The Rosie Project

Here is the blurb from Amazon:

Now in paperback, the international bestselling romantic comedy “bursting with warmth, emotional depth, and…humor,” (Entertainment Weekly) featuring the oddly charming, socially challenged genetics professor, Don, as he seeks true love.

The art of love is never a science: Meet Don Tillman, a brilliant yet socially inept professor of genetics, who’s decided it’s time he found a wife. In the orderly, evidence-based manner with which Don approaches all things, he designs the Wife Project to find his perfect partner: a sixteen-page, scientifically valid survey to filter out the drinkers, the smokers, the late arrivers. 

I started reading this Dec 2017 via audible while taking a break from Angle of Repose and upon finishing the free gift of Christmas stories from Audible.  It has been a wonderful book to read in busy December!  I have laughed and laughed.  And I have hardly been able to wait to get in the car to turn it on again to see what Don is doing now.  I would have read it more quickly if I had been allowing myself to knit in this busy holiday season.  I highly recommend this book as entertainment.

Books for living by Will Schwalbe

It is late at night and I took a quick look at audible's December suggestions.  I don't know if I will buy this book tonight, but I didn't want to loose the below.  I LOVE the word Joy!  I think that it best describes what I think each of us wants to add as much as we possibly can into our lives!  

"In this warmly engaging, enlightening, and stirring memoir-in-books and literary celebration, Schwalbe reminds us that reading 'isn't just a strike against narrowness, mind control, and domination; it's one of the world's greatest joys.'" (Booklist)

I will add to this post at a later date.

Desert God

I stopped reading Angle of Repose temporarily in order to read the next book chosen for the Book Club.  My first question as I read more of the book is: Is this historical fiction?  And the answer is answered right at the top of the photo of the front of the book.  Stephen King says that Wilbur Smith is the best historical novelist!  Pretty high praise....so I guess I will stick with it.  Wikipedia says:

Desert God is a novel by author Wilbur Smith first published in 2014. It is part of a series of novels by Smith set to Ancient Egypt and follows the fate of the Egyptian Kingdom through the eyes of Taita, a multi-talented and highly skilled eunuch slave.

Oh, wow....I just read the rest of the synopsis and I am not sure that I am going to be able to get through this book....lots of battles...lots of gore....not sure that it is my kind of book.  But below is what I am reading this morning:



Here are a few maps to help understand the first of the book....







And here is the link to the website for Wilbur Smith's books:

http://www.wilbursmithbooks.com/books/family-trees/ancient-egypt

Oh, wow, this is too complicated to figure out this close to Christmas.  So I am going to throw up my hands.   Here is what I found about another of Wilbur Smith's books that is helpful:

River God is a novel by author Wilbur Smith. It tells the story of the talented eunuch slave Taita, his life in Egypt, the flight of Taita along with the Egyptian populace from the Hyksos invasion, and their eventual return. The novel can be grouped together with Wilbur Smith's other books (The Seventh Scroll, Warlock, The Quest, Desert God and 'Pharaoh') on Ancient Egypt. It was first published in 1994. 

A new threat to the kingdom emerges — the warlike Hyksos. Equipped with the horse and chariot, as well as a superior recurved bow, their technological superiority is far greater than the Egyptian army's. The Pharaoh is killed, forcing a majority of the Egyptian nobility (including Lostris, Tanus, and Taita) to flee Egypt by heading up the Nile with the remaining army.

[So the book that we are reading is after River God...Taita and the Pharaoh have already fled south on the Nile after the Hyksos invasion.  They are planning a huge and complicated series of events to oust the Hyksos and thus reunite the land that is Egypt so that the Pharaoh can wear the crown of all of the land and so that they will have access to the Mediterranean Sea which they are lacking because of the rout.]  

And here is an answer to the idea that Wilbur Smith has based this novel on a particular reign or date: 

The central conflict of the novel is the Hyksos invasion, which took place approximately 100 years after the claimed date of 1780. 1780 was approximately the beginning of the Thirteenth dynasty of Egypt: The Hyksos have been assigned to the Fifteenth dynasty of Egypt.^[4] Thus, it is not possible to relate characters and events in the novel to specific characters and events in history.

