A good week here. Dinner, as usual, at my brother-in-law’s. He’s an excellent cook, and there are always leftovers to take home! My sister was at her son’s in Massachusetts, babysitting for her granddaughter, but Kevin still had five of us for dinner. Then, yesterday, she came over so we could watch “The Pirates of Penzance”. We’re heading to New York City on Friday, so we wanted to see the original before we see “Pirates: A Pirates of Penzance Musical”. It stars David Hyde Pierce and Ramin Karimloo, and the setting has been changed to New Orleans. I adore Ramin Karimloo, and he is the Pirate King. While we’re in New York, we’re also going to see “Gypsy” with Audra McDonald and “Good Night and Good Luck” with George Clooney. Should be a fun weekend, and we’ll be back Sunday in time for dinner. Or, we will if everything goes well on the return flight.
I’m currently reading Creeping Venom, a mystery published in 1946 by Sheila Pim Aubrey Hamilton sent it to me, thinking I’d enjoy this humorous mystery called “An Irish Village Mystery”. I’ve only read thirty pages so far, but she’s right. The goat is the book in comic relief. When the wealthiest woman in the village dies after eating poisoned escargot, the police suspect her heir because the strict Protestant woman threatened to cut her cousin out of the will if he married a local Catholic woman. So far, I’m enjoying this humorous mystery with interesting characters.
What about you? What are you doing this week? What are you reading?
We had some rain over the weekend. Getting a bit late for that sort of thing, but we’ll take it.
This week I read:
Cat Got Your Killer by Sofie Ryan; The best of these books tend to have a sort of dream like beginning, and this is no different. The end is dream like too, although I personally might have used a different ending. Still, I’d put it in the top third of this series.
Couplehood by Paul Reiser. This book was all over the place in the 1990’s. Some of the humor is dated now, but still pretty funny in parts. Whatever happened to that guy?
The Midnight Caller by Scott Blade; Spec ops guy Jack Widow is seeing New York City for his birthday, when a lady calls his room begging for help. Widow finds himself in almost too much trouble to handle. I kept wondering why he didn’t just call the police.
Lesa, your plans for your weekend in New York City sound wonderful! I can’t wait to hear how you like the shows.
Here in Canada this week we survived the election for new prime minister. Certainly with less drama than other countries lately. The only weird thing I personally witnessed was the smirk given me by the woman in line behind me when her ‘processing’ person was quicker than mine and she ended up ahead of me at the voting booth. I thought it was immature behaviour considering she was an adult. Oh well. I guess she enjoyed the ‘win’.
Two books this week:
THE SIRENS by Emilia Hart
Historical fantasy, the story follows four main characters and is told from three different timelines:
– in 1800 we follow twin sisters Mary and Eliza; imprisoned for killing a man even though it was in self-defence, they are on board a convict ship sailing from Ireland to New South Wales in Australia.
– in 1999 there is Jess, a high school student with artistic talent who struggles with feeling different because of an ‘allergy to water’ and how it affects the appearance of her skin, and whose art teacher nevertheless makes her feel special
– in 2019 Lucy is horrified to have woken in the night after a dream, with her hands around the throat of a former lover; she runs away to her older sister’s home for help
Despite the various periods in time, the troubles these four women are experiencing all seem to be connected to the small town of Comber Bay in Australia – the site of a shipwreck, as well as where eight men have disappeared from over the past few decades.
The story is about recurring dreams, sleepwalking, mermaids, the strength of women healing from personal traumas, and of sisterhood throughout generations. In the acknowledgments the author says ‘fundamentally, this novel is about the ability of water -and sisterhood – to heal and transform.’.
The writing is wonderful and is why I wanted to keep reading, but the characters themselves felt a little flat. So much happens to them and yet only one or two stood out enough for me to feel a connection. But still, the story itself was compelling despite that and I found myself reading quickly to find out what ultimately happened to these women, and I was thoroughly immersed in the various timeline stories.
I absolutely loved the author’s first book, Weyward. It was a favourite of mine. While I did enjoy The Sirens, for me it wasn’t quite as good as Weyward.
ONE DEATH AT A TIME by Abbi Waxman
I’ve read almost all the author’s previous novels, and especially loved ‘The Bookish Life of Nina Hill’. Despite a couple of quibbles, ‘One Death at a Time’ is my second favourite book by this author. It’s the first mystery she’s written and I enjoyed it. The first chapter had me laughing out loud, and set the tone for the rest of the story.
