Genny's Gramarye 2012: Quire 4

The Albert Dock, Liverpool, August 2012

Memories of a (rare) very hot, although somewhat cloudy, day in Liverpool during my summer break staying at Gladstone's Library. Liverpool is only about half an hour away on the train from Hawarden in North Wales. Gladstone himself was born in Liverpool, and ended up living at Hawarden Castle (down the road from where the library is) because it belonged to his wife's family, the Glynnes, who had no surviving male heirs.

Another new thread - welcome again to visitors and friends new and old, whether you are lurking or commenting, I'm glad you have paid me a visit.

Currently reading:

Inside the Whale and other essays - George Orwell
Not the end of the world - Kate Atkinson
The Virago Book of Victorian Ghost Stories ed Richard Dalby
The World's Wife - Carol Ann Duffy - to be honest, this is verging on stalled, I haven't read any in months...
Les Misérables - Victor Hugo (audiobook) 25% completed

My 'Currently Reading' collection used to contain quite a few books which I started reading but have not managed to finish - not usually because I didn't like the book but because I'm not lways good at keeping several books on the go at once, and having been distracted from a book it can take me a long time to get back into it again. So at the start of this year I moved all these (interesting that many of them are non-fiction) into a new collection called 'Stalled', and hope to return to finish them at some point. I'll list the stalled books here, to remind me, and so that I can cross them off once read.

Stalled - to pick up again soon...
Martin Luther King - Godfrey Hodgson (paused in reading because I've mislaid the book!)
Presiding like a woman
The life and death of Mary Wollstonecraft (another mislaid book, then found it - but still haven't picked it up again!)
The broken sword
Beowulf: a new verse translation
Landmarks: an Ignatian journey
Eating for England
Mysteries
Planet Narnia
We - John Dickinson
If you meet George Herbert on the road, kill him
The God Delusion
Gilead I really must make time to return to this - I just feel I need a peaceful moment, and there aren't any!
Animal, Vegetable, Miracle
The Picture of Dorian Gray

Posting rate changes:
5,156, 2.25 on 3.11.12
5,195, 2.26 on 11.11.12 = 39 in 8 days = c. 5/day.
5,269, 2.27 on 4.12.12 = 74 in 23 days = c. 3/day
5,352, 2.28 on 27.12.12 = 83 in 23 days = c 3.5/day
5,394, 2.29 on 30.12.12 = 42 in 3 days = 14/day
5,401, 2.3 on 31.12.12 = 7 in 1 day
5,472, 2.32 on 1.1.13 = 71 in 1 day

The Albert Dock again – with Tate Liverpool on the left. I ran out of time to visit more than the foyer on this trip – next year I’ll do the Tate first!

Books read – October onward

86. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie - Muriel Spark - 6.10 - own book
87. Espresso Tales - Alexander McCall Smith - 11.10 - own book
88. Jennie - Paul Gallico - 14.10 - own book - re-read
89. Liza's England - 15.10 - own book
90. Four Grove booklets (28 pages each) - finished 19.10 - own copies
Meetings, better meetings! - Joanna Cox
Thirty ways to use worship in music - John Leach
Dealing with personal criticism - Ali Walton
Exploring humility: towards a healthy sense of self - Mark Mills-Powell
91. Black water rising - Attica Locke - 22.10 - own book
92. Carbonel - Barbara Sleigh - 23.10 - own book
93. The Kingdom of Carbonel - Barbara Sleigh - 28.10 - own book
94. Carbonel and Calidor - Barbara Sleigh - 29.10 - own book

November
95. The Bodleian Murders ed Jane Stemp - 3.11 - own book
96. Venetia - Georgette Heyer - 6.11 - own book
97. The Game of Kings - Dorothy Dunnett - 10.11 - own book.
98. The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien - 11.11 -Audiobook - reread
99. Small Gods - Terry Pratchett - 12.11 - own book
100. The Pickwick Papers - Dickens - 14.11 -own ebook
101. Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell - 19.11 - own book
102. The Grand Sophy - Georgette Heyer - 26.11 - own book
103. The Hundred-Year-Old Man who Climbed out of the Window and Disappeared - Jonas Jonasson - 29.11 - own e-book (book group read)

December
104. Barchester Towers - Anthony Trollope - 5.12 - free ebook - re-read
105. The Man in the Queue - Josephine Tey - 7.12 - own book
106. Not the end of the world - Kate Atkinson - 14.12 - own book
107. The Outing - Dylan Thomas - 14.12 - own book - re-read
108. A Highland Christmas - M C Beaton - 19.12 - own ebook
109. Tolkien and the Great War - John Garth - 26.12 - own book
110. The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding - Agatha Christie - 27.12 - own book
111. Moominland Midwinter - Tove Jansson - 27.12 - own book
112. Death Comes as the End - Agatha Christie - 29.12 - own book
113. The World's Wife - Carol Ann Duffy - 31.12 - own book
114. At Mrs Lippincote's - Elizabeth Taylor - 31.12 - own book

Books read Jan-Sept

January
1. The Adventures of Tom Bombadil - J R R Tolkien - Audiobook - 2.1 - Reviewed 3.5 stars
2. Mr Ives' Christmas - Oscar Hijuelos - 14.1
3. Betrayal - Karin Alvtegen - eBook - 16.1
4. Hand in Glove - Ngaio Marsh - 21.1
5. The Siege - Helen Dunmore - 29.1
6. The Picture of Dorian Gray - Oscar Wilde - 31.1 - e-Book
7. Letter from Birmingham Jail - Martin Luther King - 31.1 - e-Book

February
8. The Winter Sleepwalker - Joan Aiken - 3.2 Reviewed 4 stars
9. Invitation to the Waltz - Rosamond Lehmann - 14.2
10. Faceless Killers - Henning Mankell - 15.2
11. Cheerfulness Breaks In - Angela Thirkell - 15.2
12. A Year Lost and Found - Michael Mayne - 16.2
13. The Voice of the Violin - Andrea Camilleri - 16.2
14. Selected Poems: U A Fanthorpe - 17.2
15. A Game of Thrones - George R R Martin - 25.2
16. A Clash of Kings - George R R Martin - 29.2

March
17. Death Comes to Pemberley - P D James - 3.3
18. A Stitch in Time - Penelope Lively - 6.3
19. A Storm of Swords 1: Steel and Snow - George R R Martin - 8.3
20. A Storm of Swords 2: Blood and Gold - George R R Martin - 10.3
21. A fountain filled with blood - Julia Spencer-Fleming - 13.3
22. Revelation - C J Sansom - 19.3
23. The mysterious affair at Styles - Agatha Christie - 20.3
24. Poor Caroline - Winifred Holtby - 21.3
25. Txtng: The Gr8 Db8 - David Crystal - 23.3
26. Foundation - Isaac Asimov - 24.3
27. Dark Vineyard - Martin Walker - 28.3
28. The Coffin Trail - Martin Edwards - 29.3

April
29. Silence of the Grave - Indridason - 2.4
30. The scent of the night - Camilleri - 5.4
31. Black Diamond - Martin Walker - 9.4
32. Shark's Fin and Sichuan Pepper - Fuchsia Dunlop - 11.4
33. The summer book - Tove Janssen - 12.4
34. Don't Look Back - Karin Fossum - 13.4
35. The Liar - Stephen Fry - 15.4
36. Pure - Andrew Miller - 15.4
37. Grave Mistake - Ngaio Marsh - 19.4
38. The Convenient Marriage - Georgette Heyer - 21.4
39. Fatherland - Robert Harris - 24.4
40. A dubious legacy - Mary Wesley - 26.4
41. Odd and the Frost Giants - Neil Gaiman - 28.4
42. The True Darcy Spirit - Elizabeth Aston - 30.4

May
43. Salmon fishing in the Yemen - Paul Torday - 1.5
44. Cold shoulder road - Joan Aiken - 2.5
45. Midwinter Nightingale - Joan Aiken 4.5
46. The witch of Clatteringshaws - Joan Aiken - 7.5
47. Raven black - 10.5
48. Gillespie and I - Jane Harris - 15.5
49. Sacred Diary of Adrian Plass, Christian Speaker - Adrian Plass - 18.5
50. The Weather in the Streets - Rosamond Lehmann - 19.5
51. Indemnity only - Sara Paretsky - 22.5
52. Sheepfarmer's daughter - Elizabeth Moon - 23.5
53. Up jumps the devil - Margaret Maron - 26.5
54. Divided allegiance - Elizabeth Moon - 29.5
55. Witches abroad - Terry Pratchett - 31.5

June
56. Heartstone - C J Sansom - 4.6
57. Writing at the Kitchen Table - Artemis Cooper - 7.6
58. The woman in white - Wilkie Collins - 14.6
59. The crossing places - Elly Griffiths - 15.6
60. On Chesil Beach - Ian McEwan - 16.6
61. The Gabriel hounds - Mary Stewart - 18.6
62. Bring up the bodies - Hilary Mantel - 25.6
63. Rounding the mark - Andrea Camilleri - 27.6

July
64. Good Omens - Pratchett and Gaiman - 12.7
65. Night Waking - Sarah Moss - 18.7
66. His Majesty's Dragon - Naomi Novik - 22.7
67. Throne of Jade - Naomi Novik - 24.7
68. The Coroner's Lunch - Colin Cotterill - 28.7

August
69. Remarkable Creatures – Tracy Chevalier – 4.8 - own book
70. Berlin Poplars – Anne B Ragde – 6.8 - library book
71. The Cipher Garden – Martin Edwards – 8.8 - own book
72. Flush - Virginia Woolf - 9.8 - own book
73. Rebecca - Daphne du Maurier - 11.8 - own book
74. The River at Green Knowe - L M Boston - 12.8 - own book
75. Theodora: Actress, Empress, Whore - Stella Duffy - 14.8 - own book
76. Gladstone - Michael Partridge - 16.8 - Gladstone library book
77. A necessary end - Peter Robinson - 22.8- own book
78. The hanging valley - Peter Robinson - 23.8 - own book
79. Life - Keith Richards - 29.8 - audiobook (own)

September
80. The Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas - 5.9 - audiobook (own) - have been reading this since January
81. Queen Lucia - E F Benson - 11.9 - audiobook (own)
82. Watership Down - Richard Adams - 17.9 - audiobook (own) - re-read
83. The Janissary tree - Jason Goodwin - 21.9 - own book
84. Rules of Civility - Amor Towles - 24.9 - own book - book group
85. Union Street - Pat Barker - 30.9 - own book

Gladstone presiding over his Library!

Books acquired

The goal was to add no more than 60 new books to my library during 2012. I’ve already exceeded that by some way – I’m up to 100, and we’re only 3/4 through the year! I still think I have acquired fewer than by this time last year, so will continue to try to be a bit more restrained. (I am counting all books which I acquire, whether bought, received as gifts or through Bookmooch. Library books and other loans do not count, as I will not be keeping those, though I will list them here also, separately numbered)

Books acquired from October onwards

Loans:
Learn Maltese : why not? - Joseph Vella
Top 10 Malta & Gozo - Mary-Ann Gallagher - READ

Oxfam shop, Gosforth:
92. The black book - Ian Rankin
93. Espedair Street - Iain Banks
94. Excession - Iain M. Banks
95. How to be a woman - Caitlin Moran
96. The comfort of Saturdays - Alexander McCall Smith

ebay:
97. Espresso Tales - Alexander McCall Smith - READ

Amazon marketplace:
98. Black water rising - Attica Locke - for bookgroup - READ
99. The game of kings - Dorothy Dunnett - READ

Amazon new
100. Malta and Gozo: Bradt Travel Guides - Juliet Rix - READ

Oxfam Bookshop, Jesmond
101. Black Powder War - Naomi Novik
102. The Tiger in the Well - Philip Pullman
103. The Tin Princess - Philip Pullman
104. The Right Attitude to Rain - Alexander McCall Smith
105. Mad Puppetstown - M J Farrell
106. Thirty-three Teeth - Colin Cotterill

November
Amazon marketplace
107. The Kappillan of Malta - Nicholas Monsarrat
Oxfam Shop, Gosforth
108. Absolution by Murder - Peter Tremayne
eBay
109. Queens' Play - Dorothy Dunnett
110. Pawn in Frankincense - Dorothy Dunnett
111. Niccolo Rising - Dorothy Dunnett
Bookmooch
112. Mortimer's Bread Bin - Joan Aiken
City Farm Book exchange
113. The Historian - Elizabeth Kostova
Kindle Store
114. The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared - Jonas Jonasson - for book group - ebook READ
Lit & Phil Library book sale
115. Master and Commander - Patrick O'Brien
116. Post Captain - Patrick O'Brien
117. Juggling - Barbara Trapido
118. Guy Mannering - Walter Scott
119. Moominland Midwinter - Tove Jansson - READ
120. The Exploits of Moominpappa - Tove Jansson
121. Astercote - Penelope Lively
122. The Wild Hunt of Hagworthy - Penelope Lively
123. Going Back - Penelope Lively

December
Audible credit
124. Paradise Lost - Milton (audiobook)
The Black Cauldron & The Castle of Llyr - Lloyd Alexander - replacement copies from Bookmooch
eBay
125. The Gift of Rain - Tan Twan Eng - for book group -
Audible Advent offer
126. The Christmas Angel - Marcia Willett
Scope Charity shop
127. Piece of my heart - Peter Robinson
128. Christmas at Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
From Virago Secret Santa
129. My Grandmothers and I - Diana Holman-Hunt
130. High Rising - Angela Thirkell
131. The Winged Horse - Pamela Frankau
132. Love - Elizabeth von Arnim
Other Christmas gifts
133. Flight Behavior - Barbara Kingsolver
From Abebooks
134. Some Tame Gazelle - Barbara Pym

also:
ebook purchases in 2012 which were not included in the above list:
Lady Audley's Secret - Mary Elizabeth Braddon - free
Mayu : the life of a Finnish woman - Shahzad Rizvi - free
The Pickwick Papers - Charles Dickens - free - READ
The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins - READ
Barchester Towers - Anthony Trollope - free (duplicate for ease of reading) - READ
The forgotten garden - Kate Morton (duplicate for ease of reading)
South: the story of Shackleton's 1914-17 expedition - Ernest Shackleton
all the rest acquired during December, mainly for 20p or 99p
Paradise Lost - John Milton - free
Dominion - C J Sansom
Dracula - Bram Stoker - free
La Tulipe Noire - Alexandre Dumas - free
The Expats - Chris Pavone
The Lewis Man - Peter May
Gone to Earth - Mary Webb - free
A Highland Christmas - M C Beaton - READ
The Sunne in Splendour Sharon Kay Penman
The Snow Child - Eowyn Ivey
Mortality - Christopher Hitchens
The Red Pyramid - Rick Riordan
A long way down - Nick Hornby
Artemis Fowl - Eoin Colfer

Books acquired Jan-Sept

January
Bookmooch:
1. The Yellow Wallpaper - Charlotte Perkins Gilman (VMC)
2. The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding - Agatha Christie
Oxfam shop:
3. Strip Jack - Ian Rankin
Library
A. Betrayal - Karin Alvtegen - eBook - (for book group) - READ
Loan
B. Death comes to Pemberley - P D James - READ

February
from Oxfam shop - to celebrate 6th Thingaversary
4. In Patagonia - Bruce Chatwin
5. George beneath a paper moon - Nina Bawden
6. Herland - Charlotte Perkins Gilman
7. Respected Sir - Naguib Mahfouz
8. Spiderweb - Penelope Lively
from Amazon marketplace - to celebrate Thingaversary
9. Lords and Ladies - Terry Pratchett
Library
C. Cheerfulness breaks in - Angela Thirkell - READ
D. The Voice of the Violin - Andrea Camilleri - READ
from St Oswald's library sale
10. Cutting for Stone - Abraham Verghese

March
from Amazon Marketplace
11. A Fountain Filled with Blood - Julia Spencer-Fleming - to celebrate Thingaversary - READ
12. A Storm of Swords 1: Steel and Snow - George R R Martin - READ
Loan
E. Salmon Fishing in the Yemen - Paul Torday - READ
Library
F. Foundation - Asimov - READ
G. Berlin Poplars - Anne B Ragde - READ
H. The Betrayal - Helen Dunmore - returned unread (for now)
from Oxfam shop:
13. Olivia by Olivia=Dorothy Strachey (VMC original green)
Library
I. Silence of the Grave - Indridason - READ
J. August Heat - Andrea Camilleri - returned unread (for now)

April
14. Odd and the Frost Giants - Neil Gaiman - (Bookmooch) - READ
from the Oxfam Shop:
15. Liza's England - Pat Barker - READ
16. Throne of Jade - Naomi Novik - READ
from eBay:
17. Writing at the Kitchen Table - Artemis Cooper - READ
Library
K Don't Look Back - Karin Fossum - READ
L Gillespie and I - Jane Harris - READ
M The Crossing Places - Ellie Griffiths - READ
from Kindle Store
18. Pure - Andrew Miller - eBook - READ
Gifts:
19. Every man in this village is a liar - Megan Stack
20. Orgy Planner wanted - Vicky Leon
21. The lake of dreams - Kim Edwards - ALERT - now over my limit
22. Honey from a weed - Patience Gray
From market stall in Sherborne:
23. Half of a yellow sun - Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
24. Winter in Madrid - C J Sansom
From Oxfam bookshop
25. We - Zamyatin
26. Something Rotten - Fforde
27. The holiday - Stevie Smith

May
From Amazon marketplace:
28. Heartstone - C J Sansom - READ
29. The Jewel in the crown - Paul Scott
From Oxfam Bookshop Gosforth:
30. Eco-theology - ed Wainwright
31. Rounding the mark - Camilleri - READ
32. Hearts undefeated: women's writing of the Second World War - ed Hartley
Gift from Luci:
33. Carbonel - READ
34. The kingdom of Carbonel - READ
35. Carbonel and Calidor - Barbara Sleigh- READ
36. The sweet dove died - Barbara Pym
37. The vet's daughter - Barbara Comyns - VMC original green
38. At Mrs Lippincote's - Elizabeth Taylor
39. The man in the queue - Josephine Tey- READ
40. Burger's daughter - Nadine Gordimer
From bookstall at Mantel talk:
41. Bring up the bodies - Hilary Mantel - READ
From Persephone bookshop:
42. The crowded street - Winifred Holtby
From Oxfam Bookshop Bloomsbury:
43. The Tulip - Anna Pavord
- Wolf Hall - Hilary Mantel - hardback to replace my paperback copy
- The age of innocence - E Wharton - original green VMC copy to replace my later VMC edition
44. A fine of two hundred francs - Elsa Triolet - VMC original green
- Devoted ladies - M J Farrell - VMC original green to replace later VMC edition
From Bookmooch:
45. Calabrian quest - Geoffrey Trease
From Amazon Marketplace
46. Divided allegiance - Elizabeth Moon - READ

June
47. Oath of Gold - Elizabeth Moon - from Amazon Marketplace
48. The Coroner's lunch - Colin Cotterill - from Oxfam shop Gosforth - READ
49. To darkness and to death - Julia Spencer-Fleming - from Bookmooch
50. Un Lun Dun – China Miéville – from Amazon (gift for Dad turned out to be a duplicate)
From Oxfam shop
51. No wind of blame – Georgette Heyer
52. They found him dead - Georgette Heyer
53. Slowly down the Ganges – Eric Newby
From Gosforth Library
N Pereira Maintains – Tabucchi - returned unread (for now)
O Night Waking – Sarah Moss (for book group) - READ
P River of Smoke – Amitav Ghosh - returned unread (for now)

July
From Oxfam shop
54. Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats – T S Eliot
55. Duplicate death – Georgette Heyer
56. The unfinished clue – Georgette Heyer
57. Death in the stocks – Georgette Heyer
From Scope charity shop
58. The river at Green Knowe – L M Boston - READ
From eBay
59. Red, white and drunk all over – Natalie MacLean – for book group

August
From Llangollen book shop and café - a good haul of Viragos!
60. Tell me a riddle & Yonnondio – Tillie Olsen (VMC)
61. The house in Clewe Street – Mary Lavin (VMC)
62. The rock cried out – Ellen Douglas (VMC)
63. A pin to see the peepshow – F Tennyson Jesse (VMC)
64. Troy Chimneys – Margaret Kennedy (VMC)
65. My career goes bung – Miles Franklin (VMC)
66. Blue skies & Jack and Jill – Helen Hodgman (VMC)
67. At the still point – Mary Benson (VMC)
from Greenbelt Bookshop:
68. Apparition & Late fictions : a novella and stories - Thomas Lynch
69. Walking papers : poems - Thomas Lynch
70. The lion's world: a journey into the heart of Narnia - Rowan Williams
from Oxfam Bookshop Oxford:
71. The blotting book - E F Benson
72. On the black hill - Bruce Chatwin
73. The grand Sophy - Georgette Heyer - READ
74. The quiet gentleman - Georgette Heyer
75. Cold Earth - Sarah Moss

September
From Amazon marketplace:
76. Rules of civility - Amor Towles (for bookgroup) - READ
From Oxfam Shop Gosforth
77. The track of sand - Andrea Camilleri
78. All the names - José Saramago
79. The broken bridge - Philip Pulman
80. The long song - Andrea Levy
81. The great fire - Shirley Hazzard
From Scope charity shop
82. Broken music: a memoir - Sting
83. The adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
Birthday gifts:
84. Excursion to Tindari - Andrea Camilleri
85. Alice in Sunderland - Bryan Talbot
Home - Marilynne Robinson (duplicate copy so not counting this as I'll dispose of one)
Library sale:
86. Gossip from Thrush Green - Miss Read
87. Cliffs of Fall - Shirley Hazzard
88. Acorna's Children: second wave - Anne McCaffrey & Elizabeth Ann Scarborough
89. Touching my Father's Soul - Jamling Tenzing Norgay
90. Van Rijn Sarah Miano
From Amazon marketplace
91. The rough guide to Malta and Gozo - Victor Paul Borg

Reserved for my series list, if I ever get round to doing one!

Hello hello Genny! I thought I'd jump on your new thread. Am I really first? Love the photos of your travels in Liverpool.

Yes, you're the first Ilana, welcome! I forgot to post any photos of Liverpool at the time, so I thought I'd include some on this thread instead.

There's no time like now! :-)

Hi, Genny! Love the Liverpool photos!

Wow, Liverpool is so beautiful! I am definitely going to have to go there on my voyage to England and Europe someday.

I hope you learn a wee bit of Maltese, and that your trip will go well! You've probably already mentioned this in your last thread, but when do you go to Malta?

#9 Indeed there is not!

#10 Thanks Amber!

#11 It's an interesting place, Eris. The Albert Dock area has been renovated a lot in recent years and turned into a cultural/touristy area with the Tate Liverpool art gallery, a Beatles Experience, several other museums and lots of restaurants and bars.

