France

https://hiddenbooks.nationalbooktokens.com/ Has anyone tried this year's game yet. I'm completely useless at this sort of thing but enjoy trying!

I agree. I think that why they are still in print and gather new readers continually is that the world she describes may have changed radically but the type of person she describes has not. Lady Boxe may belong to the past but her modern equivalent of the wealthy personage who assumes they have a right to dominate is alive and kicking. And the comments about books are timeless!

Simply Foxed do a wonderful series of reprints, they aren't illustrated and not jaw droppingly beautiful like the Folio Society but they feel terrific in the hand, there's a very interesting series of titles and they're considerably more pocket friendly.

Catherine Schine's The New Yorkers. Published 2007 and is set (as far as I can remember) the upper East side near Central Park. Could be the West side though!

I used the bookshelves on a few occasions but found them rather time consuming so stopped.

My grandson (1 today) was at his library story hour yesterday when the librarian started reading from a book he loves that he has at home. With a squawk of rage (my daughter's words) he rushed over and tried to seize the book! My daughter had to explain to him that books come in more than one copy and his was still at home.

Oh wow to both of those!

Good news that you're back home! How long will you have to wait for surgery?

Lucy by the Sea by Elizabeth Strout. This was automatically put on my to read list the moment it came out, I really like Elizabeth Strout's writing, it's compact, it's straightforward, she uses words beautifully and her characters, sometimes very low key, are always multi-faceted and interesting. However I'm not sure about this one the fourth of her books about Lucy Barton who grew up in utter poverty and has managed to overcome her background to become a successful novelist. In this one William, Lucy's ex husband whom she has stayed good friends with, scoops up the recently widowed Lucy at the beginning of the pandemic and takes her out of her comfort zone (New York) to an isolated beach house in Maine where they end up staying for several months. And therein lies the problem, this isn't a character based novel, it's a lockdown novel and to be blunt I feel 'been there, done that'. I don't have any interest in fictional characters social distancing, I know all about that, I want to know what drives them and when Elizabeth Strout is concentrating on her people the book is superb but there's too much f the other. That said I read this in three days (OK, it isn't long) because the good bits were so very good. If you haven't come across Elizabeth Strout before do give her a go.

I've never had moussaka made with potatoes. Does it still have the aubergines? I managed to snag, for the first time ever, one of Lidl's anti gaspillage (anti waste) boxes for 1€ which had after I'd composted 2 elderly aubergines, 2 onions and a pepper that was well over gave me 2 kilos of onions, 6 aubergines, 3 bell peppers and 9 long ones and a big bunch of grapes. So far we're working our way through a big aubergine parmigiana and I'm turning the peppers in pepperonata, the onions will be used in all sorts of things. The grapes have already been eaten.

There's a lot of good detective/murder mystery fiction set in India, most of it in the 1920's so the independence movement is a powerful background - Akbir Mukajee's Sam Wydham series, Sujaka Massey's Parveen Mistry books, Vaseem Khan has several series.

Oh goodness, poor you! Wishing you all the best for a fast recovery.

I think it's generally more of a genuine error than deliberate deception. And even though some some sellers say they won't accept returns it's different if the item is obviously not as described. I gather what you have to be careful about is pricey branded goods, my daughter bought a baby carrier that turned out to be a Chinese fake. Vinted banned the seller but it was too late to get her money back by then. I only buy things which are low priced enough for me to be able to shrug and think you can't win every time if it doesn't fit/suit me and I tend to only buy makes I know what the sizing is like.

The problem with Vinted is that you can end up with a lot of clothes on the 'I can't resist a bargain' basis! And there really are bargains, for instance I bought a pair of worn once Desigual trainers covered in sequins which I adore for 10€ and three pairs of nearly new Marks and Spencer shorts for 12€. I hunt out Sketchers which are so comfortable but not worth the money you have to pay for them in the shops. However you have to be careful, the descriptions aren't always that accurate, I bought a shirt which was 2 sizes larger than stated on the site but my daughter loved it so no wastage there. This year I think the only clothes I've bought from shops are a pair of trousers for work, a pair of jeans and a tee shirt.

I think if I'd listened to it I'd really have enjoyed it. He has a wonderful voice.

