Joyce over at From This Side of the Pond hosts a weekly hodepodge of questions. It’s been a month since I hopped into the discussion so it’s time!
 

1. What’s a word that describes your life? Cluttered
A word you wish described your life? Simple
 

2. Back in my day we
subscribed to newspapers. I always had a least two dailies coming to the house, and one at the office. Sunday afternoons, I sat down with four weekend papers. It was glorious. It was a trial for me when we first moved to rural Nova Scotia because we couldn’t get any national newspaper delivered – and even the copy I could buy at the pharmacy in the summertime has been discontinued.

But that’s not the issue. I just read this CBC news article (on-line, of course)—“Your lifestyle is making blue box recycling unsustainable”—about the problem facing recycling programs today. Basically, the sale of recycled paper used to cover the cost of processing the plastics, but because the volume of printed newspapers has dropped dramatically in the past 20 years, so has the income of these programs.

Add to that: the volume of plastics has increased BUT the income from these is based on tonnage (takes a lot of plastic to make a ton) and the processing capacity of the recyclers is based on volume. And there’s the problem of handling all the new kinds of recyclables on the market now: your take-out salad bowl, your frozen vegetables bag, or any ‘combined’ product such as bubble envelopes. (Are they paper? Are they plastic? Can they even be recycled?)
 

3. When it comes to takeout are you more likely to opt for Italian, Mexican, or Chinese food? Does a typical week at your house include takeout?

Hmm . . . of the three options, the only one available in a less-than-45-minute drive is Chinese, although there is a food bus that sells “tacos” in the summer cottage season. We probably have Chinese take-out (no delivery) once a month or so.
 

4. Think about the people you most respect. What is it about them that earned your respect?

The word that sprang to my mind was ‘integrity’. Webster’s Dictionary defines that as “having sound moral principles, uprightness, honesty, and sincerity”.

Yup, that’s it. It’s those people. I’m thankful that I have a lot of them in my life.
 

5. What’s something your friends might see and say is ‘so you’?

Wall-to-wall floor-to-ceiling bookcases. It’s something I’ve wanted all my life and finally got two years ago. Then our real estate agent told us that at least half of them had to come out if we want to sell the house. I can’t tell you how shattered I was.

(These aren’t mine. I couldn’t find a photo of mine on short notice.)

6. Insert your own random thought here.

Since I live in part of that region of North America that has had four nor’easters this month, I’m hearing a lot about how it’s supposed to be spring. I have to restrain myself from that line of thinking because I know that spring comes to northern Nova Scotia in May. At the beginning, it’s cold and colourless. By the 31st, it’s summer.

It’s a miracle month, but it’s still five weeks away.

What about you? What did you do back in your day?

March 21st, aside from being the Spring Equinox this year (more later), is also World Poetry Day. The day was established by UNESCO in 1999. The United Nations site explains “Poetry reaffirms our common humanity by revealing to us that individuals, everywhere in the world, share the same questions and feelings. Poetry is the mainstay of oral tradition and, over centuries, can communicate the innermost values of diverse cultures.”

That sounds so serious – and the poetry I’d like to share today is not. It prefaces the book Most Anything You Please by Trudy J. Morgan-Cole which I just picked up from the library yesterday and am itching to start. It’s about three generations of women who run a small grocery and confectionary store in St. John’s Newfoundland.

The words of this poem are taken from Old Brown’s Daughter by G.W. Hunt, an old English music hall song which has become a Newfoundland folk song.

Old Brown sells from off the shelf most anything you please
He’s got jews-harps for the little boys, lollipops and cheese.
His daughter minds the store and it’s a treat to see her serve
I’d like to run away with her but I don’t have the nerve.

Although we’re supposed to be getting a snow/ice pellets/freezing rain storm this evening, this morning is sunny. I think that’s appropriate given, that for the next six months, our daylight hours here in the Northern Hemisphere will be greater than the dark hours. Hurrah!

Happy World Poetry Day! Thank you to Sue at Whispering Gums for the impetus for this post. Her take on the day is much more intelligent and diverse than mine.

Do you have a bit of rhyme you’d like to share?

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 early September 2015, I received an unexpected call from my neurosurgeon, with a cancellation the following week – and a date for my spinal fusion surgery.

