Love a poem by guest author Alison Beaumont

Val Penny's Book Reviews

Hi Val, thank you for inviting me as a guest author on you site. I thought this little poem might be suitable for your blog.  We think of love as a feeling that we experience, but I see it as the energy that created and goes on creating this world we live in – when we feel love we are touching that energy.
Alison

Love

Unwavering, eternal, silent, still;

the tiny core of all things, and yet

beyond everything known and unknown.

The artist’s hand on Earth’s living canvas.

A spontaneous river of beauty and grace.

She paints the rhythm of the tumbling stream,

the delicate swirl of a falling leaf.

She paints the flutter of a butterfly wing.

The soft caress of sun on skin.

She painted me and you and gave us life.

She painted sound and sight and touch and taste,

that in her artistry we can…

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Life after Cancer on Letrozole

Surviving Breast Cancer Now!

After completion of my chemotherapy and just as my radiotherapy started I required to start taking letrozole: just one 2.5mg tablet per day. A 2.5mg tablet each day for 5 years. This is because my breast cancer wasa type that needs the hormone oestrogen to grow. In women who have been through the menopause, the main source of oestrogen is through the change of sex hormones called androgens into oestrogen. An enzyme called ‘aromatase’ is needed for this change to occur. Letrozole works by inhibiting (or blocking) this enzyme. This reduces the amount of oestrogen in your body, which slows the growth of the cancer cells, should they recur. It is my fervent hope that they will not.

I never read the information given with medication, although I know I should. The manufacturer’s leaflet will give more information about letrozole and a full list of the side effects which may…

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The Immigrant by Manju Kapur

A delightful book.

Val Penny's Book Reviews

1. Manju Kapur was born in Amritsar, India. She is an Indian novelist. Her first novel, Difficult Daughters, won the 1999 Commonwealth Writers’ Prize, best first book, Europe and South Asia. She teaches English at Delhi University under the name Manjul Kapur Dalmia. She studied and received an M.A. in 1972 from Dalhousie University in Halifax, Canada, and an M. Phil from Delhi University. This novel, The Immigrant published in 2011, draws on life in Canada, although it is a novel, not autobiographical. The Immigrant  was shortlisted for the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature. The author is married to Gun Nidhi Dalmia; they have three children and three grandchildren, and live in New Delhi.

The Immigrant was book of the month at my book group. It is not a book that I would automatically have chosen, however, reading out of your comfort zone is part of the joy of being in a book group. The…

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