Ginny, thanks. I used to buy secondhand books but stopped during Covid, worried about hygiene! It is sad that Book Depository has closed to get new copies. I used them a lot.

I really liked Book Depository, too. I'm sorry you are not able to get the book through your library. Mine doesn't always get new books quickly and frequently doesn't have what I want as an e-book. I got terribly spoiled during Covid to download onto my laptop and not have to go to the library, although I was one of those who used to say I only wanted a book I could hold in my hands.

Amazon has many copies of this book, new and used. The price is good, again looking at US info. Wish we were on the same continent, Annpan, and I would just send you one as a 'good girl' present, a term my college roommate used for a small gift just for being nice! And you certainly qualify.

Ginny, thank you for the thought. International postage is expensive which is why I have never joined the bookmark exchange!

I am waiting to read any requested one of the series from the library to see if I like it. I don't always have the same taste as others here. Too much description bores me as I prefer a fast moving plot.

I don't like a big cast of characters either unless there is a guide at the front! I would have been a hopeless teacher with a class full of pupils to recall especially as I have mild face blindness.

I read Ghost Orchid by Jonathan Kellerman, and really enjoyed it. Alex Delaware is a psychologist who assists an LAPD homocide detective on unusual cases. This one started with a double murder, an Italian man and a married woman in Bel Air. There were many twists before they solved the case.

Now I’m reading What Angels Fear, the first Sebastian St Cyr story. Several here have siad they enjoy the series, and I am enjoying this one so far.

Donna

I'm reading Elly Grffiths' The Last Word, which is a Harbinder book. I miss the Ruth series. They are by far my favorites by Ms. Griffiths.

I enjoyed the Ruth Galloway series too. Not so crazy about this other series. I read The Last Word a few months ago and found it too PC and not very believable. I felt the author was trying to check every possible box to be inclusive.

I just finished The Body in the Transept by Jeanne M. Dams which I think several others have mentioned here. I enjoyed it but prefer a more substantial mystery. But I'll read a few more of these as I borrowed five from the library.

After checking 'The Game' thread and seeing Carolyn's comment about Americanisms I was put-out to see an announcement on my computer saying 'You are almost done setting up your PC' . . .please someone tell me if this is really an Americanism or just bad grammar.

Vee was it "done" that upset you? I think that "finished" is better but "done" is quite common.

I am sure that I have heard people in the UK say "I am almost done" at the end of a task.

Annpan, I have heard Americans over here say 'done' instead of 'finish', especially when they push their plates away from them when they have finished a meal "I'm done!" But then when I worked 'over the border' in Wales it was not uncommon for males, when they had finished eating to pass their plate to the nearest female no doubt expecting them to take it from them and both serve the next course and wash it up. And in this setting the females in question would not even have been their long-suffering wives.

Vee, that is shocking! However some women put up with that sort of behaviour.

We are getting really miserable weather and it was ironic to see my new neighbour having a sun cover put over his courtyard in the pouring rain! The roof structure which is visible over the back fence is quite ugly from my kitchen window so just as well I don't need to look at it as I spend little time there.

Last night I finished for the second time Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt. I just love this book. It's not literary or full of deep thoughts, but it is heartwarming and fun. It's about an older woman who no longer has any family and is contemplating moving into a retirement home. She works evenings, just to pass the time, mopping the floors and cleaning children's fingerprints off the glass enclosures of the sea creatures on display at the local aquarium. (She lives in a small town on the coast of Washington State.) During her evenings, she befriends the resident giant Pacific octopus. And then there's a plot that involves both of them and number of other characters. Delightful!

Kathy, I just went to the library page and requested Remarkably Bright Creatures. I had to place a hold on it and found that there 138 people ahead of me. It must be good!

Yes, Vee, people here say I'm done a lot, but in many cases I think it is a more lighthearted comment that saying I'm finished. Or maybe not in the case of a serious relationship break-up, i.e., I'm DONE with you!

Carolyn, the library hold lines for Remarkably Bight Creatures have been that way for a year now. You would think it would let up.

Same in my library system too.

Yesterday I got Above Suspicion by Helen MacInnes from the library. I sat down at 4:45pm and read straight thru til 12:15am. It's her first book and so suspenseful that I just had to see how it ended. It's about a young English couple, he an Oxford don and she a graduate who writes book reviews, who are asked by British intelligence to carry out a mission on the Continent in the summer of 1939. That is just weeks before Germany invaded Poland and WW2 began. The book was published in 1941 so it has a tone of real immediacy. The young couple always travel in the summer and have no background in intelligence so are "above suspicion". Some of it reflects the author's real life. Her husband was a scholar who also did work for MI6. It's very, very good and I very much recommend it.

