tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-90951799605859084632024-03-06T21:30:09.093+13:00Tell Me a StoryCathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09391899740930810224noreply@blogger.comBlogger795125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9095179960585908463.post-41444605038327144852015-06-09T14:52:00.001+12:002015-06-09T14:52:34.063+12:0010 Books of Winter - Tick off Two<span style="color: #444444;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">Cold, wet wintery days and two books with less than 300 pages have meant a strong start to the <a href="http://cat-bookmagic.blogspot.co.nz/2015/05/10-books-of-winter.html"><b>10 Books of Winter Challenge</b></a>. After standing on one leg scratching my head and constantly changing my mind I decided to let random.org decide for me the order I would read them in.</span></span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #444444;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"><b>News From The City of the Sun by Isabel Colegate</b></span></span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #444444;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"><b> </b>To nine-year-old Dorothy Grant, the abbey is an enchanted new world. Here, in the drab, conventional Thirties, the Whitehead brothers - autocratic but non-violent anarchist Fisher, Arnold, the practical plodder, and visionary, depressive Hamilton - have collected together a colourful array of adherents to their co-operative Utopia.</span></span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #444444;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">Living near and intermittently attached to the community, which shelters under the northern escarpment of Salisbury Plain, Dorothy observes the ebb and flow of its shifting and sometimes mismatched philosophies from the Thirties through to the flower children and mind-expanding drugs of the Seventies.....until beautiful Marilyn Skinner's revolutionary ideals lead to violence and death.</span></span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #444444;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">I like Isabel Colegate's writing style and enjoyed the first part of the book, up to the end of World War II, very much but then it seemed to start rushing through the decades, characters were growing up in a few paragraphs , which was all a bit muddled and confusing.</span></span></span><br />
<span style="color: #444444;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">The ever-changing social background of England through four decades was most interesting and something the author portrays very well.</span></span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #444444;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">The title puzzled me all the way through. I couldn't see the relevance to the story so I did some googling and discovered that in 1602 a gentleman called Tommaso Campanella wrote a work of utopian fiction called City of the Sun so there is the connection to the abbey and the Whitehead's vision. I might have to read it again and look at from a different perspective. </span></span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #444444;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"><b>Bound Feet & Western Dress by Pang-Mei Natasha Chang</b></span></span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #444444;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">The author spent many hours with her great-aunt, Yu-i, drawing forth the story<b> </b>of her life. Born at the beginning of the 20th century Yu-i grew up in the perilous years between the fall of the last Emperor and the Communist Revolution, her life marked by a series of rebellions , including the first and most lasting: her refusal to have her feet bound. An early,unhappy marriage to a well-known Chinese poet brings her to England, a divorce and being left to raise her son alone. It's the story of a strong woman struggling to emerge from centuries of custom and tradition and find independence.</span></span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #444444;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">Listening to Yu-i, Pang-Mei begins to understand her own ambivalence towards her Chinese heritage, the tug-of-war between her American upbringing and the familial duties still expected by Chinese parents.</span></span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #444444;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">Fascinating reading! </span></span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #444444;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"><b> </b> </span></span></span>Cathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09391899740930810224noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9095179960585908463.post-691032935382441452015-06-05T09:39:00.000+12:002015-06-05T09:52:47.815+12:00Reading England 2015 - Cornwall Calling<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="color: #444444;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">Of all the English counties Cornwall is the one I feel most familiar with even though I've never actually been there except as an armchair traveller. Adventuring with the Famous Five and immersing myself in Rosemary Sutcliff's historical world when I was very young and later loving the Gothic Romances of Victoria Holt and Madeleine Brent</span></span></span>, <span style="color: #444444;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">Susan Howatch's wonderful family saga Penmarric and let's not forget Daphne du Maurier and Winston Graham. </span></span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #444444;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"> I've been recording the new series of Poldark and saving it to watch as I revisit Cornwall this month. I remember the old one well, especially Angharad Rees as Demelza, and keeping my fingers crossed that this one will live up to expectations. I've borrowed Poldark's Cornwall from the library to read along with it.</span></span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #444444;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">When we were making our lists for Reading England <a href="http://fleurinherworld.com/"><b>Jane</b></a> recommended the following title which I hadn't heard of but am really looking forward to.........no fiction this time, I'm going walking!</span></span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #444444;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"><b>Rambles Beyond Railways: or Notes in Cornwall Taken A-Foot by Wilkie Collins</b> </span></span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #444444;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"> In 1850 Wilkie Collins and his artist friend, Edward Brandling, set out on a walking tour of Cornwall. At the time the railway stopped at Plymouth and travelling further west meant sailing to St Germains....but not for long.</span></span></span><br />
<span style="color: #444444;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">This account of their travels with illustrations by Brandling was published in 1851 and in a second edition the following year Wilkie notes ' <i>Since this work first appeared, the all-conquering Railway has invaded Cornwall; and the title of my book has become a misnomer already.'</i></span></span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #444444;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">So I am ready to walk...</span></span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #444444;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"><i>'...walk, and be merry; walk, and be healthy; walk, and be your own master! - walk, to enjoy, to observe, to improve, as no riders can! - walk and you are the best peripatetic impersonation of holiday enjoyment that is to be met with on the surface of this work-a-day world.'</i></span></span></span>Cathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09391899740930810224noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9095179960585908463.post-42659706973654505872015-06-01T09:46:00.000+12:002015-06-01T12:38:13.225+12:00Monthly Roundup - May 2015<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="color: #444444;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">May has ended with another full-on family few days and I'm keeping my fingers crossed that June will bring me some days of solitude and quiet. </span></span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #444444;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">To keep my records up to date a very quick roundup of what I read this month - total books = 11</span></span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #444444;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"><b>Beowulf </b></span></span></span><br />
<span style="color: orange;"><a href="http://cat-bookmagic.blogspot.co.nz/2015/05/the-kill-by-emile-zola.html"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"><b>The Kill by Emile Zola</b></span></span></a></span><br />
<span style="color: #444444;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"><b>Vanessa and her Sister by Priya Parmar</b></span></span></span><br />
<span style="color: #444444;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"><b>The Shore by Sara Taylor</b></span></span></span><br />
<span style="color: #444444;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"><b>Swimming in the Dark by Paddy Richardson</b></span></span></span><br />
<span style="color: #444444;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"><b>The Dead Duke, His Secret Wife and the Missing Corpse by Piu Marie Eatwell (NF)</b></span></span></span><br />
<span style="color: #444444;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"><b>The Sandman by Lars Keplar</b></span></span></span><br />
<span style="color: #444444;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"><b>Strange Shores by Arnaldur Indridson</b></span></span></span><br />
<span style="color: #444444;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"><b>The Long Fall by Julia Crouch</b></span></span></span><br />
<span style="color: #444444;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"><b>Second Life by S.J.Watson </b></span></span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #444444;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">Looking forward to......</span></span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #444444;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"><b><a href="http://aliteraryodyssey.blogspot.co.nz/2015/05/introducing-victorian-celebration-2015.html">Allie's Victorian Celebration</a> </b></span></span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #444444;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">I have <b>Dr Thorne by Anthony Trollope </b>half-finished , the next county for the Reading England challenge ready to go and after reading <b>O's glowing review</b> of <b>Wives and Daughters by Elizabeth Gaskell </b>which was my Classic Club spin winner I'm eager to get on and read it now.</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"><b>Hope everyone has a great June!</b></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"><b> </b> </span></span></span>Cathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09391899740930810224noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9095179960585908463.post-67026932672058509642015-05-29T10:53:00.000+12:002015-06-09T14:56:02.792+12:0010 Books of Winter<b><a href="https://746books.wordpress.com/2015/05/25/20-books-of-summer-2015/"><span style="color: #444444;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">Cathy @ 746 Books</span></span></span></a> </b><span style="color: #444444;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">has a challenge to read 20 books between 1 June and 4 September with an option to read 10. I doubt I'd manage to stick to a list of 20 so will try for the 10. I have had to desecrate her nice button because down here in the Southern Hemisphere summer seems a long way away. </span></span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #444444;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">The books I've chosen are the bits and pieces I've picked up at sales and fairs, put away in a cupboard where they languish out of sight and out of mind. This month I finally bought a secondhand bookshelf and brought them out into the light and this will be an opportunity to finally get some of them read</span></span></span>.<br />
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<u><span style="color: #444444;"><b><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">My 10 Books of Winter</span></span></b></span></u><br />
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<span style="color: #444444;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">Guard Your Daughters by Diana Tutton</span></span></span><br />
<span style="color: #444444;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">Angel by Elizabeth Taylor</span></span></span><br />
<span style="color: #444444;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">The Blue Flower by Penelope Fitzgerald</span></span></span><br />
<b><span style="color: #444444;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">News From the City of the Sun by Isabel Colegate </span></span></span></b><span style="color: #444444;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">- read June</span></span></span><br />
<span style="color: #444444;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">The Winter Book by Tove Jansson</span></span></span><br />
<span style="color: #444444;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">A Handful of Dust by Evelyn Waugh</span></span></span><br />
<span style="color: #444444;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">The Traveller Returns by Patricia Wentworth</span></span></span><br />
<span style="color: #444444;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">Bel Canto by Ann Pratchett</span></span></span><br />
<span style="color: #444444;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">For Love Alone by Christina Stead</span></span></span><br />
<b><span style="color: #444444;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">Bound Feet and Western Dress by Pang-Mei Natasha Chang - </span></span></span></b><span style="color: #444444;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">read June </span></span></span>Cathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09391899740930810224noreply@blogger.com37tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9095179960585908463.post-65832674273478955262015-05-28T09:39:00.001+12:002015-05-28T12:27:11.447+12:00The Kill by Emile Zola<span style="color: #444444;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">translated from the French by Brian Nelson.</span></span></span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDwrazvOc-XGLQoOa11Tai0aUBkmtG_cNuObTB2IrXixqF0aXnXW370PNfPaOwk05C1e9d-91PvYRM5h0fl6Y9DR9kj8TH7cLwp1imf7ts3A-1QOuGRu5AmAU3lGpaC9TYsX93jCLzEgwh/s1600/The-Kill-5593734-3.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDwrazvOc-XGLQoOa11Tai0aUBkmtG_cNuObTB2IrXixqF0aXnXW370PNfPaOwk05C1e9d-91PvYRM5h0fl6Y9DR9kj8TH7cLwp1imf7ts3A-1QOuGRu5AmAU3lGpaC9TYsX93jCLzEgwh/s200/The-Kill-5593734-3.jpeg" width="131" /></a><br />
