A Work in Progress

Weekend Reading Notes

I love three day weekends.  I love the idea of three long empty days stretched out before me that I can fill however I see fit.  I have a feeling that our Fourth of July is going to be a bit of a washout as it's raining at the moment and we're predicted to have storms most of the weekend.  I don't really mind as my plans were pretty much to not have any plans and just putter about.  Let me qualify that--rain is okay, but nothing severe.  After last year's bad weather I now have a fear of really strong winds.  That aside, I just want to play hermit and catch up on reading and listen to rain pattering against the windows.  (Not very summery at all, am I?).

I set a goal for my June reading, which I actually accomplished.  I've caught up on all my 'obligation' reads and now plan on spending the rest of the summer just reading according to whim.  At the moment I'm content to get back to the books I have let languish on my night stand.  There are a couple that have been long neglected and I'm looking forward to getting back to those particularly.  I really enjoyed Stefan Zweig's The Post-Office Girl earlier this year.  I think it is easily one of my favorite reads so far in 2009.  I had actually started reading his Beware of Pity prior to that.  This novel is set just before WWI and it's an excellent story about honor and misunderstood emotions.  I've been reading it this morning and have found I could easily sink back into the story.

I've also been thinking a lot about reading more mysteries, but I seem to be stalled in Nicola Upson's An Expert in Murder.  This is not at all a reflection of poorly told story.  I just can't seem to situate myself again, and I think what I need is to spend a couple of solid hours reading it to get going again.  I'm a third of the way in, and there's no going back now.  It's set in London (primarily the West End) in 1934, which is the period I'm really interested in at the moment.  I think it doesn't help that I've been contemplating what I'm going to read next, so am getting restless.  I've been thinking of Henning Mankell (someone at the gym raved about him and so many other readers have as well), Barbara Cleverly (those Joe Sandilands mysteries I just mentioned), Stieg Larsson that everyone has been reading and talking about, Agatha Christie (just because her books sound appealing right now), or maybe a mystery by the real Josephine Tey, and am definitely in the mood for Ruth Rendell/Barbara Vine.  Of course I could just go ahead and pick up one of these (ahem...I've been known to do that on occasion), but then I'm afraid I'll just ignore the Upson mystery even longer!   

I've been reading a bit of A.S. Byatt's The Children's Book each day and am enjoying it immensely.  Why have I not picked up any of her other books.  I think after reading Possession she seemed like such a formidable writer.  If I ever have a hard time trying to figure out which books are fiction and which are literature, she's sort of my bar that I compare authors to.  Her books are definitely literature and not just fiction.  However, The Children's Book is not at all hard going, she simply takes her time telling her story, weaving her story really.  The descriptions are so lush, it's a bit of sensory overload, but I like it.

I do plan on spending a lot of time with Emile Zola's Thérèse Raquin this weekend.  Whatever possessed me to start not just one but two other classics (along with the Dickens) is beyond me.  Pure bookish gluttony I guess.  The Zola is filled with passion, but passion isn't always a good thing.  I hope to finish it this weekend (and then will move on to the Wilkie Collins).  Poor Dickens is the book most neglected and I'm thinking I very soon need to simply devote myself to it alone and finish it.  I'm a third of the way in (keeping in mind it is over 900 pages).  I could probably finish it in just a couple of weeks if I concentrated on it alone.  I have a vague recollection of planning my 'epic read' this year (which is a four volume set--each volume containing three novels....).  At the midpoint of the year I haven't even finished the Dickens.  I won't even tell you how many books in that photo (those books I am going to read in 2009...) that I have actually read.  Okay, one.  I started three others then abandoned them, but perhaps that's a subject best left to another post.

Are you still with me?  I didn't mean to make this so long.  I will just mention one more book.  Emma Smith's The Great Western Beach is a delightful book to read.  I ration a bit out each day (it's generally my lunchtime reading).  I can't really tell you what it's about--it's just random memories of living by the seaside, but she has such an endearing way of writing about her subject you can't but help being drawn in.  I do plan on starting a new book, and I had thought it would be her novel, The Far Cry.  It's about a young woman's voyage to India, but I'm just not sure that's what I'm in the mood for.  Perhaps it would be better to read the memoir first and the novel later, since they seem very different.  Which means I'm not really sure which Persephone it is going to be.  Maybe one of the books I just bought.  Or maybe Saplings, which Darlene has made sound so enticing.  Choosing a Persephone novel to read is always problematic (too many good choices being the problem).