Ginny - That sounds good. I have never in my life sat down and read an entire book like that. Pretty sure I don't have it in me to do so.

I've started reading Mrs. Quinn's Rise to Fame by Olivia Ford. I chose it because it sounded "cute" and covers a topic that interests me (The Great British Baking Show), but at the 90 page mark, I'm rather unimpressed. It seems like a book that was hastily written about a currently popular topic to make the author some quick money. If this impression changes as I get further into the book, I will come back and apologize to the author for that remark.

Ginny, I'm so glad you have found Helen MacInnes. I really like her and have all her books, some in paperback that would probably fall apart if I tried to reread them although I have done so in the past. My mother had the first one that I read, North from Rome, and that set me off. You are also my kind of reader--don't put the good ones down. I remember finishing a book one night at 2:00 am when I had to go to work the next morning after getting myself and my 18-month-old daughter up and dressed. Don't you feel sorry for those poor people who don't like to read?

Carolyn, You are so right on all counts. I am a bit of a zombie today but past the point of getting small children up and going off to work. But it's worth it. It was so riveting that I just couldn't put it down. Above Suspicion is the kind of book that makes me feel as if I am in the story--heart pounding and all.

It's very strange. Helen MacInnes is a well known name tho I had only read one of hers in the past--The Salzburg Connection. Yet I had quite a time getting Above Suspicion thru the library. It's been reprinted a number of times but there were no copies in my local library or the consortium we're part of. They had to go state-wide to get it and the copy is a falling-apart first edition from 1941. So treasure your paperbacks.

And yes I'm sure everyone here wonders at people who don't like to read. What a world is at our fingertips!

My sister and I were in high school when Roots (Alex Haley) was published. I think my sister waited a while before she could get a copy, but when she got it she went off to her room and didn’t come out until she was done (or finished, for you British English speakers LOL).

Msmeow, that was what it was like for me when I read The Far Pavillions, by M. M. Kaye. i had attempted to read it a few times, but didn’t get into it. Then one even I picked it up on impulse and several hours later, had to put it down because I could not keep my eyes open any longer. I think I only had about 20-40 pages left but I just couldn’t atay awake to finish it.

I am still working on The Lost Story, I may have to return it to the library unfinished. I’m just not in the mood for it right now.

I scolded my husband for staying up all night to read The Godfather in one go. The poor man then had to sound awake reading the breakfast news at his radio station! He had been given a copy when he bought a three piece suit in a Godfather promotion.

The next night I also read the book through. You could not put it down!

I'm going to start The Wicked City, book 1 of a Beatriz Williams trilogy.

I don't think I have read a MacIness book but after about seventy years spent reading adult books, I don't recall them all! I can get a few of these titles through the library and note that some were filmed. I may have seen one or two, again I can't remember!

I too have some paperbacks that are falling to pieces. I was sent a box full of discarded Heyer books by a friend who was replacing some titles with e-books.

I regret having to leave favourites behind in my moves around the world. I had so many, now irreplaceable. Heigh-ho!

I have enjoyed re-reading books in recent years, Annpan. And I've also had to get from the library some I used to own, painful. In the pandemic when our libraries were shut, I even bought a few I used to own. Very painful. One was Daniel Defoe's Journal of a Plague Year, excellent. Another was a biography of James Cagney, NY Irish like me. Pretty good in the early years, then just a tedious list of every movie he was ever in, most forgettable.

Last night, I watched the movie version of Above Suspicion, on Amazon Prime for $2.89. I don't recommend it at all. Much changed from the book. Stars Joan Crawford and Fred MacMurray. I don't care for Joan Crawford, especially after reading Mommie Dearest a long time ago.

Yes, to Mommie Dearest, and did you ever see the movie Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? Yuk!

I remember reading Mommie Dearest many years ago and still think "Not the wire coat-hangers"!

Joan Crawford and Bette Davis are actresses that I find difficult to like/watch in movies.

I did see Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? It was well done but too creepy for me. I've never watched it again.

Back to books--I'm reading Hillbilly Elegy by J. D. Vance. I had never read it and thought that since he is a Vice Presidential candidate perhaps I should. I'm from rural Kentucky stock, but these are not my people.

I'm into The Wicked City .......prohibition era NYC ......and having a difficult time loving it.

Beatriz Williams, what have you done !?

