75 Books - Year 8 - Fourpawz2 in 2015 - Thread 1

Another year - another 75 books. Or more.

Above is a picture of the Westport River - just about my favorite place in the world. It is not the best picture, but for now I am tired of fiddling with it. May change it.

And thought I would post best the books and covers from last year from my last thread, which were:

Best Reads of 2014

17. - Dog On It by Spencer Quinn
16. - In the Woods by Tana French
15. - Provenance by Laney Salisbury
14. - Written in My Own Heart's Blood by Diana Gabaldon
13. - Black Beauty by Anna Sewell
12. - The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck
11. - The Peabody Sisters by Megan Marshall
10. - Jane Austen: A Life by Claire Tomalin
09. - The Verneys by Adrian Tinniswood
08. - Summer by Edith Wharton
07. - Longbourn by Jo Baker
06. - The Martian by Andy Weir
05. - The Goose Girl by Shannon Hale
04. - The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid
03. - Stone by Stone by Robert M. Thorson
02. - Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell
01. - Life After Life by Kate Atkinson

Top Five Covers

5. - Longbourn
4. - Provenance
3. - The Cape Cod Mystery
2. - The Goose Girl
1. - Stone by Stone

Worst Covers (in no particular order)

Death Watch
Pay it Forward
Seven-Up
Hot Six
The Ivy Tree
Strawberry Shortcake Murder

I want to do a better job of noting books read and bought this year so I am putting them here:

BOOKS BOUGHT IN 2015

1. Lost in Shangri-La by Mitchell Zuckoff (actually it was free from iBooks)
2. A Tour on the Prairies by Washington Irving (free from Google Books)
3. A Morbid Taste for Bones by Ellis Peters (Kindle Daily Deal)
4. Wild Swans by Jung Chang
5. Indian Killer by Sherman Alexie
6. Isaac's Storm by Erik Larson
7. Acqua Alta by Donna Leon
8. Ranch Life and the Hunting Trail by Theodore Roosevelt
9. Small Island by Andrea Levy
10. Destiny of the Republic by Candice Millard
11. The Cat's Table by Michael Ondaatje
12. The River at the Center of the World by Simon Winchester
13. Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh
14. Mr. Darwin's Shooter by Roger McDonald
Books 4 -14 bought at Mattapoisett Free Public Library Book Sale
15. Death of a Charming Man by M.C. Beaton
16. Death of a Traveling Man by M.C. Beaton
17. Helen of Sparta - by Amalia Carosella - March Kindle First book
18. Younger by Suzanne Munshower - March Kindle First book
19. Highland Winds: Scrolls of Cridhe, Volume 1: Five Hundred Years of Scottish Romance - Bought for 99 cents and intended for those hot summer days when brain does not work
20. Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford
21. When Will There Be Good News? by Kate Atkinson
22. Snow in April by Rosamunde Pilcher
23. Death of a Policeman by M.C. Beaton
24. City of Thieves by David Benioff
25. Empire Falls by Richard Russo
26. Whale Rider by Witi Ihimaera
27. Started Early, Took My Dog by Kate Atkinson
28. A Fatal Vineyard Season by Philip R. Craig
29. Shapechanger's Song by Jennifer Roberson
30. A Coffin for King Charles by C.V. Wedgewood
31. Das Boot by Lothar-Gunther Buchheim
32. Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquivel
33. King Jesus by Robert Graves
34. Mistress to an Age by J. Christopher Herold
35. Samuel Johnson by W. Jackson Bate
36. Madame deSevigne: A Life and Letters by Frances Mossiker
37. The Distant Echo by Val McDermid
Books 20 through 37 all bought at the Mattapoisett Free Public Library Monthly Book Sale
38. Deadly Pleasures - a Book of the Month Club volume which includes The Black Tower, Death of an Expert Witness, and The Skull Beneath the Skin by P.D. James
39. Rituals of the Season by Margaret Maron
40. The Lovely Lady and Caption Caution by Kenneth Roberts (in one volume)
41. Bum Steer by Nancy Pickard
42. Kiss Me Again, Stranger by Daphne du Maurier
38 thru 42 all bought at the Mattapoisett Free Public Library Monthly Book Sale in April
43. Lost Dreams by Jayne Stone - Kindle
44. Knitting for Dummies by Pam Allen - Amazon - Gift Card
45. Bury Your Dead by Louise Penny - B&N - Gift Card

BOOKS LOANED TO ME IN 2015

1. Consequences by Penelope Lively - Library Book - Read and Returned
2. Orphan Train by Christina Baker Kline - Loaned by a friend - Read and Returned
3. Death of a River Guide by Richard Flanagan - Library Book - DNF - Returned
4. The Day of Atonement by David Liss - Library Book - Read and Returned
5. In The Clear Light by Fiona Kidman - Library Book - Read and Returned
6. The Quick by Lauren Owen - OverDrive - Read and snatched back from me by OD
7. The City & the City by China Mieville - Library Book
8. Gracefully Grayson by Ami Polonsky - Library Book
9. The Lost Dog by Michelle de Kretser - Library Book
10. Divergent by Veronica Roth - Library Book
11. Mr. Wakefield's Crusade by Bernice Rubens - Library Book
12. The Undertaking - Library Book
13. The May Bride - Library Book

BOOKS READ IN 2015

1. Consequences by Penelope Lively - 1/02/2015
2. The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro - 1/04/2015
3. Murder Past Due by Miranda James - 1/09/2015
4. Orphan Train by Christina Baker Kline - 1/12/2015
5. Spirit of the Border by Zane Grey - (re-read) - 1/16/2015
6. The Great Fire of London: In That Apocalyptic Year, 1666 by Neil Hanson - (re-read) - 1/20/2015
7. In the Clear Light by Fiona Kidman - 1/24/2015
8. The Day of Atonement: a Novel by David Liss - 1/26/2015
9. To Marry and English Lord by Gail MacColl and Carol McD. Wallace - 2/1/2015
10. The Quick by Lauren Owen - 2/09/2015
11. The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters - 2/13/2015
12. Thereby Hangs a Tail by Spencer Quinn - 2/18/2015
13. Leviathan by Eric Jay Dolin - 2/25/2015
14. The History Of New Bedford, Bristol County, Massachusetts by Daniel Ricketson - 2/26/2015
15. Frenchman's Creek by Daphne Du Maurier - 3/7/2015
16. The City & the City by China Mieville - 3/15/2015
17. Gracefully Grayson by Ami Polonsky - 3/18/2015
18. The Travelling Man by M.C. Beaton - 3/21/2015
19. The Lost Dog by Michelle de Kretser - 3/26/2015
20. Divergent by Veronica Roth - 3/29/2015
21. The Scottish Prisoner by Diana Gabaldon - 4/11/2015
22. Well-Schooled in Murder by Elizabeth George
23. Mr. Wakefield's Crusade by Bernice Rubens
24. The Woman Who Murdered Black Satin by Albert Borowitz
25. The Undertaking
26. The May Bride by Suzannah Dunn
27. The Millstone by Margaret Drabble

Welcome back!

BRITISH AUTHOR CHALLENGE

My very first challenge that I'm posting up top and so feel really, really obligated to actually complete. Will I manage it? Who knows.

January
Consequences by Penelope Lively - Read
Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro - Read

February
The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters - Read
Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh - Reading

March
Frenchman's Creek by Daphne DuMaurier - Read
Perdido Street Station by China Mieville - Changed this to The City & the City - Read

April
The Bloody Chamber by Angela Carter - Reading
Mr. Wakefield's Crusade by Bernice Rubens - Read

May
The Millstone by Margaret Drabble - Read
Experience by Martin Amis

June
The Birthday Boys by Beryl Bainbridge
Shakespeare by Anthony Burgess

July
Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
Christie Marly's Own Double-Entry by B.S. Johnson

August
The Bell by Iris Murdoch
The End of the Affair by Graham Greene

September
Small Island by Andrea Levy
Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie

October
The Betrayal by Helen Dunmore
The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet by David Mitchell

November
Memento Mori by Muriel Spark
Brazzaville Beach by William Boyd

December
A Place of Greater Safety by Hilary Mantel
My Man Jeeves or The Inimitable Jeeves by P.G. Wodehouse

ANZAC CHALLENGE

The BAC got me all excited and so I decided to take on this one, too.

January - Australia - Death of a River Guide by Richard Flanagan *
February - New Zealand - Season of the Jew by Maurice Shadbolt - Cancelled by Snow Complications
March - Australia - The Lost Dog by Michelle de Kretser - Read
April - Australia - Mr. Darwin's Shooter by Roger McDonald
May - Australia - The Man Who Loved Children by Christina Stead
June - New Zealand - The Whale Rider by Witi Ihimaera
July - Australia - The True History of the Kelly Gang by Peter Carey
August - New Zealand - The Bone People or Te Kaihau by Keri Hulme
September - Australia - Missus by Ruth Park
October - Australia - The Fatal Shore by Robert Hughes
November - New Zealand - Singing in the Shrouds by Ngaio Marsh
December - Australia - The Cleaner by Paul Cleave

This is not the perfect 50/50 split that I would have liked, but it is the best that I could do given the limitations of my pocketbook and my local library. I may choose to double up on some of the Kiwis to make up the difference.

*Changing this one to In The Clear Light by Fiona Kidman - New Zealand. DoaRG did not work for me. - Read

JANE AUSTEN GROUP READ

And, being completely besotted by this time with the idea of lists, I decided to do this as well. I really like certain of Jane's books quite a bit, but I've never really 'gotten' why P&P is so beloved and hope that in a group setting I will finally understand its popularity. And also I will finally finish off the couple of JA books that I've not read yet.

The schedule, as I understand it to be is:

January/February - Pride and Prejudice - Reading
March/April - Mansfield Park - Reading
May/June - Sense and Sensibility
July/August - Emma
September/October - Northanger Abbey
November/December - Persuasion

Honoured that my little ole challenge is the first one for you, Charlotte. Thread probably up tomorrow.
Lovely to see one of my favourites back again in 2015. xx

Hi Charlotte! I've got you starred :-)

>2 drneutron: - Thanks, Jim. You make it all possible!

>5 Fourpawz2: - But of course it is the first, Friend Paul. I am really excited to see if I can actually complete this challenge and at this time of year when all things seem possible, you inspired me to go whole hog and add more to my plate. Can't wait to see your thread(s). Wonder how many you will have...

>6 PaulCranswick: - Hi Susan! Am hurrying over to see yours now...

Well hello. Have a star ★.

Dropping my star, Charlotte!

You've got a lot of potential Charlotte! Good luck with that list! :)

Welcome back Charlotte!

>9 BBGirl55:, >10 Crazymamie:, >11 The_Hibernator:, & >12 souloftherose: - Thanks, guys. It's good to be back. Can't imagine life without LT in general and this group in particular.

Glad to see you're up for the Brit Challenge too. I thought about joining the ANZAC one but there was only a couple of authors I'd be able to get my hands on at the library so I skipped it this time. Hope you have a good reading year and that I'll see you around.

Charlotte,



Happy New Year from your friend in Kuala Lumpur

Hi, Charlotte! Happy New Year!!

Happy New Year, Charlotte! May it be filled with fabulous!

>14 PawsforThought: - You bet, Cousin Paws! Looking forward to seeing you at the BAC

>15 lunacat:, >16 PaulCranswick:, >17 scaifea:, and >18 Crazymamie: - Thanks very much and the same to you.

Very cold, but sunny here today. And quiet. Have the Citrus Bowl on in the background, but not because I care anything about either Missouri or Minnesota, but rather because it seems the thing to do on New Year's Day. I really don't care any about college football even though I've always loved pro-football. Have never really known why that is.

Have been reading Consequences all day as my kick-off to the British Author Challenge and it is very, very good. Am very close to being done. I read Moon Tiger several years ago and was very impressed at the time by it. Guess I will have to something toward collecting more of Ms. Lively's works.

Wish I could stay home tomorrow - would just love to settle down and read and read. Oh, well.

Hi Charlotte! Dropping off a star.

I'm doing the British Author Challenge for January, at least. I'll commit on a month-by-month basis. I'm reading The Remains of the Day by Ishiguro and I may read one of Penelope Lively's children's books.

Sandy K

Hi Sandy! So nice to see you here. I'm reading that particular Ishiguro, as well. Must go find you and star you...

Cold and sunny today, but dry - thank goodness.

