I covet this wonderful Lucien Freud still life that the artist painted for the dowager Duchess of Devonshire before she was dowagered. (I think I made that word up.)

   
Eggs 
Have you ever noticed the prominence of the egg in British fiction? It seems like everyone is always eating an omelet or scrambled eggs for dinner. I run across this all the time in my reading. And I think I notice it because I am not a particular fan of eggs for dinner. Even for breakfast scrambled eggs or omelets aren’t my favorite things. Maybe the presence of all these egg dinners says something about the characters and their lack of interest in food. Or maybe it says something about British cuisine in the dark days before Nigella and Jamie. But then again, before I lay this all at the feet of Her Majesty’s subjects I have noticed the prominence of the egg as a dinner in some older North American fiction as well. Maybe, before the days of factory farming made animal flesh so easy to come by, eggs provided more accessible protein?

How many times in the last 30 days did you have eggs for dinner?

Trollope
In my last Bits and Bobs I wrote about being drawn into the first of Trollope’s Palliser novels. Turns out I had already read it. No wonder I was enjoying it. So I moved on to Phineas Finn, the second in the series. I am enjoying it, but I am not sure if I am going to like the political nature of the series. It reminds me too much of the omnipresence of politics here in Washington. Something I am trying to avoid. It gets me too worked up. I am to the point in my life where I wish I was one of those people who didn’t care about politics. One of those people who never votes and doesn’t know if the vice president is Joe Biden or Joe Bazooka. Ignorance would be bliss. But who am I kidding? Even writing that I don’t believe myself.

What I am Reading
Half way through Ann Patchett’s State of Wonder. I have read all of her books and while I may have quibbles here and there, she really is a fine writer. And enjoyable to boot.

What I am Looking At
One of my more popular posts in recent days was the one with the picture of the bookshelves with all the bad/disappointing books. As if I didn’t already know, it confirmed that my readers are as snobby about books as I am. Hooray for us. Well good news. In preparation for a possible addition to our house, we are going through a stack of pages torn out of nine years worth of design magazines. The stack is about a foot and half tall and there are lots of bookcase pictures sprinkled throughout. So, I think critiquing photos of bookshelves is going to be a regular thing on My Porch.


It was as we were combing through the above mentioned giant stack of magazine pages this week that I found the article that had the Freud egg painting in it. When I went to scan the Freud image for this post, I noticed that the 2003 House and Garden (U.S.) article about the Duchess also had two other egg pictures in it. So I had to include them here.