I'm afraid I thought this was awful! My expectations might have been raised from hearing him read from it and he is a wonderful narrator but for me his prose didn't match up to his speaking voice!

I don't have a Sky subscription or anything like it, I don't buy designer clothes or handbags - most of my stuff comes from Vinted, and unlike most of my fellow guides I don't buy endless cups of coffee and take sandwiches with me when lunch isn't provided. I reckon that covers my absolutely non-guilty pleasures of buying books and nice knitting wool.

I haven't read any Harlan Coben for ages, I got a bit bored of him, then someone gave us a bag of books with The Match in it, I picked it up idly and basically read it solidly for the next two days. Wilde was found feral in the woods when he was a small boy and has no memories of his life before he was presumably abandoned. He put his DNA into one of those find your relatives sites and came up with two matches. One match vanishes after the first meeting, the other sent Wilde a message four months before and is presumed to have committed suicide. People start being killed... Some of the plot is utterly preposterous but that doesn't stop it being a fantastic read.

I was given one of those soup machines for Christmas and I use it a lot in the winter - it's really good for smooth soups, not so brilliant for chunky ones.

I think Lesley is a bit of both very bad and occasionally selflessly good which makes her interesting and unexpected. I do wonder where the series is going though (I have read the latest so no spoilers!).

Ghost Girl, Banana by Wiz Wharton was recommended by my daughter and not a book I've have necessarily picked up. I started off thinking it was going to be a bit YA and ended up thoroughly enjoying it. it's a dual time line story, the first set in 1999 on the eve of China taking back Hong Kong when Lily, the "messed up" member of her family receives an inheritance from someone she has never heard of in Hong Kong. She decides to go to Hong Kong against her sister's wishes to find out about it and also to meet her mother's family who have been estranged since her mother's death 20 years before. The second theme is the story of Lily's mother, sent to London in the 60's by a super critical brother to earn her living. It's a well written, well paced story, apparently inspired by letters the author's mother wrote, and definitely worth reading. I galloped though The Satapur Moonstone by Sujata Massey which is the second in her mystery series about Parveen Mistry, "Bombay's first lady lawyer" 'her professional title as a lawyer is Parveen Mistry Esquire). This time Parveen has been asked to go to the palace of the small Princely State of Satapur where a series of deaths has left a 10 year old boy as Maharajah to discuss his education with his mother and grandmother. As both women are in purdah only a female can see them. This was an excellent read, wonderful scene setting and a good sense of what was going on in India in general (Gandhi, the Independence movement) without info dump. If it hadn't been for one plot hole, which didn't spoil the story, this would be a five star read.

I had my best tomatoes ever this year which was a plus but I seem to be the only person around who can't grow courgettes - my three plants produced two edible courgettes between them. On the other hand I am quite good at herbs, two large pots of thyme, two different mints (chocolate mint is wonderful on fruit) which keep going all winter, rosemary, oregano, sage (so easy and pretty), tarragon and the parsley isn't too bad. I'm not quick enough to stop the coriander going to seed though and the dill is never very successful. We've got two heat pumps, one for the underfloor heating in the part of the house we basically rebuilt from a ruin and one to heat the radiators in the other part. I have to be honest and say that though the underfloor works really well the radiators aren't a huge success and the heat pumps themselves are a nightmare. They don't operate well when the temperature drops below 2°C and start drawing on raw electricity - the bills after a cold snap are horrendous. They break down a lot, there aren't enough really properly qualified technicians (I don't imagine it's any different in other countries) so it takes ages to get repairs done and they cost a fortune to replace. They're quite noisy too. That said I'd rather have the heat pumps with all their problems than a wood pellet boiler which was our other practical option for heating.

I'll be really interested to know what your views are when you've finished. I like the look of this a lot but I find King is wearingly wordy these days - his books are sooo long and would benefit from a good prune. I picked it up in a bookshop recently and the sheer weight (and the miniscule type size too) made me think 'No'.

I'm sorry about your Nan Hayley but agree with you about the effect of being able to immerse yourself in a book. The right ones really do give you a sort of inner peace for a while.

I've read a couple of these, they're set not too far away from where I live. I have to admit to not being blown away by then but that might be because I've met Martin Walker and he's suave, a good speaker, undoubtedly very good at all that he does and totally up himself.