booktastic

I had bad luck downloading audio books yesterday. It has been some time since I downloaded one on account of the fact that I haven’t been at work much the past couple weeks - and for most of last week I had library fines, which meant I was prohibited from making any online downloads (as if that makes any sense at all.)

Yesterday I started out listening to music while I did my data-entrying at work, but that simply wasn’t cutting it. I slept little and poorly night before last and my brain was in need of more stimulation if it was going to remain working. So in the end, I decided it was time to download a book.

My first choice was one I actually tried to download last week (but couldn’t), Death on the Air by Ngaio Marsh. She’s considered one of the great mystery writers, apparently, and I figured I ought to give her a try. I selected Death on the Air from the library’s downloads because it said this about it in the book’s description: “Death on the Air and Other Stories serves as the perfect introduction to Ngaio Marsh and her creation, Inspector Roderick Alleyn, or as a nostalgic journey for their many fans.”

This turns out to be entirely misleading. I thought I was looking at the first book in the series here - not so. It’s a book of short stories and I have no idea where in chronology it takes place. Not only that, but the first part of this book is an introduction by someone else that entirely gives away some things about the main character - things that are a total spoiler for someone who hasn’t read the series.  I am most displeased with the Chicago Public Library right now. Turns out that the actual first book of Miss Marsh’s is called A Man Lay Dead - which the ChiPubLib does not have for download. Perhaps not surprisingly.

I irately moved on. Skipping around, I found that they had a Douglas Adams book I have never read, The Salmon of Doubt, for download. I knew that this book was published posthumously, and that it was the lost Dirk Gently novel (and I had been a huge fan of Adams’s Dirk Gently books, prefering them over the Hitchhiker books to a large extent - and I loved the Hitchhiker books) . The Chicago Public Library had this to say about it: “Rescued from his beloved Macintosh, The Salmon of Doubt provides us with the opportunity to linger and frolic one last time in the uniquely entertaining and richly informative mind of Douglas Adams. For the millions of readers who expressed their grief and shock at his untimely death, this is a treasure; his final book and our last chance to see new work from an acknowledged comic genius.”

Perhaps. However, upon opening the book on the player, I had a snag… The menu was confusingly laid out and I couldn’t find the actual start of the book. I found myself listening to first an introduction by Stephen Fry (not a problem in itself, as I am rather fond of said gentleman) - and then, perplexingly, what seemed to be another introduction by Richard Dawkins (yes, that Richard Dawkins, of “You Hear Me, God? I Don’t Believe In You!” fame) - which droned on until I felt inclined to switch it off. I never did locate the actual beginning of the Adams book.

So that was my second failure of the day. I went back to the website and finally located a book by an author I was interested in reading - a book which didn’t have spoiler-laden introductions or a confusing layout, and it was the first in a series - No Graves As Yet by Anne Perry. It promises to be the first (!!) in the “World War I” series.

Well, that was all well and good. But as I got going, I found that it just wasn’t the book for me that morning. Oh, it was well-written and intriguing and all of that. But I’ve been a bit fragile for the past couple days, and I’m rather in the mood for some light entertainment; one of the last things I want to listen to is somebody dealing with the traumatic and unexpected death of his parents. Jeez. What a way to start a morning.

Discouraged, I went back to the CPL website one last time.  Finally, I found something that promised to be what I was looking for: My Man, Jeeves by P.G. Wodehouse. It’s been forever since I’ve read any Wodehouse - that’s just the ticket as far as light entertainment goes - and the CPL website promised that this was Wodehouse’s first Jeeves book. I couldn’t remember if I’d read My Man, Jeeves (but if I had, it has to have been somewhere in the arena of fifteen years since I did so) - so I downloaded it. I’m relatively certain now that I have read it before, but it has proven to be just the ticket for this morning. It’s light, entertaining and nobody’s parents die in a disgusting and traumatic manner. (And even if they did, in a Wodehouse book they would simply brush it off with a “Dash it, what a spot of bally bad luck!” or something like that, and then dress for dinner.)

So I spent the rest of the day listening to Wodehouse, and it was quite pleasant indeed. The only problem is that I downloaded four books yesterday - and the limit at a time is six - and they make you wait like three weeks before your “loan period” is up and you can download more - so if I finish Jeeves too fast I haven’t got a lot of leeway to find new listening material. Oh well! I guess I really should go back and decipher my way through the Salmon of Doubt menu. Perhaps that will last me until my lending period is through! — Mrs. Hall

My plan for the day was this: grocery shopping, trip to the library (to finally return those overdue books) and post office to mail some bookmooch requests.