Had to go back to work today. The weeks have been all messed up these past two weeks - very easy to confuse the days. To the good, I was paid for Christmas and am hopeful that I will be paid for New Year's day, too. Don't expect that to be the case for future holidays.



Book Number 1 (BAC Challenge) was Penelope Lively's Consequences - the story of three generations of women, beginning a few years before WWII and ending around 2005-2006. Each of these women - Lorna, her daughter Molly and Molly's daughter, Ruth - made particular choices that - as choices do for everyone - resulted in a major life consequence. The three women are all possessed of strong personalities and for Lorna and Molly their personalities gave them, I thought, the ability to live unconventional lives in a very conventional time and place. (I think that by the time Ruth came along, it was much, much easier to do the things she did although there were consequences to her choices as well.)

Very impressed by this book and am giving it 5 stars. With literary fiction, I always hold back on that extra half-star if a really great book does not strike some emotional chord in me. This one did it in spades. How neat it would be if the rest of the books from the BAC turn out to be on a par with this first one!

Enjoyed blabbering on about the cover art of the books that I read last year so will continue the jibber-jabber this year. Giving this cover an 8 out of 10. The Alfred Eisenstaedt photo is just perfect for the cover and jacket designer Jasmine Lee did well to pick it.

Weird thing - started my next BAC book The Remains of the Day when I got home from work and in the second sentence the narrator is talking about his employer, Mr. Farraday. Such a coincidence - this is the family name of Lorna, Molly and Ruth, but spelled 'Faraday'. Strange.

Hello, and a Very Happy New Year To You!

Wow, Charlotte, a five star read right off the bat! That's so excellent! Nice review - I have not read anything by Lively yet, but I have Moon Tiger on tap for this month. I love how you rate the cover, too - I have been known to buy a book just because the cover speaks to me! And I love when weird things happen like that in reading - last year I had just finished reading Middlemarch, which had a character named Tertius in it, and I had been thinking what an unusual name that was, and then the very next book I read was about the Civil War Ironclads, and the author's middle name was Tertius.

>22 Fourpawz2: So pleased that Consequences pushed all the right buttons, Charlotte and that my opening B.A.C. pick seems to be well received. I had tried to find connections between my two monthly choices and in this instance both authors were born overseas (Ishiguro in Japan and Lively in Egypt). What I didn't expect is that you would unearth a connection between their work!

Have a lovely weekend and stay warm.

>22 Fourpawz2: 'Had to go back to work today.'

Hope your first day back was ok. I am feeling very blue about returning to work tomorrow.

So pleased you loved Consequences :-) I've got Lively's Moon Tiger lined up for this month.

>22 Fourpawz2: Glad to see that your first read of the year was a great one! I hope the rest of the year is just as good for you, Charlotte.

Hi Charlotte, I starred a bunch of threads as soon as they went up, but just started doing the rounds a couple of days ago, slowly slowly. Glad to get around to your thread and wish you a Happy New Year and say hello. Hope the first day at work went ok and that you've been enjoying the weekend.

Thanks for the review for Consequences. It's definitely going on the wishlist now. I'd been considering the audiobook, but wasn't sure I'd enjoy it and your comments make me think I probably will. I'm looking forward to discovering Moon Tiger for the first time this month.

Give Jane a friendly stroke and pat for me, will you?

xx

Charlotte, how great that your first read was a five-star one :-) I haven't read any Penelope Lively but I think I'll be seeing a lot of reviews this month!

I hope your week goes well. I am back to work tomorrow and I reckon I'll feel jet-lagged after all my late wake-ups over my holiday. I kept telling myself to wake up at 7 but then I ignored myself.

Hi Charlotte, and Happy New Year!

Snowed last night, then turned warm and rained all day. Now it is thundering. Weird.

Another quiet day today. Finally gave Jane her catnip mouse this morning and it turns out that she likes catnip, but not so much that she gets super-crazy. Clearly this toy was more successful than the collar.



Book Number 2 (BAC Challenge) - The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro. I remember seeing the movie way back when. Well, actually I didn't truly see the movie - just the opening credits and about twelve minutes of the movie itself. The rest of it I slept through. So you can imagine that yesterday, when I hit the section on the subject of the great butlers known by the narrator over the course of time - which lasted for an horrendously long 15 pages - I did not have much hope that I would actually get through this one. Not at all what I wanted as I really did want to be successful in this challenge and not crap out of the whole thing on the third day of the year.

Well - not to worry. Started at page 56 this morning and read pretty steadily all day (taking time out for a few household things and the occasional side trip into other books that I have going) finishing this one at 4:40 this afternoon. My conclusion - this is a good book. Probably it is a very good book. I thought, as I approached the last quarter of it, that there was a vague possibility that it is - just as almost everyone says - a great book. But I was, at that point, still only expecting to give it something between a 4 and 4.5 star rating. But then I read the last section - "Weymouth" and discovered that this book demands a 5 star rating from me. Definitely a book to be re-read and more than once.

And the cover? In a word - vile. Big fat zero. Who makes the decisions on the covers? Whoever made the decision on this one should have been fired. Perhaps it is the same person who designs all the really ugly, cheap fabric. I've never understood why it is that very often fabrics that are inexpensive are also an ugly color and/or pattern. Isn't the bad quality enough of an insult without the color and pattern setting your teeth on edge? (Off topic rant now over.)

Can the BAC books continue being so very, very good? I sure hope so.

>23 Whisper1: - Hi, Linda!
>24 Crazymamie: - Hey, Mamie. Hope you enjoy Moon Tiger. I did when I read it a few years ago.
>25 PaulCranswick: - Hi Paul. I'm liking the BAC so far, as you can see. The weather didn't matter a whole lot because the reading was so good.
>26 souloftherose: - Work was not bad, Heather. Finished my end of the month reports and got the Open House flyers done (not quite perfectly, but pretty close) just under the wire. Hope your day goes well tomorrow. It is so hard going back after just a few days off - I can't imagine how awful it is to go back after two weeks.

>27 alcottacre: - hey, Stasia. Nice to see you. Hope your next semester goes well.
>28 Smiler69: - HNY to you too, Ilana. Hope you are feeling better. Gave Jane a pat and stroke as requested and you get a big stretch and a squinty smile in return.
>29 susanj67: - Hi Susan. I've been envying your long holiday. All that lovely reading and having all that wonderful time to yourself. Heaven!
>30 LauraBrook: - Hi Laura! Same to you.

Good to see that you have had to good reads so far. I'm going down the library to find my BAC books wish me luck.

I found an old catnip toy in a clear-out over the weekend and sprayed it with fresh 'nip scent' and ours thoroughly enjoyed it. Thankfully there was no fighting over it, but four of the five have been seen alternately rolling on/killing/licking said toy. We figure in a cat household as big as ours, drugged cats are definitely happier cats ;).

>34 BBGirl55: - Good luck, Bryony! Hope you find some good ones.

>35 lunacat: - Catnip scent - I had no idea. Does the 5th cat not like catnip? I know Willie had no love for the stuff at all, but Myrtle was nuts for the it. The cat my parents had when I was a baby ran up a telephone pole one Christmas Eve night and had to be coaxed down so that we could get on the road to Grannie's house. According to legend, poor cat had a hangover all Christmas Day.

>36 Fourpawz2: I'm not sure she even came across it - the others might well have scooted it off under the sofa somewhere. I haven't seen it for the last day or so, but I can't recall ever seeing her enjoying cat nip before so it could well be that she doesn't like it.

>33 Fourpawz2: Charlotte, currently it's 12.36 and yet it feels like it should be late afternoon. Waaaaah! This is what comes of sleeping in for two weeks. But the Clompingtons are back upstairs, so they helped me get up this morning at an appropriate time, at least...

What a lovely review, Charlotte! SO glad that you end up loving it - I read it last year, and it has really stuck with me. Happy Monday to you, dear!

Loved the cover rant Charlotte. Keep it up!

Agreed Remains of the Day is a great book, and one that deserves to be read and reread and probably read once again and again. I read it last year? (no, August 2013) and I hope to give it a listen this month if I can fit it in), though I'm giving priority to Moon Tiger, which is new to me.

When do we get to see pics of Jane??

Two great books right off the bat! Haven't read that Lively, but I am a fan. For obscure reasons I haven't read Remains or seen the movie, or read any Ishiguro at all which. I especially enjoyed your review of it!

Love the cover comments!

Stopping in to wish you a weekend full of fabulous, Charlotte!

>37 lunacat: - I guess they either do or they don't. I think Jane has licked the eyes off of her mouse! Either that, or it never had any.
>38 susanj67: - the Clompingtons - I love that! Hoping that after a whole week back at work, that you are re-acclimated, Susan. It's the down-side of time off, I've always think.
>39 Crazymamie: - Thank you, Mamie. It was quite a surprise to me that I did like it so much.
>40 Smiler69: - I never have to be encouraged to rant, Ilana :) I liked TRotD so much that I actually went looking at Folio Society copies at ABE books. Didn't buy anything, but liked the looks of what I saw. And as for Jane's pictures - I still have to learn the skill. It will happen - just not sure when.
>41 sibylline: - Thanks, Lucy. As I was saying to Mamie, I was very surprised that I liked it so well. I was certainly glad that I kept going when I ran into a bit of a bump.
>42 Crazymamie: - Thanks Mamie.

Been struggling with Death of a River Guide which I am trying to read for the ANZAC Challenge. It is slow and heavy going as I have not found anything likable about it. And there's Magical Realism in it - I should have paid more attention to the tags and avoided it. It's still mine for another week and a couple of days so will try to force myself to continue.

Went to Mattapoisett for the monthly book sale at the library and came back with the following books:

Wild Swans by Jung Chang
Indian Killer by Sherman Alexie
Isaac's Storm by Erik Larson
Acqua Alta by Donna Leon
Ranch Life and the Hunting Trail by Theodore Roosevelt - a lovely copy that I am certain has never been read
Small Island by Andrea Levy - was planning to buy this anyway for the BAC
Destiny of the Republic by Candice Millard - been on the wishlist since it was published
The Cat's Table by Michael Ondaatje - was on the wishlist
The River at the Center of the World by Simon Winchester
Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh - is on the BAC list for next month
Mr. Darwin's Shooter by Roger McDonald - is on the ANZAC challenge list for April

Cost me $13 which was just $1 more than I intended to spend. I always have an amount in mind that I say I am going to limit myself to, but never do. This time, when I brought my selections to the table I came in at $9 so of course I had to go back and get more. Love this book sale as the readers in Mattapoisett read some quality books.

Have a book that I finished to post here, but will not do so now as I have been wrestling with Jane over who is allowed to 'use' the keys on my laptop and I am supposed to be watching the Pats. So far the way this game is looking appears kind of alarming for Pats fans.

>31 Fourpawz2: I'm sure I've read The Remains of the Day but I don't remember much about it (including the 15 pages on great butlers!). I have it lined up for a tentative reread this month.

I agree that cover is pretty dire. I don't like sepia tones anyway but that's very unappealing.

Our cat is not at all interested in catnip but valerian sends her proper crazy!

>43 Fourpawz2: Ooh, good haul from the library sale (a monthly sale sounds very dangerous). I'm also hoping the BAC will finally encourage me to read Brideshead Revisited.

'I have been wrestling with Jane over who is allowed to 'use' the keys on my laptop'

:-)

44 - Valerian? Not familiar with that. Is that usually a cat aphrodisiac or is it just a thing for your cat?

Really not liking Death of a River Guide. Could not bring myself to pick it up even once this past weekend and I haven't touched it today. Maybe I should try and find something by this month's Kiwi writer instead ....



Book Number 3 - Murder Past Due by Miranda James - a nice cozy mystery which takes place in the fictional Mississippi college town of Athena. Godfrey Priest, a famous writer of best selling thrillers has come back to his hometown of Athena for a reception and book signing at Athena College, his alma mater, as well as to arrange for the donation of his papers to the college and, while he is at it, admit his paternity of an old girlfriend's son. Godfrey is your typical murder victim who is heartily hated by a slew of people and the only wonder is that somebody has not knocked him off prior to this visit. Athena College's archivist, the middle-aged Charlie Harris, becomes involved in the aftermath of Godfrey's death as kind of a self-appointed civilian investigator. He is a very likable character who lives with/is owned by Diesel, a Maine Coon Cat and rents rooms to college students to supplement his income.

