After my last post from the Montague book shop, I got up and walked around. Sure enough, they had the first Game of Thrones novel. The silly book owner didn’t show me the display.

I didn’t return the one had sold me (A Feast for Crows). I rationalized that I would possibly buy it anyway.  Bought the first volume (have now read several hundred pages in it), a tee shirt for Eileen and some other stuff. I was trying to find things I to buy to support this charming little shop. Despite the owner’s obliviousness to me as a customer, I still thought it was a pretty neat place. They had a stage with a baby grand piano on it and a wine bar. My kind of bookshop.

Eileen and I got up early yesterday and cleared out the cottage where we had been vacationing.  Barb rents it, but she had to leave the night before. We drove a few miles to Eileen’s Mom’s house. I cut up watermelon and musk melon in her kitchen and made a fruit salad for the Family Reunion/Aunt Vera’s 100th Birthday Party.

Then I walked over to the park nearby where they were having the celebration and helped get it ready. I helped clean outdoor tables, ran stuff back and forth between the house of Dorothy (Eileen’s Mom), helped sweep up the pavilion, put plastic on the tables and whatever I could do to prepare.

The celebration went off well. I got to see some people I don’t usually get to see because family came in from all over.

Afterwards we returned to Holland. I went over to the church to post hymns, make page turn photocopies of the postlude and register the prelude.

By the end of the evening I was pretty tired. But I think I had some good vacations this summer: California, the Grayling cabin in the woods and the Montague cottage by Lake Michigan.

I have a ton of work beginning tomorrow getting out recruitment letters. Ballet classes start Tuesday. I guess I’m back at it.

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I had trouble with the New York Times offline reader. It kept deciding my priorities so I was unable to read the back issues I was counting on despite having checked them to see that they were loading probably when I was online. Stupid stupid stupid.

I did manage however to find some interesting articles to link:

‘How Much Is Enough?’ by Robert Skidelsky and Edward Skidelsky – NYTimes.com

In this book review by Judge Richard Posner, he has some amusing recollections of a primitive England in the 80s. Fun stuff.

‘James Joyce,’ a Biography by Gordon Bowker – NYTimes.com

I liked the critical take of this review by Colm Toibin on a new bio  one of my favorite authors.

‘The Twilight War,’ by David Crist – NYTimes.com

This review of this book by James Traub has some good synoptic Iranian recent history in it.

Finally, I am totally losing my mind these days. I spent a good portion of my vacation reading J. R. Watson’s The English Hymn and the correlating his ideas with the Hymnal 1982 Companion.

This morning I downloaded a copy of John Julian’s Hymnody. (Volume I (A–O) pdf, Volume II (P–Z) pdf ) and John Keble’s The Christian Year.

The latter was recommended in the Hymnal 1982 Companion. In his biographical entry on Keble (Vol II of the Companion, p. 493) Louie Weil described it: “… [A] collection of his [Keble’s] religiouis poetry and the source of several hymns based on those texts. The collection is regarded as a classic—the expression of a rare and refined sensibility, imbued with the spirit of both Scripture and the Book of Common Prayer.”

It’s now sitting on Kindle reader on my ebook.

Good grief.