I love gift shopping & try to put a lot of consideration into the individual(s)/event involved. It just makes me happy when I see their faces light up when I hit it just right. I've had a few misses but, fortunately, not many. Christmas '09, my DDIL was tired & stressed. She'd had a difficult year with both her mother seriously ill & I had also contributed to the family's health concerns during '09. They had moved twice with 3 kids in one year, had a job relocation, & their car's engine blew up. For Christmas (and with lots of physical help from DH), I put together a "Here's A Few of My Favorite Things" basket for her including philosophy Hope In A Jar, Micro-Delivery Peel, Purity, a Godiva chocolate candle, a terry cloth wrap to hold her hair up when she gave herself a facial, etc., good quality nail files & clippers, Ojon Swa shampoo & conditioner, spent a few hours making her a hand-painted "Do Not Disturb" sign for the bathroom door, & tucked a package of cookies in with the other stuff. I wrapped the items in a set of new extra fluffy white towels & put everything in a Peterborough picnic basket. I had fun & she must have called me 6 times just to say what a great gift it was & that every time she hung that sign on the door & turned on the shower she knew she had to call again to say, "thanks". But, I have the time to fuss putting things together & because we don't have to buy for dozens of people I can comfortably spend a bit more per person. And, I also don't adhere to the rule of doing for everybody equally at the same time. So, I can spread out the expense over time so everybody gets something special...just not at the same time. About 10 years ago when our kids reached the age where they were starting their own families, taking on mortgages, & working long hours getting their careers established I wrote them each a letter explaining to them that it was my preference that instead of giving me gifts they each send me a hand written note telling me what had gone right during their week or share a funny story of something they'd recently experienced. Now, a decade later, I've got a wonderful collection of my kids' memories that someday when I'm gone they'll get to re-read. Each holiday they share, in these letters, personal things that don't get talked about when we're together. I don't respond to their letters, per se. I find a way to acknowledge something they've written if it's appropriate & always thank them repeating how much it means to me. But, it's lead to an unspoken closeness with my kids that I love & can tell that they feel the same by the words they write. I think responding to their letters would be embarrassing for them. It's just this little "secret" I have with all 3 of them. They tell me their fears but also what they've accomplished. I've learned more about each of them through these letters than in any conversation. I can't tell you how much I love getting their Christmas & birthday letters. Sometimes though they surprise ME! Once I received a cooking class gift certificate at Johnson & Wales from one of my kids as a gift tucked into his letter to me on my birthday. Along those same lines, I also told each of them when they had their own families I expected them to spend Mother's Day with THEIR family & NOT come to visit me. I had my time. Now, it's THEIR turn. I think it helped by giving them permission from me for what I knew they all would want...to spend Mother's Day with their own family. They each call me around Mother's Day but not always on the day itself. Gift giving/receiving can take so many different forms. It means something different to each of us. Problems come in when two people have different expectations. My deceased MIL was a tough one around gifts...I never was able to understand her expectations. As a result, I believe I failed to live up to her desires. I tried everything from handmade items to 18k gold...just couldn't get it right. I finally decided it wasn't my gift choices that were wrong. She just had some type of personal thing in her head around gifts that she didn't share so nobody could please her...maybe, that was the whole point. She wanted to believe we "couldn't get it right". Who knows??? I don't like gift cards although have been known to use them. On my grandson's 16th birthday I gave him a gift certificate for a year's gasoline. (It was an gasoline credit card I allowed him to use for a year.) He'd just gotten his driver's license & it seemed appropriate. Another time one of our kids was taking a get-away weekend to celebrate their wedding anniversary. I asked some innocent questions about their plans & then tracked down a nearby good restaurant, purchased a gift card, & made arrangements to have it placed on their pillow at the hotel. To this day they do not know how they ended up with that dinner. :) Anyway, I love giving gifts. Trying to fit the gift to the event/person is fun for me. I would hate gift shopping if I felt it was an obligation or that I had to somehow keep each present similar to what I got others. Nobody knows what to expect from me, nor when. Sometimes, they might receive an inconsequential Christmas present & then unexpectedly get a mystery package in February. Other times, they might get an elaborate Christmas present & just a book of Dunkin' Donuts certificates for a birthday. They all know though that as the world goes around and time passes their number comes up. Because I try to put a lot of personal thought into each gift I just am not able (mentally or physically) to come up with something just right for everybody just because the calender says it's a certain date. For those presents that are sorta obligatory like weddings of not too close friends, baby showers for the daughter of a second cousin...that kind of stuff...I stick to tradition. I've even given wedding present gift certificates...a gift certificate to a picture framing shop near where that person lived comes to mind. I didn't know the people at all...had never even met them. We used to receive lots of, IMO, inappropriate invitations to weddings of DH's staff's family members. Hard gifts. For a baby shower where the Mom to be isn't somebody I know well, I like to give a high quality blanket. Hard to go too far wrong, IMO. I usually buy white. I don't care if it gets dirty! I just make sure it's washable. lol Oh, also once I give a gift I forget about it. I don't care if somebody gives it away. If I were to care one way or another it would, IMO only, no longer be a gift. Gifts are not supposed to have strings attached to them. My Mom told me that gifts with strings were not really gifts...they were salaries. If my DDIL would have chucked last year's Christmas present I would have thought, "Well Tricia, guess you got it wrong that she was stressed, needed some alone time, and something to pamper herself in the process of being alone would be good. Think harder next time her number comes up!" :) This is a fun thread & in answer to the original question...it would not hurt my feelings if you returned a gift I'd given. I would probably feel badly that I'd failed to hit the right chord but that would be my fault...not yours. I never buy anything from a registry. I don't even look at registries. /tricia

