I like Victoria Holt. Do you remember which book? That does sound familiar.

My secret...Clairol Natural Instincts (in Clove). My hair started turning gray in my late 20s (like my great aunt) and I started dying it at the salon. Too much upkeep! I stopped and ended up cutting my hair to get rid of the too dark color.

Now, I avoid commitment (LOL) and know if I decide to stop, the gray highlights will come back....but now my hair is long. And the little bit of gray that always manages to sneak through looks nice. But then, I'm no longer in my 20s : )

One of my nieces whose hair was blonde and had started to darken used to rinse it in lemon juice and sit out in the sun.

I sat up late last night finishing Lost Among the Living. Very satisfying conclusion.

Carolyn, I could never tell that lemon juice made any difference on my blonde hair. I sunburn in about ten minutes, so I probably didn't stay out in the sun long enough.

Donna

I'm another who has let my hair go gray. My natural colour is a boring mouse brown, and I coloured it blonde for 25+ years. My new hairdresser encouraged me to let it grow out and I have never had so many compliments on my hair in my life :)

I finished the first War at Home book by Harrod-Eagles (how I wish her name was something shorter!) and have started the second.

I have to protest a little at the comments on wine pretentiousness. 'Lightly oaked chardonnay' is a valid description and I don't think it's snooty. That's more the 'hints of leather and chocolate, overlaid with raspberry and loganberry snippets' kind of thing LOL

LOL, Kath - I just had never seen that on a wine bottle before. I do agree the "hints of leather" type of comments are much more snooty. :)

I'll be opening that bottle of chardonnay tonight - we'll see if I like it. I'm really a red wine kind of gal.

Donna

I've just finished "The End of Absence" by Michael Harris. It's a well-written personal saga about the effects of technology upon all our lives. Among one of the topics discussed is the effects of computer usage upon our brain cells and how they store information. (Our technology is actually changing our brains and we are losing our abilities to focus for long periods of time). Scientists are actually studying these issues. Some of us are in the last generation that knew how life was lived before computers. The author discusses "Luddites" and makes the case for how most of us could benefit from "Walden" moments, occasionally. It can be a healthy thing to unplug for a weekend or so. It is prevalent that multi-tasking is a good thing. Actually, it's not a good mode for the brain to be in. I note how impatient certain folks have become when they cannot constantly text or be without their cell phones. This is a very thought-provoking book and was a pleasure to read, in my opinion.

That's very interesting, Woodnymph! I was just thinking the other day that proper spelling and grammar seem to be on the decline, and wondering if it had to do with computers fixing all that stuff for us. I figure people are forgetting how to do math since computers do that for us, too.

Donna

I'm currently reading Fates and Furies by Lauren Groff. It's about a playwright. So far, I'm finding it disappointing. I enjoyed her first book The Monsters of Templeton, which I read years ago, so I thought I'd pick this one up as it's gotten such good reviews. The current book is not as interesting or as well told as the first.

For book club, I'm reading The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah, and that's a page turner. However, I'm a little tired of WWII books. There just seem to be so many of them even though they are great stories.

I'm also reading London by Edward Rutherford. It tells the history of London through a chronological series of short stories, all involving the same families. It's interesting, but I'm having a little trouble keeping all the characters straight in my head.

Merryworld, I agree about keeping characters straight in Rutherford's books. It was easier in New York, but I suppose it's because we don't have so much history to incorporate.

I'm about 150 pages into Elizabeth George's A Banquet of Consequences and loving it. I think the only one of her books I didn't like was What Happened When He Shot Her. I was so annoyed with her for doing in that character anyway, and then she spent hundreds of pages after the fact.

Lavender Lass, it was The Legend of the Seventh Virgin. I had to go look it up online, as it has been many years since I read it and I do not own a copy. Not her most cheerful novel. Being a teenager when I read it, I disliked this one. I wanted the romantic fairy tale. But I have remembered it better than her other books of that era.

Thanks, Rose. I don't know if I've read that one, but it does sound familiar. I went though a phase in high school and read my mother's books. Victoria Holt, Phyllis Whitney, Charlotte Armstrong and of course, Mary Stewart : )

I still enjoy Mary Stewart, and re-read her books a couple of years ago.

