Like candy for a tea lover - so many wonderful choices this morning! 😋☕️ I stocked up yesterday. My favorite is the Gunpowder Special Grade.

Princess Dashkova was one of our kind! Voracious reader who spent all her “pocket money” on books and had quite a personal library. At a young age she had her own book agent whose pleasure was to acquire the newest publications from France for her.

😆👍🏾

Not the tagged book. ”A Gathering Darkness: Thirteen Classic English Ghost Stories”, edited by James Burns.

Husband and I had a good laugh over this sentence last night! Bah! Such wit. 😆

Well, this is certainly off to a great start!

I tried for 3 days to get into different historic fiction audio book and finally gave up. But I was hooked into this one with the first chapter! 👻 Fun premise.

This is between a pick and so-so for me. I definitely enjoyed the depiction of characters and their lives in a rural Scottish Highland village circa 1869, but the last third didn‘t hold my attention as well when it turned to the “expert” criminologist examination and the trial.

The intended victim gets no sympathy from me. 👿

“I have always shrunk from killing so much as a hen, and do not understand why educated men regard the killing of living creatures as sport.”

Well put!

For a fraction of a second I was dismayed until I read it again. 😧😆

The prose is so good that I was engrossed from the beginning! A crumbing house, living deaths, and grisly “accidents” make for a gothic story that fits the bill for the season. 🕷🖤🎃 There was only one cheesy element I had to 🙄 at, but I can overlook it for the otherwise excellent writing.

50F and dreary rain all day - perfect setting for this read. I am going to curb my guilt induced impulse to do chores and cozy up with my Kindle instead. (It‘s just so silly how cold fall feels and come spring this will be a heat wave.)

My thrifty finds - I‘ve been wanting to read the tagged book so lucky day! I read Mrs. Dalloway so long ago I don‘t recall anything about it, maybe the second round will leave an impression. I enjoyed the Candleford series on TV - I‘m guessing the trilogy will be a terrific comfort read when I‘m back in another course next week. 😢

Thrifty find today that should be seasonably appropriate! 💀

9 year old Daughter says 👍🏾👍🏾

The illustrations inside are vivid and adorable! We were happy to find it is part of a series.

This is a very pretty vegetarian cookbook, even the endpapers are beautiful! It enjoyed leafing 😉 thru it, but I only found a few recipes that I‘d actually make, the wraps shown is one of them.

So fun and informative! The format makes the recipes easy to follow. This is going on my Xmas list. 😊

And once again, I‘m now starving.

Perfectly spooky start! 👻

I haven‘t eaten yet this morning and I just read the chapter on bread, and more specifically bread toppings & soups. Good grief I‘m hungry now!

A fictional, but nonetheless very real portrayal of a young woman‘s experience fleeing South Sudan and eventually her & her mother‘s adjustment to American life.

“Rape is an act of war.” It is indeed a weapon.

Do you spy the visitor to the yellow bloom?

When a library is a revelation!

An new Sudanese refugee on her first day of school in Portland, Maine. 💜

My 6th grade teacher read this to the class and I fell in love. I‘ve read it several times since and it never gets old as it‘s a classic tale about avarice and the meaning of the “good life.” This is the first time I‘ve listened to an audio version.

My son is in the 6th grade and I can‘t quite see him loving it, but maybe I‘m selling him short because it has suspense and action. 😆

As the title aptly suggests, the heart of teen innocence is destroyed by a host of crass & deplorable adults.

Dense writing makes it a slow read and includes many insightful observations re: human experience. One of the best is Bowen‘s commentary about people who invade others‘ grief like vultures. “They bring with them the sense that the most individual sorrow has a stupefying universality.”

Worth all the hype surrounding this book, which in my experience is a rarity.

What an end! Cora wondered ...”how far he travelled before he put it behind him.” So physically and emotionally fitting.

A good story to ponder over justice, what it means and if it is a principle borne out by reality.

Cather‘s descriptive writing is is glorious! But I equally appreciated her unflinching, unsentimental portrayal of war; none of the nauseating personal or national vainglory that is always a desperate attempt to mask the pain of tragedies large and small. #catherbuddyread

QUESTION Austin fans: can someone recommend an edition with a grad course worthy Introduction or analysis? It‘s going to be one of the reading selections in my next HUMA course.

I hope I like it better the 2nd time around. I was in my early 20s when I first read it and didn‘t care for the MC. 😳 Hoping age will help me appreciate her more.