Well, I quickly talked myself out of the post office. It just seemed like a bit much for today - and my husband is going to have a good amount of free time this coming week, so I figured he can probably mail them for me. (I know, I know… I could have mailed them. I’m just lazy feeling today and didn’t want to walk the extra five blocks.) I did the grocery shopping shortly after getting up (so that we would have some food to eat for lunch) - and then at three, when my husband left to go to work, I walked the seven blocks to the library and returned my books.

I was returning Catering to Nobody, the Rita Mae Brown book and that other one I checked out (back when I posted that picture of the books I was checking out and complained about the size of the omnibuses… As I had anticipated, since I seldom feel like toting an enormous, heavy book that won’t fit into my purse along with me, the two omnibuses didn’t get read. It couldn’t have helped that I checked them out in December either, when I had a billion other things to do.) I meant to return them before we left for our very short Christmas vacation, because they weren’t overdue yet then.

That didn’t work out. (It’s a long story. Attempting to put it in a nutshell: my father-in-law, Mr. Hall senior, was giving us a ride from Chicago to Kansas City for Christmas. He drove up on the 22nd, was going to stay the night, and drive back down with us on the 23rd - and I thought we might have an opportunity to drop off my library books before we headed out of town on the morning of the 23rd. However, on the 22nd he heard some bad weather forecasts for Chicago and decided that, rather than get stuck up here, we’d better make the eight-hour-drive back that night. Hence, Mr. Hall and I spent the evening of the 22nd scrambling wildly to get ready for the trip which we hadn’t even packed for yet. My library books were forgotten about, but they were the least of our concerns.)

I also thought about returning them a couple days ago on the 1st, but talked myself out of that as well since the library was (I think) closed and I wouldn’t be able to pay my fines anyway… So I returned them today. And guess what? It turns out that the cost of Library fines at the Chicago Public Library DOUBLED on January 1st!! Cripes! Now, I’m not going to gripe about that too much - after all, it was my fault they were overdue, and 20 cents a day isn’t exactly highway robbery - but really? Doubled? Has the cost of training the librarians to be unsmiling and taciturn gone up?

Okay, okay, that was a little much; sorry, Chicago Public Library Librarians. And I must say that today I actually encountered the most cheerful librarian I have ever seen at the Chicago Public Library (any branch). She smiled and wished me a Happy New Year and everything.

Books returned and paid for, I wandered out into the stacks, even though I had agreed with myself that I was not going to check out any new ones. I idly strolled over to the Mystery section thinking that I was just going to “glance around” since I happened to be there - after all, it seemed like a waste to walk seven whole blocks to the library and then immediately walk home again. However, then I spied Dying for Chocolate, the next Diane Mott Davdison book after Catering to Nobody - sitting on the shelf. I hemmed and hawed for a moment, thought about sitting and reading it for a while at the library… Then just gave in. After all, it was just a little bitty paperback, and I’m already more than half way through A Monstrous Regiment of Women - I’ll be needing a new book soon. (A lame excuse: I already have plenty of books to read… but the title of this one has always appealed to me…)

So, in the end, I did still come home with a book in my bag (promising the cheerful Librarian to bring her some more fines in about a month’s time). But no more until this one is read and returned! And that’s final! — Mrs. Hall

Know what doesn’t make sense to me? The fact that the Chicago public library doesn’t allow you to renew your books when they’re overdue. Of all the times that a person would need to renew books, it seems like that’s a rather important one!

I am also annoyed with their policy of not accepting credit cards. I mean, the library in SPRINGFIELD MISSOURI accepts credit cards - and Chicago doesn’t?

I don’t know why I’m ragging on the ChiPubLib today, except that I’m annoyed that my books are a further day overdue today and I have no way of renewing them (and I won’t have an opportunity of returning them until tomorrow). I must owe like five bucks by now.

Well, it’s the last day of the crappy year that was 2008. I don’t know about you, but I’m rather excited to put it behind me and see what the new year brings.

There’s a possibility that I may be going to graduate school this coming year. I’ve been accepted by a school in my home state; it comes down to a question of whether we want to move back to my home state or not. I’d be going to grad school for an M.A. in English, which has been one of my goals for a long, long time; I seemed to fare well in an academic environment, unlike a business/data entry environment (and here’s a place for me to share an appropriate quote: “Once humans spent most of their days doing useful things with their hands, and I realized that we were designed to get a deep satisfaction from this. As Hughes put it, ‘You have the feeling people were supposed to do this kind of work, rather than data entry, which is amazingly horrible.’” - Emily Yoffe).

