I have been rather busy over the last few days because my OH has just had an operation - a Nissen Fundoplication. Do not Google it if you are squeamish! It's a cure for acid reflux basically but the after effects are probably more than most of us would care to experience. He has to be on a virtually completely liquid diet for the next couple of months though he can manage things like rice pudding if he eats small amounts - and I mean small - less than a dessert spoonful at a time.
Eventually he will be able to eat a more normal diet but may never be able to eat bread again. He has done well so far as he had the operation last Saturday and came out on Monday. He was expected to stay in about 5 days because of his serious lung problems and his diabetes but is recovering much better than was expected.
Books
Trollope by Victoria Glendinning - a comprehensive biography of the author which makes many references to his books and really brought the man to life for me.
Here Come the Girls by Milly Johnson - an enjoyable romp of a book which was a very welcome read at the weekend. Four friends go on a cruise. It changes all their lives - for the better.
Gently Through the Mill by Alan Hunter - the fifth book in the Gently series. 1950s crime in a flour mill with Gently involved because the body is that of a petty London villain.
Ellie Andrews has Second Thoughts by Ruth Sabberton - Again an enjoyable light read with Ellie reminiscing on her wedding day. The reader does not know exactly who she is marrying or whether the marriage will go ahead until the last few pages.
Current Reading
Daughter of Time by Josephine Tey - the classic novel about Richard III. Still good even when you know some of the text off by heart!
The Forsyte Saga by John Galsworthy - I'm still reading this in small chunks which you might think would cause a problem trying to remember what has gone on. I must have read the books many times back in the 1970s because I'm finding I have no problem recalling the story line.
The Perfect Hero by Victoria Connelly - Kay moves to Lyme Regis and opens a B&B. Her first guests are some of the actors involved in a new film production of Jane Austen's Persuasion.
Showing posts with label John Galsworthy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label John Galsworthy. Show all posts
Wednesday, 25 May 2011
Sunday, 8 May 2011
Books, books and more books
- Death in a Strange Country by Donna Leon - I am re-reading the Guido Brunetti books in series order as e-books. Unfortunately the first and the third are not yet available as e-books so having bought the first in paper back I'm trying to decide whether to do the same with the third book or wait for the ebook version. However I did enjoy this one - the second in the series. Some people don't like them because there isn't always a cut and dried solution to the murder and there isn't always a criminal brought to justice. This doesn't bother me as I enjoy reading the story anyway. Maybe the journey is preferable to the destination?
- The World the Flesh and the Bishop (Divine Comedy)by Elizabeth Pewsey - see previous posts - Just as good as ever - I always love the incident where Titus and Quinta rescue Lydia from the orgy! Unholy Harmonies is now available as an ebook
Currently reading
- The Forsyte Saga - John Galsworthy - up to book six which is the last of the novels which are purely about the Forsytes.
- Unholy Harmonies by Elizabeth Aston - see above and previous post
- Trollope by Victoria Glendinning - biography of the Victorian author. It shows how his experiences were translated into fiction as well as describing his life.
Saturday, 12 March 2011
Books, books and more books
Plenty of crime and other things mainly historical:
M C Beaton - Emily Goes to Exeter, Belinda Goes to Bath and Penelope Goes to Portsmouth - the first three books in the Travelling Matchmaker series - light reading set at the beginning of the nineteenth century. I'm waiting for the last three to come out at the end of this month. If you like Georgette Heyer then you may enjoy these.
Elly Griffiths - The House at Seas End - the third in the Ruth Galloway series set on the North Norfolk coast. This one is about six skeletons uncovered by a cliff fall which turn out to be rather newer than the skeletons Ruth is normally interested in. Excellent atmospheric writing with an out of the ordinary heroine.
M C Beaton - Hamish Macbeth mysteries - Death of a Cad, Death of an Outsider, Death of a Perfect Wife, Death of a Hussy, Death of a Snob - these are all good light reads with Hamish displaying not only his laziness but his good knowledge of human nature. While they are light crime stories they often have some deeper aspects which raise them out of the ordinary.
Ken Moody - The View from the Surgery - short pieces by a GP based in Scotland with some very Dickensian pseudonyms for the patients.
Amy Bratley - The Girl's Guide to Homemaking - chick lit - but interesting chick lit. Juliet moves into a new flat with her boyfriend only to discover he has been cheating on her with one of her friends. From there on in her life disintegrates. How she deals with that disintegration makes interesting reading.
