Sunday Bookends: school’s out for … a month anyhow. Watching musicals.

On June 14, 2026June 13, 2026 By Lisa R. HowelerIn Sunday Bookends, Sunday Salon2 Comments

It’s time for our Sunday morning chat. On Sundays, I ramble about what’s been going on, what the rest of the family and I have been reading and watching, and what I’ve been writing.

Thursday was a relaxing day that was ruined at the end by outside forces but Friday was super relaxing with lots of reading and movie watching, which was very nice.

Wednesday, the kids and I drove 50 minutes to our homeschool evaluator. The Boy went as a backup in case I needed it because my neck has been bothering me lately. Due to a detour, we got a longer tour of the area we used to live in, and while I don’t miss that area immensely, I do miss some of the convenience of it.

Little Miss will be going into sixth grade next year, and we are excited to have a break from school for a little while. She will be taking art classes online this summer through the program we’ve been using throughout the school year, but otherwise, we will be lax on strict lessons until mid-July.

My Gladwynn Grant Mysteries are on sale this weekend through next week on Amazon if you are interested in reading them. The first book is free.

What I/We’ve Been Reading

Just Finished

I finished two books, Stolen Past by Tara Randel and The Silver Chair by C.S. Lewis.

For children’s books, the Narnia books are quite thought-provoking. Very in fact.

In Progress

I am slow reading Stillmeadow Daybrook by Gladys Taber. Since each chapter is a month, I plan to read a chapter a month. I am also reading Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis.

I am currently reading The Murder of Roger Ackroyd on my Kindle.

Up Soon

I will be starting Miss Buncle’s Book by D.E. Stevenson this week.

What The Family is Reading

Little Miss and I are making good progress on Heidi.

New arrivals to my bookshelf

I obtained (bought when I shouldn’t have) three new books: The Last Battle by C.S. Lewis, Miss Buncle’s Book by D.E. Stevenson, and The Hundred Dresses by Eleanor Estes (to read with my daughter).

What I/We’ve Been Watching

This past week The Husband (who I am just going to call Warren from now on. Anyone who knows me, know his first name anyhow) and I watched The Petrified Forrest, a Bette Davis movie that I felt was better than most of the other movies I watched during my Spring of Bette Davis feature. I will share a blog post about it later this week.

I also watched The Other Bennett Sister and several episodes of As Time Goes By, a British sitcom that is a comfort watch for me.

Little Miss and I watched My Fair Lady, or finished, last night. She was disgusted that Eliza ended up staying with Professor Higgins, who was “old” and “horrible.”

Some things she said as she watched it, “Dude. I’d just punch him. Dump that tea on him! Throw that pot at him!”

“She won’t miss you, you narcissist!”

“You don’t deserve to have her!”

“Go off, Queen!”

“That’s right, you tell him!”

“I don’t care if he’s a senior citizen! I’ll throw him in front of a bus!”

“He’s old enough to be your father!”

“Gravity is natural, right? We can push him off a building and say he died of natural causes.”

“No! You are in a toxic relationship! This girl can’t walk away from a toxic relationship.”

“They make women in these movies out to be morons!”

When I told her the ending of the play was that she leaves with Freddy, she dropped to her knees, raised her arms, and cried, “yes!”

We are making our way through the old musicals I grew up on.

I’ve already shown her Singing in the Rain, but she was very young so I need to show her again. It’s my favorite movie, next to The Quiet Man.

Next up is West Side Story. Some others on the list: South Pacific, Oklahoma (which I’ve never actually watched myself), and The Sound of Music.

Which others should I show her to rage-bait her into another ten-minute rant about old movies and musicals and how they portray women?

What I’ve Been Writing

I’ve been working on book four of the Gladwynn Grant Mysteries, Gladwynn Grant Goes Back to School.

Last week on the blog, I shared:

Recent Blog Posts I Enjoyed

Cat’s chat about how many books people read at a time was very interesting and fun for me.

Photos From Last Week

Some Housekeeping

Erin (Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs) and I host a monthly bookish link party called A Good Book and A Cup of Tea. This link-up is for book and reading posts or anything related to books and reading (even movies based on books!). Each link party will be open for a month. You can find that link up for this month here.

Each week, I host the Weekend Traffic Jam Reboot with some great hosts. It goes live Thursday night, but you can share any kind of blog posts (family-friendly) there until Tuesday of each week. You can check my recent posts on the sidebar to the right for the most recent link party.

Now It’s Your Turn

What have you been doing, watching, reading, listening to, or writing?

This post is linked up with The Sunday Post at Kimba at Caffeinated Reviewer, Deb at with Deb at Readerbuzz, and Book Date: It’s Monday! What are you reading hosted by Kathryn at The Book Date and Stacking the Shelves is hosted by Reading Reality.

Hello! Welcome to my blog. I am a blogger, homeschool mom, and I write cozy mysteries.

You can find my Gladwynn Grant Mystery series HERE.

You can also find me on Instagram and YouTube.

If you would like to be the first to get news about my books or just have access to special posts for supporters, you can do so here for $2.99 a month https://lisahoweler.com/support-my-writing/

Spring of Bette Davis: Now, Voyager

On June 12, 2026 By Lisa R. HowelerIn classic movie impressions, Spring of Bette5 Comments

I have been watching Bette Davis movies for spring and clearly, it is stretching a bit into summer.

This week I am writing about Now, Voyager — a movie that chronicles the life of a mentally abused woman whose narcissistic mother held her back and down for years.

It was released in 1942, which was in an era where movies were being geared toward women, left home during World War II. It was a feminist-yet-not-feminist movie that was ahead of its time in some ways and right in line with the times in others.

Bette portrays Charlotte Val, an abused woman who only escapes the horror of her mother (Gladys Cooper) when a psychiatrist named Dr. Jaquith (portrayed by Claude Rains) sees what is happening and suggests Charlotte come to a sanatorium. His hope is to unravel the neurotic mess caused by her domineering mother.

This movie starts with Bette looking very dowdy and old, with a unibrow. Online, it also says she was overweight but…well, that wasn’t what I think of as overweight. Different standards back then, of course.

We learn right off the bat that Charlotte’s mother is a domineering, crazy lady. Charlotte has three older brothers and was the “unwanted child” that her mother felt was a burden.

Charlotte’s sister-in-law, Lisa, (Ilka Chase) brings Dr. Jaquith to meet Charlotte, and I can’t help feeling she did this to try to help Charlotte escape her mother.

Ilka also has a teenage daughter (Bonita Granville, who was also in the old Nancy Drew movies) who laughs at her spinster aunt. She is not a lovely girl, but she does improve somewhat later on.

When Charlotte leaves the sanitorium — thinner, more beautiful, and full of more confidence than when she went in — Dr. Jaquith and Lisa suggest she delay her return to her mother and instead go on a cruise, which she does. There she meets Jerry (Paul Henreid), who is on a business trip, and who she falls in love with but soon learns is married, though unhappily. They end up pushed together a lot on this trip, and when they are involved in a car crash while going to see the sights on a stop in Rio de Janeiro, they spend the night together, cuddling (maybe more? Hmmm…), and then spend five days together after missing the ship.

Charlotte eventually catches up with the ship to return home after she and Jerry admit they can’t be together because of his marriage.

This movie was very good, suspenseful and fascinating, but I am going to share one annoyance for me — and please keep in mind that this was most likely a me issue and is probably due to some sensory overload issues I’ve been having as I get older — the music that constantly plays in the background of every single scene and never lets up was very distracting for me. I hesitate to even share this lest one of the enthusiastic Bette fans who have found my movie clips on social media come here and berate me, but the music, while very good, was very distracting for me. Maybe it was the sound on my TV? I have no idea.

I searched online to see if this bothered anyone else and it did (thank you Reddit and other forums), but I also read that this was to set the mood of the movie and to show how intense things kept getting for Charlotte throughout various stages of her breaking away from her mother.

That makes sense, but it was no less annoying for me. At times, I had trouble concentrating on the dialogue because of how prevalent the music was. It was a 2-hour movie and the music never, or at least rarely, stopped. The score, composed by Max Steiner, won an Oscar, though, so this is apparently just a “me” issue.

Like many of Bette’s movies, Now, Voyager is a melodrama, and melodramatic music is to be expected.

The blog The Hollywood Garden shared that Steiner scored 21 of Bette’s movies; she was a huge fan of his. Rightly so. The music is great — just a bit too great in some scenes where it was more prominent than the voices to me.

“In 1939, during the making of Dark Victory (dir. Edmund Goulding), Bette stopped the climactic scene and asked Goulding if Steiner was going to score the picture,” The Hollywood Garden wrote. “He said he didn’t know and asked what the big deal was. She famously said, ‘Either I’m going to climb those stairs or Max Steiner is going to climb those stairs. But I’ll be g******** if Max Steiner and I are going to climb those stairs together!’”

