Book Love - Up at the Villa, Time and Chance

Finished Up at the Villa a couple of night ago.  I like Maugham and had not read this one.  I liked it very much.  Some people don't care for his writing style as it seems to sit back and watch the characters.  But I really enjoy him.  I'm about halfway through his biography, given to me at Christmas, by my sister.

I'm working my way through this one (500 pages), and I'm really enjoying it.  It is the second in a trilogy by Sharon Kay Penman about Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitane.  Lots of political plots and personal vendettas.  If it were only that, I shouldn't like it.  But she writes her characters so well and they do come to life for the reader.

On deck for reading in the near future:  The House Next Door by Anne River Siddons (an old one I've always wanted to read), and Sea Change by Karen White (new release).

I've had a very busy and noisy two weeks.  When I wanted silence, I retreated to my office and curled up with my book.  I don't know what I would do if I couldn't read. 

What are you reading?



Bobbins, Books, and Birthdays

Grammar Glamour (okay, so I must be stuck with alliteration in my brain-:)):  Do you prefer the serial comma or no?

From NewsHugs

I have been away from here for a bit.  Busy with work and it's been great fun even if I'm working a lot.  I really love working with my sister and The Prima.  But let's see.  What do I want to tell you?

I just had a birthday.  I turned 48, which is sort of uneventful.  But my sisters were wonderful; each giving me a present of a book. My TBR pile is growing but that makes me so happy!

And regarding bobbins, I've been tinkering with my sewing machine lately.  Nothing major but it is so fun to sew an apron out of my stash of fabrics.  You see, I go into fabric stores or thrift stores and pick up fabric and say to myself, "Oh I could make something out of this."  Because of course, I just have so much time and I'm an amazing seamstress - not.  I get the fabric-hoarding gene from my mother who never passed up a chance to buy some fabric if it was on sale.

Now I'm ready to go to work.  It is absolutely gorgeous here today and we're expecting a high in the sixties.  Woo hoo!

Roping Dummies and Kate Morton (or how I spent my 15th wedding anniversary)

The Chief Roping Dummy and I have been married 15 years today.  While we could have gone out to celebrate, we opted to stay in (it's a school night, ya know).

The RD and band members were at the house running through sets for their CD release party.  And here it is!

to listen go here.

Meanwhile, the CO Boy and I snuggled upstairs with the pups.  I was at the ever so critical part of a book - you know, when you've got, say, two chapters left. 

Man.  The ending was great.  Loved it.  While The Distant Hours, is probably still my favorite of Kate Morton's, The House at Riverton, was quite good.  Didn't see the conclusion coming until I was almost upon it!

Next up:

This is a children's mystery series I've thoroughly enjoyed.  Enola ("alone" spelled backwards) is a much younger sister of Sherlock and Mycroft Holmes.  Raised by their Suffragist mother she lives in London, always dodging the brothers who try to get her to attend a proper girls school.  Great fun.

Book Love

In the middle of, The House at Riverton.  I'm liking it very very much.  I love the way Kate Morton writes.  My favorite is still The Distant Hours, but this one is quite good as well.

Finished this one right before Christmas.  I have had it on my TBR list for a very long time and my sister took note and loaned me her copy.  Loved it.  Made me wish I could speak to my mother and tell her how sorry I was if I ever treated her as if she didn't know what she was doing when, in fact, she probably knew perfectly well what she was doing, only young people don't understand that.

Want to read this one.  Here's a blurb:

Writing under the pseudonym Barbara Vine, Ruth Rendell departs from her famous detective team of Wexford and Burden to tell a gripping tale of family madness. Vera Hillyard is a domineering and possessive woman who strives for obsessive control over a malicious older son, a youngest son who is--or isn't--illegitimate, and her younger sister, Eden, who secretly seeks to escape Vera's grasp and instead provokes a murder. This winner of the 1986 Edgar Award for best mystery novel belongs to the genre of old murders reconsidered and the question of who did what to whom and why is teasingly left unresolved.

And I have this one in my stack

Here's the blurb:

Spanning three generations and half the world, Wildflower Hill is a sweeping, romantic and compelling story of two women who share a legacy of secrets, heartbreak, courage and love.

