Dracula by Bram Stoker

 

Ok so this book is not appropriate for Thanksgiving weekend I agree but I really did start it before Halloween which did seem appropriate. Really! However it wasn't the only book I was reading at the time soooo. At any rate when I saw it on the Goodwill shelf I grabbed it because, as you know, the previous summer was "read classics" summer. So I figured this book was a late continuance of that theme. I had wanted to read it a few years ago but never got to it for whatever reason.

 

So I finished it yesterday. I have to say that I do like the front cover of this edition. I think the artist did a great job. During October I saw on the TV a thing about Bram Stoker and I have to say that the original design imprinted on the original book cover was demurely simple. I like it too.

 

So how was the story? Did I like it?

 

Well it wasn't what I thought it was going to be because I was expecting gore and frightful scenes but it didn't live up to my expectations. I can see how it was different from other books written during that time period and that it would catch people's attention but it was slow and plodding and slow and plodding. I think my favorite character was Van Helsing. Why? Because Bram gave him a funny way of talking and I liked reading it and I could picture him. I suppose I used the visual in Polanski's "Fearless Vampire Killers" I saw a billion times one summer in a drive-in theater in 'Little Washington'. All the snow and the scenery and the non-reflection in the mirror of Dracula during a ballroom dance and the horses pulling a carriage through the small villages and out in the wild towards Dracula's castle. And Van Helsing being this lovable, funny but fearless old man. Wow! I really need to see that movie again!!! 

 

But you never see that movie anymore? Why don't they show it during all the ones that are on the TV leading up to October 31rst?

 

So the question is ... should you read it?

 

Of course. It's a classic after all.

A Midwinter's Tale by Andrew M. Greeley

Hey folks!! I'm back with another one of Andrew Greeley's books. Again, it came from my mother's book shelf, handed to me recently by my father saying, "I thought you would like to have this book."

"Of course!"

And thank you, Dad.

I read this tale before when my mother handed it to me. She had just finished reading it and thought I would enjoy it too. She was always amazed that a priest (yes, Andrew is a Catholic priest) could write so candidly about sex. It really fascinated her. Where did he get his knowledge of it? Was it first hand or from the confessional?

I am sure that she and Father Greeley would have had great conversations if they could have known each other. To be a fly on the wall would be a good thing in order to listen. My mother was a smart cookie and knew her history of the Catholic church, the Templars, Cathars and you name it. I've already forgotten what she told me. History was never my strong suit. Or Algebra.

Nevertheless, here's a story that Greeley says is "autobiographical only in that Charles O'Malley (his main character) and I have lived through the same historical events" and that "Charles Cronin O'Malley did indeed graduate from 'St. Ursula' in 1942, as I did".

The story takes place mostly in Germany (Bavaria) during the two years that Chuck is stationed there as a very young man. It is in a Nazi's arms that he loses his virginity and in the cold, bombed out landscape that he proves to continue to be a 'hero' even though he doesn't feel like one. After all he had saved his Rosie the night of his high school prom, didn't he? But it was just a reflex. He didn't have time to put on a red cape and fly through the air. Although jumping from a pier into cold water could apply as a leap of faith.

I think you would like this book as well. You will learn what is was like or could have been like in Germany in 1947. The hardship that the people had to survive. The lack. The cold. The desperation. What can an eighteen year old do to make a difference?

As you will see life can pull you into situations that you willingly walk into and then find yourself with anothers' life in your hands. What will you do?

Check this one out and see how a priest writes of love and war and family.

IMPERFECT STRANGERS by STUART WOODS

Okay folks. You will want to read this one. It gathers its plot from the movie "Strangers on a Train" but this novel speeds down the convoluted story tracks ready for a collision with death at any turn of the page. So hold on to your seat.

I wished I didn't have to go to sleep or do anything else once I got this book in my hands. But life happens and so the book had to lay on the couch, the table or in my purse waiting and baiting me to grab a line or two out of it while I waited in line or stopped at a light (just kidding) or sat in a chair while my car got inspected.

Okay so that all happened to me but not at a stop light. I try to be a good driver.

Hint. The plot begins to take shape on a plane. A stranger sits next to another stranger in first class and begins a conversation. By the end of a few drinks, a movie and a nod the two men agree to kill each other's wives.

Do they pull it off?

