Welcome to my blog! I am a wife and mom from Pennsylvania who also happens to write. I have been writing for 25 years, fourteen of those for smalltown newspapers in rural Pennsylvania and upstate New York. I'm a homeschool mom, a cozy mystery writer, a photographer, a wife, and a mom of two. I blog a little bit about a lot of things here on the blog. You can also find me on Instagram.
Here I am with another recap of an episode from The Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew Mysteries show from 1977.
As I’ve mentioned before, in the first season of this series, the episodes switched back and forth from Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew episodes and in the next season, they started to join together. Eventually, they began to phase out the Nancy episodes and focus more on The Hardy Boys. A new actress also started as Nancy when Pamela Sue Martin became disenchanted with the parts that were being written for her character.
This week I watched a Hardy Boys centered episode called Wipe Out.
This episode was one of the better ones, which I seem to be writing a lot more as I continue through the show. It seems the show got a lot better as it went on. Episodes still have some cheesy moments, sure, but the mysteries are better than in the beginning.
I spent the entire first half of this episode thinking our boys might have gone rogue and had become criminals. Luckily, things started to make sense at the halfway point.
We open this episode with a surfing competition underway and soon learn that Frank is in the competition and the boys are in Hawaii.
They aren’t only in Hawaii, they have found two girls who are hanging all over them and going to luaus with them. Of course Joe (Shaun Cassidy) is asked to sing at one of them and of course Frank wanders off to investigate something while Joe is singing. Frank’s wandering off continues a series-long inside joke.
After Frank’s competing, which brings him accolades and a chance to compete for a bigger prize, the boys head back to their hotel room and find out they’ve been robbed. This sends them to the police station where a cop sort of brushes them off because he says their stuff is long gone by now.
This will mean the boys will to call their dad, Fenton Hardy, and see if he can wire them some money for the rest of their trip. Joe says Frank has to call him because he’s the one that wanted to come and be in the surfing competition.
Frank has a better idea and the next thing we now the guys are breaking into a room after swiping the key of a couple at the hotel. I watched in horror as our heroes started loading up bags with the jewelry and money of the people and even more horror as they went to dinner and ordered big ticket items, telling the waitress they were fine on money.
She knew they’d been robbed, though, so she was pretty horrified like me, suspicious of how they got the money to pay for their meal.
This episode did a very good job of keeping us guessing what was going to happen next and tossing in characters we thought were going to bust the boys somehow.
We had hotel cops and town cops coming after them and suspecting them of theft. Then we eventually discover there is a burglary ring, and we wonder how the boys got themselves wrapped up in it. Or did they? What is going on?
Even the girls they are seeing are starting to ask questions, like why they have a pair of fancy binoculars that look like some stolen by a couple at the hotel.
Usually I give spoilers in these posts but today I won’t because it might be fun if you want to watch it later on your own and find out what was really going on.
If you like listening to Shaun Cassidy sing you’ll get your chance a few times in this episode, especially at the beginning and end when he is singing Beach Boys songs.
The joke about Frank never hearing Joe sing continues on as Joe keeps trying to play a cassette for Frank so he can finally hear the performance. That was a fun gag but less fun was having to see Shaun’s short-shorts and hair leg every single time they focused on the cassette player in his hand.
The surfing scenes were a lot of fun to watch and I have a feeling that young ladies back then just loved to see Parker Stevenson running in and out of the waves. I will say that they kept the show very chaste because he always wore a shirt. There was one scene where Shaun was shirtless while he was rescuing Parker …er.. Frank and I’m guessing the young ladies would have liked that.
You can find the posts I’ve written about other Hard Boys Nancy Drew Mysteries shows by searching on the search bar to the right.
Up next I’ll be watching a Nancy Drew centered mystery, The Mystery of the Ghostwriter’s Cruise.
It’s time for our Sunday morning chat. On Sundays, I ramble about what’s been going on, whatthe rest of the familyand I have been reading and watching, andwhat I’ve been writing. Some weeks, I share what I am listening to.
Today is my husband’s and my 23rd wedding anniversary, and we went to a used bookstore near us because we are both serious nerds.
Then we visited a small café across the street for lunch.
Dinner and a book. That’s us, although it wasn’t always me. I read some but not as much, or as much variety, as I do now.
My husband has always been a big reader — sometimes a book a day or 3 to 5 a week.
