MarthaJeanne - Thoughts on books

I decided to start a topic, but I don't intend to list everything I read. Just to write when I have something to say.

Like today. First shopping day of a new year and I bought three books.

An einem Tisch
Geheimnisse aus der Krippenwerkstatt
Can I help it if these books were on display along my route marked way down?

The creche book is from 1996. It's got lots of nice pictures. (Marked down from €24 to €8. Bet Ruth couldn't have passed it by either.)

Vom Wienerwald zur Buckligen Welt

BTW, I am the first person to enter each of these books in LT.

Yay! Yes, please don't feel pressured to keep track. And YEAH, I'd grab up the Krippenwerkstatt. Some day I'll be visiting and we can go to the museums, eh?

Of course. Don't come this week. I hate to think of the crowds as Albertina's Dürer exhibit goes into its final days. (I saw it three times.) But there is always something interesting on.

The Dürer catalogue finally got to my turn on Friday (library hold list). I'm learning a lot from it, would probably get a lot out of another viewing, but on the last day? Forget it! No chance of getting near the pictures I really want to see again. But Oh! the book is heavy. I think I'll be glad to give it back. I'm very glad I didn't buy it! Still, the articles are quite accessible, which isn't always the case. I do get amused at the long discussions of whether or not a piece was finished, what it means that some parts are detailed, other parts more vague. You want my opinion? He thought with his fingers, drew what caught his attention, and kept the drawings because he didn't have an iPad with a camera to hold all these details for him.

If you are interested in Dürer, and can get hold of the catalogue, it's worth reading. I'm reading the German, but it is also available in English, and the Albertina uses good translators. (One place where I often cheat and read the English rather than the German.)

Finished Inheritance : a memoir of genealogy, paternity, and love. I enjoyed it, but find it weird that AI companies are still promising sperm donors anonymity. It has to be expected that the children will search for their biological father, and with the growth of DNA testing that they will also find the fathers.

>5 MarthaJeanne: Finished Dürer today. Phew!

>7 MarthaJeanne: Was there much text? I would love to browse the art.

Much more pictures than text, of course, but still a fair amount of text. As I said above, it was accessible, a lot of it pointing out how his drawings were sometimes part of designing a larger work, but often just his working things out, but then later being pulled out to provide the basis for various figures in the large works. They showed illustrations of both their works and other museums' works that are related to the works on show. I enjoyed the text, I learned quite a bit from it, and it increased my appreciation of the pictures.

It's just a really big heavy object. About 2.5 kg. For me that means it has to be supported on a table, chair arm, or something that is NOT me.

My Amazon order arrived yesterday and today.

One DVD - White Christmas. We have always watched this over Christmas, but always borrowed from others. And now the library copies no longer play, so it was very important to have a copy of our own. Yes, we watched it last night.

Then books:
The sisters Weiss I just love Naomi Ragen and never just stumble over her books. I have to chase them.

Fires of Faith
Royal Books and Holy Bones
Also a big fan of Eamon Duffy. Vienna is not the best place for picking up English History of Religion.

Greenfeast : Autumn, Winter
I don't think Nigel Slater could write a bad cookbook. (I'm currently reading Toast! which I'm not crazy about, but then, it's not a cookbook.)

The Harrowing of Gwynedd (Wrong touchstone. The new edition includes a story.)
I'm rereading the series. I think I read this one long ago, but I've never owned it. Finally available in a reprint! And I'm in the process of rereading the series. It's out of order because I'd gotten further, but I'll gladly backtrack!

Sisters of the Revolution
I think it's the Ursula LeGuin story I desperately need to read, but I'll probably enjoy most of them.

Now we all know that I don't really need more books, but I needed these books, so I am very happy tonight.

As far as Toast goes. It's a memoir. Of sorts. Mostly just disconnected anecdotes about food during his childhood. As anecdotes go, they are interesting, well written ... But it gets boring reading one anecdote after another with nothing holding them together. I may put this back on the shelf while I go through a couple of these newer books.

This is one of the remainders I picked up at Wells market in September. Didn't really do well there. The stand keeper talked me into an 'Arthurian' trilogy that I abandoned.

I can recommend The Five except for the final chapter. She does a good job of writing about the five women killed by Jack the Ripper. She did not need to draw out all the morals to be learned. Anyway, the stories are not sensationalized. There is very little sex, and what there is is not graphic, just mentioned because it is part of the story, and generally downplayed. She makes it clear that, for the most part, these were not prostitutes, but just poor, homeless women.

>12 MarthaJeanne: You were brave. I have never read anything on that topic on purpose. I didn't even know the number of his victims.

I tried Toast several years ago, both the book and the film. I found them both slightly unpleasant, like unbuttered white toast.

>13 2wonderY: But this book doesn't focus on the murders or the murderer. It focuses on the victims' lives. Their deaths are barely mentioned. In essence, this is a book on how difficult life was in those times if you happened to born poor or female or (heaven forbid) both. Obviously, pretty grim, but no 'horror'.

Yes, but how could you know that before picking it up? It does sound like a good book. I wonder how the author found enough documentary material to write enough on these individuals.

There aren't that many nonfiction titles in my library's OverDrive account, so I check them out. The description here on LT makes it fairly clear. Actually, she found very little material about the one woman who really was a prostitute and died in her bed. The others she discusses how reliable her sources were. Some of the information is generalization of what we know about poor women of the period. And that is what the book really is about, just using these five women as examples.

>13 2wonderY: Re: Toast. More, I think, like the toast you get in some English B&Bs. Buttered in the kitchen then stuck in a toast rack to serve, so it's cold and soggy, and you're not sure it was really butter, even if you wanted butter. (I can't stand butter and peanut butter together.)

It seems to me that he gives the fruits and vegetables in Tender more character than any of the people in Toast.

Well, I finished Toast. If only I had quit before the last twenty or thirty pages. I'd have given it *** and added it to the give away bag. As it is, I finally settled on 1 1/2. I guess it still lands in that bag, but the paper recycling is right there too, and might be kinder to whoever might pick it up next.

>17 MarthaJeanne: Ha! Yeah, it was obvious he didn't like most people.

I'm currently reading the ebook of On Chapel Sands. The author describes how her mother, as a child, had yearned for a pair of rubber sandals like her friend wore on the beach.

Except in another book I recently read, the narrator had just such sandals and greatly resented being required to wear them on the beach because of the painful sores she got when sand got between her skin and the rubber.

Cozy white cottage is not my idea of cozy. And just the idea of going to a flea market to buy up old, green books to look good on a shelf makes me shudder.

"She was surprised to find Daniel reading in the living room. And not a tablet, either. The man was holding a book."

Quote from California Girls

The first book I read by this author got this reaction from me:
Totally unrealistic. 2 1/2 stars.

At half way, this one looks like a solid four.

Have you read any other Susan Mallery? I haven't, but might try, if you recommend.

See my edit. My library has several of her books on OverDrive, and she gets good reviews in general. Just skip A very merry Princess.

I'm enjoying this one. It's not great literature, but chick lit rarely is. Now if Mallery can just keep the women independant for the rest of the book.

I recently borrowed Das neue Backvergnügen from the library, and as soon as I had read it went out and bought a copy for my library.

Tonight we tried the savoury Gugelhupf.



I wish you could taste this, and not just see a picture.

Re: >22 MarthaJeanne: ff. 3 1/2. Not quite sure why it didn't make four. Still for fluff it's fairly readable. I guess four happy ends is more than feels right in one book.

One incident I did not like: When one sister's husband ran off with a singer, one of her colleagues at work hit on her making it clear that he has a habit of offering revenge sex to recently badly done by wives. To me that is sexual harassment.

I got some of my ironing done this afternoon. Along with watching The biggest little farm It was fun.

BTW, I had to wait for it, and it has another hold on it now. Could, of course, be the person who had to give it back because I wanted it. But in any case, it is popular at the Vienna Public Library.

>27 MarthaJeanne: Glad you could get it. Isn't the photography amazing?

Yes. And I loved the various solutions they found for their problems. The owls and falcons were beautiful.

Child's Play

Makes me glad I'm not involved in my grown children's lives.

I don't normally enter ebooks if I don't finish them. I made an exception for A Short History of Drunkenness. It was so bad I felt I needed to warn people off. It is supposed to be funny. Maybe if you are drunk.

>31 MarthaJeanne: I read a book about barroom humor that was like that.

It's so discouraging to read older books that make sense and foresee growing problems, and then to realize that the only things that have changed is that the problems have gotten worse the way the author prophesied. A brief history of blasphemy : liberalism, censorship and "The Satanic verses" was written 30 years ago about Salmon Rushdie, and the anti-Islamic rhetoric of the time. I'm discarding it because the details are so out of date. I only wish his conclusions also were no longer valid.

