I'm happy for you! I read about a chapter in a book I started a long time ago and promised an IRL friend I would read because she just knows I will love it. That always makes me nervous. I never know what to say if I hate the book and I'm too opinionated to keep my mouth shut.

I'm struggling too. Do you want to do a mini-challenge with me? We can encourage each other. 🙂 Let's try to pick up a book we want to read and do ten pages today. I want to read but simply have so much trouble focusing right now.

@Robin M - I've been thinking about your shop. Hope you guys continue to stay busy and open. And also importantly ... that you guys stay safe and healthy! We have offices in our basement but Kevin has to go to the water treatment plant and construction sites for his projects ... we're prepared to make very strong arguments if they try to put him on lock-down that what he does is essential. We find 90% of our income very essential! I'm a few chapters into about a dozen books that are lounging on my nightstand with various inappropriate objects being used as bookmarks (a current favorite is to use another book as a book mark which seems a little cannibalistic to me). Nothing seems to be sticking. My audiobook is thirty minutes in and I haven't picked it back up. I might need to steal my Georgette Heyer books out from my daughter's bedroom. The problem is hazmat suits are so difficult to come by these days and I need one to venture in there. I don't get it - my DH and I are such neat freaks. Perhaps she's rebelling? I can only hope.

I'm reporting in that I've read five Dickens sized novels worth of text about Covid … but we're not counting that, right? Is everyone else suffering through library withdrawal yet? I'm eyeing my dusty stacks like, "So it's come to this …" These are all books I want to read but for some reason have ignored for years. Guess the day of reckoning has come. I will read Moonrakers Bride! And Capture the Castle! And I will have plenty of time to do it because we just got back from NOLA which is considered by capita one of the worst hit places outside Seattle so we will be self-quarantining for two weeks. Mistakes were made. It's so bizarre to me because at the time we left it didn't seem like insanity and now about a week later I can't imagine what we were thinking.

As is frequently the case I'm late to the party with: Small Steps: The Year I Got Polio by Peg Kehret. It's short (200 pages) and the audience is children but if you haven't read it then do so ASAP. It made a splendid audiobook also. I sobbed and laughed in equal parts during it. Then I went to take my kid's temperatures while they were asleep just in case I needed to rush them to the hospital because as a mother reading the book I kept thinking what would I do if my child was in the hospital for seven months 100 miles from home. And as an adult ... I wondered who paid for all that medical care? I'm going to get lost down some Polio and 1950's medicine this afternoon.

Oh my goodness. I can just see this whole scenario in my mind. And I've told everyone in my family about it. We've had lots of laughs over the books with the red covers. I didn't discover LM Montgomery until I did Anne of Green Gables to Sophia when she was in elementary school. I don't know how I missed it. I read about everything else as a kid. Then I discovered The Blue Castle and loved it even more than Anne. There was something about that was gentle and lovely and ... I lack words to describe how much I loved it. And now as tradition dictates I have to post the worst cover ever designed for any book anywhere whenever I talk about it. I second Negin's recommendation. Go. Read. It. So it sounds like even though it's lovely you don't recommend a lake vacation near you in February?!?! Ditto ditto. We've got about 400 books in our library and share it in my immediate family. We are all big audiobook listeners. And I love how convenient it is!

I'd look on thredup. It's an online thrift store essentially. Buy four or five and keep the one you like.

Playing off Kareni's ideas ... you could do a 'Classic I wished I hadn't read' 10x10. Or a "Well, that was disappointing". Something like that you can't (don't) really want to plan for so you might need to keep it going for a year or three.

I'm glad you've got a new furry friend! I'm rather relieved I'm not the only ones. I'll probably have to start ducking rotten fruit with my next sentence but since we're all friends I'll admit it out loud. I liked the BBC version of Little Women a couple of years ago more than I liked the book! @vmsurbat1 - Glad to see you're feeling better!

