Ffortsa's Second for 2016

My intention this year, so far as it is possible with two standing book groups to read for, is to read off my own shelves. I hope to use the various challenges as an impetus in that regard.

Pulitzer Challenge
The AAC
Saint Maybe - Anne Tyler
The BAC
The CAC
The Doorstop
The Non-Fiction
and the monthly themes.




1. @ Blood Jungle Ballet - John Enright
2. ♬ The Death of Ivan Ilyich - Leo Tolstoy
3. ✔ Saint Maybe - Anne Tyler
4. @ An Officer and a Spy - Robert Harris
5. @ Eva's Eye - Karin Fossum
6. ✔ The Collected Stories - Amanda Cross
7. @ A Test of Wills - Charles Todd
8. ✔ Wings of Fire - Charles Todd
9. ✔ Search the Dark - Charles Todd
10. Ru - Kim Thuy
11. ♬ Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore - Robin Sloan
12. Legacy of the Dead by Charles Todd
13. The Compass of Pleasure by David J. Linden
14. Writing in an Age of Silence by Sara Paretsky
15. @ Occam's Razor - Archer Mayor
16. @ Washington Square - Henry James
17. @ The Marble Mask - Archer Mayor
18. The Wapshot Chronicle - by John Cheever
19. The Black Echo -Michael Connelly
20. The Black Ice - Michael Connelly
21. The Cuckoo's Calling - Robert Galbraith (sic)
22. The Silkworm - Robert Galbraith (sic)
23. @ Dangerous Liaisons - Pierre Choderlos de Laclos
24. @ Winterlude - Quentin Bates
25. @ The Nature of the Beast - Louise Penny
26. ♬ Zorba the Greek - Nikos Kazantzakis, read by George Guidall
27. @ The Concrete Blonde - Michael Connelly
28. @ Frozen Assets - Quentin Bates
29. The Sense of an Ending - Julian Barnes
30. The Post Office Girl - Stefan Zweig
31. @ Tucker Peak - Archer Mayor
32. Brotherhood in Death - J.D. Robb
33. The Girl on the Train - Paula Hawkins
34. @ Sons and Lovers - D.H. Lawrence
35. The Murder of Halland - Pia Juul
36. Open Season - C. J. Box
37. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? - Philip K. Dick
38. @ The Last Detective - Peter Lovesey
39. Borkmann's Point - Hakan Nesser
40. Thirteen Ways of Looking - Colum McCann
41. ♬ The Man Who Was Thursday - G. K. Chesterton
42. @ Diamond Solitaire - Peter Lovesey
43. @ The Summons - Peter Lovesey
44. @ Flaubert's Parrot - Julian Barnes
45. The Uncommon Reader - Julian Barnes
46. ♬ Invisible Man - Ralph Ellison
47. Kernel of Truth - Kristi Abbott
48. Murder of a Stacked Librarian - Denise Swanson
49. The Warden - Anthony Trollope
50. Devoted in Death - J. D. Robb
51. Poisoned Prose - Ellery Adams
52. The Marsh Madness - Victoria Abbott
53. ✔@ Robinson Crusoe - Daniel Defoe
54. City of Silver - Annamaria Alfieri
55. Main Street - Sinclair Lewis
56. Mind Over Murder- Allison Kingsley
57. The Last Word - Ellery Adams
58. The Secret Agent - Joseph Conrad
59. The Age of Doubt - Andrea Camilleri
60. Out of the Dying Pan - Linda Reilly
61. Into Oblivion - Arnaldur Indridason
62. A Killer Plot - Ellery Adams
63. ♬ A Room with a View - E. M. Forster
64. Our Man in Havana - Graham Greene
65. Coming Into the End Zone - Doris Grumbach
66. @ The Caller - Karin Fossum

Another intention, to visit more threads - I lost track of some folks this past year.

I'm carrying over the icons from last year to denote ebooks, library books, off the shelf, etc. which Bianca kindly provided.

♬ audiobook
✔ off the shelf
@ e-book
✨ shared TIOLI
✿ TIOLI
✗ slow read

If you want to use any of them, here are the readable codes - just eliminate the space in the second position.

& #x266C; audiobook
& #x2714; off the shelf
@ e-book
& #x2728; shared TIOLI
& #x273F; TIOLI
& #x2717; slow read

I've decided I really must catch up with the pictures I've been taking this year. So here is a sample. More to come!

In March, Jim and I were in San Francisco and we visited the Berkeley Museum, which was having its inaugural show, all about design in all its forms.

This is a NAVIGATIONAL MAP used by the people of the Marshall islands on their sea voyages.



Here is one of several astonishingly graceful and thin ceramic pieces by George Ohr. No one seems to know how he created such fine and fragile-looking pieces - the technique died with him.



And for another type of design, here's a quilt by Rosie Lee Tompkins

34. Sons and Lovers by D.H. Lawrence

Our Tuesday evening meetup discussed this tonight, and it wasn't surprising that so many attendees did not like it. Lawrence's interior style, his portrayal of not only a culture in the midst of change but a very young man struggling to come to manhood, can feel dated these days, and the group was split about half and half.

The first time I read this I must have been in college, but I have no memory of it. This time, I had trouble with it. Paul Morel is the kind of character that aggravates me, youthfully arrogant and insecure at the same time, willfully hurtful because of that insecurity. Someone compared the story to Joyce's Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, and I have the same trouble with that work. The whole narrative felt claustrophobic, which is on reflection how Paul must be meant to feel, surrounded by women who seem to want more from him than he can give, an industrial life that is repetitive and stifling, an adolescence for which he has no real role-model, an intellect above his surrounding culture, a future and ambition ill-defined.

The first few chapters of the book, and the last third, held my attention, but I caught myself nodding off in the middle (which of course may have been more my own fatigue than Lawrence's fault). I'm a bit sorry I didn't have a more formal course in which to study this and its historical place in the canon.

Happy New Thread, Judy!
Lovely designs, and I'm very taken with the navigational map, which is a beautiful thing and meaningful, no doubt, to somebody who could read it.
Sorry about you and Lawrence. I think I read this in the dim, dim past. I have no recollection of anything except maybe Paul Morel's name. Oh well.

Happy new one, Judy!

Happy New Thread, Judy!

>2 ffortsa: Cool stuff. I particularly like that navigational map.

Happy New Thread, Judy!

I love the Navigational Map (my in-laws had one of those from their time in the Peace Corps in Micronesia).
And I can comfortably skip Sons and Lovers, I think. ;-)

Hi Judy! Congrats on the new thread. I love the artwork photos, especially the Navigational Map. I remember reading Sons and Lovers and liking, but not loving it. Not sure I want a reread....

35. The Murder of Halland by Pia Juul

I hesitate to call this slim novel, translated by Martin Aitken, a genuine mystery, although that's where I found it in the library. A man is shot outside his own house while his lover is still sleeping. Who would have done such a thing? His lover keeps asking that question, even as she is questioned by the police, grieves for the daughter she hasn't seen in years, and ruminates about how she came to be here, in this relationship, in this place.

The first person narrative limits our view, of course, but I would not call Bess an unreliable narrator in the usual sense. She is struggling to understand the people around her, the town she lives in, the family she has left for love. The end is oblique, and surprising. An enjoyable and puzzling read.

36. Open Season by C. J. Box

Here is a much more conventional mystery, the first in the Joe Pickett series that I thought to try. Pickett is a young game warden up against familiar forces - hunters, would-be backwoodsmen and women, corrupt officials. With a tenuous hold on his job and a family to support, he can't afford to make another mistake. But one of those backwoodsmen has galloped into his yard at night and died on his woodpile, trying to bring him something. What did his bring? Who killed him? The characters are picturesque, but Pickett is still a little wet behind the ink. Or maybe I just like my detectives a little older and world-weary. I'll see how the next in the series goes.

Hello ffortsa! Happy new thread.

>9 ffortsa: I enjoyed Open Season. Are you a Longmire fan? He's definitely more world-weary. Especially in the TV series. :-)

>9 ffortsa: What a great review. I'm adding it to my list. I very much like the photos of items you enjoyed at The Berkeley Museum.

Happy Summer to you Judy!

Happy new thread!

>10 brodiew2:, >11 Whisper1:, >12 _Zoe_: Thanks for the kind words. And thanks for the fairyland, Linda.

Zoe, how is the move going?

>13 ffortsa: We did some minimal packing this weekend, but we're still hoping to find a mover who will pack everything for us. We've been away for most of the past few weeks, so not a lot has been accomplished lately. I guess the short answer would be that the move isn't really progressing? But the new apartment is basically livable already, so that's something.

Jim and I spent this last weekend in the Berkshires with friends from Boston, including Caro and Marianne and their spouses. We are a very talkative crowd, that's for sure!