Woodnymph,

Thanks for the review of The End of Absence. It is fascinating that scientists are finding how technology changes and shapes our brains. Not infrequently, I think how our generation is the only one who knows life Before and After computers and the Internet, a point of view that no future generation will have.

Interesting also that those "Walden" moments seem to be of such importance to human beings.

Interesting concept, Reader in Transit. It had not occurred to me before, and of all the technological changes of the past 100+ years, I do believe that computers are the most profound in the way we live our lives. I think it is comparable to the invention of the printing press in its scope, and maybe even to the invention of writing itself.

We who are alive now, and who are over 40, will be the last generation that remembers a world not dominated by the computer.

This thought brings a chill to my spine.

I finished "Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption" by Stephen King last night. It reminded me very much of Garrison Keillor's storytelling - took 100 pages to tell a story that could easily have been 10. So...my overall impression is "meh". I usually enjoy SK a lot.

I don't know what I'll read next. The book with "Shawshank" in it has several other novellas - maybe I'll try the next one and see if I like it better. :)

Donna

I Finished a couple of books while we spent a few days 'away'.

The Past is Myself - Christabel Bielenberg.

A young English woman married to a Hamburg lawyer who stayed in Germany during WWII. A detailed and fair account of what life was like under wartime conditions. How the population coped, the Nazi propaganda, the encouragement to spy on neighbours etc. Her husband was implicated in the plot to assassinate Hitler and was imprisoned in Ravensbruck concentration camp and CB made the long journey to plead his case with the SS, the most feared and hated of all the military, for his release. She was able to use the fact that her Mother's family were of the Irish Ascendancy and owned several of the most powerful newspapers in the UK and as the War was surely at an end they might look favourably on certain Party Members . . .

He was freed and the family reunited.

I just finished reading A Fatal Grace, which is the second in Louise Penny's Armand Gamache mystery series. I have to admit that the plot was quite convoluted and far-fetched, but I enjoyed the book anyway. I can't help but like the Chief Inspector Gamache character, a feeling I apparently share with a whole lot of readers. Also, this one turned out to be quite a "snow book" which I always enjoy.

On the Acknowledgements page of this book, Louise Penny expresses her gratitude to Anne Perry, who she describes as "lovely, both inside and out." I found that quite interesting, having just learned about Anne Perry's past in this thread.

Carolyn, I decided to follow up your recommendation for The Haunting of Maddy Clare. I read it today in one gulp. It was just what I needed to break my reading doldrums. Thanks!

My Father's Places by Aeronwy Thomas is the memoir of the daughter of Welsh poet Dylan Thomas in which she describes her very neglected upbringing by her parents. Unusually, when 'misery memoirs' are becoming the norm, she goes to great lengths to maximise the positive times she had while living in the village of Laugharne in West Wales among most 'unusual' locals. With two heavily-drinking parents and a Mother who was given to terrible rages and ready to physically attack children/husband when the mood took her, life must have been far from easy.

When not writing poetry or for the BBC DT wrote endless begging letters to wealthy patrons as he couldn't manage money, pay the butcher/baker/bar tab or the boarding-school fees for the older son.

I'm sure these days all the children would have been taken into 'care', not just for the beatings or the many parental 'affairs', but for them being left every night from 7pm (even during the London blitz) when they went to the pub, staggering back home with drunken friends to party until the next morning.

Dylan was dead by 39 (during a reading tour of the US) his wife took the youngest boy to live in Italy and that was more-or-less the end of family life.

After reading this book the article below appeared in our daily paper

Dylan Thomas

Vee, thanks for the book review. Long ago, I read a memoir of the widow of D. Thomas. She ended up fleeing to Italy where she married an Italian, if I recall correctly. Within the memoir were descriptions of the parents leaving their young children in bed alone while they went out to the local pubs and carroused. I agree that today the children would have been removed from the Thomas couple and their care was certainly less than adequate. Dylan was, of course, a raging alcoholic, with an eccentric lifestyle. Having said that, he was a brilliant poet, in my opinion. I was made to study his poetry in school, many years ago.

mary/woodnymph surprisingly Dylan Thoma didn't catch-on as a poet over here for several years. Our school poetry books entitled "Modern Poetry" ended with the later works of Thomas Hardy from about 1917. I think it says more about the exam syllabus than my age!

