Speaking of bookshops, I've just started reading Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore, a first novel by Robin Sloan. The 24-hour bookstore is a used bookstore as well as a lending library for mysterious books that are borrowed by mysterious people, usually in the middle of the night. So far (21% read) it is very interesting and unusual.

Frances - funny that you mention that title, as I have just heard a book review of that on NPR the other day...Sounded good...

Finished up "Consuming Passions" by Judith Flanders (about the introduction of leisure time and how people used it during Victorian and earlier times)... Fascinating, but two things in particular thought you guys might like:

* One was that in 1867, when football (as in soccer) first started having specialised sports clothing for the games, Routlege's Handbook of Football described one uniform as including ...a coloured velvet cap with a tassell to be vital for good playing...

* And then this is for PAM: George Gissing was one of the earliest writers to include bicycles in the plot of one of his short stories, "A Daughter of the Lodge" in 1901...

Of course, tons of other details, but did not want to force you to read all that... I know that not everybody is *quite* as obsessed with this time period as I am so I will spare you. :-)

Liz, re velvet football caps. We still have the cap plus tassell worn by my late Grandfather (or at least presented to the team) when he played against the NZ All Blacks Rugby Union team in their 1905 tour of the UK.

Vee - how very cool that you all still have that... How did they stay on in windy conditions? Or was there loads of stopping to pick them up?...

After hearing many people talk about Cynthia Harrod-Eagles for years and years, I picked up one of her books off of the "New" shelf at the library. In a page and a half I was hooked. It's called Country Plot. So far I am amazed that she can draw a character so quickly and with no apparent effort as well as have me turning pages like a madwoman to find out what happens next. I hope it continues to be this good -

I haven't posted in a while although I have stopped by to see what's being posted. I've been reading two of the series by Kerry Greenwood recommended by Carolyn, I think. One is set in the 1920's in Australia and the other is modern day also set in Australia. I've been enjoying both but am ready for a break so am looking for something different to read for a change.

Rouan, you can get the "Miss Fisher Murder Mysteries" on DVDs if you wish. They are very well cast.

Just read Complete Surrender by Dave Sharp.
Sharp is the older brother of author Ian McEwan who had been 'given away' by his Mother at a month old, to total strangers. Neither boys knew this had taken place or that they each had a brother, until Dave finding he was 'informally' adopted began the search. Interestingly he had never heard of the author and when I McE introduced himself saying "You may have heard of me I am the writer Ian McEwan" Sharp relied "No, but you may have heard of me, the brick-layer Dave Sharp!"
It appears Sharp had a much happier young life in his poor but loving family than McEwan did living with his real parents and a strict NCO army Father moving between forces bases in Europe.

I've not had good luck lately with my reading choices: I could not finish Mantel's "Bring Up the Bodies", and I set aside "Evening" by Susan Minot because it jumps back and forth in a disjointed way between a dying woman's present, and her romantic past. Too many characters, too confusing.

Now, I am a bit more satisfied, reading "Istanbul" by Ohrman Pamuk, the author of "Snow." I am liking this memoir, and his style reminds me of W.G. Sebald's work, with b & w photography as a subtext.

Just starting "Death of a Neighborhood Witch" by Laura Levine. It is a Jaine Austen mystery, they always make me laugh.
I have to collect "Herring on the Nile" by L.C.Tyler from the library tomorrow. Another amusing author. I need something to cheer me up, the Spring weather has been terrible so far, windy, cold and raining.

Annpan,

Thanks for the recommendation, I have placed a hold on one of her books and found that my library does have some of the DVDs so I can watch them too. It's always great to find a new (to me, at least) author to read.

Trying to read a bit more of my own TBR pile, so stayed with the Victorian theme with Love Among the Butterflies by Margaret Foutaine. It's excerpts and details from her journals that she kept as she traveled the world looking for butterflies. If you enjoyed The Country Diaries of an Edwardian Lady or similar, then you would like this title. It's also got similar high quality production values in it as well, so it's a pleasure to look at and to hold, as well as to read.

Then tried to read some spooky Edgar Allan Poe short stories, but couldn't find any that appealed, so then moved on to a first scary book (for me): The Woman in Black by Susan Hill. It's more a novella really, so if it's not too scary and I keep reading it, it won't take that long.

