Have you ever heard of the Fibonacci sequence? This is the sequence:
1 – 1 – 2 – 3 – 5 – 8 – 13 – 21
It is a progression in which each term is equal to the sum of the two preceeding terms.
Dan Brown uses this sequence as part of the clues left behind by Jacques Sauniere, the murdered curator. Sauniere raised his granddaughter, coaching her in endless puzzles. As an adult she became a cryptographer. When presented with the numbers in a scrambled form, she recognizes the sequence, and understands that it is part of a message.

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I know, I’ve been talking about this book for the last week. It’s absolutely engrossing. I love mysteries, and this one keeps you turning the pages right to the end.
Robert Langdon is a Harvard symbologist on business in Paris. Sophie Neveu is a young cryptologist who works for the French police. Sophie’s grandfather, Jacques Sauniere, is the curator of the Louvre. The story opens with Sauniere being stalked and shot in the museum. In his last moments, he leaves clues for his granddaughter and Langdon to solve, to prevent the loss of the secret of the Priory of Sion.
The author, Dan Brown, has done an incredible job of fashioning a work of fiction based on fact. It’s difficult occasionally to tell the dividing line between the two, and that sent me surfing the Internet for information. The page before the Prologue states that “All descriptions of artwork, architechture, documents, and secret rituals in this novel are accurate.” It also confirms that the Priory of Sion, a secret society founded in 1099 is a real organization, and that Opus Dei, is truly a Catholic sect with headquarters in New York City.

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This week I finished “The Pilot’s Wife,” by Anita Shreve. It’s an exceptional book, not the kind I usually choose to read, but a very absorbing story. Normally, I pick up a book and try to read it from cover to cover in one sitting, or perhaps two. With this book, I read a chapter, or sometimes a paragraph or page at a time. I needed the time to think about the unfolding story, and chose not to push the reading.

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I’ve been reading “Under the Tuscan Sun” this summer. I pick it up now and then and read a few chapters, then set it down to work a bit more. I keep coming back to it, and it’s rare for me to read a book this way.
I’ve been delighted with Frances Mayes commentary on the rennovation of a house in Tuscany and how they came to adopt the Tuscan attitudes about food. Toward the end of the book she writes about the background of Tuscan cuisine. She suggests that la cucina provera (the poor kitchen) where leftovers were used up, and there was little extra in the way of ingredients, is the basis for much of the Tuscan cuisine in our more abundant times. The Tuscan cook makes use of what’s at hand, grapes, olives, oil pressed from your own olives, beans, mushrooms, mint and salad burnet. The cuisine is hearty, generally peasant in heritage, and revolves around bread, and pasta. Now I know where bread salad must have been created.
If for nothing else, get this book and read the recipes she shares.
There was one other line that caught my attention. Mayes wrote that she had heard that our bodies have the same proportion of minerals that the earth has. Supposedly, the percentage of zinc and potassium in our bodies is the same as those found in the earth. This led her to wonder if we have an innate need to emulate the earth’s push toward rebirth.
When I was younger, I would have said this was just coincidence, but now I believe that even the smallest details around us are part of a greater plan.
If you haven’t read this book, do. Even if you go to see the movie, read the book. And, when you decide to try the recipes……call me! I’ll bring the wine.

I was visiting Bogie’s blog and found that she had done one of the Quizilla tests. This time, it was “Which Heinlein Book Should You Have Been a Character In?
It seems she and I have a lot in common. We both came up with this:

You belong in the Cat Who Walks Through Walls. You
are creative and cunning. Your works often
feel empty to you, though others love them.
You suspect that the universe and everyone in
it are just characters in someone else’s story.

Which Heinlein Book Should You Have Been A Character In?
brought to you by Quizilla
I was browsing in another blog…it might have been the Vodka Pundit or Quit That, and came across a list of 50 Things a Man Needs to Know How to Do. It was a great list, and I wish I could direct you to it. The comments that followed were enlightening, too, but the one that I enjoyed most was this quote from Lazarus Long in the book “Time Enough For Love”:
“A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.”
I have a lot to learn, and I might become a vegetarian before I butcher a hog, but the rest is worth attempting.

