Genny's Books and Stuff, April and beyond

Welcome to thread no. 3 for 2013.



The fortress (chateau fort) of Guise, in Picardy, northern France - where I lived for 6 months in 1982 when I first left home.

I spent those months as a long-term volunteer with the 'Club du Vieux Manoir' which involves young people in the restoration of old buildings and monuments through holiday work-camps. The castle at Guise (original home of the Ducs de Guise, family of Mary Queen of Scots) is one of their permanent sites, with a few volunteers helping to look after it during the winter months as well as hosting work camps in the Easter and summer holidays. It was then in a semi-ruined state, but was gradually being repaired and restored, and had many underground passages that had remained undamaged.

I lived in an outbuilding (poorly heated with a parafin stove) in the dry moat from January to July - and learned, among other things, to chop firewood, to lay bricks, to use an old-fashioned treadle sewing machine to repair old canvas tents, to make mayonnaise for potato salad, to speak fluent French, to conduct guided tours describing medieval fortifications in smatterings of several languages, to make food orders for 100 people, to play games with a half-French, half-Welsh five-year old, and to write amusing letters home to cheer myself up when I felt homesick. It was a formative experience!

More details to follow.

Currently reading:
The Tulip ❖ - Anna Pavord
The Granta Book of the African Short Story - ed Helon Habila
Framley Parsonage - Anthony Trollope
I Call You Friends ❖❖❖ - Timothy Radcliffe

and
War and Peace - Tolstoy

Posting rate:
Total 5,472 = average 2.32 daily on 1.1.2013
Total 5,716 = average 2.40 daily on 31.1.2013
Total 5,882 = average 2.44 daily on 28.2.2013
Total 6,016 = average 2.46 daily on 2.4.2013
Total 6,088 = average 2.46 daily on 3.5.2013

Books read in April

21 Master and Commander ❖ - Patrick O'Brian
22 All Passion Spent ❖❖❦ - Vita Sackville-West
23 The Exploits of Moominpappa ❖ - Tove Jansson
24 Can You Forgive Her? ❖❖❒ - Anthony Trollope
25 Excursion to Tindari ❖ - Andrea Camilleri
26 Less than Angels ❦GR - Barbara Pym
27 The Patience of the Spider - Andrea Camilleri
28 Death in the Stocks ❖ - Georgette Heyer
29 John Diamond ❖❖ - Leon Garfield
30 Things Fall Apart ❖❖ - Chinua Achebe
31 Consider Phlebas ❖❝ - Iain M Banks

Books read in May

32 Cutting for Stone ❖ BG - Abraham Verghese
33 The World According to Bertie
34 Out of the deep I cry - Julia Spencer-Fleming
35 The Tiger in the Well ❖ - Philip Pullman
36 The Tin Princess ❖ - Philip Pullman
37 A Glass of Blessings GR❦ - Barbara Pym
38 A Buyer's Market GR - Anthony Powell
39 Les Miserables ❝❖❖ - Victor Hugo
40 Frenchman's Creek ❖❖ ❦ - Daphne du Maurier

Books read in June
41 Un Lun Dun ❖ - China Miéville
42 No Fond Return of Love ❦GR - Barbara Pym
43 Wednesday's Child ❖❖ - Peter Robinson
44 Quartet in Autumn GR - Barbara Pym
45 Men at Arms ❖❖❖ - Terry Pratchett
46 In Patagonia ❖ - Bruce Chatwin

Books read in July
47 The Song of Achilles ❖BG - Madeline Miller
48 The Acceptance World GR - Anthony Powell
49 Killing Orders ❖❖ - Sara Paretsky
50 My grandmothers and I ❖ - Diana Holman-Hunt
51 Hide and seek - Ian Rankin

Key:
❝ = audiobook
❒ = ebook
❖ = from TBR acquired 2012
❖❖ = from TBR acquired 2011
❖❖❖ = from TBR acquired 2010 or earlier
❦ = Virago Modern Classic
GR = Group Read LT
BG = Book Group real life

Books read so far this year

January

1 The Children of Hurin - J R R Tolkien ❖❖❖
2 The Gift of Rain - Tan Twan Eng ❖ BG
3 Some Tame Gazelle - Barbara Pym ❖❦ GR
4 A question of upbringing - Anthony Powell GR
5 Mortality - Christopher Hitchens ❖ ❒
6 Thirty three teeth - Colin Cotteril ❖
7 Lady Audley's Secret - Mary Elizabeth Braddon ❖ ❒
8 Winter in Madrid - C J Sansom ❖
9 Flight Behaviour - Barbara Kingsolver ❖

February

10 Oath of Gold ❖ – Elizabeth Moon
11 Have His Carcase – Dorothy L Sayers - re-read
12 Disco for the Departed – Colin Cotterill
13 Lords and Ladies ❖ - Terry Pratchett
14 The Expats ❒❖ - Chris Pavone
15 Excellent Women ❦GR - Barbara Pym
16 Lovely Green Eyes ❖❖❖ - Arnost Lustig

March
17 Doctor Thorne ❒GR - Anthony Trollope - re-read
18 Killer Market ❖❖❖ - Margaret Maron
19 Jane and Prudence GR - Barbara Pym
20 Past Reason Hated ❖❖ - Peter Robinson

April summary/analysis
11 books read
Gender: 7 male authors, 4 female
Nationality: 7 British authors, 1 Finnish, 1 Nigerian, 1 Italian (2 books)
New/old: 7 new-to-me authors
ROOTS: 9 (4 of them pre-2012)
Rereads: 0
Series: 8 (5 start of series, 3 continuations)
Format: eBooks 1, audiobooks 1, paper books 9
Publication years:
1864: 1
1931: 1
1935: 1
1955: 1
1958: 1
1963: 1
1970: 1
1980: 1
1987: 1
2000: 1
2004: 1

March summary/analysis
4 books read
Gender: 2 male authors, 2 female
Nationality: 3 British authors, 1 American
New/old: 0 new-to-me authors
ROOTS: 2 (both pre-2012)
Rereads: 1
Series: 3 (3 continuations)
Format: eBooks 1, paper books 3
Publication years:
1858: 1
1953: 1
1990: 1
1997: 1

February summary/analysis
7 books read
Gender: 4 male authors, 3 female
Nationality: 4 British authors, 2 American, 1 Czech
New/old: 2 new-to-me authors
ROOTS: 4 (one of them pre-2012)
Rereads: 1
Series: 4 (one end of series, 3 continuations)
Format: eBooks 1, paper books 6
Publication years:
1932: 1
1952: 1
1989: 1
1992: 1
2000: 1
2006: 1
2012: 1

January summary/analysis

9 books read
Gender: 6 male authors, 3 female
Nationality: 7 British authors, 1 American (or did Hitchens take up US citizenship, in which case 6 & 2), 1 Malaysian/ol
New/old: 4 new to me authors
ROOTS: 8 (one of them pre-2012)
Rereads: 0
Series: 2 (one 1st in series, one continuation)
Format: eBooks 2, paper books 7
Publication years:
1862: 1
1950: 1
1951: 1
2005: 1
2006: 1
2007: 2
2012: 2

Books acquired in 2013

January
Gifts:
1 A Dance to the Music of Time: Spring - Reading: Read 1.5 of 3
✔2 Disco for the Departed
✔3 The Patience of the Spider
4 Spell it Out
5 Troublesome Words
6 The Pinecone
7 A Discovery of Witches
Purchase/swap
✔8 Have His Carcase
9 Jingo
Gift
10 The Balkan Trilogy

February
✔11 Excellent Women
12 Pompeii
13 A History of Tractors in the Ukrainian
14 Right Ho, Jeeves
✔15 Jane and Prudence
16 A Trick of the Light
✔17 Out of the Deep I Cry
18 A Dance to the Music of Time: second movement
19 A Dance to the Music of Time: fourth movement
20 Collected Poems: McGough
21 South Riding (VMC)
22 Bertie Plays the Blues
23 Montaillou

March
24 Nature's Engraver
25 Island: The Complete Stories
26 The Song of the Lark (VMC)
27 The Blackhouse
28 Evil for Evil
29 The Escapement
30 Dream Angus

April
31 Catalina's Riddle - Steven Saylor
32 Storm Track - Margaret Maron
33 He Who Fears the Wolf - Karin Fossum
34 When the Devil Holds the Candle - Karin Fossum
35 The Well of Lost Plots - Jasper Fforde
36 The Charming Quirks of Others - Alexander McCall Smith
37 The Lost Art of Gratitude - Alexander McCall Smith
38 Letters from Egypt - Lucy Duff Gordon
39 The Fire-Dwellers - Margaret Laurence
40 Without My Cloak - Kate O'Brien
41 The Pastor's Wife - Elizabeth von Arnim
42 Madame de Treymes - Edith Wharton
✔43 Less Than Angels - Barbara Pym
44 Midnight is a Place - Joan Aiken
45 Call the Midwife - Jennifer Worth
46 In Xanadu: a quest - William Dalrymple

Ebooks
January
i The Granta Book of the African Short Story - Reading
ii 1227 QI Facts
iii Mountains of the Mind
iv The Wild Places
Les Miserables (duplicate to compare with Audiobook)
v A History of 20th Century Britain
vi Capital - John Lanchester
vii A Winter Book – Tove Jansson
February
✔ix The Palliser Novels - Read 1 of 6

Books I'd like to read in 2013

Here is a list (work in progress) of some of those books which I want to bring nearer to the top of my TBR pile (or even acquire copies if I don't yet have them). This is in addition to the books listed in the next post which I acquired in 2012, presumably because I want to read them at some point!

A complete read/re-read of Barbara Pym novels (VMC group read) - Progress: 4 books read so far
A Dance to the Music of Time sequence of 12 novels by Anthony Powell (group read) - Progess: 1 completed, 1 nearly completed
Start reading Iain M Banks' sci fi novels, of which I have the first few as audiobooks - Progess: listened to 1
Re-read The Silmarillion and some more reading around Tolkien

Books acquired in 2012 and not yet read
✔ = I have now read this
Priorities are marked in bold