Somewhere fairly recently I read about the film The Piano and got curious. I did not enjoy it.

I finished a spectacular book on dealing with the aftermath of death. Letzte Hilfe Kurs (a last aid course). Some of the details are specifically Austrian, but most of it is universal. I handed it to my husband. As president of a retiree association, he and his team deal with some of these issues. He was sort of 'do I really need this?' until he had read the first 20-30 pages. Now he is eager to read the whole thing. Guess it's not going back to the library tomorrow.

(You know what? Sometimes I know what I'm talking about.)

I'm impressed by how many people gave high ratings to A Library at Night. It seemed to me to very braggy about the medieval castle wall built into the library, and lots of name dropping about which translation of this or that old book he owns. Probably no space for my chick lit or my husband's thrillers. Both of us prefer these to 'award winning literature'. Obviously most readers of this book think differently. I didn't feel obligated to read very far as I don't seem to be the intended audience.

A lovely quote:

I'd have seen more elegance on a dinosaur wearing stilettos walking along the cobbled streets of Amsterdam.

Now just try to picture that, especially if you have experience of walking on cobbled streets.

Dream a little Dream is keeping me interested.

ETA For a few chapters. But the dreams keep getting crazier and nothing really happens. Giving up at about a third.

I know, we have all read more books about WWII and the holocaust than we care to remember.

But imagine growing up as a person of colour in Germany, adopted into a 'normal' German family, and having lost contact with your birth mother although you had seen her regularly until that adoption at age 7. You also lived for several years in Israel, and speak Hebrew. Now, at age 38, you pull a book from the shelf in the library. And you know the woman on the cover. She is your mother. She is also the daughter of Amon Göth, Kommandant of the concentration camp in Schindler's List.

How do you deal with this knowledge? How do you share it with your Israeli friends?

Amon : mein Großvater hätte mich erschossen (English title : My Grandfather Would Have Shot Me)

From the reviews it sounds as though the English translation isn't as good as the German original. I would still recommend this. It is very different from anything else I have read.

>38 MarthaJeanne: I gave the English translation 4 1/2 stars.

>39 2wonderY: As I did the German. A very impressive woman.

Children of local mothers and black fathers, have a rough time in countries that are overwhelmingly white.

I remember one time the mothers and small children group at the Catholic church in the town outside Vienna where we lived invited me and a son to join them for horse riding. Horses are not my thing. Really not my thing. But I went. We had a pony and a large horse for 6-10 children. My son must have been about three, so he was in the pony group, but somehow I ended up leading the big (scary) horse.

The oldest child was one of these mixed race girls, there with her grandmother. She was obviously uncomfortable in the group, and was also obviously bored with being walked around on the horse. So I jogged a bit to give her a more interesting ride. And also ended up jogging for other kids. This was so out of my comfort zone! But that girl knew that I had done it for her, personally. You could see that she not only liked the ride, but was very happy that someone had done it specially for her, even if the others also got the ride. It was worth it.

Testing Dream a little Dream

Reading The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek makes me feel almost guilty at having bookcases full of books, and more available from the library, bookstores, OverDrive... She travelled on muleback five days a week to bring mountain families and school what little reading material she and those like her were able to scratch together.

There are other issues as well, but it is the hunger for books that I found really moving Hunger for books even among those who were in danger of starvation or at least of other diseases that attack those weakened by hunger for food.

I'm amazed at the number of reviewers that 'couldn't get into it'. I found Cussy very real. 4 1/2 stars. I will admit that it was slower reading than some books. It's fairly heavy fiction.

Tried to read Reader, Come Home. There is a wonderful German review now that I have combined the many language versions.

I liked A single thread much better than the previous books I read of hers.

I particularly liked the embroiderers deciding not to let the Nazis have total control over a symbol that not only has been used for thousands of years, but works so well in various textile contexts.

I quit Resistance Women very early on. The descriptions of Berlin in the thirties just sounded so American. There is just no way I would make it through such a long book when again and again I had the feeling that the author wasn't able to 'get' the culture she was writing about.

Travellers in the Third Reich is a very different and interesting take on WWII. Also well written, which always helps.

I'm not sure what to do with Unsere Vögel? It's very depressing reading on the current state of birds in Germany. (Just Germany. He doesn't go into the situation in Switzerland and Austria. Already lost a bit with me, as I'm more interested in Austria.)

After getting you good and depressed, he introduces a few chapters on what can be done, both in general, and by individuals. The later get very preachy. in fact, if you start to feel that maybe you are doing something to at least slow down the decline, well all your effort, however much it may be, isn't enough. If you ate eating meat or other animal products from the supermarket, you are eating bits of dead bird as well, and your car is pulling a ghost trailer of all the insects and other small creatures you have just killed along with the birds they could have fed.

There follows a 'feel good' chapter on how much a project he was involved with has accomplished. But somehow it isn't enough to outweigh the parts that went before.

I'm not going to keep it. But where will I be most likely to get it into the hands of people for whom it might be the right book?

The new biography of Hedy Lamarr has been in all the bookstores, making it hard to wait for the library copy. I did wait, and I'm glad I did. I'm fairly sure the biography is accurate, but it is very unsympathetic.

Sisters of the revolution : a feminist speculative fiction anthology

This isn't my normal reading matter, but I really, really wanted to read Ursula LeGuin's Sur, and this seemed the easiest way to get it. Was that story worth buying the book? Yes. Would the book have been worth buying without Sur? Probably, but I would probably not have run into it.

No, I didn't like all the stories. There was one I didn't finish, and another I shouldn't have. A few that left me without any real feeling. And several that I didn't enjoy. But most of the 29 stories, whether or not I enjoyed reading them, were worth reading, worth thinking about.

>49 MarthaJeanne: The only story I recognize from that contents is When It Changed by Joanna Russ. That was my very early encounter with feminist thought, and it was paradigm changing for me. I might still have the pages I copied from whatever collection I found it in. Still love it.

Like I said, lots of stories really worth reading and worth thinking about.

When I was downtown on Friday, I was looking in the windows of a remainders bookstore when a graupel shower started. Yes it was light, and the graupel was just tiny white balls, but I object to being hit with iceballs, even small soft ones. So I walked in. I stopped to look at Indian Style which is full of lovely photographs that took me back to my childhood. I had already decided not to buy it, suspecting that I might already own it. Then I saw the price. €2.50. OK, that price I almost already owe the store for giving me protection from the weather. The pavement outside looked clear of falling ice, so I headed onwards. (The graupel came back when I was waiting to be picked up from the Ubahn station.)

I had borrowed the book in 2014 and given it four stars, so I am pleased to have a copy of my own.

I got half way through Quantum before realizing that I read it back in 2013. Half is enough this time.

I saw The hare with the amber eyes today along with many other Ephrussi netsuke. I didn't have the time or concentration to see the rest of the exhibit (in Vienna's Jewish Museum), but I did look at the many display cases of the netsuke. Lovely, but terrible to have to look at them just from one angle. They cry out to be picked up and examined from all sides. I hadn't really expected them to be so small, but of course that is why they were saved. The had reproductions of a group of turtles, and my sister collects (maybe collected) turtles, so I bought her one and was able to hold that.



The magnet is 5x8 cm.

>54 MarthaJeanne: "They cry out to be picked up and examined from all sides."

An enthusiastic agreement to that. I used to be active in the antique and collectible button world, and some buttons approach the same kind of detail and whimsy. And one of my button friends also collected netsuke.

Here's a carved bakelite button I own:

I was watching a biscornu demonstration earlier today with a dragon theme, and the designer explained that she prefers using plain buttons for the final shaping, but I'm of the 'If it's worth doing, then it's worth overdoing' sort, and just longed to put a dragon button, at least on the back, and certainly not a boring white button on the front. Yes! This is what I wanted! Just virtually, of course. If I do one of her patterns, it is more likely to be the lion or elephant.



Would have to be on the bottom. Not enough space on top. But still.

Like your quilting projects!

I had no idea what a biscornu was. Do you have a need for interesting buttons? I have a stash - I could send you some.

Or I could send you some of mine.

Or I could send you some.

To make a biscornu:
You take two equal squares with the outside line stitched in back stitch. You match a corner on one piece with the middle of a side of the other piece, wrong sides together. Whip stitch over each stitch around, stiffing well when you are down to only the last side. Close the piece, then sew two buttons in the middle of the two sides, pulling them together. They are fun to put together. They work well as pincushions. Usually the top is fairly complicated, but symmetrical. The bottom tends to be mostly just the corners.

