Happy Birthday to Harvey!

Then

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Now

Book #4 Tigerlily's Orchids

Book #4

Tigerlily's Orchids, by Ruth Rendell

Having read Portobello in December, I wanted to read another of Ruth Rendell's books.  She's won numerous awards, including three Edgars, the highest accolade from Mystery Writers of America, as well as three Gold Daggers, a Silver Dagger, and a Diamond Dagger for outstanding contribution to the genre from England's prestigious Crime Writer's Association.  A member of the House of Lords, she lives in London.

Tigerlily's Orchids

When Stuart Font decides to throw a housewarming party in his new flat, he invites all the people in his building -- three flippant young girls, a lonely spinster, a man with a passion for classical history, and a woman determined to drink herself to death.  After some deliberation, he even includes the unpleasant caretaker and his wife. He considers inviting a few other friends, but he definitely does not want his lover, Claudia, in attendance, as he would also have to invite her lawyer husband.  As it turns out, the party will be one everyone remembers.

Living in a town house opposite Stuart's building, in reclusive isolation, is a young, beautiful Asian woman known as Tigerlily.  As though from some strange urban fairy tale, she emerges infrequently to exert a terrible spell.  And Stuart's parents, always worried about their handsome, hopelessly naive, and undermotivated son, have even more cause for concern.

Darkly humorous, piercingly insightful about human behavior, Ruth Rendell, whom People magazine calls "one of the remarkable novelists of her generation," has created an extraordinarily compelling story of our lives and crimes.

52 Books in 52 Weeks

Book Three: The Glass Castle 

by Jeannette Walls

The Glass Castle is a remarkable memoir of resilience and redemption, and a revelatory look into a family at once deeply dysfunctional and uniquely vibrant.  When sober, Jeannette's brilliant and charismatic father captured his children's imagination, teaching them physics, geology, and how to embrace life fearlessly. But when he drank, he was dishonest and destructive.  Her mother was a free spirit who abhorred the idea of domesticity and didn't want the responsibility of raising a family.

The Walls children learned to take care of themselves.  They fed, clothed, and protected one another, and eventually found their way to New York.  Their parents followed them, choosing to be homeless even as their children prospered.

The Glass Castle is truly astonishing - a memoir permeated by the intense love of a peculiar but loyal family.

Hard to put it down once I'd started!

Jeannette Walls lives in Virginia and is married to the writer John Taylor.  The Glass Castle won the 2005 Elle Readers' Prize, the 2006 American Library Association Alex Award, a Christopher Award, a Books for a Better Life Award, was a New York Times Notable Book, and was more than three years on the New York Times Bestseller List.

52 Books in 52 Weeks

I've decided to participate in the 52 Books in 52 Weeks Challenge for 2012. I've been keeping track of the books I've read the past few years, aiming for at least 50 per year. Usually I just keep a list by author and title, but for this challenge I'll include a bit more information. Hope I can keep it up all year! I've been reading a lot of mysteries lately, so I'll aim for more variety this year.

1. Steeplechase: a Homer Kelly Mystery, by Jane Langton

St. Martin's Press (Thomas dunne Books), New York. 2005

"Strange or not, Homer and Mary are soon engaged in a steeplechase, a pursuit of the mysterious lost church. Luckily, the reader is in on the mystery.  This sequel to The Deserter; Murder at Gettysburg is set in 1868 in the town of Nashoba, Massachusetts, where the daughter of the Reverend Josiah Gideon cares for her husband, James, brutally disfigured in the last battle of the Civil War.  In the parsonage across the town green, the Reverend Horatio Biddle fumes at what he considers to be Josiah's brazen ways, while Mrs. Biddle spies on the outhouse in Josiah's backyard.

Central to the story is a gigantic tree, the Great Nashoba Chestnut.  Crucially intermingled with its fate are a poem by Oliver Wendell Holmes, the story "The Three Billy Goats Gruff," and the nonsense rhymes of Mother Goose.  Home and Mary Kelly will once again delve deep into the past to unravel puzzles in the present.

This novel includes charming drawings by the author and a number of nineteenth-century photographs.

Jane Langton, winner of the Bouchercon's 2000 Lifetime Achievement Award, is the author of seventeen other mysteries, all starring Homer and Mary Kelly.  Most are illustrated with her drawings of the real places where her fictional events happen.  She also writes children's books, notably the ongoing Hall Family Chronicles.  She writes, gardens, and carries rocks in Lincoln, Massachusetts.

2. Mr. Monk and The Two Assistants, a Novel by Lee Goldberg

New American Library (Obsidian Books), New York. 2007

Welcome to the series of all-new original mysteries starring Adrian Monk, the brilliant investigator who always knows when something's out of place.....

Former assistant, Sharona's back in San Francisco, ready to reclaim her place in Monk's life -- much to the chagrin of his current assistant, Natalie.

Strangely enough, right after I read this little book I saw one of the old tv series which included both assistants! It wasn't the same story as this book, but it was so funny for that episode to pop up right after I read this!

"North" Florida For Sure!

Brrrrr........ We had a hard freeze warning the other night, so picked much of our citrus crop, grapefruit and satsumas.  Have a large bag of each, plus there's still more on the two trees.  Need to find someone who can eat grapefruit since it's a 'no-no' for almost everyone we know due to interaction with various prescription meds. So sad because these are such pretty and delicious pink grapefruit!

Happy New Year!