<span style="color: #444444;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">The Kill is the second volume in Emile Zola's cycle of twenty novels that through the fortunes of one family explores the ways in which human behaviour is determined by heredity and environment.</span></span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #444444;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">The setting moves from the Provencal town of Plassans to Paris during the years 1852 - 1862. Having established himself as Napoleon III, Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte set in action a policy of modernisation and under the administration of Haussmann great numbers of buildings were torn down and thousands of people evicted to make way for the long straight boulevards, parks and grand mansions of the 'new Paris.'</span></span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #444444;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">The title La Curee/The Kill refers to a hunting term - the part of an animal fed to the hounds that have run it to ground. </span></span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #444444;"><i><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">" This was the time when the rush for spoils filled a corner of the forest with the yelping of hounds, the cracking of whips, the flaring of torches. the appetites let loose were satisfied at last, shamelessly, amid the sound of crumbling neighbourhoods and fortunes made in six months. the city had become an orgy of gold and women. Vice, coming from on high, flowed through the gutters, spread out over the ornamental waters, shot up in the fountains of the public gardens, and fell on the roofs like fine rain. At night, when people crossed the bridges, it seemed as if the Seine drew along with it, through the sleeping city, all the refuse of the streets, crumbs fallen from tables, bows of lace left on couches,, false hair forgotten in cabs, banknotes that had slipped out of bodices, everything thrown out of the window by the brutality of desire and immediate satisfaction of appetites."</span></span></i></span></blockquote>
<span style="color: #444444;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">Having inherited his parents lust for money Aristide Rougon</span></span></span> <span style="color: #444444;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">arrives in Paris '<i>with the ravenous hunger of a wolf' </i>determined to make his fortune. His brother Eugene persuades him to change his name to Saccard and finds him a job at City Hall where, by keeping his eyes and ears open he discovers the plans for the rebuilding of the city but it isn't until his first wife dies that he is able to dive into the world of property speculation.</span></span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #444444;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">Aristide's widowed sister, Sidonie, a wheeler and dealer in peoples secrets and scandals brings him together with a young woman who is pregnant following a rape. The marriage to Renee is a business investment - she keeps her reputation and he has her dowry to spend. In no time they are living in luxury, separate lives, as Aristide makes money and Renee spends it. Lonely and bored her closest companion is Maxime, her stepson.......<i>' delicate and corrupt, lascivious - a defective offspring in whom parental shortcomings were combined and exacerbated.' </i>Their relationship eventually becomes a love affair as they sink deeper into a life of debauchery and depravity.</span></span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #444444;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">As in <a href="http://cat-bookmagic.blogspot.co.nz/2015/01/the-fortune-of-rougons-by-emile-zola.html"><b>The Fortune of the Rougons</b></a> most of the characters are appalling people although, despite her terrible behaviour, I did have some sympathy for Renee who seemed very much to be a victim of her environment.</span></span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #444444;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">The Kill is a scathing indictment of the excesses of the Second Empire and Zola doesn't mince words. His descriptive prose is incredible, powerful and intense it brings people and places vividly to life.....and often left this reader having to take a break and breath fresh air.</span></span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #444444;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">I am loving the Rougon-Macquart novels and look forward to the next one.</span></span></span><br />
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<br />Cathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09391899740930810224noreply@blogger.com15tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9095179960585908463.post-29981669090072700652015-05-14T10:36:00.001+12:002015-05-14T10:36:27.007+12:00May Update<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">Any thoughts I may have had that May would be a quiet month I soon discovered was mere wishful thinking and so far the month has been very busy with a mix of both sad and happy times</span></span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">At the beginning of last week Hubby's sister-in-law passed away after a long illness . </span></span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">We returned home from that sad farewell as our daughter and family arrived for a four day visit ending on Sunday with a lovely Mother's Day lunch outing. </span></span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">Then the computer which I've known for some time was failing fast chose the weekend</span></span></span> <span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">for its swan song (disaster!) and for the sake of my sanity buying a new one was top priority. Fortunately the service from the store was fantastic and they came and installed it immediately</span></span></span>.<br />
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<span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">More sad stuff yesterday as we had to say goodbye to our lovely old cat - so many times we've been through this but it never gets any easier. </span></span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">Today the newly widowed brother-in-law arrives to stay with us for a while and I'm hoping the brothers will entertain themselves and I can get back to some semblance of normality. The last ten days have been an emotional roller coaster and I'm feeling just a bit frazzled.</span></span></span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjF9VKJ-LGNNdztsJusZ93pp08fASzSreQbWvBVVUAGDBTobSL9qda1y4jEjMTyCNNpP71TIZ4NP7NQLg-RdIIEqC5EKpCgdkojx_9fPhfU-Bo6vs21wEnAuMJii5vyzo3oNi7VSlTWHCP6/s1600/vw.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjF9VKJ-LGNNdztsJusZ93pp08fASzSreQbWvBVVUAGDBTobSL9qda1y4jEjMTyCNNpP71TIZ4NP7NQLg-RdIIEqC5EKpCgdkojx_9fPhfU-Bo6vs21wEnAuMJii5vyzo3oNi7VSlTWHCP6/s200/vw.jpg" width="150" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="color: #666666;">Virginia Woolf by Vanessa Bell </span></td></tr>
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<span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">Blogging there has been none but reading when I can. Before chaos descended I finished <b>Vanessa and her Sister by Priya Parmar </b>which I loved. It is the story of the Stephen sisters, Vanessa and Virginia, told from Vanessa's perspective and being set in the early 1900's gives a very interesting glimpse of the young Bloomsbury set before any of them became famous.</span></span></span><br />
<span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">Read <a href="http://fleurinherworld.com/2015/02/23/vanessa-and-her-sister-by-priya-parmar/"><b>Jane's review.</b></a> </span></span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">Also finished <b>The Dead Duke, His Secret Wife, and the Missing Corpse by Piu Marie Eatwell</b>, a non-fiction account of the Druce-Portland affair ' one of the most notorious, tangled and bizarre legal cases of the late Victorian and Edwardian eras.' Perfect non-fiction - as easy and entertaining to read as fiction while still being aware of the meticulous research the author has done. Enjoyed it immensely.</span></span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">Keeping up with reading <b>Beowulf </b>for <a href="http://cleoclassical.blogspot.co.nz/2015/05/beowulf-read-along-starting-week-two.html"><b>Cleo's readalong</b></a></span></span></span><br />
<span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">- loving it and the challenge of actually having to think about what I'm reading. <b> </b></span></span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"><b>Currently reading:</b><span style="color: #666666;"> </span></span></span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibxqYOtbn_7ssxE1TjSJVjfv4eT_5SxJsj4iJkO-lIga9O4XgLRuUGXHBsigo-Myqz638VjamOA0TOftI36UYydf-u9VaGp_qxa4l5-8d94TNGkK-wy1zcDCyBx_5xfIDgXVA8aBXWKBQk/s1600/The-Kill-5593734-3.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibxqYOtbn_7ssxE1TjSJVjfv4eT_5SxJsj4iJkO-lIga9O4XgLRuUGXHBsigo-Myqz638VjamOA0TOftI36UYydf-u9VaGp_qxa4l5-8d94TNGkK-wy1zcDCyBx_5xfIDgXVA8aBXWKBQk/s200/The-Kill-5593734-3.jpeg" width="131" /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4e3W6aObQxo3UX2S6p5mnY9o8h6_H8FCdd9eaRC110HTNG3Fw7gFkDxN1_zFVp0fuijwiIhGge5yqY18_IP49zqYHG2ddf_sCkHPYHP67ZrfwnZb4P5EH23w7nXNNu6YHI6UJG4MxlgYJ/s1600/The-Long-Fall-16599661-3.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4e3W6aObQxo3UX2S6p5mnY9o8h6_H8FCdd9eaRC110HTNG3Fw7gFkDxN1_zFVp0fuijwiIhGge5yqY18_IP49zqYHG2ddf_sCkHPYHP67ZrfwnZb4P5EH23w7nXNNu6YHI6UJG4MxlgYJ/s200/The-Long-Fall-16599661-3.jpeg" width="130" /></a></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #666666;"><b><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">The Kill by Emile Zola </span></span></b></span><br />
<span style="color: #666666;"><b><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">The Long Fall by Julia Crouch - </span></span></b><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">bedtime psychological thriller</span></span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"><b>On the Horizon:</b></span></span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">I am so behind in everything I'd planned for May but don't want the pressure of trying to play catch-up so will read what takes my fancy and not worry about any of it!</span></span></span><br />
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<br />Cathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09391899740930810224noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9095179960585908463.post-58923491573442995572015-05-02T12:06:00.001+12:002015-05-14T08:01:57.549+12:00Monthly Roundup - April 2015<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">I seem to be constantly chasing my tail and trying to catch up! All was well in April until after Easter when a nasty sinus flare-up laid me low and I really didn't feel at all like blogging. So a brief roundup of what I've been reading.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">To celebrate the bicentenary of Anthony Trollope's birth I first read <a href="http://cat-bookmagic.blogspot.co.nz/2015/04/reading-england-2015-down-to-devon-with.html" style="font-weight: bold;">Rachel Ray</a> and then <b>Nina Balatka/Linda Tressel </b>which I picked up at the library sale simply because it was a Trollope. Originally published anonymously in an attempt to move away from his recognisable style these two novellas are the rather depressing stories of two young women whose families will do anything to stop them marrying the men of their choice. I didn't like them - I missed England and the English but most of all I missed the humour.</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwDrCs-cdAnDtiiuuYMPk5iwxu8N-fsXv7SP4XKQ_1OJh65snqXjTKgi7JnMxteNgjPQsHIdzIIddGQDINlz7UcdWTm5_ZYBk2s4m6xRf2yWUNzd9E_oAZxleE8CUYFW0tIH_XvjJhNON-/s1600/Where-Angels-Fear-to-Tread-5175031-3.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwDrCs-cdAnDtiiuuYMPk5iwxu8N-fsXv7SP4XKQ_1OJh65snqXjTKgi7JnMxteNgjPQsHIdzIIddGQDINlz7UcdWTm5_ZYBk2s4m6xRf2yWUNzd9E_oAZxleE8CUYFW0tIH_XvjJhNON-/s1600/Where-Angels-Fear-to-Tread-5175031-3.jpeg" width="133" /></a><span style="color: #666666; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Another novella - <b>Where Angels Fear to Tread by E.M.Forster. </b>His first published work it contains the same themes that he developed to better effect in his later novels - the hypocrisy of Edwardian society, the difficulty in reconciling opposing forces and lush descriptions of the Italian landscape. I thought the opening chapter was one of the funniest I've read and overall it was enjoyable reading for the <b>Back to the Classics </b>challenge - read a novella.<b> </b></span><br />
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">For <b>Reading England 2015 </b>I was in Devon with <b>Rachel Ray </b>and also with <b><a href="http://cat-bookmagic.blogspot.co.nz/2015/04/gentian-hill-by-elizabeth-goudge.html">Gentian Hill by Elizabeth Goudge.</a></b></span><br />
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">There were books started prior to April that I needed to finish. <b>To Let by John Galsworthy </b>brought the first three book volume of the <b>Forsyte Saga </b>to completion. </span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgq2Rr4nVMl-1gZ3pTCdi8WJSGOl_eEzxPw2IMs10anb7JevZ4CbDfO0XCdrKYDS0HMMMqOnFXUWySizD-H6Hq-fmBBnqZm49POT0HBwM5t5fn-wqnh83Q0osvkt1_wC85BCLzkNrDidLM9/s1600/Jane-Eyre-15252319-3.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgq2Rr4nVMl-1gZ3pTCdi8WJSGOl_eEzxPw2IMs10anb7JevZ4CbDfO0XCdrKYDS0HMMMqOnFXUWySizD-H6Hq-fmBBnqZm49POT0HBwM5t5fn-wqnh83Q0osvkt1_wC85BCLzkNrDidLM9/s1600/Jane-Eyre-15252319-3.jpeg" width="125" /></a><span style="color: #666666; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">A reread of <b>Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte </b>has been on my Classics Club list since the beginning and I took advantage of the Cornflower Book Group reading to get this achieved. It's been many decades since I first read it and I certainly had a far deeper appreciation of Charlotte's writing this time and some fun thinking about the reliability of first person narrators but it took me two months to finish which is not a good sign. I enjoyed the first half but, dare I say it, became increasingly bored with Jane and Mr R. and the second half was a struggle. I know many readers would disagree but for me Jane Eyre is a book to read and love when one is young.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">The only non-fiction I read was <b>Behind the Mask: the life of Vita Sackville-West by Matthew Dennison</b> which I found extremely disappointing. The author seemed to be able to find nothing to write about except an endless list of Vita's love affairs.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Not a lot of contemporary fiction - I finally got around to starting Susan Hill's Simon Serailler series with <b>The Various Haunts of Men, </b>another thriller <b>Missing You by Harlan Coben, Jo Walton's </b>latest <b>My Real Children </b>and one of my favourite books for April..</span><br />
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<b style="color: #666666; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">Aren't We Sisters by Patricia Ferguson</span></b><br />
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Initially I passed this over at the library because its cover looked too much like chicklit but when I saw it on the Bailey longlist I changed my mind.</span><br />
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Set during the early 1930's in a small town in Cornwall and focusing on women - childbirth , sexual ignorance and contraception the story revolves around three women. Letty is a disciple of Marie Stopes who travels the country in a mobile van strong in her belief that a woman should '<i> have as many children as she wants, when she wants.'</i></span><br />
