Mystie
Pearl Clutcher
Posts: 4,299
Jun 25, 2014 19:53:37 GMT
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Post by Mystie on Dec 2, 2023 5:07:34 GMT
Coming in very late but oh well, maybe someone will see it!
My five-star reads on GoodReads this year were:
Let Me Be Frank: A Book About Women Who Dressed Like Men To Do Shit They Weren't Supposed To Do by Tracy Dawson (non-fiction)
Exiles by Jane Harper
A Billion Years: My Escape From the Highest Ranks of Scientology by Mike Rinder (non-fiction)
Five Came Back: A Story of Hollywood and the Second World War by Mark Harris (non-fiction)
Member of the Family: My Story of Charles Manson by Dianne Lake (non-fiction)
Fatherland: A Memoir of War, Conscience and Family Secrets by Burkhard Bilger (non-fiction)
King: A Life by Jonathan Eig (non-fiction)
Starling House by Alix E. Harrow
October in the Earth by Olivia Harker
The Scent of Water by Elizabeth Goudge
I read so much mediocre stuff in the second half of this year! I can't wait to get some good recommendations from you all.
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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, 2023 4:51:37 GMT
I love making little mince tarts. I find mincemeat in jars at my grocery store this time of year. (I'm in the US, in Virginia.) I use Nigella Lawson's recipe for the pastry and technique: you roll out the pastry, cut 3"-ish circles with a fluted or scalloped cookie cutter, press them into mini muffin tins, fill with a bit of mincemeat, and top with a little star cut out of the pastry dough. They are wonderful! No alcohol, though! I guess one could stir a little into the filling...
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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, 2023 17:37:39 GMT
I read October in the Earth by Olivia Hawker. It was available for Kindle Unlimited, but I'm not sure for how much longer. I can't remember if someone here recommended it, or how I heard about it.
The story takes place in 1931, when a dissatisfied preacher's wife abruptly leaves her cheating husband and the impoverished Kentucky coal town they live in and takes to riding the rails, criss-crossing the US at a terrible time for everyone. She makes a dear friend, fights for survival, and finds parts of herself that she didn't know existed.
I thought it was a wonderful story. I'm still thinking about it days afterward. The author really put the reader into that time and place. Afterward, I realized I'd read two others of hers: One For the Blackbird, One For the Crow; and The Ragged Edge of Night, both of which were also great stories in vividly realized places. So I'd recommend Olivia Hawker.
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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 29, 2023 2:36:30 GMT
He brought me a lot of laughs back in the day. I'm sad that he didn't have longer to find the happiness he wanted. May he rest in peace.
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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, 2023 14:45:24 GMT
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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, 2023 1:21:44 GMT
These are from the past month or so.
Counting the Cost by Jill Duggar and Derick Dillard. I did it, I pre-ordered the book and read it the day it came out in September, lol. Jill Duggar is a member of the infamous "19 Kids and Counting" show on TLC. This was her story of coming to realize how her father was exploiting her work on the show for his own financial gain, and how he became emotionally abusive when she began to question why she was not being paid. At the same time, her father had no problem throwing millions of dollars on legal expenses when her oldest brother was convicted of possession of child sex abuse materials. If you're familiar with the show, or with the religious cult the family is in, it's a very compelling read.
A Morbid Taste for Bones by Ellis Peters. This is the first in the Brother Cadfael mystery series, which takes place in medieval England. I had read this series years and years ago, so when the first book popped up in Kindle Unlimited, I re-read it. It's slow-paced, but I think that first book was written in the 1960s, when books moved a bit slower. What I remembered about the books, and what still was true, was that the author really takes you to England in the 1100s and the countryside and the monasteries and the villages, and it's as close as you can get to time travel. And Brother Cadfael is a darling. I might find a few more of the books at my library if I can; I think just the first one was on KU.
Mary and Lou and Rhoda and Ted by Jennifer Keishin Armstrong. I got into watching The Mary Tyler Moore Show a few weeks ago--right before they took it off Prime, of course! I remember my mom and dad watching it when I was a kid, and I saw a few episodes in the late 90s when it was on Nick at Nite or TV Land. But I'd never just sat down and binge-watched it. I was so delighted with the show, I wanted to read a book about it, so I found this one on Kindle. The author focused a lot on the female writers who wrote for the show, which was an angle I enjoyed. I felt like it was a decent overview of how the show came to be made, but I would like more info if it's out there.
