#955 theoldmortuary ponders

I have completely failed to mention my Kindle book reading. Which this year is my non-fiction holiday read. I am a good deal further into it than this picture suggests. I had excellent history teachers at my school and wish I could have studied it beyond O level but I wish that about lots of subjects. I have never wished for different History teachers until now. Shalina Patel serves up history  so intriguingly she would most certainly get an apple from me everyday.

The Hotel Shelf book has been chosen. It will almost certainly be the flight home book.

I picked up a fabulous life quote from my current read, soon to be set free to roam wherever with all the other Hotel shelf paperbacks the world over.

” We can’t all live in perfect harmony with our integrity “

I will be taking that sentence home with me.

Necessity is the mother or father of invention. Overnight I remembered my dad sharpening pencils with glass paper ( sandpaper) . An Emery board has done a very good job. No pencil crisis any more.

In hotel bookshelf faux science I would say that the majority of guests here are German and they read a better standard of books than the British guests. There are some shockingly bad cover art examples in either language.  Predominantly ‘Romance’ novels that my mother was very dismissive of when I was younger. She called them pulpy kidney books, as if describing some terrible medical malady that would befall anyone reading such stuff. Not for her and her second wave feminist friends, except…

When it was time to clear my parents home following their deaths I found a surprise stash of exactly that type of novel in the back of her wardrobe. She didn’t sink to Mills and Boon but the subject matter was predominantly historical  and medical romance.

At death her kidneys were in fine form so maybe she never crossed a line or maybe she imagined pulpy kidneys.

#954 theoldmortuary ponders

Book 4 of the holiday reading pile includes a lot of rape. Hardly surprising as the core of the narrative is the Japanese invasion of Hong Kong during World War 2. In this book , so far , none of the main characters are involved. The brutality of the Japanese Occupation is the background to the narrative. I can revel in knowing the location well and slotting history into well-known locations is always fascinating.

In other news two new-to -me, Greek words have cropped up this week . Thanks to my fellow bookworms.

It was too tempting not to include a book and buttocks in a beach sketch . Surrounded, as I am, by buttocks both beautiful and not.

All that buttock sketching has revealed an error on my packing. No pencil sharpener!!

The second word is Ekphrasis.

Vivid description, oh how I wish I had the words. I may no longer have a useful pencil but I do still have my paints and a camera to enable a vivid end to the holiday.

The first book from the hotel shelf has been picked up, lets see how that goes.