The Malta trip (actually going to Gozo, the smaller island next door) will be in early November, once I have got through our Patronal Festival - All Saints Day - and the last of our church 125th anniversary celebrations. I shall need a break by then!

Liverpool is somewhere I definitely want to visit one day. What is it about The World's Wife that doesn't appeal? I don't read much poetry but we read that for my RL book club a couple of years ago and I really enjoyed it.

Happy new thread Genny! You've also got me wanting to visit Liverpool with the pictures above and the description of your holiday last year.

#13 I don't think it's a matter of it not appealing Rhian. I was reading one or two a day and enjoying them, but that was months ago before my summer holiday, and somehow I have not got back into the habit. I think I've been too tired when I get to bed - and the book lives by the bedside, so perhaps I should move it to the living room to catch me in a more awake moment.

#14 There's plenty to see and do there, Heather - I'm looking forward to further days out when I'm staying at Gladstone's again.

Wonderful new thread, Genny! Thanks for all the great eye candy. I've never had a chance to travel to Europe, but seeing all the pictures here on LT from all the fine people across the pond will tie me over until I can actually see everything with my own eyes!
Have a great weekend! :)

Nice new thread Genny - great pictures of your Liverpool visit.

I'm not brave enough to post a long list of my book acquisitions - the monthly totals are bad enough:)

Lovely new thread, Genny. I loved Jennie as a youngster--read it several times and bawled my eyes out every time. I'll be interested in your reaction.

Liverpool is now post-industrial, clearly. I am simply dying to do a retreat someday at the Gladstone. I bet I'm not the only one.

Nice acquisitions -- esp the Banks. this last month.

I think we are about the same - I've acquired around 100 books this year too. I think I'm about even - I've read 102 as of today. It would be so nice to end the year ahead, even if by only one book.

#16 Thanks, Valerie. Likewise I enjoy visiting other parts of the world I may never get to, through the photos on other people's threads.

#17 The list is alarmingly long, indeed, calm! But I find it helpful to see it set out like this, otherwise I'd just be in denial...

# 18 Jennie is a reread for me too, Roni. I picked up a copy recently, and it seemed ideal for Suzanne's in memoriam Jasper TIOLI challenge. I must have read it about 20-25 years ago, as an adult not as a child. I loved it then, and am remembering why now. Just read the bit about 'When in doubt, wash!': so true of cats and not of small boys!

#19 I guess there is some industry left in Liverpool, Lucy, but certainly the docks area is now very post-industrial. Like the quayside area in Newcastle (I should post some pics of my own city one day, perhaps) it is now very much geared at the leisure and tourism industries.

You would love staying at Gladstone's, I'm sure. The rates are pretty reasonable, once you've crossed the Atlantic.

I'm a bit behind you on the reading front; I'd also like my number read to exceed the number acquired, if only by a few but I have a little catching up to do...

Just staking out a spot...What gorgeous pictures! Including the one of your books :)

Great photos of Liverpool, Genny! I'm also eager to make a day trip there, thanks to you.

We were taken on a tour of Liverpool by my daughter's boyfriend when we were staying in the North-West last summer. We spent most of the time in the two cathedrals but whizzed around the dock area, too. It was all much nicer than I had expected (but perhaps that's my southern bias showing!) and I'm looking forward to going again.

#21 Thanks Kath. The books one I took last Christmas - it is rather confusing because it includes one of my Christmas cards which was in the form of a row of Christmas-themed books, in front of the actual TBR books on one of my shelves.

#22 I'm sure you'd enjoy Liverpool, Darryl, as a change of scene from London on one of your visits. Plenty to see and do there too.

#23 Hi Kerry - yes Liverpool is a very interesting place to visit. Last year was my first time there, and I spent a lot of time in the Anglican Cathedral (including the view from the top of the tower -fantastic!) and didn't make it to the Catholic one. This year I didn't seem to manage so much during my day trip - but I did spend a couple of hours in the Walker art gallery, which had some lovely pictures and artefacts from medieval to very modern, including

Rembrandt's self portrait as a young man

and

'Blotter' by Peter Doig, winner of the John Moores modern art prize in 1993. (I must admit I hadn't heard of this prize before, or of the artist. They had a display of winning pictures from 1957, there were some fascinating, some beautiful, some clever and some very strange ones among them. I liked the introspectiveness of this one.)

I probably shared your southern bias about many northern cities before I visited any of them - but now that I live in a very northerly northern city I have a different perspective! And in any case, any perception of industrial grime is well out of date in this post-industrial age; even post-industrial decline and decay is being smartened up (though sometimes more for the benefit of tourists than of the less-well-off residents), and the grand Victorian buildings which are a legacy of that industrial expansion have all been cleaned and tidied up, and docklands and old warehouses turned into galleries and restaurants. So there is lots to see and enjoy. As I mentioned above, I'm looking forward to a return visit to Liverpool, next time to visit the Tate gallery there, and maybe get to the Catholic cathedral (known as "Paddy's wigwam") too.


Paddy's wigwam!

Oh, Paddy's wigwam looks great! I'm looking forward to having the chance to explore Liverpool when we move up to Manchester, I've only ever briefly driven through before. Plus, I didn't know they had a Tate in Liverpool, so now I'm even more keen to check it out!
My husband went to Liverpool a couple of years ago for a conference and took a bit of a dislike to the place that we'll have to correct. He was under a lot of pressure at the time which I think was part of it, but I also think that as a non-native speaker of English who prides himself on understanding all the tricky British dilaects very well, he was really befuddled by the scouse accent, so that is also party to blame!
Good recent book aquistions. That is one of the really good SF Banks', and I'm sure you'll love How to Be a Woman.

Genny, between your posts, photos and North and South I am much keener to get to the north of England than I used to be. You should be on commission. Am not keen on Paddy's Wigwam though. It reminds me of the church we used to go to in Christchurch (also Catholic) that we all called Sputnik. (Wow - they have a website now!! Very cool.

Hi Genny, I love your Liverpool photos and your nice new thread!

Hi Genny,
congrats to your new thread and I also love your photos of Liverpool. I didn't realize that Liverpool had such nice spots and a TATE. When I read Tate I thought you were talking about London.
Have a lovely weekend. :)

Just a quick wave of appreciation for the new thread, will take a serious look at those new acquisitions lists soon.

I've just finished Black Water Rising and was impressed. I thought it a fine debut novel, with an interesting mix of thriller and history. I know quite a lot about the African American experience to the 1960s/early 70s, but less in the 80s. That said, I can't believe the 80s is over thirty years ago.

On that topic, is anyone finding it weird seeing your own lifetime beginning to be recorded as history, or is it just me?

Lovely new thread, Genny! I enjoy the pictures a WHOLE lot!!!
I'm also interested in your *George Herbert: Kill Him* book (!).
I have read so many fewer this year than you and Lucy, and I'm pretty sure that I've acquired as many as you or more. I'll figure it out at the end of the year when it's too late to make any hasty resolutions for 2012. As I say, ad nauseum, I collect books that I want to read someday. Other people buy clothes or knick-knacks or go to movies --- I buy books.
(I have a copy of Black Water Rising too, but I haven't gotten to it yet. I hope to. Caroline, all you have to do is teach teenagers to realize what a museum piece you are. Well, you may not be, but I am.)

Oh, just realised that I also meant to comment on your terrific review for Union Street, and to say that it really inspired me to go and hunt that book down, but I got distracted by all the nice shiny things on your new thread!

HI, Genny! Wonderful newthread. I love the photos of Liverpool!

And don't feel bad about overshooting your book acquisition limit. I've raised mine several times, and just hit the latest limit I set.

Genny, just wanted to say I saw your comment about Miss Jean Brodie on Joe's thread and have to agree it was rather acerbic. It was the first Muriel Spark book I read and I truly didn't know what to make of it. This was several years ago, and I've read and enjoyed a handful of her other books, most of which I've greatly enjoyed (Memento Mori and Loitering with Intent come to mind), so I thought I'd revisit it this year... but no, it didn't take the second time around either. Not sure why it's her most popular novel really. Saw the film with the wonderful Maggie Smith a few months ago, and she did indeed deserve her Academy Award in that role.

#25 Hannah, glad to whet your appetite for exploring Liverpool! Your husband will have to get used to a different range of local accents with the move to Manchester - hopefully he'll soon pick up mancunian and scouse too...

Manchester is another city I don't know at all really (one brief visit to check out the History Dept of the university, when I was considering going there decades ago, doesn't really give me much to go on). I'll probably do a day trip there too from Gladstone's one day if I carry on spending my summer break there - it's not too far from Chester by train.

The Tate has a gallery in St Ives, Cornwall as well as Liverpool and the two (Tate Britain and Tate Modern) in London. I've not been to the St Ives one at all... there's another trip to take one day.

#26 Hi Cushla, great to see you - enjoying your short break from writing up assignments, I hope. I think it is highly amusing that one who comes originally from so far south in the UK that to get there you have to fall right off the edge of the southern coast (the Isle of Wight) should be able to claim a commission for encouraging people to explore the North of the country! The precise nature of the differences between north and south have changed somewhat since Gaskell's day, but the north south divide and the attendant prejudices certain still survive. When you next make a long-enough visit to the UK I hope you will have time for a visit Up North!

Not sure about the Sputnik, but in general I do love modern church architecture. The inside of the Liverpool one looks spectacular, from photos I've seen, thanks to amazing use of stained glass and the circular space. I must make sure I visit it next time to see for myself.

#27 Thank you kindly, Anne, and thanks for stopping by.

#28 Bianca, nice of you to visit too. Liverpool was the European Capital of Culture in 2008, and has lots to see and do including the Tate. I didn't realise the Tate was there myself until (a few years ago) when I lived near London I became a member of the Tate and used to visit the London galleries quite frequently, then I discovered that they also had the ones in Liverpool and St Ives.

#29 Hello Caroline - the acquisitions lists are growing all the time (just added another six bought on Saturday)... Thanks for the positive recommendation of Black Water Rising - am looking forward to that one. I know what you mean about one's own lifetime turning into history: I've just read a book written in and partly set in the 1980s (Pat Barker's Liza's England), and was thinking of it as a contemporary account, then realised it was written nearly 30 years ago!

#30 Peggy, I'm glad you like the pictures. The George Herbert book was one I bought a couple of years back when the author was speaking at the Greenbelt festival - the title was too intriguing to pass by! I read about half of it shortly after purchasing it; but it changes tack part way through and I lost momentum and have not gone back to it. His argument in the first part was basically that the model of priestly life and ministry set out in Herbert's The Temple (or more accurately, later idealised readings of that model) are unhelpfully and destructively inappropriate for the kind of world clergy find themselves in today, and that too many clergy are half-killing themselves with stress trying to live up to this unattainable ideal. I could relate to his description of the stress, though I wondered if he was overstating Herbert as the culprit. The second half of his book sets out his suggestion for a healthier rule of life. I really should go back and read that and see if I can glean any helpful ideas from it!

#31 I'm glad you found it helpful, Hannah, and I hope you enjoy it when you get to it. I've just finished reading another of Pat Barker's early novels, Liza's England, which has similar themes.

#32 Hi Terri, glad to hear from another who's addicted to book acquisition! I've just added several more after the last update, can't seem to help myself...

#33 Ilana, nice to see you. I've yet to write a review of Miss Jean Brodie - those comments on Joe's thread were the nearest I've got. It was my first Muriel Spark too, and I wasn't quite sure what to expect though I knew a little about the setting. I didn't dislike it, but it was quite unsettling (probably intended to be). I'm interested to hear that you liked other works of hers better - I haven't heard of either of those.

**********************

It has been my day off today. I had hoped to get a couple of reviews written, maybe work on creating my list of series to add to the top of my thread too - but instead I finished another book (Liza's England by Pat Barker) and added six more books to my catalogue which I bought on Saturday. Now I need to add them to my running total at the top of the thread. I may still get round to doing a review or two, but first it is time to cook dinner (chicken breast has been marinating in curried yoghurt marinade; need to grill the chicken now and make vegetable rice salad to go with it).

I've been to the Tate in St Ives - it's lovely but is disappointingly small, especially as from ouside it looks quite impressively large - sort of a reverse Tardis. But it's always worth making th trip down to St Ives if you're an art lover, as you can go to the Barbara Hepworth studio/sculpture garden, which is worth the journey to Cornwall all on its own, as it's fabulous. Might have a photo on this computer somewhere...... hmm, no, they're on the old computer, perhaps another time. It's definitely worth a visit though.

but it was quite unsettling (probably intended to be)

Oh, yes. I had more or less this conversation with Ilana - people come to it expecting more of a "comedy", and get caught off-guard, I think.

Genny - had woes with my computer at home so have got a bit behind. Love the photos of Liverpool's Albert Dock which are an excellent start to another thread.

#36 We went to the Tate in St Ives last year as well and agree with Hannah that it is small. But for us that was quite an advantage as J has a very limited tolerance of art galleries so we did manage to finish looking around before he demanded to return to the beach!

Oooh, chicken curry! I'll be right over...

Hi Genny! Just checking out your new thread.

Your pictures of Liverpool are beautiful. Other than the Beatles, I don't have any mental associations with it. Now I will think of your pictures when I see it mentioned.

I also loved that painting by Peter Doig, who I've never heard of.

Thanks for broadening my horizons!

I have never had chicken curry......just trying to keep current when I can....

On Saturday I visited a neighbouring suburb in connection with a home visit for a baptism, and once I was finished I decided to have a coffee and sit and read my book - at that point I was reading Jennie, by Paul Gallico - sitting outside the café in the remarkably warm October sunshine. Then before heading home I decided to detour along the local shopping street, just in case there were any second-hand bookshops there - and lo and behold! there was an Oxfam Books & Music - the whole shop dedicated to books unlike my local Oxfam which has only two bookcases of general fiction (albeit generally a very good selection). So I had to have a look around this new, larger selection. Given my already excessive list of new arrivals, I promised myself I would limit any purchases to books in series that I'm trying to collect - and I almost achieved this, as 5 out of the 6 books I bought were continuations of series:

Black Powder War - Naomi Novik - no. 3 in the Temeraire series, which is exactly the one I need to read next
Thirty-three Teeth - Colin Cotterill - no. 2 in the Dr Siri series, also just the one I was looking for!
The Right Attitude to Rain - Alexander McCall Smith - no. 3 in the Isabel Dalhousie series which I've long neglected - I know I've read no. 1 and I think I read no. 2 also; I have 4 & 5 lined up, so no. 3 fills a gap.
The Tiger in the Well and The Tin Princess - Philip Pullman - these are nos. 3 & 4, the final two in the Sally Lockhart series; I read the first two about 3-4 years ago.

The only non-series book I succumbed to was an original green Virago Modern Classic: Mad Puppetstown - M J Farrell.

**************

#36 Thanks for the info on the St Ives Tate, Hannah. I'd love to visit that part of Cornwall one day - I know there are several art and craft related places to visit there.

#37 I didn't really know what to expect, Liz, but she certainly plays with expectations and assumptions. I must try to write some kind of review before I forget what I thought...

#38 Sorry to hear your home computer is playing up Paul - that will play havoc with your stats if you have limited posting time! Hope you get back to normal soon.

#39 Rhian, I agree, sometimes a small gallery that you can view in its entirety is better than a large one which you have to rush round before you (or other members of your party) run out of time or patience or energy...

#40, 42 - I wouldn't really call it chicken curry - but it was a very succesful recipe which I will try again. For a change I actually followed a recipe suggestion from Weight Watchers. The chicken bit was very simple: mix plain low fat yoghurt with curry powder and marinate chicken breasts in this for an hour or two, or overnight if possible - then grill the chicken breast. To accompany it I made a rice salad with grated carrot, chopped red pepper (bell pepper?) and some chopped fresh chilli pepper, with fresh mint and coriander too. The rice was fresh and spicy at the same time, and the chicken mildly curryish, and the whole was very tasty without needing any fat in the cooking.

#41 Lovely to see you here, Pat. I'm glad to give you some images of Liverpool to add to Beatles-related ones. There is a lot made of the Beatles heritage in all the tourist stuff too - you can visit the Cavern quarter, and there is a Beatles Experience in the Albert Dock just round the corner from the photos I took above. There is also something called the "Yellow Duckmarine" on which you can take a water and land tour of the docks and surrounding parts of the city - it's a converted WWII amphibious landing vehicle, painted bright yellow, whose name was inspired by a certain song!


Here's the Queen and Prince Philip going for a ride in the Yellow Duckmarine as part of HMs Diamond Jubilee visits!

Ooh! I love the Yellow Duckmarine. :-)

Well, the chicken non-curry *does* sound lovely - I like the idea of grilling it after the marinade, and your rice salad sounds delicious, too!

My mother is coming to stay next week, with a friend of hers whom I've only met briefly once before. I will be taking a bit of extra time off but mostly having to work while they are here, but I'm trying to think of things for them to do or for us to do together. So I've just booked tickets for the three of us to see the new production of the musical 'Oliver!' which is now showing in Newcastle after starting in London. I haven't checked with my mum first, but I'm hoping she will enjoy this!

I can't see how your mum and her friend wouldn't enjoy Oliver, Genny. What a wonderful idea!

If she's not impressed with the idea, tell her I'll have her ticket instead ;)

I think the musical is a great idea as well, and Oliver is supposed to be very good. I hope you enjoy your time with your mum and her friend.

Nice book haul you have got there. I have been considering to read Naomi Novik already for some time, but haven't come round to do so, yet. I also like Philip Pullman, also I have not read his Sally Lockheart series yet. I read together with my son The Firework-maker's Daughter and The Scarecrow and His Servant which we both very much enjoyed.

Marvelous photo of QE in the duck. Love it. Enjoy your time with your mother.

Nice haul - esp Mad Puppetstown a book which has to be on the shortlist for great titles.

Always such a bonus to get pictures....

I'm glad you had such a nice visit to your neighboring town :)
It seems to me that you have a pleasant life... one I would like to read a book about!

Have a wonderful visit with your mom! The show sounds like a fantastic idea!

Genny - have a lovely weekend; I am enjoying your Liverpool photos (great, great city) and I hope you have a good time with your mum.

Thanks, dear visitors. I have now told Mum about the tickets for Oliver, and she sounded very excited. I didn't mention that they are right high up in the top gallery (the only ones I could get) as she does not much like heights and I don't want to worry her in advance. I think the seats will be far enough back from the front row so that she won't have to look over a precipice, and hopefully won't feel in a panic therefore! They are also restricted view seats, but I hope not too restricted...

#47 Dee, you could be on standby in case Mum decides she can't cope with the altitude!

#48 Thanks Bianca; yes it is supposed to be a good production. The book haul is exciting - I started the Novik series earlier this year, after hearing so many people on here recommend it. I certainly enjoyed the first two very much; also the Sally Lockheart ones I've read so far.

#49 Thanks Lucy. Mad Puppetstown is certainly a great title. I hadn't heard of this one at all, saw it in the shop because I'm always looking out for those green spines, and I think it was that same evening that I caught up on Peggy's thread and saw that she'd just read it.

#50 Kath, I think the nearest I'll ever get to writing a book about my life is in the scattered updates on these threads. I was quite struck by your comment that I seem to have a pleasant life. Too often I'm feeling stressed, anxious, simultaneously over-worked, guilty at not working hard enough, and generally dissatisfied with myself and my lot, so I don't tend to think of it as a pleasant life - but actually there are some very good things in my daily experience along with all the frustrating and difficult bits. I guess I tend to write more about the nice things when I update here, like trips to bookshops, holidays and prospective visits from my mother (well, that's partly a nice thing, though also a cause of some anxiety!) - because LT is a place for me to escape from some of the stress of my role, and also an escape from a sense of loneliness which I also experience a lot of the time. By sharing some of the more positive things in life with other people (at least those who care to read my thread) I get to feel a sense of community and not feel quite so isolated. But it's good to be reminded that, however large my woes may sometimes loom, mine is really quite a privileged existence in many ways, and the fact of working from home and managing my own work schedule does mean I can indulge in a cafe stop and sit and read a book, when I feel like it.

#51, 52 Thanks Amber, and Paul. I hope Mum's visit will be ok. She can be a bit overwhelming. I find it easier to manage being with her when she stays with me than when I go to her - when she is here, I can carry on with my normal routines to some extent, and retreat into my study or my bedroom if I need some peace, whereas when I stay with her there is only a tiny, dust-filled bedroom with no-where to sit. Mum used to come each year with my godmother, Pam, until a couple of years back when sadly Pam died rather prematurely of cancer. I miss her presence on those visits, as she used to smooth the way and dilute the effects of too much mother! The year after Pam died, Mum came on her own, which was ok, and then last year she came with another friend who was rather loud and overpowering so combined with Mum too it was all a bit much. This year it's a different friend, so we shall see how it goes!

*********

Today I've been sorting out and re-shelving books, so that I can get more books off the floor where they've been in piles, and into some semblance of order on the shelves. I then did a bit of cataloguing - the trouble with moving books around the house before I've finished cataloguing is that I'm in danger of mixing up catalogued and un-catalogued books. I've been working my way systematically if very slowly through the house, one shelf at a time, adding to the catalogue, so when I started shifting things today I've had to quickly add some to LT if they were being shifted onto a shelf where the cataloguing has been completed.

Anyway, I've now finished my ancient/medieval languages section at last. Including my one really old book that I own: a Latin grammar published in 1692 (A short introduction of grammar), with a very battered leather binding whose front cover is hanging by one thread. This cost me £15 about 25 years ago at an antiquarian book fair. At the time I was working on my research which included looking at the kind of grammar books written and studied about 1000 years before this one was published, in the 7th, 8th and 9th centuries in Ireland and England. So it was fun to buy a really old book which was so much newer than the ones I was studying.

My copy was owned by a Thomas Fern (or Fearn), who wrote his name three times in the fly leaves of his grammar book with two different spellings of his surname and three different styles of handwriting, in the year 1741. I like to imagine that Thomas was about 10 years old at that time, sitting getting very bored and doodling his name in his book while his tutor was trying to drum some Latin into his head!

I keep forgetting to eat today, I've been so busy with my book projects. Time to go to the kitchen and see what I can find there...

We rustled up some soup and crusty bread for you over at the cafe, Ms. Hard Worker. Can't believe you keep a catalog for your books - you're way more thorough than I can even dream of being. Getting them alphabetized (at our son's suggestion - so I could find the ones I was talking about!) was a major step for me.

You reminded me of a funny family story. I never had a grammar class, and I mentioned to my English professor BIL that I'd like to have a good grammar book. I forgot about it until my wife called with great suspicion, asking who "Mary" was. Turns out my BIL had sent the grammar book and kiddingly inscribed it, "Thanks for the great weekend - Mary". My total lack of comprehension saved me with my wife, as did my pointing out a grammar book was an unlikely romantic present. Phew!