The trip gave us a chance to see the Clark Museum, the Freylinghuysen/Morris museum and studio, Edith Wharton's home The Mount (our excellent guide was thrilled to have readers in the group), and to see two plays and a cabaret performance at Williamstown Theater Festival. The art was splendid, the plays interesting, the meals very good, (the cabaret LOUD).

Meetup pix are on Marianne's thread (MichiganTrumpet). I'll post some of my own photos here as the week wears on.

Here are a couple of fine figures I came across in Soho earlier this month:

Congratulations on the new thread, Judy!

>16 ffortsa: Nice! That looks like an Os Gemeo (the Brazilian bros.) on the right in the top one.

I envy you your Berkshires trip; we love that area. My wife, who grew up there, calls it the Clark Art Institute. I wonder whether they've changed the name? I tease her that it's "out in the middle of nowhere,", which always gets a rise out of her. What a great museum - world class.

>17 jnwelch: No name change to the Clark. I was careless. My apologies to your MBH. The museum has changed substantially with the newest addition - it's even more splendid now, but as Jim says, all the old friends are still on the walls.

If you get to the area this summer or fall, I strongly recommend the Freylinghuysen/Morris museum and studio in Lenox. (one 'n' or two? I can never remember.)

The two pictures in #16 are on the same wall, so perhaps they were done by the same artist, especially considering the eyes in both. It was quite thrilling to come across something so inventive.

Another day of extraordinary sleepiness. I got to the periodontist at 9AM, walked part-way home and made breakfast, and somehow got stuck in my recliner until 3:15. And I was so full of energy that first month of retirement!

Next up on my reading is Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep for my uptown F2F group. That should leave some time for other inspirations.

>19 ffortsa: I really need to read that one too. It's been on the TBR shelf for ages.

>19 ffortsa: Great, Judy. I've never heard of a book group doing Do Androids Dream. It's a good 'un, and differs in significant ways from the Blade Runner movie. Looking forward to what you think and what others say.

Meet up pics now posted over on my thread!!

>19 ffortsa: Don't be too hard on yourself, Judy. Retirement, and even more so, retirement as it was handed to you, is hugely stressful. It's a major, major life change and you are allowed to have days of "extraordinary sleepiness". Every day is different, as I've discovered, and energy levels seem to go all over the place.

I've never read Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep but love Blade Runner. I just went over to Amazon to check the book out, and the reviews say how very different the book and movie are from each other. I'll have to pick it up one of these days and see for myself.

>23 karenmarie: thanks for keeping an eye on my saga! It's always nice to have a guide, like Virgil in the Aeneid. Not that it feels anything like Hades at the moment! (except for the weather - we are going to cook this summer right on the sidewalk.)

>24 ffortsa: You're welcome. I didn't know whether I was coming or going for a while, but I did know that there was time to do the things I wanted to do without making myself crazy.

We're supposed to get very nasty hot and humid weather for the next 5 or 6 days. Indoors with books is my motto!

Judy Happy Retirement!!!!

>25 karenmarie: me too. Very hot here in NYC. I took a walk this morning, but took the subway home! Reading sounds perfect to me.

At Hadestown intermission right now--so good!

To follow up on my short comment from yesterday, I just want to thank you again for bringing that show to my attention. I honestly would have gone to see it a second time this week if it hadn't already been sold out for the rest of its run. At least there will be a cast recording to look forward to.

>29 _Zoe_: So glad you liked it!

Just popping in to stay current here. Off to check out the meet-up photos (so jealous!). Happy Saturday. Oh wait, everyday is a Saturday now!! Enjoy.

Hi Judy! This is just a quick hello to see how you're doing.

Thanks >31 Berly: and >32 karenmarie: ! All good here.

I thought a bit and took my big laptop into Microsoft and had them clean it up and put Windows 10 on it, in spite of the very kind warnings. I figured I'd have to do it sometime, and I wanted to upgrade my Office software anyway, so why not let them do the heavy lifting. Of course, I now have a year's service contract, and three years of Office 365 and half-price. Probably a sucker bet, but I'm glad to be up to date. The tech staff cleaned up my machine (it really needed it), and I intend to actually learn about this version of Windows instead of poking it and complaining.

now to books:

37. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep by Philip K. Dick

Wow. I read through this novella twice, and after the second time I was all set to start at the beginning all over again. I think it's marvelous. The more I read the book, the more nuance I found.

Rick Deckard is a bounty hunter who 'retires' androids who have escaped the human colony on Mars and travelled to Earth, an earth rendered a wasteland by a terminal world war. The radioactive dust that has contaminated all has not yet affected him biologically, but others who are so contaminated are considered unfit for migration, or much of anything else. Rick and his wife and others are sustained by self-selected electrical mood manipulation and an religion that acknowledges the hopelessness of life but provides a massive and supportive circuit of empathy. Androids, however, are missing the ability to empathize, even with each other, and this lack allows detection.

At first I was amused by the mix of futuristic predictions and seeming anachronisms - yes to self-programmed mood machines but also coin-operated wired telephones. But that unevenness in imagination is after all unimportant. More to the point, what is the value of a 'natural' person? How well-engineered does an android have to be before it's indistinguishable from a natural person? Will it someday be possible to engineer an android with all the emotional accoutrements of a human - what then?

Could there be a religion that would support a population witnessing the slow ending of the world? What would it be?

Who has the right to survive after world-wide self-destruction? What would we value in such a devastated world?

And of course, the analagous questions are about our own times: What constitutes a valuable person (especially in 1968, when this was published, and now, alas - do black lives matter)? What is the value of the living world? To what purpose are the various religions we honor, and how real are they, and how real do they have to be to be of value? How pure can our actions be, or are we as imperfect as the androids?

Written in the 60s, there are more than discreet echoes of questions of race, the impact of slavery, ecological danger, religion as opiate, opiate as opiate, denial versus reality, love and despair.

The story is so intense and visual it cries out for a movie treatment, which of course is the film 'Blade Runner' - with many changes. Read the book.

38. The Last Detective by Peter Lovesy

Needless to say, not like my previous read.

This is the first of the police procedurals featuring Peter Diamond, and the character was at first so distastefully represented that I couldn't tell if he was supposed to be a satiric representation, a buffoon, or genuine. I'm still not sure, but as many here like this series, I was determined to give it a fair trial. Our cranky protagonist makes all the usual bad guesses that policemen make in books where the independent detective is the real star, but he ultimately gets it right.

Eventually, I enjoyed the journey, which is good, since I already have books 2 and 3 on my Kindle.

Next book up for my Tuesday night f2f group is Marilynne Robinson's Housekeeping. I've read it before, but I can already tell from the first four chapters that rereading this will be a pure joy.

>37 katiekrug: Oh good, Judy. I'm another big-time fan of Do Androids Dream and, like you, I've read it more than once. Some time you might also enjoy the well-done graphic novel of it: https://smile.amazon.com/Androids-Dream-Electric-Sheep-Omnibus/dp/1608867846/ref...

Thanks, Joe. I've not yet become a graphic novel fan like you and Jim, but I'll get there one of these days!

Meanwhile, another mesmerizing read:

39. Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson

One of my favorites when I last read it, it holds up even more on a second reading. Using a breathtakingly beautiful style, so much so that I wanted to read it aloud, Robinson recounts the effects of loss on the family of two sisters, Lucille and Ruth, in a small town in Idaho. More than that, she describes the unavoidable and profound effects of inevitable loss on all of us, unavoidable because we are mortal, profound because mortality is profound and mysterious.

Robinson grounds her story in the specificity of mountains, lakes, small towns and family, the institutional loss of hoboes, travelers, drifters - and threads through this story the biblical history of loss - flood and exile. Ultimately, the characters must choose what they will fight to keep, what exile they will accept.

The more I read, the more I saw the parallels between the novel's events and the iconic stories of Noah, Ruth(!), from the Old Testament, the theme of loss and redemption from the New Testament, some explicit, some implicit. Aside from her fiction, Robinson is known as a Christian writer, but she doesn't push this in the reader's face; rather she refers to the stories as historical exemplars of our human condition.

A beautiful, hypnotic and tender story.

We are discussing it in one of our f2f groups tonight. I may add more afterwards.

I loved Housekeeping, too (the film is quite good, as well) - definitely one I want to re-read.

Another Housekeeping fan here. She's such a good writer.

39. Borkmann's Point - Hakan Nesser

Ah, a nice Scandi police procedural to cleanse the palate.

>33 ffortsa: Excellent review of Do Androids Dream, ffortsa! I have a dusty old paperpack in the garage that is now calling out it me. It may be a short enough book to help me over the my present slump.

Reading plans for the month:

- Invisible Man for the reading group meeting the second week of September. I've got my old edition from college (!) and I downloaded an audio version, so I can listen and read along.

- The Man Who Was Thursday for the reading group meeting the first Wednesday of September. I snagged an audio of this. I figure it will be great entertainment on our long vacation flight.

- Flaubert's Parrot, downloaded to my Kindle because so many of our group are reading it now.