I am quite surprised that I am finding the book entertaining.  I might just get it read for Dec 15th after all.  The reader is PERFECT for the book!  He is without a doubt native born British speaker.  And it actually gives the vain Taita the perfect voice!  This morning I laughed out loud as Taita explains to Pharaoh how they are going to change huge silver ingots that they have stollen into a form that they can spend without giving away the secret that they are the culprits who have stollen the gold.  The exchange between the two men reminds me of Forrest Gump!  Movie that I loved....In solving the problem of turning all of the stollen silver into a form that they can use to purchase much needed commodities, they make coins.  And Taita (unlike Forrest Gump who was anything but vain) takes the credit for having invented coins that changed the ancient world!

I finished the book tonight.  It is a bit of a silly book.  But at the same time, it appears that the crazy volcano eruption did really happen:

• MORE

Each Monday, this column turns a page in history to explore the discoveries, events and people that continue to affect the history being made today.

The world map might look differently had the Greek volcano Thera not erupted 3,500 years ago in what geologists believe was the single-most powerful explosive event ever witnessed.

Thera didn't just blow a massive hole into the island of Santorini – it set the entire ancient Mediterranean onto a different course, like a train that switched tracks to head off in a brand new direction.

Advertisement

Minoan culture, the dominant civilization in the Mediterranean at the time, crumbled as a result of the eruption, historians believe, changing the political landscape of the ancient world indefinitely. Environmental effects were felt across the globe, as far away as China and perhaps even North America and Antarctica.

The legend of Atlantis and the story of the Biblical plagues and subsequent exodus from Egypt have also been connected to the epic catastrophe.

Dwarfed the atomic bomb

Historians and archaeologists have had trouble deciding on the year Thera erupted, with dates ranging anywhere from 1645 BC to 1500 BC. Studies of ash deposits on the ocean floor have revealed, however, that when the volcano did blow, it did so with a force dwarfing anything humans had ever seen or have seen since.

There are no first-person accounts of what happened that day, but scientists can compare it to the detailed records available from the famous eruption of Krakatoa, Indonesia, in 1883.

That fiery explosion killed upwards of 40,000 people in just a few hours, produced colossal tsunamis 40 feet tall, spewed volcanic ash across Asia, and caused a drop in global temperatures and created strangely colored sunsets for three years. The blast was heard 3,000 miles away.

Thera's eruption was four or five times more powerful than Krakatoa, geologists believe, exploding with the energy of several hundred atomic bombs in a fraction of a second.

An absence of human remains and valuables like metal suggest that the Minoan residents of Santorini predicted the eruption and the island was evacuated, but the culture as a whole did not fare as well.

Based on the nearby island of Crete, the powerful Minoan civilization declined suddenly soon after Thera blew its top. Tsunamis spawned by the eruption would have swamped its naval fleet and coastal villages first off, historians think. A drop in temperatures caused by the massive amounts of sulphur dioxide spouted into the atmosphere then led to several years of cold, wet summers in the region, ruining harvests. The lethal combination overran every mighty Minoan stronghold in less than 50 years.

In just a short time, their peaceful, efficient bureaucracy made way for the warring city-state system of ancient Greece to dominate the Mediterranean. The Aegean would turn out to be a fundamental building block for the history of Europe, and the Minoan decline changed its early foundation completely.

Famous legends

Thera didn't just alter the cultural make up of Europe, it has kept adventurers and treasure hunters busy too.

When the Greek philosopher Plato described the lost city of Atlantis over a thousand years after the volcanic eruption, he may have been referring to Thera folklore passed down in Greece over many generations and exaggerated like a game of broken telephone.

The eruption has also been loosely linked with the Biblical story of Moses and the exodus from Egypt. The effects of Thera's eruption could have explained many of the plagues described in the Old Testament, including the days of darkness and polluting of the rivers, according to some theories.

So the book has not been a waste of time.  I might never have read anything about the Minoan culture nor the volcano eruption nor of Egyptian politics had I not read this book.  But I will have to say that I am not tempted to read more of the series.  This book reminded me of the James Bond series that I read as a teenager.  My father LOVED the books.  Tatai reminds me of an ancient James Bond set in ancient Egypt.  

