I have just finished listening to The Calamity Club by Kathryn Stockett, and like several others here, really enjoyed it. The narration definitely added a lot to the experience too.

I have moved along with my Morland Dynasty reread, and I am about to start listening to Did I Ever Tell You This, Sam Neill's memoir. I was sad to hear of his death earlier this week.

I've just begun Shem Creek by Dorothea Benton Frank. Looks like another fun read.

Finished Return To Sullivan's Island and although it was enjoyable, it was not one of my favorite DBF books. The main character was disappointingly naive.

Two totally contrasting books

The Shoes of the Fisherman by Morris West. Written some sixty years ago, the story of a Russian priest who is unexpectedly elected Pope. It was often regarded as a look into the future by West as many of the themes he deals with did take place, but for me it was a deeply depressing read. A mixture of the power of the RC church and the corruption of the Italian state. Good men subjected to the iron fist of a series of dogmas, handed down through the millennia. Men (and here it is always men) tortured both physically and mentally for their beliefs. The ending was sudden as I suppose Kiril, the Pope, had no way out under the weight of history that hung over him.

There are a couple more books in the series but I'll give then a miss.

By contrast

Someone at a Distance by Dorothy Whipple, written back in the early 1950's detailed the story of a comfortably-off English family who's life is turned on it's head when a young French woman comes to act as a companion to an aged parent. She is a spoilt manipulative female who through boredom makes a pass at the weak self-satisfied husband with the inevitable consequences. Very much a book 'of its time' with discussions on food rationing and the 'servant problem'. For me the only fly in the ointment was the characterisation of the daughter of the family. She is 15-16 years old but acts as a child of 10 would today. I cannot think kids have become so much more mature these days and that a girl of 'then' would still be mad about her pony and despise boys so much! But still an enjoyable read.

Vee, I started High School in 1948 at age 11 and it was noticeable how babyish the girls from the private schools behaved. I think we were all kept rather young back then, with crushes and enthusiasms and no time for the boys in the gender segregated High school system.

With no brothers or close young male relatives we sisters and our friends were very naive.

I finished a reread of Shadows of the Past by Sharon Shinn, a selection of short stories gathered together in one volume. I also managed to make myself finish Magic & Mischief at the Wayside Hotel, by Elizabeth Everett. It was barely okay and is joining the pile of books being donated to the library. Current reads include a reread of The Wizard’s Butler by Nathan Lowell as a refresher before starting the followup The Wizard’s Cat, as well as a book recommended to me by Rosefolly, A Walk in the Park by Kevin Fedarko.

As an aside, and totally off topic, does anyone remember Rayma and her stories about her dog Rocky and bird she called Psycho Bird? i came across a link from the old RP where she was mentioned. I remember actually laughing out loud at her stories about the two and their antics. In the same thread I came across names of members I haven’t seen post in a long time. Frances-md, lemonhead101, sheriz6! sherwood38, woodnympg2-gw, and timallen are some of those who posted in that thread.

I do not remember Rayma but do recall the others. I thought that Frances md was a doctor for a while! We had fun with virtual feasts based on literature and making up poems by some of the clever posters.

I am not reading as much as I did. With one thing after another it is easier to slump and watch TV than sit up and read!

I 'arrived' at RP in about 2002 and don't remember Rayma, just many conversations about her and her dog.

I know Pat ie sherwood, Dido/Diana and liz lemonhead died (liz much too young), woodnymph moved to Charleston SC and I think is OK. I miss the posts by Martin (and the Booker prize!) and Frieda among several others.

Re: how girls bodies and behaviors have changed since I was in high school ( early 60's).

I think there might have been one girl I can recall who had a "figure". The rest of us wore AA bras with a few tissues if needed to round out things ! I think we were patterned after the Sandra Dee version of a teenager.

Today girls are patterned after the music celebs du jour....and the sluttier the better.

Around town I see many high school girls dressed very suggestively ( IMO) and I wonder where their mothers are when they leave for school ? Low cut tops showing all their over-developed wares, short shorts with a 1" inseam...leaving nothing to anyone's imagination.

And this goes for the lovelies as well as the very overweight girls. It astounds me.

There used to be dress codes in schools, now apparently there is no one willing to enforce them for fear of stepping on someone's "rights".

And this is not just in high school.

Many middle school girls are very developed for their age....while the boys seem to be on a more normal progression toward maturation.

Is it the diet ?

Is it hormones in the food ?

Or.....am I just stuck in the values of the past.