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Norah is upper middle class, totally repressed by a domineering mother whose death has now left Norah struggling to make ends meet and having to take in a lodger - Letty.</span><br />
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Rae is an incognito and pregnant movie star hiding in an old</span><br />
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">house on the outskirts of town. Woefully ignorant her only experience of childbirth comes from reading 19th century novels.</span><br />
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">If you like good old fashioned story-telling with great characters and lively dialogue, humour, and even a thriller element, I recommend. I loved it!</span><br />
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Onward into May and I'm trying not to look too far ahead.</span><br />
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Currently I have four books on the go .....</span><br />
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><b>Beowulf </b>- for <b><a href="http://cleoclassical.blogspot.co.nz/2015/04/beowulf-read-along-background.html">Cleo's readalong</a></b></span><br />
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><b>Vanessa and her Sister by Priya Parmar</b></span><br />
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><b>The Kill by Emile Zola</b></span><br />
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><b>The Dead Duke, His Secret Wife and the Missing Corpse by Piu Marie Eatwell </b>(NF)</span><br />
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><i><br /></i></span>Cathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09391899740930810224noreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9095179960585908463.post-69296277030250262712015-04-30T14:49:00.002+12:002015-04-30T14:57:19.997+12:00Gentian Hill by Elizabeth Goudge<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">The <b>Elizabeth Goudge Reading Week </b>is hosted by <b>Lory @ <a href="http://www.emeraldcitybookreview.com/2015/04/elizabeth-goudge-reading-week.html">The Emerald City Book Review.</a></b></span><br />
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">I have been in Devon this month so the book I chose to read by <b>Elizabeth Goudge</b> was <b>Gentian Hill </b>because it is also set in that county.</span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Mid 19th century Torquay</td></tr>
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><i>" There was no sound anywhere. Voices were stilled upon sea and shore and the white gulls with their gold-tipped wings floated silently. The half-moons of golden water, swung and withdrawn so rhythmically by the ebbing tide, creamed soundlessly upon the golden sand, and the tiny sound of the ripples lapping against the jetties and the hulls of the fishing boats was lost in the great silence.</i></span><br />
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><i>Into this vast peace, this clear light, sailed the great ships...."</i></span><br />
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">1803, the Napoleonic Wars, and the Royal Navy ships find a welcome respite in the sheltered waters of Torbay. On one such frigate a young midshipman is reaching the end of his endurance. Anthony Louis Mary O'Connell is 15 yrs old, an intelligent, sensitive boy raised by his grandmother until her death when he was taken on as a midshipman on a distant relative's ship. A harsh and brutal life and two months later the lure of the land is too much for Anthony and he deserts the Navy.</span><br />
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Assuming the name of Zachary he wanders the countryside in search of work becoming increasingly ragged, footsore and hungry.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">Weekaborough Farm is the home of Mary, an orphan saved from a shipwreck and adopted by farmer Sprigg and his wife.</span><br />
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">At the age of 10 she is <i>'an elfin child with the graceful movements a wild woodland creature,</i></span><i style="color: #666666; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;"> </i><span style="font-size: large;"><i style="color: #666666; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">a fawn or a g</i><i style="color: #666666; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">azelle</i></span><i style="color: #666666; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;">.'</i><br />
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">Mary loves the animals and frequently raids the larder at night to secretly feed the cats kept outside. It is while she is in the barn one night that Zachary appears and the two young people instinctively recognise a kindred soul in each other.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">Events see Zachary return to the Navy and Mary must wait patiently for his return. </span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">St Michael's Chapel</td></tr>
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">The story is a retelling of an old legend of a shipwrecked mariner who became a hermit and built the chapel high up the steep side of a hill. A place to pray for those who face the perils of the sea.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Elizabeth Goudge's deep love for the Devon countryside is obvious with her beautiful, often mystical descriptions of Nature which she balances with the down to earth telling of daily routine on a farm. The ancient customs and rituals - wassailing, harvesting and corn dollies, the ploughing chant and the bull roarer- fascinating stuff to learn about.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">An enchanting blend of fact and fiction, of Pagan otherworldliness and Christian faith. It's so long since I read any of Elizabeth Goudge's books ( one exception) that I'd forgotten what a unique voice she has , and one that is hard to describe, except to say I loved it. I think Love is the theme in Gentian Hill - the following quote is written on a scrap of paper and moves from character to character throughout the story.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><b>"Love is the divinity who creates peace among men and calm upon the sea, the windless silence of storms, repose and sleep in sadness. Love sings to all things who live and are, soothing the troubled minds of gods and men."</b></span></blockquote>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #666666; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Related post -<a href="http://cat-bookmagic.blogspot.co.nz/2010/03/review-green-dolphin-country-by.html"> <b>Green Dolphin Country by Elizabeth Goudge</b></a></span><span style="background-color: transparent;"><a href="http://cat-bookmagic.blogspot.co.nz/2010/03/review-green-dolphin-country-by.html"> </a></span></blockquote>
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Cathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09391899740930810224noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9095179960585908463.post-43015497697002265182015-04-15T11:22:00.000+12:002015-05-14T17:38:19.149+12:00Reading England 2015 - Down to Devon with Anthony Trollope<span style="color: #444444; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><b>Rachel Ray by Anthony Trollope</b></span><br />
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">" <i>...and in those southern parts of Devonshire the summer sun in July is very hot. There is no other part of England like it. The lanes are low and narrow, and not a breath of air stirs through them. The ground rises in hills on all sides, so that every spot is a sheltered nook. The rich red earth drinks in the heat and holds it, and no breezes come up from the southern torpid sea. Of all counties in England Devonshire is the fairest to the eye..."</i></span><br />
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><i>Rachel Ray p16</i></span></div>
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">The first three stops on my journey through the counties were in the North and although I have enjoyed everything I've read it's nice to now travel to a part of the country little touched by the Industrial Revolution. I haven't been to Devon but I have been to others close by - Dorset, Somerset, Wiltshire and I imagine it is similar - they are all very beautiful.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Rachel Ray is set in the fictional small rural town of Baslehurst which Anthony Trollope based on the real town of Kingsbridge situated in the south at the head of an estuary and six miles from the sea.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Luke Rowan comes to Baslehurst when he inherits a part ownership in a brewery which is presently being run by Mr Tappit who makes '<i> vile beer', 'a muddy brew'.</i> As most of the locals drink cider nobody cares about the quality of the beer but Luke is an ambitious young man with new ideas for improvements and it isn't long before he and Mr Tappit are at loggerheads. Mrs Tappit, however, has her eye on marrying him to one of her three daughters.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">About a mile and a half outside Baslehurst is the tiny hamlet of Bragg's End.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><i>'It had a little green and a little wooden bridge over a little stream - half a dozen labourer's cottages and a beer or cider shop.'</i></span><br />
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">In one such cottage live the widowed Mrs Ray and her two daughters. The elder, Dorothea, after a short-lived marriage to a curate is also a widow and a firm adherent to the Evangelical faith, a believer that ' <i>cheerfulness is a sin.' </i>As Mrs Ray is a sweet but weak and indecisive woman Dorothea has no trouble in ruling the roost at home. The younger daughter, Rachel, is in her late teens, a pretty country girl with a happy disposition and enough spirit to stand up to her sister.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">When Luke and Rachel meet there is an immediate attraction which very soon becomes, with Mrs Ray's wavering approval, an engagement. Unfortunately, when Luke has to go to London for a period of time the combined forces of Dorothea's disapproval and the Tappits campaign to blacken Luke's name pressure Mrs Ray into withdrawing her consent to the marriage and Rachel is forced to comply.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Rachel Ray is not only a charming love story but a portrayal of middle class provincial life. The gossip and conflicts of a small community and their mistrust and suspicion of outsiders, the influence of the dour and gloomy Evangelical religion, commerce, class warfare and politics make for very entertaining reading when told with typical Anthony Trollope humour.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Very easy to read and at 400p not too long - I would recommend Rachel Ray to anyone who hasn't read Anthony Trollope and not sure where to start.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">I loved it!</span><br />
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><b><a href="http://karensbooksandchocolate.blogspot.co.nz/2015/04/anthony-trollope-in-april.html">Anthony Trollope Bicentennial Celebration</a></b></span><br />
<span style="color: #444444; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><b><a href="http://cat-bookmagic.blogspot.co.nz/p/reading-england-2015.html">Reading England 2015</a></b></span><br />
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><i><br /></i></span>Cathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09391899740930810224noreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9095179960585908463.post-48554849523180508382015-04-07T10:18:00.003+12:002015-04-07T10:18:46.293+12:00The Spin Winner is...<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-large;"><b>No 2</b></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Which means I will be reading...</span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><b>Wives and Daughters by Elizabeth Gaskell</b></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Oh dear!! It has been on every spin list I've made - I really want to read it and I know I will love it when I do........but not right now.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Obviously the spin fairy wasn't listening to my wish for something short and easy because at over 600p it is one of the longest books on the list.....and I've only just finished Mary Barton by the same author.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">I don't own a copy and went over to the library catalogue to place a hold but it seems they no longer have a copy so next stop the Book Depository to buy one but that will be at least two weeks wait. This is definitely a book I want to be able to enjoy at my own pace so am not going to pressure myself into getting it read by a deadline.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">You can't win 'em all!</span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Look forward to seeing what other spinners will be reading. </span></div>
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Cathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09391899740930810224noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9095179960585908463.post-50697748881010714962015-04-01T09:26:00.001+13:002015-08-25T08:06:50.147+12:00Classics Club Spin #9<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">March has come and gone and I've been MIA throughout for a variety of reasons - some good, some not so good. That's life and I'm not even going to try to catch up but am letting last month go and looking ahead to April.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">Another spin from the </span><span style="color: #444444;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><a href="http://theclassicsclubblog.wordpress.com/2013/08/12/the-classics-spin-3/" style="font-weight: bold;">The Classics Club</a><b> </b>is just what I need to get things rolling again. </span></span><b style="color: #444444; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;"> </b><br />
<span style="color: #444444; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;"><b>The Goal - </b>to</span><b style="color: #444444; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;"> </b><span style="color: #444444; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">make a list of twenty unread titles from our</span><a href="http://cat-bookmagic.blogspot.co.nz/p/the-classics-club.html"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"> <b>list</b></span></a><span style="color: #444444; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;"> and on Monday 6 April one number will be chosen. The challenge is to read the book that corresponds to the number by May 15.</span><br />
<span style="color: #444444; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><b><u><br /></u></b></span><span style="color: #444444; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><b><u>My Spin List</u></b></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><b><u>Five Lovely Ladies</u></b></span><br />
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">1. All Passion Spent by Vita Sackville-West</span><br />
<span style="color: #444444; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">2. Wives and Daughters by Elizabeth Gaskell</span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">3. Red Pottage by Mary Cholmondeley</span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">4. The Fountain Overflows by Rebecca West</span><br />
<span style="color: #444444; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">5. Agnes Grey by Anne Bronte</span><br />
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><b><u>Five that have been on the shelf too long</u></b></span><br />
