Incoming.

A few new titles have washed up at Chez JOMP, so thought I’d let you see what they were. (Top to bottom):

• Home Cooking – Laurie Colwin (culinary-related essays, I think). (NF/essays).

• Fraternity: An Inside Look at a Year for College Boys Becoming Men – Alexandra Robbins (NF). I’ve read her earlier work about sororities and thought that to be interesting so this title made the cut. (NF/socio?)

• The Body – Bill Bryson (NF/sci).

• Untold Stories – Alan Bennett (NF/essays I think).

• The Truth About Style – Stacey London (NF/fashion). Complete impulse buy the other day.

• Solutions and Other Problems – Alli Brosh. (Also, unpictured but also bought: Hyperbole and a Half by Brosh.) NF/auto/funny as hell).

• Taste of Home Winning Recipes – Barnes and Noble cheapie bargain book to get ideas for supper. 🙂 (NF/food). I’ve tried a few recipes out of here – good so far.

And, of course. I’m not actually reading any of these right now! 🙂

Fridays are more fun with puns.

Library Loot: June 14 2021

Top to bottom, left to right:

• Trees – DK Eyewitness Books (NF/nature)
• An Empire of Ice: Scott, Shackleton and the Heroic Age of Antarctic Science – Edward J. Larson (NF/history/geog)
• The Round Tree – Louise Erdrich (F)
• Started Early, Took my Dog – Kate Atkinson (F)
• Dolores Claiborne – Stephen King (F)
• An American Marriage – Tayari Jones (F)
• The Little Princesses: The Story of the Queen’s Childhood by her Nanny, Marion Crawford – Marion Crawford (NF/bio/auto)
• The Secret of the Chimneys – Agatha Christie (F/murder)

Already read and finished the Stephen King book (ok) and now about to start on the then-scandalous Crawford memoir about the Queen’s childhood (and that of her sister). Ohh la la. (Rather a craze on the royals right now. 🙂 )

Fridays are more fun with puns.

Snort.

Reading Review: May 2021

May was quite a busy month with the end of the university semester and final grades etc. etc. but most of my work responsibilities are now complete and I have time to reset and chill out. Reading for May rather reflected the work load in some ways, but it was still fun to do.

Reads for May included the following:

• The Bean Trees – Barbara Kingsolver (F)
• Rebecca – Daphne du Maurier (F)
• Majesty: Elizabeth II and the House of Windsor – Robert Lacey (NF/bio)
• 100 Great Artists: A Visual Journey from Fra Angelico to Andy Warhol – Charlotte Gerlings (NF/art history)
• As We Are Now – May Sarton (F)
• Gentlemen Prefer Blondes – Anita Loos (F)

There is a distinct lack of blog posts related to these reads, but that is not a reflection of the quality – only of my available time and energy!

I enjoyed these reads, two of which were rereads (the Kingsolver and the du Maurier) – unusual for me. I’m not typically a big rereader but I wanted a few reads that were pretty straightforward and that I had enjoyed in the past. Both of these met those goals so that was nice.

June reading goals: more of the same really. Stay focused on the current TBR pile and pick up the focus on POC authors and topics again. (Rather fell off that in the previous month.) Onward and upward!

People you should meet…

Trawling my TBR shelves the other day, I realized that I have quite a few autobiographies and biographies about various people so thought I would gather these titles together in case you might be interested. One caveat: these are TBR which means that I haven’t read them just yet. They look good though!

• A Girl Named Zippy – Haven Kimmel. This was LOL hilarious when I read it a few years back…
• She Got Up Off the Couch and Other Heroic Acts from Mooreland, Indiana – Haven Kimmel (part two of above auto.)
• Beatrix Potter: A Life in Nature – Linda Lear.
• Some Sort of Epic Grandeur: The Life of F. Scott Fitzgerald – Matthew J. Broccoli.
• Falling Leaves: The Memoir of an Unwanted Chinese Daughter  – Adeline Yen Mah. A powerful autobiography about growing up in China.
• Charles Dickens: A Life – Claire Tomalin.
• The Glass Castle: A Memoir – Jeanette Walls.
• Lab Girl – Hope Jahren.
• The Man Who Caught the Storm: The Life of Legendary Tornado Chaser Tim Samaras – Brantley Hargrove.

• Cherry: A Life of Apsley Cherry-Garrard – Sara Wheeler.
• A Promised Land – Barack Obama.
• Becoming Queen Victoria – Kate Williams.
• Majesty: Elizabeth II and the House of Windsor – Robert Lacey. A fast read of the life and times of QEII (up to 1983, when book was first published). Just finished this. An enjoyable and rather fluffy read.
• Hillary Rodham Clinton: Living History – Hillary Rodham Clinton.
• Adventures of a Young Naturalist: The Zoo Quest Expeditions – David Attenborough.
• Life on Air: Memoirs of a Broadcaster – David Attenborough.

• Everybody was so Young: Gerald and Sara Murphy: A Lost Generation Love Story – Amanda Vaill.
• A Midwife’s Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard, Based on her Diary, 1785-1812 – Laurel Thatcher Ulrich.
• The Short and Long Times of Mrs. Beeton: The First Domestic Goddess – Kathryn Hughes.
• The Victorians – A.N. Wilson.
• The English: A Portrait of a People – Jeremy Paxman. (A DNF in the end. Just couldn’t get on with his writing style.)

• The Girls from Winnetka – Marcia Chellis.
• Lady Almina and the Real Downton Abbey: The Lost Legacy of Highclere Castle – The Countess of Carnarvon.