But, as usual, I have digressed a bit. Let’s get back to the rest of the movie.

From the first moment that Dr. Jaquith takes Charlotte from her mother’s home, I was rooting for her.

I was hoping she would break away, tell that old bitty to jump off a bridge, and start her own life. Some of this did happen, but then Charlotte was in a new cage — one of a mistress who can’t really have the man she wants because he’s already married with children. Ironically, one of his children, a daughter, is very similar to Charlotte and is treated as poorly by her mother as Charlotte was by hers.

That will come into play in the movie, of course.

Bette showed her true range in this film. I almost forgot she was Bette. Instead of being brash and bold and yelling, like she was in many of her other films, she was withdrawn, subdued, quiet, and confused during the beginning of Now, Voyager, with a later transformation into a bold and determined woman.

It was fascinating to watch the process of where Charlotte started and where she eventually ended up.

I’ve almost forgotten to mention that this movie is based on the book by Olive Higgins Prouty. It was the third novel in a series about the wealthy Vale family of Boston and was released in 1941.

Bette was not the first choice for this film, which was directed by Michael Curtiz after the first director, Edmund Goulding, became ill.

Warner Bros. Production Head Hal Wallis first looked to Irene Dunne, who had starred in another melodramatic film, Love Affair, with Charles Boyer, a couple of years before. Also considered were Norma Shearer and Ginger Rogers.

None of those women were available in the end, and Bette was in the middle of yet another blow-up and battle with Jack Warner, head of Warner Bros.

When a friend at the studio told Bette that the rights had been obtained to Prouty’s novel, though, she began to lobby for the role. She was a native Bostonian and would understand the role more than other actresses, she said.

Warner said Bette wasn’t attractive enough to go from an ugly duckling to a glamorous woman.

Bette countered that her modest appearance would appeal to all women around the nation instead of a Hollywood beauty, and Wallis agreed, thus convincing Warner to cave and give her the role.

One famous scene or recurring action that came in this film was when Paul Henreid lit two cigarettes in his mouth and handed one to Bette’s character. It was a move that followed Paul around for years afterwards, with fans offering to light his cigarettes that way.

I rented this one, but I believe it is streaming on various sites.

After I finish one more Bette Davis movie, The Petrified Forrest, I’ll be taking a break from a set movie/actor theme until Autumn, when I will be watching Jimmy Stewart movies.

The movies I’ve watched for this feature include:

Now, Voyager

The Petrified Forrest

You can find a suggestion of Bette Davis movies to watch here.

_____

Sources or further reading:

https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/6703-now-voyager-we-have-the-stars

https://theoldhollywoodgarden.wordpress.com/2021/08/14/max-steiner-and-now-voyager-1942/

https://www.tcm.com/articles/1074847/now-voyager

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2021/aug/04/now-voyager-review-bette-daviss-sublime-sex-free-act-of-sublimation

If you want to find clips and thoughts about vintage movies and TV, you can visit me on Instagram on my Nostalgically Thinking Account (https://www.instagram.com/nostalgically_thinking/) or on my YouTube account Nostalgically and Bookishly Thinking here: https://www.youtube.com/@nostaglicandbookish

You can also find me on Instagram and YouTube and Facebook.

Notice: This post may contain affiiate links. If you purchase the product from these links I will receive a small compensation at no extra charge to you.

Weekend Traffic Jam Reboot June 12

On June 11, 2026June 11, 2026 By Lisa R. HowelerIn Weekend Traffic Jam11 Comments

Welcome to the Weekend Traffic Jam Reboot, where we offer a place for bloggers to link up and get a fresh set of eyes on their posts. We also feature one blog a week, letting our readers know about the blog and providing a link so readers can learn more about it. Please feel free to post new blog posts or old ones you want to bring attention to again.

Look for the post to go live about 9:30 PM EST on Thursdays.

Little Miss and I wrapped up our school year yesterday with a visit to our homeschool evaluator. She reviewed our portfolio and declared it well done so now we will submit her report to the local school district and be done with school for the 2025-2026 school year. The next year will start with a couple of days a week of work on July 1, which will allow us to have some breaks throughout the school year.

What was nice about having to present our portfolio this year was putting all of Little Miss’s paintings and drawings in one display book, separate from samples of the academic work we had.

It was fun to see her progress throughout the year. She’s continuing her online art classes this summer.

Now, let’s introduce our current hosts for the Weekend Traffic Jam Reboot:

Marsha from Marsha in the Middle started blogging in 2021 as an exercise in increasing her neuroplasticity. Oh, who are we kidding? Marsha started blogging because she loves clothes, and she loves to talk or, in this case, write!