I pretty much zeroed in on the primary suspects in the case without too much trouble - the ultimate murderer was on my short list of perpetrators - and while there was no huge surprise here, I was pleased by the book overall.

Giving this one 3 stars

As for the cover art - it gets a 6 out of 10. The cover seems to imply that the cat was somehow involved in the investigation of the murder - perhaps even to the extent of providing an important clue or by detecting some vital bit of information. But if one draws that conclusion as I did, one is quite wrong. Also, this cat does not look particularly like a Maine Coon cat and is plainly not a grey tabby. And I wonder about the book in the middle of the pile to the cat's left. To me it appears to be a law book and Charlie is not a law librarian.

Sheesh! Way to be picky, Charlotte!

Anyway, I liked the book and mean to read the next in the series.

>44 souloftherose: I think valerian is related to catnip so that might be why. I could very well be wrong, though. But you cat isn't the only one who loves valerian - I know several cats who do, one of them raided their owner's cupboards to find some!

>45 Fourpawz2: Valerian is a plant that is used as a natural remedy for insomnia and mild anxiety. It's sold in pharmacies over here, and in quite a few other places, too.

>45 Fourpawz2:, >46 PawsforThought: Yes, I've heard valerian is similar to catnip and some cats who aren't interested in catnip are interested in valerian. It's also a herbal sleep remedy. We discovered our cat liked it becaues I made some herbal tea which had a bit of valerian in and she suddenly got really interested in it.

Ohh, I'll have to try the cats on valerian. Maybe it could drug our cats into contended happiness.

>48 lunacat: That's how we use catnip on our kitty. He's scared of fireworks and hates riding ni the car so on New Years and Walpurgis Night and anytime we have to take him somewhere by car, we drug him with as much catnip as possible. Works okay. There's a spray we put on his favourite towel that's really good.

I wonder what Jane would do with valerian...have to get hold of some and find out.



Book Number 4 - Orphan Train by Christina Baker Kline - story of Niamh, an Irish girl, living in NYC who is orphaned in 1929 and shipped out west on a so-called Orphan Train for adoption and Molly, a teenager from Maine who is part of the modern day foster care system. The story switches back and forth between the two girls and it is not hard to tell that the woman Molly works for in order to fulfill her Community Service obligation (Molly stole a copy of Jane Eyre from a local library and this is her punishment) is, in fact, Niamh decades later. Niamh's story is heart-breaking and terrible, while Molly's is less so, but no less authentic sounding even if she does come across like the usual modern-day teenaged girl outcast with goth inclinations who seems to be so very popular in current fiction.

Loaned to me by a friend, it was interesting enough and I read it in a little more than a day.

Giving it 3.25 stars.

As for the cover art it is getting 5 of 10 from me. It was ok, but would not have enticed me to pull it down off the shelf. There was something about the little girl in the photo - she did not work for me as a little girl from 80 plus years ago. Otherwise it was an o.k. cover - hence the middle of the road rating.

Book Number 5 - The Spirit of the Border by Zane Grey - the last book in the trilogy that I've read at the rate of one per year. This copy is not the original copy that Granny bought for me at a book sale at The Handy House in Westport, MA in 1962, but is one that I bought in April of 2010, taking care at that time to get the exact same edition. (That original book is in my attic; do not care to retrieve it as I expect the squirrels may have destroyed it a few years ago when they ate their way through the roof.) Unfortunately, I only noticed when I began the re-read of this book from 1950 that it was "re-told for young readers" and can in no way be considered the original story written by Grey. Nevertheless I read it anyway. Not surprisingly, it is the weakest of the three books, focusing on twin brothers - one a minister and the other a frontiersman wannabe and their experiences on the Ohio frontier around the time of the American Revolution. Because it has been sanitized for kids it is not very interesting or compelling. Perhaps one day I will read the actual book that Grey wrote. We'll see.

Taking into consideration the whole 'young readers' alteration am marking on the curve and giving this one 3 stars.

The cover art is dreadful. The colors are so blah! It did not appeal to me way back when and it is even less appealing now. Think that the figure on the cover is meant to be Lew Wetzel, the bloodthirsty Indian killer who is a character in all three books, but am not sure. It's getting a big ol' zero from me.

>51 Fourpawz2: Charlotte, I've read the first in that trilogy and I liked it, but I haven't got to the others yet. It's sweet that you managed to get the very same edition that you had as a child, even if it wasn't the grown-up version :-) I agree about the cover art, though - standards must have been much lower years ago, or people really didn't judge books by their covers.

What's next for you?

>51 Fourpawz2: - I guess you are right about the covers, Susan. Either that or standards have changed or it's a whole marketing thing. I have been going on the latter premise since I started taking note of cover art, but who knows for sure - especially since I've seen a number of rotten/deceptive covers from the recent past that have caught my eye in a negative way. You'd think that cover art that repels would automatically disqualify a cover.

I am currently reading The Great Fire of London by Neil Hanson and a book from the library The Day of Atonement by David Liss.

Just deleted Escape from Camp 14 from my wishlist on news that the subject of the book played fast and loose with a lot of things he claims happened to him. Why do people do these things?

Snowed last night, but it was only about an inch and a half. Now it is raining and it is supposed to sleet as well. Jane and I were supposed to go to my aunt's house, but I have decided to have a pajama day instead. Do not relish the idea of paddling around outside with the cold raining creeping down my neck. Ick.

Went to to my old place of work yesterday - as I do every week - to attend, briefly, the farewell lunch for a friend who is moving to New Hampshire. I was not surprised that she and her husband, when they sold their house, decided to make this move, but am still kind of melancholy about it. Another friend and I plan to make a trip to the North Country when the snow melts to see them in their new home, but I know in my heart of hearts that we will gradually have less and less to do with one another and then the friendship will fade away despite all of our intentions to the contrary.

Presently Jane is trying my patience by climbing up onto a chair and pawing at the heavy mirror hanging on the wall over the fireplace which she can reach from the top of the chair. She seems to have some kind of re-decorating gene. Last night she dragged one of the rag rugs from the kitchen into the living room.



Book Number 6 - The Great Fire of London: In That Apocalyptic Year 1666 by Neil Hanson - was a re-read. I had intended, for a long time, to read this one, but did it at this particular time because I plucked it off its shelf for dusting and once I had it in my hand, reading it now seemed like the thing to do.

Enjoyed it just as much this time as I did the first time I read it. Hanson's first chapter, wherein he follows the baker Thomas Farriner (whose bakery is supposed to have been the site of the beginning of this truly 'apocalyptic' inferno) about the city on the day before the blaze, is not, I am sure, a way of beginning the story that many historians would approve of. However, it was very enjoyable to me. It provided a perfect means, I thought, of describing the pre-fire London in 1666 as Farriner visits first one place and then another as he travels about London doing his errands.

Once the fire begins, the story kicks into high gear for a number of chapters, sweeping through one district after another at an astonishing rate of speed, gobbling up property and treasure like nobody's business. The choices that people made which only made the fire worse and the number of historic places that are swallowed up by the flames was almost heart-breaking to me.

The best bits are the chapters about the actual fire. Less successful, for me - as I am not a particularly science-y person - was the chapter on the science of fire and giant conflagrations. However, all in all, this is a good book. Am thinking seriously of getting hold of Adrian Tinniswood's book on the subject, especially as I did so enjoy his book about the Verney family. Something I did not remember from my previous reading, was Dr. Denton, who is referred to twice in this book, and who was the Verney family's good friend and relation and who appears many times in Tinniswood's book about them. Another curious coincidence in my recent reading.

Giving this one 4 stars

Cover Art gets a 6 of 10 from me. Think it would have been better if the left-hand side of the cover had not been so reddish. The print of people cowering in boats on the water, left alone, would have been more successful, I think.

Jane's antics, since I began this post, have made it necessary for me to move the chair into a corner where it blocks off about half of the bottom three shelves of my main bookcase. Cannot get to any of those books without moving the big, heavy chair. But, it is a better choice, I think, than making it possible for my naughty, naughty kitty to bring the big, heavy mirror down on her fool head! Maybe she will forget about the mirror in a few weeks and I can move everything back the way it was.

>55 Fourpawz2: Definitely sounds like a good day to have a pajama day!

Chuckling away at Jane's antics :-)

Hehehe, I wonder why Jane thinks that the rug needed to be in the living-room? Got to love their determination at times, and how obsessive they can be. Ours are quiet at this moment in time, *touch wood* all is peaceful and they aren't up to no good somewhere.

Hope you have had/are having a fabulous pajama day.

Got me with a BB too as I like the sound of your latest read.

>55 Fourpawz2: While I'm not going to add that one to my TBR list, it really does sound fascinating.

I love any excuse for having a pajama day! Good thinking! Hoping that your Sunday turns out to be every bit as lovely as your Saturday sounds!

>55 Fourpawz2: Charlotte, that one sounds like an excellent read. I've wishlisted it in my library account. I discovered the old way in to the catalogue when the new page wasn't working recently, and found my old wishlist, which hadn't transferred over, so now I have two going. Because I need more books...

I hope Jane has stopped redecorating so you can read in peace!

Am hoping that power stays on throughout stupid snowstorm that is currently raging outside. And am not looking forward to shoveling a pile of snow either. Sometimes I think it would be better to not watch the weather geniuses as they do seem to overdo things thereby getting people all lathered up. Frankly would just like to go to sleep and stay that way until storm stops and all is over. Is it possible to stay asleep for 15 hours or so?

Hi Charlotte. I've been MIA for awhile.

Good luck with the shoveling. We had about four inches of snow this past weekend, and the same amount today. Who knows what is coming tonight and tomorrow. You are right about "the weather geniuses", everything is up in the air .... perhaps soon to come down from the sky...

Hey Linda! That's ok - as per usual I've found it very difficult to keep current with everybody.

"Soon to come down from the sky" - you bet it is! Is it Spring yet?

Hoping you and Jane survive the snowstorm Charlotte.

>64 souloftherose: - Thanks, Heather. We are alive, but the storm still has a while to go. One of the weather geniuses just said that the really strong winds should start to calm done a bit by noon - about 4.5 hours fron now.

Can't see a thing out of the south and west facing windows. Very frustrating for Jane. Front door can only be opened about an inch and a half. Looks like I will have to take out the bottom window of the storm door and dig myself out with the fireplace shovel from the inside. Have had to do that before. Annoying.

I've definitely slept for 15 hours before, but usually when I'm hungover so that might not be the best way to go. I'm glad (well, assuming) that you've still got power?

It sounds awful, but hopefully it will begin to ease off soon and you can dig your way out of your home. Poor Jane must be very confused.

>57 lunacat:, >59 Crazymamie: - it was an excellent pajama day. Pajamas should be required indoor clothing on weekend days when you don't have to go anywhere.

>57 lunacat: & >60 susanj67: - glad I got you with a BB! As I said it's not an historian's history, but for me - twice - it was riveting.

>58 thornton37814: - Glad you liked the sound of it Lori. Maybe some day...

Jane has given up on re-decorating for the moment, but on Sunday she got hold of the styrofoam tray from the trash that held the pork chops I bought in order to make a faux Chinese scallions, pork, garlic and rice dish which I love. She chewed on it a whole bunch and then came into the living room and jumped up on the couch with me not having noticed that she had a little tiny piece of the tray on her head. Busted!

Book Number 7 - Paddy's Puzzle by Fiona Kidman - My January selection for the ANZAC Author Challenge was the story of Clara from childhood in a small New Zealand town to her sad end in Auckland. She has a complicated relationship with her mother and one of her sisters that pretty much sets the tone for her life. It is one of those stories that, while it is not a happy tale, is still worth the reading because Kidman handles her characters so well. Really enjoyed it a lot and am glad now that the Flanagan turned out to be such a bad fit for me, giving me the opportunity to discover Kidman.

Giving this one 4 stars

As for the cover art - another loser. I can't quite give it a zero, because there is nothing there. (Does this make sense?) Just words on a background of color. Gets a 3 from me. At least it doesn't misrepresent itself in any way.

Book Number 8 - Day of Atonement: A Novel by David Liss - Historical Fiction revolving around a man by the name of Sebastian Foxx, who escaped from Lisbon to England when a boy of 13 after his New Christian family (i.e. Converted Jewish family) is taken into custody by the Inquisition, imprisoned and 'put to the question'. Once a person was put to the question by the Inquisition that was pretty much it; death soon followed by either torture or execution - or both.

