What's Open Now: Fiction

1/31/2009 Missed entering altogether, What Looks Like Crazy by Charlotte Hughes, who's following Mifflin Community Library on twitter. A light-hearted read I enjoyed. Love that the adopted dog "Mike" ends up having puppies and retains the name "Mike." I probably know a Junque Lady or two.

Also, Wives and Daughters by Elizabeth Gaskell. Wow. It is remarkably modern compared to Jane Austen (commentary included in Wives and Daughters and Cranford BBC production.) Must compare dates of writing.

Still have Poison Study open. What else is hanging around at the foot of the bed...Should add that reading has been postponed while DVDs of Boston legal Season Two are viewed!

1/23/2009 A Presumption of Death by Jill Paton Walsh Does not draw me in with as much intensity as those authored by Dorothy L., yet parts are staying with me. The tune sung by the young schoolchild (especially as sung falsetto by Petherbridge in the Book on CD), has been bouncing around in my head. To the tune of "Colonel Bogey March" (corps of Getty servicemen marching in parade, Bridge on the River Kwai) the ditty sings of Hitler's testicles, or lack thereof. I was very pleased that this novel offered additional insight into WWII Britain (and nice to be reading Austerity Britain at the same time).

1/16/2009 Poison Study, UK release, Maria V. Snyder Looking forward to the release of Maria's new book Storm Glass that follows a character from Fire Study. See pictures from Maria's visit to Mifflin Community Library through the library's website at www.berks.lib.pa.us/mifflincl Yelena and Valek's world parallels ours in flora and fauna, but with the inclusion of magic, empathic horses, and a geography that defies placement. I admit to being deeply disappointed that Criollo has a direct connection with our world's confectionery, and is more exotic only in my imagination. Still, one can but dream of that most perfect concoction!

What's Open Now: Nonfiction

1/24/2009: Have abandoned Pliny/Vesuvius for Austerity Britain, David Kynaston, a scholarly work on the privations Britains continued to experience, 1945 to 1951. Changes in architecture and city planning as Britain  sought to rebuild bomb-scarred cities, and the dramatic social repercussions of the war in the workplace, at home, in governement and in schools. Includes notes from the impressive Mass Observation studies and makes references to fiction books that recount the various aspects of post-war Britain.  

1/15/2009: Ghosts of Vesuvius, Charlie Pelligrino. Pelligrino is the author of one of my favorite science fiction/science speculation books, Dust. At the same time I also have open Natural History by Pliny the Elder. Try the light Juvenile Roman Mystery #2 The Secrets of Vesuvius by Caroline Lawrence that has as one of the characters, Admiral Pliny.

What's Playing Right Now - Books on CD

1/31/2009 The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society

1/15/2009: A Presumption of Death, Jill Paton Walsh and Dorothy L. Sayers. Read by Edward Petherbridge. I grew up with Ian Charmichael playing Lord Peter and can't watch Petherbridge (sorry, Marianne) but I find I can listen to him. This is a book that I'll have to read a printed version before I can completely appreciate the story. There's a lovely quote about germs I'm looking forward to seeing in print. At least I think it was "germs" and not "Germans." =^..^=