Melynda from Scratch Made Food! & DIY Homemade Household – The name says it all, we homestead in East Texas, with three generations sharing this land. I cook and bake from scratch, between gardening and running after the chickens, and knitting!

Lisa from Boondock Ramblings shares about the fiction she writes and reads, her faith, homeschooling, photography and more.

Cat from Cat’s Wire is a bookworm, movie fan, crazy cat lady, armed with beads, cabs, wire and a very jumpy brain which loves to go down rabbit holes!

Rena from Fine, Whatever writes about style, midlife, and the “fine whatever” moments that make life both meaningful and fun. Since 2015, she’s been celebrating creativity, confidence, and finding joy in the everyday.

We would love to have additional Co-Hosts to share in the creativity and fun! If you think this would be a good fit for you and you like having fun (come on, who doesn’t!) while still being creative, drop one of us an email and someone will get back with you!

WTJR will be highlighting a different blogger each week this year! We invite you to stop by their blog, take a look around and say hello!

This week we are spotlighting Handmade by Amalia

A little about Amalia:

Welcome to my blog! This is the place where I write about my crafts, mostly crochet, needlework and recycled paper, and a little bit about my life as it touches it – family, work, travel… I wish to live my life with creativity and kindness and my blog challenges me to do that. I’m glad you stopped by!

Thank you so much for joining us for our link-up!

And now some posts that were highlights for me this past week:

Where the Wild Things Are was having fire alarm drama

Amy is coloring through the Psalms and struggling with church hurt

Life Captured is chatting about blog comments

Thrifting Wonderland is Enjoying Breakfast Outside

Doused in Pink Has Some Wonderful Summer Outfit Ideas

Esme is sharing lavender shortbread biscuits

Important things to know about the link-up:

This link party is for blog posts only. All other links will be deleted.

Please link only blog posts you created yourself.

Please link directly to the URL of your post and not the main address of your blog.

Please do not add links to videos, sales ads, or social media links such as YouTube videos or Shorts, Instagram or Facebook Reels, TikTok videos, or any other “social media” based content.

But do visit other blogs and give the gift of a comment.

Notice: By linking with Weekend Traffic Jam Reboot, you assert that content and photos are your own property. And you give us permission to share said content if your post or blog is showcased.

We welcome unlimited, family friendly content! This can include opinion pieces, recipes, travel recaps, fashion ideas, crafts, thrifting, lifestyle, book reviews or discussions, photography, art, and so much more! Thank you for joining us!

Hello! Welcome to my blog. I am a blogger, homeschool mom, and I write cozy mysteries.

You can find my Gladwynn Grant Mystery series HERE.

You can also find me on Instagram and YouTube and Facebook.

What I Read in Spring

On June 10, 2026June 10, 2026 By Lisa R. HowelerIn everyday musings4 Comments

My reading was not as extensive as I hoped this spring, but I still read a few books and enjoyed the majority of them.

The books I read this spring were:

The Tower Treasure by Franklin W. Dixon (Hardy Boys Mystery)

The Blue Castle by L.M. Montgomery (a reread)

Whispering Walls by Mildred Wirt (A Penny Parker Mystery from the 1940s. Juvenile genre.)

Murder on the Orient Express by Agatha Christie

Crooked House by Agatha Christie

Return of the King by J.R.R. Tolkien

The Singing Tree by Kate Seredy

Heidi by Johanna Spyri

Damsel in Distress by P.G. Wodehouse

The Enchanted April by Elizabeth Von Arnim.

A Caribbean Mystery by Agatha Christie

Nancy’s Mysterious Letter by Carolyn Keene

Murder, She Wrote: Aloha Betrayed by Jessica Fletcher and Donald Bain

The Labours of Hercules by Agatha Christie

The Cat Who Brought Down the House by Lilian Jackson Braun

Out of this list, these were my favorites:

A Caribbean Mystery

The Enchanted April

Damsel in Distress

Return of the King

Murder on the Orient Express

Crooked House

The Blue Castle

Have you read any interesting books lately?

If you write book reviews or book-related blog posts, don’t forget that Erin and I host the A Good Book and A Cup of Tea Monthly Bookish Blog Party. You can learn more about it here.

On Thursdays, I am part of the Weekend Traffic Jam Reboot blog link party. You can find the latest one in the sidebar to the right under recent posts.

Notice: This post may contain affiiate links. If you purchase the product from these links I will receive a small compensation at no extra charge to you.

