Our library is totally open and has been for months, storytime for the kids and meeting are going on. No limits on how long you stay. Masks were never required but strongly suggested. They do have a machine they put the returned books in that sanitizes the book in 30 seconds.

Lonestar - That is all very interesting about your library. Would I be correct in guessing you are located in Texas?

Rose, I'm sorry to hear about your tree but glad there wasn't more damage. I, too, have a huge oak tree in my front yard that sheds small limbs and twigs all over every time the wind blows hard. It's a nuisance to pick them up, but I would really hate to lose the tree. It is one of the originals that was already here when the subdivision was developed in the late 60s and early 70s. DH said he and my brother could not reach around it holding hands. We did lose a mature maple in the back yard, but like your husband, Donna, he was glad to have the extra sunshine for his beloved flowers. I'm not the natural gardener that he was, but I'm trying to keep his flower garden going. My aim is to get enough perennials planted closely enough together to crowd out lots of the grass and weeds. Early some springs I think the grass is prettier in than out of it.

I started reading Dissolution by C. J. Sansom yesterday. It's a mystery series set as Henry VIII is beginning to destroy the monasteries and starts off well.

No South Dakota where nothing was closed and masks weren't mandated at most places.

I've had a pretty good string of luck. The Paris Library - Jane Skeslien Charles. This was marvelous. A story divided between the 1940's Paris and 1980's Montana. The writing was good, characters were deft and every time you turned around - the Dewey Decimal System! It mentioned many books to research. Many lovely turns of phrase. My favorite quote in it about weeping over a book, "...because I'll never again experience the discovery of it..." I've been trying for years to construct a cohesive sentence to express that very thought, and there it is. Simple as can be. After finishing this Library copy I promptly bought my own.

The Summer of '42 - Herman Raucher. A very nice coming-of-age story which I guess I never read before. I must have seen the movie which actually came before the book.

The President's Hat - Antoine Laurain. Delightful, charming and just plain fun.

Tried (and failed) with One by One - Ruth Ware. After two pages I threw it back in the Library bag.

Donna, over here we dare not even cut a twig off an oak tree. They have become a protected species and even if one is growing on your own property special permission has to be obtained to even lop off a limb. This goes back to the days when oaks were heavily cut for timber by the Royal Navy and little thought was given to replanting. It is only in the last ??? years that the importance of all trees in the natural scheme of things has been appreciated and at last re-foresting is taking place. In a small very crowded country such as the United Kingdom we have to make the most of all every 'spare' acre of land and try and keep ahead of 'urban sprawl' . . . although I expect the same in happening in the US and elsewhere.

Here's an e-mail I received after sending a message to Deanna Raybourn on her website :

Dear Yvonne,

Thanks so much for your interest in Deanna's work! Unfortunately, Deanna is on deadline right now and unable to answer every email personally, but we're happy to help. Her former publisher has declined to make the Lady Julia digital novellas available in a print format at this time.

You can keep up with Deanna’s latest news by signing up for her monthly newsletter on her website!

Mailing list sign-up: https://www.deannaraybourn.com/

Best wishes,

The Team of Deanna Raybourn

NEWS!!!.......the sequel to The Golem And The Jinni has been released ! Cannot wait to read it.

I'm reading Cradle to Grave, another in the Margery Fleming series by Aline Templeton. "Big Marge" is a detective in Kirkcudbright in Dumfries and Galloway, Scotland.

Summer on the River by Marcia Willett is one of her many light but enjoyable stories always set in the English West Country and filled with comfortably well-off families living in beautiful houses. Her settings range from Cornwall, Devon and Somerset and all her male characters in rather an un-English way, have incredible empathy with their wives/girlfriends . . .and even their men-friends.

She writes delightful passages on the countryside, the flowers, the rustic cottages etc but needs severe self-control over the amount of tea and coffee her characters drink. In every chapter, in fact on almost each page someone is making tea/coffee or they are in a café downing the stuff. But I suppose it could be booze, which is only taken in moderation.

I have just enjoyed listening to Young Prince Philip by Philip Eade on BBC radio's 'Book of the Week' broadcast as it would have been PP's 100 birthday this week. Even for people with no interest in European royals I found it most informative. You may have known that his family had to escape from Greece during one of many coups with the baby sleeping in a fruit crate and settling near Paris. I hadn't known P attended a 'progressive' American school there. The break up of his family and the breakdown of his Mother's health followed. Sent to school in England and going from pillar to post during holidays. Then a tough German school in the early days of the Nazi's 'til it was relocated to Scotland (Gordonstoun) followed by naval training, WWII, and despite living on only his navy pay and technically 'stateless' marriage to Princess Elizabeth.