Starling House by Alix E. Harrow. I listen to a podcast called Novel Pairings, in which the hosts (two English teachers) discuss a classic and then come up with modern books that they think go well with it. Maybe they explore similar themes, or have heroes in similar battles, etc. So I listened last week to an episode about the 1930s novel Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier, which I love, and one of the books they recommended as a "go with" was Starling House, which was due to be released a few days after I caught the podcast.
It is just a wonderful story. It hits a lot of familiar themes and echoes other tales, particularly the haunted house theme and Beauty and the Beast. It takes place in modern-day small-town Kentucky, in a town which is slowly being poisoned by the neighboring coal mine. A young woman and her teenage brother are one step from homeless, and the young woman is trying desperately to save money from her job at Tractor Supply to get her brother away from the town and into a private school so he can succeed. When the ugly owner of the town's mysterious "haunted house" offers her a job as housekeeper, she jumps at it, both for the money and because she has had dreams about the house since she was a child. If you like Shirley Jackson, haunted house stories, offbeat romances, or even Stephen King, I'd say you'd probably like this. I found it really absorbing and touching.
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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 Aug 29, 2023 19:14:11 GMT
Paradise by Patricia Wolf. This was definitely recommended here (by pjaye ?) It was...and if you enjoyed these, then I think you'd like The Torrent too. Thanks!
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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 Aug 28, 2023 18:45:38 GMT
I haven't posted in over a month, which surprises me, and I've read a number of books since then, but I'll just mention the good ones to keep it brief. Lol. A Shilling for Candles by Josephine Tey. This is one of those classic mystery novels from the 1930s, and those are a mixed bag, but I enjoyed this one. An actress's body washes up on a deserted beach, and Scotland Yard Inspector Alan Grant has too many suspects who wanted her dead. A Winter Murder in Berlin by Sean McLachlan. A Kindle Unlimited mystery (which seems to be set as the first in a new series) that takes place in 1929 Berlin. The protagonist is a young American woman who has come into a large inheritance and started a European tour--only to arrive in Berlin the day after the U.S. stock market crash. A man who was very attentive to her on the Atlantic voyage turns up dead in her hotel room, so she has multiple problems to solve for herself in a strange city where disturbing groups are taking power. This is the typical Kindle Unlimited book with dumb mistakes and zero editing, but despite that, I still found the heroine and the setting interesting and I'll definitely read the next book when it comes out. A Madness of Sunshine by Nalini Singh. I got this one at the library; it was recommended in a listicle of mysteries that take place in isolated locales. This one takes place in a tiny town on the coast of New Zealand, and I like reading books about that part of the world. I liked the mystery and the characters, too. Apparently this author has written one or two well-loved fantasy series and this is her first attempt at a mystery. City Under One Roof by Iris Yamashita. This was also recommended in the above-mentioned listicle. The setting is an Alaskan town that exists in one high-rise building left over from an old army base. There's only one way in and one way out. A teen discovers a severed hand and foot washed up on the beach. The author is a screenwriter, and you can often tell when screenwriters write novels--they read like movies, for better and for worse. I did like the setting and overall it was pretty good. The Villa by Rachel Hawkins. I think this book was recommended by a Pea...? It's about two friends who rent an Italian villa together in the present day, and then the story of a famed murder that took place at the villa in the 1970s, and of course the two storylines converge. This trope is beyond old, but I still really enjoyed the twists and turns of this story. There was a little more snarkiness and humor than these types of stories usually have. Paradise by Patricia Wolf. This was definitely recommended here (by pjaye ?) a few weeks ago. I was eager to read it because I'd read the author's first book in the series, Outback, in February. These were both Kindle Unlimited books, I believe. Both are mysteries that take place in Australia, and though not perfect, I do really enjoy the main character and the setting. Both stories feature violent crimes against women and this one also has a serious threat against a child, so just a trigger warning there. I'm pretty sensitive to that stuff but I did okay with it. The Woman They Wanted: Shattering the Illusion of the Good Christian Wife by Shannon Harris. My only non-fiction read in quite some time! This just came out and I got my