They don’t know each other yet, but we are introduced to the two main characters as they attend what turns into a hilariously dramatic AA meeting. Julia is older, a famous former movie actress and now a lawyer. She obtained her law degree in prison while serving a 15-year sentence for a murder she’s always maintained she did not commit. Mason is a 20-something, three years sober woman who is still trying to put her life back together. She volunteers to be Julia’s sobriety sponsor. Together they make a delightfully unusual and fun duo as they, along with some amusing side characters, work to clear Julia’s name since she’s just been accused of another murder and the police aren’t working very hard to find any other suspects.
My quibbles are that there are a few too many characters and I found myself trying to remember who was who again, and it sometimes seemed they were taking up space in the story but not doing anything to help it along.
But there were lots of fast and entertainingly madcap scenes, and fun wisecracking dialogue. At the same time there was a bit of seriousness with the issue of addiction being part of the story. And a bit of found-family as well, which was nice and a bit unusual in a mystery I think. Anyway, it was quite a fun book to read, and did an excellent job of distracting me from the real world for a while. I liked it.
Sounds like a great weekend. Hope you enjoy it.
I’m about a third of the way into Bait and Swiss by Korina Moss, the sixth in her Cheese Shop series. I’m really enjoying it so far. Definitely intrigued.
So happy that you have a book with humor! We really need that in these times. I have been furiously entering to win books on GoodReads and Library Thing, they are my escape right now. Books have been popping up everywhere! YAY!
I got two from Vine, Now reading The Glory in Your Story by Monique Rodriguez. I was a little afraid to take it because of the title but author’s smile prompted me to pick it1 She tells of growing up in Chicago’s southside, her mother trying to hold the family together by working as secretary at a hospital and her drug addicted father. Her mother knew that nurses made more money than she did so she encouraged the author to become a nurse and she did. She married and had two daughters and then a son, Milan who was on life support for a while until she and her husband realized that he would never be able to survive. Grief came in with heavy footsteps. She cannot face going a back to nursing and she has expressed what she learned from the experience and it is very well written on how to deal with it and make it through. Turning away from being a nurse, she embarks on a second career with the full support of all her famiiy.
Also from Vine, Heartland, by Nicholas Alla about Tulsa, Oklahoma moved from being a gas and oil economy to a center for tech and research and development and venture capture city.
Then on Monday, three books that I won from GoodReads came on the same day! I have won more, but I have learned that ones that you want the most don’t always come, even with a staff member asking twice! Then LibraryThing announced that I won two books this month. I feel book rich!
I am still struggling with pain and having trouble walking, got to message my rheumatologist about what happened with the infusion. I can’t get out and do much because of so much pain but the joy of reading is definitely here!!
Good morning Lesa and everybody,
I hope you have a wonderful time in New York Lesa and that all of your shows are good. I did enjoy the film version of Goodnight and Good Luck, and I bet George Clooney looks much the same as he did back then!
We’ve had some excellent weather – yesterday was really too hot for me (around 70F) but I know some of you would have found it only ‘warm.’
Yesterday I *finally* finished THE TIGER IN THE SMOKE by Margery Allingham. It seems absolutely ridiculous to admit that it took me a week to read a simple mystery, but oh my goodness what a slog it was. I had whole days when I just didn’t pick that book up at all – I really should’ve abandoned it, but for some reason I pressed on.
No more Golden Age mysteries for me. If I ever mention starting another one (apart, maybe, from Christie or Sayers, and then only some of theirs) please will someone tell me to stop?!
So now I am reading COMFORT EATING by Grace Dent. Dent is one of the Guardian’s food critics, and also the creator and host of the Comfort Eating podcast, which I love. In each episode she invites a celebrity (always an interesting one) to her own house and asks them to bring a plate of when nobody is looking. She has rules, which she sets out in this companion book – no ‘artisan’ anything, nothing that needs long cooking, nothing healthy….she wants people to be honest, and not pretending that, when alone in the house and in front of the TV, they make themselves a healthy quinoa salad.
Some of the things her guests bring in sound, to me, inedible, but whatever floats your boat. My favourites are the ones whose snacks include a lot of toast and butter, because that is exactly what I would have. Of course, after discussing the snack, Dent goes on to ask each guest about their food-related memories, taking them through their lives – what did they eat as a child? What do they eat if they are away from home? (She admits to buying small tins of Peppa Pig spaghetti hoops and eating them in her hotel room with the teaspoon provided for the coffee.)
Grace is very down to earth and funny. She comes from a solidly Northern working class family, and although her childhood was very different from mine, I recognise so much that she says about the foods of the time. The London middle class chatterati may have been reading Elizabeth David, and bringing anchovies and exotic cheeses back from their holidays in France, but Grace and her brother, like most of the rest of us, spent holidays eating cheese on toast in a caravan on the Cumbrian coast while outside the rain lashed relentlessly down.
And although she’s now paid to eat in Michelin starred restaurants, Grace’s reviews cut through any pretentiousness like a knife, and she says she still enjoys the bread basket (and especially the butter) more than the meal that follows it.