Finished up Anne Tyler's Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant which was a nice read, but elicited very little comment from me (apart from a nice read).

Also read a non-fiction My Stroke of Insight by Jill Bolte Taylor, a neuroscientist who suffered a stroke in her mid-30's. Being a neuroscientist who was studying brains, she has a different perspective from this along with her PoV of how she felt (physically and mentally) when the stroke was actually happening. Fascinating. My father had a stroke just before he died back in 2001, and we were woefully unprepared for the aftermath. This book would have been extremely helpful to us as a family. It's also a well written reminder to live in the present moment.

Rouan, I can't take credit for the Greenwood recommendation. I'm not familiar with that author.

I have finally finished Drood by Dan Simmons. This was my first Simmons book, and it is weird. It has lots of biographical info about Charles Dickens and, I assume, Wilkie Collins, too. It's purportedly written by Collins, sometime close friend of CD, and I will have to read up on him. Woman in White is the only book of his that I've read. Drood is a huge book, 775 big pages. I rechecked it from the library once and interspersed reading it with other, more entertaining books.

Today I took it back to the library and picked up the new Louise Penny, which I'm very much looking forward to.

Carolyn, I think I was the poster who recommended Kerry Greenwood. There is a new Phryne Fisher coming soon, Rouan, "Unnatural Habits".
I must not read amusing books on the train! A comment on Dan Brown in "Herring on the Nile" had me choking and weeping to stifle a loud laugh today!

Liz, I own "Love Among the Butterflies" and found it fascinating. I must re-read it, although my paperback copy has such tiny print.

I also liked Susan Hill's "The Woman in Black". I can recall being really spooked by it. Just love her Simon Serailler mysteries.

Frances, please let us know what you think of Mr. Penumbra, it's been on my "should I buy this?" list since I first heard about it.

I'm just about to (finally) start Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand for my bookgroup meeting next week - nothing like waiting until the last minute.

Finished Cynthia Harrod-Eagles's Country Plot which I enjoyed very much. A bit of fluff but entertaining. It did, however, undergo a rather startling change near the end, where it seemed that a different writer took over. The writing became less elegant, a minor character did some startling things, and the plot took a decided romance-y turn. This change became almost as interesting to me as the actual story line.

For something completely different, I have a biography of James Joyce by Gordon Bowker that looks very promising. I haven't read a biography in a long time.

I am a big an of Cynthia H-E and have requested Country Plot from the library. Thanks, Siobhan.

I'm presently reading a Tommy and Tuppence Agatha Christie downloaded from the library. There are several available, which I never knew about, so I'll be requesting others. I like those characters much better than Hercule Poirot!

Carolyn, I like that pair too. The tv series with the lovely Francesca Annis was fun.

I have had bad luck this month with reading. I have started several books, only to abandon them due to "temporary unsuitability".

In honor of Hallowe'en I recently started Ammie Come Home by Barbara Michaels. It is not "deep literature" by any means, but is definitely a good, old-fashioned spooky read. I am moving through the book at a fair clip. Hope to have it finished by the weekend.

I just finished reading Farthing by Jo Walton. It was a disturbing book set in an alternate 1940's where England made a truce with Hitler. Disguised as an English country house mystery, it wandered far from that traditional territory. I don't know if "liked" is the word, but it made me think.

Rosefolly

Aunt Ruth and her house feature in two other Barbara Michaels books, Shattered Silk and Stitches in Time. I like Ammie Come Home the best of her books but like them all except the last one she wrote under that name, Other Worlds. I think Ms. Mertz just found out that she could make a lot more money on Amelia Peabody writing as Elizabeth Peters.

This has been a beautiful day for a Beautiful Mystery. It is cold and rainy, and I've been perfectly lazy only venturing out to get the paper and the mail and then reading the new Louise Penny book. I'm even planning ham sandwiches and already made frozen fruit salad for supper. After four weeks of a torn up house to get new floors put down and a week of cleaning up afterwards, surely I deserve a day off, don't you think?

I'm reading Cynthia Harrod-Eagles' "Country Plot" and am really liking it. Trouble is the libraries in our system only seem to have the Moorland Dynasty series and the Bill Slider mysteries. Has she written others not in a series and if not, are the series books as good as this stand alone book? I'm generally not a fan of historical fiction.

Norar, she has written other books. Unfortunately, my library only has the Bill Slider books. I've had to buy the Morland Dynasty books and wait forever for the newest ones after they are published in England--in paperback, in defense of booksellers in GB, because I wanted to have them all the same.

Annpan, thanks for telling us about the Adela Barclay mysteries. My library system doesn't have many of them but I did get a fairly early one to try. I liked it enough that I'm going to look for a couple more to read.

Sorry for the confusion Carolyn, I remember writing down several books that were recommended by various RPers and forgot who recommended what. I do remember that you recommended something I wanted to read but now I forget what it was!

Rouan, have you noticed the Gladys Mitchell Tribute site? All her books are listed with a plot precis as well as other items of interest.

Sheri, I finished reading Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore and did enjoy it. It is as much about technology as about books and I found that interesting but that may be because I've worked in the computer field for a long time. The book is a different take on other books I've read involving secret codes. I generally hesitate to recommend books because everyone has different tastes -- but I loved the last paragraph!

Frances, thank you for the review, I think it sounds like something I would like.

I finally finished Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand. It was harrowing and brilliant and once I got into it I couldn't put it down. The things Louie Zamperini went through as a POW in Japan were staggering, and I was stunned to find that he is still alive and well at 95. I'm looking forward to my bookgroup discussion later this week.

I also started Ready Player One by Ernest Cline, and so far I'm hooked. It's full of 1980s references and quite a bit of Dungeons and Dragons, which is all good. My teenagers recommended it and hounded me until I started it. This may wind up one of my favorite books this year.

Here is a link that might be useful: CBS News Zamperini interview

A while ago, I shared some books with a few of you who were interested in reading them. Then, the offerings were not as good as the ones I shared previously. But a few more showed up today... they look very good. I am being quite cryptic on purpose. Will keep you posted and, of course, will share if anyone is interested.

PAM

Finished up reading A Woman in Black by Susan Hill (1983). What a good read and although I was rather worried about how scary it might be, it wasn't that frightening for me, at least not as much as I had been concerned about. It was more of a sensation novel, really, and was written in that style. Just a thoroughly good read for Halloween.

Still reading my (slow) way through Love Among the Butterflies which is fun and I am trying to savor as I travel with her across Victorian Europe. Whoever was her editor and put together her diary entries to make this has a very sly sense of humor whenever he comes in to comment on an entry. I really look forward to him interrupting the narrative as he is really quite funny at times. Unexpected really in a book of this sort.

And then also picked up a Project Gutenburg edition of Queen Lucia by EF Benson. Funny, funny in places. Much funnier than I had thought it was before. (Weird how that happens.)

I've had Creole Belle by James Lee Burke on hand for several weeks while I've read requested library books that just keep coming. I started it today and am loving it despite the violence. His writing is so lyrical that I just love reading the books, especially the Robicheaux series set in south Louisiana, which this one is.

DonnaMira, Heinlein is a great favorite of mine and I own 3 editions of Stranger, one being the unexpurgated version unpublishable (or unmarketable imho) in the 60s. I absolutely hate Stranger in a Strange Land. Have you read other books by him? Everything else is orders of magnitude better, and I dearly love the juveniles. Did you know that he wrote Stranger after he and L. Ron Hubbard had a talk about inventing a religion? Hubbard wrote Dianetics and we know how that turned out.

Something must be in the air. I, too, read Ammie Come Home by Barbara Michaels this month, one of several Michaels/Peters comfort books I downloaded to the kindle.

Carolyn, I read some time ago that she was constrained to write more Peabody books by her publisher.

I'm in the beginning of Creole Belle having just finished The Glass Rainbow. The very first Burke I read was In the Electric Mist with Confederate Dead, where the ghosts of the past haunt Robicheaux throughout in an entirely believable way. These last two novels return the ghosts, but in a more magical manner. What do you make of this, Carolyn?

From The Glass Rainbow, a passage I loved and which brought back lovely forgotten memories.

How many people can understand what it means for and eighteen-year-old girl to be in love, to wake every morning and feel that something extraordinary and beautiful is about to happen on that particular day? How many understand the joy a young girl experiences when she is kissed on the mouth and eyes by a man who loves her, or the sensual pleasure of dancing barefoot on a lawn at an open-air concert, throwing her rump around in an innocent celebration of her sexuality, to see her own skin glow in the mirror, to see her breasts swell, and to hear her heart's blood race when she says the man's name in the silence of her bedroom?