Emma, a prima ballerina in London, is at a crossroads after an injured knee ruins her career. Forced to rest and take stock of her life, she finds that she’s mistaken fame and achievement for love and fulfillment. Returning home to Australia, she learns of her grandmother Beattie’s death and a strange inheritance: a sheep station in isolated rural Australia. Certain she has been saddled with an irritating burden, Emma prepares to leave for Wildflower Hill to sell the estate.

Beattie also found herself at a crossroads as a young woman, but she was pregnant and unwed. She eventually found success—but only after following an unconventional path that was often dangerous and heartbreaking. Beattie knew the lessons she learned in life would be important to Emma one day, and she wanted to make sure Emma’s heart remained open to love, no matter what life brought. She knew the magic of the Australian wilderness would show Emma the way.

Wildflower Hill is a compelling, atmospheric, and romantic novel about taking risks, starting again, and believing in yourself. It’s about finding out what you really want and discovering that the answer might be not at all what you’d expect.

However, before I can sink into another book, I have lots of other stuff waiting on me.  Perhaps if I print out the book covers and hang them on my wall, they'd give me the motivation to get through everything???



Library Love - The Little Stranger and Halcyon Crane

I've been listening to this audio book in the car.  It's one I've been meaning to read but decided to give it a go in the car so I could finally get to it.  I love it.  All the gothic ingredients that I love so much.  Dilapidated house, in thise case Hundreds Hall.  Family secrets, don't know what they are yet. 

Sarah Waters is a wonderful writer and her ability to describe makes the narration even better.  Simon Vance is the narrator.  I understand he is a popular narrator for books, but this being only my second audio book, I didn't know that when I began listening.  Here's the back cover blurb:

One postwar summer in his home of rural Warwickshire, Dr. Faraday, the son of a maid who has built a life of quiet respectability as a country physician, is called to a patient at lonely Hundreds Hall.  Home to the Ayres family for over two centuries, the Georgian house, once impressive and handsome, is now in decline, its masonry crumbling, its gardens choked with weeds, the clock in it stable yard permanently fixed at twenty to nine.  It's owners - mother, son, and daughter - are struggling to keep pace with a changing society, as well as with conflicts of their won.  But are the Ayreses haunted by something more sinister than a dying way of life?  Little does Dr. Faraday know how closely, and how terrifyingly, their story is about to become entwined with his.

I'm reading this one.  It's actually pretty good.  At times, I'm not in love with the writing the way I am with Sarah Waters, but the plot is very intriguing and keeps me going and she isn't a bad writer, just not as descriptive in the same way as Waters.  Here's the blurb:

When a mysterious letter lands in Hallie James’s mailbox, her life is upended. Hallie was raised by her loving father, having been told her mother died in a fire decades earlier. But it turns out that her mother, Madlyn, was alive until very recently. Why would Hallie’s father have taken her away from Madlyn? What really happened to her family thirty years ago?

In search of answers, Hallie travels to the place where her mother lived, a remote island in the middle of the Great Lakes. The stiff islanders fix her first with icy stares and then unabashed amazement as they recognize why she looks so familiar, and Hallie quickly realizes her family’s dark secrets are enmeshed in the history of this strange place. But not everyone greets her with such a chilly reception—a coffee-shop owner and the family’s lawyer both warm to Hallie, and the possibility of romance blooms. And then there’s the grand Victorian house bequeathed to her—maybe it’s the eerie atmosphere or maybe it’s the prim, elderly maid who used to work for her mother, but Hallie just can’t shake the feeling that strange things are starting to happen . . .

Work has been stinky as we have a big event coming up this weekend, so I've been dealing with that.  Additionally Cub Scouts is starting up and lots to do there.  So the reading/listening is a lovely escape at times.

 



Book Love - Wait for Me!

North American cover

I'm reading the memoirs of Deborah Mitford.  Actually I'm listening to them on CD.  I don't usually listen to books but my schedule has been challenging and I find I have little time to read.  So I decided to make use of my commute and listen to a book.

