Why does March have to be so darn long? With only 8 days until April 1st and the end of the TBR Dare, I threw in the towel this morning. I actually made the decision to give up last night, but it wasn’t until this morning on the Metro that I took the leap and started reading a book that was not in my official TBR pile.

You may recall that when I first accepted the dare, I had over 300 books in my TBR pile. You may also recall that I subsequently decided that that was too easy and so I further limited my choices to the 40 or so books in my nightstand TBR pile.

And for the most part the TBR Dare has been wonderful. I finally got around to reading some truly wonderful books that would have gone unread for a much longer time if not for the dare. So what went wrong? It wasn’t the lure of other books so much as it was boredom of going back to the same pile of 40 books which had been whittled down to only 23. As I read the wonderful May Sarton novel The Magnificent Spinster last week I started to worry about what would be next. I just knew that there were no books in my nightstand TBR pile that would fit my mood when I finished the Sarton book. And then I realized that my despair over lack of choice was making me slow down my reading. And I don’t need any more reason to watch TV.

So last night, not in the mood for any of the four books that I have partially finished and somewhat bored, I decided I needed to choose something that wasn’t in my nightstand. But no biggy, my nightstand restriction was self-imposed and wasn’t part of the focal TBR Dare. I could go down to my library and choose from the 300* books in that TBR pile. Or at least that could have been the case. But this morning when I went in to choose something for the morning commute I was immediately drawn to a book that is not part of my TBR pile. A few weeks ago I got about 6 books from my book club. I was going to wait until April 1st to dip into them, but there was one that leaped out at me this morning. And I just knew that it was the one to fend off my impending reading slump. I wanted fun. I wanted American. And I wanted something that I knew, without qualification, I would want to devour in one fell swoop if I could.

So the culprit in aiding my downfall in the TBR Dare is also my saviour, and made me truly happy from page one: My Life in France by Julia Child with Alex Prud’homme.

So do I feel bad about my failure? No.

(*I just noticed that my first post about the dare I say that I have 400 books in my TBR pile. In my second post I say 300. I wonder which it is?)

  
Since I first started buying and reading Persephone editions I have been keeping an eye out for books by Persephone authors in secondhand shops. In particular I have been looking for Dorothy Whipples. There is a reason Persephone is doing the reading world a service–the authors they publish are pretty hard to find otherwise. And since I buy too many books but don’t want to deprive myself of shopping for books, I have been focusing on finding literary needles in haystacks rather than more easily available fare. So I hunt for the hard to find. But don’t get this confused with antiquarian books. I don’t have much time for expensive books that have already been “discovered” and shined up by booksellers. I like finding the forgotten copies.

Last week when we went out to see the beautiful ocean, we stopped at Unicorn Bookshop along Route 50 in Trappe, Maryland. Lo, and behold, I found not one but three Persephone authors.

Find of finds. A Dorothy Whipple on this side of the Atlantic.

Once I found it I got greedy and wished it was a Whipple title that Persephone doesn’t publish. Still, I wasn’t going to pass it up.

I loved, loved, loved the Persephone edition of Dorothy Canfield Fisher’s The Home-Maker so I couldn’t pass up this one either.

FHB isn’t as hard to find in the US as Whpple but this one was still a must have.

Not in perfect condition, but I can’t wait to read it.

   

When John and I were in London back in November you may remember that I went a little crazy collecting all 100 of Penguin’s Great Ideas books. Well, that was nothing compared to the other purchase we made while we were there. Since we moved into our house last May, we have been looking for library chairs that would be comfy for both reading and dozing. I am six foot two and need a fair amount of lumbar support, so finding the right chair that would be cushy but still offer support for my back is no easy task. On top of that, the door into our library is only about 25 inches. You would be surprised how few chairs fit through that kind of opening.

Anyhoo, we had checked out all the usual local sources for chairs and were coming up with nothing. We thought since we were in London we would check out George Smith. Both of us had been a fan of their classic look for years and we knew their quality was second to none. Mind you, we only went into LOOK. We had no intention of buying. That is of course until we went in the store, sat down ,and realized that we would never find a more comfortable library chair.

So many, many pounds (and even more dollars) later we had purchased two chairs and a large ottoman. And then lickty split, only four months later (!) our chairs and ottoman made their way through the narrow library door (thank god) and have become my favorite place to sit in the house.

I wasn’t going to post this picture because the rest of the room isn’t really up to snuff yet. We have put off painting the walls until the windows are finished. And the window work may require replacing the less than pretty shelves sooner rather than later. And it is clear there isn’t much insulation in the walls, and the fireplace flue needs to be replaced…did I mention that I love my chairs?

Well, John knew. He is always trying to get me to take jaunts out of the city on weekends but I almost always say no. And of course I knew that the ocean was only about 3 1/2 hours away (in good traffic), but near DC, I had only ever been to Rehoboth Beach, Delaware which is way too busy and commercial to feel very special to me. Plus they have those awful little planes with banners advertising things flying over the beach. So it was quite a surprise yesterday to discover a beach so beautiful so close to DC. The March weather meant that the Assateague Island National Seashore in Maryland was pretty quiet.

Assateague is famous for the wild horses that live there. They are often down by the beach, but this is the closest we got to them when they were on the bay side of the barrier island.

The road from Berlin, Maryland, the nearest town.

Berlin, MD

      
That’s right folks, 176 points for one word. My sister and her family are visiting from Arizona and this was our third game since Sunday. And the fact that the word was “cardigan” made the moment even more special. (Remember my post about the Cardigan Mafia?)

The breakdown:

14 points for the word (including one double letter score for the “D”.

I got to triple the word twice because it fell on two Triple Word Scores. (We verified this scoring with the official rules on the printed in the box.)

And then, because I used all of my seven tiles I got an additional 50 points.

Needless to say this is the highest score I have ever gotten for one word in Scrabble. Too bad the word didn’t have a “Z” or “Q” in it.

  

To quote Simon T. completely out of context: “Meh”.

I bought this memoir of Oxford because, well, c’mon, it was about Oxford and because the edition could not be cuter. Plus I have read about 3 or 4 of the other titles in this “The Writer and the City” series. I had never heard of Justin “One of the finest novelists currently at work” Cartwright. He may indeed write amazing novels but after reading this somewhat tedious memoir I am not so sure. I wonder if one could interpret that quote from the Guardian quite literally by defining the word “currently” very narrowly as the exact second the quote was written. How the Guardian writer knew that Cartwright was working at that exact moment, I don’t know.

I started off liking this memoir but then he seemed to go on about Oxford folk I had never heard of, which wouldn’t necessarily be off-putting, but he didn’t make it interesting enough for me to care. I think this might be a better read for someone who has studied at Oxford. He says next to nothing about the city of Oxford.

I have many other quibbles with this book, but I think the biggest problem happens when Cartwright goes on a bit about the Brideshead myth. I understand the reference to the wonderful Evelyn Waugh book but then Cartwright makes a fatal error. He refers to the fictional Lord Sebastian Flyte’s teddy bear as “Algernon”. Algernon?! Now anyone worth their salt knows that Sebastian’s bear’s name was Aloysius. I mean come on.

Cartwright, game over.

One more thing, why the title This Secret Garden? I mean I understand why he would want to call it that, but he didn’t think it sounded too much like another book? Was he hoping someone might confuse it with The Secret Garden?