Carola Dunn - Styx and Stones - poison pen letters in 1920s rural England. This is the first book I've read in this series and I think I shall be looking out for the others.
Edmund Crispin - The Case of the Gilded Fly - Golden Age crime set in Oxford. Good reading and the solution to the murder is so simple when you know it!
Currently reading:
Georgette Heyer - Faro's Daughter
John Galsworthy - The Forsyte Saga - I'm on volume 5 - The Silver Spoon. I can still see the people who played the characters in that long ago BBC adaptation!
Anthony Trollope - The Way We Live Now - very topical even if it was written in the 19th century.
Simon Parke - One Minute Mindfulness - short passages providing food for thought.
M C Beaton - Emily Goes to Exeter, Belinda Goes to Bath and Penelope Goes to Portsmouth - the first three books in the Travelling Matchmaker series - light reading set at the beginning of the nineteenth century. I'm waiting for the last three to come out at the end of this month. If you like Georgette Heyer then you may enjoy these.
Elly Griffiths - The House at Seas End - the third in the Ruth Galloway series set on the North Norfolk coast. This one is about six skeletons uncovered by a cliff fall which turn out to be rather newer than the skeletons Ruth is normally interested in. Excellent atmospheric writing with an out of the ordinary heroine.
M C Beaton - Hamish Macbeth mysteries - Death of a Cad, Death of an Outsider, Death of a Perfect Wife, Death of a Hussy, Death of a Snob - these are all good light reads with Hamish displaying not only his laziness but his good knowledge of human nature. While they are light crime stories they often have some deeper aspects which raise them out of the ordinary.
Ken Moody - The View from the Surgery - short pieces by a GP based in Scotland with some very Dickensian pseudonyms for the patients.
Amy Bratley - The Girl's Guide to Homemaking - chick lit - but interesting chick lit. Juliet moves into a new flat with her boyfriend only to discover he has been cheating on her with one of her friends. From there on in her life disintegrates. How she deals with that disintegration makes interesting reading.
Carola Dunn - Styx and Stones - poison pen letters in 1920s rural England. This is the first book I've read in this series and I think I shall be looking out for the others.
Edmund Crispin - The Case of the Gilded Fly - Golden Age crime set in Oxford. Good reading and the solution to the murder is so simple when you know it!
Currently reading:
Georgette Heyer - Faro's Daughter
John Galsworthy - The Forsyte Saga - I'm on volume 5 - The Silver Spoon. I can still see the people who played the characters in that long ago BBC adaptation!
Anthony Trollope - The Way We Live Now - very topical even if it was written in the 19th century.
Simon Parke - One Minute Mindfulness - short passages providing food for thought.
Saturday, 22 January 2011
My madeleine moment . . .
I bought a Marks & Spencer's coffee Swiss roll the other day and I decided a few minutes ago to have a piece of it - together with a cup of coffee. When I took the first bite I was immediately transported to evenings in the early 1970s. Once again I was sitting talking to my fellow blogger - Norn - and drinking coffee and eating coffee Swiss roll. I was also reminded of watching the BBC's adaptation of Anthony Trollope's Palliser novels with Susan Hampshire as Glencora Palliser and Philip Latham as Plantagenet Palliser. Of such moments are memories made.
Books
Several Patricia Wentworth crime novels - The Watersplash, Grey Mask, Vanishing Point all featuring the inimitable Miss Maud Silver.
Gone Away by Hazel Holt - the first of her Mrs Malory crime series
A Paramedic's Diary by Stuart Grey - his experiences on the streets of London among the drunks the drug addicts, the genuinely ill and the time wasters. Fascinating reading if you like that sort of thing.
The Checklist Manifesto by Atul Gawande - how he helped to introduce checklists to the medical world and how they are used in other professions. A fascinating look at how simple things can simplify the most complex processes and help prevent mistakes happening.
Cruise Ship SOS by Ben Macfarlane - about his experiences as a doctor on a cruise ship. The book should come with a health - or wealth - warning - as I now quite fancy going on a cruise - something I've never really considered before.
Currently reading
Patricia Wentworth - Lonesome Road - I've only just started this so can't really say much about it yet.
M C Beaton - Agatha Raisin and the Quiche of Death - the first in the Agatha Raisin series. I've read it before but enjoy re-reading these stories.