My BIL of course absolutely loved it when he heard the story later.

I guess we all sometimes forget to remember the good things. I try hard not to .. forget that is.
I am quite drawn to British authors... and while I'm certain that your life has difficult times, and maybe even lonely ones.. ( mine does, anyway) I still think it would make a lovely story...

maybe a journal?

to begin with :)

Sexy Grammar! Love it, Joe!
Genny, you are busy and useful and get time for yourself - sounds like a lovely life to me. On the other hand, I know that a pastor, or at least a wise pastor, can't have very close relationships with her parishioners, so I can also see how it can be a lonely life. I'm with Kath. Your journal would be fascinating.
I'm very excited that you got a good copy of Mad Puppetstown, and I hope that you enjoy it as much as I did. I'm enthralled with your Lily's Grammar too. (Just as a sidelight that means nothing, DH is very involved in genealogical research into his father's family. The oldest member who immigrated here was born in 1692.)

Hi Genny, just dropping by to say hello. Hope your visit with your mother goes OK. I always find it slightly stressful when my Mum comes to stay as well, but for different reasons. She's exactly the opposite of overwhelming and I always find it completely impossible to work out what she wants to do. It would be so much easier if we lived nearer each other and could meet up for coffee or something on a regular basis, rather than these all or nothing longer visits.

>57 SandDune:: I couldn't agree with you more. When I was first out of university, I thought it was great to be far away from my parents. I could be independent and all that. But oh dear, visits became such loaded affairs -- filled with unstated and therefore unmet expectations, and attempts to do too much to make up for not spending time together more often.

A book... from 1692! :O *faints a little* The oldest book I own is from the early 1800s! And not just any book - a Latin grammar book! And doodled in by some young buckaroo in 1741! That's so much history! Oh, how delightful! I cannot put enough exclamation posts into this comment to express my happiness about how interesting your book sounds!

Today was a miserable, drizzly, grey, damp day, and I was feeling cold, tired and fed up as I trudged home wheeling my bicycle laden with shopping ready for Mum's visit (she arrives tomorrow). Then I turned the corner onto my street and was suddenly surrounded by gold above and below, from the maple tree in the corner of my garden, and had to stop and take a photo.

Oh my... how beautiful! I love this time of year :) What a lovely street.. and you bike for your shopping?
You are my hero. Srsly.

#54 Joe thanks so much for that welcome soup on Friday, and for coming over here to tell me it was ready!

Cataloguing the books is what got me into LT in the first place - long before I discovered the groups and the social dimension. I did start out training to be a librarian at one point, and long before that, as a young child I used to write 'Genny's Library' inside my books and arrange them very carefully on the shelves, so I guess the librarian tendencies are deeply ingrained. When I add books to my LT account I feel a need (not justified by any practical purpose that I can think of) to add as much detail as possible about the edition, physical dimensions, correct cover, source, format, price and anything else relevant... No wonder it is taking me a long while to get through the whole collection. I reckon I'm about one quarter done so far.
I love your grammar book story - thanks for that!

#55 Oh Kath, perhaps when I'm retired I shall write my memoirs! Though I wouldn't hold your breath: any writing project takes me forever, even short reviews I agonise over for hours (which is why so few get written by me), so a book of my life would probably need another whole lifetime to complete.

#56 Peggy, see above about the journal. Some of the things that go on in parish life would certainly make a good story - from the very moving at one end to the very ridiculous, storm-in-a-teacup at the other. And sometimes writing about the tough times helps to put them in perspective and cope with them - I do remember that when I was 17 and working in France in my gap year, as a volunteer in a project restoring a medieval castle, I was finding a lot of it very strange and difficult, but I used to console myself by thinking how I could describe the experiences in my long letters home. I don't know if my mother kept those letters...

#57 Hi Rhian. I agree, it would be easier to have mum living nearby. For about 18 months in the 1990s I lived back on the Isle of Wight (where mum lives and where I come from originally), and after about 6 weeks of living with Mum (which was all I could cope with) I got my own flat about 3 miles away. For the rest of that time we were able to meet up quite often for a coffee or the occasional day out or meal, and it was certainly much easier to manage that than the full-time experience of either visiting her or having her visit me. Still, this coming visit is only 4 days, so I think I shall survive ok!

#58 attempts to do too much to make up for not spending time together more often Yes Laura - I can identify with that! Putting a slightly more positive spin on the visits, they are also opportunities for me to get out and visit different places round about our area which I hardly ever get round to doing unless I have visitors - but it does make it quite a busy and tiring prospect, especially as I'm also trying to fit in work responsibilities around all this.

#59 Eris!!! Feel free to use as many exclamation marks as you wish!!!! I remember being pretty excited myself when I first bought that book - there were much grander books in much better condition on sale at the antiquarian book sale, but at a much greater price which I could no way afford, and though it was only a humble and battered grammar book, I was still excited to own something that was so old.

#61 Yes, it's a nice quiet street in a leafy residential area. That's my house on the right, behind the brick wall. And my shopping bags match the colour of the leaves, almost!

I use the bike for shopping because I don't currently own a car (though I'm in a car club which means I can hire a car by the hour for when I do need one). The high street with the local supermarket and smaller shops is only about 8 minutes walk away, or 2 minutes by bike, so I do most of my shopping there and usually buy a small amount at a time which I can carry easily on the bike. In this case I had too much to manage to cycle safely, so I just used the bike to carry the load. When I want to do a really big shop, I either hire the car to carry it home, or do an online order and have it delivered.

CAR CLUB ???? OMG, what a brilliant idea! I love it! Do we have those here I wonder?
hmm.

Your house looks like it is in a cozy place. I need to move. Any local houses for rent? :P

I don't know if you have them over there, Kath. They started in London here a few years back, and have spread to many cities in the UK now. They only really work in c ity areas - where there is a high density of population and where quite a few people manage without cars a lot of the time. The way it works is that the club owns and looks after a number of cars, which are parked in designated parking spaces in various locations around the city. You pay a small one off fee to join the club. Club members can book any of the cars, of course usually I book the one that is nearest to me, which is just on the High Street so I can reach it on my bike in 2-3 minutes. You can book online or by phone, months in advance or just a few minutes before as long as it is free. And you can extend your booking from within the car if you find your trip is taking longer than expected. It costs about £4.50 (about $7.20) per hour - that includes petrol/gas and all other running costs for the car. I use it once or twice a week, and am spending about £50 to £100 a month on average, which is saving me a lot of money compared to running my own car where I'd be paying about £25 in insurance per month plus about £50 in petrol, as well as paying back a loan to buy the car in the first place (probably at least £120 per month for four years or so) - and then there is road tax, and maintenance costs.

I've been doing this since June 2011, and so far the minor inconvenience of having to book and fetch the car when I need it is far outweighed by the savings and the freedom from worry about maintenance etc. Plus its good for the environment because it encourages me to use my bike more often, when sometimes before I would have used the car just because it was there. And that's also good for me because I need to get a bit more exercise!

ps Edited to add:
What's your budget, Kath? The suburb where I live is not the cheapest - I could no way afford to live here if I were not living in a house that comes with the job! There's a three-bed room apartment down the road for £1,500 per month, and a 2-bed in a fancy 1920s Art Deco mansion block for £780 per week (that's over £3,000 per month, wow!). Whole houses vary from even more expensive to less than some apartments - there's a five-bedroom house on my own street for £1.900 per month which sounds a good deal compared to the flats! The North-East of England is generally cheaper than other parts of the UK, certainly than London and the South-East, but my particular bit of Newcastle is the expensive suburb where all the professionals live.

#62 The Isle of Wight - now that's somewhere I've always wanted to go but never got around to yet.

That colour is absolutely gorgeous, Genny! Don't you just love it when you least expect and especially if you are feeling all grumbly, something just stops you in your tracks and just reminds you to take it all in and...enjoy. :)
We have something similar to your car service here in downtown Calgary. It's called Car-To-Go where you pay an annual fee and there are several locations all over DT where you can just pick up a car, take it for a short amount of time (mins to an hour) and then park it any of the designated spots. It's perfect for people who don't want to park DT because of course it costs an arm and a leg and need a vehicle for a really brief amount of time.

hmmmm I guess I have to win the lottery pre- move, so it might take a while...

After thinking about it.. I remembered this http://www.zipcar.com/ and I am wondering how it's going.
I love the idea! Since I had the lack of foresight to buy a house on a hill... I am thinking it would be impossible to do what you did today. I can barely get my old bones up the blasted 2 block hill, never mind put a loaded bike up with me.

old and creaky is me, I guess..

#67 Hi Valerie - yes it's good how the world around us reminds us that it is beautiful, and worth appreciating. Your Car-to-Go scheme sounds very similar to my car club (which used to be called Common Wheels and has just changed its name to Co Wheels). Only in this scheme you have to return the car to the same parking spot you got it from. But our city also has a bicycle loan system where you can pick up bikes in one part of town and leave them in another.

#68 Oh well, roll on your lottery win then, Kath! Zipcar does sound exactly like my car club. But I agree, it would not work so well if I lived on the top of a hill! I am actually very slightly uphill from the main shopping street - not so much that you notice it in a car, but on the bike, or pushing something, I really feel the difference. I can coast all the way down to the High Street with only a few pushes on the bike pedals, but coming home I have to go into lower gear and still arrive out of breath. I suppose I'd be even less fit if I didn't do this!

One of the things I miss - in the city I often shopped on my bike, but now I drive everywhere. Ironic. Yes, indeedy.

Sending good wishes for the impeding visit from your Mum and her friend Genny! I can too easily believe that working as a minster can often be quite a lonely role (although I think I now base a lot of my thoughts about being a vicar from the TV series Rev which may not always be accurate I suppose). I'm also very grateful for the LT community - please use us as much and as often as is helpful :-)

#60 I love the autumn colours at the moment too. I keep wanting to take photos but they never seem to capture them properly.

No time for a long update, just coming to note my astonishment and concern that it is snowing, reasonably heavily, and settling, and October is not over yet. The peculiar weather pattern is concerning enough, but I also have to take my mother to the airport very early tomorrow morning, so I'm worried about the state of the roads, and whether she'll be able to take off at all assuming we get there safely. This happened before a couple of years ago, except it was the end of November then so slightly less unexpected, but then her flight was delayed for about 9 hours.

Have to get some sleep now anyway.

I can't believe it's snowing already Genny!! Hope you get some photos (when you have got home safely from the airport of course).

In Switzerland when we arrived we had great intentions of just doing their car club scheme, Mobility - it was really good and sounds like yours. We tried it for the first month but ended up buying one because we wanted to be able to be spontaneous about going places with the kids. Cool idea though.

Snow!!!! Holy Moly! Be very careful in the morning, Genny - and your maple was so beautiful. We have a couple across the street from our house, but the leaves have mostly fallen before achieving full color - some years it's like that.

Well I'm safely at the airport, and Mum and her friend have headed off through security, and I'm having a latte and a bacon butty to fortify me for the journey home. It was too early, and I was too busy scraping snow off the car, to have any breakfast before we left.

Yay for a bacon butty! Have a safe drive home.

Just been reading the following article in the Saturday Guardian. It may be of interest to fellow European crime and detective fiction enthusiasts. I haven't yet listened to any of the related 15 part radio series, but hope to catch up on iPlayer.

Crime's grand tour: European detective fiction

http://gu.com/p/3bcdy

Snow in October! We've got a sprinkling as well and it's even more unusual here than it must be there. It doesn't snow much even in the depths of winter here. The weather this year really has been weird

Weird certainly! Two weeks ago I was sitting outside a café drinking my coffee and reading a book; now it's 1°C outside and feels colder with the wind chill factor. And we had I think the wettest summer since records began, and precious little sun, but yesterday (before the snow fell in the evening) I was being blinded by bright sunshine in the car with no sunglasses - which are hardly ever needed and certainly not in October.

Glad to hear your Mum and her friend got off ok. No snow here but it feels really cold (it's apparently 2C outside so slightly warmer than Newcastle).

Weird weather in your neighborhood, too? It has been unseasonably warm here this past week. We had weather in the eighties ( F) for a couple of days, Like mid summer! Now, we are headed for highs 30 degrees below that and possible snow, depending on what happens with the freaky storm.

No snow for me here in Northern California, but lots of rain. It's fairly nice out today, so I am happy about that. My poor mom hates being cold. I hope you will be all right, Genny!

I'm fine, Eris, and it's due to get a bit warmer again (a few degrees at least). I'm more worried about those of you across the other side of the Atlantic facing this big storm...

And I'm very tired and have lots of preparations still unfinished for tomorrow. The good news is, this is the night the clocks go back, so that I gain an extra hour to fit in sleep and work. Sleep first, I think, and up early to finish jobs...

Sorry to hear about the snow! At least its not just my part of the world that got it so early...
It's been chilly as well so the furnace is constantly on and I'm under a blanket whenever I'm on the couch. Good times for some a nice warm cup of tea or hot chocolate! :)

We've gotten some snow here, too, in the higher elevations hit by the remains of Hurricane Sandy.

Glad you made it to the airport and back ok despite the weather, Genny.

#84, 85 Hi Valerie and Terri, It wasn't too bad in the end, just unexpectedly early and a bit worrying with that airport trip; but compared with the weather some folk have been dealing with in the past few days with Sandy, I feel I have nothing to complain about. But I agree about nice warm cups of tea or hot chocolate and snuggling under a blanket!

Just stopping by to say hi, Genny. Glad the snow has stopped and you have a chance now to warm up.

Hi Genny - I was thinking of you as I started Great North Road which begins in a futuristic Newcastle on Tyne.

So, a few days now since my mother left and I've recovered my energy enough to post a bit about her visit.

I collected Mum and her friend Annie (whom I'd only met very briefly once before, about 10 years ago) from the railway station 8 days ago - they'd come on from a few days at my sister's in Lincolnshire. Gave them a quick lunch then we drove out to one of the nearest beaches, at the unattractively named Seaton Sluice, with Ty the dog, for a short, bracing walk.



Then I deposited them back home while I went out to a meeting, and then came back and cooked us dinner, including a simple lemon mousse which I'd made the week before while trialing recipes for a church cook book - I'd managed to freeze some portions, so that was quick and easy.

Next day I had more meetings in the morning so they explored the local shops on their own, then I picked them up and we drove out to Corbridge, a little town/large village up the Tyne valley, which dates back to Roman times (Corstopitum was a supply town for troops on nearby Hadrian's Wall), but is now full of tea shops, delis, old fashioned bakers and other nice little shops including an independent bookshop, and has a fantastic bridge.


The bridge over the Tyne - dates from 1674, the oldest surviving bridge over the river

We had a quick lunch there and I left them browsing while I went to my book group, which meets in a home on the outskirts of the village. We were discussing Black Water Rising, which the few of us there had all enjoyed quite a bit, though some felt the author was trying to pack too much into this her first novel. I rejoined Mum and Annie in the bookshop, where I managed to refrain from buying anything mainly because I'm too mean to buy new books unless I have a book-token! But I saw a copy of the new David Crystal book on English spelling, Spell it out, which was being discussed earlier that day on Suzanne's thread, so I was able to have a little look at that. I think I will get myself a copy when it's out in paperback, or perhaps put it on my Amazon wishlist for Christmas.

Back home via my dear elderly friend Marjorie's house for a cup of tea; Marjorie is a member of my congregation who has taken me under her wing and mothers me, and also loves looking after my dog Ty when I go away; she has also enjoyed Mum's visits and usually invites us round for a meal while she's here. Sadly she is currently suffering with bad sciatica, and can barely move around the house, but she was desperate to see us, so at least we were able to have a quick visit and a cup of tea. She insists she will still take Ty next week when I go on holiday, as he is no trouble and can be let into the garden for the necessary - she doesn't need to be able to take him out for walks. She loves the company, so although part of me thinks it is not fair to ask her to look after him when she is not well, I think on balance it will probably do her good having him in the house.

Then I left Mum and Annie to cook their own supper, while I had to go out for dinner at our local Loch Fyne fish restaurant! This was work-related: I had to join the lecture committee in taking our speaker to dinner before he spoke. We have re-started, last year, an annual lecture at our church on some topic that is church related but of broader cultural, historical or social interest. This year, Professor David Rollason, Prof of Medieval History at Durham, was speaking about medieval Saint Kings, from St Oswald (who is one of our local Northumbrian saints) to St Wenceslas (whom most of us only know through the carol, but who was actually a 10th century Duke of Bohemia who was assassinated by his own brother). Fascinating stuff, about how the relics of these royal saints and their cult were used to legitimise and confer an aura of divine approval on the royal line of their descendants. Good question session too afterwards, including two of our young people raising interesting points - I hadn't known that they had an interest in medieval history. The evening was only marred by the fact that the heating was not working in church - had not been for a couple of weeks while engineers were busy installing a new boiler - thankfully it was not yet as cold as it would be once the snow came!

On Thursday Mum and Annie went into Newcastle for the day, and Mum enjoyed showing off the Quayside with its modern concert and music centre, The Sage, and next door The Baltic modern art gallery in a converted old flour mill (Newcastle's equivalent of Tate Modern).


The Baltic to the left, and the curvy glass building next to it is The Sage

Mum also showed Annie the 12th century castle (from which Newcastle gets its name), squeezed now between the 14th Cathedral with its lantern tower and the Victorian railway viaduct.


View of the castle and cathedral from the Swing-Bridge

Then in the evening after a busy day of paperwork and meetings myself, I caught a bus just in time to join them in the Theatre Royal on beautiful Grey Street, for the production of Oliver! which I'd booked last week.


Theatre Royal


Grey Street, looking down with Theatre Royal ahead on the left.

Oliver was great fun, a suitably high energy production with spectacular choreography and lively performances, from the opening number 'Food, glorious food' in the workhouse to the London street scenes and the interior of Fagin's den. It was very hard to refrain from joining in singing all the songs!

Video of photoshoot for Oliver.

Home by Metro (free travel for 2 hours before and after performances at the theatre) and bed after a tiring day!

#87 Thanks for dropping by, Joe. Yes, snow has long gone - it didn't even last 24 hours. And the church heating is now working too, thankfully!

#88 That sounds an interesting one for me, Kerry - I shall look out for your review. You've got me with the title already! I live right by the Great North Road - the high street of my suburb runs along it, though the main traffic was diverted several decades ago onto a bypass round the city. But the road itself, the original route, runs across the Tyne bridge and on up through the city, through my suburb, and on upwards all the way to Edinburgh. It's one of the most evocative of roads in the UK, I feel - I used to live by it also when I lived in London, and had the sense that when I stepped on to it I would be swept away, rather like Bilbo Baggins, on Adventures!

Some great picture there Genny. I love the Hadrian's Wall area but I've never been to Newcastle except once to the docks when we caught a ferry to Bergen, and I don't think that counts. I missed that you had a dog previously as well.

Lovely photos, Genny, some familiar and some bits new since I left Newcastle.

Genny - You record that your posting activity is only 2 point something but an absolute humdinger of a post above (#89) only counts as 1. Glorious photography my dear of what I am reminded is a lovely and historic city and not the Northern wasteland that movies such as Get Carter (which I loved) captured. Oliver! is a wonderful musical and I am glad you enjoyed it - Consider Yourself one of us!

Genny, I loved reading and seeing what your visit was like with your Mom and her friend. Bravo on a great report!

Love the pictures and chronicling of your mom's visit, Genny. I know nothing about Newcastle and those are amazing pictures! And your review of Oliver may inspire me to pick up Terry Pratchett's new book, Dodger.

Oh how I am enjoying traveling with you! Thanks for posting all these lovely photos!

Wow! I am so glad that I stopped in :) Thank you for sharing your mom's visit with us.. and all of the wonderful pictures! This visit added a lot of pleasure to my morning...

Hope all is well for you :)

Where will you be going next week, did I miss that somewhere?

Marvelous photos, Genny!

I loved reading about your Mum's visit and seeing the photos! My parents are doing a month-long driving trip in England and Scotland next year and I'm going to have a look at their itinerary and mention Corbridge if it's on their way (they would like the cake shops!).

Cool that you saw the spelling book too. I suspect it is in Marsden Books, my favourite local independent book shop, but I am not going in there till I've read some of my recent purchases (she says with great intentions).

Thanks for visiting, Rhian, Kerry, Paul, Pat, Roni, Linda, Kath, Terri, Cushla! I'm glad you enjoyed the Mum travelogue and photos. There's a bit more to come: I still want to tell you about Mum's last day and our trip to the Northumberland county archive and mining museum. I'll do that later when I've got my laptop, not just this fiddly smartphone keyboard.

I also have to tell you about a text exchange with Mum yesterday evening which had me in hysterics (not doing my persistent cough any good) - but again that will be easier to do from a full-size keyboard. I'll just say that it has to do with predictive text and lack of proofreading!

I look forward to that. Ellen DeGeneres has a thing on her show where she shows texting
flubs caused by predictive texts and users who are unfamiliar with shortcuts. One was a woman who was telling relatives about the death of a relative, and ending with LOL. Her horrified daughter asked why.. the mom thought it meant Lots of Love. :)

Ok, here's a message I received by text from my mum yesterday evening.

"Hi joan i want to send my career cardamom missing the greek number and name could you please send."

Any guesses what she was on about? I didn't have a clue at first... Was this message even for me? Mum does tend to send 'group' texts to all her friends sometimes, but this seemed like a message directed at one person with a specific, if unintelligible, request... Or was it some kind of text spam or virus where a genuine message of mum's had got hijacked somehow and corrupted by someone trying to persuade me to follow up a dodgy hyperlink? But there was no hyperlink, and I've not known texts to be corrupted by virus.

I forwarded the message to my sister to see if she had any clues, or perhaps she had received a similar message. No luck there. But we reckoned this was another case of Mum not checking her message before she sent it.

(A bit of context: Mum was always renowned for sending illegible letters and postcards. Her handwriting is appalling and her mode of expression full of abbreviations and nicknames, so you had to be both skilled at interpreting the obscure written forms and understanding how her mind works in order to make any sense of them. These days she mainly sends texts not postcards, but the difficulty of interpretation remains although the letters and words are now legible - thanks to the ways of predictive text coupled with her continuing preference for unique abbreviations.)

Has anyone worked it out yet? No, I expect not!

As I was texting my sister for clues, I received a follow up message from Mum and things began to be a little clearer. The second message read:

You send me marjories street name and number.please I have a card for her

Marjorie is the nice lady who looks after my dog sometimes, and who Mum has met, and who is currently suffering from sciatica. Mum was simply asking for her address. But how did we get all that stuff about careers, cardamom and greeks - even for predictive text it seems quite a long leap? I sent her a message back saying I was glad she'd sent the second message because the first one didn't make much sense. I then sent her Marjorie's address.