Maybe it's the yob philistine in me or just plain literary indolence but the last thing I care about in novels is what label the critics (or readers for that matter) want to pin on a particular work. The only question I ask is does the tale hangs together well? I can accept fantasy,surrealism a little magic realism (whatever the hell that is), whatever - just so long as it feels right within the framework of the story. I guess this is purely an instinctual approach but my preferred one. I found Georgio's death one of the most affecting parts of BWW and it did not jar in the least. I do agree that Georgio's drowning diatribe against political,religious and military "F***heads" ruining a beautiful world represent pretty well a summary of deB's own views. I don't think in either novel he takes a particularly anti-Greek, anti- Italian or anti - Turk point of view or their converse. He does criticise unmercifully all their leaders however in all their incompetence, greed, sheer pig ignorance and self aggrandising madness. It is the ordinary people of all these nations that he admires and weeps at the travails visited upon them by their maniacal leaders. I read somewhere that deB said his preferred method of work was to show how the megalomaniacs chew up the societies the try to remake in their own twisted image. Above all this analysis and introspection both BWW and CCM are beautiful human works by a great writer. Larry

Eleni by Nicholas Gage and Cavafy's wise poem ITHAKA - my contributions Despite being involved in a terrible tragedy there - I remember my days lived in Greece with some sweet longing As you set out for Ithaka hope your road is a long one, full of adventure, full of discovery. Laistrygonians, Cyclops, angry Poseidon - don't be afraid of them: you'll never find things like that one on your way as long as you keep your thoughts raised high, as long as a rare excitement stirs your spirit and your body. Laistrygonians, Cyclops, wild Poseidon - you won't encounter them unless you bring them along inside your soul, unless your soul sets them up in front of you. Hope your road is a long one. May there be many summer mornings when, with what pleasure, what joy, you enter harbours you're seeing for the first time; may you stop at Phoenician trading stations to buy fine things, mother of pearl and coral, amber and ebony, sensual perfumes of every kind - as many sensual perfumes as you can; and may you visit many Egyptian cities to learn and go on learning from their scholars. Keep Ithaka always in your mind. Arriving there is what you're destined for. But don't hurry the journey at all. Better if it lasts for years, so you're old by the time you reach the island, wealthy with all you've gained on the way, not expecting Ithaka to make you rich. Ithaka gave you the marvellous journey. Without her you wouldn't have set out. She has nothing left to give you now. And if you find her poor, Ithaka won't have fooled you. Wise as you will have become, so full of experience, you'll have understood by then what these Ithakas mean Constantine P. Cavafy

I liked Leonie Swann's "Three Bags Full". At least the sheep acted quite naturally which is more than can be said for some of the animal detectives! Being winter and cold, windy, raining etc. (Like the UK Summer this year apparently) I have been curling up under my cheap misprinted Winnie the Pooh blankie and listening to tapes so that I can keep my frozen mitts under wraps. I bought a lot of them from the local library who are selling old and donated, almost new, tapes. I like books I have already read, I find them easier to follow. I also like women readers better as they can deepen their voices for male characters but men don't sound right becoming women! What do other listeners think? I have been trying to get Kate Fenton's two early books from the Australian library system but no luck so far. I enjoyed her books very much and was reminded of her from another thread. Almost Spring, so a lot of my reading will be garden catalogues!