 ebooks
Oldest was from 1868 (MEB again!) and the newest from this year.

Stealing your summary categories. I like em.

Steal away, MrsL!

>214 Bookmarque: Still Life with Crows. That was pretty creepy and gruesome, wasn't it? I left the Pendergast series alone for quite a while after that one. The relentless pattern of monster chases through underground tunnels did almost make me laugh, though. Did you post a review? I didn't find it, if so.

Yeah it was, Meredy. I agree about the underground parts; less would have been more. No review from me. This is my third reading (the Pendergast books are some of my comfort reads) and sometimes it's hard for me to pick out one book from all of them. I may though...I've reviewed most of the others. Your review pretty much tallies up with mine.