rosalita (Julia) ROOTs around in 2022

I work at my alma mater, the University of Iowa, so my thread topper (or toppers if I end up with more than one thread) will feature seasonal images from the campus, often (as with this one, a reproduction of a 1928 Christmas card) the Old Capitol building at the center of campus. OPTIONAL HISTORY LESSON: It’s called the Old Capitol because Iowa City was briefly the capitol city of the Iowa Territory (1839-1846) and later the state of Iowa until the capitol was moved to a more central location (Des Moines) in 1857. After that, the Old Capitol hosted the entire State University of Iowa (1857-1863) and later the law school (1868-1910) until being restored as a historic monument in the 1970s. /HERE ENDETH THE LESSON

My name’s Julia, and I have too many books. Well, that’s not really possible but it’s fair to say I have too many books I haven’t read yet. I’ve participated in the ROOTs group for two years, and managed to read a total of 100 books. I started fast last year but the fall was a rough patch for me and I just managed to meet my goal of 48 books. I’m going to aim for that same target in 2022, just 4 per month. We’ll see how that goes.

That’s enough of the blather — on to the books!

ROOTed in 2022

January
1. The Fingerprint by Patricia Wentworth.
2. Golden Girls Forever: An Unauthorized Look Behind the Lanai by Jim Colucci.
3. The Mystery of the Green Ghost by Robert Arthur.
4. The Man in the Brown Suit by Agatha Christie.

February
5. A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles.
6. The Alington Inheritance by Patricia Wentworth.
7. The Mystery of the Vanishing Treasure by Robert Arthur.
8. Fer-de-Lance by Rex Stout.

March
9. A Game of Fear by Charles Todd.
10. All Systems Red by Martha Wells.
11. The Secret of Skeleton Island by Robert Arthur.
12. Rally 'Round the Flag, Boys! by Max Shulman.



*Denotes books not from my shelves; usually library books but occasionally borrowed from a friend.

Added to the shelf in 2022

January
✔︎ 1. Rally Round the Flag, Boys! by Max Shulman. (free ebook/Kobo)
2. K: A History of Baseball in Ten Pitches by Tyler Kepner. ($2.99 ebook/Kobo)

February
✔︎ 3. A Game of Fear by Charles Todd. ($14.99 ebook/Kobo)
4. They Came to Baghdad by Agatha Christie. ($1.99 ebook/Kobo)
✔︎ 5. The Cereal Murders by Diane Mott Davidson. ($1.99 ebook/Kobo)
✔︎ 6. In the Best Families by Rex Stout. ($1.99 ebook/Kobo)
✔︎ 7. Nights of Rain and Stars by Maeve Binchy. ($2.99 ebook/Kobo)

March
8. The Magician by Kathleen Shop. (free ebook/Kobo)
9. The Orphans of Davenport: Eugenics, the Great Depression, and the War over Children's Intelligence by Marilyn Brookwood. ($4.85 ebook/Kobo)
10. The Gates of Europe: A History of Ukraine by Serhii Plokhy. ($19.99 softcover/Prairie Lights)
✔︎ 11. The Moving Finger by Agatha Christie. ($1.99 ebook/Kobo)
12. All the Single Ladies by Rebecca Traister. ($3.99 ebook/Kobo)
13. The Ode Less Travelled by Stephen Fry. ($4.00 ebook/Kobo)

April
14. Amongst Our Weapons by Ben Aaronovitch. ($14.99 ebook/Kobo)
15. Dark Tort by Diane Mott Davidson. ($1.99 ebook/Kobo)

✔︎ indicates books that I have read, either this year or previously.

Currently Reading
(as of Jan. 2)

  

Liz (lyzard) and I are almost finished with our shared read of the Miss Silver mysteries from the early- to mid-20th century. The Fingerprint is #30 of 32.

Last year I embarked on a complete rewatch of all seven seasons of The Golden Girls, one of the best situation comedies of all time. I bought Golden Girls Forever late last year, and with the recent passing of Betty White, the last surviving Girl, it seemed like a good time to pick it up.

It's good to see you back! Hope 2022 is a good year for you :)

>5 Jackie_K: Thank you, Jackie! I think we've all earned a good year in 2022, don't you? :-)

Welcome back, Julia! Have fun finishing up that shared read. Do you think you'll tackle another series of that vintage as a shared read when you're done, or something else?

Hi Julia, good to see you back for another year of ROOTing.

Here you are! So happy to see you back! :)

Happy New Year, Julia!

>7 rabbitprincess: Liz and I have talked about finding another series to start once we've finished Miss Silver, but haven't decided on one yet. Liz has extensive knowledge of early 20th-century mysteries, so I'm leaning on her expertise, combined with what's available to both of us (she's in Australia, I'm in the US). I'll keep you posted!

>8 connie53: Thanks, Connie. I'm glad to be back.

>9 Copperskye: You found me, Joanne! So crafty you are. :-) I'm glad to have you here.

Happy new year, Julia! I hope it's filled with good reads for you.

>11 katiekrug: I hope so, too, Katie! And also for you (whoa, just got flashbacks to Catholic mass — unnerving!). :-)

Happy New Year, Julia! It's so good to see you back - I missed you. Hoping that your 2022 is full of fabulous!

>13 Crazymamie: Thank you, Mamie! I am tempted to say, "Well, 2022 couldn't get much worse" but we all know that's taunting fate and I. Will. Not. Do. It.

But really ...

>14 rosalita: Agreed.

Hi, Julia! I’ll follow along with you and your reads here. Thanks for the history lesson up top - I loved it!

Good luck with your ROOTing this year, Julia. I hope that it continues to go well for you all year.

Great to see you're back with us, Julia. Happy reading!

>16 scaifea: I'm glad you're here, Amber!

>17 Familyhistorian: Thank you, Meg.

>18 MissWatson: I'm glad to be back, Birgit.

Happy reading in 2022. I just made a reading visit to Iowa via Marilynne Robinson's Gilead. My mother loved Golden Girls. Whenever I visited her during the last years of her life, we would watch the Golden Girls Marathon, or at least that's what it seemed like, on one of the Las Vegas independent TV stations. Happily, that show was a riot, so I never minded. Cheers!

>20 rocketjk: Oh, I loved Gilead, Jerry! I need to read the others in the series, which are all right here on my shelves so what's my excuse?

I was surprised how funny the Golden Girls still were when I did my re-watch. Sometimes the things you remember as being hilarious when you watched them back in the day turn out to be ... less than that ... when you see them later. What a nice memory to have of time spent with your mother.

Happy New Year, Julia! I found you. Good luck with the reading from your shelves. I also hope to do better this year. Last year only 39% of my reading came from my shelves. I have to learn how to ignore those shiny new library books!

Love the topper and now I have you starred.

>22 BLBera: I'm so glad you're here, Beth! Library books are very hard to resist ...

Ah-HA!! :D

>24 lyzard: Curses! Foiled again! :-D

BTW, are you going ahead with the Three Investigators? I can't remember where we left those.

>26 lyzard: I am, but like Miss Silver I am a bit behind, I think. I've only read the first three — The Mystery of the Green Ghost is up next for me. I think you are at least a book or two beyond that ... ?

1. The Fingerprint by Patricia Wentworth.

We are nearing the end of a chronological read of Wentworth's Miss Silver mystery series, which started in the 1920s and now, with Book 30 (of 32) has progressed to the mid-1950s. The formula is familiar by now — there's always at least one romantic subplot whose happy resolution can be seen coming a mile away, and there is usually a cooperative police detective (often the charming Inspector Frank Abbott, with whom Maud Silver has a warm relationship — not that kind of warm, get your heads of the gutters!)

As is often the case in this series, Maud Silver is nowhere to be seen in the opening chapters of The Fingerprint. Instead we get the lay of the land through the eyes of Frank Abbott, who as a friend of a guest staying at the country home of Jonathan Field is present when the seeds of Field's eventual destruction are sown. The setting of the village of Deeping is familiar to readers of the previous The Eternity Ring, and Miss Silver's previous acquaintance with some of the characters from that book makes her entry into the murder investigation here more believable. For an elderly former governess who never stops knitting as long as her eyes are open, Maudie gets around!

It seems at first the impetus for Field's removal is an age-old one: He has recently re-made his will to leave the bulk of his considerable estate to Mirrie, a young woman who is a distant relative only recently discovered and brought to live at Field End. Her elevation in status has come at the expense of his beloved niece Georgina. There are other suspects, including the stepson of another distant relative and any of the people who attended the dinner dance where Field told a provocative story about his peculiar hobby of collecting fingerprints. Field claimed to have been trapped in a building collapse during the Blitz with a man who confessed to two murders but then vanished when rescuers came. Did the mystery man find out about Field having his fingerprint and come to cover his tracks for good? Or is this just a case of good old-fashioned family greed?

Miss Silver and Inspector Abbott get to the bottom of the case, as always, but this isn't one of those mysteries where the culprit is revealed in a dramatically staged scene. Instead, we follow along as Abbott and Maud figure out who done it and then work to gather enough evidence to enable his arrest. But someone desperate enough to kill won't go down without a fight ...

I admire your perseverance in reading the series, Julia! I mean, I read series,too, of course, but not specifically as a project. Though I guess it is one by default? Anyway - good job!

>29 katiekrug: Thanks! It helps that the books are really pretty good, and of course reading along with Liz (lyzard) makes it so much more fun.

>30 rosalita:

Aww, thank you! :)

>27 rosalita:

Yes, I'm slated for The Mystery Of The Fiery Eye this month, which is #7; The Mystery Of The Green Ghost is #4.

I don't mind waiting if you want me to, or do you prefer to catch up at your own pace?

ETA: Also, are you okay if I send you a few more book covers?

>31 lyzard: I don't want to mess up your reading plans. I could be caught up by March; would that work for you?

And yes — send me all the book covers!

>32 rosalita:

I will go ahead with this month's (I need it for a challenge) and then I will be happy to wait for you. March is good but don't stress it.

Excellent!

You make me want to get back to reading the Miss Silver mysteries, Julia. It's been a while since I picked one of those up. I enjoy older mysteries that aren't pages and pages long.

>34 Familyhistorian: I have really enjoyed the series, Meg. I do read and enjoy plenty of dark, twisty modern mysteries, but there's a definite place in my heart for the more streamlined, less graphic mysteries of yesteryear.

Hi Julia! Happy new year and happy first ROOTs thread.

I have to mention that one of my most favorite books ever, Geraldine Brooks' People of the Book is on e-sale right now for just $1.99. I listened to the audiobook several years ago and it was beyond fabulous. I've liked everything I've read by Brooks but this one is my most favoritest.

>36 karenmarie: Thanks, Karen! I was just leaving a message on your brand-new thread!

Great minds, eh?