Thomas Jefferson

It is two years later after my post about John Adams who was interpreted at the Nov 2014 Colonial Dames fundraiser at Guyan Country Club.  This year the event was held at Edgewood Country Club in Charleston.  And this year Steven Edenbo "brought Thomas Jefferson to life"



What a wonderful program!  I wish that I could listen to something as educational and inspiring EVERY week!  So start by visiting my blog post that I wrote after the John Adams event two years ago:

http://serendipityreading.blogspot.com/search?q=john+adams

The background that was presented by John Adams is quite helpful in understanding what Thomas Jefferson is saying.

Thomas Jefferson started his presentation by kind of doing a mumbling beginning.  He seemed to be trying to point out that the original Thomas Jefferson was not an accomplished speaker.  He actually said that Thomas Jefferson's inaugural address was heard by only a few people sitting in the first rows of the Senate chambers......however, there was a printed version that was passed out as the men exited the doors.  And that the address was printed in MANY languages because the ideas presented were so innovative.  But I am getting ahead of the story....

Much of the first part of the talk told about the ugly election process that had taken place in the fall before this inauguration.  John Adams and Thomas Jefferson had been great friends.  By the end of the process leading to the election they were at such odds that they never spoke to each other again.  (later Thomas Jefferson explained that they did indeed become friends years later and spent many years exchanging letters about everything from gardening to politics.....but they were never to actually be together again in person).  These are the two men who died on the very same day:  4th of July in 1826....the date of the celebration of 50 years since:

In Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the Continental Congress adopts the Declaration of Independence, which proclaims the independence of the United States of America from Great Britain and its king. July 4th, 1776.


I wish that I had the energy to repeat all that our wonderful Thomas Jefferson explained about this election.  However, I do not.  I will content myself with adding a few links to remind myself of some of what he said:

https://www.gilderlehrman.org/history-by-era/early-republic/essays/presidential-election-1800-story-crisis-controversy-and-change

The link below is the only one that takes the reader to the mentioned the name of the representative from Delaware,  Federalist James A. Bayard, Delaware’s only representative in the House.  The information about this is MOST interesting in this article.  The information about Bayard is in fact #11:  

http://mentalfloss.com/article/82871/12-facts-about-election-1800

If I were to condense what I believe that I heard, I would say that after an ugly election, there was no clear winner.  When George Washington had been president, there was only one party.  He was the clear majority winner.  During the presidency of John Adams, two parties had evolved.  John Adams was a Federalist who believed in strong central government.  Thomas Jefferson had shifted away from this belief and felt that John Adams and the Federalists were wrong.  He believed in States having strong control over their own constituents.  They hadn't quite settled on a name for this new party.  But it was some sort of combination of Republican and Democrat.  While the House of Representatives and Senate were voting every day, every day produced a stalemate.  More than one state had raised a militia to march on Washington, DC if the Federalists won.  It looked as if there could be Civil War at any minute.  And this was what people all over the world were used to!  Uprisings every time a government changed hands.  But Thomas Jefferson felt strongly about that as well.  And when finally Bayard abstained from voting and a couple of other states who had representatives who were Federalist did the same, Thomas was officially president.  His inaugural address made it clear that he did not plan to ride the other politicians out of town on a rail...nor punish them for their ideas....nor incite any sort of an uproar.  Instead he felt strongly that it was important that the ideas that didn't agree with him were important.  That it was GOOD to have opposing philosophies to help keep those in power honest and also to help keep them from the temptation of too much power.  It is hard for us to believe today that this was a NEW concept.  That before this date and this speech every time there was a political upheaval it was accompanied by strife, bloodshed, chaos.  That is why Thomas Jefferson's speech was translated for readers all over the world to read!  He had changed the face of politics forever.

My other favorite remarks of the day included:

The Missouri Compromise of 1820.  The Missouri Compromise was about slavery.  Thomas Jefferson's remark was this WAS NOT a compromise!  In a real compromise both sides give up something and reach a middle agreement in which no one is really happy, but there is an agreement.  That if anyone is happy with a compromise, it is NOT a compromise....someone has won.  In this Missouri Compromise, everyone just agreed to stay in their own arena with their own beliefs thus eventually leading to the split between the two factions which happened with the outbreak of the Civil War.  Missouri joined the Union as a slave state while Maine was admitted as a free state.

