Nope on Ford Madox Ford but yes on Plath

Catching up on book reviews and making plans.

Epic fail on my Classic Club Spin.  I just couldn't get on with A Good Soldier by Ford Madox Ford so it's a DNF.  Having planned to knock out one of my titles on the list I chose The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath.  Now I need to edit my Classic Club list on the tab.

I'm sure Sylvia Plath used much of her own thoughts in writing the character of Esther Greenwood.

This novel was before the pill, medical knowledge of mental illness, women's studies and a bit like that TV series Mad Men in regard how women were viewed. The character  Esther recognized this despite her mental illness, or perhaps because of it.

She wanted more from life than the traditional path expected and having depression and suicidal thoughts didn't help with her mental state and decision making.

Noting how it would turn out if she married - "And I knew that in spite of all the roses and kisses and restaurant dinners a man showered on a woman before he married her, what he secetly wanted when the wedding ended was for her to flatten out underneath his feet like Mrs. Willard's kitchen mat."

She just wanted more out of life.

 The character mentions she should be grateful for the friend of her mother, Mrs. Guinea, for affording Esther to stay at a nicer sanatorium during her treatment.  But she was no more grateful than being gifted a ticket to Europe, or a world cruise or trip to Paris to sit and enjoy a sidewalk cafe...she'd still be under that vacuum, that Bell Jar, feeling nothing but misery. It wasn' that she was an ingrate, she was mentally paralyzed.

Medical knowledge and treatment were woefully lacking in those days regarding depression. Esther's mother was always asking her why was she like this, as if it were her fault. Knowing Plath's true life story made this a sad read. 4 stars

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Frankie by Graham Norton

I've read a few of Graham Norton's fiction and this one, true to form, gives us a setting in Ireland and lots to think about.  The plot centers around Frances Howe and how her very sad childhood changed her path in life.  The different time periods are well described, in my opinion. We start with Damien who is a care giver living in London.

Frances, dubbed Frankie once she arrived in New York, is now in her eighties and has broken ankle.  Damien is sent to her for the temporay care she needs.  As they are both Irish and Damien knows the area Frankie grew up in this opens a window for them to reminisce.  He's great at getting his clients to chat and this opens up a flood of memories from Frankie as she slowly tells him her life story.  From county Cork in Ireland to London, Frankie finds happiness for a while and it's an interesting journey.  

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This week I posted and tried to join in on Nonfiction November Here. Upcoming I have a stack of books and need to decide which to tackle first, some depend on library due dates.

Hope your reading week is a good one!

 Linking up with:

Readerbuzz for Sunday Salon

Joy for British Isles Friday

Nonfiction November - week one

This is my first time participating in Nonfiction November although I do participate in an annual nonfiction challenge at Book'd Out.  

Our host for the first week here is Heather at Based on a True Story.

 Week 1 (10/27 – 11/2) Your Year in Nonfiction: Celebrate your year of nonfiction. What books have you read? What were your favorites? Have you had a favorite topic? Is there a topic you want to read about more?  What are you hoping to get out of participating in Nonfiction November? 

So far this year I have read thirteen nonfiction books with various topics such as Food, Health, Travel, Garden, Myths/Legends and Memoir/Biography.  I am about to start The Art Thief by Michael Finkel which is true crime, also a buddy read with Susan at The Cue Card.

Favorites / One of my absolute favorite for 2025 is The Story of a Heart by Dr. Rachel Clarke. That book could well have landed under the science category but I chose health.  

Here is a list of the nonfiction completed so far in 2025.

Olive, Mabel and Me by Andrew Cotter

Be Ready When Luck Happens by Ina Garten

Atlas of Abandoned Places

Hidden Libraries

On the Hippie Trail by Rick Steves

Vanishing Cornwall by Daphne du Maurier

The Day the World Came to Town by Jim DeFede

What I Ate in One Year by Stanley Tucci

The Backyard Bird Chronicles by Amy Tan

Testament of Youth by Vera Brittain

The Shepherd's Life by James Rebanks

Pastoral Song by James Rebanks

The Story of a Heart by Dr. Rachel Clarke ★

I have been reading nonfiction all year as I participate in Shelleyrae's Nonfiction Reading Challenge .  You can find more about this annual challenge at Book'd Out.

Sharing with the hosts Heather at Nonfiction November and Readerbuzz.

UPDATE - I am not on Facebook and can not sign in to participate in the link on Heather's blog.  So...yeah.

Book chat and Loki's dental escapade

Happy Wednesday my bookish friends!  I am gearing up for our first Halloween in a neighborhood since 1991 - yikes!  We haven't had trick-or-treaters in so long so we have been buying candy on each of our grocery trips.  Decorating was fun.