Just read the folk tale, "East of the Sun and West of the Moon" from the collection East of the Sun and West of the Moon, Old Tales from the North by Peter Christen Asbjornsenm, one of the free kindle downloads.

As a reader of classics I love all the free ones on-line.

I've finished up a few new ones. The Round House by Louise Erdrich was very good; it is a coming of age story, a mystery, and a lesson in the vagaries of criminal prosecution on Native American reservations. Dennis Lehane's Live by Night, the second in a rumored trilogy about the Boston Irish Coughlin family, deals with the youngest brother's involvement in organized crime in the era of prohibition. I'm working on the beautifully written Booker short-lister The Garden of Evening Mists. Being a Jo Nesbo fan, I'm enjoying The Phantom which I like much better than his last one.

As far as watching Call the Midwife, while I loved Jennifer Worth's first book, I watched the first episode and that was it. Too much grunting and screaming for me, though since it is about childbirth I don't know what I expected otherwise.

Bookmom, I had the same turn-off! The scenes of poverty were very depressing too. Although I can watch a Dickens adaptation showing Victorian age poverty. Strange!

Chris ITV, I've always liked Heinlein's juveniles, especially Citizen of the Galaxy, which I still occasionally re-read. I borrowed Stranger from the library, and it was the unexpurgated version - seemed to go on forever! I didn't know about the Hubbard conversation, but it fits!

I have a copy of the Asbjornsen & Moe collection with the Kay Nielsen illustrations. It's one of my treasures, won in a closed auction when I outbid 2 dealers, despite being a poor college student and having to give up a lunch or 2 to come up with the cash. If you like literary re-tellings of fairy tales, you might enjoy Edith Pattou's East.

Just finished Jack Zipes' The Enchanted Screen: a history of fairy tale films and for a book discussion group, Pamela Schoenewaldt's When We Were Strangers.

Chris, I have given up trying to interpret Dave Robicheaux! Either he has pickled his brain with alcohol, Burke is trying to invent a new religion a la Heinlein, or I am clueless at analyzing novels. Or maybe all three.

Finished Creole Belle and admit to some breath holding and quick page turning at the end.

I finished Orhan Pamuk's "Istanbul", which was quite a tour de force. Now, with hurricane Sandy just offshore, on a dark and windy day, I'm quite happily finishing the one Susan Hill Simon Serailleur mystery I've not yet read.

I just finished Lisa Genova's novel-love Anthony. It was very powerful and I cried at the end. I have read all 3 of her novels and although they deal with subjects sometimes hard to read about they are well written, informative and somehow beautiful. Just in case-the other 2 novels are Still Alice and Left Neglected.

Thanks, DonnaMira, for the heads up on the Edith Pattou. I do like deeper examinations of well known tales, not that "East of the Sun and West of the Moon" was known by me except in the much less complicated "Beauty and the Beast."

Good luck to all of you in Sandy's path over the next few days.

Comments on Heinlein - I like most of his juvenile SF also, as well as his short stories. His later books were peculiar, starting with Stranger in a Strange Land. I read it as a teenager and found it disturbing, re-read it as an adult and it was still disturbing. I did like some of his novels, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress being one. Friday maybe. Disliked Glory Road and several others.

Rosefolly

I have started Berlin Noir by Philip Kerr. It contains the first three of his Bernie Gunther novels, and I am well along in the first one, March Violets. I am enjoying it, but it seems pretty irreverent for a private eye in 1936 Nazi Berlin. I'm assuming the next two will get progressively darker.

I first read Glory Road as a very religious 8th grader and was disturbed by the description of the naked Star in the beginning. I put it aside for years. When I tried the novel again, it became one of my favorite books. I see it as a meditation on happiness.

I finished Ammie Come Home. I had hoped to stretch it out to Hallowe'en, but it was too much of a page-turner. Not as scary as I hoped, but I still enjoyed it. It was published in the late 1960s, and it feels a bit dated. I did appreciate that it was not too violent or gory.

