flight paths discussion

Its tempting to sleep
through the drowsy heat
and indeed under a tree
a dreamy nap is good.
A book had better be
provocative to keep us
awake in August

It seems lately that all the books Ive been reading are provocaive.

Magdelanye, love your ode to August!

I finished Dark Fire, which I loved and have begun The Waitress is New (which for some reason isn't in the GR database) and am liking this story of a 56 year old bar tender. I've also, at long last, started Crime and Punishment which I'm loving.

Next on my list is The Savage Detectives by Roberto Bolaño. i loved 2666 and am finding the beginning engaging.

Magdelanye, that's a lovely ode! Thank you for that.

Ellie, I loved 2666, too. I've heard good things about The Savage Detective. I look forward to your thoughts on it.

I'm reading Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, and thoroughly enjoying it.
For lighter reading, I've started. The Deeds of the Disturber. Amelia Peabody is entertaining.

the ode to August was written on the fly, as you see it, right here, especially for Flight Paths. I'm glad you both like it.

i adored Savage Detectives but i did fight with it. its quite an interactive book. i am eager to read 2666 but have yet to clear a space for it.

Crime and Punishment is a remarkable reading experience. Its so satisfying to start a book from way in the beginning of ones thr.

petra ive heard very mixed reviews about Sapiens. I think I mentioned that ive twice failed to get into it. its not many books i return unread. So I am especially interested in your reaction.

How lovely Magdelayne! What a terrific way to begin August. :) I am having a hard time settling on books lately, so I've tended towards lighter reads. I just finished Tana French's book The Searcher and I forgot what a truly lovely storyteller she is. Last night I started The Molly Murphy Series, Books 1-3: Murphy's Law; Death of Riley; For the Love of Mike (The Death of Riley) and I also have The Mapping of Love and Death on my nightstand as I can't seem to be able to resist Maisie Dobbs. I just wish I could settle and finally get into 21 Things You May Not Know About the Indian Act: Helping Canadians Make Reconciliation with Indigenous Peoples a Reality and Gary Barwin's new novel Nothing the Same, Everything Haunted: The Ballad of Motl the Cowboy.

Petra wrote: "Magdelanye, that's a lovely ode! Thank you for that.

Ellie, I loved 2666, too. I've heard good things about The Savage Detective. I look forward to your thoughts on it.

I'm reading [book:Sapiens..."

I forgot about Amelia Peabody! I really enjoyed the first two books in that series.

Hi Natasha. Glad you posted. :)

Ellie wrote: "Hi Natasha. Glad you posted. :)"

Thank you, Ellie. I always mean to. I don't have a regular place I post now on Goodreads, so I'm hoping this can be my new book post home. :)

Natasha, I'm glad you're here.

You've reminded me of Tara French's books. I read one and really enjoyed it. I have the second of that series on my bookshelf. I should pick it up soon.
Thanks for the reminder.

Maissie Dobbs pops up occasionally. I haven't read any of that series. Maybe one day I'll give it a go.

Natasha wrote: "How lovely Magdelayne! What a terrific way to begin August. :) I am having a hard time settling on books lately, so I've tended towards lighter reads. I just finished Tana French's book

Great to to have you here, always feel welcome.
We are low key but we are warm and fervent!

I think all of us have been experiencing fluctuating ability to focus. Am I right? Do check out our library for a few suggestions.
And I am recommending Pearl Cleage to everyone. She's feisty and romantic with more than enough relevant political content so you don't feel guilty for fluffing a bit. I just finishedI Wish I Had A Red Dress which is a stand alone sequel to What Looks Like Crazy on an Ordinary Day
Right now I am loving Robots vs. Fairies. The short stories are all high quality with each author promoting their team. Clearly, I prefer magic to materialism, so team fairy.
But there are some interesting representations and its fun to speculate.

Also reading The Twelve Tribes of Hattie by Ayana Mathis which harsh and heartbreaking but very skillfully done.
The real horroe that I am reading is It's All in Your Mouth: Biological Dentistry and the Surprising Impact of Oral Health on Whole Body Wellness
A life changer, this one.


