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Archive Entries for November 2013

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Saturday November 30, 2013

Books in November

  • A Question of Belief and Beastly Things [read by David Colacci]
    by Donna LeonBOM-BeastlyThings.jpg BOM-AQuestionOfBelief.jpg
    As usual excellent themes binding the stories together in each book - and as usual there are two layers of the crimes - one layer poignantly sad, sympathetically illustrating all human weakness, and the other demonstrating the despicably evil depths of human nature.
    Annoyingly true to life, in the Question of Belief, the morally guilty party disappears without facing justice, (and it's debatable what laws he actually broke in person).
    In Beastly Things the we are led to believe the murderer will face the law in due course. However, the strong sub plot (if it can even be called that - shall we say the background to the murder story) may influence you never to eat meat again. Alison told me she was forced to skip passages in the reading - I listened to the narrative in the car, and was not able to skip any of it....

  • The Impossible Dead by Ian Rankin [read by Peter Forbes] BOM-TheImpossibleDead.jpg
    Initially our hero is leading his Internal Affairs team to follow up on suggestions of wider corruption in another police force after one of their number if convicted. However, Malcolm is drawn into re-investigating a 25 year old cold case, which seems to involve a cover-up at the highest levels within the force. A nicely interwoven tale of the type we can rely on from this author.
    Malcolm Fox is still in "the complaints" but since it's a fixed assignment role, we find him considering his abilities to take up a post in CID once again. Clearly (I hope) this is shaping up for future books with wider potential for the story lines.

  • V is for Vengeance by Sue Grafton [Read by Liza Ross] BOM-VisForVengeance.jpg
    This book seems to be a slight departure in the author's writing style - or maybe it's evolving. Much of the story is from the perspective of characters other than our heroine. The author has certainly done this before but maybe not to this extent. I really enjoy the fresh approach in a book series, where the author can maybe avoid getting trapped in a sequential narrative.
    Unusually, some of the organised crime "baddies" seem to achieve an apparent happy ending (you have to assess for yourselves how "bad" they actually are - though pretty bad is my assessment, even though my sympathies were with them) - whereas the author seems to have a truly zero-tolerance attitude to shop-lifting. The latter I suppose is to point out to ones such as I that shop-lifting is not a "soft" victimless crime but simply stealing, and someone has to pay for it.

Posted on November 30, 2013 at 12:58 PM. Category: Books of the Month.

Friday November 29, 2013

Nonsuch Craft Fair

NonsuchCraft1.jpg

I went to Bourne Hall to see the Nonsuch group's items for sale - and came back with some redcurrant jelly, and a couple more little (cat) items from the clay artist who supplied me with the pixies last October.

Posted on November 29, 2013 at 3:37 PM. Category: Crafts.

Saturday November 23, 2013

Sandi Toksvig: My Valentine

SandiToksvigValentine.jpg

An outing with Sandi Toksvig at the Rose Theatre. The show has an autobiographical theme (vaguely) - and she is simply hilarious. I particularly love her interest in language and puns... all seen from the point of view of someone for whom English is a second language - just too funny.

Posted on November 23, 2013 at 3:25 PM. Category: Art and Culture. | Comments (0)

Saturday November 16, 2013

A Christmas Garland

... albeit a bit early this year - we had a little party for our final Guild meeting of the year.

GuildChristmasTrees1.jpg

In the morning we had a (select) group session making miniature knitted Christmas trees and tree decorations. In the afternoon, we were lucky enough to secure Eliza McClelland for a Christmas entertainment which was very lively and put us into a suitably unseasonal mood - along with the mince pies and stollen supplied by members.

Eliza is known to us at the Guild as a textile artist rather than through her acting and talks. Below is an exert from YouTube illustrating her skills with beautiful bead work.

Posted on November 16, 2013 at 6:39 PM. Category: Spinning, Dying, Weaving.

Thursday November 7, 2013

ATP tennis

ATPTennis2013.jpg

We were lucky enough to see Federer again this year at the O2. We had excellent seats as the photo demonstrates.

While Helen was down south we went shopping in Guildford. In Pandora I bought the yarn to make the Nepal Wrap in the specified Rowan Fine Tweed colours - designer's choices better than my own I thought. However, I am now slightly regretting it as they seem to give a sludgy brown effect overall - not my colours at all. The photo in the magazine makes them look more like muted red, white, blue.

RowanWrap.jpg

Posted on November 7, 2013 at 11:25 AM. Category: Days Out.