Lucy/Sibyx Reads in May and June!

New image for June!


Bobolink in flight. A meadow inhabiting bird, very striking, declining in the northeast as the result of the abandonment of farming. They don't thrive in either a heavily forested or suburban setting. They need those big hayfields and we've got them. A quintessential late spring and early summer bird.

Currently Reading (June)
♬ ♬

new Fates and Furies Lauren Groff contemp fic
✔ Lord of Emperors Guy Gavriel Kay fantasy (Sarantine Mosaic 2)
new Patrick Leigh Fermor: An Adventure Artemis Cooper bio
♬Where Serpents Sleep C.S. Harris
♬ podcasts of Clarkesworld, sf stories. 12=1 book. sf
Ongoing
Murdoch Marathon: ONGOING. (No plans for reading IM at present) IM readers group is HERE
Virago No plans
The New Yorker

64. new Last Friends Jane Gardam contemp fic ****
65. new The Broken Road: From the Iron Gates to Mount Athos Patrick Leigh Fermor travel/memoir ****1/2
66. ✔ The Broken Shore Peter Temple mys aus ***1/2
67. new Station Eleven Emily St. John Mandel sf-dystopic *****
68. ✔ Sailing to Sarantium Guy Gavriel Kay fantasy ****
69. ♬ What Angels Fear C.S. Harris mys ***1/2
70. ✔ Troubles J.G. Farrell hist fict, irish fict *****
71. ♬When Gods Die C.S. Harris mys ***1/2
72. new Why Mermaids Sing C.S. Harris mys

RoT-Quit in June
2. Nothing lately!

Guide to symbols
new=year or less on shelf
♬ = audio
✔ = Year plus on shelf
RoT= Read or Toss

Read in May
50. new Red Fox: The Catlike Canine H. David Henry nat sci *****
51. new The Snake Stone Jason Goodwin hist myst ****
52. new Voyage of the Basilisk Marie Brennan fantasy
53. ♬ Queen's Play Dorothy Dunnett hist fic *****
54. new The Restless Supermarket Ivan Vladislavic contemp fict ***1/2
55. ✔The Pull of the Moon Elizabeth Berg contemp fic ***
56. lib Predator's Gold(2) Philip Reeve sf dyst steampunk YA ****
57. lib Infernal Devices (3) Philip Reeve sf dyst steampunk YA ****
58. lib The Darkling Plain (4) Philip Reeve sf dyst steampunk YA ****1/2
59. ✔ Fine Just the Way It Is Annie Proulx ss ***1/2 ss
60. new The Three Body Problem Cixin Liu sf ***1/2 sf
61. ♬ The Disorderly Knights Dorothy Dunnetthist fict *****
62. new Tenth of December George Saunders ss *****
63. ✔ A Thousand Perfect Things Kay Kenyon sf alt hist ****

Best of May
Fiction
Queen's Play & The Disorderly Knights historical fiction -- utterly superb
Traction Cities Quartet Philip Reeves spec fic/post apoc/steampunk
A Thousand Perfect Things Kay Kenyon alternate history
Tenth of December George Saunders contemporary fiction - short stories
Non-Fiction
Red Fox: The Catlike Canine H. David Henry nat sci - top flight

Worst of May
Nothing bad enough for this category

MaylReflections
This might best be characterized as a month of "continuation" of series begun last month. Also a month of excellent reading. Completion of one--the excellent YA steampunkish series and the next two books in the 6 volume adventures of the dashing Lymond Crawford. The last one The Disorderly Knights was a doozy! It was also a month devoted almost entirely to fiction as I slowly read my way through Patrick Leigh Fermor's third of the three books chronicling his long walk across Europe to Contantinople in the 1930's as I only read one NF book at a time, my NF progress is always slow and this is a wonderful book, not to be read quickly. Because the quality of my reading was so high, the "best of" category is a bit misleading, but it wouldn't be fair to leave out any of those reads. Probably the least satisfying sf book was The Three Body Problem - the story idea was great, but the unfolding too slow, and the main characters so wooden and occasionally so inexplicably ruthless it was hard to believe they were real and it dragged the rest down. Kay Kenyon deserves a MUCH wider readership. She's very good. As is Marie Brennan. I enjoyed her 3rd installment about Isabella, Lady Trent (and, like the Kenyon drawing on the Victorian era for atmo). This time she is chasing dragons across the oceans when she isn't rescuing Important Persons. I was overall a little disappointed in my contemporary fiction reading, the Proulx was not her best, even more apparent if set against the superlative Saunders.The Restless Supermarket was not a hit, I found it interesting but a bit overly clever, although it was not without merit and others may love it.

May Stats:
Total: 14
Men: 6
Women:5
M/W writing together: (NYer)
Non-fiction: (NYer)
Contemp/Classic/Hist Fiction: 6
SF/F: 6
Mystery: 2
YA or J: 3
Poetry: 0
New author: 3
Months of NYers:
Reread: 0

Book origins/type:
From library or borrowed: 3
Audio: 2
New: 6
Off Shelf: 3
Read it or Get Rid of It: 0

Housekeeping
IN May=7
2016 Total IN=37
OUT May=
2016 Total OUT= No change, still 15

Book titles IN: May 2016
May
31. Patrick Leigh Fermor: An Adventure Artemis Cooper
32. The Complete Patrick Melrose Novels Edward St. Aubyn
33. The Broken Road Patrick Leigh Fermor
34. The Voyage of the Basilisk Marie Brennan
35. Forge of Heaven C.J. Cherryh
36. Conspirator C.J. Cherryh
37. IntruderC.J. Cherryh

APRIL STATS
Read in April
37. ✔ Lark Rise to Candleford: A Trilogy Flora Thompson eng country life
38. new Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen Lois Bujold sf ***1/2
39. new The Midnight Mayor Kate Griffin urb fant **1/2
40. ✔ My Struggle: Book 2 Karl Ove Knausgaard contemp fic *****
41. ♬ Game of Kings Dorothy Dunnett hist fic *****
42. ✔ MaddAddam Margaret Atwood dyst ****
43. ✔The River of Doubt Candice Millard adventure/bio ***1/2
44. new Mort Terry Pratchett fantasy ***1/2
45. new Rock With Wings Anne Hillerman mys ***
46. ✔ The Red and the Green Iris Murdoch hist fic****
47. ✔ The Tropic of Serpents Marie Brennan fantasy
48. ✔ Mortal Engines Philip Reeve steampunk/post apoc.YA
49. New Yorkers September 2015

Best of April
Lark Rise to Candleford: A Trilogy Flora Thompson
My Struggle: Book 2 Karl Ove Knausgaard
Game of Kings Dorothy Dunnett hist fic

Worst of April
Midnight Mayor Kate Griffin
(with apologies)

April Reflections

Off in some new directions this month, although curiously two of the three best reads are both what one could describe as fictionalized memoirs. The first, Lark Rise to Candleford (which is really three books put together) capture life in a hamlet near Oxford in the late 1800's. A quiet thoughtful book. Knausgaard's novel, on the other hand, is anything but quiet and understated, as he attempts to capture the frustrations of being a new parent, an serious writer, a (mostly) responsible introvert in contemporary Scandinavia. The two books share an interest in the minutia of daily life, both authors would agree that life is truly made of these small details and to overlook them as unimportant is to miss the experience of being alive. On the fun side the other great read was the historical adventure The Game of Kings by Dorothy Dunnett. She wanted to create the ultimate "hero" figure and that Francis Lymond is, along with being a trickster and everything in between . . . he is one of the most complex characters I've ever encountered in a book that is not "serious" in the sense of being literary fiction (say, Joyce or Dostoyevsky) - ultimately what drives him is his restless brilliance, and Dunnett convinced me of it. (I'm presently deep into book 2 of the five or six book series of The Lymond Chronicles. Historical fiction is new for me also - and I seem to like it especially in the audio format, although I do intend to read the Lymond books in print in order to look up the thousands of quotes and sly references. In an ordinary month both Maddaddam and The Red and the Green would have gotten more attention, but all things being relative . . . in terms of absorbing reading and listening, these first three just had me on the hook. My last read, a YA steampunkish, Mortal Engines was a book I couldn't seem to put down so it deserves a mention, even though it wasn't perfect (one whole paragraph was repeated almost verbatim in two places). I began the second in the Kate Griffin series set in London and found, once again, that this sort of first person narration is tricky for me. There is a point where I just stop "believing" after the narrator gets pounded and is still staggering on. I also found it repetitive, which grated after awhile. A stellar reading month I have to say!

In more down to earth book news, I seem to have gone a bit wild in April, and already was given three books TODAY! I'm 2 for 1 In and Out at the moment, which is not so good. In #'s of books read, last year I was up to 57, which seems excessive!

April Stats:
Total: 13
Men: 2
Women: 9
M/W writing together: (NYer)
Non-fiction: (NYer)
Contemp/Classic/Hist Fiction: 4
SF/F: 5
Mystery: 1
YA or J: 1
Poetry: 0
New author: 4
Months of NYers: 1
Reread: 0

Book origins/type:
From library or borrowed: 0
Audio: 1
New: 4
Off Shelf:7
Read it or Get Rid of It: 0

Housekeeping

IN April=14
2016 Total IN= 30
OUT April=6
2016 Total OUT=15

Books IN: April 2016
17. The Last Policeman Ben H. Winters
18. Countdown Ben H. Winters
19. World of Trouble Ben H. Winters
20. The Aeronaut's Windlass Jim Butcher
21. On the Steel Breeze Alastair Reynolds
22. Poseidon's Wake Alastair Reynolds
23. The Long Ships Frans G. Bengtsson
24. Dog on It: A Chet and Bernie Mystery Spencer Quinn
25. Red Fox: The Catlike Canine J. David Henry
26. Norwegian Wood: Chopping, Stacking and Drying Wood the Scandinavian Way Lars Mytting
27. The Paladin C.J. Cherryh
28. Fever Season C.J. Cherryh (and others)
29. The Dorothy Dunnett Companion II Elspeth Morrison
30. Cuckoo's Egg C.J. Cherryh

Started in 2016
Sebastian St. Cyr Mysteries C.S. Harris (3 of 11) READING: Where Serpents Sleep
The Sarantine Mosaic Guy Gavriel Kay (1 of 2) READING: Lord of Emperors
The Lymond Chronicles Dorothy Dunnett (3 of 6) NEXT UP: Pawn in Frankincense
Inspector Yashim Togalu Jason Goodwin (2 of 5) NEXT UP: The Bellini Card

Continued in 2016
Lady Trent's Memoirs Marie Brennan (3 of 4) NEXT UP: 4 In the Labyrinth of Drakes
Rivers of London Ben Aaronovitch (5 of 6) Next up: 6 The Hanging Tree
The Culture Iain Banks (6 of 9) NEXT UP: 8 Matter
My Struggle Karl Ove Knausgaard (2 of 6) NEXT UP: (Book 3)
Discworld Terry Pratchett Mort series: 1 of 5: Next up: 2 Reaper Man

Completed or caught up with in 2016
Mortal Engines Quartet Philip Reeve (4 of 4)
Matthew Shardlake C.J. Sansom (6 of 6)
Foreigner C.J. Cherryh (9 of 18) (I will continue the series 1n 2017)
Doctor of Labyrinths series Sarah Monette (4 of 4)
Imperial Radch (3 of 3)
Elizabeth Jane Howard (Cazelet Chronicles) (5 of 5)

To be continued
Blue Remembered Earth Alastair Reynolds (1 of 3) NEXT UP: On the Steel Breeze
Discworld (2 of 35) NEXT UP: Mort
Shetland Ann Cleeves (5 of 6): NEXT UP: (6) Thin Air
Chronicles of St. Mary's (2 of 5 ) NEXT UP: A Second Chance (3)
Walk to Constantinople Patrick Leigh Fermor (2 of 3) Next Up: The Broken Road
The Seven Kingdoms Kristin Cashore (2 of 3) Next up: Bitterblue
KingKiller Chronicles Patrick Rothfuss 2 of 3. Doors of Stone forthcoming (undeclared)
Foreigner C.J. Cherryh will start w/book 10 when I resume.

