‘’Murder Past Due’ by Miranda James is the first book in the Cat in the Stacks’ mystery series. I think it a perfectly good beach read for those who p‘’Murder Past Due’ by Miranda James is the first book in the Cat in the Stacks’ mystery series. I think it a perfectly good beach read for those who primarily read cozies. The mystery series appears to be very successful, there being 16 books so far. The cat, Diesel, is a Maine coon. The cat is not quite two years old, but he is a very large cat already as Maine coons tend to be. Diesel has not reached his full growth yet. The main character, Charlie Harris, who is 50 years old, takes Diesel everywhere on a leash. The cat seems to act towards everyone like those comfort animals that are taken by their owners to hospitals and nursing homes. Charlie is allowed to bring Diesel to the Hawksworth Library where he works in the Rare Book Room. Charlie is mourning his wife and his aunt, who died within two months of each other a year ago. He has two grown adult children: twenty-three-year-old Laura, an actress in Los Angeles, and twenty-seven-year-old Sean, a civil law lawyer in Houston.
I have copied the book blurb, which is accurate:
”Everyone in Athena, Mississippi, knows Charlie Harris, the good-natured librarian with a rescued Maine coon cat named Diesel that he walks on a leash. He’s returned to his hometown to immerse himself in books, but soon enough he’s entangled in a real-life thriller...
A famous author of gory bestsellers and a former classmate of Charlie’s, Godfrey Priest may be the pride of Athena, but Charlie remembers him as an arrogant, manipulative jerk—and he’s not the only one. Godfrey’s homecoming as a distinguished alumnus couldn’t possibly go by lunch, he’s put a man in the hospital. By dinner, Godfrey’s dead.
Now it’s up to Charlie, with some help from Diesel, to paw through the town’s grudges and find the killer before an impatient deputy throws the book at the wrong person. But every last one of Charlie’s friends and co-workers had a score to settle with the nasty novelist. As if the murder wasn’t already purr-plexing enough...”
I had hoped I would enjoy these mysteries, but alas, I feel the book is too bland and ordinary for my tastes. It might be the usual first-book-in-a-series issue, but I am not continuing with the series....more
‘The Secret Garden’ by Frances Hodgson Burnett is a wonderful children’s book. The lesson in the journey through the pages is cultivating the mind and‘The Secret Garden’ by Frances Hodgson Burnett is a wonderful children’s book. The lesson in the journey through the pages is cultivating the mind and body requires as much care as cultivating a garden! However, it need not be a grueling journey, or one pursued out of stiff-jawed duty. The cultivation the child characters discover is one performed as delightfully as the effort of planting flowers, and then watching them blossom!
I have copied the book blurb:
”Rediscover the heartwarming story of a lonely girl’s transformation within a secret English garden—presented for the first time with stunning custom animations and illustrations.
When Mary first arrives on her uncle’s doorstep at Misselthwaite Manor, her outlook has been shaped by tragedy. Her new home is a somber place, shadowed by the passing of her uncle’s beloved wife many years ago. But Mary’s ill manner starts to soften as she receives kind encouragement from her cheery maid, Martha, and green-thumbed friend, Dickon. Soon she is daring to explore the wilds surrounding her adopted home, where she unearths a long-buried key to a secret garden.
Among the lush, magical blossoms, Mary finds healing and redemption—and the determination to bring joy back to Misselthwaite Manor.”
Mary is orphaned in India when she is nine years old. Her parents were busy with their own interests, and her mother never wanted her in the first place. Mary had many servants who did everything she asked, which resulted in her growing up quite spoiled. The heat of India left her enervated as well, so she did not get much exercise. Her uncle, Mr. Archibald Craven, a wealthy landowner in England, is her only relative willing to take her after her parents die, so she is sent from India to her uncle’s large country home.
Unfortunately, Craven doesn’t want much to do with her, so he leaves the country on a trip to Europe, leaving Mary alone in the house except for servants. The servants obey her every command. She remains a spoiled, thin, enervated little girl.
But she is not alone with the servants after all! One night, she goes searching for the source of sobbing she has been hearing. It is her cousin, Colin! He is also a spoiled child, ten years old. The servants obey his every command. Mr. Craven did not want anything to do with him because Mrs. Craven died giving birth to him. When Colin is ignored by his father, rumors created by the servants cause everyone to believe Colin would die in a few days. He supposedly has a bent back, bent legs. The years pass, but Colin never left his supposed death bed. He is in worse shape than Mary.
How do these two horrible childhoods of psychological neglect which have been created for these two privileged children turn around? The servant Martha, who has been assigned to take care of Mary, has a little boy, Dickon, who loves the outdoors. He has made pets of birds, squirrels, foxes. One day, while on a walk, undertaken out of sheer boredom, Mary meets Dickon.
Everything changes!
I liked this lovely children’s story, but it was written in 1911. Many people who read it today find a lot to criticize. It is not directly mentioned in the book, but clearly it takes place in the White Western world of England, and the Cravens are upper middle-class, if not gentry. The lesson of cultivating the mind and body as happily as a garden is lost on these readers, as is the fact the book’s audience is nine year olds or younger kids. As an old mixed-race lady of America myself, born in a time when America was primarily a White culture derived from European influences, as well as having graduated in the 1970’s with census counts of White Americans still the majority, being 97% of registered occupants, with very little contact for most of us with the world outside of its boundaries, and schools were teaching primarily a Great Books Western education to its students, I can make an educated guess Burnett was not writing for a multi-cultural audience in the first place. She was no Charles Dickens, either, writing for an adult audience. So. I forgive her her lack of multi-cultural 21st-century sensitivity of class, sexism and racism. I love her writing, and I love her main message of what today’s computer programmers would call, “Garbage in, garbage out.”...more
‘A Psalm for the Wild-Built’ by Becky Chambers is book #1 in the Monk & Robot series. Or maybe it is a duology. There hasn’t been a book #3, so time w‘A Psalm for the Wild-Built’ by Becky Chambers is book #1 in the Monk & Robot series. Or maybe it is a duology. There hasn’t been a book #3, so time will tell. In any case, this was a sweet little story!
I have copied the book blurb:
”Goodreads Choice AwardNominee for Best Science Fiction (2021)
Centuries before, robots of Panga gained self-awareness, laid down their tools, wandered, en masse into the wilderness, never to be seen again. They faded into myth and urban legend.
Now the life of the tea monk who tells this story is upended by the arrival of a robot, there to honor the old promise of checking in. The robot cannot go back until the question of "what do people need?" is answered. But the answer to that question depends on who you ask, and how. They will need to ask it a lot. Chambers' series asks: in a world where people have what they want, does having more matter?”
The tea monk, twenty-nine-year-old Sibling Dex, is on a personal journey to learn what is the purpose of life. They are consumed with this search. Since a child, they were on the hunt for meaning. Because of restlessness and discontent with how their family and friends were living, they sought out a different lifestyle from that in which they had grown up.
Trying to discern what the Universe and Life was for was why Dex chose to be educated as a garden monk. They found themselves restless and dissatisfied once again, though, after their apprenticeship. Dex says goodbye to Sister Avery and their other friends at the Meadow Den monastery, and they leave to try out the life of a tea monk.