I'm happy and sad that the Dick Francis SHARED Read is over - three years was a good run, IMO. I'm not starting any personal challenges because reading has been iffy since mid-November, but am trying the ASIA Authors Challenge in the 75ers group. I've started My Name is Red, by Turkish Author Orhan Pamuk.

>39 karenmarie: I think three years is very good for a shared read, Karen. I'm going to try to keep up with re-reading Francis on occasion. Like you, I am also not committing to any personal challenges other than my ROOTs goal. I have found that for me challenges often just make reading work instead of fun, and I'm over it. I know they work for lots of people, though, and I say good for them!

Testing.

Testing2.

>41 lyzard: LibraryThing had some heartburn earlier, apparently, but it appears to be all cleared up now. Considerate of the site to go down while I was busy working at my actual job! :-)

Morning, Julia! I was perusing Kindle deals today (I know you have a Kobo but the e-books deals seem to cross platforms usually...) and saw one that made me think of you:

K: A History of Baseball in Ten Pitches

32 days until pitchers and catchers report!

>43 katiekrug: Ooh, thanks for that tip, Katie! I'll check Kobo as you're right about deals being cross-platform most of the time these days.

I am pessimistic that spring training will start on time with the lockout, but I would love to be wrong. Sounds like you have more faith than I do!

>44 rosalita: - No, I'm just a bad baseball fan and haven't been paying attention so didn't know where was a lockout. *shuffles away in shame*

>45 katiekrug: This is a no-shame zone, missy! But yeah, the owners locked out the players pretty much right after the season. They are supposed to re-start talks tomorrow, but we'll see how it goes. I don't know if you'll be able to see this story on The Athletic: https://theathletic.com/news/mlb-mlbpa-scheduled-to-meet-thursday-for-first-time...

And the book was on sale at Kobo, so it's now in my collection. Thanks again for the tip — it looks like just my thing. Have you read The Arm: Inside the Billion-Dollar Mystery of the Most Valuable Commodity in Sports by Jeff Passan? That's probably one of my favorite recent nonfiction reads about baseball.

Thanks for the info! I could read the first couple of paragraphs of the article.

ETA: Nope, haven't read that one. Will keep my eye out for it.

Currently Reading
(as of Jan 12)

  

I still need to write up my review of Golden Girls Forever but in the meantime here are my current reads. I fell behind in the last part of 2021 on my shared read with Liz of The Three Investigators middle-school mystery series, so I need to catch up. The Mystery of the Green Ghost is the fourth in the series.

And I want to get back to The Lone Pilgrim, a fabulous book of short stories by Laurie Corwin that I started last year before my meltdown. So much catching up to do!

46> Hey, Julia. Just catching up on your thread this morning. The Arm: Inside the Billion-Dollar Mystery of the Most Valuable Commodity in Sports looks really interesting, though I did have to laugh at this line from the synopsis: "Every year, Major League Baseball spends more than $1.5 billion on pitchers -- five times more than the salary of every NFL quarterback combined." (emphasis mine) There are 48 NFL teams, and each one has 2 quarterbacks, but only one starter commanding a high salary. There are 30 major league teams, with each one needing 5 starters and around 7 relievers. So, 96 QBs, 360 pitchers. Not five times as many, but more like four times as many, and still enough to make put that sentence into the breathless hyperbole category for me. Marketing, ya gotta love it!

Anyway, I assume that the author did not write the synopsis, and if you say it's one of your favorite non-fiction baseball books, that's enough for me to put it on my list!

Do you like baseball biographies? If so, one I read last year, The Corporal Was a Pitcher: The Courage of Lou Brissie by Ira Berkow, is excellent. Brissie was considered a prospect of great promise when a mortar blast almost took his leg off during the Italian campaign in World War 2. He had to beg the army doctors not to amputate. Amazingly, he went on to become a very effective major league starting pitcher for several seasons.

2. Golden Girls Forever: An Unauthorized Look Behind the Lanai by Jim Colucci.

Preface: Back in 2020, I briefly switched to Hulu for live TV, because they were the only streaming service that included the Marquee Network, which is the channel owned by the Chicago Cubs that broadcasts all their games. Then they dropped Marquee, and I switched back to YouTube TV, which has a cleaner user interface and much better DVR. But by the time that happened, I was already a couple of seasons into a re-watch of The Golden Girls, one of the sitcoms my mom and I watched together back in the 1980s, so I kept the basic Hulu service to finish it up.

The series was as good as I remembered, although all of the references to current events of the era would probably go over the ahead of anyone less decrepit than I am. Anyway, when I finally got the end of the seventh and final season, I wasn't quite ready to say goodbye. A friend who is a huge fan of the Golden Girls recommended this book to me, and I picked up the ebook.

Actual review content: With the series so fresh in my mind, I very much enjoyed the book. The first part details the development of the show, shooting the pilot and analyzes what made the show such a touchstone for so many people. Most of this was new information to me, and very interesting to someone who loves behind-the-scenes logistics.

The hefty middle section provides summaries of individual episodes, combined with photos and reminiscences from cast and crew members and guest stars. It's not every episode, but it's a lot of them. I think this part would have been much less enjoyable if I hadn't just refreshed my memory with the rewatch, but since I had I liked reading what was happening offstage and what people involved with the show thought about each episode.

The last section delves into the actual production details, especially the set design. I was relieved to read that the layout doesn't really make sense if you think too hard about it, because I could never figure out how all the pieces fit together. Especially the kitchen, which was a last-minute addition and doesn't fit with the rest of the set, and yet turned out to be maybe the most important set, given all the discussion over cheesecake that occurred there.

There's also a section that details the ways that the show has inspired more modern television sitcoms, and includes short blurbs from all sorts of entertainment folks about what the show means to them and which Golden Girl they think best embodies their own persona. This was pretty meh, especially because I haven't heard of the majority of the people being quoted.

Given my recent re-acquantance with the show, I'm glad I was able to read this. I don't think I'd recommend to anyone who either wasn't a big fan of the show or who hasn't watched it in the last decade or so. It isn't earth-shattering, but it's a nice read for what it is.

>49 rocketjk: Apologies, Jerry — I didn't realize until this morning that you had posted while I was writing my review. The Lou Brissie bio sounds interesting — he's not a player I'm familiar with but it sounds like he has quite the life story. I'll keep an eye out for it at the library — thanks!

Currently Reading
(as of Jan 13)

  

My plan to read one story a day from The Lone Pilgrim is working well. Since this is going to be a drawn-out reading experience, I'm also jotting down a short note about each story in my notebook so I'll be able to jog my memory for a review once I'm done.

I finished up The Mystery of the Green Ghost and will write a review soon. But in the meantime, I am finally tackling A Gentleman in Moscow, years after the rest of LT read it, at the request of my IRL friend Liz, who is reading it now and wants to discuss. And it's also a ROOT, so that's a bonus.

I haven't yet read AGiM, if it makes you feel better :)

>53 katiekrug: You know, it really does, Katie! Thanks for that. :-)

>52 rosalita: >53 katiekrug: I haven't read it either, but I really want to!

I should add, I definitely plan to read it. Just haven't gotten to it yet. Maybe this year 🙂

>55 scaifea: >56 katiekrug: Well shucks, I'm in the very best of company with you two!

>50 rosalita: I found a Buzzfeed quiz that purported to tell me which Golden Girl I am, but it said I was Blanche, which I don't buy for a second so I'm not linking to it ;) I'd consider myself more of a Dorothy.

I loved The Golden Girls as well, Julia. The book sounds fun. I did read A Gentleman in Moscow. I'll be interested in your comments.

>55 scaifea: >56 katiekrug: >57 rosalita: I'm glad to know I'm not the only one. No sane person can keep up with all the good books mentioned on LT.

>58 rabbitprincess: I always thought of myself as a Dorothy, too, except without the self-confidence to actually deliver some of those sharp remarks!

>59 BLBera: I'm sure your read of AGiM was one of the many that put the book on my radar back then, Beth.

>60 MissWatson: There are more of us than I thought, Birgit! And you are so right about keeping up with all the good books everyone is reading — there are just so many.

3. The Mystery of the Green Ghost by Robert Arthur.

Two of the Three Investigators — teenage boys Bob Andrews and Pete Crenshaw, their ringleader Jupiter Jones busy with other duties — are scoping out a deserted mansion that is scheduled for demolition. Legend says the house is haunted by its last owner, Matthias Green, who married a princess in China and fled to California with her and a purloined string of priceless pearls, but ended up dead the foot of the stairs in his great mansion.

Bob is making a tape recording of their investigation when they hear a scream coming from the house. A group of neighborhood who happened to be passing by (yeah, right) also hear the scream, and convince the boys to join them in a search of the house. They don't find the source of the scream but they do spot a strange green ghost who floats about here and there and eventually disappears through a wall. The ghost, to no one's surprise, seems to resemble old man Green.

It's not so easy for the police to dismiss this as the overactive imaginations of children because the men saw and heard the same thing. And the ghost makes further appearances through the night around town, including in a graveyard where it's observed by the chief of police, who really does not want to admit he saw a ghost. That makes him more open than usual to enlisting the Three Investigators' help to find out what's really going on, especially after the body of Matthias Green's wife, who was presumed to have fled back to China after her husband's untimely death, is found walled up in a secret room of the mansion, wearing the priceless pearls.

The investigation takes Bob and Pete to San Francisco, where a descendant of Matthias Green owns a vineyard and wants the boys' help to protect the pearls. The vineyard turns out be a a satisfying setting for all sorts of adventurous capers, from roaming around in underground mine shafts to being kidnapped by Chinese gangsters, before Jupiter gallops (well, lumbers) in to solve the case and rescue his friends.

It was strange to have Jupiter, the "chunky but brainy" one, in such a secondary role, as if he were the star of a TV series taking time off to have a baby or something. But the action sequences hit all the right notes and Bob especially gets his chance to shine. I might quibble with why the book cover depicts the ghostly Green as a Chinese man when the story plainly states he is an American who married a Chinese princess, but if you're reading these books for their historical accuracy you're probably not reading these books, if you know what I mean.

>64 rosalita:

:D

Robert Arthur might have been told "More action, less thought"? The later ones do keep separating the boys but I think they balance the narratives better.

>65 lyzard: I agree it's seemed awkward in previous books to shoehorn Jupiter into an action sequence after constant harping on the fact that he's more brains than brawn, and this one worked better for the separation. But I think there's a way to give them all more or less equal roles — or rotate the lead role from book to book — without almost completely shunting one of them aside. It seemed like Jupiter could have been doing more back in the junkyard to help solve the case, except the excuse for leaving him behind was his aunt and uncle using him for free child labor and it didn't leave him much free time. :-)

Thanks for reminding me that I've been wanting to look at The Three Investigators!

A Gentleman in Moscow was a favorite of the year for me in the year I read it (in fact, all of Towles’ books have been annual favorites). I hope you enjoy it as much as I did!