Rereading!
Liaden Universe Starting Over! 2 of 19. Not sure what's next! Maybe Theo

Completed or caught up with in 2015
Ki and Vandien Quartet (4 of 4)
Cormoran Strike (3 of 3)
Trade Pact Universe Julie E. Czerneda (3 of 3)*
Lens of the World (3 of 3)
The Entire and the Rose Kay Kenyon (4 of 4)
Flavia de Luce Alan Bradley (7 of 7)
Liaden Universe Sharon Lee Steve Miller
Medicus Ruth Downie mys (6 of 6)
The High Lord Trudi Canavan (3 of 3)
Pegasus 1 of 1 (more forthcoming.....)
Serrano Legacy Elizabeth Moon(3 of 3)
The Old Kingdom Garth Nix(4 of 4)
Chronicles of Josan (3 of 3)

*Series is continued in Reunification 1

I can't seem to keep track of or read my NYers in an orderly way these days (or to keep up - I'm falling more and more behind!)
The New Yorker October 5

-Kenneth Goldsmith - poet or not? Well, I think maybe more not, but he is an artist, I guess somewhere between conceptual and performance and I ended up being interested.
-trying to protect women in Iraq. Painful reading.
-Jorge Ramos -- hispanic tv journalist, fascinating. Had never heard of him before.
-grieving father. Couldn't read it.
-Story Tim Parks, Vespa. Meh. Felt unfocussed. I like his novels though.
-Gopnik on urban evolution - book reviews. Momentarily intrigued, but then I remember I really don't have much to do with cities any more.

The New Yorker October 19
-Gladwell on rise in school shootings. This is a brilliant piece. Point being that inhibition lessens with each shooting and the type of young man (so far it is males) who become enchanted with the idea of killing people en masse changes to more "ordinary" boys. He studies a boy clearly on the Asperger side who planned killings and was thankfully stopped, but he was not from a dysfunctional or unloving home, he was just caught up in the glamor and "can I do it" aspect of it. Very disturbing.
-Riveting piece on Thoreau's dark side as an antisocial arrogant conservative and rather misleading writer.
-Gloria Steinem. Viva Gloria! Nice article!
-Marlene Dietrich and Leni Riefenstahl. Interesting! The similarities and differences. . .
-French-Arab cartoonist. Read this superficially.
-Story - Cold Little Bird. Ben Marcus Creepy Dad! Well done!
-Sam Shepard. Makes me want to go out and read all the plays.

Happy new thread, Lucy. I've never been first before :)

Wow, you've been going to town, Lucy! On everything!

>1 sibylline: Nice. Can't believe you have a fox den that close to you, Lucy. How cool.

Happy New Thread!

Happy new thread, Lucy! Love the topper!

>3 sibylline: Enjoyed your thoughts on your April reading. Looking forward to what goes on in May and June.

Those fox kits are so adorable, Lucy. We used to have a fox den under our neighbor's shed…until they sold the house and the new people took down the outbuilding. I miss seeing the offspring play this time of year. I did it! I bought Book One of My Struggle. I will probably move pretty slowly through the series but am enjoying what I've read thus far. Thanks for the nudge.

Happy new thread :)

Happy New Thread for sure! I can't tell you how happy I am that you are loving Lymond. Me too!

Just saving my seat!

Happy new thread, Lucy.

Foxes are all the rage in the UK too at the moment. A completely unheralded soccer team Leicester City, known to their fans as The Foxes, are on the cusp of winning the English Premier League (almost certainly the world's leading domestic soccer league). This is despite being a relatively small midlands city who have spent very little money compared to the likes of the teams from London (Chelsea, Arsenal, Tottenham), the two Manchester clubs and Liverpool. They could be crowned champions this evening if Tottenham fail to win at Chelsea.

What a cute opening. Congrats on your shiny new thread, Lucy.

Hi, Lucy!

Everyone who stopped in, thank you so much for stopping by. After setting up my thread I had a busy day yesterday - harping at a small event - and didn't get back here until late!

>6 RebaRelishesReading: Being first is a great feeling, eh? I hardly ever get there either.

>7 ronincats: Yep! Have you read that Mortal Engines series? Maybe you already said?

>8 jnwelch: >11 Donna828: Foxes are another animal that have adapted and thrived around humans and provided the right den conditions are there, they will live very close by. We have the perfect thing, loose sandy soil on a steep drop off between two meadows, one above and one below, so they are in the wild area in between. Below is a marsh that seethes with wildlife. They hunt off of edges and pathways mainly because that is where the mice etc. are. And they really will leave your cat and your dog (except maybe a tiny sleeve dog) alone. They'll eat the mice and voles and chipmunks and squirrels mainly.

>9 Crazymamie: >10 ursula: >12 Kassilem: >14 laytonwoman3rd: >16 Ameise1: >17 scaifea: Hello!

Last year there were kits also. In August when they started hunting we kept finding dead voles everywhere along the margins of our dirt driveway (esp the hill that goes down to the lower field and out into the world) and we couldn't figure it out! But in my fox book I learn voles taste horrible -- so the kits were hunting them and then not even bothering to cache them.

>13 LizzieD: It's almost embarrassing what a crush I have on Francis Lymond - of course - I also know he is so so so far out of my league . . . Sigh.

>15 PaulCranswick: Foxes rule! I like that kind of story.

And to inadequately answer your steampunk question (which there are others better qualified to do:
It's steampunk if there is, uh, steam - that is late Victorian decor, industrial technology, clothing . . . but it's all stylized, so in a way it's the best of, those marvelous dusters, driving gloves, goggles (think Toad!) . . . there is something about the conjunction of the formal clothing and the early machine technology that is aesthetically pleasing. A sort of "what if" we never got past the zeppelin, idea. In most a certain amount of the social strata are also present, so you have a fairly hierarchical social system. It can be set at any period, or 'verse--Marie Brennan's dragon books are mildly steampunkish, Diana Wynne-Jones was wonderful at it. There are so many that draw on the steampunk idea and they do it in so many different ways it's hard to list them. The Philip Pullman trilogy has a steampunk element - Lyra's home 'verse is an example of industrial and social development turning in a different direction than ours.

Three goslings sighted this afternoon with the pair of Canada geese - of course - there are loads of these birds driving people batty in cities, but it's delightful to have our own little family. They must have been born a week ago as, while they are small, they aren't just tiny balls of fluff. What amazes me is how much time the parents have spent together away from the nest, pretty much every day.

On the reading front, I really am struggling with The Restless Supermarket, set in Johannesburg, South Africa. The main character is an obsessive-compulsive retired proof-reader. Fine and dandy. But what am I to think when he refers to Rip Van Winkle consistently as Rip Van Winkel? Is this an intentional error? A little are-you-paying-attention joke on the reader by the author himself? There have been other spelling errors too in the main text, not the protag. going on and on about the mistakes he's found and catalogued. And it really really is a "nothing happens" sort of book with endless talking and pontificating and so forth and I don't know if I can stand it. I have made it to page 100 and I generally get stubborn if I've invested that much time and effort. This is a prize-winning book, by the way, in South Africa. It has its moments, but.

>19 sibylline: agree with your comments about goslings, we love the annual rituals. In addition to goslings, we get a huge influx of geese on our pond around late December into January, and then they gradually move off leaving just a breeding pair or two behind. We've also noticed after the goslings are born, that the family will disappear for days at a time. We think they are traveling to a pond on another property and I'm just amazed that the little ones can make the trek.

The fox pups are adorable!

50. nat sci *****
Red Fox: The Catlike Canine J. David Henry

A gem of a book, thoughtful and factual both, and written with just a touch of the playfulness you might expect from a natural scientist who has spent decades studying foxes. Henry also gives the reader the sense of the limitations of what a single researcher can do. Simply acclimating a fox to your constant presence, for example, takes up to a month. Then you have to devise experiments that take patience, arduous (and sometimes strenuous) care to fulfill, and be open to whatever the results may bring. Studying fox caching behaviour, for example, Henry created experiments that had him running about recreating various caching methods to figure out why foxes cache the way they do. His conclusions are surprising--and make a lot of sense. The final chapter is a delight, thoughts about his observations over the years of fox playfulness -- once when done playing with a vole he saw a fox take it back to the hole where he got it and toss it back in. We had a cat that collected the mice he caught in buckets, presumably so they would be there when he wanted to play with them again . . . and he makes the point that the anomalous and strange things one observes matter as much as the experiments that can be verified over and over again and that the "scientific method" needs a way to incorporate and utilize those rarer observations. Anyway, if you want to learn about foxes, this is the book to get. *****

I'm a born and died in the wool city girl but your descriptions of life with nature close around you still sound lovely.

Happy New Thread, Lucy! I'm going to find the fox book.

Happy New Thread and Happy Fox and Gosling Watching, Lucy! I hope the two families don't "collide" in some bad (sad) way.

51. hist mys ****
The Snake Stone Jason Goodwin

Yashim, the "special ops" eunuch of the Ottoman sultanate is back in book 2 of a mystery series, set in the mid 1800's in Istanbul, that is shaping up to be wonderful reading. I spent hours looking things up and poring over maps as I read. I am fonder than ever of Yashim and his Polish ambassador friend Palewski. Pure pleasure, a good mystery, well unravelled. Recommended to all historical mystery lovers! ****

Nature news:
So last night just as I was going to bed I could hear the goose papa honking agitatedly. They were huddled out in the middle of the pond. He gradually calmed and just sort of hooted and huffed and I went off to bed, although I confess I had to take an herbal sleepy since the fracas woke me up. This morning when I came down, pond was glassy quiet- usually the fam. is there already but then I thought, maybe papa needs his rest after last night. Anyway, finally they showed up. At first I just saw one baby but then I got out my binocs, and thankfully all three are intact. I don't know if I can stand it! And I know there are plenty of geese and so on. It's just hard when it is on yr. doorstep!

