Still in the Tunnel and Mystery Bookmark

Sorry for the abrupt interregnum here. I should have let you know that I had carpal tunnel surgery on my right hand so would be absent for a bit. The surgery was not scheduled to happen until this coming Monday but there was an opening so they whisked me in on Friday, May 13th (yikes!!!) so it was all a big whirlwind. Anyway...three weeks into recovery and I am nearly back.  Very satisfied with the procedure and expect to be fully recovered in another week or two. Left hand is scheduled for June 28, so fair warning, another pause to come!

Enough about that.

With lots of time to dawdle, I finished two 2016 Reading Challenge books. I will post on the Lopez book soon, and the Farrell book later as it is part of trilogy I need to finish.

Also, I have listened to many audio books while playing one-handed Churchill Solitaire on my iPad. As usual, my genre choice is British mystery but I also listened to a short history of Greece and a mystery with a knitting theme. Random, but I do tend to choose my reading matter based on the most shiny thing I see at the moment.

Here is what I am currently reading in the physical book world:

Provence by Ford Madox Ford

Desert Solitaire by Edward Abbey

In the Skin of a Lion by Michael Ondaatje

I have "dipped into" Plutarch's Lives, The Game of Kings by Dorothy Dunnett, and The Singapore Grip by J.G. Farrell. I will save those for later. The Dunnett is quite dense. So much so, I have a companion volume to refer to when I do not understand her historical references. I love the challenge but am not quite ready for it right now. Plutarch is part of my mental "must read the classics" obsession and the Farrell is part three of a trilogy so I will wait to post about it when I can speak to all three books. I need to re-read Troubles, the second book in the trilogy because for who knows what reason I began reading them out of order and it was several years ago and I cannot remember much about Troubles. The first book, Siege of Krishnapur, winner of the Booker Prize, is shown above. I am still thinking about that one so am looking forward to the next two.

Here is a teaser for you ~~

Side Two of a Bookmark

I found this in one of the books I am now reading...more to come. Now, I have to grab some ice and rest my hand.

Spotify and Desert Island Discs

Do you listen to music while reading? I do. Sometimes because I find it easier to concentrate without random noise, or because I am in the same room where television is on and cannot read otherwise. My favorite way to listen is Spotify. I subscribe to the ad-free premium version.

I first heard of Spotify when listening to the podcast Books on the Nightstand. Ann Kingman, one of the pair of publisher reps who created the podcast, was talking about listening to music while reading. She said she uses Spotify to find music to suit the mood of the book she is reading. This idea intrigued me, so I went looking for Spotify.

Now, several years later, I have many playlists that reflect my taste in music and I go to for enjoyment, background, or to set the mood for reading a particular book or author.

While reading Virginia Woolf, I play my "Woolf" playlist which includes Wagner, Beethoven, and Mozart (so far). I built this playlist from mentions of London concerts attended by the Woolfs in Virginia's diary.

Rainier Maria Rilke came from an old Bohemian aristocratic family. His letters and poems are accompanied by music from "old Bohemia", now part of the Czech Republic. I have downloaded Czech and Slovak folk music for my "Rilke" playlist.

A fun way to learn about an author's taste in music is to listen to BBC Radio 4's Desert Island Discs. I love this podcast! There is a treasure trove of programs in the archives on the website. I am a big fan of Ian McEwan. He was interviewed on Desert Island Discs and his favorite music includes jazz, Mozart, Bach, Schubert, Donizetti, and Van Morrison. If I am reading one of his books, I might create a "McEwan" playlist including some or all of these. Just to set the mood.

Spotify has become part of my reading life. Not for everything, but today as I work my way through John Banville's The Sea, I am listening to music about the sea, like:

La Mer

Now I need to go find some more quiet sea music for my playlist "The Sea". Thank you, Ann Kingman, for introducing me to Spotify.

I will be back soon with a post on two books, The Sea, The Sea by Iris Murdoch and The Sea, mentioned above. Both Irish writers, both Booker Prize winners for these particular books.

Library2Go

I love my local library. As a reader, of course I love it! Nowadays it has taken on a fresh new look. Comfortable easy chairs in a sleek art deco style, bright colors, indoor "patio" tables with bright colored umbrellas, a huge teepee, interesting displays, a full-sized plastic skeleton, "trader" paperbacks free for the taking, a wonderful dollhouse for my granddaughter to populate with her choice of toy people, dinosaurs, furniture, and a tiger (her favorite), plus the usual assortment of books, etc. For the past two years or so, I have been using the Library2Go Oregon Digital Library Consortium service too. This comes free with my library card.

