What I'm Reading; Girlette Round-Up

Fiona, IG doll-friend in Berlin, asked me how many Orphan Red Dolls live here.
I wasn't sure.
I photographed all of the ones here, hanging out. (Penny Cooper is staying with Sophie as she recovers from a stroke, and new girlette, Jennifer Baker, is with Marz). With the ones out visiting, there are fifteen--a manageable number.

This is my favorite photo: Girlette Eeva on my bedside table, listening to Rat read aloud, with Girl Mountie & Duckette.
Eeva is Canadian, of Finnish descent, and she says she lost part of her feet on a desperate winter hike carrying wolf-hybrid puppies to safety.

I don't know what Rat is reading--I think maybe fairy tales?

I'm currently reading the two books on top of the pile:
Slowly I've been reading for a while now In Praise of Good Bookstores, by Jeff Deutsch—the director of Chicago's Seminary Co-op Bookstores.

Gobbling up Somewhere Toward the End (2009), by English book editor Diana Athill in her ninety-first year, written with the intention ‘to understand, to be aware, to touch the truth’ about aging.
I'm thinking a lot about that myself, here at the entrance gate to old-age.

I like Athill; I relate to how she tends to be "interested rather than engaged"––a biscotti, not a cream bun––something she sometimes regretted, but not much.

I've read it before, and I've just reread her first memoir too, Stet: An Editor's Life (2000)--about books and writers she worked with.

I want to but haven't yet read her last memoir, Alive, Alive Oh! And Other Things That Matter (2015).
Athill died in 2019, age 101.

 
Here are the rest of the Girlettes in Situ.

On my desk:

On the bookshelves:

In the kitchen, planning the Halloween jack-o-lantern: