Mystie
Pearl Clutcher
Posts: 4,299
Jun 25, 2014 19:53:37 GMT
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Post by Mystie on Dec 15, 2022 1:18:04 GMT
Strong black coffee in the mornings with a splash of milk. A cup of tea in the evenings with a splash of milk only. Current favorites are Celestial Seasonings Bengal Spice, Harney and Sons Paris blend, and Charleston Tea Plantationโs Carolina Mint Tea. I like Charleston Tea Plantation! We were there on an anniversary trip in 2017 and I brought back a few kinds of tea. It was so much fun to visit, and the tea is good, too!
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Mystie
Pearl Clutcher
Posts: 4,299
Jun 25, 2014 19:53:37 GMT
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Post by Mystie on Dec 15, 2022 1:12:20 GMT
I do like a hot drink. Plain coffee, plain lattes, or a flavored latte with just a very small amount of flavoring. I'm looking forward to pistachio lattes coming back to Starbucks in January, fingers crossed. I make coffee in my French press at home when I have time, but I do love my local Starbucks a lot.
I also like black tea, Twinings is my favorite brand. And in the winter I love Constant Comment tea from Bigelow, which is black tea with an orange and spice flavor. Herbal tea I can take or leave.
I do like cocoa, but I don't need the sugar, so it's a rarity for me.
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Mystie
Pearl Clutcher
Posts: 4,299
Jun 25, 2014 19:53:37 GMT
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Post by Mystie on Dec 15, 2022 1:02:54 GMT
This has been on my mind a lot...my pastor is trying to get together a small group from our congregation to join in a larger regional outreach group (to put it very briefly) and I was interested and joined up, but now it's getting off the ground and requiring one dinner meeting of our small group per month plus one lengthy zoom meeting of the larger group per month, and I'm regretting it!
I'm sure some of it has to do with having more than enough to do in December already, and maybe I'll feel different next month, but I hate evening meetings because by 6:00 in the wintertime, I'm halfway ready for bed, not wanting to drive out into the dark and cold. (I didn't know there would be evening meetings when I expressed an interest in this thing.)
I'm an introvert with an anxiety disorder--I veer between wanting to participate in things and have relationships and be of help in my community, and then kicking myself in the ass when it's time to actually do those things, because in reality I just want to stay at home and feel secure and not talk to people. ๐
If you can commisserate, please do, and if you can help me figure out how to reframe this struggle into something easier, please do!
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Mystie
Pearl Clutcher
Posts: 4,299
Jun 25, 2014 19:53:37 GMT
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Post by Mystie on Dec 10, 2022 13:51:52 GMT
I adore โitโs a Wonderful Lifeโ but I canโt watch it at all! I have an anxiety reaction to yelling. I couldnโt figure out what was making me anxious while watching a movie I loved until I realized lots of Jimmy Stewartโs lines seems like heโs yelling. Iโm 100% sure Iโm the only person affected negatively by the dialogue in this movie, so that probably only makes sense to me. You're not the only one! But I actually detest the movie because of the yelling and overwroughtness (is that a word?) of Jimmy Stewart. NOT the vibe I want in a Christmas movie. And yelling makes me very anxious, too.
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Mystie
Pearl Clutcher
Posts: 4,299
Jun 25, 2014 19:53:37 GMT
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Post by Mystie on Dec 8, 2022 7:37:01 GMT
My goal was just to read more books than I have in the past few years--and I did! I've read 80 books this year so far, as opposed to 39 in 2021 and 28 in 2020.