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">6. The Odd Women by George Gissing</span><br />
<span style="color: #444444; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">7. The Story of a New Zealand River by Jane Mander</span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">8. The Enchanted April by Elizabeth von Arnim</span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">9. The Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf</span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">10. Vanity Fair by William M Thackeray</span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><b><u>Five about the Boys</u></b></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">11. Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy</span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">12. Adam Bede by George Eliot</span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">13. Ivanhoe by Sir Walter Scott</span><br />
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">14. Maurice by E M Forster</span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">15. Dr Thorne by Anthony Trollope</span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span><span style="color: #444444; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><b><u>Five by authors I haven't read before</u></b></span><br />
<span style="color: #444444; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><b><u><br /></u></b></span><span style="color: #444444; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">16. The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde</span><br />
<span style="color: #444444; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">17. Highland River by Neil M.Gunn</span><br />
<span style="color: #444444; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">18. The Good Companions by J.B.Priestley</span><br />
<span style="color: #444444; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">19. Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry</span><br />
<span style="color: #444444; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">20. Helen by Maria Edgeworth.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Keeping my fingers crossed for something short and easy!</span></div>
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Cathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09391899740930810224noreply@blogger.com19tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9095179960585908463.post-20294034138460392052015-02-28T13:03:00.000+13:002015-02-28T13:03:05.207+13:00Monthly Roundup - February 2015<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<b style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><u><span style="color: #666666; font-size: large;">Books read in February = 8</span></u></b><br />
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<b style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span style="color: #666666; font-size: large;"><a href="http://cat-bookmagic.blogspot.co.nz/2015/02/helbeck-of-bannisdale-by-mrs-humphrey.html">Helbeck of Bannisdale by Mrs Humphry Ward</a></span></b><br />
<b style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span style="color: #666666; font-size: large;">In Chancery by John Galsworthy</span></b><br />
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<b style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span style="color: #666666; font-size: large;"><a href="http://cat-bookmagic.blogspot.co.nz/2015/02/on-lighter-side.html">The Winter Foundlings by Kate Rhodes</a></span></b><br />
<b style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span style="color: #666666; font-size: large;"><a href="http://cat-bookmagic.blogspot.co.nz/2015/02/on-lighter-side.html">The Crooked House by Christobel Kent</a></span></b><br />
<b style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span style="color: #666666; font-size: large;"><a href="http://cat-bookmagic.blogspot.co.nz/2015/02/on-lighter-side.html">The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins</a></span></b><br />
<b style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span style="color: #666666; font-size: large;"><a href="http://cat-bookmagic.blogspot.co.nz/2015/02/on-lighter-side.html">The Mangle Street Murders by M R C Kasasian</a></span></b><br />
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<b style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span style="color: #666666; font-size: large;">One Pair of Feet by Monica Dickens</span></b><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span style="color: #666666; font-size: large;"><b>The King in the North by Max Adams </b>(NF)</span></span><br />
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<b style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span style="color: #666666; font-size: large;">rereading Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte - 100/407p</span></b><br />
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<span style="background-color: whitesmoke; color: #666666; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large; line-height: 25px;">Fiction = 7</span><br />
<span style="background-color: whitesmoke; color: #666666; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large; line-height: 25px;">Non-Fiction = 1</span><br />
<span style="background-color: whitesmoke; color: #666666; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large; line-height: 25px;">Library Books = 5</span><br />
<span style="background-color: whitesmoke; color: #666666; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large; line-height: 25px;">E-books = 0</span><br />
<span style="background-color: whitesmoke; color: #666666; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large; line-height: 24px;"><span style="line-height: 25px;">Off my Shelf - 3</span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: whitesmoke; color: #666666; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large; line-height: 24px;"><span style="line-height: 25px;"><b><u>Other Posts</u></b></span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: whitesmoke; color: #666666; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large; line-height: 24px;"><span style="line-height: 25px;"><b><a href="http://cat-bookmagic.blogspot.co.nz/2015/02/reading-england-2015-where-to-next.html">Reading England 2015 - Where to next?</a></b></span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: whitesmoke; color: #666666; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large; line-height: 24px;"><span style="line-height: 25px;"><b><a href="http://cat-bookmagic.blogspot.co.nz/2015/02/library-loot.html">Library Loot </a> </b></span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: whitesmoke; color: #666666; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large; line-height: 24px;"><span style="line-height: 25px;"><b><a href="http://cat-bookmagic.blogspot.co.nz/2015/02/shirley-country-visual-tour.html">Shirley Country - A Visual Tour</a></b></span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: whitesmoke; color: #666666; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large; line-height: 24px;"><span style="line-height: 25px;"><b><a href="http://cat-bookmagic.blogspot.co.nz/2015/02/im-reading.html">I'm Reading.. </a> </b></span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: whitesmoke; color: #666666; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large; line-height: 24px;"><span style="line-height: 25px;"><b><a href="http://cat-bookmagic.blogspot.co.nz/2015/02/library-loot-books-for-begorrathon.html">Library Loot - Books for The Begorrathon</a></b></span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: whitesmoke; color: #666666; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large; line-height: 24px;"><span style="line-height: 25px;"><b><u>Added to My Bookshelf = 2</u></b></span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: whitesmoke; color: #666666; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large; line-height: 24px;"><span style="line-height: 25px;">Early for my hairdressing appointment I popped into the charity shop and couldn't resist the James Herriot which I bought for the beautiful photographs of Yorkshire but no doubt will also reread the stories. For $2 the poetry anthology was too good to leave behind.</span></span><span style="background-color: whitesmoke; color: #666666; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large; line-height: 24px;"><span style="line-height: 25px;"><br /></span></span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwEDblGQ02Z4g1MinlNBUa1oxTUzaWHWzeyki5Nxasic3MQS3r3OxUJfbNuhxEIkaZGeRBxlw9TO3oJGUQF86fQ7_irak87ygpGlM1KyYeH_Aefb15ZsLwTySlesArF4N-w6QD3IgyjcBv/s1600/james+herriot.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwEDblGQ02Z4g1MinlNBUa1oxTUzaWHWzeyki5Nxasic3MQS3r3OxUJfbNuhxEIkaZGeRBxlw9TO3oJGUQF86fQ7_irak87ygpGlM1KyYeH_Aefb15ZsLwTySlesArF4N-w6QD3IgyjcBv/s1600/james+herriot.jpg" height="200" width="153" /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhyphenhyphenWo9PwEdK9iN1bIbqH4SSk_xkxV5qPyoThllBhSMNQk4c8fWe8l07O9S0f2MDjykz3aL2PmNJbTHqTRZkR-dvl0ofA8xFuVzDj3WQrxwbVljLJ16WQuOoCO-OJaXXNlo2HtFunmbqlG3/s1600/the+rattle+bag.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhyphenhyphenWo9PwEdK9iN1bIbqH4SSk_xkxV5qPyoThllBhSMNQk4c8fWe8l07O9S0f2MDjykz3aL2PmNJbTHqTRZkR-dvl0ofA8xFuVzDj3WQrxwbVljLJ16WQuOoCO-OJaXXNlo2HtFunmbqlG3/s1600/the+rattle+bag.jpg" height="200" width="121" /></a></div>
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<b style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span style="color: #666666; font-size: large;">The Best of James Herriot - memories of a country vet</span></b><br />
<b style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span style="color: #666666; font-size: large;">The Rattle Bag - edited by Seamus Heaney and Ted Hughes.</span></b><br />
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><b><u>What's Ahead in March</u></b></span><br />
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<li><span style="color: #666666; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">hopefully another month of summer although the mornings already have an autumn feel.</span></li>
<li><span style="color: #666666; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">continuing Jane Eyre</span></li>
<li><span style="color: #666666; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><b>To Let </b>- the third part of The Forsyte Saga</span></li>
<li><span style="color: #666666; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">another county, another book for <b>Reading England</b></span></li>
<li><span style="color: #666666; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><b>The Begorrathon </b>- reading Ireland.</span></li>
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">That should be enough to keep me busy!</span></div>
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<b style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span style="color: #666666; font-size: large;"><br /></span></b>Cathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09391899740930810224noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9095179960585908463.post-36709713587854610652015-02-26T12:00:00.003+13:002015-02-26T12:00:40.077+13:00Library Loot - Books for The Begorrathon<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgv679FByVcc1JntPV5b1OcuJprOfY_IH1DBDIWulTB1HDwJJohckwCTIeGraYF7IIWQzEX6YipC_DUEUoupSHiAGKvBPHj6X5cw1AfUCw_pqVL0ogsAH3tnY6RyL13f5o9BD1fOeLjOtwX/s1600/ireland+month.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgv679FByVcc1JntPV5b1OcuJprOfY_IH1DBDIWulTB1HDwJJohckwCTIeGraYF7IIWQzEX6YipC_DUEUoupSHiAGKvBPHj6X5cw1AfUCw_pqVL0ogsAH3tnY6RyL13f5o9BD1fOeLjOtwX/s1600/ireland+month.jpg" height="200" width="200" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: #666666; font-size: large;"><b>March </b>brings <b>The Begorrathon - </b>a month long cultural celebration <b>of </b>all things Irish hosted by<a href="https://746books.wordpress.com/2015/01/30/irelandmonth/"> <b>Cathy@746 Books</b></a> and </span><span style="color: #666666; font-size: large;"><a href="https://ragingfluff.wordpress.com/" style="font-weight: bold;">The Fluff is Raging </a><b>. </b>You can read all about it at either of those links.</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: #666666; font-size: large;">With the end of the month rapidly approaching I set off to the library to pick up the three books I had planned to read but old habits are returning and I came home with a couple more than expected. </span></span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYOUNW6QxBNBKOs1-i46sqISoKiQlfhwVWQkj3XcKJa2zR1c-Rn71B8l00nQwexfp7vTL4DWBjcUbOpkZ0vU3aGzs6zewTkpXtjnc9MEJI3-QNaBzmmkUPnCEqWC1MONMCcxF1_15bbYlX/s1600/through+connemara.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYOUNW6QxBNBKOs1-i46sqISoKiQlfhwVWQkj3XcKJa2zR1c-Rn71B8l00nQwexfp7vTL4DWBjcUbOpkZ0vU3aGzs6zewTkpXtjnc9MEJI3-QNaBzmmkUPnCEqWC1MONMCcxF1_15bbYlX/s1600/through+connemara.jpg" height="200" width="128" /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifGf5_C4LmqGdJ566Vh4XGazidWE9kikJSqMMCQEwQiwGNom1j5RTvUlXYvWqz5c4bOMDKeRoSLE4Xt305rJ5p5_7tmJe8TqW3_3Oc74PfoUIXPE661sVzlfw6SOl_WzW6ZLKCEzfsN77b/s1600/laws+in+conflict.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifGf5_C4LmqGdJ566Vh4XGazidWE9kikJSqMMCQEwQiwGNom1j5RTvUlXYvWqz5c4bOMDKeRoSLE4Xt305rJ5p5_7tmJe8TqW3_3Oc74PfoUIXPE661sVzlfw6SOl_WzW6ZLKCEzfsN77b/s1600/laws+in+conflict.jpg" height="200" width="127" /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKyGJl0MayMNfSrHU7HZOt_Tu0jZe9hYTEXkmZQXnzX5OwDwp2WiXyJ_5Uq1sVPUqgO8GxAUjZRH3Z0p3THoz7ehyphenhyphent2QydiLe2B5S0xYBkZHvUX0Me1hYy57EygB5kaLzCkLqwm8_W57eU/s1600/A-History-of-Loneliness-15669091-3.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKyGJl0MayMNfSrHU7HZOt_Tu0jZe9hYTEXkmZQXnzX5OwDwp2WiXyJ_5Uq1sVPUqgO8GxAUjZRH3Z0p3THoz7ehyphenhyphent2QydiLe2B5S0xYBkZHvUX0Me1hYy57EygB5kaLzCkLqwm8_W57eU/s1600/A-History-of-Loneliness-15669091-3.jpeg" height="200" width="130" /></a><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="color: #666666; font-size: large;"><br /></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><b>Through Connemara in a Governess Cart by Somerville & Ross</b>.......I have always enjoyed <b><a href="http://tbr313.blogspot.co.nz/search/label/E.O.%20Somerville%20and%20Martin%20Ross">Lisa's reviews</a> </b>of the books of S & A and have had this one on my TBR for quite a while. It is the only one my library has but fits in nicely with The Begorrathon.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><b>Laws in Conflict by Cora Harrison.....</b>In 2010 I read the first in this mystery series set in 16th century Ireland, really enjoyed it and was looking forward to more. Unfortunately the library never bought any more until last month when I noticed they had added all further seven of the series - I have some catching up to do.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><b>A History of Loneliness by John Boyne</b>.....'<i>a courageous, deeply moving account of a nation and a man living through a period of cataclysmic, irreversible change.'</i></span></div>
