SusanJ's 75 Books Challenge - Thread 9

Hello, and welcome to my ninth thread for 2017.

I'm Susan, a Kiwi living in London for the past 22 years. During the working week I'm a lawyer so I love nerdy legal stuff, which crops up in more books than you might expect.

Over the past few years I've started to read a lot more non-fiction, so my reading is now more balanced between F and NF than it typically has been. I typically aim for 150 books, with a 100 NF/50 F split, although this year isn't working out quite like that. While I read mostly from the library, I do have a fair few books that I've bought (mostly for the Kindle) and I need to keep my eye on those so that I actually read them instead of just accumulating them. This year I want to read at least 50 books from Mount TBR (which counts as anything I own) so I'm adding a ticker for that too.

Books read during 2017



By Dick Mudde - Own work, Public Domain, Link

January

1. The Trials of the King of Hampshire by Elizabeth Foyster
2. The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead
3. Make Me by Lee Child
4. The Bible: The Biography by Karen Armstrong
5. Before We Kiss by Susan Mallery
6. Until We Touch by Susan Mallery
7. Night School by Lee Child
8. Under Another Sky by Charlotte Higgins
9. Miss Smilla's Feeling for Snow by Peter Hoeg
10. The Invention of Nature by Andrea Wulf
11. Defiance: The Life and Choices of Lady Anne Barnard by Stephen Taylor
12. The Last Grain Race by Eric Newby
13. The Improbability of Love by Hannah Rothschild
14. Hold Me by Susan Mallery
15. Kiss Me by Susan Mallery
16. Thrill Me by Susan Mallery
17. Toast by Nigel Slater
18. The Unexpected Inheritance of Inspector Chopra by Vaseem Khan
19. The Janus Stone by Elly Griffiths
20. Hell's Bottom, Colorado by Laura Pritchett
21. The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson
22. The Emperor of All Maladies by Siddhartha Mukherjee
23. Looking for Alaska by John Green



February

24. China Rich Girlfriend by Kevin Kwan
25. The Tidal Zone by Sarah Moss
26. The Perplexing Theft of the Jewel in the Crown
27. The Riviera Set by Mary S Lovell
28. Five Star Billionaire by Tash Aw
29. The Dinosaur Hunters by Deborah Cadbury
30. Assassin's Apprentice by Robin Hobb
31. Evicted by Matthew Desmond
32. China's Disruptors by Edward Tse
33. Oil on Water by Helon Habila
34. Royal Assassin by Robin Hobb
35. Bleak House by Charles Dickens
36. The Unwinding by George Packer



March

37. A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles
38. The Butcher, The Baker, The Candlestick Maker
39. The Templar Legacy
40. Waves of Prosperity: Indian, China and the West: How Global Trade Transformed the World
41. Assassin's Quest by Robin Hobb
42. The Looming Tower by Lawrence Wright
43. How to Survive a Plague by David France
44. Missing Pieces by Heather Gudenkauf
45. The Mighty Dead by Adam Nicolson
46. The House At Sea's End by Elly Griffiths
47. A Room Full of Bones by Elly Griffiths
48. The Life Project by Helen Pearson
49. You May Also Like by Tom Vanderbilt
50. Another Day in the Death of America by Gary Younge



April

51. The Big Rock Candy Mountain by Wallace Stegner
52. The Swerve by Stephen Greenblatt
53. The Wangs vs the World by Jade Chang
54. Hit Makers by Derek Thompson
55. The Epigenetics Revolution by Nessa Carey
56. The Windflower by Laura London
57. An African in Greenland by Tete-Michel Kpomassie
58. The Leveller Revolution by John Rees
59. The Death of an Owl by Paul Torday
60. Behold the Dreamers by Imbolo Mbue
61. Talking to the Dead by Harry Bingham
62. Cast in Shadow by Michelle Sagara
63. Girl Waits With Gun by Amy Stewart
64. The Woman Next Door by Yewande Omotoso
65. Vicious Circle by C J Box



May

66. Killers of the Flower Moon by David Grann
67. Dying Fall by Elly Griffiths
68. The Plague Charmer by Karen Maitland
68.5 Midnight at Tiffany's by Sarah Morgan
69. The Doctor's Engagement by Sarah Morgan
70. Mail Men by Adrian Addison
71. Wonderland: How Play Made the Modern World by Steven Johnson
72. Good As You by Paul Flynn
73. Fully Connected by Julia Hobsbawm
74. Irresistible by Adam Alter
75. The Book Smugglers of Timbuktu by Charlie English
76. Los Alamos by Joseph Kanon
77. Ghachar Ghochar by Vivek Shanbhag
78. The House of Hidden Mothers by Meera Syal
79. About Last Night by Catherine Alliott



June

80. Barbara the Slut and Other People
81. Ship of Magic by Robin Hobb
82. All This Will Be Lost by Brian Payton
83. Queer City by Peter Ackroyd
84. Heat and Light by Jennifer Haigh
85. On Intelligence by John Hughes-Wilson
86. The Husband Hunters by Anne de Courcy



July

87. A Necessary Evil by Abir Mukherjee
88. Koh-i-Noor by William Dalrymple and Anita Anand
89. See What I Have Done by Sarah Schmidt
90. The Red Parts by Maggie Nelson
91. The Outcasts of Time by Ian Mortimer
92. Collecting the World by James Delbourgo
93. The Anatomy of a Traitor by Michael Smith
94. He Knew He Was Right by Anthony Trollope
95. A Very British Coup by Chris Mullin
96. Fifty Things That Made the Modern Economy by Tim Harford
97. House of Spies by Daniel Silva



August

98. A Murder of Magpies by Judith Flanders
99. Emigrants: Why the English Sailed to the New World by James Evans
100. Caesar's Last Breath by Sam Kean
101. Ulverton by Adam Thorpe
102. Pale Rider by Laura Spinney
103. When She Woke by Hillary Jordan
104. History of Wolves by Emily Fridlund
105. The King's City by Don Jordan
106. One Hot Summer by Rosemary Ashton
107. Crusoe's Island by Andrew Lambert
108. The Outcast Dead by Elly Griffiths
109. Do I Make Myself Clear? by Harold Evans
110. Lovers and Strangers by Clair Wills
111. The Ghost Fields by Elly Griffiths
112. Hidden Figures by Margo Lee Shetterly



September

113. The Woman in Blue by Elly Griffiths
114. The Chalk Pit by Elly Griffiths
115. Dragon's Lair by Sharon Penman
116. Pirates by Helen Hollick
117. Medicus by Ruth Downie
118. A Morbid Taste for Bones by Ellis Peters
119. The Sanctuary Seeker by Bernard Knight
120. Wine of Violence by Priscilla Royal



October

121. Roman Blood by Steven Saylor
122. Prince of Darkness by Sharon Penman
123. The Strangest Family by Janice Hadham
124. The Norfolk Mystery by Ian Sansom
125. Home Fire by Kamila Shamsie
126. Best of My Love by Susan Mallery
127. The Terror by Dan Simmons
128. Life of Pi by Yann Martel
129. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon
130. Stamped from the Beginning by Ibram X Kendi
131. Pandora's Lab by Paul Offit
132. Logical Family by Armistead Maupin
133. Tender Morsels by Margo Lanagan
134. 1984 by George Orwell



November

135. Our Endless Numbered Days by Claire Fuller
136. Dunbar by Edward St Aubyn
137. Men Explain Things To Me by Rebecca Solnit
138. Windblown by Tamsin Treverton Jones
139. A Book of American Martyrs by Joyce Carol Oates
140. The Strange Disappearance of a Bollywood Star by Vaseem Khan
141. No Middle Name by Lee Child
142. The Poisoned Chalice by Bernard Knight
143. Elizabeth's Rival by Nicola Tallis
144. The Upstarts by Brad Stone
145. The Whitsun Weddings by Philip Larkin
146. The Last Hours by Minette Walters
147. The Mad Ship by Robin Hobb
148. The Mamur Zapt and the Return of the Carpet by Michael Pearce
149. One Corpse Too Many by Ellis Peters

Last year I started a new NF challenge, which is to read the non-fiction winners of the Pulitzer prize. I stole this idea from Reba, who was doing a fiction challenge (and has now finished it. Hi Reba!) This is a long-term project, rather than something to be completed in a year or two. If I can't find the relevant non-fiction winner easily in the UK, I propose to substitute the winner of the history category.

Last year I read about eight books from the list. This year I'd like to do the same, but I have five already and I'll focus on those.



Here's the full list:



2017 Evicted by Matthew Desmond
2016 Black Flags: The Rise of ISIS by Joby Warrick
2015 The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History by Elizabeth Kolbert
2014 Toms River: A Story of Science and Salvation by Dan Fagin
2013 Devil in the Grove by Gilbert King
2012 The Swerve: How the World Became Modern by Stephen Greenblatt
2011 The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer by Siddhartha Mukherjee
2010 The Dead Hand: The Untold Story of the Cold War Arms Race and Its Dangerous Legacy by David E. Hoffman



2009 Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II by Douglas A Blackmon
2008 The Years of Extermination: Nazi Germany and the Jews, 1939-1945 by Saul Friedländer
2007 The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11 by Lawrence Wright
2006 Imperial Reckoning: The Untold Story of Britain's Gulag in Kenya by Caroline Elkins
2005 Ghost Wars by Steve Coll
2004 Gulag: A History by Anne Applebaum
2003 A Problem From Hell: America and the Age of Genocide by Samantha Power
2002 Carry Me Home: Birmingham, Alabama, the Climactic Battle of the Civil Rights Revolution by Diane McWhorter
2001 Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan by Herbert P Bix
2000 Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II by John W. Dower



1999 Annals of the Former World by John McPhee
1998 Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies by Jared Diamond
1997 Ashes To Ashes: America's Hundred-Year Cigarette War, The Public Health, And The Unabashed Triumph Of Philip Morris by Richard Kluger
1996 The Haunted Land: Facing Europe's Ghosts After Communism by Tina Rosenberg
1995 The Beak Of The Finch: A Story Of Evolution In Our Time by Jonathan Weiner
1994 Lenin's Tomb: The Last Days Of The Soviet Empire by David Remnick
1993 Lincoln at Gettysburg: The Words That Remade America by Garry Wills
1992 The Prize: The Epic Quest For Oil, Money & Power by Daniel Yergin
1991 The Ants by Bert Holldobler and Edward O Wilson
1990 And Their Children After Them by Dale Maharidge and Michael Williamson



1989 A Bright Shining Lie: John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam by Neil Sheehan
1988 The Making of the Atomic Bomb by Richard Rhodes
1987 Arab and Jew: Wounded Spirits in a Promised Land by David K Shipler
1986 Common Ground: A Turbulent Decade in the Lives of Three American Families by J Anthony Lukas
1986 Move Your Shadow: South Africa, Black and White by Joseph Lelyveld
1985 The Good War: An Oral History of World War Two by Studs Terkel
1984 The Social Transformation Of American Medicine by Paul Starr
1983 Is There No Place On Earth For Me? by Susan Sheehan
1982 The Soul of A New Machine by Tracy Kidder
1981 Fin-De Siecle Vienna: Politics And Culture by Carl E Schorske
1980 Godel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas R Hofstadter



1979 On Human Nature by Edward O Wilson
1978 The Dragons of Eden by Carl Sagan
1977 Beautiful Swimmers by William W Warner
1976 Why Survive? Being Old In America by Robert N Butler
1975 Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard
1974 The Denial of Death by Ernest Becker
1973 Fire in the Lake: The Vietnamese and the Americans in Vietnam by Frances Fitzgerald
1973 Children of Crisis, Vols. II and III by Robert Coles
1972 Stilwell and the American Experience in China, 1911-1945 by Barbara W Tuchman
1971 The Rising Sun by John Toland
1970 Gandhi's Truth by Erik H Erikson



1969 The Armies Of The Night by Norman Mailer
1969 So Human An Animal by Rene Jules Dubos
1968 Rousseau And Revolution, The Tenth And Concluding Volume Of The Story Of Civilization by Will and Ariel Durant
1967 The Problem of Slavery in Western Culture by David Brion Davis
1966 Wandering Through Winter by Edwin Way Teale
1965 O Strange New World by Howard Mumford Jones
1964 Anti-Intellectualism in American Life by Richard Hofstadter
1963 The Guns of August by Barbara W Tuchman
1962 The Making of the President 1960 by Theodore H White

There are all sorts of reading challenges around (quite apart from LT) and I have completed the Better World Books Challenge.



