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.

 

Slow down!

 Slow down! The street outside my window, so quiet for the past 14 months, hums with passing cars and clonks with trucks as they hit the uneven patch of macadam. I asked Hub if he missed the quiet streets of the pandemic. I sure do!

Our families and friends are all catching up with the celebrations they postponed, the visits they longed to make. They dragged their luggage - cases, backpacks, totes and duffel bags - out of storage. They are On The Road Again!

Meanwhile, daily life does not slow down. Workers are back in the office or the stores or the factories. Some of those workers never stopped working. Now, they welcome their far-flung families into their homes. Their joy knows no bounds. Then, the guests go home and the workers can't afford to take time off to recuperate.

I spoke to one person who will play host to a niece and her brood this weekend. She already has her three grown children at home, as well as her retired husband.  She sounded sooooo tired. I bet she visits her luggage longingly.

I know I miss quarantine. I AM grateful that I can go to the stores. Delivery services saved us for the past year. BUT I have an overflowing box of items that I could not return - because I wasn't going into stores - but that were NOT what I requested.

I miss the quiet nights of quarantine. I resent the pressure to DO things. During quarantine we could stay home alone with little or no guilt. I LOVE spending times with my family and friends but...

Could we do it slowly? Please?

Quick! A book trailer!

I have been reading up a storm - wentworth, Ngaio Marsh, Nancy Atherton - all my faves from the past. But I have added a few middle grade books to my list of READ books.

 Scrolling through all my favorite book newsletters, I ran across this little sweetie on Shelf Awareness. It's a picture book trailer and the artwork makes bats love soft and cuddly. Enjoy!

The Love Affair Continues

I read this one, too

 

 My love for Patricia Wentworth titles continues. Her plots are convoluted. Her solutions are sometimes way too simplistic. But I don't care. I love her characters, whether they are independent young women navigating life in a changing Britain between the wars, or frightened wives trapped in confusing relationships. The fashion updates are awesome. The dialogue borders on Noel Coward-esque.  You MUST enjoy the time period between 1920 and 1955, and the cinema of that period, to fully appreciate these books.

When I shared my need to read these older mysteries with a friend, SHE shared Gutenberg.org. Almost any book in the public domain is available to borrow from Gutenberg.org.  Only a handful of Wentworth's titles have slipped into public domain. I read The Astounding Adventure of Jane Smith, downloaded from Gutenberg, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Oh, the plot was totally off the wall. It included hidden underground chambers, nefarious international organizations, grief-stricken beauties and way too many secret passageways. The main character sparkled with gutsy independence. Her "suitor" stayed well out of the way until the very end. All sympathetic characters had their reputations restored. The book was the stuff of black and white mysteries of the 1940s.

Check out Gutenberg.org for all kinds of impossible to find older titles.

My friend also shared Open Library. This site attempts to offer as many books as possible to just as many readers. They have a dozen or more Wentworth titles available for loan. There are limitations and if you look at the FAQs or Help & Support pages these limitations are explained. For instance, I borrowed a book - BUT - because it was the only book of that title in the library at the time, I could only read it for one hour.  You can borrow audio books, as well.  Some titles are marked Not in Library. You can request those books and will be alerted if the book is added. OR you can search for the book in a nearby library through Library.Link. (You have to share your location.) Or look on WorldCat which simply lists all the libraries in their database that hold that title.

FREE BOOKS! Talk about endless love!

My local library offers all kinds of books to love and I have cheated on Patricia by reading a few Aunt Dimity books. Written by Nancy Atherton, this series of cozy mysteries offers a delightful rags-to-riches heroine, Lori Shepherd, who now shares her adventures with Aunt Dimity - long deceased - through a blue notebook. I KNOW!!! Totally insane but so comfy! 

These mysteries are rarely, if ever, fatal so when I read the jacket flap for Aunt Dimity and the Widow's Curse, I was flabbergasted. A new resident of the village of Finch confesses to murdering her first husband. No worries about spoilers here - the publishers put in on the jacket flap! I snapped that book up and, as an Aunt Dimity title, it is perfect. Think Hallmark mysteries minus gore and overacting.

I haven't forgotten books for young readers. I have a couple of THOSE to tell you about in my next post. Let's hope I get to it soon.

Keep reading!

Food! Glorious FOOD!

In High School, I became enamored with the soundtrack from Oliver! (Singing softly, "Whe-e-ere is LOVE? Does if fall from stars above? Will I ever know that sweet hello...? etc.) Of course, my favorite song to belt along with was "FOOD! Glorious Food!"

Why not? We need food. Some food tastes heavenly. Creating deliciousness from not necessarily delicious ingredients is clever, challenging and fun.

Authors know this and they add food elements to their books for kids. I just re-read "Listen, Slowly" by Thanhhà Lai and the foods of Viet Nam are touted on almost every single page.

The books that allow their characters to bake, cook, fry, broil their own recipes are especially engaging. (Hot book review word alert - 'engaging'.)

