This. I know people mean to be reassuring, but it would be so much better, when one hears a concerned parent, to say "Why not get an evaluation and know for sure?" Rather than "That's totally normal./ I was just like that as a child./ Mothers today medicalize normal behavior./ Better late than early." Did you get to hear the made-up Einstein thing a hundred times?

You're worrying too much; lots of kids that age don't talk. Einstein didn't talk until he was 8. She's just shy. Lots of kids are afraid of bugs. Lots of kids are afraid of germs. Lots of kids are afraid of water. She'll grow out of it.

You don't need a defense. Your Vonnegut pick moved you high in dh's literary estimation, and so vicariously in mine. :)

Oh dear. You are again. Vonnegut ....

You are my new Best Friend. ETA: Actually I suppose that's still contingent on what your 1st fave is...

Stacia, As I Lay Dying is a good "starter" Faulkner novel, I think.

... sorry ... (remorseful emoticon)

Weren't you and I going to read À Rebours? No asteroids or bedbugs in that one I think.

Looking forward to the review! I have Endo's (author of Silence, the best Catholic novel ever written) Life of Christ on my TBR stack/shelf/house. Funny how it's a genre that was so popular mid-century and has kind of disappeared now.

Sister! I watched enough of Dr Thorne to be reminded that many of the Barchester characters show up as minor characters in the Palliser novels (and vice versa). I think I might like the political series even more than the ecclesiastical, though it's been many years. Remind me whose Life of Christ you're reading?

I'm still reading Trollope's Phineas Redux, but it is nearly 900 pages long. And for a while Trollope was providing the backstory, from Phineas Finn, and it went on and on and on, and after a hundred pages I realized that I had picked up Phineas Finn, with its identical unmarked blue Oxford binding, and was re-readng it! So there went some of my reading time. (But it was actually useful to review a bit.) I watched a bit of Dr Thorne on Amazon, and it wasn't bad, but the characters all said things that Trollope would never allow them to say but only think and imply. Which of course is a tricky business on the screen. But so far in Phineas Redux there have only been twice that characters have bluntly said what they meant: the first had his marriage proposal turned down flat, and the second followed it up by shooting at the head of the person he spoke bluntly to. So I think I will read instead of watch.

NM - zombie thread.

:€

Congratulations on finishing! I completely hear you about the book. I got a book relevant to Wee Girl's issues--one recommended heavily online--and it turned out to be "here's what you need to carefully explain to your child's teachers," and was completely useless for any other context than a classroom. And it didn't have the more up-to-date (and in my experience with Wee Girl, accurate) understanding of the underlying cause as a specific phobia.

Completely agree that culture plays a big part. We live in a very fitness- and foodie-oriented city, the birthplace of Whole Foods (aka "Whole Paycheck"), and the middle class here has very high expectations from vegetables. Even humble grocery stores have a wide and inexpensive selection of fresh vegetables; there are farmer's markets everywhere; and restaurants (& the ubiquitous food trailers) are expected to feature fresh fruits and vegetables in or with the food. The competition keeps the prices low. We subscribe to a weekly vegetable delivery service, and when necessary I send a child three blocks away to a grocery store with acres of fresh produce, which actually has an employee circulating at all times just to advise customers on produce shopping and preparation. With this kind of cultural support, it's hard not to eat lots of veggies. We go way over the 3-a-day guideline. It's always a shock to visit other places and find dinky produce sections with bland, overpriced selections.

Oooo! Thanks! Aeneid fans who have been following the UK's Chilcot Inquiry will appreciate this: https://mobile.twitter.com/davidblairdt/status/752819059897540608

Surely published in birth year counts. The tree hasn't really fallen in the forest until someone hears it. I liked Trout Fishing in America.

I finshed King Henry VIII; my first read-through of the play. Returning now to Trollope's Palliser novels with Phineas Redux. Hey, I think the five chunkster Palliser novels have got to count as a novelistic epic! Right?

This week's (first) read was settled for me by discovering there's a confusing but interesting event being offered this week by our local Shakespeare group and chamber orchestra, combining to present Scenes From Henry VIII, which I've never read. So I've assigned it to Middle Girl too, and we need to read quick.

Finishing up J. Frank Dobie's collection of folklore of fabled and elusive gold and silver mines of the American Southwest and northern Mexico, Apache Gold and Yaqui Silver. I haven't quite decided what to read next. Ha!... well then I think I may just go with Paradise Lost after all.

Help me out with the definition of the "epic" category. I assumed it meant "epic" in the poetic sense and was thinking Homer or Paradise Lost. What is an epic novel? ETA: It suddenly occurs to me that "classic" might not mean "written in Greek or Roman antiquity."

Mine for those slots were:Old friend: Hamlet Birth year: In the Heart of the Heart of the Country (but I didn't care for it... & it's only a helpful suggestion if you were born in 1968!) Play: (will be) Antigone 18th century: Barber of Seville & Marriage of Figaro (novellas) Arthurian: Ivanhoe

So any thoughts on which books will occupy those slots? Stacia? Yes it's not obvious from the illustration; but his hand-lettering is unmistakable.

As a means of trying to ignore the saturation media coverage out of Dallas this morning, I've been matching books to bingo categories (thanks Stacia!). And I have only six categories unfilled: published 2016 (dh suggested his book - ho ho); picked by a friend (again with dh's helpful suggestions); a play (my two drama reads are in use in other categories); picked for cover (Aeneid should cover that); epic; and color in the title. Jenn, agreed about the appealingness of the Beethoven book! Must keep an eye out for that one.

The Cecil Day Lewis Aeneid, with the Edward Gorey cover. http://www.ebay.ca/itm/The-Aeneid-of-Virgil-Translated-by-C-Day-Lewis-/201508375438 Ah - I'm just a couple years too young for the phenomenon then. Though I probably was gnawing on pine cones at the time.