The Yellow Wallpaper - Charlotte Perkins Gilman (VMC)
Strip Jack - Ian Rankin
In Patagonia - Bruce Chatwin
George beneath a paper moon - Nina Bawden
Herland - Charlotte Perkins Gilman
Respected Sir - Naguib Mahfouz
Spiderweb - Penelope Lively
✔Lords and Ladies - Terry Pratchett
Cutting for Stone - Abraham Verghese - Reading
Olivia by Olivia=Dorothy Strachey (VMC)
Every man in this village is a liar - Megan Stack
Orgy Planner wanted - Vicky Leon
The lake of dreams - Kim Edwards -
Honey from a weed - Patience Gray
Half of a yellow sun - Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
✔Winter in Madrid - C J Sansom
We - Zamyatin
Something Rotten - Fforde
The holiday - Stevie Smith
The Jewel in the crown - Paul Scott
Eco-theology - ed Wainwright
Hearts undefeated: women's writing of the Second World War - ed Hartley
The sweet dove died - Barbara Pym
The vet's daughter - Barbara Comyns - VMC
Burger's daughter - Nadine Gordimer
The crowded street - Winifred Holtby
The Tulip - Anna Pavord - Reading
A fine of two hundred francs - Elsa Triolet - VMC
Calabrian quest - Geoffrey Trease
✔Oath of Gold - Elizabeth Moon - from Amazon Marketplace
To darkness and to death - Julia Spencer-Fleming - from Bookmooch
Un Lun Dun – China Miéville
No wind of blame – Georgette Heyer
They found him dead - Georgette Heyer
Slowly down the Ganges – Eric Newby
Duplicate death – Georgette Heyer
The unfinished clue – Georgette Heyer
✔Death in the stocks – Georgette Heyer
Red, white and drunk all over – Natalie MacLean started
Tell me a riddle & Yonnondio – Tillie Olsen (VMC)
The house in Clewe Street – Mary Lavin (VMC)
The rock cried out – Ellen Douglas (VMC)
A pin to see the peepshow – F Tennyson Jesse (VMC)
Troy Chimneys – Margaret Kennedy (VMC)
My career goes bung – Miles Franklin (VMC)
Blue skies & Jack and Jill – Helen Hodgman (VMC)
At the still point – Mary Benson (VMC)
Apparition & Late fictions : a novella and stories - Thomas Lynch
Walking papers : poems - Thomas Lynch
The lion's world: a journey into the heart of Narnia - Rowan Williams
The importance of being seven - A McCall Smith
The Song of Achilles - Madeline Miller
The blotting book - E F Benson
On the black hill - Bruce Chatwin
The quiet gentleman - Georgette Heyer
Cold Earth - Sarah Moss
The track of sand - Andrea Camilleri
All the names - José Saramago
The broken bridge - Philip Pulman
The long song - Andrea Levy
The great fire - Shirley Hazzard
Broken music: a memoir - Sting
The adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
✔Excursion to Tindari - Andrea Camilleri
Alice in Sunderland - Bryan Talbot
Gossip from Thrush Green - Miss Read
Cliffs of Fall - Shirley Hazzard
Acorna's Children: second wave - Anne McCaffrey & Elizabeth Ann Scarborough
Touching my Father's Soul - Jamling Tenzing Norgay
Van Rijn Sarah Miano
The black book - Ian Rankin
Espedair Street - Iain Banks
Excession - Iain M. Banks
How to be a woman - Caitlin Moran
The comfort of Saturdays - Alexander McCall Smith
Black Powder War - Naomi Novik
The Tiger in the Well - Philip Pullman
The Tin Princess - Philip Pullman
The Right Attitude to Rain - Alexander McCall Smith
Mad Puppetstown - M J Farrell
✔Thirty-three Teeth - Colin Cotterill
The Kappillan of Malta - Nicholas Monsarrat
Absolution by Murder - Peter Tremayne
Queens' Play - Dorothy Dunnett
Pawn in Frankincense - Dorothy Dunnett
Niccolo Rising - Dorothy Dunnett
Mortimer's Bread Bin - Joan Aiken
The Historian - Elizabeth Kostova
✔Master and Commander - Patrick O'Brien
Post Captain - Patrick O'Brien
Juggling - Barbara Trapido
Guy Mannering - Walter Scott
The Exploits of Moominpappa - Tove Jansson
Astercote - Penelope Lively
The Wild Hunt of Hagworthy - Penelope Lively
Going Back - Penelope Lively
Paradise Lost - Milton (audiobook)
✔ The Gift of Rain - Tan Twan Eng
The Christmas Angel - Marcia Willett - audiobook
Piece of my heart - Peter Robinson
Christmas at Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
My Grandmothers and I - Diana Holman-Hunt
High Rising - Angela Thirkell
The Winged Horse - Pamela Frankau
Love - Elizabeth von Arnim
✔Flight Behaviour - Barbara Kingsolver
✔ Some Tame Gazelle - Barbara Pym
Ebooks:
✔Lady Audley's Secret - Mary Elizabeth Braddon - free
Mayu : the life of a Finnish woman - Shahzad Rizvi - free
South: the story of Shackleton's 1914-17 expedition - Ernest Shackleton
Dominion - C J Sansom
Dracula - Bram Stoker
La Tulipe Noire - Alexandre Dumas
✔The Expats - Chris Pavone
The Lewis Man - Peter May
Gone to Earth - Mary Webb
The Sunne in Splendour Sharon Kay Penman
The Snow Child - Eowyn Ivey
✔ Mortality - Christopher Hitchens
The Red Pyramid - Rick Riordan
A long way down - Nick Hornby
Artemis Fowl - Eoin Colfer

Reading goals/categories for 2013

I am not keeping a separate thread going in the 2013 challenge, and I may not pay much attention to these during the year if last year is anything to go by, but I would like to set myself some goals at the start of this year.

I'm going for 13 categories, in a stepped form, reading one book in the first category up to 13 in the last. This step structure makes a total of 91 books, which is nearly my total for last year. But I will allow books to be in more than one category, so that gives me a little more flexibility.

I'm going to list possible books under each category if I already have them in mind.

Category 1 - Graphic Novels

1

Possible:
Alice in Sunderland

Category 2 - Foreign Language

1
2

Possibles:
Le Grand Meulnes

Category 3 - Poetry

1
2
3

Possibles:
Walking Papers
Paradise Lost
Shakespeare's Sonnets (in progress)

Category 4 - Folio editions

1
2
3
4

Possibles:
A Time of Gifts

Category 5 - Theology

1
2
3
4
5

Possibles:
An Altar in the World
Theology: a very short introduction

Category 6 - Sci-Fi

1 Consider Phlebas
2
3
4
5
6

Possibles:
Player of Games
Use of Weapons

Category 7 - Re-reads

1 Have His Carcase
2 Doctor Thorne
3
4
5
6
7

Possibles:
The Silmarillion

Category 8 - Audio-books

1 Consider Phlebas
2
3
4
5
6
7
8

Possibles:
Les Miserables

Category 9 - Non-fiction

1 Mortality
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9

Possibles:
The Hare with Amber Eyes
The Tulip - Reading

Category 10 Global reads (not UK, US or Scandi-crime)

1 The Gift of Rain
2 Lovely Green Eyes
3 Things Fall Apart
4
5
6
7
8
9
10

Possibles:
Half of a Yellow Sun

Category 11 - Prize nominees (Orange/Booker/Nobel etc)

1 Flight Behaviour - Orange shortlist
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11

Possibles:
The Song of Achilles

Category 12 - Big Books (over 500 pages)

1 Winter in Madrid
2 Oath of Gold
3 Can You Forgive Her
4 Doctor Thorne
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12

Possibles:
The Jewel in the Crown
The Mists of Avalon
A Feast for Crows
Kristin Lavransdatter
The Forgotten Garden
They Were Counted
Stone's Fall
The Kappillan of Malta
Intervention

Category 13 - Virago Modern Classics (and Persephones)

1 Some Tame Gazelle
2 Excellent Women
3 Jane and Prudence
4 All Passion Spent
5 Less Than Angels
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13

Possibles:
The Corner that Held Them
Frost in May
Precious Bane

Cataloguing progress

A place to note how many books, other than new acquisitions, I manage to get round to cataloguing. Probably at least 3/4 of my library still to go.

After slow progress in Jan-March, in April I finally made some headway: deciding to concentrate on getting all the books added to the catalogue with minimal details, so that I can complete it before I have to pack away most of my library for the coming year.

So in April, including new acquisitions, I catalogued:
383 books (mainly from my Theology collection)
This was over 3 times more than I'd ever managed in one month before, and about 5-10 times more than the average in the past. I hope to keep this up during May.

TIOLI plans for April
and progress with them.
✔ = READ

Challenge 1 - ABC 123 order
I call you friends - Timothy Radcliffe - Reading
Challenge 2 - Book by Chinua Achebe
✔ Things fall apart
Challenge 3 - embedded word in single title word
✔ Can you forgive her? - Anthony Trollope
✔ Consider Phlebas - Iain M Banks
Cutting for stone - Abraham Verghese
✔ The exploits of Moominpappa - Tove Jansson
✔ Less than angels - Barbara Pym
The Tulip - Anna Pavord - Reading
Challenge 4 - Two or more people on the cover
Burmese Days - George Orwell
✔ Death in the Stocks - Georgette Heyer
Challenge 8 - Religious oppression
The Red Tent - Anita Diamant
Challenge 9 - 4 syllable word on 13th page
✔ Excursion to Tindari - Andrea Camilleri
✔ The Patience of the Spider - Andrea Camilleri
✔ Master and Commander - Patrick O'Brian
Challenge 10 - Double letters in title and author
✔ All Passion Spent - Vita Sackville-West
Challenge 18 - gemstone title
✔ John Diamond - Leon Garfield

11 out of 16 - not bad!

May TIOLI plans so far: I've concentrated on fitting in the books I am currently reading, or started reading in the past couple of months but have not completed.

Challenge 5 - a book you should already have read
The Tulip Anna Pavord - I started this one back in March when I was last visiting Birmingham, and really should have finished it by now!
Challenge 8 - a book with life or death in the title
The Life and Death of Mary Wollstonecraft - Claire Tomalin (I was reading this 18 months ago but mislaid it, time to resume)
Challenge 10 - a book with a participle in the title
✔ Cutting for Stone - Abraham Verghese - reading this for my book club which is due to meet on Tuesday evening
Challenge 14 - author with the letters M-A-Y in name
I Call You Friends - Timothy Radcliffe - started this in April, currently half way through
Challenge 15 - a book originally published in volumes or one volume of a larger work
A Buyer's Market and The Acceptance World - Anthony Powell (= vols 2 & 3 of A Dance to the Music of Time (I've almost finished the former, but am very behind on the group read who are up to vol 5 this month.)
Challenge 17 - a lesser known book by a well-known author
Inside the Whale and other Essays - George Orwell (another non-fiction which I started earlier and need to finish)

I am already liking this follow-up thread!

Hi Genny, safe travels and good times!

Oh rats. I missed the party!

Thanks Connie and Richard. Nearly finished packing now - time to unplug the laptop.

Jim, you are welcome to carry on partying over here on the new thread! I may have to leave you to it for a while though...

A toast to your new thread, Genny! I knew you wouldn't be able to leave without setting it up.

I missed the party, too! But I'm here to wish you a lovely hiatus from work. The last few weeks will go quickly before you begin the next phase of your life, Genny. I wish you all the best.

Enjoy your time away, Genny. We'll keep your thread warm while you're gone. :-)

Happy new thread Ginny! Enjoy your time away!

Hi, Genny! Sorry I missed the party. Safe travels and have a good time away. Best wishes on the upcoming transition. You'll be in my prayers.

Happy new thread Genny! I hope you are going to have a great few days away!

Love love love your set up of the new thread. Plus the story of your youthful summer experience. Superbe!

Briefly checking in to make sure I don't lose you again! Have a great break!

Checking in briefly on my phone to say thank you to all visitors to my new thread and for your good wishes for my post-Easter break.

I'm having a lovely relaxing time, getting up late, going for walks with Ty (on the beach today in sunshine and bitter wind), exploring the town of Alnwick a bit yesterday, and today visiting Warkworth castle, then returning to spend the later afternoon and evening reading (and cooking nice meals).

I've finished three books in the 48 hours I've been here. Master and Commander I was 2/3 through already in March. I enjoyed it, but found it quite slow, dense reading (a little like Dunnett, perhaps for similar reasons). Then I read All Passion Spent very quickly, and loved it. And over dinner tonight, a quick, delightful read of a Moomin book which escaped me in childhood: The Exploits of Moominpappa - Moomintroll's father's slightly-embroidered memoirs.

Where I am staying is in easy walking distance of Barter Books, one of the largest second hand bookshops in England. So far I've paid one quick reconnoitering visit, purchasing only one book. But I'm sure that will not be my only visit while I'm here...

Glad you are having such a relaxing time, Genny! And close to "one of the largest second hand bookshops in England"? Heaven on earth!

