Fourpawz2 - 75 Books (hopefully) - Year 11

Hi - I'm Charlotte and it looks as if I am back for another go-around. Jane (see above) and I live on the south coast of New England in the historic Whaling Port of New Bedford. When I'm not working I pretty much spend my time reading (and Jane spends her time trying to make me quit by any one of a couple dozen kitty-subterfuges). Hoping to make it to 75 this year, but I have low expectations. We shall see....

Books Read in 2018

January

1. The Devil in the Marshalsea by Antonia Hodgson (373 pages) - 1/8/2018 - 4 stars
2. The Worst Hard Time by Timothy Egan (312 pages) - Read for the 2018 NF Challenge (Jan.) - 1/13/2018 - 5 stars
3. Death of a Dentist by M.C. Beaton (228 pages) - 1/15/2018 - 3.25 stars
4. A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles - (462 pages) - Read for RL Book Club - 1/18/2018 - 4.25 stars
5. Governess by Ruth Brandon -(257 pages) - 1/20/2018 - 3.25 stars
6. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince by J.K. Rowling (652 pages) - 1/24/2018 - 4.50 stars
7. The Barbarians: Warriors and Wars of the Dark Ages by Tim Newark (139 pages) - 1/28/2018 - 3 stars

Pages for the month:- 2,423
Pages for the year:- 2,423

February

8. Dumb Witness by Agatha Christie (243 pages) - 2/01/2018 - 3.5 stars
9. Hetty: The Genius and Madness of America's First Female Tycoon by Charles Slack (226 pages) - Read for the 2018 NF Challenge (Feb.) - 2/01/2018 - 4 stars
10. Room by Emma Donoghue (321 pages) - 2/04/2018 - 4 stars
11. Poldark by Winston Graham (376 pages) - 2/15/2018 - 4.5 stars
12. Defiance: The Extraordinary Life of Lady Anne Barnard by Stephen Taylor (341 pages) - a Susan recommended book - 2/17/2018 - 5 stars
13. Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson (219 pages) - Read for RL Book Club - 2/21/2018 - 4.9 stars
14. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J.K. Rowling - (759 pages) - 2/23/2018 - 4.5 stars
15. Aunt Dimity and the Duke by Nancy Atherton - (288 pages) - 2/25/2018 - 2.9 stars

Pages for the month: - 2,773
Pages for the year: - 5,196

March

16. The Blue Place by Nicola Griffith - (308 pages) - a Chatterbox recommended book - 3/11/2018 - 3.50 stars
17. Cleo by Helen Brown - (290 pages) - 3/15/2018 - 4 stars
18. Meetinghouse Hill by Ola Elizabeth Winslow - (316 pages) - 3/17/2018 - 4.25 stars
19. The River at the Center of the World by Simon Winchester - (398 pages) - Read for the 2018 NF Challenge (March) - 3/24/2018 - 4 stars
20. Major Pettigrew's Last Stand by Helen Simonson - (355 pages) - Read for the RL Book Club - 3/28/2018 - 5 stars
21. One Corpse Too Many by Ellis Peters - (192 pages) - 3/31/2018 - 3.25 stars

Pages for the month: - 1,859
Pages for the year: - 7,055

April

22. The Dark Portal by Robin Jarvis - (235 pages) - 4/3/2018 - 4.5 stars
23. Death of an Addict by M.C. Beaton - (215 pages) - 4/4/2018 - 3.75 stars
24. Beautiful Swimmers by William W. Warner - (291 pages) - a Susan recommended book - 4/12/2018 - 3.5 stars
25. The American Boy by Andrew Taylor - (479 pages) - a Chatterbox recommended book - 4/26/2018 - 4 stars
26. This Will Be My Undoing by Morgan Jerkins - (252 pages) - 4/28/2018 -

Pages for the month: - 1,472
Pages for the year: - 8,527

May

27. Munich, 1938 by David Faber - (437 pages) - 5/8/2018 - Read for the 2018 NF Challenge (April) - 4 stars
28. A Passage to India by E.M. Forster - (362 pages) - 5/10/2018 - Read for the RL Book Club -3.25 stars
29. Beloved by Toni Morrison - (275 pages) - 5/20/2018 - 5 stars
30. The Debt to Pleasure by John Lanchester - (251 pages) - a Susan recommended book - 5/20/2018 - 3.75 stares
31. People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks - (368 pages) - audiobook - 5/21/2018 - 3.5 stars
32. The Boston Girl by Anita Diament - (336 pages) - 5/23/2018 - 4 stars
33. Flashpoints: The Emerging Crisis in Europe by George Friedman - (258 pages) - Read for the 2018 NF Challenge (May) - 3.25 stars

Pages for the month: - 2,287
Pages for the year: - 10,814

June

34. The Romance of Tristan and Iseult as retold by Joseph Bedier - (151 pages) 6/1/2018 - 4 stars
35. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot - (381 pages) - 6/4/2018 - 3.5 stars
36. Not My Father's Son by Alan Cumming - (304 pages) - 6/7/2018 - 3.75 stars
37. Peyton Place by Grace Metalious - (372 pages) - 6/9/2018 - Read for the RL Book Club - 3.5 stars
38. A Wedding in December by Anita Shreve - (325 pages) - a Chatterbox recommended book - 6/11/2018 - 3 stars
39. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon - (226 pages) - 6/12/2018 - 4.5 stars
40. We Have Always Live in the Castle by Shirley Jackson - (146 pages) - 6/16/2018 - 4 stars
41. The Walking Dead Compendium (Volume One) by Robert Kirkman - (1,088 pages) - 6/19/2018 - 2 stars
42. Gregor the Overlander by Suzanne Collins - (336 pages) - 6/23/2018 - 3 stars
43. Attila by John Man - (311 pages) - 6/23/2018 - 3.75 stars

Pages for the month: - 3,640
Pages for the year: - 14,454

July

44. The Last One by Alexandra Oliva - (304 pages) - 7/04/2018 - 3.25 stars
45. Gallows View by Peter Robinson - (336 pages) - 7/11/2018 - 3.25 stars
46. Whose Body? by Dorothy L. Sayers - (212 pages) - 7/15/2018 - 3.25 stars
47. Modern Romance: An Investigation by Aziz Ansari - (288 pages) - 7/24/2018 - 3 stars
48. Cleopatra:A Life by Stacy Schiff - (324 pages) - 7/25/2018 - 5 stars
49. Still Life With Crows by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child - (435 pages) - 7/28/2018 - 3.25 stars
50. A Joyful Noise by Janet Gillespie - (271 pages) - 7/29/2018 - Read for the RL Book Club - 4.5 stars
51. The Legend of Colton H. Bryant by Alexandra Fuller - (202 pages) - 7/29/2018 - 2.75 stars

Pages for the month:- 2,372
Pages for the year:- 16,826

August

52. The Big Burn by Timothy Egan - (283 pages) - a Susan recommended book - 8/06/2018 - 4.5 stars
53. Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte - ( pages) - 8/14/2018 - 4.5 stars
54. The Cavalier of the Apocalypse by Susanne Alleyn - (283 pages) - 8/17/2018 - 3.75 stars
55. Brooklyn by Colm Toibin - (262 pages) - 8/19/2018 - 3.5 stars
56. Shallow Graves: The Hunt for the New Bedford Highway Serial Killer by Maureen Boyle - (264 pages) - 8/26/2018 - 4.5 stars
57. At Home by Bill Bryson - ( pages) - 8/28/2018 - 5 stars
58. Having the Builders In by Reay Tannahill - (262 pages) - a Chatterbox recommended book - 8/30/2018 - 3 stars

September

59. The Forever King by Molly Cochran and Warren Murphy - (402 pages) - 9/07/2018 - 4 stars
60. The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows - ( pages) - 9/07/2018 - 3.25 stars
61. Shakespeare by Bill Bryson - (195 pages) - 9/13/2018 - 3 stars
62. Girl, Interrupted by Susanna Kaysen - (168 pages) - 9/15/2018 - 3 stars
63. Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House by Michael Wolff - ( pages) - 9/17/2018 - 3.25 stars
64. The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid by Bill Bryson - (268 pages) - 9/19/2018 - 3.5 stars

October

65. Being a Rockefeller by Eileen Rockefeller - ( pages) - 10/01/2018 - 3 stars
66. Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? by Mindy Kahling - ( Pages) - 10/08/2018 - 3.25 stars
67. Otherland: River of Blue Fire by Tad Williams - (675 pages) - 10/10/2018 - 4 stars
68. Quietly In Their Sleep by Donna Leon - (258 pages) - 10/14/2018 - 4 stars
69. The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson - (182 pages) - Read for RL Book Club - 10/21/2018 - 3.50 stars
70. The Demon Summer by G.M. Malliet - (388 Pages) - 10/27/2018 - 3.25 stars
71. The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls - (288 pages) - 10/27/2018 - 4 stars

November

72. City of the Lost by Kelley Armstrong - (461 pages) - 11/02/2018 - 4 stars
73. Death on the Nile by Agatha Christie - (420 pages) - 11/10/2018 - 3.75 stars
74. A Darkness Absolute by Kelley Armstrong - ( pages) - 11/23/2018 - 4 stars
75 The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver - ( pages) - Read for the RL Book Club - 11/26/2018 - 4.5 stars

December

76. The Great Fortune by Olivia Manning - (287 pages) - 12/09/2018 - 4.25 stars
77. Seven Days of Us by Francesca Hornak - ( pages) - 12/13/2018 - 4 stars
78. Educated by Tara Westover - (329 pages) - 12/28/2018 - 5 stars
79. Killers of the Flower Moon by David Grann - ( pages) - 12/30/2018 - 4 stars

Real Life Book Club

January - A Gentleman in Moscow - Completed - 1/18/2018
February - Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson (my choice) - Completed - 2/21/2018
March - Major Pettigrew's Last Stand by Helen Simonson - Completed - 3/28/2018
April/May - A Passage to India by E.M. Forster - Completed - 5/10/2018
June - Peyton Place by Grace Metalious - (my choice) - Completed - 6/9/2018
July/August - A Joyful Noise by Janet Gillespie - Completed -7/29/2018
September - The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows - Completed - 9/13/2018
October - The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson - Completed - 10/21/2018
November - The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver - Completed - 11/26/2018
December/January - The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame - Reading

Recommended Books

Recommended by Susanj67

Defiance: The Life and Choices of Lady Anne Barnard by Stephen Taylor - Completed - 2/17/2018
Beautiful Swimmers by William W. Warner - Completed - 4/12/2018
The Debt to Pleasure by John Lanchester - Completed - 5/20/2018
The Big Burn by Timothy Egan - Completed - 8/06/2018
The Better Angels of Our Nature by Steven Pinker - got from library but had to return before finishing
The Iron King by Maurice Druon
Plutocrats: The Rise of the New Global Super Rich and the Fall of Everyone Else by Chrystia Freeland
Liar, Temptress, Soldier, Spy by Karen Abbott
We'll All Be Murdered In Our Beds by Duncan Campbell
The Bones of Paradise by Jonis Agee
Rush Oh! by Shirley Barrett

Recommended by Chatterbox

The Blue Place by Nicola Griffith - Completed - 3/11/2018
The American Boy by Andrew Taylor - Completed - 4/26/2018
A Wedding in December by Anita Shreve - Completed - 6/11/2018
Having the Builders In by Reay Tannahill - Completed - 8/30/2018
The Age of Wonder by Richard Holmes - Reading
The Iron King by Maurice Druon
The Ruby in Her Navel by Barry Unsworth
The Courier's Tale by Peter Walker
Every Man Dies Alone: A Novel by Hans Fallada

Books Acquired in 2018

1. Book of Poisons by Serita Stevens and Anne Bannon - acquired through abebooks - used trade paperback - pretty good condition - 1/8/2018 - This was surprisingly expensive, but I made it my Christmas present to myself
2. This Will Be My Undoing by Morgan Jerkins - acquired from Early Reviewers - ARC trade paperback - new, obviously - 1/8/2018
3. Dumb Witness by Agatha Christie - acquired through abebooks - used MMPB - average condition - 1/26/2018
4. One Palestine, Complete by Tom Segev - acquired through abebooks - used trade paperback - good condition - 1/26/2018
5. Edward VIII by Frances Donaldson - acquired through abebooks - used hardcover - pretty battered - 2/10/2018
6. Theft on Thursday by Ann Purser - acquired through abebooks - used MMPB - good condition considering it is used - 2/16/2018
7. And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie - bought from B&N - new MMPB - 2/23/2018
8. Embassytown by China Mieville - bought from B&N - new trade paperback - 2/23/2018
9. Days of the Dead by Barbara Hambly - acquired through abebooks - used MMPB fairly good condition - 3/27/2018
10. Killers of the Flower Moon by David Grann - bought from amazon (with birthday gift card) - new - 4/3/2018
11. The Age of Wonder by Richard Holmes - acquired through abebooks - used trade paperback with a lot of underlining and little post-it tabs. - 4/13/2018
12. Stone by Stone by Robert Thorson - acquired from someone breaking up house in a move. Have had my on this one for a long time - hardcover in good condition - 4/20/2018
13. House of Rougeaux by Jenny Jaeckel - an Early Reviewer book - new trade paperback - 5/7/2018
14. Blind Justice by Bruce Alexander - mmpb acquired through abebooks - has definitely seen better days - 5/7/2018
15. No God But God by Reza Aslan - acquired through abebooks - used trade paperback in not dreadful condition, but with highlighted passages - 5/16/2018
16. The Sergeant's Lady by Susanna Fraser - Kindle - 6/10/2018
17. Under the Greenwood Tree by Thomas Hardy - Folio Society hardcover in virtually perfect condition - 6/18/2018
18. Death on the Nile by Agatha Christie - acquired through abebooks - used trade paperback, but in virtually new condition - 6/19/2018
19. Thrumpton Hall by Miranda Seymour - acquired through abebooks - used hardcover in very good condition - 6/22/2018
20. The Snowman by Jo Nesbo - bought new at Barnes & Noble - mmpb - 6/23/2018
21. A Joyful Noise by Janet Gillespie - acquired through abebooks - used, published by a local press - in average used condition - 6/25/2018
22. Dying Young by Marti Leimback - gift from a friend, mmpb in decent condition - 6/25/2018
23. Lost on Planet China by J. Maarten Troost - acquired through abebooks - used trade paperback in very good condition - 7/9/2018\
24. The City and The City by China Mieville - acquired through abebooks - hardcover in somewhat battered condition - 7/13/2018 - Sadly this book did not come with the dust jacket which I loved when I got this book from the library.
25. The Age of Louis XIV by Will Durant and Ariel Durant - acquired through abebooks - hardcover in very good condition for a 55 year old book
26. The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson - bought new from Barnes & Noble (ordered specially for RL Book Club - October) - trade paperback - 8/18/2018
27. A Daughter of the Middle Border by Hamlin Garland - Kindle - 8/24/2018
28. The Half-Drowned King by Linnea Hartsuyker - acquired through abebooks - hardcover in perfect condition (looks as if it's never been read) - a former library book that came from Miami Dade North Campus Library - 9/04/2018
29. The Year of Decision 1846 by Bernard deVoto - acquired through abebooks - trade paperback in near perfect condition - a former library book that came out of the Ardmore Higher Education Center Library in Arkmore, OK - 9/12/2018
30. Demelza by Winston Graham- acquired through abebooks - tradepaperback in decent condition - 9/15/2018
31. Seven Stones to Stand or Fall by Diana Gabaldon - acquired from B&N - 12/14/2018
32. A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens - acquired through abebooks - Folio Society copy - 12/25/2018 - Christmas present to me from me

Borrowed Books

1. A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles - borrowed from the library - Completed and Returned
2. Defiance: The Extraordinary Life of Lady Anne Barnard by Stephen Taylor - borrowed from the library - Completed and Returned
3. Aunt Dimity and the Duke - borrowed from the library - Completed and Returned
4. The Blue Place - borrowed from the library - Completed and Returned
5. Beautiful Swimmers by William W. Warner - borrowed from the library - Completed and Returned
6. The American Boy by Andrew Taylor - borrowed from the library - Completed and Returned
7. Brooklyn by Colm Toibin - borrowed from a friend
8. The Debt to Pleasure by John Lanchester - borrowed from the library - Completed and Returned
9. Flashpoints by George Friedman - borrowed from the library - Completed and Returned
10. People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks - borrowed from Overdrive - Completed and Returned
11. The Boston Girl by Anita Diament - borrowed from Overdrive - Completed and Returned
12. Peyton Place by Grace Metalious - borrowed from the library - Completed and Returned
13. The Walking Dead Compendium (Vol. 1) by Robert Kirkman - borrowed from a friend - Completed and Returned
14. Not My Father's Son by Alan Cumming - borrowed from Overdrive - Completed and Returned
15. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon - borrowed from Overdrive - Completed
16. We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson - borrowed from Overdrive - Completed
17. Gregor the Overlander by Suzanne Collins - borrowed from Overdrive - Completed
18. The Last One by Alexandra Oliva - borrowed from Overdrive - Completed
19. Gallows View by Peter Robinson - borrower from Overdrive - Completed
20. Modern Romance: An Investigation by Aziz Ansari - borrowed from Overdrive - Completed
21. Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte - borrowed from Overdrive - Completed
22. At Home: A Short History of Private Life by Bill Bryson - borrowed from Overdrive
23. Shallow Graves: The Hunt for the New Bedford Highway Serial Killer by Maureen Boyle - borrowed from the library - Completed and Returned
24. Shakespeare: The World as a Stage by Bill Bryson - borrowed from a friend - Completed
25. The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid by Bill Bryson - borrowed from the same friend - Completed
26. Fire and Fury by Michael Woolf - borrowed from Overdrive - Completed
27. Being a Rockefeller by Eileen Rockefeller - borrowed from Overdrive
28. Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? by Mindy Kahling - borrowed from Overdrive
29. City of the Lost by Kelley Armstrong - borrowed from Overdrive
30. The Demon Summer by G.M. Malliet - borrowed from library
31. City of the Lost by Kelley Armstrong - borrowed from Overdrive
32. A Darkness Absolute by Kelley Armstrong - borrowed from library and Overdrive
33. Seven Days of Us by Francesca Hornak - borrowed from Overdrive

The Best and Worst of 2017

These were the books that I liked the best (in no particular order):-

The Curse of Chalion by Lois McMaster Bujold
Otherland: City of Golden Shadow by Tad Williams
Catherine de Medici by Leoni Frieda and
The Last Farmer by Howard Kohn (Actually, this might be my favorite, by a hair.)