I’m a much slower reader.
At the bookstore, I found three new (to me) Nancy Drew books, three Murder She Wrote books, and a cozy mystery by an author I am not familiar with — Betty Rowlands.
The Nancy Drew books I brought home were Mystery of the Tolling Bell, Mystery of the Brass-Bound Trunk, and The Clue of the Broken Locket.
The Murder She Wrote books are Killer in the Kitchen, Murder in Red, and The Murder of Twelve. I have a feeling they might be awful and I’m here for it. I started Murder in Red to see what I thought, though, and the first few pages was good.
The other cozy mystery was A Melissa Craig Mystery: A Little Gentle Sleuthing by Betty Rowlands.
There are so many variety of books there. I could have stayed there an hour but The Husband, alas, was hungry so we had to head out for some food which was odd because I am usually the one who needs to leave places for food.
After the bookstore and the dinner we headed home and watched a Frank Sinatra/Gene Kelly movie called Take Me Out to the Ballgame.
I have a monthly book-related link party if you are interested. You can find the A Good Book and A Cup of Tea link party at the top of my page or here.
We will be holding another one Saturday, July 19 at 1 p.m.
The Crafternoons are events where we gather on Zoom and craft at our respective homes and chat while we work on various projects. We are calling them drop-in crafternoons because you can drop in and out during the time we are on (usually from about 1 to 3 p.m. EST US time). No need to stay the whole time if you can’t. Come late if you want or leave early.
If you want to join in, email Erin at crackcrumblife@gmail.com and she will add you to the mailing list.
I finished The Imitable Jeeves by P.G. Wodehouse this past week and really enjoyed it. It was so much fun and exactly what I needed right now.
I started The 100-year-old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared and I don’t know if I am exactly enjoying it but it’s different. I’ll see what I think.
I also started Spill the Jackpot by Erle Stanley Gardner. It’s a Cool and Lamb Mystery. I am not enjoying this one much at all so I’ll see if I finish it. There were three pages of a guy describing how to use slot machines! Why??? Ugh! The first in the series was so much better. This is number four.
I started Memory Lane by Becky Wade to see what I thought because I have wanted to read a light romance but have not enjoyed the two I tried by Courtney Walsh. I just think she isn’t my cup of tea but I’ve read Becky’s before and have enjoyed her so I thought I’d try this one and … I liked the beginning so I am going to read that when I need a light read.
Before bed I am enjoying Prince Caspian by C.S. Lewis.
I plan to read one of the Murder She Wrote I picked up soon.
Last week I watched The Scarlet Pimpernel (1982), The Pirates of Penzance, and A Hole in the Head.
I don’t recommend A Hole in the Head. It’s a Frank Sinatra/Edward G. Robinson film and it has some cute and fun moments but fell apart hard toward the end and didn’t resolve well at all. It’s like they just ran out of time and said “welp, that’s it! We’re done!”
I also watched an episode of The Dick VanDyke Show and The Husband and I watched Take Me Out to the Ballgame and the Canary Murder Case, a Philo Vance Mystery from the 1930s.
What have you been doing, watching, reading, listening to, or writing? Let me know in the comments or leave a blog post link if you also write a weekly update like this.
I’m the type of person who has never liked summer unless I can spend most of it in a pool. This year, though, we don’t have the pool we had before at my parents. Maintaining it has become too much for my dad with all his mounting health issues and it’s hard for us to maintain it the way he would like.
The decision to take it down was made a couple of weeks ago and it’s been very sad to walk out back and not see it. This past week my dad and son put up a small pool that our neighbors gave us a couple of years ago but it is a ton smaller than the last one.
It will at least be something that we can sit in, almost like a hot tub, when it is super hot out at least. Of course, I have to get myself in the pool without injuring myself. I am short and round so climbing in and out of a pool without a ladder, even when it is a shorter pool, can be a challenge. I did manage to get in the pool while it was filling on Thursday. It was nice to sit in it and watch Little Miss play and splash around. It was less fun trying to get back out again, especially since I needed to use the little girl’s room.
It was only comical after the fact, of course.
We are looking for a small ladder or step stool that will make getting in and out easier for all of us.
Last week was very busy for us, compared to our usual schedule in the summer.
Little Miss and I went to a library event and her 4-H Wildlife Club on Monday. On Tuesday we went to VBS but had a not-so-great experience there so on Wednesday we went to my parents to help clean. We went back on Thursday.
