Finally read Their Eyes were Watching God by Zora Neal Hurston. Wow. What a read. It's written mostly in AfAm dialect from the south and once I got the hang of that, it was eaz-readin'. It's a bildungsroman novel (or is that repetitive?) of a young AfAm woman who struggles to find out who she is, so it sounds rather "same old story" but the writing is stupendous. If you like to read lyrical descriptions that are heavy with Southern folklore (but not enough to make it confusing), you'll like this. Don't be put off by the dialect. You get the hang of it (or at least I did). Neale Hurston's own biography is a fascinating story in its own right as well. She won a couple of Guggenheims for research, she went to university as an Af Am in 1917 or so (when few women let alone women of color did), and had a successful writing career. And then - she ends up in Florida working as a maid, her writing forgotten for years, has a stroke, ends up in an indigent hospital and dies in an unmarked grave. Alice Walker et al brought her writing to the fore in the 1970's and now she is part of the canon of the Harlem Renaissance (although not everyone might agree with that categorization). Fascinating...

The spiritualist movement in the U.S. is a fascinating study. Two things immediately spring to mind. The Fox sisters of New York were instrumental in spreading spiritualism. They produced rapping sounds, apparently by cracking their toes, as well as other phenomena. Their lives were pretty interesting, from what I have read. I haven't any books to recommend, as I have only read occasional magazine articles. But they should be easy to search for, and if you are a library user I would bet you can find a lot there. Harry Houdini, when he wasn't escaping from straitjackets and handcuffs, devoted a great deal of his life to debunking spiritualists. I particularly enjoyed Houdini!!! The Career of Erich Weiss by Kenneth Silverman. One of those non-fiction books that reads like a novel. This is a very interesting subject - you could easily spend the next year reading up on it.

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.

A selection of short stories Mr Wrong by Elizabeth Jane Howard was easy reading at bedtime. You'll Never See Me Again by Lesley Pearce was another undemanding book. Apparently Ms Pearce had a large following of fans who enjoy her work as so many of her characters are 'the same'. I had never come across her before and found though the story, set during WWI, was quite pacy I felt the heroine, a simple country girl, was amazingly lucky in finding employment with people who treated her as one of the family and by the end is able to marry a man way above her 'social station'. Is it just me that finds many of these popular books set in 'times gone by' could be about 'modern' people? In the above book all the better-off houses have electricity and modern plumbing. Everyone is very clean with baths/hair washing etc happening daily. Women are shown as being 'empowered' with very modern attitudes. And my old bug-bear . . . farms have hay stored in barns not in hay-stacks and agricultural labourers drive tractors; with never a horse to be seen.