I'm happy to hear that all 3 babies were still with you this morning. I've had friends watch ducklings disappear before their very eyes to snapping turtles. I don't think I could bear it either.
I'm excited to have the first Yashim book if I can ever get to it! I'm reading my annual obligatory Anna Pigeon mystery, and then it's *Janissary* for me!

Happy new thread, Lucy. What cute young foxes in your topper and good to hear that all the goslings were there this morning.

Happy new thread Lucy!

Thanks for the steam punk explanation Lucy. Think I have got it.

Have a lovely weekend.

>26 sibylline: What a great idea to read this series with maps. I am hoping Goodwin keeps writing these books as I enjoy them.

Lucy, I am loving your nature updates! Hoping that your weekend is filled with fabulous!

Happy to report that after being absent for an entire day, the family group, still with three goslings, looking MUCH bigger, just reappeared. That has happened before--there isn't really an idea overnight spot and I suspect they retreated down to the wherever the nest or some other good hiding place might be down in or near the big field below us. One set retreated there for several weeks and only returned to the pond when the "little" ones were half-grown. Anyway, I am relieved to see them.

Following your gosling adventures, Lucy. Delighted all are safe.

Glad the goslings are all intact. I know how it feels--I felt much the same for my hummingbird baby in a MUCH safer environment last month.

Hooray for the goslings and their parents!

The most exciting moment yesterday was when Miss Po treed a ground-hog who went right up to the very top of a very young tree, so s/he was quite precariously clinging . . . Po was beside herself. Later she encountered a foraging (distracted) chipmunk only a couple of yards away and had a second thrill. Normally all these critters see her coming miles off!

Family group still intact. Goslings are still quite little, but probably twice as big as they were when I first saw them. Invader pair hasn't shown up yet. Sleeping in?

Meanwhile I am reading. It is Sunday so here is a review:

♬

new Voyage of the Basilisk Marie Brennan fantasy
new The Broken Road: From the Iron Gates to Mount Athos Patrick Leigh Fermor memoir
new The Restless Supermarket Ivan Vladislavic contemp fict
♬ Queen's Play Dorothy Dunnett hist fic

Loving the Brennan dragon memoir, will finish that today, no doubt. After which I will pick up the 2nd of the Philip Reeve steampunk, traveling cities series, Predator's Gold which came in on ILL on Friday. I'm dragging miserably through The Restless Supermarket - I "committed" to it at some point (what this means is I have invested enough time in it that I have to get to the bitter end). It is set in Johannesburg in the 90's and it has merit, paints a time and a place from the pov of an older white man struggling to adjust to the changes, but it isn't my cuppa. He's a retired proofreader and there is just too much cleverness that fall flat for me. Finally, I don't know why it is but I get very melancholy every time I pick up Patrick Leigh Fermor -- there's something about his evocation of youthful idealism, energy and playfulness--plus the descriptions of places so many of which are gone, gone, gone--that bring up my own memories of (paltry by comparison) adventures and just how open the world felt to me. Not a complaint at all, simply an observation. And, since I am so absorbed in the Dunnett, it is possible I will just put on the headphones and lie around listening a bit today as I have nowhere I plan to drive to!

>38 sibylline: What a thrilling day for Miss Po! On my walk in the park yesterday there was a man standing on the side of the path with a large poodle. The poodle was stock still peering up at the top of a tree. The muttered explanation was, "squirrel." It looked like they had been there for a long time. I had to laugh and wonder how many more hours they stayed in that spot.

>31 PaulCranswick: Hey, Paul, if you want some recommendations to dip your toes into steampunk, let me know - it's a favorite of mine!

52. fantasy ****
The Voyage of the Basilisk Marie Brennan

I'm good and hooked! The slightly arch style of Isabel Camherst's memoir took a bit of getting used to, but I'm now I'm an avid and awed admirer of hers, just as if I were a Scirling native reading about her fabulous exploits. There is a steampunkish element to this series, as it is a very Victorian era time, but really it is about the dragons that live in this uni. Entirely plausible dragons, I might add. She has permission to write up what really happened on her voyage around the world studying dragons as enough time has passed so that the truth won't hurt diplomatic relations. Isabel loves dragons, but she is racing to save them. Dragonbone, when preserved, is the hardest and strongest and lightest material in existence and she is hoping if she can study it enough she can save dragons from being exterminated for use of the bone. She lives in a society where women have few rights, are not regarded as "serious" in any significant way, and are expected to behave with propriety. Isabel doesn't fit, her drive is too strong. These are a lot of fun, very consistent world-building and great character development.! ****

I just need to do a little bit of whining. Drove down to NY environs to pick up my daughter and got to the B&B I love and settled in and unpacked and found . . . I forgot the "FUN" book I am reading, Predator's Gold. It is really SAD. I do have three perfectly good books, of course, but the one I was really looking forward to digging into was that YA steampunk. Sigh. At least now I know I will finish the contemp novel I've been dragging myself through. And I can always put on the headphones and listen to dear old Lymond. Speaking of which . . . I finished Book 2 on the road . . .

53. ♬ hist fict *****
Queen's Play Dorothy Dunnett

Lymond goes to France, having promised the Dowager Queen Mary of Guise, on his own terms, not as her obedient servant, to do what he can to protect the small Queen Mary Stuart. There are many who would like to see her dead and those close to her are aware there have been attempts. They do not know who is behind these attempts, though. Lymond goes to France incognito, masquerading as Thady Boy Balaugh, the olave (royal poet/scholar/companion) to Prince Phelim O'Liam Roe of the Slieve Boom (an area in central Ireland) who has come to France to ask for support for getting out from under the boot heels of the English. There are plots within plots, Lymond by walking into a room, complicates matters for he always seems to bring out the best and worst in everyone. One person, Margaret Erskine, is making a serious effort to get the charismatic Lymond to take more responsibility for the effect he has on everyone around him and that forms the deeper and most riveting aspect of the story, touching the fate of the hapless archer Robin Stuart, a bastard son of that noble family, the beautiful Oonagh O'Dwyer, and the transformation of Phelim O'Liam Roe into a true prince. The climax was, literally, explosive! Lots of fun! I'm sure I miss half of what is going on listening, but that will make reading these books again later all the more interesting. *****

54. contemp fic ***1/2
The Restless Supermarket Ivan Vladislavic

This is a tough one for me to evaluate. The protagonist, Aubrey Tearle, is a retired proofreader of telephone books in post-apartheid Johannesburg, South Africa. I assume he's in his early seventies at the time the book opens, pretty spry and has his marbles. When he first retired he started frequenting the Cafe Europa in a shopping mall, that was, for a time, everything he dreamed a cafe could be. He makes some friends, who find his lists (say, of shops with ridiculous names, of buildings named after women, of people with odd names that reflect their work, and so on) and comes up with an idea for creating "A proofreader's derby" that is, writing up a document full of errors and then having a contest. Slowly the group of friends drift apart and then the Europa itself changes hands and deteriorates and is now going to close. There will be a closing party and Tearle fantasizes of at last presenting his now finished Proofreader's Derby opus, but instead comes up againt . . . well, you have to read the book. I've rarely read a book where I have felt so constantly jerked in and out of the story because of the quirks and twitches (and glitches) in the text, and something else in the style of writing that I could never quite decide if was the way it was because it's first person and so it is Aubrey Tearle's "voice" or if it was a genuine inconsistency in the writing style itself, fluid and character-driven one moment, and then retreating into verbal fireworks the next. I'd like to give Vladislavic the benefit of the doubt, but I am not entirely convinced that the book itself isn't just a wee bit cleverer than the author could manage to pull off. The flight of fancy that is the text for the Derby was great reading as was most of the last part of the book, although I felt that same confusion reading the final paragraph that haunted the book. I did persevere, I did finish, but I am not sure why. I suspect that this is a book that many other readers would like and I think it has merit. ***1/2

>26 sibylline: I really enjoyed The Janissary Tree, and I'm glad to hear the second in the series continues the fun. (BTW, the touchstone in your post leads to Harry Potter. I wish they wouldn't mess with things that work already!)

>45 laytonwoman3rd: I've been trying to fix those touchstones as I go, but they seem to resist fixing!!!! I hate the new system they've put in, I think it responds to "most frequent" words and it really DOES NOT WORK! Utterly maddening as it creates yet another step that one has to manage with every new mention of a title. In this case "stone" and possible the combo with "snake" too shoot one directly to Potterland.

55. contemp fic ***
The Pull of the Moon Elizabeth Berg

I could fulminate or I can just accept the book for what it is . . . a crafted catalogue of the grievances and hurts a woman might acquire over the course of a long and basically sturdy marriage bundled into a presentation, the American classic--the solitary road trip to think things over--that alternates between being spot on, observationally and emotionally, and improbable. The strongest parts are the woman's own private reflections on her own choices, which alternate between letters to the husband and recollections. There is an abbreviated, smoothed out quality to her recollections of the past (say, the sexual freedom of the late 60's) and most of the adventures she has on the road trip itself, the interactions with the people she meets have the quality of allegory not reality. But OK, she touches upon, systematically and thoughtfully, the frustrations that many women who started out liberated and then somehow or other retreated from working or making any of their dreams come true for reasons they can't, as they hit menopause, quite understand. It's too easy to blame "men" for those choices and it's one of the more effective aspects of this really very slight and somewhat superficial book, that the narrator veers back and forth between knowing she made many of these choices out of her own fears and out of a need for support that she didn't know how to even begin asking for--not even from her husband who might have given it if she had been more articulate or whatever . . . but it is very easy to retreat from the world into a small and safe one and Berg can write well. This isn't chick lit, but it is related, the next phase, once the gilt is off the wedding silver and reality sets in, but not too much reality. I'm leaving it on the bookshelf at the B&B and it was a decent trip book. I picked it up for free too. ***

Home from picking up the Little Darling from school. She's thrilled to be home and we are thrilled to have her!

Happy to report there are still 3 goslings.

Hi Lucy, saw your comment on Laura's thread about hoping to find to time one day to reread Trollope. I know you listen to audiobooks, and had to drop by to say that I listened to all of the Barchester and the Palliser novels. Most of them were narrated by Simon Vance, who is sublime!

>49 lit_chick: As I hit the "post" button I had that exact thought . . . what about audio?!!!

Oh yes ... Audio! Go for it Lucy!

Glad the LD Is home. Julia comes home tomorrow, but not for long. She has a summer internship and will be in Spain for the fall term. We have a seriously empty nest now.