In the years leading up to the Missouri Compromise of 1820, tensions began to rise between pro-slavery and anti-slavery factions within the U.S. Congress and across the country. They reached a boiling point after Missouri’s 1819 request for admission to the Union as a slave state, which threatened to upset the delicate balance between slave states and free states. To keep the peace, Congress orchestrated a two-part compromise, granting Missouri’s request but also admitting Maine as a free state. It also passed an amendment that drew an imaginary line across the former Louisiana Territory, establishing a boundary between free and slave regions that remained the law of the land until it was negated by the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854.

Then in the final parts of the presentation, Thomas Jefferson explained that when he left the office of President, he was greatly relieved to give up the responsibilities of the office.  And then he spent time admonishing all of the audience to never make it easy on those they elect.  To constantly hound their elected servants to do right and not to yield to the temptation of power.

And one of my favorite ideas put forth was that any generation that decides to participate in war, needs to tax itself to pay for that war.  They should not put the expense of war on the next generation.  Thomas Jefferson was very unhappy about the great amount of debt that the new nation had amassed with the Revolutionary War.  Much of what he was doing in Europe in the early days of our new nation's history was trying to finance loans just to pay the interest on the debts that had accumulated.

And finally the words that Jefferson himself chose as the three things he wished to be remembered for :

The brief inscription his tombstone bears, written by Jefferson himself, is as noteworthy for what it excludes as what it includes. The inscription suggests Jefferson's humility as well as his belief that his greatest gifts to posterity came in the realm of ideas rather than the realm of politics: "Here was buried Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of American Independence of the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, and father of the University Of Virginia."

Ok....I have a few more things that I want to add because I don't want to loose the ideas.  Apparently John Marshall and Thomas Jefferson were cousins.  I am googling tonight trying to figure out what their connection involved.  I have a few URLs that I want to add:

http://patch.com/massachusetts/attleboro/bp--thomas-jefferson-and-john-marshall-founding-fathe0e112006ee


ok....it looks as if it is a distant relationship through the Randolph family:

http://www.let.rug.nl/usa/biographies/john-marshall/

  

Angle of Repose

Wallace Stegner's Pultizer Prize-winning novel is a story of discovery—personal, historical, and geographical. Confined to a wheelchair, retired historian Lyman Ward sets out to write his grandparents' remarkable story, chronicling their days spent carving civilization into the surface of America's western frontier.








I decided to skip the book that the book club is reading this month.  I hate that I can only manage to read one book that is fiction each month....but it is a fact.  I had already started Wallace Stegner's Angle of Repose, and I decided to stay with it.  Much like Crossing to safety, the book is not a huge page turner.  It is slow and purposeful.  I have had the actual print book on my shelf for many years.  It has seemed to me a book that I SHOULD read:  Pulitzer Prize Winner....book about a Quaker woman ....book about a man who is writing his grandparents family history after his retirement....well I HAVE to read it don't I?

I am actually listening to it via audible.  And today is the first time that the light bulb went off:  Oh, yes....I "get it"....Susan Burling Ward has just taken the train across the continent to join her new husband in California.  How many thousands of times did a young Quaker girl move west on our continent and think about all that she left behind and the fact that she might never see her parents again?  WOW!  The thought is huge.

This morning on the way to get coffee Iistened to a part where Susan and Oliver are visiting San Francisco for their Thanksgiving holiday.  It reminded me of the fact that San Franciso was quite gay in that time period.  Unlike the rest of the state that was still fairly raw.  My grandmother Hawkins was very proud of her Uncle John Partridge:

Granny Mary was proud of her relationship with John S. Partridge of San Francisco, California who was recently [letter written July 26, 1923] appointed Federal Judge in this state...

Granny Mary  said:  "Uncle John was rich and lived in a four story mansion in San Francisco and all of his children lived in the same house.  They were Marie (a singer), Bee Wellmans and Carl and Harry."

