Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont by Elizabeth Taylor - 1971

Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont by Elizabeth Taylor - 1971

I offer my thanks to Buried in Print for suggesting this marvelous novel

The New Yorkerwhere she published many of her short stories, has a good overview of her life and work

“Elizabeth Taylor's exquisitely drawn character study of eccentricity in old age is a sharp and witty portrait of genteel postwar English life facing the changes taking shape in the 60s . . . Much of the reader's joy lies in the exquisite subtlety in Taylor's depiction of all the relationships, the sharp brevity of her wit, and the apparently effortless way the plot unfolds . . . Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont is, for me, her masterpiece―Robert McCrum, 'the 100 best novels', “The Guardian

July 3, 1912 - Reading, England

1971 - Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont is short listed for The Booker Prize

November 19, 1975 -Penn, England
 Some novels are so beautifully sad they almost hurt to read.  Mrs Palfrey at Claremont is a haunting work.  It tells a bleak story about what it was like to be an elderly woman with little family that cared about you in England after the Wars.

On a cold wet English morning the elderly Mrs. Palftey checks into The  Claremont Hotel, where she will spend the rest of her days.  The hotel is a place  you go when you cannot quite live alone anymore and no one wants to bother with you.  Of course you have to have an independent income to pay the hotel.  It puts England in a very harsh light as a place where the old are thrown away.  As I read it, I am 73, I knew I am lucky to have a very close family and live in a society that respects the elderly.

Mrs Palfrey soon gets into the social life, most of the permanent residents are women, of the Claremont.  Mrs Palfrey, now a widow, spent time in Burma when her husband was an administrator there.  She does have the English “Stiff Upper Lip”.

The women in The Claremont group often talk about their relatives, each one trying to top the other.  Almost no one gets a visitor.  Mrs Palfrey one day makes up a grandson who she says works in the archives of The British Museum, so she will have some one to talk about.  One day she takes a fall while out for a constitutional.  A young man helps her get up.  She invites him to the Claremont for a meal, telling him to pretend he is her grandson. It may not sound like it, but this is all hilarious while very sad.

The deceptions pile on and Mrs Palfrey and her pretend nephew become very close.  We learn about the family history of his mother and sit in as he gets a girlfriend.

The prose is just so exquisite, every sentenced is like a polished emerald.  Some pages left me stunned.

This novel is for sale as a Kindle edition for $0.99.  It can be read in one evening.  My guess is many will add her to their read through list.

She published 11 novels and a number of short stories.  Her stories and nine of the novels are available in Kindle format.  I hope to read them all.

“Aunt Taibele” - a short story by Sarah Hamer-Jacklyn, translated from The Yiddish by Miranda Cooper - first published 1965, translated 2020

“Aunt Taibele” - a short story by Sarah Hamer-Jacklyn, translated from The Yiddish  by Miranda Cooper - first published 1965, translated 2020

You may read “Aunt Taibele” here 

Born 1905 in Novvoradomsk, Poland

Immigrated 1904 to Montreal, with her parents

Passes on in 1975 in Montreal

Sarah Hamer-Jacklyn was a long time preformer in the Montreal Yiddish Theater.  Second to New York City, Montreal had a large number of Yiddish immigrants.  While merging with much success into Canadian society, they cherished their heritage. 

In addition to acting, Hamer-Jacklyn was a very frequent contributor of short stories to Yiddish language periodicals.

On January 9 2019 I posted upon two Short Stories by Sarah Hamer-Jacklyn included in The Exile Book of Yiddish Women Writers / edited by Frieda Johles

Today’s story ends with a pandemic taking a high toll.  It seemed very appropriate somehow to post on this now.  The story also reflects the closeness though hardly drama free families of the shtetls of Eastern Europe and Russia.

“Aunt Taibele” is both funny and very sad, a combation not uncommon in Yiddish literature.  The story is set in Nowo-Radomsk,Poland.

Here is the opening description of Aunt Taibele:

“Aunt Taibele was coming to Nowo-Radomsk from Gwoźnica. She was really more of a distant relative, but the whole family called her “aunt.”