Vee, that's an author I am unfamiliar with, but your vivid description sounds so much like what I remember of the novels of Rosamund Pilcher--wealthy families in gorgeous country houses, Cornwall, Devon, etc. and rustic cottages. Too perfect, by far.

Recently I read The Last Coyote, a Harry Bosch story by Michael Connolly. I think it will be a while before I go back to Bosch - this one was reaaly grim. After that I read The Scorpion’s Tail by Preston & Child. FBI agent Corrie Swanson and archaeologist Nora Kelly are trying to solve the mystery of a body found in a ghost town near the White Sands military facility. it’s a very busy plot involving murder and treasure hunting,

Yesterday I started Serpentine by Jonathan Kellerman.

Donna

Atonement, by Ian McEwan

On the hottest day of the summer of 1935, thirteen-year-old Briony Tallis sees her sister Cecilia strip off her clothes and plunge into the fountain in the garden of their country house.

Watching her too is Robbie Turner who, like Cecilia, has recently come down from Cambridge. By the end of that day, the lives of all three will have been changed for ever, as Briony commits a crime for which she will spend the rest of her life trying to atone.

I read "Atonement" and liked it a lot. There is also a movie version that is well done. I also recommend "Enduring Love" by Ian McEwan.

The Huntress by Kate Quinn....grabbed me right from the first chapter.

I've started Clouds of Witness by Dorothy L. Sayers, another old series I want to read my way through, although I've read several of the books in the past.

I finished The Vanishing Half by Brit Bennett, and it was very good. The story revolves around African-American twin sisters who are so light skinned they can pass for white. One twin does just that, while the other twin keeps her racial identity. Spanning the 1950s to the 1980s, it tells the sisters' stories, as well as the story of what happens when their daughters eventually cross paths. I'm looking forward to the book group discussion.

Yoyobon, The Huntress is definitely on my TBR list, I'm glad to hear it grabbed you right away.

A book I didn't enjoy so have returned to the library The Mitford Murder by Jessica Fellows (wife of the Downton Abbey writer)

She uses many of the 'real' Mitford family plus some very unlikely servants as her cast and has borrowed many of the expressions/information that both Nancy and her sisters used in their books and goes at length to describe the way-of-life led by the wayward young aristocrats and their chinless-wonder boyfriends of the early 1920's. So there was a mix of a tough-woman led gang of notorious thieves, some working in disguise as servants in grand houses and brainless debutantes who's jewels would be pinched. Hang onto your pearls girls.

Think Nancy Drew solves the Finishing School heist.

I'm currently readng Shadow and Bone by Leigh Bardugo. I decided to read it after watching the series on Netflix. The series has much more depth and complexity (in addition to incredible costumes). The author has other books in this universe, and I have never read any of them, so I suspect that the screenwriters pulled some of the other characters and background from her other books. In any case, the book is okay, but the series is rich and compelling. I ended up bingeing it over two days. I'm sewing a new dress and love to watch/listen to movies or series while sewing.

I'm reading Devil's Food, a Corinna Chapman book by Kerry Greenwood. Corinna is a large lady and proud of it. She runs a bakery in Australia, and in this book she is trying to reconcile her parents who abandoned her to her grandmother when she was five. I like this series much more than the Phyrne Fisher books.

Carolyn, I liked this series too and envied her the home in that lovely complex but I always felt hungry when reading about the baking!

I finally have a loan of the annotated Mansfield Park written by David M. Shapard. It has the annotations on the right pages opposite the story on the left and is easier to follow than notes at the back.

Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea by Barbara Demick

The title comes from a slogan on posters plastered on every thoroughfare and public building in North Korea during the era of the 'Great Marshal' Kim Il-sung: We Have Nothing to Envy in the World. The phrase also was used in a popular North Korean song -- a hymn really that was sung by schoolchildren during the opening assembly of their school days.

In the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, and even into the 1980s, most North Koreans were willing to believe this as a good sort of propaganda. After all, the regime of Kim Il-sung provided for ordinary people by distributing food, clothing, shelter, utilities, healthcare, education, etc. The people only had to obey their leaders and uphold their end of the bargain by carrying out their educational training and workplace assignments that their government chose for them. It seemed like a good trade-off, at the time. Then 1990 came and the electricity sputtered and eventually went off completely. The government distributions dwindled to nothing. The 'starving time' came next. Ordinary North Koreans had to do something to survive.

Demick had to rely on interviews of North Korean defectors to South Korea and sometimes farther afield, as she was not given access to ordinary people in NK -- and even if she had been it is not likely that they could have responded candidly to her queries. The result is quite remarkable, I think. Demick's narrative fairly crackles . . . it's appalling but it is also humanizing. I am very glad I read Nothing to Envy.

I'm going through a period of reading a book and losing interest halfway through. I think it is the reader that is at fault, not the books. Most recently I got about halfway through The Rose Code. I didn't love it, but it was an engaging read. Then suddenly at the exact midpoint I completely lost interest. I'm planning to read the last couple of chapters just to satisfy my curiosity, then return it to the library so that more motivated readers can have their chance at it.

I found to my delight that I have no recollection of reading "A Shilling for Candles" by Josephine Tey. I had requested some of the Alan Grant series of books I do not own from the library and I thought I was doing a reread!

Sometimes I am more inclined to go to a favourite author from my shelves rather than start a new book.

As I have been miserable with an abscessed tooth which had to be removed eventually, I was in need of distracting comfort reading. The mystery was interesting and I read it very quickly, forgetting my woes for a while.

rosefolly I go through periods such as you describe. By the way, I returned "The Rose Code" to the library, unread. Now I am waiting for the library to obtain "A Gentleman from Moscow." Meanwhile, I have been re-reading a few of my own "old favorites."

I just read Spiteful Bones, the latest Crispin Guest medieval mystery byJeri Westerson and not as good as they usually are. She said in an end note that there will only be one more in the series, so I suppose she is running out of ideas.

I read The Mystery of Mrs. Christie by Marie Benedict, and found it very enjoyable. Agatha Christie disappeared for 21 days in 1926 and the book is the fictionalized story leading up to her disappearance and the extensive manhunt for her.

There were times when Agatha was doing everything she could to please her jerk-face husband when I wanted to slap her. :) If he was truly anything like he's portrayed in the book, she should have kicked him out early on. But I realize sentiment regarding marriage and women's roles was very different in the 1920s than it is now.

Donna

No Longer at Ease by Chinua Achebe

A bright young Nigerian civil servant's promising future is threatened by his acceptance of bribes, with no alternative. Great book and very interesting story told from the eyes of a Nigerian tribe at the time of English colonization.

After reading the annotated Mansfield Park I started on Josephine Tey's The Man in the Queue. This was published in 1929 and I am wondering if it should have had similar explanations of some of the text!

Would a young reader be puzzled by the police catching taxis to interview suspects? Would they wonder about a phone number having to be connected by the exchange?

I expect to find other confusing examples as I read more of the mystery!

Yesterday, I finished reading Defending Jacob by William Landay. This novel has been on my radar for several years and I finally decided it was time to move it to the front of the line. It turned out to be fascinating reading. I would say it "packs a wallop." It had me all tensed up each time I sat down to read it. Quite a story. It is narrated by a prosecuting attorney whose son is accused of murdering a bullying classmate. The boys were only in the eight grade. The father believed with all his heart that his son was falsely accused. But the reader, as an uninvolved onlooker, is not led to believe in Jacob's innocence as strongly as his father. It tears at you.

I have just finished A Demon Summer, a Max Tudor story by G M. Malliet. I have really enjoyed these books, but this one was long and the plot was quite drawn out. I was tired of it before it ended, which is unusual for me. I have another from the series waiting to be read. I had to get these two directly from the library since they were not available in ebook form, I find I've gotten quite spoiled during this last year with downloading from my easy chair,

I recently finished The Little Women Letters by Gabrielle Donnelly. I picked this book up at random from my neighborhood Little Free Library and it was a nice, undemanding read. The story follows three sisters who are descendants of Jo March. The middle sister, Lulu, is adrift and trying to figure out what to do with her life when she discovers a packet of letters written by great-grandma-Jo in her parent's attic. Much of what happens in the book ties back to plot points in Little Women. I've seen lots of books that riff on Jane Austen's stories, this was the first one I've encountered that plays off Louisa May Alcott's writing.

I also finished Malibu Rising, by Taylor Jenkins Reid. The story is about the four children of a world-famous rock star. It's 1983 in Malibu, CA, and the eldest sister getting ready to host their annual summer party. Their backstory is told in flashbacks as preparations get under way, and as the party gets closer to starting, they must all face their various demons and "choose what they will keep from the people who made them . . . and what they will leave behind." Definitely a great beach read. I enjoyed it.

Fugitive Telemetry by Martha Wells finally came from the library yesterday, and I'm about a quarter of the way in. It's great to be back in Murderbot land.

After finishing The Huntress by Kate Quinn I will pick up Rococo by Adriana Trigiani to enjoy something humorous and light !

Redhead by the Side of the Road. Anne Tyler is such an accomplished writer and even in this book where nothing very particular happens, she manages to get in to the character of Micah, the 40 something computer tech repair man and his very narrow, organised life. His boisterous family laugh at his dusting on a Wednesday, laundry on a Friday etc and his inability to show empathy for those around him. You get the impression that Tyler is familiar with autism (if that is what Micah has). The only thing I took slight issue with is that Micah has had several girl friends. I do wonder if people on this 'spectrum' have difficulty forming any relationships however short lasting.