You will just have to pick this book up anywhere you can get it and start reading it. Make sure you have some time on your hands to devote to it. You may want to take it on a trans Atlantic flight to fill in the hours if you can't take a snooze. I can't seem to fall asleep on a plane much to my sorrow and aggravation.

Just remember not to talk to strangers!

The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry by Rachel Joyce

I have joined my neighborhood's newly formed book club and this is the latest selection we had to read. I have to say that it really affected me and I have changed a few things in my life.

This book is a pilgrimage, a journey, a walk through Harold's emotions and thoughts as he suddenly decides to walk from his home one day to a woman he once worked with who is now dying of cancer. He believes that as long as he is walking towards her that she will live and perhaps recover.

But it is Harold that recovers. He recovers not only the meaning of his life, and unearths his own demons but heals one of his most cherished relationships.

I won't tell you if he saved his co-worker's life but he saves his own and touches other souls along his wandering path.

I think you may enjoy this read. I know I did!

The Cat Who ... by Lillian Jackson Braun

Here we go folks. I'm on a Cat Who marathon. And who can blame me? I feel like I have been visited by a best friend with his two Siamese cats and we have been on our own adventures in Pickax from the K Mansion.

 

I can taste Mrs. Cobb's cooking from here, smell the fresh lake air from the cabin where Mr. Q. goes every now and then, and know The Big One is coming by looking at the clouds in the sky. But if you need any more relevant information then all you need to do is gather yourself up at the Dimsdale Diner for the coffee hour and you'll get more than a cupful of terrible brew. It's not gossip in Moose County. It's just neighborly info passed along a verbal line that extends from house to house without the use of the telephone wires. It's faster that way. No one locks their doors and you can walk right in and borrow a cup of sugar even if the owner isn't there. It's how it's done Up Here and contrary to Down Below.

 

But mischief reigns supreme in them thar mosquito ridden woods and if you have two cats by the name of Koko and Yum Yum then you are in luck and on your way to solving things that aren't brought up in conversation if someone from Down Below comes into a room. We're all family in Pickax and what the foreignors don't know won't hurt us.

 

But Mr. Q. is fast becoming one of them for various reasons. He is now the richest man in the county and lives in the best mansion on the circle in downtown Pickax. He's likable too with his ingratiating mustache that lures in the women and the secrets that aren't usually shared with those who weren't born and bred and raised right in the throw back county of Moose. And his two cats are problem solvers with a reputation known only to the favored few who can speak 'Yow!".

 

Grab one of these books and be ready to have a good time and make a new friend.

Mr. Q.'s sense of humour is worth it.

 



The Cat Who Went Up the Creek by Lillian Jackson Braun

If ya'll have never dipped your paws into a Lillian Jackson Braun "Cat Who ..." book then I suggest you do. If you like what you read then you will have a shelf full of editions to keep you purring. I have thirteen paperbacks which I have collected here and there since my mother got me onto Qwilleran, Koko and Yum Yum. You'll understand in a minute.

 

Unfortunately Miss Lillian is no longer with us in person but her spirit and humour live on in her witty books. I would have loved to have met her. I know our conversations would have been delightful.

 

So here's the deal ... her books center around Jim Qwilleran who writes for the newspaper where he finds himself living at the time, from The Daily Fluxion to the Moose County Something. I suggest you start at the beginning with her first books, The Cat Who Could Read Backwards, The Cat Who Ate Danish Modern and The Cat Who Turned On and Off. That way you can get into the life of the columnist as he helps solve crimes and mysteries through the whiskers of a cat and sometimes even through the twitching of his own voluminous mustache.

 

I personally love it when he finds himself the recipient of a mansion full of money and he begins to take root in Moose County which is "400 miles north of everywhere". Specifically Pickax with a "population of 3,000", a love interest who works at the library and has his level of brain info and catly persuasions, and a community of individuals who make the everyday life seem interesting. You seriously want to have a vacation in Pickax and have dinner with Jim, see a neighborhood play and discuss the possibility of the dead body found floating down Black Creek (in the book above).

 

Well I'm not going to tell you.

 

You'll have to curl up on your own couch like a cat happily dozing in the sun and read your own edition or 13. I guarantee, if you have an ounce of dry humour in your bones, that you will be purrfectly satisfied.

 

If not, then all I can say is "Yow"!

 

 



The Knights of the Sacred Lake by Rosalind Miles

Do you like Camelot? King Arthur and Lady Guinevere? Sir Lancelot? Merlin? Knights in armour and swords and horses and castles? Oh my!

