Lancaster city is a nice small city...while I live in a much more rural area, I do get in town frequently. The buildings are very nice architecturally if you like that. Queen street has quite a few nice stores in a walking district...hand blown glass, childrens boutiques, vintage clothing and accessories, anitiques, coffee shops. Additionally you can visit Central Market, the Quilt and textile museum (amazing and very old quilts), Science factory, Lancaster Arts museum. Come on the weekend and attend First Fridays and visit the many art galleries. Catch the symphony, a show at the Fulton Opera/Theatre, a minor league Barnstormers baseball game. Visit Rock Ford plantation (built in 1749, home of General Hand), Visit home of James Buchanan (our 15th president) 2 lovely plaes to stay in the city are the brand new Marriot Convention center (BEAUTIFUL!). They very creatively maintained the original facade of an historic Watt and Shand building as well as preserving several very unique aspects within the building as well - inside there is a glass enclosure around a foundatation and cesspool of Thaddeus Stevens home and is a working archialogical site. The Marriot is downtown and you can walk to almost anything I mentioned above. The other really nice hotel is the Lancaster Arts Hotel. It is still in the city, but a little further away from walking district. It is a converted tobacco warehouse and very nice. The restaraunt on site gets all their ingredients from local farmers. I can go on and on an I missing so many wonderful things...other nice places I never get tired of: The Cloister in Ephrata, Landis Valley Museum, walking around Lititz. Visiting Greeen Dragon farmers market on Friday (maybe tonight!) or Roots market on Tuesdays. Pa Renaissance Faire in Manheim. I only occasionally go to Intercourse, Bird-in-Hand, etc (usually on my way to Target! lol) I live here, I have friends that are Amish...their lifestyle while unique and seemingly tranquil...well it's just part of my everyday life and I am used to it. I have eaten dinner, attended weddings, and auctions with both Amish and Mennonite friends. Lancaster county is extremely diverse and offers so much! I am blessed to be here.

Finished up Spook by Mary Roach, an in-depth and irreverant look at the world of mediums, ghosts etc. Very funny (as she always is) and interesting, but more of a pick-up and put-down book really so it took a while to finish. Finished The People of Privilege Hill by Jane Gardam, a book of short stories (one or two featuring old characters like Old FILTH etc.). Most of the stories were very well written, but there were a few slightly odd ones in there. I think it was a bit of a vanity project for the author... Then an ILL came in: Fire on the Mountain by Anita Desai, a novel with absolutely beautiful descriptions in it of the hill station in North India where the book is located. There is a crusty grumpy old lady who lives there, glad to be alone when suddenly one of her daughters dumps her own daughter (the protag's great granddaughter) there all summer. It's how the relationship develops (or dosen't) between the two generations. Really enjoying this one bc the writing is just so good. Then, as a NF read, I have another book by Sue Hubbell, a series of essays (I think) about her country living and keeping bees. I really enjoyed her other book, so am hoping this will be similar. I also need to switch off One-Click on ama. It is absolutely far too easy to buy a book right now when I have a slow mo at work...

Sheriz, I have just finished "Death comes to Pemberley". I don't normally read P&P inspired books but I thought I would try this one, not having much time to choose a library book and this one was handily displayed on the new books shelf! Such a respected author, too! I thought I was going to enjoy it at first, with the tongue in cheek description of what the gossips thought about Lizzie's calculated pursuit of Darcy. As the book progressed, however, I got quite annoyed. Too much of the author's modern thoughts were creeping into it. Phrases that didn't seem right for the period and silly mistakes aggravated me. I finished it in a hurry to discover the mystery. No more Austen fan fiction, ever! What did your group think?

Years ago when The Far Pavillions first came out, it was very popular and was hard to get from the library. I finally found it on the shelf (and I worked at that library too!) and took it home. It went back unread at the end of the borrowing period. This happened a few times; for some reason, I just couldn't sit down to read it. Finally, my sister in law gave me a paperback copy as a birthday present and it again sat on my shelf unread for quite a while. One day, bored, I picked it up and started reading it. Hours later, my eyes closing despite my efforts to stay awake, I put down the book with only 60 or so pages to go and fell asleep. I finished it the next morning and couldn't understand what took me so long to get into it. For those who think Tolkein is too wordy, Rosefolly explained it much better than I could. She said he wrote as if the books were being presented orally. (Rosefolly, you explained it more clearly in a much earlier post.)In other words, his works are meant to be read aloud. If you listen to an audio presentation of LoTR, you will hear this.