Here are my choices:



A food memoir Toast by Nigel Slater COMPLETED
A young adult novel Looking for Alaska by John Green COMPLETED
A National Book Award Winner The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead COMPLETED
A book under 200 pages Hell's Bottom, Colorado by Laura Pritchett COMPLETED
A non-fiction book about nature The Invention of Nature by Andrea Wulf COMPLETED
A book set in Asia China Rich Girlfriend by Kevin Kwan COMPLETED
A book translated from another language Miss Smilla's Feeling for Snow by Peter Hoeg COMPLETED
A fantasy novel Assassin's Apprentice by Robin Hobb COMPLETED
A book that’s more than 100 years old Bleak House COMPLETED
A book about immigrants The Wangs vs the World COMPLETED
A romance that takes place during travel The Windflower by Laura London COMPLETED
A book set in a place you want to visit An African in Greenland by Tete-Michel Kpomassie COMPLETED
A book you picked based on its cover The Leveller Revolution by John Rees COMPLETED
A collection of short stories Barbara the Slut and Other People by Lauren Holmes COMPLETED
A book with a color in the title The Red Parts by Maggie Nelson COMPLETED
A book about a historical event Pale Rider by Laura Spinney COMPLETED
A book over 400 pages The King's City by Don Jordan COMPLETED
A book by a person of color Hidden Figures by Margot Lee Shetterly COMPLETED
A book by a female writer The Strangest Family by Janice Hadham COMPLETED
A book that’s been adapted into a movie The Life of Pi by Yann Martel COMPLETED
A book with a child narrator The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon COMPLETED
A book based on a fairytale Tender Morsels by Margo Lanagan COMPLETED
A banned book 1984 by George Orwell COMPLETED
A book that takes place in a forest Our Endless Numbered Days by Claire Fuller COMPLETED
A book of poetry The Whitsun Weddings by Philip Larkin COMPLETED

Other projects for 2017

The Pulitzer challenge has no end date, but for 2017 I want to read Boswell's Life of Johnson which I have in a slightly different (i.e. cheaper) version than this handsome Penguin Classic. But it's the unabridged version, so yay.



I'm also starting to listen to podcasts, as they seem to be The Thing, so I'll record them here:

Podcasts

1. BBC 3: Breaking Free: Martin Luther's Revolution. Reformation 500 http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p052bmk9
2. BBC Radio 4: The Battle of Lincoln 1217 http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b08njv60
3. BBC Radio 4: 1816, The Year Without a Summer http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b077j4yv
4. BBC Radio 4: Le Morte d'Arthur http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01pp989
5. BBC Radio 4: The Epic of Gilgamesh http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b080wbrq
6. BBC Radio 4: Purgatory http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b08qxfrb#play
7. BBC Radio 4: The Gin Craze http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b084zk6z
8. BBC Radio 4: Enzymes http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b08rp369
9. BBC Radio 4: Christine de Pizan http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b08sksb4
10. BBC Radio 4: The Day is for the Living (Hilary Mantel Reith lecture) http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b08tcbrp
11. BBC Radio 4: Making History - The English Pearl Harbour http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b08sn96v
12. BBC Radio 4: The Field of the Cloth of Gold http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p003k9dl
13. BBC Radio 4: Making History - Zombies in Yorkshire? http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b08tcg6f
14. BBC Radio 4 Extra: Suburbia http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b05n3yjq
15. BBC Radio 4: The American Populists http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b08tbf4g
16. BBC Radio 4: Costing the Earth - The World's Toughest Plants http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b08rq6dx
17. BBC Radio 4: Common Sense Philosophy http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b007qhbn#play
18. History of Pirates podcast - Introduction http://www.historyofpiratespodcast.com/?p=19
19. History of Pirates podcast - What is a Pirate? http://www.historyofpiratespodcast.com/?p=23
20. History of Pirates podcast - Ancient Pirates and the Quest for Stuff http://www.historyofpiratespodcast.com/?p=111
21. History of Pirates podcast - The Phoenecians and Greek Pirates http://www.historyofpiratespodcast.com/?p=121
22. BBC Radio 4 - Eugene Onegin http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b08tvjjq

129. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time by Mark Haddon

I read this for the "book with a child narrator" category of the Better World Books challenge. I must be about the last person on earth to get to it, but I enjoyed it.

I'm going to try and finish a library book this afternoon (or maybe this weekend). Yesterday I got an email to say that an e reserve was ready, but it wasn't the Jack Reacher book, which is the only one I have reserved at the moment. And yet it looked like the sort of thing I would like...Eventually another email arrived saying that I had recommended that the library buy it, and add me to the list if they did. Aha! It is Pandora's Lab: Seven Stories of Science Gone Wrong and I think I read an extract from it in a magazine.

Happy new thread, Susan.

I am glad you enjoyed The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time.
I have read it back in 2008, when I just started reading again, and was very impressed.

Happy new one, Susan. You are not the last person to read The Curious Incident of the Dog - I have not yet read it.

Happy new one, Susan. Pandora's Lab looks like it could be scary - I'll watch for your comments. I haven't read The Curious Incident yet either, so you are not quite the last one.

Happy new thread!

Happy new thread :) (and I haven't read The Curious Incident of the Dog yet either)

Happy new thread.

>8 FAMeulstee: Thanks Anita :-) The Curious Incident is in about 35,000 other libraries on LT - one of the most I've seen.

>9 Crazymamie: Hi Mamie :-) Nice to know I'm not the absolute last :-)

>10 BLBera: Beth, or even the second to last :-) I loved Pandora's Lab, which I have reviewed below.

>11 drneutron: Thanks Jim!

>12 RebaRelishesReading: Thanks Reba. And now I am feeling like something of an early adopter with that book...

>13 Helenliz: Thanks Helen.



130. Stamped from the Beginning by Ibram X Kendi

In summary: White people are the devil.



131. Pandora's Lab: Seven Stories of Science Gone Wrong by Paul A. Offit

I like this one a lot, although I was surprised to finish it so quickly. I thought it would be a longer read, but I gobbled it up today. It's the story of seven scientific things that have gone wrong due to the law of unintended consequences, and I won't say what they all are and ruin the surprise, but the one I read about in the June 2017 issue of National Geographic was nitrate fertiliser, and is quite the eye-opener. This is just the sort of thing I like, and I will look for his other books now. Very highly recommended for popular science fans.

I’ve got Stamped from the Beginning on reserve at the library. Darryl got me interested, now I hear he’s put it aside for a bit to finish something else. 😀

Happy new thread, Susan.

Hmmm hubby might like the science one.

Happy New Thread Susan - hope things are okay.

>15 drneutron: Jim, yes, it is very long. I could also say that I've read it all before, written better by others, but I know my opinion doesn't count.

>16 PaulCranswick: Thanks Paul.

>17 BekkaJo: Thanks Bekka. Things are OK. I've only told a couple of people at work so at least people aren't avoiding me.

I went to the library this morning to return Stamped from the Beginning and my grand plan to take out only one book at a time fell apart.



Oops.

However, there is a talk on Wednesday by the author of the Inspector Chopra books, and they had SIX copies of The Strange Disappearance of a Bollywood Star available, so I don't think that one was really my fault. Book 2 is Wind Blown, by Tamsin Treverton Jones, which is about the Great Storm of 1987, so I thought it would be interesting as I wasn't here then and only remember the NZ news coverage.

Oh, good. A return to normal - I didn't know if I was going to be able to adjust to you taking out just one library book at a time. It felt as if the world had shifted. But now you have righted things, so thanks for that.

>19 Crazymamie: Mamie, glad to oblige :-) I mentioned my grand plan to Favourite Library Assistant and he looked at me like "Oh please," as if it couldn't possibly work. Heh. Still, three are novels and the NF is a memoir and pretty short. I left the Queen Victoria book behind again. By the way, I downloaded the Fitbit app from the Google Play store, and it has the challenges! I'm doing the 8,000-step New York one, which I have almost finished. I went for a walk at lunchtime specifically to collect gems (well, and go to Asda, where they have orange flavoured Smarties (which are like M&Ms) for Christmas. In giant tubes.)

Hooray for getting the challenges! I really need to get back to making stepping a priority - I have fallen off the bandwagon and onto the sofa. Heh. And I had to goggle Smarties because they are something completely different here. We have these:



And you get these:



You win because...chocolate! And a whole tube of orange flavored ones!!

>21 Crazymamie: Mamie, yes, those are quite different! In New Zealand, we mostly used to get Pebbles, which is the Cadbury equivalent. One of the neighbours made a dessert for us when I was there, and it was a creamy confection with pebbles in it, known as "lolly pudding" (not to be confused with an ice-cream based dessert, as "lollies" in the UK are frozen popsicle-type things, whereas in NZ lollies are sweets)

Oh, Cadbury! Yum! Here, lolly would be short for lollypop, which would refer to a hard candy on a stick, usually called a sucker, which is much less dignified. There might or might not be a treat inside, such as gum or a tootsie roll center.

mmm, smarties. The orange ones are the bestest things. I never knew they arrived in whole tubes of orange ones!

Sorry to see you've fallen off the one book wagon (no, not really - normality is restored)

Why orange ones for Christmas?

I'm running behind, but I'm sorry to hear about your father's death. Prayers for you and your family.

>23 Crazymamie: Mamie, that's a very cute picture!

>24 Helenliz: Helen, they are in large-sized tubes, as well - 150g which the pack says is seven servings hahahahaha. That's based on 16 Smarties per serving. I don't know who thinks this stuff up.

>25 RebaRelishesReading: Reba, I'm not sure, although the Terry's Chocolate Orange is very popular at Christmas, so it might be because of that.



There is also the ever-popular yard of Jaffa Cakes which appears for Christmas:



(picture from Google, not my desk!)

>26 thornton37814: Thanks Lori.

True, I remember that the chocolate oranges were a big Christmas thing. I know the Jaffa Cakes but didn't connect them with Christmas. I just think red and green, or maybe blue and silver, when I think Christmas so the color orange seems odd...then, I really don't like the combination of orange and chocolate as flavors so that may be part of it too :)

Ooh a yard of jaffa cakes. Almost as tempting as the chocolate oranges, which I too only eat at Xmas.

Glad to see that you're supporting your local library again in the proper manner. :-)

Hooray for library books! I will look for Pandora's Lab.

I am not looking at the candy, I am not looking at the candy....

Sorry to read about your Dad, Susan. That's a hard one even when you know it is coming.

Our sweets are more like the UK ones. We have the chocolate kind of Smarties. >21 Crazymamie: The US Smarties are called Rockets and we hand them out for Halloween. >27 susanj67: Terry's Chocolate Orange is popular here for Christmas and any other time if it comes to that. Mmm, chocolate - must have a sweet fix after supper.

I read the opening blurb and noticed that you keep track of your fiction to non-fiction ratio so I had to go back over my threads for this year to see what mine was. It is 67 fiction to 31 non-fiction. Hmm, well anything to get out of doing what I should be doing right now which is prepping for my research trip.

>28 RebaRelishesReading: Reba, Jaffa Cakes themselves are not Christmassy, but the yard-long boxes appear in supermarkets for Christmas. I think they are the size of four normal packs or something - they're marketed as a great stocking filler. I have so far refrained because there is just me to eat them.

>29 charl08: Charlotte, I haven't had a chocolate orange for years, but they are very Christmassy. Maybe this year...They should do an Advent calendar with a segment every day.

>30 BLBera: Beth, it *is* too early for the candy. I think.

>31 Familyhistorian: Thanks Meg. Weirdly, after never having heard of the US Smarties in my whole life, yesterday I was watching a video on YouTube and there they were! My fiction/NF ratio is a bit out this year - the novels are usually so much shorter and easier to read. I hope your trip goes well :-)

Disaster at the office - we are losing access to webmail, Facebook and other social media platforms, messaging sites (which I don't use anyway) and basically anything fun. I'm hoping LT slides under the radar and remains available.

Bummer that you're loosing access to relaxation sites at the office. I'll keep my fingers crossed for LT.

I love kid candy and (American) Smarties are one of my favorites. I would take it over the U.K. chocolate Smarties any day. (Guess I'm just a kid at heart :))

No chocolate oranges? Gosh. They're an institution with us. Great wailing and gnashing of teeth the year mum forgot.
(I now try to buy them as a back up!) They used to go in Xmas stockings.

Raspberries and vanilla ice cream for tea. A favourite dessert. Apart from all the other ones...

Chocolate oranges were a thing in my family when I was growing up, but I recall them being difficult to find so we didn't always get one in our stockings. They seem much more widely available now, and I always try to remember to get one for The Wayne (and I usually end up eating it!)...

Chocolate orange for us in the toe of our stocking every year. Himself & I buy one for each other for old times sake. I struggle to find the dark chocolate ones, whereas the milk seem to be everywhere.