The Mitford sisters were so interesting.  I'm not really sure why.  Maybe because some of them were outrageous (one was a Fascist who married Sir Oswald Mosley, and another was a Communist, while still another shot herself in the head when she realized Great Britain declared war on Germany).  Deborah is probably the most conventional of all of the sisters and the youngest of them.  How funny that a Duchess would be considered, "conventional".  They had an interesting childhood and her writing is very "listenable".  It helps to have a good narrator in the way of Anne Flosnik.

Even though the girls didn't have a formal education (their mother was big on what we would be something akin to homeschool and she cared little for exams), they were so creative and witty.  All of them were voracious letter writers and their words have been preserved in various books written by them and about them. 

Most people know of Nancy Mitford, who wrote books about her family, thinly veiled as fiction.  You know my love of portraiture, be it human or dog or horse.  This is a portrait of Nancy Mitford I discovered and I love it.  She's a bit pointy looking in it, but I love it nonetheless.  I tried to find information on the artist but came up empty.

Nancy Mitford portrait by Mogens Tvede

The guys are off to Cub Scout Camp and I have three days to myself.  I'll be cleaning my filthy house, but also doing some stuff that will be more enjoyable.  Like staying up late and reading!

Book Love

I devoured this book.  I absolutely adored it. 

Gothic themes are probably my favorite themes in books.  When they are handled well, as in Kate Morton's book, it makes me ache to be a better writer. Family inheritances of secrets and how the past impacts the present.  Minds that crack under the weight of these secrets.  I love it!

I can't begin to summarize the book.  I tried to do so for the Roping Dummy (aka husband), but I couldn't communicate the language of the book and do it justice.  Although he seemed to get the idea as he went to bed last night and had dreams about his own current reading.

Note:  I posted photos of the North American cover and the UK cover.  Which do you like?  I think I like the UK cover best, especially after reading the book.

Library Love - The Dust Bowl in photographs and then some

Most everyone has seen this photo taken by Dorothea Lange in the thirties. 

For those of you who haven't heard me gush about our new library, well...it's just the best thing ever.  The selection is like a bookstore and I wander the shelves finding the most interesting things.

This past week, I checked out "The Dust Bowl through the lens: how photography revealed and helped remedy a national disaster," by Martin Sandler.  Lots of Dorothea Lange photographs are included as she was part of the WPA work at the time.  The book is a wonderful combination of visual history with a text that is just as interesting and readable.  Yes, I knew about the hard times.  Yes, I knew it had an incredible impact on those who survived.  But this book put such an amazing light on it and showed the power of the photo in terms of making others aware of the issues.  Issues from ploughing up all the grass, leaving nothing but dust, to families having to make the decision to pull out of their homesteads or try to stick it out when they'd just sold the tires off of their car for food.

I know things are tough right now for so many people and we are calling this The Great Recession.  But look at the photos in this book.  It will put it all in perspective, I think.

And for some lighter reading, I just turned the last page on Rhys Bowen's first book of "Her Royal Spyness" series.  What fun!  It's 1932 and Lady Georgiana is about 28th or so in line to inherit the thrown but also penniless.  She finds a dead body in her bathtub and sleuths to find the murderer before he murders her as well.  If you like historical cozy mysteries, you'll enjoy this one. 

Finally, I'm starting a Kate Morton book, "The Distant Hours".  Here's the blurb:

Edie Burchill and her mother have never been close, but when a long lost letter arrives one Sunday afternoonwith the return address of Milderhurst Castle, Kent, printed on its envelope, Edie begins to suspect that her mother’s emotional distance masks an old secret.  Evacuated from London as a thirteen year old girl, Edie’s mother is chosen by the mysterious Juniper Blythe, andtaken to live at Milderhurst Castle with the Blythe family: Juniper, her twin sisters and their father, Raymond,author of the 1918 children’s classic The True History of the Mud Man. 

It was a holiday weekend with MLK day yesterday, and the extra day was just enough for me to pore over my books.  But tomorrow it's back to work and just maybe I'll be able to steal a moment to read a chapter each night.  I'm not hopeful but we'll see!

If you're reading something wonderful that I need to know about, please chime in.  And if you're reading something dreadful and would like to warn me, by all means...chime in-:)