John Galsworthy - I'm still reading The Forsyte Saga - nearly at the end of the third volume - To Let - with everyone trying to keep the details of the Irene/Soames scandal from the ears of his daughter, Fleur.
I'm also dipping into Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice for the umpteenth time.
Books
Several Patricia Wentworth crime novels - The Watersplash, Grey Mask, Vanishing Point all featuring the inimitable Miss Maud Silver.
Gone Away by Hazel Holt - the first of her Mrs Malory crime series
A Paramedic's Diary by Stuart Grey - his experiences on the streets of London among the drunks the drug addicts, the genuinely ill and the time wasters. Fascinating reading if you like that sort of thing.
The Checklist Manifesto by Atul Gawande - how he helped to introduce checklists to the medical world and how they are used in other professions. A fascinating look at how simple things can simplify the most complex processes and help prevent mistakes happening.
Cruise Ship SOS by Ben Macfarlane - about his experiences as a doctor on a cruise ship. The book should come with a health - or wealth - warning - as I now quite fancy going on a cruise - something I've never really considered before.
Currently reading
Patricia Wentworth - Lonesome Road - I've only just started this so can't really say much about it yet.
M C Beaton - Agatha Raisin and the Quiche of Death - the first in the Agatha Raisin series. I've read it before but enjoy re-reading these stories.
John Galsworthy - I'm still reading The Forsyte Saga - nearly at the end of the third volume - To Let - with everyone trying to keep the details of the Irene/Soames scandal from the ears of his daughter, Fleur.
I'm also dipping into Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice for the umpteenth time.
Friday, 14 January 2011
Good start to the New Year - I don't think!
My other half - MJR - has been in hospital for the last four days though he is home now thanks to a break down in communication between the hospital, the consultant and our health insurance company. He would have been out today or tomorrow anyway. He is on Warfarin and his INR - the clotting factor in his blood - went way too high because he's been on too high a dose for too long.
Fortunately the antidote - Vitamin K - works almost straightaway but has to be administered in hospital in case the INR goes too far the other way. He has to go to our GP today to have his INR tested and it depends on the results (obtained instantly like blood glucose machines) of that as to what dosage he's on. Clearly for someone who has had two previous pulmonary embolisms it is essential that his blood does not clot too easily. But on the other hand you don't want to imitate someone with haemophilia.
So - not a good start to the New Year. He has a consultant's appointment on Monday which may lead to another operation so it looks as though this year is going to feature hospitals prominently.
The good thing about the last few days is that it has shown me I'm getting more things done than I thought I did because trying to fit everything in that I normally do has proved impossible.
I have never seen our local hospital as busy as it has been the last few days with everyone rushing around all the time and ambulances queuing to unload patients four or five deep at times. Clearly winter is taking its toll on people round here.
Books
I took my Kindle with me when I went visiting and when MJR fell asleep one day I decided to buy a book - just for the hell of it! That's the first time I've used it outside the house and it worked! Funny how little things amuse me. I downloaded a book called The Checklist Manifesto by Atul Gawande - which is about making sure the right things are done at the right time in hospital - which I thought quite appropriate.
I am still reading John Galsworthy's Forsyte Saga - on the third book at the moment - To Let. I'm also still reading my way through Patricia Wentworth's crime novels.
Fortunately the antidote - Vitamin K - works almost straightaway but has to be administered in hospital in case the INR goes too far the other way. He has to go to our GP today to have his INR tested and it depends on the results (obtained instantly like blood glucose machines) of that as to what dosage he's on. Clearly for someone who has had two previous pulmonary embolisms it is essential that his blood does not clot too easily. But on the other hand you don't want to imitate someone with haemophilia.
So - not a good start to the New Year. He has a consultant's appointment on Monday which may lead to another operation so it looks as though this year is going to feature hospitals prominently.
The good thing about the last few days is that it has shown me I'm getting more things done than I thought I did because trying to fit everything in that I normally do has proved impossible.
I have never seen our local hospital as busy as it has been the last few days with everyone rushing around all the time and ambulances queuing to unload patients four or five deep at times. Clearly winter is taking its toll on people round here.
Books
I took my Kindle with me when I went visiting and when MJR fell asleep one day I decided to buy a book - just for the hell of it! That's the first time I've used it outside the house and it worked! Funny how little things amuse me. I downloaded a book called The Checklist Manifesto by Atul Gawande - which is about making sure the right things are done at the right time in hospital - which I thought quite appropriate.