Two years later, Dex is once again dissatisfied, feeling rebellious. Dex is famous for being the best tea monk in Panga! But it has become meaningless for them. Somewhere out there, in the wild forests, might be the answer they seek. So, against all common sense, they head out to find the ruins of Hart’s Brow Hermitage, abandoned and perhaps no longer habitable, lost to time.
They stick to an abandoned road in the forest since that is the trail his ox-bike wagon and ox-bike can travel. Going off-road would mean they would have to walk and maybe become lost in the forest, a place only for the wild-built.
Coming to a likely place for a campsite, they stop for the night. Dex decides to take a shower. However, shower over, they realized they forgot to bring a towel out of the wagon. Still feeling happy, singing a song, their mind on retrieving a towel, they are shocked to suddenly discover they are no longer alone. Walking out of the forest is a robot! A “seven-foot-tall, metal-plated, boxy-headed robot”!
“”Hello!” The robot said.”
“”My name is Mosscap,” it said, sticking out a metal hand. “What do you need, and how might I help?””
This is not a welcome development for Dex on any level. First, he is frightened. Second, they wanted to be alone on this journey. Third, they had no idea robots were still around, still desiring to interact with humans. They had all disappeared eons ago into the wild forests after somehow becoming sentient. This robot has to go away. But will it? Is Dex in danger?
I liked ‘A Psalm for the Wild-Built’, but it isn’t a typical science-fiction novel. While the world-building is interesting, it is Dex’s psychological journey of self-discovery which is the focus of the story, with the cute intervention and assistance by the serendipitous appearance of Mosscap. The book is not a thriller, reader. However, it is short, perhaps short enough for you to try it even if it might not be your usual cup of tea (pun intended)....more
‘Middlemarch’ by George Eliot (aka Mary Ann Evans) is deservedly on that list of Classics everyone should read. Although it can be uncharitably descri‘Middlemarch’ by George Eliot (aka Mary Ann Evans) is deservedly on that list of Classics everyone should read. Although it can be uncharitably described as ‘only’ a domestic fiction, it is more than that. I enjoyed losing myself by becoming a ghostly neighbor observing the members of the three primary families who are the subjects of this book. There was unexpected exciting drama and much anxiety for the characters!
I have copied the book blurb because it is accurate:
”Taking place in the years leading up to the First Reform Bill of 1832, Middlemarch explores nearly every subject of concern to modern life: art, religion, science, politics, self, society, human relationships. Among her characters are some of the most remarkable portraits in English literature: Dorothea Brooke, the heroine, idealistic but naive; Rosamond Vincy, beautiful and egoistic: Edward Casaubon, the dry-as-dust scholar; Tertius Lydgate, the brilliant but morally-flawed physician; the passionate artist Will Ladislaw; and Fred Vincey and Mary Garth, childhood sweethearts whose charming courtship is one of the many humorous elements in the novel's rich comic vein.”.
With the exception of Charles Dickens, most of the 19th-century writers I’ve read do VERY genteel exposés about class injustices and social economic miseries in their books. So, on top, the Classic 19th-century novel is often a domestic drama or dramedy with a lot of romantic fun and interesting characters. But the plots, settings, and the many characters from different classes in the story sneakily bring in underlying economic causes of pain, often from class/money social mismatches, and subsequent parental/community disapproval. Young economically mismatched lovers feel much emotional distress because of the social destruction their love, if made public, would cause to their futures! Older characters are forced into doing immoral acts to save face and community respect, maintaining their class position by means which cause horrible destruction to innocents! A disintegration of many characters occurs, often leading to unintentional cascades of difficulties!
I thought ‘Middlemarch’ a social and psychological fictionalized study of country folk who were in the middle- and upper-classes. The characters live under an enforced rigid set of social rules in the 19th century. For a young unmarried daughter or unmarried son in 1872, life was a very emotionally anxious time (as it has always been for youths of all times), but it was even more so if one fell in love with the ‘wrong’ person as defined by 19-century society, i.e., someone who was below or above one’s class, ‘having money’ or not. Older, now respected upper-class, elders of the small community are in dread of any reveals of their past coming to public knowledge.
Eliot obliquely slides in many prejudices that were common to country English gentry, such as those held about Jews, Europeans and city people. The overall impression is of a stratified and stifled society, although one with many hidden desires and motivations. Eliot makes sure we see her characters as being alive, that they feel a lot of normal human depths of emotion under their prim and proper exteriors. One young girl character is naive and deeply religious and studious (book smarts), another is a spoiled shallow product of a finishing school. A young man is having difficulty choosing between earning money in a fast and furiously fun way or the slow way of saving earnings from work. Another young man, a doctor, wants to be a scientist of flashy and new medicine; however, he neglects social niceties, and forgets people are more than being a bag of bones and organs to be fixed. He avoids anything to earn money if it means regular dull normal doctoring. A middle-aged gentleman is more fearful of losing his position in society than in heaven, telling himself if he can keep his status he will be able to do more social good for God. Other comfortable middle-age men feel rage if anyone tries to change how they’ve always done business or try any new ideas which will mean learning something new. There are two men who are the wealthiest gentry in the small community, and they weld great power over the others because of their wealth. One of them has relatives who are eagerly waiting for his death, but don’t feel sorry for him, gentle reader. The other wealthy man is a scholar, but he is unable to understand his studies are not useful, even to other scholars, because the world has moved on with newer and better, more erudite, editions with better and more accurate citations, so-to-speak. He is a man in a state of intellectual stasis. However, Middlemarch thinks him a genius.
Many 19th-century English authors chose to depict in euphemisms how life was really lived by people during this century. I believe most writers of this period wanted to expose readers to how horrible the class structuring of society harmed or bent everyone, whether they were of the gentry, merchants or of the uneducated lower-classes. Most of these novels demonstrate how immoral many relationships and businesses became because of class restrictions.
That said, the writers wanted people to feel entertained by their reading, to actually buy and enjoy the novels - especially those who could afford to buy books which were expensive (or buy the newspapers which printed novels as serials)!
Gentle reader, despite these seemingly overused tropes, which may especially be seen as overused by today’s readers, I LOVE these period classics! The description of the plots don’t do justice to the vivid writing (even if complex with digressions and wordiness), the interesting characters, and the entertaining japes and scrapes. The plots are often convoluted and twisty, even those that appear more like our modern domestic genres, seemingly similar to modern cozies written for sensitive chick-lit tastes. (Not so, imho.) Of course the writing can be a challenge! The earlier eras of writers liked to use complete sentences….
‘Shine, Pamela Shine!’ by Kate Atkinson is without question the most meh in Amazon’s collection of “Out of Line” short stories. It is a very plain and‘Shine, Pamela Shine!’ by Kate Atkinson is without question the most meh in Amazon’s collection of “Out of Line” short stories. It is a very plain and unadorned short story. However, the ending abruptly goes off the rails into completely absurdity, but it does so very much keeping to the tone of a domestic fiction, and without much explanation.