In our house, there was always talk of “Aunt Taibele.” Grandma used to travel to Gwoźnica often to visit her and her husband and see to it that the young couple always had food on the table. She told us that Moyshe Haim, Taibele’s husband, complained that his wife was a public nuisance, a wicked woman, a shrew. And Taibele said that her husband was a glutton and a drunkard—he had to have a snack before he went to daven, and what’s more, he was a big bon vivant. Grandma always sided with Aunt Taibele.”

Aunt Taibele is divorced with one child.”Whereever she went she was angry and sullen, full of grievances against the world and her ex-husband”.She soon moves out on her own and establishes a business making and selling soap.

“She only stayed with us for two weeks, during which time she found herself an apartment and started a soap business. Once a week on market day, she would set up a little stand for her homemade soap and sell it to ladies. During the rest of the week she courted customers in well-to-do houses and sold them fragrant, exotic soaps. She never borrowed from anyone but also hated to pay out of her own pocket. This business was her source of income. Her only goal in life was to take pity on people, help the sick, collect charity for the destitute. She applied cupping glasses to her patients and leeches under their ears, helped ward off the evil eye, and anointed the ill with salve and ointment that she had made herself from various medicinal herbs. Aunt Taibele never missed a funeral. She would weep and accompany the corpse to the cemetery. With secret joy, she listened to the difficulties of sad souls and consoled them. And soon all of Nowo-Radomsk called her “Aunt Taibele”.

Soon people in the community begin looking for a new husband for her.  But she rejects perfectly decent men.  She has one close friend, a widower with a sick son. Somehow this woman’s misery draws her to her.  Once the widow marries a grocer with a secure income Taibele draws away.

Then one fine day Taibele marries again, to a grave-digger.  

“Aunt Taibele married the gravedigger, who was an energetic man, but unclean and unkempt, with a neglected house. The whole shtetl speculated that the couple wouldn’t even last as long as the time between the Fast of Esther and Purim. 

But it soon became clear that this was a match made in heaven. The marriage imbued Aunt Taibele with new life. A red flush spread across her cheeks. Her ever-sour face shone. She replaced all her household items, threw away the old beds, bought new ones. She shined her bronze candlesticks, hung new curtains, scoured, polished, and bleached the two rooms. Suddenly she became a real lady of the house, and saw to it that her husband was clean and well put together. She cooked and baked. She also worked together with her husband at the cemetery, accompanying each new corpse, never leaving the grave until the last shovelful of earth had fallen.”

Then a plague began to spread in the area.  There was a Custom at the time to hold what were called “Plague Wedding” were staged in an effort to ward of the plague.  Here is Miranda Cooper’s explanation of this:

“plague weddings, known as mageyfe khasenes or shvartse khasenes. This superstitious ritual involved marrying people on the margins of society to one another in an effort to ward off the plague. Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, there has been increased interest in this ritual, still little-known in many Jewish communities”.

“Then a plague broke out in Nowo-Radomsk. The rabbi ordered that the black khupe be erected over the cemetery. The whole town, under the leadership of Aunt Taibele, got involved. An orphan girl was found and married to Berele, the town fool. Aunt Taibele stood in for the orphan’s mother for the wedding. She and another community matriarch went to the stores for meat, fish, challah, wine, and liquor, and they set about cooking.  

Almost the whole town gathered at the cemetery. Aunt Taibele and her husband accompanied the orphan bride to the khupe. Aunt Taibele, dressed in her silk dress, distributed food among the poor and announced the wedding presents, gathering them all in a large box. She even found an apartment for the young couple. When the plague began to subside, she felt that it was thanks in large part to her and her husband.”

The story ends happily.  

Sarah Hamer-Jacklyn (1905–1975) Born in Novoradomsk, Poland, Sarah Hamer-Jacklyn immigrated to Canada in 1914. Captivated by the Yiddish theatre in Toronto, she began her career as an actress and singer at sixteen. Retaining her love of Yiddish as well as her dramatic connection with the theatre, her short stories serialized in the Canadian Yiddish daily Der Keneder Adler, as well as in major literary journals, depict a wide range of subjects spanning shtetl life, Holocaust narratives, and women’s search for creative expression in America. Her collection of short stories, including Lebens un gestalten ( Lives and Portraits) and Shtamen un tsveygn ( Stumps and Branches), published in the 1940s and 1950s, were received with critical acclaim. From The Exile Book of Yiddish Women Writers / edited by Frieda Johles Forman

Miranda Cooper is a New York–based writer, editor, and literary translator. Her translations from Yiddish have been published in Jewish Currents and Pakn Treger, and her literary and cultural criticism has been published by Kirkus Reviews, Jewish Currents, Tablet, JTA, In geveb, Alma, the Jewish Book Council, and the Yiddish Book Center. She currently serves as an editor of In geveb and was a 2019 Yiddish Book Center Translation Fellow.