I am still reading John Galsworthy's Forsyte Saga - on the third book at the moment - To Let. I'm also still reading my way through Patricia Wentworth's crime novels.
Sunday, 2 January 2011
Happy New Year
A Happy New Year to everyone who reads Jillysheep regularly and of course to those who just happen to stumble upon it.
Read recently:
Patricia Wentworth - The Key - murder of a scientist in World War II in a small English village church. Suicide or murder? Miss Silver needs to find out. The war time background in interesting - especially telephones which are connected to party lines. Does anyone under 50 remember these? I wonder how younger readers think of them?
Patricia Wentworth - The Clock Strikes Twelve - did he fall or was he pushed? James Paradine is found dead on New Year's Day after a somewhat fraught family party. Can Miss Silver work out who did it?
Currently reading:
John Galsworthy - The Forsyte Saga - I'm on volume two - In Chancery. Soames after twelve years of separation from Irene has decided he wants a divorce.
Christina Hopkinson - The Pile of Stuff at the Bottom of the Stairs - the heroine is fed up of doing everything around the house and starts to keep a list of all the ways her husband annoys her - the reverse of the star chart she keeps for her small sons.
Read recently:
Patricia Wentworth - The Key - murder of a scientist in World War II in a small English village church. Suicide or murder? Miss Silver needs to find out. The war time background in interesting - especially telephones which are connected to party lines. Does anyone under 50 remember these? I wonder how younger readers think of them?
Patricia Wentworth - The Clock Strikes Twelve - did he fall or was he pushed? James Paradine is found dead on New Year's Day after a somewhat fraught family party. Can Miss Silver work out who did it?
Currently reading:
John Galsworthy - The Forsyte Saga - I'm on volume two - In Chancery. Soames after twelve years of separation from Irene has decided he wants a divorce.
Christina Hopkinson - The Pile of Stuff at the Bottom of the Stairs - the heroine is fed up of doing everything around the house and starts to keep a list of all the ways her husband annoys her - the reverse of the star chart she keeps for her small sons.
Monday, 27 December 2010
With Christmas out of the way . . .
. . . it's back to the reading.
John Galsworthy - The Forsyte Saga - all nine volumes of it. I haven't read it since the BBC dramatised the books back in the 1960s with Nyree Dawn Porter and Irene and Kenneth More as young Jolyon. I find I am still seeing all those famous faces as I read!
Patricia Wentworth - The Gazebo - I do love these Golden Age detective story writers and it's great - form my point of view - that some at least are available as e-books.
Books read:
David Austin - Delivered Unto Lions - not my usual sort of book but I found it compelling reading. Daniel is 12 when he is sent to Oakdale - a psychiatric children's unit in the 1970s. It is written in the first person in a matter of fact style which makes it all the more effective. He is suffering from depression and the regime at Oakdale would be more likely to give anyone depression than cure it. Daniel is kept in the dark about just about everything and punished if he asks questions. I really hope children - or adults for that matter - are not treated like this now.
Ngaio Marsh - Final Curtain - Troy is commissioned to paint the portrait of an ageing Shakespearean actor dressed as Macbeth. Naturally he ends up dead which provides another case for Troy's husband Roderick Alleyn.
Anthony Powell's Dance to the Music of Time is starting to appear in e-book format.
John Galsworthy - The Forsyte Saga - all nine volumes of it. I haven't read it since the BBC dramatised the books back in the 1960s with Nyree Dawn Porter and Irene and Kenneth More as young Jolyon. I find I am still seeing all those famous faces as I read!
Patricia Wentworth - The Gazebo - I do love these Golden Age detective story writers and it's great - form my point of view - that some at least are available as e-books.
Books read:
David Austin - Delivered Unto Lions - not my usual sort of book but I found it compelling reading. Daniel is 12 when he is sent to Oakdale - a psychiatric children's unit in the 1970s. It is written in the first person in a matter of fact style which makes it all the more effective. He is suffering from depression and the regime at Oakdale would be more likely to give anyone depression than cure it. Daniel is kept in the dark about just about everything and punished if he asks questions. I really hope children - or adults for that matter - are not treated like this now.
Ngaio Marsh - Final Curtain - Troy is commissioned to paint the portrait of an ageing Shakespearean actor dressed as Macbeth. Naturally he ends up dead which provides another case for Troy's husband Roderick Alleyn.
Anthony Powell's Dance to the Music of Time is starting to appear in e-book format.
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