- A Brief History of Seven Killings which I have in an uncorrected proof somewhere or other. (You would think in a 1 bedroom apartment things couldn't get lost. Ha!)

and I have Colum McCann's Thirteen Ways of Looking out from the library.

Alas, if my mood of this morning is anything to go by, sitting still to read may be problematic. Good thing some of this is on audio!

Hi Judy!

I have The Man Who Was Thursday on my shelves, so will be interested to see what you think of it.

I hope you get some good reading/listening in today.

I thought The Man Who Was Thursday was good old-fashioned fun, although it certainly will give your reading group plenty to talk about.

I'm going to be starting Seven Killings in about ten days in a mini-group read with Ellen and others.

>41 ffortsa: Thank you for setting me on to The Man Who was Thursday, ffortsa! This another example of LT shining light on things I have not seen before. This is very interesting.

>43 jnwelch: A Joe recommendation goes a long way. Who wouldn't want 'good, old fashion fun'?

How did I get anything at all done before I retired? Today I saw my dentist, picked up my glasses from the optometrist, walked home (have to get those steps in), realized I'd lost my Fitbit usb antenna, frantically logged on the fitbit help and finally synced my Zip with my phone. It's 1:34. I have an appointment at 3:30. My day is GONE. and I haven't read a page.

Yesterday, however, I did read a page. In fact, I read

40. Thirteen Ways of Looking by Colum McCann.

What to say? This story of an old man mulling his life and current situation was clever, and kept me reading, and had a reasonable resolution, but it was more like a puzzle to be solved than a satisfying read. As he did in Let the Great World Spin, he alternates point and time of view, so that part of the ending is telegraphed well in advance. I liked the use of Wallace Steven's '13 Ways of Looking at a Blackbird' poem to set off the chapters, but that's mostly because I love Stevens.

I grabbed this volume at the library because I had heard McCann speak last year and so was interested in the results he spoke of. There are several short stories in the volume that I might also read, but there's something about McCann's writing that floats away from me. Can't quite put my finger on it. Anyone else have a thought about his writing?

>45 ffortsa: Hi Judy! Famous last words. I'm finding the same thing. Today is some reading and posting on LT, then some US women's soccer, then visiting a friend, then dinner with other friends, and that's about it. How time flies!

>45 ffortsa: - Re: McCann, I've only read TransAtlantic but I loved it. I have several more of his on the TBR, so I'll be interested to see how he strikes me overall.

Hi Judy - I've loved most of the McCann I've read, although Zoli didn't hit the heights of either Transatlantic or Let the Great World Spin. I also heard him speak a couple of years ago - really a charming guy. I loved the old man story you mentioned but can't remember any of the others (but that's always been my problem with short stories).
Hope you're staying cool!

Sounds like you have excellent books lined up for August! I'll just be happy if I finish the books I've been reading for months now. :)

Hm I'm thinking about the value of a relatively tech-free vacation. I'll have my phone, of course (isn't it implanted in my body?), and I have a netbook I could take, although I don't want to spend that much time online. I'd take it mainly to read LT threads and not get even more hopelessly behind than I am already (see threads for Mark, Darryl, Mamie, Paul C., Amber, etc.) I think I have enough room for the audio books on my iPod, and I could get the Audible app for my phone, so I should be able to do without the netbook.

Besides, I need to take some exercise stuff with me. For rather murky reasons, many of my muscle spasm problems have reoccurred this month. My old chiropractor has retired, and I have visited a new one who may not have all the different techniques to hand that my old one did. He really rescued me from very serious problems about 25 years ago. So I'm planning to take a short foam roller and some small hard rubber balls I use as a sort of floor massage tool. This might all be because I'm waiting to put a new tooth in place, but being a pretzel can cause fit problems with that. A delicate balance.

I'll take my camera, although I suspect my phone is sufficient. Very few real books - thank goodness for Kindle.

Tomorrow I go to the storage locker (hope the heat breaks by then) to get my larger suitcases, and pick which one to take. I do hate packing, especially for climates different from the one I'm living in at the moment, but I'll take my silk long underwear for the glacier trips and that should help. I'll certainly appreciate the milder weather forecast for the Alaskan coast.

I've started listening to The Man Who Was Thursday. Pretty sure I'm missing a lot of the jokes that were topical at the time in Chesterton's day, so if Jim can find his footnoted edition, I'll go back and read it when we get back from vacation. Invisible Man comes along in paperback and audio. Thank goodness for all the unread stuff on my Kindle. Alaska is a long, long flight from New York.

Vacation starts tomorrow, before the crack of dawn. I be so behind on the threads when I come back! Don't you all go galloping off without leaving a trail of bread crumbs.

Have a great trip, Judy! Can't wait to hear all about it.

I be so behind on the threads when I come back!

I'm so glad I'm not the only one who thinks this when I go away for awhile ;)

Enjoy your vacation, Judy!

I'm another fan of Housekeeping. And I haven't read Thirteen Ways of Looking but I loved TransAtlantic and Let the Great World Spin.

Yes, you'll be behind on threads when you return (I was!) but it's okay. Just don't do what I did and catch a virus as a way of finagling some free time to catch up. Ha!

I hope your trip was as magnificent as was mine. I can't wait to hear about it.

>54 EBT1002: Our trip was lovely. The only thing I regret is having so little time in Denali. We haven't done a lot of 'tour' traveling, so the travel time on the land portion of our trip didn't register until we were doing it, alas. We ended up with an afternoon in Fairbanks, then an early 4 hour bus ride to Denali Princess, an afternoon there, a 4 hour train ride the next day to Mt. McKinley Princess, an afternoon there, and the next day a bus ride to the boat.

The cruise portion of the trip was fine, lots of pampering, lots of glaciers and excellent weather. In fact, we took a trip to the Misty Fjords but they weren't the least bit misty!

We didn't get a breathtaking look at Denali mountain itself, but I did spy it on the flight to Fairbanks, thrusting above the clouds.

I hope yours was fun and you didn't get all the rain we were told about when we arrived.

Photos and more comments when I get my act together.

There was some time for books on the trip.

41. The Man Who Was Thursday by G. K. Chesterton

Discussion to come on Wednesday, so I'll keep quiet for now. I listened to it, and wished I'd had an annotated edition, since a lot of it seems referential to either Chesterton's life or Christian theology.

42. and 43.: Diamond Solitaire and The Summons by Peter Lovesey.

I had these two on my Kindle and no real interest in any deep reading with all that wonderful landscape around me, so I read them while waiting for things to happen. Lovesey's detective is flawed in ways that don't endear him to me, so I doubt I'll be pursuing this series.

44. Flaubert's Parrot by Julian Barnes

I'll reserve comments until after I look at the common thread for this month.

Hi Judy! Welcome back.

I was going to say I had given up on the Peter Diamond series, but when I looked at my catalog just now, I have read the first 5 and given them all 4 stars. I have 4 of the last 11, but have no urge to go back to them now - too many other exciting things to read! There will be a day and time when I pick up The Vault and continue on.....

Jim (magicians_nephew), Zoe and I had a mini-meetup last Sunday for brunch in Manhattan. Last chance before the move was finished.

Thanks for posting the picture! I'll steal it for my own thread shortly.

Great meetup photo! Where are you?

>60 jnwelch: We met at a little place called UVANYC on 2nd Avenue and 78th Street. They have a delightful back yard and a decent, if somewhat restricted, menu for brunch. Reasonable prices (for NYC) and a really mean Mary's Revenge cocktail.

>61 ffortsa: Nice! :-)

Well, I need to start reading Invisible Man for the second week in September. I've got ten days, which should be enough, but Jim was saying he's finding it a slog. avoiding it has been abetted by a found copy of The Uncommon Reader, which I'm about half finished with. It's a little twee for me. I can only imagine what the Queen thought of it.

And a guest is coming. My sister should ring the doorbell any minute now, and we have a rather full weekend planned, with a family wedding in New Jersey. So I'm going to have to buckle down when possible. I have it both paper and audio - maybe that will make it less sloggy.

A minor annoyance - my checkbook register in Quicken doesn't match my online account. Not a lot off, and the site was having trouble, but all the entries are from the site, so what could be wrong? This happens from time to time, but it's usually my fault. A pain to track down.

And my ergonomic grief has reappeared. I don't know why I thought it wouldn't - my setup at home isn't nearly as good as the one at work. So I bought a used Zody chair, which is what I had in the office, and I've just ordered the Microsoft Sculpt ergonomic keyboard. It's not quite as big as the one I had in the office, but I really don't need the keypad attached and it will save space on the desk. I may have to get a keyboard tray, but that is more complicated because of the distance I'd need from the edge of the desk. Oh well. After the keyboard arrives - possibly today - and the chair, in a few weeks - and I get my replacement tooth next week, and I spend time at the chiropracter's getting everythimg back in the right places, I should be ok. Patience, patience.

ah, adventures. So I needed to reset my fitbit - bluetooth had gotten messed up on my phone, so I needed to pull the fitbit battery out. But I couldn't unlock the battery door. Tried everything. It just wouldn't release. So I thought, maybe it's off the track for some reason. Maybe if I hit it just lightly with a hammer....

sigh. It was just a little tap! If I'd known it was this fragile, I would have really swung at it, just to get my frustrations out.