All this candy talk!! Dang all of you. I had to got get two squares of Sanders Dark Chocolate Sea Salt Caramels from me secret closet stash. You know, it's for emergencies. Like this one!! LOL

>33 RebaRelishesReading: Thanks Reba. I need all the crossed fingers I can get!

>34 charl08: Charlotte, I don't remember them being a New Zealand thing, which is why I haven't got into the habit. Of course, it shouldn't take too long to build a new habit...

>35 katiekrug: Katie, that is the perfect solution!

>36 Helenliz: Helen, yes, I think milk chocolate generally is more popular. If I see a dark one, I'll let you know who stocks it.

>37 Berly: Kim, sorry about that :-) Ooh, salted caramel. Yum!

Finally finished another book.



132. Logical Family by Armistead Maupin

This is Maupin's memoir, and it's a lovely read. Tales of the City fans will be particularly interested to learn where his inspiration came from (and where it didn't, despite rumours) but it's about his life overall and it's great. And I took it back to the library and didn't borrow anything else, so success all round!

My library doesn't have a copy of the Maupin memoir! Boo!

Heating up some chicken soup but what I really fancy are chips and a chocolate orange.

>39 charl08: Charlotte, it's brand new so I'm sure they will get it soon. Mmm, chicken soup! Lovely. I have just had Punjabi Day in the canteen, which now has it on Fridays as part of the "British Classics" counter, as well as Wednesdays. I missed it on Wednesday as I was at a meeting. Even the roomie likes it, which is surprising because the French lawyer in my group says she shudders at the "French Bistro" offerings, which are not really French. Or Bistro-y. I didn't confess that it is one of my favourite days.

I had pizza for lunch and have an enormous bag of Polish truffles that my report bought me as I leave next week. Trying not to open the bag as they will vanish in a trice and I'll feel sick. However all this talk of chocolate is not helping the will power.

We celebrated Divali at work this week (or was it last week? lost track) loads of decorations, some of the staff in traditional dress, and a traditional indian meal selection for lunch. Really good effort and the lunch was good too. Can't resist indian snacks.

My library is likely to close, the county council has introduced a proposal that could see them go from 28 libraries to 7. Not happy. Not happy at all. On the war path about that on, I can tell you.

>41 Helenliz: Helen, I hope your willpower held and you still have the truffles :-) What are you going to do next? Diwali was the 19th, and we had cake. Strangely, Punjabi Day had been the day before in the canteen, which proves they weren't paying attention. Sorry to hear about the library - you would never think that the UK was the 6th richest country in the world.

Good news re the chocolate oranges though - Waitrose has the dark ones as well as the milk. And two for £4. In the interests of accurate reporting, I tried this at the till, as they are quite bad for offering great shelf prices that never quite make it to the till software, and I can confirm that it really works. Ahem.

I did lots of steps today, as I am doing a Fitbit challenge in Yosemite National Park. It's the first time in ages that I've met my target. Tomorrow I'll walk to the office to get a head start on the week, and may go on somewhere from there. We have the whole extra hour to do stuff with. Yay!



133. Tender Morsels by Margo Lanagan

Ehh, this was tedious. I read it for the "read a book based on a fairy tale" category of my book challenge, as it is apparently based on the story of Snow White and Rose Red, but I didn't like it. And it's NOT for young people - it's very dark and probably should have trigger warnings, which are something I read about on the internets. So #fail for this one, but then it's not the sort of category I would seek out anyway. And I don't feel I'm missing anything.

Next up, I think I'll read 1984, which has eight days to go before it expires.

Hooray for the stepping and the chocolate oranges! Is it just me, or is that cover truly creepy for Tender Morsels? YIKES!

>43 Crazymamie: Mamie, it is creepy and yet totally appropriate for the book :-) I am top of the Fitbit league at the moment - all y'all really must get back into it!

I forgot to put mine on this morning, so I have 11 steps so far today. Heh.

>45 Crazymamie: Oh noes :-( I thought it was weird that I was right up there :-)

Best thing in my inbox this week:



http://www.schuh.co.uk/accessories/bags/clutch-bags/irregular-choice-disney-mupp...

WANT. Am too old for, but want anyway.

>47 susanj67: Too funny!

>47 susanj67: I rather like that the link is labelled 'irregular choice' :-)
If it played this song I'd be queuing up for one.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ck4ND9W6tkU
(Although perhaps not ideal in the office)

Oh, dear! Charlotte, that link is reminding me of the kids' favorite muppet recording: Bohemian Rhapsody

Glad you survived Tender Morsels. It sounds awful. Happy to know you're walking in Yosemite. That's just up the road a piece, why don't you stop by when you're finished? lol
My Fitbit's are all dead and my new Garmin synced with my phone the day I got it and set it up but hasn't since. I have got to set aside time on Monday to contact their "help" people and see what I can do about it. I'm so much less motivated to walk without a tracker that I must get something going -- but eeeehhhhh I HATE dealing with this kind of thing!

>48 Crazymamie: Mamie, Animal is my very favourite :-)

Some other options:





>49 charl08: Charlotte, it's just what my office needs. Love that link!

>50 Crazymamie: Mamie, and that one too! I love the way they've changed the lyrics to make it kid-friendly. Also "I see a little silhouetto of a clam".

>51 RebaRelishesReading: Reba, yes, I'm glad to be finished with it. Yosemite is beautiful! Every so often I reach a new landmark and get a lovely panoramic photo to look at. I think I must have the world's only Fitbit not to have conked out (touch wood). I was going to walk to the office this morning but it started raining and I didn't want to melt, so I got the tube.

Now here doing WORK (and printing things, hence this post). But I downloaded an 80s radio station app to my phone, so it could be worse. We lost access to radio stations on the work system years ago, which is why all the young people walk around with one earphone in and their phones in their pockets. It even tries to block the live stream of Parliament, as if anyone would be watching that for fun. I'm vaguely planning to go to Westfield later but as the shops don't open till 12 I have plenty of time.

134. 1984 by George Orwell

I read this for the "Banned book" category of my reading challenge, and I'm embarrassed that it's taken me so long to get to it. But now I see what all the references mean :-) "Alternative facts" fits right in there with the other doublespeak. One review says that sales of this soared after the 2016 US election, and I can see why.

I went to look at notebooks this afternoon (computer notebooks, that is, sorry stationery fans :-) and what was I *thinking* going to Westfield on a Sunday afternoon?) and I saw a couple that looked good, but the reviews are a bit meh. I thought something small and cheap that got webmail and other sites I use a lot might be useful for the office once the fun is turned off, but now I'm not sure. I've loaded the Yahoo app onto my Kindle Fire for the time being, and hope it works better than Yahoo did on the old Fire, when it wouldn't actually send any messages. But I don't think I had the app then. Hooking up to the firm's "Bring Your Own Device" wi-fi defeated me last time too, but one of the many great things about the Wharf is the free wi-fi right across the estate. I've been registered for years, and sometimes use it at the bus stop :-)

Back into the fray tomorrow but I am so glad I went in today for a few hours - I can now start tomorrow calmly. And really, going through documents with Iggy Pop and the Pet Shop Boys playing isn't the greatest hardship in the world :-)

I still haven't read 1984.

*hangs head in shame*

>54 katiekrug: Me, either.

>54 katiekrug:, >55 Crazymamie: Well, I hadn't yesterday, so I can't really judge. Which is a shame, as I do like judging :-))

Well, good news on the tech front - I got the warning that "this site will be blocked soon" for a couple of sites I tried this morning, but not for LT! Yay! And I've managed to connect to the firm's wi-fi, which seems easier than last time.

On the bus this morning I started Our Endless Numbered Days, which is a book set in a forest for my reading challenge. Just the other half of The Whitsun Weddings to go and I will have finished.

>57 susanj67: I've still got three books to go. Stamps foot, etc.
I've got to find a book about technology and a banned book, yet. Plus one more - oh yes, the micropress one. I think I might cheat with that one and go for something I've already read. Possibly.

>52 susanj67: would make a fab red nose day outfit all on their own, as far as I'm concerned.

>58 charl08: Charlotte, it's not really cheating if you've read it this year! The technology one in your Guardian reviews looked good - what about that? The backlash against the "disruptors" is interesting.

The shoes are scary...

>59 susanj67: I think my main criteria for the tech book is that it has to be short - I'm struggling at the moment to finish anything.

>60 BekkaJo: Bekka, I just love Animal, but I suppose if you disassociate the Muppetness from them, then yes...

>61 charl08: Charlotte, I've looked back over my books for the year and here are three that would fit the category and are pretty short/quick reads:

You May Also Like https://www.amazon.co.uk/You-May-Also-Like-Endless/dp/0307958248

Wonderland https://www.amazon.co.uk/Wonderland-Play-Made-Modern-World/dp/0399184481

Irresistible https://www.amazon.co.uk/Irresistible-Checking-Scrolling-Clicking-Watching-ebook...

While I've interpreted "technology" as modern tech, you could, I suppose, also interpret it as anything new-fangled at the time, so a book about the Luddites might qualify, although I can't immediately think of a quick read in that category :-)

You may also like sounds good - I've downloaded a sample. In case I, you know, like it. Hmmm.

Hello, Susan! Nothing to say, just thought I'd check in :)

>63 charl08: Charlotte, I hope you do, you know, like it :-)

>64 katiekrug: Hi Katie! I have nothing much to report either - no time to read anything last night due to the office stealing my life. Humph.

Love the shoes!! And



Happy Halloween!!

>66 Berly: Hey Kim! I hope you had a fun Halloween :-)



135. Our Endless Numbered Days by Claire Fuller

This was the "book set in a forest" for my book challenge, and another confusing read that I failed to understand. But still, the challenge is nearly finished :-)

Maybe I won't pick up that one then Susan! I am thinking I will go walking at the weekend, which should leave me plenty of time on the train to read a book about tech, and knock that one off the challenge. I hope!

>67 susanj67: - Uh oh, I just picked that one up in a Kindle sale...

>68 charl08: Charlotte, it's not a race - oh, wait, it kind of is...

>69 katiekrug: Katie, here's what to do. Create a collection called Last Book Left and then, when you're getting on a plane and thinking OMG I have read all my Kindle books (because that will happen one day) you will remember the collection :-) I am thinking now of some other candidates I would put in that category...

I'm at home today so thinking about tackling the pile of books I have made no progress with since I got them two Mondays ago. I ought to be able to read Dunbar today, particularly as it turns out that Magic FM has an 80s lunch hour (!) so I won't be distracted by QVC. Maybe I should check my loans page to see if anything has been renewed...Hmm, no, nothing. But FLA said he wanted to read A Book of American Martyrs so I'd better not keep that one too long.

136. Dunbar by Edward St Aubyn

This was one I picked because it's part of the Hogarth Shakespeare series and others on LT have read it, but I didn't love it. It was OK, but I read it because it was short and I wanted to finish something. The beginning was quite confused and Lear-y and didn't really fit with the rest of the story which was very modern. I'd like to try something else by this author, though.

Next up might be the book about the Great Storm - I want something else I can finish by Monday and take a couple of things back. I seem to be having a bit of a run of "meh" reads lately - maybe it's time to break out a romance novel instead :-)

I say break out the romance, Susan. Here's hoping your weekend is full of fabulous!

>71 susanj67: Break out the romance, for sure!!

>72 Crazymamie: Hi Mamie! Well, the first instalment in my new beauty box subscription arrived this morning, preceded by an email from Royal Mail saying that they would be delivering it. That's fancy. They must be trying to copy the courier companies. After I'd collected it from downstairs and was sitting on the bus opening it, I got another email to say that it had been delivered. It had a little copy of the UK Elle magazine, a sample-sized Pixi by Petra Glow Booster (which you mix in with foundation, apparently - all this highlighting stuff is new), a full-sized Bella Pierre lip gloss in a great colour, something called Time Filler (can't hurt), a little moisturiser with SPF 30, some This Works Deep Sleep Pillow Spray, which I have been wanting to try for a while, and an eyeshadow by Teeez which scares me slightly, being "Minty Haze":
https://www.teeezcosmetics.com/spectrum-of-stars-eyeshadow#186=43 described as one of a

"Curious array of 18 intensely, eye-catching hues add intrigue to any outfit. Some are double changeant, others are triple. They’re all exquisitely crafted finishes from shimmering to metallic to high gloss. In a kaleidoscope of sublime colours with staying power. The effect? Luminescent. (Literally!)"

I'll have to try it out tomorrow and see just how luminescent it really is. What with that and the glow booster, I can't be too luminous in meetings. So much of the makeup these days seems to be aimed at the Instagram market - everything is "photo-ready". But the box is great value at £13 per month - the eyeshadow and the lip gloss are full sizes, and the shadow is $23, according to the company's own website, and the lip gloss is £20. That's insane. I can't imagine a world in which I would pay £20 for a lip gloss, even if it is kiss-proof.

