Ginny I heard The Maid read on the BBC radio Book at Bedtime slot. The trouble is I always fall asleep during the 'reading' so miss important parts of the plot.

I can relate to that, Vee. I used to watch Law & Order on TV before bedtime. I believe I've seen most of the Law portions, but very few of the Order portions. Now I listen to a podcast on my phone after I turn out the light. That way, I can repeat the portion I slept through the next night. Sometimes it takes 3 or 4 nights to get through a one-hour podcast.

Kathy, I could never get through an hour of anything late at night. The 'Book at Bedtime' is only on for a quarter of an hour Mon - Fri from 10.45 - 11pm. I usually drop off after about 5 mins and wake up to find I am listening to 'Today in Parliament' which really doesn't hold my attention!

I used to love reading in bed. I don't think I could get thru a single sentence now :)

I cannot get comfortable now to read in bed. I have had to cut down on reading anyway, still having a right eye problem. I have to sit upright in an armchair to hold the book at a suitable angle.

OT...Today I watched the Oscars, mainly for the jewels and gowns. I recorded some of the show to avoid the ads and speeches! Are any of you movie-goers? I wait for the DVD of anything I fancy to come out.

My daughter and I see a movie now and then, not so much since the pandemic. We did see Elvis and Eighty for Brady.

I finished The Corpse Bridge by Stephen Booth last night. It's a series I read infrequently, liking the books better after I finish one than while I'm reading. They are set in the Derbyshire Peak District, and the author is evidently in love with the area. There is lots and lots of description. He does tell a good story in between, though.

Thanks, Carolyn. I'm always looking for new mystery series and I especially like ones set in an interesting area of England or elsewhere with lots of description. I just requested the first Stephen Booth book based on your description here. Looking forward to it!

PS--I haven't been to the movies since just before the pandemic when I saw the latest Little Women. Not great.

The TV is not in the bedroom and I make sure to watch something peaceful for my last show of the evening. I enjoy the British Antiques Roadshow and am now watching Escape to the Country, new to me. I get them on BritBox or Acorn TV here in the US.

I started to listen to the first installment of Old God's Time by Sebastian Barry on the BBC's 'Book at Bedtime' slot. I managed to hear the intro.music and the first two sentences (retired cop - house overlooking the Irish Sea) then . . . z z z nothing.

I have never watched TV in a bedroom and as I use contact lenses I would either be seeing a blurred screen, or have to get up to remove them after the programme. I can see to read OK but have just got one of those 'new' body-shape mattresses which is fine when lying down but less good for sitting. And actually getting out of bed requires some effort as they have no spring in them so need to heave ones-self up and out. I feel rather like a seal on dry land lumbering towards the water.

Annpan, we seldom go to the 'movies'. The last film I saw was The Favourite with Olivia Coleman as Queen Anne (about 2019) No cinemas near us, we no longer have a car and there are almost no buses to anywhere in this area. I thank the Lord that I am still able to walk to most of the local shops. Luckily most national chains of supermarkets do a 'delivery service' via computer on-line ordering. Very useful during COVID and we carry on using them.

Vee, I still think of the cinema visit as "going to the pictures" or "going to see a film" but usually refer to them as movies in posts.

I need so little at each shop that it wouldn't be practical to order online. The Support Worker goes from shop to shop and the library for a modest (Council subsidised) fee to me.

I write a list in block capitals to avoid mistakes because of my cursive script not being understood and give the S/W a special low credit tap-and-go debit card for convenience.

I am annoyed as the doctor who holds a twice-weekly clinic here in the Village has given notice. It was so convenient and we are not expecting to find a replacement soon.

Medical staff are being poached from all over the world and even cheekily approached in TV ads from interstate! Our chap was from Wales with a lovely Valleys accent! Now I have to find another one I can feel comfortable with. I also had problems, now solved, with both my laptop and phone! Not a good week and it is only Tuesday!

I hope that the library has something I requested waiting for me soon.

I am reading the new Amos Decker, Long Shadows, by David Baldacci. I haven't read much yet, so will save my opinion till the end.

Has anyone heard from Winter lately?

Donna

I just finished John Green's The Anthropocene Reviewed, and enjoyed it. It was written during the height of the pandemic, which he references frequently, and is a collection of essays rating a variety of human experiences. The essays were also the perfect length for bedtime reading. I loved his YA book, The Fault in Our Stars, but knew nothing about him. He is apparently a bit on the spectrum, and his observations are quirky and unique.

The newest Veronica Speedwell book, A Sinister Revenge, just arrived, and I can't wait to get to it. However, the soon-to-be-overdue Dark Earth by Rebecca Stott has to be finished first.

