Book Report

I decided to re-read some of Rhys Bowen's Royal Spyness mysteries and found a recent addition that I never read! The Last Mrs. Summers!

Georgie (Lady Georgiana etc, etc, Rannoch, of late 34th(?) in succession for the throne until she married Mr. O'Mara in a Catholic ceremony and gave up her place in line) and Darcy have been married for three whole months when he is "called away". He is some sort of undercover agent in the service of the Crown. Bored and lonely, Georgie goes to London and finds that no one is available to cheer her up. Even her old Granddad -(not a royal AT ALL) - has a volunteer job.

She arrives home at Eynsleigh, the estate that one of her step-fathers has "given" to Georgie and Darcy, to find Belinda, her best friend arriving. Belinda has been left a cottage in Cornwall so off the girls go to check out the property.

Note: Bowen opens the book with a tribute to DuMaurier's classic suspense novel, Rebecca. If you ever read that book or watched the movie you will appreciate the setting.

Anyway, the cottage is a wreck and they go into town to find a hotel. Belinda meets a childhood friend (she spent her summers in Cornwall) who invites them home to a large and possibly haunted estate. A gruesome murder takes place. The ladies are suspects. There is some sort of tomfoolery at a nearby stately home. Smugglers? Ghosts? 

And was that Irishman really Darcy? 

Bowen knows her audience so well!

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I have read Nancy Atherton's Aunt Dimity and have found a few that I know I never read. Ngaio Marsh and her lovely Inspector Alleyn has gotten me through some hot days. And Patricia Wentworth's endlessly patient and serene Miss Silvers continues to unravel startling mysteries. 

But what about the Kids' Books?

Most recently - The Lion of Mars by Jennifer L. Holm finds Bell living in the American station on Mars. The station has cut itself off from the other stations on Mars for the past 10 years. Bell takes us through his routine with the other young people and their mentors. When a stow away mouse brings a virus that attacks only the adults in the station, the children and teens have to get help. Help from earth can take 8 months! Bell and his former best friend head out in the train tunnel and they discover that the other stations are filled with lively, generous people. Why did the Americans cut themselves off?  I will not tell you who or what the LION is in this book.  Read it.

Max and the Midknights: The Battle of the Bodkins by Lincoln Peirce is a quick, heavily illustrated fantasy by the author of all the Big Nate books. Max and her fellow knights in training must battle an outbreak of Bodkins - evil spirits that look exactly like people already in the kingdom. The real people are imprisoned while their evil twins destroy the kingdom. It's a romp through a Middle Ages-ish landscape.

Stefan Bachman returns with another delightful fantasy, Cinders & Sparrows.  Zita Brydgeborn receives a letter - delivered by a scarecrow - telling her she has inherited a castle, Blackbird Castle the ancestral home of a long line of powerful witches. Zita is the last.  And, of course, she must quickly learn all she can to fight the forces of Evil. It is much richer than this formula promises. Zita and the reader struggle to see who is a friend and who is a foe.  Spritely written, this book is classic fantasy.

Keep cool and READ ON!

Fans, Films, Folderol

 Grab bag blog post coming up.

FANS: Moving air is a blessing in these sweltering times. We function on window air conditioners in this house and some rooms are out of their reach. So, we use fans. They work. You can find hacks to lower the air temperature on YouTube. Hanging bottles of ice on the back of your fan, or placing a block of ice in front of your fan is a decades old fix. But moving air against your moist skin will cool just enough to make life bearable.

 FILMS: I am not a movie fan. I never want to sit still for that length of time. I can sit still and, if it's thinking or reading time, I will. But watching someone else's story for 90 plus minutes does not appeal to me. 

However Vox put together a look at the 25 best films of 2021 and some of them are so enticing, I may sit through them. I want to watch Concrete Cowboy. The film, Truffle Hunters, looks fascinating. There is a documentary - without a voice over - that features farm animals. And The Heights! The Heights! I love singing and dancing movies.  Take a look at the trailers. Find a film to love.

https://www.vox.com/22538640/best-movies-2021-so-far-half

FOLDEROL: a list of all the things that occupy my mind.

My Mom turns 95 tomorrow.  We will gather for lunch at a restaurant to sing Happy Birthday. Hopefully, we can get the youngest sibling on FB Messenger to help us sing. He lives in Japan and it will be wee hours there. Mom will not be the oldest person there. Her sister, Aunt Mary, will turn 98 this year. 

Peace Camp at Home. The local peace and justice organization, LEPOCO, has held a week long camp for kids for 30 plus years. Last year, we went virtual because no one was going anywhere. This year, we decided to do virtual again because kids are not vaccinated yet. We put together a packet of activities for each day and send them out to registered campers. So I have been hunting up ideas to go into the packets. Click on the link above and look for Peace Camp at Home for more information. 

 And I discovered PORCUPINE VIDEOS!!!!!!

Teddy Bear is a North American porcupine, I think. And he LOVES to eat.

 Kemosabe is a South American prehensile tail porcupine who loves to eat, too. 

 The noises they make are so adorable.  They sound like cartoon animals!

 Books: I have read so many books lately -kids' fantasy and adventure and family stories - but mostly, as recent posts have reported, mysteries written in the first half of the 20th century by Patricia Wentworth or Ngaio Marsh (Dame Edith), or cozy mysteries I read so long ago that I can read them again with gusto. I stray into non-fiction from time to time. I keep promising a full report. Someday.

Other Amazing Stuff:  The grandgirl is awesomely fun. We made some puppet show videos this week. They need editing but they are typical homemade silliness. We are so lucky to have her in our lives.

I have given up on getting any beans. That plot of ground is not even growing weeds - well, not many. I suspect that my salt and vinegar weed killer may have leached into that area. DO NOT SPREAD SALT on your weeds. It will render the ground infertile. Get horticultural vinegar at your garden store if you want to kill weeds without killing bugs and birds or the soil. Save the salt for paved areas.