I especially like to download audio books that I can listen to as I go about my daily routine. Usually I listen to British mysteries, you know, stories set in "peaceful" country villages where nothing ever happens. Ha!

I like writers such as P.D. James, Dorothy L. Sayers, Ngaio Marsh, M.C. Beaton, Agatha Christie, Elizabeth George and Deborah Crombie. The last two are American writers whose stories are set in Great Britain. There are many more I could list. Besides mysteries set in Great Britain, I also like to listen to Donna Leon's Detective Brunetti mysteries. These are set in Venice so I get a vicarious visit to that magical city with each new story.

 And, I like Andrea Camilleri's Inspector Montalbano series, set in Sicily, so more vicarious travel.

One caveat with my choice of mystery books. I do not like realistic detective fiction. Spare me the autopsies, and psychopaths who build snowmen in the yards of their victims, or put body parts in the car boot. No thanks. Some of my writers throw in gruesome scenes but one is not taken into the mind of the killer. Elizabeth George is an exception, I guess. My "cosy" mysteries, where there IS murder, it is (for the most part) sanitized such that my delicate sensibilities can handle it.

So far in 2016, I have listened to sixteen audio books. They are not all mysteries. I have "read" Rosamunde Pilcher, Emile Zola, Anthony Trollope, and listened to an Arthur Miller play. OK, I'm a dreamer but isn't reading an escape, no matter how it is accomplished? At least with audio books, I get my chores finished!

And, a trip to the library is as easy as picking up my iPod. However, these days, I am making more trips in person to my local library. Sitting in a teepee is fun!

Do you listen to audio books? What have you "read" lately?

The Song of the Lark

Book One of Sixteen

2016 TBR Reading Challenge

My apologies for the sporadic posts. I am continually surprised by how long it takes to recuperate from serious illness at this age. Not feeling bad now, just low energy and low interest level in things that used to occupy my mind like an obsession. Some things remain constant -- I am reading several of the books from my 2016 reading challenge. This is a challenge to read through at least sixteen of the books in our "To Be Read" stacks. This is an update on the first of my sixteen. Have you joined the challenge?

My personal reading road map has guided me through myriad detours and strange meanderings over time. Willa Cather is an American author I have known about but not really taken that seriously. Considered a "western" writer, Cather wrote in the late 19th and first part of the 20th century. Stories about pioneers and the hardscrabble life do not usually interest me much. You see, I prefer English literature and have pretty much ignored American writers. I have lots of their books, but usually pass them over when looking for something to read. Is the writing too raw and new? Not serious enough? Perhaps, as I do like the history, established tradition, and the legacy of the ancients found in English literature. Snobbish prejudice aside, many years ago I read My Antonia by Willa Cather. I remember being moved to tears by the beauty of the writing, the story, and the feeling of being there, on the Nebraska prairie, as I read. For reasons I cannot even now imagine, I never read another of Cather's works or thought about her much, until now.

About a year ago, I was reading through a collection of nature writing by women, Sisters of the Earth, edited by Lorraine Anderson. One of pieces was an extract from Willa Cather's The Song of the Lark. Here is a snippet from the biographical sketch of Cather at the beginning of the piece:

"Cather's work has been praised for its lyrical and profound evocations of nature...The land is a central figure in her mature fiction; a primary theme is that if treated properly, the land is a source of well-being and -- in the case of struggling young opera singer Thea Kronborg, protagonist of Cather's third and longest novel, "The Song of the Lark" -a source of deep solace. Kronborg has tried to transcend the limits of her upbringing in the frontier Colorado town of Moonstone by escaping to Chicago; when that attempt has seemingly failed, she finds respite in Panther Canyon in the Southwest."

When I read the extract from Sisters of the Earth titled The Ancient People, I knew I had to someday read The Song of the Lark. Once again, Cather's writing was so evocative, I felt I was there, in the deep, winding crack in the earth called Panther Canyon. Here, where long-abandoned cliff dwellings occupy the inner gorge within the canyon:

"The dead city lay at the point where the perpendicular outer wall ceased and the V-shaped inner gorge began. There a stratum of rock softer than those above had been hollowed out by the action of time until it was like a deep groove running along the sides of the canyon. In this hollow (like a great fold in the rock) the Ancient People had built their houses of yellowish stone and mortar. The overhanging cliff above made a roof two hundred feet thick.

