Rouan, Thanks, I did use audiobooks after I had a palsy stroke but didn't really like just sitting and listening. I bought some of my favourite comfort books on CDs and borrowed items from the library. I am more into watching TV and DVDs now than reading as it takes me a while to finish books, even Large Print copies.

I am housebound mainly because of bad sleeping patterns which keep me awake at night and too tired to do much in the daytime. I do have help with shopping from a list, collections from the library etc. and no real reasons to go outside my Village. The very cold weather this Winter hasn't been encouraging for leaving the house either! I hope to be able to get out when the days are warmer. I miss personal shopping rather than picking food ideas from catalogues!

I am so sorry to hear this, Annpan. I do hope you have a good selection of TV shows to watch. Do you have a DVD player? And does your library have DVDs to lend? There are a lot of good shows to watch that way too. I hope warmer weather comes soon for you and that you can get out a bit. Thinking of you.

Ginny, I am afraid that the Free TV I get isn't very interesting excepting for news and current affairs programs. I do like the afternoon quiz shows too. There are sometimes good Sunday evening shows. An Aussie version of Death in Paradise has just started.

I have a couple of DVD players for the different regions and can borrow from the library. I have my own DVDs that I can replay, various versions of Austen classics and several Vanity Fairs!

Annpan, I'm glad you have the DVD player. A lot of people don't bother with them anymore but I have one and use it for shows that aren't available anywhere for streaming, like Dalgliesh with Roy Marsden. I also use it for shows you have to pay to watch. I hope your library has a good selection for you.

Ginny, one of the players also takes videotapes! I have some left from years ago. I had been collecting tapes for many years and bought our first top-loader player when they came out. I was sorry that my poor DH had to miss favourite TV shows while he sat on so many evening committees as a Local Councillor. It had such a clear picture that a TV repairman wouldn't believe me and tried several channels on the TV he was fixing. The recorded pix weren't always good back then! He was so astonished at the quality.

I have just finished borrowing the Harry Wild series 1 and 2. Jane Seymour is such a beauty, hard to believe her age!

Wow, Annpan, videotapes! The only ones I still have are some with family connections, like graduations. I used to give them to the library but they stopped accepting them years ago. Yours sounds like a really good one. Glad you held on to it.

There is a story about that machine. I bought one from a good department store but it didn't work even after paying for installation. I took it back and the Manager apologised then gave me a much better one which played both video and DVD. It covered all regions on the DVD side and he paid for another installation! Good business practice.

I can't video TV now on it, due to a different reception change so I had to buy a second TV recorder which can record two different programs at the same time.

I know there are better systems now but I stick with what I know how to use! I also stick with Free to Air, not wanting the bother of streaming services gadgets.

Now that is customer service. I like to hang on to things that work for me too. I'm not into getting the latest and maybe greatest, and maybe not.

I skipped through the Beatrix Potter books I borrowed. They were a bit too fantastic although well researched. I am not into whimsy at the moment! I was interested in Potter herself and read up on her. She was a remarkable woman.

I spent the weekend having a Sense and Sensibility reread, checking out some discussion sites and watching the Emma Thompson DVD version. I see there is a recent one out but it got poor reviews. I shall try to get it though and form my own opinion.

I'm still slogging my way through the nonfiction book, The Wager by David Grann, which describes the truly terrible experiences of shipwrecked Englishmen off the far southwest coast of South America in the 18th century. The fascination of it won't let me put it down. My progress has been unusually slow due to the busyness of moving back home after 6 weeks of rehab for a cracked tibia. It's nice to be back home, walking with a cane now.

So glad you're home again, Kathy. Hope you're fully mended soon. It's such a coincidence that you mentioned The Wager. I had never heard of it but read an interview with the author this very morning and immediately requested the book from the library. Waiting list but lots of copies. I read his Killers of the Flower Moon and thought it was very good.

Kathy, I’m glad you are home!

Kathy, sorry you have had such a bad time. Plenty of reading time, though, if you felt like it.

I have just finished Ann Cleeves' new Vera Stanhope book, The Dark Wives. It was very good, as always.

I thought Ann Cleeves was done with Vera. Glad to see I'm wrong. I went to my library online and reserved it but I'm number 56 in line, alas. How do you all find out about books just published by authors you like? Is there a site to check?

