bookish

Just ordered my annual Christmas book for Occasional Helper's little girl. Shopping for a child's library is good fun, and I keep a running list of possibilities throughout the year and choose in November. 

November almost got away from me this year - it's all been a blur since August. Recent rumors of Thanksgiving caught my attention, and now I'm making another list, of Things To Be Done Before The Holidays.

Do you know about Bookshop.org? It's an excellent alternative to the behemoth online seller of books/everything. Bookshop.org was established solely to support independent bookstores, and it's worth a glance at their "About Us" page. Just a fine endeavor in every way. And as easy to use as any other online bookseller.

I now rely on audiobooks for 95% of my entertainment reading, and am fortunate in having online access to an excellent regional library system. But once or twice each year I treat myself to a special hardcover, sometimes an out-of-print book that I watch for on eBay, or something specific from a small publishing house or an academic press or a museum. I've had nothing but good experiences ordering from Blackwell's, which has been a great resource for such books, published in faraway magical places like South Africa and England.

Last year, my "treat" book was this heavily annotated reissue of "A Thousand Miles Up The Nile," by Amelia B. Edwards, the 19th-century English woman who created the Egypt Exploration Fund. It's a satisfyingly dense brick of a book, with two ribbon bookmarkers and many previously unpublished illustrations by Amelia Edwards. Just my cup of tea, especially for the long dark nights of Winter.

Do you own and acquire a lot of books? Is most of your reading for information or entertainment or a combination? Is your reading seasonal? Are there good libraries where you live?

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one special book

The Heywood Hill bookshop is celebrating their 80th anniversary with a drawing, which includes a spectacular first prize.

From their website:

"First prize is a lifetime's subscription to our famous A Year in Books service. The lucky winner will never need to buy a book again. They will be sent a new hardback book, individually chosen to suit their particular reading taste, every month FOR LIFE wherever they live in the world.
Second prize will be a one-year subscription to A Year in Books, and third prize a hardback book every other month for a year."

Nice, right?

It's a free drawing, open to all. To enter, you must answer just one question:

"Simply tell us which single book has meant the most to you, published in English since Heywood Hill opened in 1936."

I have been pondering this question at odd moments for several days now, and still don't have the answer. (But I will, before entries close on 31 October.)

What keeps springing to mind are books I read over and over again in childhood. Or unheard-of books given to me by friends, which I then carried from place to place for years. Books that became old friends, or that broadened my vision in some way. Books that inspired, entertained, instructed, influenced or dazzled me deeply.

But "meant the most to me"? It's a difficult question, but one that I very much enjoy mulling over in odd moments. So, in a way, I have already been given a prize by the Heywood Hill bookshop, and I've not even entered yet!

Which single book would YOU name?

I hope my readers will enter this drawing, and also share your thoughts in the comments below. Maybe some of us will discover shared favorites, or - I'm hoping! - find titles to add to our "must read" lists :)

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a few brief updates

Book Report:

Have you ever read Daphne du Maurier's "Rebecca"?

One day last week when I was searching my much-appreciated online regional library for an audiobook to download, "Rebecca" popped up as a recommendation. I read it for school when I was about 13 and a few images from the story have stayed with me, but not much of the plot detail. After checking the brief sample clip to be sure the narrator would be easy to listen to (for me, the narrator can make or break any audiobook), I downloaded the novel for knitting entertainment.

Well.

I'll tell you what.

This book is a stunner.

That Daphne du Maurier really knew

how to put the words together.

And the narrator, actress Anna Massey, was brilliant.

I've listened for an hour or so each evening, while working on the second(!) orange sock. And today, while listening to the final part of the book, I mindlessly knit an extra inch

on the foot of the sock.

Hundreds and hundreds of tiny (unnecessary) stitches.

That's a pretty good book!

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Weather Report:

I have not been talking or writing or thinking about Autumn yet. This is not denial. I know it's right around the corner, and I'm already working hard to prep for the season that will come after it. No, I love Autumn and will welcome it gladly, but I've had a strong feeling that we have not seen the last of Summer.

And sure enough, for the past three days we've had mid-70s. Truly Hot. It's been hard to sleep; hot and stuffy even with all the windows open.

This isn't even Indian Summer...it's just 

Not Yet Autumn.

