August 10, 2019 at 2:13 am (Conversations, Food and Drink, Places, Surprises, Traveling)
Tags: India, Fridays
Tim Dee’s gorgeous book – about gulls, and human waste, and interdependence, and evolution – is making self think about India.
She’s back in Old Delhi, the night market. She has a guide, but everything is just TOO. MUCH. The people, the open vats of food, the crowding, the muddy gutters, the smells.
She couldn’t resist buying food (Someone told her cooked food was okay): she tried some samosas, wrapped in an old newspaper. Delicious!
When she had finished, she looked vainly around for a garbage can. She clutched that oily piece of newspaper in her hand, alley after alley after alley. Finally, she asked her guide where she could dispose of her trash. The guide pointed straight down.
Self was confused. “Where?” she asked, looking at her feet.
“Just throw it,” the guide said. Meaning: anywhere. Throw it anywhere. Right here if you want.
Self looked around, and saw that other people were doing just as the guide suggested: eating and then dropping the containers on the street as they walked, never breaking stride.
She truly felt as if she was in a nightmare. The idea of eating something and then just dropping the wrapping or container ON THE GROUND while walking around. Oh God. She almost heaved.
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
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July 21, 2019 at 5:36 am (Books, destinations, Filipino Writers, Food and Drink, Memoirs, Places, Recommended, Weather, Women Writers)
Tags: Asian American Writers, English writers, Kepler's, memoir, Menlo Park, novel, restaurants, Saturday, summer
Bookstores are fine places.
Kepler’s Books, Menlo Park: That woman is very wisely dressed.
Staff Picks, Kepler’s Books
More Staff Picks! Leanne Shapton’s mother is Pinay.
The order line at Café Borrone, around 10 a.m.
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June 18, 2019 at 11:02 pm (destinations, Food and Drink, Links, Places, Recommended, Traveling)
Tags: Cee Neuner, desserts, indulgences, London, memories, Prague
It’s a good day whenever self can participate in Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge. The week’s Fun Foto Challenge is 2 ITEMS OR THE NUMBER 2.
Here are a couple of pics with ‘2 Items.’
Whipped Cheesecake, Drury Lane, London, May 2019
Bridge Near Prague’s Jewish Quarter (No time to look up the name of the bridge, self will just wing it!), May 2019
These two windows were directly across self’s in Hotel Aria, Prague, May 2019
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
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June 14, 2019 at 10:45 pm (Books, Conversations, Food and Drink, Memoirs, Personal Bookshelf, Places, Recommended, Women Writers)
Tags: Fridays, Los Angeles, reading lists, sadness
Somehow, the 13-year-old narrator of Hindsight manages to make a friend, a boy named Scarecrow. They meet at the shelter.
“Let’s go get pancakes,” she tells him.
His eyes widened. “You have money?” he asked.
I nodded. “Just a little,” I lied.
As night falls, Scarecrow takes the narrator to his “squat” — “over a small fence” and then through “a large, empty apartment complex” to the parking garage and “a storage closet . . . on the wall.”
“Do you like me?” he asked.
“Maybe,” I answered. I was in uncharted territory and sinking fast.
He tried to kiss me, but I started to cry.
So instead, he held me in his arms, and asked me what had happened. He somehow knew.
This story is almost unbearably sad, but the narrator’s friendship with Scarecrow has an innocence. Scarecrow takes the narrator on a tour of Hollywood: his favorite breakfast place, Tommy’s (“They make breakfast all hours of the day. Pancake special: $1.99”) and Mann Chinese Theatre. It’s a very sweet interlude.
Unfortunately, they return to the shelter for breakfast the next day and someone reports them. Scarecrow’s 19 and the narrator’s only 13. They’re both arrested and the narrator is taken to a facility in a police car.
UGH. She’s put into an orange jumpsuit and told, “You’re a 601.” She’s put in a cell and the guards are tall, beefy women.
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
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June 4, 2019 at 6:48 pm (Family, Food and Drink, Links, Places, Recommended, Surprises, Traveling)
Tags: Cee Neuner, favorites, humor, London, Miami University Press, restaurants
Self just got back from a trip to Ireland and England.
The last week of May, she met up with Amy Toland of Miami University Press and took her to her favorite London restaurant, Chez Nous, 22 Hanway Street. Self has been coming here since 2014, Julie is an amazing cook!
Julie, chef of Chez Nous on Hanway Street in London; Amy Toland, Managing Editor of Miami University Press
This cheeky picture of Harry and Meghan was hanging on the wall of a wee cheesecake shop on Drury Street:
Son was in London for work. Self spent time with her daughter-in-law, Jennie. Here’s Jennie in a London cab:
Love the prompt from Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge!
Stay tuned.
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May 24, 2019 at 3:12 pm (Books, Conversations, Food and Drink, Personal Bookshelf, Recommended, Traveling, Women Writers)
Tags: favorites, Fridays, Henry Tilney, inspiration, Jane Austen, Northanger Abbey, novel, Prague, reading lists, wisdom
It’s been a long day walking around Prague. Finally back in the hotel, self finds herself thirsting for Henry Tilney. A wine bar across the street says:
Henry Tilney, p. 246:
- If the effect of his behaviour does not justify him with you, we had better not seek after the cause.
The wisdom of a 23-year-old man! He is so kind to our heroine.
Stay tuned.