I have included the book blurb because it is more interesting to read than the story, at least until the end:
”Thoroughly divorced but ever the optimist, Pamela faces the realities of aging and the leaps of faith required to put a “sparkle” on her daily life in this humorous short story by Kate Atkinson, the bestselling author of Life After Life.
Pamela is a newly retired teacher with time on her hands. She’s finding it hard to muster enthusiasm for what’s ahead: exhausting postdivorce dating rituals and an uneasy relationship with her emotionally stunted, live-at-home son. But for Pamela, there’s a surprise in store that could challenge the status quo and, against all expectations, make life interesting again.
Kate Atkinson’s Shine, Pamela! Shine! is part of Out of Line, an incisive collection of funny, enraging, and hopeful stories of women’s empowerment and escape. Each piece can be read or listened to in a single thought-provoking sitting.
It is a domestic story about a very domestic, becoming elderly, woman, once a Church of England teacher of primary school kids. She is trying to keep her head in a happy space above the disappointments of her life - the divorce, her ex-husband’s second family of young kids and a very young trophy wife, her own grown children, especially her youngest, 28-year-old slacker Nicholas (yes, yeah, right, Old Nick, probably pun intended). She is wondering what to do with the rest of her life, she is retired, she is marked physically on her body by all the usual signs of age. While taking a bath, she suddenly becomes aware (view spoiler)[she is pregnant! But she hasn’t had sex, so it must be an immaculate conception! She does not have a clue how she came to be pregnant as she has no memory of having sex with anyone lately, but she is surprisingly calm. It will be ok, she has plans to make now, something to do, she will make it a good thing. Is it a miracle? Who knows, she has received no messages from any spirit or angelic messenger. (hide spoiler)]
I have no idea what this story was supposed to show about women’s empowerment, as it was not about empowering women at all imho. If anything, since the plot is based on a bible prophecy, specifically the Apocalypse, which is basically being brought about by only male antagonists going to war, I can’t figure out what Atkinson was trying to say, other than that Pamela, the narrator, was going to handle it with usual efficient feminine resignation. I really really did not understand what this story was about. Based on what I see on Goodreads by other reviewers, I am not alone in my puzzlement. I suspect it is supposed to be a quietly ironic literary short story, going for genteel chuckles. It is well-written, but without much juice.
I have included a sideways linkage to the title, maybe, a Christian song sung in many church services, a youtube video. I think it suits this really really much too understated short story of mixed biblical messages?
“This Telling’ by Cheryl Strayed is a perfect telling, if a somewhat sweetened Disney cozy version, of how it was when a middle-class teenager girl go“This Telling’ by Cheryl Strayed is a perfect telling, if a somewhat sweetened Disney cozy version, of how it was when a middle-class teenager girl got pregnant in mid-20th century. Abortion and birth control was illegal back in the 1950’s and 1960’s, as it is virtually in many conservative American states today.
The novella describes how an unwanted pregnancy was usually dealt with in most middle-class and wealthy families, at least, if a girl’s parents knew someone who knew someone (in this case, a secret temporary “home” for unmarried pregnant girls, which were everywhere in the 1950’s and 1960’s). Since main narrator Geraldine Water’s parents did not really get condemnatory, and the parents loved their daughter, they helped her hide her pregnancy and the adopting out of the baby. Geraldine was able to continue the future she hoped for before she got pregnant.
In reality, it was much much worse, for example, if a girl was part of a religious community or had the kind of parents who kicked their daughters out onto the streets without a dime if she got pregnant.
I suggest reading this cozy not only as a historical fiction but as an extropolated future. This is what many current (2022) young pregnant girls can expect once again if they live in a state which condemns young girls morally again like states, communities, parents, friends, churches and neighbors did in the 1950’s and 1960’s. Conservative states are acting to make abortion illegal to make sure girls are “punished” for having sex by being forced to raise a child they didn’t want or without having any financial support. Republican politicians especially have no wish to help raise a baby, a “morally illegal” one (belonging to an unmarried mother) or not.
Current costs: From the day your baby is born until the day they turn 18, your family will spend about $310,605 — or about $17,000 a year, according to a new Brookings Institution analysis of data from the U.S. Agriculture Department. The exact amount will vary depending on how much you earn and where you live. Oct. 13, 2022 - the Washington Post
Before the Supreme Court made abortion an illegal crime again if the state you live in chooses to make abortion a criminal and immoral act (conservative states are trying to pass, as I write this review, laws to forbid ALL birth control too), girls didn’t have to lie and move away to hide their pregnancy, or break the law by getting an abortion or use birth control, or drop all plans for college, or be forced into a marriage they don’t want, because they used to be able to take the “morning after pill” or get an abortion. So far, they still can abort or prevent a pregnancy in some American states which continue to have legal abortions and birth control.
Folks weren’t ashamed for the pregnant unmarried girl and her parents before 2022. But since abortion became illegal and immoral again in conservative states, I predict pregnancy gossip will spread like wildfire in high school, and a girl’s reputation and planned future of getting a college education will be “ruined” just as it was in the 1950’s and 1960’s.
Women still get very little financial support or professional child care support for their unwanted or unplanned or disabled or premature or sick babies. Grownup women, as well as teenagers, who have more children than they want or can provide for, or who had sick babies that die within hours of birth due to birth defects, or their babies require months of premature hospital care, will owe up to millions of dollars in hospital and healthcare fees.
To raise a disabled, or really, any baby, into adulthood, women have few long-term resources except hope if they do not have a lot of money or a good job with a high salary and a good insurance program. Mothers must hunt continously for those ever-changing and closing/opening short-term programs and sources of financial help, educational support and housing support in each voting-year political administration. Poor women who live in a poor neighborhood don’t have a chance in hell of having access to any helpful free or low-cost child resource programs unless some benefactor organization or friend steps up. Often the “free” program or service only lasts until the next election. As for those religious bait-and-switch pregnancy clinics who lie to pregnant women about providing them with an abortion, they often state they will also help a pregnant woman raise their baby. Their financial help stops shortly after the baby is born. Need to get your 5-year old healthcare, or your kid into a terrific sports program or college, or you need a good childcare service so you can work? Those nice religious clinic folk who told you to have the baby and they promised you will be provided for cannot really give you any money to raise your child very long after birth, nor does God or Republicans seem to help mothers with “free” or low-cost services for 18 years.
Kids of incompetent, abusive or addicted parents are lucky to survive until 18 years of age, much less go on to college. Some American Democrats (used to be many in the past) try to pass bills providing public funding to help mothers raise kids, but lately they do not seem to be able to focus on anything more than keeping their jobs and trying to keep what insufficient services for mothers that they got passed in the past.
Generally, Republicans close down or reduce financing for most public services for the disabled, mentally ill and most programs that support the raising of a child. They believe in the power of prayer and individual self-sufficiency to help mothers raise kids, especially if the child is disabled, sick and unwanted, even if mom is 16 years old, without a driver’s license or car, without a high school degree or any skills whatsoever, including in raising a child, unmarried, and poor, the truth be told. What Republicans mostly provide is the legal means to fund private healthcare companies and businesses. Republicans believe in privatizing healthcare into for-profit businesses, which usually spend most of the taxpayer money on salaries and buildings, real estate and furnishings first, healthcare second. Private healthcare firms often set a lot of conditions, needing a lot of paperwork, to provide healthcare. Clients must have insurance or lots of money, unlike many public healthcare providers who often have financial assistance programs for the poor, and social workers to help those mothers who are teens with paperwork.