The LD will be home for three weeks, then in NYC for three weeks (except for a weekend up in the Adirondacks at the family gathering) at the New School doing a fiction workshop then home for about two weeks and then to Capetown, South Africa to do an internship at a cable station. She's worked here at the local cable station making local history documentaries and they'll be doing similar work there. She'll be home around 10 August and then we'll see her for a few weeks before she goes off to college again. It is delightful to have her home again and she is delighted to be home again. She spent all day finishing up a paper and then sorting out her clothes. After dinner she helped me sort mine and we put NINE kitchen-size bags in the car for Goodwill. Only one other bag of clothes nice enough to take to the resale shop where we can get something for them if they get bought up is still in the house. I finally purged some things that I've been hanging onto and never ever wear, so I am thrilled. Our house has very limited storage, no closets at all really, so it is thrilling! She was a huge help, just sitting there saying, "Mom! No! You know you'll never wear that again!"

And I finished up a book!

56. steampunk YA ****
Predator's Gold Philip Reeve

Tom and Hester's adventures continue in book 2 two years later, when the airship they "inherited" from Anna Fang, is spotted and they get caught up in a plot of a radical splinter group of the Anti-Traction League. They end up on a traction city that is heading toward old North America where there are rumours of "living land." Things go horribly wrong, however, when Tom is attracted to the city's leader -- Hester makes a big mistake and then has to try and fix it. I'm very impressed with how well Reeve balances a ripping good yarn with plenty of rough stuff but rough stuff that feels integral enough to the story, not gratuitous, along with lots of character development, humor, and action all of it within a YA context. Reeve stays within the "tropes," of the post-apocalyptic but romantic setting (by that I mean many things go unexplained, where they grow the grapes for wine, where they have the sheep for sheepskin coats--those things are necessary texture and part of the fun of the story). The next two volumes have arrived from inter-library loan and I'll be plunging onward! ****

All goslings present and accounted for this morning. Beautiful sunny day shaping up, although it is only 46 F right now, but I'm not too particular!

Happy weekend, Lucy.

Currently Reading!
♬

lib Infernal Devices (3) Philip Reeve steampunk YA
✔ Fine Just the Way It Is Annie Proulx ss
new The Broken Road: From the Iron Gates to Mount Athos Patrick Leigh Fermor memoir
♬ The Disorderly Knights Dorothy Dunnett

Looking forward to your review of Fine Just the Way It Is. I loved The Shipping News and may just need to read this one too.

I loved That Old Ace in the Hole another Annie Proulx novel.

Predator's Gold has an intriguing cover.

I've read Fine Just the Way It Is three years ago. It was a (3 1/2 szars) for me.

>55 Ameise1: >60 Ameise1: Very appropriate photo, Barbara - it is snowing a little bit today and I imagine the goslings were tucked up just like that last night!

I'm not very far into Fine yet - distracted by some fun reading and by having my daughter home. Much less reading going on all around.

Snow on our local mountains today, Mt. Mansfield and Camel's Hump. We saw snow this morning whirling about but it never accumulated, thank goodness.

Later Posey started barking and we looked out the window and there was a fox trotting down our driveway and over to this ditch between it and the forest and it stayed there for three or four minutes trying to pounce on something. Too far away to even try to take a video, but it was fun to watch.

We also saw a great blue heron today too, hanging about the pond -- they like to stop by now and then for a frog snack.

All goslings still present. Getting bigger too, down changing color, maybe a bit of real feather already coming in.

I'm glad the goslings are faring well, Lucy. I wish I could say the same about our cygnets. Only one (out of 5) are left. I know turtles need to eat, too, but… My other animal story is a raccoon on top of our bird feeder. Now I knew why there is scattered seed on the ground. Our Lab, Lucky, went crazy looking out the window. He probably would have stayed far back if he had been outside. We don't see many raccoons around here. The last one was on our roof!

Hooray for goslings and a fox and heron!
I'm sorry about your cygnets, Donna. Why can't turtles eat snakes or eels or something equally unlovely? We have raccoons occasionally, and the ones we see are big enough to be dangerous. We also get the occasional possum, foxes, beavers in the river, and very, very, very rarely an otter. Our Mississippi kites are back, and they are fun to watch. I miss the songs of the wood thrush and the bob-white and whippoorwill (?), which have all gradually disappeared.

We do still have wood thrushes in summer, deep in the woods, and along the edge of the meadow I do hear, and now and then see, bob-whites. But it's been ages since I heard or saw a whippoorwill, now that I think about it. Of course I don't know if they come up this far north. There must be a few somewhere. Must go look!

Our geese lucked out this year with the huge snapping turtle because it has been so cold she hasn't put in much of an appearance yet. She could still do some damage but the goslings are getting bigger and stronger and quicker every day. I figure every day they live they collect a percentage point towards surviving. (Figuring on a hundred days or so to be large enough and close to flying.) Slow but steady progress -- We're around 21%, I think it's been about three weeks. And it's still fairly cold.

We usually have about one otter sighting per summer. One will come up from the river to feast on our frogs. I have a sense this year of great abundance of animals because of the mild winter.

57. sf steampunk YA ****
Infernal Devices Philip Reeves

Book 3 of this series (which appears to have multiple names on LT and everywhere else--Traction Cities, Hungry City Chronicles, etc.). It's been fifteen years since the end of the last one and Hester and Tom's child, Wren, is growing up and bored to death. Well, you guessed it, she finds adventure, a lot more adventure than she bargained for. Green Storm and the Anti-Traction movement and the Traction Cities are all fighting like mad and she gets caught up. Mom and Dad set out to rescue her, but things get twisty and a secret comes out. And that's all I can say without spoiling. This is a very good series - somewhere between YA and adult in my view, rich in complex characters especially, plenty of humor, violence but not egregious violence and a sturdy plot. ****

I appear to be in a color-coordinated book reading moment again:
Currently Reading (May)
♬

No comment about snow on your mountains this morning, Lucy, other than, Are you freaking kidding me? Interesting: we have a local mountain called Camel's Hump, too.

Champlain gave it a better name - Le Lion Couchant so many people call it The Couching Lion, which I like a lot better! I wish it wasn't Camel's Hump which is just . . . clumsy.

>65 sibylline: I am rooting for the goslings but kind of find it startling you have a turtle in your pond. Would love to watch one, must make for exciting home viewing. Geese must have it comparatively easy here I think. Maybe foxes to worry about? Not sure. Saw some coot chicks today. Very cute (and loud!)

I fear I am getting too attached to the goslings at this point.

How about some kitty or Posey pictures to alleviate my anxiety?

Oh, and you've hit me with multiple BBs on the Reeve series.

>70 charl08: Huge old snapping turtle. We watched her lay eggs in our driveway one year, tried our best to keep everyone away from it. Another year I actually did see a baby or two. They live forever so I just sort of assume she is there. Our pond is quite long and has a curve in it and she lives at the north end where we have allow some reeds to grow.

>71 ronincats: You will LOVE the Reeve books, Roni, that I am certain sure of. I'm surprised you haven't stumbled into them before!

I've heard of them Lucy, but you know how many YA/juvenile steampunkish series are out there. You are the first to make them stand out from the rest.

I read somewhere that April was a record warm month. All I can say is that if so, this was the case EVERYWHERE except new England. I'm dreading my next utility bills.

So the day after I mention raccoons around here, DH goes to take May out between showers and there are raccoon tracks across our front stoop. I don't know when that's happened! I was right in the front of the house too and saw nothing because May said nothing.
Actually, our April was cooler than normal, as is our May. I'm NOT COMPLAINING!!!!!!!

Our April and May has been warmer than usual - 37 degrees instead of 32 degrees - believe me you can tell the difference!

Have a great weekend, Lucy.

Stopping by after a bit of an absence to get caught up. Love all of the nature/wildlife reports on your previous thread and this one. The fox pups at the top of this thread are so darn cute!

Wishing you a wonderful weekend, Lucy.

58. sf steampunk/dystopic YA****1/2
A Darkling Plain (4) Philip Reeve

Ultimately, what distinguishes this quartet and kept me reading steadily are the excellent characters and the steady flowing prose. I've described the plot in other reviews of the previous three; here, in brief, is the final crisis and confrontation between the consuming wheeled cities and the anti-tractionist faction(s). There are a lot of characters and the core group of them, although that shifts a little as some don't survive, are complex and intriguing, dimensional and different from one another. They are not profound, mind you, this ain't Crime and Punishment, but they are solid. Throughout the writing is a pleasure, the descriptions grounded, and some of the ideas are fun, albeit it is a world/future pretty much solidly based in extant memes. (Yuh, I'm saying, not terribly original.) Even so, Reeve puts the story together elegantly and makes it work very satisfyingly. What is truly special though, are the characters. Hester, in particular, stands out but so does her much less emotionally complicated partner, Tom. It's YA because there is no graphic sex, and no long-drawn out, gory, close-camera work when violence does occur--and there is plenty of it--deaths are generally deftly managed and not lingered over. It's a lot of fun and I'm glad I went on with this series. It appears to have fallen by the wayside--I borrowed books on inter-library loan to complete the series, and it seemed no one library had all four, which is too bad. For the whole quartet: ****1/2

59. ss ***1/2
Fine Just the Way It Is Annie Proulx

This story collection has the feel of the answer to the literary agent's query, "What else have you got in your files?" And Proulx coming up with this bunch. The only cheerful stories are the two in which the devil plots up amusing and wicked ways to make lives more unhappy and another one about a hungry sagebrush. Another story is set thousands of years ago and is about a buffalo hunt -- maybe the best thing in the book as far as I'm concerned. Every single one of the rest of the stories addresses just how tough life can be for those born poor or impulsive or not terribly bright or into a family with careless or cruel parents . . . and it all plays out in rural Wyoming with whatever particularities of weather and scenery of the place and with its own special flavor of unforgiving viciousness for the hapless, helpless, and unlucky. I confess I skimmed the last story, grasping the gist; from page one it was evident that it would be a recital of cruelty and misery dogging a perfectly innocent little girl through her life and I was not mistaken. I have no doubt, because of what I know about Proulx, that the stories here are all based around a kernel of truth, something she heard or read about, but it is an unbalanced collection, just too relentless; Proulx's humor which balances her novels, is absent here even though the writing, as ever, is brilliant. ***1/2

Hi Lucy! Hope you had a great weekend! Happy new week!

My line-up is changing from a yellow/white/brown theme to blue, apparently:

Currently Reading (May)
♬

new Tenth of December George Saunders ss
new The Three Body Problem Cixin Liu sf
new The Broken Road: From the Iron Gates to Mount Athos Patrick Leigh Fermor memoir
♬ The Disorderly Knights Dorothy Dunnett

Hmmm also noticing a triangle theme on the latest two picks, totally random, I assure you.

>81 sibylline: I have The Three-Body Problem as an e-book, consequence of positive commentary on LT. Reading of course lags far behind acquisition.

ETA: Oh dear, I've been lurking far more than you'd suspect, though all the foxes and geese.

>81 sibylline: I love seeing the patterns in the books I read, too. Sometimes it's a cover theme, sometimes it ends up being a word theme. Funny when it happens though.

Happy New Week, Lucy! So glad that all the goslings are alive and growing! :)

>79 sibylline: Thank you, Lucy, for saving me. Don't think I need to put that one on my wish list. I'm not a huge fan of short stories in general and that one sounds like it has more than the usual problems.