And these the ones I liked the least:-

New Boy by Tracy Chevalier
The Fire Within by Chris D'Lacey and
Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov

There was equal suckiness in the least favorite book category.

These were my favorite covers: -

Otherland: City of Golden Shadow



Catherine de Medici: Renaissance Queen of France



and Frankenstein



and the ugliest cover was :-

Dimestore

In case of I don't know what...

Hi cousin, and Happy New Year! Looking forward to seeing what you'll read this year.

Cousin Paws!! What a great way to start off the year. I am, too. Haven't made any particular plans, but I am hoping to do The Forsyte Saga year long read and combine it with my Real Life Book Club Year Long Read - if we get concensus from the club members. (When I read this it sounds ridiculous as there are only three of us and two of us are in agreement, but it sounds very grand to talk about a 'consensus'.) Other than that I think I'm just taking it as it comes.

Must toddle over to your thread and drop a star...

Hi Charlotte! That's another sweet picture of Jane :-) I'm going to be following along with your thread, feeling nervous in case a me-recommended book fails to amaze and delight you :-)

Have no fear, Susan. I think I've only had to return one you-book to the library unfinished. I think that is a pretty good indication that you are a first-rate recommender.

I think I did plan to put up a picture of something that was not Jane, but then decided to just use this one because she is so doggone cute in it. Must make a concerted effort to point my phone at actual landscape-y stuff one of these days.

Happy 2018 reading to you! My 3 boys send greetings to Jane!

>10 Fourpawz2: Oooh, The Forsyte Sage, sounds like a great year-long read. I hope you get your book club consensus and can combine it.

Happy new year, Charlotte. Starred you.

I'm with you on New Boy being a sucky read. I didn't even make it halfway through before I tossed it aside. I'm only glad I didn't actually buy the book but borrowed it from the library. There's nothing worse, I think, then buying a book and then finding out that it's awful.

I've started watching Medici : Masters of Florence on Netflix and it's really gripping. So I've a new interest in this family, and since you've listed Catherine de Medici as one of your best reads in 2017, I'm adding that to my teetering wish list for this year.

Happy New Year to you! May it be filled with lots of books, and room to store them.

Dropping a star, Charlotte. I love the Jane topper!

Happy reading in 2018, Charlotte!

Happy New Year to you and Jane!

Happy new year!

Happy 2018, Charlotte!

Happy New Year
Happy New Group here
This place is full of friends
I hope it never ends
It brew of erudition and good cheer.

Happy New Year! I wish you to read many good books in 2018.

Hi happy new year have a *.

Hi Charlotte - Happy New Year. I hope you have a great reading year.

Am incredibly sick of the super cold weather. Haven't been outside since Wednesday which means that I haven't taken a crack at the snow that is covering my car, driveway or front steps. Think I will try to do a little something about that tomorrow when it is supposed to be a summery 14 degrees outside. I know I should have done something toward clearing the snow away on the day of the storm, but did not want to risk being crushed by a tree limb in those high winds.

>13 thornton37814: - Thanks, Lori. And thank you to the boys as well. Wish Jane had a cat sibling to pal around with but she came with a cautionary card on her cage at the shelter, so no other animals allowed in the house. Except for the mice that she can't figure out how to polish off.

>14 PawsforThought: - Thanks Cousin. I've started Forsyte, but have only read a chapter. So far, so good, though.

>15 cameling: - Thanks, Caro. I was very glad not to have shelled out actual money for New Boy. Got it through ER. It was a definite dud. Haven't seen that particular show yet, but I've been curious about it. I really loved the one about the Medicis that starred Jeremy Irons. It was so beautiful.

>16 Whisper1:, >17 Crazymamie:, >18 FAMeulstee:, >19 LauraBrook:, >20 drneutron:, >21 jnwelch:, >22 PaulCranswick:, >23 The_Hibernator: - Thank you all very much. Looking forward to the reading year as always. Just wish I could read faster.

Currently Reading:-

Governess: The Lives and Times of the Real Jane Eyres - Bookmark rests at page 98 of 257 pages. Last touched on 1/1/2018
The Devil in the Marshalsea - Bookmark rests at page 270 of 384 pages. Last touched on 1/1/2018
The Forsyte Saga - Bookmark rests at Page 16 of 715 pages. Last touched on 1/3/2018
A Gentleman in Moscow - Bookmark rests at Page 232 of 462 pages. Last touched on 1/5/2018
The Worst Hard Time - Bookmark rests at Page 50 of 312 pages. Last touched on 1/5/2018

I have other books that I am reading as well, but this year I am going to try to update my progress only when I have actually cracked the covers within the previous three weeks.

Hi Charlotte! Gosh, the US weather looks terrible. We keep getting (the same) footage from Boston, and I can't imagine how anyone is getting out to do anything. Our US secondee came back from the Christmas holiday having spent it in Chicago, Indiana and then New York, and said he had given up following the weather there now he's back because it was just too much.

Your current reads look excellent. I liked The Devil in the Marshalsea and the Governess one looks good. Oh goodness, I don't even have the library catalogue open in another tab. What is *wrong* with me?!! I hope you can make some progress with them if you're stuck inside.

Currently Reading:-

Governess: The Lives and Times of the Real Jane Eyres - Bookmark rests at page 108 of 257 pages. Last touched on 1/6/2018
The Devil in the Marshalsea - Bookmark rests at page 283 of 384 pages. Last touched on 1/6/2018
The Forsyte Saga - Bookmark rests at Page 16 of 725 pages. Last touched on 1/6/2018
A Gentleman in Moscow - Bookmark rests at Page 242 of 462 pages. Last touched on 1/6/2018
The Worst Hard Time - Bookmark rests at Page 91 of 312 pages. Last touched on 1/6/2018

>27 susanj67: - It is horrible, Susan. I don't think I can stand another day of this kind of weather. A primary example of how crazy the weather is making me, is the fact that it is now 8:42 AM and I have been up since 4:45 this morning. Why - you might ask? The answer is that when I got up at a quarter of five to pee, I could hear this weird sound - a kind of bubbling sound. First thing I thought was the unthinkable - that something not good was going on in the basement. Something with the pipes. Put on a bunch of clothes over my pj's and went down cellar where I proceeded to run all over listening for the sound. I heard it again over near the laundry sink next to the washing machine. Went back upstairs to listen in the kitchen and I could hear it again. And I could still hear it in the bathroom. Back to the cellar. I could still hear it but I could not figure out where it was coming from. Back upstairs to search online for some confirmation that it was my greatest fear in this super cold weather (can't even type what that was, but you know what every homeowner's fear is in the freezing cold, right). Wondered if a plumber - any plumber - could possibly be persuaded to come out on a Sunday morning, at 5:30 in the morning when the temperature was hovering around -2 degrees (and it actually had another degree to drop before hitting rock bottom). Decided to get dressed and then made the rounds of the house again. Still heard that sound in that bathroom that was making my blood run cold and then galloped back to the kitchen to listen at the sink once more. Still there. And then I turned off the faucet which I had left running for the past two days - just at a trickle - and the sound stopped. Back to the bathroom. Nothing. Another tour of the cellar. Nothing. Came back to the kitchen - relief washing over me - and turned the faucet back on. The sound did not come back. Clearly, the 'on' spot to which I'd opened the kitchen faucet yesterday made the cold water line, all over the house, emit a weird little noise that, to me, sounded, heart-stoppingly alarming.

So, that is why I have been up for almost exactly 4 hours. Sheesh!!!

Governess: The Lives and Times of the Real Jane Eyres - Bookmark rests at page 108 of 257 pages. Last touched on 1/6/2018
The Forsyte Saga - Bookmark rests at Page 29 of 715 pages. Last touched on 1/7/2018
A Gentleman in Moscow - Bookmark rests at Page 262 of 462 pages. Last touched on 1/8/2018
The Worst Hard Time - Bookmark rests at Page 116 of 312 pages. Last touched on 1/8/2018

Got out in the real world yesterday for the first time since last Wednesday - not because I wanted to, but because I had to. Took me two days of chipping ice from my car to effect that. The roads were horrendous. For some reason it seems to be a thing in this town to leave them in a vile condition after a big storm and it has been this way for for as long as I can recall. The towns around us do a much better job. They weren't perfect, but they did not make me wish that I was driving a big ol' truck instead of my little car.



Book Number 1 - The Devil in the Marshalsea - by Antonia Hodgson - Finally got my first book for 2018 done. Have been anxious to read this book for ages and finally got to it. Did not think that the mystery itself was so very amazing, but the process of the reluctant, first-time sleuth, searching for the solution while imprisoned in the horrific Marshalsea prison, under threat of being sent to live in even worse conditions than he was living in already - and they were horrific indeed - was excellent. Definitely continuing with this series.

Bookshelf appeal of this book - First rate. Both the title and the cover would have caught my eye in a bookstore.

Will it find a home on my crowded bookshelves - Yes, definitely.

Hmmm, I like the sound of that one.

>30 drneutron: - I recommend it, Jim. I put it on my TBR list when Chatterbox recommended it several years ago and she was totally on target about its excellence. And I've heard good things from others as well.

Cold here again, but nothing like a week ago. Before last week I would have thought temperatures in the low 20's to be quite frigid, now it seems almost pleasant to me.

Currently Reading:-

Governess: The Lives and Times of the Real Jane Eyres - Bookmark rests at page 138 of 257 pages. Last touched on 1/13/2018
The Forsyte Saga - Bookmark rests at Page 34 of 725 pages. Last touched on 1/9/2018
A Gentleman in Moscow - Bookmark rests at Page 338 of 462 pages. Last touched on 1/13/2018
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince - Bookmark rests at Page 38 of 652 pages. Last touched on 1/13/2018
Death of a Dentist - Bookmark rests at Page 24 of 228 pages. Last touched on 1/13/2018



Book Number 2 - The Worst Hard Time by Timothy Egan - read for the 2018 NF Challenge

All about the Dust Bowl years - The Dirty Thirties - and the Great Depression - in the Southern Plains. Heart breaking! Wonder what would have become of the place without FDR. He and his administration may not have solved the problem, but at least they provided some relief for the suffering people.

Oh, the greed and foolishness of men!

I worry about people forgetting what happened in that place. Forgetting is one of the things that we do best. And we are awfully good at denial as well, even when the big, scary, undeniable, evidence is standing right in front of us, screaming at us, we pretend it isn't happening.

Giving this book a full 5 stars.

Bookshelf appeal of this book - Quite good. Would have pulled this one off the shelf in a store.

Will it find a home on my crowded bookshelves - Without a doubt.

>28 Fourpawz2: Charlotte, you have all my sympathy with the weird sound. Thank goodness you managed to work out what it was, and was easily stopped. I always get super-ultra-nervous in winter because of the holidays and people being hard to get hold of. And we don't even have your weather.

I'm glad you enjoyed The Devil in the Marshalsea - I liked it a lot, even if you didn't get it via the me-recommended list. And The Worst Hard Time was a good read too.

We are supposed to be getting cold weather again, but only London-cold, which isn't really that cold :-) I'll take any excuse to stay inside looking out.

Found and starred you Charlotte and wishing you and Jane a belated happy new year!

>12 Fourpawz2: 'I think I did plan to put up a picture of something that was not Jane, but then decided to just use this one because she is so doggone cute in it.'

Good enough reason for me!

>29 Fourpawz2: I have a copy of The Devil in the Marshalsea - I tried reading it at some point and bounced off but it's the sort of thing I usually enjoy and everyone says it's good so hopefully I will pick it up again at some point. Glad you enjoyed it!

>32 Fourpawz2: Glad it's warmed up a little. As Susan says (>33 susanj67:) there have been news stories about us getting a cold snap this week but that just means it gets cold enough to freeze - not cold like you've had at all!

The Worst Hard Time has been on my wishlist for a while now, another that I've only heard good things about.

Happy Sunday, Charlotte! Nice review of The Worst Hard Time - that one was just so well done. And it stays with you.

>32 Fourpawz2: I'm pretty sure I own that one. (LT tells me I do.) However, I haven't managed to get around to reading it yet. Glad to hear it's so worthwhile.

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A Gentleman in Moscow - Bookmark rests at Page 389 of 462 pages. Last touched on 1/16/2018
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A Woman of Destiny - Bookmark rests at Page 13 of 712 pages. Last touched on 1/16/2018

>33 susanj67: and >34 souloftherose: - I will not sneer at your cold weather, ladies. I'm sure, relatively speaking, it is certainly cold to you. Pretty sure that Minnesotans would be in hysterics over my complaints about the weather we've been having here. To the good - I spotted some crocus leaves making an appearance up against the foundation of my house. I try not to get too excited about it for it happens every year about this time, due - I am sure - to the house being south-facing and the foundation a bright white. But still - it is a promising sign.



Book Number 3 - Death of a Dentist by M.C. Beaton - A dentist is poisoned in the depressing little town of Braikie in the Scottish Highlands and Hamish MacBeth investigates, running circles around the Strathbane police department and declining all credit once he has solved the mystery because he has no desire to leave his lazy little village of Lochdubh. The investigation proves tangled and confusing - the obvious suspects all have alibis and little motive when push comes to shove. Making matters more difficult are an illegal still being operated in the neighborhood and an unsafe, safe (it had a wooden back!) which has been broken into and a very amount of money stolen from it. Nevertheless - eventually, Hamish gets to the bottom of matters.

Gave this one 3.25 stars

Bookshelf appeal - Had quite a pretty little cover, but it was almost impossible to see because of all the annoying type atop the scene, so if I were not already very far into the series, I guess I might not have pulled this one off a bookshelf in a store.

To keep or not to keep ? - It definitely has a home on my mystery bookshelves.

>37 Fourpawz2: I always get excited about crocuses and snowdrops - we have the latter in our garden but no crocuses even though those are my favourites. Somehow although I mean to I never get round to planting any.

>38 souloftherose: - I'm like that too, but with Lillies of the Valley. I say every year that this is the year I will for sure plant some - and then I never do. Perhaps this is the year.....



Book Number 4 - A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles - read for Real Life Book Club - January

Everybody liked this book, me included. It is impossible not to like Count Rostov and I just love the Metropol Hotel. However - the one thing that kept it from being a full-on 5 star book was plausibility. I just found it almost impossible to buy the idea that confinement to this hotel for life was believable in Stalin's Russia. Likewise the ending, which I won't go into, other than to say that I could not believe in it as the final ending for the two characters involved because of the nature of the USSR in that time-period; I could not believe that it was possible to make such a thing happen or that it would be countenanced by the government. Still, I really liked this book and found it very soothing as it took me away from all the miseries of our present world pretty effectively.

Giving it 4.25 to 4 stars

The cover was a good one and an honest one, but not one that would have made me pull it off a shelf in a store.

If I had bought it, instead of borrowing it from a library, it would be a keeper. If I run across it in a book sale somewhere, I will probably buy it.

Found out at the book club meeting that the author has spent time in the town where we always have our meeting which was kind of neat. The other members seemed to know some of his relatives/friends. I always like finding out stuff like that.

Oh - and we had a pork and apricot Latvian stew from the book and vanilla ice cream - one of the meals eaten by the Count and his young friend, Nina.

Book Number 5 - Governess: The Lives and Times of the Real Jane Eyres by Ruth Brandon

Brandon mostly profiles well-known women of the 18th and 19th centuries - Mary Wollstonecraft, Claire Clairmont (Lord Byron's much abused lover), Charlotte and Anne Bronte, Agnes Porter, Anna Leonowens. At times (particularly with the first two women) it was hard for me to remember that the subject of the book was governesses, so deeply into the individual stories did Brandon get. (However Clairmont's story helped me to remember how much I dislike Byron, the man!)

Obviously, for the most part, it was terrible to be a governess at this time, but then, in general, unmarried women without a fortune had miserable prospects and often the married women's lives were nothing to write home about. Life is often tough for us now, but was plainly a lot worse then.

Gave this one 3.5 stars for it was informative if not as deep as I had been hoping for. For this reason, it has earned itself a place on the shelf.

The cover art makes sense, but I don't love it for it is very brown.

Book Number 6 - Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince by J. K. Rowling - Part of my Harry Potter binge that I began toward the end of last year.

As I believe myself to be the last person on the planet (except for those under 3 years of age) to read this series I have no problem writing here what happened in this next-to-last book. If I am wrong in this - please - avert your eyes.

I knew Dumbledore was going to die, but always thought that it was going to happen in the last book for surely such a monstrous occurrence had to be a series-ending event - or so I thought. Was very surprised to find that Book 6 was the end of the road for him. And I was even more shocked that it was Severus Snape who killed him Always thought that he would prove to be a hero or at least an anti-hero. Wrong!

The love-lives of the students are not interesting to me. Realistic, yes, but no more interesting than real life, teenage love.

But, overall, a very successful story. Voldemort will die at Harry's hands, I have no doubt, but I have no idea as to the how of it.

And - who else will die?

Gave this one 4.5 stars. I really don't care for teen romance.

The cover was great. Best of the series and I think it will be one of my favorites for the year.

Both this book and the entire series are keepers for me. The only change I will make - when I get the opportunity - is to replace the trade paperback books with hardcovers.

Oops! - forgot this:-

Currently Reading

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Woman of Destiny - Bookmark rests at Page 104 of 712 pages. Last touched on 1/26/2018
Room - Bookmark rests at Page 46 of 321 pages. Last touched on 1/26/2018
The Barbarians - Bookmark rests at Page 84 of 139 pages - Last touched on 1/26/2018

Will probably be picking up Agatha Christie's Dumb Witness today at some point. Will be holding off starting Housekeeping for a few days. Perhaps.

>39 Fourpawz2: Charlotte, I love the idea of having a meal from the book at the book group!

>40 Fourpawz2: I definitely want to read this one. I looked it up in the library catalogue and it is Other People's Daughters over here, and the catalogue promises a copy on the shelf at the library branch I usually go to. Hmmm...(I'm closing my eyes here to my reserve list).

Your current reads look good too :-) I might need a Charlotte-recommended list as a formal thing.

>41 Fourpawz2: Oh my! I suggest a box or two of tissues for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.