I did a fun button project a long time ago- Stitched the numbers and their names down one side of the cloth, then sewed a different sort of button in each row, the right number of course. I remember that ten was a train with various wagons. Lots of fun choosing the buttons. Less fun sewing them all on. Do you know how many buttons that is? 'Only' 55!

Don't tempt me like that. See discard thread.

I should say that I have tried shank buttons on biscornus, and they don't really work well.

The sisters Weiss

I really love Naomi Ragen's books, and this one is no exception. I have given the three I own each 4 1/2 stars. They all take place in ultra orthodox Jewish families, showing both the good and the bad of these communities.

Greenfeast : autumn, winter
I think I liked the summer one better. Perhaps because I like the summer vegetables better.

>4 MarthaJeanne: Don't come now either. The government has cancelled any events that bring 100 or more people together inside. This includes most museums, concerts, the cathedral, the zoo, schools (There will be child care through 8th grade. Do NOT send your children to grandparents!) ... and the main library. Branches are smaller and remain open, but I am used to the main one.

Outside events are allowed 500 people, so most sports events are cancelled. (Vienna Marathon) We need to find out what that means for the Bird Experience we are signed up for late April. We'll go and use the room we have booked and try to see birds, but not near as much fun without the lectures and venders.

From the airport pictures and news stories, now would be a good time to travel - airlines are offering bargain rates. But first, I need a passport; something I've thought about but not acted upon. *shrug* Later!

Get the passport. It's good for 10 years, and once you have it, renewal is fairly easy.

But travel restrictions change from day to day, and may include not only a medical check, but also 14 day quarantine. Then, like I said, most of the museums are closed. Of course it is nice crossing Stefansplatz without having to go around large groups of tourists, but surely you would want to go into St Stephen's, not to mention all the other big museums.

At least for now stores and even large shopping centres are open.

BTW, at least for now Bird Experience has cancelled the venders, but not the lectures. We've decided to confirm our b&b booking, and look for birds by ourselves if need be. We stay with a vintner we know. Comfortable room, Really good breakfast, nice people, and they hold the room we like for us every year.

Reread Der ParadiesVogel before putting it in my box. Such a lovely story!

(See http://www.librarything.com/topic/314659#7093238 and related posts.)

I came across my favorite boxwood carved button ~

I like Eamon Duffy, and was enjoying Royal Books & Holy Bones! until I got to the chapter on the plague that ends

In the recurrent cycles of pandemic disease, we must hope that these remain purely historical conundrums, and that we don't discover the answers to such questions existentially, at first hand.

A bit to close too home right now.

There is a big 'plague column' in the centre of Vienna built after the plague epidemic of 1683. Normally surrounded by tourists taking selfies, right now people have been lighting candles around it.

Tried to read Turbulence. This is supposed to be 'a stunning, virtuosic novel'. I found it so boring that I gave up less than halfway through. It is short, which is part of the problem. The almost unconnected chapters are only a few pages long, so there is no development. The people are undefined. Situations are not resolved.

I suppose I should enter it just to give it a single star and enter this review where someone might see it.

One of my favorite mystery authors is Susanna Gregory. Her first book in my favorite series (Matthew Bartholomew) takes place in the first black death plague in England. Entire villages were wiped out. The death rate was much higher, estimated 40-50% of died.

If you want plague fiction, my first choice would be Doomsday book, and I also liked Minette Walters Last Hours series. I'm not about to reread them right now. Aren't we lucky we 'only' have Covid-19 to deal with?

I've read the first book in the Doomsday series but is was shortly after it came out. I may have read the second one two but I'm not sure.

The Other Madisons is an exceptional book. I'm not quite sure how OverDrive had it already just as it came out, but I'm very glad I chose it.

Secondhand : travels in the new global garage sale is another very worth reading. Strangely, the one thing in it that really shocked me was the idea that people replace shirts rather than sew buttons back on. How crazy is that? But, I often am very sad that a good shirt that has clothed me dependably for several years has reached the unwearable point and has to be turned into rags.

Rags? What an old-fashioned idea! Why would you need rags when you have one-use paper products; or even better, one use polyester that will live forever in a landfill?

I even at one point bought extra cotton diapers for certain tasks. Cotton works better than anything else.

Another good one: Will My Cat Eat My Eyeballs? Doughty's adult books about death and burial are very good. So is this children's question and answer session. Adults and teenagers who are interested can move on to her earlier books. But read this one if you see it. It's fun.

Note: This is very much what happens to the body, and that mostly in the USA. She stays away from religion except where it explains different burial customs in different places.

I marked this down because in the eBook I read some of the illustrations covered the text. This was difficult when the picture was grey. At least once it was black.

Danielle Steel writes some very good books, and some not very good books. Moral Compass is one of the good ones. It deals with alcohol and rape at a private boarding school in New England. The first chapter is confusing as too many teenagers and their parents and teachers are introduced at once, but it calms down quickly as the school year gets going. There is never any question to the reader about what happened. The only question is whether and how the police will find out the truth.

There is a bit too much 'Happy End!' for my taste, but this goes a long way towards making up for the last few ones of hers I read.

If you read German and like storks, I can recommend Boten des Wandels.

Just gave up on Nellie Bly : die Biografie einer furchtlosen Frau A very American subject, book written in Italian, then translated into German. Something did not work. The other review also complained about the writing style.

I can't believe the review I just wrote for 52 European wildlife weekends. I tend to be the stay at home type, or at least want go back to 'safe' places I already know.

Barefoot in Baghdad With all due respect for the work she tried to do, she is horribly naive, and probably should not have been there. She should also have used a ghostwriter.

Really stupid to start reading At my table as a borrowed ebook. Of course I want the book in my bookcase. Should I finish it now or wait until I get it?

Garten ist Krieg (Garden is War)

This was fun. The author is somewhat less bio than I am, but he has many tips that I will find helpful. Most helpful are the hints on which garden pests are worth fighting and which aren't as pesty as you thought. The text is loosened up with quotes from various writers on war, but also Genesis.

Finally got around to baking the carrot-coconut cake from Salz küsst Karamell. The recipe has two major problems. First, it never tells you to add the grated carrot. Second, after praising it as an option for those with a nut allergy, it uses Amaretto as a flavouring. Now the things I looked up indicated that the risk is very small for a reaction drinking it, and it is certainly even smaller in a cake like this, but why take even a small risk if you are baking for someone with an allergy?

I reduced the sugar by about half and used a whole grain mixture of not-quite-wheat for the flour. I also upped the spicing. This is all what I usually do when baking. Also I had 280g of grated carrot from the supermarket and a 200g package of coconut. And that's what I used. The recipe called for 300g carrot and 250g coconut. Obviously if the cake isn't good, I'm totally to blame.

I needed to go upstairs, so I checked on my cake. 35 minutes into the hour, it was certainly done.

You put your books to such practical uses.

Not all of them.

I just gave The Engineer's Wife back, finding that I didn't care about either the bridge or any of the characters. I know that others are waiting for it. I hope they enjoy it more than I did.

I was at my favourite bookstore today. Where I buy lots of magazines and a few books. Their first day open, and, at least in the magazine department they were not ready for customers. They had rearranged everything, but the most recently received magazines hadn't been put in place.

I bought most of the newest batch of books in a German series of very short cookbooks highlighting various ingredients. Salbei, Feige (Sage, Figs) are the ones I have gone through. Walnuss, Vanille and Johannisbeere (walnut, vanilla, currants - the berries, not the tiny raisins) are waiting for me, and I seem to have missed Fenchel (fennel). Oh, dear, I might have to go back to my local spice and cookbook store. Such a hardship!

It seems sad to not read some of the last few library books I have, but whatever made me think that I would be able to read A Girl Called Shameless? This is written as the blog of an oversexed high school girl into various media. I will be kind and not give it a rating.

The library opens again next Monday. Such a relief! On the other hand I've gotten my To Read collection down a big amount.

My husband asks whether the king of Spain is self-isolating on his private jet.

After all - The reign in Spain stays mainly in the plane.

We will not be watching My Fair Lady tonight.

So schmeckt Spanien does not really seem to be intended as a usable cookbook. For one thing the 'indexes' are only the Spanish and German names of the recipes. I know that there is an interesting scallop recipe in there, but how do I find it? Whether or not they really thought people would cook from this, the lack of a good index in a cookbook costs it a star.

I did find a few recipes that might be fun to cook. Said scallop recipe, another for oxtail, and batter fried lemon or orange leaves. Apparently you don't actually eat the leaves. These are all near the back of the book.

Of course if I were a restaurant owner or chef asked for a recipe for a book like this, I would choose one that people would want to eat, but not do the work of making. What surprised me was not that I didn't want to cook them, but that I didn't want to head out to Spain to try them. Right now that's good, but hardly to the book's purpose.