Hello! Welcome to my blog. I am a blogger, homeschool mom, and I write cozy mysteries.

You can find my Gladwynn Grant Mystery series HERE.

You can also find me on Instagram and YouTube and Facebook.

If you would like to be the first to get news about my books or just have access to special posts for supporters, you can do so here for $2.99 a month https://lisahoweler.com/support-my-writing/

Ten Books with Handwriting on the Cover

On June 9, 2026June 9, 2026 By Lisa R. HowelerIn books and reading, top-ten-tuesday18 Comments

Top Ten Tuesday is hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl.

If you are new to my blog, I just wanted to share with you that I co-host a monthly bookish link party called A Good Book and A Cup of Tea (no, you don’t have to drink tea to participate) and you can find a link to it at the top of the page.

The link party is for all book-related posts from reviews and recommendations to …well, anything related to books at all. Including Top Ten Tuesday, if you want to link your top ten there too!

Today’s Top Ten Tuesday prompt is: Books with Handwriting on the Cover (Or fonts that look like handwriting. Titles, subtitles, covers with letters on them, etc.)

So I went to my shelves and pulled ten books out with covers with handwriting, or script that looks somewhat like handwriting at least.

Some of these I’ve read and some I haven’t.

A Desperate Hope by Elizabeth Camden

Have not read yet.

The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett

Read and loved.

Stories That Bind Us by Susie Finkbeiner

Have not read, but hope to soon.

A Murder At the Vicarage by Agatha Christie

Read and enjoyed.

Bombs on Aunt Dainty by Judith Kerr

I read the first book in this series (When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit) a couple of years ago so I would like to read this second one soon.

Love and a Little White Lie by Tammy L. Gray

I enjoyed this one as well.

Agatha Christie: An Autobiography by Agatha Christie

I am looking forward to reading this one slowly.

Phantom Stallion by Terri Farley

This is a book that Little Miss picked to read.

The Chronicles of Narnia (omnibus) by C.S. Lewis

I am on the sixth book in this series and really enjoying it. I am reading it from a smaller collection that this one, though.

The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis

I started this one and hope to finish it this summer. It’s very good – thought-provoking.

On Thursdays, I am part of the Weekend Traffic Jam Reboot blog link party. You can find the latest one in the sidebar to the right under recent posts.

Hello! Welcome to my blog. I am a blogger, homeschool mom, and I write cozy mysteries.

You can find my Gladwynn Grant Mystery series HERE.

You can also find me on Instagram and YouTube.

If you would like to be the first to get news about my books or just have access to special posts for supporters, you can do so here for $2.99 a month : https://lisahoweler.com/support-my-writing/

Notice: This post may contain affiiate links. If you purchase the product from these links I will receive a small compensation at no extra charge to you.

Sunday Bookends: Celebratory dinner, disturbing Rita Hayworth documentary, and the same books

On June 7, 2026June 9, 2026 By Lisa R. HowelerIn Sunday Bookends, Sunday Salon11 Comments

It’s time for our Sunday morning chat. On Sundays, I ramble about what’s been going on, what the rest of the family and I have been reading and watching, and what I’ve been writing.

This weekend seemed hectic but it really wasn’t that bad.

I helped my parents a couple of days and then on Friday we had a family outing where Little Miss and I got our hair cut and we had lunch out to celebrate my husband’s promotion at work.

On Saturday the kids and The Husband went to a mall an hour away and I stayed home and watched movies and caught up on some shows I’ve been watching. It was nice to have a relaxing day.

This week Little Miss and I meet with our homeschool evaluator to close out our homeschool year. We are taking a month off and will start up with some school again in July to allow us some time off throughout the school year. She will continue her Outschool art classes throughout the summer, at her request.

What I/We’ve Been Reading

Just Finished

I didn’t finish anything last week.

In Progress

I am slow reading Stillmeadow Daybrook by Gladys Taber. Since each chapter is a month, I plan to read a chapter a month.

I’m still reading The Silver Chair by C.S. Lewis and Stolen Past by Tara Randle.

I’m enjoying them both, but didn’t seem able to focus on reading as much this week. My mind was busy I guess.

I also started The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie for the June Reading Christie 2026 Challenge.

And then, because I know I will probably finish The Silver Chair this week, I also started All The Broken Places by John Boyne. I don’t know anything about it so I’ll see how it goes.

What The Family is Reading

Little Miss and I are continuing Heidi.