Probably his play Under Milk Wood written for the BBC was the most famous work we would have known about.

Thomas reading from Under Milk Wood USA Last Tour 1953

I have just this minute finished Keep the Home Fires Burning by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles. She is so good at presenting history in an easy to read manner. I had no idea that German zeppelins bombed London in WWI.

I'm not sure what is next, but probably Everyone Brave is Forgiven by Chris Cleave.

Vee, specifically, the memoir I read years ago was "Leftover Life to Kill" by Caitlin Thomas. It is all coming back now: Caitlin had a dreadful girlhood and was incredibly self-absorbed. After Dylan died, she married an Italian who read her the riot act to get her to stop drinking. I gather the second marriage for Caitlin was far happier than the first.

You guys are always raving about this Cynthia Harrod-Eagles, which prompted today to check our library system (again), but they have only a few (well, 27) of her books and only one of the Morland series.

This new series--War at Home--sounds v. good. Will recommend our librarians to get it. Thanks, Kath, for making me aware of it.

R-I-T, I checked the library here in Orlando, and we have very few CH-E books, too. Only a dozen or so.

Donna

I recently picked up a second-hand copy of One True Thing by Anna Quindlen (the writer mentioned in the 'Game' thread). I had never heard of her or read any of her books and found this one to be well-written and dealing with a situation many people might find themselves in. The character has to give up her well-paid job in NYC to nurse her Mother through a terminal illness. During these weeks she learns much about her parents. Should she have taken her Mother's nurturing/parenting for granted? Was her Father worthy of her over-the-top admiration as an academic?

The books is not overly mawkish or sentimental and for me, as someone from England, throws even more light onto the Small College Town Life of the US which is never to be found in the UK.

Vee, that is an interesting comment, that small town college life is never to be found in the UK. Is that because your universities are mostly in cities? I am intrigued, perhaps because I have always been attracted to small college towns.

I finished reading two very different books: "Under Magnolia" is a memoir by Frances Mayes, who is well known for her books about Tuscany. In it she speaks of her southern roots, born in a small town in GA, college in VA, with many sojourns in Florida along the way. Now she shares her life between both Tuscany and a NC village of artists and writers. It's a well-written depiction of a certain generation and life style of southern womanhood, those born in the 1940's.

I also read R. Khoury's "The Last Templar." I now realize this is one of a series, so I have two more of his waiting on the TBR pile.

Woodnymph, I didn't realize the Templar book was part of a series. I liked it, so I'll look for the others.

I'm currently reading The Final Cut by Catherine Coulter about a jewel heist at the Met in NY. I'm enjoying it!

Donna

Rosefolly, I think almost all our universities are in cities, or at least large towns. Until the nineteenth century the only universities (made up of several colleges) were those at Oxford and Cambridge and Trinity in Dublin, followed by Durham and London. It wasn't until around the turn of the 20th century that the 'Red Brick' uni's largely developed from colleges for 'working men', appeared in the large industrial cities, Birmingham, Manchester, Sheffield, Newcastle etc I can't think of any 'liberal arts' places similar to those you have in the US.

My son attended a university (Keele) in the English Midlands founded in the 1940's on American lines. Built on a campus in the countryside and offering 4 year courses, with the first year offering a variety of subjects studied for a number of weeks in each semester (over here 'terms' are more usual) before specialising in joint honours subjects for the remaining three years.

I don't think the campus could be described as a 'small town' as it is mostly lived in by students and presumably many of the staff live elsewhere and it doesn't have the same facilities as would be found in a 'real' town.

Vee, many of those liberal arts schools were located in small towns to keep the students protected from the sinful ways of the big cities. Some were religiously affiliated, originally at least. That was also true of many of the more affordable state-related schools. Some started as teacher training institutions and grew into universities over the course of a century or so. Others were land-grand schools, given federal land along with a mission to teach practical skills. My own university, Penn State, was one of the latter. Its original name was Farmers High School, and it was positioned in the exact middle of the state to shield the students from the wicked temptations of Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. Today it, and many other universities, have wonderful, vibrant towns around them. I always expected to retire to a college town some day for the perfect mix of a lively downtown and a rich cultural life without the congestion of a big city. As it has turned out, I doubt we'll ever move from Silicon Valley. With each tree I plant, I become myself more deeply rooted into this one piece of land. And I have planted dozens of trees.

