I've just returned from a few glorious days away and am thoroughly exhausted, so this post will be short.
As I mentioned last week, I'm interested in anything that could help me retrench, so I decided to refresh my memory about one of my favourite frugal home-making books: Living on a Little by Caroline French Benton, first published in 1908. (It's available to download from Project Gutenberg.) Taking the form of conversations between a pair of sisters — one an experienced home-maker, the other soon to be married and wanting to get it right — it provides general guidelines, advice for each meal and food category, as well as strategies for dealing with leftovers, avoiding waste and making cooking easier. Although quite dated in some respects, it remains a valuable resource for anyone wanting to take steps towards decreasing their grocery bills.
Alas, I've almost come to the end of Emma Newman's Planetfall series with Atlas Alone... only a collection of short stories remains. This is another fantastic mystery set in a highly credible future. Our narrator, Dee, uses her considerable mental and physical skills to pursue her goal of unmasking, then punishing those aboard Atlas 2 responsible for the heinous crime committed six months earlier at the end of After Atlas (my favourite novel in the series). Her strategy leads her to participate in highly sophisticated immersion games that bring her face to face with traumatic events in her past. I was once again fascinated by this author's ability to integrate advanced technologies into very relatable human stories. I'm more determined than ever to seek out more of her writings soon.