I’m flying through this book, which is a relief as, bogged down in that Allingham novel, I had started to think my reading mojo had deserted me.
I’ve also listened to two good books on BBC Sounds this week. The first was EM Forster’s MAURICE, of which I think I saw the film many years ago, and the second was a new book, MAYBE I’M AMAZED by Guardian music journalist John Harris. Harris and his wife have an autistic and largely non verbal son; in the book he talks about James’ diagnosis at the age of 3, their struggles to get the help he needed, and the important part that music has played, and continues to play in his life (James is now, I think, about 18) and the difference that certain music teachers have made. While the book exposes the many failings of our hard pressed mental health services, it is also a heartwarming story about a family, its challenges, and its ultimate triumphs.
I’ve had some lovely walks over the past few days – there is so much colour everywhere now, from daffodils to apple, cherry and almond blossom, whin (gorse), cowslips, bluebells, flowering currants, Pieris and euonymus. I’ve been working away in our own garden, and when I took my early morning tour today (which takes all of 5 minutes…) I was so pleased to see the peony about to burst into bloom, the pansies flowering, and buds appearing on several shrubs.
This afternoon I am going to a talk by a local author on ‘How to get published.’ I don’t actually have anything TO publish, but I’m still interested. Then tomorrow evening we are at the Tivoli Theatre in Aberdeen to see The Signatures, a Northern Soul tribute act that looks like fun. I don’t know if anyone has seen the film NORTHERN SOUL? It’s an excellent (fictional) picture of the emergence of Northern Soul in Manchester and other English cities and towns in the 1970s and 80s, and thr drug culture which unfortunately grew alongside it.
On television I finished the Australian series THE NEWSREADER, which I enjoyed. I’ve now been sucked into PARAMEDICS ON SCENE, which is a series following ambulance crews in various parts of Scotland. Each week focuses on three towns or cities plus the central control room at South Queensferry (outside Edinburgh). I am always so impressed by the calmness, professionalism and kindness of the ambulance crews, but it’s also interesting to see what goes on in the control room, and how the people who answer 999 calls cope with distraught callers, extremely difficult situations, and the problems arising from the lack of enough ambulances and crews to meet the ever-increasing demand.
There are numerous programmes in this series, and it’s quite addictive.
in between I continue to re-watch SCHITT’S CREEK, which always cheers me up before I go to bed.
I hope you all have a great week – I think our fine weather is set to end in thunderstorms later today, but it was good while it lasted.
It’s been a quiet week here with weather in the upper seventies so we’ve been eating lunch and dinner on the porch.
I finally had a week where I liked all of the books I read.
The Lobster Chronicles: Life on a Very Small Island by Linda Greenlaw. A woman returns to the small Maine island where she grew up to try her hand at lobstering.
An ARC of Dogged Pursuit by David Rosenfelt. It’s a prequel to his Andy Carpenter series and features Andy’s first big case as a defense attorney. I had trouble putting it down.
The Very Long, Very Strange Life of Isaac Dahl by Bart Yates. The premise of this book is that it’s the memoir of a 96 year old former journalist. He tells his life story through a series of 12 short stories, each one a day in his life and, each day is set 8 years apart. Some of the days featured are memorable days in history and some aren’t. And none of the days are cheerful and upbeat. I really didn’t expect to like this book but somehow I did. Ultimately it was a story about a family who loved each other and accepted each other for who they were, warts and all.
Happy Thursday at Lesa’s, everyone!
Safe and fun travels, Lesa – tell Ramin i said Hey!
what did i read?! BEST book!
A new Miford novel. Jan Karon says that after the death of her daughter she felt no reason to live, or to write. But a few years have passed and Ms. Karon found her way back to Mitford and gives us My Beloved.
Description –
“When Father Tim’s wife, Cynthia, asks what he wants for Christmas, he pens the answer in a love letter that bares his most private feelings. Then the letter goes missing and circulates among his astonished neighbors. So much for private.
Can a letter change a life? Ask Helene, the piano teacher who has avoided her feelings for a lifetime. Ask Hope, the village bookseller who desperately needs something that’s impossibly out of reach. Or, if you’d like to know how a brush with death can be the portal to a happy marriage, Cynthia will tell you all about it.
In My Beloved, Harley gets an important letter of his own; a broken heart teaches the Old Mayor, Esther Cunningham, a lesson long in coming; and thanks to Lace and Dooley, readers get what they’ve been waiting for: Sadie.
Poignant, hilarious, and life-affirming, My Beloved sets a generous table for millions of readers who love these characters like family. With Karon’s signature humanity shining through on every page, this is a season of life in Mitford you won’t want to miss.”
i loved this book so much.