Happy Monday! Gardening Book Month is officially over! I know, I know – I’d said I would have a review up on Gertrude Jekyll’s Colour Schemes for the Flower Gardens. But, the truth is, I couldn’t get through it. The book is, literally, a breakdown of what flower she has planted next to what shrub (all identified by their Latin names).   I guess Gertrude is where we separate the gardeners from the weed-pullers, and I seem to fall in among the latter.  Overall, though, I believe it was a good run.

I’m currently reading Tokyo, Cancelled, a wonderfully written book by Rana Dasgupta.  Here’s a teaser:

A strange image was fluttering in Thomas’s head while Jo was talking.   All the memories of the world were stranded and terrified, like animals fleeing a forest fire.  With nowhere to go, they huddled in groups and wept, and the noise of their weeping was a cacophony of the centuries that filled the skies but could not be heard.  And the earth became saturated with their tears, which welled up and dissolved them all, and they seeped away into nothingness.

Also in the news:  J.D. Salinger died last week.  I’m hoping to have my thoughts up in the next few days.  He was an author who threw an enormous shadow, and while I’m not overly saddened by his passing at age 91 (he left his readers a long, long time ago for all intents & purposes), his short stories rank high on my list of favorites.

Hmm…. this is a bit of a melancholy post for a Monday.  Can’t have that.  So click the link for my favorite tribute to Salinger last week – originally published June 8, 2009 in the Onion. And don’t forget to look in on J. Kaye’s other bloggers.