Knowing I would be dozy for a few days with the general anaesthetic and the painkillers, I piled up some of my ‘easy reading’: mysteries from some favourite series. A picture book and a cookbook rounded out my selection.
Let’s cover those first.

 

1. THREE CUPS by Mark St. Germain illustrated by April Willy (Fiction, Children’s Picture book)

The current issue of this book lists Tony Townsley as the author and St. Germain as a “contributor”.

3CupsBook.com explains that the system used by the fictional family in this charming picture book was originally devised by Townsley & his wife for their children. St. Germain wrote the text of the book.

The Townsleys tried to teach their children that it is not how much money you have that is important, it’s how you use it and devised a game of three cups (Spend, Save, Share) ‘to help them develop positive habits early on that would last them the rest of their lives.’

I don’t even want to think about the politics and legalities of that attribution situation, but I do know that this book makes wonderful sense. If you have small (or even older) children or grandchildren, I recommend you check it out.

Stacie at Simply Stacie first brought this book to my attention back in 2010.

5 stars
 

2. MAKE THE BREAD, BUY THE BUTTER by Jennifer Reese (Nonfiction, Cookbook, Home)

It’s seldom that I rate a cookbook five stars, but Make the Bread, Buy the Butter is so much more than a cookbook. Cover blurb says: “When Jennifer Reese lost her job, she was overcome by an impulse common among the recently unemployed: to economize by doing for herself what she had previously paid for. . . . So Reese began a series of kitchen-related experiments, taking into account the competing demands of everyday contemporary American family life . . . . Although you should make your hot dog buns, guacamole, and yogurt, you should probably buy your hamburger buns, potato chips, and rice pudding. Tired? Buy your mayonnaise. Inspired? Make it.”

Reese considers much more than just the cost-saving (or not) of making your own, but also time and effort expenditure, ethics, and quality & taste. Where her opinion is that you should make something, she provides a recipe – over 120 of them.

I always try at least one recipe from a cookbook before I pass judgment. In this case, it was ‘Simplest Buttercream’ frosting. It was that simple – and scrumptious.

But it’s not the recipes that made me love this book – it was the wit and warmth as she regaled me with the stories of cooking, baking and animal husbandry. I read this cover to cover, and every bit of it was a delight.

A huge shout of thanks to Leslie at Under My Apple Tree for prompting me to buy it.

5 stars

NOW FOR THOSE MYSTERIES:

3. THE CRUELEST MONTH by Louise Penny (Fiction, Mystery, Police Procedural, Series, Canadian)
#3 Armand Gamache & Three Pines

Penny writes an excellent mystery set in the fictional village of Three Pines, Quebec but she also writes with wonderful insight into the human experience:
‘I can’t believe she’s gone,’ said Hazel, sitting down as though her legs had given way. Loss was like that, Gamache knew. You didn’t just lose a loved one. You lost your heart, your memories, your laughter, your brain and it even took your bones. Eventually it all came back, but different. Rearranged.

And with humour:

Gamache couldn’t sleep. His bedside clock said 2:22. He’d been lying awake watching the bright red numbers change since the clock had said 1:11. He’d been woken up not by a bad dream, not by anxiety or a full bladder. He’d been woken up by frogs. Peepers. An army of invisible frogs at the pond spent most of the night singing a mating call. He would have thought they’d be exhausted by now, but apparently not. At dusk it was joyful, after dinner it was atmospheric. At 2 a.m. it was simple annoying. Anyone who said the country was peaceful hadn’t spent time there. Especially in the spring.

I’m not sure why I haven’t made time to get back to this series.

4½ stars

4. THE DARK VINEYARD by Martin Walker (Fiction, Mystery, Police Procedural, Series, Francophilic)
#2 Bruno, Chief of Police

Ah – (fictional) St. Denis, in southwest France, the home of Bruno, chief of police and all things southern France-y. In this episode industrial espionage threatens the local wineries, a research station growing genetically modified crops is burned down, and a big US winemaker wants to buy up land in the valley to produce a homogenous commercial product that is anathema to Bruno and most of the people of his community.