Mum's response:

It was speaking text did you see my request for Matjories address

The plot thickens, or clears, or something. It is easy now to see how the clever speech-recognition app on mum's phone would turn her sentence: Hi Gen, I want to send Marjorie a card and I'm missing the street number and name; could you please send? into the gobbledegook above. It made me laugh so much once I'd worked it out, but also get very frustrated that she didn't acknowledge there was any problem or see anything funny in it either.

And she seems to have ignored the information I sent her in response to her request once I'd worked it out.

Another text came this morning:

Can i please have margaritas address?

At which I didn't know whether to get very frustrated or just laugh some more. I know I've sent messages with errors in often enough, and of course you can't correct text messages once you've sent them, unlike these posts (I'm very grateful for the edit button here to go back and tidy up careless posts!) - but if I don't remember to check the text before I send it, I do normally look at it once it is sent, and if I spot that I've sent something unclear I'll send a correction. I don't think Mum ever reads her texts as she writes them or after she has sent them... Grrrr.

#93 Paul, you do have a point that my posts tend to be on the long side! Which does mean that while my average posts/day is still crawling along at 2.23 thanks to my 4 years' silent membership prior to starting to post messages, my average number of words per post is probably higher than many, currently standing at 90.28.

This is picking up on conversation over on Paul's thread, for those who have not been following it. I mentioned there about the average posts per day statistic, which can be found on one's Home Page in the 'Your Zeitgeist' section, and only there. The statistic for average number of words per message is not displayed there, but can be found in the Statistics and Memes section, under the Groups and Talk sub section:

Messages

Total messages: 5,124

Word count: 462,573

Words/message: 90.28

I think it's a safe bet that Liz (lyzard) will have a higher words/message figure than this, though.

Laugh, Genny, Laugh! It beats weeping with frustration or gnawing your nails or whatever is handy. Your mum is obviously quite a character. I LOVED taking the mini-tour with the three of you - 4, counting Ty on the beach. I'll never see any of it in person, so it's all wonderful to me. AND I've wishlisted Great North Road too.

Quite a character indeed. Lovely in small doses! Infuriating for any length of time.

Happily, Annie who travelled with her this time was a good foil, calmer and and more sensible, and very helpful around the house too, which helped to lessen the rather overwhelming impact of having Mum to stay. I told her she could come again! It was quite brave of Annie travelling up to spend first several days with my sister and her family, and then with me, when she didn't really know us at all, and didn't know these parts of the country or what to expect as a guest in my sister's or my house. But she fitted in well here and seemed to enjoy discovering more about Northumberland and Newcastle, and Mum was enjoying showing her some of the places she's visited on previous trips.

I've just gone up to 2.24 posts/day, and a total of 5,130 posts. I'm noting this here to see how long and how many posts it takes to increase my average. I'm distracting myself with this completely pointless bit of statistical trivia when I should be spending all afternoon catching up on admin and emails so I can clear the decks a bit before holiday starts next week.

Wow, your mum is amazing! Your story about her texts made me laugh, and I was trying to decode them along with you. That speech recognition software sounds very faulty. I don't text or have a cell phone, thank goodness. I refuse to use shortcuts and abbreviations, so I would be a very slow texter as I spell everything out.

And I think I'll contribute to the sharing of statistics!

Total messages: 5,800
Word count: 180,166
Words/message: 31.06

You definitely beat me for words per message, Genny! :D

EDIT: I am also thankful for the Edit button, as well. I have had to use it so many times, especially since I have such a motor-mouth.

I loved the mum texts tale--hilarious!

And sharing:

Total messages: 10.549
Word count: 622,439
Words/message: 59

The only comparable one, of course, is the last, as the first two are affected by how long you've been around. Of course, I've been around 3 times as long as Eris and Genny, and have fewer than twice as many messages...

I found some more fun stats, but I'll share them on my thread rather than hijack yours, Genny.

I am laughing out loud so hard (not lots of loving) over my coffee and toast Genny. Those texts are classic. Does she realise what she sent? Career must be address with the d and a backwards and the phone doing its thing.

At least she is USING a phone - I have so many frustrating conversations with my parents. It's pathetic but the cell phone is like a magic "get into an argument" button - they have one but **do not turn it on** This would be fine but sometimes they pick up the kids after school and it really would be nice to be able to get in touch with them... but Mum says "But you won't need to get in touch with us!" - variations on this conversation must have happened 20 times over the last few years! I am trying to train myself not to go there and just forget that they have a cell phone at all.

Have a good weekend! Hope the church isn't too cold tomorrow.

Hi Genny, I have never visited your thread before Genny, although I have seen you on other 75ers threads. I just wanted to say it is delightful, full of interesting information, and I got a great laugh over your mother's texts. I enjoyed the photos and felt as though I had a nice time armchair traveling with you! I'm sure I will be back to visit again.

I've just been over to church with the churchwarden to check the new boiler/heating system. It is meant to be programmable so that it only turns itself on in time to warm up for specific service times and then switches off again. This is very different from our previous system which was basically on ALL THE TIME because we had no way of programming it, and because a reasonably constant temperature is needed for the sake of the organ; it was a huge waste of energy as the church is only used a little bit during the week on a regular basis, certainly not all day every day. So the new system should save us money and be far more environmentally responsible by using less gas. It will automatically kick in if the temperature drops below a certain level so the organ should still be ok.

Only trouble is, since they finished installing it two days ago, it has not worked properly yet. It keeps losing pressure, apparently every time it switches off, and it won't work when the pressure drops too low, so we are having to manually re-pressurise it in order for the heating to come back on in time for services. We have a big service tonight to which all those who've been bereaved in the past year are invited, so we want to be sure the church is nice and warm and welcoming. And we have a very big occasion on Sunday morning when the bishop will be with us for our Patronal Festival (our church is dedicated to All Saints and this is All Hallowstide) - as the final celebration in our 125th anniversary year. So after three Sundays without any heat, we definitely want it to be warm this Sunday. So I reckon that since the problem occurs when the heating is off, we should simply leave it running all the time over the weekend - it won't be any more wasteful than we used to be all the time with the old system, and at least we should be guaranteed a warm building.

Then hopefully the engineers will sort out why the problem is happening and fix it properly. But I'll be on holiday in Malta next week so I'll happily leave the churchwarden to wrestle with engineers and leaky valves and pipes!

#110 Hi Mary Beth, thanks for visiting. I've seen you around too, it takes a while to get to know everyone on here, doesn't it! I'm glad you enjoyed the thread and found mum's texts amusing. The armchair travel aspect of this group on LT is one of the many unexpected bonuses - we come here for book talk and find so much more. I find I'm learning so much about different parts of the world - most of which I probably won't ever visit in person. Do drop back in when you have time - I hope to be posting about my forthcoming holiday in Malta/Gozo soon. I might even get round to writing some book reviews one day, but don't hold your breath!

#109 Hi Cushla, yes, Mum provides lots of LOL moments. She doesn't realise at all what she has sent, and I'm sure she didn't look back at her original message even when I commented that it made no sense. But then she has always been very unaware of the impact that she has on people around her - she is very child-like in the sense of being un-selfconscious, and spontaneous - never stops to think about how something will come over before she speaks, or acts, or texts... Whereas I am the complete opposite, and will ponder and agonise over every sentence and every decision.

She has always been a keen mobile phone user, long before I did anything other than use one for emergencies. We had the opposite problem to yours: she kept sending me texts and complaining that I didn't reply, and could not understand although I explained frequently that I didn't have my phone switched on or have it on my person and therefore it was not the way to get in touch with me and she should use the landline instead. But now I have a smartphone and usually keep it close at hand, so she is able to indulge in her cryptic texting sprees and get some kind of response from me!

#108 These stats are a great way to procrastinate, Roni! I frequently check my stats page, to see whether I'm posting more or less than last month, and other details over there. You wouldnt' have been hi-jacking, Roni - but anyway, I went over to your thread and saw your details including the number of messages for each year of the 75 challenge - I see that your posting rate has increased year on year, whereas mine fluctuates more. I was more active in 2011 than I have been this year as I had several months earlier this summer of being quite absent and distracted by work, so I don't think that even by the end of 2012 I will equal last year's total.

75 Books Challenge for 2011 (2,415 messages)
75 Books Challenge for 2012 (1,299 messages)
75 Books Challenge for 2010 (1,040 messages)

Oh, and my longest post ever according to the stats page is one on my final thread for last year, where I listed all the books acquired in 2011. As there were over 300 books, I'm not surprised that was a long one! My first ever post was also in this group, in 2010.

I think if I were to list the number of work-related emails that I haven't sent because I've been so busy posting messages on here instead, my parishioners would be horrified!

#107 Thanks for sharing your stats too, Eris. Your total of texts sent is amazing - more than mine already although you've only been a member for just over a year and I've been actively posting for nearly three years. So we all have our different ways of excelling. Mine is in being prolix (I like that word!).

#104 Peggy, I'll post another nice photo of Mum and Annie when I complete my account of their stay. I didn't think to take many pictures sadly. Most of the ones above are borrowed from elsewhere. There are certainly plenty of wonderful places to visit both within the city and out in Northumberland, with the hills and the sea both near by - I do enjoy having people to stay and the excuse to get out to places.

Love the text messages too, so baffling.

I still haven't read much of Great North Road but loved coming back here yesterday and seeing the photos of the places mentioned in the book's first chapter especially the Sage auditorium. The book is set about 50 years in the future and most of the action will be on another planet but he places the first bit firmly in central Newcastle. I very briefly visited Newcastle four years ago mainly to visit Seven Stories and spent the rest of the day in the countryside visiting Roman ruins with my two youngest children. The next day we drove north and visited Alnwick & Bamburgh castles on our way to Scotland. Still annoyed that there was no time to go to Barter Books.
Love their coffee mug -


David Almond is another writer who places his books in and around Newcastle.

#113 Kerry, how great that you have visited Seven Stories! I love that place, but I don't go very often as they charge quite a lot to visit, so I wait until I have young children visiting.

I must read some David Almond. I see that he is doing a couple of talks for children/teens in a forthcoming Winter Book Festival in Newcastle.

Alnwick and Bamburgh are the jewels in the crown of the Northumberland castles - but there are so many we are spoiled for choice. Shame you didn't get to Barter Books though - I love the mug!

Funny mum story :) she sounds quite nice !

Love the mug in 114!

Genny, I was so keen to get to Northumberland after reading a lot of historical fiction set there. We also drove out to Holy Island, but really had no time at all to do everything and it was a Sunday so I think Barter Books was closed, but I knew about it and would have loved to have gone in.
From Gaskella's blog: Barter Books has also made a name for itself as the re-discoverers of the ‘Keep Calm and Carry On’ poster. This was one of a set of propaganda posters which were to be issued in case of invasion during WWII. They weren’t needed in the end and were destroyed – except for one found in the bottom of a box of books by the owners of the bookshop, and another now in the Imperial War Museum.

My great x5 grandmother's family came from the Coldingham & St Abbs area which was another reason for us being in that part of the UK. My youngest daughter shares her birthday exactly 200 years later so we just had to visit her hometown. She emigrated to South Australia in 1838. We spent several hours exploring that part of the Scottish Borders coastline before ending up in Edinburgh. My next trip to the UK will have to include another visit to the north. My oldest daughter lives in London so I have a good reason to get there (eventually).

I loved everything about Seven Stories, I visited the Roald Dahl exhibition and they also had a Naughty Children one as well. I'm a member of a children's literature organisation here in NZ so was very interested in visiting a centre like this. I loved the building that it's housed in. I also visited the International Youth library in Munich on the same trip.

Enjoy your trip to Malta, and I hope the boiler sorts itself out before you return.

>>#103

Oh, hey! Must I always be the group's negative yardstick!? First we have Paul assuring everyone that a post that just says ((hugs)) "has just as much weight as one of Liz's", and now this! I'm starting to get a complex! :)

Oh, okay: for the record---

Words/message: 149.64

---and my single longest post was my review of The Man On Devil's Island, posted just the other day.

By the way, Genny, if you can wade through my verbosity, you'll find a review of When Parents Text, a whole book dedicated to experiences like the one you just had with your mum!

#115 Alnwick and Bamburgh are the jewels in the crown of the Northumberland castles - I love the Northumberland castles but my favourites are Dunstanburgh and Warkworth - I like my castles a little bit more ruined. I love the stories about your Mum texting. My sister bought my Mum a mobile phone for Christmas, J put all her contacts on it and tried to teach her how to use it but ever since it's stayed exactly where I thought it would: in a drawer in her sitting room!

Genny....I got a huge tickle out of your mom's texts! My mom (88 years old) does leave her phone on, (she's always "pocket dialing") but does not text.....to which I say THank You Lord. She does however figure out new and imaginative ways to screw up her computer, email and is hopeless about opening pictures or attachments. I finallly subscribed to a site www.logmein.com , loaded it on mom's computer, and now when she calls I just login in from here. She's in Maryland, I'm up in Maine about 600 miles away. We have the problems fixed in about 5-8 minutes. It's so much easier than trying to figure out what on earth she's talking about when she says "there's this thing up there on my screen....it's next to that big green box (or yellow circle) or whatever."

Hope the service goes well tonite, the weekend visit from the bishop is good, the heating gets fixed.

Enjoy Malta.

#117 I didn't realise it was Barter Books who got us started on the Keep Calm and... posters. There are so many variants of that around now, it is getting too much. But strange to think that we might have lost that little bit of cultural history altogether if they hadn't found that copy.

Interesting to hear of your family connections with this area; I hope you get the chance for another visit soon - then we could have a Newcastle LT meet up in the café of Seven Stories, combined with a long visit to Barter Books!

I was very excited when I first contemplated moving to this part of the world - my PhD research had been partly on manuscripts produced in the scriptoria of Wearmouth and Jarrow, Bede's two-base monastery up here by the Tyne and Wear, and what with Holy Island, Bamburgh, Hexham and all, there is so much rich history from the early medieval period I'd always been fascinated by. Then there is also the rich folk music tradition, and the wonderful Northumbrian pipes, of which I was already a fan before I moved here, and have been sort of trying to learn since then (though it has taken a back seat in the past 18 months, must get back to it). I'm very proud of my adopted home town/county, and hope that when the time comes to move to a new post, I can find something suitable in this area.

#118 Liz, no negative judgement intended, I assure you. Some of us go for length, some for quantity - neither is better or worse than another! As one who tends to wordier posts myself, I wish sometimes that I could learn to be more succinct - but even if I fear I go on a bit too much in my own posts once I get started, I don't feel that at all about your long reviews and informative posts on the tutored reads: I look forward to reading them greatly. I'm behind on your threads, but following the tutored reads with great interest. So I look forward to reading your review of When Parents Text - who knew that there was a book about it!

#119 True, Rhian, Warkworth and Dunstanburgh are also very special. I first visited Warkworth back in about 1989 with a Canadian friend whose surname is Percy. She said she wanted to visit 'her' castles, so we went to Warkworth first then on to Alnwick, seat of the Percy family and the Dukes of Northumberland to this day (and also one of the locations used for Hogwarts in the Harry Potter films).


This photo of Warkworth Castle is courtesy of TripAdvisor.


This photo of Dunstanburgh Castle is courtesy of TripAdvisor


This photo of Bamburgh Castle is courtesy of TripAdvisor


This photo of Alnwick Castle is courtesy of TripAdvisor

Liz, no negative judgement intended, I assure you.

(soothed feelings)

I know, I know - the strictures are justified - I've completely lost the art of succinctness. :(

Gorgeous photos, Genny!

#120 Tina, glad to have tickled your funny bone with that! My mum has been much slower to get into using computer and email than she was with the phone and text. She does now occasionally send me emails, usually forwarding one of those funny or sentimental ones with photos and quotes. And now she has a smartphone, she can get emails on her phone, so the first thing she did when she arrived up here was demand to know the password for my wifi, when I don't think she even knew what that was last year. But she has a rather tenuous grasp on all this; she usually charges ahead with the bits she understands and ignores the rest, and just about manages to get by. That 'log me in' website sounds a very useful way of providing remote computer guidance though - I know what you mean about trying to do such things by describing them over the phone (I was trying to explain to Mum how to use Bookmooch last year, not easy!).

Genny, I love seeing the photos of the castles in your area. My university sponsored a coach tour of England and Scotland several years ago. On my favorite day of the tour we spent the morning on Holy Island and the afternoon at Bamburgh Castle. You are blessed to live in a beautiful corner of the world!

Our coach driver grumbled all morning about taking us to Holy Island. For some reason he didn't want to drive his coach over the causeway. We made it there and back with no problem. However, when we arrived at Bamburgh Castle, which he was quite happy to drive us to, he backed the coach into a pole and did quite a bit of damage to it.

Love the castle photos. And your mom's texts were great for a laugh! I don't text, but the lists I type on my i-Phone are constantly self-correcting in odd ways . . . one turned (author Dennis) Lehane into Lebanese . . . (?) . . . and when I tried to fix it, it wanted to make him Leanne . . .

Beautiful! Beautiful! Beautiful!!! Thank you, Genny.

Loving the castles!!!

My mother (84yrs) uses her mobile phone and texting far more than me. I'm just not into it. She also uses skype all the time, another wonderful connection tool that I don't bother with.

I had just read Credo before I visited Northumberland and would have loved to spend a lot more time visiting abbey ruins and all. Coldingham also has a long history with one of the earliest abbeys. We walked the creel path down to the sea. My two teens also wanted to visit ruins which we eventually did when we got to Wales.

creel path

#125: I have to admit to being apprehensive with driving out to Holy Island as I didn't have much information about the tides and it was a spur of the moment decision to drive out there. I loved my visit to Bamburgh Castle, looking out to sea and imagining them having to defend an attack from the sea.

HI Genny
Thanks for sharing all those lovely pictures! They look great!
Your mom sends text messages like I do! Auto correct messes me up all the time and I don't check before I send it. My husband finds them pretty funny sometimes!

What a delicious anecdote about your mother and her texts. I loved it.

Hi Genny. I love the castle photos too. What a beautiful area you live in. I have to say I admire your mother for not being afraid of technology. I have probably only sent a handful of texts in my life. That aspect of technology seems to have passed me by.

All these pictures of Northumberland's castles are bringing back a lot of happy memories. I've spent three holidays in that area: once as a younger teenager with my parents; once with Mr SandDune the first year that we were going out together and once as a family when J was about four or five. I remember buying him a chain mail outfit and a toy sword at Warkworth castle and he spent the rest of the holiday storming any ruin he came across. I think Warkworth sticks in my mind particularly because of the little hermitage across the river - I remember J loved going across in the rowing boat. And Dunstanburgh has such a lovely location even though the ruins are less extensive than some of the other castles.

Wow. No words for the castles and your trip but wow. Thanks so much for sharing. (Since you've already got a mom, would you like to adopt me as an auntie?)

Genny basking in your photographs. Alnwick Castle is a favourite but all the photos are making me nostalgic for home.
Love the stats on posting information. Not surprised either to note that Liz's avaerage post length is double my own (I am at almost 80 per post).
Hope your Sunday (of course by necessity a working day for your goodself) goes very well. x

Don't work too hard today :) I hope the working part is easy and the pleasant part is long..

hi genny!
i have just spent a good chunk of time reading your delightful thread and loved it - gorgeous pictures, entertaining stories, and amusing mom episodes. i have missed a lot over here and soon you will be going on holiday - i expect more great reading :-)

the UK is small in size but packed with high interest. i do hope to get there someday and hope i am not too overwhelmed. will need to do a lot of research beforehand - and plan a long vacation!

Hi Genny,
I've got seriously behind, and was slightly intimidated by the high number of posts that have built up in my absence, but I'm so glad I pressed on bravely, as there are so many treasures here! Love the photos of Newcastle - I've heard really good things about it, and have been suggesting it as a possible place for a city break to the husband for a while, but now I shall redouble my efforts - it really looks lovely. Also, who could resist all those marvelous castles? I see a rather excellent holiday taking shape before my eyes....
Re: parents and technology. Both my parents, but especially my mother are rather hopeless, and they don't even have the excuse of particularly advanced years to fall back on - they're only in their mid-sixities but act rather like suspicious eighty-somethings in some regards. (In contrast, my Grandfather's girlfriend, who IS in her eighties, is a lively correspondent with me on Facebook and seems to have embraced technology wholeheartedly). I had to teach my mother how to text, after she had already owned a mobile phone for several years, and don't even get me started on her use of the computer.... My husband has become her "IT Helpdesk", as most of the rest of the family don't have the patience, and he often has to endure very long phone calls, often to solve silly non-problems. I've told him about "logmein", and I think we may well have to get it...thanks LT for another great tip!
I guess we shouldn't judge them too harshly - I'm hardly a computer expert myself - I'm fine as long as everything works as it should, but as soon as something goes wrong I'm very quickly out of my depth. Also, as my husband says, there will probably come a day when we that were born in the pre-digital age will get hopelessly left behind as well - technology is progressing at such a dizzying speed that you may soon have had to grow up with it to be truly comfortable with it - anyone who has ever seen a seven year old pick up a piece of technology they've never used before will know what I mean - it's pretty intimidating.

#89 Sounds like your Mum and her friend had a lovely visit in the end. I hope it wasn't too stressful trying to squeeze entertaining guests in around all your work commitments.

I also loved the photos you posted of Newcastle. I've only passed through on the train and have never got out to see the city. It looks really nice.

#102 How funny! (and frustrating) My Dad was trying to show me the speech recognition software in his car and of course it took ages for the car to 'understand' his request to turn the radio on.

Here are my message stats:

Total messages: 5,764
Word count: 509,143
Words/message: 88.33

75 Books Challenge for 2010 (1,821 messages)
75 Books Challenge for 2011 (1,681 messages)
75 Books Challenge for 2012 (1,614 messages)

It seems I tend towards longer messages too (I'm suspect this is a side effect of not checking all the threads everyday so when I do post, I'm replying to or commenting on quite a few messages).

#118 "Must I always be the group's negative yardstick!?" Maybe it's a positive yardstick?

#124 "She does now occasionally send me emails, usually forwarding one of those funny or sentimental ones with photos and quotes."

I think there must be some kind of subscription service parents sign up to that sends them all these emails. My dad's the same although there are several emails a week. But at least I managed to get him to stop sending them to my work email address.

Hope you enjoy your Malta trip. When do you go? (Have you gone already?)

Enjoying the pics of the castles, Genny. We loved Urquhart Castle when we were in Scotland. I'd sure like to do more castle-exploring like that.

Those were wonderful photos of your local castles. I've never seen a castle in real life. :-(

Genny, I'm so far behind, hence skipped through this time, but will return. Very amused by your mum's speak message texts. The joy of mis-communication haha. Loved the photo tour of her visit.

