Time for the monthly update on the view from my office window.

In the photo, there doesn’t seem to have been much change since the beginning of June. But when you’re here, you can tell that the wild roses in the circle garden are blooming, and everything is just fuller.

The weather in June was crummy for the first two weeks: cold and rainy. The rain pushed back the fence-building work which, in turn, pushed back the tree trimming. That pear tree in the foreground has got to go!

It’s been lovely since and all the rain and then the sun has made everything lush. This long holiday weekend promises to be sunny and hot – perfect beach weather.

How’s the weather where you are?;

In November 2013, I was still a reading machine, getting through a dozen books, although two were cookbooks, and two were picture books. I guess that means I’m not much of a machine after all, doesn’t it?

The two mystery books that I read are detailed in a separate post.

 

1. THE LIBRARY by Sarah Stewart, illustrated by David Small (Children’s picture book, Bibliophilic)

Elizabeth Brown loves to read and leaves her home as a library for the town. A charming story and delightful illustrations.

Read this if: you love books; or want to engender a love of books in a little person. 5 stars

2. IN THE LAND OF BIRDFISHES by Rebecca Silver Slayter (Fiction, Literary, Canadian)

Blinded in childhood, two young sisters are separated for treatment and lose contact with each other. As an adult, Aileen decides to search out her sister in the Yukon Territory, Canada.

This is a brilliant depiction of the long summer nights of the short northern summer near the Arctic Circle. Add an unreliable narrator (but who?) and it’s a smashing story.

Read this if: you’re looking for a literary summer read; or are interested in new Canadian literary talent. 4½ stars

 
3. ZELDA AND IVY by Laura McGee Kvansnosky (Children’s picture book, Series)
 
Zelda and Ivy are sisters who make me glad I was the eldest of my siblings. I hope I was a better big sister than Zelda.

Charmingly illustrated, this book kicked off a popular series of Zelda and Ivy adventures.

Read this if: you’re helping a child deal with sibling relationship issues. 4 stars

4. THE BURGESS BOYS by Elizabeth Strout (Fiction, Contemporary, American)
 

With The Burgess Boys, Elizabeth Strout continues her tradition of fine fiction (see my notes on her Amy and Isabelle.) Her writing is beautiful and the stories are memorable.

Read this if: you want a literary summer read (another one!) 4 stars

 
 
5. BREAD BAKING MADE EASY by “Rita Martin” and Robin Hood Multifoods

This small gem, published by Robin Hood in 1953, illustrates step-by-step breadmaking. You need not have any prior experience nor even exposure to yeast, kneading, or doubling. This book explains it all.

It’s an interesting aside that Rita Martin was invented in 1938 as a corporate character for Robin Hood flour. According to Culinaria: “with a name equally pronounceable in English and French, Martin was one of the faces of Robin Hood [Canada] until around 1970.”

The test, of course, of any cookbook is what kind of bread I made using the directions: it was light and even, and I felt that it was a “properly made” loaf.

Read this if: you want to learn how to make basic bread. 4 stars

6. A WILDER ROSE by Susan Wittig Albert (Fiction, Biography, Book-related)

Many of you have read and loved the pioneer stories of Laura Ingalls Wilder. Some of you are aware of the controversy surrounding her stories—allegations that it was, not Laura, but Laura’s daughter Rose Wilder, who wrote the Little House books.

Witting Albert makes this case, rather convincingly, in this novel based on Wilder’s life between 1928 and 1939.. She uses some artistic license to imagine the communications between Laura and Rose.

Read this if: you’ve read and enjoyed Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House books. 3½ stars

 

7. VW BLUES by Jacques Poulin (Fiction, Canadian, Quebecois, translated)

I’ve wanted to read this since Rock Carrier championed it in CBC’s Canada Reads in 2005.

Translated from French, VW Blues is the story of an impulsive road trip from Gaspe in Quebec to Las Vegas, Nevada to find the protagonist’s brother, with whom he has had no contact for 20 years.