Currently Reading

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Woman of Destiny - Bookmark rests at Page 150 of 712 pages. Last touched on 1/27/2018
Room - Bookmark rests at Page 46 of 321 pages. Last touched on 1/26/2018
Hetty: The Genius and Madness of America's First Female Tycoon - Bookmark rests at Page 168 of 226 pages. Last touched on 2/01/2018
Housekeeping - Bookmark rests at Page 8 of 219 pages. Last touched on 2/01/2018



Book Number 7 - The Barbarians: Warriors & Wars of the Dark Ages by Tim Newark - Very short, general look at the various barbarian incursions/invasions of the Graeco-Roman world and Western Europe. I found it to be somewhat informative. Kind of a stepping stone toward something more extensive on the subject.

Gave it 3.25 stars

This is a keeper for now - mostly because it turned out not to be as dreadful as I thought it was going to be and mostly because it was a gift from my father about 30 plus years ago. At least it is a very thin book - that will help it to stay for a while longer.

As for the cover - I think it is pretty ridiculous - very comic book-like. This is the sort of cover that would keep me from buying a book. For some reason (perhaps to pad the total number of pages) the illustrator of the cover was called upon to do a half dozen or so full-page illustrations for the book in addition to the cover. They also appeared very comic book-like to me.

Book Number 8 - Dumb Witness by Agatha Christie - a Hercule Poirot mystery. It is the 16th one concerning Poirot that I have read; can't believe I've read so many that have revolved around HP as he is not a favorite of mine.

This time HP's client is already dead when he takes her case - a letter from Miss Emily Arundell was not mailed until after her death, so the detective is too late, by far, to save the wealthy, elderly lady from death. Miss A, who has a lot of money, suspects that one of her three blood relatives (and the husband of one of them) is trying to kill her and wants HP to get to the bottom of things and so avert a terrible scandal - the thing she wishes, most, to prevent. Even though she is several weeks dead by the time HP receives her letter, he still takes the case.

All of the relatives are good possible murderers - some better than others. And one cannot forget the late Miss A's companion. Personally, I settled on the companion, for reasons that I can't go into here.

Christie plays fair in this mystery; the clues are there for anyone to see.

I really liked the way Christie dealt with Miss A's dog - Bob - who was suspected of almost killing Miss A by accident. Christie kind of allows him to participate in the conversations where he is present by putting his thoughts in quotation marks and it worked for me.

I think HP's sidekick - Hastings - is getting quite tired of the great detective. He was awfully testy at several points and I would not be surprised if one of these days he outright refuses to play Watson to HP's Sherlock anymore.

Gave this one 3.5 stars as I did not get weary of HP at all and the mystery itself was reasonable. And - because I loved Bob.

It is a keeper. I haven't bought every single Christie book that I've read so far, but I've picked up quite a number. I really should fill in the blank spots in the group as these books are not very big.

Liked the cover quite a bit, featuring Bob and his beloved ball as it did.

>39 Fourpawz2: A Gentleman in Moscow is high on my list for 2018 (I nearly wrote 2017 then remembered.....)

>40 Fourpawz2: I liked that one when I read it a few years ago - the UK cover art is a bit more striking:



>46 Fourpawz2: I'm also a fan of Dumb Witness and Bob in particular :-)

^^^ Me, too, Charlotte - Bob is what made Dumb Witness for me, although it's another good Agatha mystery regardless. A writing risk that paid off.

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Room - Bookmark rests at Page 202 of 321 pages. Last touched on 2/03/2018
Housekeeping - Bookmark rests at Page 28 of 219 pages. Last touched on 2/03/2018
Meetinghouse Hill - Bookmark rests at Page 26 of 316 pages. Last touched on 2/03/2018

>47 souloftherose: - That is a much better cover, Heather. How nice to know that Dumb Witness has fans and that Bob does as well. I had not heard anything of it, prior to reading it - just endless mentions of The Murder of Roger Ackroyd and Murder on the Orient Express - which I did not think was more than a middling sort of mystery.

>48 jnwelch: - Hi, Joe! Agreed - it was a risk for her and considering that her career was already made and her popularity quite secure, one that she didn't have to take. But I'm glad she did.

Book Number 9 - Hetty: The Genius and Madness of America's First Female Tycoon by Charles Slack - Read for the 2018 February Non-Fiction Challenge - Biographies.

I've always been interested in this woman who was born in my town 119 years before me. When Hetty Howland Robinson Green was a young woman she was celebrated for her inherited wealth. Her father, Edward Mott Robinson, saw the impending collapse of the whale oil industry when it was scarcely a blip on the distant economic horizon and got out as quickly as he could, leaving his daughter almost six million dollars in cash and trust money when he died. She could have had a really comfortable 19th century life if she'd wanted to, but by the time Robinson died, Hetty was on another path altogether - a path that would make her notorious for her perceived miserliness and obsession with the acquisition of wealth. Lots and lots of it. More than any one person could ever need. Wealth of the Bezos and Gates caliber. Truly.

I think that there was something wrong with Hetty. She was obsessed from very, very early days with the idea that her wealth was in danger of being taken away. It's very likely that she forged an addition to her invalid Aunt Sylvia's will in order to make certain that all of Aunty's money remained in her clutches where Hetty could protect it, instead of in another trust that she could not control - a trust which would be given away to her many Howland relatives after she died (but would yield $65,000.00 in annual income to Hetty). It was not very cleverly done and she wound up in court in a much celebrated case that did nothing toward getting her the control of all of that nice money that she so desperately wanted. But - no matter. She was a woman who had a knack for making money and she spent the rest of her life doing that and not much else. She lived in rented apartments and boarding houses in several different states - all part of her plan to keep from paying taxes. She moved from place to place to place in order to keep the government from being able to determine where exactly it was she lived - they needed proof of her residency in order to collect the personal property taxes that she would have to pay if they ever did. It was no hardship for Hetty though; she refused to live according to her means for to her that would be a sinful waste of money. No - her way was to squeeze every penny until it shrieked in anguish.

No doubt she was a genius at making money. She was so rich that she was able to rescue desperate cities with loans (New York City was one of them) that she made to them by just writing a check on her account at Chemical National Bank. And she was a character - newspapers loved getting new stories and anecdotes about Hetty Green so she was always being followed by reporters. She was good copy and very different than every other woman of her time, traveling about on streetcars, wearing plain, out of date clothing, arguing with waiters over the price of the cheap meals in cheap restaurants that she preferred, climbing up on the roof of her husband's Vermont house in order to fix a leak and other similar shenanigans that people loved to read about 'characters' of Hetty's sort.

She cared about her two children - Ned and Sylvia - in her way. All of that money was for them. They would be the wealthiest people on the the face of the earth one day, if Hetty had her way. Of course to do that she had to keep the world at bay for she had no doubt that given the chance the whole world meant to steal Ned and Sylvia's money. So Sylvia spent long years glued to her mother's side, at Hetty's command, before marrying, at 37, Matthew Astor Wilks who was 20 years older than she and Ned lived with Mabel, his ex-prostitute mistress (who was masquerading at his 'housekeeper') for 24 years before Hetty died and he was able to marry at long last. Of course Hetty protected the money from Matthew for he was caused to sign a pre-nuptial agreement and Ned had Mabel to the same.

No one knows for certain how much they actually inherited. It was somewhere between one hundred and two hundred million dollars. That's one hundred to two hundred million 1916 dollars - which is the year in which Hetty died. Ned had a lot of fun with the money he got from the interest on his half and when he died, Sylvia inherited everything for she was the only family he had. And Sylvia had no family at all once Ned was gone. So the money - Hetty's money - went to all sorts of charities. Yes, Hetty left tons of money to her children, but the life they lived was so sad. Hetty wouldn't have thought so, but she was wrong.

Definitely a keeper - lots of interesting info in it.
Gave this book 4 stars.

The cover is not bad. Glad the picture of Hetty is no bigger. She was an awfully grim looking old woman. It was her every day expression insofar as I can tell.

Oh - about Sylvia's charities - one of the bequests was to the New Bedford Free Public Library. It was decided to build the Howland Green Library in the south end and the Wilks Library in the north end. It is where I get my library books, so I guess you could say I have benefited from Hetty's money.

>50 Fourpawz2: Charlotte, that's a superb review, and I definitely want to read it! I love the connection between Hetty's money and your library, too. At least if it went to charity it did some good, because it doesn't sound like the family had a great time, save for Ned once he inherited :-)

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Housekeeping - Bookmark rests at Page 60 of 219 pages. Last touched on 2/07/2018
Meetinghouse Hill - Bookmark rests at Page 68 of 316 pages. Last touched on 2/07/2018
Poldark - Bookmark rests at Page 138 of 376 pages. Last touched on 2/09/2018
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Book Number 10 - Room by Emma Donoghue

A novel about a 5 year old boy named Jack and his 26 year old mother (who is never named). The mother was kidnapped years before by someone who is only called Old Nick and held in a shed in his back yard. This is where she is raped and impregnated (twice) and where Jack - the only child who survives - is born.

Thought at first that Donoghue's way of having Jack narrate their day-to-day lives, using his words for things and his outlook was going to make it a difficult read, for all of the seemingly endless talk of the games they played and the TV that was watched and their lives in general told in this child's voice was almost more than I could stand. Right off the bat it was obvious what had happened to the two of them and I did not need to hear the particulars of that (which, of course, Jack did not know about). It was the childish voice that was annoying, even though I knew it was the best and most impactful way for Donoghue to tell the story. But, after the two are freed from their terrible captivity and Old Nick is arrested, she continues the story in Jack's voice and manner and suddenly I did not find it hard to take anymore. Truthfully, the part of the story that took place after their rescue was by far the better bit. I really liked the way she handled Jack's thinking processes and reasoning - his trying to find his place in this new world that is so strange to him. It is on account of this part of the book that I am giving this an overall four star rating after a 3.25 star first part.

This book is a keeper.

I thought at first that the cover was overly simplistic, but at the end I realized that it was the perfect cover for this book.

>51 susanj67: - Thanks, Susan. Yes, Colonel Green had a wonderful time after Hetty was gone and not a bad one before then, once he was grown and on his own.

I never knew him, of course, but a friend of my mother's (I'll call her R) was the daughter of the caretaker at Ned's estate - Round Hill - and she grew up there. She and her brothers were the only children on the estate and the Colonel loved children, but she, being the oldest by many years, got a lot of attention from him. My favorite story about the Colonel was the time when R's father and mother were driving the Colonel to Providence so that he could catch the train for some trip he was taking and R was riding in the back seat of the car with him. During the course of their trip to the station, Colonel Green asked R if she would give him a kiss goodbye - something she did all the time - and for some perverse reason she refused. The Colonel repeated his request several times, but R was being very notional the way kids can be and would not do it. Finally, he told her that if she would give him a kiss he would give her this ring that he wore all the time. I don't remember what the stone in the ring was exactly, but it was something quite valuable. R could feel her parents in the front seat were listening hard and silently commanding her to give the Colonel his kiss, but for some perverse reason she would not do it, even though she was very fond of the Colonel. He asked her once more when they got to the station, but she refused again. The Colonel thought it was funny, but her parents did not. It was a long and very silent ride back home.

Book Number 11 - Poldark by Winston Graham - the first book of the Poldark series. Have been wanting to begin this series for a long time as I have been wanting to see the PBS series which I can't do - because is the goofy way in which I've been made - until I read the books.

Enjoyed this one very much. Loved everything about it - the setting of Cornwall, the characters, their lives, the houses - even the less than admirable characters. Especially fond of Ross, Demelza, Verity, Jud and Prudie. Thank goodness I have a B&N gift card from Christmas. Used copies of these books are not cheap, so I will shell out for a new copy of the second book.

Giving this one 4.5 stars

The cover is neither here nor there for me - as is usual with covers that have been tied in to movies, TV shows, etc.

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Housekeeping - Bookmark rests at Page 109 of 219 pages. Last touched on 2/15/2018
Meetinghouse Hill - Bookmark rests at Page 90 of 316 pages. Last touched on 2/11/2018
Defiance: The Extraordinary Life of Lady Anne Barnard - Bookmark rests at Page 190 of 341 pages. Last touched on 2/15/2018
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - Bookmark rests at Page 12 of 759 pages. Last touched on 2/15/2018
Tristan and Iseult - Bookmark rests at Page 12 of 151 pages. Last touched on 2/15/2018

Although it has been ten days since I've picked up The Forsyte Saga, I have not lost interest. It is just that I have planned to spend the year on this one and so have been paying more attention to Housekeeping (February's RL Book Club read) and Defiance, which is a library book. Really enjoying Meetinghouse Hill - a book I've owned for ages. Am learning lots of interesting things about Massachusetts' earliest days in the 17th century - how Meetings were formed, the founding of towns, and the earliest colonials. HP and Tristan and Iseult are, of course, just begun. It is Woman of Destiny that is danger of not being finished. Things Mormon do not interest me very much, unless we are talking non-fiction. If I remember correctly I bought this book at a library book sale just after finishing Pastwatch which I liked a whole lot. Guess I should have read the back cover before purchasing...

Book Number 12 - Defiance: The Extraordinary Life of Lady Anne Barnard by Stephen Taylor - a Susan recommended book

Biography of an almost unknown/forgotten Scottish memoirist - Lady Anne Lindsay Barnard and author of the poem "Auld Robin Grey". She was born in the 18th century and lived into the 19th. She was very different from other women of this time and rank - Taylor draws the conclusion that she was a true bohemian and I agree. Warm and witty, incredibly talented, courted by many men- some of them very powerful. From the age of 16 until her middle forties she rejected all of them, for she was not looking for money or rank, but love. And then finally, she found what she had been looking for.

This is a wonderful bio. I am not sure if the credit goes to the author or to the subject. Taylor did a great job, but I think the credit goes to Lady Anne.

Great recommendation, Susan!

Giving this one 5 stars.

Hate the cover.

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Meetinghouse Hill - Bookmark rests at Page 90 of 316 pages. Last touched on 2/11/2018
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Tristan and Iseult - Bookmark rests at Page 12 of 151 pages. Last touched on 2/15/2018
Sophie duPont - Bookmark rests at Page 16 of 192 pages. Last touched on 2/17/2018

Book Number 13 - Housekeeping by Marilynne Robinson - Read for the Real Life Book Club

I used to own the movie with Christine Lahti, many years ago, on VHS and watched it about 50 times, I think, before I disposed of all of my VHS tapes. Loved that movie and chose it for the February read in the RL Book Club.

It is a quiet book - as I knew it would be - about 2 sisters and the previous two generations of women who are pretty much haunted by the tragedy of their grandfather's drowning death in a train crash. The sisters' mother commits suicide, leaving them in the care of their grandmother, but granny does not last long. Eventually their aunt, Sylvie comes to take care of them, seemingly after having given up her life on the road. It turns out, though, that Sylvie is still pretty hobo-esque - plainly not the best of caregivers for the orphans.

It is a very deep book - the kind that you know that you have to read multiple times.I was going to say that Ruthie, one of the sisters, and her aunt Sylvie were the most prominent characters, but after reading somewhere that Ruthie is something called "The Transparent Eyeball", I wonder if Sylvie is the only major character. Not sure I understand what TTE really is, so will have to learn more about that.

Really liked this book a lot and have given it 4.75 stars. Without a doubt it is a keeper - and not just because I must read it several times more.

Liked the cover very much. Very appropriate.

Book Number 14 - Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J.K. Rowling

Pretty pleased with myself that I actually completed the series as I usually fail at book reading resolutions. The series certainly ended with a bang and not a whimper - which was great. Am so used to books, movies and television series running out of steam at the end.

There were many deaths, but I was only surprised by the death of Fred as I already knew about poor Dobby (very sad) and some of the deaths of other prominent characters did not carry as much of a punch for me. Also, it was very different not having Hogwarts in the picture until quite late in the story. Thank goodness for magic, as reconstructing the school with Muggle building techniques would have cost a mega-fortune. Surely whipping the place back into shape via Magic had to be less costly and a lot quicker.

Sorry the series is done, but Rowling did a beautiful job. The only book in the series that I thought had a lot of 'meh' moments in it was the one concerning the Tri-Wizard Tournament.

Giving this one a full five stars. And of course it is keeper.

The cover was kind of blah. Too much orange.

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Aunt Dimity and the Duke - Bookmark rests at Page 120 of 398 pages. Last touched on 2/24/2018
The River at the Center of the World - Bookmark rests at Page 48 of 398 pages. Last touched on 2/24/2018

Have to make a stab at continuing WoD today or it will very shortly be time to drop it from the Currently Reading group and consider evicting it from the house. Likewise Sophie du Pont. The main focus of the book seems to be Sophie's drawings and neither they, nor what passes for Sophie's life, are holding my interest.

Aunt Dimity is pretty stupid, but I think I can make it through to the end - if for no other reason than to see what the point of it all is.

Hi Charlotte! I'm glad Defiance worked out for you. And Housekeeping looks good too. I was thinking of you the other day when I watched the episode of Netflix's "Rotten" about the fishing industry, because it was set nearly entirely in your town. I paid far more attention than I might otherwise :-)

Well done on finishing Harry Potter!

>52 Fourpawz2: Room was one I read for a book club several years ago. I didn't think I would like it at all and ended up thinking it was excellent. What I liked about the second half was how much emphasis there was on how difficult things continued to be for both Jack and Mum. No easy resolution from such a difficult scenario.

>54 Fourpawz2: Hooray for Poldark - it's an excellent series. I tried watching the TV show after reading the first few books and was a bit disappointed - I think I felt they were moving through the plot too fast but hopefully you'll like it (I can be quite grumpy about film or TV adaptations of books).

>56 Fourpawz2: I thought that one sounded familiar and when I checked it's already on my list from when Susan recommended it!

>57 Fourpawz2: Added to the list - I've really enjoyed Marilynne Robinson's Gilead and companion books (although I have yet to read the most recent volume). Sounds like Housekeeping is another one to look out for.

>58 Fourpawz2: Congratulations on finishing the HP series!

>61 souloftherose: - I've seen the first episode and agree with you about Poldark, Heather. I was disappointed that they chose to launch Demelza into the story as a full grown woman instead of following the storyline properly. Have not rushed ahead to Episode 2.