My five-star books this year were:
Meet Me at the Museum by Anne Youngson
Billy Summers by Stephen King
Meg, Jo, Beth, Amy: The Story of Little Women and Why It Still Matters by Anne Boyd Rioux
Can't Buy Me Love: The Beatles, Britain and America by Jonathan Gould
Clementine: The Life of Mrs. Winston Churchill by Sonia Purnell
Strong Poison by Dorothy L. Sayers
Gaudy Night by Dorothy L. Sayers
Busman's Honeymoon by Dorothy L. Sayers
The Christie Affair by Nina de Gramont
Five Wives by Joan Thomas
Booth by Karen Joy Fowler
French Braid by Anne Tyler
The Dutch House by Ann Patchett
The Star Machine by Janine Basinger
Happy-Go-Lucky by David Sedaris
The Boys: A Memoir of Hollywood and Family by Ron and Clint Howard
Evvie Drake Starts Over by Linda Holmes
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Mystie
Pearl Clutcher
Posts: 4,299
Jun 25, 2014 19:53:37 GMT
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Post by Mystie on Dec 8, 2022 5:50:37 GMT
@redsquirreluk I take Gabapentin, too. It helps quite a bit, doesn't take care of 100% of the neuropathy but I can certainly tell if I miss a dose! (I take Exemestane, too, haven't had as many side effects from it as it sounds like you and Elaine have.)
I've become a big fan of those soft plush socks with the grippers on the bottom. They are so soothing to my feet, though they lose their softness a bit after they've been washed a lot. I've also started buying my athletic socks in the larger (10-13) size range and having that extra toe room makes a ton of difference. And diabetic dress socks, I finally caved and bought some, and they are much more comfortable than my old socks. And finally, Gold Bond Therapeutic Foot Cream is really helpful. I think regularly massaging feet with lotion helps a bit anyway, and the Gold Bond stuff is extra good.
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Mystie
Pearl Clutcher
Posts: 4,299
Jun 25, 2014 19:53:37 GMT
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Post by Mystie on Dec 5, 2022 14:08:56 GMT
I also went into medical menopause after chemo in 2020, and where I mostly wore 8 1/2 and could wear a lot of regular width, I'm pretty solidly a 9W now. I never connected it to menopause, though...I think it has more to do with the neuropathy from chemo in my feet. My toes are very sensitive and my feet in general just need more room to feel comfortable. I can wear my old broken-in shoes, but for new shoes, I've had to size up. I've also spent a fortune trying to find comfortable socks! I can't wear anything too stiff, thick, or tight.
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Mystie
Pearl Clutcher
Posts: 4,299
Jun 25, 2014 19:53:37 GMT
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Post by Mystie on Dec 2, 2022 15:19:24 GMT
My husband stayed in a nice hotel recently and came home raving about the iron in his room. So you don't have to push a button to make it steam, you just put it facedown and it automatically steams?
Our iron was a wedding present in 1992, and he certainly irons more than I do, so I thought I'd get him a new one for Xmas. Any recommendations would be helpful, especially for one that steams without pressing a button...?
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Mystie
Pearl Clutcher
Posts: 4,299
Jun 25, 2014 19:53:37 GMT
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Post by Mystie on Nov 17, 2022 15:56:56 GMT
It seems silly for people to be upset that the statue will be placed by a river, simply because she died by suicide in a whole other river. Woolf lived 60 years, I'm sure she enjoyed river walks many times in all those years. It sounded like the placement was carefully considered, and I hope the naysayers don't succeed in getting it stuck in some out of the way place. I'm a fan of Woolf and a fan of having more and more statues of famous women.
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Mystie
Pearl Clutcher
Posts: 4,299
Jun 25, 2014 19:53:37 GMT
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Post by Mystie on Nov 13, 2022 4:15:06 GMT
I cube and cook them, toss them with a sauce made with orange juice, orange zest, butter, and a little sugar, then bake them with pecans sprinkled over the top. They're sweet but not sickeningly sweet, and the orange flavor goes well with the cranberry sauce and the salty stuff. I've been making them this way for about 20 years.
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Mystie
Pearl Clutcher
Posts: 4,299
Jun 25, 2014 19:53:37 GMT
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Post by Mystie on Nov 9, 2022 2:12:58 GMT
It made my day to see your post and read about your good outcome and the excellent care you had. I hope you'll keep recovering well and soon be able to put this scary experience behind you. All my good wishes to you!