Yesterday and today, we stayed home and watched movies and TV, read books, ate watermelon, cooked dinner, bathed the dog, and tried our best to just relax.
Tomorrow The Husband and I are celebrating 23 years of marriage, so we are going out to dinner and to a used bookstore. Yes, we are that exciting. We both love books, though, and the little village where the bookstore is located is very picturesque so it should be a nice day.
Next week The Husband is on vacation and we have a few day trips planned but nothing very exciting. He and the kids are most excited about seeing the new Superman movie, but I’m really not that excited so I might sit this one out.
While typing this blog post up, Microsoft’s One Drive suggested I look at some photos from this same date five years ago.
Here are those photos:
These are from a trip we took a friend’s farm for me to take some photos for them and to sell for stock photography. I don’t know why but my dad took me out with the kids and on the way home he took the long way back and we ended up with a flat tire. Luckily, he knows how to change tires, but we had to wait a bit while he did that. While we waited there was a wonderful sunset for us to watch.
It was fun to visit the friend and see all her cows and the creamery she had opened. Sadly, life circumstances led to the creamery being closed and the cows being moved but her sons are still involved in farming and in showing cows for 4H.
In closing, I’ll leave us all with a quick reminder of how we need some breaks from all the hard stuff in the news. I read a couple of reminders this week that we as humans are not meant to consume all this information about the tragedies in the world all at once. Our minds are not infinite enough to handle all the grief, all the horror, all the fear on our own.
My advice to myself and to you is to take breaks from it all.
Don’t take it all in at once.
Just because we can know everything that is going on these days, doesn’t mean we need to.
Read a book. Watch a nice movie. Take a walk outside. Play with your kids and grandkids. Pet your dog and/or cat.
Sing some hymns.
We can’t ignore all the bad news, of course, but in the end we have to leave it in the hands of the only one who can carry it all.
How was your week last week? I hope it went well and I hope you have a good week this week.
This summer I am watching Angela Lansbury movies for the Summer of Angela. Up this week we have The Pirates of Penzance, which is a bit of a switch up from my original list. You can read more about that below, but first just a quick note — Last week, Cat from Cat’s Wire watched Gaslight and talked about it on her blog. You can read her thoughts here. She compared the British and American movie versions and a German televised version of the original play, and I think the post is so much fun!
And now on to this week’s movie, which I switched around from my original plan. I was going to watch the TV movie, The Shell Seekers, but instead, I thought that I would watch one of Angela’s Broadway/musical performances for fun — The Pirates of Penzance with her and Kevin Kline. The movie is a reproduction of the Joseph Papp’s Broadway production.
I will tell you upfront that halfway through the movie, I had to check that I wasn’t having a fever dream. I also realized I’m very old and my ears are in even worse condition than I thought because I had no idea what was being said in any of the songs. I even tried close captioning but because I watched it for free on YouTube, it didn’t work so well.
I also couldn’t figure out what was happening most of the time. Still, I pushed forward and ended up enjoying it in places and being utterly baffled in other places.
A description from Google:
“Frederic (Rex Smith), who has spent his formative years as a junior pirate, plans to mark his 21st birthday by breaking free from the Pirate King (Kevin Kline) and beginning his courtship of Mabel (Linda Ronstadt). But because he was born on Feb. 29, a date that only arrives every fourth year, Frederic isn’t technically 21 — and the Pirate King is still his master. Unless something gives, Frederic will soon be on a collision course with the Pirate King’s new nemesis: Mabel’s father.”
The movie starts with the people in town coming out of church, seeing the pirate ship off shore, and locking up all their doors.
Then we are on the pirate ship with Frederic and the Pirate King and the rest of the crew celebrating Frederic’s birthday. It is after all the singing that Frederic announces that now that he is 21 he can leave the ship and his service with the Pirate King.
This is when Ruth (Angela), Frederic’s nursemaid, tells him that all those years ago when his father wanted him to apprentice with a pilot and she heard “pirate” instead.
Frederic has a strong sense of duty, which is why he stayed with the pirates and committed crimes with them all those years. But now that he is no longer bound to them, he vows that when he leaves the ship, he will fight against the pirate and the criminal acts he and his crew try to commit.
“Individually, I love you all, with affection unspeakable. But collectively, I look upon you with a disgust that amounts to absolute detestation.”