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><b>Academy Street by Mary Costello .....' </b><i>the heartbreaking and evocative story of one woman's life spanning six decades.'</i> The sort of book I would have expected to be of chunkster proportions and I'm interested to see how a lifetime can be portrayed in 178 pages.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><b>The Doll's House by Louise Phillips ... </b>Irish Crime. Criminal psychologist Dr Kate Pearson is called in to help in the investigation of a murder after a body is found in a Dublin canal.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><b>*****</b></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEglR9rWFp0ifOz5pPCiuZ8PFWXHSWF-yV1TQDLVQDl2tcZZGHUe4MEGkKlvmxbgqDQQZTmRuQqmp1-IB8XFwI56rkADEczsIr3FRHTVrrWWq3cfBjUUzm_pib98_hajfkQdDGtKqfY2lXSj/s1600/badge-4.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEglR9rWFp0ifOz5pPCiuZ8PFWXHSWF-yV1TQDLVQDl2tcZZGHUe4MEGkKlvmxbgqDQQZTmRuQqmp1-IB8XFwI56rkADEczsIr3FRHTVrrWWq3cfBjUUzm_pib98_hajfkQdDGtKqfY2lXSj/s1600/badge-4.JPG" /></a><span style="background-color: whitesmoke; color: #666666; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: large; line-height: 18px;"><span style="line-height: 25px;"><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Library Loot is a weekly event co-hosted by Claire @ </span></span></span><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large; font-weight: bold; line-height: 25px;"><a href="http://thecaptivereader.wordpress.com/">The Captive Reader</a> </span><span style="color: #666666; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large; line-height: 25px;">and Linda @ </span><b style="background-color: whitesmoke; color: #666666; line-height: 25px;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><a href="http://sillylittlemischief.blogspot.ca/">Silly Little Mischief</a> </span></b><span style="background-color: whitesmoke; color: #666666; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large; line-height: 25px;">that encourages bloggers to share the books they have checked out from the library.</span></div>
Cathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09391899740930810224noreply@blogger.com12tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9095179960585908463.post-46519977000379105252015-02-23T14:48:00.001+13:002015-02-23T14:48:35.792+13:00I'm reading....<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">......more books at once at once than I usually do. There are books all over the house with bookmarks inserted at various points of progress and when I look for something to write a post about I come up empty handed......nothing is finished. So ....I'm reading -</span><br />
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><b>The Brontes by Juliet Barker,</b> although browsing is probably a better description, and discovering the pleasure of owning a book that needs time and concentration to appreciate. I love finding threads that link one author to another and here I read of Charlotte Bronte's visit in 1850 to Fox How, the home of the Arnolds. Having a ' <i>highly idealized impression of the deceased Dr Arnold........it was an intense disappointment to meet his widow and daughters' </i>who she found to be ' <i>lacking that genuineness and simplicity</i> <i>one seemed to have a right to expect in the chosen life-companion of Dr Arnold..........neither she or her daughters were intellectual.'</i></span><br />
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Dear me! Charlotte - a touch of intellectual snobbery there.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Mary Arnold (Mrs Ward) speaks of the same occasion in an address given to the Bronte Society at Bradford in 1917. You can <b><a href="https://archive.org/stream/bronte00chesuoft#page/14/mode/2up">read this article here</a> - </b>it's very entertaining if inaccurate at times and is only one in a collection from various people written to celebrate the 1916 centenary of Charlotte's birth. Which means we have a bicentenary next year and I should have saved all this Bronte reading until then. </span><br />
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">I'm rereading <b>Jane Eyre </b>now - it's the choice of the <b><a href="http://www.cornflowerbooks.co.uk/2015/02/cornflower-book-group-april-2015.html">Cornflower Book Group </a></b>and as it has been on my Classics Club list for almost three years I thought this was a good opportunity to reacquaint myself with a book I read in my teens and know I'll be seeing from a completely different perspective.</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjuUDbgVqyr2CzklBtJ5vq2PejaR-V0kXIgCZ-k2Ngga8jfOjPtgCFVARU_uUGwoWMNmYGQ6jz6C2oFX3DSxAuY5TY-fLUUIGDFVqHEDZGzjlScPZ4KQCUyPMHKtnGa23017kr49mz56_Z0/s1600/The-King-in-the-North-The-Life-and-Times-of-Oswald-of-Northumbria-15858250-3.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjuUDbgVqyr2CzklBtJ5vq2PejaR-V0kXIgCZ-k2Ngga8jfOjPtgCFVARU_uUGwoWMNmYGQ6jz6C2oFX3DSxAuY5TY-fLUUIGDFVqHEDZGzjlScPZ4KQCUyPMHKtnGa23017kr49mz56_Z0/s1600/The-King-in-the-North-The-Life-and-Times-of-Oswald-of-Northumbria-15858250-3.jpeg" height="200" width="127" /></a><br />
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><b>The King in the North by Max Adams </b>- NF</span><br />
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Seventh-century Britain and the biography of King Oswald - considered the first great English monarch (634 - 42) he re-united and re-Christianised the Northeast; founded a monastery on Lindisfarne and forged a hybrid culture of Briton, Irish, Scot and Anglo-Saxon. Much of it is set in Northumbria around Bamburgh Castle with its glorious coastal views although nothing remains from Oswald's time except the gateway that bears his name. </span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Bamburgh Castle</td></tr>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">St Oswald's Gate</td></tr>
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">I'm really enjoying this and it's providing some </span><br />
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">excellent background for Beowulf but can only read it in small doses so can't see me finishing it before the end of the month.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">Finally two light and relaxing books for bedtime..</span><br />
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;"><b>The Second Deadly Sin by Asa Larsson - </b>scandinavian crime.</span><br />
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;"><b>One Pair of Feet by Monica Dickens </b>- the second in the author's chronicles of her working life - this time she's doing her nursing training. Easy reading but not as funny as One Pair of Hands.</span>Cathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09391899740930810224noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9095179960585908463.post-68579985616316098302015-02-20T10:48:00.000+13:002015-02-20T10:48:22.305+13:00Helbeck of Bannisdale by Mrs Humphrey Ward<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><b>Reading England 2015 - Westmoreland. </b>( now a part of Cumbria)</span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Lyth Valley, Cumbria</td></tr>
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">The setting for the story is the beautiful Lake District and the Lyth Valley a few miles SW of Kendal where Mrs Ward's grandparents had a summer home, Fox Low, at which she spent time during her girlhood. Her descriptions of the countryside are lovely....</span></div>
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><i>" A Westmoreland wood in daffodil time - it was nothing more and nothing less. But to this child with the young passion in her blood, it was a dream, an ecstasy. The golden flowers, the slim stalks, rose from a mist of greenish-blue, made by their speary leaf amid the encircling browns and purples, the intricate stem and branch-work of the still winter-bound hazels. never were daffodils in such a wealth before. They were flung on the fell-side through a score of acres, in sheets and tapestries of gold....."</i></span></div>
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Levens Hall which she rented while writing Helbeck was the inspiration for Bannisdale.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><i>"It was built of grey stone, covered with a rough-cast, so tempered by age to the colour and surface of the stone, that the many patches where it had dropped away produced hardly any disfiguring effect. The rugged pele tower, origin and source of all the rest, was now grouped with the gables and projections, the broad casemented windows, and deep doorways of a Tudor manor-house."</i></span></div>
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Bannisdale is the home of the Helbecks, one of the northern Roman Catholic families that for centuries stayed true to their faith . For Alan Helbeck it is a struggle to keep the house and estate solvent and the interior of his home has slowly become a shadow of its former self as he sells more and more of the family possessions. He takes his responsibilities seriously but knows if it hadn't been for Bannisdale he would have become a Jesuit priest. </span></div>
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Alan has a sister, Augustina, who he has not seen for seventeen years. She married out of the faith and he refused to have anything more to do with her. Now she is widowed and returning to Bannisdale to live with her brother, accompanied by her stepdaughter, Laura. </span></div>
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Laura's father was an atheist and he raised his motherless daughter according to his beliefs, emphasising freedom for the self without any controlling forces. Alone and grieving in a strange household she is appalled by daily prayers, the chapel, the visiting nuns - the routine of a Catholic family.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">She turns to her father's farming relatives who live nearby but only finds an equally fanatical Protestant home.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Despite their differences Alan and Laura are drawn to each other and fall in love. Laura is unable to reconcile herself to living under the conditions his faith would impose on her and leaves to stay with friends in Oxford but is forced to return when Augustina is dying.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">It is a story of a relationship between two people with completely opposing religious beliefs. Mary Ward's family circumstances gave her an inside view of the conflict and resulting unhappiness of such a situation and has tried to give a balanced account but it is impossible not to feel more for Laura who is expected to give up everything.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">If it gets a little melodramatic now and then it's forgiveable and overall I found it powerful and moving. The ending was a bit disturbing and I don't fully understand Laura's actions - I thought she had other choices - will maybe have to reread the final chapters.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">It is a tragedy and I cried! What more can I ask for.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">I recommend!</span></div>
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><u>About the Author</u></span></div>
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Mary Augusta Arnold was born in 1851 in Hobart, Tasmania, the daughter of Thomas and Julia Arnold.</span></div>
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<b style="color: #666666; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large; text-align: center;">*</b><span style="color: #666666; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large; text-align: center;"> Her grandfather was </span><b style="color: #666666; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large; text-align: center;">the </b><span style="color: #666666; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large; text-align: center;">Dr Arnold of Rugby School renown.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><b>* </b>Matthew Arnold the poet was her uncle.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><b>*</b>Her sister Julia married biographer Leonard Huxley and was the mother of Julian and Aldous Huxley.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Thomas Arnold, a Professor of Literature, was appointed inspector of schools in Tasmania in 1850. In 1856 he converted to Roman Catholicism with the result he lost his job and the family returned to England. He later reconverted back to Anglicanism and then again back to being a Catholic. It did not make for a happy childhood and the affects can be seen in her writing. Mary Ward was an interesting woman who achieved more than being a novelist and probably deserves to be remembered more than she seems to be today.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><b><a href="http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/ward/2.html">Read more about her life</a></b></span><br />
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<b style="color: #666666; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;"><a href="http://cat-bookmagic.blogspot.co.nz/p/reading-england-2015.html">Reading England 2015</a></b></div>
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><b><a href="http://cat-bookmagic.blogspot.co.nz/2014/12/two-more-challenges-for-2015.html">Back to the Classics 2015</a></b> - a forgotten classic</span></div>
Cathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09391899740930810224noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9095179960585908463.post-11425123914244592362015-02-16T15:45:00.002+13:002015-02-16T15:45:55.643+13:00On the Lighter Side<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Four mini-mentions from the crime & psy.thriller library shelves.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><b>The Crooked House by Christobel Kent</b></span><br />
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Alison has put her past behind her and lives a very quiet life which is exactly how she likes it. Until a wedding invitation takes her back to the coastal village where she once lived.</span><br />
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">When her name was Esme.</span><br />
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Where she was left the only survivor of a terrible tragedy.</span><br />
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Now Alison must confront the past and seek the truth of what happened.</span><br />
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">I loved The Crooked House. It has everything I like in a psychological thriller - an atmospheric, slightly spooky setting, a fast pace with a continuous escalation of tension and suspense. Hard to put down!</span><span style="color: #666666; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><b><br /></b></span><br />
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><b>The Winter Foundlings by Kate Rhodes</b></span><br />
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Taking a break from her London life psychologist Alice Quentin has the opportunity to study treatment methods at Northwood high-security hospital. One of the inmates is child killer Louis Kinsella and when young girls begin going missing and are later found dead a link is suspected between him and the murders. Alice is once again called in to help the police.</span><br />
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">This is the third in this series and having enjoyed the first two I was looking forward to this one and it didn't disappoint. Well-written and suspenseful.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><b>The Girl on the Train</b></span><br />
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Every morning Rachel takes the same train and every morning the train stops at the same signal and Rachel watches the same couple. She fantasizes about what she imagines their perfect life to be and compares it to her less than happy existence. </span><br />
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">I tend to avoid over-hyped books like this one but have to admit it was easy, and at times compulsive, reading but I also found it too repetitive and lacking in the surprise twists I expected. It wasn't that hard to see where it was going. Good but not great!</span><br />