Now I just to read them all. HA!

Fridays are more fun with puns.

Summer Plans…

I’ve now properly started my Summer of Liz which means oodles of free time for me (I’m very lucky), and I’ve been thinking of how I’d like to spend my time. (Doing loads of very worthy and world-changing activities, I’m sure… HA.) 

Actually, I’m not sure what I’m going to do but I do know it’s going to involve going to the gym and the pool (for the lazy river, naturally!); it’s going to consist of lots of reading; and I’m determined to continue with this slightly out-of-character interest in cooking new recipes. 

(I think this is what happens if you binge-watch a couple of seasons of the Great British Baking Show. I’m not that interested in baking sweet stuff so I tend to focus more on savory recipes. If I’m going to cook, I may as well make it something ready for supper… Two-birds-with-one-stone idea. If I’m honest, I am also not the greatest with fiddly baking stuff either.) 

Recipes so far have included spinach and feta cheese wrapped up in individual puff pastry packets (yum); lemon chicken; roasted turkey tenderloins with herb sauce and pork tenderloin with figs — all new recipes to me and all worthy of repeating. 🙂

Reading-wise, I think I’d like to focus on my own TBR pile for a while and see what progress I can make there. I do love the library and I’m sure I’m going to continue my visits there — I’d just like to continue my ongoing focus on my own books as well. (I also need to turn off that One-Click option on Amazon… 😉 )

I’d also bet that there will be a jigsaw puzzle or two to keep me busy. 

To contribute to communal life, I volunteered some time with the local Friends of the Library group which was fun and worthwhile. I’ll probably repeat that again sometime soon. Messing around with books? Going to the library? No pressure to be sociable? Yes please.

And then I’d really like to get some culture so I’m planning on seeing what exhibits our museums and art centers have going on. Haven’t been to them for some time so interested in catching what’s new (to me, at least). And linked with this, I’d like to pick up my camera and doing some photog stuff again as well. 

So, we’ll see how this progresses. None of this stuff is “have-to-do” and if it happens, that’s great. If not, no pressure there either. Win-win. 

I do like summer (especially since our region hasn’t hit the highest temperatures yet so it’s not too brutal to spend time outside right now). I hope your summer is going smoothly as well. 

Summer reading

School and grades are now completely done which means, for me, that I can start the Summer of Liz. I don’t have anything required (outside the normal responsibilities) so the next three months are mine, all mine. 🙂 (I’m very lucky, I know.)

So – how to wisely spend this time? HA! I’m going to read and then read some more. I’m going to go through my wardrobe to see which outfits I can create/combine (just for fun) and I’m going to go and see my twin sis in CA for a few days.

So, speaking of reading (as we were), what titles have I read since the end of school? The above image tells the story:

• Chasing the Monsoon – Alexander Frater (NF). Reread and ok. Probably doesn’t need to live on my shelves any more though. :-} (Off the current TBR shelf.)
• Soul Clap Hands and Sing – Paule Marshall (F). I’ve read and enjoyed other Marshall work. This was a collection of short stories. Meh. Library.
• Majesty – Robert Lacey (NF/bio). I love the majority of Lacey’s work (good sense of humor) and and enjoying the older bio of the monarch. Nothing too mind-shattering but enjoyable all the same. (Off the current TBR shelf.)
• Rebecca – Daphne du Maurier (F). Loving this classic. (Off the current TBR shelf.)
• 100 Great Artists: A Visual Journey from Fra Angelico to Andy Warhol – Charlotte Gerlings (NF/history/art). I’ve really been interested in getting some more culture so got this out of the library. A quick but wide-ranging tour of some of the artworks of the world (mostly [all?] Western hemisphere).
• The Pale Horse – Agatha Christie (F). A murder mystery all wrapped by the end of your cup of tea. I do like a Christie every now and then. Library.

New TBR shelf…

Here are the titles on the new TBR shelf:

• Letters of Note: An Eclectic Collection of Correspondence Deserving of a Wider Audience – Shaun Usher (ed.) (NF/socio)
• On Doctoring: Stories, Poems, Essays – Richard Reynolds, M.D. and John Stone, M.D. (eds.) (NF/socio)
• The Girls from Winnetka – Marcia Chellis (NF/bio)
• A Victorian Courtship: The Story of Beatrice Potter and Sidney Webb – Jeanne McKenzie (NF/history/bio)
• Cold: Adventures in the World’s Frozen Places – Bill Streever (NF/geog)
• My Family and Other Animals – Gerald Durrell (NF/nature)
• All Things Wise and Wonderful – James Herriott (NF/nature)
• The Book of Not – Tsitsi Dangarembga (F)
• Ender’s Game – Orson Scott Card (F/sci fi)
• Majesty: Elizabeth II and the House of Windsor – Robert Lacey (NF/bio). Read. Good.
• Time and Again – Jack Finney (F)
• On Borrowed Wings – Chandra Prasad (F)
• Olive Kitteridge – Elizabeth Strout (F)
• Gentlemen Prefer Blondes – Anita Loos (F). Read. Good.
• Mr. Chartwell – Rebecca Hunt (F)
• Tales of a Female Nomad: Living at Large in the World – Rita Golden Gelman (NF/travel). Read. Good.
• Lady Almina and the Real Downton Abbey – The Countess of Carnarvan (NF/history)
• Rebecca – Daphne du Maurier (F). Read. Good.

As always, the usual guidelines are in place: these are just suggestions for me and I’m happy to go off-piste if I want to. It’s summer time rules here! 🙂