Loki had a dental procedure on Friday and he took forever to get back to normal.  We were worried because he was supposed to bounce back the next day.  He wouldn't eat or drink for 2 days. Here he is making my life easy in the kitchen...my foot makes a decent pillow.

📚 Book Chat 📚

I finished The Elements by John Boyne. A page turner of a novel and I am glad I didn't discover these individual stories until he put them all together.  Unbeknownst to me, these four stories Air, Fire, Earth and Water were previously published as novellas.  Putting them all together links up certain characters throughout each "Element."  

I liked the settings in Ireland, especially in the first story titled Water where a woman took time to heal and evaluate her life on a remote island off Ireland's west coast . The stories are disturbing but not graphic.  Triggers for rape, spousal abuse and revenge are present.  The writing is fantastic. 

Thank you Jackie at Junkboat Travels for alerting me to another Graham Norton book.  I am reading Frankie and may be caught up with Norton's fiction.

📚Upcoming 📚

I played along with the Classic Club Spin which I listed HERE and my book will be The  Good Soldier by Ford Madox Ford.

My next nonfiction is  The Art Thief  by Michael Finkel and eventually a buddy read with Susan at The Cue Card.

What is on your reading agenda for the rest of the month?

  Linking up with:

Readerbuzz for Sunday Salon

Joy for British Isles Friday

Classics Club Spin Time!

 Here's my book list for the Classics Club Spin 

1. A Town Like Alice by Nevil Shute
2. Agnes Grey by Ann Bronte
3. All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque
4. Breakfast at Tiffany's by Truman Capote
5. Catch 22 by Joseph Heller
6. Daisy Miller by Henry James
7. Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway
8. Goodnight, Mr. Tom by Michelle Magorian
9. Hotel Du Lac by Anita Brookner
10. It Can't Happen Here by Sinclair Lewis
11. Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
12. Scapegoat by Daphne Du Maurier
13. Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut
14. Tess of the D'urbervilles by Thomas Hardy
15. The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
16. The Covenant by James Michener
17. The Good Soldier by Ford Madox Ford
18. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
19. The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark
20. The Road to Wigan Pier by George Orwell

When the spin number is announced on Sunday 19 October I will read that book before December  21, 2025.  Will you be joining in?  Check out the announcement post HERE.

Sharing with:

Deb at Readerbuzz for Sunday Salon

The Classics Club

Reading, CrocktoberFest and Planting

Hello bookish friends.  First week of October has me reading outside thanks to cooler temps, using the slow cooker and planting pollinators. I hope your week is going well.

Currently reading The Elements by John Boyne.  

From Goodreads - "The narrative follows a mother on the run from her past, a young soccer star facing a trial, a successful surgeon grappling with childhood trauma, and a father on a transformative journey with his son. Each is somehow connected to the next, and as the story unfolds, their lives intersect in unimaginable ways."

I'm over halfway through with this book and it's quite a page turner.  Set in Ireland and England, there are triggers on rape and abuse but nothing graphic. 

Four different stories and circumstances with the point of view of a perpetrator, a victim and I am not so sure about the enabler label on one story. Anyway, Boyne is linking up these stories and people in each section titled Air, Earth, Water and Fire. I can't put it down.

Surprise in the mail - Thank you to Deb at Readerbuzz for the seed packet and lovely card!  I have planted them and hope for some pollinators to visit.  I also planted my Seed Pop but so far, only a few sprouts.  Maybe I am overwatering.  We will see.

Here is the one I planted.  They come in different varieties for butterfly, bees and birds.

CrocktoberFest time.  This slow cooker isn't mine but I thought it looked so cute .

First thing I wanted to do was make this Peach and Pear Cobbler (click on link for recipe).  I made it ages ago and posted on my defunct food blog.  Dessert in a slow cooker - yes please.  Next crock effort is a lentil soup.  We are starting to get cooler temps.  Very excited.

Sharing with:

Deb at Readerbuzz for Sunday Salon

Joy for British Isles Friday

September reading and October plans

 Well we got through September.  While I am longing for fall temperatures here, my friends in the southern hemisphere are about to experience Springtime :-)  Clearly I need a home is two  parts of this world, haha.

So a wrap up of September reading and watching.  

I was saddened to learn of Nan's passing.  She wrote at Letter from a Hill Farm and will be missed.  Les wrote a lovely tribute to Nan and you can read that HERE. 

📚 Books read 📚

The Correspondent by Virginia Evans (a buddy read with Susan at the Cue Card)

The Last Letter of Rachel Ellsworth by Barbara O'Neal

Forever Home by Graham Norton

Vanishing Cornwall by Daphne du Maurier - a nonfiction for my 2025 Nonfiction Reading Challenge at Book's Out. and British Isles Friday.

