Just finished a book, a psychological thriller: Follow You Home by Mark Edwards.  Definitely an addicting plot, well crafted, I liked the pacing and the way things were revealed.  Only problem, sort of, was the ending.  It was logical, appropriate, and fitting -- and it left me with a bad feeling.  Kind of an off-kilter feeling.  Well, for half a ( Read more... )

I have a Kindle now.

And I love it.  The font is easy to read, and I sized the text up a touch so I can read a lot longer without getting physically tired.  Also, it is so comfy reading in bed with it.  I think I'm reading about twice as much as I could before. And using it saves paper.

I used to read so much, and then around five years ago I noticed ( Read more... )

The Ring of Morgana by Donna Hosie

This is sold as a YA  book and the first in a series.  It picks up seventeen years after the Return to Camelot trilogy.  Modern teenager Mila doesn't know she's a princess of Camelot, that her father Arthur is that Arthur, nor that her mother is -- was -- Morgana, until after her mother's ring turns up in their ( Read more... )

With thanks to Carol for putting it out there ( Read more... )

Over the weekend while I was staying warm and cozy on the couch under a great deal of crocheted afghan, I finished Arthur C Clarke's 2001: A Space Odyssey.  I was eight years old when I saw the movie in 1968, and I had vague memories of the basic plot, the monolith, HAL and Dave, and an image from the end.  The book was written concurrently with ( Read more... )

I made this nice potato salad again.  I made the recipe up trying to copy one I had one time when we were out and I think it turned out really well.

Dijon Potato Salad

3 lb. smooth-skinned potatoes (smallish red ones work well and look nice)
1/2 cup Dijon mustard
3/8 cup olive oil
1 Tbsp sugar
1 Tbsp parsley flakes

Leaving the skins on, scrub and cut the ( Read more... )

The first book I read this year is Jeffrey Small's The Breath of God: A Novel of Suspense.

My micro-review: it's like a Dan Brown book, but better.

PhD candidate Grant Matthews finds an ancient text describing Issa's journey into India and what he learns from the Hindus and Buddhists.  Issa is Jesus, and the text is an account of his teenage years ( Read more... )

It's a fairly rainy summer; even the one week-long heat wave featured plenty of thunderstorms.  There have been flash floods, the grass is green when it ought to be crispy, and the tomato plants are growing in slow motion.

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I was thinking the other day, and noticed that when considering abstract concepts, it seems to be vitally important  to ( Read more... )

Descartes' Bones by Russel Shorto

I found this featured on a table at Half Price Books and snatched it up.  Shorto traces a brief biography of Rene Descartes and the passage of his bones from hand to hand across Europe over hundreds of years, and interlaces it with the effects of Cartesianism on the development of modern Western thought.  Besides ( Read more... )

1. Favourite childhood book?
A story about magic that I got from the school library and can't remember what it was.  Also, Black Beauty and Nancy Drew and Alfred Hitchcock.  Swallows and Amazons.  James Thurber.  Ray Bradbury.

2. What are you reading right now?
Descartes' Bones

3. What books do you have on request at the library?
A Dance with ( Read more... )