karenmarie, addictively turning pages, chapter 7

Welcome to my seventh thread of 2018. Thank you to all my visitors!

Being retired is the cat’s pajamas, the bee’s knees, the eel’s hips, the monkey’s eyebrows, the sardine’s whiskers. I do not miss working at all.

I read, am a charter member of the Redbud and Beyond Book Club, now in its 21st year, am Treasurer for our local Friends of the Library (henceforth abbreviated FoL), and manage our home, finances and etc. as my husband heads off to work Monday – Friday. Being an introvert (you’d never guess it from these pages!) I need and cherish the alone time to recharge my batteries.

I have been married to Bill for 27 years and am mother to Jenna, now 24, living about 3 hours away and working on a 2-year business administration program at Cape Fear Community College in Wilmington. We have two kitties, 18-year old Kitty William and 10-year old Inara Starbuck. We live in our own little corner of paradise on 8 acres in central North Carolina USA.

The picture I’ve chosen for this thread is of my paternal grandmother Nellie and her first cousin Alice. The cousins are each named for their mother’s sister. The back of this picture is inscribed ‘Alice and Nelle on way to Garden of the Gods - Colorado. Guide took picture.’ It must be sometime after 1907 when my grandmother got married because her married name is used on the inscription, in her hand. Grandmother Nellie is on the left, cousin Alice is on the right. My grandmother is the little girl in the topper from my previous thread.




My goal is to read 105 books in 2018, 5 more than I read in 2017. I missed my pages read goal of 34,000 pages by 525 pages, so will keep the same pages goal.







And, in honor of Sue Grafton, I am going to re-read all her Kinsey Millhone Alphabet Series books this year. Alas, there will never be a Z. I’ve read A-J so far this year but am still giving it a rest.




A few quotes about libraries that mean a lot to me:

Libraries are reservoirs of strength, grace and wit, reminders of order, calm and continuity, lakes of mental energy, neither warm nor cold, light nor dark. The pleasure they give is steady, unorgastic, reliable, deep and long-lasting. In any library in the world, I am at home, unselfconscious, still and absorbed. Germaine Greer

I declare after all there is no enjoyment like reading! How much sooner one tires of any thing than of a book. – When I have a house of my own, I shall be miserable if I have not an excellent library. Jane Austen

I like libraries. It makes me feel comfortable and secure to have walls of words, beautiful and wise, all around me. I always feel better when I can see that there is something to hold back the shadows. Roger Zelazny

And finally, very few books are worth slogging through when the inspiration to read them has gone. I abandon books with glee.

My theme for 2018, addictively turning pages, comes from an image on Mark’s thread first thread of 2018. In this case, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.

Read

1. Every Dead Thing by John Connolly 12/27/17 1/6/18 *** 467 pages trade paperback
2. Kinsey and Me by Sue Grafton 1/6/18 1/9/18 **** 283 pages hardcover
3. The Country Girls by Edna O'Brien 1/1/18 1/10/18 *** 1/2 175 pages trade paperback
4. You're All Just Jealous of My Jetpack by Tom Gauld 1/1/18 1/15/18 **** 160 pages hardcover
5. Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House by Michael Wolff 1/6/18 1/17/18 *** 1/2 328 pages hardcover, Kindle
6. No Middle Name by Lee Child 1/17/18 1/19/18 **** 418 pages hardcover
**abandoned after 90 pages** Brain Food by Lisa Mosconi 1/9/18 326 pages trade paperback ER Book
7. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince 12/3/17 1/22/18 **** audiobook, 19 hours
8. The Hounds of Spring by Lucy Andrews Cummin 1/23/18 1/23/18 ****1/2 160 pages trade paperback
9. A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman 1/20/18 1/26/18 **** 337 pages trade paperback
10. The Far Side Gallery 5 by Gary Larson 1/24/18 1/27/18 159 pages trade paperback 1995
11. A is for Alibi by Sue Grafton 1/26/18 1/30/18 ***1/2 209 pages hardcover
12. Nicholas Nickleby by Charles Dickens 1/1/17 1/31/18 **** 780 pages plus 9 pages introduction
13. A Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley 2/1/18 2/5/18 ****1/2 367 pages trade paperback
**abandoned after 32 pages Why Buddhism is True by Robert Wright 2/1/18 266 pages hardcover
14. B is for Burglar by Sue Grafton 2/5/18 2/6/18 **** 186 pages hardcover
15. C is for Corpse by Sue Grafton 2/7/18 2/8/18 **** 181 pages hardcover
16. D is for Deadbeat by Sue Grafton 2/8/18 2/9/18 **** 184 pages hardcover
17. E is for Evidence by Sue Grafton 2/9/18 2/10/18 ***1/2 180 pages hardcover
18. F is for Fugitive by Sue Grafton 2/10/18 2/13/18 ***1/2 182 pages hardcover
19. Dead Wake by Erik Larson 2/14/18 2/19/18 *** 359 pages trade paperback
**abandoned after 56 pages Plainsong by Kent Haruf
20. Obsession in Death by J.D. Robb 2/19/18 2/22/18 **** 404 pages hardcover
21. The Power by Naomi Alderman 2/23/18 3/1/18 *** 382 pages hardcover
22. G is for Gumshoe by Sue Grafton 3/2/18 3/4/18 ***1/2 227 pages hardcover
23. H is for Homicide by Sue Grafton 3/5/18 3/8/18 **** 202 pages hardcover
24. The Godwulf Manuscript by Robert B. Parker 3/10/18 3/12/18 *** 153 pages hardcover
25. God Save the Child by Robert B. Parker 3/12/18 3/14/18 **** 145 pages hardcover
26. Mortal Stakes by Robert B. Parker 3/14/18 3/18/18 **** 157 pages hardcover
27. The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That Changed America by Erik Larson 2/25/18 3/20/18 ****1/2 396 pages trade paperback
28. I is for Innocent by Sue Grafton 3/14/18 3/22/18 **** 224 pages hardcover
29. God's Kingdom by Howard Frank Mosher 3/22/18 3/26/18 ****1/2 228 pages trade paperback
30. J is for Judgment by Sue Grafton 3/26/18 3/31/18 *** 254 pages hardcover
31. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J.K. Rowling 1/22/18 4/2/18 **** audiobook
32. The Shining Girls by Lauren Buekes 4/1/18 4/5/18 **1/2 368 pages hardcover
33. Promised Land by Robert B. Parker 4/5/18 4/6/18 ***1/2 218 pages mass market paperback
**abandoned after 132 pages The Invisible Library by Genevieve Cogman
34. Euphoria by Lily King 4/6/18 4/10/18 ****1/2 257 pages trade paperback
35. I've Got Your Number by Sophie Kinsella 4/10/18 4/12/18 **** 433 pages trade paperback
36. Blue Monday by Nicci French 4/13/18 4/18/18 **** 322 pages trade paperback
37. The Last of the Bighams by J.A. Zeigler 4/18/18 4/21/18 *** 230 pages trade paperback
38. Isaac's Storm by Erik Larson 4/20/18 4/23/18 277 pages trade paperback
39. The Watchmaker of Filigree Street by Natasha Pulley 04/23/18 04/29/18 *** 318 pages hardcover
40. A Perfect Match - Jill McGown 4/29/18 4/30/18 **1/2 186 pages mass market paperback
41. The Invention of Wings by Sue Monk Kidd 4/3/18 5/3/18 **** 13.5 hours audiobook
42. The Weekenders by Mary Kay Andrews 5/2/18 5/4/18 **1/2 trade paperback
43. The Supremes at Earl's All-You-Can-Eat by Edward Kelsey Moore 5/5/18 5/11/18 ***1/2 307 pages hardcover
44. Longbourn by Jo Baker 5/11/18 5/18/18 **** 332 pages trade paperback
45. The Cold Dish by Craig Johnson 5/20/18 5/25/18 **** 354 pages trade paperback
46. K is for Killer by Sue Grafton 5/26/18 5/28/18 ***1/2 238 pages hardcover
47. The Grand Tour: Around the World with the Queen of Mystery by Agatha Christie, edited by Mathew Pritchard 5/28/18 5/29/18 ***1/2 376 pages hardcover
48. The Man in the Brown Suit by Agatha Christie 5/29/18 5/31/18 ***1/2 232 pages hardcover
**abandoned after 60 pages Prayers for the Stolen by Jennifer Clement
**abandoned after 25 pages Eva Luna by Isabel Allende
49. L is for Lawless by Sue Grafton 5/31/18 6/2/18 ***1/2 225 pages hardcover
50. Until Proven Guilty by J.A. Vance 6/2/18 6/3/18 **** 310 pages mass market paperback
51. Injustice for All by J.A. Vance 6/3/18 6/6/18 **** 342 pages mass market paperback
52. Trial by Fury by J.A. Jance 6/6/18 6/7/18 **** 322 pages mass market paperback

Currently Reading:

Disclaimer by Renee Knight 6/7/18 336 pages trade paperback 2015
The Story of Human Language by John McWhorter 5/4/18 audiobook 18.25 hours
Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow by Yuval Noah Harari 5/5/18 464 pages hardcover, Kindle

Added

January - 16

1. SomeGuyInVirginia - True Tales from the Annals of Crime and Rascality by St. Clair McKelway
2. Thrift Shop - Secrets in Death by J.D. Robb
3. BookMooch - Guardian Angels & Spirit Guides by Brad Steiger
4. BookMooch - God's Fires by Patricia Anthony
5. Circle City Books - A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman for Feb Book club
6. Circle City Books - Plainsong by Kent Haruf for March Book club
7. Amazon - Why Buddhism is True by Robert Wright
8. LT ER - The Hounds of Spring by Lucy Andrews Cummin
9. BookMooch - The Silver Swan by Benjamin Black
10. Thrift Shop - The Princess Bride by William Goldman
11. Amazon - A Trail Through Time by Jodi Taylor e-book
12. Amazon - Fire and Fury by Michael Wolff e-book
13. B&N - Persons Unknown by Susie Steiner
14. BookMooch - Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman
15. Amazon - Kindred by Octavia Butler e-book
16. Amazon - Not Perfect by Elizabeth LaBan e-book

February - 9

17. Jenn - Britt-Marie Was Here by Fredrik Backman
18. Scuppernong Books - A Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley
19. Amazon - The Power by Naomi Alderman
20. Amazon - The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin
21. dianekeenoy - My Name is Venus Black by Heather Lloyd
22. Amazon - The Sword in the Stone by T.H. White
23. Friend Sherry - Rebel: My Life Outside the Lines by Nick Nolte
24. Friend Sherry - The Journal of Best Practices by David Finch
25. BookMooch - Isaac's Storm by Erik Larson

March - 10

26. Amazon - The Story of Lucy Gault by William Trevor
27. Amazon - Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them by J.K. Rowling
28. Amazon - Enter Spenser by Robert B. Parker
29. Thrift Shop - I've Got Your Number by Sophie Kinsella
30. Amazon - God's Kingdom by Howard Frank Mosher
31. Circle City Books - Eva Luna by Isabel Allende
32. Circle City Books - Promised Land by Robert B. Parker
33. Amazon - On Tyranny by Timothy Snyder - ebook
34. Amazon - The Invisible Library by Genevieve Cogman - ebook
35 Amazon - True Fiction by Lee Goldberg - ebook

April - 69

36. ER - Gumshoe on the Loose by Rob Leininger
37. The Complete Cartoons of the New Yorker by Mankoff, Robert
38. 20,000 years of world painting by Jaffé, Hans Ludwig C.
39. Legends: The Century's Most Unforgettable Faces by Jordan, Killian
40. Tutankhamun: His Tomb and Its Treasures by Edwards, Iorwerth Eiddon Stephen
41. An Acceptable Time by L'Engle, Madeleine
42. Blanche on the Lam by Neely, Barbara
43. Enjoying Purple Martins More: A Special Publication from Bird Watcher's Digest by Wolinski, Richard A.
44. A Cure for Dreams by Gibbons, Kaye
45. Still Life with Bread Crumbs by Quindlen, Anna
46. The Best of Will Rogers by Sterling, Bryan
47. Theft by Finding: Diaries (1977-2002) by Sedaris, David
48. Lincoln: A Life of Purpose and Power by Carwardine, Richard
49. Theodore Rex by Morris, Edmund
50. The Hush by Hart, John
51. A Very Private Enterprise by Ironside, Elizabeth
52. Atlantic: Great Sea Battles, Heroic Discoveries, Titanic Storms,and a Vast Ocean of a Million Stories by Winchester, Simon
53. The History of Ancient Egypt by The Great Courses
54. The Story of Human Language by Professor John McWhorter
55. Lovers at the Chameleon Club, Paris 1932: A Novel by Prose, Francine
56. Lafayette in the Somewhat United States by Vowell, Sarah
57. What Happened by Clinton, Hillary Rodham
58. The Black Death by Ziegler, Philip
59. Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood by Noah, Trevor
60. Did Lincoln Own Slaves?: And Other Frequently Asked Questions About Abraham Lincoln by Prokopowicz, Gerald J.
61. Sunday Silence by French, Nicci
62. Charles Jessold, Considered as a Murderer: A Novel by Stace, Wesley
63. The Ladies' Man by Lipman, Elinor
64. Jane Austen's Novels: The Art of Clarity by Gard, Roger
65. Recipes & Remedies From The People's Pharmacy by Joe & Terry Graedon
66. Into the Wild by Krakauer, Jon
67. Mrs. Bridge by Connell, Evan S.
68. National Geographic Complete Birds of the World by Geographic, National
69. The Mystery of the Ivory Charm by Keene, Carolyn
70. The Mystery at Lilac Inn by Keene, Carolyn
71. The Sign of the Twisted Candles by Keene, Carolyn
72. The Secret at Shadow Ranch by Keene, Carolyn
73. The Whispering Statue by Keene, Carolyn
74. The Ghost of Blackwood Hall by Keene, Carolyn
75. The Mystery of the Brass Bound Trunk by Keene,Carolyn
76. The Clue in the Old Album by Keene, Carolyn
77. The Clue of the Tapping Heels by Keene, Carolyn
78. The North Carolina Birding Trail: Piedmont Trail Guide by North Carolina Birding Trail
79. Damascus Gate by Stone, Robert
80. Gump & Co. by Groom, Winston
81. The Astronomer: A Novel of Suspense by Goldstone, Lawrence
82. The Last Enemy by Brophy, Grace
83. The Truth According to Us by Barrows, Annie
84. Language & Thought by Chomsky, Noam
85. Dearie: The Remarkable Life of Julia Child by Spitz, Bob
86. The Malcontenta by Maitland, Barry
87. Necessary as Blood by Crombie, Deborah
88. Changing Places: A Tale of Two Campuses by Lodge, David
89. The Accomplice by Ironside, Elizabeth
90. The Sheltering Sky by Bowles, Paul
91. The Canon: A Whirligig Tour of the Beautiful Basics of Science by Angier, Natalie
92. Slouching Towards Bethlehem: Essays by Didion, Joan
93. The Underpainter by Urquhart, Jane
94. The Cold Dish by Johnson, Craig
95. Ten Dead Comedians: A Murder Mystery by Van Lente, Fred
96. Shrimp: a Savor the South® cookbook by Pierce, Jay
97. Early Man and the Ocean: A Search for the Beginnings of Navigation and Seaborne Civilizations by Heyerdahl, Thor
98. King Solomon's Mines, She and Allan Quatermain by Haggard, Henry Rider
99. This Is NPR: The First Forty Years by Roberts, Cokie
100. Tartuffe by Moliere, Jean Baptiste Poquelin de
101. Confessions of a Shopaholic by Kinsella, Sophie
102. Iced by Siler, Jenny
103. American Sphinx: The Character of Thomas Jefferson by Ellis, Joseph J.
104. For the Time Being by Dillard, Annie

May - 5

105. Mom's house - The Mike Roy Cook Book by Mike Roy
106. Friend Tamsie - The Whip by Karen Kondazian
107. Friend Louise - Change of Heart by Jodi Picoult
108. Friend Louise - Nineteen Minutes by Jodi Picoult
109. Amazon - The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August by Claire North

June -

110. Friend Jan - Until Proven Guilty by J.A. Jance
111. Friend Jan - Injustice for All by J.A. Jance
112. Friend Jan - Trial by Fury by J.A. Jance
113. QuailRidge Books - Calypso by David Sedaris

Culled

1. Every Dead Thing by John Connolly first of a series I will never continue
2. Brain Food by Lisa Mosconi
3. Why Buddhism is True by Robert Wright - references to The Matrix and powdered sugar donut analogies left me cold
4. Plainsong by Kent Haruf didn't hold my interest
5. The Power by Naomi Alderman daughter expressed an interest and I have no desire to keep it on my shelves for some reason
6. The Shining Girls by Lauren Beukes 2.5 stars, not a keeper
7. I've Got Your Number by Sophie Kinsella good but not worth using the shelf space to keep
8. Audubon Bird Guide - Eastern Land Birds 1946, outdated
9. The Clue of the Tapping Heels by Carolyn Keene - duplicate, poorer quality
10. The Mystery of the Brass Bound Trunk by Carolyn Keene - duplicate, poorer quality
11. The Mystery at Lilac Inn by Carolyn Keene - duplicate
12. The Secret at Shadow Ranch by Carolyn Keene - duplicate, poorer quality
13. The Underpainter by Jane Urquhart - duplicate
14. Waiting by Ha Jin - 2.5 stars, time to go
15. The Whale Rider by Witi Ihimaera - time to go
16. Rush Limbaugh is a Big Fat Idiot by Al Franken
17. A Perfect Match - A Mystery by Jill McGown
18. The Weekenders by Mary Kay Andrews
19. The Supremes at Earl's All-You-Can-Eat by Edward Kelsey Moore good book, don't need to keep
20. Night and Day by Ann Stuart
21. Prayers for the Stolen by Jennifer Clement blech
22. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe - gift to friend Karen
23. The Voyage of the Dawn Treader - gift to friend Karen
24. Prince Caspian by C. S. Lewis - gift to friend Karen
25. The Horse and His Boy by C. S. Lewis - gift to friend Karen
26. The Magician's Nephew by C. S. Lewis - gift to friend Karen
27. The Silver Chair by C. S. Lewis - gift to friend Karen
28. The Last Battle by C. S. Lewis - gift to friend Karen

Statistics Through May 31

48 books read
6 books abandoned
13192 pages read
53.5 audiobook hours
Avg pages read per day, YTD = 87
Avg pages read per book, YTD = 275

Author
Male 40%
Female 60%

Living 55%
Dead 45%

US Born 67%
Foreign Born 33%

Medium
Hardcover 52%
Trade Pback 35%
Mass Market 4%
Audiobook 6%
e-Book 2%

Source
My Library 96%
Other 4%

Misc
ARC/ER 2%
Re-read 31%
Series 50%

Fiction 87%
NonFiction 13%


Author Birth Country
England 21%
Ireland 4%
Scotland 4%
South Africa 2%
Sweden 2%
US 67%

Original Decade Published
1830-1839 2%
1920-1929 4%
1960-1969 2%
1970-1979 8%
1980-1989 15%
1990-1999 19%
2000-2009 8%
2010-2018 42%

Genre
Cartoons 4%
Fantasy 4%
Fiction 15%
Historical Fiction 6%
History 6%
Memoir 2%
Mystery 48%
Politics 2%
Romance 4%
Science Fiction 2%
Steampunk 2%
Thriller 2%
True Crime 2%

Next one's yours!

