Helen > Recent Status Updates

I see that I started reading this back in 2019 per Becky’s suggestion. Well here I am finally! I am quite enjoying this book, although it is slow going with all the notes and vocabulary helps. I’m also very much enjoying listening to it read in Middle English on archive.com.

Although this doesn’t have all of the“Idylls,” it does have lots of really useful notes and I kind of like just reading what someone has determined as the best of the twelve. So far I’ve been most successful with reading it for quite a while in one sitting, rather than just a few pages at a time. After this, I plan to read the recommended Sidney Lanier’s A Boy’s King Arthur.

I haven’t really gotten into this book yet. Maybe it’s partly because I just finished The Dean’s Watch, which is another book about a cathedral town. I generally do like Goudge a lot, so I do plan to finish it.

Taking it a bit at a time. The notes are super helpful, and really flesh out the meanings and puns and historical references. Also subscribed to the Hillsdale College online class, but I’m waiting to get a bit further in the book before I get started so I don’t see any spoilers. Charlie bought copies of a different edition for himself Johnny and me for us all to read, but I already had and prefer this edition.

I’m actually reading the version published in 1929, but it has the same cover. This book was mentioned favorably two or three times in the series The Saturdays that I was reading a while ago, which also features a big family.

Almost done. I’ve read this before and I know it’s got a sad ending for some of the characters. I always feel like this book is way more about Brian, Dubois and Rebecca than it is about Ivanhoe. It’s a good book, but I do find that Scott’s wit and cleverness with words is not as much in evidence here as in some of his other books.

Abandoned. See review. This is approximately where I left off. I did make an effort — but life and reading time are too short to struggle through this.

The Custard Heart: what a masterfully drawn portrait of a “wistful” self-involved society woman, who can’t bear to be presented with anything unlovely.

I’m enjoying this a lot. It has a great cast of characters. Johnny and I watched the miniseries back in ~’87-‘88, and loved it!

I gave up on this, as I was tired of the constant drama. I used to love books about big families, and I still do (for example, The Family from One End Street, or The Would-Be-Goods, etc.) but this is just too high energy for me.

Just finished the first essay about Madame du Deffand. This is the first book I’m reading in the Penguin Modern series of short books, that Charlie and I are reading together.

Considerably grittier than earlier ones I’ve read by her, and again it drags on a bit,but they are story is engaging enough to keep reading.

I’m enjoying this so far. Various people’s lives converge at an old house near the sea in west Ireland. Involving stories.

I’m on the verge of giving up on this book. The plot is so contrived and the accent is so painful to read through (an L instead of an R when the Chinese are speaking—but even then not consistently). At this stage there are hardly any scenes with the children as the main characters. I was kind of excited I thought this might be fun, but it’s just dragging so much for me.

We’re on Cato the Younger now. This book is very helpful in providing context and additional information about the time periods and the people involved.

The author is so enthusiastic. The last two places we visited were the Taj Mahal and Mount Everest, and he describes them so well and the imagined experience of visiting them is so vivid — you almost feel like you are there with him.

Just started, but wanted to make the note that I’m not reading the Kindle edition, but the paperback edition that I am reading doesn’t have a cover on Goodreads – – but cover is the same as shown here for the Kindle edition.

Also, it’s instructive without being pedantic. It goes into details about where to find perch, lots of details about sailing, including parts of the ship and how to tack, etc. Good stuff thatchildren could follow. It also sets a good example of the parents letting them have some freedom, but monitoring them without being overbearing and restrictive.

One thing I’ve noticed about this book so far is that it gives equal time, or at least more-equal time, to the younglings. There are four children, and often in these books it seems that the older ones get the most attention, or it’s written from the older one’s perspective. This one seems to switch the focus to the perspective of each of the children, which is nice.

An interesting premise. Other than lots of vignettes from his past lives, I'm not sure where the book is going. A scathing indictment of prisons in London's era. Really awful.

I started to reread this book about a week ago, when I wanted something light like this. The adventures they get themselves into are fun and imaginative, but sometimes verging on irritating because you would think they would know better. So far, they’ve all turned out mostly all right, if you don’t count the expense incurred to fix the damages due to their antics.

Super interesting. I’m enjoying the word studies — which makes it slow reading, but more enriching!

A different twist than the usual. Tongue in cheek, with a refreshingly straightforward heroine, who has her own opinions — and generally sticks by them. She’s quite inexperienced though, so doesn’t have a lot of comparisons from which to draw. Although there has been some activity, something quite dramatic has just happened, which we don’t know the cause of yet (the cause of which we do not yet know). 😄

Another thing that irritates me is the author’s way of saying something unexpected or unknown has happened, but not telling you what it is. And then you have to wait for it to be revealed later on. It happens a lot. For example, he might say, “Gamache couldn’t believe what he was seeing on the screen.” End of chapter and change of scene. That kind of thing is annoying when it’s done so often.

*spoiler*. This is getting really irritating. I find it hard to believe that real detectives would be as dense as this. They are not thinking creatively; they’re making a lot of assumptions & choosing the most obvious suspect, which is affecting their case adversely. I like the characters but in this particular instance it is getting a bit annoying, & almost seems like the author is trying to stretch out the book.

I’m quite enjoying this book. The author is a real character and you feel like you’re getting to know her as you read through this book. She goes through a lot getting used to her orange grove and the 1930s hammock environment in Florida. The writing is evocative and the stories are often poignant.

A fun listen. I like the narrator. The story line has bogged down a bit (no pun intended).

Going to abandon until another day, and/or when the audiobook is available.