 

This is an easy read and I have to admit I would have liked more. A bit more description so that I could really feel as if I was there. A bit more emotion. However, I did  feel the love between Guinevere and Lancelot and wished there had been more of that but ...

 

The cover is vivid.

A Book of One's Own: People and their Diaries by Thomas Mallon

I thoroughly enjoyed this book by Thomas Mallon. I found it in my daughter's Goodwill while I was visiting her last Spring. I just finished it!! I know. That's bad, but I had other books to read as well, the summer job and I finally picked it back up this past weekend from the table by my couch. I had been stung by a virulent yellow jacket and needed book sustenance of a lighter kind where I didn't have to figure out a mystery, a murder, etc...

 

This book was published in 1984. I love the cover. The funny thing was this: when I grabbed this book off the shelf I also grabbed two more and what do you think they all ended up being about? Diaries. So I took it as a nod to "Hello! You may want to start one!" So I did.  It may not prove to be as fascinating as the diaries that Mallon discusses in his book.

 

Mallon says he had read "hundreds of diaries" and that he came "to feel sure of three things":

-writing books is too good an idea to be left to authors

-almost no one has had an easy life

-no one ever kept a diary for just himself

 

You really do want to read the diaries he has picked to discuss and go back in time to experience the daily life of a downstairs servant, or what the gossip was at court during the reign of this or that King or Queen, or what it was like to be a grave robber. Famous diarists such as Sylvia Plath, Samuel Pepys, Virginia Woolf, Evelyn Waugh, Queen Victoria, Thoreau, C.S. Lewis, Anne Frank, Mary Shelley and so forth. To get into their minds is to get into their daily thoughts whether uplifting or downtrodden. To look through the window of their soul.

 

Mallon explains that a diary keeps a person alive and some if not all of the diarists within his book carry this wish when they are writing. That they may live on eternally.

 

I get it!!

 

So if you can find this little gem then grab it. It'll be a good read.

 



Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte

 

Here's a classic that I was trying to read last summer but finally read this summer. Better late than never, right?

 

Yes, I found this book on my Goodwill shelf and grabbed it before anyone else could. Don't you love the book cover? So haunting. It befits the story that always seems to be brooding, self loathing and quite sparse of cheer, sunshine and flowers. But one is compelled to continue reading even though one knows that the outcome is not going to produce rainbows and lollipops but rather dismal rain and sorrow.

 

We are intrigued with Catherine and Heathcliff, their deep and eternal love that exudes such highs and lows to the point of devastation. Would one really want that kind of love that pulls one only into another and without that other then one drowns in one's own contemplation in solitude and despair? Regardless we must read on and on to the conclusion which has a glimpse of redemption and recovery for us to feed on.

 

If you have not read this classic, then I suggest you grab one from a friend, the library or off a shelf somewhere. Even though you are not going to laugh uproariously nor smile from ear to ear I think you will be glad you can say that you read it.

 

If I wanted to throw a pun in I would call this novel "Withering Heights" because that is what happens to everyone, almost, who surround themselves around Healthcliff. He is a social vampire.

 

I must admit though that I like the 1939 movie with Merle Oberon and Laurence Olivier. It has one of the best lines in it that I love which is not in the book. 

Suspense and Sensibility (Or, First Impressions Revisited) by Carrie Bebris

This is "A Mr. and Mrs. Darcy Mystery". Therefore you will be solving a mystery along with the Darcys as they live their Jane Austen written lives beyond her hand written novel.

 

Are our first impressions really whom we see before us or is there another person lurking below the well dressed facade in front of our very eyes? Do we need to just look in a mirror to see our true selves?

 

All is not what it appears to be as the Darcys take their siblings to London for The Season. Hopefully there will be weddings in the offing but will there? One can only hope and despair either to the point of emaciation or gluttony. What do the gossips say? Can they be trusted?

 

This book caught my eye because of its title and front page. We all seem to love Jane Austen so why not a book which "carries on" the relationships. I personally would have enjoyed reading about their regular lives, what they ate, wore, saw and experienced rather than adding a mystery to investigate. But that doesn't mean I did not enjoy the book.

 

In fact the author has written more Austen-ish mystery books that I hope to find at my local Goodwill where I found this one. I would say they are a good summer read or if you are snowed in.

 

I will keep my eyes peeled and keep you posted!