As you can see my reading has been all over the place in the last few days (just how I like it, really).  Somehow, though I think I might need more than three days off, but I can work with what they give me!  Happy Fourth to those who are celebrating it--I hope you get in some good reading, too!      

Bookish Indulgences

 

The Persephone titles I chose for their three for the price of two sale have arrived.  It's always so hard chosing, but in the end I settled on Winifred Peck's House-Bound about women/wives who must manage on their own due to the scarcity of servants during and after WWII; Joanna Cannan's Princes in the Land about a woman who's raised her children and at the end is left wondering just what it was all for (subtley--she asks this qestion); and Molly Hughes's A London Child of the 1870s which sounds very memoir-ish (and entertaining) about an ordinary Victorian family.   

 

I didn't stop there, I'm afraid.  I indulged with a few others as well.  Laura Wilson's Stratton's War is a book I've been trying to get from the Book Depository, but both times I tried to order it they cancelled on me and said it was not available.  Weird, so I went to Alibris and looked for another source.  It's a mystery set in London in 1940.  Cornflower has recommended Susanna Kearsley's Sophia's Secret, and as I love good historical fiction I had to take her up on the suggestion.  I really enjoyed a novel I listened to last year by Katharine McMahon, and I want to read some of her other books, so I indluged in a recent reissue of Confinement, which is set during the Victorian era as well as in the 1960s.  Alan Furst is another author that came recommended as a good writer of spy novels and his newly released The Spies of Warsaw caught my eye.  And I've wanted to read Barbara Cleverly's Joe Sandilands's mysteries set in 1920s India, so I bought the second instalment, Ragtime in Simla, to keep the first one sitting by my bedside, company.        

One more.  Although we won't be discussing the next Slaves book until the end of August, I ordered Dawn Powell's Dance Night already, so it will be close at hand. 

"It is sometime prior to World War I in Lamptown, Ohio, a working-class town filled with factory girls (Young Nettie Farrell complains: 'Every time a new man comes to town it's like dividing a mouse up for a hundred cats.').  Every Thursday night at the Casino Dance Hall women and a few men gather to escape their pedestrian lives in fantasy, and sometimes to live out these fantasies.  Observing all are the novel's two young protagonists, Morry, who dreams of becoming an architect and developer, and Jen, an unsentimental orphan of fourteen who, abandoned by her mother, dreams of escape."

Doesn't that sound good?  If you're intrigued there's lots of time to get a copy.  Everyone is, as always, welcome to join in our discussion.

I've been very good lately about not starting new books (even though I talk about what I want to read all the time here), so I'm thinking I might need to pick one of these up to read over the long weekend...

More Links to Tempt You

Actually I should really say more links to tempt me!  I've come across a few more interesting small publishers recently.  I'm always on the lookout for independent publishing houses, as they often publish fresh new voices (or bring back into print old respected voices), and they rarely get the press (or space on bookstore tables most likely) that the big houses do.  So, without futher ado, here are a few links to check out.

One World Classics - "Its aim is to expand the literary canon in the English-speaking world through a series of mainstream and lesser-known classics, often by commissioning new translations."  Bravo.  I can only say that more/new translations can only be a good thing!  I wonder if they would consider translating those novels that are part of Émile Zola's Les Rougon-Macquart cycle, which are not available in English or are out of print.  I'm reading Zola now and plan on exploring more of his work.

Via One World Classics I also came across Alma Books.  "Alma Books was set up in October 2005 by Alessandro Gallenzi and Elisabetta Minervini, the founders of Hesperus Press. Publishing from fifteen to twenty titles a year, mainly in the field of contemporary literary fiction, Alma takes around sixty per cent of its titles from English-language originals, while the rest are translations from other languages such as French, Spanish, Italian, German and Japanese. Alma also publishes two or three non-fiction titles each year."   