I discovered that the green fitbit zip is either the most popular on the planet, or they had a manufacturing problem. Finally found one in Soho and just finished reinstalling. Now I think I will take a hard swing at the old one - it has a pretty new battery in it that I can save. Oh well.

In the course of this, I discovered that my PC is too old to have a built-in bluetooth connection, and I'd have to get an adapter. So I used the dongle that comes with the zip, but I'm disappointed. One of these days, I'll take a hammer to the PC and get a new one.

oh, and I finished
45. The Uncommon Reader by Alan Bennett

This is a novella fantasy of Queen Elizabeth II developing a habit of reading that gradually increases her empathy and makes her restless in her role. Light and fun, probably more of a giggle for Brits than for me. But it does point out that reading, especially reading the classics, is a humanizing and creative act. But we knew that already, didn't we?

>58 ffortsa: What a wonderful photo!

>64 ffortsa: Yikes, technology is daunting at times. Lehigh continues to change computer programs, I think they do it just for the heck of it. It wastes so much time learning the new programs when the previous ones were just fine. There seems to be a rebellion on campus regarding their new email settings. People are refusing to change. I think it wouldn't be so bad if the work load wasn't so heavy.

>64 ffortsa: I'm sorry for your tech woes, Judy. I can just picture you tapping your Fitbit.....

I really liked The Uncommon Reader. It was humorous and entertaining and even a bit thought-provoking.

Ditto, Judy. I'm glad that you ended up having a good time with The Uncommon Reader.

Improvements are happening. My new Fitbit is set up and working (8500 steps so far today), my new ergonomic keyboard is working and comfy (could be lower, I think, but right now, ok). And I did smash the old Fitbit and retrieved the battery.

Saw a friend of mine currently in the hospital, and among other things he was touting the Fujitsu scanner currently on the market. A bit pricey, of course, and it has an odd negative, in that it will only connect to one machine at a time through wifi, and if you want to change that, you have to use the USB cable and essentially install it on the second machine. We've got two in active use, so for that price I think I'll wait for developments.

And I started listening to Invisible Man today, read by Joe Morton. So far, he's doing a fabulous job. I put it down only because I'd reached a point I vividly and painfully remember, and thought I'd catch my breath before tackling it. What writing!

Re that wedding this weekend, it was a completely over the top New Jersey wedding that I thought would permanently destroy my eardrums. We snuck out early and missed the torch procession to the dessert buffet. Happy for her, and glad it's done with. At least I saw some cousins I could talk to at breakfast the next day.

Nice meetup pic!

I'm two thirds of the way through Invisible Man, and for anyone thinking of reading it, I strongly suggest Joe Morton's recording. It has a rhythm and variety that just carries me along. Highly recommended.

>64 ffortsa: "sigh. It was just a little tap!" I shouldn't be laughing, perhaps, but I am nonetheless!

I have long been wanting to read Invisible Man; I feel rather sheepish not to have done so yet. Joe Morton as narrator is pretty good, eh?

Hi Judy - I love Invisible Man. Maybe it's time for a reread. I'll be anxious to hear what your group thinks of it.

>71 EBT1002: and >72 BLBera: yes. Just to be clear, this is the novel by Ralph Ellison, not the science fiction book with a similar title. Morton is terrific. I'll definitely post something after Tuesday.

45. Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison

Okay! I've just finished this towering novel, listening throughout to Joe Morton's narration. It's easy to see why reading it in my old edition, from my college years and probably in 7 point type, might have bogged me down, because the jazz rhythms are so important and often carry the listener by their sheer momentum through what might seem repetitive on the page . Morton gives each character its own voice and cadence, which makes the dialog clear and the characters vivid and diverse.

The story is a classic Bildungsroman, detailing the growth of a naive character through episodes that both damage and enlighten him. It is also an existential novel of a man struggling to gain self-knowledge too often through the definitions of others, until he has no choice but to look deeply into himself. The episodes are brilliantly delivered, from the first abysmal racist entertainment to the last riot in Harlem. Some of them made me wriggle with discomfort or anger or impatience at this innocent man's blindness; that might speak to my own naivety as much as anything.

Some details that are relevant: it is set in the thirties, principally in Harlem; the times are infused with the aftermath of the depression; the Great Migration north; the growing ideology of socialism; the racism we still cannot escape. References that might be somewhat obscure to a current reader: Marcus Garvey and Booker T. Washington as two models of behavior promulgated from within the black community.

Some details that are delightful: trolley cars on 125th Street! Double-decker buses. Wide-shouldered suits. And a time when $300 was a fortune with which to pay back rent and board and still have money left over for a new suit of clothes. Hot sweet yams from a corner cart - but maybe they still sell those in Harlem.

I was afraid the book would not hold up after so many years; I was mesmerized.

I may revisit this to relate how our reading group (almost always not racially diverse) grapples with it tomorrow.

Great review of Invisible Man, Judy. I'll be interested to hear what your reading group makes of it.

(almost always not racially diverse)

Interesting. I would have thought it would be easy to gather a multicultural group in Manhattan.

>75 kidzdoc: I always found Manhattan neighbourhoods surprisingly not diverse, certainly in comparison to Toronto.

>74 ffortsa: - I read Invisible Man in high school and liked it very much, but I know a lot went over my head and I would probably get more out of it now. You have me tempted by the audio......

>75 kidzdoc: Self-selection often creates a fairly homogeneous group. Our Tuesday group is mainly, but not entirely, middle-aged (can I still say that here? let's say 40s to 60s), predominantly but not overwhelmingly female, and almost entirely white. This Tuesday's group contained one Asian, no other minorities or immigrants.

Our other reading circle has slightly better balance - two African Americans in fairly regular attendance, and a smaller group anyway.

One of our Tuesday group mentioned almost immediately that he wished some of our attendees were part of the African American community. I think he was right. There was quite an emphasis on how invisibility is a problem for everyone. Sigh. Yes, Ellison's book has an existential thread, and his protagonist ends in an especially existential circumstance, but there's no disputing the specificity of the events of this journey, and the cultural strains in this country. Sure, these days people who look 'Muslim' are more likely to trigger outsized reactions, but I think this is a complication of our original 'racial' society, where people from Africa and people native to North American were demonized, dehumanized, and categorized.

Sorry, a little tirade from white privilege.

The attendees to the discussion thought the book either a masterpiece or occasionally uneven. Everyone commented on the vivid episodes, and the details of the story were really clear in their minds. It was a good session.

My book club isn't very diverse either. It's just Morphy and a friend of mine. But we have fun.

47. Kernel of Truth - Kristi Abbott
48. Murder of a Stacked Librarian - Denise Swanson

The first of these was a delightful cozy, the first of a series that I hope to enjoy more of. The second was a dead loss - I wonder if someone has written a mystery about a writer of overwritten, obvious mysteries. Oh well.

Meet Up picture just put up over on my thread! So very good to see you and Jim! We just adore you both! And thanks for introducing us to Rich and Kate!

I've been posting more regularly here, but that may change for a while. I've run into some ergonomic issues and will try to stay away from the keyboard and mouse until the necessary equipment arrives, and I stop hurting. Nothing life-threatening, of course. Just a pain in the neck and other places!

Hi Judy! Take of yourself first. I hope you get the right equipment soon!

>83 karenmarie: Thanks. It may be a long haul, as my recent dental work may also be involved. Just stopped in to take a peek.

Dang woman! I am finally getting back into the LT swing of things and now you're gone! I hope you are ergonomically fixed real soon. Good luck. Sorry about the Fitbit. : (

>85 Berly: I'll be back soon. Thanks for checking in with me.

Did you and Jim see Hamilton, Judy? I suspect you did. We were just at its opening night in Chicago and LOVED it.

>87 jnwelch: Nope. The prices are astronomical, since we weren't members of Public Theater and didn't see the scoop on the first round. Lucky you! Almost worth flying to Chicago.

>82 ffortsa: update. It looks like most of my physical idiocies have settled down, partly because I haven't been computing, and will continue to take it easy for a while. So wouldn't you know, I've been reading!

49. The Warden by Anthony Trollope

I read this the first time not too long ago, but my Tuesday F2F group is discussing it next week, so I thought I'd refresh my memory. Second time was definitely worth it. Trollope conspires deliciously with the reader to set up the characters in the first of his Barsetshire novels. The Warden is taxed to defend his right to the large income that comes with caring for a dozen poor retirees, and that gets in the way of his friendship with the Bishop, his relationship with his very precise and disputatious son-in-law, his daughter's romantic involvement with a perfectly lovely man, and his own peace of mind. Trollope manages to skewer the Anglican Church, the legal profession, the business of journalism and public opinion with lovely, snarky writing.

