05 June 2009

What I'm reading...

Information:

I've done a review of information about frontal temporal lobe dementia.

I'm reading gardening books as I plan new plantings along the back fence. The overgrown ligustrum hedge was cut down to facilitate the replacement of the fence blown down by Hurricane Ike. I've removed the jungle of honeysuckle, bramble, elderberry, trumpet vine and who knows what else. I'm also spending a lot of time watering grass.

Fiction:

Sansom C. J.: Dissolution: a novel of Tudor England. New York: Penguin Press, 2003. Introducing Mathew Shardlake and featuring a cameo appearanced by Thomas Cromwell. This book came highly recommended by the staff at Houston's Murder by the Book which is the perfect bookstore. I don't read mysteries but since I'd read and enjoyed Ellis Peters' Cadfael series, the staff assured me I'd want to read Dissolution and since David already owned it the book, I read it. Mathew Shardlake is a hunchback and I heard echos of John Halifax, Gentleman. An interesting book, reasonably well written but much darker than the Peters books. FICTION MYSTERY 21st Century

Cram, Mildred: Forever. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1944. Original copyright 1934. I found this novella at an estate sale. The book jacket notes "a love that was stronger than life and stronger than death." The author was a popular novelist and movie writer. Among her credits is An Affair to Remember. Notes on her extensive film career may be found at the internet movie data base: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0186118/
This writer is not listed in Wikkipedia nor at U. Penn's Celebration of Women Writers. So someone has some work to do. Maybe me on a less busy day. FICTION ROMANCE MOVIES LIFE&DEATH 20th Century

Bedside Book:

Andreach, Robert J.: Studies in Structure: Stages in the spiritural life in four modern authors: Gerarad Manley Hopkins, James Joyce, T.S. Eliot, Hart Crane. London: Burns & Oates, 1964, Fordham University Press. Now I understand why I never liked James Joyce.

Chairside Nibbles:

Yonge, Charolotte M. (ed.): Gold Dust: a collection of golden counsels for the santification of daily life. New York: Thomas Whittkaer n.d.. 165 p. DEVOTION 19th Century

Kindle:

Patten, Robert L.: George Cruikshank's Life, Times, and Art. Volume1: 1792-1835. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1992. BIOGRAPHY ARTIST ILLUSTRATOR 18th Century 19th Century 20th Century This award winning biography by one of my English literature professors from Rice University is proving a most enjoyable re-read. One of Patten's strong points as a professor was rooting the literature in the history, the sociology, and the culture of the time, He offers rich details in a very readable frame. With my new interest in book illustration it is even more interesting to me now than it was on my first reading some years ago.


SEASONS:

Linn, Dennis; Linn, Sheila Fabricant; Linn, Matthew: Good Goats: helaing our image of God. Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 1994. vi, 101 p. FEMINITY OF GOD JUDGEMENT DAY HELL DOCTRINE 20th Century