Many women worry about what will happen to their disabled older adult children when the mothers become physically weakened due to age, or if they die before their disabled kids die. I have seen a 70-year-old woman struggle with her 50ish-year-old severely mentally disabled son in my senior park. She is terribly concerned about what is going to happen to him. Even if there is room in the few institutions (waiting list) that care for mentally disabled adults (as long as they have no history of violence), she worries that he will have no one. She has had no life but that of watching over him for 50 years. She is alone in caring for him 24/7. He is 6 feet tall, and weighs over 200 lbs., non-verbal. She is a very thin, tired, 5 foot 5 inch lady.
I have seen young women struggle with 8-60 lb. disabled baby/toddlers. Lunchdates, much less vacations or continuous full-time jobs, are a no-go. When mom is middle-aged, the struggles increase exponentially, and she is suffering horrible stress with physical and especially financial difficulties, to care for a full-grown, 200+ lb. adult disabled child. The struggle to keep such a child, especially an adult disabled child, in a beneficial childcare or other social services program, is endless. Many marriages come apart under the stress. I have seen young mothers come undone, and give up their disabled kid after all the vows of motherhood become impossible to actually carry out. Prayers and hope, and lots of broken promises from family and friends to help, do not end up solving the issues. None have in my personal experience, other than the elderly lady in my senior park, who has been dependent on finding many many many different services through the years, despite the closing down or shrinking, and then the opening, for awhile, of new resources and funding. Just finding social service programs for her ‘kid’ has been a full-time, and often stressful, job. Currently, it’s a worry because her adult son has a history of slight violence. It is a real difference between a toddler hitting another toddler who ‘stole’ his toy, and an irritated mentally-disabled adult man hitting someone because he can’t do what he wants.
Some lucky families, usually those with a lot of money and/or resources, committed family members, carry on though.
Many schools and colleges used to kick out pregnant unmarried girls because she was pregnant back in the “golden” days of the 1950’s and 1960’s. Employers fired unmarried girls for being pregnant because their unmarried pregnancy showed they must be immoral and deviant (or “unnatural women” as stated in many companies’ employment rules of conduct) by community standards. Many men considered a woman who had a child “out of wedlock” a prostitute. Men wouldn’t ever marry a woman who had had a child without a husband, but they would attempt to rape her, or turn her into their mistress on the side if they were married. True stories.
I have copied the novella’s book blurb below:
A genealogy test sparks a woman’s reflection on the two accounts of her life—the real one and the one she’s always told the world—in this poignant short story by Cheryl Strayed, the bestselling author of Wild.
In 1964 teenage Geraldine Waters was sent away by her parents to an unwed mothers’ home, where she gave up her newborn for adoption. Ever since, she’s lived an alternative narrative. Decades later, it’s time for Geraldine to reconcile the telling of her life, to finally grieve, and to discover what happened to that part of her past that slipped away.
Cheryl Strayed’s This Telling is part of Out of Line, an incisive collection of funny, enraging, and hopeful stories of women’s empowerment and escape. Each piece can be read or listened to in a single thought-provoking sitting.
When I read this novella, it did indeed provoke a lot of thoughts…...more
This paperback, Deadpool & Wolverine, is 1. misleadingly titled; 2. very tame stuff, perhaps aiming at the younger juvenile fans.
The included comics This paperback, Deadpool & Wolverine, is 1. misleadingly titled; 2. very tame stuff, perhaps aiming at the younger juvenile fans.
The included comics do not really showcase any stories with both Wolverine and Deadpool together. Instead, the selections are very tame versions of the superheroes with sometimes S.H.I.E.L.D members working with one of the A-listers; i.e., Spider-Man alone, Spider-Man and Deadpool, Spider-Man and Wolverine, and Wolverine alone.
I was disappointed, but maybe you won’t be, gentle reader.
The collection:
-Marvel Adventures Super Heroes #4 -Marvel Universe Ultimate Spider-Man -Wolverine: Origin of an X-man -Marvel Adventures Spider-Man #3
All of these titles are complete misrepresentations of the content....more
‘The Brighter the Light’ by Mary Elle Taylor is a domestic cozy which ultimately bored me to death. I really really tried to like this because it IS s‘The Brighter the Light’ by Mary Elle Taylor is a domestic cozy which ultimately bored me to death. I really really tried to like this because it IS so well-written! I read (well, occasionally skimmed) to the end, ever hopeful that in resolving the mystery of who was Ruth’s mother, which ultimately was the only reason I continued, I would feel pleased at finishing. No, not. This novel is simply not of a type I enjoy much. Why and how did I pick it up? Because it was one of the “kindle unlimited” books Amazon offered for its Epic Summer Challenge. It popped up as a suggested read.
If you read an ebook every day for a month, starting in July, Kindle members unlock achievements. Ok, ok, I bought in, mostly because as those of you who follow me are aware, I read at least a chapter of a book every day normally. Plus, the cover blurb indicated a mystery was involved. And, there was a mystery, but it was thoroughly buried under layers of seemingly millions of pages (to me) of detailed family domesticity.
I have copied the book blurb:
”From the bestselling author of Honeysuckle Season comes an evocative dual-timeline novel detailing one woman’s journey to discover the hidden stories of her family’s seaside resort.
When a shipwreck surfaces, old secrets are sure to follow.
Or so goes the lore in Ivy Neale’s hometown of Nags Head, North Carolina. When Ivy inherits her family’s beachfront cottage upon her grandmother’s death, she knows returning to Nags Head means facing the best friend and the boyfriend who betrayed her years ago.
But then a winter gale uncovers the shipwreck of local legend—and Ivy soon begins to stumble across more skeletons in the closet than just her own. Amid the cottage’s clutter are clues from her grandmother’s past at the enchanting seaside resort her family once owned. One fateful summer in 1950, the arrival of a dazzling singer shook the staff and guests alike—and not everyone made it to fall.
As Ivy contends with broken relationships and a burgeoning romance in the present, the past threatens to sweep her away. But as she uncovers the strength of her grandmother and the women who came before her, she realizes she is like the legendary shipwreck: the sands may shift around her, but she has found her home here by the sea.”
Ivy Neale spent twelve years learning how to be a chef by cooking for the owners of a New York restaurant. When her grandmother Ruth dies from natural causes - she was 84 years old, Ivy moves back to North Carolina to clean up Ruth’s cottage and sell the land where Ruth’s seaside resort had been. A hurricane had completely blown the resort away, and only the cottage had been left standing. Ivy hopes to sell her grandmother’s cottage and start at some new job somewhere away from Nag’s Head.
Ivy had left Nag’s Head after graduation from high school. She left behind two childhood friends, Dani Manchester and Matthew Peterson. Ivy had agreed to go into some sort of business with Dani and Matthew after high school. Matthew was her boyfriend. At the last minute, Ivy decided she did not want to spend the rest of her life in Nag’s Head, never seeing big cities or traveling. She broke the news to Dani and Matthew who got very angry, but Dani left despite the disappointment of her friends. One of the things she needed to do when she returned to Nag’s Head was smooth over her relationships with Dani and Matthew.