I suspect I read books like these the first time in a frenzy to get the characters straight and the plot worked out. This time, knowing more, I luxuriated in the snark. If you have any inclination to read 19th century romps, I strongly recommend this one.

50. Devoted in Death by J. D. Robb

Another round with Roark and Dallas and a pair of serial killers in futuristic New York. Fine bubblegum with the usual flavors.

A note for anyone not seeing my posts on Facebook. We had a marvelous run of theater last week (not rivaling our Brit-mad folks, of course).

- "Beautiful" - the bio of Carole King. Normally I skip this sort of feel good theater, but we had guests from Australia. And it is definitely feel good theater, and the music is of course great.

- "A Taste of Honey" - A revival of a gritty, breakthrough British play from the fifties, done beautifully at the Pearl Theater.

- "Nat Turner in Jerusalem" - The last night of the rebel Nat Turner, as he copes with a white lawyer looking for conspiracies, a white jailer more than a little afraid of his charge, his faith, his actions and his passions for freedom and revenge. A powerful performance. For almost all of the 100 minute play, the actor playing Turner is in chains. I kept thinking of how the actor must have felt preparing for this. At New York Theater Workshop.

Tonight we are seeing "The Color Purple", also with our Australian visitors. Then some peace and quiet.

>89 ffortsa: Hi Judy! I have Trollope on my shelves and, having just read Great Expectations and realizing I might not read any more Dickens, possibly ever, might pull The Warden. I love snark.

Like your 'less computing', I need to spend less time on my cell phone, according to my chiropractor. I already knew this, but she mentioned it again yesterday. I do have a bit of arthritis in my thumbs, but it is aggravated by playing on my cell phone. Sigh. Well, if you can do it, I can do it too!

I am out in the sticks and envy you your access to theater. When I lived in LA, there was a group of us that went to theater - both large and intimate venues and loved it. A friend and I always buy the Chapel Hill Playmakers' season tickets and so have 6 plays to look forward to between now and April.

I hope "The Color Purple" was wonderful and enjoy the returning peace and quiet!

>91 karenmarie: Hi, KarenMarie! Sorry Great Expectations didn't live up to yours. I generally like the better of Dickens's work, but I had GE shoved into me in high school by a teacher who outlined the entire plot on the board before we started. Definitely a hostile act. Have you read any other Dickens? I'd suggest A Tale of Two Cities and Bleak House, or if you like an author's righteous anger, Nicholas Nickleby. I was amazed when I read the last of those, how quickly it flew by, how angry the narration is.

Yeah, I'm guilty of the cell-phone blues too. Arthritis in both thumbs, and since retiring, I've been living a little compulsively on the phone. It doesn't help.

Sometimes I long to be out in the sticks for a few days, just for the quiet and the air. When we were in Alaska in August, the clear air was a revelation. Coming back to New York, not so much. Is there any good theater a driveable distance from you?

As for "The Color Purple", aside from some trouble with amplification in the first actv(fuzzy and loud), it was really, really good. The set alone was worth the tickets for a theater junkie like me, so simple and flexible, just wood plank playing levels and a wooden back wall that opened to allow shielded entrances and exits. Great voices. I should have listened to the score before I came, as I missed a lot of words, but the story is clear enough, and the singers have amazing voices (they didn't need any amplification as far as I could tell - what power!). I haven't seen the movie or read the book, but had some knowledge of the story beforehand and that was more than enough.

Now I get quiet days and nights until Tuesday, when we get together to discuss The Warden.

Ha. I've spent much more time on the cell phone since retiring in January. I need to start listening to NPR more - by that I mean that if I've got WUNC playing on my cell phone I'll be less inclined to play games on it concurrently.

I live about 45 minutes from Chapel Hill - that's where our Playmakers' tickets are. There's also DPAC in Durham, where I've seen some ballet and some traveling Broadway shows over the years. There's a venue about an hour and a half away, in Raleigh, where we saw The Lion King and Cirque du Soleil - when daughter was young.

The closest movie theater is 40 minutes away, and they don't play too terribly much that interests me - maybe one or two movies a year. Thank goodness for books!

>93 karenmarie: well, at least there are ways to get movies at home these days.

Listening to NPR, or just my own music, would help me too, I think. Also what would help is uninstalling Candy Crush. One of these days...

I should uninstall Clockmaker and Monster Bashers.....

51. Poisoned Prose by Ellery Adams

A nice cozy mystery in the seaside town of Oyster Bay (not the one on Long Island), featuring a restaurant owner and her police chief lover. No proof, but I suspect this is set in North Carolina. The story includes Appalachian storytellers and a genetic mutation that gives people blue skin, something I have heard about, so it wasn't nonsense. But the usual motives of passion, envy, and greed are reliably employed. A pleasant read.

Oh rats. I took a bag of books to the library yesterday as a donation, and forgot to mark them gone. Oh well, mostly business books. I doubt I'll wonder where they go.

In my poetry meet-up today, we read "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock". The leader is a Ph.D. and published poet, and she did her dissertation many years ago on the influence of Edward Fitzgerald and "The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam" on T. S. Eliot; our slow reading and rereading of Prufrock led me to the opinion that it is about the anxiety of influence as much as about anything else. Said leader invited me to read her dissertation, in which I gather she claims that it is a parody of the Fitzgerald. Opinions around the table varied.

Glad you're enjoying your theater trips! I love the theater...I'm thinking of getting season tickets for my mom's Christmas present next year. The Guthrie theater is pretty well known in the Upper midwest. I'm going to go see Sense and Sensibility on October 23rd, regardless of whether I buy season tickets, though!

>73 ffortsa: and >74 ffortsa: I was pretty sure it was the one by Ralph Ellison that you were reading. I have a copy on my shelves. Your comments make me want to bump it up on the read-soon list!

In college, "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" was my favorite poem.

a moment to vent re: Quicken help, Chase help, Windows 10 obscurity, technology in general. !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

>100 ffortsa: - Oh dear.

Hi Judy! Love your theater updates... I am getting excited about having ready access to excellent opportunities. Dallas has gotten a lot better, but can't compare at all....

>100 ffortsa: Uh oh.

>100 ffortsa: When technology gives us fits it is scarier than it used to be because we rely on it so heavily. I had my own woes with Windows 10 earlier this year when I upgraded after being badgered by Microsoft via pop ups for months and months, only to learn from Dell that my particular model of laptop was incompatible with Windows 10. $249 later for a 1-year Dell Tech Concierge contract and about 20 hours on my part, I got back to 8.1. I'm going to keep this computer as long as I can.....

>101 katiekrug: Katie, can't wait to go to the theater with you!

>102 EBT1002: and >103 karenmarie: and then I had to reboot my modem because I lost my internet connection. At least that worked.

Last night I found an email from my bank asking me to 'validate' that I wanted to download data to Quicken. They couldn't show me a pop-up message online?? I hope this means the downloads will work next time. In the meantime, I have to get some education on the curious differences between Windows 10 and Windows 7. As a retired techie, I really don't like it when software is too 'helpful' and leaves me wondering what exactly is going on!

Jim finally straightened out my printer connection for me. He always makes it seem easy. Of course, then he disappeared to the health club for longer than advertised. I was a little out of control.

And so I took some time to scan family photos. It's hard to toss the less than perfect ones, or the ones that are strictly contextual when the context is no longer meaningful. But I did it. Too many to keep. I'm planning to keep the ones I have scanned for a while in hard-copy, and eventually catalog the negatives (my cousin said "negatives? what are they?") in case we want reprints or enlargements. My father had made a series of internegatives for large format photographs he put on the wall, some quite large. I have some of them, but they tend to fade, so having the internegatives is useful.

It's cool and cloudy here, and Jim is working from home because of a water main break near the office. Maybe I'll get a little more scanning done today.

52. The Marsh Madness by Victoria Abbott

A funny little mystery in the Book Collector Mystery series. It's really a cozy set in upstate New York, centering on a young woman from a con artist family who has decided to 'go straight', but who falls into all these murderous adventures. ok for what it is. And back to the library it goes!

I need to do a better job of scanning and cataloging photos or everything will be lost to a mess of FB and other un-backed up stuff. Way to go scanning your pictures in. That takes a lot of time.

>106 The_Hibernator: pretty tedious, but I'm trying to capture at least the best of them. Thanks.

So my wrist is telling me I should get off the computer, or at least not use the mouse (yeah, try that!), and my bridge afternoon was aggravating, and tomorrow is Yom Kippur and I'm not in the mood to contemplate anything, especially my sins. Grump.

Take care of that wrist, Judy! You want to be able to hold books, of course.

Grr. Wrist contines to be a problem, but at least my chair arrived. Not only is it the same style as the one I had at work, but the color of the seat cushion just happens to match the walls. The keyboard tray had better get installed this weekend.

