I bought this 2nd hand, and look what I found inside! November book for my irl book club.

This is just the 1st of 8 volumes. I went in expecting to learn a lot (and I did) but not expecting the humor and the quality of the prose. I‘m not jumping right in to volume 2, but I do hope to finish the whole thing by the end of 2026. Pic is the map on the endpapers of my edition.

And the relevance to our current situation keeps coming. Sigh.

I have a hard time taking these names seriously. 😀

Gibbon‘s prejudices are always on display, and sometimes humorous. 🍺

My November list for #readyourkobo is heavily weighted towards my current Dickens. 😀 @CBee

My November #bookspin contains two of my current (but LARGE) reads, but also some I‘m hoping to get to soon. @TheAromaofBooks

Let‘s hope it‘s not irrevocable. And this was written in 1776. Do we never learn?

I always thought of this as something I “should” read, but didn‘t look forward to it (so it languished on my shelves for decades) but he‘s actually amusing. Just barely into Chapter 2 and I‘ve read at least four quotes out to my ever-suffering husband.

I kept to a chapter a day until last weekend and then I just had to finish it. But if I‘m counting correctly we should be finishing about now. I fell in love with Tom Pinch and his sister, and laughed with Mark, and despised Pecksniff. The ending was satisfying, except for poor Tom. Be sure to read the end note Dickens insisted be included in every edition - knowing how much of his $ was made in the US made me 🙄 #whatthedickens

“In these times of ours, though concerning the exact year there is no need to be precise, a boat of dirty and disreputable appearance, with two figures in it, floated on the Thames, between Southwark bridge which is of iron, and London Bridge which is of stone, as an autumn evening was closing in.”#firstlineFridays @ShyBookOwl

Here‘s my Dickens shelf. L to R: Little Dorrit, Barnaby Rudge, Hard Times, Dombey & Son, Bleak House, Pickwick Papers, David Copperfield, Oliver Twist, Great Expectations, and A Tale of two Cities. My Martin Chuzzlewitt doesn‘t match either of these sets, and his Christmas books are on another shelf. Plus I have most of his novels on my Kobo. But I love these old boxed editions. @Texreader #whatthedickens

Not my normal genre, so maybe I‘m not the best judge, but this fell flat to me. Too many obvious red herrings, too much repetition, and the characters development didn‘t feel organic. 🤷🏻‍♀️

The premise drew me in and made me want to read this, but in the end I was disappointed. The villains were cardboard cut-outs, and the deception (and its uncovering) too easy to be believable. It could have explored the tension between the husband and his best friend, tasked with watching out for the pregnant wife and then resented for getting to experience what the MC missed by being in Korea. Instead it focused on how evil his parents were.👇🏻

Exactly the book I needed right now. Light enough not to require “work”; interesting female characters with problems that were not solved by meeting the right man; and a pace that felt like the speed of a narrow boat on a summer canal. I loved the exploration of female friendship and the open-ended conclusions about their paths forward.

This light novel is perfect for my post-meniscus surgery distraction. (Don‘t be alarmed by all the drugs on display - so far Tylenol and Ibuprofen are sufficient.) We discovered narrow boat vlogs a few years ago and it‘s fun to be able to picture the boat & the locks as I read.

I needed something fluffy right now, and this is fitting the bill.

I found this, while full of information, to be dated both in ways of identifying other cultures and in cooking methods. It‘s from 1962 and boiling for hours is his preferred cooking method! I‘m glad I read it, but I think I need photographs and maybe a mentor before I get into foraging. #bookspin @TheAromaofBooks

I lived out west for 22 years and never heard about the 1910 fires. But I watched year after year as Yellowstone evolved after the fires of 1988. Egan brings it to life along with its heroic and cowardly moments. The subtitle is a bit misleading as it is Gifford Pinchot more than Teddy who is the policy focus. But the real interest for me lay not in the DC politics, but in the efforts of underfunded unappreciated forest rangers.

My roommate freshman year played this all year. All.the.time. It‘s been 45 years, so maybe I‘m ready to hear it again. 😀 @kspenmoll @AnnCecilie

OMG, this was so unbelievable, so overwrought. And the author couldn‘t stop writing about nipples. 🙄At least I‘ve knocked off one #readyoirkobo for September. But don‘t waste your time on this one. @CBee

My October #bookspin list. @TheAromaofBooks

Found inside my 2nd hand copy “To Dad from SSCR” Four kids? A family nickname? I‘m intrigued.