Book Number 15 - Aunt Dimity and the Duke by Nancy Atherton - This is the second book in the series. Read the first one a very long time ago and did not remember it being as dopey as this one turned out to be and will very likely not be going ahead with the series. I think Aunt Dimity is supposed to be some kind of benevolent spirit/ghost who goes about helping people. In this one she has befriended "the Duke" and is helping him achieve his lifelong intention of restoring the gardens of his property which were treasured by his late grandmother by steering an American amateur gardener (who is, in real life, an employee in the computer industry) his way. She is immediately added to the collection of characters in the duke's home, welcome to live there gratis for as long as she wants while she works on the garden project.

This is a very gentle cozy mystery. No one dies. A woman does fall down and hits her head, but there is no malice in it. Love conquers all at the end.

The Duke seemed quite ridiculous to me. The story takes place in the mid-1990's and the duke is in his thirties, but he speaks in a very Tally-Ho, wot, wot fashion that seems more like the sort of thing you might find in a book concerning Jeeves and Wooster.

It was a waste of my time.

Gave it 2.9 stars - could not bump it up to 3 which, for me, is the minimal requirement for an okay book. If it hadn't been a library book it would already be in my car waiting for me to chuck it into the nearest book donation box.

Cover is dreadful. Very dark. Seen on a bookshelf, I would have passed it by without a second thought.

Am closing in on the end of a couple of books, but so far nothing is completed this month.

Currently Reading

The Forsyte Saga - Bookmark rests at Page 100 of 725 pages. Last touched on 3/10/2018
Woman of Destiny - Bookmark rests at Page 218 of 712 pages. Last touched on 2/25/2018
Meetinghouse Hill - Bookmark rests at Page 196 of 316 pages. Last touched on 3/10/2018
Tristan and Iseult - Bookmark rests at Page 42 of 151 pages. Last touched on 3/04/2018
Sophie duPont - Bookmark rests at Page 45 of 192 pages. Last touched on 2/19/2018
The River at the Center of the World - Bookmark rests at Page 230 of 398 pages. Last touched on 3/10/2018
The Dark Portal - Bookmark rests at Page 18 of 235 pages. Last touched on 2/26/2018
Major Pettigrew's Last Stand - Bookmark rests at Page 86 of 355 pages. Last touched on 3/10/2018
The Blue Place - Bookmark rests at Page 226 of 308 pages. Last touched on 3/10/2018

Meetinghouse Hill, The River at the Center of the World (which I am reading for the 2018 NF challenge for March), The Blue Place (a Chatterbox recommended book) are all coming along nicely. Major Pettigrew's Last Stand is the March RL book club read and I am doing it at the rate of a chapter a day, which just comes out perfectly. I've not read enough of The Dark Portal to know if it is working for me. Am satisfied with the rate at which The Forsyte Saga and Tristan and Iseult are coming along - I never meant to rush ahead with these two. Am just about done with trying to even pretend to make an effort to read Sophie du Pont and Woman of Destiny had better shape up in about the next 50 pages or I'm done with that one.

Have ordered a Susan recommended book from the library. It is about crabs - the water dwelling kind not the others. A very odd subject for me as I don't care for shellfish and am not in love with the ocean, but it is on my Susan list and Susan hardly ever gets it wrong.

Book Number 16 - The Blue Place by Nicola Griffith - a Chatterbox Recommended Book

This a suspense novel - supposedly - but I thought the suspense was really limited to near the end of the novel. It concerns a young woman of Norwegian/American parentage - Aud Torvingen - who was once on the Atlanta police force and now makes her living as a bodyguard. In this story, initially, she is hired to look after a young woman visiting Atlanta, but this is not the main focus of the book. The main storyline concerns another client - Julia Lyons-Bennet, an Art Dealer who authenticated a 19th century painting by Friedrich when it first passed through her hands some years before. Now it has come back to her before being shipped on to the new buyer and she believes it is not a genuine Friedrich, but is now a forgery. She hires Aud (after they run into each other - literally - at the scene of a house explosion) to look into the problem.

There are a lot of complicated twists and turns in the story and the problem of art fraud quickly turns into a serious threat to Lyons-Bennet's life. But, to me, a great deal of the story is taken up with the fact that Aud and Julia fall in love and when they believe (mistakenly) that Julia is now safe they take a working vacation to Norway. This is the best part of the book, I think; Griffith does a very nice job describing the countryside, the water, the light, flora and fauna and the food (I really need to stop whining about the price and break down and get myself some gjetost cheese very soon!) I will never visit Norway, I am certain (or any other place that is at a far/expensive reach), but it does sound so very lovely as described by Griffith. Really liked this part best and it is why I'm giving it 3.5 stars.

If I had bought this book (and not borrowed it from the library) I expect I would be keeping it for at least a while.

The cover is plain ugly to me. It is too dark and too blue. The figure of the woman is lost in the darkness.

Book Number 17 - Cleo: The Cat Who Mended a Family by Helen Brown

About the life of New Zealand cat - part Abyssinian, part alley cat - and her family of humans. She lived for 23 years with her original family of humans, less the little boy who chose her when she was still too young to leave her mother. The little boy - Sam - was killed in a car accident - run over by a woman when he emerged from behind a bus. The crushed family, who were not cat fans, do not want her at the first, but eventually decide to keep her because she was important to Sam.

Much of the book is taken up with the humans' stories - and there are a lot of them. (Their lives have a lot of ups and downs.) Cleo has a huge personality. She is full of hell at times and she always the most vibrant creature in the room. It is not long before she has everyone under her paw and loving it.

This took me right back to Willie. He, too, had a big personality. I love Jane dearly and would not part with her for anything, but there is still a good-sized hole in my heart where he was that can never be filled.

Although it is very sad at the end, Cleo is full of a lot of very funny bits. Enjoyed it a lot more than I thought I would.

Giving it 4 stars. The writing is okay and Brown sucked me right in with her memoir of her sweet little cat.

Suppose I shall have to keep this one. Had not planned to; it was passed on to me by my cousin who acquired it somewhere or other and thought I would want it. A common conclusion that far too many people arrive at. It is not true that a cat person wants to live his/her life surrounded by cat-decor, cat books, cat art, cat-themed clothing or cat umbrellas or cat switch plates. (Those last two were given to me by an old boss who was trying to curry favor. They did not make me like her any better.)

The cat on the cover is amazingly gorgeous. I'm almost 100% sure that this is not a picture of Cleo, but it does match the description of her. It is very eye-catching and I surely would have snaked this one off the shelf if I'd run across it out in the world. (The green of the cat's eyes and the red of it's collar are much, much more vibrant than they appear to be in the picture posted here.)

Book Number 18 - Meetinghouse Hill by Ola Elizabeth Winslow

I've had this book for a long time and I did try to read it once before, but quickly ran out of steam. No fault of the book - I was just not ready for it at that time.

Winslow writes about meetinghouses in New England from 1630 to the passage of the Bill of Rights. It was the revolution that pretty much killed the Puritan meetinghouse, for the separation of church and state that came with the new country changed the meetinghouse system irrevocably. Before separation from England the Puritans really ran the towns. Rates for support of the ministers (read 'taxes') were levied upon everyone regardless of how they felt about the minister and the meetinghouses were where all town business was conducted. Everyone was expected to be guided and ruled by the meetinghouse minister. If they failed to come up to snuff they were subject to the criticism of their fellows (which included being taken to task for their failures) and the discipline of the meeting. It was not fun being a 'Saint' or even just living in proximity to the elect, in those days.

I learned a lot about how the meetinghouse locations were chosen, how the building was expanded when the congregation grew too large and the troubles that resulted when people could not agree on what was to be done to solve the problem. The Puritans were often a pretty quarrelsome bunch of people.

And I learned that the period between around 1700 and 1750-ish was a very bad time for the Puritans - for the ministers were no longer held in such high repute as they had once been. The Baptists were making an appearance - a new evangelical mood was on the land and the future for these men was looking pretty insecure. The quarrel with England - the Stamp Tax, the Boston Massacre and the impending revolution gave them a second wind, but their very success during the war changed everything irrevocably.

For me the book was very interesting because, coming from an almost exclusively Quaker background as I do, there is no Puritan family history, to speak of. Pretty much nothing concerning the revolution happened in my neck of the woods (except for the British naval attack on Fort Phoenix in Fairhaven which is the town across the harbor from my little city) and none of the men in the family served in the Continental Army. In many ways I am an ignoramus when it comes to the Puritans.

Occasionally Winslow's writing turned gently humorous and I did enjoy that. Overall this was a good and informative history of the ministers and meetinghouses of New England.

Giving it 4.25 stars

It is a definite keeper.

The cover is awful. Nothing appealing about it at all.

Currently Reading

The Forsyte Saga - Bookmark rests at Page 100 of 725 pages. Last touched on 3/10/2018
Woman of Destiny - Bookmark rests at Page 218 of 712 pages. Last touched on 2/25/2018
Tristan and Iseult - Bookmark rests at Page 52 of 151 pages. Last touched on 3/14/2018
The River at the Center of the World - Bookmark rests at Page 270 of 398 pages. Last touched on 3/15/2018
The Dark Portal - Bookmark rests at Page 64 of 235 pages. Last touched on 3/15/2018
Major Pettigrew's Last Stand - Bookmark rests at Page 159 of 355 pages. Last touched on 3/15/2018
One Corpse Too Many - Bookmark rests at Page 22 of 192 pages. Last touched on 3/15/2018
Beautiful Swimmers - Bookmark rests at 13 of 291 pages. Last touched on 3/17/2018

>63 Fourpawz2: Charlotte, I see you've started Beautiful Swimmers. Should I be worried, or are my recommendations still working?! Your Currently Reading list looks good - I have one thing on the go which I fear is not going to be that great, but I feel I should read it. Aaargh. Somehow I've finished a couple of others since starting and I'm only three chapters into it.

>68 susanj67: - not to worry, Susan. They are still doing fine. I picked up Beautiful Swimmers from the library just yesterday afternoon so only read a few pages. Read a more this afternoon and I'm enjoying it. It seems like a strange subject- difficult to make crabs interesting I would have thought. Blue crabs were part of my life one summer for two weeks back when I was 9 or 10 so I'm enjoying learning so much info about them.

>66 Fourpawz2: I'd probably enjoy that one in spite of its awful cover.

>70 thornton37814: - I think you would, Meg. Lots of mention of meetinghouses and their members and ministers in CT, NH and MA, but virtually no mention of the Cape or other nearby southeastern MA towns between the Cape and RI. MA meetinghouse history seems to stop south of Plymouth which I believe is certainly due to the populations of the Cape turning, and those of Bristol County being, seriously Quaker. The Quakers met in meetinghouses but not the kind that Winslow wrote about.

Book Number 19 - The River at the Center of the World by Simon Winchester - Read for the 2018 Non-Fiction Challenge - March (Travel)

Concerning Winchester's quest to trace the source of the Yangtze River from the sea west to Tibet. He succeeds, but it is not a smooth journey.

This was my first non-fiction book about China - horrors! The land, 20 years ago, was till beautiful in some places, but the government is corrupt. It seems plain to me that everything must be worse now - especially as concerns the over-building, pollution and destruction of historical locations. This is not a place that I have ever considered that I would want to visit and this book has not changed my mind about that.

The chapter in this book about the Three Gorges Dam was tedious and longer than it should have been; all the rest was interesting.Would really like to read more about Chinese history.

Another book that is a keeper. Has a very good cover.

Have fallen behind a bit with keeping up with the books I've read. Work, a three-day trip to New Hampshire and Jane doing her best to lay all over the laptop has not helped. Still have 5 more books to post here.

I've enjoyed catching up on your thread. I like the attention you give to covers in your comments and the variety of books that you read. Looking forward to keeping up the rest of the year.

Book Number 20 - Major Pettigrew's Last Stand by Helen Simonson - read for Real Life Book Club

I borrowed this book from the library a few Decembers ago and loved it; so much so that I bought a copy - new - something I rarely do. Was very happy that someone picked it for us to read for March; I've been wanting to read it again. Loved it every bit as much this time around as the first. Consequently I am bumping up its rating from 4.5 to 5 stars and making myself a promise that I will read this book every year - at least for a while.

Goes without saying this book is a keeper.

For some reason the cover passed me by the last time I read it, but I took a good look at it this time and finally realized that it is a very clever one.

Currently Reading

The Forsyte Saga - Bookmark rests at Page 100 of 725 pages. Last touched on 3/10/2018
Tristan and Iseult - Bookmark rests at Page 68 of 151 pages. Last touched on 4/22/2018
This Will Be My Undoing - Bookmark rests at Page 64 of 252 pages. Last touched on 4/22/2018
A Passage to India - Bookmark rests at Page 166 of 362 pages. Last touched on 4/22/2018
The American Boy - Bookmark rests at Page 356 of 485 pages. Last touched on 4/22/2018
Munich, 1938 - Bookmark rests at Page 199 of 437 pages. Last touched on 4/22/2018

Keeping The Forsyte Saga in the mix because I was away for a long weekend and before that my time was taken up with running about getting ready for going away so I was not able to read quite as much as I wanted to. A Passage to India did not grab me at first, but am liking it very well now. Only Munich, 1938 is dragging a bit, but I expected that. Mean to soldier on to the end, regardless. And The American Boy certainly qualifies as "a Thumping Good Read" - just as Suzanne said.

Hope all is well, Charlotte.

Hope you aren't too stuck with the Forsyte saga. xx

>75 PaulCranswick: - Hey Paul - nope, I'm good. Just meandering along with it per the plan for it.



Book Number 21 - One Corpse Too Many by Ellis Peters, #2 in the Brother Cadfael mysteries

The story of the killing of Nicholas Faintree is woven around King Stephen's time at Shewsbury (including the battle against Maud's supporters in S and M's war to grab the English crown) in 1138. The reader is supposed to be suspicious of a character called Hugh Beringer, recently arrived to join Stephen and his forces, but I thought Hugh was just too likable to be the murderer. And even though I know that I am terrible at sussing out the real killers in these kinds of stories, I still liked him and could never accept him as 'the one'.

Cadfael is terribly clever - kind of like Poirot without being full of himself.

I am not sure about Peters' main female characters - they seem kind of stock. Poised to fall in love.

All in all it was a good read. Keeping on with the series.

Giving it 3.25 stars

The book is a keeper and the cover is quite good. I'd like to have the full set with similar covers if I can manage it, but as I am buying them used as I go along, that probably won't happen.

Hi Charlotte! I read that one recently, but already I seem to have forgotten the plot. Oh dear :-)

How are you and Jane? And dare I ask whether spring has caught up with you there?

Book Number 22 - The Dark Portal by Robin Jarvis -

Superior Animal Fantasy Saga revolving around a collection of mice, rats and bats. There is a struggle between the followers of two religions - The Green Mouse of the mice and the rats' evil, Dark Lord, Jupiter. Juvenile mice Audrey, Twit, Oswald, Piccadilly and Arthur and the utterly amoral rats Skinner, Morgan, One-Eyed Jake and Finn are the stars of the show.

Jarvis was conjured up a wonderful world - especially his frightful underground world that is inhabited by the rats. He does not hold back on their dreadfulness which is majorly horrible.

I love the word 'mousebrass' - the word for a little necklace that each young mouse receives in a ceremony when they come of age. I kind of want a mousebrass for myself.

Jarvis did all of the illustrations, too and they are really, really good.

Giving this one 4.5 stars

Most definitely a keeper. Must buy the second and third books soon.

The cover is perfect. A definite 10.

>77 susanj67: - Hi Susan! Assuming, since we posted at virtually the same time that you are talking about Major Pettigrew?

Jane and I are fine.
Well, we kind of went from chilly and grey into full blown summer in the space of about 24 hours. Hate that. It was very hot and - for me - unpleasant for a couple of days. Now we are falling backward a bit into the sixties so that is an improvement. I know it will work its way back into summer weather sooner rather than later, but am hoping it will do it in a measured, normal-ish way.

Currently Reading

The Forsyte Saga - Bookmark rests at Page 120 of 725 pages. Last touched on 4/28/2018
Tristan and Iseult - Bookmark rests at Page 68 of 151 pages. Last touched on 4/22/2018
A Passage to India - Bookmark rests at Page 265 of 362 pages. Last touched on 5/05/2018
Munich, 1938 - Bookmark rests at Page 297 of 437 pages. Last touched on 5/05/2018
Beloved - Bookmark rests at Page 50 of 275 pages. Last touched on 5/05/2018
The Debt to Pleasure - Bookmark rests at Page 34 of 251 pages. Last touched on 5/05/2018

Have given up on Dragonsinger after a chapter. I read the first book in the series a couple of years ago and while it was not amazing I thought I would continue onward to book two - mostly because I already had it. However, it is too much of a girly fantasy story, and frankly - boring. Now that I am an old fart, I do not want to waste my time on stuff that I know I am not liking at all. So I am ditching it and sticking it and the first book in the nearest book donation box as soon as spring clear-out time ends and the glut of items that people have stacked around said boxes lets up. (Have got a tote bag full of clothing items to donate too, but those boxes are even more stuffed.)

There's a relief, Charlotte!

I meant the Cadfael, Charlotte. I was wishlisting the next one in each of my series in the elibrary the other day, to remind myself where I was up to, and I've read the first two. I've also read Major Pettigrew, but I do remember that one :-)

>78 Fourpawz2: A definite book bullet hit for The Dark Portal Charlotte! Hope you and Jane are having a nice weekend!

Hi, Charlotte. Great to have a fellow appreciator of Major Pettigrew's Last Stand. I loved that book, too.

>80 susanj67: - Oops - got that wrong! Looks as if we are both in the same place in the series.

>81 souloftherose: - Hey Heather! Hope you enjoy it.

>*2 - Hi Joe. Isn't it the best? I remembered that I enjoyed it the first time, but had forgotten how truly lovely it is. Nothing about it that I don't love.

Was supposed to be washing windows for a client today, but it is so grey and chilly here - and supposed to be raining later on - that the job had to be postponed. For today, early spring with all of its less attractive qualities, is back.



Book Number 23 - Death of an Addict by M.C. Beaton - Book number 1,349 - or so it seems - in the Hamish MacBeth series.

In this one Hamish is investigating a couple of characters -Tommy and Felicity - who live in rented properties in a location that is on his beat but not in Lochdubh. Tommy is (he says) a recovering drug addict who is writing a book about his experiences, while Felicity is a highly excitable young woman who seems to come completely unglued every time she comes into contact with Hamish. He has his suspicions about both of them as to their connections with drugs.