Waving hello; I'm going to check out Red fox, the catlike canine since my library has it.

>86 markon: It's a treat! Good science and good writing!

Mainly to my fitbit buddies - my stats will be way down this week due to having that "welcome to middle age" procedure, you know the one I mean (this was my second), where you drink awful stuff, can't eat any food, and really can't leave the house for a day or two . . . Home from it now, and allowed to eat again, thank goodness! I did all right, but not as perfectly as the first one I had at 50. And I am a tired and subdued puppy. On the other hand I listened to oodles of Lymond yesterday while lying about and knitting and catching up on some long overdue darning and hemming and have almost finished The Three Body Problem.

It's a beautiful day, so I hope to get out in it later.

>87 sibylline: my fitbit buddies
Ahem. I sent you my email awhile back.

FitBit screwed up my data so I'm engaged in an email exchange with tech support, but eventually the problem will recede...

Did you? I was in a kind of fitbit hiatus for awhile, but I swear I didn't get anything from you, I would have signed up. Can you send me what I need to know to invite you?

60. sf ***1/2
The Three Body Problem Cixin Liu

This is another "problem-solving" sf novel - not dissimilar to Ready Player One and I am sure there are zillions of others like it out there, highly influenced by gaming and primarily a vehicle for demonstrating how some highly theoretical ideas (like the sophon quantum computer) and some highly do-able but seriously creepy ideas (the nano slicer) could possibly be put to use. The ideas drive this novel and give it plenty of force and interest. The underlying questionis whether or not this eagerness of ours to connect with extraterrestrial intelligence is such a hot idea. What if, some civilization was on a planet in dire trouble? What if they needed a new home? How would we respond, would it bring people together or just bring out the worst in us? So what is entirely lacking in this novel are believable or sympathetic characters, with perhaps, the exception of the tough police guy Shi, who provides, at least some humor and unpredictability. Pretty much all the rest, the various scientists and intellectuals, are mouthpieces for presenting the ideas. There is a tiny passage where one character spends a year living with the peasants near the radar station where she works that is at odds in some ways with the rest. In the peasant society men and women stay separate, the higher you go the less gender makes a difference in terms of work, although it is all men who run things at the top. The real divide is between the educated and uneducated. I was, at times, uncomfortable with a cheerful and rather brutal matter-of-fact dividing everyone into intellectual vs technical vs uneducated, and also by the constant insistence on factions and rigid categorization, couldn't tell where that was a character thinking or Cixin Liu and a Chinese cultural viewpoint. Even so there are lyrical moments: "From time to time, I would gaze up at the stars after a night shift and think that they looked like a glowing desert, and I myself was a poor child abandoned in the desert. . . . I thought that life was truly an accident among accidents in the universe. The universe was an empty palace, and humankind the only ant in the entire palace." But make no mistake, this is hardcore idea-driven sf. ***1/2

So, as ever, I am months behind in the NYer but I just read this piece about how research is being done into the connection between sounds and what we think we are tasting or getting . . . the crispier chip, the manly sounding spray deodorant (TSCH sh -sh) as opposed to the ladylike Sh - sh sh), the brewski with the potent pop-tab KAPOW! Are we really this pathetic? This easy to bamboozle? If you feed someone a sweet on a round plate it supposedly tastes sweeter than served on a square plate.

And the money and effort being sunk into this research. Groan.

Anyway, if nothing else, it's good timing and inspiration for stepping into one of the great paranoid classics of the 1970's, The Illuminatus! Trilogy which I took out of our local library two months ago and keep stubbornly renewing but will finally read now.

Back to say, I've been reading the first book in The Illuminatus Trilogy and I am fairly sure it simply isn't the right book for me right now. I won't say ever, because it is clearly very amusing and clever, but not quite what I need or want at the moment.

Hmmm. I own *Illuminatus* and read the first of the *Historical Illuminatus*, but apparently the time has never been right for me either.

Yeah, I'm taking it back to the library. I know it's a classic and all and I was amused, sort of, but I'm in the mood for something more absorbing than clever. I want to actually like at least the protagonist . . . and no fizzy fireworks. Anyway I am substituting a Kay Kenyon A Thousand Perfect Things - alternate history type and we'll see what happens. I liked the books I read of hers last year, I think the series was called The Entire and the Rose. The spousal unit went nuts over her and pretty much got all of her books a year or two ago!

61.♬ hist fict *****
The Disorderly Knights Dorothy Dunnett

So, confession-time, I'm hooked, addicted, to the adventures of Lymond Crawford. This last one was a "stay up all night listening" (or it would have been a page-turner in book form). Lymond has been gotten out of the way, sent to Malta to help the Knights of St. John who are soon to be under attack by the Turks. But all is not well on Malta or with the Order. The Spanish Grand Master refuses to believe it and the knights are divided. There is very little Lymond can do but he appears to have a magnificent ally in Sir Graham Reid Mallet, known as Gabriel, a super-knight of the Order, maybe the first person Lymond has ever met who is his potential equal. Everyone adores Gabriel except, of course, Lymond, but he is ever one to let people prove themselves. Gabriel has a breathtakingly lovely sister Joletta who is sent back to Scotland (and of course ends up at Midculter). In the end after many disasters Lymond goes back to Scotland filled with the idea of creating his own army for hire and Gabriel ends up there too as an emissary from the Order. And then things begin to heat up, red hot, in fact. If you do pick up this series, be warned that the last 1/3 of each book is so packed and fraught, you won't want to do anything but read or listen. It was so exciting that it is almost impossible to write about without spoiling!!! I loved the young knight sidekick this time, Jarett Blythe (sp?) and greatly enjoyed the development of young Phiippa. I haven't read widely in this genre butI have read some and this is A+ historical fiction--as good as or better even than Patrick O'Brien, Hilary Mantel, Rose Tremain et al. *****

Snow last week and a heat wave this week - got very close to 90 briefly and it is very humid! Got the outdoor shower up and running, a little later than usual, and went canoeing nearby this morning, very proud of ourselves for getting it together to go do something.

This was quite the week, the "procedure" I mentioned above really did me in and I didn't score as perfectly as I did the last time. Nothing too bad, but just not an A+. So I'll probably have to do it more often then once every ten years. Wanh. Then that very night I noticed a lump on Posey's chest and totally lost it. But thankfully, I got her to the vet and it is an injury, somehow she must have jammed into something running around in the woods (harum scarum after chipmunks, no doubt) and pulled skin away from muscle tissue and that got infected. So I have to do compresses and she's taking an antibiotic. I hope this week is less exciting. We send the LD back to NYC in the middle of it for a writing workshop she's taking at the New School, so it will be quiet again around here.

Lots of reading - both print and listening this week and not much else, frankly.

Sorry to hear about the health issue and need for more frequent yuckiness, Lucy. I wish they could figure out a better way to do that particular test.

I'm very glad Posey is okay. Our Woody is going through some tests this week as he's been having trouble with one of his front paws.

And it will be quiet here as well when Julia leaves for her internship this week. Sounds like both of ours have fledged the nest. It's not all bad though, just a new phase of life.

>96 sibylline: Isn't amazing how we sometimes take a potential health issue with our pets harder than a potential problem with our own selves? I'm glad Posey isn't facing anything dire; hope it responds quickly to treatment. And as for you...give yourself a gold star and a lollipop for doing the right thing for both of you.

>96 sibylline: Exactly!

Ew... I should do that procedure quite regularly (every 5 years or so) but don't. Twice has been enough for a long while. That was another reason for stopping meat and reducing milk. How often will you have to do it now?
Very relieved it isn't serious, and also relieved that Posey's lump wasn't anything dangerous. Okay - sending what I hope are "good health" vibes into the world now and hope they arrive. :)

We had snow last week too and I fear my parents up on the mountain are being snowed in today yet again. Not that I wish for another summer like last year, but can't we please have something in between extremes?

62. ss *****
Tenth of December George Saunders

What makes a short story good? I mean the kind where you get to the end and maybe sit there thinking, "What just happened?" and further "What just happened to me?" The writer took you somewhere unexpected, but once arrived, you can't avoid facing that it's the right place (often a place you didn't really want to go.) The final story, "The Tenth of December" is especially like that and I am going to keep this book around to remind me of the point it makes, which I can't take apart here or I would be spoiling it for you. You could argue that his stories and a couple of others, because they have (in a way) "happy" (not really) endings that they are sentimental, but how can a story about a boy finding his courage be sappy? Most of the time, in fact, people notice, say, that the baby is crawling too near the pool or about to pull the tablecloth off the loaded table; most of the time, you brake, you swerve, you do the right thing. Sometimes there is no right choice to make, they are all bad and Saunders writes about that with profound compassion and rightness. The majority of the stories are about the way circumstances can force a person to make those hard choices, to give in or to find the strength (courage) to resist, or act or do whatever the circumstances require of them. Sometimes a character does the right thing for the wrong reasons and ends up somewhere new and we watch a their surprise and we end up surprised too, but with a slightly additional (parental?) layer of knowing how hard this new resolve or insight is going to be for that person to hang onto. Saunder's writing style will either drive you mad or you will fall into its embrace, and yes, I wrote this review just slightly under his spell because that is the effect reading Saunders has; he brings out that hesitating layered way we actually think, two steps forward, one back. I've read pretty much all of these in the NYer at one time or another and was thrilled to revisit. One of my very favorites is "My Chivalric Fiasco" which is just funny-awful but somehow full of charm. *****

63. sf/alt hist ****
A Thousand Perfect Things Kay Kenyon

Kay Kenyon has created an alternate history where there are only the continents of Anglica and Bharata, the first exploiting the second as Britain exploited India. Anglica is relentlessly materialistic, logical, devoted to the scientific method while Bharata puts value on the spiritual, mysterious, and magical. The Anglicans have built a pontoon bridge that spans the ocean between them. So the Harding family, with young Astoria (Tori) who has a club foot, is connected to Bharata in a unique way as Tori's grandfather found the location of the revered golden lotus and took a small piece of it secretly. Tori, because of her disability, has been allowed to work with and for her grandfather as a naturalist even though women are not allowed into the elite of the sciences. The plot turns around finding the golden lotus. Everyone knows that only Tori has the clues necessary to find it, and both Anglicans and Bharatans have their own reasons why they want her to do just that. The Bharatans wish to break free of Anglican tyranny and the Anglicans wish to strengthen their control and misjudge the depths of Bharatan determination to become independent. This is NOT YA, by the way; the themes are more complex. The violence is understated, sexuality is explored bluntly but not overdone. Kay Kenyon should be better known, this was a fine read, totally absorbing. The pontoon bridge was a bit hard to suspend disbelief of, but what the heck! ****

>102 sibylline: Hmm, I suspect I'd like this one.

>102 sibylline: I enjoyed Bright of the Sky by Kenyon. Not perfect but interesting story-telling. I avoided her books for quite a while because I was confusing her with Sherrilynn Kenyon who writes paranormal romances. This one sounds interesting too.

