Not Monday, Not September 18 -- Books & More
THOUGHTS
We're home! After 5 nights with the old folks, we drove home so I could start prepping for the Rosh Hashanah dinners. It was a good visit and we got a lot accomplished. Once home, I had to shop and start cooking for the weekend's festivities -- family dinners on Saturday and Sunday. I haul out the white linens and Grandma's china and everyone gets all gussied up, including the chef. Traditions are important. That and I am stubborn and steadfastly refuse to take short cuts. Saturday morning comes and I am on track for sitting down at 1:30pm. Perfect. DD1 is helping me in the kitchen while everyone else is at services. We are getting the job done and we are going to have a lovely meal together.
Family is all here now. The chicken goes in the oven at 1 pm -- an apricot chicken recipe that I haven't made in years -- and we are making our way to the table when all of a sudden the house goes dark. No electricity. Hurricane Lee hijinks. So, we finish pouring the wine and sit down at the table. We had what we needed to start the meal -- wine, bread, apple & honey and a huge pot of hot chicken soup, enough to tide us over until the electricity was due to come back on and the chicken could finish cooking. It wasn't quite what I had planned but it was leisurely and delicious and we were altogether. Besides which, it wasn't the first time that mother nature had other plans for our holiday celebrations.
OUGHTTOBIOGRAPHY
Still on hiatus because the list hasn't changed and I can't think of anything clever.😉
HALLOWEEN BINGO
Things are moving along slowly but surely, especially my decision to read a print version of Chocolat for Film@ 11. It is just so hard to cook and eyeball a book at the same time (my mother used to try to do it but was forced to give it up when the dishwashers (her children) complained about the burnt on food in the cooking pots). I've claimed 4 squares so far, finished 13 books and have had 8 of my squares called. I still have no idea what to read for a whole bunch of squares but I am sure that I will find them eventually.
Any one need a book for PSYCH? Try After She Wrote Him by Sulari Gentill (aka Crossing the Lines). Works for Death Down Under, too. Quoting myself: Wow. This one will leave you reeling. Keeps all the balls she is juggling in the air.
HB possibility: Psych, Death Down Under (Australia and Australian author).
THE BOOKS
Sparkling Cyanide by Agatha Christie
Finally, a Christie that I have enjoyed reading -- not that I even remember the plot at this point.
HB: Arsenic & Old Lace, Country House with a twist, Vintage Mystery, Genre: Mystery, Amateur Sleuth
3.5 Stars
La hojarasca por Gabriel Garcia Marquez
I listened to this one in Spanish. Enjoyed it but I had to slow the reading speed so I could hear the readers more clearly. I really need to do this more often.
HB: Magical realism
4 star
The Irregulars by Jennet Conant
A bland WWII spy story focusing on a group of "spies" working in the US (Roald Dahl, Ian Fleming among them), gathering information and trying to influence the American people to stand with Britain and other dastardly deeds. Makes me wonder just how many people the US had in England doing the same thing.
3 stars
Finlay Donovan Knocks ' Em Dead by Elle Cosimano
I really did not like this one at all. Weapons in a classroom!!! Stupid MC. Bad decision making. Bad geography. Nobody flies to from DC or Baltimore airport to Philadelphia (unless it is a connecting flight); one drives or takes the train because it is faster. And while I may be using this one for Gallows Humor, it was not funny. Absurd beyond belief maybe but not funny.
1 star
The House Sitter by Peter Lovesey
I love Lovesey. I love how Peter Diamond is a complicated mess who doesn't care what people think of him; he just gets the job done.
HB: I read this for Genre: Mystery but it works for Splatter (serial killer) and Urban Decay, maybe, if you consider Bath to be a city not a village.
4 stars
Castle Skull by John Dickson Carr
I have wanted to read something by JDC for a while now and have finally done so. Good choice for a still creepy but cozy mystery story. In other words, no lost sleep after reading this one.
Read for Locked Room but works for Vintage Mystery, Genre: Mystery, Country House and maybe Ice Cold Fear (but I can't remember when it was set).
