Roux plus sharp cheddar. Never have a problem getting the creamy consistency: I put it on high heat and keep stirring until the texture suddenly turns creamy, then turn heat all the way down and keep stirring.

Time to send dh on another library run!

Another one where I've seen the movie--Die Brücke--but not read the book, nor even knew it existed. Now I will have to keep an eye out for it in English.

Oh, yes. "It was an ugliness fundamental and systematic, the result of the abnormal nature of the Brigstocks, from whose composition the principle of taste had been extravagantly omitted. In the arrangement of their home some other principle, remarkably active, but uncanny and obscure, had operated instead, with consequences depressing to behold, consequences that took the form of a universal futility. The house was bad in all conscience, but it might have passed if they had only let it alone. This saving mercy was beyond them; they had smothered it with trumpery ornament and scrapbook art, with strange excrescences and bunchy draperies, with gimcracks that might have been keepsakes for maid-servants and nondescript conveniences that might have been prizes for the blind. They had gone wildly astray over carpets and curtains; they had an infallible instinct for disaster, and were so cruelly doom-ridden that it rendered them almost tragic. Their drawing-room, Mrs Gereth lowered her voice to mention, caused her face to burn, and each of the new friends confided to the other that in her own apartment she had given way to tears."

I might be up for a re-read of Poynton....

Heather, I agree with mumto2. Time to read something fun and guaranteed. Prayers for healing.

Bad taste in furnishings knows no boundaries. If I had to start James from the beginning again, I would start with one of these two minor novels: The Spoils of Poynton, or Washington Square. It can be hard to get the hang of reading James; besides lengthy sentences, he carries thoughts a long way, often leaving me looking back half a page to see what non-concrete noun "it" or "they" could be referring to. He has certain recurring and perplexing expressions, such as "he took it," meaning "he accepted the observation that had just been made regarding himself and gave it due consideration." And he expects you to pay attention to all interpersonal dynamics and internal states, and to how other people are reacting to those. There is usually a key "crisis" scene somewhere in the second half of the novel in which crucial realizations are made, but it's not necessarily a scene with much or any action. (Ironically James was a much more successful director of theatrical tableaus in his novels than when he actually tried directing.) Action is subtle and you have to pay attention. If that didn't put you off too much, there is deep emotional satisfaction in completing a James novel. At least for me. Poynton and Washington Square have all the James things going on, but not so subtly as to leave a new reader confused. Oh, and Poynton is in fact entirely about furniture, in a way. :D

I haven't cracked out my bike yet because I'm still waiting for the lovely weather. High near 100 degrees today.

Half hour of morning shamble.

Dh just rented Rebecca. It's like he's reading my book thread....

St Lawrence (San Lorenzo) is crazy popular in my part of the country, so I don't have a good answer. I used to host a St. Lawrence Day barbecue (his feast being conveniently in August) for our St. Vincent de Paul Society, back when I had fewer children and more volunteer time.

Yes, this is a constant in James' fiction. The moment you see that early Victorian mahogany sofa, you know you're in the presence of a Bad Person.

Near the end of Piers Plowman. These are more theological chapters, and very uncomfortable for post-Reformation reading. The narrator condemns ecclesial (as well as social) corruption and the use as well as the abuse of Indulgences, and makes what has often been interpreted as a prophecy of the Reformation. But he condemns the developing theology which emphasizes predestination and salvation by faith alone--which was working its way through the Church well before Luther and Calvin--strongly emphasizing salvation by good works done in charity; as well, he has a strong Marianism, and emphasizes Purgatory. The result was the near-disappearance of Piers Plowman from literary history (Wikipedia tells me it was a notable omission from William Caxton's publications), as both Catholic and proto-Protestant oxen are thoroughly gored. Also well into The Wings of the Dove. Full of Jamesian goodness. The American in England; the Englishman in America; the conversations that reveal so very, very much in so few words; the character whose fundamental immorality is made plain by the tasteless offensiveness of her heavy rosewood and marble furniture.

Names can be such a minefield. It's so tied up with one's personal identity and relation to both wider society and smaller communities; and for us women those are things in flux historically and over the course of our own lives. With the combination of (rightly) strong feelings about our names and the huge variety of names and titles, it's a wonder anybody dares address anybody else at all! I try to live by my grandmother's twin dicta: Call people by whatever they want to be called; and Remember most people are bad at names, so just assume the best and gently remind. (My Grandmommy went by Mrs. Firstname Maidenname Exhusband1 Exhusband2 Exhusband3, so she had had some experience there.) Two name anecdotes, not directly apropos of the OP: 1. A friend of mine has a last name that is both long and unusual: sort of like "Tchaikovsky." She married a second cousin with the same last name and has endless, endless confusion. "So you didn't take your husband's name then?" "No, I'm asking your maiden name, not your married name." "What, your husband took your name?" She says she has often toyed with hyphenating it, just as a sort of inchoate revenge on the universe. "Yes, it's Tchaikovsky-Tchaikovsky. The first Tchaikovsky is mine." 2. I knew my mother-in-law from childhood, and always addressed her as Mrs. Crown. On the day after my wedding, I phoned her from the airport to let her know our departure time (she distrusted airplanes and always liked to know when exactly to start worrying), and at the end of our conversation she said, very formally, "Now you are my daughter-in-law you must call me Carol." It was so like her to have guessed that I was unsure how to address her now and a little afraid to ask, and so beautiful how she made the direction sound like "You are truly family."