I went gallery hopping with my cousin the (east coast) artist, and had a really good time, only to head home to find I'd lost my metrocard (subway card, for you out of towners) again. It's a special senior card, so I can't just buy a new one at the subway kiosk, but had to report it missing and wait for them to send me another. It's not such a big deal, but it does make me feel stupid and a little old to be so careless.

On the reading front, I finished
53. Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe

I wish I could say I liked this classic, but it was a something of a chore to read. Not that it dragged, although I found it wordy, and a little too Puritan for my taste, although I understand the source of that theme in historical terms. It was fascinating to see how he learned to do the things he needed to do to survive well on his island, and how long he persisted in learning the more difficult crafts. But the whole Friday story, the ultimate rescue with its naive story line, the recounting of the recovery of his monies, etc. didn't interest me. The last vital scene to me, the attack by the wolves crossing the Pyrenees, was amazing, but I was glad to reach the end of the book.

54. City of Silver by Annamaria Alfieri

It took me a while to get into this historical mystery, set in Potosi, Peru during the time the Spanish controlled and exploited that part of the world.

Potosi is essentially a mining town set below a mountain of silver ore, and people have been mining the silver for decades. The people who had been getting rich sending the silver to the King of Spain are facing the exhaustion of the mine. Rumors claim the coins created in Potosi are not made of silver alone, which reduces the value of the coins. For this reason and others, the Visitador (civil authority) and a representative of the Inquisition are paying the town a visit.

While this is going on, two headstrong young women are fighting with their families for very different reasons, and both end up in the convent of the the Abbess Maria Santa Hilda. When one of them is found dead and barricaded in her cell, an apparent suicide, the Abbess, her community, her friends all fall under the scrutiny of the Inquisitor.

The story is part romance, part history, part mystery. Once the basics had been laid down, the pace picked up and I was able to enjoy the chase. And while the ending was a little peremptory, the resolutions were satisfying.

>110 ffortsa: Hi Judy! Sorry about your wrist still troubling you. And losing your subway lifeblood is terrible. I hope you've already gotten a replacement for it.

I'll probably pass on Robinson Crusoe but will put City of Silver on my wishlist.

Happy Saturday!

>111 ffortsa: That looks interesting for the historical aspect.

55. Main Street by Sinclair Lewis

I couldn't tell sometimes if this story of early 20th century small town morals and social pressures was feminist or mocking.

Carol, a young woman who has lost her parents, becomes a librarian in St. Paul and meets an older country doctor. She marries him without really understanding the constrictions of small town life. Her attempts to renovate the town are peremptory and mostly failures, given the very conventional nature of the community. Her husband is loving but does not share her intellectual cravings. After a son is born, she escapes for a time to Washington, D.C. but work there is not much more fulfilling. After an extended visit from her husband, she is once more pregnant and returns to their small town of Gopher Prairie, determined to do as much as she can to improve the social freedoms, especially for women.

Lewis's descriptive powers are impressive - the country itself leaps off the page over and over again. Carol and some of the other characters are very transparently drawn, so that you can see their thoughts, especially Carol's, as they struggle between ambitions and realities. The observations of prejudice and mean-spirited attitudes toward the poor have not become any less relevant today, alas, although I suspect the small towns have changed a great deal since the 1915-20 era.

56. Mind Over Murderby Allison Kingsley

A cozy purporting to also be a paranormal, but not so much. Not really worth the time spent.

>115 ffortsa: - I hate when I regret reading a book. Such a waste...

The Wayne survived his first week :) I'm back in Dallas now, but chomping at the bit to get back up there permanently!

>115 ffortsa: Hi Judy! Do you always finish a book once you start it? Just curious. Last night at book club, one of the women had read I am Radar because the back cover/premise sounded wonderful and kept reading because she can't put a book down, kept thinking it would tie up nicely and redeem itself but it never did. It was 672 pages! I usually drop books like hot potatoes if they don't continue to interest me.

>117 karenmarie: I usually finish books, unless they are so upsetting that I can't continue. That's happened a couple of times. This one wasn't objectionable, just not worthy of further pursuit.

I haven't posted in a little while, although I have been reading. Partly, I've been too busy, partly I've been away at Mohonk Mountain House for the Words weekend, partly I've been too disheartened by a conviction that my easy retirement has been shelved in favor of political work and attention.

I'll post some pictures from Mohonk when I get the chance. It was a stunning weekend, but I couldn't enjoy it as much as usual as I had a real crash after the election. Working the polls was really interesting, but it was, as advertised, a 5AM to a 10:30PM workday with barely time for a run to the bathroom. As my first time doing this job, it was quite a trial by fire. I'll be sure to do it again for next year's mayoralty race.

But I am very anxious about the results of this election, especially as the incoming team seems to be a bit in disarray, shall I say. Maybe that won't be so bad.

I'm looking for ways to participate in political life. Today I'm headed to a lunch and discussion sponsored by the League for Women Voters. Just a taste of the possibilities.

>119 ffortsa: I'm looking for ways to participate in political life.
Post what you figure out? I'm looking for ways too, that I realistically have time for and that won't be too scattered.

>120 qebo: Well, as it happens, I've joined the League of Women Voters. They were having a lunch and guest speaker on Thursday, right near my place, so I went to get a sense of the group. Most of the women there were older (and note that I'm almost 68), but some were younger and some were new as I was. And all of them were feisty as all get-out. The League is non-partisan (although in this town mainly Democratic or Green Party or Working Families, etc.) And they are geared toward investigating and establishing their opinions and recommendations on specific issues.

There are a number of working groups I hope to investigate, one centered on affordable housing, a big issue in this city. As part of their efforts, they have developed a detailed knowledge of the community boards across NY, and I might learn something about this place I live in and how to have an influence on local and state issues.

I think I mentioned before that I've made plans to volunteer with a small non-profit that works with homeless women and families, many of which were involved with the military or the law or both. Definitely a local effort, and I'm not sure what I can do, but the head wants to talk to me about determining what data they need collected to present for more funding, etc.

I have a friend, Loren Shlaes, who is very active now in what might be called remote influence -which people to call in Washington, for instance, to register a protest. For instance, I called the House Oversight Committee yesterday and recorded a message exhorting them to examine conflicts of interest for Trump and the White House staff. It looks like the callers blew the system yesterday. Clearly got their attention. Phone calls are much more effective than emails, petitions, or the endless clicks and reposts we see on Facebook. You can look Loren up on Facebook and see her activity and postings.

That's about as far as I've gotten. As I seem to have a knack for stating complicated ideas simply, I might have something to offer.

Really cutting into my reading time!

Note that I having yet approached any party affiliated groups. I'll wait and see a little on that one. My choice would be the Dems, but I don't know the array of political 'clubs' in the city and understand the one nearest me is the most internally political (meaning a lot of infighting, at least in the past). I think I'd rather work on issues.

Oh, about the speaker at the LWV. He was Errol Louis, a political analyst who appears on CNN and a local station here, NY1. He's also involved with one of the journalism schools here in the city, and a bunch of other things, as well as op ed pieces and essays, etc. Wonderful speaker, about the election, of course. Does not think we ought to abolish the electoral college, by the way. For reasons I don't yet understand, he feels it will increase the likelihood of effective voter fraud. Some of the women at the meeting felt that it would make their votes 'count' more so more candidates would campaign here (the inclusion of 2 extra electors representing senators along with the number of congresspersons means that some thinly populated states are over-represented on a population basis), but I don't see anyone campaigning more in New York if the headcount was more granular. Of course, I could be wrong.

I'm thinking of posting this to Facebook, or even creating a political blog as an incentive to keep myself involved. I'll let you know if I do.

back to books!

57. The Last Word by Ellery Adams

Another cozy in this series set on the Atlantic shore of North Carolina. I see that it would help to read these in order. Decently written and I found the characters engaging, and I learned a little history.

58. The Secret Agent by Joseph Conrad

I think this is Conrad's only book set in London. The year is 1886 or so, and there has been a lot of anarchist activity on the Continent. Mr. Verloc, a foreigner and proprietor of a seedy pornography shop in Soho, seems to be involved in this, but Conrad has quite a few twists and turns for us. You can see his influence on LeCarre, I think.

The atmosphere of London, especially the seedier and more internationally populated areas of it, is stunning and murky. I could feel the mud under my feet and see the fog. In addition, Conrad brilliantly delineates the varieties of Anarchist and Socialist thought flowing through this polyglot population, people fanatical or dilettante, poor or poorer, police rounding up the usual suspects or not, the rich with their noblesse oblige or not.

And ultimately this is a domestic drama, centered on Mr. Verloc, his wife and her damaged younger brother, the lengths to which people go to protect those they love, the inability of people to truly communicate.

All in all, a terrific read.

