Membro: harrietgate

Hi Harriet - no, I haven't yet seen the movie, but plan to do so. I have revisited my great admiration for Charles Dickens' Bleak House by watching the PBS movie...it is a wonderful representation of what I consider to be his finest novel. Nothing takes the place (for me) of the heft of a good book, but this is a close second. I had forgotten how much I love the English surnames. Hope your holidays are filled with memory-making moments of joy.
Pat

publicado por pdebolt às 1:50 pm (EST) em Dec 22, 2009

Hi - thank you for adding me as a friend - I happily accept. I love the picture of your labs. One of my daughters has a wonderful English lab with a big square head and the kindest of hearts. We seem to share quite a few books in your library...I am a great fan of many Canadian authors. This site is so addictive and a wonderful way to catalogue all we've read and want to read. Take care,
Pat

publicado por pdebolt às 6:50 pm (EST) em Dec 8, 2009

Thanks for your kind words, Harriet! I almost enjoy contracting a cold these days, because I always re-read the Mallory Towers books when I'm ill, they're like a favourite warm blanket in that way....

publicado por thefirstalicat às 5:11 pm (EST) em Nov 1, 2009

well, I am sure you will enjoy the Belleview book... I know I did. Yes, please add me as a friend and I will add you as well! Did you enjoy the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo? You know, the Girl who Played with Fire is even better than the first!!!

publicado por voracious às 6:52 pm (EST) em Sep 16, 2009

Thank You for the kind remarks Harriet!
We live in the country as well.
I love the peace and quiet in my secret reading garden; perfect for taking me any where I choose to "travel" with my books. Reading your description of your library,I am sure you understand. :0)
Indianapolis is an interesting city and the Museum is one of it's most beautiful places.
I have always wanted to travel to Canada but have only made it as far as Niagara Falls. Maybe someday.
Love the sweet pic of your dogs!
It is so nice to meet you,
DebRinker

publicado por DebRinker às 8:22 am (EST) em Sep 16, 2009

thanks! Your dogs are really cute too! I was just in Toronto in August and really enjoyed it. Have you read Weekends at Bellevue yet?

publicado por voracious às 6:50 am (EST) em Sep 16, 2009

Thanks, Harriet. Fortunately, I've always loved to read, but have been frustrated by being such a slow reader. Enjoy all the books you can - as they say, "So many books, so little time!"

publicado por irishwasherwoman às 1:32 am (EST) em Sep 8, 2009

Nope, I don't really use Russian at all since I retired in 2001, and, perhaps sadly, it's beginning to fade. The "use it or lose it" saying is very true, esp concerning foreign languages. But I did work for the US DoD for nearly thirty years, incl my 8 yrs in the army, so I certainly got my money's worth out of my RU trng. Retirement is, however, the best job I've ever had. And yes, Cheltenham is still open for business.

publicado por TimBazzett às 10:09 pm (EST) em Sep 1, 2009

What else but Russian. It was the Cold War.

publicado por TimBazzett às 9:13 pm (EST) em Aug 31, 2009

Your experiences sound similar to mine, Harriet.

I start a few books which are duds or not to my taste, but mostly my TBR pile is precarious so most books are eagerly awaited. I don't mention the duds!

Cheers, Karen

publicado por kiwidoc às 10:38 am (EST) em Aug 31, 2009

Hello, Harriet - noted in one of your posts to Schmerguls that your husband (Bern?) is a reader too, interested in WWII and history. I have read many military memoirs, preferring the ones by the lower-ranking "enlisted scum," as we used to call ourselves. A lot of good ones about Vietnam now. Enjoyed those from Tobias Wolff, Tracy Kidder, and Bob Mason's Chickenhawk, but plenty yet to read. I was from the Vietnam era, but escaped it - posted to Turkey and Germany instead, for which I am thankful. I stayed alive. My second book, SoldierBoy, is about my own Cold War service. My fourth book, Love, War & Polio, is a bio of the early years of a WWII vet, who was our local banker for 40-plus years, now retired. If you're both readers, your house must be comfortably awash with books. My best to both of you. - Tim

publicado por TimBazzett às 9:27 am (EST) em Aug 31, 2009

Yes - born in the UK, emigrated to New Zealand as a teen, married a Canadian in my twenties. An international citizen perhaps.

publicado por kiwidoc às 1:59 pm (EST) em Aug 29, 2009

Thanks for bookmarking my library. It is too expansive and taking over the living space - so I tell my hubbie we need to move to a house with a library!!

Interesting that you should have started in Yorkshire and ended in Canada. My family all originated from NewCastle-Tyne (my Great Grandfather was the Mayor!)

