NOOK VS. BOOK

Excuse my poor photography - but I think the point is made.  I paid for and downloaded a book I already owned because I just couldn't read the small grey type for very long before my eyes gave out.

The good news - totally worth it - I am again loving the Margaret Atwood book, The Year of the Flood, leading up to her trilogy closing book MaddAddam.   I have book club tonight so I will have to read that selection before I get to read MaddAddam, but I am happy to have it waiting in the wings.

FRIDAY FAST ONES

1.) What does it say about our little city that the most prevalent new businesses seem to be two of types:
 massage parlors  and academic tutoring.

2.)  I was disappointed when the book selected for our book club this month was a Jodi Picoult novel. I am a bit of a book snob - I admit it.  However,  though I am not finished with it yet and it may still disappoint, The Storyteller is a pretty good read.

The thing is, I am anxious to get back to re-reading the first two of the Margaret Atwood MaddAddam Trilogy - the third book just came out and all the reviewers suggested going back to the first two before embarking on this new one.  The first, Oryx and Crake, came out 10 years ago and I was amazed at how much of it I recalled when I re-read it last week.  When I finish the book club book, I'll read The Year of the Flood again and then dive into MaddAddam.  Just love Margaret Atwood.

3.)  I started my holiday shopping this weekend with a online session.  I didn't have much luck finding things I was thinking about for gifts - some companies I have shopped with in the past seem to be gone and prices seem to be a lot higher this year.

I read that the California economy is supposed to be nearly back to what it was 8 years ago.  It certainly hasn't happened in my house and the article didn't address the huge increase in the price of everything vs. the new lower wages we are living with. I make $4.00 an hour less now than I did 8 years ago and pay $800. more a month for health insurance. Then add in the higher cost of gas, groceries and even internet.

 I suppose statistically speaking,  people who made good money during this recession and are making even more money now will skew the numbers higher than the reality most of us live with.

4.)  Just got back from our date night. We skipped dance class and went to the gym then out to eat.  The moon is huge and bright, the temperature when we got to dinner was 68 degrees; we ate outside knowing it is probably the last week of this balmy fall weather...  Tomorrow we are off to Monterey to ride bikes with our Zac.

Hope everyone has a lovely fall weekend!

HOSTING BOOK CLUB

At about 7:15 I was thinking I would be writing a post called "I hosted book club but nobody came." I knew that attendance was going to be low, but since it was supposed to start at 7, I was getting worried that I would be the first hostess to have no club members turn up!

I ended up with 5 of the 18 members here.  We discussed the book "The Light Between Two Oceans" which was a tragic story but very worthy of discussion.  Beautifully written, too.

I tried to keep my food options light and easy - just

a veggie tray, some nuts and nibbles.  I made an ice cream and sorbet  bombe and some shortbread cookies for dessert. The bombe turned out beautifully and everyone really liked it.  It was perfect because I could make it a day ahead and just had to put out the food and drinks when I came home from work.

Tom and I cleaned the house on the weekend - he helped by waxing the laminate floors which turned out great.  I finally made my finished needlepoint into a pillow. That's the nice thing about entertaining - it stimulates housekeeping!

Book Club hosting done for the year, a clean house and  a long weekend coming up!  A nice end to the summer.

WHAT IS THIS FEELING?

Really - it was fancier than this!

I don't think it is as simple as envy.  That suggests that I want what someone else has and maybe that's a small component of the feeling.  Wistfulness is a part of it.  Missing what I once had, even if it was less grand. Sheepishness or something  that's short of embarrassment is there, too.

These were my feelings last night when I walked into the home of a book club member.  A home designed and decorated in a style nothing like mine but in such an obviously expensive, no holds barred extravaganza of molding and cabinetry and designer excess that I was a bit awestruck. 

Since we host the club meetings on a rotating basis and we now have 20 members (!) I may end up moving before it is my turn.  If not, I have no idea where I will put them all.  My little house was overflowing when we had 10 members. It isn't like I am the only member with a small home. One member regularly hosts in a restaurant rather than try to make the logistics work and I could do that.

Part of my chagrin is that we rent and the home has not been well maintained by the owners before  we moved in or since.  At the very least it needs paint and it's long overdue for  a lot of updating and repairs beyond what Tom is willing to do out of our pockets - because we have already done quite a bit of that. So these things are not in my control.  I don't want to go around making excuses for the "substandard" place in which we live but it is always in my mind when people are over.