We are currently on holiday and in Iceland at the moment, so I read Burial Rites by local (to me in Adelaide) author Hannah Kent, set here in the early 1800s. It's quite a bleak tale, but I enjoyed the writing and characterisation very much.

Ginny, I use stopyourkillingme site for new mysteries although it can be slow with listing UK authors. I must have seen the new Cleeves book there as I find I have put in a request at my library and I am number 2. I could perhaps get it at the Big W now quite cheaply but I will wait.

I have been reading The Education of Henry Adams and am actually getting quite a kick out of it! He was John Quincy Adams' grandson and served as a personal secretary for his father, Charles Francis Adams, who was Abraham Lincoln's ambassador to the UK. This autobiography was published after Adams' death and won the Pulitzer Prize. It is so quirky, as it is written in the third person. He is such an observer of people and really seems to leave ego out of it.

I did wonder if he ever married as he never mentions a wife in the book. Turns out, he was very happily married to Marian "Clover" Hooper who was an accomplished photographer. After her father died, she fell into a deep depression and swallowed potassium cyanide (which she used to develop her photographs). Henry found her. He commissioned this haunting bronze sculpture as her grave marker.

The book is really good and apparently Adams tinkered at it his whole life. So this added understanding of his personal life helped me understand how he saw the world as he did, with writing full of empathy for others but also a bit of self-mockery at where he found himself in the upper echelons of society. He understood that no matter what you know, you can never be completely "educated."

Thanks, Annpan. I do look at stopyourekillingme but I guess not often enough. I did see a new #1 Ladies Detective Agency is coming out soon and got on the list for that.

Phaedosia, thanks for your review of The Education of Henry Adams. That's an American classic I have never read. My parents had a copy in a collection of classics they had but I just never picked it up. You have me intrigued and I think I'll request that from the library..

I have seen that haunting memorial to Henry Adams' wife in Washington DC. It's by renowned American sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens, our most brilliant sculptor. It's worth taking a look online at some of his works, especially the Shaw Memorial in Boston.

Ginny, I too read David Grann's Killers of the Flower Moon when it was my community's One Read selection for 2018, and I was able to attend his author's talk in conjunction with the program. He is a great nonfiction researcher, writer and speaker. In both books, he kept me reading about topics I found unpleasant.

Ginny, thanks for the information about the Shaw Memorial! I just got to the part in the book where Adams is talking about his friendship with Saint-Gaudens. They are both such down-to-earth people!

Adams was also friends with stained glass artist John LaForge (competitor of Tiffany). In 2015, there was am exhibit of his work at Boston College and they created this digital guide to his work: https://library.bc.edu/lafargeglass/.

I was already thinking how much I wanted to visit Massachusetts and Rhode Island to see his work. I will Saint-Gaudens' works to my list, too!

It may be too far for the same trip, Phaedosia, but Saint-Gaudens had a summer home in Cornish, New Hampshire. Many in the art and cultural world visited him there and it became the center of what was called the Cornish Colony of artists and writers. It's in an absolutely beautiful location with views of Mount Ascutney and is now open to the public and owned by the National Park Service. There's a great covered bridge nearby and Vermont isn't far away either. JD Salinger, author of The Catcher in the Rye, was a later but longtime resident of Cornish as well.

Ginny, that is so neat!! I am adding that to my list of “must-sees”!

Ginny, I get their fortnightly newsletter which gives a list of new publications and reading suggestions. I also subscribe to newsletters from some authors. Richard Osman has a new book out and he sends chatty letters and puzzles from time to time.

I try to get in early with requests at my library and find I am better off with Large Print editions with shorter waiting lists!

I try to find the latest DVDs by logging on to a store in town which lists new arrivals and buy favourite shows as these take so long to go on my Free channels unless they are made in Australia. They have to be shown soon after production as mandated Local Content.

An unusual story-line, but based on true but fragmentary records, turned into a work of fiction by Guinevere Glasfurd. The Words in my Hands is set in Amsterdam in the 1630's (the Golden Age of the Netherlands) and concerns the illicit relationship between a Dutch maid and the French philosopher/mathematician, Descartes. She gave birth to a daughter and after some years in different areas of the country the couple were reunited. The title refers to the maid learning how to write, using a quill, after encouragement from her 'lover.'

I found the start of the book rather slow-burning, but it picked up as it went along.