Thank you for asking, Donna.

Winter...that's me...has decided to resign from this forum. However...I'm well and currently watching more snow being added to the current 9" that have fallen out of today's sky.

A couple of last comments. I read your current Baldacci selection, Donna, and it's good. One of his better mysteries involving the memory man. I think you'll enjoy it. It won't surprise me if Baldacci uses the current female accompanying Decker on this investigation as a character for a new series.

For AnnPan...I read all of the Shetland book series.. I think you should have stuck with them. 😊 I, too, found the first three volumes to be rather uninteresting but reading forward...it was worth my time and interest. to complete the series and Cleeves wound the series up with a rather surprising ending. The series was a relaxing and peaceful read which is just what I needed at the time. However, I wish I could say the same about her Vera series. Her mystery formula is rather good..as always...but every time she has Vera use the word "pet" in her conversations with characters...I cringe. Consequently...I doubt I'll proceed with that series.

It’s nice to hear from you, Winter!

Winter, why are you resigning? I enjoy reading your posts.

I watch the news from the US and of all the snow you are getting there.

It seems unfair! I am luxuriating in 80F warmth with all doors and windows open to catch a welcome breeze!

I'm sorry you are leaving us Winter. I have always enjoyed your wide range of book choices and comments. We are surely becoming a sad band of bibliophiles and need all the help we can get.

Winter - Ditto to what Vee said. I always enjoyed your comments. Sorry to hear you don't plan to continue.

I agree, too, Winter. l hope no one has offended you.

I finished Long Shadows by David Baldacci this morning. it was really good! I could hardly put it down. I like Amos Decker’s new partner and I’m looking forward to the next book.

Donna

I'm really enjoying Delphine Jones Takes A Chance by Beth Morrey. I also really liked her first novel, The Loves Of Missy Carmichael.

Read Smallbone Deceased by Michael Gilbert yesterday. It was written in 1950 and listed in the top 100 mysteries ever published and as Gilbert's best book.

Amazon keeps asking me in recommendations if I'm ready for a "cathartic tearjerker." I don't know why because I'm sure as heck NOT and seldom read that sort of book.. Are they the "going thing" right now in book groups or something?

I do read mysteries and crime, but I actually don't get very involved with them -- enough to cry about them, anyway. Other than those I don't know why I get so many lugubrious recommendations.

Frieda, that's an odd recommendation! The recommendations I get from Amazon seem to be based on recent reads from the Kindle app, and are usually lists of books rather than a type of book. I can't imagine you would choose something like that anyway!

I recently finished The Apollo Murders, by Chris Hadfield, a former astronaut. I read it based on a recommendation from a friend who is a NASA retiree who worked in both the space flight and science divisions, just as I did. And she was right - this book is authentic down to the last detail, which I began sometimes to skip past, in the interest of finding out what happens next. :) A very fun thriller.

I've now started Lessons in Chemistry, which finally became available at my library after about a two-months wait. I'm only a few pages in, but it's starting well.

Donnamarie.....I really liked that book ! Hope you enjoy it too.

I've now read another oldie, Murder in the Mill-Race, by E.C.R. Lorac, and it was really good, too. It was written in 1952, so I think the later "old" books may be better than the really old ones, although they are still a far cry from modern ones with their bad language and gory descriptions.

Mrs. Harris Goes To Paris .......a book, which is now a movie and currently on Amazon Prime I just loved it ! A real feel good movie.

Finished reading Spare by Prince Harry. Say what you want, but I feel sorry for the "poor little rich boy." As for his choice of a wife, let those among us who never had a regrettable marriage or romantic entanglement be the one to cast the first stone. I found the parts about his childhood and military service very interesting. The section about Meghan seemed like a long series of complaints about how she has been misunderstood and lied about. Not so interesting, but obviously very important to Harry. He's deeply in love.

I just finished rereading The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches by Sangu Mandanna and had the same reaction (which is why I reread it; to see if it affected me the same way again). It’s a fun story on the surface but we are told, almost right away, that witches are always orphans; their parents die either by accident or by illness shortly after the child is born. There was a spell placed on witches (accidentally, a couple of hundred years ago, in an attempt to protect them from the witch burnings of that time, and the spell went wrong, causing a curse instead). So a witch can have a ”normal” child and be okay, but if she has a daughter with magical abilities, both parents will die. I kept thinking about this, that it’s basically suicide for a witch to get pregnant, not only will she die, but so will the father. I wonder if the author thought of that when she wrote this.

I just finished Jacqueline Winspear's new book, The White Lady. Not a Maisie Dobbs story, although I'm not sure if this is the start of a new series, or will remain a one-off like her The Care and Management of Lies. This was a page-turner for me, although some may not like how she bounces around in 3 time periods. This is another book about the effects of war on the human psyche, with multi-layered villains that will twist your perspective a bit.