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Mystie
Pearl Clutcher
Posts: 4,299
Jun 25, 2014 19:53:37 GMT
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Post by Mystie on Nov 7, 2022 18:35:51 GMT
I read A Lady's Guide to Fortune-Hunting by Sophie Irwin. I heard about it on the Novel Pairings podcast. It's a Regency romance about a young woman who tackles the London season in order to find a rich husband who can pay off her dead parents' debt and help her support her four younger sisters. Very Jane Austen-ish! I enjoyed it, it was a light read.
Lucy By the Sea by Elizabeth Strout. I had read Strout's book Oh, William about the same characters a couple months ago, so I was up to date with the story, which begins as the covid pandemic begins and Lucy heads out of New York City with her ex-husband William, who sees what is coming and convinces Lucy they must head for Maine and hunker down. Some reviewers were hostile to this book, not wanting to read pandemic fiction just yet, but I thought it was the best of any of her books I've read, mostly because it felt cathartic to read about a character sharing those feelings of disorientation, fear, and grief. I liked it.
You Can't Be Serious by Kal Penn. This is Kal's memoir about growing up the son of Indian immigrants, bucking the expectations of his community to pursue a career in acting, and the subtle and not-so-subtle racism he's encountered in Hollywood. He also chronicles the years he spent campaigning for Obama and then working for Obama's administration. I found his stories about the obstacles faced by Asian-American actors to be really enlightening. The book has a light-hearted tone with a lot of funny stories.
This book was also Kal's coming out moment, as he briefly discusses meeting his fiance, and some LGBTQ people were upset that he drastically downplayed being gay in the book. I felt it was very odd, too. I wondered if he may be thinking of writing another book just on that topic, but I'm probably wrong. I didn't even know he was gay and I've been a casual fan for years, so it seems that's a part of his life that he wishes to keep private.
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Mystie
Pearl Clutcher
Posts: 4,299
Jun 25, 2014 19:53:37 GMT
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Post by Mystie on Nov 7, 2022 1:36:24 GMT
The Boys: A Memoir of Hollywood and Family by Ron and Clint Howard
Meg, Jo, Beth, Amy: The Story of Little Women and Why It Still Matters by Anne Boyd Rioux
A Storm of Witchcraft: The Salem Witch Trials and the American Experience by Emerson W. Baker
This Time Next Year, We'll Be Laughing: A Memoir by Jacqueline Winspear
Hidden Valley Road: Inside the Mind of an American Family by Robert Kolker
Damnation Island: Poor, Sick, Mad and Criminal in 19th-Century New York by Stacy Horn
Come back soon, my fellow non-fiction lover!
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Mystie
Pearl Clutcher
Posts: 4,299
Jun 25, 2014 19:53:37 GMT
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Post by Mystie on Nov 6, 2022 4:06:36 GMT
I read Wintering in the winter of 2020-21, a month or two after I'd lost my dad, and I found it helpful. I've been thinking of pulling it out again. I'm so glad that you are taking some time for yourself, and I hope the feelings will land gently upon you as you let yourself feel them. I respect you so much for being willing to take care of yourself. Come back when you can; I'll keep you in my prayers.
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Mystie
Pearl Clutcher
Posts: 4,299
Jun 25, 2014 19:53:37 GMT
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Post by Mystie on Nov 6, 2022 3:49:20 GMT
My mom always made cranberry salad at Thanksgiving, but although it had jello in it, it did not look like jello. It had oranges, chopped apple and nuts in it, and it was delicious. I havenโt had it for years. This recipe is similar: food52.com/recipes/7554-mama-s-cranberry-saladMy mom made a similar cranberry salad at Thanksgiving and Christmas.ย Brings back so many memories. The other weird jello salad that mom made was orange jello with finely grated carrots and crushed pineapple.ย My dad loved this as a snack.ย No mayo in jello salads ever! My mom made the orange-carrot- pineapple jello when i was a kid, too. When I was in chemo in 2020 and didn't feel like eating much, and couldn't travel home to see my mom because of covid, I made a pan of that jello and ate it for several days. Very tasty and comforting. I like a cranberry jello as well. I think putting tart things into the jello helps cut the sweetness a bit. But no weird stuff! Looking at the recipe from the NYT, I see that it doesn't use Jello, but unflavored gelatin, which is great because you can then control the sweetness and use all different kinds of juices to flavor it. No artificial colors, either.