The Forgotten by David Baldacci

 

Hey Folks! Here's the next book I have finished this summer. It's June 9th and I have read a lot of books so far.

 

As usual I got this at the GW (short now for Goodwill). I think this might be included under "Guy Reads" because it was ok but didn't rock my Baldacci world as some of his books have done.

 

That said, it was about an Army guy on R&R who ended up using his time solving his Aunt's murder which happened in a nice retirement neighborhood of Florida where no crimes seem to be committed. But right under everyone's sunburned social secuirty receiving noses is a huge illegal business that happens during the wee hours of the night when everyone is finally asleep.

 

But if you can't seem to close your elderly eyes and sleep but rather decide instead to take a drive in the night then you may have wished you had stayed in bed or watched reruns of Andy Griffith. Why? Because you may find yourself in a nose dive in your backyard fountain for your spying.

 

Go back to bed!

 

If you want a read that will get you through until your next really exciting book, then pick this up but don't pay full price. So to your local GW and see what you can find.

 

I love you, David, but I am sorry that this one didn't hit the mark with me. But don't worry. I am only one person in a billion and my opinion usually doesn't count.

 

Sleep tight!

The Red Tent by Anita Diamant

First of all, don't you love the cover? And the red font? How stunning! If that doesn't grab you from the start then I think you need to rethink yourself.

Also I had heard that this book was a great read so when I saw it at the Goodwill (where else?) I grabbed it off the shelf. It certainly grabbed me. How could I pass it up with such a beautiful cover? My question to myself was, "Could I paint that?"

But you may be asking yourself, "What is a red tent and what is its significance?"

You will find out if you read this book but I will give you a hint ... what comes once a month for most women? Now maybe the tent in and of itself was not the color red but what happens inside it does include that color. But more goes on there than mere cyclical necessities. The tent is where the women can talk and share their thoughts and where they can rest from their work.

Ok, women out there, do you wish you had a red tent where you could rest from your work for about three or four days every month, and you would be handed food and cared for? Sounds like a plan, right?

But this book really is about the biblical Isaac and Jacob and Joseph and their women and events behind the scene of the events. What went on with the lives of these people in a daily grind of living not to mention of birthing lots of children for the men. The more you had, the merrier you were supposed to be, or rather the richer. You could say, Look at me I have a billion sons to carry my seed on and on. I am great and powerful.

I am being facetious but there is a lot of birthing going on in this book. After all it is mostly about the women behind the men.

That said I liked the book. It was not a cliff hanger as the Bible seems to be at times during the events covered but it does capture what it would feel like to be a woman at that time. It is spoken through the voice of one of the daughters, Dinah. I haven't yet opened my Bible to see if see is specifically named so I need to get with that program. I personally don't remember her and she seems to be invisible most of the time in the book.

At any rate, I hope your Spring was full of interesting reads and that your summer proves to be even more exciting. Mine is getting a boost by the next book I am reading. A David Baldacci. I'll clue you in after I have read the whole thing.

Ta ta for now!



September by Rosamunde Pilcher/A Book of One's Own by Thomas Mallon/Cordina's Royal Family by Nora Roberts/In This House of Brede by Rumer Godden

OK. So you are probably wondering why I have a gazillion book titles in the heading!?! It's simple. I am reading them all at the same time. Yes, it's true.

I started with In This House of Brede by Rumer Godden who is, as you know from previous posts, one of my mother's favorite authors. It is very interesting but is slow so I picked up another book as well to read that moved along in a faster pace. I will tell you about it next. But first let me tell you a bit about Godden's book. In short, the House of Brede is a convent. Thus the slowness of the plot yet you get to look into the lives of the novitiates as they go through the process of becoming a nun or not. Also the thoughts of the mother superior as well as the nuns who have lived there for a long time. Each has their duties within the convent and tend to gravitate towards tasks they are suited for, such as cooking or gardening. Is there jealousy, gossip, or actions among the ranks that need to be subjected to submission to the work of the Lord? Well yes. They are only human. If you were brought up Catholic or you are just curious what goes on behind convent walls, then pick this book up.

It is centered on a woman who has been climbing up the corporate ladder of success only to get to the top rung and decide there has to be more to her spiritual life and her life in general. To tell you the truth I haven't finished this book yet as I am reading so many at one time. So I don't even know if she decides to stay or go.

Have I finished any of the books listed above?

