'Bright, Flickering Lights' by D. J. Blackmore

 

Note: I was offered an advanced copy of this brand new book by the author and jumped at the opportunity, to boost my quota of quality Aussie books for this year. 

MY THOUGHTS:

There is lots to love in this YA Australian novel as it is dense with provocative themes. Two unlikely romances, along with a couple of very cool twists tick my personal boxes. But essentially it is a novel about secrets, whether it's the uncanny discovery of a fully-furnished ghost-house, the possible roaming of a legendary Yowie, or things that characters choose to conceal for various reasons. 

The points of view swing throughout the book between three teenage protagonists. 

Young Darcy Calhoun has an indigenous family background which he doubts he'll ever fathom. He lives a somewhat stifled existence with his one-legged, diabetic grandmother and his Auntie Kim, who he regards more as an annoying big sister. Darcy has an inkling that some Stolen Generation trauma is all entwined with their history, but secrets aren't revealed for the asking. Meanwhile, a major crush on his schoolfriend, Margot, keeps him idealistic and optimistic.

Margot Radcliffe is a budding artist and environmental conservationist. She helps her single mother, Annie, nurse and rehabilitate injured wildlife. To this duo, speaking up on behalf of the voiceless is a human obligation. Now that a company sinking coal seam gas wells has invaded their little town, that description fits the vulnerable native species whose lives are at risk. And Margot guards a personal secret which would never fly in her small-town environment. 

Sarah Hardacre resents her stepdad, Tom, to the extent of praying for his demise. Her deep-seated bitterness and insecurity is her own resentful secret. Tom is second in command of the coal gas company. Sarah is convinced that dislike of her and her twin brother, Sam, keeps him at loggerheads with their mother. She despises anything to do with Tom, including his two bull terriers. (Ah, those bull terriers remind me of my brother's sweet boy, who was the same breed and sometimes similarly misunderstood 💓)  

It is a timely book shining light on a very real problem. Since white colonisation, over 100 precious species have become extinct in Australia. But through the voices of coal working characters, Blackmore fairly speaks up for the other side too. They are convinced that at our stage of technology, failure to utilise their resources will revert our nation to the dark ages. It is a volatile and emotional issue. 

This story is saturated with the spirit of Australia, from the flora and fauna whose essence is revealed by the tribal 'Uncles' to several other more general food icons featured. (Tim Tams, Vegemite, Weet-Bix, or Arnott's SAO biscuits, anyone? Or maybe just a girl's day in with sausage rolls and pavlova?) It also explores legends such as the Bunyip or Yowie and the equally mythical self-contained Aussie bloke. This novel makes me patriotic by highlighting what I'm missing from all the non-Australian books out there. 

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'A Power of Roses' by Ruth Park

Summary: Roses were rarely seen at the old Jerusalem hotel.

Life is hard, and for some of the tenants a luxury might be warm feet, cat's meat stew or a five-bob coat from a jumble sale.

In A Power of Roses, Ruth Park draws vivid portraits of Miriam, the tough adolescent heroine; her Uncle Puss, a canny old Irishman; and a colourful assortment of inhabitants who live in the hotel's damp, rat-infested rooms.

MY THOUGHTS:

This story begins so bleakly, I almost talked myself into abandoning it after the first few chapters. But I ended up loving it. So much so that on the strength of reading it, I've just ordered another batch of Ruth Park's vintage novels. 

It tells a story about the riff-raff residents of the dilapidated Jerusalem apartments in the heart of Sydney. These folk each do their best to stay dignified when just trying to stay adequately fed and clothed is incredibly difficult and demoralizing. It begins with young Miriam McKillop buying 'backbones for me cat,' because she and her uncle can't afford higher quality fish. However, the collection of tails, fins, and fish heads is destined to flavor their own stew.

These two are the heart of the story; Irish migrant Uncle Puss McKillop (whose real name is Percival or 'Perce') and canny young Miriam, the great niece he has brought up, who can love with great ferocity. 

Not only does Ruth Park weave us right into the picture with her world-building, but she does it in an intriguing metaphysical way. She entices us readers with the probability of a deeper, invisible plane of existence which infuses the more lovable characters with optimism and hope. For example, 'Miriam was aware of a fairy world, hanging heavenlike behind the accidents of this life', and hence so are we.  