In both walls of the canyon the same streak of soft rock had been washed out, and the long horizontal groove had been built up with houses. The dead city had thus two streets, one set in either cliff, facing each other across the ravine, with a river of blue air between them.

The canyon twisted and wound like a snake, and these two streets went on for four miles or more.

All the houses in the canyon were clean with the cleanness of sun-baked, wind-swept places, and they all smelled of the tough little cedars that twisted themselves into the very doorways. One of these rock-rooms Thea took for her own...The day after she came Henry brought over on one of the pack-ponies a roll of Navajo blankets...and Thea lined her cave with them. The room was not more than eight by ten feet, and she could touch the stone roof with her fingertips. This was her old idea: a nest in a high cliff, full of sun."

Thea Kronborg, is a descendant of Swedish immigrants, and is one of a large family living in southern Colorado, desert country, in the late 19th century. Her father is a clergyman in the small town of Moonstone. Thea's mother recognizes a streak of musical genius in her daughter, and arranges for her to learn to play the piano. Her teacher, an alcoholic German musician, is a stern taskmaster. He too recognizes Thea's talent and pushes her to embrace her ability before she really understands what it is. Over time, Thea becomes aware that she is different from her brothers and sisters, and from her schoolmates. She feels the constraints of the small too-close community and finally breaks free. She travels to Chicago where she studies piano with a well-known concert pianist. When he has to leave because of a career opportunity, he hears Thea sing and is sure she is headed in the wrong direction with her piano studies. He arranges for her to continue her musical studies, and convinces her that her true musical talent is in her voice. Over time, Thea studies, learns the "ropes" of performance art, and then, just as she is about to launch her career, suffers a physical setback, contracting a serious case of pneumonia which nearly kills her. During her long recovery, she is invited to travel to the Southwest, to a friend's ranch for a healing rest. It is while visiting the ranch that she makes a personal breakthrough in her relationship to her art.

Thea stays at the ranch for weeks, making the trek into the canyon every day to occupy her "nest". There she finds badly needed solace and gathers into herself the canyon's raw energy and the spiritual echoes of the Ancient People.

"Not only did the world seem older and richer to Thea now, but she herself seemed older. She had never been alone for so long before, or thought so much. Nothing had ever engrossed her so deeply as the daily contemplation of the cliff...Here everything was simple and definite...Her mind was like a ragbag into which she had been frantically thrusting whatever she could grab. And here she must throw this lumber away. The things that were really hers separated themselves from the rest. Her ideas were simplified, became sharper and clearer. She felt united and strong."

Thea emerges from the canyon with renewed purpose as she pursues her musical career. She had gone through a "vision quest" of a sort, and now understands and believes in her gift. As she explains to her mentor, "Dr. Archie":

" 'You see, Doctor Archie, what one really strives for in art is not the sort of thing you are likely to find when you drop in for a performance at the opera. What one strives for is so far away, so beautiful' -- she lifted her shoulders with a long breath, folded her hands in her lap and sat looking at him with a resignation which made her face noble -- 'that there's nothing one can say about it.' "

I thoroughly enjoyed this book and plan to re-read My Antonia. It is on my Kindle. Many of Willa Cather's works are free for Kindle download, as they are in the public domain.

I hope to see you back here soon with another reading challenge update. This seems to be the right time to zip through these books as they are there in my TBR stack and so I do not have to do a lot of creative thinking about what to read next.

Computer Issue Resolved

Whew, feels like I am in a foreign country, but slowly getting back up to speed with the computing situation. Hope to return with more reading adventures in a day or two.

In the mean time, here are more books added to LibraryThing. As you see, I am in the "Gardening" section of my library.

The author of the Forever Lavender Manual is my sister. This little book is a very useful guide to growing and using lavender.

The Picnic does not really belong in the gardening section. Not sure how it ended up there. A gift from a friend, and a great resource for picnic ideas.

See you soon with another post from Mt. Ulysses.

Serendipity

I had planned to write about Sylvia Beach today. I finished Shakespeare and Company last night and want to share her stories about James Joyce and other ex-pats in the Paris literary world of the 1920s. However, that will have to wait because of a bit of Serendipity to start my day.