The wistfulness comes because we had really nice homes in the past.  Not only spacious, but nicely decorated and maintained.  We have never had high end interior designer budgets, but then again, I don't really have a taste for a lot of frou-frau and embellishments.  (Twice I have visited the houses we sold after the new owners poured a lot of money into them and for the most part, I think they were nicer before all the moldings and granite inlays and such were added!)

I enjoyed my nice homes when we had them and was aware of how fortunate we were.

I was willing to give up our last house for the little rental because it was in support of Tom pursuing his dream of a law practice. And 10 years later I am feeling, well, tired. 

Maybe what it boils down to is loss. I don't see an end to our financial stresses.  I don't see a time when we could own our own home again and have the ability to paint and choose window coverings and light fixtures and all those silly things that I feel so shallow just writing about but still somehow have a hold on me.

So I guess the feeling isn't envy - I don't want what my book club member has. I want to have something that is my own again.

BOOKS

The closing of our  local Border's store was announced this week.  I will really miss it.  It is where I usually bought my book club selections, my coupon in hand.  About half the time I managed to find another book or two to take home, too.  Books are my splurge.  I keep trying to go to the library to be thrifty, but I still can't go without purchasing books pretty much every month.

I am a life long book lover.  I still have some of the Nancy Drews from my childhood.  The Edger Allen Poe book my aunt bought me when I was 12, eecummings poetry volumes I collected in high school and  the Jungian psychology of Robert Johnson I read in college.  I have lugged books up and down California and across 3 states when I have moved.  I still morn the loss of  a box of books that was pilfered during one move when someone saw the boxes on the sidewalk outside an apartment building and went through them, taking some choice volumes.

My dream home has rooms of floor to ceiling bookcases. 

When e-readers came out I had no interest.  As more and more people around me got them, I had some mild curiosity, but when I held one it knew it was not for me.  I love books - not just reading.  One woman in my book club said that if she really likes one of the books she reads on her Kindle, she buys a copy to keep!    That just seems so odd to me.  Other friends have told me that they never really know where they are in a book - they miss the placement of a bookmark and the glance that tells them how much more there is before they finish.

As my eyes get older, I sometimes get eyestrain and need brighter light to read by.  Sometimes I increase the font size on my computer and I appreciate the possibility of doing the same on an e-reader.  I can also see the benefit for travel when you would otherwise, perhaps, end up carrying several volumes.  Having one lightweight reader would be

nice in that circumstance. 

I know there are arguments on both sides about the greeness of paper and ink books versus e-books.  I would just miss bookstores so much and there are so few left that offer the pleasures of wandering through and discovering authors, subjects and stories which aren't on the current best seller lists. 

I sense that it is all going to go away so much faster than I am prepared for.  That my bookcases are going to be full of books that are considered as old fashioned as the typewriter I have in the back of the closet.

FRIDAY FAST ONES

1)  What is it about letting an insurance policy lapse which triggers a need for coverage within days?

2.)  Our false Spring weather has caused the daffodils to burst into bloom and the cherry trees are getting started, too.  The rain and 50 degree weather is back in a few days.   It's got to be confusing to be a plant with all this climate change going on..

3.)   I had been thinking how fun it would be to hold my turn for book club at the hotel.  We have a beautiful board room with a private bath and big comfy seats.  Then it came to me that I am now working on book club night.  Oh, no!  I'll have  to drop out of book club.

4.)  On the other hand, Tom and I are getting a very nice, romantic room for Valentine's night.

5.) I worked with Jerry Brown during his first term as Governor of California.  I was a college student and had the opportunity through my student government position at San Diego State University to serve on a committee with the Governor.  When I read this I was so glad to be reminded that he has not changed. in all these years:

Anyone who needed a reminder about how much has changed in terms of California's gubernatorial style with the election of Jerry Brown just needed to look at Southwest Airlines Flight 896 from Sacramento to Burbank on Thursday morning.


There, in the fourth row, was Brown, sitting amid the regular procession of business travelers.


Not only does Brown fly commercial, but he flies coach, and without an entourage. No staffers or security traveled with the governor, who made the trip south on the low-cost carrier to address the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce on Thursday night.

And that's the way all the politicians should be behaving.  They are elected to serve the people, not reign over us.

6.)  Have you seen Car Lashes? 

Have a great Valentine's Weekend - if you are into all that!