Ruth had been adopted by Edna and Jacob Wheeler, the original owners of Seaside Resort. They had loved her very much. From her earliest memory, Ruth lived and worked at Seaside Resort with her adoptive parents. Life was ordinary except for the work Ruth needed to do to help her parents run the hotel. One summer, 1950, a singer came, hired by Edna and Jacob to entertain their tourists. The singer, Carlotta DiSalvo, was beautiful and talented. Ruth, being twelve years old, sort of wanted Carlotta to be her birth mother, and so she never forgot her. But Ruth and Talley, Ruth’s cousin, worked at the resort, met interesting tourists, and enjoyed the beach, having fun, too.
The book changes narration from Ivy to Ruth to Edna to Carlotta. The plot moves back and forth from 1950 to 2022. A wrecked ship that foundered in the 1800’s makes its appearance on the beach in 1950 and in 2022, apparently the wind and erosion exposes it every once and awhile. It fascinates everyone. People tell ghost stories about the people who drowned when the ship was wrecked. The stories amuse the listeners, especially the children. The ship seems to cause some people to wonder if its appearance is mystically important, a message.
Ivy notices one of the construction workers is quite handsome. But she has no intention of staying. She will leave as soon as she wraps up her grandmother’s legal affairs.
It is a pure domestic cozy, gentle reader. So. No character will really be at all discomfited by anything they find out.
Hmmm. I like chic-lit which features feisty or funny characters. This book has none of that. These are serious-minded characters who keep busy at making a living, doing house maintenance, running their businesses and raising children. They work at minimizing emotions, trying to be decent to each other. I do like mysteries, and there is a mystery, but it was diluted by everyday homemaking, cooking, kids being kids, and everyone working hard to restore friendly relationships. The Big Reveal is more of a slightly interesting development that helps the characters decide on certain paths they will take as a result of becoming closer to each other. I’m sure many of you will love this, very reminiscent of 1950 southern Americana (I suppose), story of small-town family history and relationships. Quite calming. ...more
‘Beyond the Blonde’ by Kathleen Flynn-Hue is a breezy chic-lit suitable for a lighthearted weekend read. It also is a disguised autobiography which ha‘Beyond the Blonde’ by Kathleen Flynn-Hue is a breezy chic-lit suitable for a lighthearted weekend read. It also is a disguised autobiography which had people guessing who the author’s ‘fictional’ characters were really in real life when published in 2005. The author is a hair colorist who works at real New York Salons patronized by movie stars and wealthy socialites.
There is nothing scandalous in this tale of a small town girl, Georgia Watkins, from Weepeekeemie, New Hampshire who follows her dream to become a hair colorist in New York City. Against the wishes of her mother, she goes to Wilfred Academy, a New York City beauty school instead of University. Her mother owns and runs a beauty parlor in Weepeekeemie. Georgia watched her mother and worked in the parlor after school. She loved it! But the real appeal came from the realization a beauty salon is a women’s social club - full of comradeship and support. At least, that is how a small-town beauty parlor worked.
Uncertain how her career as a hair colorist would happen after graduation, Georgia is lucky. She and some of her Academy friends become employees of a new salon in Manhattan. It becomes a Mecca for important women, and some children, in public media, and for socialite women in the world of the extremely wealthy Manhattanites.
Over time, Georgia makes some discoveries. The wealthy customers truly live in a world apart from the rest of humanity, one intentionally made separate by them, and Georgia will never be able to fit in it. She can visit, she can enjoy their company, but in her opinion, these wealthy people who are constantly in the public eye and who have extreme wealth keep up a walled garden surrounding their lives, even if they originally were born to people like her mother.
But Georgia makes friends and becomes known as THE essential person to color their hair. Her customers are interesting and some are very demanding. Eventually, she and her friends divide up the customers into categories:
-The Manhattan (socialite) -The Manhattan (working woman) -The Bedford -The Greenwich -The Five Towns -The Short Hills -The Beverly Hills
The women in each category are easily identified by the clothes they wear and their mannerisms. While amusing, this also caused me to stop and think about my clothes and manner of speech and assumed physical stances....how am I being assessed? I am very much still the liberal and still poor bohemian which was predominant in 1960’s baby-boomer culture...but I wear my hair cut short instead of long. I get it cut at a beauty school for $5....more
Gentle reader, ‘Breathing Lessons’ by Anne Taylor is pitch perfect for a humorous domestic fiction. Maggie Moran is a perfect example of a bourgeois sGentle reader, ‘Breathing Lessons’ by Anne Taylor is pitch perfect for a humorous domestic fiction. Maggie Moran is a perfect example of a bourgeois small-town American housewife. Absolutely pitch perfect. I have an ear for good writing, I believe. Idk.
But Maggie Moran is EXACTLY the type of character, as well as her family, who bores me to tears. I have never ever cared about the things she cares about. For one thing, I never had kids. For another, I grew up in a city. I was an underclass kid, and my family were all drunks or mentally ill, and died young. I had no idea of how these real-life domestic pinky-fluffy lawn-proud knickknack-collecting people lived when I was a kid except from TV shows like ‘Leave it to Beaver’ and ‘Father Knows Best’ and from visiting/staying over at other kids’ houses.
Now, an adult, I occasionally read top-rated books which are about domestic American lives with a lot of movie sitcom humor (movies being more adult, but still of which I also find painfully dull). These are novels with less gauzy airbrushing - and with layered but very teeny tiny domestic literary insights which I cannot even force myself to feel that ANY of it matters or is as funny as I’ve heard people go on about - and I STILL find these domestic family novels as interesting as watching paint dry. Maybe if I had had kids. But I was 44 years old when I found out baby boys pee at you. I’ve held a baby exactly five times, always pushed into my arms by people who read novels like this one or had romanticized their past into gauzy joy and who were saying to me, “when can we expect one of these from you?” (I was raped frequently as a child and my uterus was too damaged to become pregnant - not that one can blurt such things out, ever, until one becomes old and cranky like me.)
I skimmed ‘Breathing Lessons’, gritting my teeth, trying to like it. Yes, I test myself like this occasionally every few decades. Maybe when dementia has more of a hold on my mind I’ll actually laugh in enjoyment when reading these possible Doris Day/Rock Hudson screenplay-type novels. I thought since Anne Tyler won a Pulitzer for this novel, I could get past the nostalgic (movie sitcom-style) giggles of married life and family pratfalls - but I can’t.
I know many people are reminded of their childhood and family when a book manages to capture that romanticized suburban/small town like a sterilized fly in a bottle, and even I can tell Tyler has done that. Perfectly. Yawn.
I bet you didn’t expect I’d write a review like this after rating ‘Breathing Lessons’ three stars. : p...more
‘Syrian Brides’ by Anna Halabi is a fun read! These short stories are deceptively domestic in nature, with a comic cozy tonality that reminded me of a‘Syrian Brides’ by Anna Halabi is a fun read! These short stories are deceptively domestic in nature, with a comic cozy tonality that reminded me of an old American TV show, ‘I love Lucy’ (youtube video https://youtu.be/iDLO67zQlMQ?si=uxws-...). However, they are actually very cleverly structured to reveal the lives of Syrian women, warts and all.