Walker captures modern life in rural France: where the locals still take their own containers to the local wineries and fill their own for one Euro a liter or less, but where “Saint-Denis now boasted four bakeries, four salons, four real estate agencies, three banks, three shops selling foie gras and other local delicacies, but there was only one grocery and one butcher’s shop. The fishmonger had long since given way to an insurance agency. Another grocery had been replaced the previous winter by a business that serviced computers and sold cell phones and DSL lines for the Internet. And a butcher had retired in the spring and now rented his premises to a real estate agent. It was no longer the Saint-Denis Bruno had first come to a decade ago [written 2009], when the small towns of rural France still retained the shops and the texture he remembered from his boyhood. Now people shopped at the supermarkets on the outskirts of town, or drove to the complex of shopping malls and hypermarkets outside Périgueux, forty minutes away.”

I continue to love this series.

4½ stars
 

5. SCENTS & SENSIBILITY by Spencer Quinn (Fiction, Mystery, Private Investigator, Series, Animal narrator)
#8 Chet & Bernie

Another great entry in this series, this one dealing with the illegal cactus trade (and murder – of people, not of cacti).

I think Quinn is tiring of this series. The writing and the mystery are still first-rate but the end of the book is a cliff-hanger that could most easily (and probably correctly) be construed to mean that Bernie dies.

There was outrage by fans, and Quinn has been promising a sequel now for a couple of years. But I have a feeling this series is no longer his first love. I dread the end of it.

4½ stars
 

6. A FÊTE WORSE THAN DEATH by Dolores Gordon-Smith (Fiction, Mystery, Series, Amateur Sleuth)
#1 Jack Haldean

It’s 1922 and Jack Haldean, young crime writer and former Royal Flying Corps pilot, is enjoying the local fete on a beautiful summer’s day in rural Sussex. When his friend is murdered, Jack steps in to solve the crime. I can’t remember how the police figured in this one, but I do remember being pleasantly surprised at the quality of the mystery, and that I enjoyed it even though I saw the murderer right away.

I find it amusing that the title of this book works because, although the French pronounce the French word fête fet, the English pronounce it fate. Much like the French word valet (va-lay) which the English say is val-et. (Just going to do it our way.)

4 stars
 

7. FOOL’S PUZZLE by Earlene Fowler (Fiction, Mystery, Amateur Sleuth, Series)
#1 Benni Harper

Many years ago, I somehow got hold of and read the fourth in this series featuring Benni Harper who is a folk art museum curator in fictional San Celina, California.

I was attracted initially by the title of Goose in the Pond because it, and the name of all of the books in this series, are quilt patterns. I discovered a likeable protagonist and a good mystery and meant to get back to it before this.

In Fool’s Puzzle, 34-year-old Benni, newly widowed, lands the job just mentioned and then finds herself embroiled in the murder of an artist and small town intrigues.

This series is well worth continuing.

4 stars
 

8. THE HERRING-SELLER’S APPRENTICE by L.C. Tyler (Fiction, Mystery, Amateur Sleuth, Series, British)
#1 Ethelred & Elsie

Ethelred Tressider, mystery write (aka herring seller “it was a facetious reference to the red herrings that she considered my stock in trade”), and his agent, Elsie (the herring seller’s apprentice?) try to solve the mystery of the apparent death by suicide of Ethelred’s ex-wife Geraldine. Geraldine had taken several people, including another of her ex-husbands and her banker, to the cleaners with an investment scam.

Even though I recognized the cleverness of the plot at the end of the book, I doubt I’ll read more of this series since I remember feeling confused—almost disoriented–most of the way through. (Maybe it was those painkillers?) Jane (when she was blogging at Fleur in Her World ) recommended this.

4 stars
 

9. WOOF by Spencer Quinn (Fiction, Young Readers, Mystery, Animal Narrator, Series)
#1 Birdie & Bowser

Woof is the start of a new series by Spencer Quinn, author of the Chet & Bernie mysteries. It’s narrated by Bowser who sounds, perhaps not surprisingly, very much like Chet – that is, dumb but smart, hilarious, & loveable. His new mistress is 11-year-old Birdie who lives on the Louisiana coast with her Grammy. When a prize stuffed marlin is stolen from Grammy’s bait and tackle shop, Birdie and Bowser take on the case.

This is a charming start to what is no doubt an excellent series, but I do prefer the adult version (Chet & Bernie).

4 stars

10. MURDER PAST DUE by Miranda James (Fiction, Mystery, Cozy, Series)
#1 Cat in the Stacks

Small-town Mississippi librarian Charlie Harris walks his rescued Maine Coon cat Diesel on a leash – and takes on the murder of a former classmate who has become a famous author.

