The View from my Window – 29Jul16
July30
Time for the monthly update on the view from my office window.
The past three weeks have been sunny and hot, as many other places have been. It was beginning to look as if we would have a “mini-drought” but yesterday the clouds moved in:
And then it rained – one of those beautiful summer rains that come straight down so that you can keep all the windows open and hear it drip from the eaves, and smell that wonderful warm-earth-meets-rain smell called (very unromantically) petrichor.
It rained gently into the night. Today promises to be sunny and hot again – perfect for the beach!
How’s the weather where you are?;
dottle: the plug of tobacco residue or ashes left in the bottom of a pipe after it is smoked.
“He filled his pipe and struck one of the wax vestas.”
From Amazon: ” Mid-summer, 1948. The war is over, and as the initial phase of de-Nazification winds down, the citizens of Vienna struggle to rebuild their lives amidst the rubble. . . . 
Aka, Nobody Wore Black.
I read this book this month because, well, I was living in my mother’s house after her death.
In Newfoundland in the early 1800s, explorer David Buchan wants to establish communication with the last of the Beothuks–the native peoples.
Set in Newfoundland fishing villages c1940-1955, this is a heart-rending story of how war affects families and communities.
3. The Corrigan Women/To Scatter Stones/A Fit Month for Dying by M.T. Dohaney
Set in modern day St. John’s, Newfoundland, this book tells its story through alternating chapters about Colleen, a seventeen-year-old would-be eco-terrorist, her mother Beverly, Beverly’s sister Madelaine, and Frank, a benevolent young man without a family.
Twelve-year-old Jeannie Shaw lives in the Margaree Valley on Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia in the 1950s. Amazon says: “Lonely and isolated in her small, post-World War II rural community, she longs for a friend, a longing that verges on obsession. When a new family moves in, her hopes are raised, then dashed, and a near tragedy yields unexpected results. Taylor has done a fabulous job of painting a vivid picture of life on Cape Breton Island.”
This is the first two parts of what the author evidently intended to be a five part opus. Némirovsky was arrested in 1942 and deported to Auschwitz, where she died. This manuscript, then, was written in the early years of the war in Occupied France, in which she set the novel.
Wow – how to classify this book? By now, you’ve either read the book or heard the premise: Ursula dies at birth, is reborn and this time does not die; Ursula drowns at age 4, we try again and she doesn’t drown; and so on. (So many ways to die!)
Published in 2013, within two weeks of Atkinson’s book of the same title, McCorkle’s novel seemed to have gotten buried.
This book showed up in my library inbox in late November because I was trying to complete an unofficial A to Z Reading Challenge using authors’ last names.
Quire: a set of 24 or 25 sheets of paper of the same size and stock, the twentieth part of a ream. 
I’m joining in an annual link-up hosted by Jo at 
Well, actually, this story is set on Grand Manaan Island which is really Canadian, but the holiday community, at least for the summer discussed, is composed of Americans.
Set in Vermont and in a Florida primate research facility, this story is told alternately from the POV of humans and chimpanzees. 
I’ll repeat 
551 GoodReads ratings; my rating – 4½ stars
How delightful this book!
Set in the nineteenth century American mid-west, this is the story of a little boy who becomes lost on the prairie and spends several weeks living underground with an adult female badger. For some reason, I mistakenly thought it was a true story – and I found it highly believable. The boy was small and desperate; and the badger, grieving. 
Richard Barager’s debut novel is set against the back drop of 1960s America, the Vietnam War, and the ever increasingly violent anti-war protests of the time. It is the story of David and Jackie, young people on opposite sides of those divisive issues, but who have a passion for each other that connects them through it all. 
This novel is set on a kibbutz in Israel, mostly in the years 1949 and 1961.
One of my readers asked if anyone knew what truffles taste like. They’re a fungus that usually grows in tree roots, and one wouldn’t think they’d go with dessert. (Mushroom pudding, anyone?) 