Foxx (aka Sebastiao Raposa) returns to Lisbon when grown in order to find his lost love, Gabriela, and primarily to get his revenge upon the priest who engineered the arrest of his parents.

Thereafter follows a long series of complications which cause a lot of delay in Foxx achieving his goals. In this time Foxx does a lot of agonizing over his brutal nature (caused by his anger over his family tragedy) while he attempts to save more people than he had originally planned to and also to have his vengeance upon other people that he had not planned upon ruining/killing.

I've read a couple of other HF novels by Liss and liked them - in particular A Conspiracy of Paper (which I thought was very clever) - and so I snatched this one off a shelf in the library when i saw it. Another thing that motivated said snatching was that it was set in Portugal - a location that is much neglected in the HF genre. You get a zillion American, UK and French settings and a fair number of Dutch and Italian ones, but rarely anything in Lisbon. I would have liked a little more of a Portuguese feel to it - that part seemed a little thin to me - and less of Foxx pounding the crap out of people or planning to pound the crap out of people. And, I wish that I had not figured out something that happened in Lisbon at this time, so easily. It never improves a story if you know ahead of time when something 'big' is going to happen.

Otherwise, this was a pretty good HF book. Giving it 3.5 stars.

The cover art gets a 7.5 of 10 from me. I like the colors, the view of Lisbon and its harbor and the silhouette that is front and center on the cover. This is the kind of cover I would automatically reach for in a store - even if I had never read any David Liss before.

Charlotte, it's good to see you didn't lose power. We had a bit in the news about New York not getting much snow but it sounds like you got quite a bit up where you are. I hope you don't have to shovel too much to break out!

>70 susanj67: - Hey Susan! In some ways I did have to shovel too much, but not as much as I might have as one of my neighbors came over on Tuesday night and used his snow blower on the end of my tiny driveway and the part of the street that the plow did not touch. It was nice not to have to do that. It was a light kind of snow, but because there was so much of it (the snow drift in front of my door was literally up to the bottom of my butt) that it felt awfully heavy as the shoveling dragged on. Understand there is more snow tonight to be followed by rain, sleet and freezing rain. yay.

Book Number 9 - To Marry and English Lord by Gail MacColl and Carol MacD. Wallace - a non-fiction book about the flood of American Heiresses (I truly had no idea there were so many of them!) who invaded England in the last half of the 19th century and basically bought themselves titled English husbands. The best know of these girls were, of course, Jennie Jerome Churchill, mother of Winston and Consuelo Vanderbilt who was raised to be a duchess by her over-bearing mother, Alva. But they were just two among what seemed like hundreds and hundreds. I'm sure it wasn't really hundreds and hundreds, but as this book went on I got pretty overwhelmed by the names and titles. The money spent by the parents of these girls to get them a titled husband was appalling. Literally, in many cases, millions of dollars. The authors don't give a final dollar amount expended in this quest, but I'm sure if I could gather the strength to do it and go back through this book I would find that it is a very shocking number. And mind you these would be numbers that would have to be multiplied by more than 33 in order to reflect today's dollar values. (33 was the number one had to muliply the dollars spent in 1989, the year of this book's publication.) Makes me want to throw up.

Lots of interesting stuff in it though, even if it is laid out oddly. The authors say in the Acknowledgements section at the beginning that their publisher, Peter Workman, was the only publisher who understood their book which probably explains the crazy way it is laid out. Lots of tiny articles about all sorts of things - calling cards, tiaras, servants, dresses, Newport Mansions, Stately Homes, "Estate Drains" (not toilets and plumbing, but the monetary drain on the estate income), "The Newport Schedule", about a jillion parties and many, many more subjects - are everywhere in this book, often appearing at inconvenient intervals (and in the margins as well!) as one is trying to read the story of all these brides/wives/mistresses/dukes,earls, etc. The only thing that I know Workman Publishing for is calendars of various kinds. This may explain the peculiar layout of the book as well as its hundreds of pictures and illustrations. It is also, for a trade paperback, a heavy bugger!

Anyway, it was kind of interesting, but after a while it was just too much. Too many dresses, too many jewels, too many houses, too many awful marriages, too much wasted money and too much extra-marital carrying on for me. It all seemed so pointless to live one's life in such a way. Kind of sad really.

Giving it 3 stars.

The cover art garners a 4 of 10. It is too pink and too busy for me.

>71 Fourpawz2: Hooray for nice neighbours! I have often wondered what happens when people can't shovel at all - someone disabled, for example. Do they have to rely on neighbours or is there a number they can call for help?

>72 Fourpawz2: I *love* the sound of that book! And my library has it as an ebook, republished in 2012, and described as "An inspiration for the popular television series Downton Abbey" because the Countess of Grantham was a "dollar princess" herself. I'll have to borrow it, but maybe not immediately as I just checked two things out this morning. Then again...

I'm so glad you had the help of your neighbour to lessen the load slightly. What a nice thing to do.

Hi Charlotte, nice to know you have a helpful neighbour. Seems like you guys have been getting all the snow that ought to by rights be coming this way, since we are closer to the North Pole! I'm always happy to get tonnes of snow because a) I don't have a car to dig out and don't have to drive in those kinds of conditions, b) there's only so much shovelling I need to do living in an apartment and c) I just love walking around in mounds of the stuff. Glad to know you've kept your power in the worst of it.

Just the other day I added a bunch of David Liss titles to my wishlist after seeing Susanne had reviewed a couple of his books on her thread. I had one of his books on there already which I had seen somewhere at some point, so they are accumulating and I guess it's just a question of time before I pick one up since I am quite a big fan of historical fiction, as you may know.

Wishing you well. xo

>73 susanj67: - I think that people have to depend on neighbors and family for their shoveling around here, Susan. I've always tried my best to take care of it myself, but some of the time that does not work out. Part of the property faces on a busy street with a sidewalk and ideally one is supposed to shovel that sidewalk. Sometime I am able to get that done, but this time the snow is too high and frozen solid. There is no way that I can chip through it, so will just have to hope that it melts soon or softens up to the point where I can remove some of it. Hope you enjoy that book when you get hold of it, Susan.

>74 lunacat: I thought so, Jenny. I don't know which one of them did it as I've not seen either of them to ask. I know for sure that Paul did it as they are both named Paul. Apparently Paul is a name given to nice men.

>75 Smiler69: - I noticed the other day that it was warmer up your way than it was down here. It did get all the way up to 39 degrees on Wednesday, but has since plunged into the nether regions and I am not enjoying it one bit. Likely the gas company is, but I would like it much better if it were the balmy 40s or thereabouts instead. Definitely good about the power staying on. It is inconvenient when the power goes off in the summer, but in the winter it seems deadly. It doesn't happen often here in blizzards - I can only remember it doing so in February 2013 in that horrible storm that resulted in my neighbor (one of the Pauls) being burned out of his house. I've never been so cold in my life!

At the moment it is snowing a bit, but if The Weather Channel is to be believed it will not amount to much. I haven't gotten to the end of any of the books I am currently reading and so have none to post here. Brideshead Revisited is not half read (mostly because I am not in love with it) and I am only a little way into Leviathan. Am closest to the finish line with The Quick, which I borrowed as an ebook from the library when I was becoming disenchanted with BR last Sunday. Am almost done with it, which is good as I've only got it until Monday. Have ordered The Season of the Jew from the library for the ANZAC author challenge. Almost did not order it as parking at the library is a 'challenge' all its own due to the street being a massively icy mess. Worth a person's life to get from one's car to the interior of the library without breaking a hip or worse.

I am not sure why Shadbolt is so darned difficult to find over here. I am struggling to find a book for my ANZAC challenge and may take up the wild card offered via The Thorn Birds.

>77 PaulCranswick: - Hi Paul! Seems as if it should be a little easier to find Shadbolt in your area. Because of the proximity thing. Didn't have any difficulty finding a book by him. The one that surprised me was Once Were Warriors. I could find copies of the movie at the library with no problem, but nary a copy of the book.

Grey again today and a little mushy underfoot. Cleared off the snow from yesterday which was only about a half inch or so. Supposed to snow overnight and through tomorrow to the tune of 1 to 3 more inches. Just enough to be annoying.



Book Number 10 - The Quick by Lauren Owen which I finished a couple of hours ago. I know there are a lot of fans of this book out there and I don't usually manage to read many currently or even close to currently popular books until years later. But if one is going to borrow books thru Overdrive one had better be prepared to go with recent books because unless you are looking for a Classic, that is all they have. So, The Quick, it was!

At first I was not a fan. It seemed to take so long to get going. Also, the gay romance thing was not doing it for me either, as I was (and am still) trying mightily to slog my way through Brideshead Revisited as well and I was finding four young men swooning over one another to be a bit much.

I do think this would have been a better book if it had been a bit shorter - 500+ pages is a lot, especially when the first half of the book is moving slowly. The best part, truly, was the first two-thirds of the second half, i.e. the exciting bits about vampires. This, unfortunately, was followed by what seemed an over-long winding down period before the big reveal at the end, which was really not a surprise to me. (Am assuming that there is to be a sequel. Am I wrong?)

Anyway it wasn't the worst vampire-ish book I've ever read. Very atmospheric. Just wish she had not spent quite so much time on the before parts. If it had been pared down some it would have been an easy 4-4.25 stars for me. Giving it 3.5 stars because the vampire bits were just so darn good.

As for the cover art - it gets a 6 of 10 rating. I definitely would have snaked this book off the shelf based on the cover alone.

Nice review, Charlotte - I have that one in the stacks. I think a lot of books suffer lately from being a bit too long. I agree with you about the cover - I like it! Happy Monday to you, dear!

>72 Fourpawz2: The subject of that one is interesting but not sure I want to read it enough given the problems you had. And I agree that cover would not have made me pick the book up.

>78 Fourpawz2: I really enjoyed The Quick although I think I prefer the UK cover to yours. She definitely left things open for a sequel didn't she? Not sure if one has been confirmed or not.

I am sadly behind here, Charlotte. I do hope you have a lovely Sunday, staying in and staying warm!

Happy SUnday, Charlotte!

>80 souloftherose: - Yes, the UK cover of The Quick is better. Don't know why it has been decided that books need to have different covers for different places. Am sure it is a marketing thing, but am thinking that a good cover should work for everybody. I think that the whole subject of American heiresses shopping for English aristocratic husbands is a very interesting one, but the layout of the book was wrong. Too frivolous. Of course it may be that the authors were only able to write in a frivolous way and I suppose that must mean that the subject is still basically untouched. Wish someone a bit more serious would take a crack at it.

>81 alcottacre: Hi Stasia! I am trying to get warm after a late morning snow shoveling stint. Am glad I am done with that!

>82 Crazymamie:, >79 Crazymamie: - And to you, too, Mamie! I do think that books of about 375-400 pages are the perfect length. 500 pages and above are just too daunting. Not that I don't read them anyway, but I wish they could be not quite so long.

Hi Charlotte - sorry you have to shovel. I hope the snow leaves you in peace for some quality reading time this afternoon.

Well, the horrid blizzard is mostly over. The sun is trying to shine, but the snow is still blowing around. I went outside at 10:30 to shovel and was done at noon. However, I would have been a lot longer if my other neighbor named Paul had not come over to sweep off my car and then he took his snow blower to the rest of the driveway. I was supposed to park on the street while he finished the bits that I had not done, but the street is so narrow now that I could not make the turn without getting stuck in either the snow on the opposite side of the street or in one of the giant piles of snow on the corner of my drive. So he had me drive back in and then he knocked the corners off of the giant piles of snow (they are up to my shoulders!). After that I backed Alice out of the drive and into his driveway while he cleared the rest of the snow all the way back to the trash/recycling bins. I finished that bit and put Alice back where she belongs. Truly, I have never seen it this bad before. I can't even look at my roof without cringing! At least the snow is light and fluffy. Am hoping that the wind keeps up and blows more of it off the roof. Am so not looking forward to going to work tomorrow.

Am also incredibly sick of snow in general. The other day I told my boss that I really want to do more than anything else is punch somebody. I know that won't make the snow go away or the winter go by any faster, but living like this is just so frustrating. There is no rock salt for sale, so I bought kosher salt on Friday. Have a horror of the mail delivery person killing him/her self on my icy steps. And, to make it just that much worse my boss is going to Florida today (assuming that his flight gets off the ground) and my cousin is already there for a week with her schoolteacher friend.