To mention a few other colorful characters their story entwines with, there is young Dunkie, a handsome and opinionated boy who can't walk, and whose self-focus naturally reflects his narrow physical outlook. There is the desperately devout Mr Creepin' Christmas, who runs the fish n' chip shop, and Mr Holland, the shy young minister whose job feels way out of his depth. 

At one stage, the community is rocked by the healing ministry of the Reverend Doctor Maisley, who operates his outreach in a similar style to the Duke and the King from Huckleberry Finn. And I'll keep secret the identity of one of my favorite characters who ushers in change with great panache.

There is a lad named Porgy Ketchel whose fondest dream is to someday work on a garbage truck, which he fears is out of his league. The most menacing presence in the book is Porgy's father, Cheap Billy Ketchel, a vicious and resentful bully who keeps rehearsing his litany of injustices. I'd challenge any reader to come up with a single redeeming quality for this bloke. 

Looking back over the plot, it seems to me that Park uses some form of literary natural selection to weed out the more malevolent and negative influences from the Jerusalem, so that only the benign, loving, and harmless remain. And brace yourselves for a perfectly planned and executed revenge mission with a real Australian bite. It probably couldn't be done now, with our high-tech surveillance tools, but one character quietly does many others a colossal favor.  

The author blurb in this old edition reveals that Ruth Park, along with her husband, D'Arcy Niland, was forced to live in a Sydney slum tenement for a while, owing to the shortage of adequate housing following World War Two. Aha, no wonder her descriptions bear such a compassionate insider's touch. Park's writing is alchemical, spinning gold from straw. 

The ending brims with heartbreaking closures and exciting new beginnings. As for the title, we are rewarded by learning why 'a power of roses' is Uncle Puss's whole life philosophy all condensed into four words. 

🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟

'This is not a book about Benedict Cumberbatch' by Tabitha Carvan

Summary: In This Is Not a Book About Benedict Cumberbatch, Carvan explores what happens to women's desires after we leave adolescence...and why the space in our lives for pure, unadulterated joy is squeezed ever smaller as we age. She shines a light onto the hidden corners of fandom, from the passion of the online communities to the profound real-world connections forged between Cumberbatch devotees. But more importantly, she asks: what happens if we simply decide to follow our interests like we used to, unabashedly, audaciously, shamelessly? After all, Carvan realizes, there's true, untapped power in finding your "thing" (even if that thing happens to be a British-born Marvel superhero) and loving it like your life depends on it.

MY THOUGHTS:

It is the subtitle that attracted me to this book. What a quirky and timely read it is. And you don't have to even admire Benedict Cumberbatch to appreciate it. I, for one, haven't succumbed to his charm, but still wouldn't have missed reading this. 

Tabitha, a wife and mother  living in Canberra, describes how she discovered Benedict Cumberbatch when her children were small. 

'Something lurched into motion in the pit of my belly, that churning, squeezing madness for more that leaves you in no doubt why they call it a crush.'

Since then she's watched the Sherlock series and the Marvel movies many times over, along with every other starring role of her idol's. And her life became shinier, illuminated, and far more fun than ever before, although she was performing the same old roles in the home and workplace. 

The difference to her outlook was so remarkable that Tabitha Carvan took it upon herself to find the hideaways of others with similar stories to share. Although most of the women interviewed for this book are fellow 'Cumberbitches' our fannish 'thing' can be anything that lights us up in the same way. 

This book is first and foremost an enthusiastic and convincing defense of passionate fandoms; the liberation document we never realized we so badly need. It strikes such a chord with me, I know I'm among this book's target audience. You'll feel the same way, if the description fits. We are the people whose benign hobbies are sometimes denigrated and trivialized as time-wasting and unproductive, making us inclined to keep them intensely private. The Protestant Work Ethic has infiltrated our western culture in its insidious way until we feel sheepish at best and shamed at worst. Whoever would have imagined we'd need an earnest voice like Tabitha's to tell us the truth. The transforming pleasure we get from our fandoms and passions is all the justification we need! 

Quiet personal tragedies undoubtedly abound. Casualties of voluntary diminishment are surely everywhere. Those who heed the content of subtle yet powerful guilt trips will never know what fun they've missed. For the alternative of this vibrant, imaginative, switched-on life (in other words, not having a 'thing') does not feel bad but merely normal. Once about twenty years ago, a well-meaning friend of mine described how she'd switched off her vivid imagination for the sake of peace and contentment. I left her house in a sort of daze, thinking, 'Nope, too great a sacrifice. I could never do that.'