I liked the weirdness too. Think I can count it as my October spooky read? There's just an unfortunate part of my brain that follows up with ideas for a 5-8 page paper on whatever I read. I have just encountered the World's Most Obnoxious Footnote, in the Penguin edition of The Wings of the Dove: --------------- 'You're wonderful on such subjects! I think I should leave you in no doubt,' she pursued, 'that if I were to sign my aunt's agreement I should carry it out, in honour, to the letter.'^6 [Note in the back:] 6 In fact, by the end of the novel, Kate has broken her agreement. ---------------- I sure hope the rest of the notes will give me a thorough overview of the events in the novel well before I get to them.

I should add--because it just occurred to me--that when the narrator mentions that perhaps his own perceptions are as unstable as his shipmates', they're starved and dehydrated on the upturned hull of a ship. Later he and one of those shipmates are again starved and dehydrated (though this time he is less focused on that fact) on a hilltop--a very strange place to be marooned, unless one were looking for a locale resembling an inverted ship. But this time he doesn't suggest that his perceptions of reality, or his shipmate's, might be unreliable. And this is when most of the really strange events begin: the escape through tunnels that form oddly relevant letters, etc. Also, writing as a physical thing occurs oddly on this island. The only definitely recognizable writing--on the wall of the tunnel--is proveably naturally produced; and the mysterious purple water is apparently made up of lines of ink (the narrator mentions that it looks like "gum arabic," an ingredient in 19th-century ink). But when they leave the black island for the white pole, the water is, equally strangely, a blank solid white. And at this point the narrator stops writing. Dh tells me that Verne's version of Pym mainly serves to illustrate Verne's limitations. So I may be in less of a hurry to read it.

Middle Girl read Moby Dick last year and found it engagingly strange. She's now a Melville fangirl.

Dh has read the Verne but not the Poe (yet). I may make him bring his Verne home from the office. What I liked best in Pym was Poe's continuing exploration of altered states of consciousness and perceptions of reality, from both physical and psychological causes. The narrator warns us early in the story that some of his circumstances have made his own perceptions unreliable, which combined with the increasingly dreamlike quality of the story (complete with non-ending resembling a sudden waking up) makes the entire narrative unstable. No wonder Borges, and the ever-psychological Henry James, took up Pym. And of course Poe's repeated live burial phobia. Dh is well into Roadside Picnic. Apparently he's played the computer game, too. The book thread is revealing to me hidden things about my husband! Middle Girl just read Bartleby the Scrivener and now goes around saying "I prefer not to." Literature corrupting the morals of the young.

47. Edgar Allen Poe, The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym Well that was weird.

Since our city went to a hands-free rule, you can only use your phone when the vehicle is completely stopped. Which has led to a little epidemic of people sitting at green lights, texting away. So I pull up behind an suv in the left-turn lane. The light turns green. She doesn't move. I can see her tapping away at her phone. A gentle beep with the horn. She's oblivious, tap tap tapping at her phone. I honk again, a little longer. Tap tap tap. It's like I'm not there. This is amazing. I look in my rearview, wondering when the annoyed mass honking will begin; nobody else but me behind her. Another long honk, flash my lights: nada. She's still tapping on the damn phone, way into the green light. I decide there's nothing to do but resign myself. Another few seconds and the light turns yellow. All my self-congratulatory patience abruptly deserts me, and I lean on the horn, over and over. One more tap on her phone, and she looks up: and sees the light is, of course, red. So she looks at me in the rearview mirror and flips me off. We wait through one more cycle and she goes at the green. Probably to tell her friends about the idiot woman honking at her to go through a red light.

Dh has seen the movie but didn't know about the book. He's just picked it up from the campus library. Thanks for the recommendation!

Happy (late) birthday, Shawne! Commiserations to those undergong the wet windy weather. I remember rain.

Dh is back today at last. :) I've finished Rebecca and now want to rewatch the movie because I think I liked the Hitchcock better than the du Maurier. Still making steady progress through Piers Plowman. And began Poe's Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym, having found it mentioned in two very different books--Borges' Book of Imaginary beings, and James' The Golden Bowl--after first learning about it here on the book thread--and dh having mentioned he's been reading Jules Verne's An Antarctic Mystery, Or The Sphinx of the Ice Fields, a sequel to Poe's Pym. The universe was conspiring to get me to read it. So Henry James has been back-burnered for a while. So many posts to catch up on....

nm new thread, sorry

Wales and Scotland, as the Welsh and Scots will zealously inform you, are countries which, with England and Northern Ireland, make up the sovereign state of the United Kingdom.