>73 RebaRelishesReading: Hi Reba! I was tempted by the romance, but in the end started the book about the great storm of 1987, which is a great read so far. I've stopped to get some dinner and watch a couple of episodes of Motorway Patrol, which is all about the police catching bogans on the motorway in Auckland. I've told Oldest Nephew that there Will Be Trouble if I ever see him on it.

I might try Alias Grace on Netflix tonight - they emailed me about it a day or so ago and I maxed out on Suits last night. So much talking! And all so silly! Oldest Nephew asked me if being a lawyer is anything like that show. "No!" I said, maybe too quickly and at unnecessary volume. But I just know that all the Young People I lecture think it is exactly like that, just as I was sure that it was like LA Law back in the 80s. And yet never, in my entire career, have I met a Michael Kuzak or a Victor Sifuentes, and Grace van Owen is just a wistful dream.

Hmm, well, last night turned out to be back to back episodes of Border Control USA while playing Word Cookies on my phone. Poor. I will try and do better today. Any minute I'm going to stop watching YouTube beauty vloggers unboxing Advent Calendars (another pursuit I would never have dreamed existed) and go out to the fancy Westfield on the other side of town, taking with me Rebecca Solnit's Men Explain Things To Me to read on the way. The news at the moment seems to be a non-stop roll-call of people being outed for being perverts. Half of the cabinet will be gone by the end of the week at this rate (not that I am suggesting that would be a bad thing). So I thought some old-school feminism would be just the ticket. There was a good article in the Guardian yesterday on the subject of why harassers rise to the top, despite being disgusting people: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/nov/04/sexual-harassers-rise-rank...

Best line on QVC this morning:

"And now, the Molton Brown bath oil."

"Ooh, this is pure - like - oil."

Apparently there are some oils out there that are not oils OMG.

>76 susanj67: Ha! Another job on my list if "thank goodness I don't have to do that."?!

Susan, your thread gave me a giggle this morning. I might have read parts of it out loud to the girls. I am excited to hear about your adventures with your beauty box subscription - did you try the slightly scary eyeshadow yet? (It scared me a bit, too, but then I don't wear any makeup except for lipstick.) Abby is our makeup guru.

"...last night turned out to be back to back episodes of Border Control USA while playing Word Cookies on my phone. Poor." Well, we all need nights like that sometimes.

We loved the QVC line, so thanks for that.

I did not do any reading last night, either. We watched the re-make of 'The Magnificent 7' and 'Wall-E' (interestingly, I was the one to pick the first and The Wayne the second!). I was up entirely too late, so was appreciative of gaining an hour thanks to the end of daylight savings time...

Hi Susan - Too bad your fiction reads recently have been disappointing. I haven't yet read Dunbar, but have read all of the other Hogarth Shakespeare series. My favorite is Hag-Seed.

>52 susanj67: Love the shoes. They do look extremely uncomfortable.

>77 charl08: Charlotte, secretly I think I have missed my calling by not being a QVC presenter. As those of y'all who've met me will know, I can talk for hours about anything :-)

>78 Crazymamie: Hi Mamie :-) I tried the moisturiser this morning, but couldn't think what to do with the eye shadow. When I got home I tried it because no-one else could see me and it's a pretty colour, but I'll need to think a bit more. It will be perfect on the centre of the lid, just a tiny bit, but on top of something that I either don't own yet, or have forgotten about.

>79 katiekrug: Katie, thanks for reminding me about daylight saving - we had quite a week last week getting the times of conference calls with NY wrong. I will now be able to announce that things are back on track. Hooray for movie evening!

>80 BLBera: Beth, yes, I'm in a bad fiction rut, which is not the same as a Bad Fiction rut, as those are quite exciting :-) I'll be interested to see what you think of Dunbar when you get to it. I think my favourite so far is the Anne Tyler but I have a few to get to. I got Dunbar because it was right there and I am weak.

Outstanding shopping moment of today, in the Body Shop:

"Do you still do the lip exfoliator, in the lipstick shape?

No, but we do have this lip exfoliator, which looks like a lipstick.

OK, I'll take that, thanks!"

I also bought a couple of translucent powders as I have nearly run out of my old staple (Clinique) and thought I would try some new things. I got a NYX HD Studio Photogenic one and a No. 7 one (I do giggle a bit when the US make-up girls treat No. 7 as something special, as you can get it in literally every branch of Boots over here - it is their own brand). Soon I will have everything I need to be a YouTube lifestyle vlogger except the actual lifestyle.

I also read the Rebecca Solnit essay collection while I was out, and partly due to the very poor service at Le Pain Quotidien.



137. Men Explain Things to Me by Rebecca Solnit

Rebecca Solnit is widely credited as having invented the term "mansplaining", but in fact she didn't. But it did seem to be invented as a result of the publication of the first essay in this collection, which is also the title of the collection. And it's excellent. I thought all the essays were good, although I'm not going to pretend I read every word of the Virginia Woolf one. If you have this in your library, and you're bewildered/angered by the explosion in dreadfulness that we are currently going through, then now would be a good time to dig it out.

138. Windblown by Tamsin Treverton Jones

This one seems to be too new to have a touchstone, but it's a memoir about the Great Storm of 1987 and about the role of the author's father in designing a memorial plaque for it at Kew Gardens, in London. But she seeks out many other people too, after reading all she can on the old microfiches of newspapers at the British Library. It's really good, if a little bit over-full of adjectives at times. But overall I'd recommend it to anyone who went through the storm, and anyone who's heard about it since and wondered what it was like. I remember the news coverage in NZ but in those days it would have been fairly minimal and even then it was a big story. There is also a family memoir aspect to it, which I liked less, but that could just be because I'm tired of reading about people with amazing families that they can write books about.

>138 BLBera:. Really?! I remember that, it can't be the subject of a memoir. I'm not old enough for that!! It was a bit blowy, btw. >;-)

I will definitely be looking for the Solnit essays - thanks for the recommendation!

>82 susanj67: I remember that too. Not history to me either (ha!) Weird going down the road and all the big trees were down, and the two big parks we went to suddenly had a whole new range of downed- tree based climbing options. But I suspect to people who regularly get big "weather" probably wasn't such a big deal, just unusual for the UK.

>83 Helenliz: Helen, it was 30 years ago, which seems to qualify...

>84 BLBera: Beth, I'd recommend them even more after what happened in Texas yesterday.

>85 charl08: Charlotte, I liked the bit which compared it to the great storm of 1703, when things were far worse. And I've downloaded Daniel Defoe's book about that one...

I returned a couple of books this morning, but fortunately haven't done No!vember this year, because look what I found in the new NF:



It's the "Tumultuous Tale of Lettice Knollys, Countess of Leicester" in case the cover is coming up too tiny and hard to read. Brand new! Tudor! Yet again the book about Queen Victoria got left on the shelf.

They had a display of books to "snuggle up with" and a picture of a fire. Looking at the books, I realised that all the covers were yellow, orange or red. Yes, they had a flame-coloured display. I would love a peep into the mind of the person who thinks all this up. Maybe just a quick peep.

Thirty years ago? Yikes. Off to go lie down in a darkened room.

I want to read Defoe's plague book. And I should probably finish Foe which is the one that made me think of it.

Love the title of the the new Tudor book. I hope the content is as good.

>86 susanj67: Very nice score, Susan, with the library book. Although, I am starting to feel badly for poor Queen Victoria who keeps getting left behind - the poor dear.

Laughing about the library display - ours currently has bodies outlined on the floor just as you enter with crime scene tape and a table displaying crime fiction books.

#82 My parents were always amazed that my sis and I slept through the great storm (I was only 5 to be fair). Mainly that we slept through, despite the fact that the wind ripped the corrugated iron roof off the cow sheds next to my bedroom...

And my Mother always accused me of not sleeping! Huh.

>87 charl08: Charlotte, yup. Hope that lie-down worked out for you :-) Defoe's plague book is *excellent*. I thought it was a fabulous first-person account of the plague until Heather pointed out that actually it was fiction as he was about 5 when the plague hit. But even knowing that, it was excellent. With the storm book he advertised in the papers for people to send him their experiences of the storm, so it is based on those.

>88 Crazymamie: Thanks Mamie. Yes, I also feel bad for Queen Victoria, but it looks like she'll be there a while yet. A library in east London couldn't have a display involving crime tape because borrowers would just assume it was from an actual crime, and start looking for the bullet holes and googling the local paper. Even a picture of flames is...pushing it, frankly. It must be nicer where you live :-)

>89 BekkaJo: Bekka, that is funny :-) I bet you wouldn't sleep through it now, though. Grown-ups seem hard-wired to worry.

The roomie has gone somewhere. Possibly Geneva, possibly Delhi. Evidently I wasn't paying sufficient attention. But she has two MORE trips to Delhi before the end of the year (weddings) so I'm not sure that it's entirely my fault. I hope if it's Switzerland she brings back a Toblerone. OMG, it's all about me.

I think my run of bad novels is over! Last night I started A Book of American Martyrs and before I knew it I'd read 150 pages. On a week night! I can't wait to get back to it tonight. Ah, that's better.

I'm trying the £20 lip gloss today. It's beautiful, but I still wouldn't pay £20 for it. It's a matte, which is the New Thing, but I'm not entirely convinced that it's the right thing for my age group, so I may hunt out a sheeny lip balm and try it with that. I like a little errand to run at lunchtime to get me out of the building, although today is lunch with FOR as it's his last week before six weeks of parental leave, during which he will be living on chicken nuggets, fish fingers and pasta. "I like fish fingers," he said, a tiny bit defensively.

>91 susanj67: A lip gloss that is matte? Isn't that a contradiction in terms Susan. Hani, my wife has very beautiful lips (I know I am biased) and has a huge assortment of lipsticks and glosses and balms and whatever else. My two girls are somewhere between the lip styles of both parents - Hani is full lipped whilst mine are paper thin - and they don't get nearly as big a kick out of the products that Hani does.

Now chicken nuggets and fish fingers (I didn't know that fish had fingers) are far more certain terrain for me!

My brother recommends fish finger sandwiches. I can't see it myself!

I don't think matte is ageing, or think you need to worry about age appropriateness. But then my makeup duty free splurge is still sitting in the bag, so no vlogging in my future...

Off to see if A Book of American Martyrs is in the library.

>92 PaulCranswick: Paul, yes, it is a contradiction - maybe lip creme would be better. Actually that's what the packaging calls it. There are masses of things out there now, although some of the new colours are a bit weird (navy blue etc).

>93 charl08: Charlotte, FOR and I just got back from Giant Robot, which is the hipster food hall above the Crossrail station, where we had...fried fish sandwiches :-) And chips. There is a lobster bar, and hip fried chicken and other things - I peeked in once but had never eaten there until today. We agreed that I may stage an intervention if I suspect that he has started repeating scripts from In The Night Garden in an endless loop.

I have A Book of American Martyrs on my Kindle. I tend to like Oates' work, but it can range wildly for me.

I also tend to like fish fingers (which we call fish sticks), though I haven't had them in years and years.

>95 katiekrug: Katie, my copy of A Book of American Martyrs is a new edition, which has "The book of Trump's America" across the top of the front cover (a quote from the Daily Mail). And so far...yes. I asked one of our US secondees yesterday if fish fingers were a thing in the US and he looked at me like I was slightly crazy and said yes. (He sits with FOR so it was part of a conversation about nursery food rather than totally out of the blue, but still :-) )

The fish sticks talk is cracking me up - when my nephew was little, he made me promise never to keep them in my freezer. He ate a lot of them in his younger days, and he never liked them. He would often come to stay with me in the summers and on school breaks, and he always checked my freezer first thing for fish sticks to see that I was keeping my word. He is now a grown man, and when he was living with us a few years ago he mentioned the fish sticks - he said, I always knew I could trust you because you kept your word about the fish sticks.

I like the new matte lip cremes. (Birdy has the blue one!) Funny you should mention that you weren't sure about it being appropriate for our age group because I always tend to shy away from the glosses for the same reason. So interesting.

I'm looking forward to your review of A Book of American Martyrs. The title doesn't attract me but I usually really like books you rate highly so we'll see.

>14 susanj67: Pandora's Lab: Seven Stories of Science Gone Wrong by Paul A. Offit looks interesting, is the tone of it to warn people that science is flawed, or is it more about forging new scientific ground by being bold?

The Smarties up-thread remind me of Pebbles, do you remember then from the corner dairy?

>94 susanj67: Giant Robot? I will be very disappointed if food is served by people at that. I still want to see the crossrail archaeology exhibit - think I might have left that too late.

>97 Crazymamie: I love this story.