I thought it dragged in spots although, in the end, everything tied together.

Read this: if you’ve thought about going off to find long-lost relatives. 3½ stars

 

8. TRAIN OF SMALL MERCIES by David Rowell (Fiction, Historical, American)

I was an impressionable 13-year-old when Robert Kennedy was assassinated and I’ve had an interest in RFK since then. So when I heard that this book centred on the train carrying Kennedy’s body from New York City to Washington D.C. for burial, I was intrigued.

Alas, although there was potential, there was no story.

Read this if: you enjoy very low-key anecdotes about everyday life. 3 stars

 
9. THE THIEF by Fuminari Nakamura (Fiction, Contemporary, Japanese, translated)
 

I understand that this is a Japanese modern classic. But either it loses greatly in translation, or my sense of “classic” is off. I did persevere to the end, but it was almost painful.  

Boring, not much point. 3 stars
 

10. 1 BATTER; 50 CAKES: Baking to Fit Your Every Occasion by Gina Greifenstein (Cookbook)
 

This recipe book sounded promising but really was just a compilation of recipes that purportedly followed a basic pattern.

As with the breadmaking booklet, the test is in the tasting. We tried only one recipe, that produced a “cake” that wasn’t even edible.

The half star is for explaining the basic composition of cakes.

Don’t bother to read this. ½ star

P.S. The links are affiliate links so I will receive a small percentage of any purchase you make after clicking through from this blog.

One of my favourite mystery series is Martin Walker’s Bruno, Chief of Police. The books are set in southern France about 100 km (60 miles) from where we stayed in 2014. We did, indeed, take a couple of day trips into Bruno’s territory, before I had ever met Bruno.

Part of what I love about this series is the atmosphere – the life and ways of modern French villages, being bought out by wealthy foreigners (chiefly British), but valuing their heritage, including their cooking.

This is not a cozy series and does not include recipes. But Bruno is no slouch as a cook, and in Black Diamond he makes a dessert for a funeral gathering. I was particularly intrigued because I had considered buying a jar of truffles (scraps and trimmings, no doubt) while I was there but wasn’t sure how I’d cook them, or whether I’d be allowed to bring them back into Canada since fresh truffles are definitely banned from import.

Here then, is the closest to a recipe this series comes.

Crème Brûlée with Truffles

Now for the dessert, he said to himself. He had decided on crème brûlée with truffles and began by taking a jar of truffle scraps and trimmings and tying them firmly into a small bag of doubled cheesecloth. Then he poured three quarts of heavy cream into a saucepan, turned on the heat and dropped the bag of truffle trimmings into the thick liquid. As it heated, he began—with thanks to his chickens for their fecundity even this late in the year—to crack two dozen eggs, tipping the egg halves quickly back and forth over a bowl so that the whites slithered out and the yolks were left in their half shell. In a separate bowl, he mixed the egg yolks with a dozen tablespoons of sugar until they were thickened and had turned pale yellow.

The cream was about to boil, and the heady scent of truffles began to fill the kitchen. He turned down the heat, poured in the egg yolks and whisked until the mixture began to steam. Careful not to let it boil, he tested it with a wooden spoon to see if it would coat the wood, and once it did he poured the mixture through a sieve into his largest soufflé dish. He chopped one of the black truffles he had been saving into the mix and set it aside to cool. He’d leave it in the refrigerator throughout the day to set, and then all it would need was a layer of sugar on the top and a minute with a blowtorch to melt it. The result would be a dessert fit for royalty. Fit for Hercule, he thought sadly.

I’m linking up with Weekend Cooking.

Save

Save

I continued with a favourite series – and discovered a really good new (to me) one.

Have a look!
 