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><b>The Mangle Street Murders by M.R.C.Kasasian</b></span><br />
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">March Middleton is the ward of London's most famous personal detective, Sidney Grice and she is determined to help on his next case. He thinks women are too feeble for detective work but soon discovers how mistaken he is.</span><br />
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Set in Victorian London this new detective series strikes a perfect balance between the relationship of a duo constantly at loggerheads and an interesting and complex criminal investigation . Original and very funny I enjoyed it immensely and look forward to bringing home the second book very soon </span>Cathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09391899740930810224noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9095179960585908463.post-53772946270340740342015-02-13T10:27:00.002+13:002015-03-02T19:40:02.066+13:00Shirley by Charlotte Bronte<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Shirley is the least well-known, the least liked and the least written about of Charlotte Bronte's works.P</span><span style="color: #666666; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">ublished in 1849 a year after the hugely successful Jane Eyre it suffered then, as now, from readers expecting another Jane and suffering disappointment. Intended to be different, to be a social and political novel, Charlotte warns her readers on the first page to expect '<i>something as unromantic as Monday morning, - </i>not exactly a truthful declaration.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">The strongest criticism has been - <b>it has too many themes that go nowhere, no real story and no real focus. </b>There is..</span><br />
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><b>*History</b> - Yorkshire in 1811/12 at the time of the Luddite riots . The Napoleonic War had left England deeply in debt, taxes were high and unemployment caused by wartime trade restrictions and embargoes, and the increasing use of labour-saving machinery in the textile mills left the working class artisans struggling to survive and unable to see any way out except through violence and disorder.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><b>* Social history </b>- a portrait of Yorkshire habits and manners with many of the characters based on people Charlotte knew well. Curates and clergymen, mill owners and maiden spinsters, a governess and a tutor - the middle class 'haves' but what is lacking , and what would have tied in with the Luddite theme, is being taken into the life of the 'have-nots' - a working class family. That is kept at a distance and only in one brief passage is there a glimpse of of their misery.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">"<i>On his entrance his wife served out, in orderly sort, such dinner as she had to give him and the bairns. It was only porridge, and too little of that. Some of the children asked for more</i> <i>when they had done their portion - an application which disturbed William much."</i></span></blockquote>
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><b>* The Role of Women - </b>particularly that of unmarried women, a future that even at 18 Caroline Helstone is already confronting..</span><br />
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">" <i>I have to live, perhaps till seventy years. As far as I know, I have good health, half a century of existence may lie before me. How am I to occupy it? What am I to do to fill the interval of time which spreads between me and the grave?"</i></span></blockquote>
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">It's a subject that Charlotte was passionate about and she takes every opportunity to climb on her soapbox and pour forth her feelings; to the extent she puts words into the mouths of her characters that you can't imagine them ever saying.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><b>* Personal Relationships </b>- </span><span style="color: #666666; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">Robert Moore is a mill owner struggling to stay afloat. His cousin Caroline Helstone is in love with him but although he is attracted to her he knows he needs to marry money and sets his sights on the wealthy Shirley Keeldar but this lively young woman has her own ideas about marriage and is drawn to Louis, Robert's brother and her former tutor.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">The growing friendship between shy Caroline and the spirited Shirley makes for delightful reading. Neither of them fit into the local society, their different personalities perfectly complement each other and both have something to give to and to learn from the other.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">In the last part of the book the social issues fade into the background and the personal stories become the focus. If Charlotte was intent on happy ever after for everyone who can blame her considering her own circumstances.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">She began writing Shirley in 1848 but laid down her pen when her brother, Branwell, died in September. Three months later Emily died and early in 1849 it became obvious that she would soon lose Anne as well. It was after Anne's death a few months later that she resumed writing Shirley, pouring out her grief in the chapter The Valley of the Shadow of Death. It is impossible to imagine such loss and the depths of pain and despair she must have felt.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">I am not a critical reader so none of the criticisms bothered me one whit. I may be in a minority but I loved Shirley, loved all the different themes, the stunning descriptions of the landscape, the history and the people of Yorkshire. A real pleasure to read and a wonderful beginning to my journey through the English counties.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><b>Related post - <a href="http://cat-bookmagic.blogspot.co.nz/2015/02/shirley-country-visual-tour.html">Shirley Country: A Visual Tour</a></b></span><br />
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><b><a href="http://cat-bookmagic.blogspot.co.nz/p/reading-england-2015.html">Reading England 2015</a> - Yorkshire</b></span></div>
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><b><a href="http://cat-bookmagic.blogspot.co.nz/p/the-classics-club.html">Classics Club</a></b></span></div>
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><b><a href="http://cat-bookmagic.blogspot.co.nz/2014/12/two-more-challenges-for-2015.html">Back to the Classics 2015</a> - </b>person's name in the title.</span></div>
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Cathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09391899740930810224noreply@blogger.com13tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9095179960585908463.post-42043816438381390342015-02-07T09:41:00.000+13:002015-02-07T09:41:27.296+13:00Shirley Country: A Visual Tour<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Gomersal and the Spen Valley</td></tr>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><i>" They looked down on the deep valley robed in May raiment; on varied meads, some pearled with daisies, and some golden with king-cups. Today all this young verdure smiled clear in sunlight; transparent emerald and amber gleams over it. On Nunnwood - the sole remnant of antique British forest in a region whose lowlands were once all sylvan chase, as its highlands were breast-deep heather - slept the shadow of a cloud; the distant hills were dappled, the horizon was shaded and tinted mother-of-pearl; silvery blues, soft purples, evanescent greens and rose shades, all melting into fleeces of white cloud, pure as azury snow, allured the eye as with a remote glimpse of heaven's foundations. The air blowing on the brow was fresh, and sweet, and bracing.</i></span><br />
<span style="color: #444444; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><i>'Our England is a bonny island,' said Shirley,' and Yorkshire is one of her bonniest nooks.'</i></span><br />
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Shirley is set in the Spen Valley around the village of Gomersal in West Yorkshire. Six miles south of Haworth it was an area Charlotte knew well as her friend Ellen Taylor lived there at The Red House which is now a museum. In Shirley it is called Briarmains and is the home of the Yorke family.</span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Red House, Gomersal, West Yorkshire</td></tr>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">" <i>It whitened the pavement in front of Briarmains ( Mr Yorke's residence), and made silent havoc among the tender plants in his garden, and on the mossy level of his lawn. As to that great tree, strong-trunked and broad-armed which guarded the gable nearest the road..."</i></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7WYx1cJro_UChpY_-Hn7i4EDCF059Zko3QoW8HRn34kCxdE4LXwOp1phE_OmxKxX9QsDO8YYe4gnZvYh5ykppCusAPkZsTIEdQAQjYXBNP0oK7m_7DHyhYiQVFgoKFM40PPnNHKnMUINC/s1600/stained+glass+window.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7WYx1cJro_UChpY_-Hn7i4EDCF059Zko3QoW8HRn34kCxdE4LXwOp1phE_OmxKxX9QsDO8YYe4gnZvYh5ykppCusAPkZsTIEdQAQjYXBNP0oK7m_7DHyhYiQVFgoKFM40PPnNHKnMUINC/s1600/stained+glass+window.jpg" /></a><span style="color: #444444; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><i>" Those windows would be seen by daylight to be of brilliantly stained glass, purple and amber the predominant hues, glittering around a gravely tinted medallion in the centre of each, representing the suave head of William Shakespeare, and the serene one of John Milton."</i></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">A great many of the novel's characters were drawn from life, including the Yorkes who Charlotte based on the Taylor family she knew so well. If she thought she was safe in her anonymity she was mistaken and it didn't take long for the community to recognise themselves. Described as <i>' a large, gloomy censorious woman ' </i>it is not surprising that Mrs Taylor took offence.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Also now a museum is the Elizabethan manor, Oakwell Hall, - Shirley's home, Fieldhead.</span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMRAeUBdpfqEXhggsy6PtOfgH6kxPMYoxI3nojMJmgDOhknSV53rk1kq2ppWyknrS273DGxqDlmqcUfTWIQ9ABv8BvX2zZX1zi85e4ljf6HWLRxvtcOLxv-Gflo-pzpOAnzUfKJ61oh8nN/s1600/oakwell-hall-at-birstall-427274034.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMRAeUBdpfqEXhggsy6PtOfgH6kxPMYoxI3nojMJmgDOhknSV53rk1kq2ppWyknrS273DGxqDlmqcUfTWIQ9ABv8BvX2zZX1zi85e4ljf6HWLRxvtcOLxv-Gflo-pzpOAnzUfKJ61oh8nN/s1600/oakwell-hall-at-birstall-427274034.jpg" height="265" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://www.kirklees.gov.uk/leisure/museumsGalleries/oakwell/index.aspx">Oakwell Hall, Birstall, West Yorkshire</a></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><i><span style="color: #666666;">" </span><span style="color: #444444;">If Fieldhead had few other merits as a building, it might at least be termed picturesque. It's regular architecture, and the gray and mossy colouring communicated by time, gave it a just claim to this epithet. The old latticed windows, the stone porch, the walls, the roof, the chimney stacks, were rich in crayon touches and sepia lights and shades. </span></i></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><i>"Mr and Mrs Helstone were ushered into a parlour: of course, as was to be expected in such a gothic old barrack, this parlour was lined with oak: fine, dark, glossy panels compassed the walls gloomily and grandly."</i></span><br />
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><i>" As to the mill, which was an old structure, and fitted up with old machinery, now become inefficient and out of date he had from the first evinced the strongest contempt for all its arrangements and appointments. His aim had been to effect radical reform.....</i></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><i>......He never asked himself where those to whom he no longer paid weekly wages found daily bread; and in this negligence he only resembled thousands besides, on whom the starving poor of Yorkshire seemed to have a closer claim."</i></span></div>
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<span style="color: #444444; font-size: large;"><i><br /></i></span>Cathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09391899740930810224noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9095179960585908463.post-77040522469957898542015-02-04T11:19:00.000+13:002015-02-26T11:56:29.689+13:00Library Loot<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhaTjIN_bJCE2xe_I2WdgutAiBGGidm3O7-boZhpk4aqO75WyCojBjyxxHHi8LoNfECWItyG2TpyhjwmVu609Z0XrpdlfP3zXqShid41kRCmLRcclKylMznUbdSg_WELEUdwzpRo0PO4o56/s1600/badge-4.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-size: large;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhaTjIN_bJCE2xe_I2WdgutAiBGGidm3O7-boZhpk4aqO75WyCojBjyxxHHi8LoNfECWItyG2TpyhjwmVu609Z0XrpdlfP3zXqShid41kRCmLRcclKylMznUbdSg_WELEUdwzpRo0PO4o56/s1600/badge-4.JPG" /></span></a></div>
<span style="background-color: whitesmoke; color: #666666; font-family: Arial, Tahoma, Helvetica, FreeSans, sans-serif; font-size: large; line-height: 18px;"><span style="line-height: 25px;"><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Library Loot is a weekly event co-hosted by Claire @ </span></span></span><span style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large; font-weight: bold; line-height: 25px;"><a href="http://thecaptivereader.wordpress.com/">The Captive Reader</a> </span><span style="color: #666666; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large; line-height: 25px;">and Linda @ </span><b style="background-color: whitesmoke; color: #666666; line-height: 25px;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><a href="http://sillylittlemischief.blogspot.ca/">Silly Little Mischief</a> </span></b><span style="background-color: whitesmoke; color: #666666; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large; line-height: 25px;">that encourages bloggers to share the books they have checked out from the library.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: whitesmoke; color: #666666; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large; line-height: 25px;">I was very restrained last Friday when I had my first visit to the library in six weeks and only brought home three books. Two crime and some short stories for lighter reading...</span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivTuuGmRChZLXncxQtVSp-CIrY6Ucvb67ct1NMJDPOvcQMkWWDZcflTGaSylAw8jk4xEdBfNjZW_2QAVOfIHJhIlahCvLCkIhCPavjpzcouZlG8ibO7bIRw70DHGbfiBNG3H6vt-p_Im5z/s1600/The-Winter-Foundlings-16337841-3.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivTuuGmRChZLXncxQtVSp-CIrY6Ucvb67ct1NMJDPOvcQMkWWDZcflTGaSylAw8jk4xEdBfNjZW_2QAVOfIHJhIlahCvLCkIhCPavjpzcouZlG8ibO7bIRw70DHGbfiBNG3H6vt-p_Im5z/s1600/The-Winter-Foundlings-16337841-3.jpeg" height="200" width="132" /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtHYMoRdd7s0desFOShVElxfdziDDW_yWGxJf1O-4YFZQggEFAh3cjpijIQgUsBOuQEHD6M5HyyUSNKe_AvxXWt09PJIrX86sZ3QjGC0Uy-ara0wZ_kNGBnBckXkCAWa2Zd86Ts8W_dzq5/s1600/The-Mangle-Street-Murders-15753309-3.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtHYMoRdd7s0desFOShVElxfdziDDW_yWGxJf1O-4YFZQggEFAh3cjpijIQgUsBOuQEHD6M5HyyUSNKe_AvxXWt09PJIrX86sZ3QjGC0Uy-ara0wZ_kNGBnBckXkCAWa2Zd86Ts8W_dzq5/s1600/The-Mangle-Street-Murders-15753309-3.jpeg" height="200" width="130" /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjW7-tjJoUDY_OODFUwnh00oC8B7ItNnHRoNreWvrQbbWYBTgKDFjChfRagmrFyrAOF6nRI0EvQYALk3OA5twMfw4NM13xRLSqUyjQnFAyK3XvGkD2JXFsDW0Or35ykHeZJ2eS5-dQbtwN7/s1600/Stone-Mattress-Nine-Tales-15891337-3.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjW7-tjJoUDY_OODFUwnh00oC8B7ItNnHRoNreWvrQbbWYBTgKDFjChfRagmrFyrAOF6nRI0EvQYALk3OA5twMfw4NM13xRLSqUyjQnFAyK3XvGkD2JXFsDW0Or35ykHeZJ2eS5-dQbtwN7/s1600/Stone-Mattress-Nine-Tales-15891337-3.jpeg" height="200" width="130" /></a></div>