Happy new thread, Karen!! Great topper, as always

Happy new thread, Karen! I like the tourist photo in your first post.

>7 jessibud2: Thanks, Shelley. I always have a lot of fun picking out a picture.

>8 harrygbutler: Thanks, Harry. Here's another one from the same trip - my grandmother's parents. So stiff and formal on their mules. And Great-Grandmother Alice was riding sidesaddle.

Happy new thread!

Happy new thread, Karen! LOVE the family photos. Everyone is looking very dignified.

Happy new one, Karen. I love the photos.

Happy new thread!

Happy new thread, Karen, I like the family pictures.
Were the mules a common way to travel back then?

Happy New Thread! Love the photos!

I've just finished On Tyranny. My next on the theme will be Dear Madam President: An Open Letter to the Women Who Will Run the World by Jennifer Palmieri.

Hi, Karen. You be doin' good, I see. Me? Ehhh. Buying faster than reading.

Happy new thread!

*smooch*

>10 The_Hibernator: Thanks, Rachel!

>11 Crazymamie: Ditto, Mamie. I’m glad you love the photos. They look stern and dignified, don’t they?

>12 Ameise1: Thanks Barbara.

>13 drneutron: Thanks, Jim! And thank you for your on-going administrative efforts on behalf of the 75ers.

>14 FAMeulstee: Hi Anita, thank you. I think for trips into ‘the wilds’. I don’t know the exact year, but this would have been 1907-1920 (after Grandmother Nellie’s marriage and before my dad was born in 1921).

>15 streamsong: Hi Janet! Thanks. I’ve temporarily stopped at essay 5 of On Tyranny. I love the title of your next book on the theme!

>16 weird_O: I do be doing good! Hi. I’m buying faster than reading, too. I’m refusing to feel guilty about it, though. And, I have read 40 books so far this year, over 10000 pages. Stats for April are in message #5 above.

>17 ChelleBearss: Thanks Chelle!

>18 richardderus: Purtiful, RD! *smooch* back

Happy new thread Karen and great thread topper my dear. Hope all is well with you my dear apart from the problem with your feet. Hope the weather is good with you and it is picking up over here and the next few days are to be good so I can potter about in the garden.

Sending love and hugs dear friend.

Thanks, John! The wedge inserts are helping some. I go for orthotics Thursday and have an appointment for PT evaluation on the 9th.

I just cleaned some of the porch railings where the birds make a mess under the feeders. Sheesh. I've gotten about 1/3 of it done.

>21 karenmarie:, Glad the wedge inserts are helping my dear and hope all goes well at the orthotics on Thursday. I cleaned up under my feeders last week, don't they make a mess the little devils, lol. Whilst I have been pottering about in the garden the Robins have been getting quite close to me looking for worms as I am turning the soil over, their young are being fed well and it was lovely to see a couple of the babies yesterday in the garage, I made sure I was quiet and kept my distance from the nest.

I'm so glad the Robins are using your garage for their nest and babies! You and Karen are being so considerate, it warms my heart.

I spoke with the PT scheduler today - she told me that my diagnosis was "bilateral posterior tibial tendonitis" and "acquired valgus deformity". Deformity. Yeesh.

>9 karenmarie: Hi Karen! Am I seeing things or is there a full-figure carving of the Elephant Man in the cleft of that rock?

I can see where you might think it, Michael, but nothing that I can see online indicates that "Balanced Rock", which you can still see today, had anything artificial carved into it. I didn't realize it was "Balanced Rock" until I started looking for information on the Garden of the Gods.

Happy New Thread, Karen. Warm day in the Midwest. Mid-80s, actually. I was soaking it up and, no, I did not blind anyone, with the white legs, but I may have all ready taken off that dazzling sheen, with all this sunshine.

I put up my oriole feeder, which is a hook screw, with half an orange on it. See, if I get any action.

Happy new thread Karen. Nice pictures again. The two young women look definitely more at ease then your great-grandparents with that rock above their heads!

Glad the inserts are helping and never mind the medicalese, hope the PT will help you.

Happy new thread, Karen!!

>26 msf59: Hi Mark and thank you! It was warm here, too. I don't know if I mentioned that Bill and I put the hammock out Sunday but I haven't used it yet. Baltimore Orioles apparently migrate through this neck of the woods, and I have heard about using orange halves to attract them.

>27 EllaTim: Hi Ella, and thank you. Ah, the younger generation! And that rock is ominous looking, isn't it? Thanks re the PT.

>28 RebaRelishesReading: Thanks Reba!

Happy Wednesday, Karen. I'm off to Basel meeting Paul Stalder (LT) and visiting the Tinguely Museum.

Thank you, Barbara! I hope you have a lovely time visiting Paul! I've never heard of the Tinguely Museum before, it sounds wonderful.

>25 karenmarie: Yeah, I thought the impression might be an artifact of having watched the film four times a year with my students for the last 8 years.

Happy New Thread, Karen!

Love the old-timey photo of Alice and Nellie.

>31 karenmarie: It's gorgeous. I've posted some pics on my thread.

>32 majleavy: Oh my goodness, I remember watching The Elephant Man with my mother and us both sobbing pretty much throughout the entire movie. 32 times in the last 8 years. No wonder you saw Merrick in the Balanced Rock.

>33 jnwelch: Thanks Joe! I'm sad that I never got to meet my Great-Aunt Alice, much less my great-grandparents.

>34 Ameise1: Ah, off I go!

Morning, Karen. Sweet Thursday. Got some rain over night, which we needed, but it is staying mild. Whew!

No hummers or orioles yet. I am staying vigilant.

'Morning, Mark! It's 55F here now, but it's going to get pretty warm later on, 86F.

Louise saw a Baltimore Oriole yesterday. I know they're migrating through, but will be surprised if I see one.

Just going to get my first cup of coffee. *happy dance all the way to the kitchen*

> 35 Fortunately, I'm mostly over the sobbing part - except when Mrs. Treves loses it over John's devotion to his mother. It amazes me that I can still take pleasure in it, but the black-and-white cinematography continues to enthrall, and the discretion of the main performances is endlessly fascinating to the actor in me.

41. The Invention of Wings by Sue Monk Kidd
4/3/18 to 5/3/18





From Amazon:

From the celebrated author of The Secret Life of Bees, a magnificent novel about two unforgettable American women

Writing at the height of her narrative and imaginative gifts, Sue Monk Kidd presents a masterpiece of hope, daring, the quest for freedom, and the desire to have a voice in the world—and it is now the newest Oprah’s Book Club 2.0 selection.

Hetty “Handful” Grimke, an urban slave in early nineteenth century Charleston, yearns for life beyond the suffocating walls that enclose her within the wealthy Grimke household. The Grimke’s daughter, Sarah, has known from an early age she is meant to do something large in the world, but she is hemmed in by the limits imposed on women.

Kidd’s sweeping novel is set in motion on Sarah’s eleventh birthday, when she is given ownership of ten year old Handful, who is to be her handmaid. We follow their remarkable journeys over the next thirty five years, as both strive for a life of their own, dramatically shaping each other’s destinies and forming a complex relationship marked by guilt, defiance, estrangement and the uneasy ways of love.

As the stories build to a riveting climax, Handful will endure loss and sorrow, finding courage and a sense of self in the process. Sarah will experience crushed hopes, betrayal, unrequited love, and ostracism before leaving Charleston to find her place alongside her fearless younger sister, Angelina, as one of the early pioneers in the abolition and women’s rights movements.

Inspired by the historical figure of Sarah Grimke, Kidd goes beyond the record to flesh out the rich interior lives of all of her characters, both real and invented, including Handful’s cunning mother, Charlotte, who courts danger in her search for something better.

This exquisitely written novel is a triumph of storytelling that looks with unswerving eyes at a devastating wound in American history, through women whose struggles for liberation, empowerment, and expression will leave no reader unmoved.

Why I wanted to read it: Having finished the Harry Potter audiobook series (again), I wanted something completely different and simply picked this off the shelf.

I am humbled, I am stunned. This book of historical fiction is absolutely amazing. It is written as the alternating stories of Hetty Handful, a slave, and Sarah, daughter of a wealthy and powerful slave-holding family. I listened to the audiobook, and the two women chosen for the parts of Sarah and Handful, did a masterful job.

I did not realize that Sarah and Angelina Grimke were real people, that their story as abolitionists and feminists is true. It appears that I need to some more reading of the early years of feminism. The sisters lived and worked before Seneca Falls, and their writings were inspirational to Harriet Beecher Stowe, author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin.There was an extensive author’s note at the end, where Ms. Kidd talks about how she wanted to write a novel about sisters. She may have already heard about the Grimke sisters, but became more aware of the sisters, conceived of the novel, and she melded fact and fiction to give us a dramatic and beautifully plotted fictional account. None of the slaves owned by the Grimke family are historical figures, but Denmark Vesey and four of his insurrection-planning lieutenants are.

One thing I usually abhor about women readers of audiobooks is how they voice the male characters, usually trying for a gravelly and gruff voice and only irritating me. The male voices were subtle and didn’t detract from the ebb and flow of the reading.

The descriptions of how slaves were treated and the point of view of slaveholders – specifically Sarah’s mother and sister Mary – were hard to hear. So, too, was Sarah’s father’s deathbed confession that he abhorred slavery but couldn’t bring himself to break free of the wealth, power, and influence the lifestyle brought to him.

Sarah was radicalized and traumatized as a child by witnessing a slave being whipped. She acquired a stutter that was with her, to a greater or lesser degree, her entire life. She was an abolitionist at heart before she could even have known the word or power of the movement in the North. As godmother to her sister Angelina, she influenced her sister. She was also a feminist, yearning for a profession in a time when women of the upper classes were simply married off or stayed maiden aunts at home.

Handful, her mother Charlotte, and her half-sister Sky, are beautifully written characters. They never forgot their roots, never forgot that they were slaves and not members of the family. Charlotte ran away multiple times, first from the Grimkes, then from the slave holding family she was sold to. She and Handful always wanted freedom. Charlotte’s quilt is an homage to the real life Harriet Powers, a slave, who made appliqued quilts. Here is one of the two surviving quilts by Harriet Powers, allowing us to see how Charlotte’s story quilt might have looked.



I can’t say enough good things about this novel. It interweaves historical fact with fiction seamlessly. The whole is greater than the sum of the parts. It speaks to feminism, abolitionism, slavery, plantation life, life in the North. We learn about the Quakers and the difference between abolition of slavery and true equality of the races. The former was desired, the latter much less so. I don’t think I’ve ever seen emancipation/abolition of slavery as separate from equality of the races until I read this book. Thoughtful and thought-provoking, lyrical and harsh, detailed and big picture, a stunning book.

I am so happy you loved this book as much as I did, Karen. I also listened to the audio and I don't think there could have possibly been better casting for the two characters. I think I mentioned this before, but the narrator who played Sarah, also narrated another of Kidd's book that I loved, The Secret Life of Bees and she was just as excellent for that one as she is for this.

I did a lot of googling after listening to this book and that is how I found out about the real Grimke sisters.

Happy newish thread, Karen. Great topper photo. I love your family photos. The quality of that photo reminds me of one that I have of my grandmother and her cousin. The one that I have was helpfully the front of a postcard which was mailed and date stamped in 1908. Maybe your photo was around the same time?

edited to add. You got me with a BB for The Invention of Wings.

>40 jessibud2: Hi Shelley! Oh yes, it was wonderful. Some books just seem to work well as audiobooks for me, certainly the case here. Amazingly, I've never read The Secret Life of Bees. I'll keep an eye out for the audiobook, because Jenna Lamia is certainly a wonderful reader.

I spent time searching the internet, too..... *smile*

>41 Familyhistorian: Thanks, Meg! Thank you re my photos. The topper photo is just that - a photo, but the one in message #9, of my great-grandparents, is a postcard, alas never written or mailed. So I don't have a true date.

Ah, yay for a book bullet! It's a stunner, for sure.

>39 karenmarie: Raving review, Karen!
If it wasn't already on my library wishlist, I would have added it now :-)

Great review of The Invention of Wings, Karen. If you post it on the book page, I'll thumb it.

I haven't read this author since The Secret Life of Bees, which I liked a lot. I'll add this one to the WL.

>43 FAMeulstee: Thanks, Anita! I hope you get a chance to read it soon.

>44 jnwelch: Posted, Joe, and thank you in advance for the thumb. Wow, a thumb and a BB too!

Ermahgerd! Sorry for being late! Very cool photos, you're fortunate to have them still. How did you manage to keep them? And I love the place name 'The Garden of the Gods'. It sounds like a Star Trek episode.

I'm taking a mental health day tomorrow so I'm up way past my bedtime. It's kind of wonderful.

Happy Friday, Karen.

>46 SomeGuyInVirginia: I hope you're still sleeping in, Larry! Enjoy your mental health day. Give Parker some skritches for me, unless he's keeping your Dad company.

Good question about the photos. I just always had boxes of photos. Nothing so organized as Bill's family and Bill - most of those pics are in albums, both large and small. These two came out of a box of my grandmother's, a stationery box with roses on the front, that I've been carting around since high school. My mom and dad were really strange in a lot of ways. One of those strange ways was not having family photos out ANYWHERE in the house, ever. I used to be envious of friends because they put family photos out. I have some framed photos of my dad's side of the family, the ones in the rose stationery box and a few others that I actually found at Mom's when I shut down the house last year. Here's the family wall, upstairs, with both sides of Bill's and my family. There are 19 different people on that wall. We haven't changed what's on this wall in 20 years.....

Good morning, Karen! I like the wall of family photos. We have up and around, but more that really should be framed and displayed and just haven't made it.

>45 karenmarie: Thanks. Done!

Happy Friday!

>49 harrygbutler: Hi Harry! Thanks. I love looking at my family members, Bill's too! When people come into our home, they don't always see this upstairs wall, but we have quite a few pictures downstairs, too, and always get questions. Seeing family keeps things in context for me, somehow. Even now, just looking at the wall again, brought out lots of good feelings.

>50 jnwelch: You're welcome! Today is a day without formal obligations, the kind of day I like best. I do want to work in the vegetable garden a bit (try to get it ready to get it planted by Sunday or so!) and finish cleaning the railings.

Wonderful review of The Invention of Wings, Karen. Thumbed it and put it on my never-ending wish list. Since I'm no longer commuting to work everyday, my consumption of audiobooks has taken a steep decline, but this sounds like one to look for!

I'm loving the photos of your family. Have you watched the animated move Coco? It's about the Mexican Day of the Dead, but it's also about the importance of remembering your loved ones. Highly recommended if you haven't seen it.

Hi Janet! Thank you. The never-ending wish list! It sounds familiar. And I'm not commuting 80-90 minutes each workday either, so it took me a month to listen to it!

Thanks re the photos, too. I have not watched Coco. My consumption of animated movies has taken a serious hit since our daughter doesn't live at home. She's also 24 now, so the newer ones aren't on our radar.

I just spent an hour power washing the front porch steps, rails, and porch/furniture. There's still pollen to come, but getting the bird mess up and the first round of pollen gone will allow me to enjoy the hammock more.

Friend and neighbor Larry is coming over to help me figure out what to plant and exactly where in order to block the view of the new neighbor's house. And, if there's any leftover money, something nice to block the old neighbor's house since we lost two Leland Cypresses and had to cut our Redbud down three years ago. Larry will buy what we need and plant it for us. He's got the right equipment and a large trailor to bring in bigger plantings from a very nice nursery about 50 miles from here.

>39 karenmarie: definitely onto the wish list it goes

>5 karenmarie: huh, looks like you love 2015 as the year for published books!

>9 karenmarie: wow that is amazing! What a treasured image.

>39 karenmarie: Great review of The Invention of Wings. Just added it to my TBR list!

Happy new thread and I will echo others: I love the wall of photos.

Happy Friday, Karen. Great review of The Invention of Wings. Thumb! I NEED to finally read this one. Maybe, soon...

I am waiting to finally see my first Baltimore Oriole of the year, preferably at my feeders.

>53 karenmarie: I'd be very interested in hearing about what you are thinking of planting. We need to replace the river birch in the front of the house. We'd like to plant something nice, not too aggressive, that will grow big in a medium amount of time. We are struggling to agree on what that is. Sigh.

Happy Saturday, Karen.

Hope you have a great weekend, Karen!

>54 RebaRelishesReading: Hi Reba!

>55 LovingLit: Hi Megan! I hadn’t paid strict attention , but at least it’s a variety of genres – nonfiction, fiction, mystery, and steampunk.

I have more photos of those great-grandparents than any other set. I have none of my dad’s paternal grandparents, for example.

>56 witchyrichy: Thank you, Karen, re the review and the new thread. I’m glad you like my wall of photos. Somehow, through all my moves over the years, I’ve managed to keep them safe and sound.

>57 msf59: Thanks Mark! You won’t regret reading it. One of the things I really liked about it was that it took place from about 1811 to the 1830s, not just prior to or during the Civil War, or the ‘War of Northern Aggression’ as some now-passed-on members of Bill’s family called it. As a strange aside, one of Bill’s great-great-however-many-times grandfathers, who lived in Lincoln County NC had slaves – we know this from his will, which designated which family member got which slave. Sigh. It also turns out that a dear work friend of mine comes from a huge slave-holding family here in Chatham County - I believe he said something like 400 acres and 200 slaves.... a pretty large holding for NC.

Good luck with your first Oriole of the year.

>58 nittnut: Hi Jenn! We’re going to be very unoriginal, I’m afraid because we’re using these for blocking views. More hollies – we have lots of hollies on our property. I was considering Nandina, which is quite gorgeous, but all parts of it are toxic and the berries attract Cedar Waxwings and other birds. It’s also considered an invasive species in NC. Hollies it is. Leland Cypress are gorgeous but require a lot of sun – we lost two because of planting them in the front tree line of our property and in the shade of our Redbud. Once we took out the Redbud (dying) and two Lelands that were in its shade (dead), two other Lelands we thought were going to die started doing much better.

What about a nut tree? I don’t know how long you plan on living in NC, but I wish now I’d planted pecan trees. I’ve got hickory nut and black walnut trees, but those were here when we bought the property except for one large black walnut volunteer.

>59 Ameise1: Thank you, Barbara!

Today’s going to be busy – I promised to set up a membership table at a performance by the Nippon Choir Club of the Triangle. Errands after that, then an early dinner at Angus Barn for a late celebration of our 27th anniversary.

Good morning, Karen! After two days of hot weather, the temperatures have moderated some here, so it will likely be a garden- and yard-oriented day up this way. Enjoy your dinner out!

A slightly belated Happy new Thread, Karen.

I hope that your weekend will be a great one and I suspect that it will be.

Happy Anniversary.

Morning, Karen. Happy Sunday. I am getting ready to leave on an organized walk, in just a few minutes. Hoping for a productive morning. A bit cooler today but not bad.

Have a great day.

>63 PaulCranswick: Hi Paul, and thank you! The weekend's gone well so far. I just got up, fed the cat, and had my first sip of coffee.

