Monday 31 July 2017

Comma butterfly spotted late July

Comma - Chaldon, Surrey 19-March-11
So lucky!  just at the end of July and I have spotted another new butterfly in the garden.  Now when I say new, I mean new to me.  They may have been flitting around for years, but I don't think so - and this is the new sighting - The Comma.

This is the female, pretty wings, the underneath a good disguise looking like a dried up leaf.  See below - and also below the reason it's called the Comma.  See the white "comma" on the underneath?

Comma female - Belstead Brook Park, Ipswich 2-Aug-2013
Photo © Vince Massimo
Polygonia c-album - Family Nymphalidae Rafinesque 1815. 




PS - also today, a Gatekeeper, but that was not new to the garden as I posted about this butterfly last Summer.

Gatekeeper (female), Hog Wood (23 July 2011)
Female
Photo © Mark Colvin

Saturday 29 July 2017

Keeping Henry - Nina Bawden

Just back in print with a lovely new cover, this is a children's book fit for adult readers too, and a lovely one at that.  Henry is a red squirrel; a baby brought home by the youngest of three siblings and kept as a pet.  The book is set during WW2, when their father is away in the Atlantic, Chief Engineer of a merchant ship, dodging German submarines and transporting food across the ocean.

 In his absence, the two boys and their sister (who tells the story in the first person ) are decamped from London to live in a couple of rooms in a farmhouse on the Welsh Border.  They help out on the farm and in exchange get fresh eggs amongst other things, and learn country ways, and start to grow up.  The older brother James, is brilliant at maths but dyslexic with words (it does not use that word but you quickly realise how he is), Charlie, who brings the baby squirrel home is the youngest, the cheekiest, the naughtiest, but the one who loves Henry the most.  They all learn about country practices, animals, birth and death, injury and much more.  A good all round education for them and the reader too.

I know the age range is quoted for 7-11, but I read it and thoroughly enjoyed it.  I recently read and reviewed here The Peppermint Pig by the same author - different entirely but a lovely style.  With only 160 pages, a young reader will not get bored, and I think will get much pleasure from Henry's antics.


Friday 28 July 2017

Mrs Mac suggests - a book for AUGUST

A few days early for August, but I am a busy woman!

Take yourself off to the Southern Hemisphere this month.  

Anywhere south of the Equator is my suggestion - because there's a lot of choice.  But I am not being lazy......... I have a huge list of ready made suggestions, and this was on the list.  So go on! Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Botswana, Argentina.... just a few there.  Here's my suggestion for you.  A book set on a rugged and lonely part of the Australian coast, a woman who married the wrong man, a man who needs to hide.  A great read - and a great author too.  If you have not come across him, try this one and then try Cloudstreet.....anyway here it is, my suggestion for August:




Dirt Music - Tim Winton


Tuesday 25 July 2017

The Storied Life of A. J. Fikrey - Gabrielle Zevin

Now here's a lovely book!  For me, anyway, a person who always enjoys a book about books.  I had already read a book by this author, Elsewhere, a book about a 16 year old who wakes up elsewhere.... I thought it a brilliant concept, but when I read this book I didn't connect the two, nor did I remember the author's name.  No matter.  All the dots are joined now and so let me tell you about AJ and his bookshop on Alice Island, Mass., USA.



AJ Fikrey is a widower, his lovely wife having been killed in an accident some time previously.  But the book does not start with that accident, and it is only mentioned in passing, for the important thing is now.  Now - today, when AJ finds a two year old girl with a label round her neck left behind in his bookshop.  The child knows her name (Maya), she knows her age, but that's about it really, and AJ certainly does not want this problem on his doorstep.  But the problem is not going to go away  because the social worker will not be able to arrange foster care over a weekend.....

When I first started reading, I laughed out loud several times, and read huge chunks out the the hubs.  It just enchanted me.  It is the story of a man and his life and loves.  So simple, so touching, and written with real feeling.  I loved it for two reasons.  It made me laugh at the beginning, smile in the middle and cry at the end.  That's the first reason (I know there are three things mentioned but trust me here!).  The second reason is that this is a book about books as well as the story of AJ.  And the titles of those books are woven into the narrative so nicely that I kept smiling every time I came across one (many of which I had read).  Also, at the beginning of each chapter is a little chunk about a short story, and why AJ chose to tell Maya about that particular one.  If you love books and love to read, like me, you will enjoy the journey through all those books, as well as the narrative of AJ's life.

Recommended

Saturday 22 July 2017

The Watery Part of the World - Michael Parker

Here's an odd one.  My, I found it difficult to read - it hops about in time a bit, and whilst I usually enjoy that kind of novel, this one took some sticking to; and to be honest, at first  I only wanted to read it because it is set on the Outer Banks of North Carolina, and having been there on holiday a few years ago, this one captured my interest.