Don’t you just hate it when you’ve started a book and something interrupts you and you don’t get to finish it? Normally I pick up a book and read it straight through cover to cover, sometimes in one day. Of course, I’m wrecked the next day if I’ve been reading into the wee hours, but some books you just can’t put down. There are three books that I’ve started, that I really want to finish, that I won’t be able to get to for three or four weeks.
The first is a book that was widely popular a number of years ago: “Tuesdays With Morrie.” I’ve started it, and I know the basic arc of the book, but I set it aside, claiming that Christmas was demanding my time. I don’t handle death and dying as well as I’d like, and I know there are great lessons to be learned from this book, so once the wedding is over this will be the next book up.
One of my nieces is always reading. She keeps an eye on what the book clubs are discussing and what the best sellers are, and occasionally she will give me a book. Since she knows that I traditionally read trash, she gave me something more enlightening: “The Red Tent” by Anita Diamant. The novel is the story of the Biblical character Dinah. I’ve read more than half the book. I set it down at the point where Dinah’s father is going to send her life in a totally unexpected direction. The Boston Globe said of this book: “An intense, vivid novel…It is tempting to say that The Red Tent is what the Bible would be like if it had been written by women, but only Diamant could have given it such sweep and grace.” Diamant has done a superb job of showing us what life in those times must have been like.
The last book I need to finish is “Under The Tuscan Sun” by Frances Mayes. Mayes and her husband purchased a Tuscan villa and renovated it over several summers. The book is based on her journals, and begins with the search for the right villa, and carries us through the vagaries of construction, permits, and contractors to the point where they are able to welcome friends to their summer home. It’s packed with descriptions of the local food, and in some places feels like a travelog. The heat of the day, the frustration of getting good help, and the incredible textures of Italian food all pour out of this book. It’s the perfect volume to pick up on a chilly, rainy day.
There’s one more book I haven’t read, but I hope to pick up today. It’s called “A Round Heeled Woman: My Late-Life Adventures in Sex and Romance,” by Jane Juska. The author placed this ad in a personals column: “Before I turn 67–next March–I would like to have a lot of sex with a man I like. If you want to talk first, Trollope works for me.” This Midwestern English teacher had endured an unsatisfying marriage and become a single, mostly celibate, mom, and wanted to experience the pleasure of touching before her life ebbed away. I’m interested in the courage it took to pursue this passion, and the story of how she chose the men who played a feature role in her life. My understanding is that she made love to men in a range of ages and that the unifying factor was that almost all of them wanted the same kindness in a relationship that she was hoping to find. There were cads and selfish men, but the majority were gentle men reaching out to make a connection and break the bonds of loneliness. I’ll have to let you know if the book lives up to my expectations. *S*
So…..have you read any good books lately??

We’re voracious readers in this household. We probably single handedly support Borders, and Amazon.com. We also hit the library once or twice a month.
Lately, because I’ve been getting the house ready for our daughter’s wedding, I haven’t had as much time to read, so I forced myself not to collect any books that might tempt me. Sunday night I really needed to sit down with a book. My back was hurting and I needed a little quiet time, so I borrowed a book that my mother had just finished.
You can really tell that we are from different generations by the books we read. The book was by Jayne Anne Krentz. It was one of her “modern” books, rather than one of the Regency books she writes under the pseudonym “Amanda Quick.” Actually, I like the Regency books she writes, and I dislike the modern ones. It seems to me that the Regency heroines are all self-sufficient, intelligent women who are misfits in their time and very pragmatic about relationships. In the modern settings, you’re likely to find a heroine who WANTS to be overwhelmed by a man, and to some degeree measures herself by the men who want her.
I cringe when I read some of the lines she gives the men! “I must HAVE you.” “I had you last night, and you were willing.” “I’ll have you again.” What’s with the HAVE stuff?? I don’t know if she was just an immature author when she penned those lines, or if she really believes guys think and talk that way.
I guess what bothers me most about this is that she’s a best-selling author. That means that somewhere out there, women are enjoying what she’s writing. Does that also mean that there are women who swoon at the thought of being HAD….or taken? It’s one thing to have an emotionally and physically strong partner. It’s another to loose your say in what’s going on with your body or your life. All this HAVE stuff makes me vaguely uncomfortable.
I know that it’s not easy to write women’s romance. I’d LOVE to be able to write an entire book, but so far all I’ve managed is vignettes, and most of them are too pornagraphic to publish! Still, I’d rather see a plot with a strong female lead, instead of someone who worries that the big strong man MAY know her needs better than she does. I think it’s a bad idea to promote that idea.
I guess I’m lucky that this is the greatest of my worries tonight. *S* I hope you all have a great night!