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><span style="background-color: whitesmoke; line-height: 25px;"><b>The Winter Foundlings by Kate Rhodes - </b>the third in the author's series featuring psychologist Alice Quentin who works with the police when they need help solving murder cases. I enjoyed the other two and expect to like this one too.</span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><span style="background-color: whitesmoke; line-height: 25px;"><b>The Mangle Street Murders by M.R.C.Kasasian </b>- ' <i>set between the refined buildings of Victorian Bloomsbury and the stinking streets of London's East End this one is for those who</i><b> </b><i>like their crime original, atmospheric and very,very funny.' </i></span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><span style="background-color: whitesmoke; line-height: 25px;"><b>Stone Mattress by Margaret Atwood - </b>a collection of short stories ' <i>darkly humorous and seriously playful.'</i></span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><span style="background-color: whitesmoke; line-height: 25px;">I also placed two on hold and the first is already waiting to be picked up.</span></span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgVKQIyil184YWBVpx2o0n4z_ArUeRxWA3FHyWbSwuWmvmzw6FC4LYvv7uRmuLn3K8-o0F_gLSlo-v_Kk4OsZ-DzXcFsEIgUJZZSHo6h9atNroNDvIYEYBQcEibbR2pCGe87MiQgwoOr31s/s1600/the+crooked+house.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgVKQIyil184YWBVpx2o0n4z_ArUeRxWA3FHyWbSwuWmvmzw6FC4LYvv7uRmuLn3K8-o0F_gLSlo-v_Kk4OsZ-DzXcFsEIgUJZZSHo6h9atNroNDvIYEYBQcEibbR2pCGe87MiQgwoOr31s/s1600/the+crooked+house.jpg" height="200" width="131" /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2hAus5nUdw3NTqIZN8hyphenhyphen8Miw4ovqUVhRtYCFBkC2DvccGHL4KTiniPIjVKJ9Zl3bOtJn3Lnj-MSGvwz7Px1QcRXqn83GJ0nWT_CyDoUIB4139YQT2j-10z73OoaBBfQksGB2Gu5uAcXtB/s1600/The-Girl-on-the-Train-17278678-3.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2hAus5nUdw3NTqIZN8hyphenhyphen8Miw4ovqUVhRtYCFBkC2DvccGHL4KTiniPIjVKJ9Zl3bOtJn3Lnj-MSGvwz7Px1QcRXqn83GJ0nWT_CyDoUIB4139YQT2j-10z73OoaBBfQksGB2Gu5uAcXtB/s1600/The-Girl-on-the-Train-17278678-3.jpeg" height="200" width="133" /></a><span style="color: #666666; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><span style="background-color: whitesmoke; line-height: 25px;"><i><br /></i></span></span>
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><b>The Crooked House by Christobel Kent</b></span></div>
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><b>The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins</b></span></div>
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">If I can stand firm these will be my library allowance for the month!</span></div>
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Cathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09391899740930810224noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9095179960585908463.post-63225430763578478082015-02-02T10:53:00.002+13:002015-02-02T10:53:30.562+13:00Reading England 2015: Where to Next?<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">I finished Shirley by Charlotte Bronte and although I will still have one foot in Yorkshire as I write a post reading wise it's time to move on.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">I have books set aside for several of the counties that border Yorkshire but as I looked at them one in particular held</span><br />
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"> my attention. Every time I look at its cover I have the same thought - 'I bet that's a Grimshaw!' And so it turned out to be.</span><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Waterloo Lake, Roundhay Park, Leeds - J Atkinson Grimshaw</td></tr>
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><b>John Atkinson Grimshaw </b>(1836 - 1893) was a Yorkshire painter who I discovered back in 2012 when I was writing <b><a href="http://cat-bookmagic.blogspot.co.nz/2012/03/classics-challenge-march-prompt.html">a post for The Tenant of Wildfell Hall.</a> </b>A connection to the Brontes which feels like a signpost showing me the way forward and a moment to remember a very happy day!</span></div>
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">On holiday for a limited time and with other people's wishes to consider there often has to be a compromise and mine was Haworth or Scarborough? I chose the latter because it was tourist season and I had visions of hordes of visitors overrunning Haworth - I don't like crowds.</span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgAayC4aYBAYIQKi3wZ7C2fbwvTcBwzZlohEHuqbHIIQoeGtRGZRnhpcWtNtaNW6L-TQ80Nk9OeoWv5kFeHnEzSCud4DgeoO-cOjX5-B1y9AsPy3v0I2j8qLhUyKWg1GO1PEeAv9SBgOLu-/s1600/079.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgAayC4aYBAYIQKi3wZ7C2fbwvTcBwzZlohEHuqbHIIQoeGtRGZRnhpcWtNtaNW6L-TQ80Nk9OeoWv5kFeHnEzSCud4DgeoO-cOjX5-B1y9AsPy3v0I2j8qLhUyKWg1GO1PEeAv9SBgOLu-/s1600/079.JPG" height="320" width="183" /></a><span style="color: #666666; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">It was the most beautiful summer's day in Scarborough. Far below the sea glittered in the sun, the castle wall loomed on my left and the bells of St Mary's church were ringing for a wedding. Hard to believe that I'm here, sitting beside the last resting place of Anne Bronte and wishing I had brought flowers to replace the dead ones . Magical!</span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6ZgiK-KVkfBW4CwS-F6z1TIzjROBbWnwFOa4P-bb0gJV6T-OO_3wkMk1uZR9vRRmYRQ0Q_g_Pj6Z3d0lNrqGuhlfgv8xLRsyl1A5wnuL_vJ-xin95OJtpbXi9uR4ayGmi56DywqFoTTvl/s1600/the+castle+by+the+sea.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6ZgiK-KVkfBW4CwS-F6z1TIzjROBbWnwFOa4P-bb0gJV6T-OO_3wkMk1uZR9vRRmYRQ0Q_g_Pj6Z3d0lNrqGuhlfgv8xLRsyl1A5wnuL_vJ-xin95OJtpbXi9uR4ayGmi56DywqFoTTvl/s1600/the+castle+by+the+sea.jpg" height="255" width="320" /></a><span style="color: #666666; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">After my family managed to drag me away it was a short stroll to look over the other side of the harbour and a stop for refreshments at The Castle by the Sea. </span><span style="color: #666666; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">Gorgeous views, my first taste of elderflower cordial and egg sandwiches so freshly made the filling was still warm.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">I wanted to have a look inside this unusual Victorian building and there beside the door was a plaque..</span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiD21cRnzNrv6JWo_bmIdWhZXiy0_Pr_q-gki_0HBFTHagaD9yqZOXw8_tkQW5Gq-UgLPuKWJuFuN_y4agiMYHTdX1eEgJJu8k6fDYMpju5uf05Jg25Oo25TVzt-Z31jSbpLvaCuFjSwDHw/s1600/083.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiD21cRnzNrv6JWo_bmIdWhZXiy0_Pr_q-gki_0HBFTHagaD9yqZOXw8_tkQW5Gq-UgLPuKWJuFuN_y4agiMYHTdX1eEgJJu8k6fDYMpju5uf05Jg25Oo25TVzt-Z31jSbpLvaCuFjSwDHw/s1600/083.JPG" height="200" width="197" /></a><span style="color: #666666; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;"><b>John Atkinson Grimshaw </b>liked to spend his summers in Scarborough and had this house specially built to suit both his artistic needs and to accommodate his large family.He named it The Castle by the Sea from a Longfellow poem. Today it is an hotel and restaurant but inside there are many prints of his paintings on the walls and the interior still retains many of its original features like this beautiful door with the stained glass panels and the elaborately carved and tiled fireplace.</span><span style="color: #666666; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">It was the sort of day that special memories are made of!</span><br />
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Back to the books. I am travelling to Westmoreland (now a part of Cumbria) and I'll be reading...</span><br />
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><b>Helbeck of Bannisdale by Mrs Humphry Ward.</b></span><br />
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">'written in 1898 it has as its theme the love between a man and a woman which tragically clashes with their personal beliefs.'</span><br />
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">I'm looking forward to reading an author who was apparently very popular in her time but one I had never heard of before.</span>
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Cathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09391899740930810224noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9095179960585908463.post-87707770714015677192015-01-31T07:00:00.000+13:002015-02-27T09:48:27.702+13:00Monthly Roundup - January 2015<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Gorgeous prose and ghastly people were the keynotes of my first books for 2015 with a lighter ,brighter tone emerging as the month progressed and overall a most pleasurable and satisfying start to the new year.</span><br />
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">A very hot and humid January which is fine if a shady place can be found to read in but limits the blogging because who wants to sit in front of a computer on a summer's day. I've also spent more than a few hours watching the Australian Open tennis - an annual event I always enjoy.</span><br />
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">I'm pleased I stuck to my resolution not to take on anything with posting deadlines that might put me under pressure even if it meant foregoing two challenges that really appealed and I also have to ask how much did <b><a href="http://www.emeraldcitybookreview.com/2014/12/put-library-on-hold-month-of-reading.html">Lory's challenge</a></b> contribute...</span><br />
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">...and if I'm honest it was quite a lot. No pile of books with due dates screaming to be read made for a far more relaxed approach. I began just before Christmas so it's almost six weeks since I visited the library and it hasn't been as painful as I thought it might be although I was very happy to return to my weekly visit yesterday. The only books I buy are classics and Virago type - no contemporary fiction so a lack of the variety I like in my reading and really looking forward to a good crime thriller for a change and being able to participate again in the Library Loot meme.</span><br />
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<b style="font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><u><span style="color: #666666; font-size: large;">Books read in January = 9</span></u></b><br />
<span style="background-color: whitesmoke; line-height: 25px;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><b><span style="color: #cc0000;">* </span><span style="color: #666666;">A Century of Books</span></b></span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: whitesmoke; line-height: 25px;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><b><span style="color: #666666;"><a href="http://cat-bookmagic.blogspot.co.nz/2015/01/the-fortune-of-rougons-by-emile-zola.html">The Fortune of the Rougons by Emile Zola</a></span></b></span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: whitesmoke; line-height: 25px;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><b><span style="color: #666666;">The Man of Property by John Galsworthy</span></b></span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: whitesmoke; line-height: 25px;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><b><span style="color: #666666;"><a href="http://cat-bookmagic.blogspot.co.nz/2015/02/shirley-by-charlotte-bronte.html">Shirley by Charlotte Bronte </a></span></b></span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: whitesmoke; line-height: 25px;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><b><span style="color: #666666;"><a href="http://cat-bookmagic.blogspot.co.nz/2015/01/2-for-century-of-books.html">The Vet's Daughter by Barbara Comyns</a></span><span style="color: #990000;">*</span></b></span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: whitesmoke; line-height: 25px;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><b><span style="color: #666666;"><a href="http://cat-bookmagic.blogspot.co.nz/2015/01/2-for-century-of-books.html">Danger Point by Patricia Wentworth</a></span><span style="color: #990000;">*</span></b></span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: whitesmoke; line-height: 25px;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><b><span style="color: #666666;"><a href="http://cat-bookmagic.blogspot.co.nz/2015/01/its-margery-sharp-day.html">The Sun In Scorpio by Margery Sharp</a></span><span style="color: #990000;">*</span></b></span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: whitesmoke; line-height: 25px;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><b><span style="color: #666666;"><a href="http://cat-bookmagic.blogspot.co.nz/2015/01/tuesday-intro-going-into-service.html">One Pair of Hands by Monica Dickens</a> </span><span style="color: #990000;">* </span><span style="color: #666666;">(NF)</span></b></span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: whitesmoke; line-height: 25px;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><b><span style="color: #666666;">A Breath of French Air by H.E.Bates</span></b></span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: whitesmoke; line-height: 25px;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><b><span style="color: #666666;">High Rising by Angela Thirkell</span></b></span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><span style="background-color: whitesmoke; line-height: 25px;"><b><u>DNF</u> - Sister Carrie by Theodore Dreiser. </b>I'm always telling m</span></span><span style="background-color: whitesmoke; color: #666666; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large; line-height: 25px;">yself I must read more American classics so </span><b style="color: #666666; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; line-height: 25px;"><a href="https://bkclubcare.wordpress.com/2015/01/05/sister-carrie-readalong-announcement-carriealong/"><span style="font-size: large;">Care's readalong </span></a></b><span style="background-color: whitesmoke; color: #666666; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large; line-height: 25px;">seemed a good opportunity but I didn't like it at all and with so much else I really want to read I decided it just wasn't for me. </span><br />
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<span style="background-color: whitesmoke; line-height: 25px;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><b><span style="color: #666666;"><u>Also posted</u></span></b></span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: whitesmoke; line-height: 25px;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><b><span style="color: #666666;"><a href="http://cat-bookmagic.blogspot.co.nz/2015/01/ethan-frome-by-edith-wharton.html">Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton</a></span></b></span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: whitesmoke; line-height: 25px;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><b><span style="color: #666666;"><a href="http://cat-bookmagic.blogspot.co.nz/2015/01/reading-england-2015-stepping-ashore.html">Reading England 2015 - Stepping Ashore</a></span></b></span></span><br />