Finished: Touch Not the Cat by Mary Stewart. Here's the deal. I really enjoy Mary Stewart books. Complete with the dated clothing and smoking. This one I couldn't really get lost in. The ESP thing was too bizarre. (Granted I tend to shy away from anything supernatural so ...) I'd recommend this one only if you're the Ppresident of your local Mary Stewart fan club chapter and you've already read all her other books twice. This is book 17 for me for the year. Guys. I ONLY read 17 book last year. This year is looking better!

@Violet Crown - What's your Emma schedule look like? I've attempted it a few years ago and can never get through. (I've had better luck with the movies which is a bizarre things for me to say since I'm generally TV-phobic.) I've downloaded an audiobook to try with the idea that it might go better. I'm really attempting to add some culture to my life but I still can't seem to get myself to start Emma again.

Highly recommend both those Mary Stewarts! They are dated but so charming. That's a new Mart Stewart to me. It's on my to-read list ... so many books so little time! Thanks for the heads up about the Eloquence.

I would have guessed my reading is more male author heavy too but it appears it's not! Right now I'm at 50/50. That'll be a fun thing to track this year. @Group - I'd love to know where everyone else falls. Do you tend to read more female or male authors? What about so far this year?

Alexander McCall Smith is such a prolific writer. He's written over 100 books ... he's got to be writing two books a year. And he works as a professor. And travels. Impressive!

I used to tease my grandmother that she was Krauthammer's biggest fan. Looks like she was in good company with you in the fan club! I have such happy memories of watching him sitting beside her on the couch. Thank you for sharing your pictures.

It might be quite the Mary Stewart week around here. I just started Touch Not The Cat as an audiobook. I only picked it up because it's Mary Stewart and I hadn't read the back cover. Well. I just did and I don't know about that premise but we'll see.... I finished The Chenltenham Square Mystery by John Bude. Who first mentioned Bude as a Golden Age mystery writer? Someone on here did and I meant to mark it down and then forgot and now I'm embarrassed. (I REALLY got to find a way to remember who recommends books to me!) Anyway, just read it. It hit everything I love from that era. It's also interesting because it's helped me to pinpoint why I prefer women writers from that era. The men writers never seem to have a romantic subplot and that's one of my favorite things in my Miss Silver or AC novels. Can anyone prove me wrong? Is there a male Golden Age mystery author that adds a strong romantic subplot?

I promise it wasn't just me. Five of my friends have had the exact same experience with gals from a couple of agencies. It wasn't everyday or every week but at least once a month there was ... something. All the girls I had were between the ages of 20 and 30 so they weren't teenagers.

I'm so happy you pointed that out. I rely on Goodreads so much for keeping track of who has read what and I couldn't figure out where I even heard about the book. It was a great recommendation. Thank you so much. It's going to be one of my top three books of the year. I can predict that and it's only early February!

I am getting so much reading done with this flu-induced insomnia! At 3 am I finished Morning Glory by LaVyrle Spencer. It's another one I was surprised to see that none of my GR's friends have rated yet. It's a romance between the town "crazy" and ex-con. The setting is Georgia summer 1941 so you know there's bad stuff around the corner. It was incredibly well written. The author had her historical facts spot on. The hero and heroine were perfect for each other. It played on the trope of "fall in love after you get married" which is one of my favorites. @mumto2 - I seriously can't believe you haven't read this! I have to wonder if you read it before GR's and it just didn't get marked? Highly recommend!

Yay! Mary Stewart Month! I'm excited about this. She's an author I discovered as an adult and have loved. My favorite of all her books is Wildfire at Midnight which I think I've read three times now. That said ... I haven't read all her books yet so I might discover a new favorite with this months new read. Just added to my to-read list! I am so so so so sorry. My kids just went back to school yesterday after being sick for almost ten days. I hope you guys have a speedy recovery.

