I really liked the Beatrix Potter books and saw nothing strange re the animals wearing clothing, as a child. After all, when we were kids, we used to dress up our pets like dolls. I can recall being given one of those old dolls which were half black and half white, according to how you flipped them upside down. Recently, in the downtown old market of Charleston, I saw those dolls for sale. I would have thought they would have been banned, due to P.C. I remember loving "Little Black Sambo" as a child, but when I went to the USSR in the 60's, it was pointed out how this racism was a flaw in the American value system, and that of course, we Soviets, with our pure intents have no such values.... My parents took me to see the movie "Uncle Remus" when I was a child growing up in Atlanta, GA. I remember being driven by the former home of Joel Chandler Harris on the other side of my city. I thought the film charming and was shocked that it went out of circulation, when the P.C. police took over.... My grandmother gave me the Milne books in the 1940's. I loved the poems and could recite by heart the one about "My teddy bear is rather fat, " for years.

I think there is a difference between writers we don't enjoy and a book being over-rated. I think some of Picoult's work is OK, really didn't like others, but I don't think her over-rated. She has a moderate audience but doesn't sell in the amounts that others do, particularly a lot of the sci-fi authors. There are many books I haven't liked that others have - The Secret History leaps to mind to mind. I thought it a load of codswallop, but I have yet to find anyone to agree with me *g* However, I wouldn't call it over-rated. JMHO of course.

Of the ones on the list, I have only read Didion's book and thought it gripping and very well-written, but painful. It was even more painful to learn from a local newspaper recapitulating this year's stories that her daughter, Quintana Roo, who was seriously ill at the time when Didion's husband suddenly died, also ended up dying (this past August.zxzxzxzxzxzxzxzxzxzxzxzxzxzxzxzxzxzxzxzxzxzxzxzxzxzxzxzxzxzxzxzxzxzxzxzxzxzxzxzxzxzxz Several months or a year ago, I tried to read one book by Murakami because it was up for discussion in this forum, and a good deal in it disgusted me to such an extent that I never joined in the discussion. I can't help suspecting that Murakami deliberately writes the way he does for the sake of notoriety, and I plan never to read anything by him again. Maybe, just maybe, "Kafka..." (Reduced to using quotes for titles because the usual formatting won't work.) contains no disgusting scenes, but "Once bit, twice shy." zxzxzxzxzxzxzxzxzxzxzxzxzxzxzxzxzxzxzxzxzxzxzxzxzxzxzxzxzxzxzxzxzxzxzxzxzxzxzxzxzxzxzxzxzxzxzxzx Ha haaa! The thing wouldn't let me even make paragraphs, but I have partially thwarted it--or so I hope--by typing strings of zxzxzx. Come on, Powers that Be, if only for the sake of clearer expression, give us back the ability to indent, leave double spaces, and write short lines of poetry if we want to!

I've been having trouble getting into "my next book." I checked four books out of the library the other day and rejected them one-by-one after reading just a few pages of each. Last night I scanned my own bookshelves and selected A Patchwork Planet thinking, "Maybe Anne Tyler can get me out of my funk." As I started reading, the book seemed vaguely familiar and yet I had no idea what was coming next. This morning, I checked my book journal to see if I'd read it before. I had to laugh at what I had written: I was disappointed in this book. While entertaining, it's pretty forgettable. Forgettable indeed!