If anything did encourage a trip to Spain, it was Margaret Stepien's wonderful photographs. They are the best part of the book. I'll try to remember to fix her touchstone once she is indexed.

Spillover

This is a good explanation of how viruses move from animals to humans. The stories of how past spillovers have been detected and researched make it easier to understand the current case.

Although the subject is a scary one, Quammen isn't out to add to our fears. He stays with the facts, and by explaining them, makes things less scary.

"Yes, we are all gonna die. Yes. We are all gonna pay taxes and we are all gonna die. Most of us, though, will probably die of something more mundane than a new virus. "

And there are scientists out there trying to find the Next Big One while it is still small.

--

If you want to read one book on the topic right now, this is a good one to chose. BTW, He says that corona viruses are a good candidate for the NBO.

>97 MarthaJeanne: Good philosophy. We so fear death, though it is always inevitable.

What is "NBO?"

In the sentence above - Next Big One.

Gave up on And they called it Camelot.

>97 MarthaJeanne: Influenza (Brown) is not as good as Spillover, but also does a good job of explaining the science. Both what we know and what we don't.

BTW make sure your Vitamin D levels are up.

I have library books! NEW library books! Happy dance, happy dance!

Now I need to figure out who suggested Stadt der Frauen to me.

I liked this quote from Elders (Denton):

(Clive James answering the question 'So you would seriously read these all again if you could?)

I guess so, or read more. But you do start wondering why you keep things once you've extracted the essence. I just like the look of them. I think the civilisation that exists in the book gets into tou by osmosis. I like to have them around.

For me, it's not extracting the essence. I've built a relationship, and like to have my friends stick around.

About a Girl was very good.

And then you're dead wasn't. 1 1/2 stars

>85 MarthaJeanne: We ate the pasta recipe from At my Table tonight. Yes, that was worth buying the book for.

Anchovis, tomatoes and mascarpone. Yum!

Now what do I do with the rest of the mascarpone?

Off topic: I see that the Austrian president made BBC.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-52792941

This has been fun following. First we heard a radio news item that he had been caught by police at a 'covered outdoor table of an Italian restaurant in the city centre' after the 23:00 time when restaurants have to close. The owner says he stopped serving at 11, but thought the guests could stay at the outside tables.

We, of course, wondered if this was the same restaurant we were at on Monday. It was. This place has very good food, and an amazing group of regular customers (we count as frequent customers for over twenty years, but not of the amazing sort). We usually go early evening, but the real business is usually after the opera gets out. Not now, of course. No opera performances, and restaurants closing at 23:00.

Van der Bellen has said that if Aki is fined, he (the president) will pay the fine.

>108 MarthaJeanne: We were there last night, and guess what the biggest topic of conversation was! We even exchanged a few words with one of Austria's most respected past politicians.

I have realized that I don't need to finish Love &Ruin. I can return it to the library and try to get a book I will enjoy more.

The dragonfly diaries was very good. I didn't bother writing a review, just thumbed up the one that was there. Anyone interested in dragonflies or in gardening for wildlife will enjoy this.

Starting the month right with Death in Mud Lick.

Das Haus der Frauen takes place in Paris now and a hundred years ago. A hundred years ago a Salvation Army officer dreamt of a place where women could go to live safely. Today it is a community that brings new life, not just to the homeless and refugees, but also to Solène, who has everything she needs except a reason to live.

This doesn't seem to have been translated into English yet. I read it in German, but it was written in French. I can only say, read it as soon as you can get it in a language you can read.

Too good to share

I love this cookbook. Don't tell the author, but I plan to double the recipes and share the results with my husband. The general idea is that you make a base recipe including extras that can be used for a second (or more) meals over the next few days.

There are also ideas for baking and other desserts that are suitable for one person. It finishes with a mug cake sticky toffee pudding. First I need to buy dates. ...

(Didn't you know that I am crazy about sticky toffee pudding?)

Bah! Küchengeheimnisse der Antike is fairly nicely laid out. Good illustrations. Creative working out of possible reconstructions of ancient food... including the use of pennyroyal with no mention of its potential health hazards. Yes, the ancient Greeks and Romans used it. In these quantities probably not a hazard to healthy, non-pregnant adults. But an herb known to cause abortions, vomiting and liver damage ought not to included without warnings. I'm discarding the book, but I added warnings before it goes into the bag.

I really wish Jerry's office would open up. the bags are overflowing.

The Bible in a disenchanted age
I was having a lot of trouble getting into this in the beginning. Come on, Walter, I expect to enjoy reading your books. (Disclosure: the author's wife and I were very good friends and part of the same prayer group before she went off to seminary and married her OT professor.) However, once he got through the preliminaries, he moved to the reasons we as Christians read the Bible as a privileged text, why it is better to consider the Bible as 'trustworthy' than 'inerrant', and what Dawkins gets wrong.

Off topic

Wow! Today we are not required to wear masks in shops. I had mine along in case things got crowded, but they didn't, so I could breathe, and SEE! Wow! I enjoyed shopping. OK, it was still frustrating when the store with craft supplies had lots of every colour of ribbon that wasn't pink or violet. I think I bought everything they had for my lavender harvest. But I found fabric markers to finish painting my feather T-shirt, and the gluten to improve my bread dough, (The shop I tried a few days ago proudly showed me their wide range of gluten-free products.) and oh, look at the dried fruit. I need some of that, what do they have? Also two kinds of pesto... It makes such a difference when you can both think and see!

A Summer of British Wildlife

I would really like to give this book more than four stars.

The variety of wildlife included is amazing. Birds, of course, and sea mammals, but also mice, bats, otters, water rats... snakes and other reptiles. When you get to insects, he includes the butterflies and dragonflies you expect, but also smaller and less obvious ones. Oh, and spiders, of course. But animals are not the only wildlife - there are plants, too. Orchids, and poppies, and orchids and yellow birdsnest, and orchids. Did I remember to mention the orchids?

Each outing has a double page including how to get there, whether it is accessible for wheelchairs and child friendly, other places of interest in the area, as well as a description of the possible sights and two or three photos. They are ordered by the recommended day for doing the outing (with notes on how flexible this is) so geographically you would bounce all over if you really wanted to do them all.

So why 'just' four stars? I guess mostly because I would have liked to see pictures of more of the species he describes. It would be useful to have lists of days by accessibility and child friendliness. With 3s, I would have liked to know how much my walker is going to limit my day. Of course, all that would double the size of the book. Of course also that this is 2020 and a trip to the UK to do these things just isn't practical, so I'm feeling frustrated.

Oh, and note that you need to check details before going. For example, the Dragonfly Centre at Wicken Fen was closed in 2019. Some of the days are organized around the tides.

Where did I hear about Saving the season? I guess the important thing is that I did. It's so hard not to jump around every time he mentions a recipe further in the book, like cherry and red currant jam. I think we need to buy more fruit tomorrow.

Oh, this is funny. On my iPad I am reading The year 1000.

Describing finds at L'Anse aux Meadows:
A weight to hold wool thread down during spinning (called a spindle whorl)

The whorl is the heavy bit of the spindle that makes the shaft, and therefore the thread keep turning. It certainly does not 'hold wool thread down'.



Actually, in one of these you wind the thread around the whorl (two wooden slats) to create a ball that can be pulled from both ends. All the others the thread is wound around the shaft once it has been spun.

I use bottom whorl spindles. Some people use top whorl spindles. But in both cases, the whorl is what makes the spindle spin - turn round and round to put twist into the fibre. If you google Viking spinning you will find that some think the Vikings used top whorl, and some think bottom whorl. If you only find the whorl it is hard to tell.

Wie schön ist deine Liebe *****

Five stars? Yes, five stars. Of course the Chagall paintings are wonderful. But the texts by Klaus Mayer actually enhance the pictures!

Artists have a long history of using Bible stories as an excuse to paint naked women. If this offends you, you probably won't enjoy these paintings.

>120 MarthaJeanne: Giving up. This woman does not know what she is talking about or doesn't proofread properly. "Arsenic bronze has certain advantages over bronze made with copper." (Bronze is always a copper alloy. The most common bronze is copper mixed with tin.)

Just my luck is not a great book, but it is a great argument for not playing the lottery. (At least not if you have Lexi's husband and friends.)

>122 MarthaJeanne: Well, she answered my email about the first problem. Which is nice, of course, but I responded that after finding the second big mistake I don't trust anything she writes. Might be cruel, but if it is the rule for fiction writers to 'write what you know about', it ought to be doubly so for non-fiction authors.

>124 MarthaJeanne: New answer. Apparently not an oversight, she is just ignorant about the things she is writing about.