Annpan, I started High School in 1956, all girls and run by nuns! Although several girls must have had brothers at the almost next-door boys school fraternization was heavily discouraged. My school was RC and the nuns claimed mixing with the boys might lead to 'mixed marriages' ie when an RC marries 'out of the faith'.

Perhaps not surprisingly several of these nicely brought up young ladies kicked over the traces when they left school and for many years 'Convent Educated School Girls' carried a whiff of danger/excitement . . . just think of Marianne Faithful!

I should add that I wasn't RC so missed the attached stigma and among our group am about the only person who's children were 'born in wedlock' and stayed married to the same person.. . . Now please excuse me while I adjust my halo.

Vee, my husband and I were born in 1961 and we have very few contemporaries whose parents were only married once, as ours were.

Hello, RPers! I do still drop in occasionally because I like to think I’m keeping in touch, if only in my mind, and was surprised to see my name. I do still read lots of books, mostly nonfiction at the moment, but like to see what all of you are reading. I always loved RP!

Hi frances_md, so good to know you are still here checking in with us! I have been here off and on too and am making a concerted effort to stay in touch better.

i don’t remember hearing that liz/lemonhead, Pat/Sherwood, and Dido/ Diana had passed away. I must have missd those posts, or just didn’t remember. Thanks for the update Veer.

It's nice to see people checking in to say hello.

I just finished JD Vance's new book, Communion, about his journey of religious faith. He is a controversial person but the book was very interesting. He writes in a conversational style that is easy to read. I'd recommend it to anyone with an interest in faith.

Yoyo, I agree with you about the way girls and women dress now. I certainly wore my share of mini skirts but it was nothing like what you see everywhere today.

I was tempted to take a photo of my eldest GD from the rear so that she could see her short skirt and bulging back legs and almost the lower part of her bottom! I did not but the saleswoman and I persuaded her not to buy a column wedding dress but opt for a meringue style to suit her voluptuous shape instead.

Plumbers crack is sadly not confined to plumbers!

Vee, the RC school opposite my home would not take C of E children so we walked a mile to the local school in all weathers instead.

Today I read an article from The Atlantic magazine entitled The Age of Reading is Over. Needless to say, that title made me unhappy. After reading it, though, I would say it was more about how and what we read are changing. i won’t go into details but some RPers may be interested in the article.

rouan, thank you for mentioning the names from the older post. I do remember all of those names and now plan to stop being a lurker.

Annpan, Maybe there just wasn't room for other children. In my New York City Catholic grade school, we had almost eighty children in one classroom, with one nun teaching. No specialist teachers, no cafeteria, no gym, no library. I had a very long walk four times a day as we went home for lunch.

When we moved to the suburbs, I thought it was heavenly that we had only sixty in a class--again one nun--and a cafeteria--that didn't serve food. We brought our lunches. And there was a school bus. This was the 1950s.

Ginny, no, that was not the case. The headmaster was quite adamant that he only allowed RCs as quite a lot of the lessons were religion based. Sadly that meant that few RC pupils made it to the Grammar/High school as they did not pass the scholarship test. We had three in our class of thirty children and they did separate Religious studies.

Thirty pupils was the ideal number but at the local school it was more like 40. I heard our teacher sigh when classes started and she had 42! The classes soon sorted themselves into interested children sitting at the front and those who had to attend playing up at the back!

My mother was a first grade teacher. One year she had 50 six-year-olds and asked the county superintendent what on earth she was to do with so many children. He told her just to do the best she could, and the next year the classrooms were more evenly divided.

I'm reading a Scottish stand-alone, I'll Keep You Safe, by Peter May. It's very good.

Class size is one big issue where the local teachers' union and the school district come to an agreement. The teachers' contract specifies the acceptable size of a class and if there are more students that year , the school has to hire an additional teacher.

I recently finished the 25th anniversary edition of Diana:Her True Story by Andrew Morton. I found it far too long due to a lot of repetition. In general a very dismal book.

Now I’m reading Country People by Daniel Mason. It’s about a California couple and their two children who move to Vermont for a year for the wife to do a visiting professorship. The husband mostly does a lot of nothing, supposedly working on his PhD dissertation. According to the synopsis, they are going to find some very strange goings-on in this small Vermont town. It started off very oddly, but it getting better.

It’s nice to hear from you, frances_md!

Donna

I am happy to hear from Frances_MD. Glad to hear that you dropped by!

I was aware that Pat/Sherwood, and Dido/Diana were no longer living. I don't think that I knew about Liz/Lemonhead, and I am sorry to hear it now.