Frederic sees pirates as scum but if they are going to be actual pirates, he does wish they would attack people stronger than them instead of pretending they just don’t want to hurt anyone. Instead, they just don’t want to get beaten. There is also a whole song about how they won’t attack anyone who says they are an “orphan” because they are also orphans.
This word said in a British accent becomes important later in the movie when there is a whole hilarious debate about if they are saying “orphan” or “often.”
Anyhow, Ruth wants to leave with Frederic and marry him, but Frederic isn’t so sure about it. He’s never really met other women and wants to know if Ruth is attractive. The pirate and crew assure him that she is, simply because they would like to get rid of her too.
Frederic agrees to take Ruth with him but discovers, when he sees a group of women frolicking together near a small pond, that she is not actually attractive and is instead just old.
He sends Ruth away and approaches the women, who turn out to be sisters, and asks which one of them would like to marry him.
Yeah….this musical is weird.
What follows is a song where he hits an incredible note and does a little impression of Elvis.
A lot of silliness follows all this including the singing of the famous song “I Am The Very Model of a Modern Major General.” That was a lot of fun. I always wondered what the song came from. The speed which the nonsense for this song is spit out is insane.
Fun is the key word for this movie. The songs are fun – though I still don’t know what they were saying in half of them. Wait. I’ve mentioned it like ten times now that I didn’t know what they were saying half the time, didn’t I? Okay, I’ll stop doing that.
Also, I did finally look up the lyrics so I could follow along. They didn’t make much more sense that way, but, hey, at least I knew what was being said.
I should note that I did read that a lot of this musical is satire and making fun of some elements of British society during the time the original comedic opera was written in 1879, which is why it seems ridiculous at times.
One thing I can say after seeing this is that Angela was so talented — it seems like there wasn’t anything she couldn’t do — acting, singing, dancing, producing, writing… wow. I’m still trying to figure out if she actually hit the high note in the one song but if she did…wow again!
I am a huge fan of some musicals — Fiddler on the Roof, Singing in the Rain, South Pacific, etc., but this one? I didn’t know what to make of it at first, and from what I am reading, that is a bit of the point of Gilbert and Sullivan musicals.
Their musicals are, I guess, nonsensical at times, and that’s what makes them fun. After reading more about the musical/movie, I understood it more, watched parts again, and liked it more than I did with my first run through.
At first, I decided I’d never watch the movie or musical again, but it grew on me on the second time around — especially Kevin Kline and his unbuttoned shirt. I mean.. his musical and acting talent.
Rex Smith (who I’d never heard of before) was amazing. The pipes on him. WOW.
The resolution on this video is not great but the singing….sheesh!
I had to look him up to see if he had been in anything else and apparently, besides his stage work, he’s most well-known for starring in a show called Street Hawke in the 1980s as well as for being a popular singer in the late 70s with his song You Take My Breath Away.
I would be remiss if I didn’t mention Linda Ronsdadt. I really don’t think I had a clue she sang this amazingly. I don’t know a lot about her at all so her voice totally shocked me! I thought she was just a pop singer . . . I feel embarassed I didn’t realize her range.
The Pirates of Penzance was released on Pay TV at the same time it was released in the theater, which made it a flop at the box office because theater owners boycotted it as a form of protest. Boy, if the theater owners from back then could only see what’s going on these days with movie releases!
Because of the boycott, the film ended up making less than a $1 million total during it’s entire time in the theaters.
It also received mix reviews from critics, but over the years it has become a type of cult classic among musical theater fans.
Those who have seen it over the years, especially when they were young, hold a special place in their heart for it.
“The movie version of the Papp production came out in 1983. It’s pretty much the same experience as the stage. The biggest differences are some superfluous cuts to the score and the upgrading of the character Ruth. No offense to Estelle Parsons (we love her), but let’s face it—Angela Lansbury would be an upgrade of pretty much anyone.”
Of when Ruth and the Pirate King return to find Frederic she writes: “Apparently, once officially rejected by Frederic, Ruth went back to the pirates who not only welcomed her, they got her a fabulous makeover to boot. Not going to lie, my boyfriend and I have this head canon in which the Pirate King and Ruth wind up together since he knows better than to be prejudiced against a hot older woman. They do their best to frump her up for Act 1 but let’s face it—Queen Angela. Need I say more?”
