Monday 5th November - better late than never

I think there may be several blog posts with this title as the month goes on.

I got back late from Book Club and went straight to bed. The book for last month was Edith Wharton's 'The Age of Innocence'. Pulitzer Prize winner it may have been, but I stuck after several chapters and gave up. I wasn't the only one, but the ones who did enjoy the book, LOVED the book. Maybe I should give it another go? I just wasn't interested n the characters or the plot, but the others were extolling the way the characters did, or did not communicate, and the interesting descriptive writing. We agreed that it was a book to be read slowly, as the sentences were long and precisely written.

We are reading Ruth Hogan's 'The Keeper of Lost Things' next - a totally different style. Modern holiday reading, 'heartwarming' according to the blurb. A 'Richard and Judy' choice. The original suggestion was a ghost-thriller called 'The Loney', but I, and some of the others said it sounded too scary. The fact that Stephen King was among the people recommending it made it certainly not one that I wanted to read!

We bring food to the book club; every Book Club night I find myself desperately scrabbling through the cupboards for something to bring. Last time I found we had enough variety of fruit to quickly put together a fruit salad. This time there was almost nothing in the fridge. I have just bought one of Jack Monroe's cookery books for 99p on kindle, mostly out of respect for her campaigning against poverty in the UK. I skimmed through, and constructed her Goulash recipe, involving tinned beans (wash off all the liquid) tinned baked beans (wash off all the tomato sauce), onion, garlic and tinned tomatoes. Plus herbs and seasoning. It was surprisingly delicious, considering the unpromising ingredients. Everybody had some, and it made enough for me to have leftovers for lunches.



At 26p a portion it must have been (geddit?) one of the cheapest meals I have ever made!

The music for today was, of course, from Handel's firework's music, 'La Rejouissance'. The link will take you to wikipedia - I found the background info as interesting as the music.