Carol's Notebook – Page 518

Monday Morning

July 11, 2011July 8, 2011 by Carol17 Comments

This week is Vacation Bible School at our church. Which means after work every day we head over there. It runs 6-8:30, but both David and I volunteer, he coordinates the wood craft project and I help with registration and other randomness, we're usually there by at least 5:30 and are lucky if we're home by 9. It makes it a long week, but definitely worth doing. My giveaway is still open for a few days. The random winner gets to pick a book of his or her choice, up to $20 from The Book Depository. It's open internationally, so enter here. Anyway, I got one book in the mail this week, The Map of Time by Félix J. Palma, thanks to the publisher. David saw it and asked why I got it. Time travel is not usually my favorite, but how could I pass this one up? "Set in Victorian London with characters real and imagined, The Map of Time is...

Cooling Down with AC: A Caribbean Mystery

July 10, 2011July 7, 2011 by Carol7 Comments

I adore Miss Marple. She seems like a sweet, gentle old lady, but she's bright and knows human nature. In A Caribbean Mystery, Miss Marple is on vacation, enjoying relaxing in the Caribbean sun thanks to her nephew's generosity. There's only one problem - she's bored. It may be paradise, but nothing ever changes. But then Major Palgrave dies under suspicious circumstance, and Miss Marple takes it upon herself to figure out who the killer is. Miss Marple is on center stage in this one, in a new setting making new friends. Of course, everyone has their secrets, here mostly romantic ones, and there are plenty of suspects. None of the characters really struck me, except Mr. Rafiel, a rich elderly man who becomes Miss Marple's ally in catching the criminal. I can't say that the plot here is the strongest. It wasn't too tough to figure out the killer, even if there were red herrings aplenty. There were simply only so...

Out my window

July 9, 2011July 11, 2011 by Carol7 Comments

I was at home on Friday during lunch and took a minute to look out my front window, and honestly there was nothing particularly interesting to see. It was a grey, dreary day, so no one was out walking their dogs, no kids on the road. I didn't even see any birds. The only thing that caught my eye were my flowers. My front flower bed is in bloom. It's also more than a little weedy, but that's beside the point. On the drive back to work, I did see the most interesting thing. I tried to get a picture, but was too slow. Two bog old crows were pecking around in the grass near our office parking lot. Nothing extraordinary in that, but then one pulled his head up and there, in his beak, was one of those little bouncy balls, about an inch in diameter. I just kind of stared in surprise. The ball was clear with some yellow...

Thursday’s Tale: Little Snow White by the Brothers Grimm

July 7, 2011 by Carol6 Comments

Image source: Sur La Lune Fairy Tales "Little Snow White" is the Snow White story I know, complete with the seven dwarfs and the talking mirror. It's actually closer to the Disney version I remember than I expected. The Grimm version I read is from Household Tales, translated by Margaret Hunt, published in 1884. At the beginning of the story, a queen sits at a window, sewing. She pricks her finger with her needle and when she sees the drop of blood on the snow outside, she wishes for a child "as white as snow, as red as blood, and as black as the wood of the window-frame." A lot of fairy tales start with someone wishing for a baby, don't they? Snow White is born, but the queen dies. After a year the King remarries; enter the evil step-mother. The new Queen is obsessed with being the most beautiful woman in the land, and she has a mirror that when asked always...

Review: The Honey Month by Amal El-Mohtar

July 6, 2011July 7, 2011 by Carol13 Comments

The Honey Month is a book to be savored, a book whose words, filled with longing and love, drip slowly from the page. It's such a unique book that I've been having trouble writing a review. I loved it, devoured it on the beach one afternoon, but it's difficult to describe. In the introduction, Danielle Sucher tells of giving thirty-some vials of honey to Amal and Amal used these little tastes as inspiration, writing the 28 pieces in this collection, one for each day of February. Each day begins with a description of the honey, its colour, smell, taste. She sample such a wide variety of honeys I was amazed at how different some of them seemed, how lyrical her writing is even in this part. For example, thistle honey- Taste: Intriguing—definitely an apple taste, definitely green apple, and again, this is one of the refreshing ones; there's a crispness and a mellowness at once, and I feel it's playful, a child among honeys,...