Harassing a Friend

I've been working with a friend of mine from our book club about choosing books for next year. In the meantime, I've been recommending several good mysteries to him. Below is a typical missive he has been bombarded with these past several days. I only hope our friendship outlasts my obsession!

Dave,

As I was working earlier in my study, I happened to look down at my mystery pile next to my desk. That's' where I keep my stack of mysteries to be read or re-read. On top of the pile was the second of a five-part series by Anne Perry. She's probably most famous for the 18th Century Detective Thomas Pitt mysteries (I've never read them - don't know why), but since WWI is my weakness, I read her series several years ago and now have already re-read the first one, Angels in the Gloom, again. The second, Shoulder the Sky, the title from the English poet A. E. Housman, is beckoning me to read once again. 

Angels is the story of a young man whose parents were just killed in an auto accident that turns out to be murder. While solving the murder, the son - Joseph, an Oxford teacher of religion - discovers a conspiracy that threatens national security. So while the murder is solved in the first book, the conspiracy connects all five books. The story is about his adventures during the war, and those of his younger brother Mathew and younger sister, Judith, while they all get involved in the war and in solving the conspiracy.

I don't know why I didn't recommend this series to you before. It's on a par with CT.

I'll write later about my two French mysteries. Still trying to decide on what to do about the 2021 book selections. You and I are the last ones. Barbara came through today, while Debi gave me a three-choice; she will choose from them and us know early in the coming year so we have plenty of time to get the book. She is scheduled for November. I also have let Vera choose which two months she wants since she is doing two books. (If we had chosen the 2-book CT deal, I would have scheduled them back-to-back as well.)

Anyhow, these emails help me even if they may be slightly bothersome to you. It beats talking to myself.

Stay safe 

Ron

As you can see, my friend has a lot patience.

Mind Wandering

The title represents what I have been doing this past week after Tuesday's book club meeting. Between settling down to choose my book for next year, thinking about posts for Facebook, to watching too much political theatre, I can't seem to settle on anything to read, post, or watch with regularity. I have decided on a stylistic photo to use when I don't have any for a particular post (remember, I told you that I don't like posts without a photo - sort of like a room without a window).

When I look at it I am reminded of the first Indiana Jones movie when he flies to Southeast Asia. It shows a drawing/photo of a Pacific Clipper Seaplane heading west over a map/globe. I am going to use this whenever I don't have any other specific pictures to use.

All this writing and I have not yet been able to settle on anything to write about. So it's lunchtime. I'll eat and get ready to venture out into COVID Land with my mask on for my annual eye doctor. 

Talk to you later. Stay safe. 😷

Book Choices for 2021 Book Club

Without any preamble, this is the list of books I have decided my selection (or selections) will be coming from for the coming year, along with notes to myself to help in my decision:

Fiction

A Very Long Engagement (find)

Regeneration

City of Thieves

A Gentleman in Moscow

A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

The Wind in the Willows

The Secret Garden (library book)

Doomsday Book (library book)

Madonnas of Leningrad

The Indian Clerk

The Two Georges

Going After Cacciato (library book)

  

 

Non-Fiction

Spillover (500+ pages)

Killers of the Flower Moon (library book)

The Island of the Colorblind

The Death of Politics (decide after the election)

The Death of Truth (decide after the election)

Travels with Epicurus

Caesar's Last Breath

The Library Book

Inextinguishable Symphony

Shoe Dog (library book)

Movie Nights with the Reagans (library book)

Twin Tracks

The Pinball Effect

I will be discussing a few of these in the days to come to help me decide on my final selections - I'll choose two in case we need to cover the 11 months of book meetings. As of today, we have three submissions. I'll make my selections after I know everyone else has either submitted theirs or if someone has declined to submit one (we have two of these so far).

Re-Visiting Re-Reading

It's been quite a while since I have written on this topic. I have always been a re-reader. Most people I personally know are not. Most people I read about and the authors that I read are. I try very hard to explain to people why I enjoy re-reading a good book. By the way, this also fortifies my argument for keeping books after I read them. But I know I go overboard.

Yesterday I found something in a book I haven't read yet that best explains the habit of re-reading I've seen to this point. It is in a book by Michael Dirda.

He writes in his preface on page x, "Who, at any age, can read unmoved the last pages

of Tarzan of the Apes when the rightful Lord Greystoke, deliberating sacrificing his

own hope for happiness, quietly says, ' My mother was an ape...I never knew who my

father was.' In our hearts, we measure all the "better" and "greater" books of adult-

hood against such touchstones - and in later years we often return to the originals for

comfort and renewal."

Comfort and renewal. I guess that's how I feel when  I go a book I've read before and pick it up to begin again the story has to tell. One of my very favorites is actually non-fiction but is a series of essays about - what else but books. It's called, Ex Libris by Anne Fadiman. I have read it at least four times. Every time I enjoy it more. From combining her library with her husband's after only five years of marriage (to say nothing of six years before that of living together) to about what people write on flyleaves of books, the entire book is a treasure.

Now that I've pulled it down from the shelf, I just might read it again. At least about combining libraries.

Where Have You Been, Mrs. Robinson?

 Now that I have your attention, let me explain. I am talking about my  own  absence from the blog. In a sentence - I have been busy with medical visits and preparing for next week's book group meeting.

The medical appointments have all been normal follow-up visits with my docotrs. In one case, my diabetes is being handled by the endocronology department now instead of my primary care doctor (though he will remain in the loop). And they are not over yet. I have a urologist, a demotologist, a podiatrist, and a sleep specialist on my calendar before the end of the calendar year.

As far as the preparation for this month's book club, I am the discussion leader this time. The book, "when Books Went to War", is about the program America had to provide small, specially-made paperback books for the servicemen and women during WWII. As discussion leader I was responnsible for developing the questions. I actually found some online and a few of my own.

My current reading comes and goes. Books that I am currently reading: in fiction, "The Woman in White" by Wilkie Collins and "The Hunting Party" by Linda Foley. My nonfiction are "The Pity of It All" by Amos Elon, "Good-Bye to All That" by Robert Graves, and "Mind of the Raven" by Bernd Heinrich.

All good reads.