My Maurice Shadbolt book is at the library to be picked up and I have no idea if I am actually going to get there to do it before they give up on me and send it back. Wish I could hibernate until March 31st or so. Bears are so lucky!

Book Number 11 - The Little Stranger by Sarah Waters which I read for the BAC Challenge and it was a really good, suspenseful, creepy book. Post WW2 England. Aristocratic family (the Ayres) mired in creeping poverty, clinging stubbornly to their rapidly crumbling Stately Home called Hundreds Hall. A local doctor, from a lower class background, but with a connection to the Hall (his mother was a nursery maid there and he visited the house as a child) is called to tend to the family's teenaged servant and then gradually becomes friendly with the Ayres while being sucked into their problems.

I was not at all surprised that things turn out as they do for these characters. Everything seems to have an inevitability about it that can't be avoided. (Though at times I did want to grab Dr. Faraday by the shoulders and shake him while shouting at him, "Wake up, you fool and stop being so scientific! Things are really, really wrong here!") First rate book, I thought. Fingersmith was maybe a teensy bit better, but only a teensy bit. Giving this one 4.5 stars.

As for the cover art - it gets a 5 of 10 rating, mostly because of the extra text on the cover that does not need to be there. Otherwise I probably would have given it a 6.

Now, if only I could finish Brideshead! Don't think it is going to get done this month.

Book Number 12 - Thereby Hangs a Tail by Spencer Quinn - am loving this mystery series starring Bernie Little, owner of The Little Detective Agency and his doggie sidekick, Chet. This time Bernie and Chet are working on the disappearance of a cute little show dog named Princess who has been dognapped just before a big dog show (interesting, I thought, that I happened to pick this one up just before the Westminster Kennel Club dog show started.) Bernie (and Chet) are hired by Countess Adelina Borghese (originally of New Jersey) to recover Princess. Recovery of missing persons and now dogs is, Chet tells the reader, their specialty.

The recovery effort morphs all out of shape and before long it becomes a matter of murder as well as the recovery of some humans as well. Chet naturally plays a very important part in the investigation all the while narrating the story. I love the way Chet's thoughts go off in 50 different directions all at once.

There is a complication at the end that does fill one with concern for Chet, but as the series seems to go on and on after this, the second book in the series, I am not worried.

Giving this book 4 stars. Just love books where a dog is a major character. Books where dogs and their thought processes figure prominently are much more interesting than the ones I've read with cats, but then again no one, so far, has really tried to get into a cat's head.

The cover gets a 7. Really like the view over the desert that Chet and Bernie love so well.

Note regarding The Little Stranger (see above) - I remembered after I posted that the name Faraday came up previously in The Remains of the Day and also in Consequences. In TLS there is another character named Faraday. Weird. Wonder if I will run across a fourth book this year with this name...

Some melting going on here - but mostly it is just cold. Cold, cold, cold. So boring. Sick of ice. Snowed last night here so am glad of that as it puts a little snow between me and the slippery ice. Husband of a girl at work fell down delivering mail over the weekend and she has been out since then taking care of him. Old boss slipped on his steps and broke his elbow in two places.

No matter how much the furnace runs at work the place is like a meat locker.



Book Number 13 - Leviathan: History of Whaling in America by Eric Jay Dolin - a book I've had for a while and have been wanting to read. A really good history that interests me a lot because a lot of it takes place in my home town. No doubt about it - whaling was a dirty, hard, dangerous business - for all except the owners who stayed safely at home. Although, to be fair, they did risk, and often lost, a lot, if not all, of their money in sending their whale ships out to sea. I'd known that there were dangers in whaling for the men who actually did it, but Dolin really brought all those things home to me. In particular, I think encountering a truly pissed-off sperm whale would probably make me die of fright. I've kind of always thought of all whales behaving more or less alike, but those sperm whales seemed especially terrifying to me.

Dolin took, what seemed when he first did it, several detours to write about different wars that America was involved in, but those wars turned out to have serious impacts on the industry and very nearly killed it at several points.

Of course I would have liked to have seen some mention of family members who went a'whaling, but naturally there was nothing about any of them as most of them were never more than crew members - the men who suffered most and earned next to nothing while doing it. I think it's time to go and dig up the letters they sent home, now, and reacquaint myself with what they wrote.

The prosperous days of whale fishery really only lasted about 100 years and most of that took place in Nantucket. In my town this industry was much shorter lived (but more profitable) and was very much like most industries have been here - a few years of high profitability followed by decades of crushing unemployment and severe economic depression. The current one has been going on since about the mid-20th century.

Anyway, loved this book. Highly recommended.

Giving it 4.5 stars - one of best reads of the year so far.

Cover art gets a 7 of 10. Can't beat an action painting of a scary sperm whale eating a whaleboat with crew for breakfast!

I sympathize with your feelings about the cold and the ice. Eliot had it wrong: *February* is the cruelest month!

Without a doubt Amber! April is just frustrating.

The whaling history looks very good.

Hope you are doing better with all the snow.... it does seem like it will never go away, doesn't it. But my bones can feel the weather changing.

>91 sibylline: - it was good, Lucy. I think you might like it.

I know what you mean about the weather change. There are crocuses coming up in my yard! I uncovered their area and though I still have tons of snow in the yard and it has been wicked cold, but there has been sun that bounces off the house and warms the ground near the foundation where the crocuses are. It snowed another 4.5 inches overnight, but it's going up over freezing today and the next week is supposed to have some 40 degree days. Very excited about that.

I have so lost count of the number of snow storms we've had this winter. I do know that the last one was on Thursday. 1 to 3 inches, my heinie, Weather Channel!!! Try 10 frickin' inches!!! Nothing like having to park your car with its rear end in the street while you frantically shovel away like a mad thing trying to get it unstuck from first one and then a second attempt to get into your own driveway! And the language!! Good thing there was no one around to hear me...



Book Number 14 - Local, 19th century author, Daniel Ricketson's history of New Bedford which would interest no one but me. Filled with anecdotes of people and families of Old Dartmouth and in particular of those parts which eventually broke away from Dartmouth to become New Bedford. All of families have now disappeared from New Bedford and there are only a very few remnants of those families left in Dartmouth, Westport and Acushnet now - mine among them. It was interesting to me, but I know without a doubt that it would bore the pants off of most people. I particularly enjoyed the parts where he was describing where this or that old house or business was and I tried to figure out in my head exactly where on William Street, County Street, Sixth Street, etc. he was talking about. In almost every case those old houses and business establishments have been gone for well over a hundred years. Just the same I really liked it. I imagine that a non-New Bedford-ite would give it a 2 star rating, but I'm giving it a 4 because I enjoyed it so darn much.

I downloaded this book from Google, so naturally the cover art did not come into play at all. If I owned the physical book it would be very, very plain looking. Not sure how to rate the cover, though - especially as I really did not have one to see when I got it from Google.

Charlotte, that darned snow! (I did laugh at your description of your most recent shovelling, though, and the language). It has to stop soon. We had weather from Bermuda over the weekend (no, I don't know either) but it will be back to rain tomorrow.

The history of New Bedford sounds like a great read if you have a long history in the area. I envy that - I've never belonged anywhere and I never will. I looked up Leviathan but it hasn't made it to the library, which is a pity. I'll keep an eye on Amazon marketplace, though. I live not far from Greenland Dock, where they used to boil up whales right here in London, and I'd like to learn a bit more about that. It's all yuppie flats now, of course, like the rest of the London docks :-)

Hope you can get hold of Leviathan, Susan. It does talk about England's attempts to establish a whaling fleet on several different occasions in order to get a chunk of the lucrative whale market as well as several other aspects of the whole whaling story.

There's been a lot of melting going on here today - the first of a whole string of above-freezing days we are supposed to be getting - and just in time as I seem to have developed a couple of tiny leaks around my big Living Room window. Ice begone!

Still melting. Yesterday I could see January 29th on the path that I began shoveling from the house to the street a month and a half ago, but I mostly see January 27th now - i.e. the ground! What a beautiful sight it is.



Book Number 15 - Frenchman's Creek by Daphne Du Maurier for the BAC Challenge

I love Rebecca and The Scapegoat and, though I have not read it in years (mean to correct that soon), I have very fond memories of her first book - The Loving Spirit. Frenchman's Creek, unfortunately, was just a 'meh' read for me. Apparently I started this book many, many years ago when I found it in the used book section of a local bookstore (defunct for eons now), as I found my bookmark from back then (deposit slip from a local bank that has been absorbed into a big overseas bank) and it seems that I abandoned this book about 70 pages from the finish line. I did better this time around and finished it, but it just was not my kind of book. (Bored and jaded English noblewoman travels to husband's home in Cornwall to get away from husband and his friend, discovers pirate ship lurking near home, meets captain of ship, lots of noblewoman/pirate frolicking and dressing up as cabin boy topped off by humiliation of husband and the neighbors) Pirates - it would appear - don't interest me. But - I finished, which is the important thing.

To the good, there were places where the pirate twiddle dropped away and Du Maurier's ability to write very nicely of nature and scenery and a very pleasant location took over.

But I cannot give this book more than 2.5 stars. It's the fault of the pirates.

As for the cover art - OMG this cover from my paperback published in 1971 is hideous! I guess it was a good thing that the author's name takes up fully one-third of the cover, because that must have been what caught my eye. It certainly couldn't have been the oily-looking pirate captain - wearing head-to-toe orange (Way to blend in and not attract attention, Captain Jean!) - nor could it have been the slutty Lady Dona with her cheap, trashy dress and a hundred pounds of eye-shadow. And the two of them surrounded by thousands of 'flowers' that remind me of the psychedelic flowers the baby bear saw after eating a pile of mushrooms in "The Bear" (one of my favorite movies). Awful! Gets a 1 of 10 from me.

Ooooh, a trashy pirate story? With costumes? I'm in!!

Sorry to hear it wasn't a better read, Charlotte, but somehow I think I might like it, so at least you've helped to spread the word :-)

Crazy, crazy rain today - coming down like nobody's business. Thank goodness it isn't snow!

Went to the Mattapoisett Free Public Library Monthly Book Sale with my cousin. Had a big hankering to go there as I missed out on last month's sale (a 2-for-1 sale!!) and as usual did well. Bought 18 physical books (listed as books 20 - 37 in Message 1, above), but one was an omnibus, so technically I got 19 for $15.00 or 78 cents each. For the first time I bought a "Friends of the Mattapoisett Library" bag which costs $15.00, but the purchase of it gets you as many books as you can stuff into it. I could have fit a few more in, but quit at 18 because it already weighed about 60 pounds and it was going to be quite a sprint through the rain to my car. Afterwards we went to lunch at the Inn and had a generally great time. Am glad to be inside now and out of the cold rain. Have now got to push all these books out of the way that are taking up so much room on the couch so I can snuggle under the blankie with Jane and get back to reading The City & the City.

>97 susanj67: - Glad I could help locate a pirate story for you, Susan! I know it is a pretty well-liked book; it's just me, I think. Pirates don't do a thing for me.

Hurray for an amazing book haul! Funny, because I just downloaded the audiobook of Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet from the library this week, which I had never heard about before but discovered had apparently been quite popular among quite a lot of LT members. Sorry I haven't been commenting for a while, though I had been lurking in the background and keeping up with you that way. We had a huge snowfall yesterday and it's winter wonderland all over again over here—you'd think it was mid-January instead of just a few days away from Spring. I don't really mind it because the end of winter is so gross here with all the garbage and dog droppings defrosting all over the place. At least this way we get a temporary whitewashing, but I hope for your sake it doesn't travel over to your neck of the woods.

Wanted to tell you I just finished The Scapegoat by Daphne du Maurier yesterday and really loved it. You'd recommended that one at one point and I'm glad I followed up on your suggestion and purchased it. Great story!

>100 Smiler69: - Don't worry about it, Ilana. I know that you are lot busier these days than in times past. It's hard enough when you have little to do to keep up around here so when you have an actual life that tends to make it difficult to keep current. You are right about The Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet - I remember when it was hugely popular. I wasn't even sure if I had already bought a copy (can't check my books online in Mattapoisett because all the water there makes it impossible), but I took a chance and got it anyway.

So glad you loved The Scapegoat. I thumbed your review and now, after reading it, I have such a hankering to read it again. Can't believe that it is 6+ years since my last re-read.

Incredibly windy today and so it is very, very cold here. I shudder to think what my gas bill will be this month. The sun itself is warm, but all of that wind ruins any positive effect of ol' Sol.