Exciting new book mail! Daughter immediately confiscated Guts and the Vanderbeekers will be our next read aloud whenever we finally finish Restart (which we‘re liking). It takes us a long time to get thru a book a chapter at a time. They are just so pooped by bedtime. 😴

Welcome to adulting Claude. #catherbuddyread

I could eat like this every day! Some great looking recipes in this book, especially the starters. 😋

Bill Nighy was simply fantastic in the movie adaptation! What body acting, subtle things that make his character real.

*not tagged book

Awesome audio short story telling! Nate DiMeo‘s writing is superb! Thanks to a recent episode on RadioLab, I just discovered the podcast The Memory Palace, where DiMeo writes and reads very short historical based stories.

I am late to the party! Anyone else listen to this podcast?

2nd installment in the quirky good-feels Poor Relations series. Perfect for times when you don‘t have serious attention span or need a pick me up.

My only Thrifty Find yesterday, but it has a really marvelous collection of selected short stories by various authors.

I came very close to buying a reissue of a 1930‘s novel set in Montana (bc I am a sucker for all things MT), but it smelled like cigarette smoke and in the end I just didn‘t think I could tolerate it. I even stood there contemplating how I could get rid of the odor, but gave up.

Daughter participated in a book tasting at school. She was quite definitive about this one! 😳 “Dislike”, “horrible”, “nothing good”, “NO!”.

She told me it seemed more like an adult book. 😆 She praised the graphic novel on the menu though, no surprise there.

MN Littens or anyone planning a visit to the Twin Cities, not only is Moon Palace Books a terrific shop, but the cafe inside it, Geek Love, was noted as one of the best pizzas makers by a City Pages contributor. 😋 🍕 I see pizza in my near future. #moonpalacebooks

🙀 Nooooo, not TWO cups of stimulant! 😆

#catherbuddyread @Graywacke

This book definitely makes you ponder ways you can reduce & reuse. It also notes eco-brands & eco-focused websites to check out. The photo includes my most annoying regular plastic purchase. 😒

This book is unpretentious, which I appreciate! A recipe for microwave macaroni & black pepper that Andres and his daughter developed. He also describes artichokes as a “pain in the ass.” 😂😆👍🏾

Love these kinds of inspirational ideas in cookbooks! 😋 Piquillo Peppers 🌶

Totally my kinda comfort food: pasta with green olives & breadcrumbs. 😋

Very pretty book with several recipes I‘ve tabbed to make.

The struggle is real for everyone feeding a family; the mixed messages, the guilt/shame complexes, time crunches, food preferences, money & health concerns, etc. The list goes on. “Cook organic whole foods in the kitchen that you bicycled home in cloth bags and the planet‘s and families‘ problems will be solved” is unrealistic and untrue.

Good grief! The only way for a low income & food insecure grandmother to take her grandchildren to the state fair is to donate cans of food for the food pantry collection at the entrance, specifically to help families like hers. 🙄 I have a lot of concerns that I can‘t express with limited space.

A cozy period read with the kind of quirky characters you‘d expect. Nothing earth shattering or profound, just a feel good that is easy listening. Sometimes we just need that in our lives. I will continue on and listen to the next installment.

Wondering how I could justify taking this affectionate baby home. 🤔🤔 If only we didn‘t camp so long in the summer. We already take a cat & dog.

Some last blooms. 😩 This book is making me feel better about the challenges of feeding a family - I‘m not alone.

Of course 👍🏾👍🏾. Miller is an amazing writer! She made a love story more than palatable, which for me is a hurdle. 😁

US Kindle Deal: I really enjoyed this short YA novel. The characters have fresh and unique voices. I don‘t recall it being whiny or unduly teen angsty, which is a turnoff for me.

Only on chapter 5 and the quality of her writing is such I‘ve decided I‘ll follow Miller wherever she goes. 😁

Unpopular opinion: I enjoyed the mystery of Cahalan‘s illness, but the recovery part of the narrative was so excruciatingly detailed I couldn‘t continue on to finish it. For me, this is why memoir (and some NF) is not in my wheelhouse. Sometimes shorter is more impactful.

I really enjoyed the structure of this sad (I think) intimate family portrait and illumination of the plight of migrant children. The archival type structure would have been even more powerful in print. I love the theme of capturing “lost” or “ghost” sounds as remnants of people and events. Makes me realize how much I don‘t consciously register. It is a slow moving narrative, but that only reinforces the intimacy.