Someone in my online reading group shared the link to Greyladies Books.  They are actually a bookshop specializing in second-hand children's books, but they also have their own imprint (Greyladies) and have published a handful of titles for adults by children's authors, most notably Noel Streatfeild.  They also "do a spot of crime" as well.  Their motto is "Quirky, witty, intelligent, unexpected--Hints of a fading sisterhood of ladies long gone."  I'm looking forward to trying one of their titles soon.

With her mention of a Stefan Zweig novella, Cornflower led me to Pushkin Press.  As a matter of fact they have a whole slew of Zweig's work, which I want to read more of and will be checking out what titles they offer.  Again, their aim is to publish translations of classical and contemporary European literature "that changes the way you look at the world."  

Lastly, I recently came across Roast Books - "'Great Little Reads'--handsome editions designed to be read on a long lunch or a single train journey."  This is a recently founded publisher of quality short fiction.  It's kind of cool to have fiction especially geared for the commuter.  It certainly takes away the excuse of 'having no time to read'!     

Lots to discover, eh?  You can see yet more links to excellent small publishers on my left sidebar under "where to buy your books".  Have you come across any interesting small publishers lately? 

The Solitude of Thomas Cave

While not without its imperfections, Georgina Harding's The Solitude of Thomas Cave is a beautifully rendered story of one man's survival in a most inhospitable environment.  It's a story of his internal struggles and eventual transformation.  And it's a story of faith and redemption in a time of religious supersition.  There's a grandeur to Harding's imagery both in it's beauty of the natural world and in the wretched manner in which man exploits and despoils it. 

"I shall not forget the sight of him as we left, that picture stays strong with me: his figure still and straight on the wide shore, the land huge and bare about him, the snowy dip of the valley at his back, the mountains on either side, twin peaks they were of seeming identical height, rising steep and smooth and streaked with grey as if in some strange reversal the rock were ashes that had been poured down on to the snow from heaven; the sea darkened pewter and having that sluggishness to its movement that comes when it is heavy with the beginnings of ice.  In all God's Earth, from the tip of Africa to the Indies or the wide Pacific, a man might never see a sight so lonely."

What would prompt a man of middle years and good intelligence to remain alone during the fearsome winter months in the Arctic?  It's August 1616 and the whaling ship Heartsease is anchored in the Svalbard Archipelago in the Arctic Ocean.  As a result of a bet between crewmembers Thomas Cave agrees to remain behind as the ice closes in after the retreating ship.  Reminiscent of Robinson Crusoe Thomas spends his first days planning and preparing, counting his stores and supplies and making ready for the dark days to come.    

As the days shorten until there is no perceptible daylight, it becomes clear that this was no rash decision of Thomas's, rather he sought out this extreme solitude.  Brought low by a fever Thomas becomes delusional and believes his wife and child are with him in the cabin and follow him about.  Real or not Thomas Cave is grappling with his own ghosts of the past and inner demons.

Written in both the first and third persons, the story moves backward and forward in time painting a picture of grief and culpability that Thomas feels.  His story is told in third person by an omniscient narrator, which I thought seemed representative of Thomas's character.  Austere in feeling and calm in action, Thomas remains aloof from his fellow sailors.  However sympathetic I might have felt for Thomas, I always also felt a distance from him.  His story is bookended by the narrative of Thomas Goodlard, which is related to the reader some 24 years after the events occurred.  Young Thomas Goodlard is a fellow countryman befriended by the elder Thomas Cave and he tells in his own voice what he knows of this strange man.  There's an immediacy to Thomas Goodlard's narrative, which is juxtaposed with Thomas Cave's more ethereal and dream like experiences.

The novel was at times painful to read.  Some of the actions of the characters were shocking, and I had to remind myself that I was viewing this 17th century world with my 21st century sensibilities.  What's sad is that in some ways things haven't changed much. There's a lot to think about in Harding's novel.  On the surface this is a simple adventure story, but underneath Harding seems to have several different motives for telling this story--some more successful than others.  What Harding excels at is creating a world at times so achingly beautiful that you almost want to enter it's icy coldness.  What I do know is this is a story that will linger for a long time in my mind.