So I feel somewhat inclined to do that, because I think it would suit me as a profession better than being an office flunky. Of course, I’ve been worrying that maybe it would be better for me to do something like an M.A. in Library Science - because people with that degree are surprisingly well paid.  It wouldn’t be SO BAD to actually get trained for a position where I would be making a decent salary for once in my life, would it? (Except that I think that I’m just tempermentally more suited to teaching than to something like library science which - at its heart - is mostly clerical, data-entry type stuff. *sigh*)

Well, it’s something to contemplate in this 2009. Well, not really, since I’ve been accepted to the English program and not the Library Science program. And money’s not everything, after all - but everything costs money, which always unecessarily complicates life. — Mrs. Hall

Merry Christmas!! I hope that a wonderful 25th was spent by you and yours. If you don’t celebrate Christmas… well, I hope that you had pleasant day regardless.

Christmastime (Advent and Christmas proper) effectively removed any possibility of my posting on a regular basis during the month of December. I was reduced to posting once a week (or less) on both my blogs.

That situation should improve now that January is almost upon us! Christmas purists will know that Christmas is still going on (until Epiphany) - but the most complicated parts for me (the decorating, gifting, and visit home to family) are done. Now I just have to enjoy its remaining days. I have to go to work on many of them, unfortunately, but I do have a weekend AND two days off for New Year, so I shall make the most of what I’ve got. (I plan on baking a “King’s Cake” for 12th Night, by the way. This will be a new tradition for my family… so, I guess it’s technically not a tradition at this point… but I would like it to be so in the future. I’m going to research traditional cake recipes and everything.)

Very little reading was done this month. When I wasn’t distracted with Christmas, I was sleeping. And although I did bring two books along on my Christmas vacation (A Monstrous Regiment of Women and Shepherds Abiding), I did not read them because most all of our time was spoken for. I am still in the midst of reading The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus by Julie Lane, and a copy of my beloved The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus by L. Frank Baum arrived with yesterday’s mail! (Thanks, Jeanne at Bookmooch!)

I have three overdue library books (forgot to return them before vacation… eep!) and also received a book from Miss Landis for Christmas…! So I suppose what I’m saying is that I have a goodly portion of Christmas reading to fit in before Epiphany, and also two other books that I wish to start reading (and would like to finish reading, and return to the library) soon.

I also have a book that I wrote this past year that needs to be submitted to publishers in 2009…!  This looks like a busy month and year in the offing… – Mrs. Hall

A few posts ago, I told you my opinion of The Cereal Killer by Diane Mott Davidson. That was a pretty decent book and I enjoyed it quite a bit (even though it was slightly disconcerting when - listening to the audio book - the main character described details of a physical romantic encounter. Up until that point I could totally pretend that this was friend talking to me about her life… but that kind of weirded me out. But - that was just a minor issue, and I probably wouldn’t even have cared if I had been reading, rather than listening to, that book.)

Well, as I mentioned, that was the third book - so I went to the library and picked up the first, Catering to Nobody. It is so-named because in it, the main character’s business is temporarily (for almost the entire book) closed down.

This means that one of the main things I liked about the third book — the fact that the main character was constantly talking about food –  was more or less absent from this one. Oh, don’t get me wrong - food did come up on a good number of occasions, and the actual recipes are featured in case you are interested in making them - but it just wasn’t there as much as in the third one. (Which is another problem with reading books out of order!! I hate reading a book from “later in the series”, then going back and reading the first book and not liking it as well!!)

However, as a mystery novel it was pretty interesting. I didn’t find the setting of the mystery (an ObGyn doctor scandal) quite as personally interesting to me as the focus of The Cereal Killer (which was a higher education scandal, an area I have more experience with and more interest in. Higher education, I mean, not higher education scandals). However, that is not to say that it wasn’t interesting at all, or that you would only enjoy it if you spend a lot of time at your ObGyn… Just a personal preference there.

I enjoy and like the main character, Goldy, even though her views on things are rather different from my own. However, now having read two books, I must say that I take mild issue with the fact that the character often doesn’t push some points hard enough… Let me explain. Let’s say, for example, she has an idea that her friend Marla knows a clue which may solve the mystery. Goldy asks her about it surreptitiously,  Marla stonewalls her a bit or says she’ll talk about it later… and Goldy just lets it slide, feeling she can’t pursue the matter.

