I quite liked her most recent, Foreign Bodies. The promotion compared it to Henry James' The Ambassadors, which I think was a mistake -- it is not nearly as dense as James. My comparison would be Linda Grant's We Had It So Good, although Ozick's obviously comes from a more American perspective. Also, consider Dictation, a Quartet -- four longish short stories (or shortish novellas -- the book is just under 200 pages). You can tell from The Shawl that Ozick is very, very good at capturing a lot in not very many pages and she does it to good effect in all four of the quartet. The title story is quite hilarious, in a devilish sort of way.

I am another one of those who is impressed that Bookhound found a wonderful "gift for two" that involved renting a digger for a week. The truly innovative mind knows no bounds.

Many happy returns, DGR. And may the next reading year be every bit as good as the last few.

Happy Birthday, Tinker, from both myself and Mrs. KfC. I trust your new landlady will come up with an appropriate feast.

A job well done and I am sure the Tinker is settling in just fine. I am rather surprised that you and Bookhound were not commissioned to prepare the Ken Palace apartments for the Cambridges -- it would have been done on time, on budget, with superior results. :-) I am only speculating, but I bet with this job now done Bookhound has a project in mind that will require rental of a digger for at least a few days this summer.

Since I know a little bit about the Fiction Uncovered prize, I'd like to take this opportunity to say how chagrined I am that you were a judge. Not that you weren't worthy, by any means -- you are exactly the kind of judge they want and need. But we DGR fans have had a whole year without any thoughts from you on contemporary fiction, since you are being a decent judge who does not talk outside of school, as it were. Sort of like the Duchess of Cambridge going on a High Street shopping strike, with all apologies to our 'ilary. Or the V and A saying "we're taking a year off to reconsider our definiton of 'craft' -- we'll be back next year". I'd rather you talked then judged, but that is inherently selfish. 'nuff said. George Eliot has waited for a fair while to hear your thoughts and I don't think a month's delay will be a problem. Fellow travellers like myself will just have to hold our breath. I for one am delighted at the regime that you have proclaimed for 2013. You have been a "saint" (we aren't supposed to say that during Lent, are we?) in keeping the blog current for the last year, given your busy schedule. On the other hand, I can't help but look forward to when this blog will again be DGR's platform number one. As for the Tinker, surely he could hang up a few towels for a couple of weeks? (That's a ludicrous idea of course -- I am sure he has a whole suitcase full of tapestries that could fill in for a bit.) I am quite certain that if you had given him the list in your post a couple of days ago, the first thing he would have said would have been "why don't we hang a couple of towels over the windows for a few weeks -- or perhaps we could put up some of my 'minor' works?" Cheers.