I, too, have fond memories of watching The Golden Girls.

I'm not a huge fiction reader, but I also loved A Gentleman in Moscow.

>67 BLBera: I hope you're able to find The Three Investigators, Beth. Scout might enjoy them if she likes mystery-type stories.

>68 Copperskye: That's good to hear, Joanne! Our tastes usually align pretty strongly, so I have high hopes for AGiM.

>69 Jackie_K: Thanks for the encouragement, Jackie.

I'm still working away on both The Lone Pilgrim and A Gentleman in Moscow, and enjoying both. But mostly I wanted to highlight a couple of ebook deals today on books I recommend:

• Chesapeake Requiem by Earl Swift ($2.99 at Amazon and Kobo) is a fantastic nonfiction account of (as the subtitle eloquently states) a year with the watermen of vanishing Tangier Island, which is succumbing to the forces of climate change as rising water levels in the Chesapeake Bay erode its edges and alter the habitat of the blue crab, the mainstay of the island's fishing industry. I found it one of the most un-putdownable nonfiction books I've read in quite some time.


• Winter by Ali Smith ($1.99 at Amazon and Kobo). The second entry in Smith's Seasonal Quartet, as I wrote in my 2018 review, "centers around a complicated family dynamic between two sisters, the son that both of them love, and his pretend girlfriend. Along the way, Smith sprinkles the novel with ruminations on the current global political climate (particularly but not exclusively Brexit), old-time radio and television comedians, artists, and peace activists. Oh, and there's a disembodied head floating around."

If you've read either of these, please feel free to chime in with your thoughts, even if (especially if) it's different than mine.

I haven't read either, Julia, but I do have Chesapeake Requiem on my Kindle already, and I think you just moved it up my To Read list. I've had a fascination with Chesapeake Bay since reading Jacob Have I Loved as a kid.

>74 katiekrug: If I get hit with a book bullet in your response to my hitting you with a book bullet (at least in terms of reading priority even if not purchase) — is that a ricochet?

>75 rosalita: - Yes. Or friendly fire?

JHIL is one of my favorite childhood reads. It's rather sad, but very beautiful.

>76 katiekrug: I'll have to check the library for it!

I also loved Winter, Julia, and plan to reread it soon before continuing on with the quartet. I'd forgotten about the head. :)

>78 BLBera: Honestly, so had I until I revisited my review! I'm not sure how such a detail could slip my mind. :-)

University of Chicago Press has kicked off their annual Great Chicago Book Sale, which offers books at up to 90% off list price with the promo code AD1958. (The website doesn't seem to show the sale prices until you go to checkout, but the PDF of the sale catalog is more clear and perhaps easier to browse.) Below, some titles that caught my eye in a quick skim:

    
All 24 entires in Richard Starks seminal Parker series, $7 each

  
Nuns Behaving Badly ($7) and Harlem: The Unmaking of a Ghetto ($13)

>80 rosalita: I love that Parker series. I've been reading through it gradually. I think I've read the first six. The Harlem book looks fascinating.

>80 rosalita: - Devil!

>81 rocketjk: I have wanted to read it for a long time, Jerry, because it's been recommended to me by so many people. But my library only has a handful of titles and I must read them in order, of course. I am seriously tempted to just splash out and get the whole dang series at that price!

>82 katiekrug: Sorrynotsorry. 😈

>83 rosalita: I certainly understand that temptation! I've been ordering them online one at a time, as I've only been going through the series gradually rather than gulping the whole thing straight down. I think they might get repetitive read all in a row. Well, you could buy the whole series and then donate them to the library when you're done, so you get your Parker itch scratched and then the warm feeling of doing a good deed! :)

>84 rocketjk: I wish I knew that they would still be available in next year's UCP sale — then I could space out my acquisitions a bit more. :-)

>80 rosalita: I'm trying to avert my eyes...

>86 BLBera: Come on, Beth. What could it hurt to just take a peek at the PDF catalog? You know you wanna ...

>80 rosalita: Dangerous post there, Julia!

I'm interested to see what you think of A Gentleman in Moscow. I've resisted reading it but it's in my collection now.

>80 rosalita: I got their email, and thought I'm sure they had that big sale just a couple of months ago (I remember being very very very very restrained and only buying two books then. *polishes halo*).

>88 Familyhistorian: I'm enjoying Gentleman in Moscow so far, Meg, but I am not very far into it. I've temporarily set it aside so I can read my January entry in the Agatha Christie reading challenge, but unlike some books I set aside, I'm actually looking forward to getting back to this one.

Stay tuned for my final verdict ... :-)

>89 Jackie_K: I am impressed by your restraint, Jackie. And it occurs to me, as I'm sure it has to you, that your restraint then means you have more money to spend now ...

Just trying to be helpful!

>90 rosalita:

Don't tell me you've picked up the Poirots!? :)

>92 lyzard: This month's Christie theme is "books inspired by her travels." I don't want to read the Poirots out of order (though I DO need to get back to them; Taken at the Flood is next up for me).

No, I chose The Man in the Brown Suit as a standalone I've not yet read AND that I already owned. Kind of a win-win situation there. :-)

>93 rosalita:

Excellent!

>91 rosalita: Exactly the kind of help I appreciate and welcome :)

>95 Jackie_K: :-D

>80 rosalita: You are such a temptress. It's a good thing that shipping costs are prohibitive, I'll just have to wait for a lucky find over here.

>97 MissWatson: Hi, Birgit! I was disappointed that the ebooks were not on sale as well, as that's my preferred format these days, and there would be no shipping costs for those! But I suppose the whole point of the sale from their perspective is to move stock out of the warehouse to make room for new stuff.

>98 rosalita: Nice business model, make room in your warehouse by cluttering up customers' shelves. I'm still not comfortable with ebooks, but I will get there eventually, I think. Just a matter of time (and running out of space).

>99 MissWatson: Space is the main reason I've embraced ebooks, along with portability and being able to adjust the font size as my eyes age and my vision gets worse. But I think there will always be a place for printed books, and especially books with a lot of illustrations. I think there's room for both (along with audiobooks, of course) so everyone can choose their own adventure, so to speak.

I'm not going to make a habit of posting a bunch of links this year, but I thought others might also like this article about writers who choose to create their first drafts with pen and paper:

The Case for Writing Longhand: ‘It’s About Trying to Create That Little Space of Freedom’

The link should work even if you don't have a NYT subscription.

>101 rosalita: I love that, Julia, and totally agree. I think my writing is better and more thoughtful when I write with a pen.

>101 rosalita: I do most of my writing and editing work on screen, but I find pen and paper extremely helpful when I'm trying to sort out how to organize my ideas at the paragraph or document level. Something about writing the sentences on paper or writing the section names on Post-its and taping them to my wall helps untangle things.

>102 BLBera: Writing instead of typing definitely seems to use different parts of my brain, Beth. I think it's about having to mentally map out what I want to say, instead of just typing quickly and then cutting and re-arranging afterward.

>103 rabbitprincess: I feel the same way about my daily planner and to-do lists. I am much better at actually following through on things when I write them down instead of relying on an electronic device.

>101 rosalita: Thanks for sharing that article, Julia! I usually start with mindmapping using pen and paper, and will often write a handwritten first draft too. After that I type it up on a gloriously low-tech gadget called a Neo2, which only shows 5 lines on the screen, and scrolling backwards and forwards is a right pain, so it's just a means of getting it down electronically as quickly as possible. Once that's done I transfer it to the laptop, and then the editing can start. If I were to come to a new piece of writing with just a blank screen I don't think I'd ever start!

>106 Jackie_K: Thanks for sharing your process, Jackie. I recently had to write up a set of training documents for a complicated task that is devolving onto someone who does not actually work in my department, and there were so many "if this, then that, except when" forks in the road that I found sketching out a flow chart really helpful before attempting to write anything.

When I was a journalist, I always had to come up with the lead paragraph or at least sentence in my head before I could sit down at the computer and write the article. It might not end up being the lead when all was written, but I had to have someplace to start or that blank screen would make me freeze.

>52 rosalita: Just so you don't feel bad, I haven't read a Gentleman in Moscow yet either.

been busy reading, glad you're back!

Thanks, Chèli! I'm glad to be back. And so far, I am very much enjoying A Gentleman in Moscow, though I'm only about a quarter of the way into it. It's a bit of a chunkster. :-)

I read The Man in the Brown Suit after I read The Grand Tour: Around the World with the Queen of Mystery. It added more depth to the read knowing that she'd based the brown suited man on their tour leader.

>110 Familyhistorian: I think I have that one hidden around the digsite somewhere - looks like fun!

4. The Man in the Brown Suit by Agatha Christie.

Anne Beddingfeld is a young woman trapped in the dull countryside of England with her anthropologist father. Her longing for bright lights and adventure is realized when her father dies, but her impulsive trip to London segues into an impulsive voyage on a steamship to Africa in pursuit of a man she thinks she saw commit a murder (the titular man in the brown suit). She's caught up in a series of increasingly improbable events both on board the ship and later in South Africa, and survives more or less in spite of herself.

This is one of Dame Agatha's earliest novels — I think it was her fourth — and it shows. The plot contains the twists and turns we came to expect from a typical Christie mystery, but it's rough around the edges and doesn't always hold together on close scrutiny. That the first problem. The second is not Christie's fault, but mine. One of the main suspects in this adventure is a man I first encountered in a couple of Hercule Poirot mysteries, written much later. Because he was on the side of the angels (or rather the funny little Belgian with the mustaches) in those, I knew he couldn't be a murderer here. That's just the kind of thing that happens if you don't stick to strict chronological order, kids.

I read this now to fulfill the first prompt (read a book inspired by Christie's travel) in the reading challenge sponsored by Christie's official website. You can see in Meg's post at >110 Familyhistorian: that she wrote about her round-the-world voyage in a book that sounds well worth picking up. I'll have a look for it at the library.

>112 rosalita:

The giraffe, though! :D

That's just the kind of thing that happens if you don't stick to strict chronological order

Ahem.

There's another, much more serious example of that in the Poirot books, so I hope you've learned your lesson! :)

>113 lyzard: The giraffe! When I first started reading that bit, I was picturing little carved wooden animals small enough to fit in the palm of your hand. Once it dawned on me that we were talking toddler-sized or better, the whole thing became much funnier. :-)

I don't remember the details of the Poirot situation you are referring to, but I remember carefully avoiding your review of whichever book it was so that I didn't accidentally spoil myself. Am I right that the book that should be read first is Cards on the Table? I've read that one now, so hopefully when I get to the one you reference, I'll remember this conversation!

>114 rosalita:

I wanted that giraffe so bad when I first read that book! Still do. :D

Yeah, that's the one: if you get those particular books out of order it's a disaster, because it automatically eliminates one of the four suspects!