1. THE SOUND AND THE FURRY by Spencer Quinn (Mystery, Detective, series)

This is the sixth installment in the Chet & Bernie series, which the canine “Chet the Jet” narrates. He and his “partner” Bernie run the Little Detective Agency and have been hired to seek the missing brother of a past “client”. Said brother has disappeared with his houseboat somewhere in the Louisiana bayou. This poses a BIG change of scenery for our boys but Quinn had me smelling those swamps, so succinct were his descriptions.

If you haven’t yet tried this series (perhaps because of the animal narrator), I’d urge you to do so anyway. There is almost always a solid mystery and some suspense. And Chet has such a naive and positive outlook on life that he can’t help but leave you smiling.

Read this (series) if: you’re a dog lover; or you’d like a mystery that’s definitely not cozy but still fun. 4½ stars

 

2. KILLED IN THE RATINGS by William L. deAndrea (Mystery, Vintage)

I found reference to this series in Old-Time Detection, a thrice-yearly publication written and published by Arthur Vidro of Claremont NH, and I was able to purchase the Kindle version of the series’ first book.

Written and set in the 1980s, it’s a peek into corporate culture in the pre-cell phone, pre-Internet days. It’s also a look behind the scenes in the television industry.

Matt Cobb, network executive, deals with literally deadly office politics. It’s reasonably well-written. I’m not sure how more murders will occur within the scope of a high-end entertainment exec, but the series continues, and I’m pretty sure I’ll be reading some more.

Read this if: you’re nostalgic for the days when you didn’t have to be available to everybody 24/7; or you’re looking for a series that not too dark, in a setting that’s a little different. 4 stars

3. THE IGGY CHRONICLES by Spencer Quinn (Mystery, Novella – adjunct to the series)

Another sort of prequel to the Chet & Bernie series (see item #1), this is the story of Iggy, the dog next door. Iggy is Chet’s bud, but they don’t see much of each other.

While this wasn’t as intriguing as A Cat Was Involved, another series prequel, Quinn still has a way with a story and this dog’s irrepressible take on life.

Read this if: you’re a series fan. If you haven’t read any of the books yet, start with A Cat Was Involved and then move on to Dog Gone It. 4 stars-

Do you like the sound of either of these series?

P.S. The links are affiliate links so I will receive a small percentage of any purchase you make after clicking through from this blog.

I’m stuck looking through our photos of our trip to France two years ago. It was such a dream come true.

Updating our travel journal: This was one of our “home” days, having lunch in the walled garden in back of our gite (cottage). Bread & soft cheese (I shared that plateful!). And, I know, it should be wine instead of water but, now & then, we needed a break.
 

Saturday Snapshot is hosted by West Metro Mommy Reads. To participate in Saturday Snapshot: post a photo that you (or a friend or family member) have taken and then leave a direct link to your post in the Mister Linky at West Metro Mommy Reads.

Finally – here I am with my “Books Read Summaries” for the rest of 2013. This is what happens when one lets herself get behind in recording “Books Read” on her blog, her personal & necessary record: life, and death, and more life. I won’t bore you with the details all at once, just as they occur.

So here I am in October 2013, blissfully unaware of what’s ahead, and reading, reading. Because this was almost three years ago, I won’t pretend to remember everything about these books, but I’ll tell you what I can. I’m thankful that I rated them when I read them.

The three mystery books that I read are detailed in a separate post.
 

1. THE DEATH OF BEES by Lisa O’Donnell (Contemporary, Scottish)

Two young girls bury their parents in the back yard and try to carry on as normal so that their parents’ assistance cheques will keep coming. The lonely widowed next-door neighbour watches them, suspects that something is amiss, and reaches out to include them in his life.
The story is told in the first person from the POV of each of the three main characters. I remember that the voices were clear and distinct. Also, the burgeoning relationship between the neighbours is credibly drawn.

Read this if: you’d like a sneak peek into the slums of modern-day Glasgow and the life of many of those who receive welfare; or if you like stories with young, resourceful protagonists. 4 stars
 

2. FAUNA by Alissa York (Literary, Contemporary, Canadian)

This was the 2013 pick for One Book Nova Scotia. It’s set in the Don Valley in Toronto, Ontario. The River Don runs through the heart of Canada’s biggest city, largely unnoticed by most residents, but the valley teems with wildlife activity.