Things like that happen a lot in the book - so much that it almost feels a touch forced, like it’s a device to draw out the length of the story. Oh well, I suppose there are worse ways to draw out the length of a mystery story… like by shoving a semi-unrelated short story about cannibals or Mormons into the center of the book.

Mid-way through, I was on the verge of saying that I wasn’t excited enough by Catering to Nobody to track down the next book in the series. However, by the ending I was thoroughly engrossed and found the ending good and satisfying, so I will be locating the next book. Although it must be said that after discovering the title of the next book is Dying for Chocolate, I really had no choice in the matter.

I can’t resist a book with chocolate in the title. I seriously can’t. — Mrs. Hall

I have a shameful confession to make. When I was a child, I owned the complete set of Paddington Bear books…

And I never read them.

I don’t know why I never read them. After I learned to read I became a voracious reader and consumed almost every book I owned and many I didn’t (thanks, West Plains Public Library) - including an entire series of rather crappy “Solve it Yourself” mysteries and “Choose Your Own Adventure! ” books.

But not Paddington. There were just a handful of books I owned that I never read (including Misty and King of the Wind because I could just never get into a book about a horse. I liked horses, like all eight year old girls do, but I was never interested in reading stories exclusively about them. I mean, who cares what a horse is thinking about? In my experience growing up on a farm, horses think about two things: eating and finding things they can use to knock off/crush the people riding them. But I digress.)

I don’t remember why the books never interested me. I was always interested in the British Isles, so it kind of surprises me that I didn’t take to the books… I seem to recall, at some point, asking my Mother where they had come from and if she had ever read them; I don’t remember her reply, except that it can’t have inspired me to read them. But I do remember what happened to those books - I wound up giving them to the children of some friends of ours who were even more poor (poorer?) than we were (!!). They were excited to get them.

And so I have gone through my life Paddington-less. The story would have ended there, but for the fact that recently I was searching for audiobooks to download from the public library website. I searched, on a whim, for “Stephen Fry” (a British actor of whom I was overly fond at one time; he was half of the team of Fry and Laurie, the other half being Hugh Laurie of House fame)  - and discovered that Stephen Fry was the narrator for a copy of A Bear Called Paddington, available for download. Somebody else had it checked out, so I patiently waited my turn for it, and downloaded it last week.

It only took me a few hours at work (data entrying) to finish it… but it was delightful. This kind of story was made to be read by someone like Stephen Fry: so quaint and distinctly British, with lots of emphasis on subtle puns and wordplay. Mr. Fry has an amazing speaking voice and was able to do all the different characters (with different accents and intonations, depending on the case) perfectly.

As far as Paddington goes… I am very sorry, now, that I did not read these books as a child. This one at least was very cute and enjoyable, and I even chuckled out loud a couple times. As far as the narration by Stephen Fry goes - it was fabulous.

If you’re in the mood for a sweet, light, enjoyable, entertaining book - and want to hear it narrated by a great voice actor - buy or download this copy of A Bear Called Paddington!! – Mrs. Hall

I had a very nice Thanksgiving, thank you. Mr. Hall had a rare day off and we relaxed for the first part of the day (well, he relaxed: I baked two pies and a turkey and sweet potatoes while preparing mashed potatoes, stuffing, gravy, fried squash and buns… not that I’m complaining. I think I enjoy cooking more and more…) ate around three, then put up our Christmas tree. (Yes, a bit early, but, well, he’d gotten a deal on a tree…)

I had yesterday off and took it easy… Well, mostly easy; I had a lot of Thanksgiving dishes to wash and Christmas cards to address. Today I had to get back on the ball and run my usual weekend errand: grocery shopping for the coming week.

I also made a library trip today. At long last I had to return  How to Write and Market a Mystery Novel, and decided I would look for several mystery novels: the first “The Cat Who…” book (The Cat Who Could Read Backwards), the first Goldy Bear book (Catering To Nobody), the sequel to The Mistletoe Murder (the inexplicably titled Tippy-Toe Murders) and, finally, if possible, the sequel to The Beekeeper’s Apprentice - which I thought was Locked Rooms.

I was very annoyed. They didn’t have the first “The Cat Who…” book - but had about ten others. I thought about picking up the first Dick Francis novel, and carried that around for a while, but I don’t think that’s the kind of mystery I’m into right now and put it back. Then I went and looked for Tippy-Toe only to be disappointed in that respect as well - they had about six others, but not that one.