Kathy, I hope you continue with your healing/walking process.

Kath . . . from Adelaide to Iceland; almost the opposite ends of the Earth!

Annpan, I never knew they had a newsletter. Thank you for that. I will sign up. It certainly helps to know if a book is coming out so we can get on the library's list quickly.

Ginny, I went to our local public library this week and asked to be put on the list for Louise Penny's latest book, The Grey Wolf, being released late next month. Not sure how long the list is at this point, but at least I'm on it !

My library is helpful as it lists how many copies of a book have been ordered and where you are on the list so you have some indication of a waiting time.

A number of popular authors come out in a cheap paperback edition, sold in places like Target and Big W. If the list is too long I buy the book. It depends on how impatient I am to read it!

I also have been lucky with a donation at our Village library by a Richard Osman fan who left his last book well before I was due to get a Public library copy!

I was spoiled as a junior library assistant in the mid-Fifties at Boots Subscription Library as we were encouraged to borrow new books to read overnight and then could chat to the readers about them. We also got to buy recent discards for pennies and I got some Heyer books from that source even after I left. I was into Historical Fiction then. The really Historical Fiction set before the 19th Century and not 1950s! (Oh, Horror! I could hardly believe that time's listing!)

I finally did actually finish The Wager by David Grann. It's very well written and full of interesting information, including how the nautical language of the 1700s spawned idioms we still use today. For example (quotes from the book):

A ship was "three sheets to the wind" when the lines to the sails broke and the vessel pitched drunkenly out of control.

A "scuttlebutt" was a water cask around which the seamen gossiped while waiting for their rations.

I'm glad I read it, although what happened to those seamen was quite brutal.

Ginny, if you go to the bottom of the stopyou'rekillingme site, it shows a list of new releases by month for several months in advance.

I have started Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt. Among other characters, one is an octupus. Google Are Octupuses Intelligent and see if you are as amazed as I was. It's a good story in addition to the octupus.

Carolyn, That's a great tip. Thank you.

Carolyn - I watched an interview with Shelby Van Pelt on youtube. She said she got the idea for writing about the octopus from watching "naughty octopus" videos on her laptop (naughty in the sense of trying to outsmart their captors). So you were following in the author's footsteps when you googled about octopuses.

Carolyn, I am on a cruise ship at the moment and picked that book up from their library and have just started it!

What luck! Have a lovely trip.

Kath, have a great trip. My first cruise (except for Alaska Inner Passage) is set for the end of Feb/beginning of March next year, and I'm already excited.

Ginny, how sweet and appropriate. Your flowers are nice, too.

I got the latest Maeve Kerrigan book by Jane Casey from the library today, A Stranger in the Family. No telling what time I will get to bed tonight.

I read my first, and likely last, Danielle Steele book for book club, Only the Brave. The story turned out to be interesting, but didn’t elicit much discussion.

I also read The Fouth Wing and Iron Flame, books 1 and 2 in The Empyrean fantasy series by Rebecca Yarros. Good story but way to much sex! My niece informs me that many fantasy books are that way these days, but I hadn't noticed that. Have any of you seen that?

It’s been a while since I commented on my reading. Partly because I’ve recovered enough from my shoulder surgery to start using my arm, and I’ve been busy sewing! 😁 Today at PT we started stretches behind my back, and next week I will start using more weight. Yay!

I’m nearly finished with Butter, a novel by Japanese author Asako Yuzuki. The plot is very intricate, but the main theme is that a female journalist, Rika, is interested in getting an exclusive from-prison interview with a woman who was convicted of killing three men. She has a new trial coming up soon. It’s an interesting look at what life is like in Japan for a single woman with a career.

I’ve also been reading Four Witnesses by Rod Bennett. The four witnesses are from the early Christian church (first and second century). It’s interesting reading. Bennett was an evangelical Protestant and through studying these early writings was moved to convert to Catholicism.

In between, when I need something lighter, I’ve read several Lucas Davenport and Michael Bennett novels. I’m almost caught up on the Davenport series!

Donna

Donna, I am glad to see that you are improving but don't overdo it!

I started to reread my Roger the Chapman books and got such pleasure from them and the beautiful covers that I got the Support Worker to get me what the local library still had. They are hard to get now the author has gone. I had to buy second hand copies to read the whole series.