Off to Gladstones for a long weekend next Friday, last visit of the year. Recharge my batteries.

Thank you for all your visits and nice comments about the castles etc. and parents and technology.

I typed several replies yesterday, but managed to lose them before they were safely posted. Was too tired to write them out again then. And tonight I was hoping to come back to those replies (and reply to new messages) but I'm very tired again - today was another big day, the last big bit of our celebrations of our 125th anniversary. It was a good and happy occasion with a service led by the Bishop, followed by cava and cake and a ceremonial unveiling of a photo mosaic of church members, then a bring-and-share lunch; but a number of people complaining about various matters, or taking offence at what others have said, or telling me why they have chosen to stay away because of x or y, have marred the build up and wind-down time and just drain my energy so quickly...

I also intended to post something about books for a change! I have selected an improbably large number of books that fit into November TIOLI challenges (going for shared reads quite a bit), partly as a way of starting to select what I'm taking on holiday with me. There are 21 physical books piled up, as well as one or two on my Kindle app. The latter can easily be carried with me, but the former need sorting into a shortlist of manageable weight that I think I will like to read while I'm away.

The candidates are (in no particular order and not bothering to specify which challenge they fit into, for now):

(later updated to show which ones got read)

The Hare with Amber Eyes - moved to December
The World's Wife - still (just about) reading
Half of a Yellow Sun - moved to December
Apparition &Late Fictions - moved to December
The Hobbit - re-read - READ
Tolkien and the Great War - moved to December
The Time of the Hero
Cloud Atlas - READ
Small Gods - READ
Food for Life: the Spirituality and Ethics of Eating - moved to December
Summer Cooking
Oath of Gold
The Game of Kings - READ
The Wandering Fire - moved to December
Inside the whale and other essays - Reading
On the Black Hill - moved to December
Room - moved to December
More Trees to Climb
The Grand Sophy - READ
Venetia - READ
The Finkler Question - moved to December

On Kindle:
Barchester Towers - re-read - Still reading
Pickwick Papers - - READ
The Forgotten Garden

I'm off on my holiday on Tuesday. Tomorrow is a day to tidy up loose ends from work, sort out practical things before I go away, do my packing etc, deliver Ty to Marjorie, etc. There may not be much time for posting or updating before I go, but I will need to come back and refine my book-packing list. Any recommendations? As I holiday by myself, there is usually time for a lot of reading, interrupted only by the desire to get out and explore the area I'm visiting (so some of the books I'll be taking are guidebooks). So I can manage a couple at least of chunksters. I'm thinking this might be a good time to tackle Cloud Atlas - no idea what to expect from it other than it comes highly recommended.

hi genny!
i rec cloud atlas
i found it a bit tough going at first - but came to love it.

happy holiday! safe travels!

Regarding messages from your mom, I laughed right out loud.

Communication is such an incredible thing.

I'm always amazed that two people can indeed (for the most part) understand what the other is trying to say.

Happy Travels to you!

a number of people complaining about various matters, or taking offence at what others have said, or telling me why they have chosen to stay away because of x or y, have marred the build up and wind-down time and just drain my energy so quickly...

I have a couple of clergy friends who have started keeping files of encouraging cards and messages they receive. When the negative voices seem to have the upper hand, they pull out their encouragement file and re-read the contents.

Why is it so much easier to complain than to express appreciation and thanks? At church this morning we heard a sermon on the sin of ingratitude. I was reminded how little it costs to say "thank you" and how much it means to the person on the receiving end.

I hope any negative feelings surrounding your special events quickly fade and that everyone's memories of your anniversary celebration will be happy ones.

Heyer is always good vacation reading! Light and fun.

Hi Genny. Just stopping by to wish you Bon Voyage. I'm so glad you're thinking of reading Cloud Atlas on vacation. I started it a couple of weeks ago and loved it right from the start but now I've gotten bogged down in the middle (which is the distant future in the book) and need some encouragement to push through.

I'm looking forward to hearing about your trip. :)

#143 Well, my top most recommendation would be Barchester Towers which I am really enjoying but as that's on the kindle app it's going anyway.

I think Cloud Atlas is a great book and don't think it requires too much brain to be a holiday read. Personally I wouldn't want to read something as tragic as Half of a Yellow Sun on holiday. I'm an easy reading on holiday person so I'd also take The Hobbit and the Georgette Heyers.

#146 "Why is it so much easier to complain than to express appreciation and thanks? At church this morning we heard a sermon on the sin of ingratitude. I was reminded how little it costs to say "thank you" and how much it means to the person on the receiving end.

I hope any negative feelings surrounding your special events quickly fade and that everyone's memories of your anniversary celebration will be happy ones."

Hear, hear.

Genny - have a lovely holiday. I'm looking forward to hearing what you think of Malta.

I'm still in the middle of a catch up with your threads, but you can download all of the Foreign Bodies episodes so far as podcasts from iplayer - there are 2 omnibus editions available and the 3rd on Friday. I really recommend it, though it should possibly come with a health warning - it's made me want to read various books I haven't yet read and also the ones I didn't like when I read them before in case I missed something. Mark Lawson normally comes to the Harrogate Crime Festival and does panels at it, as does Jenni Murray (another Radio 4 broadcaster, known especially for Woman's Hour).

Genny, I've had a great hour or so catching up with you here. It felt a bit like reading a novel. I'd say a Barbara Pym probably, based on the one book of hers I've read so far, though there are more on my tbr I look forward to. I know you probably won't have time to read this message, but there are so many things I wanted to respond to that I'll go ahead and respond to a few and maybe when you get back from your vacation in Malta you'll have time for it then.

Loving all the photos and descriptions of locales. I used to travel quite extensively and have been housebound for just over 5 years now. In large part it was out of choice, and I haven't minded in the least, but these past few weeks I've been feeling more and more restless so getting to travel here along with you has been a nice break.

Loved reading about your travails with your mum. Mostly because I can sooooo relate. The text message incident is just hilarious. I use the dictation feature on my phone extensively, so can well see how that would happen, but unlike your mum, I'm rather obsessive about making sure everything gets sent properly, though typos as the bane of my existence. When you described the kind of woman she is though, I really had the sense I was reading about my father as well:

"But then she has always been very unaware of the impact that she has on people around her - she is very child-like in the sense of being un-selfconscious, and spontaneous - never stops to think about how something will come over before she speaks, or acts, or texts"

All applies save for the texting part, as he only had a mobile phone very briefly and has decided it's too costly for him, so no texts, though I suspect we'd have a similar situation there too, as he's never bothered to learn how to spell properly for one thing.

I was interested in the stats you'd posted. I hadn't known you could see what your very first message had been, and wasn't surprised to find my first message was posted over a year after I'd joined. Like you, I spent several years using the site mostly to catalogue. I'm pretty obsessive with tagging, but otherwise not as thorough as you by any means! That first message was in answer to someone who was asking how to separate their collections in 2008 before that feature had been made available here on LT. I can't imagine going without that feature now!

I was rather astounded by my stats, though I shouldn't have been since I know I'm a wordy one too and have never mastered the art of pithy messages:

Total messages: 9,751
Word count: 1,501,679
Words/message: 154

Also:

75 Books Challenge for 2011 (5,322 messages)
75 Books Challenge for 2012 (3,247 messages)

which explains why I feel I'm so out of the loop compared to last year, even though I spend much too much time on LT still as it is!

I hope you have a fantastic vacation and will look forward to seeing pictures and reading all about it.

Genny, I'm wishing you a lovely holiday. I hope you take lots of pictures. I enjoyed the little tour of Newcastle and the castle pics. I'd love to visit England again, but for the time being, I'll just enjoy the pictures you post.

LOL at the situation with your mom although I can understand how frustrating it can be as well. My mom never says hello or goodbye on the phone when she calls. When the phone rings and I pick up, she goes right into whatever she has to say and then when she's done, she just hangs up without so much as a warning! So often I'm left going..hello?..hello? to myself for a few minutes just to make sure she really has hung up...

Dear Genny, have a wonderfully happy holiday! I applaud your taking Cloud Atlas and agree that when you've gotten into it a little, you'll appreciate what all the fuss is about. Of course, I hope in a nostalgic way that you'll take The Game of Kings, and The Grand Sophy is - grand! Enjoy!

Thank you all for your comments and suggestions for which holiday books to take. I'm up early to finish my packing (well, start it, if I'm honest). I'll check in again later once I'm en route or arrived - I won't have my laptop with me but I will have my phone, and there is free wifi at my hotel so I should be able to keep in touch while away and post shorter messages at least.

Now safely landed in Malta and waiting for the suitcase to emerge...

Have a fun and safe trip!

Have a fantastic holiday Genny!

Woo-hoo! Have a great time, Genny!

Well here I am, checked in, unpacked, showered and changed, and having discovered the password for the free wifi, I'm now connected with the world again.

I'm staying in an old-fashioned Gozoan guest house, in a beautiful large room with old wooden furniture and three times more storage space than I need, even with all the books I brought with me! It's very much the quiet end of the season; I'm the only guest here. The downside is that the couple who run the place have decided to take a month break from running their restaurant next door, which is where I was counting on eating most nights. But they have invited me to share their supper tonight, and tomorrow I shall find out what other eating out options there are.

I finished reading Venetia on the plane, and have mostly been reading guide books since then. There is no TV in the room, so I will have few distractions in the evening to take me away from books, beyond posting on LT.

Hi Genny

Just stopping by on your thread after enjoying your comments on mine. So glad to see that you take - and post - wonderful photos! Say hello to Gozo for me. Will you be able to get over to Malta as well - do you have a car hire? I remember Mdina was lovely.

Helen

Malta! How lovely! Having a wonderful time already, eh what? Well deserved. Thanks for stopping by my thread to help celebrate my renewed contact with the world, and have many good adventures.

I'm slowly catching up with threads while I watch the US election results, Genny. Have a great time in Malta! I look forward to your travel reports from there. I loved your Newcastle photos, and I'll have to spend a day there on a future trip to the UK.

Replies later...

Today I am exploring Gozo's main town, Victoria, or Rabat. Named Victoria after the queen in celebration of her jubilee, while Rabat means suburb in Arabic and is the locals name for the town which grew up outside the walls of the historic Citadel, which is where I am exploring this afternoon after enjoying a lunch of local cheeses and salty olives and sun-dried tomatoes. I've spent my leisurely lunch in the company of the intriguing Lymond, hero (or anti-hero?) of Dorothy Dunnet's Game of Kings, recommended by several of you earlier in this thread. This is the first of a series which will end up in Malta by book three, but I won't get to read the Maltese one till long after I get home. Excellent historical fiction: lots of dialogue and not too much exposition so the reader is kept on her toes and not spoon-fed.

Am taking photos of course, but I don't think I'll be able to post any on my thread using my phone, so visitors will have to wait till I get home to see them. I can easily post to Facebook though, so I'll probably put some there for those who want a preview.

Sounds marvelous, Genny! Enjoy!

Your lunch sounds fabulous. Glad you're enjoying your book.

Your lunch sounds delicious! I have Game of Kings here somewhere, recommended enthusiastically by a RL friend many times when we were at grad school together.

So glad that you're having a nice time :) I look forward to your always wonderful pictures :)

Free wifi in my guesthouse, but only intermittent connection from my room. I could go downstairs to have better connection, but mostly I've been busy reading or out walking and exploring (and listening to audiobooks while I do so: one fifth of Les Miserables, and half of The Hobbit so far, the latter especially good while walking through strange countryside full of marvels). As for paper books, I'm still with Lymond in The Game of Kings, the dense and allusive style and chess-game plot make it not a quick read, but a very enjoyable one.

Yesterday I visited megalithic temples older than Stonehenge, and far, far older than the pyramids.

Today, more prosaically, I'm planning a coastal walk with views of salt-pans.

Hello genny slowly catching up with threads. I love the photos of your time with your mum and all the castle photos - soooo beautiful - wants me to come and see them for myself. I loved the picture of the creel path, exactly what I like to go for long walks/hikes :)

I found your mums text conversation very entertaining and almost spilled my coffee on my laptop *giggle*. I just try to imagine your puzzlement when receiving the first message.

And last I WISH you a great and relaxing time on Malta, so far it sounds that's exactly that :) The temple sound magnificent and your coastal walk sounds lovely. :)

Hope you are having a great time and managing to recharge your batteries:)

Morning check in time at the guest house before I set off for more explorations. I'm taking it very easy this morning, enjoying the fact that it's a Sunday and I'm not on duty (though I did wake up with relief from a nightmare about a wedding for which I'd forgotten to do the legal paperwork!).

I finished The Game of Kings last night, and now am longing to know what the sequel will bring. But I don't yet have a copy of that, so it's on with the other books I've brought with me. Another 3 hours or so of the Hobbit to listen to while I'm out walking today. I've read a bit more of Barchester Towers, the chapter about the sermon was a bit close to the bone and set me thinking about work stuff rather than relaxing holiday thoughts. I must catch up with the tutored read thread and comment there, if I can bear it!

Should I squeeze in a quick read, like Small Gods, the latest in my Pratchett read through, before picking up Cloud Atlas? I am inclined not to rush into that one, though time is running out on my holiday...

Sounds like you are having a wonderful time and getting through some great books. I'll be starting The hobbit and the 4th Lymond book in the next few days. I had to google the megalithic temples - wow!

Just cross posted on your thread, Kerry.

Yes, the temples were amazing. I'll post more when I have access to a full keyboard. One less-than-impressed visitor made some comment about one stone being very much like another, but i certainly found it very awe inspiring to see the oldest free-standing example of human architecture, and those vast great stones (mega liths) up to 50 tons, shaped and moved into position no-one knows how.

>173 gennyt:: oh no, a wedding nightmare while on holiday!! I hope you're enjoying a Sunday off, Genny. Your holiday sounds lovely.

This is sounding like a perfect get away...Iam so happy for you! And for us when you share photos :)

Hi, Genny! Glad you're having a nice holiday!

Happy temple-watching! Checking out the competition's work, eh? :-)

102: The plot thickens, or clears, or something.
Heh, funny. Makes so much sense once you know.

And photogenicity abounds in your part of the world.

What, you’re going away again? Well, you always return with photos.

I am completely beyond envious that you are in Malta. I can't wait to see your photos.

I would like to listen to the Hobbit too Genny. I remember as a boy Bernard Cribbens reading the story on Jackanory and I was hooked. Trust the holiday is still at the very least meeting expectations.

Add me to the envious crowds Genny.

I saw on Kerry's thread where I was lurking that we are both taking in Rob Inglis performing The Hobbit more or less simultaneously? It had been eons since I read it, so it's all new to me again, and Inglis makes it such great fun, doesn't he?

Also impressed by the temples, which I've also googled. Silly comment about one stone being like the next. Talk about missing the point entirely!

Last morning at the guest house. Packing still to do, and then the slow journey to the airport: bus, wait, bus, ferry, bus... I've decided against one quick last dash into the central town before I depart: I can do any shipping for local delicacies at the airport, and that gives me time perhaps for one quick wander along the local cliffs instead.

I'm very impressed with the bus service here. Gozo is a tiny island, but from its central town Victoria/Rabat buses radiate out to every village and to several beaches or other non residential tourist destinations, on an hourly basis, from early in the morning till after 10 at night. I've managed several of my days out by taking the bus into Victoria (10 mins), then on to one village, walking from there down to the coast and along, then getting a different bus back to Victoria and so on home to the village where I'm staying. More irregular or infrequent buses would have made this very difficult. It does mean I have spent many an odd 40 minutes or so in the little café near Victoria bus station, but with a book always on hand that is never a problem!

Hello genny,
glad to hear that you had such a great vac and I wish you a save journey home. And what did you read in the end? Cloud Atlas or Small Gods ?

I read Small Gods yesterday -which kind of fitted with the theme of ancient temples long abandoned - and may try to start Cloud Atlas today as there will be lots of opportunity for reading on the journey home.

#175 I certainly found it very awe inspiring to see the oldest free-standing example of human architecture
I'd definitely agree with you on that. We went to Papa Westray (one of the Orkney Islands) where they have the remains of the oldest stone built houses in northern Europe (about 3700BC) and I found it fascinating to look at something that was so old but still recognisably a human habitation. It sounds like you've had a relaxing holiday. When we've been to the Mediterranean we've pretty much always been in the summer when it is baking hot - I always think that it would be so nice to be there when the weather was cool enough to be doing long walks. It's always far too hot in July or August.

I am glad that you have had such a lovely time... and I appreciate that you share your adventures with all of us :)

What a lovely holiday it sounds like, and I agree about the historical monuments and visits. I'm fascinated by early and pre-history, up to about 11th century, and seeing houses etc makes you realise that we haven't changed at all in any of our basic needs. I'd love to go around the world and see all the early habitations and civilisations.

Thank you for taking us along with you, Genny. I'm very glad that it's been so restful and stimulating!

A lovely lovely holiday, so glad you could make this happen!

Gozo sounds like a wonderful getaway destination. Can't wait to see the pictures! And you get to read Cloud Atlas on your way home. Excellent choice. I hope you like it as much as I did.

What a great trip, Genny. I'm another one fascinated by the old castles and temples.

Your trip sounds lovely Genny. I had a look at the guesthouse you linked to on facebook and it looks very tempting. I've bookmarked it for future holiday considerations :-) The old temples sound really interesting.

I think I reached the sermon chapter in Barchester Towers today - I'm sorry that reminded you of work whilst you were away on a break! Hopefully the other books you'd taken with you helped to put it out of your mind.

Glad to hear you had a great time on your trip, Genny! :)

Good that you are safe home with a wonderful trip to tuck into your memories..

Sounds like you have had a lovely holiday Genny. Hopefully a picture or two on your return?

Oooh, I'd love to see those megaliths, too. Happy to hear that your vacation has been a good one, and wishing you safe travels back home!

I've been woefully absent on my own thread since returning from holiday 6 days ago. Work, and procrastinating about work, and feeling unwell, have all taken up my time. I've been reading a certain amount, but not updating much...

I have done some sorting out of photos, but need to do a bit more before I'm ready to post any. It's getting complicated because I have taken many photos on my 'proper' camera, but also quite a few more on my mobile phone, which are mostly good quality (my old phone didn't have a very good camera on it, so I rarely used it unless I'd forgotten my proper camera and didn't bother incorporating those pictures into my holiday albums, but with this newer one I've had since August, the quality is good, sometimes better than from my camera itself. Thus I need to work out a system for integrating both sets of photos and storing them both online (from where I can post a few images on here and make albums visible to those who want to see more) and on my hard-drive. I hope to finish fiddling around with this soon so that I can satisfy the demands to see pictures of my trip!

I've almost finished reading Cloud Atlas - I'm in the last section, and don't really want it to end...

Glad you're enjoying Cloud Atlas Genny! It's a unique gem, isn't it? Although, I have Riddley Walker on my TBR pile because it is apparently very like the post-apocalyptic sections of the book. My favourite sections were those featuring the fast food restuarant actually, but they were all a joy.
I sympathise with your photo cataloguing woes. I love the photos I can take on my new phone with the fancy Instagram app, but after losing all the photos from my old phone as I never bothered to upload them onto my computer, I really have to figure out a way of getting them from the phone to the 'puter. I'm sure it's relatively easy, but the technophobe in me is resisting....

Holiday photos part 1

Well, I've made a good start on sorting my photos. I don't want to overload my thread with too many images, especially as this is already quite a long thread, so I propose to post one or two images for each day of my trip, and then also a link to an online album where those who are interested can see more ad nauseam! (I take FAR too many pictures...)

The first full day of my stay on Gozo was spent visiting the 'capital city' or central town of Rabat, also known as Victoria. I should really have taken a picture of the bus station, since I was there several times a day throughout my trip, but it was not very photogenic! Victoria's main attraction is the fortified Citadel, the oldest part of the settlement on a hill in the centre of the island, dating back to Neolithic times and with many remaining medieval buildings, surrounded with fortifications from various eras.

Full album should be viewable from this link: 2012 11 07 Gozo day 1 Rabat Let me know if you have problems with this - it should take you through to my Picasa Web Album which is viewable by all who have the link.

Here are a few tasters.


Narrow medieval pedestrian streets in the Citadel

From the ramparts you can see just about the whole island, including glimpses of the sea in all directions.


Panoramic view from the ramparts

While in Victoria I visited the Archaelogical Museum, where some of the artefacts associated with the megalithic temples are kept, along with more recent remains (recent in these terms meaning Roman or later!). I also visited the baroque Cathedral, famous for having a dome which is in fact a trompe l'oeil optical illusion painting, as the exterior view reveals that there is no dome. And I also visited the Folklore museum, housed in three adjacent medieval buildings which are as much of an attraction as the objects on display.


Prehistoric stick figurines found on Gozo

Genny, I'll check out your full album when I have more time. I love the panoramic shot...and the starkness of the Citadel streets. You have a great eye for photography. Thanks for sharing!

Wonderful photographs.... thank you for sharing...
:)

What gorgeous photos! The panoramic view is spectacular.

Wow, that panoramic view one is especially gorgeous, Genny! Looks like you had a beautiful vacation. Thanks for letting me live vicariously through you. :)

Adding my voice to the chorus re: panoramic Gozo, Genny. Lovely stuff!

Thanks so much for sharing your holiday memories with us, Genny. It looks beautiful.

I'm at work and the pictures are filtered out - it's very annoying to hear you all enthusing about them and not be able to see them!

Loved the photos too. That panoramic view is phenomenal.

Thanks for the photos, Genny. Looks like a great trip! Those prehistoric stick figurines are striking, aren't they?

Genny, no problem seeing the pictures at all. Looking forward to the next installment!

I'm planning to intersperse my holiday photo posts with ones about books, since that is what this thread is meant to be about, I vaguely recall. I'm so erratic in my book reporting. The last actual review I wrote was for Union Street, my last read in September. I've made passing comments since then on my reading but have not put down any organised summary or even brief concluding reports.

So here is the first part of what I read in October:

Book 86. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie - Muriel Spark

From my bookshelf, acquired Nov 2011

This was my first Muriel Spark, and an unsettling little book it is. I knew the basic premise of an Edinburgh girls' school setting and a teacher with her coterie of favourites. Didn't know what to expect beyond that and had not seen the film (with Maggie Smith as Miss Jean Brodie) either, so it was all new. This is a long way from a cozy, Goodbye Mr Chips sort of tale about a teacher. The nature of Miss Brodie's relationship with her girls - her 'creme de la creme' - is explored in acerbic style, and sideways rather than head on. The narrative jumps forward and backward between different periods of the girls' school careers and their life after leaving school. Somewhere in this circling, oblique tale it appears there has been a betrayal - but who has betrayed whom, and why, and when?
I'm glad I finally read this and would be interested to see what else Muriel Spark has written.