Sounds like you are relaxing wonderfully, Genny. I heartily approve your decision to case the joint — er, I mean check out the bookstore — before going back to sack and pillage — er, I mean make some purchases.

Oh, what a lovely time you're having! Jealous, but happy for you!

You seem to enjoy every moment, Genny. That's the way to do it.

Thanks Roni, Julia, Amber and Connie.

I went back to Barter Books yesterday and came away with 15 books! Ty came with me - they welcome dogs there, and even provide a supply of dog biscuits for them. Ty got lots of admiration and made lots of new friends while I was browsing the bookshelves. He's very good at standing still patiently...

Genny, I mentioned you on Facebook to show you a video link about Barter Books. Have fun, and please list the new titles!

I love shops that welcome dogs!

I agree with Laura - dog-friendly shops are excellent, and I certainly wish there were a used bookshop with that policy (or, heck, just a used bookshop) round these parts.

Where I am staying is in easy walking distance of Barter Books, one of the largest second hand bookshops in England.

Oooh! What temptation!

I went back to Barter Books yesterday and came away with 15 books! Ty came with me - they welcome dogs there, and even provide a supply of dog biscuits for them. Ty got lots of admiration and made lots of new friends while I was browsing the bookshelves. He's very good at standing still patiently...

Sounds like a lovely store! Can't wait to see what books you got -- I hope you list them when you get a chance! (And sounds like you've got a well-behaved dog)

I'm just adding my praise for the new thread, happiness that you're having a good break, and hope that you'll list your new books!!! It all sounds very, very good!

#1 You lived in a castle?!? Well, sort of. What an amazing experience :-)

#29 A dog-friendly bookshop sounds lovely. Like everyone else, I'm waiting to hear which books you came away with.

Enjoy the rest of your holiday.

Warkworth is a fabulous castle in a nice corner of the world. We managed to catch it on a beautiful day so I've loads of pics of empty windows with blue sky beyond. I will studiously ignore mentions of bookshops - no one here needs any encouragement in that department.

Glad you loved All Passion Spent - I think it's in my (rather longer than) top ten women's fiction.

Also v. glad you are having a nice respite.

Sorry for lack of updates on here - this is my last week at work, and I'm busy trying to tie up all the loose ends, and say farewells.

I hope to attend to my thread and visit others more after this coming weekend...

Dear Genny, I know that this is more than bittersweet. Take care of yourself and enjoy the good spots. We'll be glad when you get back to us here.

#39 Exactly what Peggy said.

Exactly what Peggy and Heather said!

Yes, have a lovely last week at work Genny! Also, have wishlisted All Passion Spent and will shortly go and Google Barter Books, with a view to mounting an expedition at some point in the future!

Just echoing what others are saying. . . best wishes to you, Genny!

Genny, I hope your last week has gone well for you. Peggy said it well. See you soon.

Genny, I really hope you are doing allright and your saying farewell is not to emotional. See you soon.

I'm thinking of you as you make this huge transition in life. Change is difficult but it has rewards in the end. Wishing you strength and peace as you enter this new phase in your life, Genny.

Final day is over. A long morning, (almost) too busy and full to get emotional, and then a lovely lunch and cake:

That is a lovely cake!

I hope you get some time to handle all the emotions, Genny.

#47 What a lovely cake (and I like the size of that slice). Thinking of you.

Also thinking of you, Genny!

Very pretty. I am especially thinking of you today because I finished one of the Virago Secret Santa's you sent me...... it seems long ago..... but really two years? A Rosamund Lehmann. At least, I assume you did, because your card fell out of it while I was reading it!

Well, finally some time to sit down and catch up with my own thread!

Yesterday, the first day after my final day at work, I had deliberately planned to be out away from the house. So I went out for a few hours with a friend to walk the dogs and visit a garden centre and have lunch. And after several phone calls to family and friend, later that evening I was out again with other friends, driving up into the hills of Northumberland in search of clear night skies (away from the light-pollution of the city) in hopes of seeing the Lyrid meteor shower which was meant to be peaking last night/early this morning. Unfortunately it was rather cloudy; we did manage to see quite a few stars, but only one possible shooting star (well, it seemed to be gradually falling, unless that was the cloud cover rising to obscure it). Still, it was fun to be out at night sitting in a field hearing all the night sounds and paying attention to what was around us and above us.

Today I've made a good start on what will be my new daily routine, a mix of practical tasks like sorting out the garden, tidying and de-cluttering the house, burning CDs onto my computer, catching up on personal emails etc - and cataloguing my books! I'm trying to do an hour or so of each of these tasks a day, so that I can gradually whittle away at them, rather than be overwhelmed by the huge size of any one task. It's working well so far, though I may have overdone it in the garden: I can feel that I am going to be stiff tomorrow.

As for cataloguing, I realised that I would have to change my approach if I am ever to get my whole collection onto LT. So I am going for a very minimal approach, just trying to get title, author and correct edition/isbn, and not worry about any of the details like physical dimensions, 'where from', date acquired, scanning the cover image or anything else. By using the LT barcode scanner app on my phone, I have found that I can work through a pile of books pretty quickly, without even having to carry them to the desk where my computer is, and so I seem to be able to input about 30-40 books in an hour, instead of taking about 15 minutes per book which I normally do. I'm putting them all into a collection called 'Needs Work' so that I can go back and add more detail one day, perhaps! So far this month, using the new speedy approach, I have already catalogued over 200 books, and I hope to be adding 40 or so per day for the next few weeks. I'd like to get everything added before I have to start packing them all into boxes.

As requested by several of you further up, here at last is a list of the books I acquired in Barter Books while I was on holiday in Alnwick:

They were nearly all continuations of series I am reading, or Virago Modern Classics - there were plenty of others I was sorely tempted by...

Catalina's Riddle - Steven Saylor
Storm Track - Margaret Maron
He Who Fears the Wolf - Karin Fossum
When the Devil Holds the Candle - Karin Fossum
The Well of Lost Plots - Jasper Fforde
Something Rotten - Jasper Fforde (turns out this was a duplicate - I thought LT was meant to prevent me buying duplicates by mistake!)
The Charming Quirks of Others - Alexander McCall Smith
The Lost Art of Gratitude - Alexander McCall Smith
Letters from Egypt - Lucy Duff Gordon
The Fire-Dwellers - Margaret Laurence
Without My Cloak - Kate O'Brien
The Pastor's Wife - Elizabeth von Arnim
Madame de Treymes - Edith Wharton
Less Than Angels - Barbara Pym
Midnight is a Place - Joan Aiken
Call the Midwife - Jennifer Worth

and (not from Barter Books but for 50p from a charity shop in Alnwick)

In Xanadu: a quest - William Dalrymple

I was particularly pleased to find a copy of Less Than Angels just in time for this month's group read with the VMC group. And glad too to find a couple of other VMCs by authors I have not yet tried: Margaret Laurence and Kate O'Brien. As for Call the Midwife, there is a connection between this book and the community where I am probably going to be living for the next year, so I'm pleased to have a copy (I've seen the TV adaptation, but not yet read the book).

What a brilliant approach to cataloging, Genny. I like the idea of a "Needs Work" collection. You can still have that wonderful sense of accomplishment while pacifying your inner perfectionist.
(this from someone who is also fond of those dimension and "from where" fields ...)

*waving* at Genny

I hope your transition is going well!

Sounds like a great plan both for your first day "after" and your cataloguing, Genny.

That a good plan, Genny. Make sure you plan some time for reading!

You are smart, Genny! Hooray for having time to get things done and taking the things at a reasonable speed!
Connie is right though. Do take some time to read some of those wonderful books you listed. You are in for such a treat (well, two rather different treats) with Kate O'Brien and Margaret Laurence. My advice is to plan some time for breathing!

Just dropping by to say hello. Hope everything goes well with new phase of your life.

Very good idea, the 'Needs Work' - I put in hundreds of books as I packed boxes to move three years ago - and virtually all of them could use some work.... I can sort of tell if they are from that era by the entry date, and every once in a while I do go back and mess around with them. I am finding that the best thing about LT (for me) is being able to put in comments of various kinds. Mainly for my own use.

Genny - Yours is a thread that I have read every word of since my return and I wish I had not been so preoccupied so as to be able to proffer my best wishes to you at a more appropriate juncture.

You have made so many friends here and your warmth, wisdom and goodness are certainly treasures in these tropical climes. I do hope sincerely that Birmingham or wherever you choose to spend your hiatus is kind and rewarding to you dear lady.
You would be a welcome visitor in Kuala Lumpur anyday and I am sure that we could host you happily for a few days!

Have a lovely albeit probably wistful weekend in Northumbria - I really do wish we had been able to meet up over there a few weeks ago!

Just stopping by to say hello, Genny. Best wishes to you!

That was a lovely cake with lovely sentiments.

I love your book haul! I've read both the Fossum titles. That's a good series.

Nice haul indeed, Genny, and interested particularly to hear about your opinion of In Xanadu: A Quest.

Adding my good wishes to you as you transition to a new phase in your life.

I am impressed with the book cataloging you are doing. It must be lovely to have some time to spend on tasks like that.

High time I replied to some messages...

In reverse order -

#64 Thank you for the good wishes, Diana. The book cataloguing is a necessary task as part of sorting out my stuff prior to packing and moving - it's good to have a reason to make it a priority at last.

#63 It may be a while before I get to In Xanadu, Richard, but I'll try to remember to report back when I do! Have you read that one?

#62 Terri, thanks for calling by. The cake was lovely indeed, and very tasty. I'm looking forward to reading more of the Fossum series, I've only read the first one so far.

#61 Paul I am most honoured that you bother to read every word - you've had a lot of catching up to do since your trip! Good wishes are welcome at any juncture - my process of stepping down, sorting out, packing up and moving on is going to be quite long and drawn out... And thank you for your kind words and your offer of a place to stay in KL - I don't know when I'll be able to travel as far as that, but hopefully one day!

Good to hear from you, Genny. We've been wondering how you were doing!

Thanks Roni! I'm ok, I'm just distracted by lots of new stuff at present. I'm current staying for a week down in Birmingham, in the community where I am hoping to come and live. This is to give me a chance to get a better feel for the place than I managed in my previous 24-hour visit, before I finally decide if this is the right thing. I've been given a chance to find out what is entailed in some of the light duties that I would share in, but they have not been working me too hard and have given me lots of space just to rest and do what I please - which is what I really needed, as I think I overdid it a bit last week in my first week following my 'retirement'. As well as a certain amount of sorting out, cataloguing books, 'ripping' CDs onto the computer and general tidying up, I had lots of invitations to lunch, and also a long drive last Thursday to see my mother, my stepfather and his brother who were staying in the Scottish Borders en route from the Isle of Wight to Orkney on holiday. So I drove for 2 hours, spent 2 hours with them having dinner (this was after already having a substantial lunch out with a friend!) and then had the 2 hour drive back again. That was a rather tiring day - but it was a good opportunity to see Mum as it is a much shorter drive than it would have been all the way down to the Isle of Wight!

Anyway, I've been here since Monday, travelled in this instance by coach since it was 1/4 of the price of the train, and I'm having to be more budget-conscious as my income will soon be dropping quite a bit. I have previously avoided coach travel because it is so much slower than the train, and I can't read without feeling ill. However, I realised that I would be able to listen to audio-books instead - so I spent the 6 hour journey listening to Consider Phlebas by Iain M Banks. Except I kept drifting off and falling asleep and having to rewind when I woke up!