Alissa Yorke imagines an auto wreckers in this ravine, with a secret sanctuary for the injured fauna of the title. All of the characters who cross paths here are recovering from or distancing themselves from a loss. Most interesting is Edal, a federal wildlife officer on stress leave, torn between reporting the illegal operation and watching the wildlife she is sworn to protect heal. There’s also a coyote-shooting fringe element, and of course, the wildlife itself.

Read this if: you are interested in the role that animals and humans play in the healing of the other; or you live in or near Toronto (or another large urban centre) and want a glimpse of the hidden world amid the concrete that is the Don Valley. 4 stars

3. BREATH by Tim Winton (Literary, Australian, 1970s setting)

Breath is set in a small fictional village in Western Australia. Childhood friends Piker and Loon grow up daring each to more and more dangerous stunts. As teenagers, they take up surfing and meet Sando, a former pro surfer who leads them to new levels of daring.

What I remember most about this book is the image of the beauty and the savagery of the west Australian coast. Winton put me on the edge of my seat, underwater with those boys.

Breath won the Miles Franklin Literary Award in 2009.

Read this if: you’ve forgotten the thrill of testing yourself to the limit. 4 stars

4. A FAR CRY FROM KENSINGTON by Muriel Spark (Fiction, Vintage, British)

The narrator of this book lived in a boarding house in Kensington in the 1950s and recounts the mild adventures of her fellow boarders. As usual, the narrator is a key, but that fact is obscured until the end. This makes it sound as if I didn’t like this book, but I did – a great deal. Spark is a smooth delight at any time.

Read this if: you’ve just finished a book you had to work really hard at and you need a ‘palate-cleanser’; or, obviously, you enjoy vintage English comedies. 4 stars

5. EXTRAORDINARY by David Gilmour (Fiction, Canadian, Contemporary, Literary)

Long-listed for Canada’s prestigious Giller Prize for Fiction, Extraordinary became a controversial choice after comments made by the author that many saw as sexist. It was a challenge to approach this book then, without preconceived ideas about its value.

Very spare, it’s told from the viewpoint of a man asked by his sister to assist in her suicide. It’s perhaps as objective an account as can be told about this hotly debated subject.

Read this if: you’re interested in the collateral effect of the assisted death of an ill person. 4 stars

6. YOU ARE ONE OF THEM  by Elliott Holt  (Fiction, American)

Set during the Cold War, this story revolves around a community of young Americans living and working in Moscow.

I had a difficult time deciding on a rating of 3 or 3½ stars. In the end I came down on the side of readability.

Read this if: if you’d like a low-key spy novel. 3½ stars

7. PALISADES PARK by Alan Brennert (Fiction, Historical, American)

The real Palisades Amusement Park in New Jersey, just across the Hudson River from New York City, saw millions of visitors in its life 1898 – 1971. It was immortalized in Freddy Cannon’s 1962 hit of the same name.

Brennert has created a novel that could well be the biography of generations of those who worked and/or owned the concessions and made the park their second home during the summer months.

Read this if: you remember having fun at Palisades Park or another large privately-owner amusement park. 3½ stars

8. EVERYTHING FLOWS by Vasily Grossman (Fiction, Historical, Russian, translated)

I would never have picked this up but for the War and Literature read along.

Translated from the Russian, this strongly autobiographical story follows Ivan Grigoryevich who returns to society from prison during the Communist regime. It’s hard for us to imagine living with the distrust of friends and family members that Russian citizens did for decades—lifetimes.

I’m glad that I read this but it did drag immensely. Perhaps life in Russia did then.