Ellie I hope you are feeling stronger and better every day/

Petra I hope you have subdues a little corner in your background jungle/ I'm glad you are enjoying the Olympics.

Hows the Dostoevsky Ellie. I am still waiting for your update on Sapiens Petra.
I cant say a thing about all your detectives, except the savage one. I cant imagine reading that alternatively with C and P.

Enduring Grace

dont know why above message went all italics

That happened to me once, too, Magdelanye, so I had to figure it out.

The reason is the last part of the quoted comment is half of a link. So the site sees the start of a code for the link but not the end of the code. This tells it that whatever comes next is part of the link.
The italics work the same. The quoted part has a code for the italics at the end, but not at the beginning. This tells the site that you want italics for everything.

If you edit out the half links, your text will go back to normal.
Remove everything after "Tara French's book" in the quoted section.
You may also have an "issue" with the link for Pearl Cleage. There's part of the code after Cleage that is missing.

That would be Petra voting herself as the technical expert :-)
Reading a donated book Find Them Dead and started another Vera The Moth Catcher

:LOL Petra is indeed more capable with the tech
Ill remember for next time but not much happened when I edited out the link.
As long as its readable

There's probably an "< i >" somewhere near Natasha's name that is causing the italics. You'll only see if when you go to edit the comment.
Remove that and your comment will be regular font.
OR......leave it and add a < / i > (no spaces) at the end of Natasha's comment. Then Natasha's comment will be in italics but your comment won't be.


LOL! Me, a tech?????!!!!! I am quite computer illiterate. I have figured out the GR code, though and their list of html codes listed under "(some html is ok)"

There definitely is one of these codes in your comment, Magdelanye. My comment was all in italics after the code part of my comment after I initially posted. I had to put quotation marks around it and spaces in the parentheses to make the italics go away and the code to appear in the comment.

well Petra thats interesting to note but I think I am going to let that comment be 🐫
this little camel is there because I must have pressed something accidently and up popped this little square with emojis on it. I went to close it and instead impulsively pressed the camel. I've had a number of experiences with camels and learned to stay out of reach when needing to pass.

Just finished Robots vs. Fairies which was kind of enchanting. I didn't love the last story by the only one of the authors I know and quite admire, but I did love her commentary on it, and some of her remarks about the immortality of fairies and the battery life of robots.
Ice Im not sure if you might appreciate

team faeries! go!

Magdelanye, I wish I could figure out how to use emojis in GR! I love emojis.

Robots & Fairies sounds fascinating. On it goes to my intimidating TBR shelf which is definitely cracking beneath the weight of my dream list.

Also, I am totally loving Crime and Punishment. It's unbelievably readable and exciting. (I felt that way when I finally read War and Peace: I couldn't believe what a fast, "fun" read it was--I wondered why I had waited so long to read it!)

Ice, I'm back into mysteries and Nordic Noir and always check your comments for ideas!

I don't know what I've posted here. I checked back but am too lazy to go back far enough I guess. I finished The Waitress Was New by Dominique Fabre, a small French book (I read in translation) which I found fascinating. Very French in that small, focused look at the ordinary. I'm continuing with Detectives but also, somewhat unfortunately, started When Christ and His Saints Slept, one of those historical fictions (the Plantagenets) that I loved as an adolescent and are oddly comforting to me right now. It's unfortunate because it's almost 800 pages long so I'll see how long it holds my interest. So far, it's very enjoyable. I'll stick with it as long as I'm liking it.

I'm also still reading (or rather re-reading) Agatha Christie for comfort food. I just finished The Mirror Crack'd from Side to Side. I have 3 of my favorites on loan from the library: Peril at End House, Death on the Nile, and Murder on the Orient Express as well as a Kindle copy of Endless Night which is one I don't remember.

My "challenge" read at the moment is an amazing book by Ann and Barry Ulanov (I studied with her husband Barry as an undergrad a million years ago) called Primary Speech. It's a brilliant book on prayer. It was recommended by Michael, my poetry mentor. We're going to discuss it along with my poems. At the rate I'm going, however, I may never finish it even though it's less than 200 pages. I stop after almost every sentence, stunned by the content and pausing to unpack it. I may have to stop underlining and just memorize the entire work, lol.