Our local super market has a shelf of second-hand books, which I always check over when there. The other day I was surprised and very pleased to pick up a 'box set' of three books by the writer Molly Hughes. I already have her first book A London Child of the 1870's a copy owned by my Grandmother who was a child from London, but of the 1880's.

She describes growing up the youngest of five children with four older brothers, in a middle class home in Canonbury N London. The surprising freedom available to them . . . but especially the boys. while they were taken to the theatre, parties etc Molly had to stay at home, but was glad of the undivided attention of her Mother. The brothers were sent away to school while she was educated by her Mother, then to various small school in the area.

This comfortable way of life ended with the sudden death of their Father, when the boys had to get jobs and the family 'drew in their horns'.

. . . and the second book is A London Girl of the 1880's, in which Molly describes life after her Father's death. Her brothers have left home and she attends one of the first all-girls schools founded in London by the pioneering educator 'Miss Buss'. Much of the following chapters are given over to the school, the classes, discipline etc. plus the fact that few of the staff had any idea of how to teach! Molly was one of the first students to attend the newly formed teacher training College in Cambridge and go on to take a degree in Classics (not that the 'degree' itself was awarded until the 1940's!). While this is going on she has a very long engagement (10 years) to a young man studying law.

The first book is really the most enjoyable, the second OK but rather too many Latin and Greek phrases for someone who studied neither . . .

I have yet to read the third book A London Home of the 1890's.

I finished The Wager, as recommended here, a few days ago. It's the non-fiction account of a disastrous voyage around Cape Horn in the 1740s. Shipwreck, mutiny, starvation, many deaths, and a murder. It's all based on several accounts by survivors, especially a detailed diary kept by a man named Bulkeley who later immigrated to Pennsylvania. It was a very good read. Author is David Grann.

I am rereading The Handmaids Tale. I had forgotten how disturbing that book is.

I've been reading mindless stories just to keep my brain buzzing along. It's been quite a while since I read anything new worth recommending here. Too much going on for me to actually concentrate on anything.

The good news is that our bookcases have arrived. One is located in the hall that connects the kitchen with the dining room. Another is located on the large open area at the top of the stairs. We are calling that area the book room, probably because that room has the largest bookcase. The third is actuallly a media storage center surrounding the television. It has storage for CD's, DVD's, LP's (yes, we still have some), the Hi-Fi and the DVD player. And yes, it has several shelves for books as well. I'm keeping my favorite chidren's books there, ones that have memories for me. We will need some tweaks to that last one. They underestimated the dimensions needed for the CDs and DVDs and spaced the pull-out drawers too close together. We will need to have them adjusted. And the shelves for the actual books were cut about a quarter inch too deep. We will need to have the extra length cut off for them to fit properly. But I am sure these things can be ironed out.

I'm happy to say that my house is no longer littered with stacks of books everywhere I turn. They look SO much better on shelves. I can actually find what I want.

Books do look pretty on shelves, don't they? My quirk is that I want them alphabetized, so when I get a new one in the first part of the alphabet it is a major chore to scoot everything along the rows . . . and rows . . . and rows. No use to leave space--I'm running out of it.

Has anyone read any of the Jo Nesbo series featuring Harry Hole? They are so highly recommended by a reader on another site that I am now reading my second one, and they just aren't doing it for me.

Oh, Carolyn, you are making trouble for yourself!

We had to arrange a complete non-fiction library shelving twice when the librarian who had forgotten to allow an early section enough space had to get us to do the whole thing again!

Donna - It's good to hear you are recovering well from your shoulder surgery. I've hear that can be pretty challenging. Good for you!

I have my fiction divided into two parts, science fiction and everything else. Each part is arranged alphabetically by author. Well, I am a librarian by training, after all. We recently culled our books so intensely that there is now space for expansion on every shelf, a little bit more on the shelves where I anticipate adding more by certain authors.

My nonfiction is arranged into three categories, gardening, fiber arts, and everything else. Within those topics I sometimes sort further by particular subtopic, but I do not alphabetize nonfiction. It is a small enough personal library that this allows me to find what I am looking for easily. Though I must admit that I sometimes look for something I no longer have!

Thanks, Kathy! I’m very happy how well this shoulder is recovering.

I worked in a university library during and after college. We had to do regular ”stack shifts” to reorganize the added books. Not my favorite chore.