#60 Lucy, had a much longer name for the collection at first, something like 'Minimal Entry - Needs Further Work' - but that made the column in the Your Books page too wide and I realised that it could be a lot shorter and not so explicit as it is just for my information. It will be useful to have all these books grouped this way. The main information I would like to add later is date and place of acquisition where I can remember these - in some cases this is written inside the book, but I could not slow down to make a note of these at this point. The new 'fuzzy' dates options will be helpful: it will be possible just to put a year, or year and month, if I don't know more precisely when they were acquired. I use the private comments field among other things for recording the price. Then if I wish (I probably don't) I could work out exactly how much I have spent on books from year to year...

#59 Hello to you too, Rhian! Thanks for dropping by and for your good wishes. I must get back to your thread soon and see what is going on in your life too...

#58 The speed is of necessity rather slow, Peggy, given my energy levels - so I'm glad I have a couple of months at least to get the house sorted out. But I am also doing some reading - I certainly read more in April than I did in March. And once I am moved and settled, the coming year is all about having a breathing space, so I am looking forward to that very much.

#57 Connie, I certainly won't leave off the reading, indeed I hope to be able to read a bit more. I've read some good books in April already.

#56 The plan is a good one Roni - I just need to stick to it reasonably well. It's amazing how quickly a week or a month can pass by, and I do need to be whittling away at the tasks bit by bit.

#55 Stasia, it's just like old times seeing you wave as you drop by! The transition is indeed going well, one bit at a time...

# 54 Exactly, Laura, the inner perfectionist can look forward to happy hours tinkering with the entries in the future, but at least this way I will end up knowing how many and what books I have when they get put into boxes (I may even be able to calculate fairly accurately how many book boxes I will need for my packing).

#51 I'm glad you got a chance to read the Lehmann, Lucy. I remember sending it - it was a Virago group duplicates one rather than a Secret Santa gift, I think - but sent around Christmas time so effectively another Santa gift. I like keeping cards from senders inside the books they sent, too.

#50 Roni, thanks for keeping an eye on me and my thread so faithfully while I've been rather absent!

#49 The cake had to go round a lot of people, so it needed to be large. I did manage to sneak one of the cupcakes to take home with me for later on though. Thanks for your thoughts, Heather.

#48 Thanks Connie, the emotions were certainly rather stirred up on my last Sunday. It was actually a very happy occasion in many ways, a good atmosphere. But it was hard saying goodbye to people, and perhaps the more so because I am not moving away directly and will probably see many people round about in the community over the next couple of months - so it was 'goodbye officially but I'll probably see you again before I go ...'.

#46 Donna, thanks for your good wishes. The next few months will be a strange time of upheaval, but I am looking forward to the new stage that lies beyond that once I am settled in my new situation.

#45 Connie, you are very kind to visit and keep an eye on how I'm doing - thank you!

#44 Laura, I can't believe that last week was already two weeks ago - time is whizzing by. I thought I would find more time for posting on here as soon as I had finished, but I think I had underestimated how tired I was as well as being distracted by my new set of practical tasks.

#43 Terri, thanks again for visiting and for your good wishes.

#42 Hannah, I'm pretty sure you will enjoy All Passion Spent - I thought it was a lovely book, with a wonderful and surprising elderly woman as the main character. And you really must visit Barter Books if you are ever in the North East - it is not to be missed!

Here's a snap I took that shows the little model train which runs around on top of the bookstacks - a permanent reminder (if the architecture was not enough) that the building used to be the train station for Alnwick):


#39, 40, 41 Thank you Peggy (and Heather and Roni echoing you). I was checking in every day to see if there were new posts on my thread, I just didn't really have the energy to write anything myself, but it is always cheering to see that people have been thinking of me...

Glad to see you here, Genny! And glad again that you have some sort of intercalary days before you have to decide what happens next. Take care!!!

#37 Lucy, I remembered that you spoke very highly of All Passion Spent. I've had a look at the 13 books in your top ten women's fiction collection: apart from this one, I've read three of the others: Mansfield Park, Mill on the Floss and Frost in May - have heard of most of the other authors and read something by most of them, but there are others that are quite new to me (Nancy Clark, Ann Beattie). Hooray, more new books to look out for!

#36 Warkworth is certainly a stunning castle - it's in a great location and the distant views from the road as you approach the town are very good. But close up too it's good and the keep is in good repair so there is lots to visit. I managed a few pictures like yours with blue sky through the stone window frames - until it clouded over.

Here are a couple of the better photos:

A view of the keep, and from one of the keep windows guarding the mouth of the river Coquet and looking out to the sea.

And if anyone wants to see more of the delights of the North East (castles, beaches, and Barter Books) you are welcome to have a look at my album on Google+.

#35 Yes Heather, going back to your reference to my post at the top of this thread: living in a castle was quite an experience! (Castles seem to be a recurring theme in my threads, what with living currently in an area with so many of them too.) I used to get funny looks when I said I lived in the moat - people forget that some moats are dry moats not full of water. But it was bitterly cold even if it was not wet - no heating apart from the above-mentioned paraffin stove, which did not work properly and seemed to emit fumes rather than heat. There was no hot water, so washing was a chilly affair; once a week I was allowed to go up to the Director's house to use their hot water to wash my hair. But living among so much history and helping to bring it to life for visitors was fascinating.

The last of my unanswered messages:

#30-34 - Richard, Laura, Amber, Terri and Peggy - re Barter Books, see the photo in post 70 above (which scarcely does justice to the vastness of the place however). And if you want to see more pics of that and other places I visited last month on my post-Easter break, do have a look at the link in post 71 to my online album on Google+.

But here's one more from the album - Ty in his smart coat (the wind was still very, very cold although the sun was at last shining) on the beach at Alnmouth:

I've been updating my monthly summaries & reading statistics (because that's easier to do than writing reviews!). The full monthly breakdown can be seen up in Post 4, but here's a summary of the first quarter of the year:

Reading stats Jan-March 2013

Number of books read: 20
Fiction/Non-fiction: 19/1
Re-reads: 2
Part of series or sequels: 9 (1 start of series, 1 end of series)

Genres
Crime/Mysteries: 7 of which
-‘Golden Age’ mysteries: 1
-Contemporary crime: 5
-Historical mysteries: 1
20th century classics (including VMCs): 4
General and literary fiction: 3
Fantasy: 3
19th century classics: 2
Biography/memoir: 1
(Other genres: SciFi/distopian, Children’s/YA, Humour, Historical fiction, Religion/spirituality, Poetry, Travel/food, Language,
Politics - 0)
Publication years:
19th century: 2
1930s: 1
1950s: 4
1980s: 1
1990s: 3
2000s: 6
2010s: 3

Authors
Total different authors read: 17 - of whom living: 9, dead: 8
New-to-me authors: 6
Books by Male/Female authors: 12M (11 different authors) 8F (6 different authors)
Books acc. to nationalities of authors: UK 14; US 4; Malaysian 1; Czech 1
Authors by whom I read more than 1 book:
Barbara Pym (3); Colin Cotteril (2)

Source and format of books:
Own books - all 20 (no library books or loans) of which
4 Gifts; 1 bought new; 11 bought used; 2 bargain e-books; 2 free e-books
ROOTS (books acquired pre-2013): 14 (4 of them pre-2012)
Format: 4 e-books; the rest paper books
Online/face-to-face acquisition: 12 from online sources, 8 direct from physical bookshops/people

Genny - Nice to see you back and posting. I trust your transition will go well and that Birmingham will prove to be all that you desire it to be.
Wonderful photos of Ty, Warkworth and the wonderful bookshop the latter of which, given my known predilictions had my salivating.

Have a lovely weekend. x

The Northumbria coast is one of my favourite places but we have't been since J was little.

#71 Thanks Peggy! 'Intercalary' is a good word.

#75 Paul, I shall indeed have a good weekend. Having a 'weekend' at all has been an unfamiliar experience for many years. I'm planning a trip into B'ham city centre this afternoon to explore a bit - it seems to have been substantially re-built since I last lived here!

#76 Rhian, you must rectify that with another visit soon! Excellent location for a holiday for both children and dogs. I hope to make the most of it in my remaining time, energy levels permitting.

Book details and hopefully some reviews follow, for the books read in March and April.


17 Doctor Thorne - Anthony Trollope ❒GR ❖❖❖

From: own shelf since c 2004
Finished: 16th March
Format: I read this as an e-book on my smartphone Kindle app, rather than read the lovely but heavy Folio edition
Source: Kindle store for the e-book, Folio Society subscription for the Folio ed.
OPD: 1858
Genre: 19th century classic
Series: Barchester Chronicles 3/6
Re-read: Yes (first read 1980s)

I don't have a record of when exactly I first read this, but I must have been in my twenties. I remembered that I had enjoyed it, and remembered the very basic premise of the plot, but there was so much detail I had forgotten, and it was a real pleasure to read it again, and to share with others as part of a group read.

Reading a book after an interval of 25 or so years gives one a rather different perspective. For example, the wonderful Miss Dunstable (a wealthy heiress earmarked by his family as a suitable bride for the impoverished young gentleman Frank Gresham who 'must marry money') I remember as being quite old! In fact, I read "In age she was about thirty; but Frank, who was no great judge in these matters, and who was accustomed to have very young girls round him, at once put her down as being ten years older." Of course, thirty was indeed regarded as old by the society of the time for an unmarried woman, but it is interesting that such a perspective has influenced how I remember the character (who in my mind was perhaps in her 40s or 50s). But then, since I was only 20 something myself when I first encountered her, I suppose I shared some of Frank Gresham's youthful prejudice. However, my memory of her being a very sympathetic character is more accurate. If anything, I appreciate her even more this time.

Knowing how the story would end did not detract at all from the re-read. Indeed, Trollope usually makes the outcome pretty obvious throughout even for first-time readers; his books are not about surprise and suspense, but the pleasure of the journey and the exploration of the characters and motivations along the way. In Doctor Thorne, the journey explores the tensions and contradictions in how people are valued: for their wealth, their 'blood' (social status) or their good character - and exposes the hypocrisy of a society which insists that good breeding is paramount, but happily ignores the lack of this if someone has enough money.

I enjoyed rediscovering the humour that is woven through the novel in characteristic Trollope style. It is partly there in the descriptive or punning names of many minor characters: the apothecary Bolus, and the physician Dr Fillgrave - Dr Thorne's rival - whose name gives a clue that he may not be the safest pair of medical hands! The humour is also there in many incidents and encounters, including a showdown between the rival doctors at the house.

18 Killer Market - Margaret Maron ❖❖❖

From: own shelf since 2010
Finished: 18th March
Format: used paperback
Source: Bookmooch (from France)
OPD: 1997
Genre: contemporary mystery
Series: Judge Deborah Knott 5/18

Thoughts pending

Just realised I hadn't stopped in to say hello on this thread:(

Amazing pictures, hope you are having a good time in Birmingham

#80 Hello calm - no reason why you should have already dropped in before now, but I'm glad you have now!
I'm having a good, restful time - apart from this afternoon when I went into the city centre to see how much it has been changed since I used to live here. What with all the Saturday crowds and lots of walking, I'm quite worn out this evening.

May TIOLI plans so far: I've concentrated on fitting in the books I am currently reading, or started reading in the past couple of months but have not completed.