3.75 stars
Sands of Windee by Arthur W. Upfield
Australia mid-20th century warts and all. Many thanks to the editors for not bowdlerizing the text and preserving for future generations what life was like in Australia at this point in its history. Good mystery and interesting MC.
HB: Death Down Under; marginalized MC (although the author is an English expat).
3.5stars
Evan's Gate by Rhys Bowen
I have been slowly reading this series over the past few years. It is a cozy set in the mountain villages of Northern Wales featuring the Welsh version of M.C. Beaton's Hamish Macbeth, Constable Evan Evans. I like the laid back setting of story, where characters all have very similar names such that everyone is known by their name and their profession -- Evans the Meat, Evans the Fruit, Barry the Post -- and everyone knows everybody else's business.
HB: Cozy Mystery, Dem Bones, village setting, mountains and forests abound, Genre: Mystery
3.5 stars
Always Outnumbered, Always Outgunned by WalterMosley
Meet Socrates Fortlow. Convicted felon who served his time and is now living in LA (Watts). This is a series of short stories/character studies rather than a novel per se. There is not much of a plot. I was hoping to use this for Urban Decay but it doesn't really meet all the requirements -- no suspense, no murders, no thrills or chills. So even though it is a magnificent depiction of urban decay, it doesn't seem to fit bill for Halloween Bingo. I'll pick another Mosley instead.
4 star
The Gift of Fire + On the Head of a Pin: Two Short Novels from Crosstown to Oblivion by Walter Mosley
Walter Mosley could have spent his whole career writing Easy Rawlins mysteries and made a good living at it. Instead, he branched out and experimented. These are two of the 6 short novels that he wrote for this series. I will be the first to admit that these stories are way over my head and I will have to read them a few more times until they sink in and I can make some sense of them.
I'm using The Gift of Fire, which uses Prometheus's gift to mankind as the jump off point to a more futuristic story, for Grimm's Tale.
3.75 stars
• Many thanks to 
I gave up Wind in the Willows in favor of DRACULA and kicked off the game in the very wee hours Wednesday morning with , which I really enjoyed but am now having trouble deciding exactly how to use it. I have no reading plan! I was thinking of just going through the list of my squares alphabetically; that plan didn't last for very long. I'm trying to work my way through a print edition of Chocolat for Film@11.
I was neither enthralled nor impressed by most of the editors choices. I didn't even keep a story by story list -- or stop to make notes about the individual stories. I just wanted to finish the stories before Bingo. I wonder why I threw this title on my wishlist in the first place.
8/30 ~ What a fun way to kick off Halloween Bingo -- with orcs, dwarfs,succubi and more. The book is fresh, bright and funny -- and they all live happily ever after. Just my speed.
8/30 ~ As soon as a saw that Martha Grimes had titled a book The Black Cat, my choice was made. No discussion needed. I don't have a lot to say about this one. I am slowly bouncing my way around the series with no rush to finish reading them because they make good fill ins when I don't know what I feel like reading. 
8/31 ~ I was looking for a "magical realism" title but realized that this would also work for Film@11. The only stumbling block is that this title is not available as an audiobook. So, I have taken the plunge and I am very slowly working my way through the book. I am not even 10% in. I love the movie and never read the book, so reading this breaks one of my cardinal rules: read the book or see the movie but not both. AND, I still need a magical realism title. Any suggestions?
9/1 ~ For Amateur Sleuth (first on the list of books on the "read the alphabetically" plan), I turned to the huge stash of audios I bought earlier in the summer at deep, deep discount -- from here on out known as "the stash." I decided that I would read one of the Miss Silver titles that I had bought. Wentworth kept me guessing till the very end. I liked the suspenseful ending, the red-herrings and how she kept me guessing.
9/2 -- When PSYCH was drawn as square of the day, I rushed to choose a book so that I could claim a Square and feel like the game had really started. I quickly settled on a tried-and-true Dick Francis title. This mild bit of dueling mind-fuckery has always worked for me. It was written in the early 60s but you are so engrossed in Rob Finn untangling the problem and setting up to resolve it that you don't miss the modern tech. You said it; I am a died in the wool Dick Francis fan.