Book Number 16 - The City & the City by China Mieville for the March BAC Challenge

This combination police procedural/fantasy story was amazing! Once I wrapped my head around what Mieville was doing, I really, really enjoyed it. I have great respect for the mind that could just come up with the concept and to write it in such a way that it was interesting and understandable was such an accomplishment. My only other Mieville experience before now was King Rat which was, I thought, decidedly weird. This book was not weird at all. And the ending did not let me down at all. It was a good ending that made perfect sense to me. The only thing that I did not understand - and it may have been that I missed it in the early part of the story when I was still trying to grasp what was happening - was why the two cities were at such odds and had to be completely separate from one another. However, even if Mieville did not offer an explanation of why this was, I would not mind. And - once again - this is another book, borrowed from the library, that I wish I owned.

Giving this one 4.5 stars. Very much recommended.

The cover art gets a 9 of 10 from me - the highest rating this year, I believe. I loved the light blue color of my copy, the panoramic drawings of the two very different cities at the very top and bottom of the cover and I especially love how the 'the City' line runs backwards and is a little muzzy looking - just the way that I imagine one city should look to the citizens of the opposing city - if they dared to look at it.

Yay! So so glad you loved The City and the City. It utterly absorbed me too - as you say - once I 'got' the premise, which did take a little while.

That trashy cover is great! Better than the book, eh?

Now I have to go look at your book haul.

Russo, Atkinson, Ford! You did very very well!

Nice review of The City & the City, Charlotte - I recently finished that one, and I loved it, too! And I agree that the cover is lovely. Hoping that your week is full of fabulous!

Stopping by to say hello Charlotte! Glad you enjoyed The City & The City. I don't think the book ever explained why the two cities were at such odds, but I may have missed it. I think your cover is much better than the cover of my edition which is just a black and grey noir-type cover.

LT to Charlotte, come in Charlotte! We miss you :-) I hope you're doing OK and having a good Easter weekend.

I loved your review of The City & the City. We have Perdido Street Station in the book exchange, but I think this one might be more "me".

>101 Fourpawz2: I also thought that King Rat was weird so I have not given hope seeing your positivity about The City and The City.

Sorry that I have been so rubbish at keeping up so far in 2015. RL is a bit hectic of late.

Have a lovely Easter weekend, Charlotte.

Sorry to have disappeared again, guys! Had not realized just how long it was. Just trying to deal with my crap.

>102 sibylline: - I think that one is going to be one of my favorites for the year, Lucy. And glad you approve of the book haul. Can't believe that the April sale is this Saturday..

>104 Crazymamie: - Glad to hear you liked it too, Mamie.

>105 souloftherose: - Thanks Heather. Glad to know that I did not just skip over that particular point. Makes one wonder what, exactly, it was that set the two societies against each other. Am supposing that Mieville decided not to address the issue as it had gone on so long that no one really remembered why any longer??

>106 susanj67: - - Hi Susan! That book was a real thinker and I think that is one reason I liked it so much. Hope your Easter was a good one. Mine was. It was my cousin's birthday and I took Jane to the birthday dinner. She is such a good rider and a very entertaining guest. Very unusual in my experience as a cat-parent.

>107 PaulCranswick: - Thanks Paul. No apologies are necessary. I haven't been exactly 'good' lately either.

I mean to get back and post my recent reads soon. Maybe tomorrow?

Grey and cold today. I think Spring is not planning on coming here this year. I think the plan is to launch directly from 50 degrees and rainy to 88 degrees with 75% humidity.



Book Number 17 - Gracefully Grayson by Ami Polonsky - a library book which I read on Joe's recommendation. It is the story of a transgender child of middle school age. Grayson, who has felt himself to be in the wrong body from a very, very young age, is now in middle school and struggling with this issue as well as all of the usual middle school age problems. Things reach a crisis point when he decides to try out for a female role in school play.

This book is intended for children of 13 or so and I feel that because of its target audience that it is pulling its punches a bit. I think that if Grayson were a bit older - say 16 or 17 - there would have been more substance to his struggle beyond a lot of time spent mentally picturing himself in pretty dresses. Hope this does not sound insensitive - I am sure that it must be hugely difficult to deal with this issue (especially at a time in life when one has so many issues) - but I think that with an older protagonist and the freedom to flesh out all of the issues facing Grayson, it wouldn't have felt
'thin' to me. Over all, it was well written, but I wish it had been more.

Giving it 3.5 stars

The cover art was simple, but not particularly eye-catching for me. Giving it a 5 of 10

Book Number 18 - Death of a Travelling Man by M.C. Beaton - Book Number 10 in the Hamish MacBeth series. This time around a 'travelling man' - Sean Gourlay - has come to Loch Dubh with his companion and immediately sets about worming his way into the community. Hamish is suspicious of him as soon as he sees him, but Sean has a lot of supporters amongst the villagers. A number of the villagers soon begin behaving strangely and Hamish is sure it is Sean's fault, but Hamish at first cannot find any proof of Sean's criminality. And Hamish's new assistant, Willie, who is kind of a Scottish Felix Unger with all of his constant cleaning and organizing, is driving Hamish bats. Needless to say Sean is eventually murdered and Hamish solves the case.

Still liking this series. Giving this one 3.75 stars

The cover gets a 6.5 out of 10 from me. It is very pleasing to me, but there is just too much print on the cover.

I've got 2 more books to post and am almost done with two others, but it's time to start being useful before going to work where I will likely be profoundly bored for most of my four hour sentence there.

Charlotte, it's good to see you posting again!

The City & The City is a Kindle cheapie here at the moment, so I snapped it up yesterday. Possibly in the middle of the night (bad Kindle habits).

>109 Fourpawz2: Oh good, I'm glad that you gave Gracefully Grayson a try, Charlotte. I can understand your comments about how an older protagonist might thicken up the book. As you've probably been reading, in RL there are a lot of kids (and parents) dealing with transgender issues at the younger age. I was struck by Grayson's bravery under the difficult circumstances.

Sorry the cover wasn't more of a hit with you. I love it. The simplicity appeals to me. At the author's appearance here, there was a cake with that as the frosting picture on top, and it was a big hit.

I'm glad to hear The City & the City is a Kindle cheapie in >111 susanj67:. Such a cool book, and it deserves a wider audience.

Hi Charlotte, not much to say for myself this time, but I'm glad you enjoyed The City & The City as much as you did. I loved it too. It was my first Mieville, and I tried reading another last month, but he was just too disturbing for me.

I think we'll be experiencing the same non-spring thing as you over here too, more or less.

>111 susanj67: - Nice! I hope to find a copy at some book sale or other soon.

>112 jnwelch: - I thought it was good as far as it went, Joe. I just had to be honest about the way that I felt about it. It was a simple cover, but like the story a little too simple for me. Still - am not sorry that I read it.

>113 Smiler69: - I was kind of surprised, Ilana, that I liked it so much. My only other Mieville was King Rat which was definitely majorly weird.

We had a taste of spring over the weekend - 60 degrees for parts of both days. I think I see buds starting at the very tops of trees now, but that could just be wishful gazing.

Went to the Mattapoisett Library Book Sale on Saturday. I think that in the future I will try to limit myself to every other month. It's not a money thing (not particularly, that is), but more of a selection thing. Or maybe it is a summer people thing - when they come down to occupy their houses perhaps they will weed out the books they want to get rid of.

Oh - almost forgot - I heard a woman telling one of the ladies who runs the sale, as she was putting all of her selections on the table in order to pay for them, that a friend of hers gave her a fabulous idea for decorating - buying books to fill up the built-ins in her new house and she'd been running around like a crazy person buying books of certain colors in order to complete the project. I know this is not a new thing, but I've never actually seen one of these creatures before - buying books as if she were buying pillows or picking up seashells or something in order to decorate her house. Am also coming to the conclusion that when a person calls a book shelf a built-in, he/she probably does not read much of anything.



Book Number 19 - The Lost Dog by Michelle de Kretser - read for the ANZAC challenge.

This was one of the back & forth kinds of stories that is woven around the the incident of Tom's (the main character)
dog, who is lost (or dead), his aging mother, and his friend Nelly, an artist, who is suspected of having killed her missing husband. And always in the background is the story of Tom's childhood in India and his emigration to Australia.

It took a while for this one to get off the ground for me. probably a hundred pages or so. Most of this, I am pretty sure, was because of the story of his mother who has many problems now that she is older. Tom does not deal well with the reality of caring for someone who has just begun to have a lot of incontinence issues. Tom does not do much of his mother's caregiving, leaving most of it to the aunt in whose house his mother lives, but it has an impact on him. Can't say that I blame him as I had to deal with those issues myself with my parents, but I guess I really did not like reading about the subject all over again. And then there was the mystery of Nelly and whether she did or did not kill her husband. Tom is very taken with Nelly and does not want to believe that the eccentric artist could have killed the missing man.

Tom is obsessed with the missing dog. I think a little of that obsession was a way of avoiding buckling down to the problem of his mother and the whole Nelly situation. But, to his credit, I think Tom was sincere in his guilt and worry about the dog.

In the end I was glad that I stuck with this one although it is not a book that I would buy. It was good, but not good enough to add to the library.

Giving it 3 stars

The cover gets a 6.5 of 10 rating from me. I really liked the nice orange color, the print of the dog at the bottom of it and especially the way the dog is over in one corner - as if he is going away. No doubt that I would have pulled this one off a shelf if I'd seen it in a store.

Book Number 20 - Divergent by Veronica Roth - This YA dystopian story was not, I thought, as good as The Hunger Games. It was a little thin. Am getting a little tired of amazing young women and their nobility and mad physical skills.

For the most part YA books seem so unrealistic to me in one huge area. Am not talking about the dystopian part, but instead it occurs to me that in a YA book, actual sex is forbidden and this makes it impossible for these books to seem very real, as the age group that is being written about, generally, has been sexually active for a generation or so. All those overheated kissing sessions and the moony gazing at the adored object leading to - nothing much. Not that I think these books should be full of all kinds of carrying on, but they just don't seem real in that respect and I wonder how young readers put up with the lack of realism. Am guessing that the kids who are actually reading these books are younger still.

Gave this one 3 stars. 3 very thin stars.

The cover gets a 5.5 of 10 from me. Eye-catching.

Borrowed it from the library so am thankful that I did not spend actual money on it. Just time.

>115 Fourpawz2: buying books as if she were buying pillows or picking up seashells or something in order to decorate her house. Wow. Why not just buy some book wallpaper and skip the real thing altogether?!

Hi Charlotte! I always get excited when I meet another one of our ilk. You are only number 4 in my whole entire life. It's been a little weird seeing your posts on Susan's thread and knowing that I wasn't the Charlotte she was addressing. We are rare, we Charlottes. Only 1 of us is allowed per every 5 square miles (or so I tell people).

I agree about the wallpaper. Can't help thinking that it is a cruel, cruel thing to buy those books strictly for their covers and then never read them. How neglected they must feel! (Yup - it's official - attributing feelings to books makes me one of the decidedly weird people in the world.)

>108 Fourpawz2: 'Makes one wonder what, exactly, it was that set the two societies against each other.'

Yes, it does. I think when reading it I didn't question that because it felt like it was set somewhere in the Baltic states in Europe and it feels like there are always (and always have been) tensions there.

>115 Fourpawz2: 'buying books to fill up the built-ins in her new house and she'd been running around like a crazy person buying books of certain colors in order to complete the project.'

Just aaargh.

>117 charl08: I wish someone would police the rule re the Charlottes where I am! We seem to have had a glut of them round here lately, and I can't walk through the local park without wondering why some woman is shouting at me to get off the swing... (I'm not on the swing! oh, I see...) I was a 'Charl' for a while, hence the screenname (my school had an unwritten rule about names with more than one syllable) but this seems to confuse people! Beyond Charlotte's web, not many in lit though? Or have I missed them?

>119 souloftherose: - I still wish I knew what it was, Heather. I am thinking Mieville had to have had something in mind. If I ever find myself alone in an elevator with him, I think I will just have to ask him what caused the rift. As for the woman filling up her shelves - I am just glad that I wasn't one of the ladies sitting at the little table collecting the money and having to listen to such flap-doodle. Yes, I would know that I ought to make some agreeable sounds and look pleasant upon hearing such foolishness, but a part of me would really want to say something awful.