Challenge 5 - a book you should already have read
The Tulip Anna Pavord - I started this one back in March when I was last visiting Birmingham, and really should have finished it by now!
Challenge 8 - a book with life or death in the title
The Life and Death of Mary Wollstonecraft - Claire Tomalin (I was reading this 18 months ago but mislaid it, time to resume)
Challenge 10 - a book with a participle in the title
Cutting for Stone - Abraham Verghese - reading this for my book club which is due to meet on Tuesday evening
Challenge 14 - author with the letters M-A-Y in name
I Call You Friends - Timothy Radcliffe - started this in April, currently half way through
Challenge 15 - a book originally published in volumes or one volume of a larger work
A Buyer's Market and The Acceptance World - Anthony Powell (= vols 2 & 3 of A Dance to the Music of Time (I've almost finished the former, but am very behind on the group read who are up to vol 5 this month.)
Challenge 17 - a lesser known book by a well-known author
Inside the Whale and other Essays - George Orwell (another non-fiction which I started earlier and need to finish)

Good to see you catching up on everything! What a wonderful-looking bookstore.... dangerous.

So nice for you to have a weekend to relax and enjoy!

Looks like you have a fairly challenging list for May reads! Hope your weekend was great!

Genny, that Ty is a handsome fellow indeed in his coat on the beach. I'm sure you've mentioned it before, but what sort of a dog is he?

Hi Genny, Looks like you have been off to a great start with the new phase! I'm sure I'm not the only one who is full of questions about this community where you might be living - do tell us more when the inclination strikes you.
Barter Books looks like heaven! Once I'm settled in Manchester I am hoping to use it as a base to explore the whole of the North of England a bit more - I'm such a Southerner I've hardly ever ventured past Birmingham until fairly recently, and there's still loads of places I haven't seen at all. It's definitely going on the planned route of one of the trips...

Helping Hannah keep your thread warm, Genny. I hope all is going well.

Sorry I've been so absent again - distracted by the process of cataloguing, and various other practical things, and so I've not really settled into a routine of daily catch up on LT.

#82 The catch-up is intermittent, Lucy! And the bookshop is indeed dangerous - I was back there again yesterday, since I was driving past on my way back from visiting a friend further north, and I don't often have the opportunity to get there. Needless to say, I've acquired another pile of new (used) books to add to my collections!

#83 Yes Roni, weekends are a strange new concept for me!

#84 Hi Diane; as for that list of proposed May reads, I've been ignoring most of them so far in favour of easier stuff! But I did finish Cutting for Stone in time for my book group - really enjoyed that one.

#85 Julia, Ty is a greyhound. Black in colouring, though increasingly grey with age now! He is beautiful and elegant, and very gentle and friendly, and a great foot-warmer when he shares the sofa with me. I am very sad that he will not be able to come with me when I move to Birmingham.

#86 Hi Hannah, thanks for visiting my dormant thread and revitalising it. I will say more about the community at some point. As for Barter Books, see my reply to Lucy above. It's well worth a visit, but hard to leave empty-handed. When I arrived yesterday they were in the middle of a power-cut, and could only take cash not cards as a result. As I had very little cash on my, I thought my bank balance was safe - but the power came back on after I'd been browsing for only about 5 minutes, so I came away with 13 more books! (They are the 13 most recent to be added to my catalogue- I will list them soon but I have some other tasks I need to do first).

#87 Thanks for calling back again Roni and checking up on me. I'm ok, just not quite in the mood for LT posting at present very often.

Currently reading: The Tin Princess by Philip Pullman, an older children's adventure story (the last in the quartet of Sally Lockhart stories) with a couple of lively female leads and lots of plots and subterfuge. A bit of distraction from my ongoing tasks of sorting, tidying, handing over and preparing for my eventual move... Also reading In Patagonia - a very different, rather more masculine book!

Hi Genny, it's always nice to see you here. Glad to see you up to your usual hijinks raiding book shops!

I look forward to your list too, Genny!
I'm so happy that you enjoyed Cutting for Stone. Really, how could you not? I have a proprietary interest in Margaret Maron since she is a N.C. author. I must say that Killer Market is not one of her best.
I'll look forward to what you have to say about Tomalin on Wollstonecraft since I own it. Ooo. I have In Patagonia too, and today I thought I had read it. When I entered it here though, I didn't think so.
Anyway, I'm glad to see you here and hope you can work us into your schedule more as you work out a new schedule!

#89 Laura, I can guarantee my book-shop raiding habits won't change! My current excuse for continuing to buy more books just when I'm about to have to put most of them into storage is that there do not seem to be any nice second-hand bookshops very local to where I will be living soon (at least not within easy walking distance), so I'm making the most of the opportunities up here while they still exist! I'm sure there are some lovely bookshops in Birmingham, and I look forward to discovering them, but certainly the part of the city where I will be living does not seem to have charity shops with book shelves that resemble the combined threads of most of my LT friends, as is the case here.

#90 Hello Peggy. Oh yes, that list... Soon, soon...
Cutting for Stone was brilliant. If I were better at writing reviews, I'd have given it a glowing one. Apart from anything else, I loved the multiple meanings of the title.
I know you enjoy Margaret Maron with a particular keenness because of the local connection. I've enjoyed the rest of the series more than that one, and enjoyed discovering something about a part of the world as unfamiliar to me as it is familiar to you. And meanwhile I have not picked up the Tomalin since listing it above. But am continuing to read In Patagonia, a couple of (very short) chapters a day. Still getting used to his style. Short sentences, almost Hemingwayesque, which makes it very terse and angular - but with rich vivid descriptions of the strange landscape and people he is meeting, which have an almost hallucinogenic feeling.

I'm speeding through my cataloguing - finished the A-Z of general fiction a few days ago, then did the mixed shelf of history, women's history, politics, and on to the books about writing and books: calligraphy, paleography, bibliography; followed by half a shelf of various art/picture books mainly with a natural history theme. I re-discovered some of my old treasures there, including the Atlas of World Wildlife, which I got as a prize at school. It is a very large format book with each double-page spread full of fascinating information about various animals, with inset boxes and photographs; I can remember being absorbed in it for many happy hours.

Then it was on to the travel bookcase: a small collection of travel writing, some regional guides, quite a number of books on walks in the UK (long distance path guides and collections of short walks) and loads and loads of maps. I love maps! I've got quite a collection of Ordnance Survey ones which reflect the different parts of the UK that I have lived in and/or stayed on holiday. I was rather saddened in cataloguing this lot as it brought home to me how much I've missed getting out for longer walks since I've been suffering from this chronic fatigue - down to the shops and back is quite enough for me these days.

Hi Genny. Just realising I have been very remiss at visiting your thread this month so stopping by to say hello. Thinking of you as you spend some time thinking, sorting and trying to rest - I always feel much more tired than I expect when I have time off.

No more remiss than I have been, Heather: a visit to your thread is long overdue! But I have at least finally posted you a book promised long since.

I am certainly not any less tired since giving up work a month ago - its going to take a lot longer before I can hope to get better, I think. And meanwhile there are practical tasks to do which are physically tiring - yesterday I was cleaning my fridge, and in the coming week I will have to empty that and about half my furniture of the belongings stored there, ready to pass the furniture on to a friend. She is about to move into an unfurnished house, so is taking a lot of my stuff for the coming year, which will save me having to store so much and save her having to buy everything at once. The deadline is next Friday evening, so I've plenty to be busy with in the coming week. I'll end up with quite a depleted house, but will still have a bed to sleep on, a table to eat at, a sofa to relax on, and a desk and my computer to reach LT on, so I shall survive!

Good luck with all the things you are planning to do (and have to do). Moving is always a tiresome thing. But I'm sure you'll get through it just fine. All the best.

Genny - Nice to see you back posting. Had a look through the books in your catalogue and we have a heck of a lot shared tomes in there. Trust that sorting your stuff out in the coming week or so is not stressful. x

Genny, I'm tired just reading what you have coming up in the next week, and I'm disgustingly healthy - also disgustingly lazy, but never mind.
I need to go to your library for some serious browsing. You're adding great stuff!
Hope you get to relax a little over the weekend.

#93 Good luck with the packing and moving things. Good that you can pass some of your furniture onto a friend rather than having to pay to put it all in storage.

Hi Genny! Just stopping by to wish you well with packing, cataloging and getting things ready for your new situation.

#93 When we moved between vicarages about 15 years ago, on our last morning the four of us ate our breakfast in the study around Jon's desk, sitting on stools and folding (or collapsing as my children used to, quite accurately, refer to them) chairs, using a very odd collection of crockery and cutlery.

More visitors! Thank you for keeping in touch, Connie, Paul, Peggy and Heather (eta: and Diana and Kerry, who posted while I was typing the rest of this message) even though I have not been able to reciprocate with visits to your threads recently.

I've just invited some friends to dinner next Tuesday, so that I can use the dining room one more time before it gets dismantled (that's one of the main areas from where the furniture is disappearing: the dining table, six chairs, and a set of cabinets/shelving units which are mostly full of books (the ones I have just about finished cataloguing) but also are used to display some of my nice bits of hand-thrown pottery. The table has been half-covered in all kinds of stuff for the past 18 months and while there is room for me to sit and eat at one end of it, I haven't had more than a couple of people eating round it for a very long time. But now I've cleared the table just about, and found homes for the clutter or thrown some of it out. So it will be good to use the table and the room for a nice evening with friends before it is all taken away!

#94 Connie, you are right, moving is tiring, and pretty tiresome too! But I am lucky to have plenty of time to sort things out - it will be happening in stages over a couple of months rather than all having to be completed within a few days as usually happens.

#95 We do have quite a few tomes in common, indeed Paul, though on the 'weighted' list of member with my books, you do not feature very high up (I think because of the much larger size of your collection, and the fact that the ones we have in common are most not so very obscure). Heather usually comes top of my weighted list... The sorting etc should not be too stressful - and I'm planning some breaks, not only the dinner evening above, but also on Sunday I'll be spending all day at the local arts cinema where they are having a special anniversary celebration with 24 hours of films showing at £1 a ticket! I may find myself falling asleep in the cinema, but it will make a change from falling asleep at home in front of the TV.

#96 Enjoy the browsing in my rapidly expanding online library, Peggy! I still have to add just over half my theology collection, my children's book collection, and several shelves of mysteries, fantasy and sci-fi on the upstairs bookcases (including my large Tolkien collection), plus some miscellaneous shelves. I think there must be about 1000 more to add. Thankfully, the bookshelves are not among the items of furniture about to disappear next week (apart from the ones in the dining room which I've completed), so I have more time to finish adding those before I have to start boxing them. The hard thing will be deciding how many and which ones I can take with me for the coming year. I don't think I'll have room for more than 200 or so. I might be able to leave another 200ish in boxes with my sister, to swap over part way through the year once I've read my way through the first lot (I'm hoping to read more than my usual 100-120 in the coming year).

#97 Thanks Heather. It is indeed very good to be able to lend some of my stuff to my friend. It should save me quite a bit in the cost of storage. I have yet to calculate exactly how much it will cost - for that I need to be able to estimate the volume of storage space required, and that is quite tricky. Now I know which bits of furniture are going to my friend, I can decide which of the remaining bits I want to keep and which I will dispose of, then I can try to estimate the storage space. Getting all the books catalogued is helping towards this, as I can see how many books fit into one box and then once I know the total number in the collection I can work out how many boxes full I will need to store...

Meanwhile, you have been (temporarily, I hope) ousted from your usual position of top member with the same books as me. Currently we have 545 books in common, which is about 1/4 of my library, but someone called ljhliesl, with whom I have only 219 shared books, is top of the weighted list at present - not sure why, as the books s/he and I have in common are not very rare...

#98 Thanks for your god wishes, Diana! I hope all is well with you too.