READING GONE WILD

I am a big reader.  I am not saying I am a reader of great taste and sophistication, just that I read a lot and all the time.  This past month or so I have been reading strangely.  I have been ordering books from Quality Paperback Book Club (QPB) at a great rate, I have been taking books out from the library and purchasing books from the local used book store.  I have also borrowed a few books from my sister and even bought a hardcover book (The Irresistible Henry House) which was our July book club selection.

The new thing is that when I have read about a book which interested me, on a blog or website, I have gone to my local library and put in a reservation on a returning copy.  I really haven't done this before.  So while I was reading David Guterson's "The Other", the copy of Anne Tyler's "Noah's Compass" came into the library.  So I put aside the first book, read the second , then picked up the first book again and finished it.  Then I started reading the other book I picked up from the library which was a book of wonderful short stories by Elizabeth Berg called "The Day I Ate Anything I Wanted".  I read it in a day! 

Then I zipped through "That Old Cape Magic" by Richard Russo.  It was good but not as good as "Empire Falls."  My sister loaned me "Cutting for Stone" by Abraham Verghese which I liked as soon as I started reading it, but 4 chapters in and I got the notice that "Mr. Peanut" by Adam Ross had come into the library.  I had read on a number of sites that it is the big summer beach read on the East Coast - so I am giving it a go.  I am not usually a reader of murder mysteries.

So I am interrupting "Stone" for "Peanut."  Then, I went to Costco, and found  Barbara Kingsolver's new book "The Lacuna" is out in paperback and I snatched it up!  So I have that to look forward to, in addition to "Homer and Langley" by EL Doctrow.

Oh!  And I am a big fan of Larry McMurtry.  I read the third of the books about Duane, he was Jacy's boyfriend in "The Last Picture Show."  Anyway, there have been 3 more books following him through his life in his small Texas Town, and "Rhino Ranch" was the final book.  Now I want to go back and re-read all of them...when I have time.

Read anything good lately?

LAZY DAYS OF SUMMER

It has been an uneventful weekend. A bit lazy in fact. I have drifted from a bit of gardening in the cooler part of the day to a little housekeeping. Some reading of my new book club selection "The Irresistible Henry House" which is pretty irresistible.

I have almost finished a new mosaic pot which is an homage to the new stripy umbrella for my mosaic area. In fact I sat right there, under the umbrella to read my book, iced tea at my side for an hour or so yesterday. Anyway, you can't see it well in this picture, but there is a purple stripe and a creamy yellow and the green in the umbrella isn't quite as foresty as the one I am using on the pot, but that's what make it an "homage" I suppose! I will grout it black and plant it later in the week.

Ally spent the weekend in Tahoe with friends and Tom has been either riding or working on his bikes. I had to go rescue him this morning when he had a break down while riding many miles from home, he wasn't hurt, unlike some of the riders on the Tour de France which we have been watching a bit.

I finally watched "It's Complicated" last night. I am probably the last woman in my age group to see it - it was fun, but so much of it had been revealed in the previews and promotional clips that very little was a surprise. That is the problem with waiting so long to see things. I promised Ally that I would save "Nine" to watch with her when she gets home. Which should be about 3 hours from now...

Hope the long weekend was as restful or activity filled as you wished!

BOOK CLUB - MY TURN

I hosted book club last week. Which required me to clean my house with more attention to detail than usual. I mean, it just gets dirty again, right?

So I hauled in the step stool, climbed up and cleaned the glass shelves, washed some of the windows and went after all the cob webs - what is it about Spring and spiders? No sooner do I knock down the webs than more are spun...

I stopped at a farm stand on the way home from Montery and bought a flat of strawberries, so I made chocolate dipped strawberries to serve. The berries were huge! I piled them on a cake stand - they looked amazing! I ate one. I had more than enough to serve each member a Strawberry Bellini when they arrived.

I also made asparagus with thinly sliced ham rolled around them, and roasted for about 15 minutes. Very tasty and low cal. I had some hummus with pita chips and veggies and little pumpernickel bread pieces with dilled cream cheese and a slice of smoked salmon.

The food was a hit - the book, not so much. I had chosen "The Little Giant of Aberdeen County" because the writing had been compared with that of Alice Hoffman, one of my favorite writers. The book was okay. Next time I will pick a book I have read, like "Little Bee" which was very touching and sad.

This month we are reading "Look Again" by a Penn grad who teaches at the Law School. Appropriate for my trip there!