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Mystie
Pearl Clutcher
Posts: 4,299
Jun 25, 2014 19:53:37 GMT
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Post by Mystie on Oct 31, 2022 20:18:21 GMT
I read a classic mystery novel that I heard about on a podcast, Checkmate to Murder by E.C.R. Loran. It was written during WW II, and so the plot hinges on things like blackout curtains and other wartime details. It was a quick read, a good puzzle.
And I read We Are the Brennans by Tracey Lange for book club. This is a modern family drama about an Irish-American family and all the secrets they keep from each other. It started out promising, I was interested, but the "big reveal" was underwhelming and none of the characters were very likeable. I was disappointed.
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Mystie
Pearl Clutcher
Posts: 4,299
Jun 25, 2014 19:53:37 GMT
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Post by Mystie on Oct 26, 2022 22:54:24 GMT
Oh, I can sympathize with that! My DH was recently gone for 3 days and I got to control the thermostat,,, I don't think the heat came on once! It was lovely (and cold!). My husband just left for a work trip and will be gone for at least three weeks...I'm going to really miss him, but as soon as I got home from taking him to the airport I turned the a/c WAY down and it's going to stay that way. ๐๐๐
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Mystie
Pearl Clutcher
Posts: 4,299
Jun 25, 2014 19:53:37 GMT
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Post by Mystie on Oct 26, 2022 15:49:03 GMT
I'm so relieved to keep seeing good updates! Thank you for keeping us posted.
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Mystie
Pearl Clutcher
Posts: 4,299
Jun 25, 2014 19:53:37 GMT
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Post by Mystie on Oct 24, 2022 5:27:44 GMT
@the Great Carpezio Just your description of that first book spiked my own existential dread! I read a similarly themed article in The Atlantic the other day and have felt sick to my stomach ever since. I don't know how to handle the anxiety of watching the world crumble around me.
ANYWAY, because life does still go on, I did read a good book this week, There Is Confusion by Jessie Redmon Fauset. Fauset was part of the Harlem Renaissance, more well-known as an editor than as an author. I heard about this novel on the Novel Pairings podcast and was intrigued. It was written in 1924, and it's about three friends as they grow into adulthood from roughly 1900-1920, and realize that their dreams for their lives will always be impacted by being black in America.
What I found interesting was that one of the main characters comes from a well-off family and the other two main characters come from impoverished backgrounds but enter a more privileged society as teenagers and aspire to careers and status themselves. So many stories about the experiences of black people are about slavery, so I thought it was interesting to read about people in a different era, from a different class, and with different opportunities. These main characters are the children and grandchildren of slaves but have very different expectations about what they can accomplish in life, and they encounter racism in different and unexpected ways.
The book is also about a love triangle, and has just a touch of Jane Austen style, with romances, misunderstandings, and the manners of a specific society. I had a couple feminist quibbles with it, but I'm very glad I heard about it and got to read it. I'd like to read more black literature from that era.
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Mystie
Pearl Clutcher
Posts: 4,299
Jun 25, 2014 19:53:37 GMT
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Post by Mystie on Oct 24, 2022 5:09:12 GMT
Thanks for the birthday wishes! ๐งก๐๐งก
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Mystie
Pearl Clutcher
Posts: 4,299
Jun 25, 2014 19:53:37 GMT
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Post by Mystie on Oct 23, 2022 13:09:15 GMT
That cutie pie can walk as slow as she damn well pleases! I love her doggy smile!
