violetismycolor

Pumpkins...

Just love this time of year...

Visited the Pumpkin Patch (Lee's in Tualitan)...ate warm Pumpkin Donuts and hot, fresh cider, wandered among the orange vegies, defended our pumpkins from thievery, and had a wonderful family adventure.

 

funny things Bonnie writes...

Bonnie is busy with her Law School applications.  She is very frustrated by the process by which the LSAC (the organization that submits all apps for you) is operated.  Can't say as I blame her...

So she has these funny/related comments on her Gchat:

Getting closer! I defy your diabolical antics, LSAC, by actually completing applications.

I think my month's salary is going to go to law school apps. Law school wants you to get used to bleeding money early on.

interlibrary ecstasy...

I am a book addict.  I know it.  If you know me, you know it.  I seem to always have 10 things checked out at the library, but that doesn't stop me from picking up something new at Costco if it is just too irresistible to me.  And then there's Inter-Library Loan. It's an ENABLER!

I recently read The Aviary Gate by Katie Hickman.  This wonderful little gem was about a young woman from 1599 England, kidnapped by corsairs near Constantinople and sold into a harem.  I adored the intelligent writing, the history, the complete ability of the author to make me feel the very suffocating isolation of the women's quarters at the Topkapi Palace.  Enabler!

So, of course, I had to know if Ms. Hickman had written anything else.  She had.  In 1992, she published The Quetzel Summer.  I looked at my library's website.  Nope.  No Quetzel Summer there.  Amazon?  Nope, only a couple of used copies and those were over $20 each for an old paperback.  So, I turned to Inter-Library Loan.  Searching their website, I found that there was only one copy on file in the country...at the University of North Carolina.  So, I asked for it and voila!  Today it arrived.  So, I now have about 5 books that I am reading.  Check out the sidebar where it says:  What is she reading? 

She is reading:

• Dancing to the Precipice, non-fiction

• An Echo in the Bone by Diana Gabaldon (Outlander series)

• The Quetzel Summer by Katie Hickman

• South of Broad by Pat Conroy

• The Lieutenant by Kate Grenville

So many wonderful worlds to enter, so little time!

witchcraft in literature...

     I just finished The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane by Katherine Howe.  The protagonist is a grad student in Early American History (as is Howe), who ends up being descended from a woman tried as a Salem witch (as is Howe).  Hmmmm....

    I enjoyed the mystery that was the heart of this book, but I had it figured out well in advance of our heroine.  She was searching for Deliverance Dane, whose name she found in key in her Grandmother's house.  (Spoiler alert...)  Deliverance Dane's daughter was named Mercy, Mercy's daughter was named Prudence, then came Patience, then Temperance.  And the heroine's mom is Grace, her grandmother is Sophia, and her name is Connie (which I quite readily figured out came from Constance).  And all these women had only one single child...always a daughter.  She was an only child, as was her mom, as was her grandmother.  Yet it took her forever to glean that this Deliverance Dane that she was searching for was her own ancestor.  Connie goes to Harvard, for God's sake...I thought you had to be smart to go there.

Anyway, besides THAT little bit of silliness, I did enjoy this book.  There was a little more flowery description than I care for, causing me to do a bit of skimming.  But the story was ultimately interesting and satisfying.  I learned some history, too...always a plus.  I expect some other interesting novels to come from this author.