I added birth and death dates and the middle name Slater while perusing information on Ancestry in June 2004.  Source given for the information was:

Name: Partridge, John Slater

Birth - Death: 1870-1926

Accession Number: 3244759

Source Citation: Biographical Dictionary of the Federal Judiciary. Compiled by Harold

Chase, Samuel Krislov, Keith O. Boyum, and Jerry N. Clark. Detroit:

Gale Research, 1976.(BiDFedJ)

Biographical Directory of the Federal Judiciary, 1789-2000. Lanham,

MD, USA: Bernan, 2001. Biographies begin on page 347.(BiDrFJ)

Who Was Who in America. A component volume of [Who's Who in American

History.]. Volume 1, 1897-1942. Chicago: A.N. Marquis Co.,

1943.(WhAm 1)

But the thing that I remember the most about early San Francisco was the Cliff House.  And Susan mentions having seen the Cliff House in this book.  My NORCAL mail list (back in the days when it was VERY active) talked about the Cliff House for many days!  Jack and I took the trolley out to see the site the last time we were in San Fran.  The structure below no longer exists.  But the ruins of the Sutro baths are visible.  I am not taking the time to figure out what Susan and Oliver actually saw on their trip.  Instead I am remembering what I was thinking when I bought the pictures that are at the bottom of my steps to the basement.



OK....the book just started to engage me totally.  It may still not be a page turner, but the description of the mine town and the structure of the mining business in that town is amazing.  I don't know how Stegner manages to get one to understand so amazingly well all of the things that are going on in the book....including his character, Lyman Ward, .....how his life is so much at the mercy of the people around him and yet he manages to have a real life that he indeed controls with the help of his help.  This is truly a great book!

The Nightingale

I found this book to be so full of dread and suspense that I called Mitzy more than once to beg her to tell me what happened next so that I could turn the book back on via audible.  Kristin Hannah does an amazing job of giving the reader the sense of dread and foreboding that these people must have felt on an everyday basis.  It is probably my favorite book of the year.  I read it via audible.

From review on Amazon:

FRANCE, 1939

In the quiet village of Carriveau, Vianne Mauriac says goodbye to her husband, Antoine, as he heads for the Front. ......When a German captain requisitions Vianne's home, she and her daughter must live with the enemy or lose everything. Without food or money or hope, as danger escalates all around them, she is forced to make one impossible choice after another to keep her family alive.

Vianne's sister, Isabelle, is a rebellious eighteen-year-old girl, searching for purpose with all the reckless passion of youth. .... she meets Gäetan, a partisan who believes the French can fight the Nazis from within France, and she falls in love as only the young can … completely. .... Isabelle joins the Resistance and never looks back, risking her life time and again to save others.

With courage, grace and powerful insight, bestselling author Kristin Hannah captures the epic panorama of WWII and illuminates an intimate part of history seldom seen: the women's war. The Nightingale tells the stories of two sisters, separated by years and experience, by ideals, passion and circumstance, each embarking on her own dangerous path toward survival, love, and freedom in German-occupied, war-torn France--....

The Patron Saint of Ugly

Mitzi invited me to go to her book club at the Gallaher Library many months ago.  Every month I was either not available at the time that they met or I had not read the book and found myself not enticed to go to a meeting to discuss the book being discussed.  This month I was determined that I would read the book and attend!

The book's subject is actually of great interest to me.  My husband grew up in the coal fields of WV in the time period that is pictured in the book.  This book takes place in Sweetwater, WV.  It is my best guess that this is a fictional place.  Here is what the blurb on Amazon says:

Born in Sweetwater, West Virginia, with a mop of flaming red hair and a map of the world rendered in port-wine stains on every surface of her body, Garnet Ferrari is used to being an outcast. With her sharp tongue, she has always known how to defend herself against bullies and aggressors, but she finds she is less adept at fending off the pilgrims who have set up a veritable tent city outside her hilltop home, convinced that she is Saint Garnet, healer of skin ailments and maker of miracles.

Her grandmother, the indelible Nonna Diamante, believes that Garnet’s mystical gift can be traced back to the family’s origins in the Nebrodi Mountains of Sicily, and now the Vatican has sent an emissary to Sweetwater to investigate. Garnet, wanting nothing more than to debunk this “gift” and send these desperate souls packing, reaches back into her family’s tangled past and unspools for the Church a tale of love triangles on the shores of the Messina Strait; a sad, beautiful maiden’s gilded-cage childhood in blueblood Virginia; and the angelic, doomed boy Garnet could not protect. 

Saint or not, Garnet learns that the line between reality and myth is always blurred, and that the aspects of ourselves we are most ashamed of can prove to be the source of our greatest strength, and even our salvation.