"Thank you for writing to me a second time. I'd be grateful if you'd explain what my error about the arsenic bronze is--provided that you have time--since I am curious and I can make corrections.
I hope that you realize that I did my best to catch errors."

>119 MarthaJeanne: Made the cherry jam with redcurrants. It's good, but I ran out of patience and added sugar with pectin so that it would finally gel. This is still very low sugar for a jam.

>120 MarthaJeanne: There is always a relevant button. I came across this one today. Not precisely correct, but I thought you'd like it:

>127 2wonderY: That's lovely. You don't see the spindle - it would be below her right hand, although the thread seems to be missing. What she is holding in her left hand is a distaff. A stick that the fibre is tied to to keep it tidy.

I have tried to do the drop spindle but never mastered it. Mine is somewhere as is my spinning wheel after we moved.

>126 MarthaJeanne: Glad to report that after soaking with a stain remover my stork t-shirt is going to be fine.

>129 mnleona: Anyone wanting to spin with a spindle should get a copy of Respect the spindle. I think the best advice in there is to spin EVERY DAY even if only five or ten minutes, for the first 6 weeks. After that, you will be able to pick it up and put it down as you will. But get it deep down into your fingers first.

I bought a gardening book today about mixing veggies and flowers, and getting the right combinations of things. Die Mischung macht's

Review: It might be nice to have a big enough garden and enough energy to actually bear all this in mind.

You know what? I don't follow all the rules, and I still get more vegetables out of our garden than we can eat. 3 1/2 *

I really liked Laetitia Colombani's Les victorieuses so I was excited that my library had The Braid. The first chapter hit me as being a bit too much elementary information about Untouchables in India. But the second chapter about Smita has her staying up several evenings sewing a sari for her daughter's first day at school. Excuse me, how long does it take to hem the two ends? Even if a 6 year old is going to wear a sari. She lost me.

>119 MarthaJeanne: >126 MarthaJeanne: Finished the book. Solid 4 1/2 stars.

Buch-Gewänder : Prachteinbände im Mittelalter
I'm getting generous. Here's another 4 1/2 star book. This is a fairly heavy book, both physically, and also in terms of its content. Ganz describes how the covers for liturgical books in the early Middle Ages functioned. (A few twelfth centuries examples are described in an epilogue, explaining how their whole purpose was different.)

The book is very well illustrated. I would almost say that it would be interesting for the pictures is you can't read the German. Except that the text led me to examine and reexamine the pictures, showing me details I wouldn't have noticed and helping me understand the significance of those details. Particularly interesting is how many books are portrayed on these covers.

Dishoom I not only plan to buy a copy myself, I gave a copy to my mother.

This isn't so much a cookbook as a celebration of Bombay with recipes. 4 1/2 *

I'm still working on I Like Birds, but have already reviewed it:

This book is not the one to buy if you want help identifying the birds you see. The illustrations are much too abstract for that. But somehow they feel 'right' for the birds I know. The texts are short, but full of extra information that the bird guide doesn't include, so you know more about the birds.

I read the German translation. Although it is obvious that the book was originally written for English readers, the text has been reworked to suit German readers where that makes sense.

This is a delightful addition to a bird lover's library.

-
I probably ought to add that these are European birds, not North American ones.

Wie Krankheiten Geschichte machen von der Antike bis heute
How can one publish a general history book in 2019 that is only concerned with Europe and the US? Oh, sorry, other parts of the world are mentioned when illnesses come from there. White male privilege.

I borrowed The Left Hand of God from the library, and we watched it tonight. I recall a scene in The Drifters where the old man complains about films Bogart played in in his later years that were not worthy of him. This must have been one of those.

I found a small book of Arcimboldo's paintings in my TBR pile, that gave me a very pleasant hour this afternoon.

There was a lovely Librarian I didn't know.

I'm not a thriller sort of reader. The State of the Union, Kennedy never really grabbed me, but I kept reading. Now the main character is being hit with one disaster after another, her husband is at best no support, her son is actively disparaging her. Her father and daughter have created the disasters. I quit. I have read 430 pages of this, and it has gone from not really enjoyable to positively something I do NOT want in my life. Enough already. Garbage!

>139 MarthaJeanne: I didn't do a great job of choosing DVDs the last time I was at the library. Tonight we watched My Blue Heaven (1950). The plot kept getting worse. Also Betty Grable and Dan Dailey just aren't as good dancers as several others I could name from that era.

I suppose this would be OK if you like trained dogs. There are several scenes that would not pass current rules about racism and nobody today would publicly celebrate a new baby with a big alcohol and smoking party telling the father what a great guy he is because he is becoming a father. My husband seemed even more disturbed by that than I was.

The rules of contagion was a very current book, even if it never mentions Covid19. I am discouraged though by the reviewers who didn't follow the repeated statements of how various 'infections' were reduced by limiting one or more of the DOTS criteria, or recognize the graphs as showing how the mathematics worked out.

Ah, well. To come back to our current situation - until we can limit susceptibility with large scale vaccination, we have to stop opportunities for infection with masks, social distancing, and

How can I give a book only 2 stars when the average so far is 4 1/2? Easy. I do not like Ribbons of scarlet. I have read 4 of the 6 novellas, and I'm going to skip the other two.

Gottes besondere Häuser This was fun. The subtitle is 'a trip to the most unusual churches of the world'. However that was almost certainly the publisher's idea. It isn't. Not that many of these churches aren't unusual. They are. But the author, in his introduction, suggests that wherever we travel we will find churches that are worth visiting, even if nobody knows about them. He then goes on to introduce about 70 churches. The order is random. There are very old churches next to brand new ones, from many different denominations - and none. Simple, magnificent, large, small, from all the continents.

Each church is shown by one photograph and a very short text. You are always left wanting more. But that is the point. Most of these churches would be worth a book of their own. I'm sure many have them. But this book is to get you onto a journey to find your own unusual churches, to get you to think about the unusual churches you have visited. My list would be different from his.

Now working on Mein Schmetterlingsjahr (My butterfly year) by a German writer who wins literary prizes. The sentence I just read has 41 words in German. It would be more in English. I never did learn how to diagram sentences. I think I see 5 or 6 verbs in there. The main clause seems to be, 'He spreads his wings jerkily.' That leaves out all the information about the wings, the food the butterfly eats, and its favourite time of day.

So far the butterflies are almost winning out over the very flowery style, but only barely.

*Catocala fraxini becomes active at dusk. It likes to drink from windfall fruits. If it feels endangered in spite of the well camouflaged grey-brown patterns on its upper wings, it spreads its wings jerkily. This discloses the lower wings with the shining blue band running through them.

I would also recommend reading this book (if at all) as an eBook. The pages are strewn with black and white drawings of unlabelled butterflies. In an eBook you could easily look up the pictures of the various butterflies.

(From https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Catocala_fraxini_01a_(HS).JPG)

Another translation

The joy about finding this rare butterfly is too great not to share it. I wrap my hand around the butterfly, who seems sleepy, and move it from the leaf into the collecting can in my backpack. Before I let it go again I want to show it to Apostolos, so I immediately head back to the hotel.

Note: He has already established that Apostolos is afraid of butterflies.

This is not the first content that sets my teeth on edge as much as his style.

For what it's worth, I managed to get through Weight long after I knew I didn't like it. (**) It's at least short, and has a lot of empty pages padding it.

Luckily, I am enjoying The Last Black Unicorn. It really helps if I like at least one of the books I'm trying to read.

>146 MarthaJeanne: Well, I finished it and wrote a nasty review. Discarded!

Here for it Most of the references to modern US popular culture totally missed me, but otherwise this was fun.

We tried to watch All is True. Fairly soon we decided that it hadn't lost us, because it hadn't had either of us enough to lose. So that DVD can go back to the library. Then we tried to find something on our shelves to watch. No great excitement about anything there either.

Finished Fires of faith. I really like Eamon Duffy's books. (This was my fourth.) I see I have given the other three 4 1/2 stars each. This one 'only' gets four.

I'm currently reading two books that jump back and forth between two story lines in different times. A third book recently got thrown out for the same reason. That one had no visible connection between the story lines, and I wasn't really interested in either of them.

The eBook is The Book of Lost Friends and threatens to lose me every time it switches. However each story line does interest me, and I can see connections between them, so I keep at it. This book is well written, and I suspect that if the author does't mess up the end of the book, that I will give it four stars.

But I am also reading The Sisterhood, and I am very invested in both timelines. Plus the connection is very clear between them. This has a good chance of getting 4 1/2 stars.

Of course it could be that 16th century Spain appeals to me more than post-Civil War Texas. Or do I care more about images of swallows than families wanting to be reunited? I hope not, but I feel that the swallows will have some special importance that isn't clear yet, but we won't discover more about any of the many families than is in the short announcements. It may also be the religious angle that has also caught me.