Georgette Heyer: Read, Unread and Favorites?

 

When I posted a few days ago about my most recent Georgette Heyer read, there was a little discussion about which books I had read and which were favorites.  I generally don't like to read an author's work back to back, but lately I've been reading a lot of Georgette Heyer's books.  When it comes to entertaining comfort reads, Georgette Heyer's books rank amongst my favorites.  I fear my Heyer binge has not altogether come to an end.  While I don't plan on starting another novel right away, I suspect I might be tempted to do so at some point later this summer.  This is my pile of Heyer novels that I've already read, A Civil Contract and The Corinthian being my favorites so far (the two books standing up on the left).  I've enjoyed the other novels as well, but those two stand out.

 

These are my unread Heyer novels--what I'll be choosing from eventually.  The four on the left are mysteries and the rest are novels.  At least a few of these have come up as favorites of other readers, which I am happy to hear.  I've been trying to buy them as they are reissued here in the US, though I know I'm missing quite a few still.  I believe she wrote something like fifty books.  I wonder how long it will take me to get through them all.  I like how the cover designs are all similar and the spines match.  They'd look pretty snappy all lined up together on my bookshelves if only I had enough room for them... 

So, which is your favorite Georgette Heyer book?  Which should I make sure I read? 

Forthcoming Books (More for My Wishlist)

It's sort of hard browsing for new books online.  I haven't quite found the one place to see all the new books that are going to be released in the next few upcoming months, but I did spend some time looking on Amazon over the weekend.  It's a bit hit or miss, but I still have a nice list of reads to look forward to and I'm sure I'll be adding to it later.

Although A.S. Byatt's The Children's Book is not due out in the US until October, I splurged and ordered a copy from the UK's The Book Depository.  It came on Friday and I've just barely had a chance to start it.  The opening is promising and I can't wait to read more.  The story "spans the Victorian era through the World War I years, and centers around a famous children’s book author and the passions, betrayals, and secrets that tear apart the people she loves."

Bloomsbury is releasing the first two Bloomsbury Group titles July 7.  I've already ordered Rachel Ferguson's The Bronte's Went to Woolworths and Joyce Dennys' Henrietta's War (which I hear is very similar to E.M. Delafield's The Diary of a Provincial Lady). 

I've read very good things about The Blue Hour: A Life of Jean Rhys by Lilian Pizzichini from a number of readers I respect, so I'm already in line for a copy at the library.

Tasha Alexander's Tears of Pearl, the fourth of the Lady Emily Ashton mysteries is due out in September.  I've really enjoyed these mysteries and can't wait to read the new one, which is set in Constantinople, Turkey during the Victorian era.

Both Gil Adamson's The Outlander and Karen Maitland's The Company of Liars are due out in paperback this summer.  If I really like Karen Maitland's book, I'll be able to read her new one, The Owl Killers late this fall.       

Both Kazuo Ishiguro and Alice Munro have short story collections coming out soon.  I sort wish it had been a novel for Kazuo Ishiguro, but I'm sure I'll still give Nocturnes:Five Stories of Music and Nightfall a try.  Alice Munro's Too Much Happiness will  be out in time for the holidays.      

I've yet to read Orhan Pamuk, though I have a couple of his books on hand.  I should really read them before giving, The Museum of Innocence (isn't that a great title?) a try.

An author who I have been following from the beginning is Carol Goodman, though I've slacked off a bit on her last book or two (hopefully will read this summer).  She has Arcadia Falls coming out after the holidays.  Doesn't that sound really far away?  In any case, that should give me time to catch up on my unread books by her.

I started listening to Emilio Calderon's The Creator's Map a while ago.  While the story caught my interest, the reader didn't click with me (I'm very picky about audio books), so I'll be happy to give the paperback a try.  It's set in Rome during WWII.

I have Sadie Jones' The Outcast on my pile to read and just found out she has a new book coming out as well, Small Wars.  As it is another book due out after the holidays, perhaps I can squeeze in The Outcast before then.   

And one more.  I thought this one sounded interesting.  A Truth Universally Acknowledged: 33 Great Writers on Why We Read Jane Austen, edited by Susannah Carson with an introduction by Harold Bloom!  I already know why I read Jane Austen, but it could be a fun read nonetheless. 