By the way, was it you who initiated the fish paste discussion re: Sad Cypress? - because my Google timeline thingy just reminded me that two years ago you took a photo of toast with fish paste on it!?

>115 lyzard: Yes! That was me with the fish paste. :-) I still haven't had any yet, but I've managed to survive. Someday ...

Daily Deals

Colson Whitehead's The Underground Railroad is $2.99 in ebook format at the usual suspects (Amazon, Kobo). I thought I already had a copy of this but apparently I don't, so I'm happy to grab it here.

>117 rosalita: - Great book.

>118 katiekrug: Noted. I have purchased it and added it to the teetering TBR pile. :-)

>112 rosalita: I thought I had read all of Christie's books, but this one sounds unfamiliar...

The Whitehead book is really good. How many books does your Kobo hold?

>120 BLBera: The Christie is a standalone, Beth, not part of the Marple, Poirot or Tommy & Tuppence series. I haven't read many of her standalones, and like you I had not heard of it before.

How many books will fit on the head of a pin a Kobo e-reader depends on how big the book file is, but the 8GB of storage supposedly will hold about 6,000 average-sized books. I don't usually load all the books as soon as I get them, though, so I only have probably a couple of hundred on the device at the moment.

>121 rosalita: - I think I am probably an outlier in how I "manage" my e-books. Any news ones are downloaded onto my Kindle automatically when I connect to the internet and then I enter them into LT and immediately remove them from the device. I only ever keep about half a dozen on the device itself.

>122 katiekrug: So when you are ready to read a book, you re-download it from Amazon at that time? I think that makes sense. I do something similar except I download the EPUB files to my computer and store/organize them on my computer in a program called Calibre, which can then send them to my e-reader when I want to read them (and in the case of Kindle books, convert them to a format I can read on a Kobo). Basically, I don't trust Kobo/Amazon not to take a book away after I've bought it (since we know Amazon at least has done that in the past) so I want a copy of it on my computer even if it's not on my e-reader.

>123 rosalita: - Yep - I just turn the wifi on my Kindle on, search for the book I want and download it. I get the trust issue. But I'm also lazy and I tried futzing around with Calibre several years ago and couldn't make it do what I thought it should. User error, no doubt.

>124 katiekrug: I find Calibre invaluable but it does have a bit of a learning curve, for sure. But since you only buy and read Kindle books, most of its features aren't really useful for you, anyway.

Daily Deals
Maybe you watched the Netflix limited series The Queen's Gambit and now you want to read the book it was based on. Or maybe you had no idea there was a book, and you're curious. Either way, the ebook of The Queen's Gambit by UI Writers Workshop alum Walter Tevis, is on sale for $1.99 at Amazon and Kobo today.

>122 katiekrug: >123 rosalita: I also keep only a few e-books on my Kobo. Most of my reads are from the e-library, so they are inaccessable after three weeks.
I download all e-books with Adobe Digital Editions, needed for the library books, and handy to download my own e-books on the computer. My own e-books are also on an external harddrive.

I keep every one of my ebooks on my kobo all the time, I love 'flicking' through the entire library, like browsing my shelves. I splashed out and got a 32GB kobo, I've got nearly 500 books on it and it's still only using a fraction of the space. Better buy some more books! :)

>127 Jackie_K: You definitely need to find some friends for the books you already have, Jackie! Do you have a Forma? That's what I have, but the smaller 8GB as I said. Since I don't keep all my books loaded all the time, I figured that was plenty for me.

>128 rosalita: I do have a Forma, yes, and I LOVE it! I had a Glo before then, but I managed to fill it up (probably had around 400 books then, but some of them were cookbooks so the files were giant). I've been really pleased with the Forma, I much prefer it to reading on a kindle (although admittedly I only have a very old second hand kindle).

>129 Jackie_K: I originally had a Touch, way back in 2010 or 2011, then upgraded to the GloHD because it had a front light. I still have the GloHD and use it when (if, these days) I leave the house, but I love the larger screen of the Forma and the warmer lighting that isn't as harsh to look at.

Kobo should pay you, Julia. You are very convincing.

I see that COVID in Iowa is over. Great news. ;)

>131 BLBera: I know e-readers aren't for everyone, and that's totally cool. I just want people* who are thinking about an e-reader to realize there are options other than Kindle. More choices are always good! :-)
*Mostly Americans; Kobo has a much larger market share in other parts of the world.

And yes, Iowa is officially* free of Covid. Here's hoping the rest of you see the light someday.
*According to our esteemed governor, #CovidKim aka #KimReaper

Things are quiet on the reading front over here — still happily working my way through The Lone Pilgrim collection and A Gentleman in Moscow. So let me start your week by tempting you to spend some money ...

Daily Deals
Because Internet by linguist Gretchen McCulloch is a nonfiction book about the ways the internet has changed language. I've enjoyed listening to the podcast that McCulloch cohosts, Lingthusiasm. The ebook is $1.99 at Amazon and Kobo.

Long Bright River by Liz Moore is an outstanding novel set in Philadelphia in the midst of the raging opioid epidemic. The first paragraph of my 4.5-star review:

This is an unflinching look at the opioid crisis through a dark lens. None of the characters conform to the usual stereotypes. Cops aren't always heroes (or villains); addicts aren't always dangerous or hopeless. Everyone has secrets and people are seldom what they appear to be at first glance. In that way, it's one of the most realistic novels I've ever read, and one of the most moving.

It's $1.99 at Amazon and Kobo.

>133 rosalita: - I second the recommendation of Long Bright River. Such a great novel. I gave it the full 5 stars.

Glad your current reads are good ones!

>134 katiekrug: I'm pretty sure you were the one who convinced me to read Long Bright River in the first place, Katie.

It's hard to fit the reading in between all the Olympics coverage, though I can usually get some pages turned during the stupid X-Games stuff. Oh, and the cross-country ski marathon thingy. Although there was a wipeout early in that one, too, which you would have enjoyed. ;-)

>135 rosalita: - If you are referring to the skiathlon or whatever they call it, when they switch styles, I did see the Russian guy wipe out early on. He still won, though :(

>136 katiekrug: I couldn't remember the word skiathlon because it's a dumb word, but yes, that's what I meant. I remember the commentators saying that a fall so early wouldn't necessarily ruin his chances to win, and I guess they were right. I didn't know he ended up winning because I think I fell asleep. :-)

>137 rosalita: - Cross-country skiing is mostly a snooze-fest, isn't it? Sometimes the race for the finish line is exciting but who wants to sit through it just for that? I do have a soft spot for the biathlon because I can't imagine that kind of exertion and then trying to hit targets!

I am also a fan of Long Bright River and agree that a skiathlon would be like watching paint dry. I need instant gratification.

>138 katiekrug: >139 BLBera: Right? I wouldn't mind trying to watch a shorter race to see if it's slightly more exciting than an 18-mile slog like the skiathlon, but otherwise it's a hard pass for me — except for the biathlon, because I agree shooting straight while heaving for a deep breath seems impossible.

Beth, I remember you were another siren singing the praises of Long Bright River. So good.

>133 rosalita: I really liked Because Internet so would endorse taking advantage of that deal! I've read it in both print and audio (the audiobook is narrated by the author).

>141 rabbitprincess: That's good to hear. I bought the book but haven't read it yet. Another ROOT!

Daily Deals

The Collected Stories of Eudora Welty is a great introduction to one of the great writers of the American South. This anthology includes all of her published short works, including what is probably her most famous: Why I Live at the P.O.. The ebook is $2.99 at Amazon, Kobo, Apple, and Google.

Belt Publishing is an independent press that focuses on people and issues related to the Rust Belt, the Midwest and its writers. They are having a winter sale, with 40% off all books and free shipping for orders of $30 or more. I already own several of their books, including Rust Belt Chicago, How to Speak Midwestern and Red State Blues.

Currently Reading
(as of Feb. 17)

  

I finished A Gentleman in Moscow and hope to have a review up soon. And I'm still happily dipping in and out of The Lone Pilgrim, but I've added The Alington Inheritance, the penultimate book in Patricia Wentworth's Miss Silver series, which Liz and I have been share-reading since February 2017! I won't hardly know what to do with myself when it's over.

I bet you and Liz could find another project to undertake together!

Daily Deals

Cormac McCarthy's masterful The Road is on e-sale for $2.99 at all the usual places (Kobo, Kindle, Nook, Apple Books, and Google Books). The blurb: After a worldwide disaster, a father and son make their way through a shattered landscape. This is one of just a few books in my LT catalog that is tagged "too sad to re-read." I sobbed all the way through the last section. A read for me.

>145 katiekrug: We recently started a shared read of the middle-school mystery series The Three Investigators but we are also planning to add another Golden Age mystery series; I think we're leaning toward Arthur Upfield's Inspector Bonaparte series, set in Liz's home stomping grounds of Australia. I'm looking forward to discovering an author brand-new to me!

>146 rosalita: - Co-sign.

>147 rosalita: - Fun!

I have a couple by Colwin that I picked up on your recommendations, and I keep meaning to get to them. I started one that I had as an Ebook, and then got distracted... I really liked what I read of it.

>149 BLBera: I hope you enjoy Colwin when you are able to read her, Beth.

Hi Julia!

>40 rosalita: Well, I bombed on the January ASIA read, bought a book for the February ASIA read, and read 2 pages and may not get it done in February, too. Sheesh. I am, however, re-reading Killing Floor after watching and loving Reacher, with an actor, Alan Ritchson, who actually almost looks like Reacher instead of the short man with dimples… *smile*

>80 rosalita: I saw those Richard Stark books, but decided to pass, although the sale goes on for quite a while and I may reconsider. I bought 4 books from the sale, one of them being Nuns Behaving Badly.

>101 rosalita: The benefit of writing longhand is that it makes for books that aren’t bloated for us readers.

Looking forward to your review of A Gentleman in Moscow, Julia. I really loved that book.

Currently Reading
(as of March 1)

  

I missed doing a "Currently Reading" update for the last two books I read because they were such quick reads, but I'm starting in on the latest entry in Charles Todd's Inspector Ian Rutledge series, A Game of Fear, which was published on Feb. 1. This is one of my favorite series, and you'll know that's true when I tell you that I pre-order the books at full price! Yes, it's true.

On the story collection front, I took a break from The Lone Pilgrim but am ready to get back on track now.

And I owe too many reviews, which I will post soon. Absolutely. Almost certainly. Possibly. Hopefully.

Hi, Julia!

Adding the Todd series to my list...

I've pre-ordered Stewart O'Nan's new one at full price. I think that's the first time I've ever done it!

>154 scaifea: It's so good, Amber! I only read the first book in Todd's other series (about WWI nurse Bess Crawford) and it didn't engage me at all, but this one captured my attention from the very beginning and has stayed strong throughout.