This is my fourth story by Sarah Hamer-Jacklyn.  I hope a collection of her stories will be published soon.

Joe Gets Suspended from The Union - A Short Story by Y. Y. Zevin - 1909 . Translated from The Yiddish by Dan Setzer - 2015

Joe Gets Suspended from The Union - A Short Story by Y. Y. Zevin - 1909 . Translated from The Yiddish by Dan Setzer - 2015

This story is included in the collection of stories by Y. Y. Zevin, Joe The Waiter, translated  by Dan Setzer

You may read today’s story here

Israel Joseph Zevin published under several names, Y. Y. Zevin and Tashrak were the most common. He also published as himself.  (There is a detailed bio below.)

Born - 1872 in Horki, Belorussia

1887 - Moves to New York City

Dies - 1926 in New York City

Isreael Zevin was a very prolific multi-genre writer.  He published in English, Hebrew, and Yiddish.  It is for his brief humorous fictions about immigrates getting used to New York City that he are still read.

“Joe Gets Suspended” must have made New City readers of Yiddish (estimated at about 250,000) laugh and wryly smile saying “yeah that is how things are for a man trying to make a living as a waiter in New York City.  Joe, a member of the Waiters Union, is serving dinner.  A union official enters the restuarant and advises him he has been suspended from the Union.  If he keeps serving, they will throw a strike closing The place down.  Through some weird Union rules sevice cannot be resumed to the customers.  They must start over with a new waiter.  Some get mad and walk out.  Joe asks “why am I suspended.?”  He is told he must come to a union meeting at one A. M, waiters often work until midnight.

The reason for his suspension was just so crazy I was delighted by inventiveness of the author.



TASHRAK (Heb. 1926–1872; תּשר״ק), most common pseudonym of Israel Joseph Zevin, a humorist and pioneer of the Yiddish press in America. Born in Horki (Belorussia), Zevin immigrated to the U.S. in the late 1880s. From 1893 until his death he was on the staff of the Orthodox daily Yidishes Tageblat in New York, and wrote under his own name and the pseudonym Yudkovitch. He became a member of the paper's editorial board and for a time served as its editor-in-chief. From 1924 he wrote, under the names Dr. A. Adelman and Meyer Zonenshayn, for the Morgn Zhurnal, also in New York. His writings – stories, feuilletons, and articles on current affairs – appeared in other American newspapers and in the foreign press. He won recognition principally for his humorous tales about the typical Jewish immigrant's adventures in the U.S. (later these appeared in book form as Y.Y. Zevins Geklibene Shriftn ("Selected Works of Y.Y. Zevin," 1906); Geklibene Shriftn ("Selected Works," 1909); and Tashraks Beste Ertseylungen ("Tashrak's Best Stories," 4 vols., 1910). He also published anthologies of aggadot, midrashim, and proverbs (Ale Mesholim fun Dubner Magid ("The Complete Proverbs of the Dubner Maggid," 2 vols., 1925); Ale Agodes fun Talmud … ("The Complete Aggadot of the Talmud," 3 vols., 1922); Der Oytser fun Ale Medroshim, ("The Complete Treasury of Proverbs," 4 vols., 1926)), which he had collected and translated into Yiddish toward the end of his life. Zevin wrote children's stories (Mayselekh far Kinder, "Stories For Children," 1919), a number of stories in Hebrew, and a posthumously published novel. From 1905 he began to write in English, mainly translating his own stories which appeared in the English section of the Tageblat and in the weekly American Hebrew. Between 1914 and 1917 he was a regular contributor to the Sunday issue of the New York Herald, and became known for his essays, interviews, and humorous pieces on New York Jewish life.

From https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/tashrak

Dan Setzer is a Maryland-based translator of Yiddish and Italian. He is currently translating the memoirs of a German soldier who served in World War II.

