Mockingbird Hill Cottage

Mockingbird Hill Cottage

Early Morning Moon

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Taken yesterday morning when I woke up a wee bit too early, but it was worth it to get this shot.

Welcome, March!

Today is sunny, but cold. We had relentless winds on Wednesday and Thursday. Even Don – who usually doesn’t mind them – was saying “Enough, already!” As happened to some of you a day or two earlier, the temperatures plummeted. It’s still cold out there, but the we should be getting back to the low fifties soon.

Last night when I was headed to bed, I took one look at the Olga Tokarczuk book (which is at least 800 pages long) and decided to go with the newish mystery instead. I need a ‘very long book’ palate cleanser. But I’ll take a peek at the opening pages later today.

We watched The Holdovers  last night. Have you seen it yet? We are big fans of Paul Giamatti and Alexander Payne, the movie’s director. It’s simply wonderful. Giamatti gives an amazing, nuanced, and profound performance. Payne tells the story beautifully. It’s not rushed, there’s no high-tech action assaulting the viewer. Just a story that takes place in the 70s. Character development is everything here and boy, do I recommend it. I’m still thinking about it this morning. Giamatti is nominated for an Oscar, as is Da’Vine Joy Randolph, who is also quite wonderful. And newcome Dominic Sessa is wonderful as one of the students.

Don has a gig tonight and one tomorrow night as well. Good for him, of course, but I’ll miss him.

I’m in the middle of a Stella deep cleaning. Because we use propane gas, she gets greasy, and, although I clean the surface every night, it’s time to get into every nook and cranny. It’s yucky but it must be done.

Exciting times, right?

Stay safe.

Happy Friday.

 

Books and the Change in Winter

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Another library walk yesterday. After we had finished, I ran in to return The Year of the Locust and checked out the New Books on the shelves. I knew of Olga Tokarczuk’s book, The Books of Jacob. It has been written about a great deal on my IG book feed, so I grabbed it. She wrote it in 2014, but it didn’t get translated into English until 2021. From Penguin Random House’s site: The Nobel Prize–winner’s richest, most sweeping and ambitious novel yet follows the comet-like rise and fall of a mysterious, messianic religious leader as he blazes his way across eighteenth-century Europe.

Sounds fascinating!

Also on the shelf: Everyone on this Train is a Suspect  by Benjamin Stevenson, an Australian author. The blurb said that fans of Anthony Horowitz and Richard Osman would love it. Sounds like a nice palate cleanser.

Our library is so small that I rarely check out a book there, anything I see there that I find interesting I’ve usually already read. I get books through the inter-library system instead. So it was refreshing to come up these books.

I’m reading Wolf Hall, of course, and caught up on my assigned reading yesterday. It’s fascinating, but at heart, I’m not a fan of historical fiction, so I’m never fully on board, if you know what I mean. I know a lot about the Tudors already, through my education and a lifetime of immersion in Shakespeare – they sort of go hand in hand. I’m on the fence as to whether I’ll read the other books in the trilogy. As I’m going to read more at a time (ignoring the schedule for the readalong) I might end up feeling differently.

Today is rainy so a walk might not be on the docket.

It’s very warm out there, unseasonably so. And it looks like it will continue, save for a couple days here and there. It’s rather eerie. Both Don and I have wondered if  “Winter” has changed forever. Yes, we still get snow, but not that much. It’s the end of February and my day lilies are emerging, as well as the daffodils. At the library, we saw new growth everywhere. Is this the new winter? On one hand, it’s nice not to have deal with so much snow and ice. On the other hand, we need winter and we miss it. We may still get some snow in March, but it will be short-lived.

What has this winter been like where you live?

Okay. Have to make our second cup of coffee.

Stay safe.

Happy Wednesday.

 

 

These Boots Are Made for Walking

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Well. I should have known it. Harper saw the boots and knew immediately just how they should be worn. That girl!

Monday morning. Cloudy. We had a lovely sunny day yesterday and we atoned for only one walk earlier in the week. It was very cold, but we did it. Winter is tricky. The weather determines our walking days. So we haven’t been able to do it as much as we like, but when we do get one in, we feel so much better. I think we’ll go today, as well.

It was a low-key weekend. I finished The Year of the Locust last night – I didn’t read it for a day or two because I wanted to delay finishing it. But last night in bed, I finished. Truly a wonderful book. I couldn’t put it down, all 787 pages of it. Terry Hayes sure knows how to write a tight, engrossing, and whirlwind of a plot. Now, of course, I’m spoiled and nothing will look as good. I’ll get back to Wolf Hall  and catch up. Wolf Hall  is wonderful but I think I would like it more if I read it like I read The Year of the Locust, rather than a chunk a week. It’s so well written, but I lose the thread. Not the book’s fault at all. When it was War and Peace, I was reading a bit each day, so I was clued into the evolving plot. Not so much this way, as the assigned pages are not daily, but weekly. So I have to get back into it. I may just keep on reading and finish the book. Then when Bring Up the Bodies, the next book in the trilogy, is ready to start – sometime in April, I think – I’ll read that.

These are quality problems.

Movies on the weekend: We watched Laura  again. Don didn’t like it. He’s not a fan of Dana Andrews to begin with and he said that he didn’t really care about anyone. I get it. It’s stylish but there’s not a lot of substance. Then we finally watched Wuthering Heights, and I didn’t like it. It was beautifully filmed, as was Laura, but I had no patience with Cathy. Or Heathcliff, for that matter. It’s a gothic romance/ghost story and, though I read only that kind of thing when I was a young teen, this one didn’t do it for me. A young Geraldine Fitzgerald was the best thing in the movie. She was so real, so present.

I much prefer Jane Eyre, where the longing is repressed and the characters are not wallowing in it, which makes for a much more interesting story.

My humble opinion, of course.

Oh, the sun is trying to peek out from the clouds!

Do you have spring fever yet? I confess, I do.

Stay safe.

Happy Monday.

Lambs Like to Party

Lambs Like to Party

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