>64 msf59: Hi Mark! Good luck on your walk. I hope you see a lifer.

I've got book club tonight to discuss a book I didn't read - Prayers for the Stolen by Jennifer Clement. I started it but it held no appeal for me. Of the 6 books in this book club year, I've read and liked 3, abandoned 3. Next month's isn't looking too good, either, as far as being something I want to read. Eva Luna by Isabel Allende. For some reason I just don't care to read fiction about Mexico, Central America, or South America. I realize that leaves out a big portion of the world, but as always, Karen's rule applies: If any reason you don't want to continue reading a book, put it down. You may keep it, get rid of it, re-start it, never finish it, finish it from where you left off, but put it down." A different way of saying it is that I abandon books with glee if they're not working for me.

We didn't go to dinner at Angus Barn last night. Air conditioning was out at Bill's work for two days and I honestly think he got overheated. He was whupped both nights and didn't feel good most of yesterday. There was no sense spending a ton of money when you're not feeling well enough to enjoy it properly, so we cancelled. Looks like it's going to be three or four weekends from now since Angus Barn is completely booked for the next two weekends.

Good grief, you'd think Bill's work would send everyone home in this heat.

I don't care to read books about espionage or the cold war, so I get not being drawn to books on Mexico or South America.

Who's cooking for tonight's book club? Can you save me a doggie bag? Can you tell I'm hungry?

Hi Larry!

I told Bill that if the AC's still out at work on Monday to come home and work remotely. It's harder to do, more tedious and he doesn't have two monitors, but it can be done.

Let's see - it's Kira's house for book club. Sigh. I pretty much don't like her food, it's always very spicy and ambitious but is always chicken. I'm sure this will have a Mexican theme so it might be better than usual. I'm the exception to the rule - everybody else gobbles her food up. I'll get you a doggie bag!

I hope you're having a wonderful three-day weekend!

Have fun at book club even if it is chicken!

Thanks, Meg! I like chicken, I really do. I'll report back on the food.

Bill and I are watching Wallander. It's growing on me.

Also, because @PaulCranswick mentioned it as a May read for him on his thread, I've started Homo Deus, which I bought on Kindle last July. It seems like a good nonfiction read for me right now. So far, so good. I'm also reading a fiction book, The Supremes at Earl's All-You-Can-Eat by Edward Kelsey Moore, which is amusing and light, deaths, ghosts, and etc., notwithstanding.

I'm so behind. Glad you and Bill are enjoying Wallender! I hope to watch Call the Midwife yet tonight. The West Coast - it's just after 9 pm here.

Wishing you a good start into the new week, Karen.
I've seen all the Wallanders some years ago. I enjoyed them very much.

>70 vancouverdeb: Hi Deborah! Nice to see you here. I'm almost inspired to read the Wallander series - I read the first one, loved it, started the second, The Dogs of Riga and remember being very depressed by it. If I see it at the thrift shop or next book sale in the fall I'll buy it and try the series again. A couple of people here on LT have mentioned Call the Midwife.

>71 Ameise1: Hi Barbara! Thank you. Same to you.

...

Bill just called - his transmission failed on the way to work. He's 'limping to Siler City', as he puts it and I'll go pick him up in a bit. He can work from home.

We were going to have his transmission replaced under a warranty program tomorrow anyway. I wonder if he can get a loaner car and go to work tomorrow? Ford extended the transmission warranty on the 2013 Focus to 100K miles because so many of them failed - he could never get the other Ford place to 'see' the problem, though. This dealership was able to confirm the problem and tomorrow was/is the day.

Morning, Karen. Sorry, to hear about the vehicle issues. Bummer. It is going to be a beautiful day here and I am off. Yah!!

Good morning, Karen!

Too bad about the car; vehicle breakdowns are annoyances even when the cost is covered.

I hope your day looks up.

>72 karenmarie: Good grief! I blame stinkin' rotten, lousy, no good Monday mornings.

>73 msf59: Thanks, Mark! Blech, vehicle stuff. I'm glad it's a beautiful day in Chicagoland and that you're off! Have fun.

>74 harrygbutler: Hi Harry! What it has meant is that Bill's worked from home today and will take my car to work tomorrow. I'll be vehicle-less, but many days I don't go out anyway. I've had a good day - FoL stuff, lunch out with Bill, more FoL stuff, and now it's hammock time and Homo Deus on my Kindle.

>75 SomeGuyInVirginia: Hi Larry! Of course it's stinkin' rotten, lousy, no good Monday morning crap. But things are smooth right now and I am hammock-bound.

Tomorrow I will go visit other threads.

>61 karenmarie: We have Leland Cypress on both sides of the house, between our neighbors and us. They are OK, but I don't want more. I love the idea of nut trees. I've never had any, but wouldn't it be nice to have your own pecans? My husband wants hollies. I'm not a fan, but they are evergreen, so.

Sorry about the car breakdown. How nice that it's covered though. I hope you got a good long hammock rest.

We scrubbed the porch and patio and all the railings on Saturday, and it's so nice to be out there now. I realize it will be completely pollinated again in a day or two, but still, it's nice.

Hi Jenn!

I can understand not wanting any more Leland Cypress. I like hollies. We have way too many, but I do love their greenness in the winter. Maybe there's another place you could put a pecan.

I ended up being too busy for the hammock but have high hopes for today. Louise came over in a panic yesterday - her PC had a scamming virus on it and she couldn't get out of it. We shut down her PC and restarted it - but it was still there. I went to task manager and ended Microsoft Edge and that solved it, we think. She does have some antivirus software but I'm not impressed - I mentioned about a year ago what we were using. We pay for it, but have a license for 3 PCs which covers all of us. She didn't want to deal with it. She was genuinely distressed, so we chatted for a while, then she had to get home to take care of her dogs. Then the Ford dealership called to say that Bill's car was ready. Apparently they found a controller board in inventory instead of having to order it for today, so got everything done. We immediately went out to pick it up.

Yay for clean porch, patio, and railings. I may make some time today to work on the back porch.

Sorry your day was so crazy. Good luck with today.

>77 nittnut: "...wouldn't it be nice to have your own pecans?" Um...YES! The trees are beautiful, and the pecans are delicious.

Too busy for the hammock?! Say it isn't so, Karen! Hoping you get to hammock today. Our goal for this weekend is to take all the furniture out of the screened-in porch so we can get rid of all the pollen accumulated on both the furniture and on the porch. I would love to do it all in one go and be done with it.

How nice that you got the car back so quickly! I hope you get some hammock time today. It's a gorgeous day. How's the foot?

>80 Crazymamie: I'm sold. A pecan tree, somewhere in my yard.

Good morning, Karen! I hope your Tuesday goes well. I'm aiming to make some time after work to plant a couple native plants we got over the weekend, but I don't know that I'll tackle any other gardening. We'll see.

>79 The_Hibernator: Hi Rachel! Thanks. Today will be calmer, although as I think about it I could let it get busy.... My cleaning ladies have come and gone, I've updated and published the final numbers for the book sale. Time to read for a bit. Then I want to go to the Library to drop off some membership forms for the Membership Chair, make a deposit at the bank, and get more salad fixings. THEN the hammock and then possibly a bit of effort on the back porch.

>80 Crazymamie: Thus speaks the woman who knows - her place is not named Pecan Paradisio for nothing. Yesterday was too busy for the hammock. I can't stay out any longer than 'til about 4:30 before the sun comes onto the porch and makes it too hot. Today I'm determined. I hope you can get the screened-in porch pollen-free this weekend!

>81 nittnut: We were surprised and happy, Jenn. Bill would have had to take my car today, leaving me carless. I'm going to really try to get some hammock time. And excellent about your resolution to get a pecan tree!

I posed this on Mamie's thread on Sunday: To answer your foot question - better but I overdid it a bit on Friday by power washing the front porch (40' x 10'), the steps leading to it from the side of the house, and all the furniture on it (swing, 4 chairs, 2 tables, hammock stand.) I'm keeping the wedge insert shoes on at all times when I'm not actually sleeping or reclining in the hammock and they make a stunning difference. The diagnosis is bilateral posterior tibial tendonitis of the right ankle. I've got a PT evaluation appointment next Wednesday. The orthotics should be ready in 2 weeks. I will probably need to get a wider and possibly bigger shoe, still Sketchers, possibly New Balance. As long as they don't look like old-lady shoes, I'll be content. Thank you for asking.

>82 harrygbutler: Hi Harry! I hope you can get your native plants in the ground. I'm probably going to not have a vegetable garden again this year. Sigh. Laziness and timing are doing me in.

Oh, I'd love some cleaning ladies, Karen. I don't think we could really afford it, and I 'd have to hustle around straightening up first - but other than that? I'd love someone to do the floors, vacuum , and clean the bathrooms, my least favorite chores. Now that I have osteoporosis I can't bend over and scrub things the way I used to do ( so as to get stuff clean, not that I enjoyed washing floors etc, but I did enjoy clean ). Regrettably, my husband does not quite do the same job as I used to do.
Sorry about the car breakdown.

As for the name Karen, it was popular in my day too. My SIL who is about 45 is named Karen. I think she is the youngest person that I know personally that is named Karen. A good name and I'm sure it will be restored to it's former glory.

My mom has always been horrified by her first name Penelope, but she goes by Penny. Lately I've seen a resurgence of both Penny and Penelope. I've told my mom, but she just shakes her head. My told me her parents could not think of a name for her , so her aunt came up with the name Penny . Growing up my dad often called her " Henny Penny " with some affection, but I don't think she really appreciated that. Names are funny things . I didn't think much one way or another about the name Penny as child or younger adult, but lately it struck me as cute name.

Morning, Karen. Happy Wednesday. Not much to report on the birding front but our weather remains pleasant. I hope your week is going fine.

>84 vancouverdeb: Hi Deborah! I can't really afford them since I've retired either, frankly. I think the cleaning days will be numbered because Pat, diagnosed with breast cancer 6 years ago, has now been diagnosed with lung cancer and is getting really unsteady on her feet at age 74 (smoker, has NEVER quit, even after the breast cancer diagnosis - I've never smoked so don't understand the addiction) and once she can't work any more I don't want to continue with just her daughter. It will be a good excuse to save the money. I'll probably then just get a cleaning service in quarterly to do the big stuff and, sigh, I'll take over the rest.

Bill's car is working great - he says it has a bit less pep than it had before, but it is, after all, only a Ford Focus.

Mom mentioned to me one time that they really wanted to name me Pamela, another popular name in the early 1950s, but my last name, Pomeroy, combined with Pamela, would have given kids an edge in the cruelty game - I can just imagine "Pee-Pee Pomeroy" and who specifically would have tormented me with it. So Karen's a good'un.

Penelope is one of those retro names. I like Penny, too. How odd that your grandparents couldn't come up with a name for her.

>85 msf59: Good morning, Mark! Thanks. My week is going well. This afternoon is the evaluation for PT for my "bilaterial posterior tibial tendonitis" and "acquired valgus deformity". Before then, among other things, will be more cleaning up of the back porch area. Bill immediately noticed it when he came home yesterday. We don't always notice the yard work the other one did. *smile*

I also booked my Ontario, CA flight to Bozeman on June 23rd. I'm flying standby to get to CA and standby when leaving Bozeman to return to Raleigh, but cousin Rebecca said the Bozeman flights book up quickly so I bit the bullet.

Morning, Karen! I will be thinking of you today as you go to your first PT - I will be interested to see what they have to say.

Hi Mamie!

I've never had PT for anything in my life, so it will all be new for me. I'll report back!

>88 karenmarie: Me, either, but my son Daniel has had a LOT of it. Heh.

Morning, Karen!

>86 karenmarie: - Regarding the name Pamela, my mother (Patricia) was one of three sisters. Her older sister was Margaret, but called Peggy, she was the middle one, and there was a bit of a gap between her and the baby. My grandmother was so upset she hadn't "given" her husband a son (by all accounts, my grandfather really didn't care and doted on all three of his girls), that she told him he could name the baby. He said he'd always liked the name Pamela, to which my grandmother (by most accounts a bit of a shrew) snapped, "Peggy, Pat, and Pamela? Sounds like a vaudeville show. No." So my mother and her sister got to name the baby and like the true readers they were, they picked names from the books they were reading, so my Aunt Liz is Elizabeth Dorothea after Elizabeth Ann Seton and Dolly Madison.

Hi Katie!

What a wonderful story! Even then, Elizabeth became Liz.

My parents gave my brother a name that could be shortened - Douglas to Doug, but they made a conscious decision (after Pamela was eliminated *smile*) to give us names that couldn't be shortened. Laura Beth - she won't answer to Lori - and Karen. We do have family nicknames, but not with our given names. One of mine is Kairfa Marika (I do not remember why), and my sister is Dora Beffers or Lorda Bee.

Whew. Just continued getting up three winters worth of leaves on the path to the barns. Shameful. I'm not sure but that we might have killed the mondo grass, something I thought would have been impossible.

Good morning, Karen! Some years our garden gets more attention than others, that's for sure. One of the reasons I like that we have berries is that we get some fresh produce even when we are lazy.

We go to pick up our tomato plants either this weekend or next, so I better get started blending in the bags of compost (and whatever is available from our compost pile).

Hi Harry! In hindsight, I should have planted blueberries and blackberries years ago, also asparagus and some pecan trees.

Yay for your summer garden. I don't think I'll plant a summer garden even though I sort of want to..... I'm going to be gone June 20 - July 6 and that's when things will need a lot of attention depending on the rain.

>93 karenmarie: Blackberries would be easy to establish anytime, I think. Do you have the soil for blueberries? We don't, and even those we tried in planters failed, and their needs are different enough from the rest of what we want that we gave up on them.

We don't have a good place to put in asparagus, though I'd like that as well. We are going to try to put in ground cherries as a perennial crop, if we can manage it, though I don't know whether that will be this year.

I do want to get some more black raspberries; only one of the three plants we put in last year has survived, and that's not quite enough. :-)

We also happened upon wild strawberries for sale at the local wildflower preserve, so we're going to try them, starting them out as container plants until we figure out whether to give them a dedicated space in the landscape.

I find names endlessly fascinating. My dream job would be to have a baby naming consultancy...

I am Catherine, which can be shortened to all sorts of things, and my sister is Ann, which is about as short as you can get :) And being Catherine with a C but Katie with a K has caused all sorts of confusion throughout my life (for other people, obviously I am pretty clear on it *grin*) My parents wanted to name me Katherine and call me Katie but my father had an Aunt Katherine whom he detested and he didn't want anyone to think I was named after her, so I was Catherine with a C. But they thought Catie with a C was weird, so I was Katie with a K.

My father was going to be Andrew Scott but his last name started with an S and my Granny decided that maybe ASS wasn't the best monogram to have...

Anyway, I should probably keep in mind that not everyone finds names as interesting as I do :)

I find them endlessly fascinating, too! Catherine with a C but Katie with a K. Works for me.

Bill's Mama's name was Anne with an e, and his step-mother's sister's name is Ann, with no e.

I can relate to not naming a child after a detested relative. I wanted to name our daughter Leanna. Bill's mother Anne and father Dutch divorced in 1975 and there was much acrimony on both sides. Bill said that it would just about kill his father to have Anne be part of our daughter's name, so that let that one out. I didn't want Loreena, which Bill wanted because of Loreena McKennit, because all I could think of was Low-REE-na in Bill's Mama's voice and it just sounded so southern hick to me. We dithered around for quite a while, then heard the name Jenna and that was it. Of course now there are many Jennas, including baby Bush's daughter's, but we didn't know any of that at the time.

Initials are important too, and ASS would have been horrific.

One of my great-grandfathers was named Francis Marion Pomeroy - was he named after The Swamp Fox? My dad's first and middle names are John Milton after one of his great-grandfathers. Was the great-grandfather named after the 17th century poet/polemicist/man of letters? It's all fun to consider.

Ah, yes..names. My mother wanted to name me Janice Lee but my father wanted to/insisted on naming me after his older sister, Reba. Mother agreed as long as my middle name was Sue and I was called by both. I grew up in the 50's and 60's in California and I HATED having a name that sounded southern. In 8th grade I tried to be called just "Sue" but learned you can't get people you've known for 8 years to change what they call you. Finally when I went to college I dropped the Sue. Until Reba McIntyre no one could spell, pronounce or remember "Reba" which was most annoying but now I it isn't such a problem (bless Ms. McIntyre's little heart) and I like having a fairly distinctive name.

Hubby's name is Hungarian (again his father's choice) which no one can spell, pronounce or remember and he hates it. At places where you give your name to be put on a list he always uses the English translation of his actual name.

When my son was born I was living in Europe and it wasn't clear where he would spend most of his growing-up years so I wanted a name that was fairly international as well as not something embarrassing in some European language so he's Thomas (Tom). I think he's OK with it now but for part of his youth he was bummed that his name wasn't John. I think he got over than when he learned its other comment use lol

>84 vancouverdeb: Checking in to see how all is going and loved the conversation about names. As a Karen also, I can usually tell the relative ages of other women with my name. Nowadays, it seems that if someone is named Karen, it is spelled Karin or Caren.

My favorite family name story comes with my great aunt Edith who was a poet and family lore says she died of a broken heart. Somewhere along the way, she began spelling her name Edythe. I suspect she thought it was more poetic.

As for orthotics and shoes, I am loving my orthotics (they really did make a difference in my walking almost immediately) and rocking them in a pair of Jambu fabric sneakers. The fabric stretches comfortably around my feet.

Names. A naming consultancy is not such a bad idea!

My grandmother was baptised Gertrude, shortened to Geertje, quite nice and in fashion again nowadays, but in our part of the country all names get shortened as much as possible so she became Geert, a boys name, and she hated it.
My mother is also baptised Gertrude, but was called Truus, which she disliked as well. So now I am also baptised as Gertrude but it is my third name, and my first is officially Elizabeth. Quite an improvement ;-)

Funny and fun conversation about names. I don't have kids but did once think about it. I used to love the name Devon, but early in my teaching career, I had 2 students named Devon who I quite disliked (privately, of course). However, it was enough that I knew I would never be able to even imagine naming any kid of mine Devon! The association was just hard to break.

And as far as names belonging to certain eras, in my family, there are so many Michaels. My brother, and numerous cousins. It got to the point that, even now, when we talk about any Michael in the family, we have to use last names. And I have one cousin, Mitch, who, inevitably, got called Michael numerous times during his growing up years!

>97 RebaRelishesReading: Hi Reba! I was raised in 50’s and 60’s California too and I wonder what I would have thought of your name? We mostly had Vickies, Cathys and Kathys, Debbies, Karens, Janice and Janets, Nancys, Susans, and lots of Lindas.

Your husband’s name and his using the English translation reminds me of a group of my husband’s friends during the time when we were just married (before, too). Whenever they met at a restaurant, instead of trying to remember or figure out who had made the reservation, they always used The Family Fred. It made things really easy.

Glad your son likes his name now. My dad never went by John- always Milt.

>98 witchyrichy: Hi Karen! Yes, there are strange spellings of it, although I know one Karin from Denmark, pronounced Kaw-rin, lightly trilled R. I’ve also seen Caryn – that’s Whoopi Goldberg’s real given name.

>99 EllaTim: Hi Ella! I’m glad you like Gertrude as a third name. It's sad when a child doesn't like her/his name.