Tommy turns up dead - apparently of an overdose, but his parents swear that he was really and truly reformed. A cop from the local drug task force thinks otherwise, but Hamish is not convinced. When Tommy's parents approach Hamish, wanting to hire him to investigate their son's death with an eye to finding his killer, he agrees to do it.

Thus Hamish is propelled into his first fully undercover job. Hamish has never participated in such a dangerous enterprise before, but in his usual way is game to give it a try.

Blair, his nemesis from the Strathbane police force is very nearly uncovered as the rat that he is. I have hopes that he cannot last much longer.

Overall is was a pretty good story and Hamish is once again, quite likable. Hope Hamish replaces his late dog, Towser, soon. He seems like the kind of person who needs to have a dog.

Gave this one 3.75 stars.

Of course it is a keeper. They are very small books and don't take up much room in the Mystery Bookcase.

The cover is rubbish. Too cartoon-y.

Book Number 24 - Beautiful Swimmers by William W. Warner - a Susan recommended book

This is an old book (1975-ish) written about Blue Crabs and the Chesapeake Bay and its watermen. I know more about both now - more than I ever cared to know. Not that this is a bad book, at all. I am just not a water person nor am I a crustacean person in any sense. Warner clearly loves the place, the life and the people. All three needed to be written about. In fact, I think that there is a need for more books of this type; there are too few books about homely (in the English sense of the word) places and people. The work done by the people who live and work on and around the Chesapeake is hard, hard work, but written about by Warner the work is hard and the people satisfied.

I don't like crabs - we have a history - but I found at the end of this book that I liked it.

Giving this book a rating of 3.75 stars

It was library book, but if I ever saw a copy - I don't expect I ever will - I might actually pick it up. It's kind of weird that this book that I got through the ILL system came from the Westport library which is the same town where I acquired my history with and dislike of blue crabs.

Good cover

>84 Fourpawz2: You're right, that is a great cover, Charlotte.

Have a lovely Sunday.

>83 Fourpawz2: Book number 1,349 - or so it seems - in the Hamish MacBeth series

Giggle :-)

>84 Fourpawz2: Charlotte, I'm glad you liked it well enough for 3.75 stars, anyway. And I loved the co-incidence between Westport being the home of the book and the site of the crab incident. Plus you've now read a Pulitzer winner should you ever want to do that challenge!

>86 susanj67: - you've now read a Pulitzer winner - and all thanks to you, Susan!

I think Beautiful Swimmers is a pretty popular book in Westport for the library book is certainly well-used. Wonder if anyone still goes crabbing on the Westport River anymore. There was a concern over pollution and its effect on crabbing and oystering at one time, but that may have been cleaned up.

And I have another connection to the book in addition to my childhood crab experiences and that is that I was conceived* in a little place called Pocomoke City, MD which is on the Pocomoke River which empties out into Chesapeake Bay and thus is part of the whole crabbing industry.

*Yeah, I know there are both TMI and ewwwww factors to this statement and I do apologize.

>87 Fourpawz2: Charlotte, :-)) Clearly it was the perfect book for you!

Book Number 25 - The American Boy (American Title - An Unpardonable Crime) by Andrew Taylor - a Chatterbox recommended book

Edgar Allan Poe is the American Boy and his involvement in this story was, I thought, minimal. He is a child throughout, so this makes the British title somewhat misleading; I expected the title character to play a larger role than he did. Otherwise this is a pretty good tale in the vein of Fingersmith. Greed is at the heart of the matter in this book. It is atmospheric and complicated.

If I'd bought it instead of borrowing it from the library, it would definitely qualify as a keeper.

Gave it 4 stars.

This cover was not the best, I thought. I did not understand the child's face looming over the waterfront scene while the depiction of a waterfront at all seemed very misleading to me.

Currently Reading

The Debt to Pleasure - Bookmark rests at Page 206 of 251 pages. Last touched on 5/19/2018
Flashpoints - Bookmark rests at Page 112 of 258 pages. Last touched on 5/18/2018
Beloved - Bookmark rests at Page 180 of 275 pages. Last touched on 5/18/2018
Tristan and Iseult - Bookmark rests at Page 75 of 151 pages. Last touched on 5/18/2018
Thomas Hardy - Bookmark rests at Page 14 of 578. Last touched on 5/13/2018
The People of the Book - Last touched on 5/18/2018
The Forsyte Saga - Bookmark rests at Page 120 of 715. Last touched on 4/28/2018

The Debt to Pleasure has turned out to be a quirky little thing. Can't imagine how it is going to end. Surprisingly, I would guess.
Flashpoints is interesting, but not my usual cup of tea.
Beloved is quite good. Should finish it this weekend or shortly thereafter.
Tristan and Iseult is coming along at the pace I expected.
This is the second time around for the Thomas Hardy biography. Started it the first time a few years ago, but it pooped out after a couple of months so have had to begin again.
The People of the Book is an audio book that I got from the library so that I could do something interesting at my cleaning/dog jobs. It only has a very little more to go and it will definitely be finished by Tuesday. (Also own a copy - forgot to check that when I was looking through the library's audiobooks.)
The Forsyte Saga is lagging behind, but I will not cut it loose.

Book Number 26 - This Will Be My Undoing by Morgan Jerkins - An Early Reviewer book

Hmmmm. I don't know what to say about this one. She is angry. I get that. And she gave up way too much information here - I really, really did not need to know about her left labium minora condition, her 'second tonque' (shudder) and a few other things. I guess mostly what I came away with is that she is very young. She's a decent writer, but I think another ten years experience might have made these essays better.

Can't give this one a rating right now. For that, I really need to read it again, I think. So, for now, it is a keeper.

The cover is neither here nor there. It is very expected. (My copy, obviously, does not say anything about it being a NY Times bestseller.)

Book Number 27 - Munich, 1938 by David Faber

This one was very full of a ton of detail about the months leading up to the handing over of Czechoslovakia to Hitler and the Nazis (as well as the Anschluss). As I, of course, knew, Neville Chamberlain does not come out of the event looking well at all, although for quite a while, over the many months of the long slow slide into giving Hitler everything he wanted in an effort to satisfy the monster, there are many who think he is doing the best thing for the UK. In only one respect do his endless efforts to keep the country from confronting Germany make sense, i.e. the UK was just not equipped in any way to take on a war at that time.

I hesitate to make a lot of judgments about the politics of the time as I don't know enough about the situation in this time period. It is kind of embarrassing to me that I am so ignorant about the two major wars of the 20th century, but there is a chance that I may in the near future rectify said ignorance a bit.

The many details in this book did not enable me to fly swiftly through its pages, but that was not a bad thing. Faber does a good job with an era full of non-flashy events and tons of diplomatic maneuverings. I understand this small part of the pre-WWII era better now.

4 stars

Munich, 1938 merits a re-reading by me, so it is definitely a keeper.

There is a good index in this book - something that is, to me, absolutely vital in a good non-fiction book. I have not often mentioned my feeling about good indices, bibliographies, etc. in NF books. I intend to make note of them in my future reading.

And, I think I need to read a good history of the Nazi era in Germany as well as good biographies of Chamberlain, Hitler and most definitely Churchill. Can't take on WWII without reading about Churchill.

Currently Reading

Attila - Bookmark rests at page 94 of 311 pages. Last picked up on 6/9/2018
A Wedding in December - Bookmark rests at page 230 of 325 pages. Last picked up on 6/9/2018
Thomas Hardy - Bookmark rests at page 42 of 578 pages. Last picked up on 6/8/2018
The Walking Dead Compendium Vol. 1 - Last picked up on 6/7/2018 (no page markings in this monster of a book)
Juliet - Bookmark rests at page 122 of 512 pages. Last picked up on 6/4/2018
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time - audiobook, so have no idea where I am in this one. Last listened to on 6/9/2018
The Forsyte Saga - Bookmark rests at 124 of 715 pages. Last picked up on 6/2/2018

Of these books the only one that is dragging a lot for me is Juliet. I may give up on it. The Walking Dead compendium is doing nothing toward making me like the so-called graphic novel type of book. They are still just comic books to me. Not hurrying with the Hardy biography as I failed with this one about a year ago. If I take it easy I may get to the end some day. Atilla is very good - very interesting and A Wedding in December - though not my kind of book - is coming along.

As for The Curious Incident - I gave up audio books a few years ago because I could not listen to them while doing anything else - such as sewing or really anything that requires any kind of concentration, but I have found that I can listen to them while doing such mind-stultifying stuff as cleaning toilets and vacuuming in the houses that I clean. In fact they make that job much more bearable. So The Curious Incident is my 5th audio book since the middle of May. Guess there is a good chance that my end-of-year book totals will be pretty decent this year. Only problem is deciding which books to choose as I still prefer a physical book with actual pages and don't want to forgo that pleasure by listening to a really good book when I'd get so much more out of it by going old school.

Book Number 28 - A Passage to India by E.M. Forster - which I read for my Real Life Book Club. I tried to read it once before, but failed. This time around I had better luck. I've never seen the movie so had no expectations or opinions about it.

A pretty simple story at the beginning - two English ladies travel to India - the older one escorting the younger to meet with her probable intended (who is also the older lady's son). They have ideas about what India is and what they want to do while they are there and of course India is not what they expected and they really never get to see and do the things they want to for things fall apart very early. The younger - Miss Quested - while visiting some caves has something happen to her that changes everything. Is it rape or did she just have some kind of mini-breakdown while on her own in the caves - I was not certain. But the English are certain she was attacked and try to prosecute Doctor Aziz who was the person who had arranged the expedition to the caves.

Of course the main point of the book is the relationship between the British and the Indians whose land they have been 'colonizing' since the 18th century. And relations are not good. The British do not respect the Indians and the two sides do not understand one another. And the atmosphere in an India where the Indian independence movement is alive and kicking is not good and it makes the Miss Quested situation that much worse.

Thought the resolution during the trial was a little clunky and it almost seemed as if Forster really cared most about this British/Indian relationship rather than this crime/not-a-crime situation that he whipped up. At the beginning I thought that Mrs. Moore - the old woman - was going to be a major character, but it seemed afterward that she was whisked off-stage rather quickly. Dr. Aziz perplexed me. Wrongly accused, it seemed as if he should be liked, but ultimately I could not like him.

Gave this one 3.25 stars

Not sure if this is one I will keep. Am leaning toward eviction from the house for this book.

Not crazy about this movie tie-in cover. In a store it never would have attracted me.

Currently Reading

Attila - Bookmark rests at page 230 of 311 pages. Last picked up on 6/20/2018
Thomas Hardy - Bookmark rests at page 68 of 578 pages. Last picked up on 6/17/2018
Juliet - Bookmark rests at page 126 of 512 pages. Last picked up on 6/16/2018
The Forsyte Saga - Bookmark rests at 124 of 715 pages. Last picked up on 6/2/2018
Otherland: River of Blue Fire - Bookmark rests at Page 54 of 675 pages. Last picked up on 6/20/2018
Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire Volume 1 - Bookmark rests at Page 716 of 840 pages. Last picked up on 6/19/2018
Gregor the Overlander - audio book. Last listened to on 6/20/2018

Of course I have not read 716 pages of The Decline and Fall since June 10th, but have been in the process of reading this series for years. Reading Attila sent me back to this one again.

Book Number 29 - Beloved by Toni Morrison - Part ghost story, part historical fiction. I remember trying to read this one years and years ago and failing. (I think my mind was too occupied at the time by my horrible job.) I failed so badly that I got rid of the book, but then bought another copy afterward.

Can't say enough good things about this book this time around. Wonderfully written. The story of the people from Sweet Home plantation was hard to take, but I was glad for the others who had lives and went on to live them.

As for the ghost, Beloved, she was incredibly creepy. I was very glad when she was gone.

And I am left wondering what happened to Miss Amy Denver. She is a small character who does a big thing and though she is imaginary, I can't help but wonder what might have happened to her.

A definite keeper that gets 5 stars.

Not a great cover, but it's better than some of them I've seen.

Book Number 30 - The Debt to Pleasure by John Lanchester - a Susan Recommended Book

A seemingly tame little book about food and cooking, living well - a kind of memoir (fiictional) rendered by one Tarquin Winot. He tells stories concerning his mother, father, the family's Irish maid, their Norwegian cook and especially stories about his brother, Bartholomew, who is an artist - sculpture mostly (or perhaps entirely).

I was more than half-way through before I realized what was really going on.

Clever and quirky. Kind of reminds me of the Bernice Ruebens books I read a couple of few years ago.

I do not think that I ever want mushrooms on toast or in an omelette.

I really want to snag a copy of this one and add it to my library - it's that good. Giving it 4 stars - a lot of that for the cleverness.

The cover is really special. It must have cost a bit to do it; the peach is printed on the book itself and then they cut away a square of the dust cover to reveal the fruit and added a little cardboard frame to the underside of the jacket so it looks like a tiny work of art. Quite lovely.

Another good one, Susan!

Hi Charlotte! I'm embarrassed to admit that I have *no memory whatsoever* of reading The Debt to Pleasure, although I see that it is in my library and I only add books that I've read. Uh-oh :-) Maybe I should get it again!

Beloved is on my list of books I mean to get to, and I think I'll try a bit harder having read your review.

Book Number 31 - The People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks - an audiobook which I read way back in early May.(As usual I am way behind in posting, although I have tried to keep up with my list toward the top of this thread.) I have not been a huge fan of audiobooks in the past, but decided to try them again in order to make work less boring. I am trying to pick books that I am not anxious to read - just ones I have heard of, vaguely. The stuff I really, really want to read, I know I must do with a physical book.

When picking out this book, however, I forgot that I already had a copy of it in some pile or other. Oh, well. It is the story, as I am sure sure most people know, of a particular ancient book - the Haggadah - and its long and - up until this point - unknown history as well as the modern day story of the young woman who restores it and then tries to figure out, using her book sleuthing skills, what its history is.

I'm pretty sure I've seen this type of story before - if not in a book somewhere - in a movie (The Red Violin?). Lots of stories with different characters who own or acquire the book, how it affects them and what happens to it. It's a nice device for the writer, probably, but not one that I love. These stories from the past are the best bits of this book; the modern story of the young woman's part is less interesting to me. A lot of that part of the book was kind of predictable, really. But for an audiobook it was pretty good; I only lost the thread of what was going on in one spot which is different for me and was not the fault of the story or the narrator. I was just taken up at a critical moment with vacuuming what was the nastiest rug in creation and my mind was partially shut down.

Gave this one 3.5 stars at the time, but now am thinking that it should be something a teeny bit lower - say 3.3 stars.

And I'm keeping the copy that I already own. It'll probably rise to the top of the pile it is in one of these years.

The cover art is really nice. One of the better ones for the year.

I've got 15 more books to write something about here and I hope I'll get around to actually doing that soon. To the good I am way, way ahead of my last year's numbers. Two months ahead.

>96 Fourpawz2: Charlotte, that one looks interesting, and good for you for trying audiobooks again. I did recently too, and it wasn't such a terrible experience, but I do get distracted easily. Sorry your distraction was a nasty rug.

I looked at your list at the top of the thread and there are some great things on there! I keep seeing Shirley Jackson mentioned, so I will look for her at the library.

We had your president here last week and it was quite the experience. There are rumours of a state visit being offered (again), but I hope it never happens because I don't think we could go through it again. Still, maybe he'll be busy entertaining Vladimir Putin now :-)

>97 susanj67: - Well, at least that rug is all gone now - likely rotting in some landfill or other. And its all been replaced by some really lovely tile in one room and some kind of faux wood with very realistic graining in the other. I am really liking both replacements very much. So easy to clean and they don't show the dirt at all. The whole job in those areas goes much more quickly. Yay.

I liked the Jackson book so much, that I am thinking of choosing The Haunting of Hill House for my RL Book Club's October read. I think it will be my turn then.

Gee - I was kind of hoping your experience with Our Orange Leader might have awakened some level of envy amongst residents of the UK and that we might have worked something out. I certainly would be perfectly okay with swapping OOL for something reasonable - like, say, a pair of old leaky wellies and a battered teapot. And you can have him for the next 2 years and 5 months! Why should we have all of the fun! How about it - deal?????

>98 Fourpawz2: Charlotte, I think I can speak for most of the UK in declining your kind offer of the President :-) I can see some drama unfolding on Sky News but I muted it and couldn't quite face unmuting it to listen to the talking head who was on Skype from New Jersey. I did see Melania in the WORST pair of leggings though - what was she thinking?!! If you haven't already seen the footage (getting off a plane), only look with caution.

Good news about the rug being gone. I keep looking around thinking it's time for housework but never quite getting to it. Maybe tomorrow!

Boy - if there is some prize this year for being the slowest to post read books, I think I should win the prize. I'm three months behind.



Book Number 32 - The Boston Girl - an audiobook

This was the first-person life story of a fictional character - Addy Baum - as told her granddaughter. The actress, Linda Lavin, was the narrator and she did a great job.

Addy was born in Boston in the early 1900s. Her family are Jewish immigrants - her father arriving first and then the rest of the family - her mother and two sisters. Addy is the only one who is born in Boston. Mom is a pill - always grousing and complaining. The parents' marriage is a very believable one in that it has problems. Not problems that lead to divorce, but they are not a happy couple. Addy and her mother never get along, but they are never entirely estranged.

Addy's parents are not big fans of education for girls and push her into quitting in order to go to work. Of course Addy loves school. Isn't it always the way? My grandmother was one of those girls who was forced to quit by a parent and it left her ashamed of her lack of education.

There are a few dramatic happenings Addy's life - the post WWI flu epidemic and her sister Cecilia's marriage and Addy's first serious relationship with a man (who turns out to be a complete sleaze-bag) , stood out for me. Through it all Addy is strong and funny, always picking herself up and going on - even when some terrible thing happens.

This is not usually the sort of thing that I like, but I really, really liked Lavin. She was perfect for this book. Really recommend this in audio book format - 4 stars - and suspect that if I'd just read this in the physical book form that it only would have been about a 3.5 or even 3.25 for me.

I don't think I'll be buying this one, but I wouldn't mind listening to Lavin read it again.

Cover was just average - the red and yellow title is really in the way.

