Interesting thread - Martin - we are about to start on Grace Notes when we have finished reading The Dubliners - just now getting in touch with 'The Dead '. James Joyce, a gifted musician himself introduces so many musical allusions in the series of stories particularly 'The Dead' I have very little musical knowledge - apart from muusical appreciation - and I would love to understand fully David Mosley's essay ' Music and Allusion in 'The Dead' - maybe a musician amongst us would care to comment. '..although she sang very rapidly she did not miss even the smallest grace notes (from The Dead) "If he had not become a writer, there is a very good chance that James Joyce would still have made a name for himself by pursuing a career as a vocal performer. In 1904 he even shared the stage with the great opera singer and recital artist, John McCormack; and later on in life, after he had established himself as an author, he tirelessly promoted the singing career of his fellow Irishman and tenor, John Sullivan. The close relationship between James Joyce and music has long been recognized by his readers, critics, and biographers. Joyce, like his father, was both an excellent singer (with a sweet tenor voice) and an accomplished pianist with an encyclopedic mastery of music of every type and genre, rivaling his vast knowledge of world literature. As a writer, he nevertheless incorporated music into all his works in increasingly complex ways, especially in Chamber Music, Dubliners, A Portrait of the Artist, Ulysses, and Finnegans Wake." Jan

I read both fiction and non-fiction. usually have one or two of ech type going at the same time. Often a fiction book will get me to go into more depth of a subject-- ie i read a bio of jos. banks while reading patrick o'brian's sea-adventures that master and commander movie was based on. just one to many references to banks, made me dig up a bio to fit him into the books i was reading-- that lead to reading the botany of desire. right now i'm working on wincheseter's book about the 1906 san fransisco earthquake that i came a cross while looking thru the 'new non-fiction' section at our library. I read the horatio hornblower novels to compary to obrian's and edded up reading a book about tamenny (sp)hall in new york which caused me to read a bio of john adams, and because we were going to washington a read a history of 'clover' adams too. strange on how books will lead you on a thread of reading. I'm finishing peter tremayne's mystery series of sister fidelma in 7th cent ireland, no idea where that will take me, but it prompted me to pick-up books on celtic knotwork. so i read and read and read, obscure references lead me from place to place. diggerb

Usually I read five or six nonfiction books for every one fiction, but here lately I've gone through a spurt of novel reading. Fiction takes so much more effort for me that now I'm ready to kick back and pamper myself for a while with the following: The Riddle and the Knight: In Search of Sir John Mandeville, the World's Greatest Traveller by Giles Milton - Sir John is suspected of being one of the biggest travelogue-writing frauds of all time; but was he really? The author attempts to find out by going himself to the places Mandeville claimed to have journeyed through. I just read a bit about Milton going to visit the Patriarchate of the Greek Orthodox Church in Istanbul (Constantinople in Mandeville's time) but he found himself in a seedy part of town and needed directions. Passing an Orthodox Church he stepped inside its door to find a woman in the vestibule. He asked her and after she told him which way to go, Milton asked her if she was a Romioi (a direct descendant of the Roman founders of Constantinople): "No," she said. "I'm Italian. From Bologna." She didn't look Italian, and I asked when she had moved to Istanbul. She paused for a moment, then said: "I think we moved here four centuries ago." If Milton keeps up this sort of thing, I'm going to love this book! The Degaev Affair by Richard Pipes (History, Biography) I'm not well-informed about Russian history, so this bio of an obscure-to-me political terrorist who witnessed the assassination of Tsar Alexander II and then directly helped plot the assassination of the chief of Russia's security organization ordinarily would not have attracted me. But I read the back cover anyway, for some reason, and was instantly intrigued because this terrorist, Sergei Degaev, eventually wound up at -- of all places! -- the University of South Dakota as an avuncular mathematics professor known as Alexander Pell. "Jolly little Pell" and his pleasant wife were evidently great favorites of his students, the faculty, and the townspeople. This guy was a terrorist? Huck's Raft: A History of American Childhood by Steven Mintz The romanticized notions and nostalgia for the halycon days of childhood can be dispensed with quite quickly when we realize that the whole idea of childhood as we think of it only goes back to around the first part of the twentieth century. Even Samuel Clemens who did more than any other American writer of his day to capture the essence of nineteenth-century boyhood was under no illusions that childhood, for the most part, was about one-tenth bliss and nine-tenths pure hell. This overview of the history of American childhood from the 17th century to the beginning of the 21st century looks to be fascinating -- I sure hope so.

Some of my favorite characters have already been mentioned. I agree wholeheartedly with Rosefolly about Elnora Comstock from Girl of the Limberlost by Gene Stratton Porter. Aerin from The Hero and the Crown and Harry from The Blue Sword both by Robin McKinley are also favorite characters. My favorite Georgette Heyer characters are Leonie from These Old Shades and Sophy from The Grand Sophy. (Oh yes, the whole family from the Amelia Peabody series). For male characters, as a young girl, I wanted to be just like Tarzan, heck, I wanted to be Tarzan! Later, I just wanted to marry him and live in the jungle with him. (vbg) Other favorites include Jim Chee, Brother Cadfael, F'Nor and F'Lar from Anne McCaffrey's Dragonrider series. I also loved Aragorn, Legolas, Frodo and the other Hobbits from The Lord of the Rings by Tolkein. I'd better stop there, suffice it to say that I have several favorite characters from several favorite authors!