I offer my thanks to Dan Setzer for making this and other heritage stories available

Mel u

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Villa of Delirium by Adrien Goetz - 2017 - translated from the French by Natasha Lehrer - 2020 - published by New Vessel Press

Villa of Delirium by Adrien Goetz - 2017 - translated from the French by Natasha Lehrer - 2020 - published by New Vessel Press

Paris in July 2020 - Hosted by Thyme for Tea - extended for a week

Villa of Delirium is a work anyone seriously into European Art and Literature will love.  It centers on an affluent French Jewish Family, the  Reinachs, who re-creating a Greek Villa on the Rivera.  They are related to the Rothchilds and other wealthy Jewish families.The story begins in the early 1900s and follows the families history through much of the 20th Century.  The family was taken from history though the narrator Achilles the narrator is not.

The Reinachs were at their zenith during the Belle Époque era in France.  We are given a marvelous insiders view of the scholars, deeply read auto-didacts and art connoisseurs in the family. Ultimately it becomes an account of how the monsterous events of World War II not only destroyed the  Villa but almost took down three thousand years  of European culture and history.

The narrator Achiles is son of a servant at the estate of the Eiffel family, living nearby.  He is adopted by the Reinach and is taught to read ancient Greek literature.  He narrates construction of the viila.

I don’t wish to reveal to much of the plot lines which follows Achilles  Life.

What I think I liked best sbout Villa of Delirium was Achilles numerous interior monlogues about literature and art.  He sees the decay of European culture much as did Stefan Zweig.

I can see myself rereading this book for sure.

Adrien Goetz is a novelist who teaches art history at the Sorbonne in Paris. He is editor of Grande Galerie, the quarterly magazine of the Louvre Museum.  From newvesselprrss.com

Mel u

“Bettering Myself” - A Short Story by Ottessa Moshfegh - from her debut collection Home Sick for Another World - 2017 - first published in The Paris Review - Spring 2013

“Bettering Myself” - A Short Story by Ottessa Moshfegh - from her debut collection Home Sick for Another World - 2017 - first published in The Paris Review - Spring 2013

You can read today’s story here

An interesting unusual interview with Ottessa Moshfegh

A fascinating article from The Guardian

I first became aware of the fiction of Ottessa Moshfegh in an article on the best debut  collections of short stories published in 2017.  I am very glad to have found her.

“Bettering Myself” is the lead story in her very highly reviewed collection Homesick for Another World.

The narrator of the story is a math teacher at a Catholic School.   A lot of the students are from families of immigrants from the Ukraine.  She is thirty, receiving alimony from an ex-husband who she sometimes calls when intoxicated to complain about her life. She drinks a lot of beer supplemented with whiskey.  She has a boyfriend.  Her description of their relationship contains a very thinly disguised play on words I heard long ago in a Mae West movie:

“The boyfriend came and went on weekends. Together we drank wine and whiskey, romantic things I liked”.

She pretty much hates her job.  Here is her daily routine:

“Between classes I took the sleeping bag out, locked the door, and napped until the bell rang. I was usually still drunk from the night before. Sometimes I had a drink at lunch at the Indian restaurant around the corner, just to keep me going — sharp wheat ale in a squat, brown bottle. McSorley’s was there but I didn’t like all that nostalgia. That bar made me roll my eyes. I rarely made my way down to the school cafeteria, but when I did, the principal, Mr. Kishka, would stop me and smile broadly and say, “Here she comes, the vegetarian.” I don’t know why he thought I was a vegetarian. What I took from the cafeteria were prepackaged digits of cheese, chicken nuggets, and greasy dinner rolls.”

The narrator is a bit of a mess but I liked her.   All of the schools students took a statewide test every year.  Teachers were judged by how their students did on the test. Sadly for her, she teaches the worst students.  So after the tests are completed she takes them home changes the answers so her students seem brilliant.  The principal praises her for her students showing,it makes him look good also.

I will leave the rest of the story for you to read.  “Bettering Myself” is a work of dark dead pan humour which the narrator uses to get through her day.

I plan to do a read through of this collection, hopefully this year.

Ottessa Moshfegh is a fiction writer from New England. Eileen, her first novel, was shortlisted for the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Man Booker Prize, and won the PEN/Hemingway Award for debut fiction. My Year of Rest and Relaxation, her second novel, was a New York Times bestseller.