<span style="background-color: whitesmoke; line-height: 25px;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><b><span style="color: #666666;"><a href="http://cat-bookmagic.blogspot.co.nz/2015/01/a-beautiful-interlude.html">A Beautiful Interlude</a></span></b></span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><span style="background-color: whitesmoke; line-height: 25px;">Moving on into February and looking forward to another month of summer weather, a new title for Reading England, more of A Forsyte Saga........and whatever else takes my fancy. </span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><span style="background-color: whitesmoke; line-height: 25px;"><b>Have a great February!</b></span></span></div>
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Cathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09391899740930810224noreply@blogger.com11tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9095179960585908463.post-10529409569344157292015-01-28T09:53:00.000+13:002015-03-02T19:41:51.315+13:00A Beautiful Interlude<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">"<i>Irene sat down at the piano under the electric lamp festooned with pearl grey, and old Jolyon, in an armchair, whence he could see her, crossed his legs and drew slowly at his cigar. She sat for a few moments with her hands on the keys, evidently searching her mind for what to give him. Then she began, and within old Jolyon there arose a sorrowful pleasure, not quite like anything else in the world. He fell slowly into a trance, interrupted only by his hand taking the cigar out of his mouth at long intervals, and replacing it. She was there, and the hock within him, and the scent of tobacco; but there, too, was a world of sunshine lingering into moonlight, and pools with storks upon them, and bluish trees above, glowing with blurs of wine-red roses, and fields of lavender where milk-white cows were grazing, and a woman all shadowy, with dark eyes and a white neck, smiled, holding out her arms; and through air which was like music a star dropped and was caught on a cow's horn. He opened his eyes. Beautiful piece; she played well - the touch of an angel! And he closed them again. He felt miraculously sad and happy, as one does, standing under a lime tree in full honey flower.....</i></span><br />
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><i>......'Beautiful!' he said. 'Go on - more Chopin.' "</i></span><br />
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Interlude: Indian Summer of a Forsyte</span><span style="color: #666666; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span><br />
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Cathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09391899740930810224noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9095179960585908463.post-75498718934863057452015-01-25T16:00:00.000+13:002015-01-25T16:00:00.991+13:00It's Margery Sharp Day!<div style="text-align: center;">
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">A lovely idea from <b><a href="http://fleurinherworld.com/2015/01/06/margery-sharp-day-in-coming-soon/">Jane @ Fleur in her World </a>- <i>'</i></b></span><i><span style="background-color: white; color: #333332; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 15px; line-height: 22.5px;"> </span><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 22.5px;"><span style="color: #666666; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">the plan is for as many people as possible to read one of Margery’s books and post about it on her birthday'.</span></span><span style="color: #666666; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;"> </span></i><br />
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">For me it has been an introduction to an author I hadn't read before. I'm sure her books would have been around years a go when I was young but not the sort of thing I would have been interested in then. I chose to read <b>The Sun in Scorpio </b>which was published in 1965, one of her later works and from these opening lines I knew I was going to love it.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><i>'Everything sparkled.</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><i>Below the low stone wall, beyond the rocks, sun-pennies danced on the blue Mediterranean; so dazzlingly, they could be looked at only between dropped lashes. (In 1913, the pre-sunglass era, light was permitted to assault the naked eye.) opposite, across the road called Victoria Avenue, great bolts of sunlight struck at the white stone buildings and richocheted off the windows. A puff of dust was a puff of gold-dust, an orange spilled from a basket like a windfall from the Hesperides.</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><i>Everything sparkled, from the sun-pennies on the sea to the buckles on a cab horse's harness, from the buttons on a child's reefer jacket to the heavy gold pendant at a girl's ear. Everything sparkled or shone, even the stiff black hoods of the old women; serge or alpaca, worn smooth by use, under that sun a glossy blackbird-plumage.'</i></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">The Pennon family are part of the British community living on Next-Door-Island: next door to Malta, that is. It is here their three children, Muriel, Cathy and Alan spend their early childhood and it is Cathy who is the centre of this story. A true child of the sun she thrives in the heat.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">But war is looming and Mr Pennon decides they must 'go home' and there is much anticipation among the children who see this far away unknown 'home' as...</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">"<i>a Kate Greenaway paradise of primroses, beehives and pet rabbits; of paddling in brooks, nutting in woods, and dancing round the maypole."</i></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">The reality of a drab London suburb was somewhat different..</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><i>" Everything dripped.</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><i>The skies dripped, the lampposts dripped, the pillar boxes dripped and the handles of the errand-boys' bicycles dripped.</i></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><i>Everything was cold.</i></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><i>The streets were cold, it was cold on the trams and cold in the shops. A puff of breath showed on the cold air like a puff of smoke without a fire..."</i></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Poor Cathy! While Muriel and Alan adapt to their new life she is the flower that without the sun fails to flourish and grow. Ten years on , plain and ungainly, she is a shadow of her former self.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">After the death of her parents she goes to live with Muriel, the domestic queen, and her husband; a situation that neither of them likes and eventually takes a position in the country as governess and 'attendant sprite' to the upper class Lady Jean and her M.P. husband.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Cathy is rather a frustrating character who drifts along accepting what life brings but doing little to make what she wants happen. I liked the ending which holds the promise that something happier (and sunnier) is coming her way.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">The story spans more than three decades that included two world wars, a depression and radical social change - it is all there in the background and between the lines but the focus is on ordinary people. Margery Sharp writes with the true British humour that I love, capturing the attitudes and eccentricities of her characters with the perception that comes from close observation. At times she reminded me of Nancy Mitford but with a gentler wit. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">I loved it! Thanks Jane for introducing me to another wonderful author and one I look forward to reading more of very soon.</span><br />
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Cathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09391899740930810224noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9095179960585908463.post-54178088070046067972015-01-20T15:00:00.000+13:002015-01-20T15:00:00.849+13:00Tuesday Intro: Going into Service<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><b>One Pair Hands by Monica Dickens</b></span></div>
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><b>'I was fed up. As I lay awake in the grey small hours of an autumn morning, I reviewed my life. Three a.m. is not the most propitious time for meditation, as everyone knows and a deep depression was settling over me.</b></span></div>
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><b>I had just returned from New York, where the crazy cyclone of gaiety in which people seem to survive over there had caught me up, whirled me blissfully around, and dropped me into a London which seemed flat and dull. I felt restless, dissatisfied, and abominably bad-tempered.</b></span></div>
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><b> " Surely," I thought, " there's something more to life than just going out to parties that one doesn't enjoy, with people one doesn't even like? What a pointless existence it is - drifting about in the hope that something may happen to relieve the monotony. Something has got to be done to get me out of this rut."</b></span></div>
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><b>In a flash it came to me:</b></span></div>
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><b>"I'll have a job!"</b></span></div>
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><b>*****</b></span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Monica Dickens</td></tr>
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">In the 1930's it was not the thing for gently-bred unmarried girls to 'have a job.' Helping at home, sitting around idly or filling the long hours with social occasions was enough for any young woman until her prince whisked her down the aisle.</span><br />
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Monica decides otherwise - bored and adding the equation work = money = independence she enters the workforce as a hopeful cook-general. A strange choice as she couldn't even boil an egg but then domestic service in Britain at the time was on its last legs and employers couldn't afford to be choosy.</span><br />
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Monica's descriptions of her time spent in several positions ranging from city flat to aristocratic manor are very amusing and makes this memoir a fun book to relax with.</span><span style="color: #666666; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><b><br /></b></span><br />
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<b style="color: #444444;"><span style="font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">What did you think of the opening paragraph? Would you keep reading?</span></b></div>
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<b style="color: #444444; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;">*****</b></div>
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">Tuesday Intros is a meme hosted by </span><b style="color: #666666; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><a href="http://bibliophilebythesea.blogspot.co.nz/">Diane at Bibliophile by the Sea</a> </span></b><span style="color: #666666; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">which bloggers can join in with by posting the first paragraph (or two) from a book of their choice.</span><b style="color: #666666; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;"> </b></div>
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Cathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09391899740930810224noreply@blogger.com26tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9095179960585908463.post-76956377298474383432015-01-15T10:04:00.002+13:002015-01-15T10:04:56.794+13:002 for A Century of Books<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><b>The Vet's Daughter by Barbara Comyns</b></span><br />
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><i><b>"...if she had been a dog , my father would have destroyed her."</b></i></span><br />
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><i> Alice lives with her cowed and frightened mother and her brutal, sometimes violent father (the vet) in a bleak London suburb. The only joy in her miserable home life are the stories her mother tells of her childhood in Wales.</i></span><br />
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><i>After her mother's death and the arrival of a wicked stepmother Alice leaves home to care for the mother of a friend and there is hope that she will at last be able to lead a normal life and find happiness.</i></span><br />
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">The Vet's Daughter has been on my Classics Club list since the beginning - I've read many posts about it and it's always intrigued me. After reading it I am reserving judgement on Barbara Comyns as I think I need to reread this one or try something else.</span><br />
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">I loved the first part. Alice's narration has a unique voice, the writing is simple but wonderfully descriptive , the story is both heartbreaking and horrifying. It does have a fairytale quality and I wanted the happy ever after ending.</span><br />
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">I began to feel unsettled .... <i style="font-weight: bold;">" ...and I felt a strange homesickness for no home I'd known.'</i>... when I read those words which gave me a sense of where the story was going and I only skimmed the end chapter so I could say I finished it.</span><br />
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Not the right time for me to read this.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><b><a href="http://cat-bookmagic.blogspot.co.nz/p/the-classics-club.html">The Classics Club</a></b></span><br />
<b style="color: #666666; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><a href="http://cat-bookmagic.blogspot.co.nz/p/a-century-of-books.html">A Century of Books</a> </span></b><b style="color: #666666; font-family: Times, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span style="font-size: large;">(1959)</span></b><br />
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><b>Danger Point by Patricia Wentworth</b></span><br />
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><i>Miss Silver is returning home from a holiday when a very distressed and frightened young woman jumps into the compartment of her train. Mrs Lisle Jerningham , a newly wed heiress has overheard a conversation that questions the circumstances of her husband's first wife's death and wonders how long it will be before Lisle herself suffers an 'unfortunate accident'.</i></span><br />
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<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">A promising beginning which sadly never lived up to the promise. Lisle is such a passive and colourless heroine it's impossible to care about her fate and when it's obvious who the villain is.... only one thing is left. The pleasure of Miss Silver's company!</span><br />
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">But she doesn't make another appearance until over halfway through the book and when she does takes very little part in solving the case. </span><br />
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Disappointing! </span><br />
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><b><a href="http://cat-bookmagic.blogspot.co.nz/p/a-century-of-books.html">A Century of Books</a> (1942)</b></span><br />
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span>Cathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09391899740930810224noreply@blogger.com2