>120 charl08: - I've heard, Charlotte, that our name is becoming popular these days - for literally the first time in about 200 years - but am not sure how I feel about that. On the one hand there is the hope that with the increasing popularity it might just turn out that people will finally learn how to spell it and high time (I am so freaking tired of having the dolts of my part of the world spell it "Charolette"), but on the other hand I kind of like having it being a nice name that is rather uncommon. My cousins call me "Char" which I don't like and have never thought of as being my name and I was called Charlie for two weeks at summer camp when I was 10 because there was another Charlotte there - a huge violation of the 5 sq. mile rule. I think Charlotte's Web is about it. I was so disappointed when I found out that Charlotte was a spider. For some reason I'd been hoping that she was the pig.

Oops! I appear to have overlooked my umpteenth Thingaversary back on April 8th. Guess I am counting the following books that I bought last Saturday at the book sale toward that:-
Kiss Me Again, Stranger by Daphne du Maurier
Bum Steer by Nancy Pickard
The Lively Lady and Captain Caution by Kenneth Roberts - in one volume
Rituals of the Season by Margaret Maron and
Deadly Pleasures by P.D. James

Still need four more books in order to commemorate the occasion properly....



Book Number 21 - The Scottish Prisoner by Diana Gabaldon - a book I have had ever since it was published in 2011. It wasn't that I did not want to read it; it's just that I have this tendency to not read books that I am really looking forward to for a ridiculously long time. I'm not really sure if this one really qualifies as one of the Lord John Grey books. It doesn't seem to have a real mystery in it and Jamie Fraser figures in it as prominently as John Grey does, which makes it, as far as I can tell, kind of a bridge between the Outlander books and the Lord John Grey books. I liked it a lot, but then I like almost all of the books from both series. Gave it 3.5 stars.

Liked the cover, too and I am giving it a 6 out of 10 rating. I'm not quite sure what the cover is supposed to be referring to as I don't recall any keys specifically and no snow, either. I guess maybe the keys refer to the fact that Jamie s still Lord John's prisoner in this book, but the snow....beats me. It isn't exactly misleading, but I can't quite figure it out.

Have another book to post, but Jane is circling around and looking as if she is going to take a flying leap at the keyboard, so that other book will have to wait for tomorrow or the weekend. Her latest 'toy' is a big ol' snarly tangle of plastic string. I was figuring on throwing it away when I hauled it out of the cellar, but it is too popular with her, right now, to chuck it. Maybe it will fall out of favor soon...

Book No. 22 - Well-Schooled in Murder by Elizabeth George - the third book in the Inspector Lynley series. This one, like A Great Deliverance is another journey into sicko-land. It was a bit of a slow mover, but does get where it's going - eventually. This one has a public school setting and there is a lot of disturbing stuff going on there. Lynley and Havers are called in to get to the bottom of things which they eventually do, but not without a good deal of running into dead ends, which seems to be a thing with this series? I still don't care for Lynley very much, but I was glad to see that Havers has settled down a bit and doesn't froth at the mouth constantly over the differences between the two of them - status-wise. I pretty much read these books for Havers, alone. And also because somehow or other I seem to have acquired quite a number of Inspector Lynley books at various sales. Am totally not interested in Lady Helen and I could live without Deborah and her husband, Simon, as well. Still, I am giving this one 3.5 stars as I liked it better than the last book, Payment in Blood which, I can see now, I should have given a lower rating.

COVER ART - 2 out of 10 rating. I never would have pulled this one off of the shelf based on this cover alone. It's all title and author. There is a cover somewhere that features a much bigger version of the fence and padlocked gates, which probably would have attracted me, but on this MMPB, the fence and gates have been reduced to practically nothing.

Book No. 23 -Mr. Wakefield's Crusade by Bernice Rubens - one of my BAC books for April. Borrowed this one from the library. A small book (190 pages), but very entertaining. Kept me guessing until the end. In it a 38-year-old Londoner, Luke Wakefield, wealthy and extremely isolated in his penthouse apartment, steals an un-mailed letter from the person in front of him in line at the post office when the man literally drops dead. Luke reads the letter in which the dead man confesses to having killed his wife - a woman named Marion. Luke resolves to expose the murder and bring closure to the Marion's family.

There follows all of Luke's rather convoluted method of achieving justice for Marion and to say any more of the things he does or his thinking process would ruin the story. I really liked it a lot. Giving it 4 stars. Definitely recommended.

COVER ART - The cover of my copy of this book is not available on LT. Believe me, it's nothing to look at. Just the title and the author's name in white letters on a red-merging-into-orange background. A cover like this one gets an automatic zero from me.

>118 Fourpawz2: All Charlottes are welcome on my thread :-)

I think I might have The Scottish Prisoner somewhere - or maybe I meant to. I've seen it in a couple of libraries, anyway. I'm saving all my Diana Gabaldons for a great big read when she finishes Jamie and Claire, but every year that seems to get further away :-)

I hope Jane's still enchanted with her ball of string.

(And, until relatively recently, I thought Charlotte in the book was the pig too, even though pigs don't have webs :-) )

>125 susanj67: - The series does seem to have grown quite large. And when you add the Lord John series and the several novella-type offerings to those, I think you may find yourself with a lot of Gabaldon reading to do.

Jane still loves her string. She has taken to dragging it into the Amazon box that her cat food came in and playing with it from there.

It never occurred to me to wonder about the web. Maybe I was thinking 'web of lies' in the back of my mind?

Book Number 24 - The Woman Who Murdered Black Satin by Albert Borowitz - is the story of "The Bermondsey Horror", i.e. the murder in 1849 of a slightly unsavory character - Patrick O'Connor - by his mistress, Maria Manning and her husband, Fred Manning. It was, in its day, quite infamous. Supposedly Maria and Fred killed O'Connor in their back kitchen (Apparently there were two kitchens in the house. Don't know if this was common in houses of this time period.), dug up part of the flagstone floor there and tipped the body into the hole they dug and carefully covered it with lime. Directly after the murder Maria hustled over to O'Connor's home (there is a problem with the timeline concerning this) and helped herself to a number of securities. A few days after the murder Maria traveled to Edinburgh where she set about trying to unload said securities. Meanwhile Fred went to Jersey with the money he got for selling their household goods. O'Connor was reported missing and the police had no trouble locating his body underneath the flagstones. The Mannings were the prime suspects and there was no trouble in rounding them up.

The bulk of this book concerns itself with the proceedings after the Mannings are captured - the inquest, Police Court and the trial - and winds up with the execution.

The book begins in mid-search for O'Connor, when Borowitz chooses to begin his story with the second visit to the Mannings' home in Bermondsey and their efforts at finding the body by digging up the garden and then the back kitchen floor. I felt he had tossed me into the story precipitately and I was a little confused.

As for the trial itself, I thought it was a bit dry, focusing on Fred throwing his wife under the bus - which did him no good - and the legal issue of Maria, as a foreign-born woman, being entitled to a jury made up of 50% foreigners, an issue which was tossed out by virtue of her having lost this right when she married Fred. There is no doubt it was a sensation in this era of public hangings. Both Thackeray and Charles Dickens attended the trial. Dickens is supposed to have based the character of Hortense in Bleak House on Maria. Still - for me - a bit blah.

The reference, in the title, to the murder of Black Satin was not to a person called by that name, but rather to the contention that as Maria wore black satin at her trial and to her execution, she virtually destroyed the market for this fabric. Borowitz, in a chapter at the end of the book, proves this to be untrue.

Giving this one a bare 3 stars. I've read better books of this type.

COVER ART - The cover art (not available on LT - not surprising as there is only one other person who owns this book) is dreadful - a blurry black and white cartoon of the crowd at the double-execution of Fred and Maria. 2 of 10 for it.

Grey and cloudy this afternoon in New England and a little cool. Par for the course. The leaves on the trees have made a lot of progress in the last few days. I think that by this time next week, the trees will be pretty much fully leafed out.



Book Number 25 - Knit One, Kill Two by Maggie Sefton - your quintessential cozy mystery. This one has a yarn shop at its center where the knitting ladies of the community congregate. The heroine, Kelly Flynn, has returned to the town in order to bury her beloved aunt who was murdered by a vagrant and robbed of the $20,000.00, cash, which she inexplicably was keeping in her house. Kelly, who is a big-deal accountant in Washington D.D., smells a rat and vows to get to the bottom of things. In the course of things, she becomes friends with the girls at the yarn shop, begins to learn to knit herself, and meets, Steve, a single guy who is obviously interested in her (but she is not interested in him - he looks way too much like a hated boyfriend from her past).

I did not have too much trouble figuring out who the bad guy was - it was kind of obvious to me. Over all, it was a pleasant story. Had a little trouble keeping the ladies straight - their names - Jennifer, Megan, Lisa, etc. - were just so ordinary that I had trouble remembering who was who. Slightly more unusual names, I think, make it a little easier on the reader in this respect. Borrowed this one from the library as I was not sure that I really wanted to own it. I'll probably borrow the next one too. I don't knit - can't - but Sefton made me want to. I wonder if I could learn to knit by watching YouTube...
Giving it 3.25 stars.

COVER ART - gets a 7 of 10 from me. The cover art, when I saw it on Amber's thread, was the primary reason I was interested in reading it. Super-cozy looking and the kind of place I would like for myself. Except, of course, for the dead body on the floor.

Belated happy thingaversary Charlotte!

>124 Fourpawz2: Mr Wakefield's Crusade sounds good. I've read a few novels by Bernice Rubens after seeing them recommended by another 75er and I think her books really deserve to be more well known

Thank you, Heather!

Yes, MWC was very clever and well done. I hope to find some more books by her.

>127 Fourpawz2: I agree - a nice cozy read, but not high literature. Fun, though, and I'm going to keep going with the series, both because I love that yarn shop and because my mom and I are reading them sort of together.

>124 Fourpawz2: Nice to see Bernice Rubens hitting the spot, Charlotte. I must find time for her this year too.
I must find more time for LT too after a pretty dismal month by my own standards.

>121 Fourpawz2: Charlotte, the whole world will now know how to spell your name :-)

Just popping in on the day Charlotte becomes global news...

Hi Charlotte, as energy allows, I'm slowly visiting threads I've neglected. Happy Day to you!

I liked The Lost Dog also - maybe slightly more than you. Love your comments on covers, as always.

Everyone names their dog or cat Lucy - and, as well, Lucy has become a more popular name for girls of late. There were never any at all, pets or people, when I was young. So I know the feeling! For awhile it was Emma, but that seems to have died down.

>130 scaifea: I am in complete agreement, Amber. I have ordered Knitting for Dummies (on your recommendation), so maybe I will catch the knitting bug! And be halfway decent at it. We shall see...
>131 PaulCranswick: - Hi Paul! I have been much worse than you - would bet a bunch of money on that (if I had it to wager).
>132 susanj67: - I hope so, Susan. Of course now, in my typically contrary way, I am hoping that there are not going to be too many Charlottes out there. Its nice to be more popular, but don't want the name to become too popular.
>133 charl08: - It was kind of neat, wasn't it Charlotte. I kind of had a feeling about the name choice. Thought it might be beat out by Elizabeth (my mother's name and the name that I almost got for my middle one). Never thought Diana stood a chance, but am not surprised that it was chosen for one of her other names.
>134 Whisper1: So nice to see you Linda! Hope you are feeling better these days.
>135 sibylline: - I've always liked the name Lucy. It's somewhat more common than the norm down here in southeastern MA because of all of the girls named Lucia and Luciana and almost always called Lucy. Girls named Lucy must hate that their name causes people to whip out their best Desi Arnaz imitation and demand an explanation. It used to happen all the time at work. It was too bad when we ran out of Lucys and couldn't do that anymore.

Ack! I picked up Jane wrong and her anal gland (glands?) let loose on my hand, my book journal, the envelope my pay check is in and the copy of The Daughters of Mars that I received yesterday. Is there any worse smell in the world???? Am happy that my check was in the envelope and that I won't have to hand it over to the teller that way. Talk about filthy (smelling) lucre!