I am also reading Hillbilly Elegy. So far, very interesting if depressing. I'm also reading it as he's running for VP and I'd like to know more. So strange to have four people running for president and VP and three are virtually unknown. Not a good situation.

I would be interested in all your thoughts on the Vance book. I read it a while ago after DH's cousin visiting from DC mentioned that she lived at one end of his block. The people/scenes from his childhood reminded me of some of the living conditions and way of life still found in this area. Multi-layered families, the expectation that 'they' are owed a living by the Govt. Problems with drugs/booze . . . although I think much of this has become universal. A US friend tells me that much of the book is either inaccurate or plain untrue.

And so to the opposite end of the social scene. I have just read Daughter of Empire by Pamela Hicks. PM was the second daughter of Lord Louis Mountbatten, so a cousin of Prince Philip (great fun) and distantly related to the late Queen. She describes her upbringing with largely absent parents, her early war years in NYC with Mrs Cornelius Vanderbilt, who was shocked by their simple English clothes and they by her lavish way of life and glittering jewellery. Her interesting time in India where her father had to oversee 'Partition' and the horrors that followed; her deep friendships with Gandhi and Nehru. Royal duties as a Lady-in-Waiting around the Commonwealth etc. It ends with her marriage to the designer David Hicks so makes no mention of the murder of her dearly-loved father, one of his twin grandsons and others by the IRA

Vee, you probably know more about Vance than I do (which is nothing aside from the book) since you know people who know him a little. I would be interested in anything further they may have said, especially what parts of the book are inaccurate and/or untrue. I had thought it a bit of a Cinderella story with his going from the KY mountains to become a Yale Law School graduate. Either he is very bright, or . . .

IMO....memory and recall are fluid and not particularly meant to be "tested" for accuracy.

It is a memoir, after all. I guess it is read to get a gist of his beginnings.

I'm not quite finished with the JD Vance book yet. I have no reason at all to doubt his description of his boyhood in Kentucky and mostly Middletown, Ohio and his extremely dysfunctional family. It's the type of story you can read any day in any newspaper and not only in the US. As for going on to the Marines, Ohio State University and then Yale Law School, such stories have happened to many people. That's why so many flock to this country. It really is the land of opportunity for those with some talent and a willingness to work very very hard, which he did. He gives a lot of credit to his grandmother and to the Marines, as well he should. Again, he's far from the only one to learn good habits in the military and turn his life around.

It's the old saw " Choices have consequences".

Some make good ones, others do not.

I've just read The Comfort of Ghosts, the wrap up of the Maisie Dobbs books. I have enjoyed the series and found this book to be particularly good. It is set just after WWII and describes England and its ongoing rationing and need for just about everything as the rebuilding and remaking of lives began.

I finished Hillbilly Elegy. It is a harrowing but gripping life story. I have long enjoyed roots country music--not the modern type--and so have read the life stories of a number of talented singers and musicians from Appalachia, like this author, JD Vance. I find his story completely believable and can't imagine why he is accused of making it up. There is a tremendous amount of scholarship to support his account of his life circumstances. As an aside, that doesn't mean I support him politically.

Dolly Parton, Loretta Lynn, the Carter family, Bill Monroe--the list of Appalachian-roots musicians goes on. While Vance is not a musician, the culture that bred him is not unfamiliar to me. It was also partly portrayed in movies like Deliverance. It was and is a hard, tough life.

Yes, we all partly define ourselves by our choices good and bad but circumstances also have a major effect on our lives. Sometimes they can be overwhelming.

Ginny - Houzz won't allow me to simply click the Like icon this afternoon without filling out a form, so I thought I'd just tell you that I appreciate your review of the J.D. Vance book. My reaction to the book was very similar to yours, though I read the book shortly after it was first published and we were not aware of any political aspirations Mr. Vance might have had at the time. I applaud you for giving the book a fair review in our current political climate. It seems so many people are reading it now with preconceived ideas.

Full disclosure - Not being able to click Like was MY fault, not Houzz's. I forgot I was using a different computer and therefore was not logged in to Houzz. User error ... sigh!

I read One For the Money, the first Stephanie Plum book by Janet Evanovich. I think I read it years ago. She is now up to Dirty Thirty. It was alright, but I don’t know if I will read more in the series.

I also read Crosshairs, a Michael Bennett novel by James Patterson. I’ve read several in this series and like them a lot. Bennett is a homicide detective in NYC who has 10 adopted children.

