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Reading the End Posts

The Mask of Apollo, Mary Renault

I have this strategy – I’ve mentioned it before – where when I really like an author, I save some of their books.  I haven’t read two (2) of Salman Rushdie’s books.  Martin Millar has written a number of books that I haven’t read, and I haven’t made the small effort it would take to order them used online.  This is not because of any shortage of love in my heart for Martin Millar’s books.  It’s because I’m saving them.  I do it with rereads too.  It’s been at least five years since I last read Persuasion, although (well, actually…

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Review: Can Any Mother Help Me?, Jenna Bailey

In 1935, a mother wrote in to a British motherhood magazine saying this: Can any mother help me?  I live a very lonely life as I have no near neighbors.  I cannot afford to buy a wireless. I adore reading, but with no library am very limited with books.  I dislike needlework, though I have a lot to do!  I get so down and depressed after the children are in bed and I am alone in the house….Can any reader suggest an occupation that will intrigue me and exclude ‘thinking’ and cost nothing? In response, a group of women formed…

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Review: Stern Men, Elizabeth Gilbert

Ruth Thomas lives on Fort Niles, an island off the coast of Maine, where the main occupation is lobster-hunting.  Raised mainly on Fort Niles by her father and her neighbor Mrs. Pommeroy, Ruth’s upbringing is punctuated with time spent in Delaware boarding school.  Upon her graduation she returns to Fort Niles determined to start a life there, despite the apparent wishes of her mother’s family, the posh Ellises who only summer in Fort Niles. I liked Eat Pray Love – not unreservedly, but a lot.  I liked it when God told her to go back to bed, and I cried…

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Miscellany

We had a sad end of Thanksgiving – my family dog died quite suddenly on Sunday.  She was a lovely dog, really just the best dog you ever met.  We got her when I was eleven, and she was three months old and very fluffy.  For the longest time we couldn’t think what to call her – we called her Porcupine as a placeholder nickname, and my mother finally came up with Nora.  Nora was extraordinarily beautiful if difficult to capture in photographs (but here’s a picture of her anyway), and even when she was an old dowager dog, she…

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Review: The Well and the Mine, Gin Phillips

I have been hearing about this book all over.  The first line is captivating: “After she threw the baby in, nobody believed me for the longest time.  But I kept hearing that splash.”  So I decided to read it even though it is several things I tend not to like: a Southern novel, set in the Depression, and featuring The Mines.  My final opinion is, The Well and the Mine is quite good for a Southern Depression Mines novel, which – it confirmed once more for me – is just not the best kind of book for me. Nine-year-old Tess…

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Review: Chalice, Robin McKinley

So this is my adult fantasy or science fiction book for Jeane‘s DogEar Challenge, and I have managed to finish it before the end of November, which I wasn’t sure I was going to be able to do, what with all the applying to grad school I’ve been doing and whatnot.  Chalice! I have figured out the key to Robin McKinley, and I will tell you what it is.  In each of her books, she has a world that she’s created, and she plops you down right in the middle of the world.  By and large, her books are not…

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A person so useless even Aaron Sorkin can’t be bothered with him

I know this is the second time I’ve mentioned Aaron Sorkin in the past few days, but that’s only because I’m rewarding myself for applying to grad school by letting myself watch episodes of Sports Night and The West Wing.  Anyway, I’m watching Sports Night and this is the dialogue that just went by: Jeremy: This, you’re gonna love!  This is maybe the most important piece of boxing writing ever done. Casey: And what with all the important pieces of boxing writing to choose from– Jeremy: The Marquis of Queensberry Rules…written by? Casey: The Marquis of Queensberry? Jeremy: No, boxing…

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Review: The Comedy of Errors, William Shakespeare

Here’s what you should understand before reading Comedy of Errors.  My boy Shakespeare, he’s funny.  He’s all about being funny; he’s got funny down pat.  If you don’t believe me, I can only assume that it’s because you have never seen one of Shakespeare’s plays performed by actors with any hint of comedic timing.  He can do it in many different ways – he can do slapsticky visual gags, he can do puns, he can do wry little digs and situational irony and gallows humor. And when he’s not being funny, he’s still being clever.  Nearly always!  He makes his…

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Review: Richard III, William Shakespeare

I looked up Richard III, and Wikipedia says that scholars consider it one of Shakespeare’s greatest plays.  Well, you know what, Wikipedia?  Scholars apparently did not read The Daughter of Time at a young and impressionable age and acquire an emotional stake in the innocence of Richard III!  I have a framed portrait of Richard III in my house, and one of these days I am going to borrow a drill to do a guide-hole, and hang the damn thing up.  In my last apartment it hung right next to my bookshelf. Let me just say, Parliament had already passed…

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Review: The Wordy Shipmates, Sarah Vowell

The Wordy Shipmates is about the Puritans, John Winthrop and his lot, who came to America, and all the stuff they did.  Vowell admires their courage and intelligence without giving them a pass on all the things we don’t like about Puritans – the intransigence, the praying for American Indians to die of plague, etc.  It’s more of an essay collection than a history book, with Vowell speaking to her own life and how she has found strength in the writings of the Puritans, plus some fairly predictable party-line remarks on American politics.  Plus all the stuff about the Puritans.…

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