Fanfiction gets a good wrap-up in this book. As a keen fanfic author, I appreciate Tabitha's fondness for it. She has a wonderful analogy about a woman who discovered an entire hidden apartment behind her bathroom mirror. That's precisely how I felt when I thought I'd exhausted the mileage I could get from my beloved book series, then discovered these untapped masterpieces about the same favourite characters.

The statistics of Archive of Our Own (one of my second homes) proves that it is actually more like a teeming metropolis than an extra apartment. Yes, there will always be stigma from people likening fanfiction to paint-by-number art, or packaged cake mixes, or Elvis impersonators.  But those of us who are busy doing it know full well that derivative needn't mean unchallenging or un-fascinating.  

If there is one thing that occasionally irritates me about Tabitha's style, it's her exaggerated self-deprecation, since she is clearly a highly intelligent and successful person who has maintained a viral blog and an up-to-date career interviewing scientists for cutting-edge articles, not to mention getting this book deal. 'Why all the false modesty,' I kept wanting to ask her. Yet after awhile, this stopped bothering me since her ultimate message is so enjoyable and uniquely presented. 

As I often do, I read other reviews after forming the bones of mine. One man wrote a scathing, one-star review asking, 'When she's on her death bed, will she really think, "I'm glad I spent all that time thinking about Benedict Cumberbatch?"' 

I'm certain Tabitha would reply, 'Hell, yeah!' It was satisfying to see several commenters tell him, 'You've obviously missed the whole point of the book.' That reviewer was clearly just the sort of person who might stamp out our joy in his reasonable sounding, yet scornfully dismissive way. 

This is a happy-making book, fresh and colorful enough to dip into many times. I'm glad a fellow Aussie had the brainwave to give this subject the book-length coverage it deserves. 

(Oh, and by the way, I learned that many people producing fan art and fan fiction on the internet are women in their fifties. So there you go, I have many cohorts and didn't even know it.)

Note: If you'd like to read more about fanfic, or even read some of my own fanfic, then start here.

🌟🌟🌟🌟½

'Journey to the River Sea' by Eva Ibbotson

Note: This was a book recommendation which I came across in another novel, often the best way of discovering new reading matter. Sometimes suggestions from fictional characters are worth following up even more than those from our real life friends. It happens that Jane Penderwick counts Finn Taverner, from this story, among her favorite imaginary book boyfriends. So when I spotted the spine at the secondhand shop, I thought I'd take my chance on it. 

MY THOUGHTS: 

 Although published in the early 21st century, this YA novel has real vintage, steampunk vibes. The story starts in 1910. Maia Fielding is an orphan who's being sent out to the Carter family, distant relatives of hers who live along the banks of the Amazon River in Brazil and operate a rubber plantation. She looks forward to meeting their identical twin daughters nearly her own age. Maia is accompanied by the resourceful Miss Minton, who's been engaged as governess for all three girls. 

Reality is a rude shock. It turns out Mrs Carter is a germ phobe who has transformed their home into a sterile bubble to keep out the tropical environment. Mr Carter is a creepy collector of glass eyes, and Beatrice and Gwendolyn's whole goal in life is to shun work and plague people. What's more, the Carter family has only agreed to take Maia under their roof in order to receive the financial benefits they'll be paid. 

But Maia befriends two boys who are in dire straits of their own. Finn Taverner is the son of a deceased naturalist. He's doing his best to dodge two private investigators who are determined to take him back to England to claim an inheritance he doesn't want. And poor, wistful Clovis King is a young itinerant actor traveling with a crooked troupe who exploits him. Clovis' nostalgia for England is unrelenting. (I quickly anticipated a possible plot of intentional mistaken identity, but the story delivers so much more than that. Deception is brilliant when everyone benefits, including the dupes.)

The novel is a tribute to the Amazon jungles and rainforests, and the mighty river which sometimes seems to swell to the size of the sea itself. (Hence its title.) The pages are bulging with capuchin monkeys, manatees, alligators, sloths, umbrella birds and many other colorful critters. Yet Ibbotson provides a balanced view that it is not everyone's cup of tea. Clovis' hankering for British rainstorms, bread-and-butter puddings, and village greens is equally convincing. 

A highlight for me is the influence of Miss Minton, governess extraordinaire, whose quiet, behind-the-scenes wisdom and manipulations are pure gold. She prioritizes spending her salary on excellent books, at the expense of her threadbare wardrobe and sparse personal effects. ('If you want something badly enough, you usually get it. But you have to take what goes along with it.')