Book Number 26 - The Undertaking by Audrey Magee - An impulse choice from the library. This was a fairly short novel about Peter, a German soldier during WW2 and Katharina, a bank clerk in Berlin. The two of them get married to one another - he is on the Russian front and she is in Berlin - at the same moment. This is some kind of Nazi Germany, WW2 thing, comparable, I guess, to the proxy marriage of an earlier era. By entering into this kind of marriage the solider is entitled to a furlough for his honeymoon and the woman will get widow's benefits if and when her husband dies. Peter travels back to Berlin, meets his wife and takes up life in Berlin for a while. Unexpectedly, he falls in love with his wife and she with him, despite an awkward beginning and the necessity of living with her parents for the duration of the furlough and Peter being roped into doing her father's bidding while he is there in Berlin.

With the young couple being in love I did expect this book to go firmly in that direction and it did - for a long while. But the war intervenes - the horrors of the Russian front, the bombarding of Berlin, Katharina's awful toady of a father, the tragedy of her soldier brother who is broken by the war, the awful people of the upper-echelons of Nazi society who Katharina comes to associate with - and things do not work out exactly as I expected them to.

Really liked this book and will buy it if I see it somewhere for a decent price. Very glad I read it. Giving it 4 stars

The cover art gets a 5 of 10 rating from me. Was attracted to this book by the envelope.

>137 Fourpawz2: Yikes! I've never smelled that smell, but it sounds terrible. I hope you can wash it off and it doesn't last ages. It's nice to see you again, Charlotte!

Book No. 27 - The May Bride by Suzannah Dunn - which was the other book I almost took out of the library at the time I took out out Book Number 25. When I took that book back the next day TMB was still there, so I grabbed it.

This was the story of Jane Seymour (Henry VIII's 3rd bride and the mother of Edward VI) as a girl. In this book Jane is a country girl in a large family whose days are spent working at a variety of household and farm tasks. Really, the only thing that distinguishes her from the family servants is her bloodline and the family's ownership of Wolf Hall. As the book begins, Jane's oldest brother, Edward, brings home his bride, Katherine Filliol, to live at the Hall with his family. Katherine Filliol is almost lost to history, but Dunn weaves her whole story around a single historical quote (that I will not say anything about it here lest I ruin the story for someone) and then tries to balance much of what happens upon that one sentence.

Jane and Katherine seem to become good friends for a summer. Why this was I don't know, for Dunn did not convince me of any great friendship between the two of them. She says that they are friends and that is supposed to take care of it, I guess. This was definitely a slow-moving book and I was about 2/3 of the way through it before anything even vaguely interesting happened. I think a reader would have to be a hard-core Tudor fan in order to like this one much and I am most definitely not that person.

None of the Tudors makes an appearance until quite late in the book - Henry and Anne Boleyn hardly show up at all and Catherine of Aragon, appears only a little more than they do. I was particularly be-foozled by this quote on the cover - "MARRYING the KING was JANE SEYMOUR'S DESTINY. And her REVENGE..." I did not see any revenge happening. At all. Maybe it was there, but it escaped me. I give this one 3 stars - it was readable, but just not interesting to me.

COVER ART - Gets a 5 of 10. It's very red (eye-catching!), but is one of thousands of books with the 3/4 face thingy going on. This is getting very old and is nowhere near as intriguing as it once was.

Have one more book to post, but it is 9 o'clock now and I need to do something useful.

>139 susanj67: - Oh, it is foul, Susan! Can't really describe it. Just really, really nasty. Of course now she is totally intrigued by the traces of smell that she is picking up on the paper towel soaked with Mrs. Meyer's Basil scent cleaner that I used to clean with. I expect her to point her paw at me in an accusatory way - the nerve!

It's nice to be back. I'm doing LT in fits and starts this year - RL keeps getting in the way and making it hard for me to be as good as I want to be. Will try to do better. And visit threads! Am way, way behind on them. Bad Charlotte!

Oh, pee-yew! I'm sorry for the stink! (But I did giggle out loud at your filthy (stinking) lucre comment!)

Stop me if I've mentioned this before, but there is a Charlotte in Charlie's school, who is a twin (her sister is a Shelby) and she's the feistiest, most adorable little thing. Love her. Or her sister. (It's difficult to tell them apart, honestly.)

>142 scaifea: Hey Amber! Yeah - I kind of liked the filthy (smelling) lucre thing, too. Hats off to Jane for providing me with the opportunity to use it! She was pretty obsessed with the things she defiled for quite a while yesterday. She even spent some time - turn away and read no further if you have a weak stomach when it comes to nasty things - licking the book, the envelope and the journal. Gak!!

I was a little bit feisty when I was a little kid. I once got into a furious debate with the little boy next door over the issue of the color of angels' wings (he insisted upon gold and I upon white) and then denounced him for thinking he was so smart because he had "God beads!". I had recently found out that David had rosary beads and I was desperately jealous of them. Oh, how I wanted a set for myself. Wonder what my Quaker grandfather (who was hideously bigoted) would have thought if I'd turned up with a set.

>143 Fourpawz2: I love the "God beads" story! I would have been taken to an orphanage in the middle of the night and left there. My mother grew up in a town (in NZ) that sounded a bit like Northern Ireland in microcosm. You had your side and you stuck to it, and the other side was the devil. People who dared to go over to the other side (like one of my aunts) were cut off and never referred to again. I always wondered why her family was so vehement, as my father (pretty much the same age) had experienced nothing like it during his childhood, so it wasn't a nation-wide thing.

Book Number 28 - Acqua Alta by Donna Leon - which I read by mistake. I seem to have jumped over the previous book in the series, which was the one that I should have been reading. It did not seem to matter, however and I will be buying the previous book to read next. In this one Commissario Brunetti is investigating (at the beginning), not a murder, but a terrible beating and a possible case of the forgery and theft of some of the famous Chinese terra cotta soldiers. Before long he does have a dead body (connected to the forgery and theft case) to work on as well, while all of Venice deals with the annual problem of flooding and winter rains. I really love Brunetti. And I especially love the way Leon writes about his family, incorporating them perfectly into the stories. I've never been to Venice and likely never will go, but it reading these books, I feel as if I know what it would be like there. Can't imagine ever growing tired of this series.

Giving this one 3.75 stars

COVER ART - Like this one better than the cover of the last book in the series that I read. I liked the blue background and the obvious fog. For me it perfectly captured the chilly, wet, winter in a seaside location. But - it still has too much printing on the cover and I can't say that I would have pulled it off of the shelf based upon the cover, alone. It gets a 6 out of 10 for its very evocative background alone.

>144 susanj67: - I would have been taken to an orphanage in the middle of the night and left there. I love it, Susan!

My granny (wife of the Quaker grandfather) had a fit when my aunt was dating a boy in high school because he was a Catholic. Made her break up with him. I think my aunt would have married him otherwise. Some of the time parents are right about things, but some of the time they need to know what is really important and then just stay out of the not-really-important stuff. Wonder what my aunt's life would have been like if she'd married Eddie...

God beads - *SNORK!* Love it.

Went out to the Mall and its environs and did some errands this AM - buying this and that needed item, but most especially some yarn and some knitting needles as I am trying to teach myself to knit from Knitting for Dummies, which Amber swears can be done. Am very proud of self for have just successfully cast on the necessary stitches, per the book's instructions. However, for some reason I kind of forgot about Jane who is mightily interested in both the needles and the yarn, trying to claw at the yarn and chew on the needles after stealing them from me. Think that the first thing I must learn to craft is a straight-jacket for sweet little kittie-kins to wear whenever I am practicing my new craft!

Oh, congrats on successfully casting on! And good luck with Jane - I always had trouble with Susie batting at my yarn, too.

>149 scaifea: - Thanks, Amber. I'm really enjoying it, although I have had to start over due to unexpected glitches. Hey - I'm new at this! Fortunately Jane has plenty of things to occupy her, so she is not relentlessly playing with the yarn and the needles.

So - on a nice warm (but not too warm) day last Saturday, while I was settling down to some nice relaxing knitting for the first time, there came this horrendous noise outside - like nothing I've ever heard before and I was forced to put down the knitting to take a gander outside. I knew it wasn't a car crash as there have been many over the years here and I know very well what those sound like. (The street on one side of my house is a main street in this small city and most people treat it like a bloody highway! And the exhaust fumes in the summer when there is a low ceiling - I compare it to the pits at Indy.) I was sort of right. There had not beenthe usual kind of car crash - the kind that I am used to. Someone had driven off the road, through two fences, a big deck and into the house across the street. The vehicle - an SUV - was in the living room of the house! The guy who lives there - one of the Pauls who helps dig me out upon occasion in the winter - was actually in the living room of his little house and was tossed across the room by the impact. Not really hurt - somehow - but really freaked out. To my surprise, he is still in residence even though the house is nearly wrecked. Guess it is still habitable - most of it. Luckily he does not own the house, but only rents it. I expect that the owner is getting a little tired of re-building this house - it is the same one that had the electrical fire back during the big blizzard in February of 2013. Poor Paul only got back into it last July.

Book No. 29 - The Millstone by Margaret Drabble - Read this one for the BAC.

A very well-written story, from 1965, concerning a young woman - Rosamund - who lives in her parents London flat (while they are away for an extended period in Africa) and is working upon her doctorate. Rosamund, as she tells the reader at the beginning, is a virgin, but by dating two men simultaneously, has found away of giving the impression to the rest of the world that she is quite the swinger. Eventually she does dispose of her hated virginity with a third man and is one of those girls who gets pregnant right out of the box. The rest of the book is concerned with how she deals with her condition, revealing (or not) her circumstances to her parents, friends and family and the outcome of the pregnancy and her new life. This is a very low-key and very genuine sounding story and although it doesn't sound like very much, I really liked it. This is definitely one for the re-read collection. Drabble is certainly a writer of quality.

Giving this one 4 stars. Recommended.

COVER ART - Although the cover does not have anything to do with this story - Rosamund does not spend her time staring out of windows in a moon-y fashion - I still liked it - once I really looked at it. It was quiet, much like the story. Giving it a 6 of 10 rating.

I decided yesterday to banish the word Monday from my vocabulary. I'm calling it the day before Tuesday from now on. The people in the insurance office next to my office and my friend all thought it was a good idea.

>150 Fourpawz2: Thank goodness your neighbour wasn't hurt! And how frustrating for him and the owner to have to rebuild the house again.

>151 Fourpawz2: Oh I'm glad you enjoyed that one - someone else gave it a good review earlier this month and I borrowed it from the libary.

>151 Fourpawz2: Sign me up for the anti-M-day initiative. Bank holiday next week thank goodness! Did you see the article in the Guardian about the book? Spoiler-tastic though, for those considering reading (me!)

>150 Fourpawz2: Yikes about the crash, Charlotte! How lucky Paul was not to be hurt badly. I bet he's shaken up, though. I also liked The Millstone when I read it years ago. I was quite a Margaret Drabble fan.

Holy Moly! How scary must that have been for your neighbor?! I'm glad to hear that he's okay, and hopefully the damage will be easily and quickly repaired.

Also, on the knitting issue: You'll likely have to redo and start over a few times because of mistakes at the beginning, unless your a Super Knitter, so don't sweat it too much. Oh, and you should start reading Maggie Sefton's cozy mystery series - her main character is a gal who is just learning to knit...

>152 souloftherose: - I think you'll like the Drabble book, Heather.

>153 charl08: - No, I hadn't but hurried right over and read it. Have since added the Guardian app to my phone and - shameful me - I have been happily enjoying it in fits and starts at work, almost every day this past week. Love The Guardian book section. Hope I don't get caught! But, with so much time spent staring into space at work because of lack of anything to do, I can't help myself.

>154 susanj67: - I know. It's still a dreadful mess over there and people are still pulling over to stare at the carnage.
I'm thinking of hunting down Drabble's The Red Queen and taking a crack at that.

>155 scaifea: - Yup, I've had to pull my stuff apart twice already - once for an unexplained hole and another time on account of acquiring an extra stitch which caused another hole. As I spent what seemed like quite a bit for the yarn, I am now going to unravel again and move on to learning to purl this weekend. I cannot bear the idea of just cutting the yarn where I am and then starting another piece with the new stitch.

>155 scaifea: Hang in there! Those extra stitches happen much more frequently at the beginning, and the more you practice the less they'll occur. Unraveling instead of cutting is a great idea - I'm the same as you and can't stand to waste the yarn! I can't wait to see photos of your first finished project!!

>156 Fourpawz2: Did make me think I must get to Drabble's book. I was so sure that I'd read something by her, but when I went to look at my library, apparently not. Odd.

>156 Fourpawz2: I read the Drabble book over the weekend and liked it a lot. Thanks for the extra encouragement to pick that one up.