I agree with >103 qebo: and >104 ronincats:. Now I'll have to live to 115!

Came back to correct a rash of careless spelling in that review!

>103 qebo: I think you would too.

Change of plan - I was going to read a C.S. Harris, but then I realized (oh horrors!) that it was OUT OF ORDER! And I don't have #1 so that will have to wait. It was a prettier line-up but this one will do!

Reading in June
♬

✔ The Broken Shore Peter Temple mys
new Last Friends Jane Gardam contemp fic
new The Broken Road: From the Iron Gates to Mount Athos Patrick Leigh Fermor memoir
♬ Pawn in Frankincense Dorothy Dunnett hist fic

I haven't mentioned the geese in awhile. I spotted the family yesterday. They "moved" about five days ago to a "wilder" spot -- a marshy area in a "holler" that is just across the road from where we live. I was pretty sure that was where they went, but not entirely. I think the parents were feeling threatened by various predators homing in on them, time for a new undisclosed location. (I won't tell!)

Did I say that I am listening to my backlog of Clarkesworld (sf) podcasts, taking a tiny break from Lymond? I'll listen to a book's worth--I figure about 12 stories should do it--and then get back in the saddle.

And, if you are interested, in >3 sibylline: you can find my May stats and reflections, finally got them done today.

Glad to hear the geese are doing okay and in a (probably) safer spot. We are identical in May numbers!

Interesting May stats!! I wish I had your May numbers.....
Glad to hear that the geese are looking after their own (giraffes don't, you know; giraffes are selfish).
Obviously, it's too late for me to think, so I'll stop.

>108 sibylline: Glad to hear it. I spotted a magpie nest in a nearby tree and am anxiously hoping that the small birds who visit the feeders in the garden escape their chicks' demands.

>110 ronincats: We were even last month too? Maybe? I'm a bit surprised by how much I read - but I think the obsessive listening to Lymond's adventures and the gobbling up of the Reeves helped.

>111 LizzieD: Someone told me the other day that mourning doves are very mean to one another - who would have thought the way they coo and all? I haven't looked into it yet. One of the things that endears the Canadian Geese to me is that they are nice to each other, the couples, really pleasant--obviously enjoying themselves and being together, and they are extraordinarily diligent and attentive and patient with their little ones. They poop everywhere and all that, but they are animals who have evolved in ways that feel familiar and like a good example!

>112 charl08: I hope so too!

Back to say that I just noticed I am reading two books with "Broken" in the title - good thing I am not also reading Brokeback Mountain or . . .

Morning, Lucy! You read exactly twice as many books as I did in May! I'm hoping June is a better reading month for me.

>114 sibylline: I love to notice little coincidences like that in my reading. I once read two books in a row with a main character named Mildred. The first was Mildred Pierce, so I knew what I was getting there. Now I don't recall what the second one was, but the name was not in the title, and it came as a surprise to me as I was reading. Another time I read two books back to back in each of which there was a very similar difficult birth scene; they were otherwise totally unlike each other.

>116 laytonwoman3rd: Wonderful! Awash in Mildreds! What are the odds? There are, often, threads that unexpectedly connect one read to another and it has to be random, but . . . often in a way that has a nice resonance by putting some place or experience (like the difficult births) into relief. I, for one, lately can't seem to get away from Istanbul. I swear I don't pick up a book in thinking, oh goody, another book set in Istanbul . . . and yet . . . I am intentionally reading Irish this year, however, finally assembled the novels and short stories I have had languishing about. Anyway, I always mean to take more note of those odd connecting threads.

64. contemp fic ****
Last Friends Jane Gardam

I've enjoyed Gardam's three novels, starting with Old Filth and ending up with Last Friends (although I see there is also a collection of short stories . . . ). The primary focus is on three people, Terry Veneering, Edward Feathers, and Betty (Elizabeth), Edward's wife. Both men have loved Betty and hated one another. These three formed the core of a loose group of . . . not so much friends, as people who have passed their lives in connection, in part by chance, in part by design. By chance they have ended up in the same remote village in England, each other's closest neighbors. The time period, starting with childhood, is 1930ish to the present, when, in their eighties, their lives are coming to an end. Terry and Edward were in the same area of law (construction contracts and litigation) and both lived in Hong Kong. There are also satellite friends and this novel focuses mostly on two of them, two of the survivors as this group fades away, Dulcie, Fred Fiscal-Smith. It's tempting to compare Gardam to this one and that one, from Waugh to Wesley, Powell to Pym, but I think she brings her own tart flavor to the time period and to this class--the British upper middle--whether achieved by hard work or by the silver spoon. It is not biting or black comedy, rather gentler, but also not sappy. What I have liked particularly throughout is the fact that all the characters face at having become aged, but still, to their puzzlement and chagrin, not fully able to make peace with the loves and hatreds and yearnings of their younger years. Having lived to ripe old age, however, they all find, in one way or another, that they have been given the opportunity to do so, each in their own way. In this she joins Muriel Spark whose Memento Mori--a small masterpiece--in demonstrating that no matter how reduced and withered, the fires burn in our hearts right to the end. ****

Currently Reading (June)
♬♬

✔ Troubles J.G. Farrell hist fict, irish fict
✔ The Broken Shore Peter Temple mys aus
new The Broken Road: From the Iron Gates to Mount Athos Patrick Leigh Fermor memoir
♬ Pawn in Frankincense Dorothy Dunnet hist fic
♬ podcasts of Clarkesworld, sf stories. 12=1 book. (4 of 12)
Ongoing
Murdoch Marathon: ONGOING. (No plans for IM in MAY) IM readers group is HERE
Virago No plans
The New Yorker, working on October

Continuing my Irish theme picking up Farrell's Troubles now and I'm also taking a bit of a Lymond break (to make it last, mainly) listening to my backlog of podcasts of sf stories from Clarkesworld magazine.

Lucy, great review of Last Friends. I've not yet gotten to this series, in spite of the fact that I've had Old Filth in my iPad for what seems like forever. Thanks for the push ...

>118 sibylline: So many interesting points in your review (many that make me want to go back and read them again!). As you say, she makes it clear the passions and beliefs continue into old age.

I did wonder if Veneering moved there on purpose though?

Yes, one has to wonder about that. I can't remember any more if he came up with some lame explanation, or if someone else recommended it . . . I do feel there was something. I have the Wooden Hat, so maybe I'll thumb through it.

>118 sibylline: Nice review of Last Friends, Lucy. That's the one of the three I haven't read yet.

I don't remember whether there's an explanation of why Veneering moved there either.

Well, I've just learned about Pat (phebj) and I am very sad. I completely lost track of her, although now and then I wondered.

>124 sibylline: Yeah. Weren't you the one who started the card several years ago when she was first diagnosed?

65. **** travel/memoir
The Broken Road Patrick Leigh Fermor

As with the other two books of Fermor's long walk across Europe, I often found myself enveloped in a soggy melancholy, a regret and sadness about just how much was destroyed in WW2, not only places and things, but whole groups of people killed, shifted, torn away from ways of life that had persisted for millenia. Not that everything was so great for everyone, but there was an social, aesthetic and ecological price, changes set in motion then, that have snowballed until, as we all know deep in our hearts, it really can't go on--and since we can't stop ourselves--it will stop catastrophically. OK, so yeah, this has little to do directly with what Fermor writes about except . . . this precocious and sensitive twenty year old (and then the man, in his seventies-eighties who tackled this third volume) somehow intuited that he was seeing a world that was passing away. The lad falls, frequently, into deep melancholy, which the older editing Fermor leaves in, and it is frequently when he is leaving a place of great beauty and people he will likely never see again. I've never read another travel book that arouses, consistently, this sense of loss, so I don't think I am imagining it entirely.
That said. This third volume picks up as Fermor enters Bulgaria. He is struck by how entirely different it is from Rumania. The Turkish influence goes much deeper and there is a greater variety of people, I think, living in separate communities, speaking different languages, having different ethnic origins, religions and languages. Indeed, the sheer variety of types of people across this area is mind-boggling to an American. Our differences, culturally, are minor, frankly. Bulgarians appear also to be much poorer, the country wilder, and his welcome more unpredictable, the people moodier. But he finds great beauty. Eventually, however, he is drawn back to Rumania, where he lives it up in Bucharest for a time before heading toward the coast and the Black Sea, which he travels down--perhaps some of the roughest and most dangerous hiking of his trip, his life saved by a group of Greek fisherman and Bulgarian goat-herders when he stumbles into their cave-camp (utterly prehistoric) completely wet and frozen from a fall down a hillside into an icy stream. The last part of the book is a journal written and lightly edited, that he spent traveling around the monasteries on the Greek peninsula that surrounds Mount Athos. This was a wistful read in that I couldn't help pondering the oddness of this place, of so many groups of men deciding on poverty and abstinence as a way of life, of deeming a place forbidden to women or anything female, even HENS (I am guessing there were secret enclaves of hens, however, as fresh eggs turn up fairly often). I couldn't, when I looked around on line, get a full grip on what has become of the monasteries and this area, but it would appear that it is become a summer resort like everywhere else, lots of photos on the net of people in bathing suits on the shore . . . I am sure there are still some monks huddled in their eyries, but the photos show many ruins -- the odd hermitages and smaller monasteries, all gone, I expect. Fermor enjoyed his wanderings and his visits-- and it is very apparent how deeply and totally he has fallen in love with Greece. Overall, the writing in this last book is not as seamless as in the first two, and the reading of it was slower. Some of the prose (youthful excess?) was even a bit over the top but not in a bad way. I will continue my own adventure now with the biography by Artemis Cooper before completing my own long walk alongside the utterly engaging human being that Fermor was. ****

>126 sibylline: What a beautiful review of The Broken Road, Lucy. (Your touchstone is wrong, however. What a shock these days.) I have the first two of Fermor's On Foot to Constantinople books, but have yet to plunge in. You're making me very eager to get to them.

Touchstone fixed, thanks - I find this new algorithm they are using for the touchstones UTTERLY ANNOYING.

Merci du compliment bout the review!

>128 sibylline: I think we should all gang up on 'em and go post our displeasure in the Site Recommendations Group.

>129 laytonwoman3rd: Good luck with that: https://www.librarything.com/topic/189572 .
Or go to Bug Collectors and select the Touchstones category.
I don't know why it's so difficult.

They've been extremely resistant to complaints about this matter. I can only think there is an aspect to the Touchstones that is knotty.

I don't know about Touchstones (give us patience!), but I do know a good review when I read it. Thanks, Lucy. I also have the first 2 Fermors and look forward to them down the road.