(Aside: I had considered watching Angela in Sweeney Todd for this movie-watching event, but — wince — that really isn’t my type of movie/Broadway musical. Maybe I’ll watch it at some point, though.)
In past posts I have shared with Angela thought of the movie she was in, but….I couldn’t find any interviews with her about this one so I don’t have that. I do, however, have some trivia/facts.
Trivia or facts:
Kevin Kline won the 1981 Tony Award (New York City) for Best Actor in a Musical for “The Pirates of Penzance” Broadway 1981 to 1982 production and re-created his role in this cinema movie. It was Kline’s second Tony Award after having won one for “On the Twentieth Century”. Kline also starred in the precursor New York Central Park stage production and that park production’s subsequent made-for-television movie, The Pirates of Penzance (1980).
Linda Ronstadt loved the musical so much when she read about it that she played the part of Mable first in Central Park and then on Broadway for $400 a week. She then played it in the movie. It was her only movie role. She was nominated for a Tony when she played it on Broadway.
In Act II, there is an extra song (“My Eyes Are Fully Open”) that is not originally from “The Pirates of Penzance.” It’s a modified version of a song from Sir W.S. Gilbert and Sir Arthur Sullivan‘s “Ruddigore”. The inclusion of this song required Kevin Kline, Dame Angela Lansbury, and Rex Smith to sing one of most dizzyingly rapid songs in the entire Gilbert and Sullivan catalogue. (source IMdB)
The source Broadway stage production was preceded by a 1980 Joseph Papp production of “Pirates of Penzance”, which was part of a “Shakespeare in the Park” series of free plays in New York City’s Central Park, which had the same cast of principals as the movie and the Broadway stage production (except for Ruth). (source IMdB)
Writer and Director Wilford Leach, with this movie, knew what kind of movie he wanted to make. Leach wanted to create an “illusion of reality” which actually was “reality askew”. Leach, according to the January-February 1983 edition of Coming Attractions Magazine, “tried to delineate a colorful and comic world that is always true to its own logic.” (source IMdB)
Have you seen this version of the musical or the musical itself anywhere?
Cat from Cat’s Wire shared her thoughts about the movie here.
Up next in my movie watching journey, I have switched things up again and have replaced the Murder She Wrote two-part movie with Please, Murder Me from 1951, starring Angela with Raymond Burr.
The rest of the list remains the same:
July 25 – The Mirror Cracked
August 1 – The Court Jester
August 8 The Picture of Dorian Gray
August 15 – A Life At Stake
August 22 – All Fall Down
August 29 – Something for Everyone
Additional resources:
The Pirates of Penzance: For Some Ridiculous Reason…
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.
This week has been difficult for many people, especially those in Texas, but I think really the whole country has felt the heartache of the sudden losses in the floods on July 4th. It a sick, has left me with sick, heavy feeling the stomach for most of the week and I’ve been trying to regain some joy as the week has gone on.
I’ve been watching movies and reading funny books and just doing anything I can to distract myself which has also meant limiting my news consumption.
For now let’s distract ourselves with introducing our hosts, our featured blogger, and highlighting a few posts.
Our 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 Ramblingsshares about the fiction she writes and reads, her faith, homeschooling, photography and more.
Sue from Women Living Well After 50 started blogging in 2015 and writes about living an active and healthy lifestyle, fashion, book reviews and her podcast and enjoying life as a woman over 50. She invites you to join her living life in full bloom.
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!
A little about Joyce: Welcome to This Side Of The Pond! I’m Joyce and I’ve been blogging in my little corner of the Internet since 2009. When I started this blog a) we were living in England, b) my girls were in university on the other side of the pond (technically now this side of the pond), and c) I had no idea what blogging was all about???
Since then we’ve moved three times, both my girls have graduated (one twice!), and I’ve decided I use too many words to meet the traditional definition of blogger, but I’m okay with that. Making a short story long is my superpower. We’ve moved nine times in our 35+years of marriage (you do the math) with stints in Tennessee, Virginia, Ohio, New Jersey (twice), Maryland, England (sigh), and most recently South Carolina (the Upstate, not the Low Country).
My college sweetheart (aka the hubs) retired in February 2015, went back to work in 2016, re-retired in 2017, got his real estate license in 2018 and you can see why I need to eat my Wheaties, right?
Thank you so much for joining us for our link-up!
