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Need something lighthearted and nothing is really more lighthearted than Winnie.

I have always been fascinated by the art of NC Wyeth and the way he set out to make a great painter of his son and succeeded. I think all the Wyeth's had amazing talent, and Andrew was the most famous, but for me the genius was still NC.

What a tragic situation for an older man to find himself in. I suppose my own age makes me feel his predicament more than I might have when younger. I think it is a kind of universal fear in aging people that they will end up at the mercy of someone who does not care for them or a burden on someone they love. Sadly, both of these are realities for Nariman.

As is usual with Collins, the story is gripping from the first word. There are many questions, and clues that invite speculation, which is part of what makes a Collins novel fun.

I am marking dozens of quotations. Byatt is a very intellectual writer, so I am always learning new things as I explore her stories, which I think makes the reading go slower.

Pausing the book due to real life complications. Hoping to resume soon.

Feel quite invested in the characters at this point and a little uneasy about what might be in the pasts and futures of several of them.

"His mother was a good and fearful Lutheran, who gave away both time and money, visiting hospitals for the poor, organizing bazaars and clothing collections. But she ate from Meissen porcelain with silver spoons. There were hideous inconsistencies."

I think this is a struggle many people deal with, perhaps on a smaller level, but how much should we have if others do not have anything.

Love the way it opens: "Without hope there would be no magic."

I love the way he describes memory and how it plays tricks on us and the way smell is so firmly attached to memory.

"He said it meant that when you did a good thing it should seem to come from God, not from you. It should not feel to other people like your goodness, and it should not feel that way to you, either. Any good thing is less good the more any human being lays claim to it."

On the one hand, Lila is sad and unwanted; on the other hand, Doll loves her unconditionally, so she does have a glimpse of the possibility of love.

End of Part One. Have a good feel for the main characters and find the story rather captivating, despite the fact that nothing has really happened of any true significance so far.

So easy to just get lost in this book. It has probably been 40+ years since the last time I read it. I've watched the movie several times since then. I cannot separate the two in my head...when Atticus speaks he always has Gregory Peck's voice for me.

I had forgotten how much I love the perfect prose of Harper Lee.
"Men's stiff collars wilted by nine in the morning. Ladies bathed before noon, after their three o'clock naps, and by nightfall were like soft teacakes with frostings of sweat and sweet talcum."
Maybe those who have never lived without air conditioning will not experience this line as I did...but I remember those sweltering summer days of my childhood.

Then she said, "what is a soul?"
He looked up, smiled, studied her face. "Why ask me?"
"It just seems to me that you would know."
He shrugged. "On the basis of my vast learning and experience, I would say--it is what you can't get rid of. Insult, deprivation, outright violence--'If I make my bed in Sheol, behold, thou art there,' and so on.

Home. What kinder place could there be on earth, and why did it seem to them all like exile? Oh, to be passing anonymously through an impersonal landscape! Oh, not to know every stump and stone, not to remember how the fields of Queen Anne's lace figured in the childish happiness they had offered to their father's hopes, God bless him.

"Sometimes I'd be out in the barn, in the loft, listening to the piano, you all singing "My Darling Clementine, and I'd think, Maybe they've forgotten all about me, and it felt like death, in a way." He said, "I was usually closer to home than he thought I was. Where he didn't look for me."

The discussion of predestination is amazing. It is so difficult to address such a difficult and mysterious issue from so many points of view and not miss any possible arguments on either side. This is what I feel Robinson has done.

Bravo for Lila, who answers the real question so softly and so accurately.
"Then she looked up at him and said, 'A person can change. Everything can change."

After Ames has delivered the sermon aimed at Jack, there is a feeling of a rift between him and Boughton. When we have a friend like this, in whom we have confided everything, and then they do something that feels so against us, so against what we wanted or needed, it has the impact of more than a hammer blow.

Of course, we who have read Gilead understand more about this than Boughton does.