Eric Clapton

Delaney Bramlett

Leon Russell

This morning over coffee, my husband shared a tidbit from Eric Clapton's Clapton, The Autobiography about the musical genius of both Delaney Bramlett (of the group Delaney & Bonnie) and the rocker Leon Russell. How they could both compose perfect lyrics out of thin air. My husband is very deep into the connections between various blues and rock musicians so this conversation was not that unusual.

Speaking about Delaney Bramlett and Leon Russell, Clapton says:

"...we would be on the way to the studio in the morning and Delaney would say, 'What about a song about a bottle of red wine?' and he would start singing, 'Get up and get your man a bottle of red wine...' It would just flow out of him, and by the time we got to the studio, the song would be finished. I remember thinking to myself, 'How does he do it? He just opens his mouth and out comes a song.' We'd go straight to the studio and record it live. Then I would put a couple of vocal tracks down, with Delaney coaching me, and then it would be time for the girls and the horns. Rita and Bonnie would be given their parts and they'd sing it, Jim and Bobby would put some riffs on, and that was the whole thing wrapped up...Delaney had brought out something in me that I didn't know I had...Making that record was one of the most important steps I would ever take, it was a truly memorable experience. I remember going in one day when we didn't have a song planned, and Leon came up to me and said, 'I've got a line for you', and thinking aloud, he said 'You're a blues musician, but people don't know that you can also rock 'n' roll, so we can say...

'I bet you didn't think I knew how to rock 'n' roll.
Oh, I got the boogie-woogie right down in my very soul.
There ain't no need for me to be a wallflower,
'Cos now I'm living on blues power.'

Just like that, no effort, and that was the birth of the song 'Blues Power', one of my favorite songs on the album."

By the way, the "Rita" mentioned above is Rita Coolidge!  Those connections...!  Here's lovely Rita:

And this is where the Serendipity comes in:

Colette's Memoir

As you know from previous posts, I am interested in the power of genius. I am also interested in the power of the muse, manifested through whatever medium the artist chooses -- words, music, painting, sculpture, etc. So, after our morning coffee, I was still pondering Clapton's account of  lyric-writing genius and musical collaboration when I picked up Colette's memoir, Earthly Paradise. Amazingly, she is writing about the same exact creative process Clapton was! Here is how she describes an encounter with the creative musical genius of Claude Debussy:

Claude Debussy

"All my meetings with Claude Debussy took place in the sonorous warmth, the delicate fever of an exclusively musical atmosphere. A composer at the piano, a singer leaning back with his elbows resting on its bare top, or a woman singer, not leaving her armchair, but singing, exhaling the melody like a cloud of unconsidered smoke, head tilted back...At such times, Debussy seemed to become intoxicated by the music. His ambered satyr's face, his spiralling locks of hair, in which the eye instinctively sought for a glimpse of vine leaves and grapes, would quiver with an inner delirium. In moments of fixed intensity, his pupils would cross their sight lines slightly, after the fashion of hunting animals hypnotized by their own watchfulness. It seemed to me that he loved music in the way a crystal tulip loves the shock that draws a pure note tingling from its bowl. One Sunday evening, after hearing 'Antar' played for the first time in France, unless perhaps it was 'Scheherazade', we both chanced to go on the same party, and Debussy, obsessed, overcome, was singing his symphonic memories of the work inside himself. He was giving out a sort of bee-swarm buzzing, something like the sound you hear from telegraph poles, a groping and hesitant murmur. Then the memory grew more precise, and his closed face suddenly opened.
'Wait! Wait!' he said very loudly. 'Like that...mmmmm...and like this: mmmmm...'
One of us caught at this remembered shred of melody before it could fly away again, and drew it out a little further.
'Yes, yes', Debussy cried. 'And then at the same time there are the cellos lower down, saying: mmm...And the kettledrums, oh heavens, the kettledrums, just the faintest murmur to tell us there's that explosion coming from the brass, and...and...'
Lips pursed, then miaowing as he went on to imitate the violin, he panted on, torn apart by all the different timbers vying for places in his memory. With the poker clenched firmly in one hand, he hammered on the rosewood of the piano. With the other he made a zzzzzzzzzzing! sound against the windowpane, then plopped his lips together drily to re-create the xylophone, and made a sound of 'duk, duk' in a voice like crystal, to recall for us the liquid notes of the celesta.
He stood up, using his voice, his arms, and his feet all at once, while two black spirals of hair danced on his forehead. His faun's laugh rang out in reply, not to our laughter, but to some inner solicitation, and I engraved at that moment in my memory this image of the great master of French music in the process of inventing, before our very eyes, the jazz band."