Now I’m reading Masked Prey, another Lucas Davenport story. It’s the 29th book in the series. There are five more after this one (so far LOL).

Donna

Carolyn, I read The Comfort of Ghosts back in June when it was released, and thought it was a good wrap-up to series, which I have also enjoyed. I liked how it revisited the many characters that played important roles through the series.

I recently finished Anne Higgonet's Liberty, Equality, Fashion: The Women Who Styled the French Revolution, and enjoyed it. It has mixed reviews: fashion experts universally panned it for too many inaccuracies, while non-experts or art historians (Higgonet's expertise) all liked it. I found it readable and interesting as (1) how the Revolution originally expanded women's rights but gradually lost them, and (2) pocket biographies of Terezia Tallien, Juliette Recamier, and Rose du Beauharnais, aka Josephine Bonaparte.

I'm currently reading Elizabeth Rush's The Quickening: Creation and Community at the Ends of the Earth, about a scientific expedition to the Thwaites Glacier in Antarctica. Rush joined the expedition as an NSF-funded media specialist. So far, so good, but Rush follows the mold of science writers who spend way too much time talking about the scientists rather than the science. Some folks like that but I'm not one of them. My personal pet peeve with science writers.

Donna, I read One For the Money several years ago and unlike a couple of my sisters who thought it was funny, absolutely disliked it. At the time, I thought the main character was TSTL (too stupid to live) and got into situations out of sheer stupidity.

Having said that, I can see why many people did like it, it just was not to my taste.

I did manage to finish The Lost Book by Meg Shaffer, it took me several days but I did it. On Goodreads, I gave it 3 stars; it was okay but not a favorite.

Besides some rereads, I read Once Persuaded, Twice Shy, a modern retelling of Jane Austen’s Persuasion, by Melody Edwards. It was just okay; I was not impressed and immediately followed it by rereading Persuasion, to clear my palate.

I finished The Wicked City by Beatriz Williams and ended up liking it enough to consider reading the other two books in the trilogy at some point.

Now I am beginning The Lost Book Of Flora Lea by Patti Callahan Henry.

I had read and enjoyed another by her......Once Upon A Wardrobe, a tale about C.S.Lewis and how he came to write the Narnia stories.

Rouan, I liked your comment about clearing your palate! I have had to do that a few times, rereading a well loved and well written book after a bad one! I wonder that some get published!

I dumped one book that followed Elizabeth and Darcy after marriage about three paragraphs into the story. There might be some good follow on books about the P&P characters but I don't think I shall bother again.

I finally finished Mrs. Quinn's Rise to Fame, a novel by Olivia Ford. My opinion of it did not change much after making a negative comment about it 10 days ago. It was okay. It lived up to what I expected regarding The Great British Baking Show. I guess one should not expect anything new when reading about a topic you already know a great deal about. I will say, however, that there was a second plot in the book about a secret that Jenny, the 77-year-old show contestant, had kept all her life and as an indirect consequence of being on the TV show, was revealed. While I am not recommending it, it might interest others.

Next up, The Tale of Hill Top Farm by Susan Wittig Albert, a book recommended by Carolyn. I'm looking forward to it.

I have read a couple of the Max the magician books by Elly Griffiths that I had missed. I think I've read all her books now, but none is as good as the Ruth ones.

Now I' reading Murder at the Serpentine by Andrea Penrose. I have a weakness for the 1800s period.

Bon, I’m reading The Wicked City now. I like the story okay, but there’s too much of Gin’s flip banter in my opinion.

I have just received the three Beatrix Potter Cottage Tales books I was able to request from the library. I started The Tale of Briar Bank and it is quite amusing and the complete opposite to my usual type of book, being very whimsical, descriptive and full of characters! There are also some unfortunately included American turns of phrase and thoughts!

No offence intended but they do ring untrue!

However, the settings are as true as I would wish and the behaviour of the parents is very British Victorian. My own grandmother would tell me that I did not want to do something that she did not want me to do and expected me to comply! Like the Potters, she was shocked when I went ahead anyway!

Donna, I think the author was trying to make the two women very different and identifiable. Gin has a rough background for sure. I didn't really get into the story fully until about halfway through the book :0) It segues right into the second book : Wicked Redhead.

msmeow, I certainly am staying indoors reading. My phone said it was 96 at 3:00 pm, but my indoor/outdoor thermometer said it was 103 on the patio. I haven't seen that number registered before.

Yesterday I read a Robin Paige (Susan Wittig Albert and her husband) mystery called Death at Gallows Green that had Beatrix Potter as a character.