The added attraction of this book club event this Thursday is that the author plans to attend.  Looking at her e-mail address, she is now affiliated with Marshall University.  I am greatly looking forward to meeting this very imaginative writer!  

The Land of the Painted Caves

This was not my favorite book in the series.  The author felt the need to remind the reader of every detail that had happened in the lives of Ayla and Jondalar.  Even with that said, I found myself sad to leave their story after having read through  the entire series this summer.

From the wikipedia I found the following that I found of interest:

....a series of novels set in prehistoric Europe that explores human activities during this time, and touches on the interactions of Cro-Magnon people with Neanderthals. As of 2010 her books have sold more than 45 million copies worldwide.

She has developed a close friendship with Dr. Jean Clottes of France who was responsible for, among many other things, the exploration of the Cosquer Cave discovered in 1985 and the Chauvet Cave discovered in 1994.  

It was also of interest that Jean Auel used the money made on her first book sales to do MORE research and meet in person the people who had helped her via long distance correspondence on the details of the book.  

But if you have not read my other blog posts I encourage you to see the reasons that I began reading the books in the first place.  I am convinced that my own ancestors were descended from these people of the Painted Caves found in France during the last ice age.  Scroll down to read my other posts.  

The Shelters of Stone

From Wikipedia:

The Shelters of Stone is a historical fiction novel by Jean M. Auel published in April 2002. It is the sequel to The Plains of Passage – published 12 years earlier – and fifth in the Earth's Children series. It describes the return of Jondalar to his homeland along with Ayla

In the fourth book, Ayla and Jondalar traveled for a year to reach the place where Jondalar had grown up and where his people lived.  This book tells about Ayla's pregnancy and the birth of the daughter of the couple.  It also tells about her slowly becoming accepted by Jondalar's people and about the rights of matrimony that make the two a official couple.  It ends with Ayla's agreement to become a part of:

" Not long after the birth, Ayla finally decides to become Zelandonii's acolyte, if only so that the members of the Zelandonii will accept her as a healer."







This book is set in what is now the Vézère valley, near to Les Eyzies, in the Dordogne, southwest France. It was relatively densely populated in prehistoric times, with many open cliff-top dwellings that can still be seen, some of which have been turned into tourist attractions. The national museum of prehistory is located in this valley. Ayla also discovers the world-famous cave of Lascaux, which her adopted people subsequently paint.



This is where I believe that my own clan mother lived in this time period:



I think that the above map was taken from Brian Sykes book:  The Seven Daughters of Eve.  However, I have given my copy away and can not double check this. Wikipedia has an interesting article about this book at:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Seven_Daughters_of_Eve

My Haplogroup is H which means that in Brian's book, I would descend from Helena.  Compare the two maps to see why I believe that I descend from the people that Jean Auel calls the Zelendonia.



It is my understanding that the Grottes Lascaux is the cave that Ayla discovers in this book.

I just found a site for wonderful maps that someone has already drawn for us:

http://www.donsmaps.com/vezere.html

If you are really a fan, do not miss this site!

The Plains of Passage

Jean Auel got back on track with book #4.   The entire book covers the traveling done by Ayla, Jondala, the two horses, and Wolf.

I was looking for a review that would say some of the things that I think to little avail.  However, on Wikipedia, I found the following that makes me very excited to continue the series!

The Plains of Passage describes the journey of Ayla and Jondalar west along the Great Mother River (the Danube), from the home of The Mammoth Hunters (roughly modern Ukraine) to Jondalar's homeland (close to Les Eyzies, Dordogne, France). During this journey, Ayla meets the various peoples who live along their line of march. These meetings, the attitudes and beliefs of these groups, and Ayla's response form an essential part of the story.

Never did I expect Jondalar's people to be my ancestors!  I am very excited to find that the couple and their horses and Wolf would end up in the very area of Europe where my Grandmother's people were MANY centuries ago!  I guess I may as well use my new credit on Audible to purchase the next book in the series!

At the end of the book, the information is confirmed that the Great Mother River that the couple followed is indeed the Danube.  Below is a map of the Danube:



And then below a map that shows the area of France in which we find  Les Eyzies, Dordogne, France:


http://leseyzies-tourist.info/category/dordogne-caves-and-shelters



I found my photo book about the trip that Jack and I made with Steve and Doris in 1994.  We absolutely stayed in the small village of Les Eyries.  I will add information about that when I have time.

