Saturday Smiles

 This reminded me of cats I've served in the past--made me laugh!

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Something for Everyone

 It's finally feeling autumnal here--such a relief! Today we had heavy rain, sun, howling wind, and rainbows. Happy October!

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'Tis the Season...

 ...to keep my eyes open for the first Christmas biscuit sighting of the year. Yesterday was the day. We were in the grocery store in the next village and there they were.

🎄🎅⛄

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Maybe This Means We've Really Arrived :-)

 My computer had been having issues these past few weeks and nothing seemed to make them go away, so I reluctantly admitted that it was on its way out. It wasn't a surprise. There had been indications that it was struggling for a few months before and I think almost never using it for the month we were moving and only had brief access to wifi prolonged its life a little bit. We always buy refurbished computers, mp3 players, etc, for environmental reasons, so it wasn't expensive and I got years of use from it. Still it was somewhat annoying to not be able to do certain things that just don't work well on the tablet. I didn't have to deal with the issue for long, though, because Bill found a refurbished computer in Ireland that meets my minimal computer needs. Since Brexit we are much more careful about avoiding UK sellers--too much hassle and various fees. Anyway, since it was coming from Ireland, we figured there was a good chance it would get here on Monday. We were heading out when we saw the postman drive up a lane across the street, so we waited to see if he would come here next. There is a mail slot in the main door, which locks automatically when it closes, so if there is a parcel and no one happens to see or hear him, he drops a card through the slot and we have to go pick up the item at the post office in the next village a mile and a quarter down the road. There used to be one in a wee shop in our little village, but it closed. 

On this day, the postman came down the lane and swung around next to us. He asked if it was Bill and said he had a parcel. It was my computer. Bill brought it into the apartment and we headed off. As we were walking, I said to Bill, 'Now he knows who we are, so it won't be long before he sees us walking around between villages and stops to give us a parcel.' Indeed it did not take long! Today we walked to the library and then the grocery store. We were on our way home when I suddenly saw a van heading towards us. Then I saw the an Post logo. He pulled up and handed Bill the book I'd asked him to order for me. I guess it was just a tad too thick to go through the slot. He said he'd left a card for us to pick it up, but we could just rip it up. We rarely buy stuff online but when we do it is almost always a book or books, so there may be more opportunities to have them delivered while out and about. Now that we're known by the postman, maybe it means we've really arrived in the village.😀

This is the book I got and I am excited to own it. It's one I plan to keep.

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???

 I was reading along, nearing the end of the book. A weird-ish mystery, published in 1955 and then reissued in 1993 as part of a series of forgotten classics. I was about 30 pages from the end. Loose ends were being tied up and explanations given. I turned a page and found this:

I turned this page, hoping the story would pick up there where it had ended on the previous page, but nope. These blank pages were supposed to contain actual words important to the story. I muddled on, knowing I had missed some important bits. I turned the page again and was faced with more blank white space. After that, I flipped through the rest of the pages to see if there were more blanks. There weren't and I finished the book, but the experience would have been better if four of the final 30 pages had not been missing! I do not recall ever having come across this kind of thing before and I hope it's the last time! 🤨😕

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July Books: Fiction and Short Stories

 I read some great fiction and short stories in July.

Middlemarch: A Study of Provincial Life by George Eliot (Mary Anne Evans)

This book was originally published serially in 8 parts in 1871 ans 1872. The story is set in the fictional town of Middlemarch between 1829 and 1832 and runs roughly on two tracks, although they intersect frequently. The novel begins with Dorothea Brooke, a very young woman who, with her sister, Celia, has been raised by an uncle on the death of her parents. She is pretty uninterested in the expectations put upon her as a woman and instead is more interested in intellectual pursuits and improving the lives of the poor and exploited. She makes a very big mistake and learns from it as the consequences gradually become clear to her. This part began as a long story revolving around the character of Dorothea and those who are in her orbit.

The second storyline revolves around a young doctor, Tertius Lydgate, who is new in Middlemarch. He has some newfangled ideas that the older generation of doctors does not like, which creates tension. He befriends the Vincy family. He also makes a big mistake that causes him suffering. This part of the book was meant to be the novel Middlemarch until Eliot realized she should intertwine both storylines into one book.

When I read classics, and particularly Victorian classics, I am always struck by how many things sound exactly like what is going on today. The technology and channels of communication are different, so these things happen in different ways today, but it’s still the same stuff. For example, virtually everyone in the novel, no matter their class situation or occupation, was always focused on keeping up appearances and hiding things that would cause people to look down on them. They didn’t have social media influencers, but there were influencers of another kind in the form of gossip. Word (whether true or not) didn’t get around as quickly as it does today, but it did get around and changed people’s lives in profound ways.