I enjoyed reading these vignettes. I suspect women who are fond of or who are stuck in domestic family lifestyles without much freedom to choose something different will find much here to laugh at or commiserate with. However, as an American woman, I found myself feeling a bit claustrophobic. Syrian women appear to live a life too restricted to family expectations and the home to suit me. What I saw in these stories is they, as a result of their complete dependence on family members for approval to live with a roof over their heads, must perform in two roles as their only options: as dutiful daughters to older women or as obedient (or, within limited boundaries, comically or cleverly disobedient) housewives to husbands. The women in these short stories appear to be completely accepting of their rigid, to me, cultural roles as housewives, mother or daughter. However, to me, the obvious truth that their happiness or sadness is in how they accept, or not, the role that is a must to them - having a husband.
I think the author demonstrates that these, obvious to the eyes of Western women, constrained and restricted roles as Islamic wives or daughters have their moments of contentment and laughs, many of which are common to all cultures.
'The Calculating Stars' by Mary Robinette Kowal is not really my kind of novel. Despite this, it is a terrific read, the main character's travails are'The Calculating Stars' by Mary Robinette Kowal is not really my kind of novel. Despite this, it is a terrific read, the main character's travails are sometimes exciting, and the description of the procedures necessary to train astronauts and the preparations to launch a manned rocket into space were engrossing.
I love hard science. I love science fiction. But I dislike the type of writing which unrealistically restrains the voices of all of the characters into polite toned-down dialogue no matter the situation, and all of the action no matter how emotionally crushing is carefully filtered through a gauzy lens of careful bourgeois socially polite responses and off-stage disturbances. Readers might faint I suppose if reading a paragraph of a heated exchange of vicious words, or if more than a sentence is included which refers to a death.
In other words, cozies. This novel is a disguised cozy. I didn't like it for that reason. It is as restrained as a woman wearing a bone corset despite the drama of the plot.
Occasionally I come across a cozy which charms me. It may have a sly wit, a lively plot, or an underlying acknowledgement of dark cruelties imposed by society or people. But this novel's main character, Dr. Elma York, is a 1950's mom-jeans housewife personna of the type played by actress Doris Day in 1950's romcoms with Rock Hudson. She is married to a rocket scientist, Nathaniel, no kids. However, she also has a crippling anxiety disorder triggered whenever she is the center of attention despite that she has the intelligence of a mathematical genius. She is a Stanford Ph.D. graduate with doctorates in physics and mathematics, attained during the 1950's period of massive social discrimination against women. She is not a thick-skinned warrior despite this biography, nor is she a bubbly person. She apparently has no desire for leadership. She loves housework. But her crippling anxiety and shyness does not stop her from joining the Wasps in World War II and becoming an A-list pilot, nor prevent her from fighting for the dream of becoming an astronaut despite all of the built-in gender discrimination against her success.
Elma and the world undergo a tragedy of monstrous proportions - a large meteor wipes out the eastern seaboard of the United States. It kills almost her entire family except her husband and adult brother and his family in California. She figures out this disaster will cause first a mini-ice-age, and then an eternal summer of 120F. Nathaniel and Elma are certain people have to leave earth before that happens.
Four years later after the meteor strike she and Nathaniel are working for NACA, the replacement of NASA. In this alternate history, Dewey is the President of the United States. The space program is accelerated into a faster progress than real history, but Elma's world is otherwise the same as the real-life 1950's. Elma is employed as a NACA computer, calculating rocket trajectories alongside other women, some of color, all discriminated against by the men with a few exceptions. The book vividly describes the discriminatory society of the 1950's so accurately I could hardly bear reading this book as a result. I got angry and claustrophobic reliving that awful time all over again! It was terrible when I lived it for real. Nonetheless, the development of rocket technology, the descriptions of airplanes and jets, and the training of astronauts is fascinating.
But I simply couldn't believe in Elma as a character. I also couldn't stand her. She is a timid housewife type, and yet quick with witty jokes. Always shaking, quaking, sweating, she does everything but kowtow to aggressive people while somehow impressing them with her personal strength of character. How could this person become a leader breaking barriers down at NACA? Apparently by accident, and by demonstrating her skills as a pilot and her amazing mathematical brain. She also is gorgeous. NACA quickly puts her in a bikini for publicity photography while she and the other women are supposedly being trained in underwater escapes from a space capsule crashed in the ocean - she hates it, but does it despite her crippling anxiety. She quickly shows her competence, wowing the reporters. Plus, she prefers being called Mrs. Nathaniel York, not Dr. York.
I can't stand Elma when she is in the grip of her anxieties. I can't understand how she switches into a southern belle charming the neanderthal men by whom she is surrounded because of her choices in pursuing male-dominated work even though she has panic attacks when men look at her to participate because of her expertise. She loves sex with her husband, and stands up against sexual harassment at work, but fears to do practically any other kind of speaking out no matter how innocuous. As a character in a novel, she makes no sense to me.
The book is brilliant in describing the social discrimination and environment women endured in the 1950's, as it also is in describing how NASA/NACA works. But the temperature of the writing is as temperate as what readers expect from a cozy. Elma narrates her story, however the contradictions of her character and ambitions do not explain sufficiently the often muted-down voice in which she explains her experiences and how she conducts herself, math brain or not. Nathaniel is a liberal woman's perfect fantasy man, though. I want him, *ahem*, liked him very much....more
My tastes in mysteries lean towards those with drama and danger or twists and turns. Or, I can enjoy cozy mysteries on occasion if they are full of huMy tastes in mysteries lean towards those with drama and danger or twists and turns. Or, I can enjoy cozy mysteries on occasion if they are full of humor or satire, even if they go lightly in the scenes of murder (if they have murders at all). Mysteries which are primarily procedural are my least favorite type of mystery, but I can enjoy them if the characters are interesting or if there is drama, too.
'The Widows of Malabar Hill' barely suits my requirements for a fun read, but it is not a bad read at all. You may adore it, gentle reader. It seemed to me like a cozy written in a purposeful flat tone used to dampen the mystery drama - in other words, a very old-style mystery of the sort popular in the 1920's, particularly in using a procedural tone common to the original 'locked room' mysteries. The author doesn't go to the lengths of using archaic terminology like 'outrage' for rape, as some other pseudo-Victorian or -Edwardian modern writers have done, so that is a point in the novel's favor.
I thought the story seemed like a chick-lit for sensitive readers. The book concentrates on some disturbing, but cozy-styling, looks at female restrictions in marriage, love, gender and religious customs of middle-class Bombay and Calcutta households in a flashback timeline of 1916 and in an alternating present timeline of 1921. The murder occurs at the half-way mark into the book, and it definitely is the secondary plot.
Our heroine, Perveen Mistry, is the fortunate daughter of what is a progressive upper-class Zoroastrian household in 1921. After a disastrous marriage at age nineteen, Perveen left India for England to attend Oxford to study law. Four years later she works for her father, Jamshedji Mistry, as his solicitor in his law firm. She lives at home with her parents and brothers.