pre-ordered copy yesterday. Shannon is the ex-wife of Joshua Harris, who is well-known in evangelical Christian circles for his 1997 book I Kissed Dating Goodbye, which codified "purity culture" for a couple generations of Christian kids. (Thankfully, I'm far too old to have been impacted by it.) Shannon writes about coming to a Christian mega-church as a young woman, falling in love with Josh, and trying to cram herself into a deeply misogynistic world where her dreams did not matter, only her support role as a pastor's wife. In the late-2010s, their marriage ended, she deconstructed her faith, and this is sort of a loosely-structured recounting of her experiences. It's an easy read, the chapters are very short, and I'm really glad she is telling her story, and that maybe other people who have been harmed by the church will hear what she has to say. Her discovery of feminist thought wasn't terribly interesting to me because I've read all the books she cites decades ago, but I know it will be new information to other readers just as it was to her. Her ex-husband has also left the Christian faith and renounced his books but he is very much a non-character in her story, he mostly just represents the world that she had to break away from. She wrote about him as if he were an acquaintance or even a stranger. Maybe he was, even though they were married almost 20 years. I'd say it's worth reading if you were impacted by the American evangelical culture of the 1990s and 200s.
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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 Jul 24, 2023 10:25:08 GMT
I'm super impressed with you! Hope next year is easier and rewarding in a new way!
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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 Jul 17, 2023 20:57:41 GMT
These are from the past couple of weeks.
The Cloisters by Katy Hay. A mystery-ish novel about a young woman from a small Western town who ends up in a post-grad internship at the Cloisters in NYC. She's intimidated and overwhelmed by this gorgeous medieval art museum and her wealthy and sophisticated co-workers. She gets pulled in to her boss's obsession with Renaissance tarot cards, and after a murder occurs at the museum, she ends up learning a lot about herself and what she wants from life. This story was not perfect, but I liked the settings and the fish-out-of-water element. The author is an art history professor and if she writes another novel, I'd probably give it a try.
The Watchmaker's Daughter: The True Story of World War II Heroine Corrie ten Boom by Larry Loftis. If you grew up Christian in the US, you very well may have read Corrie ten Boom's memoir The Hiding Place about her family's experiences hiding Jewish people during the German occupation of the Netherlands. It was a huge evangelical bestseller because Corrie and her family were devout Christians. This biography by a secular author was not as well-written as I had hoped, but it had some good details and photos that helped round out Corrie's memoir a bit. If you've never heard her story, then I'd highly recommend The Hiding Place; if you're familiar with her, then this book might be of interest.
The Trackers by Charles Frazier. I picked this one up at the library because the cover was attractive. š Frazier wrote Cold Mountain years ago, and has written several other novels since that massive hit. This was the story of a painter assigned to paint a WPA mural in Wyoming during the Depression. He boards with a local rancher and his much younger wife. The wife runs off, the painter is tasked with chasing her down along with the valuable painting she stole, and so we get some good descriptions of Depression-era Florida, Seattle, and San Francisco, along with a less successful attempt to be noir-ish. I really didn't care for it. The wife's character in particular was ridiculous. One reviewer called her a manic pixie Depression girl--hilarious and accurate!
All That Is Mine I Carry With Me by William Landay. A wife and mom disappears from her home in 1975, no one can figure out what happened. Although the husband/dad is the prime suspect, there's no evidence. The story follows various members of the family through the next forty years as they grapple with the loss of their mother and their suspicions of their father. This should have been so much better than it was. The narrative devices were poorly chosen, and there was a ton of courtroom back-and-forth that just felt like padding.
A Murder of Crows by Sarah Yarwood-Lovett. This one was a Kindle Unlimited recommendation based on my fondness for fluffy-ish British mysteries. The main character is an ecologist/biologist or something like that, and she finds herself the prime suspect for a murder because she's checking out a bat colony in the same tunnel at the same time as the murder. I liked reading about bats; I liked the character's job; I didn't care for her so much; and she got involved in a ridiculous love triangle that seems to carry over into the next book, from the preview I read. I'm trying to decide if I care enough to try again with her!
