Donna, that is an amazing list. Thank you! If we wander over to Roman mythology, we might add Lavinia by the late Ursula K LeGuin. It is based on Virgil's Aeneid. I enjoyed it, too.

Right now I am reading Becoming, the autobiography of Michelle Obama. I expected to find it interesting, but it is better than that. In between I am reading The Rise and Fall of Dinosaurs by Steven Brusatte. I find myself fascinated. The description of the mass extinction at the end of the Permian Period chilled me - 60,000 years of continuous volcanic eruption and the extinction of around 90% of all species. But then I can be an overly vivid reader. It is why I dislike reading true crime. I have trouble sleeping at night when I do, as occasionally I do for my book club.

Msmeow, your mention of Five Days Gone (or On Chapel Sands, the UK title) caught my eye because I read it a few weeks ago. I am not sure how I first heard about it. Perhaps Vee had previously posted about listening to the audio reading on the BBC..

I think it's a poignant story and well told, but I wasn't surprised by any part of it. I guessed correctly what happened only a few pages in. One of the photographs, along with the author's identification of the little girl and the other person in the picture on the beach, told the tale. It's probably something that happened more often than people ever talked about in those days -- in the UK, the U.S. and elsewhere.

I know of a similar story that has circulated in my family since 1901 -- only the little two-year-old girl in that story never did find out who she actually was, and apparently neither did the family who fostered her.

What do you think of the author's presentation?

Frieda, I really wanted to enjoy Five Days Gone, but so far I’m struggling with it. I’m only through three chapters and so far I’m finding it dense and rambling. I wish she’d just get on with the story. I’ll report back later. :)

I’m also reading The Address by Fiona Davis, but haven’t gotten far enough to be really engaged by it yet.

Donna

This is so OT!

I startled a couple of bobtail goannas when I went out of the house this morning. The weather has suddenly got hotter and they have come out from where they have been sheltering in the gardens.

I remembered Vee and her "Fluffy creatures" with a smile.

Vee if you want to see my local sweet creatures, Google "Quokka Selfie" for pix of the happiest animals on the planet!

Ann.......they are so adorable ! Are those real animals in the selfies ?? How big are they ? Are they completely friendly ?

Annpan. are they marsupials? I had certainly never heard of them before!

Ann, they are so cute! Thanks for sharing.

Donna

Yoyo, they are indeed real animals in the selfies. They are about the size of a domestic cat and very friendly. They are used to tourists on Rottnest Island and enjoy the selfies. It is a must-do for visiting celebs to take one!

Vee, they are marsupials.

I haven't been to Rottnest for many years and that was before selfies were thought of! The early Dutch explorers thought they were a kind of rat, hence the name of the island.

They look like a result of breeding a kangaroo and a rat !

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-g92H3TCPas

They are adorable!

I have read some good things lately.

I have continued with Mick Herron's Slough House books, and am on the final one, Joe Country. These are contemporary spy thrillers with large doses of British humour.

I enjoyed The Last Train to London by Meg Clayton very much. It tells the story of the Kindertransports that took about 10 000 children, mostly Jewish, to England between Kristallnacht and the outbreak of WWII. The main protagonist is a real person, and the main children in the story are a bit different from your usual teens and very likeable. I like a historical novel which is based in fact, and this is a good one.

I then read The Dutch House by Ann Patchett. Another book with a historical setting, although a bit more modern. The family are quite unusual, with a mother who left and a father who died, leaving the siblings to fend for themselves. The woman is a very strong character, and I was amazed at the number of people in this book who did what was expected of them, even when it wasn't their own choice. The house itself is almost a character in the story.

Those last two books sound really interesting, Kath! I'm still working on Five Days Gone. I find her writing style to be dense, as in she uses fifty words to say something when ten would be sufficient. I'm almost halfway through, so I will keep with it to the end.

I'm also reading The Address by Fiona Davis, set in The Dakota apartment building in NYC. I'm enjoying it a lot.

Donna

I'm reading "Maphead" by Ken Jennings. Basically, this is a history of cartography through the ages. It's filled with interesting details and factoids. the author's style reminds me somewhat of Bill Bryson. I only wish there were not so many footnotes at the bottom of every single page!

Woodnymph - I happen to be reading Maphead at the moment also. Odd, huh? It was recommended to me by a "maphead" friend. My feelings about it are exactly the same as yours.

Ladies, is that "the" Ken Jennings of Jeopardy fame? Just curious. :)

Yes - that Ken Jennings.

Ah, Kath, so you are the one who got me into this. I'm reading Mick Herron's first book, Slow Horses. I had to look up the British pronunciation of Slough for it to make sense, as I had been told in the past that it rhymed with cow. Now I find that there are two pronunciations for British use and two different ones for U.S. (For anyone else who is interested, in this case it seems to be sloo.) The book has nothing to do with horses, either.

