March Blows in with a pig and a spider

I actually finished Living Alone at quarter to midnight last night so technically it is a book I read in February but I will start out March with it as Book One finished.

The book is strange and brief. I almost got the feeling that Benson had started a notebook and just jotted down scenes...in the woods, committee members' meetings, characterizations, war...and then created a story to string all them together. There is a witch and her broomstick (I have already forgotten its name), a wizard, magic packets of Happiness, an almost invisible person whose life is changed from meeting the witch, her dog named David, fairies, a dragon, dead people, a ferryman, and a too-too upper class woman.

I got carried away trying to make sense of the plot (of which there was not much) and forgot to let myself be enchanted by Benson's writing. It may be that I need to re-read it slowly now that I know that really nothing and everything is going to happen.

My favorite witch book is Practical Magic by Alice Hoffman.

I also started a mystery by a new (to me) writer Katherine Hall Page titled The Body in the Belfry. Has anyone else read her Faith Fairchild mysteries? Chapter One grabbed my attention with its humor and solid writing. We will have to see where it takes me.

And as promised, I started reading my autographed copy of The Story of Charlotte's Web by Michael Sims.

"Where's Papa going with that axe?"

Stella Benson (1892-1933)

Finished The Leavenworth Case by Anna Katherine Green. Oh my, but it was slow going. Too many suspects all denying any wrongdoing but not willing to offer any help to Mr. Raymond, the attorney and narrator, or Mr. Gryce, the detective. Many, many secrets. Lots and lots of dialogue that went nowhere and then was repeated on later pages. By the time I arrived at the denouement I didn't really care who had shot Mr. Leavenworth or why. I skipped quite a few pages and was disappointed that it was not more engaging.

Picked up my Nook last night and started Living Alone by Stella Benson. Wikipedia tells me she was an English novelist, travel writer, and feminist who was born in 1892 and died in 1933. This book, written in 1919, is the whimsical story of a witch who transforms another woman's life. It is very witty. Just the thing to be reading before one falls asleep.

Here is the author's apologia:
     This is not a real book. It does not deal with real people, nor
     should it be read by real people. But there are in the world so
     many real books already written for the benefit of real people, and
     there are still so many to be written, that I cannot believe that a
     little alien book such as this, written for the magically-inclined
     minority, can be considered too assertive a trespasser.

And, her characterization of a Miss Ford: ...a good woman, as well as a lady. Her hands were beautiful because they paid a manicurist to keep them so, but she was too righteous to powder her nose. She was the sort of person a man would like his best friend to marry.

Looks to be quite a romp.