#99 I'm sure I'll get to that stage, Kerry! There was an office desk already here in the study, so that is one item I'll be leaving behind me, so it could well be the last remaining item in the house for me to eat my breakfast off. I'm giving my folding/collapsing chairs to my friend though. There will be some complicated planning to do in the final stages, as I will have to sort the stuff I'm taking to Birmingham from the stuff I'm putting in storage. A lot of the things one usually keeps out till the last minute when moving, like a kettle and mugs and tea, and bedding and cleaning materials etc - will not be needed in B'ham. I think I may be having several trips to the storage place (I need to find one that's conveniently close), first to get the majority of items stored, and then a final trip to add all the last minute things that I won't be taking with me. Hmm, I think I'll worry about this first stage first, and cross the next bridge when I come to it.

The big unresolved matter is still what is going to happen to my lovely Ty. My reluctance to face parting from him is making me slow to explore options about possible new homes for him.

Genny, that ljhliesl is at the top of my weighted list too. I think it must be some kind of bug because before was a libahunt. When I visited their pages, my name wasn't anywhere on either of their lists.
I keep praying about you and Ty.

#102 Apparently its not a but but tends to happen when someone perhaps adds a lot of books suddenly and removes them again - or at least that was one of the theories re libahunt, who also appeared at the top of my list suddenly and stayed for a while. The display on the home page does not readjust itself for a while.
Thanks for the prayers.

I've just finished two books today: A Buyer's Market - long neglected group read - I started this volume n February and finished most of in April. I'm really finding these Powell books a bit of a chore. But I've bought the whole set, so I guess I will try to plod on and see if I like it any more as the series continues. I'm only 3 months behind the rest of the group!

And A Glass of Blessings for another group read, the Pym year-long readthrough with the VMC group. This was a reread for me, it was only two years since I read it first, but I'd forgotten much of the detail. Including bits of the plot which have startling similarities with some of what's going on in my own life (not the stealing of Fabergé eggs bit, though).

Hi Genny, continued good wishes for you as you prepare for a new phase! And a note of encouragement re: the Powells. I also found them a bit of a chore, but they really seem to pick up the farther along one goes. I've just finished the fifth and between that one and the previous one, I've become a fan.

#100 "The table has been half-covered in all kinds of stuff for the past 18 months and while there is room for me to sit and eat at one end of it, I haven't had more than a couple of people eating round it for a very long time."

That sounds a lot like our dining room table which is the first place you come through to on entering the house and tends to be where things get put to be dealt with later.

#101 "I have yet to calculate exactly how much it will cost - for that I need to be able to estimate the volume of storage space required, and that is quite tricky"

We're having a similar problem with estimating likely removal costs - all the quotes are caveated by an upper limit of cubic sq foot and I have no idea whether our book collection will mean we're over their maximum. I think we need to get some boxes, try filling one and then estimate how many boxes we'll need for books (and then faint).

I seem to be back at number one top member with your books when I look at your profile, followed by Laura (@laurelkeet). The most unusual book we share is a poetry collection you sent to me via bookmooch! Which reminds me that I'm overdue in saying thank you for Flight Behaviour which arrived on Saturday :-)

#101 & 102 I'll also keep praying about you and Try. What sort of timeframe are you looking at re moving to Birmingham?

#103 "Including bits of the plot which have startling similarities with some of what's going on in my own life (not the stealing of Fabergé eggs bit, though)." Well, I'm very relieved to hear you haven't been stealing Fabergé eggs! :-)

>103 gennyt:: not the stealing of Fabergé eggs bit, though -- ha! that made me laugh.

Me too - and it is certainly a layer of complication you surely don't really need.

Ooof! I'm taking a short break from packing, clearing and sorting. The dining room is now clear (including 9 boxes full of books, which have all been catalogued) - all apart from one shelf of a cupboard full of candlesticks and tea-light holders which need to find a temporary home. I also dug out my old 'packing and moving tape' - a recording of medieval dance music (Arbeau's Orchesographie) by the Teleman Society which I always used to play while I was packing up my rooms since the time I was at college. The short, lively tunes played on a variety of medieval instruments, including the crumhorn, always used to make me smile and kept me cheerful while I worked. Here's a recording I've found on Youtube of one of the tunes (no crumhorn, sadly) to give a flavour. I don't think I've played this for the last few moves, so it must be 17+ years since I heard it, but I'm humming along with every tune, it is all still very familiar.

#104 I'm glad to hear I'm not the only one who is finding the Powell heavy-going, Katie - and also glad to hear that you were eventually won over - it encourages me that it is worth persevering. But the reviewers who comment on the wonderful prose style are obviously experiencing it very differently from me!

#105 Heather, I have no excuse really with my dining room table because it is not the first surface on coming into the house - there is another table in the hall which serves that purpose and which very soon gets cluttered. But that one also periodically got tidied up when I was having people round, whereas as long as I only let people into the living room, not the dining room, I was never forced to clear the dining table!

I'm obviously missing news on your thread Heather, since you mention estimating likely removal costs and I didn't know you too were in the process of moving. I'm sorry I've got so behind - I promise to come over and catch up soon! But the filling one box and then calculating the total is a good method, I think. I've found that I can fit approx 40 books with a little room to spare in one of my boxes, so I will need 50 of those boxes just to contain the 2,000 or so books I've already catalogued - but I estimate there must be at least another 1,000 not yet in the catalogue too, but that is vague and until I've finished the cataloguing I can't get an accurate estimate. And in my case I then need to work out how many boxes' worth I will be keeping with me and how many going into storage... And there will be some other items besides books to store, of course.

Yes, ljhliesl has vanished again, as libahunt did before, and you are back in your accustomed place! Members of the Virago group are not surprisingly high up on the list since we all have lots of those books in common which are otherwise not at all commonly in people's libraries.

As for being overdue in saying thank-you - since it took me months to send the book and it only took you a couple of days to acknowledge it, I think I was the one who was overdue!! But I'm glad it arrived safely.

Time-frame for moving: 1) tomorrow evening half my furniture disappears! 2) by mid-August I aim to have emptied the house of the rest of my stuff into storage/given away/recycled etc apart from the stuff I'm taking to B'ham and some extra stuff to store with my sister in Lincolnshire. Then I'll be hiring a small van to take that remaining stuff south (I'll need a van because I'll be taking things like my bicycle and guitar which are quite bulky items) and depositing them before having a bit of holiday/Greenbelt festival. 3) I start my time in Birmingham officially at the beginning of September.

I don't come across many Fabergé eggs in day-to-day life - who knows what the temptations might be if I did? But I do feel a bit like Mary Beamish going off to work in a retreat house... However I am not planning to dye all my clothes black.

#106 Laura, re Fabergé eggs etc, see above.

#107 Actually, the realisation just how much stuff I have and the necessity of disposing of it all one way or another in the next couple of months would be enough encouragement, if I needed any, not to start purloining treasures from other people's studies!

Thanks for the music link, Genny. I've always had a secret longing to be a percussionist!

Hi Genny! Just passing through, and enjoying (if that's the right word) your packing-up tales. Reading this thread has reminded me it will soon be time for me to do likewise. Luckily we have already started, in that we have moved many items for the husband already. He is clearly better at leading the simple life than me though, as when I move up to join him, LOTS more things will have to follow. Like you, for the time being, many of our books and other non-essential items will have to go into storage - but luckily I have an uncle with a house with a lot of spare bedrooms, so I won't have to pay for storage space.
I can empathise over how hard it will be to part from Ty - I looked at a recent set of photos you posted of him on Flickr - he looks like a gorgeous dog. I hope a loving home within visiting distance can be found!

Genny, I am still following along with you as you transition to another phase of life. I'm glad you are able to help out a friend as well as find a temporary home for some of your furniture. I hope you work out something similar with Ty. It would be so sad to have to say goodbye forever to such a wonderful friend.

Re: A Dance to the Music of Time. Still very slow going for me, but once I pick it up for my monthly read and start recognizing characters from past episodes, I find myself once again enjoying the dance. It will never become a favorite, though, because of the detached narrating style.

#108 No apologies necessary! We're hopefully buying a house and moving - possibly in August? I can't say that I'm looking forward to packing very much but the music clip you linked to sounds like good music to pack to :-)

It's such a good idea to have music to pack by! I'm glad things are going well and you are making progress.

I hope "Dance' comes to life for you soon. I love those books so much.

See that you are still busy setting up your next adventures Genny. Have a lovely weekend.

Hi, Genny! Just stopping by to say hello.

Major neglect of my thread going on here... by me at least! Thank you to those who have been keeping it warm.

#115 Hello to you too, Terri, thanks for calling.

#114 Yes, it's a different sort of busy from when I was working, Paul, but certainly still busy.

#113 Lucy, I think dance music of some kind seems to be the ideal for being energised while packing. My usual preference for slower, quieter pieces would not serve well in these circumstances - too tempting to sit down and listen and relax! As for 'Dance' - I still have not ventured to start the third novel - it is not calling to me! But I hope to persevere far enough that it does begin to feel a more attractive proposition - I know we can't agree on all books, but when people whose taste I respect like a book, I expect to like it too!

#112 Heather, it sounds as if you will be moving (if your purchase goes through) round about the same time as me then. I would recommend the renaissance dance music (or anything energetic which you enjoy) for packing to.

#111 Donna, I'm glad I'm not the only one who was not instantly smitten with the Powell - and for me it is also the style of the narration that is off-putting. But the fact that you grew to appreciate it eventually gives me hope... As for Ty, there has been a potentially positive development, I will know more tomorrow.

#110 Hannah, it's good to have company in the ordeal of packing and moving! You are lucky that you don't have to pay for storage though - mind you, I have been very lucky in finding ways to minimise the amount to be put into paid storage - so it should not be too bad. When do you have to complete your move, I wonder? I'll have to visit your thread and find out...

#109 Peggy, I can just see you having a go on the kettle drums - or would you prefer a bodhran?

Lots going on, and I keep thinking I must come here and give an update, but have not done for ages...

There is someone possibly interested in taking on Ty; I don't know him but he is known to another lady who used to care for Ty regularly when I was on holiday. They are coming to visit him tomorrow and we shall see. If that works out, it will be a weight off my mind, but I hope I shall be able to keep hold of him until August when I complete my move.

I now have a very long check-list of all the items (or categories of items) in the house, which I am meant to be working through, to decide what is to become of each item and what needs doing with them (sorting, washing, mending, packing etc). There are over 250 items on the list, and if I don't get on with it a bit faster, I will find myself running out of time to do the necessary sorting.

But meanwhile I have been having some enjoyable times, for example visiting our local independent library, The Lit and Phil, for a 'Phantoms at the Phil' evening of original ghost stories read by their authors, one of whom was Ann Cleeves.

Also wonderful concert celebrating the traditional music, dance and culture of the North East of England last Friday at the Sage venue in Gateshead - hosted by Kathryn Tickell, who I first heard/saw play the Northumbrian pipes many years ago, long before I moved to this part of the country, and who first inspired me to want to learn the pipes when I moved here. This event featured among other things local children's author David Almond, reading a piece of his on the value of dialect, recently written for the Guardian. I looked this up after the event - I must say, it was much easier to follow the spoken version than the written; he has chosen to use unconventional spelling in the written version partly to try to convey the accent/pronunciation, but it is much harder work 'translating' this than hearing it spoken (well at least for me, now quite attuned to the accents of the north east). If you are not too distracted by his spelling to get through the article (as many of the commentators were), there is a lovely argument about the importance, and slightly transgressive feeling, of knowing and using local dialect words - in addition to knowing the 'proper' words, of course.

Glad to hear you might have a nice new home for Ty, Genny. I think it is really sad you both have to part, but it's good to know he will have a good place to go to.

