todayiamadaisy (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
todayiamadaisy) wrote2018-12-01 12:22 pm
todayiamadaisy) wrote2018-12-01 12:22 pm
Is your character as hard as your muscles?
It is officially the first day of summer and I have a scratchy throat, precursor to my second cold in two months. Grrr.
I think we knew, deep down, Tojo's story wouldn't end well. All things considered, I think Tojo enjoyed his final few days. He loved the makeshift shelter my mother made out of an old crate by the back door. Once he decided it was safe, he moved right in. He sunned himself in the garden during the day and took to the shelter in the evening. His little face peeped out when he heard me come into the kitchen in the morning.
But he was sick and deteriorating. He was losing weight, when there wasn't that much to lose. Picking him up was like holding a frail little bird. On Wednesday morning we fed him, gave him a little cuddle, then popped him in the cat carrier where he just curled up. That says how unwell he was, I think. No fight, no fuss. My mother took him to the RSPCA shelter to be checked. They kept him in our carrier while they did blood tests, which was handy as it meant she could find out the verdict when she went back to collect it. It wasn't good, obviously. He had feline immunodeficiency virus, which isn't fatal, but does make cats vulnerable to other infections, including pneumonia, which he also had. There were other problems too, so they made the decision to put him to sleep.
The lady who handed the carrier back reported he had been very well-behaved and sweet, and they'd been carrying him around and patting him in the afternoon while they were waiting for his test results, so he had people fussing over him to the last. She also said he'd been lucky to find us for his last few months. Which was nice of her, I suppose, but I still feel down about it. Poor little lost lamb.
November books read
I made it to fifty books for the year. And what a bland lot they were this month.
* Sideshow: Dumbing Down Democracy - Lindsay Tanner (2011) ★ ★ ★
Written by a former Australian politician, this is an attempt to look at the relationship between politics and the media. The weakest point is the last chapter about how to stop the slide into dumbing down the news: Tanner had few suggestions and, seven years on, Australian politics has continued heading down the path identified here.
* Wakestone Hall - Judith Rossell (2018) ★ ★ ★
This is the third and final book in the Stella Montgomery series, about a plucky young orphan living with her dreadful aunts in Victorian England. In this one, Stella is sent to a terrible boarding school whose headmistress has a sinister secret, and is forced to investigate when one of her new friends goes missing. If anything, there's too much happening in this with a few loose ends left, but overall it's a nice ending to Stella's tale.
* The Café by the Sea - Jenny Colgan (2016) ★ ★ ★
I heard Jenny Colgan being interviewed on a podcast, and she was so interesting I thought I'd try one of her books, and it was... okay. I suspect this might not have been the best one to start with. Flora MacKenzie, a paralegal working in a big London firm, is sent back to the small Scottish island she grew up on to do some legal work for a rich client. Back home, the book turns into a family drama with her widowed father and three brothers on their struggling farm, and also a romance, with Flora being torn between two men. I enjoyed the family drama, which I would have enjoyed more of; not so much the romance, which I found trite and unlikely.
* Snap - Belinda Bauer (2018) ★ ★ ★
In 1998, eleven-year-old Jack and his two younger sisters are left waiting in their broken-down car while their mother walks to a phone; three years later, a pregnant woman finds a knife beside her bed along with a threatening note. What links them? Sigh. It's hard to believe this made the Booker long list. It's an okay, if underdeveloped, thriller, with an unlikely ending.
I think we knew, deep down, Tojo's story wouldn't end well. All things considered, I think Tojo enjoyed his final few days. He loved the makeshift shelter my mother made out of an old crate by the back door. Once he decided it was safe, he moved right in. He sunned himself in the garden during the day and took to the shelter in the evening. His little face peeped out when he heard me come into the kitchen in the morning.
But he was sick and deteriorating. He was losing weight, when there wasn't that much to lose. Picking him up was like holding a frail little bird. On Wednesday morning we fed him, gave him a little cuddle, then popped him in the cat carrier where he just curled up. That says how unwell he was, I think. No fight, no fuss. My mother took him to the RSPCA shelter to be checked. They kept him in our carrier while they did blood tests, which was handy as it meant she could find out the verdict when she went back to collect it. It wasn't good, obviously. He had feline immunodeficiency virus, which isn't fatal, but does make cats vulnerable to other infections, including pneumonia, which he also had. There were other problems too, so they made the decision to put him to sleep.
The lady who handed the carrier back reported he had been very well-behaved and sweet, and they'd been carrying him around and patting him in the afternoon while they were waiting for his test results, so he had people fussing over him to the last. She also said he'd been lucky to find us for his last few months. Which was nice of her, I suppose, but I still feel down about it. Poor little lost lamb.
November books read
I made it to fifty books for the year. And what a bland lot they were this month.
* Sideshow: Dumbing Down Democracy - Lindsay Tanner (2011) ★ ★ ★
Written by a former Australian politician, this is an attempt to look at the relationship between politics and the media. The weakest point is the last chapter about how to stop the slide into dumbing down the news: Tanner had few suggestions and, seven years on, Australian politics has continued heading down the path identified here.
* Wakestone Hall - Judith Rossell (2018) ★ ★ ★
This is the third and final book in the Stella Montgomery series, about a plucky young orphan living with her dreadful aunts in Victorian England. In this one, Stella is sent to a terrible boarding school whose headmistress has a sinister secret, and is forced to investigate when one of her new friends goes missing. If anything, there's too much happening in this with a few loose ends left, but overall it's a nice ending to Stella's tale.
* The Café by the Sea - Jenny Colgan (2016) ★ ★ ★
I heard Jenny Colgan being interviewed on a podcast, and she was so interesting I thought I'd try one of her books, and it was... okay. I suspect this might not have been the best one to start with. Flora MacKenzie, a paralegal working in a big London firm, is sent back to the small Scottish island she grew up on to do some legal work for a rich client. Back home, the book turns into a family drama with her widowed father and three brothers on their struggling farm, and also a romance, with Flora being torn between two men. I enjoyed the family drama, which I would have enjoyed more of; not so much the romance, which I found trite and unlikely.
* Snap - Belinda Bauer (2018) ★ ★ ★
In 1998, eleven-year-old Jack and his two younger sisters are left waiting in their broken-down car while their mother walks to a phone; three years later, a pregnant woman finds a knife beside her bed along with a threatening note. What links them? Sigh. It's hard to believe this made the Booker long list. It's an okay, if underdeveloped, thriller, with an unlikely ending.