I'm hopping over to our chat room to write about the rest of my life!

I broke through the reading slump I was in and I finished Gary Barwin's book Nothing the Same, Everything Haunted: The Ballad of Motl the Cowboy. I know his writing style isn't for everyone, but I loved this book. It was inventive and imaginative and entertaining and thought-provoking all at the same time. I also finished The Molly Murphy Series, Books 1-3: Murphy's Law; Death of Riley; For the Love of Mike (The Death of Riley), and I'll be moving on to "For the Love of Mike" soon. I don't know why I can't find the books listed singly in the book search, but there it is. I also let my hold lapse on 21 Things You May Not Know About the Indian Act: Helping Canadians Make Reconciliation with Indigenous Peoples a Reality because I know I'm not in the headspace to read it.

Instead I have started and almost completed Jann Arden's book If I Knew Then: Finding Wisdom in Failure and Power in Aging for a book challenge in another group. I also have City of the Lost by Kelley Armstrong on my nightstand for the same reason. I also put Indian Horse by one of my all-time favourite Canadian authors Richard Wagamese there as well.

I'm hoping now that my reading block has been broken, I'll make some serious headway on books that I've wanted to get to for some time.

Natasha, glad to hear your reading block has been broken--I always feel disoriented and unhappy whenever I hit one of those. I'm curious about Jann Arden's book: are you liking it? I'm always on the lookout for books about aging but so many of them are useless and/or uninteresting.

Natasha, I'm glad you're past your reading slump.

Both of you, Natasha & Ellie, are reading an astounding list of books.

I'm reading Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind (and very much enjoying it), The War of the End of the World (too early to tell yet but it's very well written) and, in audio format, Hamnet and Judith.

Ellie wrote: "Natasha, glad to hear your reading block has been broken--I always feel disoriented and unhappy whenever I hit one of those. I'm curious about Jann Arden's book: are you liking it? I'm always on th..."

I really liked Jann Arden's book. There's an authenticity to it and an absence of condescension that I really like. She learned a lot of lessons the hard way, and she'd not shy about being honest about those moments, and what the takeaways are - even if she doesn't recognize them in the moment.

I have finished If I Knew Then: Finding Wisdom in Failure and Power in Aging by Jann Arden. See comment above for how much I enjoyed it. My current read is a lot harder. I'm reading That Lonely Section of Hell: The Botched Investigation of a Serial Killer Who Almost Got Away by Lorimer Shenher, who was one of the initial investigators in the Missing Indigenous Women cases for the Vancouver Police Department. The book chronicles the highs (VERY RARE) and lows of the investigation, which eventually led to the arrest of Robert Pickton. It's such a hard book to read because it's maddening. Utterly maddening that they had Pickton in their sights in 1998, but nothing of consequence (mostly due to the RCMP's unfathomable failures) unfolded until Feb, 2002.

I haven't decided on the next book yet, but I know it will have to be COMPLETELY different and lighter and offer more balance to what I'm reading now. This book weighs on me. But I made a promise to finish it for a bookclub challenge, so I will. But it's a book that comes with a cost.

Perhaps after this one, I'll dedicate myself to finally finishing The Mapping of Love and Death by Jacqueline Winspear. I always enjoy my time with Maisie.

I also finished City of the Lost by Kelley Armstrong for a book club challenge cegetory for a book set in a fictional setting. It was wonderful! I love mysteries - they've always been one of my absolutely favourite genres. There was SO much unveiled in this first book, I can see myself going back to Rockton to revist the two main characters again soon.

Just a short note as I'm on t

the fone. already it has been trigger happy. I do need to say how nice to hear Natasha that your reading block is over although I'm not sure that I will ever bring myself to read that Picton book. I was in Van that whole time and knew many of the missing women.

Im not sure about Jan Arden either. I sure was unimpressed with her hosting. I'm glad actually that you found her enjoyable.

Petra it seems you are getting into Sapians. Do his statistics seem valid to you?