DS is in parochial school now but when he was a baby we had part-time nannies. A ton of my friends also had similar setups. Let me tell you about this term we have ... nanny problems. A common group text ... Can anyone watch my kid today during my meeting because my nanny didn't show up. She is sick/is in the hospital/boyfriend's is in town/has to run errands with her mother/car didn't start. These were wonderful young women. Smart. Beautiful. Fun. My son adored every one of them. And all except one was a little bit of a disaster. Sometimes they needed to be paid early. Sometimes they needed cash immediately instead of a check at the end of the week. Sometimes they needed me to pay them for two weeks before they worked any of it. They were usually late. Once she didn't show up at all I about had a heart attack that something happened to her but she took a sleeping pill and just didn't wake up until noon. They were fully trained professional nannies. They came from an agency. We had all sorts of problems. My friends have all had similar sorts of problems. It's par for the course I think in having hired childcare. I was lucky that I worked from home so my job could be flexible. And the things I cared about I could fix. I packed food and a snack whenever they went out so they wouldn't hang out at McDonalds for five hours in the play place. I got used to the idea that start time was between 9 and 9:30. If I really needed her there by 9 then I said she had to be there by 8:30 so I could leave for my meeting. Everything else you have to get over. She'd take him to the library and pick books that I wouldn't let him read. Whatever. Not a big deal. My kid was safe and happy and that's what was important. We also paid well so it wasn't like we didn't have reason to expect good service. $20 an hour. Then we usually gave a sizable gift at Christmas and birthdays.

Day 10 of the flu. We're still alive. John is about 80% better the rest of us are less ... It probably didn't help that I was up until 3 am last night with insomnia and because I was reading a good book. Nothing Venture by Patricia Wentworth. It was the first book of hers that I've read that didn't have Miss Silver. Really an outstanding book. Mysterious and suspenseful with a touch of romance. Have any of the other PW fans on her read this one yet? I didn't see it ranked by anyone else on Goodreads. That said ... for those that follow me on Goodreads I am a very generous rater. Cozy sweet romances that I loved as a young adult might be ranked as high as Night by Elie Wiesel in my rankings. I rate books simply for myself.

Finished another book. Wow. Scene & Structure by Jack Bickham - This book was fantastic but if I'd picked it up as a new writer I would have been overwhelmed. It goes into the nitty gritty of scene structure and is exactly what I needed at this point. Highly recommend. Have any of the other writer gals on here read it?

Flu updated. We're all sick now and on Tamiflu. Tamiflu is like drinking Unicorn Blood. You're alive but it's a half life filled with nosebleeds, insomnia, and nausea. @mumto2 - Stargate! That takes me back to college. I had a friend who watched that with me and we loved it. So much so that circa 2001 I printed a picture of Samantha Carter off the internet on the school printers and took it into stylist and told her I wanted my hair to look just like that. It didn't but I still tried. @Robin M - We are still on the 11th Doctor! We started again at the beginning watching at the 9th Doctor with John so give me a year or so! @Lady Florida. - What are you reading these days?

I finished Moshi, Moshi too! I didn't really love it like I have with Banana's other books. She does a fantastic job with emotion but the dialogue is very stilted and oddly formal. I wonder if that's a translation thing or simply Banana's style. It made it difficult to get lost in the story because I kept thinking that nobody talks like this. Particularly not young adults on dates. Then there was a twist romance at the end which was a bit strange but I could buy into it. What really bothered me (and again maybe this is cultural) but the easy acceptance of infidelity. After a while I just wanted to shake them and tell them that they should be mad. Pissed as hell in fact. This is a long rambling way of saying that I recommend Kitchen instead. Flu update. John slept all day yesterday and today he's at least out of bed and wandering around. He feels better but not good. Kevin feels bad. He's up now but I expect he'll be heading to be before long. Sophia had me pick her up at school yesterday morning. She doesn't have any of the traditional flu symptoms but she feels icky. I wonder if she's managed to catch a cold when everyone else has the flu? Stranger things have happened. I'm okay but paranoid. Every so often I wonder do I have a headache because I'm coming down with the flu or because I'm a hypochondriac? And I haven't read any Julia Spencer Fleming but added it to my to-read list! This is a splendid review of one of my all time favorite GH books.