59. The Age of Doubt by Andrea Camilleri

Ah, with all this going on, I needed a purely pleasurable read, and what better than a Montalbano? Livia doesn't figure much in this episode, which is particularly up to date in its mystery and side comments. Montalbano is in a definitely philosophical mood, and also beset with a new love interest. The usual cast of characters is present. So soothing.

I've begun reading Graham Greene's Our Man In Havana, which Greene claims to be one of his entertainments, but is certainly one of his Catholic books as well. I'm reading it aloud to a friend in the hospital, so it will go slowly, I think.

>121 ffortsa: Loren Shlaes
Thanks. I found and followed.

House Oversight Committee
I didn't hear about this one until yesterday evening. I gather from recent reading that phone calls are the most bang for the buck, because they occupy staff time. I'm having trouble keeping up with all the who to call about what posts I'm seeing in political blogs. I hate hate hate making phone calls, which is probably exactly why I should get used to them.

League of Women Voters
There's a branch here that has candidate meet-and-greets, dunno if anything else. There'd be more D vs R here, I don't know how it'd play out, and the Ds have enough factions on their own that I don't want to take on Rs too. Like you, I'd prefer to focus on specific issues.

electoral college
I've been reading lotsa discussion and I'm sympathetic to the cause, but don't have a firm position. It'd surely change campaign tactics, and I'd worry about an emphasis on population concentrations. OTOH, people in states that are heavily tilted either blue or red would have more motivation. I'm more interested in ranked choice voting as a way to increase viability of 3rd parties so people aren't forced into a dilemma of less-than-ideal vs spoiler. I can imagine the current major parties resisting. So I'll be watching how it works in Maine.

Yesterday was the city's Extraordinary Give, which along with one-stop-shopping for donations provides an overview of a wide range of non-profits, either purely local or branches of national organizations. A couple of neighbors have initiated discussion gatherings so I'll see what emerges. I'm not very sociable, better at behind-the-scenes organization, not yet sure what I have to offer.

>124 qebo: on the topic of ranked choice voting, I suspect it would have to be introduced in local elections first, to let people get accustomed to it. It's a rather sophisticated system and we are not, as this election proved, a sophisticated population.

A pity that the LWV near you doesn't have issues committees. Nice to meet the candidates but issues research helps to form non-partisan views of possible actions and solutions.

As for phone calls, I've always gotten answering machines and left a brief message. So don't worry about having to talk to anyone. You could also write out a short script of what you want to say. These calls are not really about having a conversation, just about being counted. The extra effort necessary to make the call does make it weigh more than emails.

>125 ffortsa: Re ranked choice, I agree that it'll need to bubble up to the national level. Maine was motivated by LePage. I don't know how it'd work in primaries.
Yeah, I generally write a script for task-oriented phone calls, don't think well on my feet. I gather though that the staff essentially tallies.

60. Out of the Dying Pan by Linda Reilly

Another cozy, this one set in the Berkshires, where the amateur detective runs a restaurant in which everything is deep fried, including pieces of fruitcake. Is this a thing? Aside from that, a few misplaced modifiers, and the usual over-writing, it wasn't bad.

Judy, I am thankful of your presence in the group. xx

I hope you enjoy your new volunteer opportunities and thanks for being active!!

Thanks, everyone, for your greetings above.

I had a funny thing happen today. I was riding in a friend's car to a Thanksgiving gathering. He and I were at the same school at the same time, but we didn't know each other then, meeting afterward through another alumna. For a while we had a thing going, and we were bridge partners, and now we are friends.

So we were talking about a recent experience he had at a bridge club that had new machines for scoring, and he mentioned that he had to enter his ACBL membership number for scoring. And a number flashed in my brain. Ah, I said, must be MY ACBL membership number. Then he told me what his was. I knew we had close numbers, and it wasn't even in the same format.

So what was the number in my mind? I mentioned it to him. Oh, he said. That sounds like your id number at college.

!
!!
I graduated college in 1971.
!!!
Yeah, that was it.

Back to reading. I've started a Scandi crime novel I might finish tonight, and tomorrow I continue to be live reader of Our Man in Havana for my friend Gideon. Hope everyone who celebrates Thanksgiving on the U.S. schedule had a fine feast, and no politics.

61. Into Oblivion by Arnaldur Indridason

I've read at least one other by this author, and his work fits well in the 'scandicrime' subgenre. This one takes us toward the beginning of his detective Erlander's career, and into his obsession with people who have been lost, the way his brother was lost in a blizzard many years before. It intertwines an old case with a new one dealing with an American airbase in Iceland.

Well-written with interesting characters and conflicts.

I must read up on the history of Iceland during the cold war. According to this book, there was no love lost between the U.S. military who served on the base and the Icelanders, many of whom worked as maintenance and construction there. In the older case, the plight of Icelanders just after World War II is emphasized as one of home scarcity and poverty. This history would make an interesting backdrop to the more recent economic damages the country suffered.

Hi Judy! ID number from college. Amazing. Just think of all the brain cells tied up in holding on to that number for 45 years!

Of course I remember my California DL #, which I haven't used in 25 years.. Fewer brain cells, but still.

>133 karenmarie: Ah, but I bet it's a longer number!

I didn't have to waste any brain cells on a college ID number--mine was too small for that!! Although I still remember phone numbers from when I was 10. And we moved just about every other year, so that's a lot of cells wasted!!

When I was 13, I was absent for a spelling/vocabulary test and had to take it later. The retake date kept getting moved, so I had to keep studying the list again. The words on the list were:

autonomous
belligerent
default
dogged
emancipate
flora
gourmet
hindmost
mania
memoirs
opulence
prate
residue
sporadic
thermal
umber

I'm sure that's been a productive use of brain cells for almost 20 years....

I still remember my 9th grade class in alphabetical order, boys and girls separate. Why that year? We all took the same classes, some teachers assigned seats alphabetically and took attendance out loud, and it was the last year of stability before we switched to the much larger high school.

Just dropping by after your visit to my thread. There are so many people in the group to keep track of!

>114 ffortsa: I read Main Street last year? The year before? I really liked it. I didn't think it was mocking of a feminist perspective, although I could certainly see how it could be seen that way. I thought it saved its mockery for the small-towners. Carol's attempts to change things weren't successful, but I saw it as just a depressing result of the time.

On the topic of useless remembered numbers and info, I still remember my ex-husband's social security number and driver's license number (we divorced in 1996).

62. A Killer Plot by Ellery Adams

Well, I had to go back to read the first of these fluffy mysteries, having started by mistake with the second. Ms. Adams (a cheesy pseudonym, don't you think?) could use a copy editor from time to time, but it was an entertaining read on a rainy day.

Only 13 to go. I wonder if I can read that much in December? I've got some volunteer work taking up time, but maybe I can. The Graham Greene is in progress and I'll certainly finish that one. And I have to read (or listen to) A Passage to India for my Tuesday f2f group next week. Doesn't seem likely that I'll make the full count, but that's ok. There's always next year!

Another thing - my apologies to all my friends here whose threads I just couldn't keep up with this year, even after I retired. What a gabby group we are! Maybe I'll do better in 2017.

Hi Judy! I'm reading a Graham Greene right now for my RL book club - Travels with My Aunt. it's quite funny and very different from most of his works.

Retirement takes a different form for each of us - I've found more time to be on LT. But it's all good.....

Ah, I love A Passage to India. Thinking about re-reading it next year...

>140 karenmarie: We saw a terrific play based on Travels with My Aunt some years ago, where the main characters, including a young girl, were played by a rather robust middle-aged actor whose name escapes me now. It was a complete hoot.

eta: Ah yes, Brian Murray. When he was offered the parts, he called his agent. 'But this director wants me to play a 16 year old virgin girl!' his agent 'Well, why not try it?' Murray has done a lot of Albee and also Shakespeare - we saw him play Sir Tobey Belch in Twelfth Night some years ago - MUCH more traditional casting!

Hi Judy. I resonate with your thoughts about political involvement. These are unsettling times.

I've never read A Passage to India but it has long been on my radar.

I hope you are well.

Huh. Why did I say I had to read A Passage to India? It was actually A Room With a View, which I did listen to and enjoyed every moment. More about it later.

63. A Room With a View - E.M. Forster

I had the great pleasure of listening to this via an Audible recording by B.J. Harrison, whose narration was wonderful. It's an early Forster, in which he delightfully skewers Edwardian upper middle class manners. A young woman takes a tour of Italy, with a rather purse-lipped older cousin/chaperone, and of course falls in love, to her own dismay, flees, makes bad choices, and then good ones.

The characters are vividly different, and include sneering expats, an inappropriately wild female novelist, a clergyman, a pair of older British spinsters, and even a rather un-Italian pension proprietress. The writing is equally vivid. What is most striking to me is how Forster makes us privy to the thoughts of our heroine Lucy Honeychurch (what a name!). We hear her testing her conventions and emotions, as Italy shows her the possibilities of generous feeling, as well as the dangers of passion. Back home, she struggles to re-adapt to the expectations of society, but plans go delightfully awry.