#116 Sounds like potentially good news regarding Ty Genny. Will keep praying that everything works out smoothly for him and that you get through your 250 items before you have to leave! I am dreading the housemoving to-do list.

The concerts and talks sound lovely and hopefully have proved to be a nice distraction from the to do list.

Genny - I hope Ty has a nice home to go to and I can understand what a tremendous wrench it must be for you. Have a good weekend despite all that pesky sorting that is still an enforced part of your existence presently. x

Just stopping by with best wishes to you, Genny!

Me too!
I hope you're beginning to feel good effects from being out from under such a huge work load.

I hope everything is going well, Genny!

Thank you again to my kind visitors, Connie, Heather, Paul, Terri and Peggy - I don't know where the time is going since I've stopped working: the weeks are flying by and I keep meaning to post more often here but never seem to.

Oh, such a strange time I am having. Busy with sorting through stuff, some of it not seen for decades - reliving lots of memories and reflecting on changes in my life over the years.

Then Ty and I have been a bit pre-occupied because he had to have a general anaesthetic to remove many of his teeth last Thursday - he is recovering nicely but still on soft foods and taking antibiotics to chase off remaining infection. But his breath smells much sweeter already!

And after having a visit from one possible new owner a couple of weeks ago, Ty now has a possible second offer from a friend who originally said no but is relenting - this would be preferable for me as I would be able to take him back again at the end of the year, but the friend already has a couple of hounds so it would be a handful for her...

In between this I've continued to attend some very enjoyable occasions, from concerts to ordinations and parties - last weekend was a busy one with friends staying in order to be present at a mutual friend's ordination - lots of reunions with other friends too during the various celebrations throughout the day on Sunday, and remembering my own ordination on the exact same date (30th June) 17 years ago... We dug out the photo album from that occasion. Everyone had either less grey hair then, or more hair altogether, or both!

And I'm still getting some reading done, when not too tired at night. Almost forgot to start reading The Song of Achilles in time for my book group last night, so I only managed to read 3/4 of it before the meeting. Half the group disliked it very much, the rest of us mostly enjoyed it very much, so it was interesting trying to work out why the strong reactions either way.

Today I am concentrating on trying to catalogue as much as possible of the remainder of my collection. I hope to get the theology books finished, and maybe some of the remaining ones from elsewhere than in the study (I still have the cookery book collection, my Tolkien collection and some others to go).

I'll try to do a brief update more often!

Really good to hear you are doing just fine. And I hope the second friend will take Ty so you could get him back!

Great to hear your news, Genny. I've got my fingers crossed that things work out for you and for Ty.

Good to hear from you, Genny. Sounds like things are going pretty well, although Ty might not think so at the moment.

Good stuff, Genny. I'm glad to hear good news re: finding a home for Ty, too.

Hi Connie, Julia, Roni and Laura - thanks for calling by yesterday. How are you getting on with the new site design and home page? I'm one of those who liked the salmon colour, so I miss that, and I really miss the old Home Page which I used a lot and worked fine for me - with the new one I can't see as much information at a glance as I could before (I loved to have the 'On this Day' and Hot Reviews modules near the top on the right hand side, so I could glance at those to see if there was anything interesting while heading for the talk section, my main starting point.

Too much change going on in my life generally has made me more than usually resistant to changes in my favourite website! But there are some great new features too. The module that shows the size of your library over time certainly demonstrates visually how busy I've been with cataloguing in the past few months compared to my previous 7 years of membership!

I have to get used to the new look too. There are things I just can't find now. But perhaps it takes some time to get used to it.

I like the way the site looks now, for the most part. I have not really messed about with the new dashboard and home pages to customize them, but then I was someone who really did not use the old home page much at all. I have my LT bookmark set to go straight to 'Your Posts' in Talk. I'm thinking about changing it back to the home page for a while, just so I can give it a fair shake and see if it's something I would use more now.

Apparently not many people did use it very much, so they have tried to make it more appealing, but the result perhaps inevitably is that those of us like me who did use it a lot will find the changes rather hard to get used to and prefer it how it was before!

Genny, you can reorder the "modules" on the homepage so that the sections you care about most are at the top. I did that, and deleted a bunch of stuff I didn't want displayed on my Home page. It was kind of fun to poke around and see what was what!

Thanks Katie, I do know that, and have done so - but you could do the same on the old page too - the difference was you could put things in two different columns before, so there were twice as many sections visible at the top of the page, now it's all in one single column apart from a few official announcements at the top right, so I have to scroll down further to get to the modules I want. Apparently some people thought the page was too dense and 'information rich', but that was how I liked it, not with all this wasted white space on either side. *Sigh*

Oh, gotcha. That is annoying.

I don't use the home page much, as I just open up right on my "Starred Threads" in "Talk". If they changed that set-up, I would be lost!

Getting at Starred threads was basically what I used the Home Page for most of the time - but I also had at my fingertips the Your Books heading with a handy search box above, along with the recently added titles; below Talk I had My Zeitgeist and then Members with Your books - and frequently looked at the stats there. To the right I had, under news announcements etc, 'On This Day' which I enjoyed glancing at - to notice if there were any anniversaries of favourite authors, and to be amused by unlikely combinations of authors appearing together (eg Thomas Jefferson and Georgette Heyer both died on 4th July) - and underneath that I had the hot reviews and might take a break from reading threads to go and read some of those reviews, particularly if they were by people not in the threads I follow.

I rarely ever went to the talk page, because it was just as easy to get at "my starred/posts I've started/my posts/my groups" etc from the home page. The main other place I went for reading threads was to the group page for a particular group if I wanted to do a more thorough catch up with unstarred threads etc. I can still do this now, but I'm missing being able to see the other info at a glance, and am trying to work out whether it is easier to have them further down the page (where I may not bother to scroll) or on the sub-sections of Home (where I am not used to looking).
I almost never used my Profile page before and probably still will not do so. I hope I'll get the home page(s) customised enough to feel useful even if the layout is different from before.

After a busy day yesterday, this is what my study bookshelves now sadly look like:



And here is the stack of boxes into which the contents of the shelves have been loaded.



I still have several boxes worth left on the shelves that need cataloguing before I box them up... Have run out of that size of box so I have time to catch up with the cataloguing first.

Wow, Genny! You're doing yeoman's work there!!!!!
I'm very happy that you may have the possibility of getting your Ty back after a year. That's good news, and I hope your friend can see her way clear to do that for you.

Love the organisational skills you have obviously put into your packing Genny but not the packing and moving on itself. Have a lovely weekend.

Nice work Genny!

I took a few photos of Ty rolling in the grass in my garden, and Google+ automatically created this animation out of the multiple photos - which is far better than the video I took just after the photos, by which time he'd stopped rolling and just lay basking in the sun!

Oww, he is gorgeous

That's really great, Genny!
Hope the two of you are getting out for some more recreation this afternoon.

>140 gennyt: Nice!

Oh, isn't Ty a sweetheart! How clever of Google+ to do that.

Just adding my hellos Genny. I will soon start the packing up task, although not until I finish work in a few weeks time, when the husband will arrive to give me a hand. Until then, it is a task that is officially "off radar", as I just don't have the mental energy to contemplate all the work that lies ahead! Looks like you are making excellent progress though!

Ty doesn't look a bit fazed about his uncertain future. I hope offer #2 works out, Genny, so you two can be reunited. Your books are so well organized in their respective boxes, but the bookshelves look lonely. I know you will be glad to have this move over with.

#146 I agree about the lonely looking bookshelves, Donna. And so many of those books I wanted to stop and read when I was packing them away. Now I won't see them for a year or more. The fact that I've ignored them while they've been easily accessible on the shelves for the past however many years just makes it more annoying! Option 2 for Ty is shaping up...

#145 Hannah, it certainly takes a lot of energy - hopefully you have more than I do. I don't feel I'm making much progress - I've taken months and done very little really, and time is running out...

#144 He is a sweetheart indeed, and the animation thing is very clever - I didn't know it could do that until I saw it with these photos. I think that if you take sufficient photos that are very similar it now does this automatically. I'm glad you can see it ok - it works for me on my desktop, but not when viewed from my laptop or phone, so it must depend on monitor settings or something.

#143 I'm glad you like it, Darryl.

#142 Peggy, I'm certainly trying to spend as much quality time as I can with him before the separation. To the extent of letting him crowd onto the foot of my bed at night, even though I'm now sleeping on a single bed, having lent my larger bed along with other furniture to a friend for the year. So that is a bit cosy!

#141 Very gorgeous indeed, Connie. The very first day I brought him home, six years ago, he went out and had a good roll on the lawn - he always seems especially happy when he does that.

Today's aim is to finally finish cataloguing and boxing the remaining books in the study, and then if possible complete the process with some of the remaining uncatalogued sections elsewhere in the house.

A couple of weeks ago I did my childhood books, and rekindled some long-forgotten memories looking at some of those.

Here's a page from my Illustrated Encylopaedia of Animal Life which always used to scare me as a child, it looks so much as if the snake is on top of the page rather than printed on it!

>148 gennyt: Wow, you're right; at first glance I thought that the snake was lying on top of the page!

And here are some examples of how I created 'Genny's Library' with some of my earliest books, including making little pockets for the book ticket and a sheet for date stamps! Nobody seemed to borrow from my library except me, though...


Secrets in Stones - I'm surprised I did not turn out to be a geologist, I loved this book so much!


Gneiss (say 'nice') - love it!




(I love the illustrations in The Little Biplane - which I used to pronounce Bip - lane to rhyme with 'tip'!)

#123 Oh, poor Ty! I hope he has recovered from having his teeth removed now. I hope something works out for Ty for the next year - someone who's willing to take him for the year and then let you have him back sounds like it would be ideal.

#128 The module that shows the size of your library over time certainly demonstrates visually how busy I've been with cataloguing in the past few months compared to my previous 7 years of membership! Or, if you've kept up to date with your cataloguing it can indicate some rather worrying trends in the size of your library! You canc hange which collections it tracks - I've changed mine to display my 'To read' collection in the hope that this will inspire me to try and show a downward trend in this area....

#136 Oh, well done on all the packing!

#140 Google can be worrying clever, can't it? Ty looks lovely :-)

#150 The Little Biplane has beautiful illustrations. I love the fact that you created your own lending library with borrowing tickets as a child.

#151 Hi Heather, yes the Library over Time graph can be useful (or worrying) in lots of ways. I've set mine to show just those books I own, not wishlist etc. I hadn't thought of using it to monitor the size of the TBR pile - I'm off to have a quick look at that now, and perhaps that ought to be the default setting once I've finished cataloguing!

I now have exactly 3,000 books catalogued in 'My Library'. Time to stop for a (very late) lunch before I carry on.

I am deathly afraid to look at Library over Time - I know I'm not going to live long enough to read everything that I've accumulated, but I don't want to have to see it in black and white!
I do tag a book "read" when I finish it. When I first joined LT, I had "read" a bit more than a third of my collection. Who's surprised to learn that now it's not even close?
I love the lending library too - and the snake picture is scary even on my monitor! I am very hopeful about Ty Option #2. Are there any bribes that we could offer as extra incentives?

#153 And we now share 653 books - you're back at the top of my 'members with your books' list :-)

Some of the books I had as a child still have the library pockets and cards (or the marks of their removal) that I made but, like you Genny, no sign of any borrowers...

#156 Kerry, I'm glad I'm not the only one! It is clear that our library obsession began at a young age...

#155 Yes Heather, you remain consistently at the top of my weighted list, apart from those interlopers which may have been a glitch in the system! Lots of overlapping collections there...