And now some posts that were highlights for me this past week:
Top Ten Tuesday July 8: Books I’d Like to I Re-read (Share either your favorite books that you enjoy re-reading or books that you’d like to read again!) (Submitted by Becky @ Becky’s Book Blog)
I don’t reread books a lot but there a few I would read again, and I guess for this post, I need to come up with ten that I have reread or would reread. I think I can do that.
The Blue Castle by L.M. Montgomery
It took me until last year to read this book and I ended up loving it. I would love to reread it again this year and I probably will.
2. Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
I know! So cliché! But here is another one that I read late in life and now I want to read it again because it was so lovely and cozy and interesting. I never imagined I’d get so wrapped up in these characters. I used to roll my eyes at people who would gush about this book and the movies based on it and then I read it. Oh, my! I understand the gushing now.
3. Sarah, Plain and Tall by Patricia MacLachlan
This book is just as sweet and touching as the Hallmark movie from the 1990s was, which is how I first knew about the story. Of course, the book came first. I didn’t read the book until I read it to my daughter a couple of years ago and I just loved it. I also loved the sequels, especially Skylark.
4. At Home in Mitford by Jan Karon
I have read this one more than once and I could read it again and again. There is always something new that I pick up on in it. I have also read Shepherd’s Abiding, the Christmas book more than once but now I read certain sections that are my favorite instead of the whole book.
5 The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien
I read this one several years ago with my son and I would like to reread it but I have to finish The Lord of the Rings trilogy first. I have The Return of the King to read next.
6. The Cat Who Saw Ghosts by Lilian Jackson Braun
This is my favorite book of this series. It’s a lot different than the others in the series and sometimes I wonder if Lilian wrote it. The main character, Qwill, shows even more of his personality in this one and even shows his tenderness toward a young child in the book. The story/mystery is also a solid one. As with any long running series, there are aways going to be duds along the way, but this was not one of them.
7. To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee
I first read this book in sixth grade by myself and again in eighth grade, though I don’t remember reading it in eighth grade. I know it was part of our curriculum but I guess my teacher wasn’t very memorable in her teaching. I remember she said, “What do you mean you’ve already read it?” She was surprised a sixth grader had taken it upon herself to read something so deep and advanced, I suppose, and I didn’t do that very often but in this case, I did read it because my mom suggested it and then started to read it to me in her southern accent. After I heard her Southern accent reading it, that’s how I heard the narrator (Scout) for the rest of the book.
I know I didn’t understand the intricacies of the message of this book when I was a child so reading it again as an adult about three years ago with my son for his English was a much different experience. I sobbed through the second half of the book as an adult because I understood so much more about the story, about Atticus, about the world and the ugliness and also goodness, the third time around. It is a book I think needs to be read several times for the message to really hit home.
8. Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
This is another book that I read at an age that other kids these days probably wouldn’t have read it. I did not do that a lot so don’t let me mislead you into thinking I read a ton of classics or harder books as a child. I did this occasionally and this one was one of those. The language is a challenge since it is written in the 1800s, but I really had fun with the story. It was a lot of fun, much more so than Huckleberry Finn, which had a lot of serious moments mixed in with the adventure. I liked Huck Finn too, though. I hope to read this one again at some point soon.
9. The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett
This is a book I read for the first time with my daughter last year. I would read it again because I truly enjoyed the story, even the harder parts I didn’t like in the movie version I saw as a child. I wanted a bit more from the ending but I really enjoyed the other parts of the book and could see myself reading it again.
10. Roll of Thunder Hear My Cry by Mildred D. Taylor
This is a book with a lot of tough subjects, but one I haven’t read since I was about 11. I would like to read it again because I have a feeling it will hit me in a different way, similar to the way To Kill A Mockingbird did. I actually have this as one book I want to read this summer.
Are there books that you have reread or want to reread? Or are you more of a one and done person like I usually am?
I know I talk a lot on here about Agatha Christie, but I actually have not yet read a ton of her books. Quite a few, but not a ton.
Most of the Agatha Christie books I have read have been either Poirot or Miss Marple mysteries. I decided to read The Pale Horse, which is not about either of those sleuths when the Agatha Christie official website suggested it a few months back as one of the challenges for their 2024 reading challenge. I have not kept up on that challenge this year but might try for the remainder of the year.