The Game is not chess, even though it‘s on the cover and in my pic. And it‘s not even really the focus of the book. It‘s sisters and mental health and struggling to know your identity. Published in 1967, it has that era‘s focus on characters who feel trapped. The prose is, like that in Possession, florid and full of “five dollar words,” but it packs a punch. 👇🏻

And we‘re back in the US. And back to uncomfortable similarities with the current times. @Texreader @Cuilin

My #bookhaul from Boos at a Steal this afternoon. Tagged book is the one in the bottom. And hey, #catherbuddyread peeps, I found a collection of her interviews, speeches and letters! @Graywacke

Starting my #doublespin on a lazy Saturday morning. @TheAromaofBooks

I loved this memoir of a truly remarkable woman who knew early on that focusing on helping others was the way to go. All the respect to her! Now I need to find a copy of her latest! #bookspin

I can‘t say I wasn‘t warned. The above sentence appears in the introduction. While the methodology of the surveys is important for academics and the differences in interpretation of the data by the 2 authors points to some issues, this book is not readable. And it doesn‘t offer me any ideas on how to safely resist. How anyone can make such horror so dry is beyond me. The information is good, but if you put people to sleep they won‘t absorb it.

I‘m loving the illustrations in this edition! Pinch doesn‘t look quite as I picture him in my head, but Pecksniff totally does! #whatthedickens @Cuilin @Texreader

My book club‘s selection for this month made me want to reread Oz and rewatch the movie! The author was inspired to write it by this photo of Maud Baum & Judy Garland. Not great literature, but a fun read.

Diving in today for #whatthedickens. I‘ll probably alternate between these two editions. @Cuilin @Texreader

Niall Williams‘ prose is so enchanting I would read him@on any subject. This epic tells the story of the Foley brothers during the time before and during the potato famine. He makes the sorrowful and tragic to be beautiful, and makes you love all the family, but especially Tiege, the horse-whisperer. The stars and constellations tie together all the threads, even though they seem stretched to the breaking point. Highly recommended!

When I choose a new poet to explore I usually open the volume at random in the store and read one or two. When I bought this collection, that poem was The Cat. I found it witty and dark at the same time. I still like that one, and the title poem. But it was not representative of the volume. I will probably come back to these again when I‘m in a different mood, but I‘m not going to run out and buy more of his poetry.

I bought this when we were in Shenandoah Nat‘l Park. It reads like a thesis or dissertation that was “rewritten” to be a book. It has a very academic feel which detracts from he pathos I think was her goal. She claims to want to present the people‘s “own voices” but then interrupts them to insert her interpretation. And giving the letters without their replies only tells at best half of the story. Disappointing.

I need to take a moment to brag on my youngest. She just opened her own Etsy shop full of bookish crocheted things! I didn‘t know a “book thong” was a thing, buy hey, you learn something new every day if you keep your eyes and ears open. 😀

I picked this up when we were in Shenandoah National Park last month. It‘s about time I read it. 😀

#readyourkobo Because it‘s almost September! @CBee

I can‘t believe it‘s almost September! But here‘s my #bookspin list anyway. @TheAromaofBooks

The one good thing about being sick is more reading time. Not a great work, but it had its moments. Alice the pig might be my favorite character. But you knew from the beginning who would come to a bad end and who would end up happy, so don‘t read it if you need plots to have twists.

Inspiring, entertaining, and surprisingly informative (about social history, history, and just plain quirky facts); sailed through this in a day. (Of course it was a day with no responsibilities, so easier.) #letterR #LitsyAtoZ @Texreader

Besides the inspiration of her ride, I‘m learning all kinds of interesting trivia. Like Milton Bradley getting into the board game business because he printed a ton of this lithograph of Lincoln which was made immediately worthless when Lincoln grew a beard.

An easy, predictable read, if a bit preachy. But it didn‘t require much from me as a reader, which is what I need right now as I am down with strep. Full of early 1920s slang, and clear-cut good vs. evil.

If it were half as long it would have been twice as good. The over-the-top language got annoying and there were other digressions into philosophy that I didn‘t find added to the story. OK, but not great.

The promised book haul photo from my trip to Fables this morning. The middle book looks very funny. #bookhaul

So excited! We finally have a book store in town! I‘ll post the books we bought later, but the collection is well-curated. The crowd today seems more interested in the cafe than the books 🙄 but I hope that at least subsidizes the book part so they survive and thrive.

Written by an acquaintance of my mother, this book reminds me of William Least Heat Moon‘s Blue Highways. The author has a reporter‘s gift of finding the right people to talk to and getting them to tell stories. There are editorial issues as I noted in my first post. But it was enjoyable to “listen” to people tell stories they are passionate about, learn a little history, and go on a journey with a grandfatherly author. ⬇️

For the most part I‘m enjoying this book about The Great Wagon Road, but I wish it had had better editing. In one place he calls the same woman by two different names in the same paragraph. In another he suggests that Washington got the plans for Fort Loudon from the Library of Congress - which wasn‘t founded until 50 years later. I _think_ he meant that the plans are currently in the Library of Congress, but that‘s not what he wrote. 🤷🏻‍♀️

The first half is Merton. The second is Pius XII. I found the first part both more readable and more valuable. 🤷🏻‍♀️
#readyourkobo @CBee