Does anyone know if Jan Kinrade is still living? I haven't seen her here in years and I have a vague memory I can't quite pull up that something happened to her, possibly an illness. I met her on my first visit to England back in 2003. She very kindly drove me around to see various sights in her area.

I miss Martin, too.

Rosefolly, we lost Jan some years ago. I found info from a site in her area, the Eastern edge of London/Epping Forest.

re Liz/Lemonhead. Maybe 6-7 or so years ago she was visiting her family in Bedford (E Midlands) and got in touch wondering if she should ask her Mother to drive her over for a visit. The car journey, although not far to someone from the US (in miles) would have taken them several hours with no direst route. I pointed this out and am now sorry to have missed the chance of a get-together.

I have been thinking about RP a good deal now and remember that Pat Sherwood and I had a special affinity for ”something” that we communicated about quite a lot. The only thing I am sure of is that it related to reading! I also remember being so sad when she passed away. Didn’t we used to have a way to look up posts from years past? Maybe that capability went away as RP moved around but I would love to go back in time for a little while.

Frances, so would I.

I have just checked and can go back for many years by going to the bottom of the subject menu and selecting back posts. It took me a few minutes to back track and there might be a faster method but I got to a Lemonhead post in 2014 and still it went further back.

I got earlier posts accidentally once when browsing the Related Discussions on the right hand side. A bit sad to see those old long gone friends.

annpan, it just occurred to me that I should be using my computer instead of my phone to access RP and I was able to find posts going back to 2005. I read the last post, new year's resolutions for 2006, and there were familiar names, including sherwood38. Thank you for checking!

I met Martin and the German girl whose pen name here I have forgotten once at a bookstore in London. We had a great afternoon chatting together. Jan was supposed to meet us but didn't feel good that afternoon. The German girl went back home, and Martin moved somewhere else in England and didn't participate anymore. There was a photo of the three of us floating around here for a while.

I remember Rayma and her stories - I actually have one from 2002 that I saved, along with 'Marco's book survey'. Do you remember him?

I also seem to have forgotten that some of our members have died.

Martin came to Adelaide once and we had lunch - it seems so long ago.

Frances-md you are welcome. I am on my laptop quite a lot in the small hours when I cannot sleep and look up all kinds of things using the AI Ask Anything.

I mentioned a pilot UK quiz show in the 1990s called Snakes and Ladders which my husband was on and AI came back in seconds to tell me that the host, who still does quiz shows, set his pants on fire by sliding down the enormous Snake prop. I did not see that but it is on a showreel! The show never took off but my husband did get a performance fee and a meal.

I'm reading The Midnight Library by Matt Haig. It's my book club's choice this month. It's about a woman and all the different lives she could have led if she had made different choices at various points in her life. Would she have chosen one of those lives instead? It's light reading and enjoyable.

Kath, I remember Marco too. I always enjoyed reading his posts.

Do youmthink you coild share the Rayma story here? I had some of them saved on a computer that died on me and I lost everything I had saved from RP

Also chiming in about the RPers of the past. I remember and miss them. Marco was our resident renaissance man, if I remember properly. I remember PsychoBird and Rocky and all of the stories. As the internet was relatively new, I had to keep a list in a little notebook of screen names and real names to keep everyone straight. we also had Russ and Books4Joy, oh, and the list goes on.

So sorry to hear that many friends have passed away. Thank you for sharing... for quite a few years I was popping in and out sporadically and I had no idea we lost them.

FRANCIS! Good to "see" you!!! I also read alot of non-fiction, much of it history.

PAM

It's sort of like a stroll down lovers' lane, isn't it? I participated in the bookmark exchange for several years.

The story I have from Rayma runs to 7 pages, so I will paste it into a new topic.

The Vet by Luke Gamble, which I felt might have been produced in the wake of the various James Herriot vet stories. Although not very well written it was quite interesting as LG describes firstly falling in at the deep end at the time of the Foot and Mouth outbreak in the UK and having to shoot hundreds of cattle and sheep (against all his training and feelings) and his work/charity related journeys. First to the Greek island of Samos to help 'reduce' the wild packs of dogs and later to India where rabies is a deadly problem.

I'm a great 'looker-upper' and found several interesting videos/articles about the charity work Gamble is doing in third-World countries. Just type in his name and lots of info comes up; especially interesting to animal-lovers.

I put Country People aside. 158 pages in, and still nothing much has happened. I moved on to The Sandcastle Girls by Chris Bohjalian. I have enjoyed several of his books, but I’m not getting into this one. So far the majority of the story is set in Aleppo in 1915, which the Turks used as a staging area for women and children from Armenia before they were deported to a refugee camp, where most of them died. Each chapter begins in the present day; the narrator is the granddaughter of the two main characters from Aleppo (an Armenian man and a young woman from Boston).