Ibbotson's droll descriptions get my thumbs-up too. Those poor detectives, Mr Trapwood and Mr Low. 'Both their stomachs had become boiling caverns of agony and wind.' And the Carter twins are described as, 'pale insect grubs who exist only to be fed and groomed by others.'

So overall, Miss Minton's words hold true. 'Whether a place is a heaven or a hell rests in yourself, and those who go with courage and an open mind may find themselves in Paradise.' Yet at the same time, there exists a geographical and lifestyle sweet spot for every one of us, which we owe it to ourselves to discover if we possibly can. 

I'm willing to track down more of Ibbotson's YA books on the basis of this one. 

🌟🌟🌟🌟  

'Daphne' by Justine Picardie

Summary: It is 1957. The author Daphne du Maurier, beautiful, famous, despairing as her marriage falls apart, finds herself haunted by Rebecca, the character in her most famous novel, written 20 years earlier. Seeking distraction, she begins to research a biography of Branwell Bronte.

MY THOUGHTS:

This well-researched novel was loads of fun to read. It is not a fictionalized biography of Daphne du Maurier's whole life, but focuses on a specific block of time, beginning when she is already fifty years old. And only one third of the novel is told from Daphne's own point of view. The other two thirds deal with two other characters, which I found a most creative way of tackling it. 

First thread begins in 1957 and focuses on Daphne herself. The popular novelist receives a whopping blow when her husband of almost 25 years, Lt. General Sir Frederick Browning, is admitted to hospital for mental breakdown treatment and she also discovers he's been having an affair. Devastated Daphne takes refuge from emotional pain in her current writing project, a biography of Branwell Bronte. She decides this red-haired wastrel may well be her lifeline. Daphne extends feelers by writing to a stranger, J. Alexander Symington requesting any help he may give her. She has heard he is a librarian, archivist and keen Bronte scholar.

The second thread covers Alex Symington's perspective. Although he'd initially love to snub Daphne, (for if anyone was to write a book on Branwell Bronte it should be himself, not a romantic lady novelist who knew nothing of scholarly research), he is impressed by her fame and reputation. 

However, Symington hides a dark secret. He was dismissed by his former employers for thievery. His sticky fingers purloined several valuable documents, including irreplaceable Bronte original writings. Symington adroitly hedges around this disgrace in his correspondence with Daphne, hoping that she'll never twig. He's a sad and seedy little man creeping amongst his stacks of hoarded papers, also trying to dodge the demands of his exasperated wife.  

The third thread jumps forward to modern times. A shy young woman plans to write a proposal for her PhD thesis on the Brontes' imaginary worlds, yet she's keen to incorporate Daphne du Maurier and whatever she can discover about her correspondence with Alex Symington.

This girl never divulges her name, at least not until the very end. She is married to Paul, a smug and breezy English lecturer who is twice her age. The specter of Paul's perfect first wife, Rachel, hangs over their home. (Does this begin to sound familiar?) However, unlike the infamous Rebecca, Paul's ex-wife is still alive. She is a gorgeous and celebrated poet, darling of the literary world. 

Nothing the insecure young heroine may do in the academic world will ever hold a candle to anything Rachel produces. What's more, the girl admits to herself that she was initially swept away by Paul's sex appeal because he reminded her of Heathcliff, Rochester, and Maxim de Winter all rolled into one. But it is becoming clear that they might have been too hasty to tie the knot. Paul was on the rebound and she was intent on building herself a life that might live up to her beloved Bronte and du Maurier novels. 

This novel reminds me of all the academic snobbery and pomposity I encountered in the English department as a youngster during my undergraduate degree. Paul is not at all happy for his wife to include Daphne du Maurier in her planned dissertation, for he considers her far too minor a figure in twentieth century literature to bother with. In his eyes, Daphne was merely popular, but undistinguished. 'Irrelevant to the proper study of English literature!' Oho! 'Although Paul turns out to have a more personal reason for his antipathy to Du Maurier's body of work, many of his faculty buddies agree with him. 

In actual fact, Du Maurier's whole extended family were quite illustrious. I'm now intrigued to find out more about her five cousins, the Llewelyn Davies boys, who were adopted by James Matthew Barrie and became his role models for Peter Pan and the Lost Boys. 

At the heart of the story, however, is the long distance friendship based on deception. I grabbed my copy of The Infernal World, and sure enough, there was Daphne's dedication to Symington, written while she still had no idea he was a crook.