Very interesting Rosefolly. Oxford and Cambridge colleges were founded and run by the Church to train men for the priesthood, which included what we would now think of as the 'Civil Service', as they were the only people who could both read and write. The tradition was carried on under the C of E and until the 1800's it was still necessary to be a 'communicant' to obtain a degree, even if only in name. Today's uni's make no religious distinctions and the growth of uni places has gone on by leaps and bounds with over half the population now attending . . . some might say to the detriment of serious academic study.

Also today women represent more than half the student numbers. Up to the mid/late '60's less than 10% of females attended. At that time when I left school (1963) only the cleverest girls (the 'blue stockings') were encouraged or expected to go on to 'academic' study. The rest of us might go to teacher-training, art, secretarial or domestic science colleges, or take up nursing but not attend the male dominated universities.

I believe that US women were more 'liberated' than us?

I should have added above that it was probably students who were responsible for much of the drinking and dreadful sinfulness that took place in university cities and towns. :-)

I've also found many colleges and universities in the US are situated on some very prime real estate. My school (Florida Southern College in Lakeland) is on the shore of a large lake, Eckerd College is on Tampa Bay, etc. I wonder if they were land grants or if the properties were donated by early patrons of the schools.

Donna

The land grant schools were set up starting in the 1860's as agricultural, technical, and military science schools, though liberal arts were permitted. They were seen as a response to training need for the industrial revolution. Florida's land grant schools were Florida A&M and the University of Florida. A lot of other schools were started by wealthy donors or by groups with a mission to fulfill, such as many of the early colleges for recently freed slaves after the Civil War.

And I would agree with you, Vee, that students seem to import their own favorite version of sinfulness no matter where they are located! Many colleges are known for their wild partying culture.

BTW, in the US, the words college and university mean almost the same thing. A college tends to be smaller and is usually limited to the the liberal arts and sciences, and sometimes education, while universities can offer engineering, applied sciences, agriculture, computer science, nursing and the like as well. But the degrees they offer are considered to be equivalent in value. I understand that the same is not true in the UK. The difference has been explained to me but I have never quite understood it. I thought it might be similar to our 2 year schools, sometimes called junior or community colleges, sometimes offering certificate or associate's degrees, and sometimes offering the first two years of a 4 year program for transfer to a 4 year school. As community colleges are comparatively inexpensive, this can be a great cost savings. However, I was told that no, that's not exactly it.

When someone in the US goes on for a 4 year (bachelor's) degree, they usually say they are going to college, rather than saying that they are going to university, even if they are going to college at a university!

And, Vee, your comments about career choices for most girls are right on target for the U.S. in the 1950s. It began to change here in the 60s, but salaries for the most part are not the same even now for women as opposed to men.

Rosefolly, over here many of what were Colleges (similar to those you describe in the US) have now been amalgamated into the local universities so now all students come out with a BA/BSc degree of some sort. The standard length of study time is three years possibly followed by a further year for a 'Masters'. The MA/MSc was becoming more popular as the lower degree became less 'meaningful' but lack of funds is putting some young people off further study.

These days students have to pay/take out a loan for their tuition fees. Back in my time the educational part of study was Govt funded and hefty grants were available to students from poorer families. I was never able to get a grant and was amazed at the queues that formed at the College bursar's office on the first day of term and students coming out waving cheques in the air which seldom went on books etc. These so-called less 'well-off' people rushed into Town and splurged the windfall on all manner of goodies! This was, generally speaking, just before booze and drugs reared their heads among the women students!

