It’s a funny day. I wonder what all my blogger friends are doing and I imagine you’re all quarantined at your homes.  Isn’t it odd to think of the whole world (almost) doing the same thing!

I’ve been reading and playing with Ollie.  I read today that pet adoption as soared as people adopt shelter animals to get them through these often boring times. I just hope they keep them in loving homes once this is all over.

I’m currently reading a book called The Maximum Security Book Club by Mikita Brockman. She, being British, begins a book club for inmates in a maximum security prison in Maryland, USA. As I love books about books and book clubs this tickled my fancy so to speak. I’ll write more about this as I get into it further.

In the meantime I am watching quite a few you tube videos on how to edit photos in Photoshop and Lightroom applications. It is a never ending process. Today I dipped into the photo archive of photos of houses (homes) I’ve taken in various places. I have quite a few books with the word ‘house’ in it.

I’ll share the photos and books here and include Good Read blurbs about the books.

The Books:

An early Sherlock Holmes pastiche. The book is dedicated to A. Conan Doyle, “With the author’s sincerest regards and thanks for the untimely demise of his great detective which made these things possible.” A sequel to “The House-Boat On The Styx,” in which Holmes (who finds himself in Hades thanks to his death at Reichenbach Falls) helps the spirits of famous people (Sir Walter Raleigh, Captain Kidd, Socrates, Sir Christopher Wren, James Boswell, Samuel Johnson, Dr. Livingstone, etc.) and famous characters of literature (Baron Munchausen, Shylock, Hamlet, etc.) to search for their missing house-boat, which has been commandeered by the villainous Captain Kidd.

HOUSE OF SNOW is the biggest, most comprehensive and most beautiful collection of writing about Nepal in print. It includes over 50 excerpts of fiction and non-fiction inspired by the breathtaking landscapes and rich cultural heritage of this fascinating country.

Here are explorers and mountaineers, poets and political journalists, national treasures and international stars such as Michael Palin and Jon Krakauer, Laxmi Prasad Devkota and ManjushreeThapa – all hand-picked by well-known authors and scholars of Nepali literature including Samrat Upadhyay, Michael Hutt, Isabella Tree and Thomas Bell. All profits from sales will be donated to charities providing relief from the 2015 earthquakes.

Dormer is an old house with Elizabethan origins, much added to. It sits, very isolated, in a cup of the Shropshire hills, surrounded by forest. The Darke family have lived there for centuries. Solomon Darke is a squire farmer who tends to unthinking conservatism; his wife Rachel is harsh, fierce and uncompromising. They have four children – the eldest is the sensitive and original Amber, who feels, at thirty, that life has passed her by. Her brothers Jasper and Peter are more strong-willed – Jasper questions all around him in a determined but romantic way, while Peter has no time for any fuss and forcefully seeks simple pleasures. Their younger sister Ruby is biddable, na ї ve and full of laughter. 

Rachel Darke’s ancient mother lives with them, a harridan remnant in ringlets and flounces, dominating this already intense family with savage outbursts and calculating glances. Completing the family is Catherine, a young relative of Rachel and her mother, whose icy beauty has entrapped Jasper, and whose cold passions equal in power the heat of the Darkes’. 

A complex web of personal desires and long held antipathies becomes activated in the first instance by Jasper’s return home, having been expelled from college for his rejection of religion.

From prize-winning short-story writer Cate Kennedy comes a new collection to rival her highly acclaimed Dark Roots. In Like a House on Fire, Kennedy once again takes ordinary lives and dissects their ironies, injustices and pleasures with her humane eye and wry sense of humour. In ‘Laminex and Mirrors’, a young woman working as a cleaner in a hospital helps an elderly patient defy doctor’s orders. In ‘Cross-Country’, a jilted lover manages to misinterpret her ex’s new life. And in ‘Ashes’, a son accompanies his mother on a journey to scatter his father’s remains, while lifelong resentments simmer in the background. Cate Kennedy’s poignant short stories find the beauty and tragedy in illness and mortality, life and love.

Continuing the story of Susan Duncan’s much-loved memoir, Salvation Creek, this book picks up after Bob and Susan marry and, two years later, move from her Tin Shed into his “pale yellow house on the high, rough hill,” Tarrangaua, built for the iconic Australian poet, Dorothea Mackellar. Set against the backdrop of the small, close-knit Pittwater community with its colorful characters and quirky history, this story is about what happens when you open the door to life, adventure, and love. But it’s also about mothers and daughters, as Susan confronts her mother’s new frailty and her own role in what has always been a difficult relationship. Where Salvation Creek was about mortality—living life in the face of death—The House is about stepping outside your comfort zone and embracing challenges, at any age. In turn funny and moving, Susan Duncan’s beautifully written sequel reminds us to honor what matters in life, and to disregard what really doesn’t.

Houses I Have Photographed (copyrighted to PSParks)

 

 

Such disparity in the way people live. It’s why I love travelling so much and I hope to get back to it once this virus has a vaccination available.

To be further entertained please view the following video that lasts for only a few seconds entitled:

After Ollie’s bath today.