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May 23, 2019 at 4:47 pm (Books, Conversations, Food and Drink, Personal Bookshelf, plans, Recommended, Traveling, Women Writers)
Tags: Catherine Morland, England, English writers, favorites, Henry Tilney, Jane Austen, novel, Prague, reading lists
Self flopped into bed at 2 and did not wake up until almost six. Sooo tired! Nevertheless, at some point, she WILL go downstairs, she WILL take the tram, she WILL inquire of passersby regarding restaurants serving “traditional” Czech food. Either that or she will go to the grocery store next door which sells the most amazing, huge, sweet cherries she has ever tasted in her whole life and buy more cherries!
Now to Northanger Abbey: Catherine Morland, Eleanor Tilney and Henry Tilney are in the drawing room, discussing Isabella Thorpe.
“But perhaps,” observed Catherine, “though she has behaved so ill by our family, she may behave better by yours. Now she has finally got the man she likes, she may be constant.”
How candid Catherine Morland is! How artless. Henry Tilney listens without once giving away his true opinion of Ms. Thorpe. For the nth time, self really loves Henry Tilney, because his manners are so exquisite.
Stay tuned.
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May 19, 2019 at 12:31 pm (Books, Conversations, Family, Food and Drink, Personal Bookshelf, Places, plans, Recommended, Sundays, Surprises, Traveling, Women Writers)
Tags: Catherine Morland, favorites, happiness, Henry Tilney, humor, Jane Austen, London, novel, reading lists, restaurants
Self was supposed to go on an Old Parish Maps walk of Clerkenwall but she bailed because she wanted to take things slow today, after that loooong train journey from Cornwall yesterday.
She had an early breakfast, then set off walking. Soon, she found herself in front of the British Library, but instead of going in, she went next door, to St. Pancras/Renaissance Hotel, and inquired at reception if they could ring her son’s room.
He did not pick up, probably because he’s just arrived in London. She told the receptionist to let son know that his mother had stopped by. Then, she twirled and waltzed out without waiting for a response from the receptionist.
She wandered on Leigh Street and found North Sea Fish was closed. She walked down Marchmont Street and stopped at a café for very yummy hot banana bread with yogurt. Topped that off with red bean gelato. Picked up a couple of flyers from LSE (London School of Economics, Dear Departed Sister’s alma mater), returned to Russell Square (one side of which was sprouting police cars, she wonders why) and resumed reading Northanger Abbey.
UGH, the horrible stress inflicted on poor Catherine Morland (so far, self’s favorite Jane Austen heroine — yes, a better heroine than Emma or Anne Elliot) by manipulative Thorpe sibs Isabella and John! In the latest situation, they have conveniently dismissed Miss Eleanor Tilney (sister of that elusive love interest Henry Tilney) without checking first with Catherine whether she intended to keep her appointment with Eleanor. Catherine, on learning of the Thorpes’s horrible presumptuousness, goes running full tilt after Eleanor (and why should she not? Henry Tilney is quite a fetching man! Self too would go running if someone told her that Timothy Olyphant or Nikolaj Coster-Waldau were just around the corner!).
p. 111:
Thorpe would have darted after her, but Morland withheld him. “Let her go, let her go, if she will go.”
“She is as obstinate as — “
Thorpe never finished the simile, for it could hardly have been a proper one.
lol
Morland refers to Catherine’s older brother, James. And a wonderful older brother he is, too. He’s in love with Isabella Thorpe, who’s a ninny. If not for that, he would be self’s third-favorite Jane Austen suitor, after Mr. Knightley and Henry Tilney. He most certainly is self’s favorite Jane Austen brother.
Stay tuned.
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April 23, 2019 at 12:26 pm (destinations, Food and Drink, Links, Places, Traveling)
Tags: Cee Neuner, favorites, London, restaurants
It’s been a few weeks, at least, since self was able to join Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge.
Today, self is in London. She walked around her Bloomsbury neighborhood and took pictures, all with an eye to the current Fun Foto Challenge, SIGNS. Here are a few:
Right outside the British Museum, which self visited yesterday.
Directly across the street from the British Museum: This bubble tea place is always full.
An Alley Off Bury Place
Stay tuned.
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April 17, 2019 at 12:42 am (Books, Food and Drink, Places, Recommended, Traveling, Women Writers)
Tags: 9/11, history, Iraq, London, memories, news, novel, reading lists, restaurants
Asymmetry, p. 196:
One afternoon we were sitting in Bloomsbury Square, keeping half an eye on our charges, when Lachlan pointed toward the iron railings on the far side of the park and said that the original ones had been dismantled and melted down for ammunition during the Second World War. These new ones were shorter, and unlocked all day; square’s been open to the public ever since. I could not pass Bloomsbury Square after that without wondering where the old iron had ended up. On which fronts. In whose bodies. It was around this time that the avowal to do away with Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction was accelerating toward its first anti-climax. Blair had declared it time to repay America for its help sixty years earlier and pledged Britain’s commitment to sniffing out all remaining stockpiles of genocidal intent. Forty-eight hours later, Clinton announced that Iraq intended to cooperate; a month after that, UNSCOM reported that in fact Iraq was not cooperating, and lo, the British-American bombing began. I watched the Desert Fox airstrikes with Alastair, sitting in our usual spot in The Lamb, whose ceiling had been strung with Christmas bunting and the bar transformed into a lukewarm buffet of mince pies and a faux cauldron of brandy-spiked mulled wine.
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