Watched Prime Suspect 1973 after finding it on the digital thingy box. Then discovered that Linda la Plante had written it off in disgust half way through the series. Now I want to read Tennison and play spot the point where the writer had enough (I have my money on the romance, but it was all a bit less gritty than the original).

>97 Crazymamie: Mamie, that is a lovely story :-) It's the little things that count with kids, isn't it, rather than the grand gestures. I'm with you on the super-glossy glosses - the whole wet-look thing is not for me. I like something mid-way - not totally matte but with a bit of a sheen. But the expensive one dried down beautifully yesterday and Stayed Put, so it definitely worked.

>98 RebaRelishesReading: Reba, I'm not sure I would have searched it out with that title, but it was - ahem - right there, and brand new...I read another hundred pages last night - sooo good!

>99 LovingLit: Hi Megan! The Pandora book was about unintended consequences, really - how things were developed and promoted to solve problem x without anyone realising that they actually created a bigger problem y. Silent Spring was one example he quoted - it started a very effective campaign to ban DDT but with a consequent vast rise in malaria cases. Those weren't an issue for the US, which had eradicated malaria, so there was no apparent downside there, but millions of people have died in other countries because DDT was an effective killer of mosquitos. Nitrate fertilisers were another example - they greatly increase the amount of food that can be produced, which is good, but the run-off into water is slowly poisoning the planet. And so on. It was a great read. I do remember Pebbles from the dairy, but even more those "cigarette" lollies, which were popular in the 70s. What were people thinking?!!

>100 charl08: Charlotte, actually our order was taken by someone posh with a full sleeve tattoo, which was interesting. But they give you a coaster thing which vibrates when it's ready, and you go and collect it. Sadly the Crossrail exhibition has finished, but there's probably still stuff online about it. I lost track of Prime Suspect, by which I mean I missed one and then couldn't watch any more because of Order. That might not surprise you...

Right on cue, the Evening Standard has rounded up the most calorific drinks of the season, and the article is here in case anyone thinks that e.g. something called Black Forest (with cream) might not have any calories: https://www.standard.co.uk/lifestyle/foodanddrink/christmas-hot-drinks-coffee-ho...

And Book Riot, for reasons that are unclear, has announced "Exciting new books out in the UK this November", like we're some strange overseas colony that amazingly has paper: https://bookriot.com/2017/11/07/new-books-out-in-the-uk-november/ I may have wishlisted a few of these, but I'm holding firm on the not reserving.

No robot waiter? How about a robot beauty vlogger?


Loved those cigarette lollies. (Can confirm I wasn't thinking very much beyond the chocolate). I love the hazelnut hot chocolate all year round, and was genuinely horrified when I first found out how many calories there were in it. (See earlier point about not thinking).

Some of those books do look exciting - I found one Ruth Prawer Jhabvala's novels in a second hand shop a week or two ago and felt quite pleased with myself. At the end of the century: stories sounds good but I suppose I should read the one I have first...

That looks a lot like me applying makeup - not at all *that* kind of girl. Had a manicure today, as part of my "new job, new me" regime. I will stop biting my nails (again) and I know I am more successful if they look good. Now I'm home, I'm less sure that sure pale lilac was quite the right colour selection though...

I like hazelnut latte, which I have decaf and with skimmed milk to make up for the calories in the syrup. >:-) It's all about balance.

>102 charl08: Charlotte, yikes about the robot. And "I suppose I should read the one I have first..." - what kind of crazy talk is that?!

>103 Helenliz: Helen, it *is* all about balance, you are so right :-) When does your new job start?

The new(ish) Jack Reacher book came in as an e reserve last night. I reserved it *months* ago - how can it take people so long to read a collection of short stories? I'm sad it's not a novel this year, but it's still Jack. Currently he's been arrested for something he obviously didn't do, because he's Jack.

I seem to have just bought the M&S Beauty Advent calendar, even though I already have the L'Occitane one. Oops. But there are so many out there now, and I have FOMO. And they're better for me than chocolate ones, so I will keep telling myself that.

>104 susanj67: start on 22nd. currently using up leave from previous job, I finished work on the 3rd, but am being paid until the 21st. 2&1/2 weeks off. Which I am filling with lists of things to do. Nothing quite a satisfying as ticking things of lists.
One of the items on the list was to visit the Hotel Chocolat shop to buy presents. And an advent calendar *may* have leapt into the basket for me...
He opted for a beer advent calendar. Oh well, each to their own.

>105 Helenliz: Helen, that sounds like a lovely break. You can get ahead of Christmas :-) I like the sound of the beer advent calendar (as a concept - I'm not a beer drinker) but I suppose you'd have to wait till the evenings to open it...Somewhere I saw a gin one. My favourite one for kids is the eraser one that I saw at W H Smith, but possibly any stationery nerd would like it :-)

I went down to the mall earlier, to get an anniversary card for my brother and SIL. We don't really do anniversaries in our family, but this is 20 years (!). It turns out that Paperchase jumps straight from year 1 to year 25. Humph. I now have to whizz around the mall to see if anyone does 20. I thought 20 was a thing. But it's china, so if I can't get one with 20 on it, I'll try and get one with a nice painting of a china cup or plate or something. I can't believe my little brother has been married for 20 years, and they were together for long time before that, so they're closer to 30 as a couple. I feel very old.

Glad the reading has picked up for you, and that you have Jack to keep you company. Have fun playing with your makeup. : )

Is that new make up every month, Susan? Sounds like fun but blue lipstick?

>52 susanj67: (I was away for a while spending my computer time doing research and not hanging out on LT.) About Fitbits - I got my One in June of 2015 and it is still working (knock on wood). It even sent me a message to have it updated yesterday. I didn't know they did that.

>107 Berly: Thanks Kim! I'm really enjoying Jack - the short story formula works better than I thought it would.

>108 Familyhistorian: Meg, yes, it's half a dozen new things every month, a mix of sample sizes and full sizes, and they pick pretty neutral choices for the cosmetics (the lip creme in the box was a pink - I've seen blue in the shops, though). I got the Fitbit update message recently too :-) It had never done that before, but it's still working fine.

Today I tried the Glow Drops, which I mixed with my foundation, as instructed. (The weekends are when I experiment, just in case of disaster). I'm not sure I can see a difference, although the aim is probably not to be able to tell the time off me in a darkened room...I'll try doing it differently tomorrow and see how that works. But the Minty Haze eyeshadow is *gorgeous*. I found some colours that work with it, and I love it.

Today I want to try and finish A Book of American Martyrs, not least because it's due back on Monday and I got a pre-overdue notice for it this morning (grrr). But I also have to tidy, file and iron, so good luck to me.

"tell the time off me in a darkened room." -- lol, literally

>110 RebaRelishesReading: Hi Reba! I must come and visit your thread. Or more accurately post on it - I do visit :-)



139. A Book of American Martyrs by Joyce Carol Oates

I got this because it was brand new and clean, and it was a great read. It's probably famous in the US but I hadn't heard of it before. But it is very timely, involving the murder of a doctor working at an abortion clinic, and the fallout for the families of the doctor and his killer. Highly recommended.

>111 susanj67: OK you got me. I think I'd vaguely heard of it but had never really heard anything about it. Will be off to Amazon in a minute.

Thanks for posting on my thread. It's always fun to get messages. I know what you mean about visiting but not posting, I do that a lot myself. I wish there was a way to just leave a little footprint so people would know you'd visited without having something worth writing to say.

>112 RebaRelishesReading: Reba, something like the Fitbit "cheer" button would be good, except it could be "Hello" :-) I often read threads on the bus, so I'm saving y'all from reading bus typing.



140. The Strange Disappearance of a Bollywood Star by Vaseem Khan

This is the third instalment in the Baby Ganesh Detective Agency series, in which Inspector Ashwin Chopra (Retd) solves crimes in Mumbai with the help of elephant calf Ganesha. I do wonder how much longer Ganesha is going to be small enough to fit inside the Tata Venture van, but this book appears to set up an interesting new development for book 4. I really like these.

I was going to dedicate Sundays to catching up with magazines, but I have Elizabeth's Rival to start, so I might read a bit of that later.

>111 susanj67: Joyce Carol Oates never ceases to amaze me. How on earth does she manage to write so many books?

Thanks for the review, Susan, it is definitely one I will pick up soon.

>114 PaulCranswick: Paul, that was my first Oates, but I definitely want to read more.



141. No Middle Name by Lee Child

This is the Jack Reacher short story collection, which I thought was *the* Reacher book for this year, but it turns out that The Midnight Line has just been published, so yay! I have managed not to reserve it yet, but it's on my library wishlist. I liked this collection, although the longer stories worked better than the shorter ones. And I continue to marvel that Lee Child is British, when the books are so packed with detail about the US military. I wonder what US people think as far as accuracy is concerned, but I'm totally convinced :-)

>101 susanj67: I do remember Pebbles from the dairy, but even more those "cigarette" lollies, which were popular in the 70s. What were people thinking?!!
I know! They still have them, btw, only now they're called Spaceman Lollies, and do NOT have the red tip :)
(My kids pretend they are cigarettes, so go figure)

>115 susanj67: Relieved to hear you will not be full-length 'Reacher'less this year Susan. I have five books on the reservation list, so some improvement. Although I did tell the librarians on Saturday that I am trying to cut back, and got the distinct impression of disbelief...

Look forward to hear more about Elizabeth's rivals. I liked the first episode of the documentary about Elizabethan spying, but haven't got any further in the series.

>116 LovingLit: Spaceman lollies? Hmmm.

Susan, I was glad to read that you don't have to settle for short stories for your Jack Reacher read this year - hooray for a full novel. And for slightly scary eye shadow that turns out to be gorgeous.

The talk about those candy cigarettes takes me back. When I was growing up, my Dad was a smoker - his whole family smoked and so did my mom's, but my mom did not smoke. She had two sisters who lived together (one was widowed and one had never married), and they were my favorite aunts. They did exciting things like take the bus downtown to go shopping, belong to the Harlequin Romance Book of the Month Club, and eat off of tv trays in the living room while washing tv. Anyway, the younger sister was my Aunt Lois, and she was a card - when I spent time with her, she would always buy me a box of those candy cigarettes and use her red lipstick to make the end look red. When my mom found out she told her that she was not allowed to do that any more - she was not to buy me one more pack of candy cigarettes. SO, the next time we went out, she produced two packs.

>116 LovingLit: Megan, I didn't realise that the brand was originally Spaceman (we used to buy them loose at the dairy) but someone has written a whole blog post about it! https://longwhitekid.wordpress.com/2011/11/05/dont-mess-with-the-classics/ And yes, they still do look like cigarettes.

>117 charl08: Charlotte, Elizabeth's Rival is going well. And that spy series is worth continuing with, although last night while catching up on episode 2 I think I was overheated and a bit sleepy, so I stopped it half way through and now I have 1.5 episodes to go.

>118 Crazymamie: Mamie, I love your unruly Aunt! Everyone needs an Aunt like that. I like to think I would have been one if I'd seen the nephews more than about four times in their entire lives...

Well, Monday got me. I didn't look directly at it, but it got me just the same. Thank goodness it's Tuesday, and I have just been to the library where I saw The Upstarts in the Best NF of 2017 display:



And THEN I saw, across the room, the NEW Minette Walters book The Last Hours in the new fiction. "Holy carp!" I said to myself (not out loud) (I hope) and hastened over to snaffle it.



On the way back to the office, I saw one of the Wharf security dogs doing a practice run on some bags that his handlers had laid out in the square. He went back and forth multiple times, but didn't find anything. By this time a little crowd had stopped to watch. His handler eventually called an end to it and he ran off in the direction of a group of people instead, who looked a bit alarmed. I'm not sure whether he failed the test or whether, every so often, they stage a test where there *isn't* anything to find, just so they don't assume that every x number of bags they have to pick one in order to be a good boy.

Hope Tuesday is an improvement over Monday, Susan!

A Book of American Martyrs has arrived. What a chunk!!

>120 katiekrug: Katie, it was an improvement, and even better now I'm home.

>121 RebaRelishesReading: Reba, value for money :-)

>122 susanj67: is that value on a price-per-page basis?
I use that type of explanation (price-per-wear) to justify spending what my husband imagines are large sums of money of handbags & shoes. >:-)

>123 Helenliz: Helen, yes. Or per hour of entertainment. And, on the latter basis, even a hardback can give great value for money, particularly with cinema prices in central London :-)

>122 susanj67: >123 Helenliz: >124 susanj67: I'm sure it will be good value on all counts :)

Hi Susan, taking advantage of some down-time to get caught up with some threads.

Ooohhh.... new phone! Always fun to check out what the new phones can do. I have never watched the Brother Cadfael TV series but I did enjoy reading the books. My teenage self had a bit of a readers crush on Hugh Beringer, if I remember correctly. ;-)

Scarf buying = good retail therapy.

