READING
Our library has a special display of books called XPRESS READS. These are new or popular titles. They can be borrowed for seven days and cannot be renewed. Other loans are for 14 days and can be renewed unless requested by another member of the library.
I borrowed Fresh Water For Flowers from the XPRESS READS area and can see why it is so popular. It is a great read! Written by Valérie Perrin, it has been translated from French into over thirty languages and has won many awards. Perrin has been named as one of the ten best selling authors in France and this was the best selling book in Italy in 2020. It was translated for Europa Editions by Hildegarde Serle.
This is the story of a girl brought up in foster homes and her experiences. It recounts Violette’s life over many years, through young love, motherhood, work, her unfaithful husband and the friends she makes along the way. The story is also about the lives of many characters involved with the family. These personalities add strength to this story of of love and loss, hope and despair.
This is a story about hope and resilience. Despite being 482 pages long I read it in two days. Perrin herself writes that it starts out appealing to women but then the women say to their husbands, ‘You must read this book.’ My husband says he’ll have a look at it, but has not committed to reading it.
The second book I read was A Hundred Years of Lenni and Margot. This is a very popular book online at the moment and was highly recommended to me. Generally, the comments say the story will stay with you for a long time. It is a wonderful story. Written by Marianne Cronin who is 30, it suffers from poor editing and *historical errors. The story is thought provoking and charming but I’m slow to adapt to snappy, poorly constructed sentences and I feel this diminishes the cleverness of this book. You must make up your own mind as it is a big hit in America.
*For instance, p81 during an event in 1940, Margot asks her grandmother “Do you have a tissue?’ Although tissues had been invented as a cold cream remover, they were unavailable during the war years and didn’t really become widely used until 1954 when they were advertised on popular TV shows.
Thirdly, Small Pleasures written by Clare Chambers and also highly recommended to me. A gentle, beautifully written book about the monotonous life of a female journalist who investigates a claim of parthenogenesis. Chambers heard an interview on BBC Radio 4 about a geneticist, Dr Helen Spurway, who in 1955 observed that a species of fish was capable of spontaneously producing female progeny. This was partially replicated with a rabbit, so Dr Helen Spurway speculated about whether spontaneous parthenogenesis was provable in other mammals, specifically women. Was a virgin birth possible? This story is about a woman who claims her child was conceived without the involvement of a male.
REMOVING PERMANENT INK FROM COTTON
I uncapped a permanent ink pen and the ink had pooled in the cap. It bubbled and splattered on my favourite, thick, very old cotton tablecloth. I use it as a tablecloth as I really like the thick floral pattern which looks embossed on the fabric, but my Mother, who gave it to me, thinks it was a bedspread.
Soaked the stains in a borax paste, my usual whitening method, but that didn’t work. More searching online resulted in soaking the stains with hand sanitiser then washing the tablecloth in cold water. That didn’t work, either, nor did isopropyl alcohol topped off with dishwashing liquid both gently massaged in with an old toothbrush.
The final attempt to remove the stains involved a product bought from the supermarket. The stained area of the cloth was soaked in Dr Beckmann’s Colour Run Remover overnight, then washed and hung out in the sun to dry. Almost perfect! There is still a slight shadow where the biggest stain was but another soak will probably deal with that and certainly hanging in the sun has bleached it a little. My tablecloth is back, my permanent markers are secured in a (recycled) ziplock bag and I am very relieved.
Did you miss World Lion Day on 10th August? Not sure what you give a lion for their special day, but all the things that come to mind are not socially acceptable.
August 12th is also World Elephant Day.