The old universities only offered degrees in classics, theology, philosophy etc but the Victorian institutions added mathematics, engineering, various sciences, medicine all powering the growing Industrial Revolution plus sending out Leaders of Men to work in the world-wide British Empire

Today a degree in hairdressing, dog-grooming or garden maintenance seem to carry almost as much weight. ;-(

Carolyn, over here we have 'equal pay' for men and women but still men earn more. It seems by altering the job-description it is possible for men to climb the greasy pole faster. My daughter who worked until recently in a very well-paid job in central London said all the women in the organisation spent much longer in the office while the men were away from their desks by 6pm claiming that if the company wanted the amount of work done in a certain time they should employ more people.

We also have a minimum and basic wage . . . apparently they are not the same and I'm not sure which is better! So for eg. our youngest son who is disabled works for a couple of 'shifts' per week washing up at the local pub. He recently got a pay rise, which was nice for him, but meant the cost of meals there has gone up and he may be given fewer hours of work in the future. It is a vicious circle.

Here in Australia a basic degree is usually 3 years (although some courses are longer). One more year of study earns you an Honours degree, designated as, for example, BSc(Hons). Another one to two years gets you a Masters degree and a PhD is three to four years past Honours, without the need to get the Masters in the middle. In our immediate family we have a BSc (me), a BSc(Hons) PhD (husband) BBus and BCom (DS1) and BPsych(Hons) (DS2).

We have had University, Teachers College, Institute of Technology and TAFE (Tertiary and Further Education) and back in the 1940s the School of Mines, but now TAFE is for certificate courses and everything else is uni.

All the capital cities have universities. When I went, tuition was free for students who won a scholarship (ie got good enough marks). Now there are courses with very low entry scores, but students come out with a debt which they begin to pay when their salary reaches a certain level.

I know I sound naive, but where are women in the US paid less than men? I have always had minimum wage and union service-industry jobs during school, friends with government jobs paid by the level and title, and now I have my own business. In our area, a lot of people are farmers, own small businesses, work for corporations (like big box stores or food chains) hospitals, universities, government jobs, etc.

On TV, especially during a political season, there is always talk about women being paid less than men. Is this all in private business? I live in eastern Washington and even in Seattle for a few years. I guess I didn't go high enough up the ladder to run into this...

To be clear, I'm not saying it doesn't happen, I just have seen more of pay for the job title, rather than pay by gender. Maybe men are promoted more quickly in some areas? I know a lot of women are administrative assistants and make less than the managers, but now a lot of women are management level and paid by the title of the job.

lavender, I can't answer your US based question but presume there is no Federal law making equal pay compulsory. Is this a state by state thing? Is the standard of living therefore inherently lower in some states? I think we non- Americans often have difficulty in understanding that the individual states have so much autonomy from Washington.

Actually, the government will often go by the county in each state to determine if income is lower than average or if those areas may qualify for more grants.

The IRS also goes by the county one lives in, when determining allowances for costs and other factors.

Some states are quite large...and there can be quite a difference in the standard of living between different counties.

You probably know that a BS or BA takes four years in the US, and sometimes five if the college is overcrowded and classes are hard to get, but that is because you must take a certain number of classes outside your major - liberal arts if you are a tech/science major, or math and science if you are a liberal arts person. It is considered that this will help to make you a well-rounded member of society. To some extent, I think it is true.

We are also seeing the rise of the master's degree as the standard of a well educated person. My husband, one daughter, and I all have one, as does my brother. It has become fairly common. My other daughter has two bachelor's degrees (career change), and my non-academic son completed a certificate program at a community college. It is unusual for anyone to stop at high school and expect much of a career, very different from a generation ago. And a generation before that, my grandfather stopped at eighth grade, which was considered perfectly adequate. He was educated in Canada where he grew up, but the same was true in the United States.

(I do want to add a side comment here. It is my personal belief that a person who did not go beyond high school but continues to read all his life long is apt to be a far better educated person than someone who gets a degree but never opens another book for the rest of his life.)

Equal pay is an iffy thing, addressed differently in different places. In areas where the cost of living is higher, pay also tends to be higher, the Boston-NYC-Washington corridor being one region with a notoriously high cost of living. Hawaii is also a very expensive place to live, and Los Angeles and the Bay Area (including Silicon Valley) is just as expensive.

