The dentist! It seems as if I’ve been to the dentist every week this year. Yesterday was my last appointment until June. Yay!
It’s definitely March in Ohio. We had beautiful sunny weather, around 60 degrees on Tuesday. Started in the 50s on Wednesday. Then we had rain. Thursday is supposed to be windy, with temperatures crashing, and there may even be snow flurries. Loved Tuesday’s weather! What about you? Weather and allergies?
Don’t forget Kim Hays is our author for tomorrow, talking about her Favorites of 2024. I hope you stop in!
I’m currently reading Jeffrey B. Burton’s The Second Grave, A Chicago K-9 Thriller. It’s the second book in his Cory and Crystal Pratt K-9 Thriller series. I missed the first one, The Dead Years. But, I read all three books in his Mace Reid K-9 mystery series.
Burton’s new series features a brother and sister. Cory Pratt is in his early twenties, going to college to be a computer programmer, but also running two cadaver dogs, Alice and Rex. Cory’s older sister, Crystal, is a Chicago police detective. They are dragged into a thirty-year-old cold case after Cory and his dogs are asked to work Kaskakee River State Park to search for a missing family patriarch. Another search team finds the man, but Cory’s team finds a graveyard, two graves with four bodies. But, all these years later, someone is taking an interest in the investigation.
I like Burton’s writing, and his cadaver dogs. I’m happy I stumbled across his new series.
What about you? What are you reading this week? How’s everyone doing?
I’m glad you survived your dentist visits Lesa. It’s not the place to go for a good time, is it?
David had his phone app’t with the surgeon yesterday, but we don’t know any more than before. Surgeon says he’s inclined to just observe for a bit and see what happens but that David should see the radiation oncologist again and see what he advises. No word yet on when that might be. I know it’s not helpful, and that it does no good – but I continue to fret and worry, and and am grumpy. David is the opposite; calm, accepting of whatever might happen, and taking pleasure in whatever he’s doing in the moment.
I did read a book this week and it was a good one. THE WHALEBONE THEATRE by Joanna Quinn.
Right from the first page I was drawn into the story. Three-year-old Cristabel waits for her widowed father to arrive back at the family estate with his new wife, and now to be mother to Cristabel, although her main aim seems to be to host lavish parties. Eventually the family expands with a sister (Flossie) and later a brother (Digby). All three children are largely ignored/neglected by their parents, and grow up left to their own devices – which mostly involve elaborate games of imagination courtesy of fiercely independent Cristabel who does her best to look after and entertain her siblings. At one point a whale washes up on the beach and rots away until only bones are left, and a theatre is made out of its huge rib cage bones. This theatre plays a large role in their lives. Theirs is an eccentric upbringing and existence, with very little experience of life beyond the family estate, other than being exposed to the various guests who come to stay.
Then comes WWII and we see how these three siblings cope with the war and how they each contribute in their own way, according to each of their characters.
None of what I just said about the book does it any justice at all but it’s a book to spend time with, to love, to revel in the writing, and to appreciate how seemingly effortlessly the author conjures a story that feels immediate and real, and is so emotionally compelling that it brought me to tears once or twice. Very powerful in a quiet way, with a strong sense of time and place and vivid characters, and every page was worth reading – although I didn’t read the book so much as I experienced it. Completely transporting and made me think on how childhood affects so much of one’s adult life, and what it takes to rise above. I thought it was a great book.
David read a book he quite enjoyed: CROSSING THE LINE by Kareem Rosser.
It’s a memoir about the trials of growing up in the roughest part of Philadelphia and the wonder of discovering horses, how that lead the author and his brother to become true athletes, and how the sport of polo gave them the opportunity of a way out of the ghetto. The author ended up being captain of an all-black team competing in the National Interscholastic Polo Championship.
David said it was well worth reading – from the heart, and gave a real feeling for the life these two boys lived. A true story but reads like a novel.
Been dong alright. The weather’s been a little chilly, but nothing unbearable. A few showers here and there.
Had a bit of juvenile fun this week. I got invited to a watch party for WWE’s Elimination Chamber. The match is in a steel cage. It starts with two wrestlers, with four others sealed in pods. Every so often, a pod opens, and out comes the wrestler to wreak havoc. Whenever a wrestler is pinned or submitted, they are eliminated from the match, and forced to leave the chamber. Hence the name. It’s pretty brutal.
At the end of the show, Jon Cena, this year’s winner, who has been the ace good guy of the company for 22 years, turns bad guy by kicking the current champion, Cody Rhodes, in the groinal area. It was interesting seeing some of the younger folks, who had been watching Cena be a hero, in some cases, for their entire lives, turn to the dark side, and try to process it. Some of the little kids actually cried.