I wrote a blog post about my mtDNA that is found at the bottom of a post on my Hornberger line.  According to the book written by Brian Sykes the nickname that he gave to the Daughter of Eve who heads up the H Haplogroup (which is my group) is Helena.  If you go to the below link and scroll to the bottom you can see where Helena's group was found in the ice ages:

http://marshamoses.blogspot.com/2013/05/trip-to-blue-ash-ohio-in-april-2013.html

Ans here is a link to a post made by Rick Steves about the are around Les Eyries

http://www.transitionsabroad.com/publications/magazine/0705/rick_steves_dordogne_france.shtml

The Mammoth Hunters

This was my least favorite book of the series.  However, I did finish it.  It was interesting in that Ayla was adopted into the Lion Camp.  And the part in which Ayla interacts with the Old Mamut.  However the sex scenes and the misunderstandings between Ayla and Jondalar made one want to fast forward.  Perhaps a good editor could have cut them down to a more manageable amount.  Here are a couple of other people's thoughts about the book that I copied and pasted from other reviews:


" On the way, three days away from the valley, they met up with other people called the Mamutoi of the Great Lion Camp who accepted friendly visitors with open arms but they were apprehensive about the two horses, Winney and Racer."

"I did enjoy the characters of the Lion Camp. They were a group of people who received and adopted people who were different. In their camp they accepted a dark skin man, a mix-breed baby, a family that no other Camps would take in, and a spiritual leader who lived among the Clan people for a while recovering from a broken arm...."

 I read this book via audible.....perhaps this is one instance in which audible should have offered an abridged version.

The Valley of Horses

I started the sequel to The Clan of the Cave Bear as soon as I finished the first book.  Jean Auel is very imaginative and I am enjoying continuing to read the saga of Ayla as she leaves the Clan and moves out into the world on her own.   I am reading this book via audible.

Here is the summary on Wikipedia:

The book starts off from the events at the end of The Clan of the Cave Bear detailing the life of a young Cro-Magnon woman named Ayla who has just been exiled from the Clan, the band of Neanderthals who had raised her from early childhood. Ayla now searches for her own people, whom the Clan refer to as "the Others".

In a parallel narrative, Jondalar, a young Cro-Magnon man of the Ninth Cave of the Zelandonii, accompanies his impetuous younger half-brother Thonolan on a traditional rite of passage called the Great Journey. In these episodes, we learn of the Cro-Magnon's paleolithic nature religion, centered on the worship of the Great Mother of All, and follow their adventures and sexual exploits. It is also through these episodes that the animosity, verging on hatred, between the Others and the Clan (whom they refer to derogatorily as "flatheads") is introduced. The Others have repeatedly persecuted the Clan, taking land and resources, but justify it by classing them as animals. However, over the course of his adventures, Jondalar starts to question this prejudice, noting that no other animals have fire, tools or communicate intelligently, nor are they actively hated or attacked-as-sport by his people.

Ayla, alone and ritually ostracized from the only people she has ever known, travels steadily from the Beran Sea peninsular home of her former tribe north for around half a year until finding the book's titular valley sunk deep into the windy landscape of the periglacial loess steppes in Ukraine. Worried that she might never find the Others, she begins to prepare for winter. Finding a suitable cave and many conveniences in the valley, she establishes a comfortable but lonely life there.

Her desire for companionship leads her to tame a filly whose mother she had killed, naming her Whinney. She also takes in and treats an injured cave lion cub, which she names Baby.

In the course of their journey, Jondalar and Thonolan have met women and hope to settle with them, but Thonolan's mate dies in childbirth and Jondalar feels he is not really in love with his woman friend. They continue on their journey and meet up with the Mamutoi people, planning to join them later in the year.

Jondalar and Ayla meet when Thonolan is killed by a cave lion—Baby, now fully grown and with a mate of his own. Ayla heals Jondalar's injuries and they begin to learn to communicate and get to know each other. Jondalar overcomes his inbred prejudice against the Clan and Ayla learns that all her peculiarities which confused and angered the Clan are actually fully accepted and encouraged by the Others.

The two fall in love as the book nears its end, and decide to leave the Valley of Horses and explore regions around the valley Ayla has not yet investigated.