>155 katiekrug: Knowing how much you love O'Nan, I'm surprised this was the first time, Katie. And you've reminded me yet again that I need to read more O'Nan soon.

Daily Deals



Candice Millard is one of my favorite popular historians. Her telling of the assassination of President James Garfield, The Destiny of the Republic, is superb. However, this particular ebook is about Theodore Roosevelt's 1912 adventurous journey along the Amazon River, which nearly ended in disaster. It's available for $2.99 on Kobo, Kindle, Nook, Apple Books and Google Books.

>158 rosalita: Ooooh, that looks so intriguing - especially since my last book about an Amazon explorer didn't scratch the itch...

>158 rosalita: - Such a great book! I just finished her Hero of the Empire which was good but didn't read the heights of Rod or Destiny of the Republic. Can't wait for her new one.

>157 rosalita: - Ha! I've not done it before because I am usually clueless about new books coming out :-P

>159 Caramellunacy: You can never read too much about exploring the Amazon!

>160 katiekrug: That's a good point — unless an author is on Twitter, it can be hard to figure out when the new book is being released.

>153 rosalita: I'm anxiously waiting for your reviews.

No pressure.

Nope, no pressure.

*taps foot*

*checks watch*

>163 BLBera: >164 BLBera: >165 katiekrug: >166 katiekrug: >167 katiekrug:

>168 rosalita: - I can't see what I assume is a snarky graphic response :)

>169 katiekrug: It is, indeed.

5. A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles.

This book first landed on my radar when it seemed so many people here on LibraryThing were raving about it, although there were some more measured reviews as well. My usual strategy when I think I'm likely to read a book is to avoid all reviews or even plot summaries until after I read it, so I knew hardly anything about this one other than it involved someone living in a hotel in Moscow.

If you're a normal person who would like just a little more setup, though still without spoilers, here it is: Alexander (the former Count) Rostov was living in Paris when the Bolsheviks overthrew the Tsar in 1917. Against all logic, considering his fellow aristocrats were being shot right and left, Rostov returned to Russia and set up house in the Hotel Metropol while the authorities decided his fate. Because he had written some poetry prior to the revolution that could be interpreted as supportive of the Bolshevik cause, it was decided that he would be allowed to live. But if he ever tried to set foot outside the hotel, he would be immediately shot.

Well, that's quite a setup. As soon as I realized that was the lay of the land I was intrigued, because I love books where people are confined in unusual places (see Stephen King's The Mist novella for a very different example of this trope). I did wonder how on earth that setup could lead to a 400-plus page book, but I settled in for the ride.

The story arcs across the 1920s to the 1950s, as Count Rostov settles into the hotel and makes the acquaintance of some very interesting people. He thinks he will have little difficulty with his confinement, given that the Hotel is essentially a small city: There is a newsstand, florist, barbershop, restaurant, bar, and other small shops and businesses. Really, he has everything he needs. Except, it turns out, the freedom to choose to be somewhere else:

For several days, in fact, he had been fending off a state of restlessness. On his regular descent to the lobby, he caught himself counting the steps. As he browsed the headlines in his favorite chair, he found he was lifting his hands to twirl the tips of the mustaches that were no longer there. He found he was walking through the door of the Piazza at 12:01 for lunch. And at 1:35, when he climbed the 110 steps to his room, he was already calculating the minutes until he could come back downstairs for a drink. If he continued along this course, it would not take long for the ceiling to edge downward, the walls to edge inward, and the floor to edge upward, until the entire hotel had been collapsed into the size of a biscuit tin.

Fortunately for the Count (and for the reader) a new resident of the hotel appears to take his mind off himself and his confinement, setting off a chain of events that reverberate throughout the rest of the book.

I appreciated the way Towles sign-posted the passing of the years and decades, and I never lost track of when we were or how old various people were meant to be. And as someone who doesn't know as much Russian history as I wish, it was fascinating to read the way the revolutionaries lost so much of the idealism that fueled their original actions. And I'd be remiss not to mention how much I loved the writing, with the quote above a good example.

All in all, I'm sorry it took me so long to get to this one but I'm glad I finally did. I have a hardcover of Towles' latest book, The Lincoln Highway, which seems to be very different from the limited information I've allowed myself to consume. Heaven only knows how long it will take me to get to that one!

There! That should hold y'all for a while ... ;-)

>171 rosalita: Excellent comments, Julia. Well worth the wait.

>171 rosalita: - Guess I should read it....

>173 BLBera: You are too kind, Beth.

>174 katiekrug: Does it sound appealing? I know I liked it, but I can't tell if I actually gave anyone else a reason to think they would like it. :-)

>175 rosalita: - It was already on my list (and on my Kindle), and your comment "All in all, I'm sorry it took me so long to get to this one but I'm glad I finally did" made me think I really should finally get around to it :)

In related news, I just saw on Twitter that Towles has begun work on his next novel, which, "begins in Cairo in 1940 and ends in NYC in 1999."

>176 katiekrug: Ha, I had already forgotten I wrote that. :-D Well, I will look forward to hearing what you think when you read it.

And seriously, Towles? I think his next challenge should be to write a book that takes place entirely within the space of one week. :-)

If you've ever wondered what the weather is like in Iowa in March, this should clear things up for you:

>179 rosalita: You could substitute Minnesota as well, Julia.

>180 BLBera: Indeed. I wasn't sure if you ever got high temperatures that high in March, but then your lowest low is probably even lower than that, so it all evens out. :-)

6. The Alington Inheritance by Patricia Wentworth.

A young woman grows up in an English village knowing that she is the illegitimate daughter of the heir to the wealthy Forbes family. Sadly he is killed in World War II before he can marry her (comparatively) lower-class mother. When the mother dies giving birth to Jenny, the child is brought up by her parent's old governess, who cares for her with much love and affection. But when the governess is felled by a hit-and-run accident, she manages before she dies to whisper to Jenny that her mother and father really were married — making Jenny the heiress to the Forbes estate and not the poor relation who is condescendingly offered a job looking after the family's young children. But Jenny has to wonder: Is it true about her parents? How can she prove it? And who else knows the truth — and what would they be willing to do to make sure it stays a secret?

Maybe it's because we are approaching the end of the Miss Silver series (this is the penultimate book) but I found myself thoroughly enjoying this entry. It's true that there really isn't much of a mystery here; it's quite clear early on who the villain is, and the victim sadly is not one of the patented Wentworth "they had it coming" variety. But Jenny is an appealing main character, and the obligatory romance is not as eye-rollingly silly as they sometimes are in this series. And who could fail to be charmed by young ruffian Dicky Pratt, who turns out to hold the key that Miss Silver, in concert with her willing acolyte, Detective Inspector Frank Abbott, needs to unlock the solution?

7. The Mystery of the Vanishing Treasure by Robert Arthur.

The Three Investigators — Jupiter Jones, Pete Crenshaw and Bob Andrews — are between cases and trying to practice their deduction skills when they visit a museum exhibit of some spectacular jewels from Japan. Of course, while they are there the lights go out and when they come back on, one of the most distinctive and valuable works of art (an elaborate gold belt set with huge emeralds) is missing. They try to get the museum curator to hire them to investigate, but he seems unenthused by the notion of hiring three teen-age boys to investigate a multimillion dollar robbery in broad daylight. Some people, amirite?

Jupiter, Pete and Bob do eventually get to the bottom of the case, of course, but not before fulfilling a personal request from their patron, Alfred Hitchcock (yes, that one), who asks them to help an old friend who is being harassed by a gang of garden gnomes. No, really. Stop laughing! I'm serious. And if you don't believe a gang of garden gnomes harassing the friend of a world-famous movie director can't be mixed up with a daring jewel theft in downtown Los Angeles, I can only suggest you visit a mechanic to have your disbelief's suspension repaired.

These books are such goofy fun. I'm sure middle-school Julia enjoyed them at least as much as middle-aged Julia does. They are the perfect reads when I don't want to think too hard about who done it.

8. Fer-de-Lance by Rex Stout.

I'm starting a chronological re-read (along with my reading running buddy Liz) of Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe series, which is probably my favorite book series of all time. Thankfully, I wrote a review of this one the last time I read it in 2018, which I have copied below for your personal convenience:

This book is Exhibit A in the argument for not always starting to read a series with the first book. And yes, I usually do start with the first book when I can, and sometimes it's absolutely essential in order to fully appreciate how the characters evolve. But Stout's Nero Wolfe series of mysteries, which were written over a span of time between 1938 and 1975, are most certainly the exception that proves the rule.

That's due in large part to the way Stout structures the books. While the setting of each book reflects the time period in which it was written, the characters themselves — enormously sedentary detecting genius Nero Wolfe; his handsome, wisecracking, athletic assistant Archie Goodwin (swoon); live-in gourmet French chef Fritz; police nemeses Inspector Cramer and Sergeant Stebbins; newspaperman Lon Cohen — never change. They remain the same ages and personalities from the first book to the last, with only minor exceptions. Wolfe is forever in his mid 50s, Archie is forever 32-ish, and so on.

It might sound odd to think of characters never aging even as they operate in a New York City and an American culture that changes drastically, but somehow Stout makes it work. And it has the advantage of avoiding the absurdity of Robert B. Parker's detective Spenser, who in the early 1970s is a Korean War vet and ages at a normal pace through the series, yet is still somehow kicking ass and taking names in the 21st century, well past the age he should be worrying bout breaking a hip during one of his inevitable fisticuffs.

While it's true that Stout's characters remain the same age, that's not to say that they sprang fully formed from the beginning, and that brings us around to why you shouldn't start this series with this book, the first. It took maybe 3 or 4 full-length novels before Stout had fully found Archie's and Nero's voices. Having read the later masterpieces like If Death Ever Slept, a discerning reader will find the dialogue a bit stilted in this maiden effort without the characteristic sparkle and sass that would develop in Archie's first-person narration once Stout hit his stride.

The mystery, though, is still first-rate, involving a snake, a golf club, and an airplane — to say more would be to say too much. Just do me and yourself a favor and don't read it until you've already fallen in love with Wolfe's World. Hands off Archie, though; I saw him first.

Since you're on a roll, could you write some reviews for me?

Well, I was going to say---

>182 rosalita:, >183 rosalita:

---"Yay, you're catching up!" but now---

>184 rosalita:

---you've gone a bit too far! :D

>184 rosalita: Oh, that is a timely warning. Nero Wolfe and Archie were my best friend's favourite series in her teens, and I couldn't quite see why when I picked up Fer-de-lance last year. This explains a lot.

>185 katiekrug: Let's meet in the middle: I give you permission to repost my reviews on your thread. :-D

>186 lyzard: :-D

You can probably guess how delighted I was to realize I had reviewed Fer-de-Lance fairly recently. If I had to write an actual new review, it probably wouldn't be done yet!