I've also just read that my latest discovery, Dorothy Dunnett, attended the same Edinburgh school as Spark (though a few years behind her), which was the one on which this book is based.


Book 87. Espresso Tales - Alexander McCall Smith

From ebay, acquired Oct 2012
It's several years since I read any of the exploits of the folk from 44 Scotland Street, one of McCall Smith's numerous series. In fact I read book 1 and then book 3 by mistake, back in the days before LT and easy ways of tracking series. I've been gathering later books from series when I spot them in charity shops, but this second volume has been eluding me so in the end I gave up and bought a copy on ebay. The next day there was one sitting in my local Oxfam. I should be more patient.

It was good fun to meet up again with the various characters: Pat and her vain flat-mate Bruce, hot-housed but resolutely ordinary young Bertie and his awful mother Irene, and all the rest. Not forgetting Cyril the dog - will he or won't he overcome the temptation to bite a certain human being? And now one or two things that I recall from reading book 3 make a bit more sense. Looking forward to continuing these gentle tales of everyday Edinburgh life.


Book 88. Jennie - Paul Gallico

From my bookshelves, acquired Nov 2011; re-read

I can't remember when I read this before, long enough ago to have forgotten most of the detail, and the ending, though I do remember that I cried. I read it for Suzanne's Jasper memorial challenge on TIOLI, and it was a most fitting choice as it is all about a cat, the eponymous Jennie. A lonely young boy - who loves cats but is not allowed to keep one - has an accident and wakes up to discover he has turned into a cat. Ejected from his home by his nurse (who does not of course realise who he is) the boy/cat Peter has a hard time out on the streets of London, until he is adopted by a street-wise stray called Jennie who teaches him all he needs to know about being a cat. One part of the story which had stuck in my mind vividly, and which was just as enjoyable this time, was the chapter early on where Jennie teaches Peter how to wash. And first of all, when to wash and why. Basically, "If in doubt - wash!" - there follows a list of all the circumstances in which stopping to wash is the appropriate response; this, and the detailed description of the technique involved in reaching every part of your feline body with your tongue, are great fun and show that Gallico had certainly observed cats very well.

This children's tale (though with a rich vocabulary that might be deemed too advanced for a children's book today) is not just about cats, but perhaps mostly about friendship, and the risk of loving after you have been hurt. It had me just about in tears again at the end.

Thank you everyone for visiting and commenting on my holiday pics so far, as well as all the earlier visits while I was on holiday. I do still plan to respond, but it is now late - my intended brief comments on October reading grew into longer reviews as I wrote them, and it is well past bed-time now.

Writing the above reviews has at least distracted me from feeling hugely sad and disappointed and frustrated about the Church of England's painfully slow and cumbersome decision-making process, which has earlier today just failed to represent the views of the vast majority in this church. The General Synod (the main policy making body) was debating and voting on legislation to enable women to become bishops. Not on the principle of whether they CAN be bishops - which was agreed (finally) a few years ago - but simply on the means to put this principle into practice and, not so simply, at the same time keep on board those who disagree with the change. To cut a long and frustrating story short, the vote was lost today by a narrow margin, specifically in the House of Laity. A 2/3 majority is required in three separate Houses; this was achieved with Bishops and Clergy but fell short by about 5 votes with the lay members. Total votes in favour were about 75%, but without the 2/3 from lay members, the motion falls. The very frustrating thing is that the vast majority of ordinary church members are in favour of this move, indeed like most of the rest of the world are astonished that we have not already long since sorted it out and moved on to more pressing matters. But the lay members of Synod contain an unrepresentatively high proportion of those against, who have got themselves elected specifically to block this change.

Ah well, time for bed and perhaps I'll read a little more of Barchester Towers, and remember that, while nothing much changes in the church's ability to waste energy and time on internal bickering, at least some of the issues change over the centuries, and no doubt in the 22nd century today's cause for disagreement will seem as bizarrely unnecessary as Barchester's clergy squabbles do to us today.

I'm sorry Genny - although I'm not religious myself, I still think it would have been good to see the Church make a different decision (though my paternal grandfather (a very high church vicar) would have been turning in his grave, but he must have been doing a lot of that in the last twenty years anyway!). I nearly asked you about it earlier but I wasn't sure how you would feel about me raising the issue on your thread. I'm surprised by how wound up I feel, but I couldn't believe the words used by a woman who opposed female bishops on Woman's Hour this morning.

I'm sad with you, Genny. I hope the blockade lifts soon.

Happys and sads: Happy that you got so many *beautiful* holiday photos - they're just lovely! - but sad to hear that you weren't feeling well (hope that's better now) and very sad to hear about the church frustrations. I'm with Richard in fervently hoping that changes swiftly.

201: Here are a few tasters.
Wow! Thanks!

213: the vote was lost today by a narrow margin
There’s a “hot topic” about this: http://www.librarything.com/topic/144912# .

Hi Genny, ever since I was a little girl and had neighbours from Malta, it's held a fascination for me. I probably will never get there in person, but your pictures are wonderful and do much to re-enforce my image of a very special place.

I saw on the news last night about the church's vote and it surprised me for two reasons. Firstly I was surprised that it hadn't already been passed as we do have women bishops here in the Anglican Church in Canada, and secondly, I was surprised that it was defeated. I fully trust that this situation will be rectified in the foreseeable future.

Great photos, great memories of our own holiday on Gozo - and shared frustration about yesterday's vote...

Very sorry to hear about the vote--it is way past time! And loved your pictures, Genny.

Genny, so sorry about the vote on women bishops. I thank you for explaining the hows and whys. It will be something to watch as the years pass, and the "old guard" are replaced with newer more enlightened members. I have great faith in the Holy Spirits ability to get her people in place eventually.

Hello Genny,
thank you soo much for your beautiful holliday photos! Wish you a lovely weekend!

Thanks for sharing the photos Genny.

Sorry about the vote:(

Hope you have a great day.

Sorry The General Synod are acting like sexist morons :(:(

I guess it isn't reserved for American ( usually white) men in charge of ANYthing.

hugs

Beautiful pictures, Genny! The mueseums look extremely interesting and the Citadel is stunning. Oh, I do so love old things. :)

I hope my views aren't offensive or anything, as I'm not really into women being priests and bishops, and we traditional Catholics are very grounded in it (we have good reasons, but I don't want to get into a theological debate). Honestly, though, if the Anglican Church has allowed women to be priests, shouldn't they go all the way and let them be bishops, too? They've opened the door for that, and now they're surprised that women want to be bishops. Very silly of them.

I know it probably isn't celebrated in England, but here in America it is Thanksgiving, and so I wish you many blessings and hope today is a happy day for you!

Love your pics! Very sorry about the vote regarding women Bishops. I may be wrong, but I think in our denomination, once women could be pastors, they automatically gained the (at least theoretical) possibility of being Bishops -- though it took many years for it to actually happen in practice via ecclesiastical ballot. Now we have several women bishops.

Dropping in...are you well?

Hi Genny, just dropping by to say hello!

Guessing you are massively busy?

Dropping by to add my appreciation of your holiday photos and sympathies on the synod vote. Hope you're ok, I know this time of year must be pretty hectic for you.

Popping in to check on you... everything ok?

Genny, I hope all is well with you. ??

Adding my voice to the chorus of your supporters and well-wishers. Hope you're taking care of yourself along with everybody else!

Hello folks, yes I am alive, and keeping head above water just about after a busy couple of weeks. I'm sorry I've not been around much - and I've got so many more books to update about and photos to share too!

I've had a lot of deadlines to meet related to work, and a few more to come, and staffing issues, and all sorts. I hope to have a quieter time soon to come back and tell you more, but meanwhile thank you for dropping by and checking up on me.

Pleased to hear from you Genny. Hope that work settles down soon.

It's good to hear from you - I was getting a bit worried, too!
Hope things calm down for you soon...

December is a fairly busy month for clergy, I can imagine you running from one commitment to the next! Just imagine us all out here as a chorus of emotional support. fa-la-la and all that!

234: I hope to have a quieter time soon
Hmm, this doesn't seem the time of year for a lull in church activity. Adding another fa-la-la to the chorus!

Adding good wishes for an easy busy season, early resolution of staffing issues, and general all-around smiling happies.

Adding good wishes for an easy busy season, early resolution of staffing issues, and general all-around smiling happies.

Hi, Genny! Glad to hear that you're well. I can understand how busy you must be! Best wishes.

As long as we know you are okay, we can handle your not being around that much. Hope your busy-ness is being productive!

La la la la!

Thank you again to all visitors and for your kind concern and good wishes - sorry for not replying individually but if I start going back to all the unanswered posts I will be here all day (it is one of my many failings in life - which I seem incapable of reforming - that I don't do things as I go along, but let things accumulate, and then wonder why I feel overwhelmed by too large a task!).

My recent busyness, contrary to expectation perhaps, has nothing to do with the season particularly. So far I've only done one task related to Christmas, which is to design and order 5,000 copies of our flyer with Christmas service times, for delivery round the parish from this Sunday. Thankfully it is not I who will be delivering all 5,000! What was occupying me for most of last week was tying up loose ends from our busy year of 125th anniversary celebrations: three different forms of memorabilia involving photos which it had partly or entirely fallen to me to design and order.

First there was a 2013 calendar made of photos of the stained glass windows in our church - I had produced a couple of samples of this earlier in the year in two different colours, and taken lots of orders, so I now had to re-create the product (since the cheaper online photo software I'd used for this did not allow me to save the previous creations) and place the order. I counted the number of black copies and white copies required, produced one black version and one white version online and placed the order - about an hour and a half's work altogether. Then I discovered that there was an extra page of orders I'd not included, so had to spend another hour creating and ordering the black and white versions all over again, while simultaneously kicking myself for not having checked more thoroughly that I'd included all the orders in the first place.


One of the windows featuring in the calendar - depicting the four patron saints of the nations within the UK.

Next task was to create and order - before the credit elapsed - a souvenir photobook to display all the photos I'd taken during our Summer Festival of flowers, music and art back at the end of June. I had spend that weekend wandering round with my tripod as well as my camera, chatting to visitors to the flower display while taking several shots at least of each arrangement and lots of general views, and some snaps of the musicians performing and of art displays in the church hall too. I ended up with well over 250 photos, many of them of decent quality, and I'd been promising myself and others for ages that I'd put them in a book for all to see, and to go eventually into the archive once everyone's had a good look. I do enjoy messing around with photos and making a (hopefully) well-designed album from them, but it is time-consuming. The website I use is quite expensive, but does special offers, so I'd bought a credit for a 60 page book at half price back in October. The credit expired at midnight on Thursday last, and despite my best intentions I'd not made a start on the book until Wednesday, and then was at it for many hours on both Wednesday and Thursday, and with the briefest of pauses for eating meals I was just about on track for completing and pressing the 'Order' button about 10 minutes before midnight - but then the wretched thing would not do a final save and so would not let me order, and so the credit expired! This tale does have a happy ending however - the next day I rang the company and (after waiting on hold for what felt like half an hour) eventually spoke to someone and explained what had happened, and he immediately re-instated the credit so that I could place the order. He also spotted that some months earlier I'd allowed another credit to expire (I'd been too busy to do anything about that one at all so it was my fault) but he reinstated that one too, giving me a few more days to do something with it.




A selection from the flower festival, including 'Flowers in a line' by the Line Dancing Group and 'Prisoners of Conscience' by the Amnesty Group.

The third task last week was to help finalise the creation of a commemorative recipe book, also for our 125th anniversary. Someone else had done most of the work on this, but to create the final version for printing - for reasons too complicated to go into - required someone to scan the pages of our sample copy, edit them, turn them into PDF files and send them off to the printers. This was needed before the end of Friday, but as I was up so late Thursday night still trying to finish the photobook, I had not done anything with till Friday lunchtime, so that was another scramble to meet the deadline.

Then Saturday I was conducting the last wedding of the year, and attending the reception (very nice meal in a lovely hotel, and with entertaining people sitting at my table, so not an unpleasant duty at all); and then a sermon to write when I got home - or rather, very early the next morning... So there were one or two more narrowly religious tasks but mostly I've been busy with photos and creative stuff. I would have quite enjoyed these tasks if they'd been a bit more spread out and without the urgent deadlines, but I should know by now that this is how I end up working...

Oh, and I managed to fit in my book group last week, which meant finding time to read The hundred-year-old man who climbed out of the window and disappeared - and also an urgent meeting about our staffing issue.

This week there will be a little bit more Christmas stuff - preparing the order of service for the Carol Service - but mostly just trying to get on with all the usual jobs and deal with some of the thousands of unanswered emails in my inbox. People always think Christmas is a busy time for clergy, but I don't find the number of work-related tasks increasing at this time (ie it feels too busy all year round!). Certainly there is an increased number of people taking part in some of the services, but it takes the same amount of time to prepare a service for 100 or 800. My colleague in the office has a harder time, because she will be printing 800 copies of the carol service booklet. What does create pressure for me though is the 'domestic' side of Christmas - because I'm as busy as ever with work, I don't feel I have space to sit and plan presents, visits, cards (they never happen these days), decorating the tree etc, and I do resent the pressure of high expectations that Christmas brings - it is that which in the end I find exhausting.

Sorry, what a long post! What I really came here to do was to write up my impossibly long list of TIOLI contenders for December, to remind myself what I've put on the TIOLI wiki. I'll have to come back and do that a bit later.

December TIOLI contenders - I don't expect to read all of these (especially if I'm to have time to do any of the above-mentioned Christmas preparations) but once we get to 26th December I'll have a few quiet working days then some days off, which will help.

Challenge one - Tag Round Robin:
1 Gilead - Marilynne Robinson - for some reason I have never managed to get back to this having started it in August 2011
Challenge two - author or title containing the word end
2 The corner that held them Sylvia Townsend Warner
3 Death comes as the end - Agatha Christie - READ
4 Not the end of the world - Kate Atkinson - READ
Challenge three - books with a special cover
5 A time of gifts - Patrick Leigh Fermor (Folio edition with block-printed cloth cover)
Challenge four - short work whose main character also appears in a novel
6 The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding - Agatha Christie (title story at least) - READ
7 Murder in the Mews - Agatha Christie (title story again, at least)
Challenge five - a book you've been meaning to read all year (this could cover a large proportion of my TBR pile...)
8 The hare with amber eyes - Edmund de Waal
9 Room - Emma Donoghue
Challenge six - Merry Christmas rolling challenge
10 The man in the queue - Josephine Tey - READ
Challenge seven - more than half the letter of alphabet in title
11 Apparition & Late Fictions: a novella and stories - Thomas Lynch
Challenge eight - book with both red and green on cover
12 Red, white and drunk all over - Natalie MacLean (started this for a book group and didn't finish in time)
Challenge nine - Long poem
13 Paradise Lost - John Milton (I've just downloaded an audio version - may tackle this during long car journeys to visit relatives after Christmas)
Challenge ten - Book with a photograph on cover
14 At Mrs Lippincote's - Elizabeth Taylor (coming late to the Taylor group read, hope to get at least this one in during her anniversary year)
Challenge eleven - Character with exceptional talents/powers
15 The Song of Achilles - Madeline Miller
Challenge twelve - Old favourite/Old TIOLI challenge
16 Barchester Towers - Anthony Trollope (didn't finish in time for Nov, this qualifies as reread of a favourite too) - READ
17 Inside the whale, and other essays - George Orwell (another one I didn't manage to finish in November for TIOLI of book of essays)
Challenge thirteen - from one of the Green Dragon Lists
18 Un Lun Dun - China Miéville (from the 1001 fantasy list)
Challenge fourteen - author biography/lit crit
19 Tolkien and the Great War - John Garth (started this 6 years ago but lost track when I moved house) - READ
Challenge fifteen - book recommended by LT/someone you don't know
20 Children of Hurin - Tolkien
Challenge sixteen - book given as a present in a past year
21 Footprints of the Northern Saints - Basil Hume (Christmas 2006)
Challenge seventeen - read a book aloud to someone else
22 The Outing - Dylan Thomas (will read this to Ty, my dog, who won't laugh at my attempt at a Welsh accent) - READ
Challenge eighteen - ISBN with a repeated digit within one of the sections
This is a good catch all for several books I'd half hoped to get to last month:
23 The Finkler Question - Howard Jacobson
24 Food for Life - L Sannon Jung
25 Half of a Yellow Sun - Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
26 On the Black Hill - Bruce Chatwin
27 The Wandering Fire - Guy Gavriel Kay

Hmm, 27 books is certainly a little ambitious! But a few are short stories. Even so, I don't expect I'll read more than half of these at the most.

Genny - what beautiful photos! I confess I tend to leave things to the last moment too - usually for the best possible reasons - but it does increase the stress. :0)

With all that going on, I'm amazed you have time to read!

244: I am in awe. And I especially like the line of vases along the ledge.

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

The windows...the flowers...! Genny, you're a Vicar on a Mission alright, to spread beauty and light around the world! The calendar will be gorgeous as will the book.

Permaybehaps one of the story collections will lead you to our Story Collection a month year-long challenge for 2013?

Beautiful photos Genny

Genny, I love the photos and reading about your creative pursuits while managing to eke out a sermon or two as needed!

#246 Thanks! The reason of course that so many things for me are last minute is because when I should have been working on them earlier I was reading instead (the perils and pleasures of working from home and being my own boss)!

#247 I'm glad you liked the line of flower vases. All the community groups using the church and hall were invited to contribute an arrangement; the Line Dancing Group felt they had no particular talent for flower arranging (why should they) but gave a donation, and someone came up with this idea which is perfect!

#248 Richard, thanks for the link to the Short Story Collection challenge. I've starred the thread, and hope to participate at least a bit. Of my possible reads this month, as well as the obvious story collections, there is also Not the end of the world by Kate Atkinson, which is apparently a collection of slightly interlinked stories, which may appeal to those who like her other books.

#249 Thanks Rhian - I've still not finished with my holiday photos either - in fact, I could quite happily do nothing but play around with photos all day...

#250 Laura, I'm glad you were entertained. I could of course post the sermon on here instead - that might not be quite so entertaining (though I do try to put in some holiday anecdotes, if not photos, in those as well!).

For a fuller dose of the beauty of flowers, see here for the full photobook, which I've just realised I can make viewable online.

Genny, my goodness! You amaze me! The photos are all beautiful, and you will make many, many people happy with all your work - WELL wroth the doing!!!!! I can't wait until I have time to look at the full photobook. I'm hoping for more pictures of your sanctuary!
What a wealth of good reading you have lined up too! Enjoy what you get to, but you are inspiring me to get to STW really soon, and I think that The Corner that Held Them will be the one.

The flowers are beautiful.

The tioli list is also breathtaking!

Lovely photobook Genny! But with no picture of your lovely self! You are just too humble - after all, someone had to arrange all those flower arrangers!
Much as I love the flowers, my favourite are the knitted saints. I like the name of that group too, "The Sew, Knit and Natter" group - they sound like fun.
Impressed by your reading ambitions for the end of the year. I have A Time of Gifts near the top of the TBR pile too, so let me know if when you are going to read it - we could try and swap notes if you like.

Chiming in to say what others already have - those photos are beautiful! Well done, you!

Agreed, more beautiful photo...
hope you have time to take a breath and relax a bit?

Thanks Peggy, Lucy, Hannah, Amber and Kath, for your kind words about the photos. The knitted saints are great, aren't they Hannah - they made another appearance for All Saints' Day recently. The group meets every Wednesday morning and has a lot of fun working on many different projects together.

No time to take breath really - I'm trying to arrange disciplinary hearings, and catch up on urgent emails, and inform people their calendars have arrived, and waiting in for the arrival of the Christmas publicity leaflets...

Still trying to find time to finish my first book of the month - I'm almost through Barchester Towers so it won't be long. Then I'd better get started on that long list of TIOLI possibles!

Oh, and I forgot to mention my adventure the other night... I'd had roast chicken the day before, so I was making chicken stock which was slowly simmering on the stove. I spent the later part of the evening watching a Danish crime series on iPlayer (The Killing, Series 3, for those who know what I'm on about) and struggling to keep awake enough to read the subtitles: my Danish is no-where near good enough to watch this with my eyes closed, I can just about follow when they say goodbye and thank you! So there I was in the living room on the sofa, drowsily watching TV and smelling the delicious smell of chicken stock wafting from the kitchen, and thinking that as soon as the programme was finished I must rouse myself, strain the stock and leave it to cool, and go to bed... Next thing I knew it was 8.30 am, I was still on the sofa, and there was a horrible smell of charcoaled chicken bones in my nose. I am lucky I didn't burn the place down while I slept, instead all I have is no stock and a pan which will take an awful lot of scrubbing to get clean. And the smell is still lingering in the house two days later!

!
So not all of my creations are quite so lovely or as successful as the photobook...

Yuk! But as you say at least you didn't burn the house down! The Killing is good though isn't it? I think the first series was one of the best things I've seen on TV ever.

Ohmygosh, yes, I'm so glad you didn't wake up to a flaming home! Whew! That's completely something that I would do, though. Sigh.

My husband's been away recently, and he's a complete fire safety nut, and general household safety maniac, so I don't tell him about most of my kitchen misadventures that occur whilst he's away, or he'd never get to sleep at night.
Those are some properly charred chicken bones you have there!

My father is famous for letting the kettle boil away on the stovetop, as he is hard of hearing and sometimes doesn't hear the whistle. And my husband recently left a pot of chili simmering on the stove all night. When I woke up at 6:30 to let the dog out, I noticed the little red light indicating a burner was on glowing in the darkness :) Happens to the best of us!

#258 Yuk indeed! I'm still working away at removing the layer of carbon - a little bit of scouring a day is all I can face!
I agree about The Killing - I think the first series was especially good because of the way it told one story over 20 episodes, so that it took a more realistic amount of time to solve the crime, rather than getting it all sorted in the usual one or two hours for a TV crime drama. This allowed more time to explore the impact of the crime on the victim's family. I like the intertwining of the domestic, police and political stories in all three series.

#259, 260, 261 I'm glad I'm not alone, Amber, Hannah and Katie. I haven't burnt anything since - but I'm running out of unspoiled pans to ruin!

This morning has been a happy one, especially in terms of my recent hard work on all the creative stuff. We had a Christmas Coffee Morning in the church hall, so people were collecting their pre-ordered calendars. The cook book which I'd had a hand in making was also ready in time, and people seemed to like that and quite a few have been sold already (we have paid for 100 of them to be printed, and will only begin to make a profit if we sell at least 80 of them). And I had my Summer Festival photo book on display, and everyone who looked at it went into enthusiastic raptures about the quality of the photos and the design, and wanted to order copies for themselves even though I explained they were quite pricey. So I felt very gratified that my hard work was appreciated!