I enjoyed the book and learning so much about the history of Cornwall.  It was a place du Maurier had such a passion for and influenced so many authors we have read in classic literature.  The part about Yorkshire and the Bronte sisters and family was very interesting to me.  Reading about their Cornish mother and aunt and how it sparked their imaginations, inspiring the plots and locale in their books.

The myths and legends about Arthur, King Mark and Tristan were page turners as well.  Too many stories in here to address all but if you have an interest in the history, landscape,  myths and legends about Cornwall, please check your local library for a copy of this book.

As a few commenters stated they didn't know Daphne du Maurier wrote any nonfiction.   I thought I would include a screen shot of the book listing her books.  She wrote many about Francis Bacon, I suppose her big interest, as well as memoirs.

Category for the nonfiction challenge is Myths and Legends.

Watching

We have enjoyed all three of these shows.  You can't go wrong with Gary Oldman in Slow Horses and while I have not read the book series by Mick Herron I like the show.  Looking forward to the next season as it airs.

Chief of War is almost entirely in Hawaiian and is subtitled so be prepared to read it. 

Slow Horses

Chief of War

Friends and Neighbors

Sharing with

Shelleyrae at Book'd Out for the 2025 Nonfiction Challenge 

Joy for British Isles Friday 

Readerbuzz for Sunday Salon

The Correspondent by Virginia Evans{ a good epistolary book with great book suggestions}

The Correspondent by Virginia Evans was a 5 star buddy read with Susan at The Cue Card.   I loved this book and the epistolary style appealed to me.  From decades back I have been a letter writer.  You can create a history of your relationships through your letters, if you save them over the years.

You will meet our letter writer, Sybil Van Antwerp aged 73, and follow her through her from 2012 to 2021.  She writes to family, friends, authors and anyone she wants to share an opinion.  I love Sybil.  She has regrets as I'm sure we all do .  The themes of friendship, grief, love and growth are found within her tale.  Sybil is a strong woman and tries her best with some challenging situations.  I love her letters to Rosalie - her best friend and sister-in-law.  They usually end with "what are you reading, I am reading XX."

There are many characters so in the beginning I would write down the name and relationship so  wouldn't be confused.

I couldn't resist writing down all the books mentioned within her letters.  Some were letters to the authors expressing thoughts on the books and most of the others were a "I'm reading this, what are you reading" between friends.  Have you read any of these?

• Outlander by Diana Gabaldon
• Round House by Louise Erdrich
• Inferno by Dan Brown
• Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier
• The World Below by Sue Miller
• To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf
• Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
• State of Wonder by Ann Pachett
• Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese
• Blue Nights by Joan Didion
• The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion
• The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro
• Never Let me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
• Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie
• Crossing to Safety by Wallace Stegner
• The Orphan Master's Son by Adam Johnson
• Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie
• Mary Poppins by P.L. Travers
• Ulysses by James Joyce
• 84 Charing Cross Road by Helene Hanff
• Travels with Charley by John Steinbeck
• Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
• Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry

Some I've read and some have been on my to-read list.  Maybe this is a good list to start for winter reading. Hmmm...

Please check out Susan's excellent review HERE.

FYI - This book is on sale for Kindle today for $1.99. Check here.

Sharing with Deb at Readerbuzz for Sunday Salon.

The Last Letter of Rachel Ellsworth and a book question

 Two woman who experienced tramatic events in their lives come together and travel.  It's more than that though.

It's about friendship, trust, facing the grief in your life and choosing to move forward. Mariah Ellsworth was an Olympic champion snowboarder and experienced a devasting injury.  Later in the book you'll find out how she was injured and why she's in physical therapy. It definitely wasn't what you would expect. She is also mourning her mother Rachel and decides to finish a book project Rachel started about Parsi tea houses in London, Marrakech, and India.  But she can't do it on her own. She needs physical help and a person who can speak fluent French.

Veronica answers the advert and applies for the position to travel with Mariah.  She is old enough to be Mariah's mother and that makes for an interesting relationship. Veronica needs the job and the money as her husband left for for a younger woman and continually tries to indercut her on alimony. Her adult children are whiny, they don't want mom to be away at Christmas time yet they don't plan to spend any time with her. They will be at a ski resort with dad.  Veronica is  in a bad place and this job and travel is exactly what she needs.

Definitely an armchair travel book.  I liked her book We Believed in Mermaids more than this one but I was never tempted to DNF this book.  If you like the settings in England this book has a bit in London.  The authors book The Lost Girls of Devon will immerse you in that part of England.

Trading Post / Here is  something I thought I'd throw out there and see if anyone has seen this book I am having a wee bit of trouble acquiring. 

The End of Seeing by Christy Collins - Can't find this one on Amazon and I am looking to find a used copy that doesn't cost me an arm and a leg.  Big ask.  If you happen to see it at a used bookstore, and it's not too expensive, I would happily trade you a book or paypal you the cost and postage.  Or point me toward a source I'm sure I don't know about and I can acquire. 