'To J. Alex Symington, compiler and editor of The Shakespeare Head Bronte, whose life-long interest in Patrick Branwell Bronte stimulated my own, and encouraged me to undertake the present study.' 

Perhaps the scandal which is exposed in this book explains why Alex Symington has no Wiki Page devoted to him, although a couple of articles about his dodgy shenanigans popped up. Yet after all his subterfuge, poor old Symington couldn't take a single one of those documents with him, could he?

This is a wonderful homage to celebrated British writers with more interesting tidbits of info packed into it than I can even cover in this review. A real springboard for further reading. According to this book, Daphne du Maurier has a personal diary locked away in a bank vault, with strict instructions not to be opened and released until 50 years after her death. Well, that sad event occurred in 1989, so by 2039, there will be another fascinating release for du Maurier fans to look out for.   

🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟   

Check out my review of Daphne's impressive achievement, The Infernal World of Branwell Bronte.  

'The Kind Ghosts' by Linda Newbery

Summary: It is the summer of 1917 and still neither side seems close to victory. Jack and Alice Smallwood, already disillusioned by the harsh realities of three years of war, have each lost someone dear. But the war grinds on, to Jack, in the mud of Flanders, and to Alice, at a base hospital in France, it seems that it must go on forever. And after the armistice, the joy and relief at returning to home life are soon cut short by unexpected and dramatic complications.

Warning: This review contains spoilers from its prequel, Some Other War. Proceed with caution.  

 MY THOUGHTS:

I consider myself lucky with book sightings. I plucked this paperback off the freebie trolley at a secondhand bookshop. It was clearly a vintage read with a catchy title. At first I thought it might have a supernatural theme, then discovered it is the second in a duology about the First World War. Fortunately its prequel is available on Internet Archive, so I raced through that (Some Other War) to get to this one. 

We are back with Jack and Alice, the Smallwood twins, whose lives were abruptly shattered in 1914. Part One picks up where Some Other War leaves off, in the chaos of combat. This time, each twin narrowly avoids death. Jack gets gassed in the trenches and Alice's Base Hospital is bombed by German planes. 

Although many characters cross these pages, the seven main characters are essentially the same as the first book. Jack and Alice, Philip, Edward, Lorna, Harriet, and Stephen. The two dead guys deserve to be still included, for the influence they continue to wield. 

Part Two deals with the twins trying to put together the pieces of their lives after Armistice Day. Jack deals with survivor's guilt, PTSD, and recurring nightmares. Then his wife, Harriet, delivers him a whopping emotional blow. 

Alice's continued grief over the loss of her beloved Edward leaves her wondering whether she remains in love with an idealized, embellished version of her fiancė rather than the real one. Edward's sister, Lorna, suggests this might hold some truth. Then the last person Alice would ever have expected romantic overtures from suddenly declares his love for her. 

I appreciate how Jack and Alice always have each other's backs whenever necessary. She changes her plans to stay near him when he's in hospital, and in turn, she's the first person he thinks to confide his heartbreaking domestic news to. Their relationship is bedrock. It's almost enough to make me wish I'd had a twin brother. 

Every character lives and breathes, including the infamous Harriet. I'm sure we've all come across girls like her in real life. They are shallow and restless, acting on sudden whims, and never thinking beyond their own concerns. Yet the Harriets of the world tend to fall on their feet and live reasonably easy lives, because they never lapse into moments of self-reflection. Therefore, they completely avoid self-reproach or remorse. 'Shame' is a word that never crosses their minds. Some archetypal characters similar to Harriet from the classics include Lydia Bennet and Rosamond Vincy. 

It turns out Harriet made a calculating, cold-blooded move in the first book. Yet from her own own point of view, this heartless character simply performed an action that needed to be done for her own protection. The person who put her in the position to deem it necessary is equally culpable (and he shall remain nameless). 

The twins' faith in the supernatural takes a sound battering, and understandably so. Alice admits to herself that she's merely going through the motions of singing and praying in church. Yet is their faith in providential machinations really dented beyond repair? On the very last page, Jack considers that the benevolent ghosts of Edward and Stephen may be working behind the scenes to find him and Alice each perfect soul mates. At last, the significance of the book's title is revealed. 

If I had any criticisms, Newbery spends a lot of time having Jack and Alice interacting with lovers who are completely wrong for them. Scenes spent with their perfect soul mates are far sparser in comparison, and I would have lapped up more of these.  