Pie in the Sky by Remy Lai   After Jingwen's and Yanghao's father dies, their mother moves them to an English-speaking country. (I think it's Australia but it may be New Zealand.) Yanghao, being younger, makes headway in learning English by Jingwen has a lot of trouble. He is angry that his mother "left" their father behind and followed through on the family's plans to move and open a special bakery.  Jingwen decides that he has to bake every single one of his father's cakes to make things better for his family. BUT his mother, who must work, has forbidden the use of the oven. And Jingwen speaks so little English that he bribes Yangwao to help him.

I can't remember recipes in this book but the descriptions of the baking process, the ingredients, the temperature, the sneakiness make a recipe of sadness. The cakes sound delicious. The memories are bittersweet.

Roll With It by Jamie Sumner.  Ellie's CP and wheelchair don't keep her from trying to win baking competitions. After she and her mother move in with her grandfather to help watch over him, she is suddenly the only disabled kid and the new kid in a small public school. It does not help that she lives in a trailer park - hey! I lived in a trailer park for awhile. Stop with the judging! - across town. Her new neighborhood nets her a real friend with a can-do attitude.

Once again, no actual recipes that I remember. Where are the recipes?

 

The Doughnut King (The Doughnut Fix #2) by Jessie Janowitz.  Well, I never read the first book so I don't know how Tris's family moved from NYC to the nowhere town of Petersville, BUT in this book, Tris already has a doughnut stand selling the most delicious chocolate cream doughnuts ever. Problems abound. As people move out of Petersville, he has trouble creating demand. When he solves that problem, he can't keep up with demand. A spot on a cutthroat kids' cooking show creates even MORE demand. 

I want a doughnut, now. 

I probably mentioned THIS book back in 2017 when I read it. The Apple Tart of Hope by Sarah Moore Fitzgerald wins the Best Food-Related Title to Date.  Oscar has gone missing. His bike is found at sea. Everyone, but Meg, assumes that this is an accidental death or a suicide.  Meg doesn't believe Oscar is dead at all. But, she has been away for several months. Maybe something happened to Oscar to make him depressed enough. No! Meg can't believe that the baker of the best apple tart in the world is dead.  

NO RECIPE!! So disappointed!

Blast from the past! Touch-Luck Karen by Johanna Hurwitz is an entry in Hurwitz's Sossi family series. Karen, 13, would rather baby-sit or cook than do schoolwork. Her grades are so bad that her parents refuse to let her continue babysitting.  She MUST bring her science grades up by doing a project.  Karen uses her other enthusiasm to demonstrate chemical reactions. Cooking to the rescue.

This book was published in 1982 and I read it during the next decade. I remembered that science demonstration and LOVED it and remembered it all these years. Was there a recipe? Now THAT, I can't remember.

 

I forgot how to blog...

I have not blogged for 6 weeks and I don't remember how!! Do I come up with a topic and stick with it? Is that a thing? I don't think that's a thing. I think people's thoughts jump around like bunnies in Spring. And it IS Spring. So stream of consciousness and random thoughts, here goes!

I play an online game in which you need to fit a set number of tile arrangements into a big 9 x 9 tile square. Is it unreasonable for me to take a violent dislike to any column of five tiles - horizontal or vertical? I really do NOT like those five tile rows in a deeply personal way. 

Dana Simpson just came out with Book 13 of Phoebe and her Unicorn, Unicorn Famous.  What will happen when Phoebe ages out of the believing in unicorns thing? Maybe I do NOT have to worry about this, actually, since Phoebe is no more real than her fabulous friend, Marigold Heavenly Nostrils. Simpson should get an award for naming unicorns.

Why are books about orphans who live in great big old buildings so popular? (I linked to Ally Carter's first Winterborne Home book but you don't have to think hard to come up with another one.) I get the orphan part. Having no parents sets the character free of any expectations or parental protections. At the same time, it's so sad!

And why big - as in city block big - and old? OK! That doesn't take too much imagination. But, I believe that setting a foundling school in one of the growing number of abandoned malls or strip malls might be intriguing.  Those buildings have back passages that the general public never see.

Wait! That reminds me of the Hobie Hanson books by Jamie Gilson. When their school got flooded, Hobie's school moved into a series of empty stores in the mall. I loved those books but I bet they are dated now. I have to let Goodreads know that I read every one of them - as an adult - (because I am old). People who read these books as kids might even have children of their own who are graduating from secondary school soon - maybe.

Loss... When we lose an author we adored, even though that writer was really old and deserved some rest, it is HARD. Beverly Cleary was over 100. Sid Fleischman was in his 90s. But they were supposed to keep writing until my grandchild had grandchildren. It might be time for me to read Ramona and her Father again - or By the Great Horn Spoon.

I made my LAST book review presentation at the Kutztown University Children's Literature Conference on Saturday. This year, I worked with Mary Hyson, who loves to talk about books more than I do and who works with books for middle grades and YA every working day. I don't do that anymore, because - see paragraph 6.

Anyway, if you want to see our awesome slide show click here. 

I am all tired out from jumping all over the place. The view out my window is beautiful. I hope your view is, too.

Our tulips in the late afternoon. In the morning they are even more glorious.