Cheers,

Karen

publicado por kiwidoc às 11:02 pm (EST) em Aug 28, 2009

Yes, we have been to Stratford, many yrs ago - in '69 we saw Hamlet and Tartuffe.Our first son was just 6 mos old then. (He's (GULP) 40 now.) Bought my first pair of bellbottoms there. Beautiful place. - Tim

publicado por TimBazzett às 8:15 pm (EST) em Aug 8, 2009

Hi, Harriet - Was looking at your notes to Schmerguls, who is a friend of mine. Isn't that an impressive collection he has? What you say above about your library? Me too. If we were still in high school and you got up and said that about your reading, and then the teacher called on me, I'd just point to you and says, "What she said." Our kids are grown now too and we have two dog who are our "kids." One of them is pictured on my profile page. One of our kids just left this morning with his family after a four day visit from PA, and the house is eerily quiet now. They have a four yr-old and a one and a half yr-old - both boys. Boy are we tired and sore after doing our best to keep up with them this past week. I think I'll keep an eye on your libary to see what you add. Tomorrow is my wife's birthday, and we're going out to dinner, maybe with our favorite neighbors. Ain't this LibraryThing fun? Best, Tim

publicado por TimBazzett às 9:29 am (EST) em Aug 6, 2009

There is a new book on D-Day, which I may read--but I have forgotten its name. It seems I saw it mentioned recently in the New York Times Book Review. But whether it will answer your question I have no idea.
I will look for the The Man Who Loved China. Thanks.

publicado por Schmerguls às 11:00 pm (EST) em Jul 27, 2009

Here is my "book of the year" list:

158 Blessed Are the Meek A Novel about St. Francis of Assisi, by Zofia Kossak (read 10 Aug 1944) (Book of the Year)
198 Golden Fleece: The Story of Franz Joseph & Elizabeth of Austria, by Bertita Harding (read 24 June 1945) (Book of the Year)
234 The World, the Flesh, and Father Smith, by Bruce Marshall (read 2 Feb 1946) (Book of the Year)
324 Kristin Lavransdatter The Bridal Wreath - The Mistress of Husaby - The Cross, by Sigrid Undset (read 24 Apr 1947) (Book of the Year)
340 Look Homeward, Angel: A Story of the Buried Life, by Thomas Wolfe (read 7 June 1948) (Book of the Year)
364 U.S.A. 1.The 42nd Parallel 2.Nineteen Nineteen 3.The Big Money by John Dos Passos (read 17 Aug 1949) (Book of the Year)
374 Point Counter Point, by Aldous Huxley (read 12 July 1950) (Book of the Year)
381 In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians, by Ambrose Bierce (read 23 Apr 1951) (Book of the Year)
449 The End of the Affair, by Graham Greene (read 11 Nov 1952) (Book of the Year)
461 The Ox-Bow Incident, by Walter Von Tilburg Clark (read 24 Mar 1953) (Book of the Year)
464 The Caine Mutiny: A Novel of World War II, by Herman Wouk (read 31 Jan 1954) (Book of the Year) (Pulitzer Fiction prize for 1952)
471 The Power and the Glory, by Graham Greene (read 30 Jan 1955) (Book of the Year)
495 Independent People: An Epic, by Halldor Laxness translated from the Icelandic by J. A. Thompson (read 29 Apr 1956) (Book of the Year)
528 I Promessi Sposi (The Betrothed), by Alessandro Manzoni (read 5 Dec 1957) (Book of the Year)
555 All the King's Men, by Robert Penn Warren (read 21 Sept 1958) (Book of the Year) (Pulitzer Fiction prize for 1947)
576 The Personal History of David Copperfield, by Charles Dickens (read 14 June 1959) (Book of the Year)
620 Advise and Consent, by Allen Drury (read 9 June 1960) (Book of the Year) (Pulitzer Fiction prize 1960)
676 The Great Crisis in American Catholic History 1895-1900, by Thomas T. McAvoy, C.S.C. (read 30 Sep 1961) (Book of the Year)
697 The Guns of August, by Barbara W. Tuchman (read 31 May 1962) (Book of the Year) (Pulitzer Nonfiction prize in 1963)
723 The Thibaults, by Roger Martin Du Gard translated by Stuart Gilbert (read 7 Feb 1963) (Book of the Year)
778 The Price of Glory: Verdun 1916, by Alistair Horne (read 7 Sep 1964) (Book of the Year)
807 In Flanders Fields: The 1917 Campaign, by Leon Wolff (read 8 June 1965) (Book of the Year)
858 In Cold Blood: A True Account of a Multiple Murder and Its Consequences, by Truman Capote (read 5 June 1966) (Book of the Year)
895 The Heart of Midlothian, by Sir Walter Scott (read 25 Mar 1967) (Book of the Year)
988 The Thirty Years War, by C. V. Wedgwood (read 21 Dec 1968) (Book of the Year)
995 Asquith: Portrait of a Man and an Era, by Roy Jenkins (read 22 Jan 1969) (Book of the Year)
1085 The Andromeda Strain, by Michael Crichton (read 9 Oct 1970) (Book of the Year)
1123 Admirals in Collision, by Richard Hough (read 1 Aug 1971) (Book of the Year)
1202 The Green Flag: The Turbulent History of the Irish National Movement, by Robert Kee (read 14 Dec 1972) (Book of the Year)
1224 Power to Dissolve: Lawyers and Marriages in the Courts of the Roman Curia, by John T. Noonan, Jr. (read 16 June 1973) (Book of the Year)
1297 The Parnell Tragedy, by Jules Abels (read 22 Oct 1974) (Book of the Year)
1345 Macaulay: The Shaping of the Historian, by John Clive (read 6 July 1975) (Book of the Year) (National Book Award history prize for 1974)
1392 The Impending Crisis 1848-1861, by David M. Potter Completed by Don E. Fehrenbacher (read 15 May 1976) (Book of the Year) (Pulitzer History prize in 1977)
1466 Roots, by Alex Haley (read 28 Oct 1977) (Book of the Year)
1487 A Savage War of Peace: Algeria 1954-1962, by Alistair Horne (read 9 June 1978) (Book of the Year)
1520 The Tichborne Claimant: A Victorian Mystery, by Douglas Woodruff (read 11 June 1979) (Book of the Year)
1593 The Great Mutiny, by James Dugan (read 28 Oct 1980) (Book of the Year)
1637 The Killer Angels A Novel, by Michael Shaara (read 29 May 1981) (Book of the Year) (Pulitzer Fiction prize in 1975)
1749 The Sicilian Vespers: A History of the Mediterranean World in the Later Thirteenth Century, by Steven Runciman (read 7 Nov 1982) (Book of the Year)
1770 The Path Between the Seas: The Creation of the Panama Canal 1870-1914, by David McCullough (read 21 Mar 1983) (Book of the Year) (National Book Award history prize for 1978)
1852 The Dred Scott Case: Its Significance in American Law and Politics, by Don E. Fehrenbacher (read 15 May 1984) (Book of the Year) (Pulitzer History prize in 1979)
1956 France Under the Republic:The Development of Modern France (1870-1939), by D. W. Brogan (read 15 Nov 1985) (Book of the Year)
1990 The Affair: The Case of Alfred Dreyfus, by Jean-Denis Bredin translated from the French by Jeffrey Mehlman (read 19 Mar 1986) (Book of the Year)
2103 The Age of Jackson, by Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. (read 15 Oct 1987) (Book of the Year) (Pulitzer History prize in 1946)
2154 Chronicle of Youth: The War Diary 1913-1917, by Vera Brittain (read 14 Jul 1988) (Book of the Year)
2215 Alive, by Piers Paul Read (read 10 Jun 1989) (Book of the Year)
2293 The Making of the Atomic Bomb, by Richard Rhodes (read 13 May 1990) (Book of the Year) (Pulitzer Nonfiction prize in 1988) (National Book Award nonfiction prize in 1987) (National Book Critics Circle nonfiction award for 1987)
2377 The Struggle for Mastery in Europe 1848-1918, by A. J. P. Taylor (read 13 Apr 1991) (Book of the Year)
2460 Dreadnought: Britain, Germany, and the Coming of the Great War, by Robert K. Massie (read 7 Sep 1992) (Book of the Year)
2539 The Bishop's Boys: A Life of Wilbur and Orville Wright, by Tom D. Crouch (read 5 Oct 1993) (Book of the Year)
2689 Crossing the Threshold of Hope, by His Holiness John Paul II translated from the Italian by Jenny McPhee and Martha McPhee (read 26 Dec 1994) (Book of the Year)
2782 A First-Class Temperament: The Emergence of Franklin Roosevelt, by Geoffrey C. Ward (read 12 Sep 1995) (Book of the Year) (National Book Critics Circle biography award for 1989)
2826 Lincoln in American Memory, by Merrill D. Peterson (read 21 Jan 1996) (Book of the Year)
3042 Back to the Front: An Accidental Historian Walks the Trenches of World War I, by Stephen O'Shea (read 21 Dec 1997) (Book of the Year)
3123 The Death Penalty: An Historical and Theological Survey, by James J. Megivern (read 28 Oct 1998) (Book of the Year)
3190 We Were Soldiers Once...And Young Ia Drang: The Battle That Changed the War in Vietnam, by Lt. Gen. Harold G. Moore, U.S.A. (Ret.) and Joseph L. Galloway (read 4 May 1999) (Book of the Year)
3358 Flags of Our Fathers, by James Bradley with Ron Powers (read 12 Oct 2000) (Book of the Year)
3417 With the Old Breed: At Peleliu and Okinawa, by E. B. Sledge (read 9 Mar 2001) (Book of the Year)
3583 The Years of Lyndon Johnson: Master of the Senate, by Robert A. Caro (read 27 May 2002) (Book of the Year) (Pulitzer Biography prize in 2003) (National Book Award nonfiction prize for 2002)
3708 Endurance Shackleton's Incredible Voyage, by Alfred Lansing (read 1 Mar 2003) (Book of the Year)
3863 Castles of Steel Britain, Germany, and the Winning of the Great War at Sea, by Robert K. Massie (read 4 Mar 2004) (Book of the Year)
4068 Eleventh Month, Eleventh Day, Eleventh Hour Armistice Day 1918 World War I and Its Violent Climax, by Joseph E. Persico (read 5 Sep 2005) (Book of the Year)
4252 A World at Arms A Global History of World War II, by Gerhard L. Weinberg (read 31 Dec 2006) (Book of the Year)
4370 The Day of Battle The War in Sicily and Italy, 1943-1944 Volume Two of The Liberation Trilogy, by Rick Atkinson (read 11 Oct 2007) (Book of the Year)
4403 America's Constitution A Biography, by Akhil Reed Amar (read 17 Jan 2008) (Book of the Year)