So I put it aside last night and started another Tony Hillerman. I’ve read almost all in this series, but it has been continued by his daughter.

Donna

I finished my reread of The Wizard’s Butler by Nathan Lowell. I’m almost halfway throigh A Walk in the Park by Kevin Fedarko. On the lighter side, I have started The Tough Guide to Fantasyland by Diana Wynn Jones which I am finding amusing.

I have started to read Pride and Pleasure: The Schuyler Sisters in an Age of Revolution by Amanda Vaill. It won the most recent Pulitzer Prize for Biography. One of the sisters was married to Alexander Hamilton.

I have been reading Ron Chernow's biography of Alexander Hamilton off and on for years and really love it but for some reason I have not been able to stick to it. Maybe I will do better with this book and can go back and finish the other one. I've been very impressed with how he was able to make such an impact on our young government considering his early life.

Several months ago I bought a bigger campervan (I used to have a tiny camper, now I have a grown-up version) and have been going on excursions nearly every weekend since the end of April. In my search for stories I can listen to with one ear while I drive between places, I have fallen into the rabbit hole of LitRPG. This is a genre of fantasy that combines elements of role-playing games with cosy, low-stakes fantasy, often focused on running a food or hospitality business. I found two that are free in the Audible library and first listened to Demon World Boba Shop and am now listening to volume 1 of The Wandering Inn, which is, I kid you not, 48 hours long! It's like being a fly on the wall in a Dungeons & Dragons world-building adventure. The latter is available as an ongoing free-to-read web series, currently running to 12 long volumes and hundreds of characters, but I will probably just made do with the audio version of this first, free volume.

Other books I have listened to or read this month are:

-The Secret Lives of Bats by Merlin Tuttle, which was delightful and interesting,

-The Bride Test by Helen Hoang, a romance novel with an autistic male protagonist, which makes for some interesting situations, both tragic and funny, and

-Wycliff and the Scapegoat by W.J. Burley, an okay detective novel with a rather bland detective.

In my re-read of the Florence, Italy mysteries featuring Marshal Guarnaccia, I just finished The Marshal at the Villa Torrini. It's about an English woman found dead. The Marshal knows who did it but just has to figure out how. Even the pathologist later says he never saw anything like it.

When I went to my notes, I saw that I really disliked it in 2008--but this time I enjoyed it very much--read it in two sittings. Now there's another mystery.

Indulging my enjoyment of the Dorothea Benton Frank novels and reading Shem Creek.

Yoyo, you are making me wish I hadn't already read all of the Frank books. I did like them a lot.

I have started one of D. D. Black's series. The very first one was pretty gruesome, so I have gone to another author to get over it.

I went back to Country People for another chapter, and still nothing much is happening. Also tried another chapter of The Sandcastle Girls, but had to skip quite a bit of it due to descriptions of gruesome executions. I think I may be done with that one.

I just downloaded the first Marshall Guarnaccia book and will see if I like it. Thanks Ginny!

Donna

Carolyn, though I've read quite a few DBF, I still have some left to enjoy:0) Starting one of her books feels like coming home.

I do love to go to Charleston but haven't been to any of the islands.

I've never been to either Charleston or the islands..... but the feel of her stories are so "down home" they have a certain familiar comfort :0)

I agree, and depending on your location, do try to visit Charleston. I think it is the prettiest city in the U.S.

Here at the tail end of the month I just re-read an old favorite, The Jane Austen Project by Kathleen A. Flynn. I enjyed it just as much as I did the first time. It is the only Austen-adjacent novel I have ever read that actually worked for me. Two time-traveling scholars go to back to 1815 to recover a lost Austen manuscript, and of course, things happen. It never feels silly the way most novels featuring Jane Austen or her characters do.

I have recommended Magdalen Nabb's mystery series set in Florence several times here. But I just read one I strongly recommend no one read. Wish I hadn't. The Monster of Florence, based on a real serial killer. The book was way too long and worse, way too grisly. I had to skip a lot--and then the case is never solved, evidently just like the real case. Ugh.

I found a copy of John LeCarre's The Naive & Sentimental Lover (1971) on the library 'free book' shelf.

Here's the Amazon blurb :

" John le Carré’s The Naïve and Sentimental Lover offers a dark and ribald send-up of both middle-class bohemian pretensions that will astonish and delight his many fans."