New arrivals to my bookshelf

The Husband picked up a Terry Pratchett book for me at Barnes and Noble:

What I/We’ve Been Watching

I’ve been watching The Other Bennet Sister and yesterday I also finished the first season of Ludwig. I watched a Sherlock Holmes movie with Basil Rathbone that was a bit convoluted and treated Dr. Watson like a total moron.

I watched a documentary on Rita Hayworth that was disturbing, to say the least. That poor woman overcame a lot to become an actress but even then she was abused (by her own father), taken advantage of, and rebuilt (physically and otherwise) to become who we watched in the movies.

It was hard to watch You’ll Never Get Rich with her and Fred Astaire after seeing the documentary since one of the plot lines of the movie is a predatory married man trying to buy her gifts and hit on her and later involves her being tricked to marry Fred, who is a heck of a lot older than her.

What I’ve Been Writing

Last week on the blog I shared:

What I/We’ve Been Listening To

Little Miss and I are listening to Little House in the Big Woods before bed.

Photos From Last Week

Some Housekeeping

Now It’s Your Turn

What have you been doing, watching, reading, listening to, or writing?

This post is linked up with The Sunday Post at Kimba at Caffeinated Reviewer, Deb at with Deb at Readerbuzz, and Book Date: It’s Monday! What are you reading hosted by Kathyrn at The Book Date and Stacking the Shelves is hosted by Reading Reality.

Hello! Welcome to my blog. I am a blogger, homeschool mom, and I write cozy mysteries.

You can find my Gladwynn Grant Mystery series HERE.

You can also find me on Instagram and YouTube.

If you would like to be the first to get news about my books or just have access to special posts for supporters, you can do so here for $2.99 a month https://lisahoweler.com/support-my-writing/

Notice: This post may contain affiiate links. If you purchase the product from these links I will receive a small compensation at no extra charge to you.

Classic movie impressions: Spring of Bette Of Human Bondage (1934)

On June 5, 2026June 10, 2026 By Lisa R. HowelerIn everyday musings3 Comments

I’ve been watching Bette Davis movies for spring and I’m stretching a bit into summer.

So what can I say about this week’s Bette Davis movie for my Spring of Bette feature?

“I watched this movie so you can just watch the clips of Bette Davis’s better parts.”

I’m kidding. Sort of. Is this a bad movie? No. It’s just not as good as others I have watched and, for me, it really dragged, partially because Leslie Howard’s character was such a wimp with no self respect who spent the whole movie whining and mooning over a woman who was truly evil and psycho.

The movie, released in 1934, is called Of Human Bondage.

Bette did play her part well – so well I literally hated her character. Honestly, I hated both characters. They were pathetic and that was how they were supposed to be. Two pathetic people ruining their whole lives and the lives of those around them because they created visions of each other that weren’t reality.

Blah.

I felt like shaking them!

An easy description for this movie is that a man with a club foot who has no self-respect, has White Knight Syndrome and thinks he can save Bette Davis’s character, who is simply a horrible, horrible person, so he keeps going back to her or letting her come to him.

Critics called this movie Bette’s breakout role and I can see why it was. At first, I hated the movie and her and couldn’t see why critics thought it was so good, but then I realized I hated her so much because she was playing the role so well.

This was Bette’s first movie with Leslie Howard, who I found out this week died young at the age of 50 while working for the war effort during World War II. There is a whole crazy story to that which I need to write about at some point. Nazi plot to take out a beloved British actor? Maybe….or maybe it was the Winston Churchill look alike that was on the plane.

But, I digress…let’s get back to the movie.

Leslie portrays Philip Carey, a man who was told he wasn’t good enough to be an artist so he left Paris and came back to London to become a doctor.

He meets Bette’s character, Mildred Rogers, in a diner when his friend has a crush on her but can’t get anywhere with her. I will warn you up front that Bette attempts a Cockney accent and it’s pretty awful. Like Dick Van Dyke level.

Philip becomes obsessed with Mildred and I think it is because she keeps playing hard to get. It’s more than that, though. She’s simply a person who likes to toy with the hearts and feelings of others and she’s loving watching… spin in the wind.

Plus she looks at his club foot in disgust. She can’t be with someone with a deformed foot…right?

Who she can be with, though, are married men who leave her in very bad positions and every time she gets in a bad situation she runs to Philip who always bails her out, hoping against hope she will truly fall in love with him.

He rejects relationships with good, caring women, always going back to the slop that is a relationship with Mildred.

The movie is based on a book by W. Somerset Maugham and was remade two times — once in 1946 and once in 1964.