Yes, I finished September by Rosamunde Pilcher while I was visiting one of my daughters. This was the book I picked up to read as I was also reading Godden. I left Godden behind on the table beside my couch and toted Rosamunde with me on the two hour plane flight. Before I knew I had landed and the lady beside me woke up from her silent nap.

As some of you may know, Rosamunde is my Dad's all time favorite author. This book is essentially a sequel to The Shell Seekers. So if you liked that one then get this one and continue to read about what happened to Noel Keeling after his mother died suddenly. Did he shape up and fly right? Also, as you have probably guessed, this book culminates in the month of September for a family wedding. Who shows up and who does not?  Does the past show up to unravel people's feelings about themselves. Is there forgiveness? As only Ms. Pilcher can do, the story moves along at a pace that one enjoys and she doesn't leave anything out. You really get to know the characters by the time you have read 536 pages in a hardback. Yes, that's what I had and it was a doozy to hold while laying on my side in bed at night to read before going to sleep. I had to prop it up on a pillow.

But it was all worth it. Thank you, Miss Rosamunde for another good companion in my life. It is sitting on my book shelf amongst the other Pilchers. Are they having a family reunion while I am asleep and gossiping about me?

"Isn't she just a darling? She keeps reading our books and saving them for posterity on her shelves. What a jewel. I think she's a keeper too, don't you?"

Since I finished September there wasn't anything for me to do but I had to go to the local Goodwill with my daughter and buy another book to read. Ok, so I bought more than one book but at those prices who can resist? One, which I have yet to finish but which has motivated me to write a "common book", is called A Book of One's Own by Thomas Mallon. The cover got my attention as it looks like wallpaper designed by William Morris long ago. Thomas read many personal diaries written by famous people that have been stored in famous libraries. He shares his insights about  those diaries and what they mean and about the people who wrote them. All very faciscinating. I had to read the book with a fine tipped Sharpie at the ready to underline fabulous lines. Therefore I read it like having a good meal. I chewed every bite slowly and got all the taste out of each morsel. I haven't gotten to dessert yet so I can't quite pat my lips and put down my napkin. Perhaps I will finish digesting all these books at one time and I will feel so full that I will actually not read for a day.

I doubt it.

Another book I bought at that Goodwill was Cordina's Royal Family by Nora Roberts. It's a romance novel and like all romance novels it is about falling in love and usually with someone who really gets under your skin and makes you furious at every turn yet pushes the right love buttons in due time and you can't resist them and yada, yada, yada. This one is woven around someone with amnesia who has to relearn how to be Her Royal Highness all over again. At least she woke up into a filthy rich monarchy!! We don't feel too sad for her. It's a good filler and if you are into romance novels then she has written a multitude of them that will fill your heart. I'm not really sure I will finish this one but I may if I am in the mood. Haha.

Well there you have it.

For now.

Authors: J.J. Marric and Dell Shannon

 

 Hello followers!!! I have been slack on posting the books I have been reading. Why? Can I blame it on the snow I had here in my fair city?

 

No?

 

O.K.

Well I take a picture of the book cover and place it at the top of my post for your enjoyment and I did, I really did, but for some reason my PhotoshopElements is still not behaving. Oh well. Can I blame that on the solar flare that has been causing havoc upon the Earth?

 

No?

 

Well I say yes to blaming the sun's tantrum because I really wanted you to enjoy the old paper jackets on the collection of the old detective/murder books from these two authors. My mother gave me her collection of them in 2011. I am just now reading them. I can't blame that on anything or anyone but myself.

 

J.J. Marric's main character, George Gideon, is Commander of London's Criminal Investigation Department, and solves cases with panache. Perhaps a little methodically slow and that's what the read is as well ... slow but steady. I find they are good fillers between more in depth and involved reading. I really wish you could see the covers. They remind me of the black and white Masterpiece Theatre figures that would pass across one's TV screen mysteriously before Alistair Cooke would quietly tell us from his cozy chair what we were about to see.

 

 My mother had checked off in pencil the books she had read by Marric which were listed on the page before the title "Gideon's Badge". This story took Gideon and his wife across the ocean to a steaming and humid New York. Each of Marric's book titles start with the word "Gideon's _______" and then one word follows. Easy to find or look up.

 

Well I looked him up online and found to my amazement that his real name was John Creasey and he was was born in 1908 and died in 1973 but not before he wrote "more than six hundred novels using twenty-eight different pseudonyms"! He wrote not only in crime but also in science fiction. So if you like his style of writing and his characters then you have a zillion books you can pick up at your local library. My goodness!! When did you ever sleep?