Time to go back to Lessons in Chemistry, which got put aside once I opened the cover of the Winspear book.

Rouan, I saw that you were re-reading Murderbot before starting Network Effect. You know that a sequel, System Collapse, is coming this fall? I have it pre-ordered (along with Cherryh's next Foreigner book....)

Here's a book which looks interesting :

The Keeper Of Stories by Sally Page

A charming, uplifting debut novel--full of humor and depth--that has taken readers around the world by surprise.

Everyone has a story to tell. But does Janice have the power to unlock her own?

She can't recall what started her collection. Maybe it was in a fragment of conversation overheard as she cleaned a sink? Before long (as she dusted a sitting room or defrosted a fridge) she noticed people were telling her their stories. Perhaps they had always done so, but now it is different, now the stories are reaching out to her and she gathers them to her ...

Cleaner Janice knows that it is in people's stories that you really get to know them. From recently widowed Fiona and her son Adam to opera-singing Geordie, the quiet bus driver Euan, and the pretentious Mrs. "YeahYeahYeah" and her fox terrier, Decius, Janice has a unique insight into the community around her.

When Janice starts cleaning for Mrs. B--a shrewd and prickly woman in her nineties--she finally meets someone who wants to hear her story. But Janice is clear: she is the keeper of stories, she doesn't have a story to tell. At least, not one she can share.

Mrs. B is no fool and knows there is more to Janice than meets the eye. What is she hiding? After all, doesn't everyone have a story to tell?

I'm nearly through Dark Earth by Rebecca Stott. Set in 500 AD England, it's a story of two orphaned Saxon sisters who have fled their home and taken risky shelter in the Roman ghost city -- long-abandoned Londonium. The author's website explained that the story was inspired by a real life Saxon brooch recovered from the "dark earth" layer of a modern London archaeological dig. As the city was abandoned for more than 300 years after the Romans departed, this archaeological layer of dirt and decay is visible in the strata, hence the title. The story imagines how such an item came to be where it was found. The book is well written, a bit dreamy somehow, and set in a fascinating time period when various kingdoms were being formed and battles waged in the power vacuum left by the Romans. I've enjoyed it.

I've had almost no time to read lately, so I hope to finish this soon and finally get to the new Veronica Speedwell book.

Donnamira, thank you for the info on the next Murderbot book. I have pre-ordered and I'm excited to see what comes next.

I finished Isaac and the Egg by Bobby Palmer, which is a kind of fable about a man who is very troubled and finds an egg-shaped creature in the woods and takes it home (trying not to give spoilers). I quite enjoyed it, but wouldn't call it a must read.

After reading the last of the Cazalet books I went on to Elizabeth Jane Howard's autobio' Slipstream which my reading-list shows that I had already read exactly ten years ago. I was surprised how much of her own story had gone into the Cazalets and wonder how her immediate family felt about the thinly veiled references . . . the very 'inappropriate' behaviour of her father when she was little more than a child, her Mother's dislike of her etc. Howard is very honest about her total lack of moral compass. Her first lover was the younger brother of her famous husband (Sir Peter Scott) and from then on she became the mistress of many, often famous literary men, with a couple more marriages in between. She admitted that sitting at home waiting for the phone to ring was not ideal for a happy life neither was helping the current lover to chose presents for his wife an easy task.

I just finished Smallbone Deceased by Michael Gilbert. It's a mystery set in a law office with lots of law and lawyers as part of the plot. It started out very well with the discovery of a body in a most unlikely place. But I'm afraid there was too much legal-speak for me to really enjoy the book. The culprit was a total surprise to me, good, but with what I felt was a weak motive. The book, part of the British Crime Classics series, was pretty good but not great, in my opinion. The author was a lawyer himself and another lawyer might really enjoy the legal sleight-of-hand employed by some characters.

Has anyone read Weyward ? I am about 1/4 into it and cannot decide if I like the story or am baffled by all the switching chapters between three women. I hope this tale is a whopper......otherwise, it's a whole lot of story-telling gone off the rails.

I have just read a good book, Murder on Black Swan Lane by Andrea Penrose. It is set in London during the Regency period. The author is new to me and there are more of the series, so I'm glad to have found her.

I retuned home after a 4.5 month South East Asia travel visiting 4 countries - Cambodia, Vietnam, Thailand, and Laos. I had the time of my life with the exploration and cultural experiences, however, the magnitude of cluelessness in terms of the region's history, politics, and economics was deeply bothering. The fact kept hitting me hard even a month after my travel, so, I did some basic research and started off with John Trully's A Short History of Cambodia. The book gives a brief essence of Ancient Cambodian History before, during, and after Angkor. I'm 20% through and the book was exactly what I was looking for.