Critics loved the 1934 film, but didn’t care so much for the remakes.

TCM put it well about Bette and her desire to have the role: “Mildred was manipulative and sadistic, raw and fascinating, and Davis wanted to play her more than anything in the world.”

Davis was working for Warner Brothers at the time and Of Human Bondage was an RKO production, but Bette desperately wanted to be a part of it. Back then the actors and actresses had contracts with certain studios and weren’t supposed to work with other ones but Bette didn’t like the movies she was being put in by Warner Brothers. She felt they were inconsequential and begged Warner to let her be loaned out for the movie.

Warner refused because he said the role, an unglamorous one, would ruin her image. Katharine Hepburn, Irene Dunne, and Ann Harding had already turned the roles down for that reason.

Maybe the role ruined Bette’s image as a stylized, glamorous star, but it opened her world to meatier roles.

“I begged, implored, cajoled,” Bette later recalled. “I haunted Jack Warner’s office. Every single day, I arrived at his door with the shoeshine boy. The part of Mildred was something I had to have. J.L. could not possibly understand any actress who would want to play such a part. I spent six months in supplication and drove Mr. Warner to the point of desperation – desperate enough to say ‘yes’ – anything to get rid of me… If my memory is correct, he said, ‘Go and hang yourself.'”

Maugham approved of Bette, which was a huge endorsement since he had poured so much of himself into the story, which was semi-autobiographical — mainly the part about being orphaned, relying on family, and having to struggle to get himself a career.

Leslie apparently was not too thrilled with an American playing Mildred’s part.

“When Davis shot her close-ups Howard would feed lines to her as he read a book off-camera, totally detached from the process,” Jeremy Arnold wrote for TCM.com. “But when he realized that she was giving a great performance and was on her way to stealing the picture, he shaped up instantly and committed himself fully to working with her. They would pair up twice more, notably in The Petrified Forest (1936).”

I’m watching The Petrified Forest, next, incidentally, but will be writing about Now, Voyageur first, which I watched a couple of weeks ago.

The lack of an Oscar nomination for Bette for this movie is what lead to a change in how nominations were made and voting was done for the Oscars.

Claudette Colbert won for Best Actress for It Happened One Night in 1934 and though she was great, some said fraud had occurred that left Bette even out of the nominations. Because of this brouhaha, write-in votes were no longer used and the accounting firm Price Waterhouse (now called Pricewaterehouse Coopers) took over the voting process and has done so ever since.

For those who are curious about what I have watched for the Spring of Bette so far, this is my list:

Of Human Bondage (June 2)

Now, Voyager (June 5)

The Petrified Forrest (June 11)

Sources:

https://www.tcm.com/articles/31567/of-human-bondage-1934

https://garbolaughs.wordpress.com/2011/01/26/of-human-bondage-1934/

Weekend Traffic Jam Reboot June 5

On June 4, 2026June 4, 2026 By Lisa R. HowelerIn Weekend Traffic Jam6 Comments

Look for the post to go live about 9:30 PM EST on Thursdays.

I wanted to take a moment to thank all of you who link up to the Weekend Traffic Jam Reboot for taking part. I don’t usually get to every post and if I do get to most, I don’t always comment, sometimes because I get interrupted. I enjoy so many of your posts, though, and love the variety we have here.

Keep linking up. We all need some distractions, escapes, and reminders these days.

Now, let’s introduce our current hosts for the Weekend Traffic Jam Reboot:

Lisa from Boondock Ramblings shares about the fiction she writes and reads, her faith, homeschooling, photography and more.

Cat from Cat’s Wire is a bookworm, movie fan, crazy cat lady, armed with beads, cabs, wire and a very jumpy brain which loves to go down rabbit holes!

WTJR will be highlighting a different blogger each week this year! We invite you to stop by their blog, take a look around and say hello!

This week we are spotlighting: craftygardener

A little about Linda:

I love crafting and I love gardening … hence my name was created … Crafty Gardener, who in real life is Linda. Now I’m retired I have more time to do all the things I love to do, and I often wonder how I had time to go to work. I’ve been sharing my love of gardening and crafting since my site was established in 2004 with my own domain as a gift from my family.

Gardening is just one important part of my life. Family is the most important part. We have been married 50+ years, have 3 beautiful daughters and handsome son-in-laws and four wonderful and energetic grandchildren that keep us smiling and young!

Thank you so much for joining us for our link-up!