Icy Images for a Hot Summer Day

I think I mentioned before that Georgina Harding's The Solitude of Thomas Cave concerns a group of whalers who have traveled to Arctic waters in search of their quarry.  At the end of the season a bet results in one of the men remaining there alone with enough provisions to see him through until the next season.  That's his expectation, at least.  No man is known to have survived alone in such extreme conditions.  

Somehow this description sounded sort of nice on a hot day like today.    

"The changes in the weather here come as sudden and total transformations.  At once, a blizzard, swirling, obscuring every single thing, and then as suddenly it abates and there is a stillness and clarity as if all before one's eyes is made from glass.  The change of the season however has followed a steady doom-laden progression despite tempests and the fluctuations of wind and temperature.  Those creatures with whom I have shared the island appeared to understand this.  All through the past six and more weeks I have observed the departure of the birds that in the first days of my solitude flocked so densely in the sky along the strand and about the cliffs.  Gulls, auks, petrels, guillemots, kittiwakes, others whose names are unknown to me, have grouped and taken off for the south, one species after another until not a screech nor a wing can be heard overhead and the silence begins to deafen.  Day by day the appearance of the sun has been limited to a noticeably briefer time until days came when its orb, big, coloured and strangely flattened in form, hovered scarcely a few minutes over the southern horizon through the red glow from it might persist for a long period across a wide band at the foot of the sky.  Ice filled the bay with similar inevitability, appearing first prettily as distant ships with sails, sometimes white, sometimes blue, sometimes tinged with pink and lilac as touched by the vanishing light, receding, returning, then becoming permanent as the water about them first steamed then congealed and froze into a hard crust."

"It has become my habit to climb each day to a lookout on the mountain behind the beach to catch what best view I can have of the retreating sun--so often that itis possible now in the twilight to pick out the clear path that my feet have trodden in the snow.  The last few days the sight of it was so slight that I did not know how much of it existed only in a trick of the eye or the delusion of my imagination, but on this day, the fifteenth of October, not even the finest slip of it did appear.  I know that for this year I have now seen the last of the sun.  The great cold is coming."       

A Few Random Book Notes

I've just started reading Emma Smith's The Great Western Beach: A Memoir of a Cornish Childhood Between the Wars.  It always amazes me when someone writes a memoir about their childhood and can remember so much and in such detail.  I recall bits and pieces of my own and then wonder just how much is accurate and how much has been embellished over the years inadvertantly.  Smith's authorial voice is very charming despite writing about an unhappy father (who wouldn't allow either pets or dolls in the house).  It seems to have gotten rave reviews and I'm looking forward to working my way through the book.  She presents her story in a series of vignettes, each more interesting than the last.  I hope to write more about this as I progress.

I don't usually write about the books I read for my postal reading group.  There are about a dozen or so of us and each has chosen a book for the rest of the group to read.  The books steadily make their way around the circle until we each get a chance to read them all.  The books are meant to be a surprise (hence my desire to keep mum about them here)--I love watching the mail every other month for the next unknown book.  Anyway, I do at least want to mention the book I'm reading now, so if you happen to be in the group and don't want to spoil the surprise, please skip the next paragraph.   

My current postal book read is really good and extremely thought provoking and it might be of interest to readers here so please check it out.  Set in colonial Rhodesia in the late 1960s, Tambu is a young girl living in a rural village who dreams of an education.  When her brother dies suddenly she's chosen (by default really) by her uncle to take his place in the mission school outside her village.  Tambu's uncle is headmaster and believes it the duty of at least one child from each unit of his extended family to study and help his respective family better themselves.  Her uncle had lived and studied in England along with his wife and children.  When they returned Tambu finds her cousin Nyasha utterly changed--anglicized really, not even able to speak her native tongue, Shona, anymore.  Although the novel purports to be about "the colonization of one culture by another", it's really about so much more than that.  It's about family dynamics and a woman's place in a patriarchical society, about what an education does and how it makes one question one's surroundings.  This would be a perfect book group book--I'm sure it would elicit an excellent discussion.  Tambu is a great narrator--her education opens her eyes to the ways of the world--the ways of her world and those in it yet she's caught between two different cultures.  Not entirely buying into everything that Nyasha embraces (or struggles against), she also can't go back to her rural village either once she's been exposed to the broader world.  She's a wonderful observer and thinker.  I suspect I'll be pondering this one long after I've turned the last page.