I really enjoyed this book. I could relate to some of the feelings expressed by Dorothea in particular.  There were some funny bits, too, which made me laugh.

The Clockmaker’s Daughter by Kate Morton

We were in the charity shop one day, dropping off a couple of books when I saw this on the shelf. I'd been looking at it for months in e-audiobook and e-book on the library site, but it's too long for me to want to read/listen in those formats, so I never borrowed it. But there it was, so I bought it, figuring I could read it right away and donate it back so I wouldn't have to move it. As it happens, since there's no wee free library in Dungloe, we ended up sort of creating on on a shelf in between the sets of doors that make up the entrance to the old church where the library is housed. We would put books on an empty shelf with a 'free books' sign on top and they got taken, so we added more. This book ended up on one of those piles. It's a good book.

Address Unknown by Katherine Kressman Taylor

This is an epistolary novel which consists of letters between friends and business partners. One is a Jewish person who runs an art gallery in the US and the other is his partner who goes back to Germany as Hitler is coming to power and falls under his spell. It’s a chilling but important work, particularly now.

The Last Resort by Jan Carson

This is a collection of linked short stories, each told from the perspective of a different person. All of them are set in a caravan park in Northern Ireland, located on the edge of a crumbling cliff. This is a new addition to the library’s e-book collection. I loved it!

Learning to Talk by Hilary Mantel

This is a collection of short stories I picked up in a charity shop a couple years ago. The last story is an excerpt from her autobiography, which was published shortly before this. It was clear from that how biographical the previous stories were. They all revolved around childhood experiences. This is a good collection and well worth reading.

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July Books: Nonfiction, Folktales, and Poetry

 In addition to all the (mostly) classic detective fiction, there was some fascinating nonfiction in the book pile in July.

In Praise of Wasting Time by Alan Lightman

When I came across this title in the e-book section of the library website, I was eager to read it. It did not disappoint.

‘We have apps, smart watches and calendars that constantly remind us to be productive and stop wasting time. We have created a frenzied lifestyle in which time is money, with not a minute to be wasted, and the twenty-four hours of each day are carved up, dissected, and reduced down to small units of efficiency.  

Professor Alan Lightman documents the rush and heave of the modern world, and examines the many values of ‘wasting time’ – for replenishing the mind, for creative thought, for finding and solidifying the inner self and letting the mind lie fallow without attempting to accomplish anything and without any assigned tasks.

Carl Jung did his most creative thinking and writing when he took time off from his frenzied practice in Zurich to go to his country house. Gustav Mahler routinely took three or four-hour walks after lunch, stopping to jot down ideas in his notebook. Albert Einstein described letting his mind ‘roam’ to make connections between concepts that were previously unconnected.

In this timely and essential book, Professor Alan Lightman investigates the creativity born from allowing our minds to freely roam. In Praise of Wasting Time teaches us all that sometimes, the best thing to do is to do nothing at all.’ Here's a quote:

Queen of Whale Cay: The Extraordinary Story of ‘Joe’ Carstairs, the Fastest Woman on Earth by Kate Summerscale

I found this in a charity shop years ago, but as it was a small paperback, I always set it aside to read larger books that I didn’t want to haul with me during a move. This time it came to the new place, but I read it and brought it back to be donated to the charity shop. It’s the biography of ‘Joe’ Carstairs, a woman born into a wealthy family who lived as a man and broke speed boat racing records before buying an island and declaring herself queen. Cay is pronounced ‘key.’

Dorothy L. Sayers: A Careless Rage for Life by David Coomes

This is a biography of Dorothy L. Sayers, best known for her Lord Peter Wimsey detective novels. She was one of the Queens of Crime during the Golden Age of detective fiction, but her output in the genre was not as extensive as some of the others. She also did a lot of theological writing. This author, who worked for BBC Radio in the religion department, is primarily interested in the latter. He skims over parts of her life, but quotes extensively from her letters and other writings that pertain to her religious views. I found this mildly interesting, but had it been a longer book, I probably would not have finished it. 

Why the Moon Travels by Oein deBhairduin

This is a collection of folktales from the Traveller culture. 

Quiet Enough by John Stevenson

This was a book of the week in an email from the Haiku Foundation. These haiku and senryu bring many images to mind, some of them sad as he writes about experiences and feelings leading up to, during, and after a break-up/divorce. But others made me smile and created a feeling of peace, like this one:

autumn wind

the leaves are going

where I’m going

I look forward to that autumn wind! 

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