Then, since I was coming up short, I decided I would try a couple new authors. I browsed until I found things that looked appealing; I picked up an Anne Perry novel called The Face of A Stranger (which I could only find in a three-book anthology with its first two sequels, unfortunately). Then I went back to the “The Cat Who…” books and looked at them for a while, trying to figure out if maybe I had just missed the first book… I hadn’t. But next to it I saw books by Rita Mae Brown that looked like more of what I was looking for. I did some research, discovered Wish You Were Here was the first in that series, and almost couldn’t find that… until I found it, also in a three-book anthology with its first two sequels.

I took this picture with my phone to illustrate a fact: namely, that these two books are huge. Don’t forget - I’m on foot. Anything I take with me when I go places, I have to carry. This makes the enormous Rita Mae Brown book especially problematic because I’m not sure it will even fit in my purse. The size of both of them also necessitated me not picking up that many other books at the library today.

However, I did find one of the books I wanted - I located Catering To Nobody. What a relief to actually find one of the books that I was interested in picking up! Plus, it was a conveniently-sized paperback.

Then I remembered that I had also come to look for Locked Doors, and went looking for it, and found it! Then I suddenly experienced a moment of doubt: what if I was wrong? What if it wasn’t the direct sequel? I had turned down several likely novels today because I didn’t want to read them out of order - and I especially didn’t want to read these books out of order. So I flipped open to the front of the dust jacket, hoping it would begin with something like, “In this second installment of the Mary Russel series…”

AND PROMPTLY HAD AN ENORMOUS PLOT DEVELOPMENT RUINED FOR ME!!! I was so peeved. And NO, it WASN’T even the direct sequel to The Beekeeper’s Apprentice: that honor goes to the much more interestingly-titled A Monstrous Regiment of Women (which the library didn’t have, by the way). So I didn’t get the book I wanted, and now I’ve had a plot development of the series spoiled!! DRAT! DARN! HECK! Why on earth would they put something like that on the dust jacket of the book? Why?

Oh well, it was something that I’d anticipated anyway - but even so, it’s annoying to have it spoiled. So I came home from the library in a really bad mood. Mr. Hall was working today so I didn’t have anybody to brighten my day, so I directed my anger at the remainder of the dirty dishes in the sink. Now the sink is significantly cleaner and I feel somewhat better. Plus, I had a new bookmooch book in the mail when I got home - The Mysterious Affair at Styles, the first Hercule Poirot story. Thank goodness for another book that I don’t have to feel bad about reading because it’s out of proper order! (Oddly, though, it’s another anthology book: rather inexplicably paired with the last Hercule Poirot story, Curtain, which I won’t be able to read until I track down all the other Hercule Poirot novels… *sigh*).  — Mrs. Hall

P.S. I forgot to look for “The Mysterious Benedict Society.” Drat! However, since I technically came home with seven books, I feel somewhat vindicated.

I’ve been in a Victorian mood lately. Granted The Beekeeper’s Apprentice is WWI, not Victorian, but one of the main characters is essentially a Victorian character - so, same difference. I wanted to immediately pick up the sequel to that book, Locked Rooms, but as luck would have it, Bookmooch hasn’t got it. I shall simply have to track down a library copy.

I just received another reading recommendation from the friend (Mrs. Gooch) who recommended The Beekeeper’s Apprentice; it’s called Silent in the Grave by Deanna Raybourn.  This book has a lot going for it: it’s another mystery,  another from the Victorian era, and at present the recommender (Mrs. Gooch) is batting 100%. So I have resolved to look it up immediately. Of course, Bookmooch doesn’t have that either!

I suppose this means a trip to the library is in order. I would do that today, but today is another one of those nasty semi-rainy days… and Chicago has apparently decided that winter starts this week. After a week of 60-70 degree weather, it’s suddenly 30 degrees outside.

I’ve already done my grocery shopping and weekend errands, and I just don’t feel up to going out again, so I guess I’ll just stick with A Christmas Story for the weekend. I’m not sure what I’ll use for my transit reading this week, but my “audio” reading will continue (even more authentically) with this Victorian mood I’ve been in; I downloaded an audiobook of Dickens’ Bleak House . This is one of the four or five Charles Dickens novels that I haven’t read, so I’m quite looking forward to it. The only problem with it is that Bleak House is a pretty long book, somewhere in the region of 900 pages… so the audio book (especially the unabridged version I picked) is apparently SEVEN MILLION HOURS LONG. Oh well! I would never consider an abridged version of a book (sacrilege!), and listening to it for five to eight hours a day at work… I should get through it before the rental period expires. At the end of the month. — Mrs. Hall

I put on an audiobook this morning called 311 Pelican Court by Debbie Macomber. I thought it was… oh, I don’t know, a quaint little book about small-town life or something like that.