I hope to finish my postal book sometime today and then will move on to Georgina Harding's The Solitude of Thomas Cave, which I had meant to read for Cornflower's book group, but am now very tardy for the discussion.  I began reading it a while back but then got distracted so I may start from the beginning again (it's a fairly slender novel).  I will, however, skip one rather harrowing passage (this is in part a whaling novel) that turned my stomach.  Although entirely fitting with the period of the story, it was ugly nonetheless.  Have I intrigued you?  More later on that one, too.  

Once I finish the Harding book I've given myself leave to read at whim.  I'm waiting for A.S. Byatt's The Children's Book to arrive in the mail.  As it's not due to be published in the US for a while yet, I was trying to ignore the virtual chatter about it that I've been coming across.  When I discovered it's set in the Edwardian period I changed my mind and am now waiting for my copy with eager anticipation.  I've read four or five books by (or about) Georgette Heyer so far this year, so I was ready to end my binge and save my unread books for later, but now I find I'm now eyeing them again after enjoying The Corinthian so much.  And I'm also finding that I'm in the mood for some good historical fiction (maybe a little further back in time than my usual early twentieth-century choices).  I was thinking of Shakespeare (to get back in the mood for reading a play later on) and had Faye Kellerman's The Quality of Mercy in mind.  

It's nice to have so many good choices.  I'm not sure which ones I'll end up actually picking up to read (my night table pile also beckons), but I'm sure I'll let you know! 

Georgette Heyer's The Corinthian

Now this is more like it.  My faith in Georgette Heyer has been restored (truthfully I never really lost it).  As much as Cousin Kate just wasn't a good fit for me, I loved The Corinthian.  It is quite literally the perfect summer read, a page turning romp through Regency England with all the right elements pulled off perfectly.  This will easily rival my favorite, A Civil Contract, though the two novels are very different.  While A Civil Contract is more serious with a more subdued and mature love story, The Corinthian is a light-hearted comedy of manners.  It's quite similar to The Talisman Ring (though better in my opinion) in that it is very much an adventure story with all sorts of twists and turns and misunderstandings--not surprising since the heroine spends the entire novel dressed as a boy! 

I wasn't sure at first just what a Corinthian was, though it's easy to infer the meaning over the course of the novel.  The dictionary defines it as:

a man about town, esp. one who lives luxuriously or, sometimes, dissolutely.

In this case, Sir Richard Wyndham is the Corinthian.  And a wealthy one at that.  Very much a dandy he is known as the "Man of Fashion".  He cares for nothing but "the set of his cravat, polish on his boots, and the blending of his snuff".  Always elegantly attired from his perfectly windswept hair to the toes of his gleaming Hessian boots, he's generally unutterably bored.  He's not lacking in encouragement to do his duty to find a wife and beget an heir, but he really couldn't be bothered.  Nearing thirty his mother and sister are urging him to marry a woman he grew up knowing, who it's been assumed he would marry all along.  Only it would be a marriage of convenience as the lady is rather cold and disinterested.  She will prevail upon him to accept his suit only because her family's financial situation is dire, not because she loves him.  Despite being the most eligible catch in the Marriage Mart, he has no other prospects (at least the sort who want him for himself rather than his bank account) and has resigned himself to his fate.

But fate has a way of tricking you up sometimes.  After a particularly long and indulgent evening at Almacks he leaves in a state of serious inebriation.  Being "devilish drunk" he decides to walk and happens upon a most unusual sight.  Out of an upper storey of a prim house a mysterious fugitive comes scampering down a rope made up of knotted sheets only to discover it isn't long enough.  The fugitive is a slight youth who begs Sir Richard's assistance.  

