Actually yes. Sometimes I go thorugh a patch where they aren't so great but then all of a sudden I have a run of good luck. Right now I'm reading The Nine,which is about the modern day Supreme Court and how it operates and chooses it's cases. Scary stuff. I'm also reading a book of plays by Chekov and on the lighter side,just finished one of many in the series of The No !. Ladies Detective Agency. Boy are those ever feel good books plus you learn a heck of a lot about Africa.

Finished Team of Rivals last week. I enjoy Doris Kearns Goodwin's writing a lot, but This book was just too long & too much detail for my level of interest. After that was finished, I headed off to the next book group book - Emma which was just the antidote for all the seriousness of the former book.

Marda, teh latest No. 1 Lady Detective book is on my night table & is the next book to be read.

I've just been dipping and browsing lately, setting aside some old favorite books to reread. Have enjoyed most some old magazines ...I love the ads as much as the articles, from the early 1900's thru 1940's.

I reread mysteries, too...LOL If it's been 5 years or so I often forget who the villain was. Don't often read them though unless I'm in a particular mood, then I'll read all the Ruth Rendell or Ngaio Marsh or whomever...and hardly anything else until I've had my "fix". There's an American woman writing marvelous Brtish mysteries (?) who is a favorite and I'm appalled I don't recall her name...all my mysteries are boxed up for now. Is it Martha Grimes? Gosh, it's time to dig out a box or two. I'm glad to hear that the #1 Detective Agency books are good...I need some "new blood" in mystery books...LOL josh

The American writing mysteries based in Great Britain is Elizabeth George .... and very good they are. josh

Actually, I played hooky from work last week and slipped into the library for half an hour and left carrying a load. It's a good thing I have vivid imagination, because I never seem to get past the non-fiction shelves and have four books on paper pieced quilting method and one on identifying fabric age by construction and dying methods. Summertime when and if I get past work projects is when I can catch some time for a novel or two.

Y'all are reading such good stuff. I've been in a 'fluff' mood for a while. Fluff is found in many books in the drugstore's rack. Mostly not meant for thinking or for raising one's consciousness, a lot of them are awfully good at both. Sneaky writers.

Anyway, in this week's bookbag: Carla Neggars; Shem Creek by Dorothea Benton Frank; re-read Mercedes Lackey's Pegasus trilogy (okay, not a trilogy, but the first three of the series); several by Kay Hooper; and a half-dozen by David Weber, oldies but they filled in the missing volumes of my collection.

Missed it the first time around, but finished 'The Shipping News' a couple days ago. Too somber to be fluff, not to mention NY Times probably doesn't put fluff on their recommended list. But I'm still laughing about the variety show, and occasionally find myself crooning, "Just imagine that!"

I am on an old novel kick. The "fluff" of the early 1900's. Some Kipling "the Story of the Gadsbys", and the DS brought me some old landscape books that I had never read.

Every couple of weeks the NY Times book section will publish an old best seller list from the 1940's or 1950's. I'll remember some of the titles from old movie versions of the book, or perhaps from reading the books my parents got from Book-of-the-Month Club at home. However, most of them are emminently forgetable & maybe best forgotten. I guess it serves to remind me that good literature has never been abundent & that pulp fiction has been around for a very long time.

Speaking of long-ago books, did anyone ever read any of the Berry series? So very determinedly an example of their time, and so hilarious. I literally wore out the one where they built a concrete house on a mountainside, and to this day I mentally blame them for my interest in off-the-beaten-path architecture. I also have a tendency to recall their incident with the bear in the woods when I'm hiking and come across blackened stumps. For some reason it makes other hikers nervous when an old lady sees the humpy remains of a lightening-struck stump and begins to guffaw.

And memory so often is feline, disappearing when most wanted. I have a poor memory for authors and it's worse for titles, but let me read the first page and --if I've read it before-- I can give you a summary of the contents. I have boxes of books in the attic, waiting for me to forget their existence. I went up the other day and rummaged through a few of the dustiest boxes, and discovered that while I couldn't quote word for word, I still remember the full story line and characterizations of most of them. I guess I'll let them rest undisturbed for another decade or so. A vineyard of books, may not become champagne but hopefully will age into a delightful rosé.

"And memory so often is feline, disappearing when most wanted."

Meldy, that's lovely...I'm going to use it as a GP quote sometime next year...I figure you may have fogotten it by then...LOL josh

I've read a lot of books in the last six months, but was overjoyed to learn the one I liked best is being made into a movie. Hmmmm.... a movie about a book about a blog about an experience with a book in a life in transition. Do not read this book if you are a sourpuss, or are looking for a serious Julia Child biography. Read it if you can identify with an imperfect woman who is interested in food, is navigating a difficult phase in her life, and is attempting to do Something Important in the meantime. Also, it helps if you are not offended by occasional profanity when it is necessary to advance the plot. ;o)

I am planning a chick party for when this movie is released. I'll only invite women who have read and enjoyed the book. We'll share some drinks, make Crepes Suzette, and then go see the movie (directed by Nora Ephron and starring Meryl Streep as Julia Child). I can't wait!