Currently Reading

The Cavalier of the Apocalypse - Bookmark rests at Page 208 of 283 pages. Last touched on 8/15/2018
Otherland: River of Blue Fire - Bookmark rests at Page 328 of 675 pages. Last touched on 8/11/2018
Thomas Hardy - Bookmark rests at Page 186 of 578 pages. Last touched on 8/12/2018
The Story of Edgar Sawtelle - Bookmark rests at Page 112 of 562 pages. Last touched on 8/08/2018
The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire Vol. 1 - Bookmark rests at 738 of 840 pages. Last touched on 8/08/2018
The Battle of Paoli - Bookmark rests at 21 of 196 pages. Last touched on 8/08/2018
The Forsyte Saga - Bookmark rests at 158 of 715 pages. Last touched on 8/1/2018

I expect to finish TCotA today (or maybe tomorrow) and TBoP is really not doing it for me. Thomas J. Maguire is spending too much time describing uniforms of the various units and I am not really hankering to learn anything about this lesser battle of the American Revolution. I'm really just giving it a chance to grab my attention before making an eviction decision. Another ten pages, perhaps, and then I'll likely be giving it the heave-ho. And TFS is still in there - reading a chapter here and there. Hasn't gotten to the point where I am caught up enough by it to read multiple chapters at one sitting.

Hi Charlotte! Maybe you could catch up with mini-reviews? You're making good progress with the reading, at least :-)

Good suggestion, Susan. Think I will take a crack at that.

Okay - it's going to be blisterlngly hot today and I don't have to go out anywhere to work - so I will try to knock off a bunch of the books that have yet to be posted....



Book Number 33 - Flashpoints: The Emerging Crisis in Europe by George Friedman

Read for the 2018 NF Challenge (May) - Geopolitics

Borrowed from the public library

The focus is on the period of 1914 - 1945, the 31-year period during which Europe basically tried to kill itself. Friedman doesn't think that the possibility of future conflict there has been lessened any, but his belief that the reduction in Europe's importance makes it less likely. Very interesting to me and I think I want to get a copy for myself in order to re-read it even though it is a little out of date on some subjects as it was published in 2015. No Brexit, no rise of ISIS, no rise of the extreme right in general. Very interesting.

Upon reflection and reading over my notes I am giving it 3.5 stars - a higher rating than when I read it.

The cover is incredibly ugly. Likely a contender for one of the worst of the year.

Book Number 34 - The Romance of Tristan and Iseult - as retold by Joseph Bedier - from the Hilare Belloc translation

A Classic Romantic Tragedy

Really liked this very old tale. It reads out loud very well.

They still had hope for hope in the heart of men lives on lean pasture. Nice.

'Retold' 118 years ago, I found nothing obscure in it and am very glad I read it.

Gave it 4 stars

It is a keeper, but my old paperback copy of this book being tattered and stained, I would like to replace it with a finer copy. This one means nothing to me as I picked it up at a library book sale a thousand years ago.

That said - the cover art is not bad.

Book Number 35 - The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

Audio book borrowed from the library.

Science/Biography

Recommended by everyone in the world, I think.

Equal focus on the science of Henrietta Lacks' terminal illness, the unusual cells she left behind at Johns Hopkins in the 1950s and her personal story - especially that of her youngest daughter, Deborah, who was a child when her mother died. Lots of anger in the Lacks Family and their feeling that JH mistreated Henrietta and cheated her family. Plainly there is a a profound failure to understand the science of these very unusual cells as well as a terrible failure by JH to understand how vital this was to the family. The science was interesting, but this is primarily a book about a child (Deborah) in pain over her lost mother. That part was very sad.

Gave this one 3.5 stars.

If I owned this book, it would probably be a keeper, but I don't think I will seek out a copy.

The book's cover is a wash for me - a photo of Henrietta Lacks, as one might expect.

Charlotte, you're making good progress! I enjoyed Henrietta Lacks too.

Book Number 36 - Not My Father's Son by Alan Cumming

Audio book, borrowed from the library. Read by Cumming.

More Memoir than Biography

The focus is on Alan's father - Alex/Alec, his mother Mary Darling and her father Tommy Darling

Alex Cumming was a hard and cruel man - particularly with Alan. (although his treatment of the oldest son, David was pretty awful, too). He was routinely unfaithful to Mary Darling, justifying his cheating by alleging that Mary cheated on him first, and makes a point of telling Alan that he is not his son. Lots about Alan's grandfather, Tommy, and and his mysterious death in Malaysia and also about Alan's childhood and the awfulness of living under Alex' thumb. There are surprises in Alan's story, but won't mention them here.

Well told and read very well by Alan. (So far, I've found that actors are the best readers of audio books hands down.)

Gave this one 3.75 stars. I would buy this book.

The cover is - again - a cover. Not much to be said about a photo of the subject of a biography/memoir.

>106 susanj67: - Thanks, Susan! Dare I hope that I'll get all caught up today???

Book Number 37 - Peyton Place by Grace Metalious

Notorious Fiction

Borrowed from the library

Read for Book Club (June) - my choice

Been curious about this book since I was little. I remember it made a big splash at the time. My mother carried on about it a lot. I think she was jealous of Metalious - they were the same age, but Grace was a successful writer and Mother was just a wanna be with lots of pretensions.

Lots of colorful characters, scandal and deep, dark secrets in a hidebound, small New Hampshire town. Some characters (and secrets) were rather stock. Doc Swain comes particularly to mind. My favorite character was Kenny Stearns, the town handyman, when his drunken performance at the Peyton Place Pentecostal Full Gospel Church leads to him being taken for a prophet, accepted as such by the congregation and Kenny just decides to go with it and a new career is born. A page turner that was better than I thought it would be.

Gave it 3.5 stars

Would be a keeper if it hadn't been a library book. If I ever see a copy at a book sale I'll probably buy it.

The copy I got from the library is an old one - published some time in the 1950s - so naturally the dust jacket is long gone. The cover above is the one I like best. Love the way that church steeple looms over everything around it.

>108 Fourpawz2: Well Charlotte, you might!

I have also read the Alan Cumming memoir and Peyton Place! It wasn't quite as scandalous as I was expecting, but I'm not sure what I was really expecting.

Book Number 38 - A Wedding in December by Anita Shreve

A Chatterbox Recommended Book (that I just happened to have bought at a library book sale a few years ago)

Fiction (with a love story inside it)

A Reunion Book. Small group of friends who'd been together at a private school in Maine 29 years before gather at an inn in western Massachusetts (owned by one of the friends) for the wedding of two of their schoolmates. Stuff is revealed.

Not really my kind of book. Well-written enough, I suppose, but the characters' problems, heartbreaks, disappointments did not resonate with me. Perhaps it is because I have absolutely no interest in the people that I went to school with. School was not a good/fun/engaging place for me. It was my first Shreve - don't know if this was representative of the books that she writes.

Gave this one 3 stars. If it is your kind of story you'd likely give it more.

It is, however, a keeper - just in case someone picks it for the RL Book Club.

The cover gets a big ol' meh from me for the sawed-off woman and man photo. I suppose I shouldn't be too critical of that though. I expect it dates from the early days of sawed-off people covers when people were losing their heads left and right.

>110 susanj67: - I expect it was more scandalous back in the late 1950s. And the other thing about it that got everybody in a tizzy (in New Hampshire anyway) was that Grace did not go to any particular trouble to conceal the fact her characters were based on her fellow citizens and that said characters were pretty easily identified if you came from her town (Gilmanton, I think it was). I remember that reading the highly unflattering things that were said about her at the time by her neighbors - she was a terrible mother, a rotten housekeeper, low class and I got the vague impression that she drank (gasp!). In other words just low-down trash trying to get back at the townspeople because she was not one of them.

>112 Fourpawz2: Charlotte, I see. That would have made the whole thing much more interesting!

I liked A Wedding in December, although mostly for the historical story being written by one of the modern characters. I'd never heard of the Halifax explosion before, but I've searched out other things since.

Book Number 39 - The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon

Audio Book borrowed from the library - recommended by absolutely everyone in the known world (which is why I was never interested in it before now). Read by some really, really good reader - sorry I did not make note of his name back in June.

Not a mystery - which, for some unknown reason, I had gotten it into my head it was.

It is the story of Christopher Boone, an autistic teenage boy, who sets out to investigate the death of Wellington - a neighbor's dog - who'd been stuck through with a garden fork. Loved the insights into how Christopher's mind works. I was a bit freaked out when he tells about the end of Earth, the expansion of the universe coming to an end with the stars collapsing inward and everything burning up.

Gave it 4.5 stars

Definitely want this book in print.

And I'd want it to be this cover which I find to be very attractive. For some reason I did not realize until a few minutes ago that the dog is not upside down, which I had always thought before. He is just laying down.

My apologies to the world and everybody in it. You were right. This is a very, very good book.

Taking a break now. Have to go make some tuna fish salad for lunch. I really don't like fish, but if I add enough stuff - celery, onions, chopped up boiled egg, a goodly amount of mayo, pepper and - the most important part - four or five halved green olives - it tastes not too bad. Not as good as a Genoa salami sandwich on cinnamon raisin bread with Swiss cheese and some horseradish sauce, but it'll do.

>113 susanj67: - Right - I'd forgotten about the novel within a novel bit. I read a really good non-fiction book about that explosion four years ago - Curse of the Narrows. I love a good disaster book.

Okay I'm back now. The tuna fish turned out pretty well. And Jane got the benefit of the tuna can, some dark tuna bits that I won't touch with a little tuna water thrown in. Not too much tuna water, though. There's something about it which makes a cat puke it all right back up. Willie did it frequently and Jane has done it once. I expect I would do it every single time, but can't imagine ingesting tuna bits and water voluntarily. Perhaps if someone held a gun to the back of my head, I might be able to choke it down, but then there would definitely be consequences. And, in this imagined scenario, one of them would be where I would have to clean it all up. How unfair.

To continue.......

We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Shirley Jackson

Audio book borrowed from the library. Read by Bernadette Dunn

Creepy Fiction

Really liked this story of the remnants of the Blackwood family - Uncle Julian and his nieces - Constance and Merricat (who is the narrator of the story). Turns out that some years ago almost all of the Blackwoods were poisoned and died (with the exception of Uncle Julian who recovered, but has never been well since). Suspicion fell on Constance, but she was acquitted. The townspeople - almost all of them treat the Blackwoods badly and with suspicion. And then Cousin Charles Blackwood comes to stay.....

Gave this one 4.25 stars

I want this book

Ms. Dunn read this book beautifully. Wouldn't mind listening to it again.

And the cover is great too. Goes perfectly with the story.

Book Number 41 - The Walking Dead Compendium Vol. 1 by Robert Kirkman

Borrowed this massive collection of paper from my friend. I'll bet it weighs about 15 pounds.

Graphic 'Novel'

This is my last GN - I hope. I don't care how much other people insist, to me, these are just comic books. And, in this case, a pretty low-level one.So many frames of zombies uttering such classic declamations as "Gak!" and "Urgh!" and "Ongh!" or things very like that. And I mustn't forget to make note of all the frames where zombies were being obliterated with lots of 'splat!' and 'crunch!' notations.

The level of violence is very high - particularly among the humans. Nothing redeeming here, nor - well before the end - entertaining.

Gave it 2 measly stars back in June. Not sure for what. Maybe I was appreciating the quality of the paper which was pretty high quality, slick paper.

Glad to return it to my friend so that she could return it to her daughter who could then return it to her acquaintance.

Cover was awful too - just drawings from the 'book', so of course I hated it.

One might think that I really hate The Walking Dead, but I'm actually a fan of the show. My friend and I have watched all the seasons at least a couple of times. So, I guess I am impressed that the creators of the show could have made such an interesting program using this collection of dreck as a foundation. Kudos to them!

Book Number 32 - Gregor the Overlander by Suzanne Collins

Audio book borrowed from the library. Read by Paul Boehmer

YA Fiction

Actually I thought this one was meant for kids a bit younger than YA age. (Though I am not sure, exactly what the age range of YA is.)

Nothing new here. An alternate underground world (beneath NYC? I forget now.) populated by descendants of Bartholomew of Sandwich (from 17th century America), rats, bats, spiders and cockroaches. There is a prophecy (yawn), a traitor, a missing father (Gregor's) and an exceedingly precious 2 year old sister (Boots). I'm not sure if she was meant to be as precious as she seemed to me or if it was just the reader who made her sound that way.

Gave this one 3 stars at the time, but I may have to revise that.

Would not be a keeper if I hadn't borrowed it.

The cover art wasn't bad.

Book Number 43 - Attila the Hun by John Man

Chosen from my own piles and piles of unread books. Bought new a number of years ago from the area's last independent book store - since deceased. *Sob*

Biography

This was a decent bio, considering how difficult it must have been to write about such a personage. Of course Man had to reach outside of Attila's story in order to tell it and he brings in a lot about Rome and its history as well as Europe and its part in the story. He also deals with a few of the Attila myths - in particular the story of Attila's three coffins. He lays that one to rest forever while pointing out what a ridiculous story it is.

There were a few bits I was only mildly interested in - the part about some fellow in Romania (I believe) who has made it his life's work to discover (successfully) how exactly to ride the way the Huns did while firing arrows effectively at one's targets. Only marginally interesting to me. Of course, if I should ever want to learn how to do that, at least now I'll know where and who to go to.

Gave this one 3.5 stars

This is a keeper. It's small. It will not take up much room on the shelf.

Liked the cover. It is pretty decent and plainly it caught my eye in the store.

Book Number 44 - The Last One by Alexandra Oliva

Audio book borrowed from library. Read by Mike Chamberlain and Nicol Zanzarella

Dystopian/Post-Apocalyptic Fiction - sort of

So, there are a bunch of people turned loose in the American wilderness as part of a reality show where they are expected to survive using skills they may or may not have. Zoo, the protagonist (Not her real name. The producers give all the contestants names based on their jobs in real life.) is alone when the story begins and she does not know that a pandemic has fallen upon the country since the show started and she thinks that everything she sees has been staged by the producers. Even when she meets someone along the way who tries to tell her what is going on she is sure he is part of the deception. Book hits every predictable "Survivor" mark - clearly Survivor is the model for this novel - and so I think I've been cured of watching that show ever again. Oliva concentrates more on the show than the hell that is going on out in the real world.

The ending was abrupt and made the book feel unfinished. I think the ending should have been different, but wonder if the author made this choice out of a feeling that there was no other one.

Gave this 3.25 stars

Not adding this one to the library.

The cover was pretty good. I would have given it a second look in a store.

The readers were pretty good.

Charlotte, you're making great progress! I am with you on the GN issue. I think I've read just the one, which was Persepolis, and that was enough. Like you, I was late to the dog in the night-time but also enjoyed it. I still want to read that Shirley Jackson.

Book Number 45 - Gallows View by Peter Robinson

Audio book borrowed from the library. Did not make note of who the reader was

Inspector Banks mystery

Banks is coping with a peeping tom, a couple of idiots who are robbing old people and the murder of a harmless old lady. There is the additional problem of a female psychologist who has become part of the police department because the department wants to look as if it is paying proper attention to crimes against women. Banks is attracted to Jenny, but he is married. Happily.

All the crimes are solved in due course. Banks's wife is forced to catch the peeper who is a friend and has been peeping at (?) her. The robbers are stupid and get themselves caught and the murderer turned out to be the person I thought it was.

I know this is a well-respected series, but I don't think I'll be buying any of the books. Might borrow the next one from the library. Maybe.

Gave it 3.25 stars

Did not care for this cover. Don't like blue and orange together. Separately they are fine (especially orange), but together - not so much.

Eight more books to go - running out of steam. Perhaps I'll do one more.

Book Number 46 - Whose Body? by Dorothy L. Sayers

From my Kindle

Classic Mystery

The title says it all. There's a body in Mr. Thipps' tub and Sir Reuben Levy is missing. But - turns out that though the corpse does look, superficially like him, Sir R is not the dead man. Lord Peter Wimsey is engaged to get to the bottom of matters.

Lord Peter Wimsey is new to me. He is young and not afraid to take risks. An outgrowth of his being an aristocrat??? Further reading of this series is required.

Though this was written in 1923, Whose Body? did not seem as dated to me as have Christie's works from the same era.

Gave this one 3.25 stars

Really, really liked this cover.

Okay. Gotta stop for now. My paws are worn out. And its hot. And I think I'm getting a headache. And I'm thirsty. Maybe I should take a nap. Or finish a book. Whine, whine, whine.

Lord what a pain in the ass I am........

To continue....



Book Number 47 - Modern Romance: An Investigation by Aziz Ansari

Audio book borrowed from the library. Read by the author

Non-fiction social science

An exploration of modern day dating (online, texting, Facebook, etc.), its history, pitfalls and headaches.

Naturally Ansari comes down on the pro-tech side, having apparently always managed that side of his life in this way. His primary argument in favor of this is Tech's ability to open up the choices and numbers of potential mates. He is pretty honest in pointing out the down side - the perfection obsession (in all things), the time it takes (lots), the isolation. Don't think he says these things in so many words, but it becomes obvious as he goes along.

This may be the way things are, but I don't think we're better off for it.

For me, Ansari cusses too much and his repeated habit of rendering the words of the people he quotes in a Southern accent and pointing it out time after time after time got very tiresome. Yes, I get it Aziz - not everyone quoted in the book came from down south. I did like the stupid stuff that people do that he pointed out.

It was kind of interesting and most definitely depressing. Especially the part about how people who are addicted to tech don't talk to one another. It seems as if they are very close to being unable to talk to one another. Not looking good for the species.

Gave this one 3 stars - mostly because dating is not an issue for me, but partly because I found it pretty depressing. Ansari is clever and mildly amusing, but I suspect the subject may prove be too serious to be treated so lightly.

I will not be adding this one to my books.

Clever-ish cover.

Book Number 48 - Cleopatra: A Life by Stacy Schiff

From my own teetering stacks of TBR non-fiction.

Biography

Considering that Cleopatra died in 30 BCE, this is a very detailed biography. Schiff uses her ancient sources well - Plutarch, Dio, Cicero and others - but does not rely exclusively on them. She puts paid to the asp (and all other scenarios involving snakes) and shows the three primary males in Cleopatra's story for what they were. Caesar is at the end of his powers. Anthony - pleasure seeking, irresponsible, profligate second-banana who, off the battlefield was a weakling. Octavian - ruthless, deceitful, manipulative, power hungry. All of them put together were much less than she.