But read it I did, and found it rather unsettling, but also haunting and beautiful.  The book starts with the shipwreck and survival of Theodosia Burr, daughter of a former US vice president, Aaron Burr.  She is on her way to meet him in New York when the ship is taken by pirates, and she is the only person left alive. She's eventually rescued by someone in the pay of the pirate captain, Daniels, who's land HQ is at Nags Head on the Outer Banks.  Her rescuer eventually frees her from Daniels, and takes her, secretly, to a small island further down the Banks.  There they live for some years, eventually becoming lovers, she bearing him several children.  That's the historic part of the book.

In the present, two sisters, descendants of Theodosia are the last two white people on the same island, together with a black couple, who they have known all their lives.  How eventually they are all gone from the island is really the entire heart of the book.

I said at the beginning that I found it difficult to read.  Well, I had to concentrate a little more than usual, although that didn't make it a bad read.  Not at all, it was certainly worth the time spent.  You can use Google Earth to look at this part of the world - and if you type in Nags Head Outer Banks North Carolina you will find yourself looking at the Outer Banks, and you will understand the title of the book.  Scroll down a little until you find Morehead, on the mainland, and between those two points the book is set.

By the way, Aaron Burr existed.  His daughter Theodosia also, and she was lost at sea (or not, if you choose to stick with the fiction of the book!).

Sunday 16 July 2017

A Gentleman in Moscow - Amor Towles



I am a little bit in love with a Russian. Never thought that would happen until I met Count Alexander Rostov. He is the star of this wonderful novel, and from 1922 until the early 1950s, Count Rostov is living in the Hotel Metropole, in the middle of Moscow, under indefinite house arrest, deemed an unrepentant aristocrat by the Bolsheviks.

 In those thirty odd years, he meets two children many years apart and loves them both. He is seduced by a beautiful woman and loves her too. He makes good friends of the Maitre'D and the Chef of the finest restaurant in Moscow, he becomes the head waiter in that restaurant, he is kind, well mannered, and known by all. Visitors to the hotel become friends too, over the years, and his life is rich, even though he has lost almost everything. But he has not, of course lost much at all if you omit the loss of liberty. For in loosing so much, he gains so much more.

A couple of years ago I read Towles' first book, Rules of Civility, which I liked at the time, but now cannot remember a thing about.  This, on the other hand, I am unlikely ever to forget.  I cannot thank  enough the friend who recommended this to me after she had read it.  She said she loved the Count's company, and on the strength of that I acquired this beautiful read, one that will stay with me, There are heroes and villains too, in this book.  you will find little bits of real history inserted into the pages, which, if you are interested makes the tale even better embroidered.  If you are not, it doesn't matter a jot!

Just Imagine.  The life of an aristocrat who somehow was not killed during the Bolshevik revolution which resulted in the death of the last Czar and his family;  imagine going from a life of luxury where you lived for a time in a whole luxurious suite in the Hotel Metropole to a tiny attic room in the same hotel.  Imagine your days, confined but not imprisoned.  How the Count managed this was by realising that possessions are not everything, but friends are.  And by the way, towards the end, a little frisson of excitement makes a perfect ending.




Friday 14 July 2017

Large Skipper sighted in my garden!

Highslide JS Photo © Peter Eeles


I found one of these little fellas on my washing yesterday in the sunshine, and sent a message to my butterfly expert, "Ian of Weymouth" asking what had I seen?  because if you look closely you will see that the formation of the wings is unusual, sitting on top of each other rather than one below the other.  He sat for about ten minutes at eye level on a white pillowcase - what a joy to be able to observe him.  I went back several times to have another look because ancient as I am, I had never ever seen one before!

So.  He is a Large Skipper, genus Ochlodes, family Hesperiidae 

Saturday 8 July 2017

A Thousand Days in Venice - Marlena de Blasi

 















This is not a guidebook to Venice.  It is a memoir of a woman who fell in love with the city whilst falling in love with a Venetian who spotted her one day in a coffee shop and left her messages to "meet me tomorrow" etc.  The difference here is that she (a non-Italian speaker) was already middle-aged, with a golden career in America, two grown children and a nice home - and he? a non-English speaking bank manager of a small branch, same job for 30 years, no excitement, no family, an apartment he bathed and slept in and no chance of change.

Suddenly, for both of them, there was a chance of a new life, a total change in everything, and for her a change of country too.  He seemed a rather morose man, and certainly full of the Italian trait of knowing that things cannot be changed; if it takes three months to arrange to pay a bill, then it takes three months.  And into his life comes this woman who is desperate to understand this, desperate to make him (and herself) happy, and in reading it, your hope that they will succeed.

The descriptions of places and people made me smile and laugh, and read bits out to the hubs so that I could enjoy them all over again.  The way the smoking civil servant inhaled smoke into her nose as well as her mouth and exhaled just a tiny puff at the end;  the old fruit seller who, in the winter, set a fire in a coal scuttle to keep herself warm, and roasted apples in the embers of that fire, and so many more things.  A delight to read even though I wanted to shake the Italian, who was not only morose but dictatorial.... until I realised that he didn't know what joy was, really, until he met her.



Early One Morning - Virginia Baily

I was attracted to this novel purely by the cover (as I suppose this is meant to happen!) and it has very little about the contents on the b...