Saturday evening
April 15th, 2017

My eyes close, and I put my book aside..

Not that it is getting on in the evening - I have really just finished dinner, but had a session in the garden this aftenoon and all that fresh air and battling with the cutch grass has left me a little weary, a little sleepy.

And the book I am reading is long (667 pages) and the print is very small.  The Los Angeles times says in its review "that it is actually possible to live within it for the brief time one spends with this book. You may never leave the chair."  I find that very hard to believe,
but the words are encouraging, if far-fetched....

I am at Chapter 18, page 231 and I have to confess to being gripped by this story Abraham Verghese tells, about twin boys born in Ethiopia to a Sister, who dies in childbirth, and a surgeon who is so wrought up he disappears and has not yet re-appeared in the pages I have read.  I could tell you all the wonderful words the many reviewers have written, but all I shall say is that I find it to be an amazing, imaginative, generous story.  And I guess I could say compelling, as well. 

The name is "Cutting for Stone".

Abraham Verghese  is Professor and Senior Associate Chair for the Theory and Practice of Medicine at the Stanford University School of Medicine and the founding director of the Centre for Medical Humanities and Ethics at the University of Texas Health Science Centre.  Also an exhilarating writer.

I am reading this book for the Library Book Club, and luckily have another 

couple of weeks to finish it.

I hurried along at the end with the last one, too ...."It's all true, no lies here" ....a story about Daniel Boone that possibly contained some of the myth that surrounds this American pioneer hero.

In the meantime. Alexander McCall Smith's latest book has arrived "My Italian Bulldozer".  I have a little stack waiting to be read, - Joanna Trollope's "Girl from the South", Emma Donoghue's "Frog Music;  and Kate Atkinson's "Behind the Scenes at the Museum"has been hanging around, waiting patiently, for ages.  

I was rash enough to pick up "spill simmer falter wither" by Sara Baume at the library the other day, being so fascinated by the title!!!

Ah well, - too much going on in the garden and at the loom for me to get a lot of reading done.  There are rainy days coming up and I can't spend all day throwing the shuttle back and forth, so perhaps I will ignore the housework and immerse myself in all this fine print!

Look for me in the big chair, underneath the lamplight, with my reading glasses

 and a magnifying glass.

Happy Easter to all!