homefries.org

George R.R. Martin. First book in a fantasy series, A Song of Ice and Fire, for which I’ve seen raves on several websites. A good, engrossing book, although not a smooth-flowing narrative. It leaves you in the lurch concerning several characters, but that just makes me want the next one. There’s lots of blood and [...]

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Patrick O’Brian. Well, I really finished Master and Commander last week. The second volume went considerably faster, as well as reminding me more of Jane Austen. Not just ships in the Mediterranean this time!

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Patrick O’Brian. I liked the movie (a lot, actually), and thought I’d give the novels a try. I found it engaging and entertaining. Serious naval lingo, which I just went uh-huh and kept on going every time I came to it. It does slowly sink in, and there are what, twenty books to catch on?

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In last weekend’s religion column in the Globe, there was an interesting brief profile of a woman, Jane Dobisz, who did a 100-day solitary Buddhist retreat some years ago and has written about it in The Wisdom of Solitude: A Zen Retreat in the Woods, recently published by HarperSanFrancisco. The column mentioned she’d be speaking [...]

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I found this link: SocietyGuardian.co.uk | Society | Comment: Nigella Lawson on women, sex and booze over on the Julie/Julia Project, (now no longer a current blog, but I’m reading along faithfully). Here’s a zinger:
Of all drugs, alcohol is probably one of the most unattractive: it makes people boring and loud, a [...]

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Thomas D. Hamm. Brand-new concise history and survey of the Religious Society of Friends in the United States. It covers the whole spectrum, blemishes and beauty spots alike. I like Tom Hamm’s writing style (and speaking style, too, as it happens), and it is good to have an up-to-date, academically respectable survey to recommend to [...]

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Found a nifty site through a link on another weblog:

create your own visited states map
or write about it on the open travel guide

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M.F.K. Fisher. What a wonderful, idiosyncratic writer! In one chapter she remembers making eggs in little ramekins while drinking champagne at three in the morning before going to bed; in another she suggests that one leave the grease from mixing up meatloaf on your hands for a while as a moisturizer. This in a book [...]

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