Re: Life of Pi comment: Literary fiction is wasted on me. LOL!

Sending belated deepest condolences on the passing of your dad.

>27 susanj67: - The Terry's chocolate oranges are a huge hit over here, even today. Love the dark chocolate ones.

All caught up.

Chocolate orange update: first one has been consumed of the season. In possibly related news, the 'no booze diet' doesn't seem to be having its usual slimming effects...

>124 susanj67: Duly noted for future reference!

Hope Wednesday is even better than Tuesday, which hopefully was better than Monday.

>125 RebaRelishesReading: Reba, I really hope you like it!

>126 lkernagh: Hi Lori! The scarves are working out well, although I have only worn one so far. I'm going to save the other one for December. And the phone is getting easier to use although I still marvel at all the things it can do. I was berating myself for forgetting to print out the pdf map on a meeting invitation on Monday, particularly as I couldn't see it as an attachment to the invitation on my phone. But then I noticed the pointy map symbol in the invitation, so I clicked that and a whole "live" map popped up with the destination marked and a moving blue dot to show where I was. Very impressed :-) I just have to remember not to be one of those people weaving all over the pavement while looking at my phone.

>127 charl08: Charlotte, I looked for the chocolate oranges again at Waitrose on the weekend but they were nowhere to be found. And a packet of milk chocolate digestives just isn't the same.

No significant reading progress last night as I had to log on to my webmail at home to email my stepmother. She used the default email account on the iPad, so my Dad's name popped up in my inbox, which was a tiny bit disconcerting. Nice to see it again, in a way, but I knew it wasn't really him. That sounds nuts, as of *course* I knew, but whatever...Anyway, before I knew it there was a good documentary on BBC Four, so Lettice Knollys will have to wait. I read that Lettice was short for Laetitia, so I think it might be pronounced "Le-TEESS" rather than, um, Lettuce. As for Knollys, I have no idea. "NOLL-ees", I would have thought, but those old names are tricky. "Sandys", for instance, is "Sands". Apparently.

I did manage a couple of chapters of the second "Crowner John" mystery, about the Exeter coroner in the 1190s. The author seems to be an unreconstructed old geezer, so they are a bit misogynistic, but I love all the nerdy legal stuff. This one deals with "presentment of Englishry". If a person was found murdered, the law presumed that he was a Norman, and therefore a large fine was payable by the township in which the body was found. The townspeople had to prove that the person was not Norman in order to escape the fine. This meant showing that he was a Saxon - presenting evidence that he was English and not Norman. Hence "presentment of Englishry".

> 128 Have an sympathetic pat on the shoulder. I can understand the disconcerting sensation over names. I took over a membership from Mum after she died, only they changed the address, but not the name. I kept saying it didn't bother me, receiving mail at my address with Mum's name on it. But it did.

>129 Helenliz: Thanks Helen. I thought I was just being unduly sensitive, but it was weird. The email address itself doesn't have his name in it, so only the display name needs changing. It makes sense for her to continue using the account as it is the login for quite a few websites that they used, and all their family and friends emailed them on it, although Dad was In Charge of it, and would read things out or print them when necessary. (It always used to drive me mildly crackers that I had no way of contacting her for e.g. birthday present discussions for Dad). I said I could send a note on how to change the display name when she was ready. Oldest nephew set up an account for her in her own name, but it's not the iPad default account, so I can understand why she didn't use that one as she has enough paperwork and admin to be dealing with at the moment.

I think I've found my 2018 office calendar: https://www.calendarclub.co.uk/art/general-art/the-reading-woman-calendar-2018-r...

It's also available in a mini version: https://www.calendarclub.co.uk/art/general-art/the-reading-woman-mini-calendar-2...

Goodness, this seems to be a popular theme: https://www.calendarclub.co.uk/art/general-art/reading-women-calendar-2018-r2006...

>131 susanj67: Does the calendar club do much between Feb-October, do you think? ( I like the pictures - just need a bit more space to write...)

>132 charl08: Charlotte, I'm sure they're very busy picking out the pictures and, um, stuff.

There's a very funny article in the Guardian this morning about the rise of luxury Advent calendars: https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2017/nov/16/ridiculous-rise-luxury-adve...

The beauty sector has, arguably, been the leading innovator, but increasingly the concept is working for food and drink brands beyond chocolate and confectionery. In many respects these calendars have moved away from marking the days till Christmas and become another side of the demand for a treat each day.” Modern adults – I am extrapolating here – are basically like dogs or toddlers.

I've decided to open my M&S one for actual Advent, and save the L'Occitane one to start on my birthday, because a little treat through January sounds like just the ticket.

Still "just" eating chocolate orange here.
Although saw some lovely advent calendars in m and s with little chocolates with numbered mini bags and pegs, and was tempted (until I saw the price).

I am impressed you can hold off until after Xmas - such willpower. I love the bit in 'The secret life of...' (small children) where they leave the four year olds with something tempting and tell them they're not allowed to touch. They have my sympathy each time they can't quite hold back!

>134 charl08: Charlotte, I think I have overdosed on chocolate orange - Friday was stressful and it was right there...but I still don't accept that one serving is only four slices. The M&S Advent has a 25th door (which is a make-up bag) and then the next one will start the day after, so there isn't much willpower involved :-)



142. The Poisoned Chalice by Bernard Knight

This is book 2 in the Crowner John series, which, as I said above, is old-fashioned in its treatment of women (basically they are shrewish wives or cheerful whores) but it has lots of nerdy legal stuff which I like. It was originally published in 1998, and I wonder whether a similar series written today might be a bit more modern in its outlook. Basically I'd like to read these written by a 30-something female historian in 2017.



143. Elizabeth's Rival: The Tumultuous Tale of Lettice Knollys, Countess of Leicester by Nicola Tallis

I liked this a lot, although it is possible that Lettice has not had a whole book written about her before because the primary sources are a bit...light. There is quite a lot of "She probably would", "She undoubtedly", "It is possible that" and so on. But I love the period, and she is definitely an interesting subject. The author is very good at explaining how she was related to many people about whom more is known too. For example, the title says that she was Countess of Leicester, and therefore wife of the Queen's favourite, Robert Dudley, which I sort of vaguely knew, but I didn't realise that she was the mother of the Queen's later favourite, Essex. A decent copy editor would have got rid of all the "As such"es but that's my only quibble. It's a beautiful book with two sets of pictures and expensive paper. Very highly recommended for Tudor fans, but don't expect a previously-undiscovered cache of letters or a diary.

I now seem to have two hard copy and three e library books, which is naughty. So I must Get On, just as soon as I've wrangled the laundry onto drying racks. I had to go into the office yesterday to do a workshop for a Graduate Recruitment open day, so I'm a day behind with household stuff.

Hi Susan!
I've always loved the name Lettice Knollys (it's always pronounced 'lettuce' in my head), but I think I'll pass on this one - mostly because I am not a fan of the Tudors. Besides - there are so many other books out there that need reading.

Nice calendar choice. I like calendars, but I rarely get them. Not enough space around here for one and every single device I own seems to have one and so a 'real' one seems to be not really needed.

Boo to working on Saturday - a person needs at least two days of recovery at the end of the week.

Hope the week ahead is a good one...

>136 Fourpawz2: It's not pronounced Lettuce?!

Hi Susan - I have a Reading Women calendar this year, so am going to choose something different for next year.

I've never been a huge Oates fan, but your comments about A Book of American Martyrs are tempting...

I'll watch for your comments on the Walters book. I'm not sure when it will be available here.

Have a wonderful Sunday.

>136 Fourpawz2: Hi Charlotte! I tried pronouncing it "Le-TEESS" in my head while I was reading it, but Lettuce seems to stick. If you're not a Tudor fan then I agree that there are better choices for limited time. I always have a wall calendar for my office, which I stick post-it notes on for talk dates and important deadlines, but I don't have room for one at home.

>137 charl08: Charlotte, I really wish I knew, but if it was pronounced Lettuce then arguably it would be spelled like that...It's certainly not a name you see or hear these days!

>138 BLBera: Beth, I also like to try different ones, although I would get another Indian textiles calendar if I could. I have it this year, but the 2018 version seems to be Asian art more generally, which isn't stitchery...I did have a nice Sunday, with lots of reading and quite a few episodes of Designated Survivor on Netflix. It's my new favourite show, although it took me a couple of episodes to realise that Kiefer Sutherland was the lead character. Something alarming has happened to his face.

I read quite a lot of The Upstarts yesterday, which is mostly about Airbnb and Uber, although it was published in January this year, so months before Uber kicked Travis Kalanick out and before Transport for London announced that they were losing their London licence for being appalling. Depending on how that plays out, I can see a revised edition of this being published. It's a good read, and the author does cover the "disruptive" aspects of their business (basically Laws? We don't care) but it is perhaps a bit cheerleady when really they and other companies like them have done a great deal of harm. I should finish it tonight if Designated Survivor doesn't suck me in. I've also started The Mad Ship, which is the second one in a Robin Hobb trilogy. I read the first one a few months ago and thought I should keep going with the series before I forgot who everyone was. That's an ebook.

It sounds like you had a wonderful Sunday, Susan. I'm not familiar with the Robin Hobb trilogy.

That is a lot of reading women! Who knew they were such popular subjects for paintings?

>141 Familyhistorian: Probably the only way the painter could persuade the sitter to sit for him: you can read whilst you're doing it, please....

>139 susanj67: I'm an uber convert after Cape Town, but my brother tells me that if you go to Berlin they've integrated digital booking of cabs into the normal taxi system - and as soon as he told me this, I thought, why doesn't everyone do this?! It does feel a lot safer to be able to track the car and the driver (although how much of that is perception, given recent news stories, I don't know).

>140 BLBera: Beth, The Hobb books are a whole series of trilogies, so Extreme Order :-) They start with the Farseer books, which I liked a lot. This set is not as good, but I need to read it to get to the next one.

>141 Familyhistorian: Meg, I know! I saw one downstairs at Waterstones and googled to find a link to show y'all, and then realised there were others.

>142 charl08: Charlotte, yes, I suppose if someone told me to gaze into the distance for hours, I would quickly try and find a way that I could read something while I did it. London's black cabs had the Hailo app for a while, but I'm not sure whether it's still going or not.



144. The Upstarts: How Uber, Airbnb and the Killer Companies of the New Silicon Valley are Changing the World by Brad Stone

The subtitle pretty much says it all, although there aren't many other "killer companies" mentioned in the book. The author, a technology journalist with Bloomberg, focuses on Uber and Airbnb and how they started and grew so quickly, and why they are now worth billions. I thought that, despite pointing out their "disruptive" effect, his overall position was that they were the future, which is pretty depressing. Nearly every time a terrorist outrage occurs, the perpetrator seems to be an Uber driver, and there are awful stories here about their drivers abusing women, not having a clue where they're going and, (and it may seem like a small thing but it's actually important), refusing to carry guide dogs. (That is not limited to Uber but is reported quite often about minicabs as well. Drivers refuse on the basis that their religion forbids dogs, and no-one dares to say Hey, you're living in the West in the 21st century now. Obey the freaking law). A UK journalist wrote a story recently after he'd tried to join the company as a driver, and had sent in fake insurance documents (from a company that didn't exist). They cleared him to drive without making any further enquiries.

Brad Stone interviews a London black cab driver, noting that they all have to do three years of training known as "The Knowledge" (which means they actually know where they're going, instead of being glued to a sat nav) and saying that they are protesting very hard to keep their middle-class jobs. Well of course they are. I'm no fan of black cabbies, but I don't see why it's seen as a good thing when middle class jobs disappear and the money goes instead to American billionaires. They don't pay taxes here. The middle class jobs pay all the taxes. I'm subsidising Uber even though I would never use it in a million years, because they have so many drivers (in London, anyway) that there isn't enough work to go round, so the drivers earn buttons and then claim benefits.

Could the existing system work better for the paying public? Yes. Is the answer to do away with any regulation and just let people do what they want? No. Uber says Oh, but our drivers go to areas that other cabs won't go to, so poor people can get cabs too, but poor people can't afford any sort of cab, be it an Uber or anything else. In London they can't even afford the tube. They take buses.

Airbnb is another company that has caused a lot of problems by taking accommodation off the rental market and turning it into short-term lets. I would never use it either (although that may be an age thing - I did giggle to read that one of the original people who declined to fund it said "I'm forty-four. I don't want strangers sleeping on my couch and I don't want to sleep on theirs." The roomie and her husband use it all the time). Again, there are terrible stories about people being attacked by hosts, being injured in properties and "guests" logging on as fake people and trashing properties. London has quite a problem, but Barcelona seems to have an even bigger one, with protests in the streets. They boast that they now have more rooms than all the Marriott hotels in the entire world, but that's bad for the hotel industry, which invests heavily in decent properties, and employs a lot of people. The answer seems to be that the hotels are Big Business, so they don't count. All the people they employ presumably don't count either.