>187 MissWatson: If I had started the series with this book, Birgit, I'm not sure if I would have loved it enough to look for more, so I completely understand your reaction. If you're willing to try again, I would recommend skipping to Book 6, Some Buried Caesar, which in my opinion is the one where the "formula" really started to gel, although it's a bit of an outlier in that it involves Wolfe actually leaving the house. The first one I read, If Death Ever Slept, is also a great introduction to the series.

>188 rosalita: - That doesn't really help me, but thanks for the offer :-P

I actually only have one to do, and it's not like I put much time or effort into my comments because #lazy.

Great comments as always. I think I have a few of the Nero Wolfe series on my shelves. I should pick them up; I know I enjoyed the ones I read, but it has been years.

>191 katiekrug: Hey, I tried. :-) There comes a point where I've been putting off writing a review for so long that it looms far out of proportion to the actual effort it would take to just write the damn thing. So, my only advice to you is: Just write the damn thing!

Gosh, I'm insufferable when I've caught up on my reviews, aren't I? :-)

>192 BLBera: Thanks, Beth. I think I've made it clear that I adore this series, so I can only urge you to give the ones you have another try.

>190 rosalita: Thanks, Julia, I'll keep that in mind!

Currently Reading

  

The Major League Baseball owners decided they had wrung as much blood out of the Players Association turnip as possible, and thus the lockout that started after the World Series last year ended yesterday. That clears the way for the season to start just a week late, on April 7. Apparently, the plan is to make up the lost games via doubleheaders and taking away off days, so all 162 games will be played and the playoffs will be expanded so we'll have even more baseball than usual. My team (Chicago Cubs) is projected to be fairly terrible, but not quite terrible enough to ignore, so that's fun. Anyway, I'm celebrating by reading this nonfiction book recommended by Katie.

And I've finished two other books since my last update, which I'll just list below. Reviews to come at some point:
  

Not to put too fine a point on it, but I haven't read K. I just saw it and thought it would be of interest to you :)

Yankees open at home on the 7th against Boston. Soooo tempted to go....

>196 katiekrug: The only reason I hesitate to unequivocally advocate for you to go to the home opener is that April is a crapshoot weather-wise. But I've never been to a season-opening game and I bet it would be loads of fun!

I couldn't remember if you had actually read K or not, so I chose my wording carefully. :-) I have barely started it, only on Pitch #1 (slider), but so far I'm enjoying it. I've always enjoyed Kepner's writing in the Times, so the writing and tone are engaging me nicely.

>197 rosalita: - Good point about the weather. Not sure I'd want to go on my own, and The Wayne will probably feel like he can't take the day off because the following week he and his team will be "retreating" so won't get much actual work done. I'll float a trial balloon and see what he says.

I hope the book continues to be good and you spend the whole time reading it thinking nice thoughts about me :D

>198 katiekrug: I set aside time in every day to think nice thoughts of you, Katie!

:-D

Liar, liar pants on fire!

Hi Julia - I just started my reread of Winter, and I can't believe I had forgotten about the floating head!

>201 BLBera: It really seems like something a reader would remember, Beth, but I didn't either until I read the review I wrote when I read it originally.

I'm not sure what that says about us, Julia.

>195 rosalita:

Can I ask you a baseball question? (No, it's not about the rules, which I understand very well. Or the terminology. :P )

In our short-form cricket here, it was really successful so the organisers (of course) tried to cash in by massively expanding the number of games---and everyone lost interest because there were "too many games" and each game therefore meant less.

As a baseball fan, how do you maintain interest through that number of games? Do you pay attention to each one, or zone in and out according to how your team is going?

This is something we often discuss here, as we are more accustomed to shorter-season sports (comparable to the NFL).

>204 lyzard: It's a good question and I'm not sure I have an easy answer. The first thing that came to mind was "because it's always been this long." Which is mostly true (the season was 154 games from 1920 until 1962, when it was expanded by just eight games), and baseball of all the American sports is the most attached to its traditions, for better and worse.

But I do think there are increasingly fewer (wait, is that possible, to have more of less? My brain hurts) fans who actually play close attention to the whole season if by that you mean watching every game by their favorite team. And I would guess that many who do tune in to most games are doing so at least some of the time with the game as background noise, something they only pay attention to when the tone of the announcer's voice signals that an exciting play has happened. That's often how I "watch" baseball, with a book in my hand and my ears attuned to sounds of excitement on the video screen.

One of the provisions of the labor settlement this year was that the players agreed to an expanded playoffs season, so that 6 teams from the National and American leagues, respectively (previously 10 of the 30 total teams made the playoffs, now 12 will), reach the postseason for a confusing array of best-of-3, best-of-5 and best-of-7 series to eventually determine the so-called World Series champion (conveniently ignoring the rest of the world outside of North America). One of the reasons fans (and the players themselves) don't like expanded postseason is because it gives teams even less incentive actually try to win the regular season, since it's likely even mediocre teams will qualify for the playoffs. And the playoffs, of course, are where all the sweet, sweet television money is.

If I sound cynical, it's because I am. I love baseball above all sports but the professional game, especially the highest level, has some serious deficiencies — the games are too slow, the season is too long, and the in-game strategy has devolved into a scenario where batters either strike out or hit home runs, both of which are ultimately very boring to watch. The man supposed to be in charge, the commissioner of Major League Baseball, seems to hate the game or at least not to understand it in any meaningful way, so that improvements seem unlikely to occur any time soon. But I have season tickets for my local university's baseball team, and they are still fun to watch, so that is a small compensation.

I will also say, not to belabor a cliche, but many entertainment things seem bigger/longer in this country, from sports seasons to television seasons. I am always amazed when I watch an Australian or British TV show and a season (what I think you all call a series) is just 6 or 8 episodes long. The standard over here is 22, and that's shorter than it used to be. I think the shorter seasons/series make for better television with less filler but I guess maybe we have more channels and more hours to fill (and more commercials to sell, above all else).

>204 lyzard:, >205 rosalita: Many good points, Julia. And, yeah, "that's the way it's always been" is as good an answer as any. To me baseball is just part of Spring/Summer/Fall--outdoor weather. It's what we played as kids every day during the summer, then came home to watch the end of the Cubs game on TV that afternoon. It's always been there. A shorter season would feel like I got cheated out of something.

The game itself is slower, more methodical, and lends itself to many games. There's always tomorrow's game if today's didn't go so well. Attending a game is as much about taking in the atmosphere and settling back to watch the strategy, as it is about winning the game. Each game can have its own merits of play, strategy and great moments, even if it means that little is accomplished toward the playoffs.

I'm not sure I'm saying this very well, and I know absolutely zero about cricket, so it's impossible for me to make a comparison. I live a couple miles from the ballpark and haven't been there in decades. But I listen almost every day on the radio. No other sport has that kind of interest for me. Maybe baseball (Cubs?) fans are just a different breed.

>205 rosalita:, >206 kac522:

That's really interesting, thank you both.

Cricket is our main summer sport here and its traditional form is the five-day test match, which non-cricketing nations never understand, but which is about the ebb and flow of the game, the two teams getting on top at different times, and being able to maintain your standard over extended periods of play.

However when TV became more powerful and wanted more immediate bang for its buck, first one and then a second shorter form of the game were devised: so-called one day cricket, in which each team has 50 six-ball overs (six pitches, basically) at each other; and now 20/20 cricket, 20 six-ball overs at each other.

The latter is EXACTLY this---

the in-game strategy has devolved into a scenario where batters either strike out or hit home runs, both of which are ultimately very boring to watch

---and I don't care for it, though in small doses it is entertaining in a crude sort of way. It's this latter the organisers have over-scheduled, and which failed as a consequence.

We are suffering a lot in all our sports here from an insane desire to "speed things up": the rules are constantly being tweaked and a lot of the traditional physicality and attrition being pruned away. Some of this is new and valid concern about concussion in collision sports, but the rest seems like tampering for the sake of tampering and is very frustrating.

>206 kac522: Hello, fellow Cubs fan! I went through a period of about 15 years when I didn't have a TV at all, let alone cable, so listening to Pat and Ron (Santo, the original) on the radio was my only connection to the game from 1990 to about 2015 (Streaming services that carry live sports channels came along just in time for the 2016 season, thankfully). But I still love listening to baseball on the radio.

>207 lyzard: I stumbled on a YouTube video explaining the rules of cricket for baseball fans, and I finally felt like I actually understood what was going on. Now I'm trying to find sources to watch actual cricket games to practice my knowledge but it's hard to find over here. I'm sure there's some out there somewhere ... Anyway, it seems like the multi-day cricket matches are somewhat akin to the way baseball teams play the same team for two, three, or four days in a row before moving onto the next series. The big difference, of course, is that the score in baseball doesn't carry over from one game to the next.

And you're both right about the slower pace, not dictated by a clock, adds to the beauty of the sport. I do think in baseball some minor changes could be made not so much to speed things up but to make things less boring, such as limiting how much batters can step out of the box and how long pitchers can take between pitches. It wouldn't have to be super short, but something to curb the outliers and bring them into line with the norm would be welcome, I think.

And of course it's all about the TV money; Kathy will know that all the talk about the need to shorten how long baseball games take never mentions making the between-innings commercial breaks shorter! And it's especially galling that the baseball owners are always crying poverty as an excuse for why they can't share more of their billions of revenue with the players, and simultaneously refuse to open their books to independent accountants to confirm their interpretation of the numbers. Hmmm, wonder why?!

9. A Game of Fear by Charles Todd.

In 1921 England, Scotland Yard sends Inspector Ian Rutledge to Essex to investigate an unusual murder: There is a witness to the crime, but no body has been found. And the witness, an eminently respectable middle-aged woman who lives in the local manor house after losing both her husband and her son to World War I, recognized the murderer — a soldier who died several years earlier during the war.

Readers of the series will instantly understand from that summary the potential this case has to be an emotional land mine for Rutledge: He came back from fighting in France with a severe case of shell shock and the voice of his dead sergeant, Hamish, constantly in his head. How will be cope with investigating a murder apparently committed by a ghost against an invisible victim?

This 24th entry in the series is excellent, skillfully weaving the actual murder investigation into an examination of WWI's lingering effects on the home front and the people left to pick up the pieces in a world devoid of so many of their loved ones. There's also a subplot involving a woman Rutledge carries an unacknowledged torch for, which hints that there may be some further development on that front in future books.

About those future books: The preface to this one is an homage from one-half of the writing team that makes up the Charles Todd pseudonym, to his mother, who was the other half and has recently died. The ending of the book is not a cliffhanger that would all but assure another entry, but it's also not a neat tidying up of all the dangling plot lines, either. So I live in hope that come next February, I'll be happily spending time again with Inspector Rutledge for the 25th time.

