Monday Mash Up

Monday, October 9, 2023 ~ Books & More...

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THOUGHTS

All I have been doing the past few weeks is thinking. I've been so busy thinking that I haven't had time to get it down on paper.

 

TICKETS

The first concert of the season was local-- 10 minutes from the house in a cozy venue just perfect for chamber music. We heard the Darshan Trio (violin, piano and cello) playing music from Beethoven to a couple of pieces from contemporary composers I've never heard of. Delightful evening.

We missed our first play at the Gamm, Topdog/Underdog, because we were in Philadelphia. A friend took the tickets and hopefully enjoyed the show.

Saturday night, we saw Gipsy Kings. Yes, the old lady who prefers Bach and Beethoven, also loves the Gipsy Kings and jumped at a chance to see them in concert. She missed the boat by about 10 years. I have never felt my loss of hearing more than sitting through this concert. What I remember as clear, crisp, joyous sound from all the times I had listened to the albums was just plain musical mush when heard in the auditorium. I contented myself with watching the amazing playing of the guitars. Still, it is becoming more and more obvious that my concert going days are numbered.

Sunday afternoon was The Good John Proctor at Trinity Rep. It was another afternoon of fabulous acting, lousy vehicle, no intermission. I think the man just a few seats down from me got it right; you could hear him snoring as the play drew to a close. So glad that it wasn't me doing the snoring. This show is running "in repertory" with another re-visiting of The Crucible, Becky Nurse of Salem by Sarah Ruhl, which we will be seeing next weekend.

 

HALLOWEEN BINGO

Read 22 • Called 17 • Claimed 15

I still can't figure out what to read for Halloween or Home for the Horror Days. Suggestions always appreciated. A Halloween title actually turned up as today's daily deal. A library hold won't get it to me in time and I'm not sure I want to spend $$ on a book I am not convinced I really want to read. I may end up using Wild Cards to solve the problem. Doesn't matter. I'll be done reading by the weekend and then it is just up to the calls when I yell BLACKOUT.

 

THE BOOKS

Sorry the list is so long today but I am still catching after my crazy September.

Chocolat by Joanne Harris

I'm doubling back to review Chocolat, which I started back at the beginning of September. It took so long to finish because I was eyeballing it. The movie is 4.5 stars; the book is not even close. Harris wrote and set the book in the 1990s -- and she was wrong, wrong, wrong. The movie got it right. It should have been set in the 1950s. The reactionary mores portrayed in the book went out of style with the Beatles, even in France. The movie also played up the magical realism much more than the book and to much better effect. The bad guy in the book is the priest not the local lord of the manor -- and oh, my was he one whack-job. In other words, don't rush out to read the book; the movie is much more enjoyable.
HB: Film at 11, Magical Realism.
3 stars

Dying Fall by Elly Griffiths

The book starts out light and bright and just gets darker and darker as the story develops.
HB: Dem Bones, Genre: Mystery; (features Druids,not sure what category)
3.5 stars

Longshot by Dick Francis

I have always liked this one. It feels so normal on the surface and yet is so deliciously malicious and cold-blooded below it. One of his best.
HB: Dark, Dark Woods, Splatter, Dem Bones, Ice Cold Fear, Amateur Sleuth, Country House Mystery, Home/Hurt, Psych, Genre:Mystery
45 star Francis

Known to Evil by Walter Mosley

The Leonid McGill series. Violent in a few places but still clever and well-written as Mosely runs the reader in circles.
HB: Urban Decay, Genre: Mystery, marginalized author
3.75 stars

The Poisoned Chocolate Case by Anthony Berkeley

Written in 1928. Two years after writing this book, where the mystery is solved by a mystery solving club, Berkeley helped found the "Deception Club."
Darkest London, Amateur Sleuth, Vintage Mystery, Arsenic& Old Lace, Home/Hurt
3.25 stars

Falling Felines and Fundamental Physics by Gregory J. Gbur

I filched this one someone else's HB list. Having already read a book for Black Cat (there's a cat on the cover), I read this one just for fun. It is an interest approach to physics but after a while, it was repetitive.
HB: Black Cat (cat on the cover)
3 stars.

The Unfinished Clue by Georgette Heyer

I chose this one off my bookshelf out of pure laziness. I wanted to read something for Country Mystery and didn't know what I wanted to read.
HB: Country House, Vintage Mystery, Home is Where the Hurt Is,
3.5 stars

The Raging Storm by Ann Cleeves

A library hold that was finally mine to read but that I did not read for HB. I enjoyed it and I'm looking forward to the next. MC is an interesting character. He is starting to loosen up a bit and I'm not sure if that is good or bad for the series.
HB: Mother Nature, Drowning Deep, Small Town, Genre Mystery
3.25 star (I like Vera Stanhope best of all)

The Hollow by Agatha Christie

I enjoyed this one. Poirot was not obnoxious and Aggie was serving up a surfeit of pickled herring (personally, I like mine drowned in sour cream) just to keep us on our toes.
HB: Genre Mystery, Vintage Mystery, Amateur Sleuth, Country House, Small Town Terror (?), Home is Where the Hurt is (?)
3.5 stars

Savage Run by CJBox

As soon as I saw that I could use this series for Great Plains, I was clicking on "borrow" at the library. I wasn't planning on continuing the series but I was desperate. Some of the shenanigans in this book are too unbelievable to be anything but "gallows humor."
HB: Great Plains, Genre Mystery, maybe Genre Thriller, The Barrens, Splatter (lots of bizarre deaths), Gallows Humor,

 

Murder in the Basement by Anthony Berkeley

Published with a foreword by Martin Edwards, so I learned some interesting things about the book before I even began the story. Berkeley liked to experiment with mystery stories. Usually we know who the victim is but Berkeley was the first to write a "who was done in" mystery and that issue had to be cleared up before moving on to the whodunit problem. This one is definitely going on the re-read pile.
HD: Dark Academia, Genre Mystery, Amateur Sleuth, Vintage Mystery, Darkest London,
3.75 star