My mother’s family has a bunch of Anglicized Bohemian names – Viola, Agnes, Lillian, Edith, Velma. And on the other side we have the much-disliked Nellie, but many English Nancys, Elizabeths, Sarahs, Alices.

Just had my first PT session – I walked for her, she tested leg, knee, thigh, and various positions of ankle strength and did some massage and manipulation of my right foot/ankle. It actually hurts a bit now from the barefoot walking and pushing and pulling. The goal is for me to be able to strengthen my arch to take pressure off the tendon and get more movement in my ankle. Also, a goal of being able to walk half a mile. Oh, and because it's been going on for so long, it's officially tendenosis, not tendonitis. That actually sounds worse - here's what Wikipedia says about it:

Tendinosis, means or sometimes called chronic tendinitis, chronic tendinopathy, or chronic tendon injury, is damage to a tendon at a cellular level (the suffix "osis" implies a pathology of chronic degeneration without inflammation). It is thought to be caused by microtears in the connective tissue in and around the tendon, leading to an increase in tendon repair cells. This may lead to reduced tensile strength, thus increasing the chance of tendon rupture. Tendinosis is often misdiagnosed as tendinitis because of the limited understanding of tendinopathies by the medical community. Classic characteristics of "tendinosis" include degenerative changes in the collagenous matrix, hypercellularity, hypervascularity, and a lack of inflammatory cells which has challenged the original misnomer "tendinitis".

>101 karenmarie: Hi Karen! Your PT sounds good, thorough, testing everything. But that diagnosis, yuck. I understand that everything concerning tendons can take time to heal. So you need patience and give it time :-(

Good, good luck with the PT. I know you'll do it, and I'm very hopeful that it will give you lasting relief!
LOVE to talk about names. I confess: in 1944 my daddy named me "Peggy Ann." Mama tried. She loved Elizabeth, as I do, but she wanted to call me Beth. Nope. I might lisp, and when people asked, "What's your name, little girl," and I said, "My nameth Beth," they wouldn't know whether I was saying Bess or Beth. HIS child was going to be able to pronounce her name. Mama tried, Rebecca. He grew up with a Beck, and there was no way his child was going to remind him in any way of Beck Boone. She gave up and let him do it. I might also add, that being in NC, I grew up with Beverly Ann, Rosalie Ann, Rita Lee, Bobby Lou, and Gretchen. Gotta love those double names.
I'm supposed to have an ancesstress named Namer Jane. She was the last child, and the parents asked the doc, who had delivered all the babies to name her. He said, "Why don't you name'er Jane?" So they did.
Favorite girls' names from college: Rhett Sapp, Alden Hatch, Dinky Coons (O.K. Dinky was a nick-name). I think I'd better be finished.
Oh....... Except that we had a bad couple of years and let the asparagus go. I do miss it. AND that we're having our huge, wonderful black walnut tree go. It has a bad place that grows and is a danger to house, cars, and garage in the next bad blow. It's such a beautiful tree - maybe even prettier than the pecan. I know all things age and die, but I nearly weep every time I think about losing it. Unlike the oaks, it has to come all the way down.

Naming issues? My family's got 'em. My mother alleged that her mother was named Harriet because the infant's father bungled the agreed upon name Henrietta during the baby's baptism. I guess after 12 of them, he was too blasé or maybe tongue-tied and got it wrong.

Harriet was passed along to my mother as her middle name, and she hated it. In her high school yearbook, she was listed as Mary Henrietta. After she married, she adopted her maiden name as her middle name.

Of course, she and my father passed along my father's name to me. She disliked the name Harold, but stuck me with it. I couldn't talk at the time, so I couldn't make my wishes known. Isn't that always the way?

My wife and I bungled names for two of our kids. We picked on the basis of nicknames—Becky and Ned—but hid them in conventional "proper" names and positioned them in the middle. They just sounded better that way. The problem for both is that society is committed to the "first name and middle initial" thing. Ned didn't really grasp his formal birth certificate name until he started kindergarten. The teacher had readied the classroom with names on the backs of their chairs, and we almost had a blowup because she'd made him "Billy" instead of Ned. For the longest time, he rejected "Edward" and reversed the name order to be Ned William Hylton. And of course after 13 years in the school system, the h.s. principal, even after we asked him not to, announced him as William and Bill in the graduation ceremony. Ned shrugged it off.

Trivia: You said your maiden name is Pomeroy. When I was growing up, the dominant department store in Reading, PA, was Pomeroy's. Sylvester Pomeroy, scion of the founder is credited as a lyricist of "The Whiffenpoof Song" long associated with Yale U. The store is long gone, and I doubt many remember the song.

I love all these name stories!

>103 LizzieD: - Peggy, my late Aunt Peggy was Margaret Ann, and to this day, her youngest sister refers to her as Peggy Ann :)

>84 vancouverdeb: My niece is named Penelope. We call her Penn or Penny. I love it. I have another niece named Natalie, but we call her Nan. Her parents call her Nat or Natalie, but the rest of us call her Nan. I don't know why...

>90 katiekrug: Peggy, Pat and Pamela! LOLOL

>103 LizzieD: My MIL and her sister have those double names! Linda Gay and Margaret Lee.

Names are absolutely fascinating. I think a baby-name consultancy is desperately needed. The names some people give their kids! My sister ran into one the other day - a poor wee boy named Motley. She also spent 10 minutes looking for a lady named Jody at work the other day. Jody turned out to not be a lady. And wasn't too happy about it either.

When we were having babies, it was tricky to find a name that we could agree on. Family names were awful. My husband goes by his middle name, but first name is Michael after his father. So, I said No More Michaels or John/Jonathans because we both had cousins named John, uncles named John and I have a brother named John. Our grandparents names were not ones to give to kids IMO. Lowe? Rhea? Arlo? LaMar? Sigh. We defaulted to the Old Testament prophets for the boys and my husband's grandmothers were both named Marguerite, so that seemed obvious for Miss M. Kids will find something to mock in any name, but I like more traditional ones that people can spell and pronounce. However, you'd be amazed how often Jonah and Elijah get misspelled. Johna (Is that short for Jonathan?) is my favorite. *eyeroll*

Going by your middle name is also interesting. I never know when I call a doctor or the DMV or wherever, whether my husband has given them his legal name or the one he goes by.

I can't resist another couple or three.
My cousin's husband wanted to name their son-to-be Nicholas (Nicky). Cousin hated it, so I reminded CIL that here he would become "Neeeky," and their son is Jonathan.
I have a young acquaintance who has named their son Edward Ellison - all very handsome except that their last name begins with a W - so his initials make EEW.
My standard reply in my child-bearing years to those boors who demanded to know why we had no children was, "We both believe in using family names. We'd have to name our first son Spurgeon Sturgeon, and we just couldn't do that to a child."

Apparently, naming my aunt (who has just died) caused ructions in my grandparents family. My grandfather suggested that the new baby be called Edith ‘after my sister’. Unfortunately, my grandmother’s name was also Edith: she felt that if the baby was going to be called Edith ‘after’ anyone it ought to be her. It caused quite a fuss apparently. My aunt was called Betty in the end ...

>104 weird_O: I grew up near Reading and remember Pomeroy's. And, if you're a Gilmore Girls' fan, you know the Whiffenpoof song, too! I didn't know it was connected to the store owner.

Love all the name chat here! If we had of had a boy I really loved the name Theodore, but my last name is Bearss. Theodore can be shortened to Ted, or Teddy.... Ya, that wouldn't work! 😝

Elissa got the spelling of her name because we loved the name Alyssa but all the names on my husband's side have an E in them so to keep everyone happy we switched the spelling. Weird, but now I love it.

>102 EllaTim: HI Ella! Thanks for the encouragement. I realize it will take time, and at $30/copay through May and I don’t know how much once I switch to Medicare in June. Ah well.

>103 LizzieD: Thank you Peggy, who I thought was probably Margaret! Live and learn. That’s so funny about your father worried that you might lisp. And not Rebecca because of growing up with a Beck. Double names are cool, I think. Namer Jane. Just imagine!

I’m truly sorry about your black walnut tree. That’s how I felt about our river birch (roots were going to get to the foundation within 5 years) and our redbud (rotten on the inside.)

>104 weird_O: Hey Bill! I love the name Harriet, but don’t know how I would have felt about owning it. My love comes from Miss Harriet Vane in the Wimsey/Vane novels by Dorothy L. Sayers. Poor Ned and Becky. But shrugging it off in high school is a good sign for Ned. I hope they are doing fine now. I had a friend in 6th grade who went by Bill until we learned his Spanish name – Guillermo – and he insisted on being called that the rest of the year.

Yup. Pomeroy. Wikipedia says one of the Whiffenpoof lyricists was George S. Pomeroy - perhaps Sylvester? My genealogical research is stuck on Warren Pomeroy, G-G-Grandfather, born in 1816 New York (1850 census) or 1817 Michigan (1860 census). My daughter would be thrilled if we were descendants of Eltweed Pomeroy. He came to what wasn’t even the colonies in the 1630s, not on the Mayflower, though.

>105 katiekrug: Hi Katie! That’s what I thought @LizzieD’s name was – but she was officially named Peggy.

>106 nittnut: Hi Jenn! I think Penn’s a great name for a girl, always excepting a Bad Person my sister knew in CA – behind her back we called her 'Penn from the pen'.

Mötley Crüe fans? And poor male Jody.

A baby name consultancy would be great. The parents would probably be happy to sign a binding agreement to use one of the names suggested so as to avoid either divorce or pressure from the relatives.

My grandparents’ names are just as ...old fashioned shall we say – Leonard, Viola, Aubrey (I kinda like that one, actually), Nellie. I’m in the same situation with Bill as you are with your husband – my husband’s given names are Frederick William. He goes by Bill. When asked, I have to say “Well, it will be Frederick, Fred, or Bill.”

>107 LizzieD: Just like I couldn’t imagine calling a girl Loreena and having it come out Low-REE-na. Ah, another initials fiasco, EWW, actually implemented. Too bad about all the boors – these days most people don’t ask unless they know you’ve expressed an interest and/or have said you’re actually trying. Although that’s info I don’t particularly want to know – we had some friends who ended up adopting, but I really didn’t want to hear about their fertility issues.

>109 witchyrichy: I’ve never heard of Pomeroy’s. And I just looked up the Whiffenpoofs. Silly Whiffenpoofs – here are the 1912 Whiffenpoofs. What is it with men dressing up as women?



......

I've called my husband Bill Honey for a long time. When Jenna was little, I never thought about it. At daycare one time, when she was perhaps 2 years old, they asked the children what their parents names were. She proudly announced "Karen and Bill Honey", so when Bill went to pick her up they all said, in a sing-song voice, "Hi Bill Honey!" Friends Brenda and Jeff's son Ethan was in the same daycare, so they started calling him that, too. In high school, Jenna and Ethan were both in marching band, and Brenda and Jeff would usually call out "Hi Bill Honey" if they saw us there, too.

......

Coffee! Brekkie! A bit more work in the back yard! Reading! Hammock time! Some FoL Treasurer check writing! A retired person's work is never done.

Good morning, Karen! Sounds like quite the busy day!

Hi Harry!

I don't have to go anywhere, which is always to be desired. I will, however, drive to the end of our road to mail any FoL checks that get written. I'll take the binoculars and perhaps just sit for a bit - Louise has told me that she saw Meadowlarks, a Blue Grosbeak, some kind of Swallow, and another bird I can't remember the name of this morning when she walked the dogs. She amazes me.

Adding my sympathy re the tendinosis, Karen, and my hope that the PT helps. Strengthening what you can around it makes sense to me; I've been able to help balky knees doing that.

>114 jnwelch: Hi Joe! Thanks. I'll try to be a good girl and do whatever exercises she recommends. Good to hear that strengthening exercises helped you.

I've made turkey meatloaf for dinner and will bake 'em (2 1-lb meatloafs) even if Bill has dinner with friend Carl. They make great leftovers.

I don't think I've mentioned that my daughter got straight As in her first semester at Cape Fear Community College. This is huge because she has never gotten straight As that I can remember and it was her first semester again as a student since 2014. Plus her computer crapped out mid-semester and she had to start factoring in study time on campus. She overcame fear, insecurity, and technical woes yet came out on top and excited about her one summer course and the four she's already signed up for in the fall.

How wonderful for Jenna, the A Student! Long may she flourish!

>1 karenmarie: "Being retired is the cat’s pajamas, the bee’s knees, the eel’s hips, the monkey’s eyebrows, the sardine’s whiskers. I do not miss working at all."
It sounds truly lovely. I am so glad you are enjoying your time!

And that photo of your grandmother and her cousin is wonderful!! What an adventure they were on.

Congratulations to your daughter for the straight As in her first semester. You know that I am all about college student success. It's great to hear that she is doing so well. Also, from my perspective, her overcoming of obstacles is as important. Building and developing resilience is a notable focus of student affairs work in recent years. I'm excited for her!

I've enjoyed skimming the conversation about names. I don't have much to add but I am always struck by how emotional the topic is. Whether we're talking about our own names, our kids' names, or having reactions to others' names, it seems to strike a visceral chord. My middle name is my paternal grandmother's maiden name. I hated it as a child but I love it as an adult.

>95 katiekrug: >96 karenmarie: I love name talk. One of my favourite games is to combine *actual* first and last names to make hilarious combinations. Try it, it is the best (you can also form combined surnames with a hyphen, if it pleases you).
My nephew was very nearly Flynn Ap$e, but they didn't want him to be nicknamed "Flaps...."

Ah, more name chat! I know a couple of Karin's as well. One is of Danish background , the other hails from the UK. The pronunciation of each " Karin" quite different. Bill Honey! I like that. I know a family that runs a auto repair business. Her husband is Scottish and came up with the name " Thistle Motors" So quite a few people think that their last name is Thistle and they get called Mr and Mrs Thistle. lol .

Congratulations to your daughter on her excellent marks.

>119 vancouverdeb: - LOL! That reminds me of my own family story. My uncle's name was Jack. His last name began with a B and he owned a children's shoe store. He called the store *Jack B. Nimble*. People who didn't know him would always call him and my aunt, Mr. and Mrs. Nimble!

Congrats to Jenna, Karen. I can attest from personal experience that it makes all the difference in the world when you are studying something that speaks to you! And marks reflect that. Go Jenna!

>116 LizzieD: Thank you, Peggy!

>117 EBT1002: Hi Ellen! My grandmother died when I was 10 in 1964. My dad was an only child, and she lived with us from about 1957 until her death. It was wonderful for us kids and, I suppose, for my dad, but my mom (who we then called Mommy) and “Mom” (grandmother didn’t want to be called grandma because apparently she said it made her feel old) had a power struggle going on the whole time. The kidlets never knew of it, but things my mother said in later years made me realize how unhappy she was. And there were so many things I could have asked “Mom” about our family that I didn’t.

Nebraska to Colorado. There’s another photo somewhere, I’m pretty sure, that proves that my grandfather was on that trip, too.

Thank you for your encouraging words about Jenna. That is such a great way to put it – building and developing resilience!

I’m glad you love your middle name now. With that rule, mine would have been Patrick, which would have been confusing to everybody, me included. All three of us were given ‘first name’ middle names – Marie, Beth, and Lee. When I married I legally dropped the Marie and took my maiden name as my middle name. Everybody in Bill's side of the family did it, and I liked the idea. My mother, sister, aunt, and maternal grandmother all dropped their maiden names, keeping their middle name.

>118 LovingLit: Hi Megan! Flaps would have been unfortunate, for sure.

>119 vancouverdeb: Hey Deborah! The Karin I mentioned above is Danish. She married an Englishman so lived in the UK for many years. Thank you re Jenna. Mr. and Mrs. Thistle. *smile*

>120 jessibud2: Hi Shelley! Another assumption, Mr. and Mrs. Nimble. Thanks – Jenna kept saying that this was math she could use. Her computer course, too, things she could use. She also had American Government and was surprised at how much she knew compared to most of the other students in the class, and an elective – Art History – which required a skill that too many students don’t acquire anymore, that of memorization.

We had a very strong thunderstorm come through last evening about 7:30. Much thunder and lightning, about ½ inch of rain. I heard either a large branch or a tree go down with a loud crack. It was on our neighbor’s property and with the leaves filling in I can’t see it this morning.

Today I really must get caught up on FoL check writing and prep for Monday’s board meeting. I also finished a book last night, The Supremes at Earl’s All-You-Can-Eat by Edward Kelsey Moore. Review to follow.

Hi, Karen! Congratulations to Jenna on her first semester; it sounds like she did indeed find a course of study that fits her well.

Thanks, Harry. It's a huge relief to me.

43. The Supremes at Earl’s All-You-Can-Eat by Edward Kelsey Moore
5/5/18 to 5/11/18





From Amazon:

This diner in Plainview, Indiana is home away from home for Odette, Clarice, and Barbara Jean. Dubbed "The Supremes" by high school pals in the tumultuous 1960s, they’ve weathered life’s storms for over four decades and counseled one another through marriage and children, happiness and the blues.

Now, however, they’re about to face their most challenging year yet. Proud, talented Clarice is struggling to keep up appearances as she deals with her husband’s humiliating infidelities; beautiful Barbara Jean is rocked by the tragic reverberations of a youthful love affair; and fearless Odette is about to embark on the most terrifying battle of her life. With wit, style and sublime talent, Edward Kelsey Moore brings together three devoted allies in a warmhearted novel that celebrates female friendship and second chances.

Why I wanted to read it: I bought it at the Friends of the Library book sale last fall on the recommendation of friend Rhoda. It just called my name.

This book took a bit to get into. There were too many characters introduced too quickly, and it was a while before I got the right husband matched with the right Supreme. The story moved back and forth in time and chapters were told from various points of view and various people’s perceptions. Chapter titles would have helped me keep things in perspective a bit better. However, by about 2/3 of the way through, I was in the groove and thoroughly enjoying it.

I really liked the ghosts. They weave seamlessly through the book, moving the story along, helping when needed. We’re introduced to the fact that Odette sees ghosts in the first chapter. In addition, there was a warmhearted humor throughout the book that encompassed most of the characters – Earl, his first wife Miss Thelma, Miss Minnie, and of course the Supremes and their husbands, children, and grandchildren.

The male author does a beautiful job of writing from a female perspective. Here’s what he says about the book:

The Supremes at Earl’s All-You-Can-Eat is rooted in the fond memories I have of a childhood spent eavesdropping on the women of my family as they talked at family gatherings. Even I was too young to fully understand the often very adult subject matter of their conversations, I was struck by how quickly the topics veered from heartbreakingly tragic to wildly hilarious. My intention in writing this novel was to celebrate the joy of true friendship and to invite readers to remember the smart, funny, and strong women in their lives.”

Mission accomplished, Mr. Moore.

I had to do a double-take just now - in addition to the metal sunflowers being down, the bird bath tray is gone - nowhere in sight. Can't find it anywhere. I'll do some more looking later, but drat! The winds from the thunderstorm must have just lifted it up and away.

>124 karenmarie: - Sounds like a good one!

>125 karenmarie: - Don't you just hate when that happens? If and when you find (or replace) it, try adding a heavy rock or piece of brick to the centre of the birdbath. It will give the smaller birds a little perch and will help keep the tray where you want it (or at least make it harder for raccoons to abscond with it)

Hi Shelley!