And now some posts that were highlights for me this past week:

Debbie is sharing some beautiful decorations with us

Nancy is telling us How to Keep Your Hair Looking Its Best Year-Round

Musings and Glimpses shows us how to make DIY Dollar Tree Mini Stand

These sourdough biscuits look amazing.

Doused in Pink is making jeans look summery

what a beautiful flower tree mosiac

Important things to know about the link-up:

This link party is for blog posts only. All other links will be deleted.

Please link only blog posts you created yourself.

Please link directly to the URL of your post and not the main address of your blog.

Please do not add links to videos, sales ads, or social media links such as YouTube videos or Shorts, Instagram or Facebook Reels, TikTok videos, or any other “social media” based content.

But do visit other blogs and give the gift of a comment.

Notice: By linking with Weekend Traffic Jam Reboot, you assert that content and photos are your own property. And you give us permission to share said content if your post or blog is showcased.

Hello! Welcome to my blog. I am a blogger, homeschool mom, and I write cozy mysteries.

You can find my Gladwynn Grant Mystery series HERE.

You can also find me on Instagram and YouTube and Facebook.

Book recommendations: The Labors of Hercules by Agatha Christie

On June 3, 2026June 2, 2026 By Lisa R. HowelerIn book reviews, books and reading5 Comments

I’ve been participating in the Read Christie 2026 Challenge, and for May, I read The Labors of Hercules.

It is a collection of short stories featuring Christie’s Belgian detective, Hercule Poirot.

The stories all connect and follow the theme of Poirot sharing twelve cases to close his career as a private detective. Because he was named after Hercules (though his name does not have the “s”), he decides his final cases will be those that follow the Greek myth of the 12 Labors of Hercules.

I don’t really know a lot about Greek mythology, but I figured it out along the way.

Agatha wrote these as serialized stories in The Strand magazine from 1939 to 1940, with the last one being written for the collection in 1947.

I wasn’t too sure about this one when I started it, but the book, with each chapter focused on a short mystery, grew on me as I kept going. Some of the stories were more serious than the others.

I almost gave up after the second story, since the first couple were not written well to me, but I’m glad I didn’t give up because the stories got better – especially the final one where Poirot ran into a woman he used to have an attraction to – Countess Vera Rossakoff.

There was a lot of humor and just a good story in that one, which was entitled The Capture of Cerberus.

Here are a couple of quotes I enjoyed from that story:

“It is the misfortune of small precise men to hanker after large and flamboyant women. Poirot had never been able to rid himself of the fatal fascination the Countess held for him. Though I was something like twenty years since he had seen her last, the magic still held. Granted that her makeup now resembled a scene-painter’s sunset, with the woman under the makeup well hidden from sight, to Hercule Poirot she still represented the sumptuous and the alluring.”

When Poirot first sees her again after so many years, it is on an escalator and she shouts back at him to meet her in hell. He later learns from his secretary, Miss Lemon, that Hell is a nightclub, and he later learns the countess owns it.

At first, though, he is totally baffled.

“But what had she meant by it? Had she meant London’s Underground Railways? Or were her words to be taken in a religious sense? Surely, even if her own way of life made Hell the most plausible destination for her after this life, surely—surely her Russian Courtesy would not suggest that Hercule Poirot was necessarily bound for the same place?”

Then, when he finally does get to the club…

“The place was full and it had about it that unmistakable air of success which cannot be counterfeited. There were languid couples in full evening dress, Bohemians in corduroy trousers, stout gentlemen in business suits. The band, dressed as devils, dispensed hot music. No doubt about it, Hell had caught on.

“We have all kinds here,” said the Countess. “That is as it should be, is it not? The gates of Hell are open to all?”

“Except, possibly, to the poor?” Poirot suggested.

The Countess laughed. “Are we not told that it is difficult for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of Heaven? Naturally, then, he should have priority in Hell.”

I was surprised by how much Agatha wrote about cocaine use and its destruction in these stories. Sometimes I am very naïve and forget that cocaine and drug abuse was a very real thing even back then.

If I didn’t think it would bore both you and me, I would go through each story and tell you why I did or didn’t like it, and share some quotes. Instead, I will simply reiterate that there were good stories and not as good stories, in my opinion, but that I would read them all because what one person doesn’t like, another person might like.

My mom and I share a Kindle/Goodreads account and I noticed when I finished it that she gave it a three star. I bumped it up to a four, but without that last story I might have given it a three too (or 3.5), even though the idea behind it was very ingenious.

Have you read this collection yet?

Up next for me for the Read Christie 2026 challenge is The Murder of Roger Ackroyd.