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Gardening Report:

A friend generously offered some of her perennial plants for my new border garden. I was thrilled! We had a lovely time chatting while she thinned numerous spots in her vast and varied gardens.

There is some question as to the exact identity of several of my new plants, as their blooms are for the most part gone. But they include bee balm (possibly in two colors!) and echinacea and hyssop and several other things. Now all are planted either in the new border garden or in one of the small flower-and-veg beds between the barns. 

Tansy! I'm told it produces light yellow flowers.

It took me about 5 hours to get everything in the ground and watered. Now I hope the plants will have time to develop new roots and get snugged in for a good rest, in preparation for a revival in the Spring.

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Piper Report:

Piper went into fits of serious barking several times last evening. There was clearly Something In The Woods, and Piper wanted to holler at it but not chase it off. I went out twice and walked around in the dark - which Piper always finds great fun! - but couldn't see or hear the mystery critter. The goats were upset, but not all facing into the woods and staring the way they do when they sense a threat - no, they were all staring at That Dog Is Scaring Us.

I know the feeling, goats. My heart pounds when Piper barks. She rarely barks at all, and when she does, it is very sudden!

The more typical Piper: Not Barking.

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and a Follow-Up:

I should add a little more about the rock and root...apparently not the best subject for a wordless post, sorry!

Here's the story behind the pictures.

I was digging a hole for one of the new perennials in untilled, hardpack soil, removing roots and stones as I went along. The "plant-end" of the root in the pictures snapped when I pulled on the stone. I might not have noticed it had it not been bright orange-pink;

probably my nemesis, oriental bittersweet.

Here's my interpretation: the root, perhaps when it was quite small, had begun growing into a tiny "fracturable" spot on the stone. As the root grew longer and wider, it forced the the stone to begin to break apart. The depth and degree to which the stone had begun to fracture was clearly associated with the progress of the root, with a wide crack on the "entry" side narrowing to a nearly invisible hairline on the opposite side. And on the non-root side of the stone (I'm running out of "sides;" but it's kind of a lumpy stone), on the other end of the stone, let's say, it is completely solid rock; there isn't even a hairline crack. I tried to show all this in the pictures by rotating the stone, but when I saw HelenB's comment about the potato, I realized a few words of explanation would have helped! I'll try to keep that in mind for the future.

Thanks for visiting and commenting...

I hope you are all having a lovely week!

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free books

This may be one of those things that everybody already knows about. I am quite often late to the party.

Except that one time when I was hours early because I had the time wrong, and those people never invited me again, which makes me feel a bit foolish and sad.

Ahem.

Onward.

Here's something I find quite useful from time to time. And the price is definitely right!

Audiobooks are daily fare here, but a while back I wanted to read a book that was only available as a e-book. Rats. I don't have a Kindle or a tablet. My cellphone is a very basic pay-for-use, and while it may be smarter than me, it is certainly not a "smartphone." (To be honest, I'm not even sure what makes a smartphone "smart." Maybe my next phone will tell me.)

But I really wanted to read that book. So after doing a little poking around on the internet, I discovered and downloaded the free Kindle Reading App for my laptop.

Because here's what I didn't know: Amazon offers a free Kindle Reading application for all sorts of not-a-Kindle devices. See here, and click to embiggen:

It was So Easy. Also, Fast.

Also - did I mention? - Free.

And in keeping with the "free" theme running through this post, here's the bonus: you can also download free books from Amazon.

Amazon sells a quadrazillion books, of course, but they also offer loads of free e-books - thousands! - in all sorts of categories; everything from Jane Austen to gardening books. The list changes frequently. The search function works well.

For example, this morning I searched for "free kindle books canning preserving." Here are the search results, again with the clicking and embiggening:

Important: many books are free for a very short time and will soon revert to their usual price. So if you see something interesting, best download it immediately. I missed out on a book about dehydrating last week, but today I'll download several books on preserving.

These e-books will live quietly in my laptop library, perhaps until a snowy evening spent planning the next garden and feeding the woodstove.

And at that point, if a book doesn't look useful, a click will delete it. So much better than dusting the bookshelves (not a high priority task here, as you might imagine) and trying to decide - again - whether to keep a book I haven't opened since 1989.

If you haven't tried this app and would like to check it out, here's a link that should take you there.

Have fun! And if you find any special treasures, please come back and share them in the comments :)

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