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.

Kingdom of the Golden Dragon by Isabel Allende

 

Don't you love the cover of this book? I received this story on loan from a friend. I wondered if I would like this book because I had previously tried to read two other books by this person, also given to me by the same friend, and I was leary about its' magnetism. But I didn't have to worry long. As I began to read I kept turning the pages and wanted to keep turning the pages. I wanted to sit longer in the morning with my cup of coffee or in the late afternoons with a cup of tea. I wanted to turn the TV off earlier at night so that I could go to my bedroom and read under the warm covers in the quiet of the winter night.

 

Now I will have to go out and find the two other books which go with this tale as they form a trilogy.

 

This is the second book. It is about a grandmother who takes her grandson and eventually a young friend of his as well on a journey to the Kingdom of the Golden Dragon. You learn that there are such things as Yetis and that you can transport yourself, by concentrated meditation, outside your body in order to fly among the wind. Is that really true? I do not know. You will have to make up your own mind. I do know that there are things that have been done as old as time and an open mind allows one to "see". It's a bit scary I think. What do you think?

 

At any rate, you will enter a Forbidden Kingdom in the Himalayas where a King has ruled for centuries and only he and his heir can know how to unlock the Golden Dragon's secrets. Who doesn't like that idea? But there are those who want to take what is not theirs and the Kingdom may find that it is no longer at peace.

 

I think you may like this one.

Standup Guy by STUART WOODS

 

I am a little new to Stuart Woods but my Dad's bookshelf  holds just about all of his books. So when I saw this paperback at my Rite Aid store I bought it for him because I knew he didn't have this one. But before I gave it to him, I decided to read it. Why? Because I had just finished whatever I was reading and needed something to read in bed before I turned the light out.

 

I was not disappointed.

 

The action kept up but it was also not so detailed that I thought I had to figure out the Da Vinci Code before I fell asleep or before a heavy book fell on top of my eyes and startled me back into wakefulness. But that would be a fantasy because I never fall asleep holding a book. That's just not me. And anyway how much harm could a paperback do?

 

So if you like Stuart then you will have someone that could keep the light on for you as you read a Stone Barrington novel. I know once I find a character that I like then it's a good thing.

 



SKETCHES of OLD WARRENTON North Carolina

 

I bought this book in Warrenton, N.C. at a wonderful bookstore on the main street. I was on a "day trip" with my parents and my niece. Since my parents were getting older and could not make the effort for huge trips, we had come up with a plan to take little "day trips" from our home town. It couldn't be more than 45 minutes away.

 

So we drove to Warrenton and walked around on the main street and went into some shops. But mostly we drove around in order to see all the wonderful, old homes. We let our imaginations run wild as to what life had been like and who lived there and we enjoyed fabricating our own history. I took pictures and when they were developed I made copies for my parents and put them in book for them. I included the "diary" I took that day which described our adventure.

When we left Warrenton my father said we should drive home through Wake Forest. Why? Because it would be more rustic and we could then have tea at this nice, little tea shop that mom had been to previously. In that shop were hats which were fun to try on and I bought one for my niece. She looks good in hats.

 

So this book brought me back to that day in my life and I was able to read about its true history. Believe it or not I found a reference to one of my ancestors between its pages. A Blount, of course. He had moved there from Washington in order to "give his children a better education". Warrenton, in its heyday, was known for its schools for boys and girls. Not only did they board there but also the town's children could attend as day students. There was also a horse racing track built outside of town and there was also a health spa down the road. So Warrenton was a hopping place way back when and it is fascinating to read, in this book, about the houses, the people and the institutions. Included were some old pictures of the houses, etc.

 

I really enjoyed the tour. But you would enjoy visiting that town too, I think.