Hildegarde’s Home/My new Kindle

The internet is a very distracting thing, and it often gets in the way of my reading, especially since so many of the books I read are only available to me via the internet.

But as of Tuesday, I am the proud possessor of an Amazon Kindle and can read e-texts without distractions. I have had time to read Vicky Van, Hildegarde’s Home — although pdfs are not ideal Kindle material — a somewhat disturbing book of Agatha Christie stories, a book of Father Brown stories, a debate between George Bernard Shaw and G.K. Chesterton, Danny the Champion of the World, a Christmas story by Connie Willis, and about a third of a mystery novel from the 1880s called The Diamond Coterie. So, yeah, I’m enjoying myself.

But right now I’m here to talk about Hildegarde’s Home, which may be my favorite of the Hildegarde books. She seems more like a genuine girl in this one — she’s hard-working, knowledgeable, and full of enthusiasm, but there’s no sense that she’s infallible, which is a danger in books of this sort, and however good and smart Hildegarde Grahame is, her mother is better and smarter. Also, everyone — the author, Mrs. Grahame, and Hildegarde herself — has a sense of humor.

Long time no update

I haven’t updated Redeeming Qualities much recently, but that doesn’t mean I’m not thinking about it. Things keep getting in the way, like the Olympics, with which I was obsessed for about a week (and then the swimming ended). I’m also trying to catch up on some TV shows before the new season starts. I’m still reading — I’m always reading — but I’ve been reading more modern things, like a few novels and novellas by Connie Willis, and working my way through a collection of Agatha Christie etexts. The Christies are old enough to review here, but certainly not obscure enough, and after all, what is there to say about an Agatha Christie mystery after the first five or ten?

I have a few things I’m planing to post about in the near future. I’m working my way through a book by Sarah McNaughtan called Peter and Jane, which is alternately fascinating and mystifying (in a boring way), and I want to do a post about Jerome K. Jerome, but I’ve decided to finish Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow before I reread Three Men in a Boat. I also recently started a Mary Roberts Rinehart book called Dangerous Days, but I stopped reading it because I suspected that the only likeable character was about to be murdered. I do intend to finish it soon, though. And then, I haven’t read any Carolyn Wells books in a while, and I really do have to finish writing about the Patty books.

Meanwhile, I do read the comments people leave, though not as often as a I should, and as several people have found recently, I’m always happy to talk about Patty Fairfield, or anythign else I’ve written about here. I mean, I mostly started this blog in the hopes of finding someone to talk about A Woman Named Smith.