OK, Claude Debussy is no jazz artist, but the creative process, the ability to pull orchestration out of thin air and physically manifest it -- oh, to have seen that!

Sylvia Beach will appear very soon because she has a lot to say about associations and creative genius too.

Here are some samples of the music mentioned in this post. Enjoy!

Bottle of Red Wine

Blues Power

Debussy Arabesque No. 1 (an example of Debussy's style, actually quite subdued compared to the picture Colette painted above)

--Note--I am having terrible difficulties with my old laptop. It is running Windows Vista and things have gone downhill very badly all of a sudden. I am taking a short break until I get a new computer. See you on the other side!

Spider Season and the Bowl of Hot Chocolate

Summer is definitely gone. We know this because our autumn visitors have arrived. They show up all of a sudden, a scurry across the living room floor, a captive in the kitchen sink, a still brown shape on the wall next to the bed, ugh...

Eratigena atrica, aka Common House Spider

Sorry, "Common" is a bit mild. How about "Scary House Spider", or "Giant House Spider", or "The Heart Attack"? Apparently the specimen pictured above is about average size for the "Air-uh-TIH-gen-uh-aa-TRICK-uh. This one looks like its leg span is about 2.5 inches. The largest can reach up to 4 inches!

My husband rescued this thirsty guy (gal?) from the kitchen sink. "C" used to be extremely arachnaphobic but for some reason, this year, he has decided these are good spiders, we should not kill them, we should rescue them and put them outdoors. OK, I get it, but they will just come back inside. According to Wikipedia:

"This species is native to Europe but was introduced to southern Vancouver Island, British Columbia in the early 20th century, and has since spread to mainland British Columbia as well as Washington and Oregon...Most specimens mature in the summer or fall and mate shortly thereafter. On warm nights in the summer and fall, the adult males wander in search of mates and may be caught scurrying across the floor when the lights are turned on. Females will typically construct more than one egg sac in their lifetime, and will suspend them in  her web...These large spiders help prevent 'hobo spiders' from becoming established indoors. They out-compete and displace the hobo spider indoors and the males often kill male hobo spiders (without necessarily eating them). Hobo spiders are not an indoor spider to begin with, but Eratigena atrica is helping to keep them that way."

Since "hobo spiders" are poisonous, and we do have them in this area, the Common House Spider is a good one to have around even if they scare the beejeezus out of me! It is the startle factor.

Colette has a charming little story about her mother's pet house spider. From My Mother's House, a memoir of growing up in Burgundy, Colette tells us:

"Have you ever heard tell of Pelisson's spider that so passionately loved music? I for one am ready to believe it and also to add, as my slender contribution to the sum of human knowledge, the story of the spider that my mother kept--as my father expressed it--on her ceiling, in that year that ushered in my sixteenth spring. A handsome garden spider she was, her belly like a clove of garlic emblazoned with an ornate cross. In the daytime she slept, or hunted in the web that she had spun across the bedroom ceiling. But during the night, towards three o'clock in the morning, at the moment when her chronic insomnia caused my mother to relight the lamp and open her bedside book, the great spider would also wake, and after a careful survey would lower herself from the ceiling by a thread, directly above the little oil lamp upon which a bowl of chocolate simmered through the night. Slowly she would descend, swinging limply to and fro like a big bead, and grasping the edge of the cup with all her eight legs, she would bend over head foremost and drink to satiety. Then she would draw herself ceiling-wards again, heavy with creamy chocolate, her ascent punctuated by the pauses and meditations imposed by an overloaded stomach, and would resume her post in the centre of her silken rigging."

Oh my. To be so in tune with the creatures who inhabit one's world. I would like to have known Colette's mother, Sido. She counted the four cardinal points as either friends or enemies (the East wind was always an enemy) depending on circumstances. Her world was one of nurturing family, farmhouse, animals, and every square inch of garden on her little plot of land. She was one of that ancient race who still believe in..."The mists of a  primitive religion--belief in fairies, in charms, in sorcerers--(that) everywhere lingers over French fields" (A. Maurois, A History of France).

Sigh, there will be nothing so romantic as a  garden spider or common house spider lurking on my bedroom ceiling waiting for the moment when I invite her to share my bowl of hot chocolate. Rather, there will be a cry for "C" to move the poor thirsty thing outdoors immediately.  