So I guess it's not just the multiple tracks that I object to. I do want to feel that I am reading ONE book, and that it is moving towards ONE finish.

It will be interesting to come back to this in a few days, when I finished the books. I will probably finish The Sisterhood first, as I find it hard to put down.

Finished The book of lost friends 3 1/2 stars. Wingate gives a lot of tempting hints of what happened to both of her main characters that make me more interested in those stories than in the ones in the book.

Finished The Sisterhood. I thought the ending was poor.

Die Entstehung der Bibel

I thought I knew a fair amount about the development of the Bible. When I saw this at the library I borrowed it for a bit of a review, and to see how the story was told differently in German.

In the end, the period I thought would be interesting was crowded into the last few pages. This is mostly about how the canons were selected in both Judaism and Christianity. After 400 AD, the authors race through the histories of how the books were translated into other languages. Even here though, there are fascinating hints at things I hadn't read before.

Most of my early Christian history, and history of the Bible must be 20-30 years old now. Oh, my, what exciting things have happened while I wasn't watching! This account is well written, easy to read, and full of fascinating details.

I expect that there are similar books available in English, and I would be interested in reading them. I have my doubts as to whether they will be this good.

Next question: Is it enough to know that this book is available at the library?

Meine Mutter, sein Exmann und ich (My mother, his ex-husband and I)

This was a YA novel about accepting people who are different, in this case, trans people and people with chronic disease (narcolepsy). The story is wooden and not very believable, but there is lots of space to tell young readers about the issues. Three stars was probably overly generous.

Bah, humbug! I seem to have picked up mostly male authors at the library today, and ones with CK at that. My gender stats are back to

Percent male: 50.52% : Percent female: 49.48%

and I was up to 49.5% female, before entering this batch.

Visited a friend last week and ended up borrowing a book on her younger sister's study desk. It reminded me of days when we read books off each other's desks in college. Psychology in your Life is a typical college prescribed textbook. While I was reading it and even after I finished, memories of college kept flitting in and out of my mind. I have always found such triggers fascinating. I know our memory can play tricks, but I still like the feeling of recalling a long forgotten memory. Even as I write this, I'm sure I would not want my bad memories to surface!

>156 MarthaJeanne: I bought it today along with two shorter books by Jens Schröter.

One of them is going to need a disambiguation notice. This is a new book about Jesus, not the one he wrote in 2006 that was translated into English in 2014. Ooops, I see I should not have been able to buy it today. Publication date is Thursday. Anyway, I have put in lots of CK, which, with luck, will keep them separate.

Jesus : Leben und Wirkung

I also bought his Die Apokryphen Evangelien

That one was already on LT.

The wedding dress
I like some of Danielle Steel's books, but this is almost a caricature of what I dislike most in the ones I don't like.

People with too much money. They lose 'everything' in the crash, but still have more than most people. And then end up unreasonably rich again. **

I enjoyed Sea swept, but I can't easily get hold of the rest of the trilogy. And this book stops in the middle of things.

>164 MarthaJeanne:. Oh, that’s too bad! I discovered Nora Roberts in the last few years and have enjoyed several of her series. Her dialogs are better than most romances I’ve sampled.

Some assembly required is an excellent book on DNA and current thinking about evolution. Four and a half stars.

>165 2wonderY: I just realized that the library does have them - in German.

I just read The Diamond as Big as the Ritz. What a weird story!

Rhabarber This can go back to the library, as I'm not going to cook from it now. But I need a copy of my own.

>168 MarthaJeanne: I didn't like the other stories in the book, either, but at least they weren't as weird.

>167 MarthaJeanne: I've been really nasty. I reserved the second one and borrowed the third one. So the person who is currently reading the second one has to wait for me after returning it before s/he gets the final one.

I’m sure they can wait.

Humble Pi is one of the most fun books I have ever read. It probably helps if you like numbers.

Finished both Die Wölfin (American Wolf) and The forge of Christendom. Both were good solid nonfiction, and took me longer to get through than I really liked. I have Eamon Duffy's Saints and sinners waiting to be read, and am curious about his take on this period.

I think you have to be a very peculiar person to be a forensic entomologist like the author of Wenn Insekten über Leichen gehen (When insects walk over corpses). The chapters that describe the various flies and beetles got very long. Sorry, the different details in their life cycles don't really interest me. On the other hand, maybe I'm peculiar myself, because I did find his cases very interesting, including how he determined death times and even helped figure out how the murderer got rid of the body.

Just finished So schmecken Wildpflanzen. It was brand new at the library - they were advertising it on the website, and someone reserved it just as I was taking off the shelf. I talked the librarian into letting me have it first (no renewals).

My review:
Yes, I want this one. This gives recipes for 30 different wild foods, many of which I recognize as 'weeds' in my garden. For many of them I'm not actually going to be able to harvest usable quantities, (even when the lawn is full of them, 2kg is a lot of daisies), but I can certainly get enough ground ivy to dry.

It's actually a revision of a book first published 10 years ago. Email sent to my local cookbook store.

The wreck of the Mary Deare is a male adventure story from the 1950s. I enjoyed it, but don't need to ever read it again.

I should not have read Jackie and Maria. Making up details of the lives that meant so much to people who are still alive is highly disrespectful, both to the dead and to the living who remember them. A standard 'This book is a work of fiction.' notice is not enough.

I think I might have enjoyed A tender thing if there hadn't been big black stars over the text every now and then. (eBook) As is I entered it to give it 1/2 star.

Started The Long Road Home. For a book about NYC and Vermont, it reads very like a book written by an author from South Carolina. I may need to enter this one as well.

Good morning. What does your last sentence mean?

>181 2wonderY: as in >179 MarthaJeanne:. Enter it to give it poor rating and review even though I don't finish it.

And in this case the author has really earned it.

Ah. Yes, I do that as well. Sometimes it’s easier to write a review on a stinker than on a good book.

And sometimes you just get so irritated that you want to warn other people off.

Off topic, but I started thinking about my youngest son and his language teachers.

First there was the time he came home. 'Mama! My German teacher wants us to do oral reports, but I don't know what to talk about! I suggested he talk about going to the library, and how many books the library has for children in both German and English. They also have CD rom computer games, and DVDs, and the library card is free for children... He did the rest of his preparation alone, and came home really happy at how pleased the teacher was with his report. 'Mama, how did you know that she would be so pleased that I talked about the library?' (Well, maybe because he obviously enjoyed going there, and that might get other kids trying it out. Not that he ever borrowed books in German, you understand.)

The next time it was his French teacher. 'Mama, we can get extra points in French if we make something French for the class to taste. What could I make?' I showed him my madeleine pans, and we baked up a batch. His classmates enjoyed them, and put up with a long talk about Proust, which probably went out the other ear, but hey! when he's talking about whosits he isn't talking grammar or vocab. 'Mama! How did you know that my French teacher would get so excited about these weird cookies?' (Maybe because I know about the literary reference?)

Mamas just know these things.

Actually, I was downtown today, and the gourmet supermarket sells various sorts of madeleines, including Poppy seed ones that I just love. I bought more today. That might be what brought all this to mind.

Oh, I’m glad you shared those reminiscences. I’m taking notes this week while I spend some alone time with my granddaughter. She is endlessly entertaining at just age 2.

Das goldene Rhinozeros is interesting to read. The history is very fragmentary, and I'm not sure I will retain any of it, but certainly worth reading.

I'm quite glad to finish Saints and Sinners. I should not be complaining of its length, the amazing thing is how much he got into one book. Still the least enjoyable of Duffy's books for me so far.

Just finished Snowdrift and other stories. Not sure whether this is good or bad, but the three new stories seem just as familiar as the ones I knew from Pistols for Two. It seems I've 'only' reread that four times since joining LT.

My author gender has just slipped up to 50.1% female.

Of course, I know that if I set all the rest of my authors I would be back down with more males, but if I only set mer when the number has gone up a bit I should be able to fix many of them and still stay in female territory.

Started Three Women. No, can't do this. Good, it can go back to the library. Someone else is waiting for it.

Ha! Looks like trash.

The introduction looked interesting, but the first real chapter was painfully full of a teenage girl who was more interested in sex than anything else.

I didn't need that when I was a teenager, and I certainly don't need to waste my time on it now.

I wasn't really impressed with Shizuko Kuroha's Japanese patchwork quilting patterns. However I felt I had to give it a first review.

Bright and dangerous objects

When I was in kindergarten I intended to be the first woman on Mars. Still interesting to read about characters who want that.

My Amazon packages arrived.