Meanwhile, I finished my re-read of Barchester Towers a couple of days ago - I really enjoyed reading it again and there was much detail that I'd forgotten. I particularly loved a scene near the end when the character Miss Thorne has a go at matchmaking and is rather startled by the speed of her success! It was also very interesting to be reading this particular book in the wake of the recent upheavals in the Church of England over women bishops. Partly I was wondering what Trollope would make of current church politics, but I was also wondering how much his creation of Mrs Proudie (ruling her husband the bishop with a rod of iron) all those years ago has left a subconscious fear of women in the episcopate! Trollope certainly showed how some married women could be and were very influential in the wider world by subtly (or not so subtly in Mrs Proudie's case) influencing their husbands in their professional lives. The concept of women entering a profession in their own right (certainly in the case of the church) was at that time of course beyond the imagination of most people, but while in some circles people were beginning to challenge those pre-conceptions, in other circles (Barchester included) women managed to claim power within the existing system.

I've also just finished reading The Man in the Queue, the first Josephine Tey mystery. I enjoyed the writing but the ending was a little unsatisfactory.

I feel the same way about Tey - enjoyable but dated somehow?

Certainly dated in having the detective refer to his chief suspect as 'The Dago' throughout (even for a while after learning his name) because he believed him to be a foreigner.

I've enjoyed other Teys much better than this one though (Daughter of Time years ago and Brat Farrar more recently).

Genny, ample baking soda in water in your pan, and bring to a boil on the stove!

This guy says add vinegar as well and it's easier, but I haven't tried it yet.
http://www.apartmenttherapy.com/how-to-clean-burnt-frying-pans-140547

Oh, gosh, thank goodness your house didn't burn down! I've had a couple of "episodes" on the kitchen stove (blowing the tea kettle up because I forgot about it, and accidentally cooking the plastic top of a pressure cooker - not my proudest moments), so I've had more than a fair share of lecturing about house safety. Yeeks. I'm glad you're all right and that it all just turned to charcoal instead.

>262 gennyt:: very interesting observations on Barchester Towers, Genny!

Chiming in belatedly to say I loved the flower book you created. I thought the flower designs and knitted saints were beautiful and I also thought the way you'd laid it out in the book looked very professional.

I have The Man in the Queue but last time I tried I struggled to get into it and it's still sitting on my shelf waiting for me to work up the courage again.

Whew! I'm very glad that you and house are still standing. You must have been truly exhausted. (Hannah, I'm married to a fire safety nut too and just as well in this old house even though he rewired it several years ago.)
I enjoyed your thoughts on *BT* too, and I also loved that scene with Miss Thorne. AND Brat Farrar is a real favorite, but I need to reread some of the others. I hope Tey doesn't date too much for me because she was always a favorite. I won't start with The Man in the Queue though. AND I hope that Gilead is one you get around to - I really loved it and would be very interested in hearing your thoughts on it. One more AND! I was vastly relieved that you didn't get to The Finkler Question for last month's TIOLI. I was going to double you, and I just didn't manage it; nor do I think that I'll get to it this month, so I'm not even putting it on the wiki.

Lovely photos, Genny!

Beautiful photos Genny! (well, not the burnt pot...;)

>257 gennyt: Yikes. Are you sure you're not related to my mother?

When I burnt my big pot (for the second time) making chutney, I soaked it in baking soda, then threw in vinegar, but it still took a lot of elbow :-(

It did give a nice smoky flavour to the chutney, though.

I enjoyed Barchester Towers, too, Genny. I have to admit that so far I haven't been tempted to read others of his.

Glad to hear you had a nice Christmas coffee :) and also glad the house is still standing :)

I've burned more than a few pots in my time......

Hello Lucy, Kath, Joe, Myopic, Darryl, Chelle, Terri, Peggy, Heather, Laura, Eris, Roni - thank you all for visiting during the past week.

It has been another busy one with a staff disciplinary matter still absorbing a lot of time and energy, plus two funerals being planned for next week.

Thanks for the commiserations re the burned pot, and admissions of similar disasters with some of you. The soda and vinegar trick worked to remove the worst of it, but some of the carbonated black layer seems to be permanently fused to the bottom of the pan - or else it would take centuries of scouring action by sand and sea to wear it down! Anyway, I think the pan is usable again now. Darryl, as far as I know I am not related to your mother - I'm guessing she makes a habit of things like this?

Thanks too for appreciation of the photos. I've still not got round to putting up day two! I'm due to start a new thread, so I think that should wait since I don't want to overload this one any more with images.

Peggy, I doubt I'll get to Finkler this month either - I think I only put it up last month because it was a possible matched read, I'm not particularly keen to read it more than so many others on my pile...

Do persevere with The Man in the Queue, Heather - it's an interesting blend of action adventure (moorland chases in the Scottish Highlands) and police procedural. I can't say why I found the end unsatisfactory (somewhat) without spoilers, but it would be interesting to discuss it with someone who has read it.

I've been updating my acquisitions list this evening instead of doing the work I should be doing.

Books acquired in November

From Amazon marketplace
The Kappillan of Malta - Nicholas Monsarrat (didn't arrive on time to take on my holiday)

From Oxfam Shop, Gosforth (I've been trying very hard to stay away from this shop, almost managed in November)
Absolution by Murder - Peter Tremayne

from eBay as soon as I got back from holiday, having enjoyed my first Dunnett, Game of Kings, so much:
Queens' Play, Pawn in Frankincense and Niccolo Rising - Dorothy Dunnett

from Bookmooch
Mortimer's Bread Bin - Joan Aiken - building up my collection of Aiken's fiction, this is one for younger children

from a book exchange at the venue where I go for my folk guitar & song tuition every week - loads of books for 50p, I've resisted apart from once:
The Historian - Elizabeth Kostova

from Kindle Store
The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared - Jonas Jonasson - for book group READ (I paid full price for this, shame the book group was not in December as this book is currently available for 20p on Kindle UK.

from the annual book sale in aid of the Lit & Phil society - thankfull for my over-burgeoning TBR shelves, this sale was no-where near as good as last year's, at which I bought over 30 books. This time the range of books and their condition was generally much poorer so I was able to be reasonably restrained. Particularly pleased to find some lovely Puffin editions of Tove Jansson's Moomin books, the two which are missing from my childhood collection, and in matching editions. Also very glad to find the first two Patrick O'Briens - another series to look forward to.
Master and Commander and Post Captain - Patrick O'Brien
Juggling - Barbara Trapido
Guy Mannering - Walter Scott (in an old Everyman edition to match several I already have)
Moominland Midwinter and The Exploits of Moominpappa - Tove Jansson
Astercote, The Wild Hunt of Hagworthy and Going Back - early Penelope Lively children's books.

Books acquired in December

from Audible
Paradise Lost - Milton (audiobook) - ready for a listen later this month
The Christmas Angel - Marcia Willett (a very cheap Advent offer, looks like chicklit)
from Bookmooch
The Black Cauldron & The Castle of Llyr - Lloyd Alexander - replacement copies for ones lost since childhood (don't count toward total)
from eBay
The Gift of Rain - Tan Twan Eng - for book group in January
from the Scope Charity shop
Piece of my heart - Peter Robinson - filling in another gap in the series collection
Christmas at Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons - short stories including a couple of Christmassy ones, very timely!

That brings the total of books acquired (bought, given, mooched) to 128 so far this year. Total read so far: 107. I'm unlikely to read quite as many as I've acquired in the year, especially as there are bound to be a few more books arriving at Christmas - but at least I'm much nearer to matching the totals than last year, when I acquired about 3 times as many as I read.

Glad to hear the black pot has been rescued (mostly). I will give The Man in the Queue another chance - I'd like to read it next year.

I always pick up old Puffin editions in charity shops when I see them. I didn't read all the Moomin books when I was younger so I've been trying to fill in the gaps too in anticipation of a read-through. Sort Of Books have just published The Moomins and The Great Flood, the first Moomin book, which was only recently translated into English and hadn't been published before in the UK.

I'm v. interested in the first Moomin book - heard a piece on the radio about it. Apparently it is quite dark - written right at the end of WW2. That's why it's never been published with the rest.

I've been skimming like crazy and admiring your photos. I have to say I especially like the picture of the blackened pot. It seems to me I've seen that one before...minus the chicken bones, maybe.

I'm starting to think I need to track my Kindle and Audible purchases the way I track my regular books. But I've been resisting.

Your mother's mysterious texts are hilarious. My kids and I always laugh over the strange things autocorrect does to our text messages, and in fact there are entire websites devoted to this subject.

I've been updating my acquisitions list this evening instead of doing the work I should be doing.

That sounds like something I'd do! That, and your overcooking incident with the pot . . .

I have The Man in the Queue on my TBR shelf. Maybe I'll get to it next year. . .

There's a set of 6 Moomin books from the Book People, though it doesn't include Finn Family Moomintroll - it looks nice but doesn't quite go with my existing Puffins, or with another quite recent edition of a book about Moominpappa.

Reading more than 80% of your acquisitions, even if that drops slightly at Christmas, sounds fantastic to me. My ratio's closer to about 20%, though that does include some odd downloads that I might look at rather than read.

Also, I just noticed that there's a documentary about Tove Jansson on BBC4 at 9pm on Boxing Day.

#283 I must remember to look out for that.

#282 Hi Luci, yes I'm quite pleased that I've been a little more restrained on the book acquisition front - partly because I'm resisting nearly all those Kindle special offers (mind you, I've bought three 99p audiobooks already which were on one-day-only offer during advent). The plan was to read twice as many as I acquired, and so gradually whittle down the total TBR mountain. I failed at that, but at least I have not added to it too much.

#281 It's very tempting, Terri, especially as I work from home. Glad I'm not the only one!

#280 Hello Anne, thanks for visiting, and happy to entertain you with Mum's texts. She's been relatively quiet since then, so there are no new funnies to add.

#278, 279 Heather and Lucy, I noticed when I was cataloguing my whole set that the first Moomin book in the series had not been translated until much more recently, although written much earlier. That's now the only one I don't have, and I'll never get it in a matching Puffin edition since it didn't exist when those were published. But I'll definitely try to get a copy. I think the first one I read was Finn Family Moomintroll, and although I haven't read any of them for probably 40 years, they retain a very special place in my heart. I may have to read the two new-to-me ones I've just acquired this Christmas.

Heather, surely you are too young to have grown up with those Puffins? I noticed your cover collection on Pinterest, and pinched the idea for myself. I'm mainly keeping an eye out for ones that I know I once owned, but which seem to have gone astray. I blame the nuns in a place where I lived in Oxford: I had a small bed-sitting room, and all my books (which included all my childhood books by then) would not fit into the room so overflowed onto shelves in the corridor of the large shared student hostel which was run by some nuns. The nuns started borrowing the books from my 'library' and I'm not convinced that they all made it back onto my shelves when I eventually moved out!

Right, well I've recovered sufficiently from the second funeral in two days, and now need to gird up my loins, or something, for tidying and preparing the house to receive a horde of carol-singing youth from the parish in about 3 hours. So far there is no tree up, no decorations out, mess and papers everywhere, and only half the provisions laid on. So why am I wasting time on here? Not wasting, but perhaps not the best use: time to go for now, therefore!

#283 "Heather, surely you are too young to have grown up with those Puffins?"

Technically, yes, but I would often get given older books by neighbours or family friends who had slightly older children or I used to pick them up secondhand from school/church bazaars. I have a very battered 1966 edition of Finn Family Moomintroll; my other Moomin books are newer Puffins though.

"now need to gird up my loins, or something, for tidying and preparing the house to receive a horde of carol-singing youth from the parish in about 3 hours"

Eek - good luck!

I have a lot of books which simply disappeared in less interesting ways, I have a vision of your nuns curled up with one of those great little paperbacks aimed at kids but loved by so many bigger people too.

I must remember to set the digibox to record that programme (as well as the films of Room on the Broom and The Gruffalo's Child by Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler) and to keep it until after we get back.

#286 I may be falsely accusing the nuns! But I too like that vision of them enjoying old childhood favourites and discovering new ones.

#285 What nice neighbours and friends you had!

The horde of carol singers turned out to be only 4 teenagers plus two leaders (usually its about 20 or more). Thankfully I checked on numbers before buying in last-minute provisions to feed them all, as I don't want the temptation of tons of mince pies, chocolates and other festive fare lying around the house. Even so, I still have quite a few mince pies left. They ate all the Pringles and chocolate raisins.

I am slowly reading my way through Tolkien and the Great War - which I started about 7 years ago, and abandoned about half way through I think when I had to move house. I've started again from the beginning, and am enjoying the description of Tolkien's school- and university-day friendships which were so important to him, at the same time as he was beginning to develop his Elvish languages and the mythology which grew from them, and also meeting Edith, being forbidden by his guardian to see her, waiting about four years without any contact between them until he reached his majority and promptly getting engaged to her, only to have the war come along to interrupt their hopes of getting married. I've not yet got to the part where he reaches the trenches, which is where I got bogged down (perhaps not coincidentally) last time. It's making me want to re-read the Silmarillion and The Book of Lost Tales.

Meanwhile for some quick light relief I read A Highland Christmas, which was a Kindle daily deal yesterday. It turned out to be quite a short mystery, very much of the cozy variety, and one which I easily read in gaps in a busy day.

I really did mean to make a final thread for the year, but this month is rapidly passing so perhaps I won't bother now, as it does take some time to do all that cutting and pasting of opening lists.

I'm leaving behind a house full of not-yet-wrapped presents, not-put-up tree, unwritten Christmas sermon, and taking the train down to Sheffield to join friends for their annual Advent party. The hosts are the parents of one of my god-daughters, and most of the other guests will be good friends of mine too, so it will be a great time to catch up with everyone. The party starts at 4 pm with craft activities for the children (and adults if they wish) and lots of singing of carols, including all the harmonies - they are a musical bunch. And lots of lovely food prepared by Phil who is a very good cook.

I will have to leave early to get the last train back, but because the party starts early too I won't miss too much. I'm travelling down on a very early train - 7.35am depart - as this was the cheapest ticket, so when I arrive in Sheffield I'll have a free morning for some last minute shopping, and also have time to sit in a cafe and read my book in peace.

edited later because my initial message written on my phone was full of typos and was posted incomplete.

>288 gennyt:: including all the harmonies Oooh, as an alto, I love that idea! The entire day sounds lovely (well, except perhaps for the unmentioned bit about finishing tomorrow's sermon ...). Have a lovely time, Genny.

Merry Christmas Genny!! Hope you have a great holiday season!

Hi Genny :) Just stopping by to wish you a great Christmas with your family!

Two services down, three to go - but only one more tonight, then I shall go and enjoy the rest of Christmas Eve by putting my feet up (while also wrapping presents...).

Happy Christmas to all who come calling!

Have a lovely Christmas Genny!

Happy Christmas Genny!

Enjoy your Christmas!

I've taken note of Tolkien and the Great War.

Glitterfy.com - Christmas Glitter Graphics

I want to wish you a glorious celebration of that time of year when we all try to unite around a desire for Peace on Earth and Good Will Toward All. Merry Christmas, Genny!

Merry Christmas and best wishes for 2013!

Blessings, Blessings and More Blessings!

Best wishes for the holidays and beyond Genny, and looking forward to continued exchanges in 2013.

Merry, merry Christmas, Genny!

Wishing you a blessed Christmas, Genny!


glitter-graphics.com

Merry Christmas, Genny -- hope you get a holiday after your workload is done!

Adding a note: do not forget about stock again!! I lived above a restaurant for two years, and there were three fires due solely to this -- people leaving for the night and leaving stock simmering.

Happy Holidays to you Genny


glitter-graphics.com

Merry Christmas, Genny!

Just dropping by with some Christmas cheer from me and the Moomins (another great LT find). I think it was on your thread that I heard the first Moomin book had been republished. I have a copy winging its way to me and can't wait to read it. I hope your Christmas is going well and that you have some time to put your feet up and relax with a good book soon.

Well it's been a wet Christmas here rather than a white one - rain all day which is consistent with it having been just about the rainiest year since records began.

But I still had a lovely afternoon/evening with my friends with whom I have spent Christmas for the past 7 years consistently. Delicious meal, rather late in the day (starting to eat the main course around 5.30), and a long pause for present unwrapping and game playing before we remembered we'd not yet had the pudding. So it was Christmas pudding, mince pies and dessert wine at 10.30pm while watching TV. Just got home and really should go straight to bed, before I fall asleep at my desk.

Sleep tight, Genny. Glad you had such a wonderful Christmas with friends.

Can you find the shark, the gray cat and the tan cat too?

Hope you had a merry day.

Happy Boxing Day! Have you patted your boxes yet? Must let them know we appreciate them.

Thank you Chelle, Bianca, Rhian, Cushla, Kerry, Roni, Katherine, Linda, Ilana, Anne, Terri, Suzanne, calm, Darryl, Pat, Lucy, Richard for your seasonal greetings!

Happy Third Day of Christmas to any visitors.

Yesterday I opened a few more gifts - Christmas Day was too busy with work and then being with friends to do much of that. So far I have received 5 books!

Four from Virago Secret Santa:
High Rising by Angela Thirkell - new VMC edition
Love by Elizabeth von Arnim - original green VMC
The winged horse by Pamela Frankau - original green VMC
My Grandmothers and I by Diana Holman-Hunt - a 'Slightly Foxed' edition, new to me, very nicely produced book which looks like a fascinating memoir.
One from my friends with whom I spent Christmas Day:
Flight Behavior - Barbara Kingolsver - hardback edition. I was looking forward to this coming out in paperback as I almost never buy a new hardback, so this was a nice surprise.

I anticipate a few more books probably when I get to unwrap presents from my sister and my father. My Dad sends a parcel, which normally arrives a few days before Christmas. This year a gigantic box arrived by courier on about 20th December. It had my address on a typed label, but my sister's address on a handwritten label in my father's handwriting. Dad had managed to put the wrong labels on the boxes, so I've ended up with the box for my sister and her family, and she's ended up with mine. I'll be travelling down to Lincolnshire to my sister's on Sunday evening, so we will be able to exchange Dad's boxes then, as well as give each other our own gifts to one another.

I have succumbed to my traditional Christmas virus - this usually develops around 29th, so this year it has come a little early. Chesty cough with severe sore throat which makes coughing extremely painful, so I try to avoid coughing as long as possible; stuffy head, aches and pains, hot and cold... I was meant to be working today, doing some home visits and catching up on paperwork (including claiming my expenses which I am very behind with and consequently am rather overdrawn on my bank balance) - but I cancelled the visits as I felt so grotty and I risked passing on something nasty, and I could not face any of the paperwork, but instead read and dozed all day.

Completed The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding, a collection of Agatha Christie short stories, and read Moominland Midwinter which made me wish we had some snow this year instead of just endless depressing rain. Moomins had the right idea though, hibernating through the winter.

So sorry to hear you are not feeling well, Genny! No matter how much reading time it provides, it's never really worth it.

#295 Kerry, Tolkien and the Great War is interesting for the keen Tolkien fan (too detailed, probably, for someone who has not read a more general biography or who knows nothing of his early writings already). The detail of his experiences before, during and immediately after the war, and how the early stages of his writing relate to these, is fascinating. The book ends with a short epilogue reflecting on Tolkien's work in the context of other kinds of literary response to the Great War.

#283, 286 Luci, Heather, did you see the Tove Jansson documentary last night? I remembered just in time, and found it very interesting. Prompted the read of Moominland Midwinter today.

#289 The Christmas sermon eventually got written on the morning of Christmas Eve, Laura - a bit late for my liking, but I was too tired over the weekend to do it sooner. Glad to have got it done at last!

#302 Suzanne, I promise to keep an eye on my stock in future! In fact, I have some simmering again tonight, so I will make sure it is safely turned off before I start getting sleepy...

#305 Thanks for the lovely Moomin Christmas graphics, Pat. Having loved these books when growing up, but then forgotten about them in adulthood, it has been wonderful to be reminded again in recent years, and also to discover Jansson's adult writing (so far, I've only read The summer book. I don't know if the documentary shown on BBC4 yesterday will be available outside of the UK, but I'm sure you'd find it of great interest if you can get to see it.

#308 Lucy, thanks for pointing out that there is more to this photo than Posey cuteness! Shark: easy; tan cat: below shark; grey cat: invisible! unless that is what tan cat is looking down at, half-hidden behind reddish cushion?/dog bed? on the floor?

I haven't seen the documentary and forgot to set the TIVO (Virgin's equivalent of Sky Plus) to record it, but will try to find on catch-up when we get back - otherwise it's repeated on 9 January.

Categories progress:

I started the year with the aim of reading at least 6 books in each of the following 12 categories, but I have not been actively keeping an eye on the categories since then, so I wonder how I've been doing?

1 Gifts and Loans - time to read some of those presents, and read and return books lent to me by friends!
1. A Game of Thrones
2. A Clash of Kings
3. Death comes to Pemberley
4. A Storm of Swords 2
5. Revelation
6. Salmon Fishing in the Yemen

2 Virago Modern Classics - my collection of VMCs has been growing far faster than I have been reading them.
1. Invitation to the Waltz
2. Poor Caroline
3. The Weather in the Streets
4. Rebecca
5. Union Street
6. Liza's England

3 Biographies (and autobiographies/memoirs) - I seem to have acquired quite a few, at least half of them written by Claire Tomalin!
1. Writing at the Kitchen Table (Elizabeth David) by Artemis Cooper
2. Flush (Elizabeth Barret Browning's spaniel) by Virginia Woolf
3. Gladstone by Michael Partridge
4. Life by Keith Richard
5. Tolkien and the Great War by John Garth

4 Middle Ages - books written in or about the medieval period, fiction or non-fiction.
None

5 Series and Sequels - an excuse to read the next one in a variety of favourite series.
1. A fountain filled with blood
2. The voice of the violin
3. Cheerfulness breaks in
4. Dark Vineyard
5. Silence of the grave
6. Scent of the night
7. Black Diamond
and several more

6 Overseas - books by non UK (and non US) authors, or set in countries other than UK or US. Might include books in a foreign language.
1. Betrayal (Norwegian)
2. Faceless Killers (Swedish)
3. The Hundred-Year-Old Man who Climbed out of the Window and Disappeared (Swedish)
4. The Janissary Tree (set in the Ottoman Empire)
5. The Summer Book (Finnish)
6. Don't look back (Norwegian)

7 The 19th Century - perhaps some Dickens in this bicentenary year. There's also Trollope, Eliot, Gaskell...
1. The Picture of Dorian Gray
2. The Pickwick Papers
3. The Count of Monte Cristo
4. Barchester Towers
5. The Woman in White

8 Non-Fiction - Books on History, Language, Travel, Books about Books...
1. Letter from Birmingham Jail
2. Selected poems of U A Fanthorpe
3. Txtng: the Gr8 Db8
4. Shark's Fin and Sichuan Pepper

9 Children's - new authors to explore, and new books by childhood favourite authors like Joan Aiken.
1. A stitch in time
2. The winter sleepwalker
3. Odd and the Frost Giants
4. Cold Shoulder Road
5. Midwinter Nightingale
6. The Witch of Clatteringshaws
7. Carbonel
8. Carbonel and Calidor
9. Moominland Midwinter
10. The River at Green Knowe

10 Theology - Umm, there's a study full of books on religion and spirituality waiting to see the light of day!
1. A year lost and found
2. 4 Grove booklets on a variety of subjects

11 Prize Winners - The place for those Orange or Booker winners or nominees.
1. The Siege (Orange shorlist)
2. Mr Ives’ Christmas (Pulizer finalist)
3. Pure (Costa book of the year 2011)
4. Gillespie and I (Orange longlist 2012)
5. Bring up the Bodies (Booker winner 2012)
6. Cloud Atlas (Booker shortlist 2004)

12 Re-reads - Mustn't forget to make time for some old favourites amid all these shiny new books.
1. The Adventures of Tom Bombadil
2. Watership Down
3. Jennie
4. The Kingdom of Carbonel
5. The Hobbit
6. The Outing

So, with just a few days left, I have completed 7 of the 12 categories, nearly completed another three, barely started one and completely ignored another! I might just manage to finish one more biography before the end of the year, and the book of Orwell's essays which will count as another non-fiction.