Free to Soar

One of my elders passed away yesterday. A beautiful woman in every way. My mother's cousin, best friend, confidante. Now they are both free to soar.

Reading Colette this morning, I found this lovely passage about aging, thought it worth saving here, and so:

Setting the scene -- Colette is remembering her childhood and the magic of New Year's Day, her most special holiday. She is in Paris and has just returned from an evening romp in the snow with her two dogs. They are now warming themselves by the fire.

"Still under the spell of my daydream, I am astounded to find I have changed, have aged while I dreamed...I could repaint on this face, with a tremulous brush, that fresh childish face, toasted with sunlight, rosy with cold, the firm cheeks curving into a pointed chin, the mobile eyebrows prompt to frown, a mouth whose sly corners belie the short, ingenuous upper lip...Alas, for only a moment. The adorable velours of the resuscitated pastel brushes off and blows away...The dark water of the small mirror keeps only my image, which is quite, quite like me, marked with light scratches, finely lined at the eyelids, the corners of the lips, and between the stubborn brows...An image which neither smiles nor becomes sad, and which murmurs for me alone: 'One must grow old. Do not weep, do not join supplicating hands, do not revolt: one must grow old. Repeat this word, not as a cry of despair, but as the signal for a necessary departure. Look at yourself, look at your eyelids, your lips, raise from your temples the curls of your hair: already you are beginning to drift away from your life, don't forget it, one must grow old!

'Go away slowly, slowly, without tears; forget nothing! Take with you your health, your cheerfulness, your coquetry, the small amount of kindness and justice that rendered life less bitter for you; don't forget! Go away adorned, go gently, and do not stop on the irresistible way, you will try in vain to do so -- because one must grow old! Follow the road, and do not stop for rest except to die! And when you do lie down across the vertiginous undulating ribbon of a road, if you have not left behind you one by one your curly locks, your teeth, your limbs one by one worn out, if the eternal dust has not, before your final hour, weaned your eyes from the marvelous light -- if you have, to the very end, kept in your hand the friendly hand who guides you, then lie down smiling, sleep happy, sleep as one privileged...'

Joy and Paula

Oregon Coast Getaway

We will return to the Ulysses Project and check in with other reading but today I will tell you about a relaxing little sojourn I took to visit friends at the southern Oregon Coast. As you may know, the best time to visit our seashore is in the fall, particularly September. The weather was perfect, except right on the beach where the summer fog lingered into the afternoon. Here are a few pictures (not taken by me).

Beach near Bandon

Face Rock

Estuary

Bandon Lighthouse

My friends live on a farm and I was delighted to meet two miniature donkeys, two tiny goats, five or six big goats, many cats and chickens. The rooster was magnificent! He looked like an Old World rooster, quite colorful, and very much in charge of his hens. There was a lovely garden too. Perfect.

Nearby "wildlife" woke me from a sound sleep. There is a Game Park nearby and the lions can be noisy!

In case you ever wondered why it is foggy and cool on the Oregon Coast in summer, it is due to the influence of the California Current (my dad always referred to this as the "Japanese Current"). The effect along the Oregon Coast is significant, especially between April and September. The day I left it was sunny, warm, and beautiful just slightly inland from the beach. When I drove by Face Rock on my way home, I could not see anything for the fog.

Here is what Wikipedia says about the current:

"The California Current is an Eastern boundary current and is also part of the North Pacific Gyre, a large swirling current that occupies the northern basin of the Pacific. The movement of northern waters southward makes the coastal waters cooler than the coastal areas of comparable latitude on the east coast of the United States. Additionally, extensive upwelling of colder sub-surface waters occurs, caused by the prevailing northwesterly winds acting through the Ekman Effect. The winds drive surface water to the right of the wind flow, that is offshore, which draws water up from below to replace it. The upwelling further cools the already cool California Current. This is the mechanism that produces California's characteristic coastal fog and the negative temperature anomaly we measure in California's coastal waters during summer (Mann and Lazier, 2006). This translates into cold coastal waters during the summer, stretching from Oregon to Baja California. Note, this does not include the coastal water surrounding San Diego. There is a warm water anomaly off San Diego (Mann and Lazier, 2006)."