This month they are suggesting Come, Tell Me How You Live, which is a memoir of Agatha’s travels with her husband Archie. This is perfect timing because I have been watching Travels with Agatha Christie with Sir David Suchet and though he isn’t talking about this book in the show, it would still tie into her traveling. The book he actually mentions would have focused on her trip with her husband Archie and this book was written after she remarried years later. It’s actually listed under Agatha Christie Mallowan. I will probably have to order it new or through Thriftbooks, but I think it would be a fun read.
Anyhow, on to The Pale Horse.
I didn’t actually read the description of this book before I started it but as I was getting into it I saw a review of it and became a little nervous. The review mentioned that it deals with the occult and seances, etc., and that is just not my thing. I decided to plow forward, though, and in the end the book did mention those topics but — without giving too much away — that is not where the story landed, shall we say.
The story is written in both third and first person, which threw me off a bit.
We start with a man named Mark Easterbrook trying to write a mystery and switch to an actual mystery when a dying woman asks for a priest to come so she can tell him something before she dies. We don’t know what she tells him, but we know that he is murdered shorty before she does tell him.
Eventually we are led back to the man we met in the first chapter and he finds himself trying to figure out why the priest was murdered and what three creepy women living together in an old inn called The Pale Horse, might have to do with his murder and the mysterious deaths of several others in the community.
When the priest died, he had a list of last names in his shoe and the police are eventually joined by Easterbrook to find out who the people on the list are or were. Sadly, some of them are in the past tense and Easterbrook is worried that if he doesn’t hurry up and figure out what is going on, more of them will be in the same tense.
One of Mark’s friends is a mystery writer, Mrs. Oliver, and she is friends, sort of, with the creepy women but she doesn’t enjoy the way they talk about occult and seances, etc. In this scene I am Mrs. Oliver:
Thyrza shot her a quick glance.
“Yes, it is in a way.” She turned to Mrs. Oliver. “You should write one of your books about a murder by black magic. I can give you a lot of dope about it.”
Mrs. Oliver blinked and looked embarrassed.
“I only write very plain murders,” she said apologetically
Her tone was of one who says, “I only do plain cooking.”
“Just about people who want other people out of the way and try to be clever about it,” she added.
I wasn’t sure where the book was going part of the time and that made me a bit nervous and I got even more nervous when Mark and a new friend of his decided they would set up the people they thought might be involved in the murders. I was also caught up in it all before that but was biting my nails (literally) once the plot moved to entrapment.
I’ve mentioned before that one thing I am not a fan of when it comes to Agatha is how she doesn’t add a lot of description of surroundings or characters. I don’t like a ton of description in my books but a little more than what she offers sometimes would be nice. Her lack of description was not an issue for me in this book, which felt like a more well-rounded novel to me than some of the ones from the series.
A description example I don’t remember reading much in other of her novels I have read (which remember is very few):
The vicarage sitting room was big and shabby. It was much shaded by a gargantuan Victorian shrubbery that no one seemed to have had the energy to curb. But the dimness was not gloomy for some peculiar reason. It was, on the contrary, restful. All the large shabby charis bore the impress of resting bodies in them over the years. A fat clock on the chimneypiece ticked with a heavy, comfortable regularity. Here there would always be time to talk, to say what you wanted to say, to relax from the cares brought about by the bright day outside.”
A couple of other quotes I enjoyed from the book:
“My husband’s a very good man,” she said. “Besides being the vicar, I mean. And that makes things difficult sometimes. Good people, you see, don’t really understand evil.” She paused and then said with a kind of brisk efficiency. “I think it had better be me.”
“People are so proud of wickedness. Odd, isn’t it, that people who are good are never proud of it? That’s where Christian humility comes in, I suppose. They don’t even know they are good.”
I considered Hermia disapassionately across the table. So handsome, so mature, so intellectual, so well read! And so — how could one put it? So — yes, so damnably dull!”
“Yes,” I said. “The supernatural seems supernatural. But the science of tomorrow is the supernatural of today.”
Have you read this one? What did you think?
Lisa R. Howeler is a blogger, homeschool mom, and writes cozy mysteries.
You can find her Gladwynn Grant Mystery series HERE.
It’s time for our Sunday morning chat. On Sundays, I ramble about what’s been going on, whatthe rest of the familyand I have been reading and watching, andwhat I’ve been writing. Sometimes, I share what I’ve been listening to.
