WWW Wednesday 09Oct13
Is anyone still out there? It’s been so long since I’ve blogged that I wouldn’t blame you if you’ve all taken your ball and gone home.
I’m working on the summaries of the books I’ve read over the past four months but,
in the meantime, and to break radio silence, here’s a fun meme hosted by MizB at Should Be Reading. I came across WWW Wednesday via Words and Peace.
What I’m currently reading:
The Death of Bees by Lisa O’Donnell
My heart is breaking for all of the main characters. It’s very hard to put down.
Necessary Lies by Diane Chamberlain
This is women’s fiction set in 1960 North Carolina. I saw a decent review of this and needed an “N” title for my A-Z challenge, but I should have known better. Happy endings that involve unrealistic resolutions rub me the wrong way.
What I think I’ll read next:
A Far Cry from Kensington
Is something published in 1988 “vintage”? I guess it depends how old you are. Anyway, I expect this book will contain a lot of the protagonist’s memories of 1950s Kensington, which I’m sure is old enough to qualify. I’m hoping this is just my cup of tea.
How about you? What are you reading? Leave me a comment and let me know I’m not all alone in the blogosphere.
by Finley Martin (Detective Fiction, Atlantic Canadian author) 
From the beach near our home on Nova Scotia’s North Shore, on a clear night we can see the lights of Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island. I wouldn’t want to live on PEI but it’s a great place to visit and, after all, part of this “Atlantic Canada” that is now my home.
This is the highly anticipated sequel to 
Somehow, as I was growing up and cutting teeth on Agatha Christie and Ellery Queen, I missed knowing about New Zealand writer Ngaio Marsh. I love how the Web has made the world so small! I started to read Marsh with 
I so enjoyed the first in this series, 
In 2010, I also greatly enjoyed Charles Todd’s first Ian Rutledge mystery, 
I was halfway across the continent visiting my new granddaughter at the end of May and into June, and then a health problem prevented us from returning home until mid-month. I feel as if I hit the ground running and am just now catching up.
The winner of Australia’s Miles Franklin Award and several other prizes, Funder’s WWII drama, All That I Am, is said to be based on real characters. A group of left-wing German activists find themselves self-exiled to England when Hitler comes to power in the 1930s. From their London base, they try to alert the world to the human-rights atrocities being perpetrated by Hitler’s government. With hindsight, we think all should have listened. But no one did.
What could be more contemporary than a reality television show? In this show, teams of two decipher clues to discover where in the world they will go next and what they must find there. The contestants race across the globe—from Egypt to Japan, from Sweden to England—to battle for a million-dollar prize.
This version of this title is a charming picture book about a boy who one day finds a penguin at his door. The boy decides the penguin must be lost and tries to return him. Since no one claims the penguin, the boy decides to take it home himself, and they set out in his row boat on a journey to the South Pole.
THIS GIVEAWAY IS NOW CLOSED
Ammonite: (from the horn of Ammon – Jupiter – whose statues were represented with ram’s horns): Any of the flat, usually coiled fossil shells of an extinct order of mollusks.
Pantile: A roofing tile having an S curve, laid with the large curve of one tile overlapping the small curve of the next
In Tears of the Giraffe Mma Ramotswe searches for the fate of a young American man who worked on a co-operative farm in the area a decade earlier. She is also surprised by her fiancé with the addition to their ‘family’ of two orphans.
Since then, I’ve wanted to read more about this duo whose older half idolizes Sherlock Holmes and wants to model himself after him. It’s left to Otto to chronicle their adventures. In this instalment, they are hired by the Southern Pacific Railroad as detectives on a Utah to California trip, and run up against notorious train robbers. 
I’m a big fan of Flavia, a spunky 11-year-old with a passion for chemistry, who travels her world of Bishop’s Lacey on her trusty bike Gladys. 
Set in 12th century France, this features Catherine, a young novice and scholar at the Convent of the Paraclete, who is sent by the Abbess Heloise on a perilous mission to find out who is trying to destroy the reputation of the convent and, through it, that of the abbess’s onetime lover and patron, theologian Peter Abelard.
This is the book I spent the month telling everybody they should read. It’s a seemingly light-weight epistolary novel set on the fictitious independent island-nation of Nollop, off the coast off South Carolina. Nollop was named after Nevin Nollop, author of the immortal phrase containing all the letters of the alphabet, ‘The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog.’ In fact, a statue with Nollop’s name and said pangram stands in the town square, and when letters start falling off, the Town Fathers see it as “Nollop’s Will” and ban the use of those letters, both in oral & written communication. As each letter is dropped from used by the islanders, so it is by the author of the book.
Set in WWI, the story tells of young officer Robert Ross who enlists after a family tragedy leaves him bereft. Written and published in the mid-1970s when it was still possible to talk to people who remembered that war, and the elderly veterans who marched in the Remembrance Day parade had fought in the French mud, it has an immediacy and power that many other First World War novels that I have read lack.
I’m sure I don’t have to tell you what this one is about. If you haven’t read it yet, you’ve read about it scores of times. I came to this book with a slightly cynical attitude but, although I didn’t cry, I did get teary-eyed a couple of times. It’s intelligently told and humanely felt. 4 stars
by Edeet Ravel (Fiction, Historical, Canadian author) 
The story jumps to various points of view and time periods, as well as formats (bits of a play, excerpts of committee meeting minutes, diary entries, and so on) at what is, at first, a dizzying—and sometimes annoying—rate. But piecing it together is all part of the plot, illustrating the complexities of any experiment to create a utopia.
Felix had explained so clearly what it was that anthropologists did (. . .) They went out to remote places and studied the customs and languages of the peoples living there. Then they came back and wrote books and articles about what they had observed (. . .) It was as simple as that. And it was a very good thing that these languages and customs should be known, firstly because they were interesting in themselves and in danger of being forgotten, and secondly because it was helpful to missionaries and government officials to know as much as possible about the people they sought to evangelize or govern.
Welcome to the first 
The United States Postal Service has named April to be National Card and Letter-Writing Month. The USPS’s goal is to boost written—and mailed—communications to build relationships through cards and letters. “Touch them with a letter they can feel – and keep,” they say.
1. Stop right now and think of someone in your life who needs to be appreciated. Send him or her a card or letter today. 
This is my first blogging award: Trish at 
I had such a hard time narrowing this list of worthy recipients to ten. I would have included Trish at Desktop Retreat if I hadn’t already mentioned her in this post. Without any set criteria, I’ve tried to include a variety of world location and types of blogs. I hope you’ll find at least one or two that will appeal to you.
Poem in your Pocket Day began in 2002 when the Mayor of NYC, in partnership with NYC Departments of Cultural Affairs and Education initiated it as part of the city’s National Poetry Month celebration. In 2008, The Academy of American Poets took the initiative National across the USA.
by Cathy Prange and Joan Pauli, authors of 
Jane recalls that a talented member of her husband’s last parish had actually had a household hint published in a homemaking magazine: ‘It was a use for a thermometer case, if you had the misfortune to break your thermometer, of course. A splendid case for keeping bodkins in!’ Jane chortled.
