Great thread, CJ. Your collection has me drooling. My list: Allikas, Nash- Orchids Allikas, Nash- World's Most Beautiful Orchids Black, Peter McKenzie- Orchid Growing Grove, David L.- Vandas & Ascocendas Kramer, Jack- 100 Orchids For Florida Kramer, Jack- Orchids For The South La Croix, Isobyl- Orchid Basics Light Marilyn- Growing Orchids in the Caribbean McDonald, Elvin- 100 Orchids For The American Gardener Mee, Margaret- In Search of Flowers of the Amazon Forests Motes, Martin- Vandas, Their Botany, History & Culture Noble, Mary- You Can Grow Cattleyas Noble, Mary- You Can Grow Orchids Noble, Mary- You Can Grow Phalaenopsis, Revised Edition Northen, Rebecca Tyson- Home Orchid Growing, 4th Edition Northen, Rebecca Tyson- Miniature Orchids and How To Grow Them Northen, Rebecca Tyson - Orchids as House Plants Orchid Society Of South East Asia- Orchid Growing In The Tropics Pridgeon, Alec- Illustrated Encyclopedia of Orchids Rittershausen, Wilma- Orchids Rittershausen, Wilma- Success With Orchids Schoser, Gustavo- Orchid Growing Basics Sheehan, Thomas- Ultimate Orchid Soon, Teoh Eng- Orchids of Asia South Florida Orchid Society Presents- An Introduction To Orchids: A Guide to the Growing & Breeding of Orchids South Florida Orchid Society Presents- A"Guide To Growing In The Subtropics, 3rd Edition Starosta & Paul- Orchids White, Judy- Taylor's Guide To Orchids Withner, Carl L -Cattleyas And Their Relatives Vol 1 Plus Ortho, Sunset, a sagging shelf containing back years of AOS bulletins (even after donating many to our OS) and a treasured Jones & Scully catalog. :>) I hope to add the remainder of Wither's Cattleya volumns to my shelf soon. And Oh! to have the Fowlie's. Sigh. Marci

Well, sigh! I'm chickening out for a day or so until I have a chance to get down the mountain and to the store. I hadn't realized Lucy's sticky wrapping post was about torrone!!! I have had a chance to go over that post and the tips here and I think I need to make sure I know what I'm doing first. And, it turns out my friend's thermometer is a meat thermometer, too, so there is no candy thermometer for me :( Plan: Get into town and pick up a candy thermometer, no-stick foil, and see if I can locate wafer paper or rice paper. Then, I'm going to brave this new challenge and make yummy candy!! And, Lucy, I Should be asking you how you made yours!! If there is anything else you can think of for someone who hasn't made candy yet, I'd love to know...I'm really guessing here. I did find what looked like an easier recipe at Martha Stewart's site, so I might try that first, seeing as how it has less steps and gives an actual temperature. I'm posting the link to that in case others want to give it a try, too. Thanks, Carol, for the tip on the topping sugar! I'm actually not sure if it would be good or not for this project, I'm just to much a novice. But after I do make this torrone, I think I'll know... wheeeee Here is a link that might be useful: Martha's torrone

Finished Steve Jobs, and I highly recommend it. It was one of the best liked books my book club has read, right up there with Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand. Now that may be in part because everything in the book is so familiar to residents of Steve Jobs's home turf. One member even remembers him from high school! We found ourselves wondering if people from other parts of the country would find it as fascinating as we did. Fascinating or not, I'm confident that any reader would find it to be well written. Now I have moved on to American Eden by Wade Graham. I like this too but suspect you would have to have some interest in gardening or landscaping to want to read it. Perhaps not; an interest in cultural history might be enough. The author examines how trends in what people do with their gardens reflects what they think about themselves and the society they live in. Again, it is well written. It reminds me how much a clumsy style or dreary pedantry can throw a barrier between a reader and even a topic that intrigues him. Fortunately neither of these books has that problem. Finally, as a quick light read, I re-read Elisabeth Ogilvie's Dancer in Yellow. I like most of Ogilvie's books, though not so much the Bennet Island series. Perhaps that is because I could never keep the family relationships straight. This one I enjoyed. Rosefolly

Also, print size could be a factor, as should the average length of books being published. If the industry average is about 300 pages, then anything longer, for example, could be deemed a long book. And the amount of white space on the pages can be a factor. I just read The Sea, The Sea by Iris Murdoch and thought it was fantastic, but there wasn't much dialogue so the pages were margin to margin text which made that book, at about 550 pages, seem MUCH longer. Maybe we should define long books by their weight??? And as a mom, I agree with cece...kids definitely can make a big difference in how many pages get read in this house! And dogs... Then there are books that are too long and those that only seem like they are too long. That's one of the great things about reading! A book that takes me forever and a day to painfully slog through could seem like a fun skip in the park to others. It's a thoroughly subjective hobby. PAM