Today two Between the Wars Stories Set in Paris by Icons of American Literature, Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald are featured.

Paris in July 2020 - Hosted by Thyme for Tea - extended until August 8th

Today two  Between the Wars Stories Set in Paris by Icons of American Literature, Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald are featured.  Their time in Paris is the stuff of literary legends.

“My Old Man” by Ernest Hemingway - 1923 - first published  in Three Stories and Ten Poems by Contact Publishing - A small Parisian publisher owned by Robert Menzies McAlmon - (his time in Paris would be an interesting story, perhaps for Paris in July 2021)

“Babylon Revisted” by F. Scott Fitzgerald - 1931 - initially published in The Saturday Evening Post 

Ernest Hemingway 

Born - July 21, 1899 - Oak Park, Illinois

May 1918.  He arrives in Paris just as it is under attack by the Germans 

January 1919 - returns to the USA

October 1921 - returns to Paris with his first wife to work as a foreign correspondent for The Toronto Star.  He meets James Joyce and Ezra Pound,  Gertrude Stein becomes his mentor.  

September 1923 - He and his wife return to Toronto. Hemingway misses Paris and they return January 1924

 By June  1925 he meets  F. Scott Fitzgerald and formed an on and off friendship marked by some discord 

March 1928 - His second wife wants to return to America so he does

Hemingway returns to France June of 1944 as a War Correspondent.  On August 25th  he enters Paris with the American Army.

After The war he returns to America but Will come back with his third wife in 1948

October 1954.  He received The Nobel Prize.

In October of 1956 he returns to Paris, staying at The Ritz

July 2, 1961 - dies Ketchum, Idaho

“My Old Man” was one of very first Short Stories Hemingway published.   Set in Paris, it is narrated by a young American man.  His father is a jockey.  They ride hordes together, hang out in cafes that horse racing people frequent.  They drink a lot.  Hemingway gave me a sense of horse racing in Paris.  The story ends in tragedy.

This is an historicallly interesting story.  Hemingway is just starting to learn his craft.

F.Scott Fitzgerald 

F. Scott Fitzgerald was the author of four novels and 164 Short Stories 

Born: September 24, 1896 - St. Paul, Minnesota 

1920 to 1940 - Married to Zelda Fitzgerald 

April 1924 - With Zelda he moves to Paris

The Great Gatsby is published in April of 1925,  initially the reviewers were unkind.  To me the last ten pages are among the most  transcendently beautiful I have ever read.  He completed it while living on the French Rivera.

From 1924 to 1926 they will alternate between Paris and the French Rivera with stays in Rome

He becomes friends with numerous American expatriates including Ernest Hemingway 

October, 1926.  He and Zelda move to Hollywood where he begins a career as a screen writer 

Dies:  December 21, 1940 - Hollywood, California 

“Babylon Revisited”, opens in the Ritz Bar in Paris, Charles Wilson is talking to the bartender, the stock market crashed not long ago, about the days when Paris was full of rich Americans living an alcohol fuel stock market money funded life of non-stop partying.  He runs into a still rich American couple he used to spend time with.  This turns out to be a very unfortunate meeting for him.He has himself returned to Paris from the USA.  Much of the focus of the story is on how the Depression has changed the behavior of Americans in Paris. Most Parisians are glad many of the once rich Americans have gone home. 

Charles used to be an extreme drinker and party goer, living the life of the rich in the Roaring Twenties.  He now has one drink a day. He lost his money in the market crash, his wife died, he gave up custody of his daughter to her sister-in-law. He now  has a job lined up in Prague and wants to regain custody of his daughter.  He plans for his sister to join them to help out.

His sister-in-law blames Charles for her sister’s death.  One night Charles saw his wife kissing  another man at a party. He leaves her out in the snow. After this she develops pneumonia and dies.  She was evidently a  serious alcoholic and her sister blamed Charles for this.

The daughter Honoria wants to go live with her father.  His sister-in-law overcomes her initial trepidation at the idea, being convinced Charles is reformed, agrees to let him have his daughter.  All seems going well when the friends he met at the Ritz Bar stop by to see him at the house of his sister-in-law.  They are drunk and invite Charles to go to a party with them.  I will leave the conclusion untold but it is not a happy ending.