I do! I used to keep a rock in it when I had the warmer in it, but as you can see in the picture, the rock is on the ground to the right of the stand. Sigh. I just looked for it again, so far no good. Maybe Bill will see it when he mows tomorrow.

>125 karenmarie: "The winds from the thunderstorm must have just lifted it up and away."
Of what was it made? (Ours are concrete and it would have to be one helluva storm to blow them away! LOL)

>128 EBT1002: It's a 20" inch plastic birdbath from Wild Birds Unlimited. It just never occurred to me that it would fly away. We have another bird bath in the back, made of concrete.

The birdbath! Oh, I've got to fetch it out of the basement, And I've got to rehab the crumpled feeder too. So much to do, so much time. Hmm, why isn't it done?

Hi Bill! The house elves have abandoned me, perhaps they've abandoned you, too.

That bird feeder looked pretty trashed to me. Is it rehab-able? I might not want to put out a newly-rehabbed bird feeder with Mr. Bear still around.

>124 karenmarie: Added The Supremes at Earl's All-You-Can-Eat to my TBR list...sounds like a lovely read.

We got the same storm. Found some things that got blown around but the bird feeders must be well protected enough and seem no worse for where. At least we got some real rain out of it as well.

Nasty, wasn't it, Karen? All of a sudden I looked up, the sky was black. Then the wind, lightning, thunder, and rain came.

Glad you didn't have any damage - we didn't either, just the missing bird bath dish and the downed metal sunflowers.

I'm a fan of Wild Birds Unlimited. Their black oil sunflowers are the best, a great value despite the hefty price per bag (more seeds. fewer twigs.) I wonder what kind of bird-feeding supplies I will be able to access here in the easter edge of the state.... hmm.

Whew! I'm glad that birdbath wasn't concrete as I was naturally thinking. That would have been some wind indeed!
More names with a nod to Megan... If Shiela Dickie had married Rick Finch (and I'm SO glad that she didn't), they could have named their son Rickie Dickie Finch. If Susie Berube (pronounce the last e "eee") had married Danny Duby (oo, she would have been Susie Berube Duby.
And my college friend's last name was Per Lee. Her father was known as Pearly Gates, and sure enough! He was once paged at a conference, "Phone call for Mr. Gates."
We also lived with my grandmother for the last 11 years of her life. I'm happy to say that she and my mother got along really well, both of them trying really hard to make it so.
We could use rain!

>134 EBT1002: Hi Ellen! I haven't been back since I bought the bird bath last year. It's 32 miles away. I get our black oil sunflower seed at Southern States Feed and Seed. I buy 50 lbs at a time, 40 lbs of wild bird seed at a time. It will be fun for you to figure out new sources, new restaurants, new everything, with your job change, new house, and P's retirement.

?135 Me, too, Peggy! A flying concrete birdbath would be a horrific thing.

Those names are a riot.

You're fortunate that your mother and grandmother got along really well.

I think that storm gave us about 1/2 - 3/4". It's supposed to get into the 90s here today and tomorrow, and Monday. Blech. Early summer, go away!

Morning, Karen. Happy Mother's Day. I am back home, after my bird festival activities. I wish the weather would have been better, but I definitely made the best of it.

Sorry, to hear about the birdbath. Did you find the top? I am glad mine, is made of concrete. It ain't going nowhere...

Happy Mother's Day, Karen. xx

Happy Mother's Day!

We are living through the first really hot days of the year: in the 90s so we pop in and out, getting hot and then moving into our air conditioned den for a little bit. Looks like things will cool down a bit next week but it is a reminder that it is time to clean up the pool!

>137 msf59: Thank you, Mark! Your trip sounds wonderful, with birds, Sue and LTer Nancy.

The bird bath dish has been found. And it was found by Jenna, who came home yesterday as a surprise to me. Her dad knew she was coming home, of course. She’s staying through Friday or Saturday. Her one summer class starts up on the 21st. Yay.

>138 PaulCranswick: Thank you, Paul! With my daughter home, it’s as it should be.

>139 witchyrichy: Thanks, Karen. Yes, we’re going to be in the 90s today too. Even though I’m in the air conditioning I just finished cleaning up the kitchen after breakfast and am warmish (yes, it’s Mother’s Day, but sometimes I like cleaning up the kitchen after a meal and today is one of those days.) Jenna’s playing one of her PS4 games, Bill’s mowing the front yard before it gets hotter than the current 87F. Jenna and I looked through a small box of photos a while ago, which was a lot of fun. I think we’re just going to all hang out together today, maybe watch a movie this afternoon. Dinner’s ¾ made – more leftover turkey meatloaf with either church rice or new potatoes and some salad.

The rewards of the pool will definitely outweigh the cleanup work for you.

Here’s the Bowl of Cheese I had for dinner last night – aka Lasagna – at our favorite soda shoppe in town, S&T’s. I also took a picture of the cards, candy, and soft animal that were on the table in the living room for me today from Bill and Jenna.

…

My Sister's Turkey Meatloaf

2 lbs ground turkey
¼ cup chopped onion
1 stalk celery, diced
2 eggs
¼ t black pepper
4 pieces wheat bread, torn into small pieces
1 T Beau Monde seasoning - I use Spice Islands Beau Monde seasoning, but there are online beau monde seasoning recipes too to make your own
Barbeque sauce

Mix all together except barbeque sauce. Place aluminum foil on cookie sheet and form meatloaf into two loafs, about ¾” high each. Spread 1/3 cup barbeque sauce over each loaf. Bake 45 minutes to 1 hour at 350F.

I'm behind as usual… Loved the family pictures on the wall upthread. They really make a statement.

Even more, I love Karen's Rule: "If any reason you don't want to continue reading a book, put it down. You may keep it, get rid of it, re-start it, never finish it, finish it from where you left off, but put it down."
That's awesome. I may give myself permission to follow your advice. It will be hard for me as I am a completist.

Interesting discussion of names. So the spring storms have begun for you. I am waiting for our first tornado warning. Not tonight, thank goodness, just waiting in general. It's a given here in Tornado Alley.

I see you had a lovely Mother's Day. Me too. Heath Bars! I love them and now will crave them until I can get that image out of my head.

Glad that you've had a lovely Mother's Day, Karen! Good for Jenna! GOOD for you!
I also love Heath Bars, but I think I'm really in love with that Bowl of Cheese. I will visit some day and have one!

>135 LizzieD: love those potential name combinations!!! I can only think of rude ones at present, so wont go there :)

>142 Donna828: I need to take Karen' advice too, I always doggedly stick with books that I hate. I just feel like it *might* get better!

Good morning, Karen! Glad to hear you had a good Mother's Day. Enjoy your Monday!

>142 Donna828: Hi Donna! Thank you, and thank you re my rule. Rarely do I regret putting a book down. In fact, the only one I can think of offhand is Room by Emma Donoghue. After the book club discussion, one of the women in book club loaned me the audio (I’d aleady gotten rid of the book) and now I think it’s one of the best books I’ve ever read. I’ve even re-acquired it for my library.

We get tornado warnings about once every other year or so but are frequently under watches. Missouri is right in the middle of tornado alley, though. Do you have a basement? We don't, and only have two places to shelter in place - one of the downstairs bathrooms and a closet under the stairs. Only had to do it once, though, with the kitties, fortunately. Bill was at work and Jenna was living in Wilmington by then.

I did have a lovely Mother’s Day. Heath Bars are the absolute best. I also got chocolate covered macadamia nuts, licorice pastels, and gummy bears (pronounced goo-me, not gummy).

>143 LizzieD: Thank you, Peggy! We really do need to have a Jenn-Peggy-Karen meet up in the Pitt. Circle City Books is just half a block’s walk away, too. Bowl of Cheese is awesome.

>144 LovingLit: Hi Megan! You should go with your instincts about a book. I’ve never felt good about books I was forced to complete – in 2008 I made a New Year’s Resolution to finish every book I started. By March I was afraid to pick up a book because if I didn’t like it I’d be miserable until I finished it. By April I’d broken the resolution and have lived happily ever after. *smile*

>145 harrygbutler: Hi Harry! Thank you. I have a Friends of the Library board meeting first thing, then Jenna and I will hang out.

Hi, Karen.

>146 karenmarie: By March I was afraid to pick up a book because if I didn’t like it I’d be miserable until I finished it. By April I’d broken the resolution and have lived happily ever after. *smile* Perfect description of why it isn't a good idea to commit to finish every book we start. Sometimes we take a chance and it just doesn't work out, or it's not the right time for the book, or whatever.

Hi Joe! Nice to see you here.

Jenna's off to visit a friend for a couple of days, then will be back with us for 2-3 days then home to start the new semester and try to find a summer job.

It will be about 10F less here today than yesterday and Sunday although more humid. Summer go away!

We took Jenna's Ford Focus to the dealer yesterday to see if he could confirm the transmission problem. They did, and she'll get a new transmission under warranty on Friday, just like her dad did a week ago. They'll also perform a recall notice on the door latches and she's springing for a new hubcap - she's been without one for a while now and it will be good to see her car looking good again.

We have 3 new 7' hollies nicely blocking the view of the new neighbor's house. Unfortunately Larry cut our phone line when he dug one of the holes - Bill didn't think to check to see where the line ran so we've been without house phone and internet since yesterday afternoon. Centurylink will run a line today above ground then when they can schedule it they'll retrench and put in a new underground line. Bill's kicking himself for not thinking about the underground lines to the house.

Thank goodness for cell phone hotspots and lots of data!

Morning, Karen. The hummingbirds have been attacking the feeder since 6am. I have still only seen one at a time, but we think there is a male and female.

I have the day off and a organized bird walk popped up, (which is not very usual, during the week, especially to coincide with my off day) so that is where I am heading, shortly. We have had a lot of rain lately but it should be dry for the rest of the day.

'Morning, Mark! Good to see that you have a day off. You are really getting into the bird walks/festivals, aren't you? I hope you have some excellent sightings.

Good morning, Karen! I'm willing to give up on books, though it doesn't occur that often as a conscious decision. What does occur, however, is that long books sometimes languish unfinished; I haven't intentionally abandoned them, but I set them aside for some reason and don't get around to picking them back up, sometimes for a short while, sometimes for long enough that I need to restart.

Hi, Karen.

I've got quite a stack of generally well-regarded books that I've started. I say, started. But something flashy diverted my attention. I'll get back to each one in its turn, beginning...well, any day now...any day.

Be glad that the excavator didn't uproot your power line. Good on the Hollies. They did some really great tunes.

:D

Morning, Karen! I am all caught up here now. I have made note of the meatloaf recipe, drooled over the Heath bars, boggled over the Bowl of Cheese, and sighed over the cut phone lines - poor Bill. Sounds like you had a Mother's Day that was full of fabulous. SO lovely that Jenna surprised you with a visit and congrats to her on getting all As for the semester.

Happy Tuesday to you!

Hi Harry! It sounds like you sometimes have a long-range reading 'plan' for any given book! I leave books I'm reading out on the desk between bookends and if I don't get back to them in a timely manner, back on the shelves they go.

I have been good at culling some books this year that I've read and just don't want to keep on my shelves. I'm beginning to run out of room again..... sigh.

>152 weird_O: It's those dratted flashy ones that always get us, isn't it Bill? I'm glad you're not holding your breath about getting back some of those books.

Toddy from Centurylink is digging up around the holly trying to decide how to get it fixed - either a short-term above ground solution until another person can re-trench, or a shallow-trench through where the holly's planted. Either solution is acceptable to me.

Ha. The Hollies.

>153 Crazymamie: Hi Mamie! Thank you. Jenna's headed off to visit a friend until Thursday morning, Bill's at work, and Toddy's working on getting us our landline, DSL, and internet back.

I just opened up all the Blue Cross Blue Shield Medicare stuff I've been collecting since March - 3 things to be saved and kept as reference, my BCBS Medicare card to be used instead of the government's Medicare card, my Medicare card to be kept with the BCBS stuff, and another chore checked off the list!

Good morning Karen!

Ah well, at least it was a phone line cut and not a power line.

Hooray for Jenna being home to surprise you and for her outstanding grades. That girl has found her way with a bang!

I have one book on my 'currently reading' list on my thread that I may give up on. I'm a completest, too, especially about books that I think are 'good for me' to have read. Right now even the books I am enjoying have put slightly aside while I do a quick read of some library books.

Hi Janet!

I thought the same thing, too. Better the phone than the power.

Yes, I'm very proud of her.

It is strange, but even though I am Treasurer of the Friends of the Library, I do not borrow books. Currently the only resource of theirs that I'm using is their Ancestry membership - available to all library patrons.

Well, the Century Link guy is still working - the phone is working but the DSL isn't. He's gone back to the office for a bit to do something there and will call me.

Yay. DSL and Internet back up. Whew!

>157 karenmarie: Hooray!

Morning, Karen. Happy Wednesday. Working today but the weather looks gorgeous for the rest of the week. Makes things, so much more pleasant.

Enjoy your day.

Thanks, Mark! Glad you've got good weather for your work week.

We had a brief furious thunderstorm last night - nothing like what the Northeast experienced but still. The bird bath dish stayed put now that I put the rock back in it.

Oops about the phone line! I'm glad they sorted it out quickly. Did you ever find the bird bath?
I hope you love the hollies!
We just had a rip roaring thunder storm, and I believe another one is on the way. Swimming and baseball are cancelled *quietly cheers* and we just have scouts tonight. I swear, it feels like the planets and everything align and overlap in May. I am sure it's my fault, but still...

Hi Jenn!

Jenna found the bird bath near the shed. I just didn't look far enough away from the house. It's got a rock in it again.

We had a rip roaring thunder storm too, but I was driving home from Apex. I stopped in the Pitt for a dozen eggs and even though I had my umbrella got soaked it was coming down that hard. There will be more storms tonight, I think. Plus Inara loves the rain and goes out, comes in soaking wet, dries off, then goes back out. Silly kitty.

I remember being happy when kidlet outside events got cancelled.

Sorry there' so much going on. School will be out in a while, and that will present a whole different set of commitments and busy-ness, right?

Glad you have your phone and internet back up, Karen. Heath bars are the BEST!

Welcome back to phone and Internet service!
We've had a little rain but not nearly as much as we need.
Aw, Inara in the rain!
As to not finishing books - I leave the bookmark in the unfinished ones, and lie to myself that I will get back to them. On the rare occasions that I do, I have to start over, but somehow the bookmark makes me feel that I haven't wasted my precious $.

Morning, Karen. Sweet Thursday. Hooray for finding the top of the birdbath. I hope your weather has been as gorgeous as ours. Sighs, contentedly...

>162 ronincats: Thanks, Roni! We had our cell phones, of course, and I could use mine to create a hotspot for the internet, but still. Couldn't use my printer, couldn't use Amazon Prime or Netflix. First world problems, for sure.

I love Heath bars and any toffee-type candy. I make a pretty good chocolate-covered almond toffee, too.

>163 LizzieD: Thanks, Peggy. It's always a balance with rain, isn't it? Not enough, too much, never Mama Bear just-right.

Bookmarks and lying to yourself. Whatever works, right? *smile*

>164 msf59: Thank you, Mark! It won't be too hot, but will be rather humid. What happened to spring?

Good morning, Karen! For some longer works, I start out with a plan, but then it may go by the wayside. For example, I started out reading a large Middle English collection of exempla, essentially short stories or anecdotes that more or less illustrate particular themes, by reading one or two a day, and I got through more than half before a break (I think due to travel) caused me to set it aside, and I just never picked it up again. Luckily, as each of the items is self-contained, I can just resume whenever I feel the urge without backtracking at all.

I hope your Thursday goes well!

Happy belated Mother's Day! Dad and I went to the grave to say 'howdy' last Sunday. I also made time to get my car cleaned, I do love a spotless vehicle. Other than that, it's been work work work.

What a great opening photo. Alas, my mother had the family photos, but she was never one to keep things. I have three precious photos of my grandmother and great grandmother -- both precious in my heart.

I've been out of touch for awhile. I'm slowly creeping back. I hope your day is a good one!

Picked up another sparkly yesterday at Bethlehem's May book sale: Jo Nesbo's Blood on Snow. Already started it. Got some other good titles, too.

Do your book sales get overrun by "resellers." I've never been so put off by them as I was yesterday. 'Twas a plague of locusts. More than a dozen young people with cell phones strapped to a forearm, scanner in hand, pulling and scanning each and every book on a shelf. Pushing some right back in, dropping others on a towering (and growing) stack. Others scooping the stacks and shuttling them to not-sufficiently-out-of-the-way squads of packers stowing the books into storage tubs. I got to the sale about a half-hour after it opened and immediately saw a dozen or more of those tubs and boxes stacked near checkout. I had heard a year or so ago that these pickers were banned during the first hour of the sale. Wasn't the case yesterday.

Might go back for the Saturday sale.

Yay for having your phone and internet back, Karen. The power line would definitely have been harder to work around. Our power went out three times yesterday. The first two were short outages, I think. I wasn't here for one of them. Just reset the clocks when I came back home. Then the power did a short blip again and I only had to reset one clock. Just as my son was about to come home it went out again, this time for real so he couldn't cook what he had planned. Of course, the power was back on by the time the pizza delivery guy got here!

>166 harrygbutler: Hi Harry. I have set books aside and gone back to them, but only if I leave them out on my desk. I did that with The Righteous Mind – started it in November 2016 and picked it up again and finished it in December last year.

I had a nice Thursday. Jenna and I met at the Ford dealership and dropped off her car, shopped for chicken and lemons and broccoli for dinner, then watched episodes of Murder Maps, a biography of Edward VIII, and then the first two episodes of The Windsors. I didn’t realize that George V changed the family name away from Saxe-Coburg and Gotha in 1917 as a political maneuver because of anti-German sentiment. We’ll watch more today.

>167 SomeGuyInVirginia: Thanks, Larry! It was good to pay your respects and a clean vehicle always runs better, don’t you think? Sorry your work is so hectic right now.

>168 Whisper1: Thanks, Linda! I think my snagging most of the photos when I was in my 20s saved them from the dustbin – neither Mom or Dad seemed to care about those kinds of things. I’m glad you have some precious photos – they are always so wonderful to look at. And, glad to see you back.

>169 weird_O: Hi Bill! I like Jo Nesbo, glad you found one at a book sale.

Our book sales are advertised as not being picked over, which draws resellers, who we call ‘dealers’. There is no first-hour ban, unfortunately. Our ‘valuable book’ sort team member left to move back up North last year, so we don’t have our special book corner – we used to post special books online with what we were charging and have a (small) room off the main sales area for them. Dealers would come in, head right there, get what they were looking for, and either leave or cruise the general stacks. They do bring hand-held devices to scan the codes to see if they want them, they are frequently sloppy about putting books back neatly. They carry big tubs around an occasionally are rude and inconsiderate, but the book sort team’s goal is to sell books and they don’t care who they sell them to. We have had less dealers the last two sales, with decreased revenue a result.

By all means go back Saturday. Does your sale have a $5 or $10/bag day?

>170 Familyhistorian: HI Meg! Yes. Cutting the power would have been much worse. Don’t you just hate those little outages? And bad timing, of course, always. However, pizza is a nice workaround.