I've rarely laughed out loud walking uptown listening to a novel, but I did several times listening to this.

64. Our Man In Havana - Graham Greene

This novel, which Greene calls one of his 'entertainments', was chosen for one of my f2f book groups, and then one of us ended up in the hospital and asked me to read it to him. I think slowing down to read a book aloud is of great benefit, although I doubt my amateur attempt was as easy to understand as a professional's would have been.

Greene sets this deceptively light comedy, by turns funny and frightening, in Havana just before the last revolution. Rebels are in the hills; spies of all countries want to know everything about them, and each other. Jim Wormold, a vacuum cleaner salesman, is recruited in the most casual way by British Secret Service; he is bewildered by the job but enticed by the money, having a daughter with expensive tastes and great manipulative skills. Pressed to report, he decides to become creative, with increasingly woeful results. People who don't even know they are involved in Wormold's fantasy tradecraft find themselves in harm's way; the not-so-secret Cuban police are everywhere, and finally our man in Havana has to become wise in a hurry to save his own skin.

But I wouldn't call this a caper. Some of the musings are too serious for that. Underneath the 'entertainment', Greene is pondering the big questions of faith, purpose, meaning, and loyalty, sometimes thoughtfully, sometimes with a snarl.

There's an early movie with an astounding cast that I hope to borrow from the library. If I do, I'll report back.

Judy, if you haven't seen it, the film of A Room with a View that Merchant and Ivory did (late 80s, maybe?) is delightful. It remains a favorite of mine.

And too funny about the brain-freeze with A Passage to India!

>146 katiekrug: I remember the movie very well - casting was great, and I might watch it again.

I managed to get the DVD of Our Man in Havana from the library today. Fantastic cast. Our group will see it next Tuesday after we talk about the book. should be fun.

How are you liking the inviting cold we have prepared for you?

It's fine until I have to go outside - ha!

I have the DVD of Our Man in Havana! Libraries are wonderful. I'm so looking forward to seeing it.

I'm trying to stem my typical procrastination about just about all things. I finally filed the last FSA claim yesterday - I hope they cover costs incurred on Cobra. They sent an answer to my question today, but I'm afraid to look.

And I found a very nice looking meditation studio about 6 blocks away (In NYC that's nothing). I may go to the noon introductory class today. Hands are feeling a bit better, and I've been on the computer a lot, so I might be near the end of this particular cranky episode.

Right now I'm reading the (academic) The Sense of an Ending as well as a Scandi crime novel The Calling. And I have to move the recording of The Shipping News to my iPod, so I can listen to it while walking and exercising at the health club. It's really an incentive to get there, because if I listen to it while doing nothing, I tend to fall asleep.

Oh, and I'm reading a sort of edited journal by Doris Grumbach, written the year she turned 70, which I think was 1988. It was published in 1991. It's rather gloomy, mainly because so many of her friends were dying of AIDS at that time, and she was feeling her age. I looked her up to see how long she lasted - still alive at 98, according to Wikipedia, in a retirement home in Pennsylvania. I found the book on the swap shelves in our laundry room. A very treacherous place.

Even with all these, I probably won't get to 75 this year, but that's ok, of course. It's not a race. Then again, if this cold settles in for long, I might pick up some other neglected titles from my bursting shelves.

65. Coming Into the End Zone by Doris Grumbach

You can see my comments in the previous post. I'm not sure why I bothered to finish this, except that it was easy to read. I am rather bemused by Grumbach's decision (with her companion) to buy a house in Maine in her 70th year. I don't think I'd take on a house, especially one in need of renovation, in a small town, at that age. But by the end of the rather lugubrious story, the new house seems to buoy her spirits. As noted before, she is still alive at 98,

66. The Caller by Karin Fossum

This entry into the Inspector Sejer series is unusual in that we see very little of Sejer and his fellow police detectives. Instead, the narrative focuses on the victims and the perpetrator, and tracks the effects of even what seem to be harmless pranks on those who are their targets. It's not unusual for a book to be written from the perspective of the villain, but it doesn't serve as a police procedural. Rather, it enlists the reader in sympathy for each of the characters, with one possible exception.

Jim and I just saw the New York Theatre Workshop production of 'Othello' with Daniel Craig as Iago and David Oyelowo as Othello. Marvelous beginning to end. My only sorrow is that the theater is so small, and the stars so in demand, that few people will get to see this. Modern rehearsal/military dress, sometimes minimal lighting, one flexible set, with bench seats on three sides (with cushions, in spite of reviews that imply the contrary). Stunningly clear language from all, as attested to by a friend of mine who had never seen the play, and probably never will again for fear of diluting this experience. Jim and I became members of NYTW to make sure we could get into this, and even if the rest of the season had been boring (which it certainly hasn't been), it would have been worth it.

The principals were especially wonderful. Oyelowo took on a gently African accent and cadence which worked perfectly with the language, while Craig was completely grounded as a soldier turned master snake. It took more than 2 1/2 hours, mainly because everyone took their time to act instead of rattling off their lines. Not much staging except mattresses on the floor along with camp trunks, doorways, and various floor lamps along with lighting along the walls and ceilings. Everything worked. (Jim had a little trouble with the darker scenes, some of which were lit by flashlights or helmet lights. Alas.)

Sometimes NYTW productions travel, sometimes they graduate to larger venues, sometimes not. If either advance happens, I can only suggest that theater devotees run to get tickets.

Nice review of Othello, Judy. I've seen it twice in London recently, once on stage at the National Theatre and a Royal Shakespeare Company rebroadcast in a cinema in Kilburn, but I would love to see that production as well. The chance of it coming to Atlanta is essentially zero, though.

Glad you enjoyed the play!

The DVD of Our Man in Havana proved interesting as a gloss on the book, but if I hadn't read the book first, it would have been rather confusing. I felt like it took every other episode and filmed it, leaving some serious continuity issues.

But I realized, watching it, that the book is so skewed that we only see things that Wormold sees, with the exception of the nonsense back in the UK. Not quite an unreliable narrator - more like a very selective vision. Interesting.

>146 katiekrug: I agree with Katie's recommendation of that film version of A Room With a View.

>152 ffortsa: Sounds wonderful. Othello is one of my favorite Shakespeare plays.

What may be the last book of the year is an audio of The Shipping News, a novel I read several years ago but no longer have on the shelf. I thought listening would encourage other activity - walking, for instance - but it's going slowly. It needs to be done by the Tuesday after New Year's.

I see the new group is up, but I won't post there until New Year's eve, at the earliest. I will, however, try to read the threads, as some people (Darryl!) have charged considerably ahead.

Wouldn't it be nice if 2017 was a year of peace and goodwill.
A year where people set aside their religious and racial differences.
A year where intolerance is given short shrift.
A year where hatred is replaced by, at the very least, respect.
A year where those in need are not looked upon as a burden but as a blessing.
A year where the commonality of man and woman rises up against those who would seek to subvert and divide.
A year without bombs, or shootings, or beheadings, or rape, or abuse, or spite.

2017.

Festive Greetings and a few wishes from Malaysia!

Judy--Dropping in to wish a belated Merry and an early Happy!!! : )

Hi Judy! Belated Merry Christmas and early Happy New Year.

I wish you all the best in your first full year of retirement in 2017.

>160 karenmarie: Thanks, Karen. I suspect this coming year to be quite busy.

I won't reach 75 this year, but that's ok. My last read will probably be The Shipping News, which I'm listening to on audio, Paul Hecht reading. I'd read the book before, but it's amazing how much I'd forgotten. Really enjoying it, and as I'm more than halfway through, I should finish it by year's end.

I seem to have shocked Joe by admitting that I'd never read The Wind in the Willows or The Secret Garden. It wasn't that I didn't read as a child - I read non-stop. But I switched over to 'adult' books at a pretty early age, and seem to have skipped over some classics. There is the coming year, of course!

I finally read The Shipping News this year, and it made my "Best of..." list :) I imagine an audio of it could be quite good.

And I also never read The Wind in the Willows... And I only read The Secret Garden a couple of years ago via DailyLit.

I loved The Shipping News when it came out and hardly remember a thing about it. Never read The Wind in the Willows or The Secret Garden but I'm not losing any sleep over it.....

I've read neither The Wind in the Willows nor The Secret Garden. I'm not entirely sure what happened during that stage of my reading life.... a lot was going on at home and I think that may be when I immersed myself (much to my regret now) in Harlequin Romances. *shudders*
Like Karen, I'm not losing sleep..... at least not over that! :-)

Looking forward to your continued company in 2017.
Happy New Year, Judy

Thanks, Paul. Same to you and Honi and the offspring.

I've got four short chapters to listen to before I complete The Shipping News, but I'll count it for 2016 anyway. And I'll set up my new thread tomorrow. See everyone over in our new land of the future.