Neil Gaiman's latest has been in my Kindle in Audible form for several weeks now. I've been hoarding it, anticipating the pleasure of listening to Mr. Gaiman read it to me. And yesterday, the time had come.
The basil down in the box beds was overgrown and falling over of its own weight. So I went in with the pruning shears and was ruthless -- harvesting a huge amount of basil and a lesser amount of parsley (my pesto recipe calls for parsley too.)
It's a tedious job, going through and picking off just the good leaves... the kittehs didn't want to help. . . so I propped the Kindle up beside me and let Neil entertain me -- he's an excellent reader, by the way.
I soon realized that this job was going to take several hours and so Neil and I moved to the living room where I could put my feet up as I worked.
At last I was ready to make the pesto. -- six batches of it. . .
I ended up with 16 half pints of delicious pesto to put in the freezer and a bit over -- which adorned the fried pork chops and the potatoes we had for supper.
Since I haven't finished the book, I'll say more about it another time -- but I can tell you that, half way through, I really, really like it. So did A.S. Byatt, according to her review.