Vee - That's an interesting take on Redhead by the Side of the Road. I had not thought about the possibility of Micah being on the autism spectrum, but that fits pretty well, I think. I believe I saw him simply as one of those "failure to launch" individuals. But perhaps that suggests autism also. Anyway, thanks for suggesting an alternate view of the situation.

Sounds like Asperger's to me. My grandson is on the low end of that spectrum and has had a few problems with relationships.

Thanks Carolyn, I am never sure of the difference between Asperger's and autism.

How does this differ from a child who simply is an introvert by nature and not an overly social creature ?? Or must we label everyone.

They are different, yoyobon. With Asperger's, one doesn't have empathy, making social relations very difficult. For instance, a child will make an overture to another who doesn't recognize it's meant as a friendly gesture and will ignore it. The first kid goes on off and pays with someone else, while the second child is simply longing to be a part of the group. It can be heartbreaking to deal with.

I meant to say that I have just read Code Name Verity, a young adult WWII novel by Elizabeth Wein. It was a really good story, purported to be written by a captured Scottish girl in occupied France writing out what she knows for her Nazi torturer.

I never finished The Rose Code after all. I was reading it with some interest until halfway through, then suddenly lost all interest whatsoever. I waited a couple of days and tried again, but no, no interest. (I did read the last chaper just to tidy it up in my mind, as after all I had a 50% investment.) Back to the library it went.

Since then I have read finished the latest Murderbot book, Fugitive Telemetry. I enjoyed it as thoroughly as I did the five that came before it. Someone suggested to me that I read one of the author's fantasy novels, so I tried one. No, didn't work for me. It seems that I like this author's straight SF better than her fantasy.

I also read my book club's latest selection, Best Seller by Susan May. I do not recommend it. Both main characters were without redeeming qualities; the prose was trite; and the ending so contrived that it left me outraged.

Other than reading, I have busied myself with sewing and working in the garden. I tend to feel very lazy if I am not accomplishing things in all my activities.

We have had a sudden local Lockdown as someone from another State visited the area with positive Delta Covid and passed it on to a few people. Our medical advisors recommended a short circuit breaker lockdown for five days.

I had read my Tey library books and couldn't get anything else as the library was closed. I am not comfortable breathing while wearing a mask so a visit to a supermarket book department was out. Why do TBRs never seem to cover the mood of the moment? ) -:

I am combing my shelves for something I haven't read for a while...

Ann, I heard about your lockdown on the news. I hope its successful in containing the outbreak.

Rosefolly, what do you sew? I am a quilter when I’m not working.

I just finished re-reading Escape Clause by John Sandford. I didn’t remember most of the details so I enjoyed it again.

Donna

Rosefolly is a wonderful seamstress. I met her and her sisters once when they attended a local Jane Austen festival, and she had made costumes for all of them.

I am reading another Max Tudor book, Devil's Breath. I like the ones better that are about his meeting and courtship of his wife. (The wedding was sort of tacked onto the ending of Demon Summer.)

Thank you, Carolyn for the lovely compliment. Actually I just made two of our costumes, mine and Rouan's. My other three sisters made their own. I do enjoy sewing historic costumes, though I haven't done it lately. More often I sew some of my regular clothes. Jeans and Tshirts I simply buy, but I prefer to sew some of my dresses and skirts for a better fit and also to use nicer fabric.

I do make quilts from time to time. If you are like many of the quiltmakers I know, Donna, you make a lot more of them than I do!

Rosefolly, I used to sew all my clothes (and some for my husband), but for some reason lost interest in it. But quilting keeps me occupied! I’ve been hinting that I want a mid arm quilting machine but I’m not sure I really have room for it.

I’m on another re-read - Confederates in the Attic.

Donna

I used to make some of my clothes but have given it up except for alterations and mending. For one thing, all our nice fabric stores have closed. All we have is a JoAnn Shop and the fabric available at Hobby Lobby. I did get a real bargain at HL in upholstery fabric to have a chair and ottoman recovered. I saw a piece I really liked at JoAnn that was $35 a yard, and I needed 11 yards. Found the very same thing at Hobby Lobby on sale with an extra markdown at check out and only paid $92 for it. It was one of the bargains of my lifetime. Of course, that didn't include what I had to pay the upholsterer!

Our weather today was absolutely perfect. I sat on the patio most all afternoon and finished the last G.M. Malliet book my library has.

Carolyn, I mail order most of my apparel fabric. There are some wonderful online resources. Quilt fabric I buy locally if I can find what I want, as I want to support the local stores that still exist. I order online if I cannot find what I want.