Read this if: you want the nitty-gritty of life under Communism in post-WWII Russia. 3½ stars

9. EVERYBODY HAS EVERYTHING by Katrina Onstad (Fiction, Contemporary, Canadian)

From Amazon: “After a car crash leaves their friend Marcus dead and his wife Sarah in a coma, Ana and James are shocked to discover that they have become the legal guardians of a 2½-year-old, Finn”.

I don’t know why I found this book so forgettable.

Read this if: Since I can’t remember anything about it, I can’t really recommend who should read it. 3 stars

10. THE HOW-TO HANDBOOK: Shortcuts and Solutions for the Problems of Everyday Life by Martin Oliver and Alexandra Johnson (Non-fiction, DIY)

Instructions for many basic but necessary life skills. Suitable for teens moving out for the first time.

Read this if: you’re off to college or to find your place in the world. 3 stars

Note: I won a copy of this book on Library Thing Early Reviewers. This did not affect my rating.

 
Is there anything here that catches your interest?

P.S. The links are affiliate links so I will receive a small percentage of any purchase you make after clicking through from this blog.

Save

Last week I took part in Top Ten Tuesday and extolled the virtues of country living. I also promised that this week I would balance the scales a little by listing a few things I miss about living in the city.

I could come up with only five. I’m clearly a country girl at heart.

1. Live Theatre — Although there is a small amateur group here in Tatamagouche, they present only twice a year. In the city, I had season’s tickets to every theatre group going, professional and amateur. From September to June, I was out an average of twice a month going to theatre productions.

2. Ethnic Food — Sometimes there will be one restaurant run by new citizens who will provide the cuisine of their home country, but usually it’s pizza, “Chinese”, or, here in Nova Scotia, donairs. Sometimes I long for good Indian food.

3. Pizza Delivery — There are some nights when it’s a toss-up as to which I feel less like doing: cooking or driving into the village to pick-up the pizza.

4. Sidewalks — In the spring, especially. Even when the snow is still piled up, if the walk has been cleared and the sun has been shining, there might be no need of boots in the city. In the country, we all have “mud boots” (for March through May) as well as warm winter boots.

5. Short distances to Your Friends’ Houses — It’s not the getting there, it’s the driving home after dark, keeping careful watch for all the critters who (rightfully) think the road is a part of their woods.

How about it, city dwellers? What are the advantages of urban living?

I first started keeping track of the books that I read in 1997 when I was already in my ’40s. What a foolish woman I was to not have started in my teens. How I’ve wished (over and over) that I had.

And my early records are incomplete, and some of the brief comments are laughable. But, inspired by JoAnn of Lakeside Musing who has shared her older journals in a series that she has named Pages from the Past, I’d like to share my journals with you. Herewith, a small sample from that first year, 1997.

Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller (fiction, play, drama, tragedy) Viking Press 1948/1970
Pulitzer Prize winner
** Very dark–not just about aging, but also madness. Would like to see it performed when in a better state of mind.
[2016 notes: Most everyone will have heard of Willy Loman and his family around whom this play is centred. Hard work and chasing the American dream have not rewarded Willy; neither have his sons turned out as he had hoped.]

The Illustrated Garden Book by Vita Sackville-West (non-fiction, essays, gardening)
** An anthology of her newspaper columns from the 1940s and ’50s.
A window on a different life–English gentility; and a different climate, where she could arrange some plants to cut for indoor ‘flowers’ every month of the year!
[2016 notes: I remember that I immensely enjoyed this book, which I dipped into an essay at a time, and fell in love with Vita Sackville-West’s writing.]

And Ladies of the Club by Helen Hooven Santmyer (fiction, saga, drama)
** My second time through this – the first over 10 years ago. I still enjoy the development of multi-generational characters; and I think I was more touched this time by the fleetingness of life. The U.S. politics still could not hold my interest, though.
[2016 notes: This story centres around two women (and eventually their families) in the years before, during, and after the American Civil War. I’m not sure why I was intrigued enough with this to reread it since it’s over 1300 pages.]