10. All Systems Red by Martha Wells.

This science-fiction novella, the first in the Murderbot Diaries series, lived up to all the rave reviews I've read all over LT. The world-building of a future where there are human/android "constructs" who provide security to human on exploratory missions, was intriguing, and the narrative voice of one of these constructs, known as Murderbot for unfortunate reasons, is wry and cynical and lively. I look forward to spending more time with it soon.

>208 rosalita:

I don't know what your viewing arrangements are, but the women's one-day cricket World Cup is on at the moment, which might be a nice introduction if you can find it.

it seems like the multi-day cricket matches are somewhat akin to the way baseball teams play the same team for two, three, or four days in a row

I've used that argument against the anti-test brigade! :D

I hear you: the form of football I follow, rugby league, is two 40-minute halves, but they're always threatening to make it 20-minute quarters so they can cram in more ads. As it is, the halftime break keeps getting longer and longer.

The failure of the overdone 20/20 competition ought to be a lesson about too much fiddling with sport and too much pandering to the networks, but the organisers just seem to make the same mistakes over and over.

>210 rosalita: I really enjoyed spending time with Murderbot as well!

>211 lyzard: I'll have to have a look around to see if I can access the women's World Cup — thanks for the heads-up!

>212 Caramellunacy: A fun, fast read was just what I needed! Looking forward to seeing how the rest plays out.

Hi Julia, TOO many posts to read here! So I skipped them all and will start following your thread from here onwards!

>214 connie53: Welcome back, Connie! You haven't missed a thing.

Hi Julia!

>171 rosalita: I’m glad you liked AGiM, and I am like you in not wanting to read reviews of books I think I’ll read. I will read a plot summary, however. I, too, have The Lincoln Highway on my shelves, and I, too, don’t know how long it will take me to get to it.

>179 rosalita: My mom was glad to move to SoCal when she married my dad in order to get away from Iowa Weather.

>184 rosalita: Just more confirmation that our reading tastes are similar. I did a complete read/re-read of the series from April 2020 to August 2021. Some work better than others, but I always liked Fer-de-Lance. The WWII ones are, perhaps, my least favorite ones.

>209 rosalita: I did not realize that Caroline Todd had died.

>216 karenmarie: I had no idea Caroline Todd had died until I read the preface in A Game of Fear, Karen. I'm curious how the series will/won't change with only Charles Todd writing — you never really know how the division of labor goes in a multi-author collaboration. And as we know from reading Dick Francis, his wife was not ever credited with helping but she did at a a minimum a huge amount of the research and some sources say much of the writing as well. And when she died, Dick only ever wrote again in collaboration with his son, Felix.

I selfishly just want the Ian Rutledge books to stay exactly the same. I think the writing style and characterization are just fine the way they are and I'd hate to see them change abruptly in ways that don't make sense in the context of what's gone before.

Daily Deals



A nonfiction pick today, available for $1.99 at all the usual places: Kobo, Kindle/Amazon, Nook/Barnes & Noble, Apple Books, Google Books. The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America's Shining Women is a fantastic historical account of the factory girls who worked with radium and struggled to get anyone to believe their terrible health outcomes were caused by that exposure. An excerpt from my 2018 review:

The story as told by Kate Moore through contemporary accounts, including journals and interviews of the women involved, has several layers that make it interesting beyond the quest for justice by these specific women in this specific circumstance. Moore does a good job of outlining just how anemic were workplace safety regulations during the early 20th century, and how the case of the radium workers spurred stricter oversight of dangerous industries. She also effectively conveys how the science surrounding radium toxicity was laggard, though certainly the companies who hired the women knew it was dangerous and deliberately lied and stonewalled to keep from facing liability after the women began falling ill. Many, many women died before ever receiving the justice of hearing their employer admit they were culpable.

Moore writes in a mostly dispassionate tone, although her sympathy clearly lies with the women and there are moments when her indignation on their behalf leaks onto the page. I didn't feel her emotions detracted from the authority of her research and narrative; indeed as I read I was feeling much the same way and in a more emphatic way than she allowed herself to reveal.

Hey Julia. Radium Girls does sound like one I would like.

>219 BLBera: I think you would like it, Beth.

I started Spring. No pressure.

>221 BLBera: No! Well, I think we'll have to be out of sync on this one, then. I've got a library book that just came in so I need to read that one before they take it away. But I hope to get to Spring sooner rather than later.

Sounds good.

Here's a free online author event some of you may be interested in:

Iowa Writers’ Workshop graduate and PEN/Faulkner Award-winning author T.C. Boyle ('74MFA) will read from his acclaimed works in an event at 7:30pm (CDT) May 5. The event will be both in person and available via a free livestream.

Since the mid-1970s, Boyle has published 28 books of fiction that explore topics ranging from historical biography to ecological apocalypse—and tackle themes such as environmentalism, fanaticism, and the unintended consequences of technology. You may attend in person or via livestream.

Register Today

“A masterpiece of contemporary social satire.” — Praise from The Wall Street Journal for T.C. Boyle’s tragicomic novel The Tortilla Curtain

The event is sponsored by the University of Iowa Alumni Association, in partnership with the UI Lecture Committee, the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and the Iowa City UNESCO City of Literature.

Hi, Julia - just wanted to let you know that I have found a copy of The League Of Frightened Men after all. I might be able to squeeze it in next month, or we can leave it for a bit if you prefer?

Hi Julia, I’m glad to see you enjoyed A Gentleman in Moscow. I was late to the party when I read it - I think it was early in 2020. Then in 2021, I read both Rules Of Civility and The Lincoln Highway and both of them were year-end favorites.

I’m way behind in the Ian Rutledge series. I’ve only read a dozen or so, but I have one on my “read sooner rather than later” pile. I also wonder about the future of the series but at least I have quite a few to read before it’s an issue for me.

Hi Julia!

>217 rosalita: I didn’t realize that about Dick Francis not writing again after his wife died until he started writing with Felix. Very suggestive. Have you read any books by the husband/wife team Nicci Gerrard and Sean French – Nicci French? I loved their Frieda Klein series and have a couple of standalones, too.

>224 rosalita: I have two books by T.C. Boyle, both as yet unread. Talk Talk and Riven Rock. Do you recommend either?

>224 rosalita: Thanks Julia!

>225 lyzard: Fabulous news! I'd definitely be up for reading it next month if that works for you.

>226 Copperskye: Hi, Joanne! I have the (chonky) hardcover of The Lincoln Highway staring at me from the coffee table, so I'm glad to hear it was a hit for you. I got it as part of a Prairie Lights event that features Towles in conversation with another of my favorite authors, Erik Larson. I can't remember if you've read him? I'd think you'd like his narrative nonfiction work.

>227 karenmarie: Hi, Karen! I have not read any Nicci French but she's on my radar as a series I'd like to try. I hadn't realized that was also a dual-author situation. I haven't read either of those T.C. Boyle books yet, but I've read The Tortilla Curtain and liked it. I think I have Talk, Talk around here somewhere...

>228 BLBera: You're welcome, Beth!

>229 rosalita:

Now that my book access has opened up a bit I need to sit and have a re-think about things, but I should be able to squeeze that in. :)

Currently Reading
(as of March 29)

  


I've decided that the baseball book (K: A History of Baseball in Ten Pitches), divided as it is into chapters each devoted to a single pitch, is best read more like a book of short stories than a novel, so I'm alternating it with the actual book of short stories (The Lone Pilgrim) that I swear on Springsteen's Telecaster is almost done, and Rally 'Round the Flag, Boys!, which I first read when I was far too young to get all the adult humor and am reading again now because Liz is reading it. I'm such a follower.

* I've posted a different cover for The Lone Pilgrim because for some reason the cover image I've been using has lost its mind and won't show properly here, although it looks just fine in my catalog and on the book page. I just can't even.

>233 rosalita: I'm very much interested in how you end up enjoying K: A History of Baseball in Ten Pitches. I have it unread on my baseball shelf. Also, Kepner, going by his NY Times work at least, is a very good baseball writer.

Rally Round the Flag, Boys! sounds fun. I'll have to have a look around for it.

>234 rocketjk: Hi, Jerry! As you say, Kepner is an excellent baseball writer which makes for an engaging read. With the caveat that I've only read one of the chapters so far (on the slider), I like the approach he's taking — he weaves together history of the pitch's development, technical explanations about the pitch (how the pitcher grips it, how the ball behaves, variations in both) and interviews with some of the pitchers who are most famous for having thrown that particular pitch. The only reason I'm slow-reading it, really, is that I didn't want all of the information about the various pitches to blur together in my mind.

>235 katiekrug: I'm curious whether it will be as good as I remember — although most of my positive reaction to it back then was the transgressive nature of reading something that was a bit naughty, and I think I've outgrown that reaction. :-) Sadly, I did not keep the hardcover edition when I went through my mom's things after she died, but I was able to find an ebook version on Kobo for about $5, which seemed quite reasonable. I'm sure Kindle would have it as well, if your library doesn't.

NYPL came through and has it in their e-book collection. I've added it to my WL...

>237 katiekrug: Sweet!

>233 rosalita: I just realized that Rally Round the Flag, Boys! is probably the inspiration for the title of the M*A*S*H episode "Rally Round the Flagg, Boys". (I have a LOT of M*A*S*H trivia percolating in my brain...)

>239 rabbitprincess: Oh, well done for making that connection! I always loved the Col. Flagg episodes. I remember as a little kid being fascinated by the way he read out the punctuation in the titles of the various Army forms to be filled out (like "1040 stroke B" and things like that). I don't think it had ever occurred to me before then that punctuation could have a name (other than the normal period, comma, etc.)

Now I want to watch old M*A*S*H episodes... they must be streaming online somewhere.

>240 rosalita: Disney+ has them as part of the "Star" channel! I have them all on DVD. It's probably my favourite show of all time.

>241 rabbitprincess: Thanks for the tip!

11. The Secret of Skeleton Island by Robert Arthur.

The Three Investigators travel cross-country from sunny Southern California to an island off the coast of South Carolina, where Investigator Pete Crenshaw's father is working on a movie set. The set has been plagued with thefts and mysterious happenings involving an old ghost legend and pirate treasure, and the boys are recruited by filmmaker Alfred Hitchcock to see if they can uncover the truth. This they do, eventually, after putting themselves into various forms of physical jeopardy and then more or less promptly rescuing themselves. For the second book in a row, Jupiter (a former child film star known as Baby Fatso) is sidelined while Pete and Bob have all the physical adventures. I didn't like that part at all but the series is determined to establish Jupiter as the brains and Bob and Pete as the brawn and that's just the way it goes, I reckon. As in The Mystery of the Green Ghost, the boys are aided in their adventures by a cheerful immigrant teen, this time from Greece. I appreciate that these books in the 1960s show the Three Investigators as welcoming and unbigoted, even as it paints the adults in a less flattering light. I'd like to think young readers took our young heroes as role models in this, at least, if not in the "constantly disobeying parents and getting into trouble" bits.

