Laurel’s Comments (group member since Dec 30, 2013)

Laurel’s comments from the All About Books group.

I read this book about 5 years ago, but I remember it with great fondness. Here are my comments when I reviewed it: Enjoyed the characters, especially Isola - she's a woman after my own heart! The story is sweet, the ending is satisfying. My only quibble is with the epistolary format. I did not feel there was enough differentiation among the "voices." Everyone sounded like the same writer (which they were, of course...) This improved in Part Two, where most of the letters were written by Juliet. Other than that, I thought this was a charming novel, and am sad that there won't be more from the author.

Tracey wrote: "The No.1 Ladies Detective Agency by Alexander McCall Smith. I am about a 1/3 of the way into it and it is really good."

I'm reading that right now, too. I had started once before but never finished it. Watched the TV series with my folks last weekend (they had never seen it), and my mom wanted to get the book right away from the library. So I thought this was a good time to pick it up again and read it along with her.

So, so, so difficult and heart-breaking. There are no words. I hope my thoughts and prayers are of some comfort to you.

It's about noon on a Saturday. And I'm still in my robe and slippers reading my Goodreads digest. Usually I only read these at work (I'm a librarian) but I get too far behind. Starting anew with April and trying to stay caught up each day. Looked up just now to see a cow trotting across my lawn (I rent the downstairs of a farmhouse.) An occasional hazard here! Looks like they were spotted quickly and rounded up.

I read this awhile ago. It's a fairly quick read, and a sweet story.

Acid milk for me. All that tea, no doubt.

Progress Report: March

Daytimers:
10. Room

Leftovers:
11. The Boleyn Deceit

The "_____" Wife:

Everything Else:
12. Enthusiasm
13. Primrose Day
14. The Four & Twenty Blackbirds Pie Book: Uncommon Recipes from the Celebrated Brooklyn Pie Shop
15: Beautiful Ruins

Currently reading:
The Boleyn Reckoning
Hamlet
The Thief
The Winter Witch

Progress Report: February

Daytimers:
6. The Shoemaker's Wife
7. Olive Kitteridge

Leftovers:

The "_____" Wife:
6. The Shoemaker's Wife (dup)

Everything Else:
8. Before I Go To Sleep
9. Eleven Pipers Piping

Currently reading:
The Boleyn Deceit

I don't know what it is, but sometimes even books that I am really liking get interrupted. Something has a hold on it at the library so I have to read it NOW. My Moby Dick theme got interrupted by the Tudor theme last year. So Ahab's wife was left hanging in the middle. I was really enjoying it, but now I want to finish up the Tudor leftovers before I get back to it, and of course I will have to start it all over again. I'm currently reading The Boleyn Deceit which got interrupted last year because it was an ebook ARC that expired before I finished it, and then I had to wait for the hardcopy to be published, and then it had other holds on that at the library... and so it goes.

Laurel wrote: "My overall goal is to read 48 books. I managed 47 last year, so I was only short by one! I thought about increasing it to 52, but I think 4 books a month is a nice goal.

Not to complicate my life or anything, but I've been sort of inspired seeing some of the "pyramid" challenges, and I like that idea, so I've come up with this. Books can fit in more than one category, and indeed will have to, because there is no way I'm going to get more than 50 or so books read, but I went up to 14 on the pyramid. Haha, maybe it'll be a two year project:

14 books: Around the World
US - Gray Mountain
Canada
Central Amer.
South Amer.
Europe
Russia/Eastern Europe
Asia/Far East
India
Africa - The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency, Tears of the Giraffe
Africa/Middle East
Aust./NZ - The Lightkeeper's Wife
Oceania
Polar
Maritime

13 books: Through time
Prehistory
BC
0-500
500-800
800-1000
1000-1200
1200-1400
1400-1600
1600s
1700s - The Traitor's Wife: The Woman Behind Benedict Arnold and the Plan to Betray America
1800s
1900-1950
1950-present - Beautiful Ruins

12 books: Daytimers bookclub
January - The Invention of Hugo Cabret
February - The Shoemaker's Wife
March - Olive Kitteridge
April - Room
May - Hamlet
June - The Story of Edgar Sawtelle
July - Safe from the Sea
August (and Sept.) - Cutting for Stone
October - Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity
November - The Night Circus
December - Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail

11 books: Random/no other category fits
The Importance of Being Seven
I Am Half-Sick of Shadows
Eleven Pipers Piping
The Four & Twenty Blackbirds Pie Book: Uncommon Recipes from the Celebrated Brooklyn Pie Shop
The Thief
The Queen of Attolia
Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children
The King of Attolia
A Conspiracy of Kings
Hollow City
Learning to Walk in the Dark
Morality for Beautiful Girls
Ten Lords A-Leaping
Death at Buckingham Palace
Second Thyme Around
People of the Book
101 Whiskies to Try Before You Die
Gray Mountain

10 books: The "____" Wife
The Sixth Wife
The Shoemaker's Wife
The Crane Wife
The Anatomist's Wife
The Traitor's Wife: The Woman Behind Benedict Arnold and the Plan to Betray America
The Headmaster's Wife
The Silent Wife
The Witch Doctor's Wife
The Aviator's Wife
The Lightkeeper's Wife

9 books: Book group reads
Twelve Drummers Drumming (English Mysteries Goodreads group - Jan. 2014)
Before I Go To Sleep (Curl Up and Read)
Beautiful Ruins (Tomes On Tap)
The Crane Wife (Tomes On Tap)
Longbourn - AAB Recommedation Swap - Nov. 2014

8 books: Books I've started at one time or another and need to finish
The Boleyn Deceit
The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency

7 books: Tudor leftovers (from 2013 list)
The Boleyn Deceit
Gilt
The Boleyn Reckoning

6 books: Moby Dick leftovers (from 2013 list)

5 books: Childhood favorites to reread
Primrose Day
The Hungry Little Bunny by Irma Wilde

4 books: Pride and Prejudice related
Enthusiasm
Longbourn

3 books: Welsh setting or author

2 books: Arthurian

1 book: Welsh language
Un Noson Dywyll

Leslie, I am not a member of that group, but I just joined. Thanks! Reading the posts it seems the group didn't like it much.