Government job pay scales are mandated by regulation, and union jobs by contract. The business sector is free to pay what the market will bear. There is a set federal minimum wage, though some areas have set their own higher minimum wage, much disputed by business which says that it will mean higher unemployment or the failure of small businesses. As for pay for women, in my area the pay ranges can be different for two reasons (at least). One is that pay is generally negotiated, and women tend to be less assertive in asking for more money, more inclined to wait until their value is recognized and spontaneously rewarded. The other is that if there are children involved, mothers are employed full time are more likely to work only 40-50 hours a week (I did) while fathers feel free to stay at the office 50-60 or more hours. Long hours are highly valued here in Silicon Valley, and they do tend to be financially rewarded. Then there is the fact, still true, that many women choose traditional female careers (teaching, nursing, library work) where pay lags unless there is a union to increase it.

Stop me before I go on even longer! I keep coming back to edit typos and explain more and more.

It is my personal belief that a person who did not go beyond high school
but continues to read all his life long is apt to be a far better
educated person than someone who gets a degree but never opens another
book for the rest of his life.

Rose- That was my grandmother! She worked as a secretary at the University of Illinois, but she read constantly. She knew a lot more than many of the professors and often pointed out their mistakes, so they could correct them before they sent our letters, papers, etc.

She knew languages, their roots too, like Latin and Greek, history, philosophy, etc. She even read some Science Fiction. She'd read almost anything...and was the one, who told me to read Watership Down. Many people at the University laughed at her for reading her 'bunny book' but she kept saying how great it was....and many finally read it and agreed : )

Back to books (and thanks, Vee, for the new thread), I finished Rock-A-Bye Bones, the latest light mystery by Carolyn Haines, and have just started The Last Mile by David Baldacci. My daughter loaned it to me. She really likes the author, and I have read a few of his books through her. This one is the second about a man who, after a bad head injury, cannot forget anything. He has now been hired by the FBI to work on cold cases.

Just finished this morning reading A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian and went to the book club discussion this afternoon. There was a lot of substance worthy of discussion, but ultimately the book gave me none of that satisfaction I want from books. Also, it is supposed to be rollickingly funny, but instead I found it quite depressing. Two estranged sisters in an immigrant family work to save their aging father from the wiles of a sexy con artist, and along the way confront the roots of their estrangement in the family's troubled past.

Rosefolly, I read "...Tractors in Ukranian" a few years ago and after reading your assessment of it, I checked my book journal to see what I had written. It turned out I had written nothing at all, so apparently the book did not make a very strong impression on me either. I do remember feeling kind of disappointed.

I read A Short History of Tractors in Ukranian some years ago and did find parts of it very funny; perhaps you need to be English to 'get' the humour. The strange title refers to the book the slightly deranged father is trying to write about the history of tractors in the 'Ukranian' language.

Her next book Two Caravans about a group of Eastern European fruit-pickers in England, gang masters, corruption etc I found far less amusing.

I have just read Up With the Lark by Joan Bomford. She was recently given an 'award' from a BBC TV programme (Country File) for local charity work and still helping regularly on the family farm in Worcestershire although well into her 80's. She started driving a tractor at age 10, had little interest in education and left school at 13 . . . she only went one day during that year, just to collect her books! Her 'story' is adequately written and gradually grows on you. Though not a poor family farming was/is hard work and those involved are beholden to what the weather and market conditions throw at them.

Farming can be dangerous work, flooding caused the loss of many cattle, her brother was gored and killed by a bull, her M-in-L (who makes my late MiL look like a saint) said her first child should have been drowned at birth . . . for being a girl . . . but the family soldiered on.

Joan Bomford

I have been missing in action for a while but have lurked now and then. Mostly because not being able to find anything new to read, I have been re-reading some old favorites.

After looking over my reading list for May, I found a few books that weren't re-reads. Storm Breaking by Mercedes Lackey, is the third one in her Mage Winds trilogy. The Distance From Me to You by Marina Gessner. It must not have caught my attention very well because I don't even remember what it was about. Another new read was Too Far to Walk by Forrest Fenn. He's the man who buried a fortune in jewels in the Rocky Mountains and has given clues to where to find it in an attempt to get more people to go out and enjoy the outdoors. Thus book is a collection of essays he has written over the course of many years