UPDATE- Thank you Deb, I bought it!  Just the right price too.

My book habit..... 🤷‍♀️

Upcoming is the nonfiction about Cornwall by du Maurier and The Correspondent review.

Sharing with Joy for British Isles Friday.

Weekly Update

My weekly update is a bit disjointed today so I'll just ramble on. I somehow strained my back and neck muscles. Probably the yard work we have tackled. It hurt to hold a Kindle or book up or for me to look down at the book, as I usually do.  No heating pad in the house so I ordered one from Amazon.  It is helping but if anyone has any ideas I'm all ears.

Question: Has anyone been in contact with Nan of Letters from a Hill Farm? I have not seen her post since March. I had a card to send her and realized I did not have her address.

Monday Mailbox - I'd not had many incoming books so have not been linking with Monday Mailbox hosted by Vicki.  I did receive this cookbook from awesome Jinjer and made a rice dish.  This week I am making a lentil soup.  

Also have the nonfiction by Daphne du Maurier Vanishing Cornwall. This is a memoir/history and myth and legend kinda book.  I've Cornwall but I love shows and book with the setting. 

Just finished a buddy read with Susan at The Cue Card - The Correspondent by Virginia Evans and loved it. Review coming up.

Sharing with:

Deb at Readerbuzz for Sunday Salon 

Joy's Book Blog for British Isles Friday.

Vicki for Monday Mailbox

Good reading and recipes this first week of September

The first week of September almost behind us and I sometimes marvel we have been in our "city" home for almost three months.  I love the quiet street we live on, talking to people who are walking or doing gardening, being close to the library, pizza, ammenities....and no more 25 mile trip to get to the grocery store. Bliss.

Books // This week I finished a Graham Norton book called Forever Home.  The setting is Ireland, as are most of his books, and the subject matter of dementia and relationships are the main themes.   I've read three of Graham Norton's books so far and can say I enjoyed the others more than this one. Most of the characters were believable and well described but there is a subplot about three quarters of the way in that's ridiculous, in my opinion. 3.5 stars

Here are previous Norton books which I enjoyed. Holding, Home Stretch and A Keeper.

For what it's worth I very much enjoyed Holding and could recommend that one for those interested in Irish village life and interactions with the community.

Currently reading The Correspondent as a buddy read with Susan at The Cue Card. The epistolary style is very appealing to me as I still like writing letters.  

What's for dinner //  Thank you to Jinjer for sending me a cookbook!  First recipe that grabbed me was the rice dish with mushrooms, onions and peas.  This rounded out the honeyed lemon chicken dish.  Recipe for the chicken here if interested.

This dish could be the main event for vegetarians (just swap out the chicken broth) or as a filling side.

Sharing with:

Deb at Readerbuzz for Sunday Salon 

Joy's Book Blog for British Isles Friday.

August Reading, Watching and Lightning Strike

The end of August already.  As the heat was extreme, I was in quite a bit and so my reading time increased.  We did have a severe storm blow in and a lightning strike so close to the house that we had damage. 

It fried our DVD player, 5 outlets in the house and the gas water heater.  Xfinity went out for a bit but I will say I was impressed by the quick response time by a technician.  Thirty minutes after the storm a tech was outside our house hooking us up. Many people in our area were without electricty and Internet for days.  Our neighbor had to have a new air conditioner replaced- yikes!  So while I will complain about a $3,800 gas water heater, it was less expensive than a new AC unit.

Here are the books I finished this month  (Reviews are in the links)

For Nonfiction-  The Day the World Came to Town by Jim DeFede

The Atlas of Abandoned Places

📚  Three Fiction Reads 📚

Wild Dark Shore by Charlotte McConaghy

Heartland by Amity Gaige

The Quiet American by Graham Greene (Classics Club)

Watching

We abandoned The Terminal List with Chris Pratt after almost finishing the first episode. He is completely unbelievable as a Navy Seal.  What we did find and like is an older show called Person of Interest   starring  Jim Caviezel. It's an interesting concept and we are up into season 2 now.  Loving the slow character reveals and development.  That said, I don't see us watching all 5 seasons.

Shrinking with Harrison Ford and Jason Segal. Love this show and the dialogue between the characters.  Just finished season 2 and I can't wait for season 3 to release! Thank you Les for recommending.  🤎 It brought a tear to my eye at the end of season 2.

Armchair Travel this month took me to Newfoundland, Maine, Australia, Vietnam and many remote places around the world with the Atlas of Abandoned Places :-)

What books and shows did you enjoy this month?  Suggestions are always very welcome.

Sharing with Deb at Readerbuzz for Sunday Salon.