Mothers' Day Plus One

A weekend without internet. For some unaccountable reason, it was running like a dream last weekend, and was completely dead this one. Still, we had a splendid fire, managed to find new bricks for our firepit and there was a hummingbird at our feeder.

I received a delicious selection of e-books for Mother's Day, what a fantastic surprise, especially since I didn't receive the notifications until the evening when we got back. AND....how very brill of Kobo to offer this service. I wanted to send a book as a gift to Austen, for his Kindle, they, sadly DON'T offer the service, they must be missing out on a lot of potential (and eco-friendly) sales there.

I am currently reading two books, both paper copies. One, 'Kissing the Hag' is about accepting the things that make us female, rather than trying to apologise for them, or hide them.

The other has been sitting on my desk for about two years since Austen told me it would be a good book to get. Simon Sharma's 'History of America', apparently there was a TV series based on this book, or vice versa.
But what an interesting book it is turning out to be, and what a sublime writer Sharma is. One of his opening lines is,
'"America has never been a warrior culture," just because it was Dick Cheney said this didn't automatically make it untrue,' and then we you are thinking, 'what the hell?' he goes on to show you how the founders of the country really did try to build something that was different from the warrior cultures of the Old World, and how, when it became necessary to defend themselves, (from the French who were rather put out by the signing of a peace agreement with Britain) put in place a college where future officers would learn about honour and duty and how war was not to be taken lightly.

As Sharma moves us forward towards the Civil War, he shows us a mirror. You can so easily see modern schisms reflected in the horror of slavery expressed by some, and the arrogance towards the lives of other humans displayed by others.

To feed our addiction for 'The Killing', we watched the opening of the U.S. (filmed largely in Vancouver) episode last night. It wasn't bad, although I feel as though watching the original, you were not only drawn into the mystery, but also their world, and so, in spite of an attempt to re-create even the Birk-Larsen's house and business premises, the atmosphere isn't there. The actor playing the Lund character is a good pick and yet lacks the essential brooding closed-off nature of the original. There are three poor castings in my opinion, Larsen's side-kick, (Vagn in the original), Lund's co-officer (Jan Meyer) and Lund's fiancé.