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Mystie
Pearl Clutcher
Posts: 4,299
Jun 25, 2014 19:53:37 GMT
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Post by Mystie on Oct 17, 2022 7:11:41 GMT
I read Back to the Garden by Laurie R. King. She writes a,Sherlock Holmes series I really like, and I've enjoyed some of her other books, too. This one seems like it might be the first in a new series, about a female homicide detective in the Bay Area. She's working on identifying victims of a serial killer from the 1970s and when a skeleton is unearthed at a former commune, she has to find out if the body is another victim of the killer, or if someone else is responsible. The book goes back and forth from present time to the 70s and how the commune came to be and what life was like there. I really enjoyed it. King is excellent at creating a world that you want to step into and walk around in. I found the main character pretty uninteresting, but the world of the book made up for it. Of course, I'm a 70s child. ๐
And I read The Resting Place by Camilla Sten. This is a Swedish mystery about a young woman with prosopagnosia (face blindness), which I've mentioned before because I read another book where that was the premise a couple weeks ago, and apparently there's yet another one floating around out there. Very odd. This young woman witnessed her grandmother's murder, even saw the killer, but can't identify them. Now she's at a remote country house in a snowstorm with her boyfriend, her aunt, and a lawyer to catalog her grandmother's belongings and settle the estate. Creepiness ensues. I thought it was pretty good, better than Rock Paper Scissors, the other prosopagnosia book I read. Many reviewers seem to disagree with me, so your mileage may vary.
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Mystie
Pearl Clutcher
Posts: 4,299
Jun 25, 2014 19:53:37 GMT
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Coffee
Oct 12, 2022 0:08:06 GMT
via mobile
mimima likes this
Post by Mystie on Oct 12, 2022 0:08:06 GMT
My husband and I were in Asheville, NC for our anniversary in May, and I picked up some locally roasted coffee at the grocery store there to use in the coffee maker in our hotel room. It is excellent! The company is Pisgah Coffee Roasters, the blend is Squirrely Blend. Their decaf is also very good. It works well in my French press and it also does well in a coffee maker. Squirrely Blend has a mellow but complex flavor with a nutty undertone (not nut flavored, though.) Now I order through their website. pisgahroasters.com/
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Mystie
Pearl Clutcher
Posts: 4,299
Jun 25, 2014 19:53:37 GMT
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Post by Mystie on Oct 11, 2022 23:56:33 GMT
This book is on my to read list. Thanks for the recommend. It occurred to me that you might like it! I know you're a non-fiction reader. I usually am, too, but this year for some reason I've been reading more fiction.
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Mystie
Pearl Clutcher
Posts: 4,299
Jun 25, 2014 19:53:37 GMT
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Post by Mystie on Oct 11, 2022 10:23:01 GMT
I read Cultish: The Language of Fanaticism by Amanda Montell. It's an examination of the types of words, phrases, and jargon that are used by cults and also by other less restrictive groups in ways that can end up being "cultish," to use the author's word. She begins by talking about a few actual cults, like the Jonestown group and Heaven's Gate, and some of the wordplay that pulls people in and keeps them bound to the group. Then she moves into more general society and talks about similar use of cultish language and techniques in multi-level marketing schemes, self-help influencers, and fitness groups, to name a few.
It's not a perfect book, but it's a quick read, written in a conversational tone, and I think it would be a good introduction for anyone who's curious about cults or manipulative language. I think it's a very pertinent topic in this era where we have so many, many grifters, charlatans and liars trying to pull us into their spheres of influence.
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Mystie
Pearl Clutcher
Posts: 4,299
Jun 25, 2014 19:53:37 GMT
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Post by Mystie on Oct 4, 2022 3:21:03 GMT
I finished The Marriage Portrait Maggie O'Farrell - a "novel set in Renaissance Italy, and centering on the captivating young duchess Lucrezia de Medici" This was a solid read for me. It had an interesting story, a very likeable main character, and I love the time period. 4 stars. This author also wrote Hamnet, which I haven't read, but may add to my list. Any opinions on that book? Hamnet is one of the best novels I've read in the past five years. I'm a Shakespeare buff, I love reading about that era, so I'm sure that colors my opinion, but yeah. This story just sucks you into the world and people of that time. I highly recommend it!
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Mystie
Pearl Clutcher
Posts: 4,299
Jun 25, 2014 19:53:37 GMT
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Post by Mystie on Oct 3, 2022 8:18:28 GMT
My reads from the past couple of weeks:
I read Rock Paper Scissors by Alice Feeney,and found it so forgettable that I was surprised to find it on my GoodReads list when I checked it just now! I'm not sure I could come up with the plot right now...dude with face blindness and his wife in a creepy house in Scotland. I ranked it 2/5 stars.