ONE OF THE FEW

Interesting statistics about reading in America, circa 2003 study:

1/3 of high school graduates never read another book for the rest of their lives.
42 percent of college graduates never read another book after college.
80 percent of U.S. families did not buy or read a book last year.
70 percent of U.S. adults have not been in a bookstore in the last five years.
57 percent of new books are not read to completion.
70 percent of books published do not earn back their advance.
70 percent of the books published do not make a profit.

I am glad there is a big market for the romance, crime, detective and chick lit books so all the other books can still be published. I just went a bit crazy at Borders when I went to pick up my latest book club selection - The Shadow of the Wind. I went by the "buy one get one free" table when I saw Elegance of the Hedgehog which I have wanted to read, so I picked up The Poe Shadow because I really liked the previous book by the author; The Dante Club.

Then I saw Revolutionary Road was on the table and I had heard it was more nuanced than the film, so I picked it up, then I had to find a "get one half price" and picked up American Wife which has gotten good reviews.

The clerk asked me if I was on vacation. Nope - just one of those statistically few readers.

BBC Big Read List

This is a list of the BBC All-Time "top 100" Most Loved Books. This sort of list is really quite subjective - and shows a preponderance of British writers. But I like to see how many I have read and get idea for future picks. I really need to check out Terry Pratchett, a multiple place holder. I am surprised that there are no Maeve Binchy titles - our current book club author, then again, she is Irish!

And, no, I have not read the Harry Potter books. My kids have read and re-read them and I have seen the movies. The genre is not of interest to me.

I have highlighted the ones I have read, not quite half.

1. The Lord of the Rings, JRR Tolkien

2. Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen

3. His Dark Materials, Philip Pullman

4. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams

5. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, JK Rowling

6. To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee

7. Winnie the Pooh, AA Milne
8. Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell
9. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, CS Lewis
10. Jane Eyre, Charlotte Brontë

11. Catch-22, Joseph Heller

12. Wuthering Heights, Emily Brontë
13. Birdsong, Sebastian Faulks

14. Rebecca, Daphne du Maurier

15. The Catcher in the Rye, JD Salinger

16. The Wind in the Willows, Kenneth Grahame

17. Great Expectations, Charles Dickens

18. Little Women, Louisa May Alcott

19. Captain Corelli's Mandolin, Louis de Bernieres

20. War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy

21. Gone with the Wind, Margaret Mitchell

22. Harry Potter And The Philosopher's Stone, JK Rowling

23. Harry Potter And The Chamber Of Secrets, JK Rowling

24. Harry Potter And The Prisoner Of Azkaban, JK Rowling

25. The Hobbit, JRR Tolkien

26. Tess Of The D'Urbervilles, Thomas Hardy

27. Middlemarch, George Eliot

28. A Prayer For Owen Meany, John Irving

29. The Grapes Of Wrath, John Steinbeck

30. Alice's Adventures In Wonderland, Lewis Carroll
31. The Story Of Tracy Beaker, Jacqueline Wilson

32. One Hundred Years Of Solitude, Gabriel García Márquez

33. The Pillars Of The Earth, Ken Follett

34. David Copperfield, Charles Dickens
35. Charlie And The Chocolate Factory, Roald Dahl
36. Treasure Island, Robert Louis Stevenson

37. A Town Like Alice, Nevil Shute

38. Persuasion, Jane Austen

39. Dune, Frank Herbert

40. Emma, Jane Austen

41. Anne Of Green Gables, LM Montgomery

42. Watership Down, Richard Adams

43. The Great Gatsby, F Scott Fitzgerald

44. The Count Of Monte Cristo, Alexandre Dumas

45. Brideshead Revisited, Evelyn Waugh

46. Animal Farm, George Orwell

47. A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens

48. Far From The Madding Crowd, Thomas Hardy

49. Goodnight Mister Tom, Michelle Magorian

50. The Shell Seekers, Rosamunde Pilcher

51. The Secret Garden, Frances Hodgson Burnett

52. Of Mice And Men, John Steinbeck
53. The Stand, Stephen King
54. Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy

55. A Suitable Boy, Vikram Seth

56. The BFG, Roald Dahl

57. Swallows And Amazons, Arthur Ransome

58. Black Beauty, Anna Sewell

59. Artemis Fowl, Eoin Colfer

60. Crime And Punishment, Fyodor Dostoyevsky

61. Noughts And Crosses, Malorie Blackman

62. Memoirs Of A Geisha, Arthur Golden

63. A Tale Of Two Cities, Charles Dickens

64. The Thorn Birds, Colleen McCollough

65. Mort, Terry Pratchett

66. The Magic Faraway Tree, Enid Blyton

67. The Magus, John Fowles'

68. Good Omens, Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman

69. Guards! Guards!, Terry Pratchett

70. Lord Of The Flies, William Golding

71. Perfume, Patrick Süskind

72. The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists, Robert Tressell

73. Night Watch, Terry Pratchett

74. Matilda, Roald Dahl

75. Bridget Jones's Diary, Helen Fielding

76. The Secret History, Donna Tartt

77. The Woman In White, Wilkie Collins

78. Ulysses, James Joyce

79. Bleak House, Charles Dickens

80. Double Act, Jacqueline Wilson

81. The Twits, Roald Dahl

82. I Capture The Castle, Dodie Smith

83. Holes, Louis Sachar

84. Gormenghast, Mervyn Peake

85. The God Of Small Things, Arundhati Roy

86. Vicky Angel, Jacqueline Wilson

87. Brave New World, Aldous Huxley

88. Cold Comfort Farm, Stella Gibbons

89. Magician, Raymond E Feist

90. On The Road, Jack Kerouac

91. The Godfather, Mario Puzo

92. The Clan Of The Cave Bear, Jean M Auel

93. The Colour Of Magic, Terry Pratchett

94. The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho

95. Katherine, Anya Seton

96. Kane And Abel, Jeffrey Archer

97. Love In The Time Of Cholera, Gabriel García Márquez

98. Girls In Love, Jacqueline Wilson

99. The Princess Diaries, Meg Cabot

100. Midnight's Children, Salman Rushdie

BOOK CLUB MEETING

Just home from book club. This month we read To Kill a Mockingbird. It was a good pick for our group - it rated the highest score of any book read to date. Some of our members really didn't want to read it, but loved it when they did.

I remembered it so vividly from high school and was pleased to find it was as good as I believed it was then. In a brief discussion with another member who had read it in high school and didn't really recall it, I realized that I was more of a romantic about stories of struggle, poverty and race than she was. Most likely because I was from a middle class California town and she from urban Philadelphia. I suppose that is one reason we have such a good group. We have an age range of about 25 years, people from different parts of this country, and one member from South Africa; we also come from different educational and economic backgrounds. The discussions are interesting and enlightening.

Many of us in the club have a child in high school, and they read To Kill a Mockingbird during their sophomore year. Ally will be reading it soon. I am very excited to see if she likes it. None of my children liked Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men which was another favorite of mine from school. Maybe with Obama in the White House, this book will take on a different level of meaning for the kids - a difference sense of the importance of his election.

BOOK CLUB MEETING

I love to read. I always have. As a kid when the bookmobile came around and they would only let you check out 2 books, I made the other kids check out books for me.

I am the newest member of a book club made up of 12 women. I have been a member for about 18 months, some members have known each other for years, we all have kids and most of us work outside the home.

We meet once a month, usually at the home of the member hosting. The host chooses the book and then leads the discussion. We usually arrive and visit and eat for a while before we sit down to talk about the book. I really enjoy our discussions because we come from so many backgrounds and points of view. It is always lively, usually we are talking over each other.

There is a lot of laughter - like about the time D bought a selection at the used bookstore, started reading, thought it sounded familiar, looked in the back of the book and found her name. She bought back the book she had sold to the bookstore! Then there was the time K couldn't quite follow the discussion and finally realized she had read the wrong book - right author, but a sequel with a similar name and cover.

At the end of the discussion we rank the book by writing style, character development, research, degree of involvement and ending. It is interesting that even the books we dislike, after the talk we find things we actually did appreciate.

Last night we had fun picking a name - forced upon us by the local bookstore in order to get a discount. Once we dismissed the theme of moms, housewives, and boobs - we came up with "books, friends, discussion" - discussion was changed to dessert. Great! The BFD. Uh, oh. Some of the ladies in the group didn't like the idea of presenting themselves as members of the BFD club. Those of us not ladies thought it was a hoot.

The next round was all W's. Women, Wednesdays, Words, Wine, Whine and Whatever. So it was decided that mathematically that was 6 degrees of W. Or W6. Which I can't type properly here, but you get the idea.

This month we read The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson. I'll review it when I am done. January is my month - let me know if you have any book suggestions!