Yet The Kind Ghosts leaves me still thinking about the characters long after I finished, which is the litmus test of a great novel. With Jack and Alice in particular, Newbery has us share so many intimate moments in their skin, even when they're alone. Hence, I can't help loving these two in a really empathetic way. And since the unfolding horror of war elicits these reactions, it reinforces what I've long known, that a well-written story is the best way to bring history to life. 

🌟🌟🌟🌟

A Winter Update

I sometimes pause my book chat and reviews for mid-year updates. Ideally I add these at the end of June, but this one has been deferred until August, largely because I've been busy on the homeward stretch of the writing project I describe further down. But here are the most salient things that have happened. 

The Change of Life

I've had a health issue which began early last December. It was all perimenopause related. It turns out I've most likely had adenomyosis for several years without knowing it, or even that there was such a condition. It is a sort of cousin of endometriosis, which I've heard of far more frequently. At this stage of my life though, I became an unwitting science experiment. The question I never sought the answer to was, 'What happens when the influence of progesterone is suddenly removed from an organ that is honeycombed with adenomyosis?' Even though I never asked, I found out the answer resembles something like a school experiment when a Mentos-style sweet is dropped into a bottle of coke.  

If this seems irrelevant to a book blog (my daughter would surely say it is, and I never even mentioned a word to my sons), I've come to decide that matters of this nature are kept too hushed up in general. If ladies' menstrual cycles weren't such a private and taboo topic, I might've discovered my adenomyosis even sooner.

 I'm better now. I have two sources of synthetic progesterone working for me in the lead-up to true menopause, a local IUD plus daily doses of oral progesterone. Sometimes modern pharmaceuticals are lifestyle, sanity-saving gifts, although at one stage of my life I would never have imagined myself saying so. Sometimes things that need simple tweaks can cause chaos. 

The Writing Project

I've been writing plenty of fanfiction over the past two years. My longest and most popular are Louisa May Alcott inspired stories following the lives of several characters from Little Men and Jo's Boys. Perhaps my most ambitious project was Emil's shipwreck story. But the one I've just finished focuses on Jack Ford and Ned Barker, the pair of boys who Jo Bhaer sadly deemed her 'two failures.' Even when an author writes off her own characters, we readers needn't write them off too. 

I came up with some excellent plot-threads and backstories for Jack and Ned. For the last eight months, I've uploaded one chapter per week. It was great fun. Yet it sometimes seemed like a crazy project to start, because Little Women fans rarely seem to make it to Little Men and Jo's Boys these days, and for those who do, there is certainly no existing fandom for these two boys. Who would possibly read it? Yet the views have been steadily rising. 

My pseudonym for these stories is Ada Sage. Ada was the name of my paternal grandmother, and Sage speaks for itself. Taken both together, it rhymes with her maiden name, which was Ada Gage. And I find 'Ada Sage' rolls off the tongue. 

The work is time-consuming, fairly challenging to get right, a huge stretch of the imagination, and great fun! 

If you'd be interested to read these novels free at Archive of Our Own here is the link to my Ada Sage writing. However, several people I know in person would prefer to have hard copies, and I aim to provide that, because I would love them too. But I don't know if will happen in the near future. 

Now what do you think of this? An uncomplimentary reviewer on Goodreads of a fantasy-adventure trilogy I wrote several years ago said, 'It feels as if Louisa May Alcott tried to write Narnia.' I burst out laughing when I read that, for this person could have no way of knowing I am now actually writing Louisa May Alcott inspired fanfiction.  

Mid-Year Aims and Goals

Rummaging through my stash of secondhand books yet to be read, I see I have a pile of Anne Tyler novels and another stack by Daphne du Maurier. Perhaps I'll get a move-on with all of those, since they are already at hand. I would also love to finish reading all the Aussie/Kiwi novels by Ruth Park. So there's a fair stash of 20th century quality literature right there, American, British, and Australasian.

Overall

Despite its bothersome start, 2026 has been a pretty good year. In past decades, trying to stand out, make a name for myself, sell my books, and prove my worth has driven me nuts in many ways, and when results I strived for weren't forthcoming, I'd slump and feel responsible. 

But right now, I'm enjoying being an anonymous worshiper among a sea of faces at different city churches, and an anonymous writer on an enormous platform along with a teeming number of others. It feels restful to think that I am doing each of these things purely for their own sake.