Jenna and I are going to hang around today waiting to get her car back from getting a new transmission (under warranty), a door latch recall done, and a new hubcap. Then, unfortunately for me, she has to head back to Wilmington – she forgot that she has a hair appointment tomorrow. She thought it was two Saturdays from now. She needs to settle back in and get ready for her one summer class and start figuring out where to get a summer job though, so it’s good for her.

Bill’s got some kind of intestinal viral bug. He hardly ate any dinner last night and didn’t have any dessert or snacks. He still feels bad this morning but headed out to work because they’re short-staffed today and he needs to hold down the fort.

Good morning, Karen!

I'm not particularly bothered by the dealers with scanners, as they are almost never interested in the books I'm looking for, and I presume that if they do take the scanned book off the table and put it in their bag, they'll actually be buying it.

I do tend to curtail my visits to the library sales that allow folks to build up mounds and mounds of books and then sit going through them to decide whether they are actually going to buy particular books, as from my perspective as another shopper it pulls too many books out of the possible purchase pool without necessarily a sale to the hoarder.

I've seen several approaches to dealers: permitted only in the paid preview hours, forbidden during the paid preview hours, forbidden at all times, allowed at all times, with or without special handling.

"Special books" sections often can annoy or amuse me, depending on my mood, as in my experience they too often betray ignorance of book values, at least among the books I'm looking for. Far too many times I've come across a price being touted as a deal because it is listed online for substantially more (with a page on Ebay, say, printed out and stuck in the book), with no proof that anyone is willing to pay that amount, and without regard for the actual condition of the book and its impact on value.

Good health to Bill, and safe travels to Jenna!

Hi Harry!

We do not allow what we call book hoarding. If a person brings a box or bag of books over to the "Counting House", the books get tallied, priced, and that bag/box is not allowed to be gone through again. If the book sale team sees hoarding on the floor, the hoarder is challenged.

Our special books used to be managed by Claudia, who was a book seller in the past and really knew what would work price-wise and what wouldn't. Our special books pricer now is a complete novice, frankly, but makes good-faith efforts. Plus, we don't up-price as many books as we used to.

Bill's still a bit puny this afternoon but sounds better than he did this morning. Jenna and I just got back from picking up her car. She's showering, will hang for a bit more, then head on back to Wilmington.

>140 karenmarie: That bowl of cheese looks yummy!

Hi Lori!

Oh, it is totally decadent and yummy. I've never been able to finish it, but I do give it the old college try.

44. Longbourn by Jo Baker
5/11/18 to 5/18/18





From Amazon:

• Pride and Prejudice was only half the story •

If Elizabeth Bennet had the washing of her own petticoats, Sarah often thought, she’d most likely be a sight more careful with them.

In this irresistibly imagined belowstairs answer to Pride and Prejudice, the servants take center stage. Sarah, the orphaned housemaid, spends her days scrubbing the laundry, polishing the floors, and emptying the chamber pots for the Bennet household. But there is just as much romance, heartbreak, and intrigue downstairs at Longbourn as there is upstairs. When a mysterious new footman arrives, the orderly realm of the servants’ hall threatens to be completely, perhaps irrevocably, upended.

Jo Baker dares to take us beyond the drawing rooms of Jane Austen’s classic—into the often overlooked domain of the stern housekeeper and the starry-eyed kitchen maid, into the gritty daily particulars faced by the lower classes in Regency England during the Napoleonic Wars—and, in doing so, creates a vivid, fascinating, fully realized world that is wholly her own.

Why I wanted to read it: It called out to me. The timing was right.

Pride and Prejudice is one of my favorite books of all time, confirmed by multiple readings and the 6-hour BBC miniseries with Jennifer Ehle and Colin Firth.

The footman, mentioned only once in P&P according to Ms. Baker, becomes a pivotal figure, with a dramatic and completely fabricated backstory. His backstory reveals a shocking aspect of one of the major characters, and his brutal experiences as a foot soldier in the Napoleonic wars are described in great detail.

So, too, the daily trials and tribulations of servants in a house with claims to gentility are described in meticulous detail. We see the drudgery, invisibility to their master and mistress and three youngest daughters, and bare and condescending visibility to Elizabeth and Jane.

The chapter headings are direct quotes from P&P and are amusing as they place the servants experiences relative to the P&P storyline. This knowledge of what is going on with the Family tie us even more to the story of Mr. and Mrs. Hill, Sarah, Polly, and the mysterious footman. Elizabeth, Jane, Bingley and Darcy are wraiths flitting in and out of the detailed story of the people who keep Longbourn running. Mrs. Bennett becomes a character of some sympathy, as does Mary. Mr. Bennett loses some of the respect I had held for him although his distance and distaste for his wife and 3 of his girls were made clear in the original.

This novel is a very welcome addition to the Pride and Prejudice canon.

Hi, Karen. Glad you had a day with Jenna! Hope your Bill is better this evening.
I'm also a fan of Longbourn, and it didn't do Jo Baker any harm in my book either.
We didn't get much rain in our event, I'm sorry to say.........only .6" according to our gauge yesterday evening. That's better than none, but the river shrinking.

Morning, Karen. Happy Saturday. Glad you enjoyed Longbourn. It is a good one. Have a nice day.

Thanks, Mark! I just posted on your thread, too. *smile*

>177 LizzieD: Hi Peggy! Let's see - I had 4 days with Miss J. She came home the day before Mother's Day and stayed through yesterday afternoon, visiting a friend of hers Tues - Thurs morning. It was a very good time.

Today is the 50th Anniversary Party for our Friends of the Library, from 2-4. I'll be at the membership table but there should be someone else there with me for at least a bit of it so I can wander to the party room and visit the balloon displays throughout the library highlighting things we've purchased for the library. We may get some bands of rain, but it should be no warmer than about 80F and humid.

>176 karenmarie: Good review of Longbourn, Karen. I loved that book. I thought she was so smart imagining stories contained within, or alongside (e.g. the war), Pride and Prejudice.

Thanks, Joe! I really, really liked it. She really did drop a few bombshells, didn't she?

So I DID go to the second day of the book sale, and it was better, at least from my standpoint. The number of shoppers was smaller, so the aisles weren't clogged. And those pesty locusts were not in evidence. As always, I got some good stuff, and, of course, some weird stuff. I'll get the obligatory list up ASAP.

I accompanied the "other" grandmother to the sale today, "other" as in the one I was never married to. (Her daughter and my son married and have three daughters.) While we were shopping for books, our mutual twin grands were passing their driving tests. And tonight is the prom.

My the bye, the Bethlehem library doesn't do the $5 bag sale, I think because they have a dedicated space in the building and they don't have to unload everything. Six sales yearly.

>176 karenmarie: Longbourn sounds good. Bb for me!

Hope you have, are having, or had (time confusion) fun at that Anniversary Party!

>183 weird_O: Hiya Bill! I'm glad you found good books on the second day. No pesky dealers helps, for sure. Sounds like a lovely time with the "other" grandmother, too. Congrats to the mutual twin grands.

We have approximately 18,000 books twice a year, and only one smallish room for storage. In fact, some of the books are taken home by members of the book sort team if it starts getting crowded. Wow. 6 sales a year. If they don't have to unload everything, do you see some of the same books at the next sale? All of our books are taken to thrift stores after the end of each sale so that we start fresh for the next sale.

>184 EllaTim: Hi Ella! I think you'll like it if you're a P&P fan.

I had a good time at the Anniversary Party, thank you for asking. We had ~200 people in 2 hours, so it was a reasonable turnout. Lots of children for the face painting and balloon animals, some very nice live music, and lots of interest in the 8 notebooks that our Membership Chairwoman spent countless hours preparing. They are a good permanent resource for the FoL now. Only a few people came over to the membership table, but that was okay - I spent most of the time talking with the husband of the woman who was in charge of the party. We talked about the Navy (he retired after 30 years, my husband served 6 years in the submarine fleet), genealogy, Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (strangely enough, we are both INTJ), and just had a grand time.

I forgot to mention that I saw a Killdeer last week, at the end of the road. There's a pond across the field, and Louise had told me she'd seen some interesting birds because of it recently.

I'm going to Montana from June 23rd - ~July 6th, and told my friend Karen that I wanted to make sure I saw a wolf, a grizzly bear, and a Golden Eagle. She assures me that wolves and eagles aren't a problem but it will be harder to see a Grizzly. She lives near Yellowstone, though, so I have high hopes. I just did a bit of research and there are around 800 in Montana, 600 in Wyoming. Seeing one from behind a safe structure with binoculars would be best..... *smile*

Happy Sunday, Karen. Hooray for the 50th Anniversary Party, going to Montana and seeing a killdeer. Killdeer are, for me, one of the easiest shorebirds to recognize. I am glad I get to see them now and then.

Your trip to Montana sounds wonderful! We spent some time there many years ago and saw lots of wildlife but no Grizzlies. Here's hoping you get your wish and a picture, too.

>186 karenmarie: Pics or it didn't happen!

>187 msf59: Hi Mark! I've only seen the one so far although I keep looking. I'm getting excited about going to Montana.

>188 witchyrichy: Thank, Karen! My biggest desire is to see a Golden Eagle. Wolves and grizzlies would be wonderful.

I was showing pictures to Jenna the other day and found my pics of the moose in Montana. I'll have to scan one in to show you.

>189 SomeGuyInVirginia: Yes, sir! I might ask Jenna if I can borrow her digital 35mm camera. I hate my cell phone and the pics are adequate but not stunning.

I've started both Eva Luna by Isabel Allende for book club and The Cold Dish by Craig Johnson because friend Karen reminded me of the TV series (Longmire) and since I had the book on my shelves....

>176 karenmarie: Good review of Longbourn, Karen. I enjoyed it. Of course, as I had never read Pride and Prejudice I had to read it at the same time to make sense of what was going on in Baker's book.

>173 karenmarie: Good morning, Karen! I hope you had a good weekend.

Glad to hear of a no-hoarding policy at your sale. We skipped the book sales this weekend but went to pick up our tomato plants and a few others (one pepper and three ground cherries). They'll go into the garden this week, I think, but we have to check on the nighttime temperatures first.

>191 Familyhistorian: Hi Meg! Thank you. I'm glad you took the time to read P&P when you were reading Longbourn. Have you read anything else by Austen?

>192 harrygbutler: Hi Harry! Yes, my weekend was good. I'm glad to hear that you're getting your vegetable garden going. I've never heard of ground cherries before. They sound delicious.

>186 karenmarie: Take binoculars with you, i you have them. The one time I saw wolves in Yellowstone they were on a far hillside and all you could see with the naked eye was some grey figures moving around. With binoculars you could see that the adults were busy taking care of a little of pups!

Hi Reba! Thank you for the thought.

I asked Karen if she had a good pair of binoculars and she said Have my dad's good pair that he "liberated" from someone in WWII. Actually, knowing my dad, he would have bought them from someone. They say "dienstglas 6X30" on them. Bring yours if they are better. so I need to research hers vs our Celestron binoculars.

>195 karenmarie: I'd recommend taking your Celestron binoculars unless it would be a hardship to do so, if only because it's much easier to use binoculars you already are comfortable using. Binoculars for birding have some differences in the optics (though I've forgotten the technical details), and the Celestron pair will probably be lighter, too — a consideration if you are walking any distance.

Morning, Karen. We have had a lot of rain lately, (and it has put a damper on the bird sightings) but I am hoping for a nice warm-up for the rest of the week. Still no orioles...

>196 harrygbutler: Excellent points, Harry, and I can pack them in my checked luggage. Done!

>197 msf59: 'Morning, Mark! Sorry about all the rain and lack of sightings. We had a few thunderstorms last night and it's humid out there right now, will get to about 86F.

I've had my first sips of coffee, the cleaning ladies coming in about 5 minutes, and Bill has finally recovered from the viral nastiness that started last Thursday and will leave for work in a few minutes.

Good morning, Karen! My birding binoculars are by Celestron, too. We went to an optics sale at the NJ Audubon Society a number of years ago, where we were able to get recommendations from experts and then try out many different possibilities, and the model I ended up with worked well with my glasses (and not all the other choices did, no matter how good they were otherwise).

'Morning! Bill bought these Celestrons in 1991 for my birthday - we'd been married 2 nonths, he asked what I wanted, and that's what I chose. They're still great.

Here's a picture from my Moose in Montana adventure in September 1987. Thank goodness annotated the back of the pic - I had forgotten what year it was. Cow and calf, although you can only see the calf in this pic. I think this is the calf.....

Hi Karen- I've never seen (or heard) a wolf in the wild, but I would love to. Have you read American Wolf about the wolves in Yellowstone? I just finished it, and agree with all the wonderful warbles it is getting here on LT.

Last night I went to an Audubon presentation on osprey. One of the incidentals they mentioned, is that while the osprey go south in the winter and nest here in Montana in the summer, golden eagles winter here and then fly north to Alaska and Canada to nest. I did not realize either of those tidbits. It will be very interesting to see if you see a golden eagle. I'm sure there are always odd birds that don't follow the crowd.

Hi Janet!

I have not read American Wolf. I should probably read it before I get to Montana or while I'm there...

I'm hoping Karen didn't get her eagles mixed up. Or that they stay long enough before leaving for me to see one. She wrote last week: I saw a Golden eagle this morning about 2 miles from my place, sitting on a power pole & looking for gophers. We should easily get that one off your Life List.

>201 karenmarie: Nice picture Karen! And it was on the other side of the stream, so no danger to you. Wishing you lots of good sightings in Yellowstone. A bear, but on the other side of the stream:-)

>201 karenmarie: Nice shot. We saw a couple moose a few years ago on a New England vacation, along the side of the road as we drove across Maine into New Hampshire (I forget which state we were in at the time). Impressive beasts.

Bison were all about when we visited Yellowstone on our honeymoon, and I think we did see a black bear along the road while driving in the park.

Enjoy your Wednesday!

>204 EllaTim: Hi Ella! Thank you. Yes, we definitely were safe behind Karen's car.

>205 harrygbutler: Hi Harry! Thanks. They are impressive, large, and unpredictable. I've seen bison over the years during various vacations in the west, never any bears. Driving while seeing bears is best, with windows rolled up. *smile*

This afternoon is a meeting with another Friends group to see how they use some membership software called Wild Apricot.

>206 karenmarie: Good morning, Karen! I hope you have a pleasant Thursday.

Thanks, Harry! Lunch with friends from the days when I was Treasurer for daughter's HS Band Boosters. I really need to do a bit of weeding, too.

>208 karenmarie: Well, lunch is good. :-) I have some weeding to do, and some mulch to spread, and I should mow the back yard, since tomorrow promises to be hotter and thus poorer conditions for doing it. I also need to go to the garden center and pick up a trellis or two for a couple spots where we are planning to put climbing plants.

Have fun with lunch! I've been doing a different kind of weeding. I've been purging books from the library. I have one on my desk that I need to see if we can find a replacement for. The copy is in horrible shape, but it's a title we need to keep.

>201 karenmarie: LOVE!

Morning, Karen. Sweet Thursday. We have suddenly jumped into August weather, but I am not complaining...yet. Grins.

Hi Karen! Love the moose pic! I've seen some in Algonquin Park and Cape Breton, they really are huge and beautiful creatures.

Cool moose! I think I'd like to visit Montana.

>209 harrygbutler: Hi Harry! Lunch was good – I realize that I don’t really have anything in common with 2 of 3 women I met there. My successor as Treasurer of Band Boosters and I go out to dinner about 6-8 times a year, the other two were nice to see but nothing I’ll do regularly. 70 miles round trip is a lot for casual acquaintances.

Good luck getting all your yard work done. I did about 45 minutes of weeding.

>210 thornton37814: Thanks, Lori. Ah book weeding. I’ve done some of that over the years – upgrade copies as I find them in thrift shops or husband buys for me new.

>211 msf59: Thanks, Mark. Yuck for August weather. You’re still defrosting from winter, so once that’s done we’ll hear the complaining, right? *smile*

>212 ChelleBearss: Thanks, Chelle. I knew I had ythem somewhere, but they just happened to be in the box I was showing to Jenna last week. Serendipity.

>213 SomeGuyInVirginia: Hi Larry! I’m sure you’d love it. Big Sky country.

Happy Friday, Karen. Looks like it will hit near 90, the next couple of days. At least the humidity levels will stay low for today.

Enjoy that Longmire. I think it is a terrific debut.

Great moose picture! I remember that we saw some of the best wildlife in the Grand Tetons including two moose moving through wetlands eating grasses. We were off the road on a path so it was just my husband, brother in law and me and the moose. This was in 1997 or so and we would go to Kinko's for internet access ($12/hour) and upload photos to our website. Here's the list of wildlife photos from Yellowstone/Tetons. The moose are towards the bottom:
Yellowstone Wildlife

Our only wolf siting was in Banff. It was early in the morning on one of the forest roads, and I distinctly remember that I was trying to get the hot water pot that connected to the car lighter to work. My husband said something and I looked up in time to see the wolf trotting down the side of the road, right along the car and up the hill beside us. It looked like it had just taken a bath. The blurry picture I snapped is included in this Flickr album.

Sounds like you are gearing up for your trip to Montana, Karen. I hope you see lots of wild life from a safe distance while you are there. I am getting ready to go on a trip myself and I'm finding that people are contacting me to get together while I am busily trying to get everything ready to go. I'm not sure why that happens when I am busy rather than when I would be happy to have something to do. Do you find that life just gets busier as you are trying to get ready to leave?

>193 karenmarie: P&P was my first and, so far, only Austen. I resisted reading her books and much historic fiction written over 100 years ago. I blame it on having to study Great Expectations 2 years in a row!

>215 msf59: Hi Mark! Whew. 90F. Glad the humidity is low. We were about 80F with a bit of the mugs.

>216 witchyrichy: Thanks, Karen! Excellent photos, I'm glad you shared. I love the kissing elk. And I wasn't expecting a black wolf for some reason.

>217 Familyhistorian: I'm allowing myself to get excited, Meg. Thank you! I want to see lots of birds and other critters. I'm sure I'll get busier as the trip gets closer. I will be spending 4 days in SoCal prior to Montana. My sister and I will be appearing before the judge in our sue-the-mortuary lawsuit on June 22nd. I didn't want her to have to go alone. I'll get there on the 20th, spend 3 nights with sister in a hotel doing fun sister stuff, then fly to Montana on the 23rd to doing fun friend stuff until it's time to come home - July 6th or, if I'm having a super time, the 13th.

Did you like P&P? Of course we had the group read of Great Expectations in September of 2016. I've now read 3 Dickens in 3 years and GE is my least favorite. I actually think Nicholas Nickleby is my favorite, with Bleak House coming in 2nd.

45. The Cold Dish by Craig Johnson
5/20/18 to 5/25/18





From Amazon:

Introducing Wyoming’s Sheriff Walt Longmire in this riveting novel from the New York Times bestselling author of Dry Bones, the first in the Longmire mystery series, the basis for the Netflix original series LONGMIRE.