I was out all day. Buses out her on the weekends are roughly every 2 hours.Petra my disengaging from the library has suffered a real setback. I am not sure how it happened but I went from 26 to 32 over one week and last week, 4 more holds and boom I'm up there again

I wrote in the "whine and cheese" section about my surgery on Thursday--I guess I've been posting in the wrong section? So all I'll say here is that it went well.

I'm reading a wonderful book about prayer by Ann Bedford Ulanov (if I've already mentioned it, I apologize: I love it but it's not a "fast read"), Primary Speech. Every page, every paragraph, stops me in my tracks. I'm reading slowly, rereading often, and studying. A beautiful book.

For my very light reading these days, I just read Agatha Christie's A Pocketful of Rye which I found delightful. If that's the right word to use about murder but then it is murder in a Christie world, so yes, light.

I've put When Christ and His Saints Slept aside for the moment. I just don't have the concentration required (although it's really not "heavy" reading). I hope to return to it soon. But although I'm loving the Christie and the Ulanov is certainly demanding, my focus is somewhat impaired and that seems to be the most I can do. Although I am reading a couple of poets as well, albeit very slowly. I'm rereading Stephen Mitchell's translation of Rilke's Duino Elegies which is brilliant. I literally catch my breath at points. I've also just begun Anna Akhmatova's Requiem and Poem Without a Hero. Both make me wish I knew more languages (all I have is French and some Spanish) but even in translation they shine.

Next up (after getting back to Christ and His Saints), is a book my poetry teacher recommended, In Search of Duende (Federico García Lorca). I love what I have read of Lorca (last year, Katie and I saw a fascinating production of The House of Bernarda Alba starring, of all people, Billy Piper--from Dr. Who--she was actually amazingly good). I've glanced at it and read some of the introduction. Another challenging read I think so I'll wait until I've finished my other books.

Really should be sleeping now but woke at 3 and reading and still very awake.
Taking a chapter break to get some water I checked into GR to see what else Daniel Mason has written. Hence I noticed your post Ellie on whine and cheese sectionand now this one. Feels like you are in the next room. it must be what 7 there. My prayers are with you Ellie and I am so glad your feeling zesty.

I love Duniio Elegies and wonder about a new translation. How does that impact the poems?

Ellie it might not be your style, but my joy man is 'preaching' this morning on the Kingdom starts 11:11. I think ive mentioned Justin Michael Williams to you before. He never ceases to amaze and inspire me. Hes not particularly Christian but I can relate to his multifaith approach. I would love to hear your opinion.

and this is not actually the place for the above remark but i deem its all appropriate

thats 11:11am pacific time
i think that is 2pm in New York

Just finished The Moth Catcher.
In Edinburgh not literally, but close A Song for the Dark Times

Good morning!

Ellie, it's wonderful to hear that the surgery went well and you are feeling good.

Magdelanye, I finished Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind this weekend and enjoyed it throughout. He doesn't have a lot of stats and takes a broader look at our progression through time. He's covering about 80.000 years in 500 pages, so it is more sweeping. That said, it's a very good look at the progression of our species through our time. What he says and how he lays out our progression is interesting and sensible. I really enjoyed this as a look at us as a whole.

I started reading Norma. I have to get the characters' relationships straight yet but the story is well written and very mysterious & intriguing.

Magdelanye wrote: "the fone. already it has been trigger happy. I do need to say how nice to hear Natasha that your reading block is over although I'm not sure that I will ever bring myself to read that Picton book. ..."

I'm so sorry about your connection to the women, Magdelayne. I won't talk as much about the book in future posts. My best friend, who is from Vancouver, said she'd never be able to read it either because the horror of the reality was so very different than the "relative" detachment of a book at distance. (I can't read it in long stretches because it upsets me too much.)

Ellie, I'm pleased your surgery went well and I wish you a continued speedy recovery.

Petra wrote: "Good morning!

Ellie, it's wonderful to hear that the surgery went well and you are feeling good.

Magdelanye, I finished Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind this weekend and enj..."

I'm happy to read your take on Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind as I have had that book on my shelf for a couple of years now. This may be the push I need to get it to sooner rather than later. :)

I have finished the book and I have moved on to the ultimate lighter read before I dive a little deeper into my to-read list: The Twelve Clues of Christmas. It's fun so far!