That’s all I recorded for 1997 although I know I read lots more than that. What do you think: shall I continue posting these old reading journal entries?

P.S. The links are affiliate links so I will receive a small percentage of any purchase you make after clicking through from this blog.

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly linkup of book bloggers hosted by The Broke and The Bookish!

I want to make this a quick list that won’t require extra photos, nor a lot of your time to read.

1. Privacy (in a physical sense). Folks will want to know who your grandfather was, where you’re from, why you’re here and lots, lots more. But most of them “don’t mean nothin’ by it”. It’s just the country way of knowing people. And they leave you be to go out on the deck in your robe (or less!)

2. Quiet – You’re usually far enough away from your neighbours that the noises you hear are the spring peepers, summer crickets, autumn leaves, and winter wind. Much nicer than someone else’s stereo on full blast, sirens and horns, and squealing tires.

3. Friendliness — It might take you a while to be accepted in the country but while you’re waiting you can pretty much know that everybody on Main Street will smile and say hello. It helps to try do things their way instead of showing off your city learnin’.

4. Traffic — There isn’t any. Except during haying season when the farmers drive their tractors down the highway. Three cars behind one is a traffic jam. (The school buses here pull over and let you by.)

5. Clean Air — No traffic carbon monoxide, no factory particulates or smells. Country air smells green; here it sometimes also smells like the ocean.

6. Clotheslines — outlawed in lots of cities, but pretty much de rigeur in the country.

7. No Water or Sewer Bill — not that we waste water; it is a limited earth resource after all. And every few years we have to pay to get the septic tank pumped. But it still beats having that monthly bill.

8. Wildlife — Okay, the bear getting into the green bin was a little much, but I never tire of seeing deer in the yard, or catching a glimpse of a fox or a ferret crossing the road and disappearing into the woods. There’s red squirrels, chipmunks, porcupines, muskrats and lots, lots more.

9. The View from My Window

10. House Accounts — at the pharmacy and the hardware store. Enough said.
 

To be fair, there are a few things that I miss about living in the city. I’ll share them with you next Tuesday.

I haven’t officially entered any book challenges since 2012, when I entered 63 of them. You read that right: sixty-three challenges. As you might guess, that burned me out of reading lists for a while.

But, from time to time, I do challenge myself: to themed reading months, to the What’s in a Name? challenge now hosted by The Worm Hole, and to Semi-Charmed winter & summer challenges. All of these have the common element of introducing me to books I might have left languishing on the shelf, while being creative and fun.

So it’s about time that I made it official: this year I’m formally entering Semi-Charmed’s Summer 2016 Challenge. I’ve copied the criteria to the end of this post. I have no idea at this time what books I will use to meet the requirements of each category, and I’m open to suggestions.

Categories:
5 points: Freebie! Read any book that is at least 150 pages long.
10 points: Read a collection of short stories or essays. They may all be written by the same author, or the book may be an anthology from different writers; your choice!
10 points: Read an adult fiction book written by an author who normally writes books for children.
15 points: Read a book set in Appalachia.
15 points: Don’t judge a book by its cover! Read a book with a cover you personally find unappealing.
20 points: Read a book that you have previously only seen the film (movie) of.
25 points: Read a book with a punny title. The title can be a play on another book title, movie title or a common expression.
30 points: Read a microhistory.
30 points: Read one book with a good word in the title, and one with a bad word. Note: This category is reeeeeeeally open-ended! Maybe you like turtles, so The Pearl that Broke Its Shell is a title with a “good” word. Similarly, the “bad” word could be a swear word or a literally negative word like “not” or “none,” or it could just be something you don’t like. Have fun with it! (Remember, you must read both books to get 30 points; this category is not worth 15 points per book.)
40 points: Read two books that contain the same word in the title, but once in the singular and once in the plural. (Remember, you must read both books to get 40 points; this category is not worth 20 points per book.)

Do you have any suggestions for me?

One of the bonuses of our rural community is that it is on the Atlantic coast. (In Nova Scotia most of us are not far from the ocean. The province is very nearly an island.)
The government of Nova Scotia limits the fishing seasons and rotates them throughout the various areas of the province. Although lobster is being fished throughout the summer, the fisherman in our area have only May & June to haul them in. So lobster season is here on the North Shore!

Since I was visiting Ontario for most of May, we have had a slow start to our personal lobster season. A neighbor of ours – just a mile down the road – runs Lobster Time each year to sell the lobsters that her husband & father-in-law fish. We picked up a feed today.

Since we eat them the traditional Atlantic Canadian way (cold with hot garlic butter, potato salad and bread), I bought these lobsters pre-cooked so supper was easy-peasy.

I’m linking up with Weekend Cooking, even though I did very little actual cooking.

This link-up is hosted by Books Are My Favourite and Best, and was inspired by Hungarian writer and poet Frigyes Karinthy. In his 1929 short story, “Chains”, Karinthy coined the phrase ‘six degrees of separation’. The phrase was popularized by a 1990 play written by John Guare, which was later made into a film starring Stockard Channing.

On the first Saturday of every month, Kate chooses a book as a starting point and links that book to six others forming a chain. Bloggers and readers are invited to join in and the beauty of this mini-challenge is that I can decide how and why I make the links in my chain.

June’s starting book is Romeo & Juliet by William Shakespeare. Is there anyone who doesn’t know this story, even if they haven’t read the play or seen it performed? It’s the classic “love-tragedy” that is so poignant over 400 years after its writing that I find myself still, upon seeing it performed, wanting to call out loud to the players: “Turn around!” or “No! Wait!”

1. Its connection to my first link Juliet in August by Dianne Warren is in title only. This cool and still story (also published as Cool Water) of a priairie town in summer won the Canadian Governor-General’s Award for Fiction in 2010.

2. The book that is my next link, The Sisters Brothers by Patrick DeWitt won the same award, the following year. Both books are Canadian and both are very good but deWitt’s ‘noir western’ about two cowboys whose last name is Sisters and who are hired to kill a man, is in no other way similar to Warren’s book, nor to my third link (by a title word only),

3. The Bird Sisters by Rebecca Rasmussen, which tells the story of two elderly spinster sisters who nurse injured birds back to health. The birds lead me to my fourth link,

4. Nicholas Drayson’s A Guide to the Birds of East Africa , a gentle love story of the courtship between two middle-aged bird-watchers in almost-modern-day Kenya. This was a charming book which connects in two ways (love and Africa) to my fifth link in the chain.

5. African Love Stories, edited by Ama Ata Aidoo, is an anthology of short stories, not so gentle, about love relationships, mostly in West Africa, expecially Nigeria. My last link also connects to Africa and love.

6. Adé: A Love Story by Rebecca Walker is a love story in the tradition of Romeo and Juliet: haunting and heart-breaking. This tale, set in modern-day Kenya, deserves to be a classic of 21st century literature. I have not been as touched by a book in a long time as I was by Adé.

So that’s my chain of six degrees: from a classic love tragedy of the 16th century to an equalling heart-rending love tragedy of the 21st century. What do you think? Does love ever change?

Why not visit Kate’s blog and see how she made the final connection to The Last Painting of Sarah de Vos.

P.S. The links are affiliate links so I will receive a small percentage of any purchase you make after clicking through from this blog.

In April I decided to post a view from my office window on the last Friday afternoon of each month.

I was half-way across the continent last Friday afternoon (the last one in May) so I’m posting a photo from today. I didn’t want you to miss seeing the “May Effect”.

Nova Scotia came alive over the past month!

It’s still too cold for the beach (9C/48F now, at 10am, and the forecasted high for today is 15C/59C) but it’s gorgeous for yard work (like pruning that pear tree). And the lilacs are just beginning to open!

How’s the weather where you are?