At Ikea and Pulitzer Prize Winning March

At Ikea, the cafeteria seats 6oo people and opens a half hour before the store itself.  Lots of seniors have discovered the $1.99 breakfast special which includes free refills on the coffee.  Hubby loves the coffee but he loves the giant cinnamon buns even more.  We are here in the morning so we will miss out on the $4.99 dinner special of 19 Swedish meat balls with potato and vegetables (yes they do specify the number of meatballs). 
What is it about Swedish design that looks perpetually modern?  Glancing around, the  tables, chairs, dinnerware, all look sleek and European to me (not that I really know what that means), but it seems like it all came from somewhere else, far away.  I really like the tray carrier, a four legged walker that you can rest two trays on and push around instead of having to carry your trays.  I notice these are popular with the seniors as well.  There is a sitting area with large couches and people are having their coffee and reading; it is all very civilized and relaxed.
We are here searching out shoe cabinets; yes, it is time to get the shoes off the closet floor and organized in their own piece of furniture.  It all seems a little extravagant to me...giving shoes their own space like this, but later at home, with it all set up and the shoes resting in their little slots behind their cupboard doors, I must admit, this is better. 

                                              What's on my night table....

This book, March by Geraldine Brooks won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 2006.  It tells the story of Peter March, the absent father of the March girls in L.M. Montgomery's Little Women.  I really wanted to love this book but I didn't; I did like it though.  My main problem was I just never cared that much for Peter; I found him pious, full of himself  and frustratingly unaware of what his actions were doing to anyone else.  The book switches to Mrs. March's side of the tale about half way through and we find her to be rightfully (I think) bitter and unhappy with her husband.  Several sections of the book were very slow-going for me and I found some of the situations contrived and certain sentiments expressed too flattering and gratuitous.  However, the book is a very accomplished work overall with beautiful writing at times and I can only imagine the creativity involved in writing an historical novel, in this case, one about the American Civil War. Just the research alone would have been a massive undertaking.  Read this book if you liked Little Women; you might find it a very interesting back story to learn more about the father and mother of those girls.