At any rate, for the first ~50 pages or so, I wondered where in the world I had found such a book and was ready to give up, but now it is becoming interesting. Do they get better as they go forward?

I have always pronounced Slough to rhyme with cow. I knew the place as my Aunt (pronounced Arnt!) lived there...

Yoyo, we also have a kangaroo rat!

Look up Bettongs on the Bush Heritage Australia site.

Carolyn, they are quite weird and may not appeal to everyone. I like them, but I wouldn't be upset if someone said they didn't. And I pronounce Slough exactly like slow.

John Betjeman's poem "Slough" has the town rhyming with now and cow!

The 'in'-famous Betjeman poem. Written at the start of WW11, a time when the countryside around London was being eaten-up by ribbon development and the main roads out of the city were surrounded by factories and soulless housing.

Come, friendly bombs, and fall on Slough

It isn't fit for humans now,

There isn't grass to graze a cow

Swarm over, Death!


Come, bombs, and blow to smithereens

Those air-conditioned, bright canteens,

Tinned fruit, tinned meat, tinned milk, tinned beans

Tinned minds, tinned breath.


Mess up the mess they call a town -

A house for ninety-seven down

And once a week for half-a-crown

For twenty years,


And get that man with double chin

Who'll always cheat and always win,

Who washes his repulsive skin

In women's tears,


And smash his desk of polished oak

And smash his hands so used to stroke

And stop his boring dirty joke

And make him yell.


But spare the bald young clerks who add

The profits of the stinking cad;

It's not their fault that they are mad,

They've tasted Hell.


It's not their fault they do not know

The birdsong from the radio,

It's not their fault they often go

To Maidenhead


And talk of sports and makes of cars

In various bogus Tudor bars

And daren't look up and see the stars

But belch instead.


In labour-saving homes, with care

Their wives frizz out peroxide hair

And dry it in synthetic air

And paint their nails.


Come, friendly bombs, and fall on Slough

To get it ready for the plough.

The cabbages are coming now;

The earth exhales.

Vee, I like that. It speaks for all the constant overdevelopment around the world.

I recently watched a PBS special " The Day The Dinosaurs Died" , which was so interesting....but the fact that gobsmacked me was : dinosaurs lived and thrived for 188 million years before the asteroid hit and wiped out all life on earth. It was another 66 million years after that before "modern man" appeared ( 200,000 years ago). Consider those spans of time for a moment.

They boggle my mind.

So true and SO impossible to get our brains round yoyo. I remember reading somewhere that if you look at an ordinary 12 inch ruler, the beginning of it is when our very earliest ancestors appeared on the Earth and the last half inch represents 'modern man' ie homo-sapiens . . . and as archaeologists keep pushing back their findings so the distance on the ruler become even more stretched out.

I remembered that poem because my mother used to mutter about the "friendly bombs" falling on Slough where my aunt lived. She couldn't stand her!

I gathered that Aunt had been disdainful and patronised her when they first met.

I have a requested library book waiting for me but the weather has turned nasty and I am not going out in it!

There was a TV repeat of "The Hollow" last night. It is one of the "close to the book" Christies so I am rereading my battered copy. I liked the staging apart from someone deciding that the Hollywood actress should wear a hat with a full face veil in her garden and she couldn't smoke the cigarette in the long holder with the veil flapping around in the light breeze.

It was distracting me dreadfully, watching her wave it and wondering if the veil was going to catch fire! Yes, I know it probably wasn't lit...but still...

Interesting discussion of the pronunciation of "slough". I always thought it rhymed with "rough."

I made very good progress on Five Days Gone last night. I was reading while keeping track of the World Series game on my phone. I couldn't go to sleep till the game was done! Those Nats are giving all us fans gray hair. :)

Donna

Donna, I got my gray hair from the NYY !

I suspect unless the Astros get their pitchers under control throwing their best stuff they might just lose it all .

Bon

What a splendid poem that Vee posted!

The discussion of pronunciation reminds me of our own low country "pluff mud." It is unique to this part of SC and has an odd odor. I never heard of it until I moved here 10 years ago. Lately, I note some are spelling it "plough" mud.

Kathyt, do you plan to finish "Maphead"? I am not sure that I will. There are just too many footnotes on each page for my taste and I am feeling a bit bogged down by all the endless detail.

Woodnymph - I was enjoying Maphead at first, but I'm now kind of pushing myself to keep reading. So I do know what you mean. I have not given up on it yet, but it could easily happen.

Vee, following up your comment about the time scale, using a ruler: a geology professor came into class one day, drew 2 long horizontal lines across the blackboard, then drew a series of vertical parallel lines to create a long line of upright rectangles on the board - he told us to imagine each rectangle as a typical bible filled with print, with all of them together chronicling the history of the earth - and that modern civilization shows up only in the last line on the last page of the last book. :)

Another favorite scale analogy is the Eames Powers of Ten Film. I think I was most impressed by the sub-meter scale, when you get down to atomic scale(10**-10 meters), then go for a long emptiness before you finally get to the scale of the nucleus (10**-15 meters). (I think I remembered the numbers right!) We really are made of space. :)

Back to books, I am still reading Whitehead's John Henry Days. With so little plot, it's hard to pick it up again once you put it down. I'm trading off with a collection of Kage Baker's short stories.

Thanks Donnamira. I don't know about everyone else but it is all rather overwhelming. Even when I look out at the stars in the night sky I feel most . . . insignificant . . . .

Nonsense Vee. You're anything but.

Woohoo! The Nats won the World Series! I was so happy for them I cried a little bit last night. :) But after a second night of being up till midnight, I'm ready for an early evening tonight.

I finally finished Five Days Gone. It was 297 pages and I think she could easily have told the story in great detail in about 200 pages. There was a lot of repetition and side trips about paintings and artists, I suppose because the author is an art critic.

Now I can concentrate on The Address.

Donna

Donna, I'm glad they won. It was the perfect underdog story without much of the back drama of the "stros" :0)

I decided to renew "Maphead." It is still a struggle, albeit interesting. Memo to anyone here who is writing a book: please put all your footnotes at the very end. Please do not scatter them throughout on each and every page. I prefer a book to "flow."

I'm still with it too, Woodnymph, but I'm only on page 93. The World Series has seriously cut into my reading time.

Woodnymph and Kathy,

Unless you are reading it for a book club--which I doubt-- with an approaching deadline, Maphead is the sort of book that you can read a chapter, put it down, a few days later (or longer intervals) read another chapter, and so on. After all, there is no plot to follow. I have Maphead somewhere in the house, and I plan (eventually) to read it like that, to avoid being overwhelmed by all the information.

Reader - I agree with you. It is clearly a book that doesn't not require front-to-back reading. But I'm reading a library copy, so that's not really feasible. I'm not wanting to buy a copy.

I finished Slow Horses and ended up liking it quite a lot. I will continue the series but not back-to-back. The slow horses weren't so slow after all, and the trouble maker at headquarters got what was coming.

I have just started The Pawful Truth by Miranda James. When I started the series about Charlie and his Maine Coon cat, I googled for the noise the cats make. They are certainly loud!

I had to work out what auditing a class as opposed to getting credits meant! I am not familiar with US educational terms.

Reader-in-Transit - regarding Maphead - I suppose you already know this, but Seattle is mentioned rather frequently in the book, since Ken Jennings lives there.

Kathy,

Thanks for refreshing my memory. I remembered vaguely that there was a local connection (I bought the book in a library book sale, about 5-6 years ago), but over time I forgot about it. Now you've piqued my curiosity, maybe I should go looking for the book and start reading slowly. No, I can't.... I have several non reading projects going on, and at least 2 books from the library right now. So many books, so little time...

I have almost made it through "Maphead." Whew! Only one more chapter to go. It does get better. I agree, it is best read in small doses. I learned a lot about GoogleEarth and who Mercator was.

Ann, many universities here in the US offer the opportunity, especially for "senior citizens," to audit various classes. It's a wonderful opportunity for "lifelong learning."

Well, I have temporarily laid aside Maphead so that I can read Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell, because I saw a notice that there will be a discussion of Outliers at my local library in the coming week. I vow to return to Maphead though.

Annpan, 'auditing' a class is a term I am unfamiliar with. I presume it just means attending a class. Sophomores and freshmen and similar are also words not used over here.

Auditing is attending a university class as a student without paying tuition or receiving credit. In New York State anyone over 65 can audit a class at a state university with the approval of the professor.

You also are not required to take the exams when auditing a class. I had thought that when I retired I would go back and take all the literature and humanities courses I had not taken when getting my degree in English lit. (In Kentucky you must be 65 before you can audit a course.) I have not taken a single course and won't at this point, but it was a wonderful idea!

Three years ago I audited an Italian language class at Binghamton University and was expected to participate in class as well as take the weekly tests. Of course I was eager to do all that because it was logical for a language class. I loved the class, loved going back to college four mornings a week and really enjoyed learning the language.

I have been auditing college and university classes in both VA and SC for the past 20 or so years. In both states, there is a fee to be paid, even for senior citizens. We can opt to take tests and exams, or not. Among the interesting classes I have audited: History of Ireland, History of Western Art, Ancient Egypt, History of Witch Persecution in Germany, Life of Martin Luther and the Reformation, English Renaissance Literature, History of the American West (with an emphasis on Native American tribes), and Voyages of Columbus. Often, we have been assigned original manuscripts to, as in Columbus' journals. Here in Charleston, I'm fortunate to live only a few blocks from the College.

wood....you are fortunate ! The campus of BU is set up so that the parking lots are on the far edges and it's always an uphill hike to the buildings. Not an easy place to audit :0) However, the university offers Lyceum presentations located off campus which can be very interesting, often presented by professors, and easier to get to. However there is a cost for those.