12. Rally Round the Flag, Boys! by Max Shulman.

Another blast from the past, as I remember reading this mid-20th century satire when I was much too young to really understand a lot of the humor, but enjoying the fact that I was reading something that felt "grown-up".

Shulman (who I have learned also wrote The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis, which the classic TV show was based on), skewers the fictional Connecticut town of Putnam's Landing, which in the post-World War II era is transitioning from flinty Yankee village to bedroom community for New York City commuters. He spares none of the groups that make up the social strata of the town: the old-money original residents and their variously sullen and perky offspring, the flood of Italian immigrants who make up the working and service class, and the hopelessly suburban commuters. The three groups come together in spectacular fashion to do battle at the annual Fourth of July festivities with a fourth set of interlopers: soldiers who populate a new missile base in town.

I liked least the sexist humor about husbands being helpless to resist their wives' demands. The ethnic humor didn't seem particularly offensive to me, since I grew up in an Italian family not far away either in distance or time that would have fit in perfectly among the Italians of Putnam's Landing. Shulman is even-handed in his ridicule, with every group coming in for their fair share of digs, which keeps any of it from feeling like punching down.

I'm glad I re-read this, and I look forward to reading Liz's thoughts someday. While it didn't seem quite as hilariously transgressive as I remember it from my childhood, there were still some laugh-out-loud bits that made it worth the time.

Great comments on both the Shulman and the Three Investigators, Julia. Interesting to see how they have aged.

>243 rosalita:, >244 rosalita:

Well done, you!

I don't think it's so much disobeying parents as that the adults never believe a word they say. :D

'Someday', yes...

>245 BLBera: Thanks, Beth! It's always a bit perilous revisiting remembered favorites.

>246 lyzard: I think that's closer to the mark — the adults never take anything the boys say seriously. And of course you know the someday is just gentle ribbing on my part — right?

>247 rosalita:

I'm just a little sensitive on that point... :D

>248 lyzard: I'll be good from now on, I promise!

Daily Deals



Mick Herron's Slow Horses series, about the adventures of a group of British spies whose screwups have relegated them to the minor leagues of espionage, is having a bit of a moment right now. There's a new series on Apple TV+ that The New York Times calls "a highly satisfying celebration and sendup of the John le Carré novels that clearly inspired it" and "a complicated conspiracy thriller crossed with an office comedy (that) lightly dusts grungy realism with off-kilter, absurdist touches that only occasionally misfire." If that makes you curious but you'd like to read the source material first, the ebook version of the first book in the series is currently $2.99 for Kindle and Nook.

>250 rosalita: Thanks Julia. I've been seeing the TV series advertised, and it looks good. I might have to become an Apple TV customer. :)

>251 BLBera: Sign up for a month to watch this and CODA, if you haven't already seen it. It's really good!

My wife and I have watched the first two episodes of Slow Horses, the only two so far available (neither of us have read the books), and we both enjoyed them a lot. Looking forward toward watching along through the rest of the series.

>253 rocketjk: Good to hear! I've only read the first two books because those were the only ones my local library had. I still want to watch the series soon, though.

BTW...don't suppose you did manage to find the Women's World Cup?

Never mind. Here you go. It's short, I promise. :D

I looked up a trailer for slow horses to show Tomm because I think it's right up his street - he loved it!

>255 lyzard: This is the same problem I ran up against when I tried to watch:

Thanks for trying to help me out, though! I haven't given up yet but I think I need to do some deeper digging.

>256 scaifea: Yes, the trailer is good! Please report back if it makes the viewing schedule at Scaife Manor. I was going to watch the first episode last night but I got caught up in the exciting NCAA championship game. The wrong team won, sadly.

Event Announcement

The Noah Webster House in Connecticut is hosting "Webster's War of the Words," an online event that features two teams of celebrity contestants competing in a virtual game show. This year's event is at 7 p.m. Saturday, May 7, and tickets are $25.

I attended this event last year and it was a lot of fun once I worked through some connection difficulties that caused me to miss almost half of it. But the half I saw was fun, and there are opportunities for viewers to participate during the competition as well. Perhaps I'll "see" you there this year!

>257 rosalita:

How frustrating! Silly too, when they should be trying to promote this in new territories. Never mind!

>260 lyzard: I know, right?! One of my favorite authors right now, Adrian McKinty, tweeted today about cricket, so on impulse I asked him if he knew the best way to watch cricket here in the U.S. (he's from Northern Ireland originally, but also lived in Australia before moving to New York). He said that the ESPN+ streaming service carries a lot of cricket, so I'm mulling whether to subscribe. It wouldn't be just for the cricket, but I think I can get it as a bundle with something else that would make it only a couple of dollars a month. We'll see ...

Is there a "season" for cricket? Like baseball is an April-October sport, generally. But of course, with y'all having the opposite seasons as all of us up here, maybe it's pretty much year-round depending on the location?

>259 rosalita: - Oooh, thanks for the heads-up! I'll check it out.

>261 rosalita:

It's a summer sport: teams play at home during their own summer (our season runs about November through February), and then go on tour; so you can usually find it being played somewhere all year round. For instance, a team from Bangladesh is currently touring South Africa.

However, the major event at the moment is the men's Indian Premier League, a 20/20 (shortest) form competition involving teams made up of players from all over the world; you would probably find a broadcast of that fairly easily.

>262 katiekrug: You're welcome, fellow trivia/word nerd!

>263 lyzard: I also got a couple of other responses from tweeters suggesting that Peacock (I know that one, it's associated with NBC network) and Willow (that's a new one on me) also offer cricket on streaming, so more options to explore.

And thanks for the tip about the Indian Premier League! It will be easier to search with a specific event to look for, I hope (though that didn't help me with the women's World Cup). I shall report back!

>261 rosalita: & >263 lyzard: My wife and I (Americans, so we are) got to see a cricket match in Port of Spain, Trinidad, during a vacation visit to Trinidad and Tobago a few years back. It was the championship game of a 3-way tournament between India, Sri Lanka and a Caribbean all-star team. The Caribbean team had been knocked out and we attended the India-Sri Lanka final. Lots of fun, though it was very, very hot that day (we were at least in the shade). There are a lot of people in Trinidad of Indian descent, so the whole place was rooting for India. We were sitting next to a couple of very friendly fellows who, realizing we were from the U.S. and didn't know the game, offered us: a) a rolling cricket tutorial and b) sips from the whiskey bottle they had with them. Needless to say, the tutorial got more enthusiastic as the whiskey was gradually consumed. One of the tournament sponsors was even giving away free t-shirts, and I still have mine! At any rate, cricket seems to me like baseball (and probably most things in life), in that the more details you understand about the game, the more interesting it gets.

Morning, Julia!
Tomm started watching Slow Horses and loves it! Thanks for the recommendation!

>265 rocketjk: That sounds like a great time, Jerry! Getting in-person tutoring while watching the game live is perfect. I suspect that's another thing baseball and cricket share — it's much more fun to watch in person.

>266 scaifea: Hooray! I need to watch the first episode soon. I kind of like that they didn't drop the whole season at once — I'm not a good binge-watcher at all.

>264 rosalita:

Good luck, let me know how you go. :)

>265 rocketjk:

Oh, brilliant! You could hardly have a better introduction! :D

>269 kac522: So far, so good! But I'm not getting my hopes up just yet. As Bart Giamatti famously wrote:

It breaks your heart. It is designed to break your heart. The game begins in the spring, when everything else begins again, and it blossoms in the summer, filling the afternoons and evenings, and then as soon as the chill rains come, it stops and leaves you to face the fall alone. You count on it, rely on it to buffer the passage of time, to keep the memory of sunshine and high skies alive, and then just when the days are all twilight, when you need it most, it stops.

>270 rosalita: No hopes up, but just one win at a time....

>271 kac522: Spoken like a true Cubs fan! There's always hope ...

Daily Deals

A classic old-school mystery and one of my favorite books of all time is on e-sale right now. Calamity Town by Ellery Queen features the famous sleuth/novelist in upstate New York's Wrightsville, a town he would return to several times over the course of his career. The ebook is $2.99 at the usual suspects: Kindle, Kobo, Nook, Apple Books and Google Books. My 5-star review, written in 2017 upon re-reading a book I first discovered on our family bookshelves as a tyke:

My mom had the Wrightsville Murders omnibus on our bookshelves when I was growing up. It was a big heavy hardcover containing three full-length Ellery Queen novels — Calamity Town, Crazy Like a Fox, and Ten Days' Wonder — that I devoured starting in about sixth grade (40-some years ago). And I knew I had re-read it more than once, but I don't think I fully grasped how often I must have read and re-read it until I started this latest read of the first book in the omnibus, Calamity Town.

On every page — nearly in every paragraph — there was a phrase or sentence or scrap of dialogue that triggered the strongest sense of dejà vu. It wasn't so much that I remember the outlines of the story or whodunit (I actually didn't) but that I remember actual words and phrases! I've never had that happen before and it was a pleasingly disconcerting sensation.

Fortunately the vertigo wore off after Part I (which makes me wonder if I read and re-read just the first section over and over? I wish I could go back in time to find out, but then again that would mean living through junior high and high school again and no thank you) and I could just enjoy the book for what it is, which is a splendidly plotted mystery full of appealing characters put into realistic situations and left to find their way out.

A brief plot overview: It's 1940, and famous writer Ellery Queen has traveled to Wrightsville, a small town in upstate New York, in search of "color" for his next mystery novel. While there, he is befriended by the Wright family, descendants of the town's founder. That leaves him in the perfect place to observe as one misadventure after another befalls the family, culminating in the requisite murder.

Perhaps because they take Ellery out of his usual New York City locale, the Wrightsville novels have always had an extra appeal for me. Whereas the "regular" Queen mysteries set in NYC seem to rely on intricately formed plots with clues and red herrings scattered about, in Wrightsville the characters come to life fully formed and breathing. Incredibly for a novel written in the 1940s, there is virtually no offensive racial stereotyping or cheap laughs gained at the expense of the "hicks" that populate Wrightsville. Ellery does not condescend to his hosts, not even the Town Soak who is prone to declaiming Shakespeare from his drunken perch at the base of the founder's statue in the town square. It feels so much like a real town that I am half convinced I've been there before.

I guess the best thing I can say about this novel is that now I remember why I read and re-read it over and over all those years ago. It's a magnificent piece of scene-setting and characterization, with a mystery that more than lives up to its surrounding structure. I have a feeling I won't wait another 30 years before reading this one again ...

Great comments on Calamity Town, Julia. I think I read it years ago, but I have no memory of it. I might have to snap up the ebook.

hi Julia, waving at you!