That's great progress on your categories IMHO. Congratulations!!

Hi Genny! Just stopping by to wish you a belated Happy Christmas and an early Happy New Year! I'm just in transit from one set of relatives to another and may not be around for a few days, but I wanted to say how much I've enjoyed our interactions in 2012, and look forward to many more in 2013.

I think you've done quite well with those categories, especially as you weren't really paying attention to them. Well done Genny!

While still feeling very grotty, and no reading at all done today, I'm trying to work a bit on some end of year stats.

First of all, how many of the books I read were acquired pre-2012? I'm estimating at least half, probably more, but I've no quick way of calculating this.

Genny, I'm so sorry that you're ill in what should be some time off for you - or time sort of off. I typically used to get sick (very like your present trouble) just before Easter. Your Christmas celebrations sound lovely though. And congratulations on doing such a good unintentional job on your categories!

#316 Thanks for dropping in, Hannah - see you in 2013!

#315, 317, 319 Thanks Tina, Laura and Peggy re the categories - yes I was quite pleased that I'd managed so well given that I was not really focusing on them throughout the year. I do have in mind always that I want to be reading some of my growing VMC collection, but most of the others just happened anyway. But the lack of any medieval reading and almost equally poor showing on the theology category is interesting: these are two areas which have been my areas of academic study and prior to that were areas that I chose to read about a lot because I had a deep interest in them which I like to think is ongoing - but the evidence of my choice of reading seems to suggest that I'm not so interested, or perhaps that these subjects seem like too much 'hard work' and my reading has been almost entirely recreational. Even though I really should be taking some work time as opposed to leisure time to read some theology for professional purposes.

The fluish/virus thing is horrid. I really urgently needed to be catching up on some emails and neglected tasks, not least claiming my work expenses, the lack of which has caused my bank account to be seriously overdrawn to the extent that payments are being refused. These quiet post-Christmas days should have been ideal for doing such a job, but I've not been fit for anything at all today. I'm trying to find cover for my Sunday services, as I currently don't feel I'll be up to taking them, and my colleague will be away.

Sorry to hear about your virus Genny :-( I hope you feel better soon and can get someone to cover for you tomorrow. A shame that you probably can't get them to do your expense claims too...

I haven't watched the Tove Jansson documentary yet but hope to catch up with it on iplayer soon.

Sorry you're feeling poorly, Genny. I hope you can relax a bit and let yourself heal.

It's tough when this happens during the holidays. I hope there are good moments and you can enjoy the time a bit.

Looks like you've had a lot of good reading this year. I'm enjoying the Moomintroll discussion. Those books were a happy and lasting experience for my daughter and me when she was a young girl.

Genny, I've had the opposite experience with Tove Jansson. I believe it was Darryl who recommended The Summer Book to me and that was my introduction to Jansson. It was only after I read that book that someone mentioned the Moomins. I've only read one so far (Finn Family Moomintroll) but would prefer to read them in order although I'm not sure that matters. Anyway, the next one will be The Moomins and the Great Flood as soon as it arrives. I googled the Jansson documentary but as far as I can see it's only been on UK TV. I will be keeping an eye out and hoping that our local public television station eventually shows it.

I hope you're feeling better today.

I know this is a busy time of the year for you. I hope you are able to rest, relax and read.

I look forward to visiting your thread in 2013.

Sorry to hear about the post Christmas plague...
Great categories list though!

Hope you feel much better soon....

314: I have not been actively keeping an eye on the categories since then, so I wonder how I've been doing?
320: the evidence of my choice of reading seems to suggest that I'm not so interested
I started the year with a goal of focusing on American history, no other specific book plans, and ended up with a whopping 6, or maybe 10 if I stretch to include historical fiction. I did not categorize through the year either, but clumped books together at the end for an overview. You got admirably close to goals, and fell short only on two where you’re saturated enough already.

Sorry about the fluish illness. Seems these things often kick in during down time, when obligations aren’t forcing you to ignore symptoms, as extra incentive to rest.

Genny, I saw in the readathon thread that you're still sick but starting to feel a little better. Hope you can rest up tomorrow.

#327 Hi Cushla, yes, I am feeling marginally better than the past few days, so I hope I'm over the worst now. Is in should have been driving down to my sister's house in Lincolnshire this evening - about 3.5 hours drive. I'll not be doing that today, or tomorrow either at this rate, so tomorrow I should be able to rest some more (and do end of year stuff with my thread if I'm feeling up to it) and hopefully travel on New Year's Day. I'm off until Saturday - so it doesn't matter too much that I've had to delay the start of my visit down south, but at some point I still need to find time to do the expenses claims and other personal finance paperwork which I was meant to have been doing the past few days...

#326 Thanks for the affirmation re my category achievements, Katherine! It is interesting to have some kind of goal, I think, otherwise these very vague aspirations to 'read some of x, and more of y' never seem to materialise. But I am not very good at keeping to self-imposed structures and rules, so it's hard to find a way of making sure I keep aiming at those goals, unless they are very much in line with the path of least resistance which my reading seems to follow! But it is interesting, at least, to state what our intentions are at the start of the year, and then come back at the end to see how we did! 6 or 10 on American history sounds like something of a focus - probably more than if you had not had the goal in mind to start with. As for the bug, yes, it has frequently hit me at exactly this time for that reason.

#325 Thanks Kath, feeling a little better today, but annoyed at having to change my plans. And my chest is sounding like an old car engine that is having trouble starting up...

#324 Linda, thanks for calling by, and for your good wishes - I look forward to 'seeing' you too in 2013.

#323 I think Finn Family Moomintroll was the first one I read, though until recently Comet in Moominland was the first one available in the series. The documentary makes sense of why her first books were so disaster laden (comets and floods threatening Moominland) as she tried to make sense of the national and domestic upheaval caused by WWII. I hope you manage to find a showing of it eventually. Feeling marginally better today; I don't want to make too much fuss as I know this will pass soon enough, but it is wretched enough while it lasts.

#322 Thanks for visiting, Joe, and for the sympathy with my poorly state! It's a shame indeed to spoil the holiday season with illness. I'm not sure which is worse, losing valuable work time or free time because of illness. I've had it both ways: I usually take a week off at some point between Christmas and early January, and plan to catch up quietly and uninterrupted on work stuff on the days when I'm not on leave; the timing of the post-Christmas bug usually spoils one set of plans, occasionally both! As for Moomins, I'm glad to have been reminded of them and to be discovering a bit more about Tove Jansson this year. Those books had such a distinctive, special atmosphere, unlike any other childhood books; I can see a bit more where that comes from now I know something about Jansson's life and other gifts.

#321 Hi Heather, yes I did find cover, thankfully. All I had to do was go over this afternoon to set up for a baptism, since it was easier to do that myself than explain where all the keys, light switches, candles and other necessary things were to be found. But then I left them too it and came back to my warm house. Actually I've been too warm for the past few days - a sign that I'm running a bit of a temperature, as normally I'm always feeling too cold in my house no matter how many layers I put on.

Oh Genny, I'm so sorry you're ill. At least you made it through the Christmas sermon! I'm sending best wishes for a wonderful new year filled with many good things, including good health!

Dawn French intimated that it maybe cool for ladies to wear a collar - you have proved it beyond doubt. Wish our parish had you in it dear lady, lucky Newcastle! Happy New Year and I look forward to keeping up in 2013.

Happy New Year, Genny!

Happy New Year, Genny! I hope you feel better soon. Getting sick around this time of year is no fun indeed. :(

Here's wishing you a Healthy and Happy New Year.

Looking forward to keeping up with you in 2013!

Here's to a great new year ahead, Genny! I hope you get well very, very soon.

Thanks Donna, Paul, Pat, Eris, Calm, Anne, Roni for your New Year greetings (and the Doctor and Moomintroll too!)

I finished my final book of the year about an hour ago, with half an hour to spare before midnight. I've been trying to read it all day, it was not long, but I have been very drowsy because of my flu virus.

Anyway, At Mrs Lippincote's, my first Elizabeth Taylor and her first published novel, was my final read, taking the total read to 114.

I am not quite ready to close off this thread yet, as I want to do some year-end stats and reflections. Maybe tomorrow I'll be feeling a little livelier and able to get those done, and set up my new thread over in the new group. I'm looking forward to starting afresh and enjoying another good year of reading and of conversation about books and other stuff - this group remains one of my main lifelines and keeps me (reasonably) sane.

I hope you feel a LOT better soon, Genny, and that 2013 is the best year yet!

Happy New Year Genny! Hope the fluishness goes away soon.

Ok, here are some end of year summaries/statistics (with 2011 figures in brackets afterwards where available for comparison).

Total read: 114 books (120) ;
of which rereads: 7 (16)
Fiction: 103 (106)
Non-fiction: 11 (14)

Genres
Crime/Mysteries: 34 (42), of which
-‘Golden Age’ mysteries: 6 (22)
-Contemporary crime: 23 (14)
-Historical mysteries: 5 (6)
General and literary fiction: 17 (17)
Children’s/YA: 13 (12)
20th century classics (including VMCs): 11 (8)
Fantasy: 11 (8)
19th century classics: 5 (6)
SciFi/distopian: 1 (5)
Humour: 3 (5)
Historical fiction: 8 (3)
Biography/memoir: 4 (5)
Religion/spirituality: 2 (1)
Poetry: 2
Travel/food: 1 (1)
Language: 1 (1)
Politics: 1

Authors
Total different authors read: 89 (83) - of whom
living: 57 (47);
dead: 32 (36)
Authors new to me: 41 (49)
Books by female authors: 61.5 - 47 different authors (66 - 44 different authors)
Books by male authors:52.5 - 42 different authors (54 - 39 different authors)

Authors by whom I read more than 1 book:
4: Joan Aiken, George R R Martin
3: Andrea Camilleri, Agatha Christie, Georgette Heyer, Barbara Sleigh, Terry Pratchett
2: Pat Barker, Martin Edwards, Tove Jansson, Rosamund Lehmann, Ngaio Marsh, Elizabeth Moon, Naomi Novik, Peter Robinson, C J Sansom, Tolkien, Martin Walker
(the previous year I read 7 each by Sayers and Christie, 6 by Pratchett, 3 by Potter, Allingham, Lively, Sansom, and 2 by each of another 12)

Books according to nationality of author:
UK: 82 (79)
USA: 17 (25)
Italian: 3 (2)
Swedish: 3 (1)
NZ: 2
Norwegian: 2 (1)
Finnish: 2
Icelandic: 1 (2)
Irish: 1
French: 1 (1)

Series
Total books read which are part of a series: 57 - ie exactly 50% of my reads for this year. Of these:
First in series: 19
Middle of series: 34
End of series, or most recently published: 4

Source and format of books:

Own books: 97 (94) - of which 67 were acquired pre-2012 (51 in 2011, 11 in 2010, 5 pre-2010) and 30 during 2012
Library books: 13 (22)
Other loans: 4 (4) - one borrowed in 2010

All traditional paper books apart from:
eBooks: 9 (8)
Audiobooks: 6 (5)

Oooh, good stats, and a lot I didn't track myself. I'm trying to resist going back to my data...

Great stats -- I really like the side-by-side comparisons with 2011.

#341 Thanks Roni. It's easier to stick with what you've already chosen to track rather than adding new headings all the time, but very tempting when we see each others' end of year summaries...

#342 Thanks Lucy - That was the advantage of using the same format as last year - the only new thing I decided to add was the number of series. The comparison shows that my reading patterns have not changed a great deal on the whole.

Now if I can make myself do a month by month summary this year, it won't have to take me all day to compile the end of year version in future!

I have some vague general thoughts to note down now that I've done the adding up, and possible adjustments to my 2013 vague goals as a result, but it's far too late and I should go to bed now and continue this tomorrow (when I am also meant to be packing to head down to my sister finally, as I'm feeling better enough to travel).

Rather belatedly, some thoughts on the year end stats...

Total read at 114 compared to 120 last year is not bad - I was hoping to read as many if not a few more, but I resisted the temptation to read lots of very short or children's books in the last week just to make up the numbers, because that's not the point. On reflection I feel sure I've been avoiding one or two interesting larger tomes this year simply because they are large and long and will slow down my book count, so am making it one of my challenges in 2013 to read a certain number of longer books (over 500 pages perhaps).

The proportion of rereads has slightly decreased - last year I acquired and re-read most of the Beatrix Potters, which bumped up the count somewhat! Most but not all re-reads seem to be childhood favourites; childhood was spent re-reading constantly because there was more time for reading that there were available books to read, thus the habit of re-reading particular texts is deeply engrained, whereas most books I've loved as an adult as much as some of those childhood favourites have nevertheless not been re-read.

Fiction to non-fiction ratio is about the same in 2012 as the year before; still a little lower than I would like. Non fiction nearly always feels like harder work than fiction, so when I'm tired (as I usually am) the pull of fiction is stronger.

Categories - always a little vague as some books are hard to fit. Broadly similar to last year. But I'm surprised I've read so little sci-fi this year. I think it's because I was tending to pick up Sci-Fi Masterworks at random from the library shelves in 2011, but visited the library less this year so that tailed off. It's an area I want to explore more, and I have several Iain M Banks on audio lined up, so hopefully 2013 will see me reading some of those.

Authors: I wouldn't have known without adding them up that I had read so many new-to-me authors - almost half of the authors I read (and the previous year it was over half of them). I think this would have been very different before LT - apart from book group choices, much of my reading was sticking with certain familiar authors, and tending to read my way through all their works and only slowly picking up recommendations for new people to try. Now I am trying so many new ones, I am neglecting to keep up with well-loved favourites. I suspect that collecting VMCs and trying to slowly read through the collection is increasing both the range of authors and the proportion of female authors. Like last year, the female/male split is fairly equal, with just over half books read being written by women. My (very incomplete) catalogue, however, contains a slightly different balance, with just over 60% of books by male authors, so either I've read more of the men in the past, or there are lots of male writers in my TBR pile which I am tending to overlook in favour of the women. It will be interesting to see how these trends continue over time.

The unconscious trend of my choices was even more Anglo-centric this year than last. It is natural I guess to love books set in my native land and written by familiar authors writing of at least semi-familiar culture and landscape; but I do want to explore more beyond these boundaries too. So one of my other 2013 categories will be books by non-UK, US or Scandinavian authors (since the latter has predominated in the foreign books I have read).

I started trying to list my series, as others have done, but gave up, as although I'm not reading as many as some, it is still so time consuming to keep track of them all. Interesting that half of my reading is from books which are part of series - mainly crime or fantasy, but not entirely. It does not surprise me to see that I have started many more series than I have finished in the past year - I wonder how I'll do next year?

My efforts to slow down on acquiring more books and read more of the ones I've already acquired were moderately successful, as is seen by the fact that over half the books I read were acquired pre-2012. Even so I still increased the TBR pile slightly over the course of the year, with 133 books acquired and 114 read.

That total of 133 acquired does not include ebooks or audiobooks, or only occasionally. I need to work out a more consistent approach to this. Previously I've only catalogued the audiobooks I've acquired once I get round to reading them, but that means I have a lot of titles languishing forgotten, so I aim to get them all catalogued, and in future to add them as I go along (I have also suspended my Audible subscription because I don't get through audiobooks fast enough to justify one purchase a month - mainly because I've chosen to spend my monthly credit on the longest possible books, to get best value for money!). I've also gone a bit mad in the past few weeks on Kindle Daily Deals and the post Christmas 12 Days of Kindle sale, so I've bought quite a few new ebooks when before I have mostly stuck to free classics. That trend is likely to continue if I'm realistic, so I should be cataloguing these impulse 'clicky click e-book purchases' as promptly as my real paper book ones.

So to summarise these rambling thoughts, here are some aims for 2013:

*Read some longer books
*Allow myselff the luxury of some re-reads
*Read a little more non-fiction
*More sci-fi
*More foreign authors
*Try to finish a few series!
*Continue to prioritise reading from the pre-2013 TBR pile
*Add all my audiobooks to my catalogue
*Add e-book acquisitions as they arrive

I do have a few more goals to aim at, but these are the ones arising from reflecting on my stats.

I use Calibre to keep track of my ebooks because I don't catalogue them all on LT straight away. I add ones I've paid for as soon as I get them, but for free ebooks I tend to wait until I start reading them. As you noted this means that unread ebooks can be forgotten whereas unread paper books cannot be ignored - I tend to trip over the book-piles after a while!

#345 I've been back through my ebook purchases for last year, and I see that I was reasonably consistent about cataloguing them (and counting them in my acquisitions list) until December. Before that (7 books in total not counting a free recipe book) I mostly was only acquiring books I was about to read straight away, whether free or paid for. There are a few freebies that snuck in. But in December I went a bit mad with the special offers - 16 acquired.

I've finally finished tagging and rating the last of my 2012 reads, and so am in a position to try to pick out what were the best reads of the year.

With 7 5-star reads, 19 4.5-stars, plenty more 4-star and only three coming in below 3-star (one 2-star and two 2.5-star) this was a pretty good reading year overall. Looking back, I might want to change some of those usually rather arbitrary ratings to make certain books stand out more which I find have stayed with me longer. But I'm not going to start tinkering with my ratings now, I know that they are unsystematic and don't allow for ready comparisons between genres, but I'll just let them stand.

Books which stand out for me now that the year is over:

Fiction
The Siege - Helen Dunmore - harrowing winter starvation scenes during the Leningrad seige
The Summer Book - Tove Jansson - exquisite evocations of Baltic summer and grandmother/granddaughter relationship
Bring up the Bodies - Hilary Mantel - fantastic! can she keep it up with the final book of the trilogy?
Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell - clever structure, engaging nested narratives, fascinating cross-currents
The Game of Kings - Dorothy Dunnett - I fell in love with Lymond, a sort of 16th-century more energetic Lord Peter Wimsey
Not the End of the World - Kate Atkinson - subtly interconnected short stories with mythical overtones in an everyday apocalyptic setting

Two of these authors new to me (Dunmore and Dunnett). I'm especially excited about discovering Dunnett, and am looking forward to reading more of hers very soon.

Honourable mentions to
The Count of Monte Cristo - because I lived with it for over 6 months as my main audiobook, not the fastest way for me to read a long book, but most enjoyable whenever I got going with it
and
Rebecca - as a 'classic' I've put off reading for far too long, not realising how different it would be from what I expected

Favourite re-reads
The Outing - Dylan Thomas - perfection in a short story, as small boy accompanies uncle and pals on a charabanc outing to Porthcawl, via every village pub en route
Watership Down - Richard Adams - the best guide to leadership skills disguised as an adventure story with bunnies

Non-Fiction
Shark's Fin and Sichuan Pepper - fascinating foody memoir about regional China
Writing at the Kitchen Table - more foody themes with this biography of the cookery writer Elizabeth David, who revolutionised English post-war cooking after a lively and unconventional few years living around the Mediterranean before and during the war.
Life - Keith Richards' memoir provided a memorable summer audio-listen, full of fascinating and entertaining details, which inspired me to listen to more Stones songs and brush up my fancy guitar tunings
Tolkien and the Great War - another biography, narrowly focussed on Tolkien's early life and his experiences in the trenches of WWI, and reflecting on the relationship between these experiences and his writings.

I also read two volumes of poetry in 2012 (Selected poems U A Fanthorpe and The World's Wife by Carol Ann Duffy) both very worthwhile, with some gems among them. From the former collection which I was reading in early January, one poem stood out for me particularly and, with the Tolkien biography mentioned above, means that the year began and ended with reflections on the same theme - and makes me want to re-read The Silmarillion in 2013.

Genesis
(for J R R Tolkien)

In the beginning were the words,
Aristocratic, cryptic, chromatic.
Vowels as direct as mid-day,
Consonants lanky as long-swords.

Mouths materialized to speak the words:
Leafshaped lips for the high language,
Tranquil tongues for the tree-creatures,
Slits and slobbers for the lower orders.

Deeds came next, words' children.
Legs by walking evolved a landscape.
Continents and chronologies occurred,
Complex and casual as an implication.

Arched over all, alarming nimbus,
Magic's disorderly thunder and lightning.

The sage sat in his suburban fastness,
Garrisoned against progress. He grieved
At what the Duke's men did to our words
(Whose war memorial is every signpost).

The sage sat. And middle-earth
Rose around him like a rumour.
Grave grammarians, Grimm and Werner,
Gave it laws, granted it charters.

The sage sat. But the ghosts walked
Of the Birmingham schoolboy, the Somme soldier,
Whose bones lay under the hobbit burrows,
Who endured darkness, and friends dying,

Whom words waylaid in a Snow Hill siding,
Coal truck pit names, grimy, gracious,
Blaen-Rhondda, Nantyglo, Senghenydd.
In these deeps middle-earth was mined.

These were the words in the beginning.

U A Fanthorpe.

What a brilliant poem!

#349 It is good, isn't it! She's got the Anglo-Saxon alliterative metre well, and obviously knows about Tolkien's biography and the philological passion at the heart of his work - it all began with words!

I love all the photos on your thread. I look forward to seeing what you read in the new year.

Although there are so many reviews I meant to write and never did, I must accept now that 2012 is over and it's time to lay to rest the things I never got finished on this thread and start afresh with plenty of good intentions on the new one...

So if anyone is still reading here, it's time to follow over to my 2013 thread, which I've finally updated, and where I've started the year with reminiscences of the earliest books we can remember from childhood. Do come and visit me over in the 2013 group here if you haven't already!