Fans of Ace Atkins, Nevada Barr and Robert B. Parker will love this outstanding first novel, in which New York Times bestselling author Craig Johnson introduces Sheriff Walt Longmire of Wyoming’s Absaroka County. Johnson draws on his deep attachment to the American West to produce a literary mystery of stunning authenticity, and full of memorable characters. After twenty-five years as sheriff of Absaroka County, Walt Longmire’s hopes of finishing out his tenure in peace are dashed when Cody Pritchard is found dead near the Northern Cheyenne Reservation. Two years earlier, Cody has been one of four high school boys given suspended sentences for raping a local Cheyenne girl. Somebody, it would seem, is seeking vengeance, and Longmire might be the only thing standing between the three remaining boys and a Sharps .45-70 rifle.

With lifelong friend Henry Standing Bear, Deputy Victoria Moretti, and a cast of characters both tragic and humorous enough to fill in the vast emptiness of the high plains, Walt Longmire attempts to see that revenge, a dish best served cold, is never served at all.

Why I wanted to read it: Time to read a mystery. I loved the TV show Longmire and didn’t realize when we started watching it that it was based on books. Reading series in order is the name of the game for me, so here we go.

I usually read the book first and am disappointed in the TV or movie adaptation. This time it was the TV series first and then the book; in this case, both are excellent.

Oh, sure, there are differences in the appearance and demeanor of the primary characters, but the feel of the department, the vibes between Walt and Vic, and the relentless pursuit of justice are the same. Daughter Cady is out of state practicing Law, but Henry Standing Bear is front and center and the closeness and repartee between him and Walt is just as fun here. Henry does not contract words in the book either, an endearing quirk.

The mystery is simple – who is trying to kill four young white boys convicted of raping a young Cheyenne girl two years previously. Walt desperately wants to figure it out before more of them are killed. The murder weapon is an unusual Sharps rifle, an ersatz eagle feather left with the body.

Walt attempts dating, acquires a pet, and drinks lots and lots of beer. We learn a lot about his character, relationship with his wife, loneliness, and plans for the department, specifically Vic. We learn some about Vic, less about Ruby, even less about Ferg, and Turk/Branch flits in and out without actually participating much at all.

The high plains come to life, with vivid descriptions of the terrain, weather, and vast emptiness and distance between houses and towns. There is a bit of mysticism, too. All in all a very good read.

Oh, Karen, MONTANA!!!!! Look and enjoy for all of us! And what a great time to be leaving NC!!!!!!!
I'm obliged to say that Bleak House remains my favorite Dickens and that Great Expectations is way down the list. I like it better than Oliver Twist, for instance, but that's damning with faint praise. It may be a better novel qua novel, but I like a lot of other ones better...... Our Mutual Friend, David Copperfield, Dombey and Son, etc.

>217 Familyhistorian: Is this lawsuit that will finially gets your mom's estate done, Karen?
If so, I hope it all goes smoothly.

>220 LizzieD: I know, Peggy, I'm so lucky. I've already been in touch with @streamsong and Karen and I are trying to have a meet up with her in Missoula.

I started Oliver Twist decades ago and never finished it. I did read David Copperfield in high school. You told me once the significance of your user name - Lizzie is from a Dickens character and D is for the man himself, Dickens, right?

>221 FAMeulstee: The lawsuit is not required to settle the estate, Anita. To my knowledge everything regarding the estate, legally with the state of California, is done. Yesterday I spent almost 4 hours preparing a statement to read to the judge and a spreadsheet of all communications with Inland Memorial form the time I requested corrected death certificates until I was told they had them in hand. It took 3 months, when they originally told me 2-3 weeks. Incompetents and liars.

>219 karenmarie: Hooray for Longmire! Great review too. The books just keep getting better too.

Morning, Karen. Happy Saturday. Another HOT one here...

Thanks, Mark! I'll be on the lookout for more of them, although with 1868 books on my shelves categorized as "to be read" I can't really justify buying books.

Having said that will not prevent me from buying books, however.

Good morning, Karen! I hope your weekend is off to a good start. It's a fairly hot day here, with heavy rains coming later, so the weather will be conducive to reading.

>203 karenmarie: I'm betting your friend is right and that she is seeing a golden eagle. There are always some that don't follow the crowd. :)

I'm glad you liked the Longmire book. IMHO, Johnson gets better as the series goes along. And the audiobooks, read by George Guidall are amazing. (perfect for trips!)

I'd love to see you try the mystery series by Gwen Florio featuring Lola Wicks. She lives in Missoula and her books are authentically Montana.

>224 karenmarie: I have a small shelf at work crammed with old papers and Amazon boxes. It's out of the way and hidden so I don't ever see it, but one day someone did and asked me if I was a hoarder. I answered, truthfully, no! I hate clutter! And then I thought, well, except for books.

Finally got a few minutes to stop by and say hello! *Hello!*

>222 karenmarie: Yep.... The Lizzie is a tribute to Lizzie Hexam in Our Mutual Friend, one of CD's less disgusting young women. (I would have chosen "Esther" for Esther Summerson in Bleak House, but I don't like the name.)

>225 harrygbutler: Hi Harry! I hope you have already gotten a lot of good reading in, with lots more to come. Yesterday was normal errands, reading, hanging out, working on my LT catalog a bit.

>226 streamsong: Hi Janet. My heart is set on seeing a Golden Eagle. And I’m glad to hear that the series gets better. It was off to a great start, for sure.

Aack! A book bullet. Thank you - I just bought a used copy of Montana by Gwen Florio. It sounds good.

>227 SomeGuyInVirginia: Hi Larry. If you had a house, would it be full of stuff? I always kept my acquisitions within the bounds of my living space, but my living space is …. large…. right now, so it’s been easy to just let things accumulate. But I envision a time when we’ll downsize and I need to start sooner than later to get rid of crap we don’t want, need, or use and that Jenna will not want, need, or use. Sigh.

Book clutter is the best, though, isn’t it?

>228 nittnut: Hello Jenn!

>229 LizzieD: Hi Peggy! LizzieD sounds much better than EstherD.

Morning, Karen. Happy Sunday. Another hot one here. We are attending a graduation party later in the afternoon. I am sure there will be plenty of shade, to drink and be merry. Enjoy your day.

Hej Karen, just come by to say hello

Oh, self-interest rampant. I love that 4-digit number heading the phrase "books on my shelves categorized as 'to be read.'" Makes my 3-digit number in the same spot seem very modest. I can buy a LOT of books without overtaking you.

In general, I must start dumping stuff. But all of it is, you know, good.

>231 msf59: Hi Mark! Thanks. Have fun at the party. I did some weeding, Bill did some mowing, we had some wonderfully sweet watermelon (I am a good watermelon thumper) while watching some Father Brown and now I'm going to finish K is for Killer by Sue Grafton.

>232 paulstalder: Hey Paul, thanks for visiting!

>233 weird_O: Well, Bill, as long as my embarrassing number makes you feel good, then my job here is done. *smile*

Ah yes, stuff. I'm gearing up to get rid of all bed linens except for two sets of each size and a few extra mattress pads. I'm resolved. This week. And towels, too. Gotta figure out how many to keep. And old-fashioned dining room tablecloths and napkins we'll never ever use from Bill's mother and grandmother.

Hi Karen my dear, I am finally getting back around the threads once again after being busy in the garden, taking advantage of the really good weather we have been having lately. We have been decorating Amy's old bedroom this Bank Holiday weekend and should be finished tomorrow. Karen did her last shift yesterday and is off now until the 4th of June, she is meeting up with her best friend Tina on Tuesday and then we should get a couple of date days in and hope to go off to the coast as long as the good weather holds up.

Hope you are having a really good weekend and send love and hugs to you and Bill from both of us dear friend.

Hi John!

Nice to see you here - so good to hear that Karen has time off and you have some date days planned.

Our weekend has been good so far, thank you. Sending love and hugs to you and Karen.

Hi Karen. Hope you had a good weekend!
Sounds like you are doing lots of spring cleaning and purging. I need to do that with my clothes closet but i can't bring myself to get rid of the too small clothes as I'd like to hope I'll be back there someday.

Hi Chelle!

Since it's Memorial Day here Bill's off work. I just got up, made coffee, fed the extremely noisy and hungry Kitty William, and will be making chipped beef on toast in a while. We're supposed to get 1-3 inches of rain today and are under a flash flood watch. We won't have problems with flooding here and with the heavy rain forecasted have no plans on going out today.

So far I've only been getting rid of things I'll never wear again even if I lose weight (business clothes mostly), and some of Bill's Mama's clothes that I forgot were still here.

46. K is for Killer by Sue Grafton
5/26/18 to 5/28/18





From Amazon:

Lorna Kepler was beautiful and willful, a loner who couldn't resist flirting with danger. Maybe that's what killed her.

Her death had raised a host of tough questions. The cops suspected homicide, but they could find neither motive nor suspect. Even the means were mysterious: Lorna's body was so badly decomposed when it was discovered that they couldn't be certain she hadn't died of natural causes. In the way of overworked cops everywhere, the case was gradually shifted to the back burner and became another unsolved file.

Only Lorna's mother kept it alive, consumed by the certainty that somebody out there had gotten away with murder.
In the ten months since her daughter's death, Janice Kepler had joined a support group, trying to come to terms with her loss and her anger. It wasn't helping. And so, leaving a session one evening and noticing a light on in the offices of Millhone Investigations, she knocked on the door.

In answering that knock, Kinsey Millhone is pulled into the netherworld of unavenged murder, where only a pact with the devil will satisfy the restless ghosts of the victims and give release to the living they have left behind.

Why I wanted to read it: Time to read some more Kinsey Millhone mysteries in my year-long quest to re-read The Alphabet Series by Sue Grafton.

I really liked my re-read of this one, although there are several convenient plot twists that reveal the murderer to Kinsey. Grafton vividly portrays some of the peripheral characters in all their strengths and weaknesses, and there is a minor plot about Lorna’s jewelry and money. Mostly it’s just Kinsey being Kinsey, by which I mean tenacious as a pit bull, relentless in her pursuit of the truth, and, once again, somewhat careless of her own personal safety.

K is for Killer had no romance, no Henry, nothing to tie Kinsey to her routine or environment. As she digs deeper and deeper she realizes that there are powerful figures in the background and powerful motives for murder; however, this mystery could be taking place in a vacuum as far as character and relationship development goes for Kinsey and her friends and acquaintances.

What always appeals to me in these books is how Kinsey is a combination of tough and smart and vulnerable and misguided. Here’s a bit of fun about her arachnophobia:

Gingerly I got down on my hands and the balls of my feet and duck-walked my way under. The spider kiddies viewed me with alarm, and many of them fled in what must have been spider fear and panic. Later they would have horrified conversations about the unpredictability of humans. “Eeew. All those fingers,” they’d say. “And those big nasty feet. They always look like they’re about to squish you.” Spider mothers would console them. “Most humans are completely harmless, and they’re just as scared of us as we are of them,” they’d say.

I really liked how Grafton developed the oddball relationship between Kinsey and a friend of Lorna’s, Danielle. Kinsey gets emotionally involved in this case and lets her heart overrule her head to make a fateful phone call. In some ways Kinsey acts very un-Kinsey-like, but for some reason it works and this is a solid entry in The Alphabet Series.

>218 karenmarie: I am not a big Dickens can, Karen, but did like A Tale of Two Cities. Not too sure about P&P, I found the Longbourn read easier.

Hi, Karen! I hope you've enjoyed your rainy day. Ours has been pleasant and reasonably productive on the garden front.

>230 karenmarie: Hi. I haven't been here for a while, which means I've missed a lot, but I've come to say hello anyway. Your question to Larry strikes a chord. I've just finished Dana K. White's second book, the one on decluttering, in which she defines a house as a container (with lots of little containers in it, of course) into which you can only fit what will fit. I'm working on it! I actually cleared what in my life has always been called the junk drawer - you know, the drawer in the kitchen where all the odds and ends go. I couldn't really count on closing it before. Now I can actually SEE everything. I feel extremely superior.

Now if I could only go through my shoes...

Morning, Karen. I hope you had a nice Memorial Day. It was another hot one here, so we stayed inside and played cards, with friends. It worked out just fine.

>241 harrygbutler: Hi Harry! I'm glad you got some good gardening in. We got much less rain than predicted, and now that Alberto has apparently turned left instead of right are only supposed to get showers and some thunderstorms - normal summer activity although it's a bit early for it.

>242 ffortsa: Judy! How lovely to see you. Hello back to you. Congrats on cleaning the junk drawer. You deserve to feel superior. Did you just reorganize everything or actually get rid of some items?

And re your shoes - are there any you can get rid of to prevent problems with your foot? Enquiring minds and all that.....

>243 msf59: 'Morning, Mark, and happy Tuesday to you. Ours was much more boring than yours. We have no friends who play cards and even if we did, Bill doesn't play cards anyway. Sigh.

Sips of coffee taken, cat fed, and I have a PT appointment at 12:30 today. I also need to prepare a very small deposit for Friends of the Library.

I'm reading The Grand Tour: Around The World With The Queen of Mystery by Dame Agatha herself from her diary entries, letters, photos, and post cards, edited by her grandson Mathew Prichard. I'm also going to start L is for Lawless, the next one up in The Alphabet Series by Sue Grafton.

47. The Grand Tour: Around the World with the Queen of Mystery by Agatha Christie, edited by Mathew Prichard





From Amazon:

Agatha Christie is the most widely published author of all time, outsold only by the Bible and Shakespeare. In this fascinating travelogue of the prolific author's yearlong trip around the British Empire in 1922, Christie provides the clues to the origins of the plots and locales of some of her bestselling mystery novels. Containing never-before-published letters and photos from her travels, and filled with intriguing details about the exotic locations she visited, The Grand Tour is a must-have for Agatha Christie fans, revealing an unexpected side to the world's most renowned mystery writer.

In 1922 Agatha Christie set sail on a ten-month voyage around the world. Her husband, Archibald Christie, had been invited to join a trade mission to promote the British Empire Exhibition, and Christie was determined to go with him. It was a life-changing decision for the young novelist, a true voyage of discovery that would inspire her future writing for years to come.

Placing her two-year-old daughter in the care of her sister, Christie set sail at the end of January and did not return home until December. Throughout her journey, she kept up a detailed weekly correspondence with her mother, describing the exotic places and the remarkable people she encountered as the mission traveled through South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, Hawaii, and Canada. Reproduced here for the first time, the letters are full of tales of seasickness and sunburn, motor trips and surfboarding, glamor and misery. The Grand Tour also brings to life the places and people Christie encountered through the photos she took on her portable camera, as well as some of the original postcards, newspaper cuttings, and memorabilia she collected on her trip.

Edited and introduced by Agatha Christie's grandson, Mathew Prichard, and accompanied by reminiscences from her own autobiography, this unique travelogue reveals a new adventurous side to Agatha Christie, one that would ultimately influence the stories that made her a household name.

Why I wanted to read it: Meg (@Familyhistorian) recently mentioned that she just read The Man in the Brown Suit. One of the characters, Sir Eustace Pedler, is based on the real-life Major E.A. Belcher, head of the trade mission.

The Grand Tour is fascinating and repetitious, narrowly focused and limited to the things the locals wanted the Mission to see. There is only one time when local politics and unrest made their way into the story. One has to view it through the prism of 1920s British hubris in Christie’s prejudices and occasional snobbery.

However, she was passionately interested in everything she saw and everyone she met. She desperately missed her mother, sister, brother, and of course her daughter Rosalind, “Teddy”. But she was on an adventure which she saw as her one and only opportunity to see the world. Little did she know that her marriage with Archie Christie would end in recriminations and divorce 4 years later and that she would marry the archaeologist Max Mallowan and travel the world by his side.

There are dozens and dozens of photographs, menus, newspaper articles, and photocopies of the letters she sent home, both handwritten and written on her Corona. They all shed light on her attention to detail, joy at being where she was (most of the time!) and insights into life in the remoter parts of the British Empire. Retaining British customs and lifestyles is clearly displayed. Social hierarchy is maintained. One can see the real life people who became characters and caricatures in her later short stories and novels.

Well worth the read to a serious Agatha Christie fan, perhaps less so to someone not quite as appreciative of her works and life.

Oh, I'm glad you had a good time with A Cold Dish, Karen. It's so interesting to have you come from the TV series to the books. Oh, sure, there are differences in the appearance and demeanor of the primary characters, but the feel of the department, the vibes between Walt and Vic, and the relentless pursuit of justice are the same. I came from the other direction, books first, but would say exactly the same thing. And some good news is the plots in the two are so different - you'll be reading different stories in all the books, with the characters interacting in somewhat different ways. This is a series I love.

Hi Joe!

I'm glad to hear that you loved the books so much.

If I didn't have over 1800 books on my shelves tagged 'tbr', I'd immediately go out and buy the rest of the Longmire series and the rest of the Frieda Klein series. I did break down and buy the 2nd in the Frieda Klein series because I just won an ER copy of the 8th and final book The Day of the Dead and figure I need to get caught up quickly to keep on the right side of the ER gods, but just can't justify getting the Longmire books now. However, I am visiting friend Karen in Montana July 23-July 6 (or 13), and I know she's read them all and will probably still have them, so perhaps I won't have to take as many books on my trip as I usually would.

I think you got me with *Grand Tour*. I'm thinking about it!

Hi Peggy! You and I haven't ever discussed Christie that I can remember, but you must like her to be considering a read.

Good morning, Karen! I hope your week has been going well. Mine has been OK, but not a lot of time visiting LT.

We've had a red-bellied woodpecker come around for a couple days (at least); nice to get a bit of variety.

Hi Harry! My week's been going okay. Nothing spectacular, feeling guilty about the weeds, guilty about some of the things I want to do around the house but haven't gotten up the energy for, but have been getting some good reading in. I hope to finish The Man in the Brown Suit by Agatha Christie today to wrap up a satisfying reading month quality-wise but not quantity wise. I'll end up finishing 8, tying February, my slowest month so far.

Congrats on the Red-Bellied Woodpecker.

I thought I'd at least heard of all of Christie's books, but I don't know The Man in the Brown Suit. Wackiness.

Eight books/month isn't bad, that's a pretty good number for me. Quality is important, maybe more important than quantity.

Hi Larry! Oh yes, quality over quantity absolutely, but I have set a goal of 105 books this year. I'm ahead of the game. If I finish The Man in the Brown Suit today, that will be 48, and even if I only read 8 again in June I'll be on target for the second half of the year.

Just for the fun of it, here's Wikipedia's Agatha Christie Bibliography. They show The Man in the Brown Suit as being the first Colonel Race novel. I've always thought of it as a standalone, but I'm halfway through and Race is definitely in it.

Agatha Christie Bibliography

>244 karenmarie: Ah, the shoes. No, it's not that they hurt my foot. Mostly it's that I'm holding on to them out of either nostalgia or a belief that I won't be able to find new shoes in my size (5 1/2 on the wide side) for dressier occasions. Mostly I spend my time in walking or running shoes these days, which I can find and which accommodate my orthotics, but I tried a pair of my summer sandals the other day and although I didn't walk far, I was ok. Whew. Getting better. If I ever win the lottery, I'm getting my dress shoes custom made!

Hi Judy! Glad to hear that you're able to wear dress shoes without the orthotics. An excellent purpose for lottery winnings.