publicado por Schmerguls às 10:56 pm (EST) em Jul 22, 2009

There is really no set pattern to what I read. I have topics which so interest me that I cannot resist reading a book on such when I come across such. I do make a fetish of recording every book I read in my list of books read, and also do a post-reading note designed to help me recall how the book struck me while reading it and to help me remember it. And at year's end I select one book as the best book read that year--something I have done each year since 1944. Can you tell me some book you think is really extraordinary and which you would especially recommend?

publicado por Schmerguls às 5:02 am (EST) em Jul 19, 2009

I appreciate your interest in my library, which is actually a list of every book I have ever read in full. I think what I have read is more important than what I might own but not read, so a book does not get on my list till I have read it completely. Do you know if there is a simple way to see all the books you have rated with five stars? LibraryThing is such a great tool and I amd wondering if there is such a way to get a list of a person's five-starred books without going thru the whole library. I would even like to do it on my list, sltho my rating is not real systematic.

publicado por Schmerguls às 11:26 am (EST) em Jul 18, 2009

Thank you for your interest in my library. What you have written about why you read applies to me and my library, especially the "sometimes to travel, more often to gain insight into human nature."
Penny

publicado por pmarshall às 12:42 pm (EST) em Jun 14, 2009

Always love having new friends! I only read 'Star of the Sea' because my online book group had read it and they all enjoyed it. I was pleased I did. I didn't think I'd like it to begin with as it took me a little while to get into it but once I had, I couldn't put it down!

publicado por SmithSJ01 às 1:03 pm (EST) em May 31, 2009

wow! My library is interesting!
Thanks for adding me. I see we have 25 books in common -- and that they're all very good ones.

publicado por bcquinnsmom às 9:44 am (EST) em May 31, 2009

I love the comment you make about your library. What a wonderful explanation of why you read. :)

publicado por SmithSJ01 às 4:33 pm (EST) em May 30, 2009

Thank you for your kind comment. I am going to investigate your library immediately.

I am working my way through Minette Walters' mysteries. I just this morning finished "Devil's Feather." She is a wonderful storyteller.

I am also reading Penelope Lively's "Passing On," and browsing some other books I've just loaded onto my new Kindle.

I have only been a member of LT since November of last year, but I find almost everything I read nowadays is from other members' libraries. What a great book-sharing resource!

All the best, Kris

publicado por kgallagher625 às 11:16 am (EST) em Apr 25, 2009

Hi,
I have books all over the place. Some of my other books not in good read are also excellent. Sharon

publicado por shazjhb às 10:36 pm (EST) em Feb 18, 2009

Hi! Thanks for the comment on my reviews. I loved looking at your library--you gave me lots of ideas for books, too. It's wonderful to be introduced to a whole new set of books when you know that you have similar taste in books as another person.

My son is almost "done" and I'll have my two lab-mix dogs ready as child-substitutes as well. I'm glad you have such good friends with yours. Labs are so sweet.

publicado por smallwonder56 às 2:29 pm (EST) em Oct 27, 2008