We seem to be in a race to the bottom - where everything is so cheap that people now demand more and more and more, like it is some sort of human right to roam around London every night in a car driven by someone else, and travel all over the world incessantly because hey look, you can stay right next to some amazing sight for £20.

I realise I sound 104, and certainly I am able to afford as many proper taxis and hotels as I want (although I never take cabs and seldom travel) but really. Sooner or later the music will stop. I leave the last word to someone quoted in the book (who declined to get involved with Uber):

"We are living in an era of robber barons. If you have enough money and can make the right phone call, you can disregard whatever rules are in place and then use that as a way of getting PR. And you can win."

As someone who has used both Uber (though I prefer Lyft) and airBNB, I think what gets lost in the discussion about them is that in some places, they are the only option. I went to my high school reunion last year in a very rural area, where there are few hotels. Rather than spending $400 night at a "quaint" bed and breakfast, we opted to stay in someone's (unoccupied) weekend home. New York City has cracked down on the issue of long-term airBNB arrangements, in an effort to prevent available properties from being taken off the rental market. It's not perfect, but the acknowledgment of the problem is there, along with a commitment to ameliorating it.

As for ride shares - I live in the suburbs where taxi companies don't operate that consistently. I'll often get a Lyft to the train station or the airport when The Wayne isn't around to drop me off. And I've never had a bad driver or one who made me uncomfortable (except for the rabid Trump supporter a few months ago...). I'm not saying they don't exist, but creepy taxi drivers also exist. I know licensing and regulation are different with the black cabs in London, so I am speaking solely from an American perspective.

I guess I often fall on the side that innovation often develops to fill a need, and while the efforts often fall short or have unintended consequences, it's too easy to brand them all as bad rather than to look at and address the underlying problem in a collaborative and sustainable way.

Also, I haven't read the book, so I should probably just be quiet now :)

>144 katiekrug: Katie, of course you don't have to be quiet! And I agree that the underlying problems should be addressed collaboratively, but the "upstarts" just won't do that. They simply barge on with what *they* want to do, and make the authorities look like the bad guys for insisting that rules are adhered to, or that a proper process is gone through to change them. That's what annoys me the most, I think. I like order. In so many ways :-)

>145 susanj67: Maybe you just put your finger on what really bothers me: "I like order. In so many ways". I too am upset by Uber and Lyft. I don't think they're properly regulated and also worry about the decent jobs that are being killed by them. I will admit that we have rented flats/houses for companies similar to AirB&B (Home Away, FlipKey) and never paused to think about what it does to the local rental market. I am not at all attracted to the "rent a couch or spare room" part of AirB&B but I do love to have a sitting room, separate bedroom and kitchen facilities when traveling.

Re the Hobb books - I think you re reading one of the trilogies that I missed out. I suspect it led to me being somewhat confused when I picked up the later set, but the confusion only lasted a few chapters ;)

>146 RebaRelishesReading: Reba, soon after I posted yesterday I saw an article in the evening standard about Ford wanting to start up a minibus service in parts of London (I have no idea why, but I'm not familiar with the areas they want to target) and the article was based on their application for a licence from Transport for London. I was pleased to see someone playing by the rules!

>147 BekkaJo: Bekka, I am shocked!! Shocked :-) The trilogy is the one about the liveship traders, which is a clever idea but the characters don't really interest me. Still, it's going quite well, in terms of amount read.

The Glow Drops have finally worked! I have tried them all sorts of ways, with no noticeable effect. ("Do I look more luminous to you?" I asked the roomie the other day. The roomie looked dubious). But today there is luminosity. Sort of like the Twilight vampires in daylight. I now need to go and stand in sunlight, which is unfortunate as my office faces north and I have things I need to do.

This is a time of year when I as a non-American ponder over what I am thankful for.

I am thankful for this group and its ability to keep me sane during topsy-turvy times.

I am thankful that you are part of this group.

I am thankful for this opportunity to say thank you.

>149 PaulCranswick: Thanks Paul.

In Glow Drop news, I don't think it's the Glow Drops. I think it's the new No 7 translucent powder. Grrr. I didn't use the drops today but I'm still luminous.

In book news, I'm still on The Mad Ship but I'm going to take a break from it this weekend and read the Minette Walters book, which is enormous but which should read up pretty quickly, being a novel.

I've just got a new (replacement) credit card, which *finally* has the contactless payment facility (known in NZ by the much better name of payWave) so that's awesome. I have, however, had to try and remember what accounts the card is linked to for auto-payments, and visit those sites to update my payment details. My first stop was the work canteen card, which has an account management page so ridiculous that I think it was designed by someone who had never heard of the internet. Clicking "change card details" resulted in "Your card details have been changed!" even though I hadn't actually entered any new details. I was trying to get to a page to enter them. In the end, I had to remove the old card completely and start again. But Amazon worked fine :-) I need to remember Transport for London, as I have my Oyster (travel) card set to auto top-up from my credit card, but TfL is now trying to get everyone to use just their contactless credit card instead of Oysters, so I could try that, I suppose. But it's very new and different. Actually paying by phone is new and different, but the Young People seem to manage.

We just recently got cards with chips in them -- still don't have chip and pin. I've seen machines that ask for the contactless type but haven't ever seen an actual card. Citibank recently decided that the Visa I've had for years should become a MasterCard -- now all of my auto payments need to be changed to. Grrrrrrr.

>151 RebaRelishesReading: Reba, that must be so annoying! I remembered Netflix and my beauty box after my last post, so now I'm getting emails warning me that my payment details have been updated, just in case it wasn't me. (Which is sort of weird, as I'd love it if someone else paid for my life :-)) I hope you catch all of yours before you get an email saying that your card is no longer current. I tried waving my card for lunch at Pret, but I think the first time you use it you have to use the PIN, so I might try M&S later for a few bits and pieces in the food hall. There's a limit per transaction without a PIN, which I think is £30, and there must also be a daily limit. Now might be the time to read the leaflet that came with it :-)

There is a daily limit? Did not know this.

Nipped into L'Occitaine and was suitably impressed by the advent calendars. I got a cute tin instead. Meant to be a gift. Rethinking, as suspect may have reflected my own taste rather than giftee...

>152 susanj67:/>153 charl08:. There is a transaction limit, yes. No, there's no daily limit or number of transactions limit. They will all get approved, as long as you have the money in your account.
I've used my contactless card on the underground and it's easy enough - as long as you remember which card you used...

Husband had a card change and managed to get his car insurance cancelled as a result. Which was interesting and provoked a few rather cross phone calls.

>153 charl08: Charlotte, my s-i-l mentioned a daily limit in NZ, which is where I got the idea from...I have to hold a hand up to my face as I scurry past L'Occitane, so I don't see what's in the calendar :-) The tin sounds lovely :-)

>154 Helenliz: Helen, the lack of a limit is useful to know, although more than one £30 transaction in a single day would probably make me twitchy anyway. Well, a transaction without a PIN, because that would mean lunch or groceries or the siren call of Boots, and not a considered purchase. That sounds very annoying for your husband. I am going to start a list of recurring credit card payments, so I don't have to wonder nervously for a month whether I've remembered them all.

We just got a message from the firm's disaster messaging system (to both my email accounts and a text message) about an "incident" in Oxford Street. That's the first time they've ever done that. It sounds bad. "Reports of gunfire", according to the Guardian. People told to go into buildings and stay there. Shops locking people in for safety. FFS. Not again.

OMG -- hope all is well in Oxford Street. Just read about a terrible incident in Egypt with 200+ people at prayer shot by extremists. So sad.

>156 RebaRelishesReading: Reba, that turned out to be embarrassing - the police could find no sign of anything wrong at all, and everything is back to normal. That doesn't explain the stampede out of the station or the broken window at Debenhams, but hey ho.

I got on the bus, and my Oyster card paused before beeping, which means that it *topped itself up*!!! With the card that's no longer valid! I hastened on to the TfL website when I got home, and changed the card details. I hope the payments go through overnight and then it will be fine. Otherwise I will get a stern email in a few days, saying that my top-up has failed and please pay the money immediately.

The joys of contact-less credit card transactions. Not a fan of them, although they will probably become the norm. I love the combination "chip and pin" much better, which has been in place for a number of years already in Canada, but then I am "old school". I prefer to pay cash for smaller transactions. I am not ready to advance order and pay for my takeaway coffee via an app on my phone when I am still two blocks away from the coffee shop. That will take longer for me to get comfortable with, if I ever do.

I had to look up contact-less credit card payments to figure out what you were talking about. I use "tap" all the time. The transaction limit here is $100 (Canadian). I was surprised that I couldn't use "tap" when I was in Salt Lake City but then the US is often behind in their credit card technology. I can remember that they caught on to chip and pin quite a while after Canada and the UK.

>158 lkernagh: yup, me too. But I know I'm not dawn wiv da youf, so that's OK with me. >:-)

>158 lkernagh: Lori, that is so funny about the coffee shop! I have never heard of that. I checked the chi-chi one that has opened just along the road from me, and they don't have it. Then I checked Pret and Starbucks and they don't seem to have it either. Maybe it goes against the British ethos of queuing :-) Contactless was quite late to roll out here, and viewed with some suspicion, but it's becoming more common now. Even Super-Fit Friend, who won't do her banking online, has a contactless card.

>159 Familyhistorian: Meg, yes, I don't know where "contactless" came from, because you still do have to put it on the reader (or maybe near the reader). When they first rolled it out there it was sold as "keep your card in your wallet" but then people started wondering whether *all* their cards would be debited if they did that. And then what about criminals standing near you with a card reader, stealing all your money? New Zealand is always years ahead of the UK with anything bank-y, because of the small population I think. They can roll things out pretty cheaply.

>160 Helenliz: Helen, I do speak fluent Jafaican, which is the patois of all London youf, regardless of race or social class. The things you learn on the D3 bus. Plus, you know, the constant immunity boosting for TB and stuff like that.

My new card is a John Lewis Partnership card, which is relevant to today's Surely you are kidding me but OMG you're not story. I went into the John Lewis at Westfield to buy a couple of kitchen bits and pieces, and the man at the till asked me if I had a Partnership card. "Yes!" I said, "and it's a fancy new contactless one." "Oh," he said, "actually we don't have contactless on the tills yet."

Of course they don't.

However, it works fine at Boots :-) But not at M&S on the self-service tills, which is weird as it worked last night on the one with a cashier. I stopped at Pret, which is advertising a "festive flat white" which apparently tastes a bit like a mince pie. Yeah, um, no. I stuck to my new fave, the coconut latte.

Today's Boots haul was mostly necessary stuff (dull dull dull) but I did get my face read by their foundation matching machine. "Calico," said the girl, putting some on my hand. "Too yellow," I said. "Yes," she said. "Actually they've just brought out porcelain and it's not on the machine yet, but that would be better." And porcelain is perfect, so I bought one. But beware if you're pale - the machine just goes by what they actually have in the system, rather than what is best for you. I'm usually porcelain, or alabaster, or "light ivory" in one brand, which is gorgeous. I tried the L'Oreal Age Perfect today, which is at huge Boots stores only, and it's far too yellow. I might get one of their old-lady mascaras, though. I also got a couple of sheet masks - the Garnier Moisture Bomb tissue mask http://www.garnier.co.uk/skin-care/beauty/garnier/moisture-bomb/skinactive-moist... and a Simple Pollution Protect sheet mask, because I read in the paper the other day that living in London is more polluting than nuclear fallout, which I think is incorrect on a number of (head in hands) levels, but undoubtedly the air is filthy. http://www.simple.co.uk/our-products/product/kind-to-skin-pollution-protect-shee...

>158 lkernagh: We’ve become big fans of order ahead apps. Mrsdrneutron calls her mom and gets the grocery list, orders on her phone, then picks it up on the way over to the mom’s house. It’s a big timesaver!

>150 susanj67: - I had to put The Mad Ship aside a while ago as it is just too dang long and I was losing interest in a number of the characters.

Kind of startling to me to read that you were thought to be "Calico". Jane is a calico and for just a couple of seconds I was thinking how odd that a person could be categorized as one. Plainly a calico person cannot possibly resemble a three-colored cat.

>162 drneutron: Jim, we do have something similar to that at the supermarkets. I also work with people who order groceries for their elderly parents online and the order is delivered to their parents. It's great if people live far apart and the parents aren't internet users.