I feel like the universe owes me a really good piece of fiction right now. š
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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 Jul 11, 2023 16:37:18 GMT
Also the thing I love about reading on the fire is scrolling!!!! I love to scroll my pages instead of turning them like the other 2 devices!! So the Fire is the only one that has a scrolling feature? I've been looking at the Paperwhite, but I gotta be able to scroll! That's how I read on my mobile Kindle app, so I'm used to 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 Jul 11, 2023 16:35:22 GMT
Just an FYI, I've been looking at Kindle Paperwhite Prime deals for the past couple of days, and it looks like they don't ship till the first week of September. Every deal I've looked at has that ship date.
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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 Jul 4, 2023 14:17:52 GMT
Most of my five-star reads so far this year are non-fiction. I read plenty of fiction, but less of it is five-star worthy. (In my opinion!)
Let Me Be Frank: A Book About Women Who Dressed Like Men by Tracy Dawson. Short bios with great illustrations, about historical and contemporary women who dressed like men to have careers, play sports, etc.
Exiles by Jane Harper. An Australian mystery, all of Harper's books are excellent.
A Billion Years by Mike Rinder. Mike was a high-ranking Scientologist who left and has worked with Leah Remini to expose the cult. This was a great memoir.
Five Came Back: A Story of Hollywood and the Second World War by Mark Harris. Five well-known directors who paused their careers to serve in the military and document the war on film, including combat footage.
Member of the Family by Dianne Lake. A memoir from the youngest member of the Manson family, whose testimony helped put him and others in prison. An amazing story.
Fatherland: A Memoir of War, Conscience and Family Secrets by Burkhard Bilger. The story of Bilger's search to find the truth about his grandfather who was a Nazi Party official in occupied France.
King: A Life by Jonathan Eig. A much-needed good general biography of Martin Luther King Jr.
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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 Jul 4, 2023 4:23:43 GMT
I've been reading quite a bit the past couple of weeks. Our summer heat and humidity finally arrived and while some people read more in the winter, I definitely read more in the summer. A few of the best lately:
King: A Life by Jonathan Eig. I was really interested in reading a Martin Luther King biography several years ago, and was surprised to find that there were no recent general bios written. There were books on specific parts of his work, but nothing general. So I was really glad to spot this book shortly after it was released in May. The author was able to access the recently declassified FBI surveillance documents on King, and unreleased recorded memories from King's father and wife, and also interview many people who'd known and worked with King. He presented a man who was deeply flawed but astoundingly courageous. I really had to stop and think about a lot of things, not just about Dr. King, but about the times he lived in and the times we're living in now. I recommend the book--it's lengthy, but the writing style is easy to follow and engaging.
How To Sell a Haunted House by Grady Hendrix. I really like this author. I read his book about the Southern book club/vampire hunters (I'm too tired to look up the title) in 2020 and it was so much fun to read a book that completely pulled me out of the shitshow that was 2020. š Then a year or two later I read The Final Girls Support Group (I think that was more or less the title) and I liked it less, mostly because I'm not a horror movie fan so I missed a lot of the inside jokes and the tropes. Plus, it was gruesome. But it was well-written. So I picked up his latest book and really enjoyed it, too. It's horror with humor, which sometimes works and sometimes not. It ran a bit long. But I love an author who can pull you right into the story and keep you there in that world, and Hendrix is good at it. Plus, there is always real emotion behind the story--in this case, how do we handle grief and change and the end of our childhood homes and beliefs? I liked that.
In the Upper Country by Kai Thomas. This novel tells the story of a young Black woman in a Canadian settlement of runaway slaves in the 1850s. A newly arrived elderly slave shoots and kills the bounty hunter who has tracked her down, and the young woman, who writes for the community paper, goes to the local jail to get the old woman's story. But the old woman demands a story from her in return. As the women tell each other stories of their lives, the reader learns of the intertwined lives of African-Americans and the indigenous people of America and Canada, and of the connections between the two women. This is an ambitious book, and the story is told in multiple voices, which could get confusing in an audiobook version. It's a little bit convoluted and I lost the plot at the end a bit. I still recommend it, because the writing style was beautiful and the stories were compelling and thought-provoking. The author is a Black Canadian man, and I hope to read more books from him. (This is his first.)