Now finishing Constance King's sumptuously illustrated The Collector's History of Dolls. Books about the history of toys, often seem to be really about the history of childhood. King's book has many fascinating (and often sad) stories, such as societies in which children were put to work as soon as possible, so any kind of play was seen as a dangerous distraction from the adult responsibility of adding to the family's coffers. Class played a huge role in childhood. Often poor children would be put to work in factories which, ironically, made toys for the children of the upper classes. Some little girls were given dolls so expensive that they were not allowed to play with them, but still had to dutifully trot her out to impress the neighbors.

Our paper today has a picture of a little seven-year-old girl in Afghanistan working in a brick factory.

I started Little Dorrit which I suggested for my book club, and which we will be discussing next month. It's moving more quickly than I had expected. I found David Copperfield rather slow. This has more movement, at least so far. I'm reading it on my Kindle and am 10% of the way through it at this point.

Rosefolly

I'm halfway through A Company of Swans by Eva Ibbotson which I am enjoying very, very much. This novel has been compared to I Capture the Castle, and I think it would appeal to those who enjoyed that great classic. Of course, everyone probably knows about this book except me.

There was a short discussion above about Call the Midwife, which reached the shores of the New World a few weeks ago. After scorning it the first week, I started watching and am thoroughly engrossed. Really strange, as I am not particularly interested in that time period, in childbirth, or the East End. Although it seemed like the last thing I would enjoy, I am really caught up in it. I have requested the book from ILL; I have heard it is excellent.

Finished a rather fun read of Love Among the Butterflies by Margaret Fountaine, a collection of her diary entries which detail her wide travels across the world collecting butterflies (and sometimes men). [grin]

Fountaine was a vicar's daughter (I think) who grew up at the tail end of Victoria and the beginning of Edwardian days, and as she was not married, she found herself somewhat unoccupied. She started to collect butterflies, and after a while, became a serious entomologist and traveled across the world adding pieces to her large collection. (Lots of overlaps with Edith Holden here.)

So - clearly, this is an unorthodox woman for the times: she travels widely to countries not familiar to a lot of people back then, she ends up having a long-term relationship (and traveling with) a man from Syria, she becomes an expert in butterflies... It's quite admirable just how far she pushed acceptability in female terms back then, but it did come with a price. She really struggles to reconcile her love of freedom with the cultural expectations of the time with regard to spinsters and marriage and "suitable" partners.

Despite all her travel experience, she stays curiously unhappy throughout her life (at least as told in these entries). She is very defensive all the time, but was heartless to those who kept her close to their hearts.

Her Syrian lover could not be publicly acknowledged for many years, and although they travel and work well together, she insisted on them having different rooms and standards (despite their relationship), and she could never grasp that he was in love with her for realz. In their rather frequent seperations, she would drive herself to distraction imagining various horrible scenes involving him and an accident or another woman etc.

Fountaine does acknowledge in her diaries that she adores her freedom, but anything that seems to threaten that state of affairs immediately puts her into a tailspin of being mean to her family, friends and lovers, of acting selfishly and generally being a bit of a pinhead.

However, just because she was rather an unkind person doesn't make this book any less fascinating. The illustrations taken from her diary pages are intriguing to look at: her writing is immaculate with very few errors and she justifies her handwriting on every page. (Goodness - how to do that without making a crossing-out every now and then, who knows?). She had volumes of diaries and numerous boxes of butterfly specimens that she bequeathed to a museum, but only with the condition that the museum administration do not open the diary box for 40 years after her death. This agreement was stuck to, and so they waited for the correct time. Thus were found the diaries.

So - good read overall. Woodnymph - you mentioned earlier that you had a copy but it was only a paperback and had type that was difficult to read. Would you like me to send you this copy? It's only going to the library book sale otherwise,...

I finally got to my library books this week and finished Death in the Floating City, a "Lady Emily" mystery by Tasha Alexander. Either I couldn't concentrate properly, or she didn't offer enough clues in the story, because the person whodunnit was a complete surprise and really seemed to come out of left field. Oh well! I've liked these mysteries, and if there is another I'll probably read it.

Chris in the valley, THANK YOU for mentioning Dorothy Gilman's Caravan somewhere here. When I saw the title, I thought I'd read it at some point, but evidently I never did. I loved it, it was a wonderful story. I'd read a lot of Mrs. Polifax as a teenager, I don't know how I missed this.