#154 Peggy, I'm finding it satisfying just at present to look at my progress with cataloguing on the Library over Time - but once that is done, I think that like you I'd rather not know. And among the nearly 1,700 books recently added, which are all in the 'Needs Work' collection, I have yet to tag these or mark those that are unread, but I am sure that over half of my theology collection will be unread, even when I exclude the ones that are more for reference or resource books than for reading properly. They all sounded so interesting when I bought them (mostly in sales or second-hand) and indeed most of them still did cry out to be read when I handled them to pack them away in boxes - but somehow I have had little inclination actually to read from this collection for the past many years. In the coming year, I will have much more leisure for reading, but I won't have the books with me! (Though quite a few of them will probably be in the library where I will be living, so perhaps I may get to a few of them before the year is out, even if not reading my own copy.)

wow Genny, you are doing a lot of book work eh! 3000 books is amazing! I don't even own a quarter of that amount!

Getting ready to catch the train down south for a week of visiting friends and a bit of an LT meet up in London with Darryl (kidzdoc) and others.

Running out of time to do everything I meant to do before I go, as usual... But it will be nice to have a break from the packing and sorting and boxes everywhere...

Enjoy your well-deserved break, Genny. I'll look for pictures of the meet up. I'd love to be there!

Safely on the train to London now, and with air conditioning feeling quite comfortable despite this rare heatwave weather.

I have 15 mins free wifi, so time for a quick update before I get down to some reading. Thanks to the new site design, my phone seems to be handling making new posts better than before: the window for typing in is a sensible size that fits on the screen.

Now I've got over the shock of the new home page and adjusted to the single column display, I am loving all the extra stuff that's been added, or made more accessible. Has everyone seen the new Folly subpage? Thingaversary mentions and Random Pages - great fun!

Have a nice week and a nice meet, Genny.

Have a lovely time in London, Genny! I haven't seen the Folly page - off to have a look now.

Have a great weekend, Genny, and speak to all the LT folks for us. Take pictures!!!
I'm following Cushla to the Folly!

I am so impressed by your beautiful book packing, the lovely photos of Ty. I do hope things work out well for his new life.

Looking forward to seeing you this week! :-)

After the initial shock I have embraced the new home page and design - I love the new Folly section and the countdown until my Thingaversary.

Yep, I love that Thingaversary thing too.

Looking forward to seeing you and other members of our gang tomorrow!

Looking forward to it too! It's today now -I must get to bed!

Happy Meetup!

Ooh! Ooh! I can't wait to hear all about it!

Happy LT meetup! Now I have to investigate the folly page too!

See you soon, Genny!

Don't forget to take lots of photos!!

Have a great time!

It was a lovely day. I did take some photos, at least until my phone battery died. Some are on Facebook, I'll post them on here when I have access to a bigger screen.

It was lovely to meet Darryl, Bianca and Fliss for the first time, and to see Luci and Heather again (our third meet-up)!

Books were purchased... Again, more details soon.

Glad you had a good time!

On another train (thank heavens for air-conditioning - which we don't often need to say in England) heading to Oxford to meet up with a Canadian friend who is visiting UK for a few weeks. I haven't seen her for 17 years! She teaches English in Vancouver so am looking forward to some bookish conversation.

As for my reading, I can report that I finished The Acceptance World on Tuesday and I am pleased to report that I am finally beginning to enjoy the Powell.

Hooray for that!
Enjoy your time with your friend, and come back to us!

Ohh, I would like to have a Canadian friend! Enjoy your meet.

A lovely catch up with my friend, and we fitted in a visit to Tolkien's grave in Wolvercote, and a drink in Lewis and Tolkien's (and more recently, but still 20+ years ago, my) favourite local, The Eagle and Child, for a warm beer on a very warm afternoon.

Also called in at another of my old haunts, the Oxfam bookshop on St Giles, where I bought 4 lovely original green Viragos:
Beyond the glass
Told by an idiot
Rumour of heaven
Jenny Wren.

Now with other Oxford-based friends for 24 hours, including one of my god-daughters.

Oooh, LT meet-up! I am sooooo jealous! I'm sorry to have missed it, which is my own silly fault for not being around more recently. Sign me up for the next one though! And, I can't wait to see pictures! In fact, I might go and snoop on a few other threads to see if I can find some....
In the meantime, I have started the packing up finally, Genny, so you have my full sympathy! Actually, the first job is one of de-cluttering for the estate agent to come round on Friday and take pictures of the house for when it goes on sale. With a bit of a wrench of the old heartstrings we decided to sell rather than rent out our lovely little house, so even more removing to be done in the next few weeks, gulp!

I think I bought my copy of Rumour of Heaven in the same Oxfam shop last summer at the VMC group meet up (June 2012)!

182: Whereabouts are you?

*sigh* I'm really glad that you're having a lovely time, Genny. You need and deserve it! But ----- *sigh*

183: I currently live in Exeter but will soon move to Manchester. London meet-ups are doable for me though, as I have lots of potential places to stay plus am happy for any excuse to make a visit!

swooping through trailing *smooches*

Just a wave...

Sounds as if you have been having some fab book-filled R&R...

Empathy waves heading your way re books. The upside? Once they are tucked away, odds are that you won't think of them or miss them that much. The packing ordeal is hellish, as you know. I still have book clusters everywhere, and one entire room full of moving-related clutter that I will have to sort through, rigorously. I'm saving it for fall, when the temperatures drop, as the A/C doesn't stretch that far (around two corners, down a hall and into a room tucked off by itself which hopefully will become a guest bedroom.)

I'm stopping by to wave hello. Good for you for posting lists of books you will read in 2013. Somehow I lack that discipline. As soon a I make a list of what I want to read, my mind travels down a different pathway that leads me further away from the original goal.

Your LT meet up sounds wonderful!!!!

I saw some meetup pictures on Darryl's thread. It looked like everyone was having a great time. Genny, it took me awhile to warm up to Powell's writing style, but now I am beginning to look forward to each month's installment. I'm so glad I'm reading this one with a group or I might have quit after the first one.

Your visit to the Eagle and Child reminded me of my own fairly recently. So pleased to see you involved in the recent meet-ups with Darryl and looking forward to some more photos of it from your perspective.

Trust that you are well and enjoying your weekend dear lady.

I've been back home a week already, but busy with visitors and packing so yet again I have neglected to post here.

Yesterday I packed another 8 or so boxes of books, having first added more to the catalogue (not many more to go now before that is complete). It was humid hot work - thankfully today there is rain and a cool breeze, which will make the ongoing packing easier.

#182,185 Hannah, we must definitely make sure you are included next time there is a meet up. I've been to three now, all in London; but as we will soon be closer to each other than to London, perhaps we could manage a meet somewhere in the midlands once we have both settled in our new homes. Though I'll still enjoy the excuse to visit London occasionally. Good luck with the de-cluttering and packing.

#183 Luci, that's one of my favourite book shops. I used to live almost next door when I was a graduate student, so I was a frequent visitor. Strange to find two copies of the same (relatively rare) book there in quick succession though.

#184 Sorry to make you green with envy, Peggy! But I'm not sorry I had some lovely visits.

#186 Richard, I am honoured by your presence and smooches, however brief!

#187 Suz, thanks for the wave! Book-filled is inideed the word - and although I am now knee deep in boxes in the house, can I stop acquiring new ones? Silly question! At present I have nearly finished boxing up the books that are to go into store; apart from one bookcase downstairs, and my cookery books, all that remains are the two cases full of TBR books upstairs. I won't have room to take all of those, so the next task is to separate the TBR pile into 'read during the coming year' and 'put into storage to read later' boxes. It's a bit like deciding which books to take on holiday, only much more so! There is absolutely no danger of me running out of books to read during the coming year even if I took only a few, since there is a library at the community, but it's hard to contemplate being parted from so many books I'm eager to read. But you are right, once the decision is made and the boxes are packed, I will mostly not miss the ones in storage as I'll have plenty to be going on with.

I can understand waiting until the termperature/humitidy is is less before finishing the unpacking. It has been hard work during the unusually hot and humid spell here, so I'm glad for a change to see clouds and rain and a cooler temperature today.

#188 Hello Linda, lovely to see you! I'm sorry I've not been by your thread for ages. Once I get moved and settled, I hope to catch up a bit. As for my list of plans for reading in 2013, like most of my lists, I have not made a lot of progress with it - it gives me a starting point from which to wander in an entirely different direction. I have a lot of updating to do on my thread in fact - but just now is not the time.

#189 Donna hello! I do intend to post a few pictures of the meet up here - I put them on FB immediately while I was away, but since I've been back I have been too busy too think about it. It was lovely to meet people (for the first time or in a couple of cases for the third time) - and I'm grateful for Darryl's visit which was the catalyst to me making a long-promised visit south and catch up with several other lots of friends too.

As for the Powell, I remember you said that it improved for you after the first few, which was one of the things that encouraged me to get going. I'm still not 100% keen on his style, but the content is beginning to be more interesting, and I like the way he re-introduces people who have appeared earlier in the sequence, with the characters themselves sometimes struggling to remember when they first met or when they last saw each other, or reminiscing about those previous encounters - very helpful when there has been a long gap between reading volumes, and also very true to life I think.

#190 Hi Paul, I can't exactly say I'm enjoying the weekend, since it mostly involves packing boxes and panicking about running out time - but I'm enjoying the sudden drop in temperature and my garden is enjoying the rain after weeks of drought, so on the whole we are fine.

The Eagle and Child was my regular haunt during my 6 years in Oxford. It was very close to my college (and to my favourite bookshop the Oxfam one almost next door) so lots of good things in one close space. The C S Lewis Society of which I was a member (really a kind of Inklings Society since it was interested in Tolkien, Charles Williams and others of that group as well as Lewis) used to have its speaker meetings in my college, and then adjourn to the Eagle and Child ('Bird and Baby') for ongoing discussion over a pint or two afterwards, and often adjourn further at closing time to someone's room to continue the book talk into the small hours. Happy days!


Me outside the Eagle and Child.

#192 "it gives me a starting point from which to wander in an entirely different direction" Oh, that is a good way to think about reading plans because that always seems to be what happens to mine too!

I love it when that happens too -

And now I have to go hunt for the folly and thinga pages.......

191: "perhaps we could manage a meet somewhere in the midlands once we have both settled in our new homes" Yay! That sounds like a brilliant idea Genny, I love it!

I'm another one who makes reading plans only to then wander off in completely the opposite direction, but I guess reading, like life, is what happens whilst we are making other plans... ; )

it's hard to contemplate being parted from so many books I'm eager to read

Like Sophie's Choice, isn't it? Painful no matter what. Of course the stakes are almost risibly less dire.

I sympathize that you have to make TBR selections for an entire year! That sounds so hard. I can never decide what to take for simply a weekend. This is one of the bookish problems that an e-reader is so good for. But just think of how exciting it will be when you are finally able to access all your stored TBRs again....it will be like Christmas!

Just stopping by to say hello and offer good wishes!

Hi Genny - following your thread and all the cataloging and packing sounds like a lot of work, but the opportunity to handle each book is satisfying even if you must put them away for a long while. I'm sure having a nearby library will prove a real asset when you eventually move.
Any news on a favourable home for Ty?

Hurrah, I've reached post no. 200 just in time to start a new thread at the beginning of a new month. But it's not quite ready to be up and running just yet. I'm out to dinner tonight, so if I'm not back too late I'll get it done then, otherwise tomorrow some time.

Thanks for all the good wishes meanwhile. Still no final decision re Ty's future - there are a couple of possibilities being explored...