The movie, Midnight in Paris, features Ernest Hemingway and the Fitzgeralds.  I found it fun to watch it, on Amazon 

Prime Video.

Mel u

The Reading Life Review July 2020

Column One

1. Patrick Modiano - France - Nobel Prize Winner

2. Neera Kashrap - India - Neera Kashyap has published a book of short stories for young adults, ‘Daring to dream’ (Rupa & Co.) and contributed to five prize-winning anthologies for Children’s Book Trust. As a writer of short fiction, poetry, essays and book reviews, her work has appeared/is forthcoming in leading South Asian journals which include Kitaab, Papercuts, Out of Print Magazine and Blog, Muse India & Indian Literature.

3. Marc Wilson - UK - author Marc Chagall 

4. Kate Williams - UK - historical biography 

Column 2

1. Pamela Binnings Ewen - USA- author Coco Chanel- A Novel and other highly regarded historical novels

2. Leonora Carrington - UK to Mexico - Surealist.  Artist and writer

3. Chava Rosenfarb - Poland to Canada - one of The very best post WW Two Yiddish language writers. Featured on our side bar 

4. Henry James - USA to England 

Column 3

1. Shirley Hazzard - Australia to USA - author Transit of Venus 

2. Edith Wharton - USA to France 

3. Catherine Hewitt - UK - historian focused on 19th century France 

4. Brian Kirk - Ireland - featured Seven times on The Reading Life -Brian Kirk is a poet, short story writer, playwright and novelist from Dublin, Ireland. His work has appeared in the Sunday Tribune, Crannog, The Stony Thursday Book, Revival, Boyne Berries, Wordlegs and various anthologies

Column 4

1. Mavis Gallant - Canada to France

2. Elizabeth Taylor - UK -  author of 11 novels and numerous exquiste Short Stories - A read through of her work is planned

3. Alice Adams - USA - much more coming on her Short Stories

Birth Countries of Featured Writers

1. UK - 5

2. USA-  4

3. France - 1

4. Poland - 1

5. Australia- 1

6. Ireland - 1

7. Canada - 1

Five of the authors immigrated from their home countries.

11 works by women were featured, four by men.

8 deceased writers were featured, 7 living

Only two writers were featured for the first time.  Mel wants more new to The Reading Life writers to be featured going forward.

The Reading Life is a multicultural

book blog, committed to Literary Globalism

Blog Stats

Since inception there has been 6,078,987 page views

As of yesterday there were 3776 posts online.

The most viewed posts for July were

1. “Ghosts” by Edwidge Danticat

2. Flush - A Biography by Virginia Woolf

3. “The Flood” by Thakazhi Sivasnka

4. “Water Child” by Edwidge Danticat

5. “The Auspicious Visit” by Rabindranath Tagore

Home Countries of Visitors 

USA, India, Turkmenistan, UK, Russia, Canada, 

Philippines and France 

We are glad to see so many visitors from Turkmenistan.  

Future Plans and Hopes for the next three months

Mel hopes to complete two long novels he began to read when the Quarantine began for him on March 3, A Man Without Qualities by Robert Musil and The Recognitions by William Gaddis as well as novels by Cynthia Ozick, Elizabeth Taylor and Ivy Compton-Burnett.  We are planning to feature two short story writers a week who have not yet been featured on The Reading Life.

Longer term Mel will continue reading along with Buried in Print through the short stories of Mavis Gallant.  In time he hopes to read collections of short stories by Alice Adams, Elizabeth Taylor, Shirley Hazzard  and possibly Nancy Hale.  

There are  over 200 Yiddish translations in queue.  

Mel will continue reading on in Holocaust related works and quality narrative non-fiction.

Review books.  To those who have sent review books, please be patient.

To all our readers, these are dark times.  Reading at least a little everyday can help you.  Consider reading maybe two short stories a week.  To our fellow book bloggers, among the greatest readers in the world, keep blogging.

To those who comment on posts, you help keep us going.

To Max u thanks for you very much appreciated Amazon Gift Cards

One day the Pandemic will be over.  Through reading we can time travel and visit countries now forbidden.  Reading protects people from cognitive decline.  Rich, poor or in between reading will enrich your life, keep away boredom and loneliness.  

Oleander Bousweau