And yet, two weeks later I picked up Daisy Darker by the same author from library hold, having utterly forgotten that I'd read the other book by her, and enjoyed this one much more (4/5 stars.) It's a bit of an homage to And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie. An estranged family meet at the crumbling family home of their mother/grandmother to celebrate her 80th birthday, and one by one start being murdered. I guessed the main plot twist about 15 pages in, but still enjoyed the atmosphere and the final reveals. It was a dark and stormy evening when I read it, which probably helped.
I also read The Lodger by Marie Belloc Lowndes, a thriller published in 1913. It's in the public domain, and can be read on several free sites, and it's free for Kindle. I listen to an Alfred Hitchcock podcast and both the book and the movie are being discussed this month. The Lodger was the basis of one of his very early silent movies, perhaps his first thriller. The plot of the book is pretty different from the movie (better, I thought) about a married couple in severe financial distress who rent their upstairs rooms to a mysterious man with a stack of money, who they begin to suspect may be the serial killer who is stalking women on the streets of London. The ending is kind of abrupt, but otherwise I really enjoyed it.
Finally I read Evvie Drake Starts Over by Linda Holmes. In this romance story, Evvie has been widowed for a year and is trying to figure out where she wants her life to go. She rents out her attached apartment to a friend of a friend, a major-league pitcher who has lost control of his throwing arm and fears his career is over. Both of these characters have a lot to work through before their friendship can turn to romance and maybe to commitment, and it's a nice journey to go on with them. I liked this one a lot, it was funny and touching without being sappy.
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Mystie
Pearl Clutcher
Posts: 4,299
Jun 25, 2014 19:53:37 GMT
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Post by Mystie on Sept 19, 2022 16:31:57 GMT
I read Agatha Christie: An Elusive Woman by Lucy Worsley. I love Agatha, and I love Lucy, so this was a no-brainer! It was a good basic bio of Agatha, and I enjoyed Lucy's interpretations of some of the mysterious events of Agatha's life.
And I read Rock Paper Scissors by Alice Feeney, a mediocre thriller that hinges on a disorder called prosopagnosia, or face blindness, where a person is unable to recognize the faces of even their closest loved ones. I don't know how common it is in real life, but I have a stack of library books from several weeks ago sitting here, and I just picked up one, and it's a mystery that is also crafted around the disorder! So maybe it's the disability du jour among writers right now.
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Mystie
Pearl Clutcher
Posts: 4,299
Jun 25, 2014 19:53:37 GMT
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Post by Mystie on Sept 12, 2022 14:51:16 GMT
I haven't gotten much read because my cat's been in recovery from surgery and he's driven me to the brink of insanity. ๐ He got his cone off this morning, so maybe this week I can tackle the pile of library books that's been sitting here.
At some point I did read Oh, William! by Elizabeth Strout, which I think may have been recommended here. I had read her book Olive Kitteredge (is that the one that won the Pulitzer?) years ago, and my Good Reads records show that I only gave it two stars out of five, but this looked like a quick read so I tried it.
I gave this one three out of five stars, so I guess I liked it a little better than Olive Kitteredge, which I really don't remember anything about. Strout is definitely good at showing you small intimate details and using those to build characters, but I just didn't like the characters she built or feel like I cared about them.
I also finished Latter End by Patricia Wentworth, which is another of her mid-century mysteries featuring the spinster sleuth Maud Silver. I've mentioned these before...they're the perfect books to have on your phone and dip into when you want to look at your phone but need a social media break. Most of them are fairly cheap for Kindle. I don't know if I'll read them all, I think this one was #11 or 12, but they are perfect for frazzled days which is what the past few weeks have been.
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Mystie
Pearl Clutcher
Posts: 4,299
Jun 25, 2014 19:53:37 GMT
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Post by Mystie on Sept 10, 2022 23:41:57 GMT
Do you always meet on Tuesday mornings?
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