Murder at Little Minton by Karen Baugh Menuhin. Sometimes I really need to comfort-read British mysteries in the vein of Agatha Christie. This is an author who came up in my Kindle Unlimited search with a mystery that takes place in a British village in the 1920s, with an elderly lady sleuth. A lot of the Kindle Unlimited books are not so great. This one is not perfect and I suspect it is self-published, but it was somehow heart-warming and just what I wanted. I looked for more, but this is the first in the series and it came out just a couple of months ago.
Menuhin also has a previous series that also takes place in the 1920s, about a young former WW I flying ace named Heathcliff Lennox, who holes up in his family estate to heal from the war, and who inadvertently becomes a sleuth. He's a cross between Peter Wimsey and Bertie Wooster. I started reading that series and I'm four books in. The first two are pretty solid, the next two less so, and I'm taking a break before I try another one. The author needs an editor for grammar, punctuation and style errors. But there's something endearing about the books. The first one in that series is Murder at Melrose Court.
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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 May 29, 2023 21:36:55 GMT
I haven't posted in a while, here are my good ones from the past several months.
I very seldom read romance, but this set of four books was available on Kindle Unlimited. They take place in a little Scottish town, and the adult siblings of a family each (one in each book) build careers and fall in love and the whole thing was really delightful. I was in need of something simple and cozy when I read them and they worked well! The first is The Winter Cottage by Rachael Lucas. (They need to be read in order.)
Five Came Back: A Story of Hollywood and the Second World War by Mark Harris. Non-fiction about five different Hollywood directors who served in the military in WW II and each man's experience. Among the five, they did everything from combat photography to military training films to recording the very first concentration camp footage. I found it all quite interesting. I like reading about classic Hollywood and WW II, so this was just my thing.
Member of the Family by Dianne Lake. Dianne was the only underage member of the Manson family (besides the babies and toddlers.) She wasn't involved in the 1969 killings, but she heard and saw enough afterwards to make her the key witness in the trial of Manson and the other killers. Her story is fascinating--in just a few years her parents moved from middle-class suburbia to homeless hippiedom and took Dianne and her siblings along. Dianne ran away from them at 15 and ended up in the clutches of the Manson family. This was an excellent read.
Fatherland: A Memoir of War, Conscience and Family Secrets by Burkhard Bilger. Bilger's grandfather was a member of the Nazi party in Germany, and was sent to be the schoolmaster and Nazi Party leader in a small town when Germany occupied France in 1940. This is the story of Bilger's years-long efforts to find out who his grandfather was and what his actions were during the war. It was another really interesting story--almost a mystery that unfolds as Bilger travels around Europe looking at archives and interviewing the few people left who were alive back then.
The Creation of Anne Boleyn by Susan Bordo. This is non-fiction; Bordo tells the historical story of Anne Boleyn and then examines the propaganda and myths that grew up around her in her lifetime, and in the centuries after her death. Then she examines the way Anne has been portrayed in fiction, popular history, and movies/series in the last couple hundred years. I enjoyed thinking about the way stories cling to historical figures, whether true or not. It makes me think of that line from Hamilton: "who lives, who dies, who tells your story?"
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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 Apr 20, 2023 4:39:33 GMT
My niece's fiance is named Kyle. The crazy part is that my niece's name is Kylie. š
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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 Mar 25, 2023 2:05:16 GMT
I'm so sorry. All my sympathy to you and to your husband and his family. She sounds like a much-loved woman.
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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 Mar 22, 2023 15:17:37 GMT
Were there any in this thread that you haven't read and that look good to you? I found a bunch of them. lol. I made a list but only put two on hold. I have to restrain myself because at the moment I have five physical books and four Kindle books from the library. It's a problem. lol. A good problem, but still...Ā Ā Ā Yeah, I found a few I'm going to check out. I counted through the recommendations and it's split about 50/50 between series I've read some or all of and series I've never read. I've got stacks of books here at home and also a Kindle Unlimited membership and I feel the overwhelm, too! I'm making a concerted effort to read through and dispose of my physical stash here. Most of it came from thrift stores or library book sales, so it should be easy to read through them and re-donate them. But then I get Kindle books and also library books sometimes, too. Yeesh.
