When I cannot write, lacking the courage mostly, I do the next best thing, which is to read.  Just finished, “Nora Webster,” a lovely novel by Colm Toibin, about a recently widowed woman in Ireland in the late 1960’s-early 1970’s.  I suspect it’s very much a memoir disguised as a novel.  Lachrymose, but lacking sentiment, the elliptical passages bring Beckett to mind though I doubt it was the author’s intention.

And just started, “The Shock of the Fall,” a first novel by Nathan Filer.

Oh, right, and planning for Christmas.  We’ve got the week before and after covered, from duck to chicken to beef to fish.  You’d be right to think it’s an abattoir here.