Then tonight, All Elite Wrestling was in Sacramento, so I went to see it live. What a great show, but a lot different than WWE.
This week I read:
Johnny Careless by Kevin Wade; We’re in Great Gatsby country, and the more things change, the more they stay the same. Daisy would feel right at home. The police chief, who spends most of his time NOT enforcing the law, tries to stop a stolen car ring, and trying to find out how his best friend was killed. The friend was pretty much like Tom Buchanan, skating by on his wealth and good looks, while everyone else cleaned up his messes. I was in a real torch and pitchfork mood by the end.
The Lies That Bind by Judith van Gieson; An ex-hippie lawyer is hired by the square mother of her best friend, to defend her in a hit and run case. Strangely, most of the book was actually about Argentinians.
Death on Demand by Carolyn G. Hart; When the obnoxious author dies, the bookstore owner, and her really only slightly less obnoxious (but much better looking) paramour investigate.
Garfield Says a Mouthful by Jim Davis; Near peak Garfield from the early 90’s. I really think the strip hit its zenith in 1988, but this book does serve to remind one of what actually sold all the merchandise, the movies, and the cartoons.
We’ve got winter weather here – 50’s and rain. Supposed to be that way again on Thursday and then warm up a little for the weekend. Then more cold and rain next week, so spring isn’t on the horizon here yet.
On the reading front, I’m working on SHATTERED SIGHT, the first in a new series from Liz Milliron. This one features a police detective in Niagara Fall, New York who is dealing with PTSD with his first case back as a detective. No, not one of my light cozies, but very good. I think the book just turned a corner, and I’m really going to enjoy the final quarter. I’m reading an ARC – the book will be out on the 18th.
Fourth day of sun and daytime 60s here after weeks of greyness. Everyone’s mood has lifted–including mine. So many snowdrops everywhere!
Lesa says she’s putting out my 2024 list of favorites tomorrow–thank you, Lesa!–and my booklist today fits right in, because I’m reading the next books in two of the three series I’ve been catching up with off and on for months. One is another of Ann Cleeves’s Vera Stanhope books, THE DARKEST EVENING (two more to go after this one, and then I’ll be caught up until she writes another Vera book). And I’m listening to BAD ACTORS, another of Mick Herron’s Slow Horses/Slough House books. As always it’s brilliantly read by Gerard Doyle, who also reads Adrian McKinty’s books, among others.
During the past week I finished Geraldine Brooks’s HORSE. I thought it was excellent and highly recommend it. It’s about horseracing just before the Civil War but even more about bonds between people and between people and animals, and–powerfully– about the enduring legacy of racism in the US.
My Bully, My Aunt, and Her Final Gift by Harold Phifer is what I started three days ago. I won it from LibraryThing. It belongs in the humor genre. A man is called by his pastor to prepare a memorial for his Aunt Kathy. Aunt Kathy has always a horrible person, full of backhanded compliments and pure venom. The pastor wants him to give a eulogy for the person that he was relieved to see pass away. It is very funny. The only negative thing is that this book is in miniature print. I can only read a few pages and then give up. My eyes cross, and are in pain while reading it. I am using a magnifying glass some of the time but that implement is heavy to hold.
The other book that I am reading has two levels higher of bigger print. I won it from GoodReads, The Ideological Brain: The Radical Science of Flexible Thinking by Leor Zmigrod. I picked it because it was not horror, fantasy or bodice ripper. It is a challenging book to read, in a place that is totally new to me! The author gives her conclusions of experiments of psychological and neurological foundations of ideological beliefs, Like what is actually going in neurologically with political zealots, rigid thinking, what happens neurologically when a person is brain washed.
I actually recognized part of the neurocognitive testing that I had to determine if I had Mild Cognituve Imparment or worse! This is the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test, which I hated with so much vigor when taking it. It determines how rigid or flexible your thinking is. The test gives you a the task of figuring out which card is next in the sequence. Doesn’t sound bad, does it? But now I know why the test made me angry and frustrated. The rules of the sorting change while you take the test. It starts out with sequence that is easy to figure out, You think you know the rules. then the rules change, over and over again. I can remember my anger while taking the test, how dare they change the rules! If you are flexible thinker you will soon realize the rules have been changed and figure what works until the rules change again. Apparently my reaction to the test was like many of the college kids who took the test. Change is painful when your structure of thinking doesn’t work and you have to figure out the rules again.
The part about brainwashing seems logical and explains why it is so difficult to change the thinking of a person like in a cult to change. I haven’t read further but now I get it why it is difficult to undo the damage.
The good part is that this book makes me think! The bad part is that if I have to take Neurocognitive Testing again, I know how to cheat to get a better score!