Charlie remembers Godfrey Priest as an arrogant jerk – and he continued to be after his school years, leaving no end of suspects for Charlie to investigate.
 

I enjoyed this well enough at the time but don’t remember much about it. Thank you to Bev at My Reader’s Block for pointing me toward it.

3½ stars
 

* * * * *

And that stack got me through the immediate post-op period and well on the way to mending.

Usually my reaction to being able to spot the murderer is boredom – and frustration at the ineptness of the author, but sometimes (as with A Fête Worse than Death this month and Agatha Christie’s Five Little Pigs) it provides an opportunity to watch the author’s sleight-of-hand and is quite entertaining.

What’s your usual reaction to being able to spot the murderer before the reveal?

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.

It’s time again for the Six Degrees of Separation link-up, hosted by Kate at Books are My Favourite and Best and you can find complete details by clicking on the link.

This month, the start to everyone’s chain is The Beauty Myth: How Images of Beauty Are Used Against Women by Naomi Wolf. Wolf asserts that the “beauty myth” is an obsession with physical perfection that traps the modern woman in an endless spiral of hope, self-consciousness, and self-hatred as she tries to fulfill society’s impossible definition of “the flawless beauty.”

1. The beauty myth is probably the reason why I bought and read Charla Krupp’s How Not to Look Old: Fast and Effortless Ways to Look 10 Years Younger, 10 Pounds Lighter, 10 Times Better (plus its companion book How to Never Look Fat Again). Both of these actually had some great tips, some of which are beyond me now, but some that I still employ. Perhaps without them, I’d look older and fatter than I do.

2. Having played into the trap of the Beauty Myth with Charla’s books, I’ll try to fight the myth, and turn to Going Gray: What I Learned about Beauty, Sex, Work, Motherhood, Authenticity, and Everything Else That Really Matters by Anne Kreamer. This book was an account of the author’s decision to stop dying her hair, and let her natural beauty shine through (that’s her on the cover).

I read this several years ago when I didn’t know that I would be 63 and not yet grey. (It’s a gene from my mother’s side of the family.)

3. But grey or not, I am 63 and considered a senior by many, so Strength Training for Seniors: How to Rewind Your Biological Clock by Michael Fekete was a clearance purchase I made in an effort to feel younger.

I believe it was David J. Lieberman in Get Anyone to Do Anything who said that, if you want people to like you, move like a young person. Strength training is necessary for me to even try to do that.

4. Some studies show that exercise may be a way to lower the likelihood of Alzheimer’s. In In Pursuit of Memory: The Fight Against Alzheimer’s, Joseph Jebelli says that as the more of the world’s population becomes seniors, “Alzheimer’s is expected to affect 135 million people by 2050, overtaking cancer to become the second leading cause of death after heart disease.” (According to the Office for National Statistics, it already has in England and Wales.)

I haven’t finished In Pursuit of Memory yet, but I’m finding it fascinating. Alzheimer’s is such a difficult and misunderstood disease. It leads me to my next link.

5. In How Many Camels are There in Holland: Dementia, Ma and Me, Phyllida Law recounts the final months of caring for her mother, who suffered from Alzheimer’s, in the tiny Scottish village of Ardentinny – with the help of friends, local villagers, and her two daughters, actresses Emma and Sophie Thompson. Amazon says that running through the account are “anecdotes, memories and legends that form the fabric of every family.”

Unfortunately when I tried to read it a couple of years ago, I got no further than the first chapter and just couldn’t make sense of it. That probably says more about my state of mind at the time than it does about the book.

6. I was reading a hardcover copy of How Many Camels that I bought because several years ago, I greatly enjoyed Law’s Notes to My Mother-in-Law. A sweet & short memoir of sorts, written in the titular notes by the author to her mother-in-law, who was hard of hearing and yet wanted the day’s news and arrangements, it was a short and charming read. Both women sounded like people I’d like to know, and Phyllida’s respect and affection for her mother-in-law were evident.

So there you have it – a journey through some of my nonfiction reading for the past few years. I seem to be focusing on aging. Quelle surprise. What most concerns you as you get older?

P.S. Did you notice that the covers for all three of the books dealing with Alzheimer’s are white – fading away? A statement?
 

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.