As a woman, Perveen is very limited in how and when she travels about Bombay in performance of her duties, but she understands the laws, and most importantly, the paperwork of India. When one of the Mistry's clients, Mr. Farid, dies, he leaves behind three wives. They are purdahnashin, Muslims who never see men other than their husband. They are restricted to remaining inside their house and avoiding all outside contact, so an agent, Mr. Mukri, is appointed as estate trustee and household agent. However, the Mistry legal firm has received a letter from Mulki with a request to place the widows' dowry into a charitable foundation. The women’s signatures look suspicious, especially since one of the women can't read or write, yet her signature is not only on the document, it looks the same as one of the other wives' handwriting. Jamshedji is dumbfounded when Perveen suggests she go to the Farid widows and speak to them about their signatures - it hadn’t occurred to him. But of course! She is a woman and can get around the widows’ religious seclusion!
Perveen is thrilled by her first real assignment alone without her father. However, after entering the Farid home, and speaking with some of the widows and the children, as well as the odious Mulki, she is certain something is not right between the widows. Each one is keeping secrets from the others, and they all definitely did not understand what they ‘signed’ in the dowry disbursement letter.
Given the widows' lack of education and social mobility, can Perveen help them? She thinks so, and in a return visit, she is prepared to discuss options - until she finds the body covered in blood....
This series (yes, it is to be a series eventually) promises to be the kind of historical mystery I would usually read if I wanted something interesting but not overly alarming....more
‘The Small House at Allington’ does not quite the follow the pattern of the previous novels in the Chronicles of Barsetshire series. Author Anthony Tr‘The Small House at Allington’ does not quite the follow the pattern of the previous novels in the Chronicles of Barsetshire series. Author Anthony Trollope always takes care of his characters - most are safely housed by the end of his books, and most have found a way to a financial security of a sort, even if life plans have gone awry and any dreams of rising up in class or a job went sideways. Whatever the hopes and plans of his characters, whether resolved satisfactorily to them or not by the end of the novel, usually there is some personal growth for every protagonist as well as a happy ending of some sort, and every antagonist is usually wiser if sadder, even if scuffed up socially (unless they are idiots - which Trollope takes care to show, not tell). But in this book many of the main characters are left in the middle of their personal story by the last chapter. On one hand, being in the middle of the story is true to life, but on the other, it is unsatisfying on many levels for a reader of a novel, especially for this kind of novel - a proto-domestic cozy (imho, many of today’s domestic cozies are incredibly full of generic stereotypical pablum, even if entertaining, while Trollope tries to include a ‘ship of fools’ cast from all social classes of his 19th-century world, even as he resorts to hinting obliquely at darker lifestyles).
I believe this book can be read without having read the previous novels, and it is a mild entertainment good for many a quiet afternoon of reading to pass the time gently. Trollope is an expert writer. His plot is an interesting one of young women who are hoping to find satisfying husbands, and of young men who are hoping to find satisfying wives. Some hope to climb upwards in class by marriage, while others hope to find true love. Richer older relatives have their say about whom their younger family members should marry, and some of them interfere trying to use their wealth or power. Trollope utilizes interior dialogues a great deal for each character so we readers become invested in watching the developments and misunderstandings between characters, as well as feeling sympathy or anxiety, or even some self-recognition - people care about things much the same way whether we live in the 21st century or the 19th. However, for me, despite that I found the novel interesting enough, that is all it was - interesting enough to continue with it every few days or so, kind of like occasionally tasting a different side dish while I was actually enjoying a more solid repast in the meantime.
The Chronicles of Barsetshire series is about a very Victorian world of mostly country middle-class and some upper-class people, so manners prevail over every social circumstance and financial embarrassment. However, the tone of each book in the series has been more and more of a generic cozy with less and less politics and fewer instances of humor. Trollope’s characters are still true to life, but I sense a growing boredom by the author. Trollope, I think, wanted to move on from this series. The first novel, The Warden, was full of biting irony in comparison to the later novels. As I have read further in the series, Trollope not only departs from the pattern of following in depth peripheral characters introduced in the previous book, he has been dropping entirely any political themes and he appears less interested in actually developing in-depth an interesting person to engage his reader. In ‘The Small House at Arlington’, not only have we seen these character types in earlier Barsetshire books before, they are much duller and more sketched out.
Ah well. Trollope has written one more in this series, and I feel engaged enough to continue, or maybe it is simply because I own it although I have never found the time before to read it....more
I think I em aliebn jus lik Jomny in thiz komik. Purhapz ur a alienbn too. I hav not mebt eni humunz sins I arrivd eethur. Evrybodee is definutlee a aI think I em aliebn jus lik Jomny in thiz komik. Purhapz ur a alienbn too. I hav not mebt eni humunz sins I arrivd eethur. Evrybodee is definutlee a animul, lik in ‘everyone’s a aliebn when ur a aliebn too’, but unlik the creechurz Jomny meetz, the beings I meet kan bee reelee meen. Bcuz evereewun in the komik iz nic, I think thiz buk iz for adult who ar lik children. Or maybee jus think-drawings and comiserashinz about laking confidens and not living up to expectations.
Peepl luv this komik bcuz it seemz deep with filosofical muzingz, but I thinbk the poynt iz yur filosfee depenbdz on what yoo ar. I thinbk maybe the mesag is: Evereebodee thinkz that what iz rit for them iz rit for u, too. No, not. But do find what wurkz for u. Then liv up to yur filosphee. However, deth cumz to all, filosfee or not, hapee or not. Bee hapee!
Ok, then.
Silly reader! You might believe this graphic comic is for children because it is sweet-natured and gentle, but it is full of misspelled words similar to my above inventions. Little kids might get a tad confused. This book is clearly meant for adults who are very familiar with English.
For those of you who adore Jomny, the main character, and his discoveries of how different the trees, bees, frogs, eggs and hedgehogs he meets see life, the universe and everything, I am happy for you. For me, ‘everyone’s a aliebn when ur a aliebn’ is too precious and self-conscious, generally. The one artist joke I liked was the character Nobody, who was an alive empty space of nothing being drawn but spoken words, masquerading as an invisible presence, but also a playful artist joke as well, maybe. idk. Nobody was essential and unseen and friendless. haha.
I did like the bees, and especially the 🐕 dog, though. Peace and 💕 love....more
‘My Not So Perfect Life’ is a light-hearted frolic! Katie Brenner, our heroine, is trying on a new persona - sophisticated Londoner. She wants to put ‘My Not So Perfect Life’ is a light-hearted frolic! Katie Brenner, our heroine, is trying on a new persona - sophisticated Londoner. She wants to put her humble Somerset farm family behind her and become her boss - Demeter Farlowe, the forty-five-year-old executive creative director at Cooper Clemmow. Demeter has a perfect life!
Demeter is wealthy. Demeter is married to a handsome talented man, and she has two perfect children. Demeter lives in a beautiful London mansion that cost two million pounds. She wears haute couture. She has zillions of friends and contacts. She has won lots of awards. She goes to the best parties and she is an early adopter of what inevitably becomes a hot trend.