Cleopatra is magnificent. She dominates the landscape. Can't help but wonder what Ancient History would have been like if she'd been a man.

Gave this one 5 stars.

Needless to say it is a keeper.

I like the cover. Definite eye-catcher.

Five more books to go. Think I'll save them for the weekend. Didn't read a single thing yesterday as I was too busy here with this much neglected task.

Charlotte, you're nearly there! I thought Stacy Schiff sounded familiar, and her book The Witches is sitting in a pile to one side of my computer, so that would be why :-) Good to know her Cleopatra book is a winner too.

I've got The Witches, too, Susan! Looking forward to it, but I think it will be a while. Want to say that I don't know why I mostly keep trying to read my books in the order of their acquisition, but I think it is because I am afraid that if I just go ahead and read everything that I really want to read right away that I will be left with a huge collection of books that I am not excited to read.

Book Number 49 - Still Life with Crows by Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child

From my Series Books Basket

Horror Fiction

Bought this book last year at the giant booksale in Westport to be saved for reading during a future heatwave when my brain was sure to be all mushy. July 25th through July 28th of this year proved to be just the time for me to crack open this book.

It was not the first book in the series, but it was not confusing to read it out of order. Lots of weird, creepy murders in a small, dying town in Kansas (coincidentally taking place during a horrific heat wave). For a long time Preston and Child handle the creepy, terrifying parts of the book well, but they can't keep it up to the very end.

The best parts, I thought, were their writing about the town, some of its people and the countryside. They had a kind of "Fatal Attraction" moment toward the end of the book and it was not necessary, but am guessing that it was there because they seemed to wanted to write some more about the killer and his mother. I think they could have just killed him flat out a little earlier, but they apparently chose otherwise.

The protagonist - Pendergast - was a little too 'different', I thought, but coming into his story so far into the series I really should not criticize; there may be very good reasons why P is the way he is.

Gave this one a strong 3.25 stars

This is a keeper for now. One never knows - I might need it during a heat wave next summer.

Really like the cover. I love crows and black and red have always appealed to me.

Went to Barnes & Noble this morning to pick up a book I'd ordered from them - The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson. I tend to buy a large proportion of my books second-hand, but this book, used, was actually more expensive than new. Bodes well, I think. This book was first published almost 60 years ago and it is plainly still in demand. I'm going to make the RL Book Club read it in October.

>129 Fourpawz2: I've read books 1 and 2 in that series, Charlotte, and there has been no explanation for why Pendergast is so strange. Maybe it's in book 3! I'll let you know.

You are good to read things in some sort of order - I am forever grabbing new and shiny, which is why there are now two piles of books next to my computer.

>130 susanj67: - Interesting choice to make him like that from the get go without any explanation. Certainly hope there is some kind of explanation at some point.



Book Number 50 - A Joyful Noise by Janet Gillespie

Read for my RL Book Club. Was supposed to be for last week, but the member who chose it postponed the meeting until this week

Memoir

Written by a woman whose family has lived or summered at Westport Point for generations. Because her grandmother and aunt lived there year-round she thought of herself and the rest of her family as different from the "summer people" that natives disdain. I can understand that. But they seemed at least a little bit like summer people to me.

That said, the way in which the late Ms. Gillespie wrote of Westport in summer was right on the money. Everything - the light, the birds, the sun, the smells, the ocean, the river, the plants - were exactly as I remembered them as a child. The only thing she left out or barely covered were the autumn and winter seasons because she was very rarely there at those times of the year.

I wished that she'd had stories about the natives she and her family must have come into contact with. I can only conclude that she did not mention them at all out of some idea that they and/or their families would not like to be written about or that she and her family did not really 'see' the people who lived there the year round because the natives are about as important as a random collection of stumps. Hope it is the former rather than the latter which is definitely a 'summer people' attitude. And I found it surprising how very much her world - centered on the West Branch of the Westport River - seemed like a world away from the East Branch of the river (which was the center of my family's life for generations), when they are really very close to one another.

Gave this one 4.5 stars.

It's a keeper - mainly for the way she wrote about Westport.

The cover - a photo of the author's family at Horseneck Beach - is not great, but Partners Village Press likes to use old photos on the covers of the books they print. For me it is a good one because the massive dunes of this particular beach were wiped out in the Hurricane of '38 and will never return, so it's nice to see a photo of one.

Book Number 51 - The Legend of Colton H. Bryant by Alexandra Fuller

From my TBR piles

Biography

For some reason Fuller chose a narrative format for this non-fiction book about a young man from Wyoming and his accidental death on an oil rig. It reads exactly like fiction and it was only because it was a very short book that I kept on with it. Bryant, loved by everyone he ever met (apparently), is incredibly ordinary. Nice enough, harmless, trusting and not well-served by Fuller's treatment. He falls off the rig on Page 172 and is dead ten pages later. The drilling company skates away barely touched by the legal system and by her when they should have been pilloried.

I just hated the fictional/non-fictional way Fuller wrote this book - almost as much as I hated how she constantly had Colton indicate how good-humored he was by having him say over and over again "He-he-he."

Written in a different way Bryant's story might have gotten a higher rating from me, but this rendering is wallowing around the 2.75 star mark.

Not a keeper.

The cover is, ironically, not too bad.

Book Number 52 - The Big Burn by Timothy Egan

Non-Fiction

Borrowed from the library

A Susan Recommended Book

This is the second book by Egan that I've read this year. The Big Burn was the giant forest fire that started on August 20, 1910 in Idaho and Montana - an unbelievable wildfire that raged through the Bitteroot Mountains.

But this is not just a disaster book. It is also about early 20th century politics, The Gilded Age, the early days of the Forestry Service, forestry itself, nobility, vile behavior and heroism. It is about Big Businesses and the tycoons who ran them and while running roughshod over the country. Teddy Roosevelt - a giant among presidents and his hand-picked successor, the 340-pound William H. Taft, who, ironically was pretty much of a midget - presidentially speaking. And it was very much about Gifford Pinchot - the forest visonary who really believed that it was possible for men to control fire completely.

It was kind of weird reading this book about that particular fire when at the same time fires were, once again, raging everywhere.

Gave this one 4.5 stars

Would like a copy of this book for myself

The cover is okay. Not terrible but for me, not eye-catching.

The weather here is just beautiful now. Wish it could stay like this.



Book Number 53 - Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte

Re-read.

Audio book - borrowed from the library for a change - read by Catherine Seymour

Classic romance (?)

I have read this book on 3 previous occasions and somehow the allure - the 'thing' - that has made this a classic has always escaped me. Seymour's reading of this book made a huge difference in my appreciation of it. Raw. Brutal. Emotional. Really enjoyed it this time.

Heathcliff and Catherine are not likable people. Everyone would have been much better off if they had never met.

Rating this book at 4.5 stars now.

I have always liked this cover a lot. Found this copy in the second-hand book department of a fine old bookstore in the city that has been out of business for decades. I think I was in high school when I bought it. A fine edition that is, of course, a keeper.

>133 Fourpawz2: Charlotte, I'm glad my recommendation worked out again!

>134 Fourpawz2: I'm not sure whether I've read WH, but maybe the audio is the way to go :-)

I hope your weather holds on for a bit. We have pouring rain, which is nice for a change after the heat. Also I am now back at home instead of outside in it :-)

>135 susanj67: - Rain would be my second choice after the kind of weather we are having today. Looks as if the weather for the first half of the coming week is going to be horrible - humid and hot with way too much sun! But - at this moment - it is the perfect day. There is something special about the light at this time of year when autumn is in the offing. It is the best time of the year and I will be very happy when I see the first autumn leaf.

>136 Fourpawz2: Charlotte, enjoy it while it lasts! I noticed quite a change yesterday, so it may only be a matter of weeks until puffa season. Ooh :-)

>133 Fourpawz2: I saw that one on one of my TBR lists. Glad to see you rate it so high. I'll keep it on the list.

>138 thornton37814: - It was really good, Lori. Very interesting. Hope you enjoy it as much as I did when you get to it.

Book Number 54 - The Cavalier of the Apocalypse by Susanne Alleyn

This is a prequel to Alleyn's Game of Patience in the Aristede Ravel series of historical mysteries.

Arson and brutal murder with Freemason connections are on the table here in pre-revolutionary France. It is Ravel's first case with the policeman Brasseur. (Forget Brasseur's actual title, but will add it later.)

Apparently before Ravel slid into the policing game he was a writer of political pamphlets and teetering on the edge of being in trouble with the law himself. He gets dragged into working with Brasseur because Brasseur sees him while he is investigating the arson/murder and remembers that they used to live in the same neighborhood.

I thought that I had nailed the i.d. of the killer because of a romance that Ravel falls into in the course of the investigation, but I was wrong. And I had forgotten my Person-Who-Serves-No-Purpose rule. Sort of.

This was a very good historical mystery. I got a good sense of how Paris worked back then.

Gave this one 3.75 stars

This is a definite keeper as I like this series.

And the cover is good. Appealing.

Started Wolf Hall a couple of days ago. Again I am the last person on the planet to read a hugely popular book. I was liking it a lot. It was really moving along. And then I got to page 100 and found that the next page was number 133!!!! I'm missing 32 pages!!!!! Freaking annoyed. Times ten! This is what I get for buying books and tucking them away for 8 mortal years. If I'd read it right away - like a normal person - I could have returned it and at least gotten my money back and then bought another copy that had 101 through 132, but no. Charlotte has to be not normal. Instead I sit on it and the bookstore goes out of business in 2015. No refund. No 32 pages and my reading of this pretty good book comes to a screeching halt. So - I'm going to get it from the library (making sure while I am at the counter that it's got the pages I'm after), take it home and make copies of what my book is missing.

SO annoying!!

Charlotte, how annoying about Wolf Hall! It's a long time since I've encountered missing pages, although I still remember two volumes of the Heidi series that were missing great chunks. They had belonged to an aunt, and should have been thrown away decades before they got to me. Like you, I had to go to the library and read the missing bits. I hope you can find it easily.

Book Number 55 - Brooklyn by Colm Toibin

Fiction

The story of Eilis Lacey who emigrates to the US from Post- WWII Ireland mostly because her sister Rose (a forceful young woman) wants her to. Eilis gets a job at a department store and a room at boarding house beforehand and then she is off to Brooklyn. In short order she is taking a course in accountancy at Brooklyn Collage, meets a young man named Tony Fiorello. Tony falls for her almost immediately, but it takes Eilis a lot longer to fall for him.

Back in Ireland Rose dies in her sleep and Eilis goes home for a month because her mother is very lonely. However, before she leaves she and Tony - at his instigation - marry secretly. Once Eilis is at home her mother behaves as though she is never leaving Ireland again. What, oh what, is Eilis going to do?

Overall, I liked this book. The period felt right and Eilis was interesting. Gave it 3.5 stars

The cover was very nice - looked just stores of that era. The only thing wrong about it was that the store Eilis describes had to have been much larger than this little hole in the wall place.

If this book had not been borrowed from a friend it would have been a keeper.

Book Number 56 - Shallow Graves: The Hunt for the New Bedford Highway Serial Killer by Maureen Boyle

Non-Fiction

This one is about the serial killings that began in the 1980s in my own community. I remember the murders very well - partially because one of the murders had a slight impact on one aspect of the job I had at that time.

Boyle did a good job on the subject. I learned some things that I had not known previously about the killings and about the district attorney's case against against his main suspect. After reading this account of the murders and the efforts made to bring the actual murderer to justice, I am pretty certain that the district attorney, Ron Pina, royally messed up this case. It is highly doubtful that it will ever be solved. The prime suspects are dead now and it seems unlikely that any new information will ever turn up.

Gave this one 4.5 stars, but that may be a bit generous.

The cover is not great.

This was a library book, but I think I might buy it at some point.

Hi Charlotte! Lovely to see you back. I liked Brooklyn when I read it too. Shallow Graves sounds grisly - I checked my library catalogue to see if perhaps the elibrary had it (we get quite a bit of "niche" US stuff that way) and it didn't, but there are quite a few other "Shallow Graves". Fortunately I managed to resist them all :-)

Have missed you this year, Charlotte.

Hope your Thanksgiving Weekend was a wonderful one.

>145 PaulCranswick: - Thanks, Paul. If not wonderful it was at least pretty good. Spent half of it with my friend and her family as I have done for a decade or so now.

I have been worse than ever this year about keeping up with LT. I'll have to scramble to get caught up before the end of the year. Have 19 books to say something about as of this last Sunday - much better than last year. Maybe next year I can manage to read and post.

Book Number 57 - At Home by Bill Bryson - Loved this book. Thought it was very clever for Bryson to use his own house as the inspriation/jumping off point for this book's information about hundreds of different things and people.

This was a borrowed audio book (from the library), but I do want to get a physical copy for my shelves. This is contrary to the whole idea of culling and library-borrowing but some of the time I just really want to add another to my books.

Like the cover - simple with those colors that I like. Liked the lock, too. Sometimes bookcovers are best when they are simple.

Gave this one 5 stars.

Book Number 58 - Having the Builders In by Reay Tannahill - A Chatterbox recommended book

This was a light sort of book - quite the sort of thing one might want to read in the summer when the heat is frying your brain. (Can hardly remember now on December 1st how miserable the weather was back at the end of August.)

However, for me, this book was only mildly interesting. It is only vaguely amusing - 15 year old Lady Susanna travels to the home of her betrothed - Gervase - prior to her wedding. She is a little immature and not very long after she arrives she falls in love with Gervase's best friend, Piers.

There is a sort of mystery going on at the same time. Dame Constance - Lady Susanna's widowed mother-in-law-to-be - is having work done on the castle and things keep going wrong. There is also a thief in residence. These things - plus Lady S's romantic problems - are eventually concluded successfully.

An okay book that, sadly, has not earned the right to occupy a place on my shelves and was donated to the Mattapoisett Library earlier this week.

The cover was inoffensive.

Gave this one 3 stars.

Book Number 59 - The Forever King by Molly Cochran and Warren Murphy

This book has been lurking on my shelves for literally years - unread and ignored.

An Arthurian fantasy which has Arthur re-incarnated in the form of a ten year old American boy. He and his much older sister are pursued by the relentless agents of Saladin - The Saladin - who has been alive for thousands of years. Saladin is truly sinister and evil - conditions brought on, apparently, by his immortality. I guess one gets a little arrogant about things generally when one just doesn't die.

Helping Arthur and his sister is an ex-FBI man who is washed up and a drunk. At this distance I don't recall whether he is Galahad or a reincarnation of him, but I think it is the former, but somehow does not fully remember this about himself. And Merlin turns up - another immortal - which is as it should be, I think.

Quite entertaining and I do want to find out what happens to Arthur at the Millennium, which means this one is a keeper and also that I'm going to be acquiring the 2nd book in the series.

I think that the cover of this book led to its taking me so very long to actually read it. It seems very blah to me and I really thought that it was a different book altogether and one that I was, so many years after its purchase, not much interested in anymore. So it was a nice surprise when I actually found myself enjoying it.

Gave this one four stars.

Hi Charlotte! I remember reading the Reay Tannahill one and enjoying it, but I agree that it was pretty silly :-) The Forever King sounds like an interesting premise, but I see what you mean about the cover vs the actual book. I keep looking up at Through a Glass Darkly which I bought after you read it, and which is sitting on the bookshelves next to my computer. I remember loving it when I read it years ago and I intend to reread it. But I keep intending and not actually picking it up. I'll have to see if it fits a category for next year's PopSugar challenge, but the olde worlde book categories seem to have been thrown out of the window and replaced by all sorts of stuff I've never heard of. Eventually, I suppose, all the old stuff will be "rediscovered" and I will feel very up to date :-)

I hope you're not being snowed on. I think Booky Work Friend has spent the last week in Boston, so I'll get an update tomorrow.

Stopping by to say hello Charlotte! I've been struggling to keep up with LT over the last few months too.

>150 susanj67: - I thought it was a very forgettable book. Harmless, but not memorable.
As you undoubtedly know by now, your Booky Work Friend found no snow in Boston and that is a good thing, but there has been plenty of cold weather in this neck of the woods. We are in another spell of unusually cold weather right now and it is getting downright tedious.

>151 souloftherose: - Hi Heather! I have been just awful this year. I think it would be impossible for me to be any worse next year and still maintain a presence on LT.



Book Number 60 - The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows

Read this one for the Real Life Book Club. Not my choice

I am not a fan of epistolary novels and so this being of that type, it was pre-doomed to not be a favorite of mine. Don't know exactly why I dislike this method of telling a story so much, but for some reason when confronted with a book of this kind I want to sigh heavily and shove it to the bottom of a closet somewhere and forget all about it. In the case of this particular one I think I would rather have read a non-fiction book about Guernsey in WW2 for I think I would have gotten a lot more out of it than a novel loaded with quirky, but predictable characters such as those I found in TGLaPPPS. To the good I bought it for a dollar at a local book sale several years ago so when it was picked for the RL book club read in September I didn't have to cast about for a library copy or shell out real money for my own copy.

Giving it 3.25 stars because it was not horribly written - just not a book I liked awfully well.

Happily I donated it to the Mattapoisett Library book sale last week and with luck it will find a home with someone who enjoys this sort of book.

The cover is not dreadful, but would have been better if there had been less in the way of print upon it.

Meant to go on with a couple of other books that I have read when I was here the other day, but Jane just had to get between me and the keyboard so I had to give it up. To continue...



Book Number 61 - Shakespeare:The World as Stage by Bill Bryson

Was surprised that I did not love this the way that I did At Home. Of course Shakespeare has to be a difficult topic for a writer - so little is known about him - naturally there was little that was new that Bryson could bring to the subject. I think that the Anthony Burgess book about Shakespeare that I read a couple of years ago told me everything that there is to know. Best chapter in this book, IMO, was the last one - "Claimants".

Gave it a skimpy 3 stars.

Luckily it was borrowed from a friend so I did not have to palm it off on the library for their books sale.

Did not care for the cover, either.