A good mix of things:

The button box

The pocket : a hidden history of women's lives, 1660-1900

Severed : a history of heads lost and heads found

Ships of Heaven

The farmer's wife homestead medallion quilt

Should be fun.

Three of those look fascinating. I’m shocked I’ve missed the button book; I thought I knew all the titles. Is it new?

> c2016, paperback 2017 It looks like it may be fairly British and the buttons mostly as a way into the social history. I thought that on might catch your eye.

One is probably a bit gruesome, but lots of people read murder mysteries. I've read a bunch of books on death and culture from lots of different points of view. https://www.librarything.com/catalog.php?view=MarthaJeanne&tag=Death&col...

I’ve read a lot about evil, but I try to stay away from gory.

Yes, the Button book is about British women and their clothing in the 20th century. The chapters are named after relevant buttons she has inherited from various relatives, but having moved from the button to the piece of clothing it was on, the button is of very little interest.

You would probably enjoy the book, but it is not really about buttons.

ETA. I marked down the rating because this book just cries out for illustrations of the clothes, not just a few buttons. Another thing that I didn't like was the lack of order or continuity between chapters.

This is about fashion in the 20th century. It is not really about the buttons. They are just an excuse for an essay on some aspect of 20th century women's fashion.

Mother London is supposed to be a masterpiece. Guess I won't find out. I'm giving up after page 65.

I'll be adding a few notes to my previous message in a short time.

After a few days of it becoming clearer and clearer that the partial lockdown needs to be intensified, they have announced a near total lockdown starting Tuesday. I was downtown this afternoon picking up a book at my favourite bookstore and buying beads for my current stitching project. I was not alone. The last time the bookstore had such lines was just after the last lockdown. That time we had no warning and we were pretty desperate when it finally loosened. Looks like the libraries stay open this time, though.

I did a number of errands this week in preparation for shopping being stopped.

I'm quite excited about the book I picked up. Die Verzauberung der Welt is a cultural history of Christianity. Apparently a very different way of looking at it. I just couldn't face the paperback with its teeny tiny print. Not that the hardcover has large print, you understand, but they obviously just shrank the hardcover pages to make the paperback. At over 700 pages of small print in German, I won't get through with this one in a hurry, but I couldn't have faced it in the paperback. It will help keep me busy during the next three weeks until (we hope) things loosen up again somewhat.

The libraries are also in lockdown again. Blah! I went by a local branch to return two books due today and pick up this year's free book. It's a collection of 29 Short Stories from Vienna. I don't always take the books, but I want this one. There was a long line, but it evaporated once someone started passing the books out. She also accepted returns, so I was good. Really stupid closing down right after the books became available. I think Saturday was the first day they were available. And full Lockdown starts tonight midnight. If all goes well things open up again on Dec 7. We did a few things at the shopping centre - fairly quiet, but there was a long line waiting to park at the DIY store on the way.

I put a current picture of my dragon on my profile.

It looks like your dragon is slowly materializing.

You like my dragon?

I do!

I updated the dragon.

I saw that. He’s coming along nicely. What’s the bigger project he’s going into?

The bigger project is surviving our second hard lockdown. I have no idea what I will do with the finished dragon. I just went through my pile of possible projects and chose the dragon and an elephant, then went to the needlework store to buy the materials just before the lockdown. I also have a sampler quilt in process and am making more masks. (I bought lots of elastic while I was at the needlework store.)

This alternates with such yard work as I can get up energy for. I may walk the empty mall next week during Jerry's physiotherapy. The Ubahn is discouraged, and the bookstore is closed anyway, so going downtown for my normal walk is not really feasible.

I need 4 more 12" sampler blocks and one more 12" background block. (My bad cutting.) I think I will make a signature block with a central white square surrounded by background. The other option is not to finish until the lockdown is over.

But not today. I went from miscounting on the dragon to cutting the background fabric on the quilt poorly.

If I finish the top and feel inspired to quilt the thing, I can order dark blue wide fabric for the back and batting online. Jerry has keys, so I can probably get him to take me to church to baste it. At the same time maybe fixing the basting of the last quilt top I made. I really need a second person who knows what she is doing to help with this. At least at church I can move several tables together to make a working surface big enough.

I love your color sense. Yes, sounds like you need to rest... maybe play in the kitchen. Or hey, just have a nice drink.

I had Jerry take me to the supermarket in the mall. The mall itself feels ghostly, but I expected that. The supermarket was so empty that it was a pleasure to shop, even with the mask. I had forgotten lemons and limes when shopping on Friday, and there are a few things I wanted that my regular supermarket doesn't have.

This got me out of the house. I walked around. And it kept me away from the needlework projects.

The background fabric is not quite a solid. I bought the same print in several different colours and use them in each square. That isn't really visible in the photo, but it does help tie the whole thing together.

This is supposed to be about reading, so I'll start by admitting that I am rather bogged down right now with four really good, but long, non-fiction books started.

Die Verzauberung der Welt is at least as good as I had hoped, but I'm not going to try more than 20 or so pages a day. Besides the small print it is also big and heavy.

Der Horror der frühen Medizin is a good biography of Joseph Lister that the library had in German.

A fistful of shells is a history of Western Africa that I would probably enjoy more if I felt more sure of the geography. It also skips around a lot. First the whole period here, then moving along to the next area and doing the whole period there ... Makes more sense than trying to do each decade everywhere, but difficult if you don't already have a Gestalt of the whole thing. It is well written, I'm just finding it slow going.

And then it became my turn for the eBook of To explain the World. Luckily here At least so far I more or less know the material. (I'm up to the Islamic contributions to science in the Middle Ages.) Weinberg writes clearly and I enjoy his comments on the various figures.

I need to go through my recent purchases to find a good chick lit to balance this all out. Not something I should read, but what my mother would call a 'junkie book'. Hers were thrillers which are not my thing, but something relaxing.

I did get most of another square made. I'm not done piecing it, but I laid out the cut pieces and "Yes!"



Hmmm. I took the picture upside down. Not going to fix it until I've done the sewing.

Sewn. Fixed.

Doesn’t matter. Nice!

>214 MarthaJeanne: I've replaced the picture with the finished square. I got it done with all the corners facing the right way the first try. Biggest hassle was running out of wound bobbins.

Checked my TBR piles. No good junkie fiction. Well, it's another two weeks before bookstores and libraries might open.

Interesting. Both Die Verzauberung der Welt (8th century Germanic rulers) and A fistful of Shells (15th century Congo manis) are asking "why did these rulers adopt Christianity?"

You see, it is not totally crazy to read this many heavy books together. They very often open each other up.

I love when that happens! Sometimes the match is very memorable.

Just finished the dresden plate square. I also worked on the maple leaf square today. This was staying nearby but not hovering while the plumber was here. I had two small squares, and wanted to make two similar ones to join into a big square. Got one done and the second cut out. Tomorrow it should be east to finish the fourth small square and form the big one.

That makes seven of the nine I need, plus I could maybe create one signature square to stand in for a background square. Getting very close.

Your hand piecing?

Mostly machine piecing this time. But I also do EPP. https://www.librarything.com/pic/6864984

>214 MarthaJeanne: I just finished the Lister biography, which is certainly worth reading if you are interested in the history of medicine.

Earlier today I finished To explain the world. He lost me with the explanations of Newton. I certainly don't regret reading the book, but wouldn't recommend it either.

I've started reading 29 Kurzgeschichten aus Wien, this year's free book given away by the city. It was strange. The give away was started with great trara on Friday or maybe even Saturday, but lockdown started on Tuesday. Most of the places to pick it up are either libraries or stores. Whoops! Anyway, I had just been to the library, part of preparing for the coming lockdown, but I had two books still to return due on Monday, so instead of the main library across town, I lined up at a local branch. Eventually someone from the library came out, "Anyone just returning books?" She was quickly overwhelmed with requests for this book. Soon I had traded my returns for a copy of it.

Anyway, they really do seem to have chosen individual stories rather than a ready made anthology. They are quite varied so far, and all very Viennese. The weirdest so far, especially for this year, is a vampire/cannibal pandemic. But there is a preventive measure discovered. If your blood alcohol is high enough the undead won't attack. It continues to an even weirder climax. (Bummabunga by Stefan Slupetzky Doesn't look like his work is available in English.)

I haven't read anything that I would rate higher than 3 yet.

>208 MarthaJeanne: The dragon now has a tail. Still needs head, though.

Beautiful

>224 MarthaJeanne:. Glad you know where it’s going, as the dragon probably has no clue yet.

I prefer to leave the head/eyes until last. It means I've done the less interesting stitching, but also that I don't have the critter staring at me while I'm stitching it. I did a tiger once...