48. The Man in the Brown Suit by Agatha Christie
5/29/18 to 5/31/18





From Amazon:

A young woman investigates an accidental death at a London tube station, and finds herself of a ship bound for South Africa... Pretty, young Anne came to London looking for adventure. In fact, adventure comes looking for her - and finds her immediately at Hyde Park Corner tube station. Anne is present on the platform when a thin man, reeking of mothballs, loses his balance and is electocuted on the rails. The Scotland Yard verdict is accidental death. But Anne is not satisfied. After all, who was the man in the brown suit who examined the body? And why did he race off, leaving a cryptic message behind: `17-122 Kilmorden Castle'?

Why I wanted to re-read it: Meg (@Familyhistorian) recently mentioned that she just read The Man in the Brown Suit. One of the characters, Sir Eustace Pedler, is based on the real-life Major E.A. Belcher, head of the trade mission in Agatha Christie’s memoir The Grand Tour. I just read The Grand Tour and so it was definitely time for a re-read of The Man in the Brown Suit.

'Memoir' is a deceptive term, because it was an editor’s dream to have letters, photos, menus, programs, newspaper articles, and Agatha Christie’s diary to present us with her Grand Tour. Her grandson did a fine job. Agatha Christie never saw this book, but it is a spirited account of an adventuresome young woman traveling around the world.

Having read one after the other, I’ll always think of these two books as related. Christie could be Ann Beddingfeld herself - fearless, curious, ready to go on an adventure at a moment’s notice, not worried about money, open to any and all experiences.

There are so many little references to things Christie wrote about on the tour that I wonder what adventures later in her life became references, details, characters, and plots in other books.

We see Sir Eustace Pedler as autocratic, childish, and pompous, much as Major Belcher was described. Peaches are thrown, early breakfasts are abhorred, secretaries are bullied. Several stick-in-the-mud secretaries and clerks make a combined appearance as long-suffering secretary Guy Pagett. I think that Harry, the Man in the Brown Suit, is Archie Christie himself, still in love with and still passionately loved by Dame Agatha.

As far as the story goes, there are many coincidences, improbable plot manipulations, and stereotypes. It’s dated but fun, a frivolous romp if you discount the murders at the beginning and the evil things done for filthy lucre.

I wish I was planning a trip to Montana. It’s on my bucket list. I loved American Wolf and think it would be the perfect companion on a trip to Yellowstone. I’m another fan of the Longmire series in print. No Netflix so haven’t seen any of the TV episodes. June is just around the corner. Have a wonderful beginning of summer. I share your weed guilt, Karen, but they can wait while I do more important things!

>256 karenmarie: You are doing better than I do, Karen, reading female authors.

Good morning, Karen! My May reading was a bit of a slow patch; we'll see whether things change in June.

I wish I was planning a trip to Montana! I could do with a dose of nature and open spaces. Though I don't have to go to America to be able to talk to Americans, had a nice chat with a couple from Florida in the bus to the central station, and another couple from Australia in the following tram. Amsterdam is brimming with tourists!

I just mowed my weeds down before my neighbours start evicting me.

Had a look at your May statistics, and was happy to see that you also abandoned books. Helps me feel not-guilty about doing so. Do you make a note of the ones you abandon?

Morning, Karen. Happy Friday. We are finally getting back to normal temps and it looks like it will stick around for awhile. Yah!

>258 Donna828: Hi Donna! I promised my friend Karen to visit several years ago, and I’m getting excited. I went once as a child on a day trip as part of a family vacation and remember Old Faithful. Daughter shares her Netflix account with us, fortunately. I’ll try to do a bit of weeding every day for a while and see if I can at least keep up with it on the north side of the house! There aren’t any beds on the other sides that get the same level of weeds.

>259 FAMeulstee: Hi Anita! Frankly I think it's the Sue Graftons I'm reading this year - 11 by her so far. Last year, for example, I was at 67% male, 33% female at the end of the year.

>260 harrygbutler: ‘Morning Harry. Perhaps your gardening reduced your reading? I hope you have a wonderful June reading month.

>261 EllaTim: Hi Ella! Ha! Mowing the weeds. We’ve done that here in the past. Some of ‘em look a lot like grass when cut way down, don’t they?

Starting last year I kept notes about abandoned books, because I’m counting the pages read in my totals now. Here’s what I’ve abandoned so far this year, for a total of 404 pages:

Brain Food by Lisa Mosconi
Why Buddhism is True by Robert Wright
Plainsong by Kent Haruf
The Invisible Library by Genevieve Cogman
Prayers for the Stolenby Jennifer Clement
Eva Luna by Isabel Allende

>262 msf59: ‘Morning Mark, and thank you. I’m glad your temps are settling down. We’re going to get to 92F today with nasty humidity.

Well, today’s a milestone day in my life. I start Medicare today, since June is my birth month and I turn 65 on the 26th. Yeesh. 65. Well, it is better than the alternative, for sure! It saves us about $400/month by my not having to be on my husband’s insurance any more. All my premiums will be coming out of my SS check.

Happy Friday, Karen! Hope you have a great weekend!

Congrats on your milestone! That's an important one, even if it brings your age into stark reality. 65 is still young though. 65 is last year's 40, after all. ;)

>264 ChelleBearss: Thanks, Chelle! The weekend will be a typical one with the exception of Book Club on Sunday, where we discuss the abandoned-by-me Eva Luna by Isabel Allende. I'll be getting my copy of David Sedaris's new book Calypso from Sarah - she works at the indie where I won a ticket to see him speak on August 21.

>265 The_Hibernator: Thank you, Rachel! It is important. I've been saying since my teens that old is 90s, so I'm not feeling 'old', per se. I wish I had the stamina, flexibility, and strength of my 20s, but I'm doing pretty well for my age, I think. Especially now that I'm getting my right ankle tendenosis under control and walking isn't always painful.

Wow! Happiest of Birthdays! That is a milestone, and one I'll reach soon, too.

Hooray for buying Gwen Florio's Montana. I think she is getting stronger with each book in the series. The first one is the weakest, but her Lola Wicks character is a strong, interesting woman and life on the rez reflects what I saw when we lived on one 30 years ago, while my ex was editor of the local newspaper. There is a book killing/series killing flaw for me in that first one, but I'm glad I went on with the series. I finished the 4th one this month and am working on the review now.

At the Montana book festival last year she stood next to me while we waited a very long time to have Donald Ray Pollock sign a book. She recognized me as having her sign two books earlier that day, so we had a long and great conversation about books, newspapers and writing.

Happy birthday month!

>267 streamsong: I may not be able to get to Montana any time soon but am definitely adding the Gwen Florio books to my TBR list. I'm heading to a $1/bag book sale tomorrow morning and maybe I'll get lucky!

Happy Birthday Karen! 65 is quite a milestone. I reach the age of 66 in September. I retire one more afterward. First thing on the agenda is to try to get my books in order. And, I know I will be doing a lot of culling and giving away.

Medicare is GREAT, Karen! I'll wish you an official Happy on the 26th (our 47½ wedding anniversary), but meanwhile, it's wonderful not to worry too much about medical bills as we age. So far I'm quite happy with United Health (we were loyal to Blue X until now, but they have been trying to get rid of retired teachers for a couple of years, I think, with less coverage for more $). I'll have yet to see what I'll have out of pocket for the latest injection of Prolia, but they do participate in Silver Sneakers and they did send me a $50 GC to Amazon for an annual physical.
(I loved Eva Luna, and I'm sorry you didn't.)

>267 streamsong: Hi Janet. Thank you. It’s a big’un, mentally.

I still haven’t gotten Montana, it’s due June 5 – 13. It’s great that you got a chance to actually speak with an author just standing in line, not in a staged setting.

>268 witchyrichy: Thanks, Karen. I’ll have to check your thread to see if you’ve posted your $1/bag finds. What an amazing price!

>269 Whisper1: Hi Linda, and thank you. I know you’re on the final countdown before retirement. I had sooo much fun getting my books in order just after I retired, I’m sure you will, too.

>270 LizzieD: I'm very glad to hear that, Peggy. Sounds like you're getting good benefits from United Health.

I'm sorry I didn't like Eva Luna, too, because the woman who chose it takes it as a personal affront if I don't finish her books. I'm at 40% - I finished 8 of 20 of the books chosen by her over the last 20 years.

Happy Saturday, Karen. Cool and cloudy here, as I start the route. Hope things begin to cool off for you. That kind of heat gets old fast.

Thanks, Mark! Glad the weather is cooperating for your route today. It wil be a bit cooler today - 87F with humidity.

I neglected to mention that I was given three books by an old high school friend, Jan, when we got together for dinner on Wednesday. We realized that we lived near each other about 10 years ago by connecting through our HS class Facebook page, and we've been meeting ever since.

She got me three books that I didn't have, in a series I've wanted to start, the J.P. Beaumont series by J.A. Vance, so I'm happy.

Until Proven Guilty
Injustice for All
Trial by Fury

Hi Karen! Did you have Big Thunder last night? We sure did. It completely missed the boys camping at Hanging Rock. I hope it missed those poor folks to the NW. The weeds are getting aggressive and I am becoming concerned about my ability to reign them in. Hoping to work on it some today.

It's awful when people take your dislike of a book personally. It's not like they wrote it! I have learned to be fairly quiet in RL book club when I don't like the book. I don't quite understand it, but my book club thinks that because I read so much I must, therefore, be smarter than they are. So, if I say I don't like a book, they start questioning whether they should like it. It's a little uncomfortable. Not like LT, where we can have lively disagreements over books and stay friends.

I just posted on your thread, Jenn. We did not have the storm that got you and only heard some rumbles off to the north. Good luck with the weeding - rain and humidity are NOT our friends in the world of weed battles - I'm going to try to spend at least half an hour a day until I leave on my CA-MT trip on weeding.

Your RL book club is different than ours, for sure! None of the women in my book club thinks I'm smarter than they are! We all have healthy egos and trust our own judgments on books. I can see how it would be uncomfortable for you. Our book club motto is the same as my motto here - Agree to Disagree - ATD. I first embraced ATD over the first Inspector Montalbano book, The Shape of Water, when @RichardDerus raved over it and I actively disliked it. We've ATD'd several times since. *smile*

We had a powerful thunderstorm come through last night, dropping 1" of rain in 20 minutes. We lost power at 6:15 for over 5 hours. Today is the same basic forecast, with the possibility of showers and t-storms this afternoon again. It's to be hoped that we don't lose power again, though.

50. Until Proven Guilty by J.A. Vance
6/2/18 to 6/3/18





From Amazon:

The little girl was a treasure who should have been cherished, not murdered. She was only five-too young to die-and Homicide Detective J.P. Beaumont of the Seattle Police Department isn′t going to rest until her killer pays dearly. But Beaumont′s own obsessions and demons could prove dangerous companions in a murky world of blind faith and religious fanaticism. And he is about to find out that he himself is the target of a twisted passion . . . and a love that can kill.

Why I wanted to re-read it: Birthday present from a friend, the first in a series by an author I’m interested in. I devoured it in 2 days.

What a wonderful first book of a series. J.P. “Beau” Beaumont and his partner Ron Peters are a good pairing, although at the beginning of the novel and only two months into their partnership they are still finding their way as partners. The story of a religious cult, child murder, and revenge are well done, with interesting characters, a quick pace, and writing that immediately drew me in. The line between personal and business for “Beau” quickly gets blurred and I admit that my suspicions fell on Anne Corley pretty quickly. There were tantalizing hints of the real solution throughout the book as there are with most good mysteries, and the ride was fun, anticipatory, and satisfying.

Of course anybody would love a financial silver lining as generous as Beau received. He quickly figured out how to help Ron Peters by using his new-found financial advisor to help with Ron’s wanting to get custody of his children. I’ll be interested in seeing how Beau’s new-found financial security and power play out.

I’m immediately starting the second in the series, Injustice for All.

>276 karenmarie: I feel your loss (of electricity), Karen. It is so miserable.

I liked Miss Pym, but it was pretty clear (to me, anyway) who the villain was. In the end, I was disabused of my suspicion, then...well, you know.

Hope to finish my Mosley for the AAC, which is The Man in My Basement. It is one of Mosley's books that doesn't feature a recurring character, the second of that ilk I've read.

Happy birthday month Karen! It's good there are some benefits to getting older;-) Good medical insurance is a useful one.

I turned 60 last year and now have cheap train days. Haven't used them yet, but should be nice.

It's End Times in the Nation's Blah, and time to build Ark 2.0. Some local areas have had lethal flooding. God's way of keeping Congress out of town, I suppose.

Hi, Karen! I hope you avoided another power outage today. We've been fortunate so far this year but usually do lose power a few times.

>274 nittnut: >275 karenmarie: I made my first recommendation to my RL book group of which I am the newest member. And, I am not going to be there to discuss it. They are reading Turtles All The Way Down. Guess I'll find out in July what they thought. I like my book group: each member has her own personality and niche. They all know each other from church and from being lifelong members of the community. I am the "come here" but they have welcomed me.

>278 weird_O: Hi Bill. Well, to be frank, we have a generator, so it’s more of an inconvenience than a disaster. It sounds like you’re getting a lot of good reading in.

>279 EllaTim: Thank you, Ella! We try to always remember to ask about senior discounts but frequently forget. Enjoy your cheap train days.

>280 SomeGuyInVirginia: The weather’s gone whacky all over the country, it seems. And re the flooding, which I’m sad to hear about, anything to keep Congress out of town. Any way to get drumpf to (permanenty) leave?

>281 harrygbutler: No outages so far, Harry. It’s clouding up, though, and 88F.

>282 witchyrichy: Good book to choose, Karen – I have it on my wish list and hope to find a cheap copy soon. Sorry you won’t be there, glad you like your book club. More times than not I hear about personality conflicts of power trips. Mine has occasional blips – someone trying to impose an opinion as a rule or putting pressure on someone to choose THIS book over THAT book – but I just ignore most of it and enjoy it when we get together.

Book club is tonight, by the way. We’re discussing the I-abandoned-it-on-page-60 Eva Luna. On the positive side, I’ll be getting my copy of Calypso from Sarah who works at Quailridge Books. She’ll bring it tonight so I’ll get it early. I bought a copy and will be seeing Sedaris on August 21 when he’s on tour in nearby Raleigh. I won one of 200 tickets to hear him speak and will get to have him sign my copy. Yay.

Hi Karen,

First pip in Ospreyland! If you scroll down in the twitter feed, there is a sweet video clip of Louis *talking* to Iris about switching places and when she finally relents, and leaves, he turns the eggs a bit before settling down. There is a pip hole in one of them.

http://cams.allaboutbirds.org/channel/27/Hellgate_Ospreys/

:-)

Morning, Karen. Finishing off my second cup of coffee and heading out. Shortened work week, with having the coming weekend off. Looking forward to it.

Enjoy your day.

>284 jessibud2: Hi Shelley! I saw the pip hole. I'll be watching off and on today. Edited at 8:07 to add: Just saw the new chick!!!

>285 msf59: 'Morning, Mark! I hope you have a good workday. Yay for a short week!

Book club was fun. There were only 9 of us - one was in France, one was in Iceland, and one had some other local plans. Of the 9 of us, 4 finished it. 3 of them liked it and Nancy didn't like it much at all but once she starts a book she feels compelled to finish it. One read The Stories of Eva Luna by mistake, two are still reading it and love it, Tamsie is in a book funk and has started and stopped quite a few books recently and probably won't finish it,and I'm the only one who has definitely abandoned it. The discussion made it sound more interesting than I remembered.

Good morning, Karen! Cool weather here. We did get some rain yesterday evening, which should be good for the garden. I need to haul some water from one rain barrel to two others, which are located by the raised beds and don't benefit from downspouts.

Hi Harry! Yay for cool weather and rain. We had a gully-washer two nights ago and about 1/2" last night about 10 p.m. and it was 60F this morning! In fact, I still have the sunroom window open to get fresh air circulating. Good luck with the rain barrels.

Good morning, Karen! We had dinner at one of our regular restaurants, the King George II Inn down in Bristol, yesterday evening, as the weather was perfect for sitting in their outside dining area and watching boats on the Delaware River and people in the riverside park.

Morning, Karen. Happy Tuesday! Mail is super light, cool temps, good books going. Should be a smooth day.

>289 harrygbutler: Hi Harry! The wonderful thing about the internet is that I was able to look at the menu for the King George II - looks wonderful. You're fortunate that the weather was amenable to sitting outside.

>290 msf59: Hi Mark! Happy Tuesday to you, too. Yay for super light mail, cool temps, and good books.

I've been working on June's budget and talking to Jenna. Now it's time for lunch and some reading.

Sounds stormy where you are! We have had some of that too- luckily for me (no flooding like there was up north), just a lot of rain and a boggy back garden. I am glad to have the fire, and a calm, quiet night to relax :)

Morning, Karen. Sweet Thursday. Last work day of the week. We are heading to MI, to camp for the weekend, with a group of friends. It should be a lot of fun. My fishing line, seems to have done the trick. No sparrows. Grins...

Good morning, Karen! The location is a plus for the King George II, as even when we have to dine indoors, most of the time we are seated with a view of the river and the riverside park.

Enjoy your Thursday!

>292 LovingLit: Hi Megan! This type of weather is typical for summer, but we're getting it a tad early. Plus there was one named storm before the official start of Hurricane Season, which is June 1 - November 1. Here's what NOAA's Climate Prediction Center is saying for the 2018 season:

NOAA’s forecasters predict a 70-percent likelihood of 10 to 16 named storms (winds of 39 mph or higher), of which 5 to 9 could become hurricanes (winds of 74 mph or higher), including 1 to 4 major hurricanes (category 3, 4 or 5; with winds of 111 mph or higher). An average hurricane season produces 12 named storms, of which 6 become hurricanes, including 3 major hurricanes.

I'd much rather it be winter and be able to join you by the fire.....

>293 msf59: Hi Mark! Yay for your last day of work this week and yay for no sparrows. I hope you have a wonderful time with your friends.

>294 harrygbutler: 'Morning, Harry! When we spent a lot of time at the coast when we had the building business, there were quite a few restaurants on the intracoastal waterway or the Atlantic itself. We always loved the views.

Today is a bit of Friends of the Library check writing and budget prep, then I'm going to go get my orthotics. I sure hope they fit into my existing shoes - the technician said my Sketchers should be fine.

And although I haven't written and don't plan on writing reviews for them, I've read L is for Lawless, the twelfth in The Alphabet Series by Sue Grafton and the second in the J.P. Beaumont series, Injustice for All. I'm halfway through the third in the series, Trial by Fury. When I finish it, I'll have read 52 books this year so far.

Hi, Karen.

Be happy.

Thanks, Bill, I work on it every day.

>295 karenmarie: Hi, Karen! Another beautiful day up here, though we may get some storms over the weekend. Enjoy your Friday!

I'm at Dad's and the weather is great. Happy weekend, Karen!

>298 harrygbutler: Hi Harry! Yay for good weather. Thanks - meeting with State Farm to review our policies, meeting with President of Friends to review budget for next fiscal year, phone call with my sister. Now, a bit of time to relax!

>299 SomeGuyInVirginia: Hi Larry! Yay! I hope you, your dad, and Parker have lots of fun. Thanks.

...
Give me a few minutes and the first six messages, then I'll be open for business on my eighth thread.