Here's my review of Hugo: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

Progress Report: January

Daytimers:
1. The Invention of Hugo Cabret

Leftovers:

The "_____" Wife:
2. The Sixth Wife

Everything Else:
3. The Importance of Being Seven
4. Twelve Drummers Drumming
5. I Am Half-Sick of Shadows

Currently reading:
The Shoemaker's Wife

Just finished Twelve Drummers Drumming which is a new author to me, the first of a series, and the main character is making a new start in a new location. I liked it very much! Here's my review if anyone is interested - http://welshbookworm.wordpress.com/20...

And all the rest of my random selections:

Exit Actors, Dying
The Cape Cod Caper
Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace with Marriage
The Fast Diet: The Simple Secret of Intermittent Fasting: Lose Weight, Stay Healthy, Live Longer
Everything You Wanted to Know about Indians But Were Afraid to Ask
The Reincarnationist - meh
Mrs. Queen Takes the Train - cute
Wild Ride - silly, but loved it!
Son of the Morning
The Knights' Tales Collection: Book 1: Sir Lancelot the Great; Book 2: Sir Givret the Short; Book 3: Sir Gawain the True; Book 4: Sir Balin the Ill-Fated

TBR/Pride and Prejudice/Tudor fiction:

Finally finished Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West - this had been a 2009 Daytimer's selection, I think.
Reread: The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie before getting to
The Weed That Strings the Hangman's Bag and
A Red Herring Without Mustard
I ADORE Flavia De Luce.

Bridget Jones's Diary - didn't care for this at all, but I did enjoy the movie.
Austenland
Death Comes to Pemberley
Pride and Prejudice and Kitties: A Cat-Lover's Romp through Jane Austen's Classic

The Forgotten Queen
Her Highness' First Murder - loved it
The Boleyn King - very good
The Queen's Secret - loved it
Queen's Gambit - really excellent

Started: Gilt

More, to be continued in 2014:
To Die For: A Novel of Anne Boleyn
Venus in Winter
The Tudor Secret
Murder at Hatfield House
Royal Inheritance

Moby Dick Challenge: Goal 9-12 books. Read 10.

Why Read Moby-Dick?
Moby-Dick; or, The Whale - read in 2012
Dive Deeper: Journeys with Moby-Dick
The Nautical Chart - read in 2012
The Secret of Lost Things
Tigers in Red Weather
Moby-Duck: The True Story of 28,800 Bath Toys Lost at Sea and of the Beachcombers, Oceanographers, Environmentalists, and Fools, Including the Author, Who Went in Search of Them
Cathedral of the Sea
Moby Clique
Ahab's Bride

Favorites: Dive Deeper, Moby-Duck, Cathedral of the Sea (though it had nothing to do with Moby Dick - I was just attracted by "sea" in the title!)
Worst: Moby Clique

Started, but didn't finish (yet):
Ahab's Wife, or The Star-Gazer
Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters - Preparatory to that I DID read Sense and Sensibility

Still on my list, and will continue this in 2014:
The Art of Fielding
The Movement of Stars
The Watery Part of the World
Railsea
The Solitude of Thomas Cave: A Novel
We, the Drowned
The Boundless Deep
The Widow's War
The Rathbones

Daytimer's bookclub: Goal 12 books. Read 12 books.

Jan: Where the Red Fern Grows
Feb: The Book Thief - actually read this in 2012
Mar: The Hobbit Along with this I also read Exploring J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit and The Annotated Hobbit: The Hobbit, or, There and back again
Apr: Still Alice
May: Little Bee
Jun: Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption
Jul: Oh My Stars
Aug: Life of Pi
Sep: Loving Frank
Oct: Haunted Ground
Nov: The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane
Dec: The Madonnas of Leningrad

Favorites: The Book Thief, Little Bee, and Loving Frank.

I had three different versions of reading goals during the year. First of all, I set a goal of 48 books, which was quite an increase over 36 for 2012. Always a given are the 12 books for my Daytimer's book club. My primary new challenge was to read 12 books based on Moby Dick. Then I decided I would read 12 books that had been on my TBR list for more than a year. The final 12 would be current interest/random reads - mostly historical fiction, and Arthurian or Welsh fiction.

Then it turned out I thought I might expand on a previous years challenge based on Pride and Prejudice, as I thought that I might be doing a presentation on that for the Minnesota Library Association annual conference in October. So for a while, that replaced part of the TBR challenge. My proposal was reluctantly (so they said) turned down, but I volunteered to be part of the 50 (books) in 60 (minutes) fiction panel, and I chose to do Tudor fiction published in 2013 for that.

I'll give the final results in the comments below. My total was 47 for the year. Pretty good!

Jean wrote: "Presumably you have already read The Time Traveler's Wife as it's screaming to be include..."

Yes, Jean - That definitely goes on that list, but I have already read it, and don't plan to reread it. I have also already read:
A Reliable Wife and
The Zookeeper's Wife
Currently reading The Sixth Wife which I probably read 40 years ago, since I devoured Jean Plaidy back in her day. Still good books! It's nice to see so many of them being reprinted.

We also have a collection of "bookclub in a bag" kits - 10 copies - so I pick from those, too.