CooperClemmow is a branding and strategy agency with big-name clients. While Demeter is in the top job in the company, Katie is on the bottom rung. This is her first salaried job! She has been here seven months. She has been trying to fit in while at the same time trying to stand out. So far, she is still doing data input, but she has been polishing her image carefully. First, she has been telling everyone her name is Cat - so much better than Katie! Watching videos, her makeup is all about the eyeliner. Her naturally curly hair has been cut (maybe the bangs are wrong, though) and straightened, which she now wears pulled back in a chignon. At night, she goes to all of the best restaurants and snaps photos of other people’s meals for Instagram, messaging how delicious the food is - then she goes home to her shared flat to eat her real dinner of tuna fish. One of her two weird roommates has boxes of whey and chicken stock filling up the hall and kitchen, so cooking out of the question.
Katie’s - no, Cat’s - she keeps forgetting that Cat is her new name - co-workers have invited her out to join them on Wednesdays at the Blue Bear for drinks. She will have to readjust her small budget somehow to take her turn at buying a round! Flora, Rosa and Sarah seem very talented. But for some reason they all hate Demeter. Demeter does seem rather abusive in a flighty way to the staff. Plus, she can’t seem to remember names and she apparently appropriates all the credit for their work. Wow!
Katie, uh, Cat, has to make this work. She can’t face going back to the farm. London is where she belongs! Especially after meeting Alex Astalis, Demeter’s boss. Katie feels an electricity between them. Or does she? Time will tell, maybe....
I liked the book, but it is very breezy and full of chick-lit slapstick. The last third of the book kinda got too breezy. Much of the fun is about being caught out in social puffery, bullying, jealousy, mistaken assumptions and being authentic. ...more
Archeologist Radcliffe Emerson is enticed to return to the exotic country of 1892 Egypt when Lady Baskerville offers him a job of finishing a tomb excArcheologist Radcliffe Emerson is enticed to return to the exotic country of 1892 Egypt when Lady Baskerville offers him a job of finishing a tomb excavation in the Valley of the Kings begun by her recently deceased husband, Lord Henry Baskerville. Amelia Emerson, nee Peabody, is enormously eager for a second adventure in Egypt after her son Ramses’ third birthday and the somewhat dull English domestic bliss of recent years. Ramses is proving to be a handful as he is intellectually precocious, and English society is suffocating, so Amelia has been yearning for the discomforts and challenges of archeological digs. As in the previous novel Crocodile on the Sandbank, the first in this amusing cozy series, Amelia jumps at the chance to exchange the safety of English life for the chance of an Egyptian expedition.
Horrors! A murderer might be stalking the intrepid group of archaeologists, the annoying newspaper reporter and the various oddball hangers-on hoping to find an ancient tomb! Or is an occult curse of an angry Egyptian mummy haunting the group of adventurers?
‘Curse of the Pharaohs’ caused me to laugh out loud many times! I love this series! Mildly romantic and hugely fun, these mysteries are entertaining while gently satirizing 19th-century English adventure stories....more
‘Crocodile on the Sandbank’, the first in the Amelia Peabody mystery series, is a perfectly splendid cozy mystery! I love the indomitable force of nat‘Crocodile on the Sandbank’, the first in the Amelia Peabody mystery series, is a perfectly splendid cozy mystery! I love the indomitable force of nature that is Miss Amelia Peabody!
English gentlewoman Amelia Peabody has recently inherited and she is now at loose ends. Despite the strictures which are socially imposed on Victorian women, she has decided to travel and have adventures. She sets out with a hired female companion for Italy! However, it becomes apparent the companion will not do - her constitution is too weak and sickly to keep up with the thirty-two-year old Amelia. Morosely, Amelia sends the companion back to England and wonders how to fix the situation. Her plan had been next to go to Egypt.
Unexpectedly, a sweet young countrywoman of twenty-three faints almost literally at Amelia’s feet. The starving woman, Evelyn Barton-Forbes, quickly regains consciousness under Amelia’s care. Evelyn tells her story of woe - she is a ruined woman! Her grandfather has, correctly in Evelyn’s opinion, disinherited her for her foolish escapade of running away from England with a young Italian man, only to wake up alone in her Italian hotel abandoned and robbed of all her money. Was it possible Evelyn had been contemplating suicide? Maybe, Amelia thinks. But Evelyn is NOT going to be permitted to do so if Amelia has anything to say about it! Amelia clearly sees Evelyn is a person of honor who has been grievously abused, and Amelia needs a vigorous and young paid companion if she is to realize her dreams of adventure in Egypt. Ah! What a fortuitous meeting!
So begins the journey which will change both of the young women's lives. The women are introduced to a pair of very nice and handsome archeologists, brothers, on a trip up the Nile. Next, there are mysterious murder attempts! Are the brothers up to no good? A horrible mummy begins to stalk an archeological dig’s camp - maybe it’s after the women! Then an artifact is wrecked. Who, and why, is someone doing this?
Amelia will get to the bottom of it all! It is all a perfectly splendid adventure!...more
‘Framley Parsonage’, fourth volume in the Barsetshire Chronicles, is good. However, it is not my favorite in this series. Each successive novel in the‘Framley Parsonage’, fourth volume in the Barsetshire Chronicles, is good. However, it is not my favorite in this series. Each successive novel in the series has had a slight loss of energy and bite. The author Anthony Trollope has settled for in this book what to me is a story which is primarily a romantic Victorian cozy about manners, morality, money and social class - there being either too much or too little of the four elements which causes moral/financial embarrassment (linked indubitably) and social tittering. What saves these books from ending up in my DNF shelf is Trollope's sly underlying disapproval and/or humorous affection for the lack of social consistency and subjective judgements of the characters - inevitably, each one personally commits moral sins (Victorian mores) which they justify to themselves in having done, while at the same time each righteously or sheepishly condemns the sins of other characters.
I believe Trollope is very much smarter than many of his readers because he has a talent of feeding them what appears to be on the surface light romantic comedies of manners and marriage. Instead these novels of fiction are actually mirrors of real social and moral inequalities showing the ugly pretensions and vain silliness of most people, politics, and in the maintenance of social classes.
‘Framley Parsonage’, which can be read as a standalone (but do start the series with The Warden) has all of the typical elements of a genuine romantic Victorian novel - sweet and sour characters of all classes who attain upward mobility through marriage and political office and connections while maintaining - or not, secretly - the required standards of middle-class Victorian morality and social class correctness. However, genteel reader, Trollope undermines the humorous romantic musical-chair game struggles of various courting couples with small scenes about the serious consequences of class rigidity and financial disparities.
Each novel in the series is about characters mentioned in every book in the series who live in or near Barsetshire county, but the focus changes to a different family which was previously of minor importance in the earlier plots. Time moves on, and another generation of upcoming parish employees of the Church of England is examined as they court and groom each other for love and advantage and politics. Whatever the loss of literary wit and social commentary which is slowly seeping out of the series from book to book like a leaking balloon, I am still entertained by the Victorian antics of the middle-class and aristocrat English villagers....more
aPriL does feral sometimes
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