>163 Fourpawz2: Charlotte, I think calico in make-up terms means the bleached fabric colour :-) I think that matching Jane might be quite a challenge for the foundation machine! I'm about 75% of the way through The Mad Ship now, and read a couple of chapters on my phone this morning as I was on various trains. But this afternoon I've started The Last Hours and read about half of it - 275 pages so far. It's a quick read and I'm enjoying it, but might watch some TV this evening.

Hi Susan - I've been thinking of you as I read Pale Rider, the book about the Spanish flu - it was you who recommended it, correct? It is fascinating. I just finished the chapter that talked about naming. Poor Spain.

145. The Whitsun Weddings by Philip Larkin

This is my poetry choice for my Better World Books reading challenge (now finished - yay!). Although I'm not really a poetry lover, I studied Larkin at school and this collection has my very favourite of his poems in it - An Arundel Tomb.



146. The Last Hours by Minette Walters

This is a novel set at the time of the Black Death, and focuses on the community of Develish, which isolates itself in order to protect its people. It reads up really quickly, but at the end there are the three fateful words To Be Continued. One crime has been resolved in this book, but there must be more to come as the community realises just how many people have died, and starts thinking about what they might do next. I wonder how long we have to wait for the next one...

I walked to another library this morning as it's been a beautiful day here, and I found Edward Said's Orientalism in a pretty new, fairly clean edition, which I was pleased about. It's been on my longlist for ages, but my own library's copy is not new or clean.

Next, I want to finish The Mad Ship and then I have a couple of library ebooks - the next Cadfael mystery and the first one in another series set in colonial Egypt which looks promising.

>165 BLBera: Hi Beth! Yes, I recommended it. I saw on your thread that it was up next for you, so I've been hoping you'd like it :-) And yes, poor Spain. We also have a phrase here for overly unionised workplaces - "Spanish practices", meaning overstaffing, time-wasting and pointless tasks Just Because, and with strike action if the Spanish practices are objected to by management. I tried and tried to work out why they have that name, but never did. In Spain I'm sure they're called some other sort of practices :-)

>119 susanj67: a whole blog post about Spaceman sweets!! Cool :)

>143 susanj67: The Upstarts sounds like a good one to have read, but one that the actual reading of could cause depression.....(a topical ointment should do to fix that though, right? Like a light and fluffy book!?)

>168 LovingLit: Megan, there are quite a few NZ nostalgia sites, particularly on Facebook. It's just slightly disconcerting to see old-fashioned stuff that was brand new when I was little! The Upstarts was a good read, and it was interesting how much has changed for Uber in just the 11 months since the book was published. I reviewed it up there *before* news broke of the huge data theft that they finally owned up to recently, so it will be interesting to see where they are after another year of lawless behaviour.

I returned the Minette Walters to the library this morning, and noticed a poster with a cartoon Santa on it, promising a *certificate* for people who read four books during December. And there was no age limit...I did manage not to borrow anything new, though. Poor Queen Victoria and her matchmaking is still sitting on the new NF shelf. Maybe I'll get it when they start issuing books for over Christmas. The library closes between Christmas Eve and 2 January, so there's a point at which we get an extra week on the loans.

>166 susanj67: Two more for my WL - darn it!

>170 BLBera: Beth, oh dear :-)



147. The Mad Ship by Robin Hobb

This is book 2 in the Liveship trilogy, which isn't grabbing me in the same way as the first trilogy, but which seemed to get better towards the end. I thought the middle sagged a bit, and these fantasy books are all very *long*, aren't they? I'm going to do another reading challenge next year, and it's bound to have a fantasy category, so I'll read the third one for that category :-)

I've started The Mamur Zapt and the Return of the Carpet, which is the first in a crime series (new to me, but not "new" new) and which looks promising. I shouldn't really have described the time as "colonial Egypt" as officially the British never ruled it. They just advised, and recommended, and backed that up with the Army.

A lot of fantasy is very long. Sometimes that works, other times... I just picked up a J.V Jones (ebook), read the first chapter and only then realised that it was 600 pages long.

>171 susanj67: "They just advised, and recommended, and backed that up with the Army." Mmm hmmm.

>171 susanj67: the crime series looks interesting - although I do NOT need yet another crime series in my life...
I will admit to being put off some fantasy based on the size of the book. I read the first Game of Thrones book, but decided I didn't need to read 7 more of 700 pages each. It was good, but not good enough to commit to that.

Love how you talk about books, Susan! I had to read your post out loud to Abby, as the same sentence that Charlotte quoted made me snort, and then Abby wanted to know why. That series looks interesting, so I will await your final thoughts to see if I need to add it to the list. And Abby and I completely agree about the length of fantasy books - why do they have to be so big? I understand that world building and the setting up of multiple plot lines takes time, but it also makes jumping in a daunting task.

>172 BekkaJo: Which one? I read Jones' The Baker's Boy and sequels years ago and liked them, but yeah, really long.

#176 I loved the Baker's Boy series too - I also read that years and years ago. Picked up Cavern of Black Ice - not sure about it yet. Pretty dark opening which I would expect of her! I have so much else on the go that I suspect it'll be slow going.

>172 BekkaJo: Bekka, yes, I have to be in the mood for a long read. And darn those ebooks for disguising themselves...You think you've read heaps and then it's 4% or something.

>173 charl08: Charlotte, yup. There was a lot of that going on.

>174 Helenliz: Helen, there are 18 books in the series, so it might be wise not to start if you really don't need another series, but then again...I liked the Game of Thrones books that I read but was put off by the fact that the series was unfinished. I like to know I'm going to get the whole story before I start.

>175 Crazymamie: Mamie, I think it would be a good addition if you like historical mysteries, because it's a fascinating time and place. I know nothing about modern Egypt and learned a lot. And I agree re fantasy - there are so many huge books in multi-book series that it's hard to know where to start at all. That's partly why I'm sticking to the Robin Hobb series - I've started so I may as well finish :-)

>176 drneutron:, >177 BekkaJo: Bekka, Jim, I'll have to keep those in mind!



148. The Mamur Zapt and the Return of the Carpet by Michael Pearce

Set in Cairo in 1908, this is the first in a series about the British head of the Secret Police, the Mamur Zapt, who has to solve crimes and figure things out. Clashing frequently with the British Army and trying to co-exist with the Parquet (the French-style prosecution service), Gareth Owen investigates an attack on a rich Egyptian and the theft of a box of grenades, just as the parade celebrating the return of a carpet from Mecca is about to be held. There is lots of interest in this book, and I'll definitely continue with the series to see how it develops. Owen is a sympathetic character, and I also like his office staff and agents, including the uptight Nikos, who frowns on the boss *writing his own memos* and finding out things by himself.

Book #148 sounds really good Susan, wishlisted. Have you read the series set in Egypt but with a Sudanese investigator by Parker Bilal? I quite liked the couple of those that I read. Erm, *runs away because realises this is yet another series I have not read in order*. Also because there is a new one I can order at the library. Result!

>179 charl08: Charlotte, I haven't, but those look good. The first one (ahem) is on the shelf at Whitechapel. I've started a note on my phone for books at other branches, as the library wishlist can't be sorted by "show me what is in stock at this library right now darn it", which I would find immensely useful. (I thought maybe the app might have such a feature, but it turns out not to have the wishlist at all, so that's...completely pointless). Next time I brave Whitechapel I'll have a look for it. Meanwhile, I've started the next Cadfael.

>178 susanj67: Adding it to The List, Susan - thanks! Hoping that Wednesday is being kind to you.

Am not minding, now, that I have not proceeded with The Mad Ship since putting it aside in September. I found it to be a very slow mover. Maybe I will go back to it and paw through it to find the story lines that I was enjoying and read those, but I suspect that will just lead to confusion. When a fantasy book is really good I don't care how long it is, but when it is just fair to middling it's like slogging through mud. At least in a mystery series the books are much shorter and it is easier to get to the finish line, even when it is not fantastic. Except for the Inspector Lynley series. Those are far too big and I would not read them except for Sgt. Havers, who is the best character in them, and the fact that I've bought so many at book sales that are in my TBR piles. Still, I can only manage about one of those a year.

>181 Crazymamie: Thanks Mamie! My library has all the books in new ebook editions, so you might find that yours does too.

>182 Fourpawz2: Charlotte, you're right - it does depend on the story. I generally wish romances were longer, which may just be a sign that I need to get back to the 1980s bodice-rippers on my Kindle. Or Through A Glass Darkly, which I bought to reread after you read it! Ooh, an idea for over Christmas :-)

Hi Susan! Just checking in....

>184 katiekrug: Hi Katie! LOL :-)

>177 BekkaJo: Oh,yeah. I read that one back in 2008, read the next two, then somehow managed not to read the last. Yep, the whole series (at least the 75% I read) had a pretty dark feel.

>186 drneutron: Hi Jim!

In weather news, we have had little SNOW flurries this morning! In London! In November! I was looking forward to pointing out the snow whirling around outside the window to our US secondee, who is from Chicago and would probably have laughed his head off, but he doesn't seem to be here :-( And now it's stopped.

The roomie is back from Switzerland, and says she has chocolate, which she will give me at some later time whenwhenwhen I didn't ask but I wanted to. She said this at 11.30, as she has a call at 12, but there was half an hour between then and the call and no satisfactory explanation was provided as to why I had to wait. *pout*.



149. One Corpse Too Many by Ellis Peters

This is the second in the Cadfael series, and I liked it a lot. Set in the time of the Anarchy, when Stephen and Maud were involving the country in all their drama, there was lots of plotting and double-crossing but Cadfael worked out what was what and saved the day.

I've downloaded the next in the Medicus series for my next crime read. That's the series about the Roman doctor in Britain in the 100s. It's by Ruth Downie, who I always want to write as Penny Downie, except Penny is an actress. So confusing. Next year I'm going to have a post at the top of my thread in which I can keep track of all these series.

I read the Introduction to Orientalism yesterday and it looks promising, if hard. But it's so often cited and referred to in the history stuff I read that it seems like something I should persevere with.

>187 susanj67: I should reread Said so that I have something interesting to say when you review it. Hmm.

Is the Downie a new one? I know I could just google it, but...

Hope the promised Swiss chocolate has materialised!

The perfect way to celebrate snow flurries is with the eating of chocolate, so what was the roomie thinking?! One does not tease with chocolate - it's like a life rule.

It's cold here, but no snow. On the chocolate front, I did discover a half eaten packet of buttons in the car. As it was pretty cold in the car, it was like eating chocolate out of the fridge.
I think roomie was trying to make sure you didn't eat too much chocolate before lunch and ruin your appetite. Which is caring, but unnecessary.

>188 charl08: Charlotte, if you say something learned about the Said you will just be showing me up, so don't worry! The Downie is not new, but it's a new series to me and I liked the first one. Sadly, the chocolate was not all that I was hoping for, given that I had specifically mentioned a Toblerone before she left, but never mind.

>189 Crazymamie: Mamie, so true. I went downstairs to a seminar, hoping for cookies, and there were no cookies either. Then I got back to the hardly any chocolate. I had to buy a Bounty.

>190 Helenliz: Helen, you must at some point have shown remarkable self-control with the buttons. I wonder what that's like.

The Standard has an article about the snow - belly-laughs guaranteed for anyone from a properly cold place who watches the video at the top of the page. https://www.standard.co.uk/news/london/london-snow-office-workers-delight-as-fir...

Okay. I am assuming that a Bounty is some kind of edible treat? Anyway, I am hoping that it is because here it is a brand of paper towel. And that would be just sad.

>192 Crazymamie: - Snork!

ETA: Images of Susan nibbling on a paper towel dance through my head....

>192 Crazymamie:, >193 katiekrug: Paper towels get such a bad rap! They are calorie-free, which is a big plus. But actually, this is the type of Bounty I bought:

>193 katiekrug: *grin*

Oh, good! Much better than a paper towel but probably less fiber. *blinks* Looks like a Mounds bar:

Love the snow excitement! It would be just as bad over here - everyone goes crazy (including me :)). We, however, are apparently one of the UK hotspots today - a massive 7C.

I remember reading Orientalism at Uni. Actually I don't - I mean I own it, definitely referenced it in an essay... have a strong suspicion I never red more than two pages of it.

>195 Crazymamie: Mamie, yes! Bountys also come in milk and dark chocolate. Our snack machine only has the milk variety, though. For dark I have to go downstairs and queue.

>196 BekkaJo: Bekka, you *are* a hotspot today! What with the royal engagement and snow, it's turning into quite a landmark week here. And as long as you referenced the right bits of Orientalism, that's what counts :-) I wonder whether he would call it the same thing today, as I know "Oriental" is out of favour in the US as a descriptor (at least of people - maybe for "the East" as a part of the globe it is still used).

Well, 199 posts! That's almost 200. So tempting...

And I am so bad with temptation...

New thread time!