66. mys ***1/2
The Broken Shore Peter Temple

Thoroughly enjoyed this one and hope there are a few more Inspector Cashin books. Set in New South Wales, Australia somewhere not too far from Melbourne (I confess I haven't looked up any town names to see if they are all fictional, I just assume that they are), it is pretty much the standard gloomy fella --Cashin messed up big-time in his last stake-out of a very violent criminal (who got away) and his young partner was killed and he was very badly injured. He's back "home", in Port Munro/Cromarty on leave from the Melbourne force, but not entirely on leave, he's filling in at the station in Port Munro as one of two station heads. Actually, my one complaint would be that I was a bit confused between the three locales of Cromarty/Port Munro/Melbourne, and the fact that Cashin was supposed to be on leave but wasn't really. . . A somewhat disgusting crime plot, not wildly plausible either, what works in this book, as tends to in this genre are Cashin's problems with his own impulsivity and stubborn independence and his personal life. His family was briefly wealthy after success in the gold fields and built a big handsome house (ballroom and all) and then his g-fa tried to blow it up . . . he's living in some ramshackle corner of it and has the daft notion of rebuilding. All this, the etting, his relationships with colleagues and the banter are what made it fun. ***1/2

I keep shifting around about what to listen to -- opted for the first Sebastian St. Cyr which I found in my audio books, rather than plunging into the maelstrom of Lymond Crawford's life. A mild irony being that once you know about Crawford, you know that he is the ne plus ultra of dashing. Station Eleven is gripping and Troubles is a marvel. I'm enjoying getting another view of Fermor's life--I am finding I remember far too little of the first two walking to Constantinople books . . .

Anyway here is the current line-up. I am also listening to sf stories from Clarkesworld a fine 'zine, here and there, plan to count twelve stories as one book and am about halfway to that. It's a great way to discover new authors.

Currently Reading (June)
♬♬

new Station Eleven Emily St. John Mandel sf-dystopic
new Patrick Leigh Fermor: An Adventure Artemis Cooper bio
✔ Troubles J.G. Farrell hist fict, irish fict
♬ What Angels Fear C.S. Harris
♬ podcasts of Clarkesworld, sf stories. 12=1 book.

>134 sibylline: I have just finished Station Eleven and I am sure that you will like it more than I did and I liked it plenty. Leigh Fermor was always pitch perfect and I loved Troubles.

Have a great weekend, Lucy.

As I said on Paul's thread, I'm one of those few who haven't read Station Eleven. I really should jump on that wagon. :)

Happy new week Lucy!

Is Troubles the first of the Farrell trilogy? I've been wanting and meaning to read those for a long time. Hmmm.

Hello visitors! I had a wild weekend of dinner parties, guests, irish sessions, and playing irish music at a fund-raiser for our little library, so I was not around this weekend to visit anyone. Hope to get to it. Any spare moment was devoted to reading Station Eleven which I finished last night!

>135 PaulCranswick: I couldn't stop reading it! The bio of Fermor is, so far, (around 100 p) excellent and is helping bring back into focus aspects of the first two books, as well as information about what happened to some of the people he met along the way. Most of it bad, but I'd rather know than not.

>136 The_Hibernator: I gobbled it up, Rachel - it is an excellent book. Great characters and just done so well.

>137 LizzieD: Yes, Peggy it is! It's very fine. Awash in black humor, detail perfect. Now that I've finished Station Eleven I hope to plunge into it.

67. sf post-apoc *****
Station Eleven Emily St. John Mandel

My goodness what fine story-telling! It's a "genre-buster" as well. Don't avoid it because you don't like stories set in a post-apocalyptic world. This one is so immediate, possible, and full of what I can only call heart, (as well as page-turning suspense, stunning detail, and absolutely rounded characters you care about a lot) it is different, you really aren't being asked to suspend disbelief and step into some insane maelstrom of violence. A version of swine flu kills irrevocably. You get sick within a few hours of exposure and you are dead in 48. 99% of earth's human population dies. In this novel unlike the more fanciful ones, the survivors are mostly bewildered and sad, yet also determined to live but not at the expense of the civilization they mourn. The suddenness and completeness of the loss of the use of technology is a shock from which many never recover. Which existence is the more unreal? The before or the after? The pace is simultaneously graceful and suspenseful, don't ask me how! It is also, although I loathe the word, really, perfectly crafted. Mandel manages, in a not terribly long book, to move around with agility and clarity between before, during and after and there is also, the graphic novel, Station Eleven which was the creation of one of the main characters. Sure, there is an improbable novelistic intertwining of characters and fates that I've come to feel is a device that novels require the same way music or any other art form is structured and recursive; it's how our minds make sense of things. It is also elegantly and without judgement put forth that for some, the explanation of disaster has to involve spotlighting oneself as more "deserving" than another, e.g. magical thinking that can easily become dangerously self-serving. (It's all around us.) I'm not going to outline the story to you, but just mention a few of the images that I think will stay with me forever -- the Gandia airline plane self-quarantined out on the runway (the last plane to land--no one got out) always visible to the community that lives in the Severn City Airport; the tea-set in the untouched house that Kirsten and August find, twenty years after; Miranda seeing the sun rise as she dies; Jeevan baking bread; Tyler standing under the Gandia airline plane reading the Bible; the small prayers August whispers to the skeletons of people he finds when he and Kirsten are searching houses for useful things; Kirsten's tattoos; Clark's museum. Ah well, I won't give away a final image, that Kirsten sees at the end of the book; it is full of hope but also signifies change, once again, on the human horizon. *****

Lucy, I loved Station Eleven, too. And what a great review- if you posted it, I will thumb.

Sounds like your weekend was full of fabulous!

>139 sibylline: I know just what you mean about hating to use "crafted" to describe a novel. But it's not a bad word when it's done well. Unfortunately, so often the machinery used to make the sausage is all too visible and you become aware of the underpinnings.

I can tell from your review that you responded in exactly the same way I did to Station Eleven--although you were much more articulate in expressing it!

>143 sibylline: You're too kind! I did love it. Such a balancing act writing a story like that.

Another thumb!

Another fan of Station Eleven here, and I am not a sci-fi fan and only occasionally read dystopian stuff. I thought it was very well done and it stuck with me for days.

Ditto, Lucy. Although I am a sci-fi fan. :-)

Happy weekend, Lucy! The Station 11 book is noted, I only heard good things about it and will eventually read it. "Don't avoid it because you don't like stories set in a post-apocalyptic world" helped - this is my first official BB in weeks! :)

Happy new week Lucy!

I've been quiet for a bit, away at a family gathering in the Adirondacks, my eight siblings (3 are halfs, five are full.) I'll try to post some pix when I am less tired! It was idyllic weather and we hiked and paddled a lot. I forgot my fitbit Sunday, my fitbit friends, which is pretty sad as that was a good long hike day. And it doesn't log paddling, sadly. I think I was well over 100,000 and that won't happen again for a good long time. I also played badminton a lot -- just got crazily into it. Anyhow, home now, recovering, trying to get psyched for regular life.

Only finished one book which I will report on when I am coherent again.

>147 Deern: I think you will like Station Eleven, Nathalie.

>149 sibylline: Ah, you leapt ahead of me in steps a few days ago and I wondered whether you were gallivanting about somewhere. Yes, pix!

Had been wondering if everything was okay up there--glad to hear it was all good stuff.

I'm glad your family gathering was so nice, I remember chatting about the venue last fall after we visited the area. It's just gorgeous there.

68. fantasy ****
Sailing to Sarantium Guy Gavriel Kay

An alternate Europe similar but with subtle differences. Byzantium is Sarantium and the time is somewhere in what we would call the dark ages, the period after Rome (here it is Rhodias) fell but before what would become Western Europe began to organize itself. A Rhodian mosaicist, Crispin, arrives in Sarantium to work on the new great dome built by the current emperor of Sarantium, Valerius II. Crispin also bears a message from his own beleaguered Queen Gisel which sets in motion a veritable cascade of intrigue. Crispin is very outspoken and a contrarian of the first water, but he is also smart and courageous and likeable. On his journey (my favorite part of the book) Crispin acquires a young slave girl who was slated to be sacrificed to the pagan god of the wildwood and the man he hires as his guard on the road becomes his loyal servant as a result too. He also acquires a tribune, Carullus, as a loyal friend. I liked the story best when it was "in motion" better than the convoluted court intrigue (always ending in some bloodbath or other, of course). Crispin is convincing as a true artist, with that observant, detached, sensitive, questioning and original way of seeing and responding to everything around him. Solid entertainment all the way with moments rising above. There is a second book to The Sarantine Mosaic, Lord of Emperors and I plan to plunge right in. I should add - this is set in the the Tigana universe, and makes me realize I need to reread Tigana! ****

This is the main house:


This is a cabin; ours was similar, but unphotographable, hidden behind cedars:


Here is a bold little chipmunk. Po' would have been delirious!

Looks like a wonderful trip, Lucy. Glad the weather was good. It's been beautiful here yesterday and today but was hot and muggy for a few days before and supposed to rain tomorrow. Too bad about your steps not getting recorded.

What an absolutely idyllic spot!

Ooooooo! Lovely! Thanks for the pix, Lucy, and welcome back!

Looks like you had the perfect spot in the Adirondacks, Lucy! Too bad Po wasn't there to connect with the chipmunk, LOL.

It was perfect!

And I can report that today I heard splashing in the pond and looked out to see that the goose family, all five of them have returned: the 'little ones' can fly already and are only slightly smaller than their parents! I was so delighted to see them all and I glad I don't have to worry about their safety anymore.

>154 sibylline: Niiiiice! (And ALL chipmunks are bold, in my experience. Cute as the dickens, but they play havoc with my potted plants!)

69. ♬ mys ***1/2
What Angels Fear C.S. Harris

The first of many in a series of mysteries set in the Regency period and starring, the tall, elegant, sanspareil, the dashing Viscount Devlin, Sebastian St. Cyr . Perhaps a bit on the lighter end of the mystery continuum, but perfect for someone (me) starting a first ambitious knitting project (very simple sweater). ***1/2

So here is a picture of the goose family. They are still here today, and I expect they will be around for a bit now.



HOWEVER - - I'm afraid the birds were entirely upstaged by what I saw this am on my early morning walk.



We have a little floating bridge over the narrow point of our pond at present--which has a round part, a narrow neck and then a long ovalish part that extends northward-- (This bridge is soon to be replaced by a Monet style arched bridge that the spousal unit has been abuilding for several years off and on.) As I walk along the driveway on the south, round end of the pond on my way home, I have a nice view of this bridge. I noticed something dark moving there and stopped to look.

IT. WAS. A. GREAT. BIG. (EXPLETIVE GOES HERE). GLOSSY. BLACK. BEAR. It was moving slowly and carefully across this bridge. I snapped Po onto the leash pronto and just stood there. My studio is near there tucked into the woods, so I waited, ready to bolt for it if he turned toward me when he finished crossing, but he turned away and lumbered along the edge of the pond toward the ovalish, north part and the woods. I waited a minute or two and then scampered into the house.

Of course I had no camera with me, but I did take a picture later of the bridge and you can see if you look that the bridge supports and sides are darker where it is wet from sinking under the weight of the bear. I am astounded by how delicately and gracefully this huge animal crossed this narrow tippy thing -- I don't use it anymore -- I find it way too tippy!