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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 Mar 21, 2023 21:25:36 GMT
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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 Mar 20, 2023 15:06:30 GMT
I finished one last Yorkshire Murder novel by J. R. Ellis, The Whitby Murders. This was the sixth mystery in the series, and while I felt like the others were just barely well-written enough to hold my interest, this one was not. So it's off to find another mystery series! I feel like I've read all the good ones.
I'm in the middle of All the Presidents' Gardens by Marta McDowell. I picked up this large hardcover book in the bookstore at Montpelier, James Madison's estate near Charlottesville, when we visited there last fall. This book is a delight! It's a history of the various gardens around the White House from when it was built to the present day. The author is a landscape designer. The book has tons of period drawings, maps and photos. I'd recommend it to anyone who loves gardening, Washington DC, or presidential history.
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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 Mar 14, 2023 23:47:23 GMT
So sorry about your pup and the general post DST-exhaustion.
About an hour ago my indoor-outdoor cat came downstairs from his nap and wanted to go outside. Sometimes when he goes out, especially in colder weather, I give him a treat so he'll get his furry little butt out the door more quickly.
So I was standing with the door half-open, reaching into the pouch to pull out a treat, and he's at my feet waiting to run out and get his treat, and I dropped the bag and spilled maybe 25 treats on the floor.
The cat is confused as to where the shower of treats came from, but he starts munching them down as fast as he can, while I'm trying to pick them up as fast as I can, while laughing at how intent he was on crunching them down. It was like a game of Hungry Hungry Hippos.
I think he only ended up getting four or five treats, so it was fine. He had to go to the vet for his yearly check-up and shots and blood work yesterday, so he deserved extra treats anyway. It was just hilarious watching him gobbling them down with this confused look on his face. š
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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 Mar 13, 2023 23:09:42 GMT
In the last couple weeks I've read
A Billion Years: My Escape from a Life in the Highest Ranks of Scientology by Mike Rinder. Some of you might remember Mike from "Scientology and the Aftermath," the show he did with Leah Remini a few years ago on A&E. I have a real fascination with Scientology, and I really like Mike, so I was excited to read this. It didn't disappoint--it was well-written and had a lot of interesting information. Mike was 52 when he got out, he's had to build a whole new life for himself and I admire him for that.
Vanderbilt: The Rise and Fall of an American Dynasty by Anderson Cooper and Katherine Howe. I really wanted to like this--I like Anderson Cooper and I know he has really grappled with grief and reassessing his life after his mother Gloria Vanderbilt died a few years ago. He says in the book that he was never really interested in his Vanderbilt heritage, it wasn't part of his life, so this is an attempt to tell the story of some of the more famous Vanderbilts and set them against some of the major themes of American history. It wasn't really successful, in my opinion. There are many books about the Vanderbilts, and frankly they were not interesting people apart from being obscenely wealthy.
The Murder at Redmire Hall and The Royal Baths Murder by J.R Ellis. I've been working my way through this police procedural series that takes place in Yorkshire. It's just okay--I'm mainly reading it because it's available on Kindle Unlimited. There are definitely things to like, but the writing and plotting could be stronger.
One For the Blackbird, One For the Crow by Olivia Hawker. A Pea mentioned this book last week, so I decided to read it since, again, it was available through KU. I definitely liked it. I've read the author's first book The Ragged Edge of Night and I liked that, too. The author in both books has pulled real stories and real people from her family's history and then tried to shoehorn them into a fictional world. It doesn't 100% work in either book, but she's a good enough writer that she still makes it worth reading. My main complaint about this book was that the female main character, a 13-year-old girl named Beulah, had zero faults and an otherworldliness that served as an awkward plot device. But the setting, the other characters, and the exploration of our relationship to death and the natural world as humans were all done well. I'd recommend it to historical fiction lovers.