 

Now on to Dell Shannon whose main character is Luis Mendoza who works in homicide for the L.A.P.D. Again, Shannon's books are also slow and plodding but have a bit of humour thrown in from time to time. I looked Dell up too online and to my second amazement found out that the 'he' in my mind was a 'she'. Dell Shannon was really Barbara "Elizabeth" Linnington who was born in 1921 and died in 1988. She was a "prolific American novelist", says Wikipedia, and was "regarded as the "Queen of the Procedurals." She was one of the first women to write 'police procedurals'  — a male-dominated genre of police-story writing."  Well no wonder she had to write as a male!! You go girl!

So if you feel like helping Mendoza or Gideon solve a crime or two then check these copious author's books out.

 

 

A Prisoner of Birth by Jeffrey Archer

Usually I have an image of the front cover of the book I have just read pasted at the top of my comments, but PhotoElements is trying to be troublesome this morning. You will just have to imagine it instead. Picture Jeffrey's name in bold, shiny gold raised letters on top of the cover against a greyish background. Below is the appearance of a pointed, black fence and further near the bottom of the cover is the title in simple, white letters.

This book was a gift to my Dad from me for Christmas. One of the few books/favorite authors I found for him at my Goodwill. He told me that he stayed up one night just to finish it so I knew it would be a good read. Therefore when I was in the process of devouring my mother's all time favorite book, I put it down in order to read this one. I knew my mother's would only simmer on my side table and only get more tantalizing like a good meal, which is always worth anticipating.

A Prisoner of Birth is a story about two young men and how destiny brings them together in a prison cell. Another person is in the cell as well, but he is a strong, quiet presence who becomes the thread that sews these two lives together. Is it destiny? Can one say that a jail cell is one's destiny which turns one's life around from poverty to riches?

But when two of those people in that tiny space begin to transform and could pass for brothers or even each other, then the stage is set. One's release becomes anothers freedom and even the courtroom cannot banish the truth. The truth will make one free and imprison others.

Check this book out of the library or borrow it off someones bookshelf like I did and get ready for a great read. You may be burning the midnight candle with this one so go ahead and get out the book of matches.

THE SHELL SEEKERS by ROSAMUNDE PILCHER

 

Does your father or mother have a favorite book? The one they call "their favorite book" every time they talk about it or pick it off their bookshelf? Well this one is my father's favorite. He just reread it for the umpteenth time so I decided to get my copy off my bookshelf and read it again too just to be on par with my Dad. Then we could talk about it again. One more time.

 

He is now 96 but when he was turning 90 I wrote to Rosamunde Pilcher and told her that my Dad was turning 90 and that she was "his favorite author" in the whole world. Would she consider making his birthday one to remember by autographing one of her books and sending it to me so I could give it to my Dad for his birthday? I would pay of course for it and shipping, etc.

 

Lo and behold I got an email from her son, Robin, who said they would be glad to do just that and they sent an autographed book to me over the sea and never asked for payment. I wanted to fly over the Atlantic and give them both a huge hug. They really made my Dad's birthday, or rather I did through them. It's a group thing. He has his signed copy, with much pride, on his shelf.

 

But of all of Rosamunde Pilcher's books, The Shell Seekers is my Dad's all time favorite.

 

I am not going to tell you what or who are The Shell Seekers. You will have to read the book in order to figure out that mystery. But let's just say that I wouldn't mind having a Shell Seeker in my home.

 

At any rate this book is primarily about Penelope Keeling who has had a very colorful life but it isn't over yet. We get to feel through her eyes and memory what she has lived and loved through. We get to see her three grown children through her thoughts and how different the siblings all are from each other and from Rosamunde as well. Who really "gets her"? We want to be Rosamunde's friend. She is intelligent, giving and highly passionate underneath her simple attire. We want to sit in her tiny but delicious kitchen and eat her homey dishes or sit with her in front of her fire and have a drink and chat. We get to understand what The Shell Seekers means to her and how it has effected her life.

 

My paperback is 582 pages of delight. It is resting once again on my bookshelf among its other Pilcher novels until I reach for it again, thinking of my father, and reading it with him in mind.

 

Next you will hear about my mother's favorite all time book which I am in the joy of reading now. It's thick so hold on to your cup of coffee. It will be a week or two before you see the post about it.