You can see the cement stantions for the new bridge - slow but steady progress!

The geese, btw, circled very quietly in the center of the round pond while all this was going on!



A beautiful animal, but a bit intimidating!

>162 sibylline: - Wow! What an experience, Lucy. I wonder if your bear will like the bridge when it is done. I'd sure like to see a picture of that.

HOLY MOLY!!!!
Maybe your SU should be adding some extra support to the new one!

Yes, he had me look up what a full adult male weighs -- up to 600 plus pounds! But that would be, I think, in the autumn just before hibernation. 125 lbs. per paw though. He is going to think about it! The SU tends to overbuild so I expect it will be fine.

Holy Moly, indeed! Your property is so beautiful, Lucy. Love to see photos of it. The arched bridge will be incredible!

>162 sibylline: (EXPLETIVE GOES HERE)
Indeed! Wow.

Lovely pond. Our goose family looks about the same age as yours. I love having them hanging around.

A bear! Wow. Can't quite compute that!

This is as about as close as I want to get to one...

Michael Rosen reading 'We're going on a Bear Hunt'.
https://youtu.be/0gyI6ykDwds

OMG!!! A bit intimidating indeed!! I'm told there are bears around here (someone I know claims to regularly have them in her backyard) but I don't think they're likely to come onto the Institution grounds -- hope not anyway. They are beautiful but I prefer to admire them in photos or from a great distance.

We have a bear ambling through our neighborhood fairly frequently. Sometimes we see it, sometimes we just see the results of its nighttime excursions...torn-into garbage bags, wrecked bird feeders, etc.

>154 sibylline: What a lovely place!

>159 sibylline: Good to read all geese are still around.

>162 sibylline: A what?? Fortunately we have no black bears (or any other color) around...

How scarey to see a bear so close! I'm reading Bill Bryson's A Walk in the Woods, and apparently there is some disagreement as what is the best way to act if you catch a bear's attention, although it is known that black bears are good tree climbers (grizzlies aren't), so climbing a tree isn't much help in the case of black bears.

I read Station Eleven several weeks ago, and also loved it. Your review is wonderful, and expresses a lot of my feelings about the book.

Nice bear story! Beats our shark story to heck and back...

Wow, what an experience! Glad there was a mutual avoidance pact in effect.

Parts of NJ are somewhat overrun with black bear, including ours. We've had them in our driveway and back yard (though not since the fence went up...dogs, you know). We even had one climb into a tree in the neighbor's yard and sit up there for hours. Animal Control had a car sit on the street to keep an eye on it and warn people to steer clear but, so far, I've never heard of an incident where someone got hurt around here.

I still find it amazing how such an urban area can have so many deer, bear, coyote, fox, even a bobcat was spotted some years ago (though I didn't see it) that live in the small patches of woods and, yet, are only seen occasionally.

I agree! One can only admire how many of these animals have adapted to humans and how good they are at moving around unseen. The curious thing is that the animals that have adapted and live in suburban environments are less fearful of humans than the ones who live out in the kind of landscape we do -- people here have the right to shoot 'varmints' (fox or coyote) that get into their livestock anytime and in hunting season people are out there shooting the deer and bears and that keeps them more wary. It's a curious reversal. Vermont, apparently, has one black bear per 3 square miles (more than anywhere else in the east, but we don't see them all that much. They can't resist campsites and anyone careless with their trash is in for it, of course.

You would like that fox book I read recently, Tad -- in fact you might like a lot of the books I've read about some of these animals, a brilliant one about turtles, and several good ones about deer.

Wow, just WOW! Not even imaginable for us here. We have the very occasional smaller bears wandering from the less settled mountain areas over to Alto Adige, but usually they disappear again quickly to a place where they aren't likely to be categorized as "risk bear" and shot.
Now - should I wish for you that he stays in the area which I guess is a good sign for the wildlife situation or that he leaves quickly? I tend to the latter, very much so.

I've never seen a bear outside of Yellowstone, but in the Rockies I did see bear poop. The dog sniffed it and really wanted to stay as far away from it as possible - in fact, she wanted to depart the entire area immediately (smart dog, and we followed her lead). Twice I did see foxes right in the center of Denver, though. Both times were on quiet days just after big snowfalls.

The good news, Nathalie, is that black bears while not "harmless" are shy and mind their own business. The brown bears and grizzlies etc. of the west and Alaska are another matter altogether. Unless you attacked one yourself, or were perceived as threatening a cub, they will run off quickly. They likely won't even eat your cat unless you leave it out all night and it's a fairly stupid cat and the bear is very hungry. So I would like that you do wish that our bear live a long pleasant bearish life somewhere in the vicinity. I know I will never see a bear crossing that bridge again, or probably ever that close again, I've wandered this property for 35 years and never seen it. I seem to get to see something extraordinary about once a year if I'm out there paying attention. Of course, the beauty in the more ordinary form hits me pretty hard every day except when the temps are in the wayyyy minuses.

70. irish fic *****
Troubles J.G. Farrell

I've been sitting here racking my brains for the right way to approach what the experience of reading Troubles was like. Is it like the Brea Tar Pits? Is it the Hotel California? Is it like every disaster movie you've ever seen but happening in s-lo-w motion? Or those dreams where you revisit some house you knew as a child and find there are doors that open into marvelous and odd rooms you never knew were there.

There is never any question that a catastrophe of epic proportions is going to unfold. Firstly because it is 1919 in Ireland and if you know any Irish history at all you know that was the start of three years of miserable violence between the British and the Irish. Secondly, the story takes place in an immense (300 rooms!) formerly grand but now decaying hotel in Wexford, on the coast, run by an eccentric Englishman, Edward Spencer, who proves to be in a state of total denial about the inevitable. Thirdly, the main character, Brendan Archer, known mostly as 'the Major,' is another Englishman who fought in the war and has come to the hotel to woo the proprietor's daughter, Angela, whom he had met before the war and who has been writing to him ever since as if they were affianced. So the point of view is firmly English. Or is it? Archer arrives, he cannot figure out what is happening with Angela, he finds the hotel at turns maddening and even disgusting, at other times, beguiling. Time seems to move differently here in Ireland and for the Major, still deeply traumatized by the war, you can see that the mystery and the unworldiness of it is somehow captivating and soothing. I understand that Farrell was deeply interested in portraying the collapse of the British Empire (and continues to do so in two more related novels). Handled less well, the hotel would be little more than an allegorical stand-in for the neglect and overconfidence, the refusal to face facts and the apathy that characterizes the British upper classes at this time. From the moment you step into the Hotel Majestic with the Major, you too, begin to fall under its uncanny spell. At about the halfway mark the Major becomes aware that, "he no longer had the will-power to leave . . . all he could do now was allow himself to drift with the tide of events. Some strange insect had taken up residence in the will-power of which he had always been so proud, eating away at it unobserved like a slug in an apple."

The Majestic has so many public rooms--bars, parlours, sitting rooms, libraries, gun rooms, game rooms, card rooms, that finding his way around takes the Major months. Once very chic the hotel is now understaffed and mostly inhabited by a large group of elderly women, many refugees from the Empire, who have nowhere better to go. If the plumbing in a bathroom fails, you simply find another room. In winter, when it is freezing cold, the Major, finding a linen room that is near a source of heat and always hot, makes himself a nest and retires there often, removing his clothing and happily wallowing about! It is such unexpected revelations as these that fuel Troubles and make it so . . . unique. Downstairs, in the Palm Room the plants have taken over. Roots bulge through floors and walls. Strange cracking sounds are to be heard. Curtains rot and sofas are explosive with dust. On the top floors feral cats breed in legions. And yet, the place limps on, some of the niceties are still observed and even if the pool is filthy and the tennis court useless, breakfast, lunch, tea and dinner are still served formally. No one I've read in recent years except Iris Murdoch has captured the spirit of a building so completely until you realize that it is really the Majestic that the Major has fallen in love with and grieves for as it literally starts to collapse around him. The Empire? Yes and no. It is so much more than that, somehow through this hotel Farrell can show the grandeur and the folly, the charm and the evil of the Empire in its dotage. The Major, too, feels sympathy for everyone, Irish and Anglo alike and his bewilderment and continuing efforts to be a decent person throughout, is very moving. Farrell's metaphors are also exquisite and unexpected and apt. I've never read anything quite like it, such a perfect and relentless blend of humor and pathos. *****

Sorry this is so long! Also thoroughly edited!

71. ♬ mys ***1/2
When Gods Die C.S. Harris

Well, I am knitting my first (still not very) complicated project and these C.S. Harris mysteries combining a bit of Regency froth with the gore and puzzle are the perfect thing to listen to and still have some space left in the brain for counting stitches. Some books edify, some books entertain, this is definitely the latter. ***1/2

>181 sibylline: ooh, knitting! What are you working on?

A sweater - it's very simple, all one piece, and very pretty, very swingy if it all turns out as planned . . . the only things to attach will be the sleeves. I'm utterly obsessed, of course. Very pretty wool, silky cottony stuff with a bit of nubble.

>183 sibylline: nice! Depending on how obsessed you are, you might want to visit Ravelry. It's like LT for knitters (catalog your projects, yarn, patterns, etc. and interact with members in discussion forums). Here's my Ravelry page, although I'm not sure how much you can see without registering.

>180 sibylline: Troubles sounds wonderful. I've never read any Farrell.

72. mys ***1/2
Why Mermaids Sing C.S. Harris

Oh dear, oh dear, no excuse for it, I'm on an nonesensical jag. Silly, fun, and I think I am more interested in how St. Cyr's new valet is going to turn out than much of anything else. This 3rd in the St. Cyr series (try saying THAT fast ten times in a row!) was in a paperback book form lolling about in the bookshelf, so I felt obliged to read that quick before returning to the audio versions (and the knitting).

A thumb for the Troubles review and a renewed determination to get to it NOW - or relatively now. Thanks, Lucy!
(I'm a sucker for books set in hotels.)

>184 lauralkeet: I have visited Ravelry! I think I joined it too at some point --I've been working on simply learning how to read directions and do various stitches . . . fingers crossed that I will get through this project!

Should I use an Audible credit for the first St. Cyr mystery??

Hmmmm - -If you are in the mood for some relief from everything, yes! I like Davina Porter very much, she's the narrator, and I am very much enjoying this binge, I must admit. But binges are very much a matter of mood and necessity as you well know, but no harm in trying one and seeing how it goes? Since I've been in the habit of using credits for much longer books, it does feel a bit "wasteful" to buy a book that is "only" ten hours of listening!

Wonderful review of Troubles, Lucy. I thumbed it.

Great review - I've not read any Farrell but have one sitting on the shelf in a hopeful fashion...

Thumbed Troubles . Excellent review, Lucy. It's a book I've considered reading but it does sound complex and perhaps rather depressing.

Wow...great review of Troubles. I have that on my shelf, and in fact had it in my hand this afternoon, contemplating whether to read it soonish. I'm taking it as A Sign that I came across your review so soon afterward!