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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 Mar 13, 2023 16:54:19 GMT
My husband and I binge-watched it in 2009--we must have been ordering the DVDs from Netflix at that point in time! How funny to think about. We just loved it. Entering that world is really enjoyable.
The show "Wednesday" on Netflix is obviously a very different story, but we binged the first season in January, and it did make me think of the Buffyverse a bit. Just entering this whole other world that exists next to the world we know and rooting for a complex heroine and her friends. I hope Wednesday can grow into that type of experience--if Netflix doesn't yank it for one of their dumb reasons!
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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 Mar 10, 2023 17:32:46 GMT
I'm sending you a big squishy hug from across the world. I had radiation for breast cancer, but it was not as stressful as what yours sounds like. I'm glad you got through the first treatment; I hope that some of your anxiety goes away now that the fear of the unknown is alleviated. Cancer shows us that we're stronger than we ever thought. You're doing great! š„°
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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 Mar 2, 2023 23:45:26 GMT
Oh, those are delightful. Thanks for sharing!
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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 Feb 27, 2023 20:33:00 GMT
I finished The Quartet Murders by J.R. Ellis which is part of a police procedural series that takes place in Yorkshire. It was pretty good. I enjoyed the setting and the main characters. If there are any more available through Kindle Unlimited, I'll probably try another one.
I'm partway through Sensible Shoes: A Story about the Spiritual Journey by Sharn Garlough Brown. I very seldom read much Christian lit of any kind; I am a believer but so much of it is crap! I help process books for my church's library and this one was donated; I flipped through it and it seemed more substantive. It's fiction with a devotional slant--I guess there are more books in the series and a study guide. I'm not interested in all that, but the story is about four women who are hurting for various reasons and who come to a seminar on spiritual direction to renew or rebuild their relationships with God. So far I am finding it thought-provoking.
Next up is Mike Rinder's memoir on living in and leaving Scientology--I'm very excited to read it! Love that guy.
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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 Feb 20, 2023 18:23:48 GMT
I read Exiles by Jane Harper; thanks to pjaye for mentioning Harper had a new book out. This was the third in her series about Aaron Falk, an Australian police officer. I enjoyed it so much, I went back and re-read the first two books in the series, The Dry and Force of Nature. They're all good, and should be read in order. Harper also has two excellent stand-alone novels.
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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 Feb 15, 2023 18:25:26 GMT
pjaye I didn't know Jane Harper had a new book out! I've read all her others, off to get this one! Thanks!
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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 Feb 14, 2023 20:03:51 GMT
I live about 60-75 miles east of this explosion. People keep sending me increasingly histrionic posts about it, the risk to everyone in a 200 mile radius, etc. This morning I read that I and almost everyone I love have been "Chernobyl'd." (ETA:Ā Waze says 58 miles as the crow flies.)Ā I reached out to my Stanford educated scientist/air quality friend who has made it her life's mission to address air pollution in our area. She said these compounds break down in sunlight. It's a catastrophe for the people in the immediate area of the burn. Probably not so much for anyone outside the immediate area though. She directed me to three local air quality organizations and they are all in agreement that there is not much risk in the air for people outside the immediate area of the crash and burn. I don't know about the water though. If people west are getting water from the Ohio river, the risk seems less clear. That being said, I'm still low key worried about my pets because they are most at risk in the short term. And I'm really, really glad my kids are on the other side of the country. I have family members who live in the next town west of East Palestine; thankfully they are out of the country right now.Ā But I wonder what they are coming home to.Ā Ā Ā I also have very close family members who are only about 25 miles east of the accident.Ā I haven't talked to them about their experience yet.Ā My mom and my sister's family live about 10 miles west of East Palestine. I haven't heard anything immediately concerning from them, but I definitely feel a bit of worry. And I feel devastated for the people in and around East Palestine. I grew up in that county, those are my people. This should never have happened.
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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 Feb 6, 2023 23:46:26 GMT
Good for her. And this, from the Family Research Council, is beyond ridiculous and hypocritical. JFC Ah, the FRC--the organization that hired child molester (and later convicted pedophile and CSAM consumer) Josh Duggar to a high-profile position. Yes, these are people qualified to speak on value systems.
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