Imagine my surprise when I listened, in complete and utter blushing discomfort, to a passage that involved exposed nipples.

Yes, it turns out that this is a romance novel. Not a traditional romance novel in the sense that it’s about one couple… it’s about four or five couples. Old couples, middle-aged couples, young couples. Other than a minor sub-plot about Vietnam War guilt, it’s all about these couples working things out.

… I’ve heard about entirely too many nipples at this point. Granted, it was just one scene so far - and really just one nipple. And it’s not that I’m such a prude that I’m going to dump a book because it mentioned a nipple… It’s just that I really don’t need to be hearing about people’s nipples first thing in the morning. AT WORK.

Thank heavens I had my earphones in! I kept looking up at my two office mates, hoping sincerely that they couldn’t hear any residual sound that might be coming out of my earphones. It was definitely not office-appropriate.

But the nipple scene was over quickly enough, thank goodness, and I was able to stop blushing as I listened to the book. The problem is: I don’t know, now, if I really care to go on listening to it. I’m not really a fan of modern romance novels. Besides the smutty moments (which I do not appreciate), they seem to be filled with an inordinate amount of people making really dumb choices; choices that seem to exist only for the purpose of dragging out the plot. “She just couldn’t bring herself to call him, even though she knew it would smooth things out…” “He was irrationally jealous, and said nothing to her, in spite of the fact he knew she wanted to hear it…”

Granted people are dumb like that in real life sometimes, but its frequency in romance novels is excessive.

I suppose I must say that, unlike the majority of modern romance novels, this one does seem focused on the “romance” aspect, rather than the “let’s get our clothes off” aspect which makes most modern romances little more than porn with a story.

But I’m uncertain about whether I want to finish listening to this book. I suppose I might as well, since I’m about half way through it, but I really, really, really hope that no more nipple scenes crop up. I don’t think I can handle any more of that today. I have no desire to blush to death. — Mrs. Hall

I tried, with the title of this post, to give you an impression of my impression of that audiobook I finished yesterday - especially with the “shrug” part.

Bell, Book and Scandal totally succeeded in one area: it made me want to go to writer’s conferences, as they sound educational and fun. But in the mystery area I would say this book more or less failed. There was really no question of a mystery until about chapter twelve (!!). I know this for a fact because I had been waiting so impatiently for the mystery to start that I actually made a note of it.

And then, when the mystery finally started, all the heroine’s friends were kind of annoyed and bored with the subject - and honestly, I found myself rather annoyed and bored with it as well. The author telegraphed all the major plot devices so that nothing was really surprising. The characters (villains especially) were kind of cartoonish. And really, there was no murder or serious crime in this book - a couple people were mildly hurt, one thing was stolen but then returned - so there wasn’t a lot of tension as far as solving the mystery went.

While it succeeded in making me interested in attending a writer’s conference - the second part of the book, the part dealing with the mystery, felt like kind of a waste. So, while I did enjoy this book for the most part, I would have to say that my final feeling is a resounding “shrug”. I’m not sure that I care to look up any of the author’s other books if they’re all going to be like this.

The most interesting thing that came out of reading this book was that the title reminded me of the phrase “Bell, Book and Candle”, and I was like, “Hm… I wonder what that actually means? Where did that phrase come from?” So I looked it up. Apparently, it refers to an old-fashioned excommunication ceremony from the Catholic Church. (The picture at left is of Robert the Pious having just been excommunicated using a bell, a book, and a candle.) This meaning makes its partial use in the title of this book somewhat nonsensical. It would be a mild stretch to say that anyone was excommunicated in this book… Perhaps excommunicated from the world of publishing, but that was a minor part of the story and hardly worthy of generating the title of the book. Oh well. I won’t complain. Perhaps there’s another meaning, of which I’m ignorant.

I’m still reading The Beekeeper’s Apprentice, and having much better luck with my motion sickness on the bus. The only problem with reading on the bus now is that it necessarily drags out my books a lot longer than they should go, since I can only read in two half-hour snatches a day. When I get home in the evening I have house-things to do, usually, and have to spend time with Mr. Hall, all of which necessarily detracts from my reading time. Such is the life of an employed person! – Mrs. Hall

P.S. By the way, on an unrelated topic: remember how I was expecting hoards of trick-or-treaters last night? Guess how many we had? FIVE! Oh well, I guess I’m just going to be forced to eat all this candy myself…