>223 MarthaJeanne: When do you give up on an anthology? I have read 20 of the stories in 29 Kurzgeschichten aus Wien and still haven't found anything really worth reading, but several that were worth skipping.

>228 MarthaJeanne:. Written by aspiring authors?

>229 2wonderY: These are newly commissioned works by established authors. Most of them have published several books, won prizes...

The story by Doron Rabinovici was worth reading.

If some of the authors took the position that they could sell the government stories nobody else would buy, that seems rather short-sighted, as this is a good chance to get 100,000 readers to learn about you.

I've given up on A fistful of shells. The first part of the book required about 95% of my brain to comprehend, but the second part is more difficult. The other review makes me feel better.

>231 MarthaJeanne: Thomas Brezina mostly writes children's books that do not impress me, but his story was at least reasonably good.

I just sent another fiction back because there were too many references I don't get. Also too much technology. Dating apps, gaming, ... Guess I'm getting too old for these things.

Except for genre fiction (sf/fantasy) I retreat back at least a half century for writers that appeal to me. You continue to be adventurous in your explorations.

>228 MarthaJeanne: Finished. The better - or perhaps just less bad - stories were in the last third. The next-to-last story, "Der Hund" has much too much dog vomit in it.

Oh, Dear. This morning I had an email that the 2 packages of my latest Amazon order would arrive today. Finally, finally 9 hours later the doorbell rang. In the past half hour I have already decided on one of the next cakes I have to bake. Delia's Cakes has a Jamaican ginger cake recipe that I think is also in her earlier book. I have also already decided that I need to make the fish square from The Bible Sampler Quilt.

>210 MarthaJeanne: very close to done on the dragon. I was at the quilt store today, mostly for the quilt, of course, but I also bought a dragon material. Still don't know what I'm doing with it, but I bought 1 1/2 meters of a black cloth with Chinese dragons, enough similar, but enough different that I think I can use them together.

I also got the backing and batting for the quilt, along with a few bits and pieces. It is so nice to have stores open again!

Wow!! Wow!! Wonderful embroidery and what a stunning match in the fabric!

Heartwarming story - off topic, but when did I ever let that stop me.

A friend is visiting his daughter and her family here in Vienna. This morning he was walking his 5-year-old granddaughter to her kindergarten. She was carrying a large stuffed penguin with her. "Are you allowed to take your stuffed toy to kindergarten?"

"Oh, yes, grandpa, we're supposed to. We can't hug each other now, so each of us brings a toy to hug."

What a clever teacher!

I've been working on The Christmas Chronicles as an eBook. On the one hand, I have bookmarked several recipes. On the other hand, I'm not sure I want to buy it. We had oxtail stew for supper tonight, inspired by his recipe. However, when I bought the oxtail, I just naturally bought soup vegetables at the same time. Turns out he only used onions and a little celery oh, and beans. Well, I do not approve of stew without lots of veggies. So my stew was very different from his. But he did inspire it. Jerry enjoyed it although oxtail is not his favourite cut. (I like it a lot, though.)

We also had fresh bread.

Kingdom coming This book is scary, very scary, as Trump tries to undo the recent election.

>242 MarthaJeanne: I've finished reading it now, and have decided not to buy it. But I'm not sure I would keep to that if I saw it in a store in English.

Today I'm finishing the pre-cut veggies in a chicken stew. I have also put applejuice and spices on the stove.

Mmmmm!

Venedig ist ein Fisch I could have done without the playlet at the end.

I have To Much and Never Enough about Trump but stopped after 15 pages. He is mentally ill and it’s depressing to have so many folks I use to believe intelligent follow someone so unqualified. Nice thing about Covid is the excuse to stay home and avoid people. I wouldn’t be able to keep quiet.

>247 BelindaCharp: Did you mean to put that in your thread?

If you are looking for something heartwarming and inspirational this season One by one by one should do the job. Warning, this is about neurological patients in Haiti. There are a fair number of gross bits.

Hmmm. Probably better than what I’ve got started. You are certainly getting lots of reading done recently.

>250 2wonderY: I think you would like the saying the Haitians keep repeating:

Apre Bondye se doktè! (After God comes the doctor.)

No. I’ve had some faulty doctors. For instance, a gynecologist who thought that women’s organs should be scooped out after their childbirth years, “to save trouble later.” Never went back to that one; but glad he was so direct.

I like weaving, but honestly don't see the point of the various small wall hangings in Welcome to weaving Silly me, I thought the main point of weaving was to make cloth of some sort.

Oh Schreck, du fröhliche! is something I picked up used some time ago, and it didn't really look promising. It turns out to be one of the best Christmas collections I have seen. Realistic and meaningful.

Christmas can come! I found a creche to buy!



With no Christmas markets, and a 3 week lockdown that finished a week ago, there just haven't been opportunities.

This is certainly very different from anything I already had.

Oh, they nest. I like the expressions.

Yes, they are 'Russian' nesting dolls. Plastic, not wood. Made in China for a Swedish company. Even Baby Jesus opens, but there is nothing inside.

Have you got a heart that will fit?

A bead or sequin? Probably. Nice thought.

No, responding to your post about Trump

Finished Ships of heaven a lovely trip through several British cathedrals. Including some that I have spent time exploring. Lovely book! (4 1/2 stars)

>214 MarthaJeanne: Finished Verzauberung der Welt. After barely keeping my head above water in the 19th century, the 20th was at least clearer to me. The finish leaves me with a lot to think about. Lauster seems upbeat about the future of Christianity. I probably should consider reading this through again fairly soon.

Got the third side of 12" squares added to my quilt top with minimal problems. The fourth side is a problems, as I cut the background squares too small. I have plenty of material, just not the right size bits, so do I piece them or wait a month until stores open again? Part of the problem is that I have lots of material, and don't really want more.

I also have the backing fabric and batting, so I could, theoretically anyway, even quilt it during this lockdown.

Finished Islandia, my first reread since joining LT. The country remains as haunting as ever, but I got very fed up with John Lang.

That’s an amazing stretch without re-reads! And now I might like to become acquainted with Islandia, but don’t want to invest in something that long. Crikey!

This is our second copy after the first got really to shabby to read. The first had sentimental value, as a former girlfriend had given it to my husband. Yes, it was a long time without visiting Islandia.

You would like it, I think. And remember, the editors cut a third of it! It could be longer. The thing is, there isn't a lot of plot driving you to read more. It just flows, taking you along with it in a slower way of life. There is one 'action' segment. He has relationships with three women, two of which involve sex, but that isn't graphically described.

Oh, yes. I was thinking last night that a publisher today would not publish this as a single volume - at least not until the trilogy was well established. Three books, each of 300 some pages would go over better than one at over 1000.

I'm reading 100 X Österreich - Judentum. I liked Danielle Spira back when she was television reporter and presenter, before she became the head of Vienna's Jewish Museum. She's doing a wonderful job there, and when I heard that she had a book out, I wanted it.

The texts - just one or two pages on each theme - are complemented by the historical pictures she has access to. No surprise, the Ephrussi chapter includes a picture of a small Japanese sculpture, now on long time loan to her museum. (The Hare with the amber eyes). Now I'm at chapter 038 on Sigmund Freud. The illustration shows a stuffed toy (https://philosophersguild.com/products/sigmund-freud-little-thinker), an 'action figure' and a finger puppet set of Freud and his couch. Love it.

Bartelby
Very peculiar.

I have to admit that one of the major enticments to read this is that it helps balance out Islandia and Verzauberung. At 75 pages, I could read it in one sitting. I also read several long books in November.

the Scribner? Yeah, I do recall it was different; but not much else about it, from high school or college years.

Yes. Sorry the touchstones got eaten when I edited.

>269 2wonderY: "The Scrivener" Sorry, I had edited and the touchstones got eaten.

I know; we're all having that problem.

On another note, I've started a cross stitch of 2 hares based on William Morris designs.

BTW, I'll continue this before my first post next year, and I'll continue that one mid-year. I promise.

Oh, right! It is time to summarize the year.

Can't wait to see the Morris piece. Love his designs.

Cook, Eat, Repeat I just wish I had had this back when I had the energy to do a lot of cooking and the boys at home to eat it all. We did have the black pudding meatballs last night. Next supermarkets are open is Monday. I may end up investing in ingredients for more recipes then.

We are spending New Year's Eve at home - not much choice about that. The Wiener Staatsoper played Fledermaus this afternoon without an audience, and it is about to begin in television. Fledermaus is what you are 'supposed' to watch on Sylvester in Vienna. We have a couple of DVD versions we switch between, but tonight we'll see a version with up to date jokes.

According to my catalogue, I finished 415 books in 2020.

Yes, but what have you been doing recently?😉

Sorry. Typo fixed. That seems to be more than 2010.