"Sir Richard was not precisely sober, but although the brandy fumes had produced in his brain a not unpleasant sense of irresponsibility, they had by no means fuddled his intellect.  Sir Richard, his chin tickled by curls, his arms full of fugitive, made a surprising discovery.  He set the fugitive down, saying in a matter-of-fact voice: 'Yes, but I don't think you are a youth, after all'."

"'No, I am a girl,' replied the fugitive apparently undismayed by his discovery.  'But, please, will you come away before they wake up?'"     

Penelope Creed is no simpering miss.  She's an impish character, ready for adventure, but not the sort that includes becoming betrothed to her fish-faced cousin.  An orphaned heiress she lives with her aunt who has distinct ideas of just what's proper--a stifling atmosphere for one just out of the schoolroom.  Richard is ready to send her packing back to her aunt, though she begs him to allow her to set off for Somerset, to her family's estates and a friend she's not seen for five years.

"There was a pause.  Sir Richard unfobbed his snuff-box with a flick of one practised finger, and took a pinch.  Miss Creed swallowed and said: 'If you had ever seen my cousin, you would understand'."

"He glanced down at her, but said nothing."

"'He has a wet mouth,' said Miss Creed despairingly."

"'That settles it,' said Sir Richard, shutting his snuff-box.'I will escort you to your childhood friend'."

Sir Richard agrees to accompany Pen from London to Somerset--a journey filled with comedy and misadventure.  Their stagecoach over turns in a ditch, they cross paths with a thief, they find themselves in possession of stolen goods, discover a body and a murderer, and assist in an elopement.  It's truly a rollicking good read and I might happily have went back to the beginning and started reading the story all over again (and still might).  Heyer creates a wonderful atmosphere with just the right tension and perfect chemistry between Richard and Pen.  Unlike many of Heyer's heroes, Richard is not dour or condescending.  He has a wry sense of humor that clicks with Pen's youthful enthusiasm.  They are both so likeable you can't but help root for them.  This is one Heyer I'll be revisiting soon.    

Miscellanea

 

I swear to you I am not going to spend the entire summer complaining about the weather.  Can I just take a few sentences to whine, though?  It's really hot here right now--yesterday's air temperature was 97, but if you calculate in the humidity it felt more like 105 and it's going to be this way all week.  Despite that clear blue sky and bright sun, it wasn't pretty.  It was even less amusing when we turned on our air conditioning unit only to discover there's something wrong with it.  I spent the afternoon sweating (no need to even move--the humidity does all the work for you!) as I was waiting for the technician to come and take a look at our AC.  He never came, but at about 4:45 someone called to apologize and reschedule (after I took half a day off work--I might add half a day away a very nicely air conditioned building!).  Oh, I might mention that for a second time in a week the power went off in my neighborhood.  What to do when the lights go out?  Luckily since it was daytime I read for a while and then stitched.  Just as I was starting to nod off (intense heat has that sort of soporific effect on me), the power came on and the fan started rotating again.  Yay.  So, please cross your fingers that the AC can be fixed today (another afternoon off work).  

Okay, whining over.  I promise to stop talking about the weather--I know many people live in far hotter places than I do and never say boo about it.  I have a low threshhold when it comes to dealing with extreme heat.  I never would have made it as a pioneer--I'll be the first to admit that.  Just imagine living before electricity and having to wear long skirts.  Eeek.  

Sorry, now I really am finished talking about the weather.  I did manage to add a few stitches to my needlework project.  I'm being optimistic that I will stick with it and finish it before the end of the year--I stitched in the date.  Usually I wait until the end to do that.  My initials will go on the other side.   

Over the weekend reference to D.H. Larwrence's Lady Chatterly's Lover came up in a book I was reading and in a movie I watched, which reminded me how much I want to read him, but never get around to it.  I know he is not a favorite with many readers, but I still would like to give him a try and see what all the fuss is about.  I pulled my copy from my bookshelves in contemplation of starting to read the book.  I wonder if it would raise a stir on the bus.  Probably not.  No one else ever seems to read. 

I was going to write more about what I'm reading at the moment, but frankly it's just too hot and I feel like I'm melting.  Maybe I'll go water my flowers.  I can attest to how cold the water from the outside faucet is right now--and you're never too old to play with the hose.  Happy reading everyone.