I’m addicted to books. If there was a Bookanon, I’d have to stand up and say “Hi, my name is Buffy and I’m a bookaholic.” I love fiction but I can be pursuaded to read non-fiction. I haven’t joined a book club because I was afraid it might feed my habit, but I was sorely tempted on Easter when my sisters were all talking about the books they had been reading.
An online friend introduced to me two sci-fi series. One is the Honor Harrington saga by David Weber, and the other is the Miles Verkosigan series by Lois McMasters Bujold. Honor is a superb miliary officer who has half the galaxy lined up against her, including a number of politicians from her home world, who continually rises to the challenge to save the allies despite incredible odds. She has great personal loss, and a fair amount of personal gain. These stories are heavy on science and technology and military strategy and politics, but Weber has written them so well that I wade through all that to get to the charachter development. I read about six or eight of the books one after the other, and then had to wait for the most recent volume. With the last book, I had to take notes and keep a chart of who was who, just so I could follow the action. There were hundreds of characters! Still….I highly recommend them to anyone who likes sci-fi. Be sure to look for the Tree cats who communicate via sign language. <G>
Bujold’s characters are incredibly addictive. Miles is everyone’s favorite underdog, who manages to live by his wits in a mostly fictitious world of his own creation. Miles gets into trouble in his late teens while on a trip away from home and tries to bluff his way out of trouble pretending that he is an admiral. The bluff works and becomes his alter ego off planet for the next ten years. Trying to juggle the “Admiral” with his real life provides most of the humor in the books and almost all the delimma. Miles’s take on the world is sufficiently off center that he sees options that others miss, and it’s that creative thinking that will bring you back to these books again and again.
There are other series that I like. I think I have every one of Nora Roberts books, and maybe those by Linda Howard, too. I prefer the sensual or erotic romance to the ones where helpless women are saved by big strong men and then they go to bed as you read the last page. Save me from Harlequin and Siloutte books!
And then there are the mysteries and thrillers…..Carol O’Connell, Patricia Cornwall, Earlene Fowler, Susan Albert, Sue Grafton…and endless others.
We built our own house about 14 years ago, and we arranged to give up one foot of the depth of the master bedroom so that we could put a bookcase in the hallway. It’s been filled about three times over in that time. We cull books to give to the library and to pass on to family and friends. I’ve had to stop buying gardening and quilting books, because there’s no place to put them any longer. And then DH starting buying books on boats, and now we’re REALLY in trouble!
In the kitchen, I have a floor to ceiling bookshelf overflowing with cookbooks. Mother has gone overboard and purchased every slow cooker cookbook she could find. We have a lot of the cookbooks published by Southern Living, and an entire section on Christmas cookies and holiday meals. Fred has studied Cantonese cooking, so we have a few of his cookbooks, and there are Mexican and Italian, soup, and bread cookbooks. I have cookbooks dedicated to potatoes, chicken, garlic, tomatoes and BEANS to mention a few! We may be one of the few households in the US who can provide FOUR recipies for Bagna Cauda! I gotta give some of them up or be found ten years from now when someone decides to clear away the mound of cookbooks in the kitchen!
Soooooooo….you could say I’m a bibliophile. Maybe I was supposed to be a librarian in this life! “Marian”……..nah……that’s no better than “Buffy” <G>