Distractions

We are on our way to another 100+ degree day here.  This will be day 5 or 6 or 7 of temps above 90.  For our neck of the woods, this is unusual and uncomfortable.  We have one small window AC unit.  With strategic placing of fans, we can distribute cool air to parts of the house.  By 6 pm, we have lost the battle. Then begins a frantic comparing of thermometers.  When inside is within a few degrees of outside, we open up the house and let fans and what little breeze there is take over.

Today's heat is compounded by smoky skies from large forest fires burning to the south of us.  Not good.

So, my first distraction is the heat.  Second, third, and fourth (not necessarily in that order) are these:

Distractions

Confession -- I love cosy mysteries, especially British cosies.  Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers, M.C. Beaton, Ngaio Marsh, you get the idea.  My local library is affiliated with the Oregon Digital Library Consortium.  I download free cosy mystery audio books onto my old iPod.  Too easy and too much fun!  A definite distraction from serious reading.

I justify the audio books because I like to listen while I knit.  Another distraction!  I just started (and re-started several times -- grrrrr) a new project.  Over the Sea to Skye Shawl. I am not happy with the yarn color.  In the above picture the yarn shows a slight shade of purple, as it did in the online catalog at Wool Warehouse.  In the real world, there is no purple, it is more of a muddy putty color.  Oh well, it will make a fine sturdy winter lacy shawl anyway.

The August 13, 2015 issue of  The New York Review of Books arrived two days ago.  I have not opened it, but I see it every time I walk into my study.  My eyes seek it out.  Just looking at the cover I see three articles I will probably not read and I think, "so it is not like you will read it cover to cover".  No, but there are at least four other articles I WILL read.  Exponential Distraction!  For me, the problem with reading The New York Review of Books is that I invariably find books I want to buy and read.  Books I do not need to buy.  I already own sooooo many unread books (thus the purpose of this blog!).  For now, I am keeping clear of the current issue.  I might sneak it into the car to read on an upcoming road trip.  The trick is not to have pen and paper at hand to jot down those titles I just cannot live without!

So, for today, this is my story and I am sticking to it.  Heat, cosy mysteries, knitting, and The New York Review of Books.  My distractions.  Uh-oh, I forgot to mention Sudoku puzzles.

My Legacy Project Update: MFK Fisher and Colette

As of now, MFK Fisher and I share two books in common according to the Legacy Library listing on LibraryThing.  These are MFK's "As They Were" and "The Collected Stories of Colette".  I have made progress with both books since last week and here are my impressions so far.

As They Were

I meant to be farther along in this book by now as it is a collection of essays.  But I have been savoring every page and have about one hundred pages to go.  It is a beautiful book and is really very good.  From the back cover:

"...In As They Were she has collected a number of essays -- she calls them 'reports' -- into an informal autobiography that wanders from Whittier, California, to the south of France." -- Newsweek

So far, one story stands out, "The Flame and the Ash Thereof".  It is a hauntingly beautiful autobiographical short story about young marrieds vacationing in northeast France in 1931.  It is also a story about the bride's return in 1945, now on her own, after reading about the devastation wrought to her special little town by the Germans in WWII.  The before and after contrast is heartbreaking.  More than parts of the town disappeared, a way of life was also lost.  MFK draws one into both worlds.  It is a story I will never forget.

The little I had read of MFK Fisher before starting this project left me wondering if I would ever "get" her writing.  Now I have no doubts.  She is marvelous.

The Collected Stories of Colette

There are 100 stories in this collection, taken from various books by Colette.  They date from 1908 to 1945. Part I contains the "Early Stories".  The first section of Part I is "Clouk/Cheri", containing seven stories.

You might be familiar with the novella "Cheri", by Colette.  The seven stories in Part I are stand alone stories, but also show the evolution of the character Cheri from "Clouk".  Clouk is a miserable poor little rich boy, physically unattractive and is becoming ever more depressed over the loss of his actress girlfriend to another man. Colette turns Clouk into "Cheri", a young handsome bon vivant who loves an older woman but is forced into an arranged marriage.  The stories are very well-written, evocative of an earlier age, and quite charming in their way.

On my list of things to do as soon as I can fit it in is to watch this movie with Michelle Pfeiffer as "the older woman":

Cheri

I will check back in on this phase of My Legacy Project in a few weeks.  Also, look for a new page on the blog for MFK Fisher.  I will organize My Reading Road Map using Pages for each person whose Legacy Library I am reading.

Now, I am off for a couple of days so I can spend some family time here:

Peace and Quiet

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