Book Number 62 - Girl, Interrupted by Susanna Kaysen

For some reason I thought that this book was going to be fiction (probably because of the movie which I saw when it came out years ago), but it was not. The author was a patient at McLean Hospital in Massachusetts for about a year and a half when she was in her late teens and diagnosed with depression and other problems. She was not severely disturbed and ended up in a ward other girls seemingly with not very severe issues. One of those girls, though, ended up killing herself after she was released. If I am remembering correctly - it's been 3 months since I read this - the girl chose to leave the hospital so one could argue that it was not the fault of McLean.

There are lots of stories - mostly the stories of patients other than Kaysen. Clearly she had problems, but they seemed not awfully interesting compared to everyone else's. The book's focus was quite narrow. There was virtually nothing about her family or friends. It was hard to know how afflicted she was.

Gave this one 3 stars. Readable, but not wildly interesting to me.

This one was not a keeper and it has been sent to the book sale in Mattapoisett

As for the cover - I hated it. That brown cover with those long spidery fingers could not have attracted many buyers on their own. It might very well be the winner of the year's worst cover.

Book Number 63 - Fire and Fury:Inside the Trump White House by Michael Wolff

Borrowed this audiobook from the library.

I have no complaints about the book though it was a bit tabloid-y. It was the reader - Holter Graham - that I could not stand. He read the whole book in a kind of excited way that seemed a little bit adolescent. The book, as read by Mr. Graham was rife with verbal air quotes. But, the most irritating thing to me was his insistence on pronouncing the word 'incredulity' as 'incredoolity'. Maybe somewhere this is indeed how it is pronounced, but in my world it most definitely is not pronounced that way. It made me want to rip off my ears.

Gave the book 3.25 stars.

Not anything I would want to own. Am much more interested in Woodward's Fear:Trump in the White House and am only about #100 in line for that at my library.

The cover of this book is rather blah. Nothing there to entice me into slipping it off the bookstore shelf.

Book Number 64 - The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid by Bill Bryson -

This memoir of Bryson's early years in Des Moines, IA had some very amusing bits. As he is only two years older than I, there were a lot of things in it that I recognized. I went on a trip to Iowa with my grandparents many years ago and I'd since forgotten about Bishop's Cafeteria in the time since. Reading about Bryson's experiences there when he was a boy brought it all back to me.

Turns out we have some other things in common - namely our grandfathers. His grandfather was an RFD mail carrier as was mine. His owned a small farm - mine, too - and rented land out to other farmers - as did mine. And even more weirdly his grandfather favored the same nighttime outfit that mine did - basically nothing from the waist down. (Though my granny did compel Grandpa to climb into his trousers immediately upon rising in the morning once the grandchildren came along.)

Very entertaining.

Gave this one 3.5 stars

This book was borrowed from a friend, but I would probably buy it if I ran across it in a book sale somewhere.

Hate this cover.

Book Number 65 - Being a Rockefeller, Becoming Myself: A Memoir by Eileen Rockefeller - audio book borrowed from the library

Did not love this poor-little-rich-girl memoir very much. Eileen Rockefeller, youngest daughter of David Rockefeller, works really hard at trying to convince one that she was very much like ordinary people. Mommy issues, sibling issues, learning difficulties (dyslexia), assertiveness issues, marital issues - these things were sprinkled throughout her story of a life of privilege. She spends a lot of time telling the not awfully interesting (to me) tale of her life and I have no doubt that it was very likely all completely accurate. I was kind of struck her weird requirement, when deciding upon the kind of man she wanted as a mate, that her husband-to-be had to have had a near-death experience. Huh? But - she found one.

And, sadly, she did not get high marks for her reading. Overall her delivery of her life's story was - sad.

Gave this one 3 stars.

I will not be buying a copy of this book

The cover - the author with her father - is very straightforward and expected.

Book Number 66 - Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? by Mindy Kaling - library audio book read by Mindy

A collection of frothy essays about Mindy's life. Entertaining.

I like Mindy. This fellow Bay-stater, is the very definition of vivacious and I've enjoyed her ever since her days on "The Office". At first I hated the show itself, but it grew on me.

The essays seem 100% genuine and very like Mindy - honest and feisty.

Rated this one at 3.25+

Am not adding this book to my library, but I would borrow the audio book from the library again.

The cover is fine - it's Mindy. Enough said.

Is it wrong that I'm not really liking Wolf Hall?

>159 Fourpawz2: Dear Charlotte,

Yes.

Keep going.

>156 Fourpawz2: That sounds like a good one!

>159 Fourpawz2: No, I didn't like it either....

>160 susanj67: - On your advice, Susan, I will keep on keeping on.

>161 FAMeulstee: - And I'm very glad to know, Anita, that I am not the only one.

Book Number 67 - Otherland: River of Blue Fire by Tad Williams

Williams still has me very interested in this series. He reveals little of what is really going on. For much of the time Renie's group is separated into three groups - each of them visiting simulations that are all very real and very frightening (most of the time.) At no time does one group visit a simulation after another group has left it. And there is no contact between them and the Paul Jonas character, though I am pretty sure that they must meet up at some point. For me the creepiest simulation was the one that Renie and Xabbu were trapped in for ages - a kind of bent Wizard of Oz world where everything has gone very, very wrong.

Looking forward to the next one (the last one?) very much. Hope it measures up to the first two.

Gave this one 4 stars

A definite keeper. I will upgrade all of these to a better edition if I ever run across them.

The cover art is not bad, but once again there is far too much print, taking up far too much space. I'm feeling as though I am being kind of whiney about this eternal complaint of mine. Clearly these covers that I don't like don't keep the books from selling and I should stop whinging on about them.

Book Number 68 - Quietly in Their Sleep by Donna Leon

So far this is the best Commissario Brunetti mystery that I've read. Dead patients in a nursing home that a young nursing sister thinks may have been killed for their money. At first Brunetti can't find much there, but his investigations begin to raise flags that he can't ignore.

Opus Dei come into play in a big way and while Brunetti knows that the plainly insane Benedetta Lerini killed her father and also who it was who tried to kill the young nun, he can do nothing because OD is too powerful.

Very believable.

Gave this one 4 stars

Another keeper

This cover of my copy is so orange and so bright that it almost totally obscures the subject of the cover. An unsuccessful cover, I think, but it does look a little better here.

Book Number 69 - The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson - Read for RL Book Club (my choice)

This is classic is not horror - I picked it because it was October - but it is definitely creepy. And though it had its moments - the hand-holding incident, the doors of the mansion that would not stay open no matter how many people opened them, the times when people were trapped in rooms while some unseen 'something' pounded on the walls and doors until the rooms' occupants were terrified while other people not in the room with them did not hear or notice a thing - somehow I expected more.

Gave this one 3.5 stars for now. It is a keeper that needs to be re-read.

The cover art is good, but it is clearly nothing like Hill House and not scary at all.

All in all, I wish that I'd chosen We Have Always Lived in the Castle for the book club instead.

Happy Christmas, Charlotte! I keep meaning to try some Shirley Jackson. The Haunting of Hill House has been made into a Netflix series, but it's supposed to be very scary.

I hope Wolf Hall is grabbing you more than it originally did :-)

Happy holidays, Charlotte.

>167 PaulCranswick:, >168 thornton37814: - Thank you, Paul! Thank you, Lori!

Okay I have to get this stuff done now! Or at least by tomorrow. For shame, Charlotte!



Book Number 70 - A Demon Summer by G.M. Malliet - Book 4 of the Max Tudor mystery series

Virtually all of this book takes place away from Max's home village of Nether Monkslip - at Monkford Abbey where, eventually, Lord Lislelivet is killed. Max happens to be there at the abbey investigating possible financial malfeasance by an unknown Sister. Max ends up as DCI Cotton's man on the inside in the investigation of the murder.

Max's unravelling of the truth - laid out in vintage Poirot fashion - is incredibly convoluted. The upshot is - Liselivet was a horrible man who deserved death. So awful is this man that it is just possible that no one will be prosecuted for his murder.

Max's romance with his decidedly non-Christian girlfriend (and the mother of his unborn child) makes a bit more progress.

Borrowed this book from the library as I have all the previous books in the series.

Gave it 3.25 stars on account of the convolutedness (yes, I know this is not a word) of it.

The cover was pretty - even if there is too much space given over to print.

Book Number 71 - The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls

Walls' memoir of her family, who lived in California, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico and New York City, chronicles the lives of her siblings and parents and the filthy squalor and unimaginable (to me) chaos in which they lived.The family is almost always flat broke yet Dad was intelligent (and a drunk) and Mom is talented and a teacher (and a selfish hoarder). Both of them believed that the lives their children were been forced to live (by their parents) built character. Filth, dirt, and starvation are the norm in the Walls' household. Mom, it turned out, was an heiress, of sorts; when her children were quite young she inherited land in Texas that was likely worth a million dollars. She and her husband wanted to live as they did. Luckily the three eldest children were very tough and rose above the hands that they had been dealt. Still - this book made me very angry with these people. No children anywhere should have to suffer in this way. I know it does happen - here and in many other places in the world - but it shouldn't. And it especially should not happen to children whose parents, apparently had the ability to make their lives much better than they did.

This book is a keeper.

Gave it 4 stars

The cover is nothing special.

Book Number 72 - City of the Lost by Kelley Armstrong

A surprisingly good mystery-thriller. The first book in the Casey Duncan series

Premise - there is a town in far northern Canada - totally off the grid - where a small rotating population of people shelter for three years from their old life and world, escaping abusive mates, their notoriety, hiding from the mob/gangs, avoiding prosecution for crimes where there are extenuating circumstances, etc. Casey is in this place because of her friend, Diana, getting away from her notoriety while Diana escapes an abusive ex-husband. In Rockton, Casey is a detective - as she was in her old life in the south. She, as the only detective in town, is quickly assigned to an apparent serial killer case, working with the town sheriff - Eric Dalton, the only person in town who is a native and does not have a sketchy past. She finds him annoying at first, but comes to respect him before eventually falling in love with him.

I found the book intriguing; Armstrong makes the possibility of such a place sound pretty plausible and Casey and Dalton are ultimately likable, though flawed, characters.

Even though I figured out who the killer was well before the reveal I enjoyed the story and quickly ordered the second in the series from the library.

Gave it 4 stars.

Would have been a keeper if it hadn't been borrowed.

The cover was quite good. Atmospheric even if - once again - it had way too much print.

Book Number 73 - Death on the Nile by Agatha Christie

These Poirot novels keep getting sillier and sillier. At one point Christie has 17+ possibilities for the murderer. Of course the number goes down as the bodies pile up, but still...

Christie manages to include 2 shipboard romances and a spy - oh, how she loves her spies! The spy was my personal choice as he served no purpose, but then Col. Race shows up rather late - Poirot had been, uncharacteristically going it alone, sans sidekick. Race steps in to play the part of sidekick while at the same time giving the spy a reason for being there. Rats!

I can't wait to get to another Miss Marple book. I still want - even after all these years - to continue reading chronologically, but Poirot is making it very difficult for me to stick with it.

It's a keeper, of course.

Gave this one 3.75 stars in spite of the silliness.

I like the cover. Looks hot. And humid.

Book Number 74 - A Darkness Absolute by Kelley Armstrong

Book number 2 in the Casey Duncan series

There is another killer on the loose in Rockton and Casey is on the, er, case. This killer is particularly vile and he/she may not be a citizen of Rockton, but someone else entirely. Once again I did figure out the perpetrator; my unnecessary person method of detection proved (partially) effective again.

Casey and Dalton are living together by now - forced to by the addition of a cute little Newfoundland puppy to the mix - and they seem to be making progress. Will be interesting to see if Armstrong has them marry and how she can do it in this place where virtually no one can stay longer than three years.

4 stars for this one.

Would be a keeper if I hadn't had to return it to the library.

And the cover is another good one.

Book Number 75 - The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver - Read for my RL Book Club

Have avoided this book for years - mainly because of its huge popularity. Yes, I know this does not make any sense, but it is a strange quirk - one of hundreds, I am afraid - that I have. Super popular, you say? Then I don't want anything to do with it. And then eventually I come around and am forced to agree - as I did with this book - that it is a great book. A classic even. It was a terrible time and situation. The political side is shameful. Such arrogance, deceit, greed and a thousand other sins. But it is beautiful as well

Leah was my favorite character, but I liked Rachel, too. So very flawed, but not concealing it. Got very tired of Adah as a child. Her backward sentences and her delight in her own cleverness. And Nathan - now there's a really good argument against war. His kind, today, would be gunning down people at the mall.

Got this book free on kindle some years ago. It's a definite keeper and I would like a physical copy instead, now.

Gave this one 4.5 stars.

Bland cover

Congratulations on reaching 75, Charlotte! :-)

Congrats!

Congrats on 75!

>175 FAMeulstee:, >176 drneutron:, >177 thornton37814: - Thanks, guys! Haven't reached the goal since back in 2016.



Book Number 76 - The Great Fortune by Olivia Manning - the first book in her Balkan Trilogy

Quite liked this 1960 novel about Bucharest in the year before the Nazis finished their conquest of the European continent.

The focus is on Guy and Harriet Pringle - English newlyweds who are setting up house in Bucharest. He is a professor returning to his job. He seems to be a Communist sympathizer, but in more of an intellectual way and not in a subversive way. There are many English and Romanian characters in the book but the standout is Prince Yakimov - a half-White Russian (the 'White' is always emphasized by him when speaking of his background), half-British ne'er-do-well, remittance man. He is constantly sponging off of everyone around him and promising to pay back what he has borrowed when his remittance comes in. He spends two-thirds of the book moaning about how unfortunate he is referring to himself as "Your poor old Yaki". And then he discovers his hidden talent.

At this point in the looming conflict the people in Bucharest are doing their best to believe that the Nazis will never invade and watch developments in other threatened countries with a kind of hopefulness. If the Nazis are focused on Poland (or Czechoslovakia or France) they are not looking at Romania.

The story is told mainly from Harriet's viewpoint. The couple married suddenly and while Guy has returned to a place and a people he knows and loves, she is less happy. Especially when she realizes that one of the Romanians she has met is an old girlfriend of Guy's who still has ambitions of landing him in spite of his new marriage.

I did like this book quite a bit. Felt very genuine. Definitely moving on to the next book in the series.

Gave it 4.25 stars

A keeper, of course.

For me the cover art is not good, but it does seem right for the period.

Book No. 77 - Seven Days of Us by Francesca Hornak - audio book

The Birch family (Andrew, Emma, Phoebe and Olivia) are confined to their country home when Olivia - a medical doctor - returns to England at Christmas-time after fighting a deadly epidemic in Africa. (Think Doctors Without Borders and a disease similar to Ebola.) The family is already a little dysfunctional so no one except maybe Emma (the mother) is looking forward to the forced togetherness. And of course there are several developments that the reader is made aware of prior to the family's ten-day lock up in the country. Andrew's illegitimate American son has decided to introduce himself to his previously unknown English relatives, Emma receives a cancer diagnosis just before Olivia's arrival which she decides to keep a secret until the New Year. Feather-headed Phoebe is newly engaged, but does not know that her fiance, George, is in denial about his sexuality, Olivia is in love with Sean, a fellow doctor, who is returning to Ireland and his own quarantine there and she has no intention of sharing anything about him with her family.

It is mostly light escapism in a Christmas setting.There is one major occurrence that I did not see coming.

Jilly Bond - the Reader - sounded exactly like Sharon Osbourne when she was doing her Emma voice, which was strange for the first ten minutes or so. She did a really good job and I wouldn't mind seeing how she does with a different book.

I found this book entertaining and strangely comforting.

I would listen to it again and am pretty sure that I would be okay reading an actual physical copy of it as well.

Liked this cover art. It fit the tone of the book.

Book Number 78 - Educated: A Memoir by Tara Westover

Riveting memoir of Westover's 32 years of life, so far. Born in Idaho to fundamentalist Mormon parents, she was kept from any kind of formal education by Dad's paranoid obsession with government conspiracies. There is no doubt that Dad is not "right", but he is supported in his insanity by his wife and four of his children. Dad is awfully industrious in his junkyard business, but the physical damage to his children, the danger he and they were exposed to is chilling. I was very surprised to find out that Dad and son Shawn did not die in the course of Tara's story - something terrible was always happening to them. Dad does not believe in any medical care but that provided by Mom and she did care for her children and husband with her collection of oils, tinctures and salves to the best of her considerable ability. They survived their injuries -numerous gouges, gashes, multiple head injuries (Shawn) and a terrifying explosion (Dad), but the physical damage is mostly appalling. And needless to say there is an awful lot of emotional damage as well. The author is nearly crippled by her feelings of guilt which makes her accomplishments in academics just that much more stunning. She got a PhD from Cambridge, for Pete's sake.

Is it my imagination or are there pockets of this country that just seem to be swarming with these kinds of religious fanatics?

Very well written. Her accomplishments and those of two of her brothers are quite remarkable.

Gave this one 5 stars.

A library book that I will have to get a copy of for myself.

Not a fan of the cover. Appropriate, I suppose, but for me, kind of 'meh'.

And finally - the end!!!!!



Book Number 79 - Killers of the Flower Moon by David Grann

The story of the murders of multiple members the Osage tribe in Oklahoma, focusing on the near eradication of the Burkhart family in a plot to gain control of their headrights which the murderers wanted in order to steal lucrative Osage oil leases. The Osage were treated as incompetents in the early 20th century - in need of white guardians who had control of their finances. Molly Burkhart was the one survivor - ultimately - of her family. Her mother, two sisters, white brother-in-law were all murdered in one way or another by the henchmen of William Hale, local white bigwig, in a variety of ways (gunshot, poisoning, torn apart in a house explosion). It is also the story of the early days of the FBI and of one FBI man in particular - Tom White, a former Texas Ranger and a truly fine human being.

Grann brings up the issue of murders that occurred both before and after the Burkhart murders after he finishes the Burkhart stories and for me they kind of felt tacked on. I think the book would have been better if he'd found some way to tell all the stories together instead of compartmentalizing them in the way he did.

But - my biggest complaint about this book - IT HAS NO INDEX!!!! Huge failing in a non-fiction book. I, for one, always want an index so that I can look for things that occurred earlier in my reading. How the hell am I supposed to find these things without an index?????

A bare four stars for this book on account of that index thing.

A keeper - but for the story and not the writing. I think in future I won't be buying Grann's books, but I would borrow them from the library for he does write about interesting subjects.

And there is way too much print on the front of this book. It ruins a really nice cover.