Also, during my visit to the Angkor Wat Complex (the largest religious site in the World), I had learnt that the civilization was abandoned, lost, and then found by French explorers in shrouded dense forests. What we see of Angkor today is a near mythical site intertwined with nature, and this is not a one off case. The Chernobyl site which had a deadly nuclear spill out and became inhabitable to humans is now thriving with floral and faunal beauty. This remarkable healing capacity of nature in the absence of human interference fascinated me into reading some ecology. I stumbled into this fascinating concept - climax community - an ecological term used to denote an ecosystem or community of plants, animals and other living organisms that has achieved equilibrium, or become stable. Apart from these 2 areas, I'll also start reading on the current political system in Cambodia and then move on to the history of Vietnam.

Zoey, thank you for that insightful comment . It leads me to believe that the earth will do very well without human contamination/interference . Perhaps our "causes" and "solutions" are not the earth's ways. Food for thought.

Although it is largely abandoned, the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone has become a haven for wildlife over the years.

"The environment of Chernobyl is a paradox," Davies said. "Despite its reputation as a wasteland, Chernobyl has become a site of high biodiversity. Around 350,000 people were forced to abandon their homes when the exclusion zone was created in the years following the 1986 nuclear accident, and since then nature has slowly begun to recover.

"Today, the zone hosts a growing habitat for populations of elk, wolves and even an endangered species of wild horse, which were almost driven to extinction in 20th century. People I have spent time with during my Ph.D. research around Chernobyl regularly enter the zone to forage for wild berries and mushrooms, despite the risks of radiation.

I finished a quick re-read of The Gunkle by Steven Rowley for my book group tonight. It remains delightful, and I'm glad I had a reason to read it again.

Last night I finally started A Sinister Revenge, the newest Veronica Speedwell book by Deanna Raybourn. It's absolutely wonderful to be back in her clever and witty Victorian world.

To any of you who may have had Great Expectations from the latest offering of the BBC's drama department, which I think many of you get via Masterpiece Theater . . . take a deep breath.

The 'rewrite' has apparently taken a modern (woke?) twist. Miss Havisham is now a druggie opium smoker to add to her many problems. Mrs Joe (Pip's sister) is into S&M. Pip is a foul-mouthed teenager and there is much slagging-off of the Empire and what might have been considered Victorian Values at the time Dickens wrote the book.

Thanks, Vee. I will avoid the 'woke' Great Expectations like the plague. Just last night, I watched the first episode of the Miss Marple series with Geraldine McEwan. What a travesty to the wonderful Agatha Christie book with a lot of added 'woke' propaganda. I won't watch any more of those.

Vee, thanks for the warning! It will probably take some time to be shown here on a Free to Air channel anyway if at all! The paid services get the good shows early but although I could afford a subscription, I can't be bothered. I have enough to watch mostly with an occasional DVD library loan.

Re...toilets and lavatories, I recall being told not to use certain words, deemed to be rude. We went to the bathroom and only spoke of our bottoms and backsides! It helped when the classless Loo became popular.

Annpan, I remember never being allowed to say 'bum'! The nuns at my school thought "Shut up" a terrible expression but I heard one nun describe a boy as a 'fat slob' which she felt was OK.

In Craig Brown's book about Princess Margaret he has her utter the word 'toilet', something with which her polished lips would not have been familiar. Apparently Loo is fine in Royal Circles. I must remember if ever invited to Buck House!

The book is Ma'am Darling I must see if the library has a copy.

Nuns.......back in the day they were not very nice people. I recall telling a priest friend about my awful experiences with nuns as an elementary student and he replied with disgust:

" They all needed to go out on a date."

Vee, thanks for the warning about Great Expectations. I agree that classics should remain as written.

I have reread a Mary Stewart oldie, The Ivy Tree. I remember when I first read it being annoyed because I figured it out so early in the book, but this time I really enjoyed it and remembered little of it except the major theme.

Donnamira, thanks for the info on the upcoming Murderbot. i will definitely look out for it , once I have finished reading the series; I have two more to go, and am taking my time reading them so they will last longer.

Carolyn, I never worked it out and thought at first it might be the actress relative posing as the supposedly dead woman.

I am easy to fool about imposters if an author chucks in enough red herrings.

Carolyn.....lol ! This is one instance when a sketchy memory comes in handy !

You must remember that The Ivy Tree was written in 1961 and I was reading Mary Stewart books as soon as they were available. Sketchy memory goes with 62 years!