Thursday I received a package from Thriftbooks and inside was supposed to be a copy of Prince Caspian by C.S. Lewis (check), a copy of The Nancy Drew Scrapbook by Karen Plunket-Powel (check), and a Murder She Wrote Mystery (no check). Instead of the Murder She Wrote mystery, I found a very old book with a crumbling dust jacket and more dust than this mild-asthmatic with allergies was comfortable with. I barely looked at the book but I thought the title looked French.
Later that night after sending off an annoyed email to Thriftbooks to tell them they sent me the wrong book, I decided to take a closer look at the book, to at least find out the name.
I had never heard of the book, but it was called Murder A La Stroganoff by Caryl Brahms and SJ Snow. Inside the cover, it had a stamp that said it was from the Newberry Library, had been retired from their shelves, and was part of the Barzel Dance Collection. I searched a little more online and these books are fairly rare because it is a first edition from 1938 and the book is no longer in print. They did issue a paperback copy in 1985, but there are not a ton of the hardcovers published by The Crime Club, Doubleday & Co, New York out there.
Sadly, the book isn’t necessarily worth a ton without the dust jacket, which crumbled in my hands when I opened the package, but I couldn’t find one online being sold for less than $20 so, hey, if I ever do decide to sell it, I could make at least $20 off something I was shipped for free. With the dust jacket it could be worth up to $150. Apparently there aren’t a ton of these first editions out there and it’s a bit of a cult classic among mystery readers.
Thriftbooks did get back to me, by the way, and didn’t get the point that they sent the wrong book. Instead, they said they were sorry the book didn’t show up the way I wanted it to and that they didn’t have any other books with that title (they still think it is the Murder She Wrote book I first ordered) so to just keep the book and do what it with I wanted. They then issued me a refund for the book.
The book is a mystery and crime book with some satire mixed in about the ballet industry and is the second book in a series. I can not find a description of the book line but I think I actually want to read it so I might get a copy of the paperback instead of trying to read this older book which might bother my allergies.
I will be writing a blog post in the future about the book and its authors, though, because I fell down a rabbit hole researching what the book might be worth. I suppose that in the end getting the wrong book wasn’t such a bad thing.
Last week I finished The Pale Horse by Agatha Christie and The Clue in the Diary by Carolyn Keene (A Nancy Drew Mystery).
I’ll have reviews of both of them soon but I did enjoy them both. The Pale Horse was obviously more adult — I mean, not like “adult-adult” but more mature themes. But not like … mature-mature. *wink*
I’ve been enjoying some leisurely reading of P.G. Wodehouse’s The Imitable Jeeves.
The book is so funny and witty. It’s been a very nice escape. The Jeeves books are comedic books about Bertie Wooster, a British gentleman from London, who is always getting into somewhat weird situations where he has to be bailed out or helped by his valet Jeeves.
This book is exactly what I have needed this week.
I think I’m going to have to give up on The Happy Life of Isadora Bentley by Courtney Walsh before I even really get too far in it. I pushed through the first chapter wondering why the author was giving me so much information at once and when she was going to get to an actual story. The first chapter is entirely Isadora standing in a supermarket, thinking about her life with very little interaction with anyone else or action. It looks to me like the whole book is mainly her thinking about things and dumping a lot of info on the reader all in one go. I just can’t get into it, in other words.
I might try again this week, but otherwise I am going to move on to Prince Caspian and then But First Murder by Bee Littlefield.
This week I watched Gaslight (1944) as part of my Summer of Angela movie watching event and really enjoyed it. It isn’t a movie I’d watch over and over because it is pretty dark in some ways, but I did enjoy it. I also watched The Rains Came, a 1939 movie with Myrna Loy and Tyrone Powers and Abbott and Costello in The Jack and The Beanstalk. This morning I watched church with Lisa Harper as the guest pastor and followed it up with a couple episodes of Just A Few Acres Farm.
I’m working on Gladwynn Grant Goes Back to School and wrote a little more this past week. I hope to have more time to write this week since Little Miss is going to VBS and I’ll probably wait at the church for her to save gas.
What have you been doing, watching, reading, listening to, or writing? Let me know in the comments or leave a blog post link if you also write a weekly update like this.
I hope everyone in the U.S. had a very nice Fourth of July. My family did and partly thanks to cooler temperatures in our area.
It wasn’t too cold or too warm for our afternoon cookout and an early evening waving of sparklers in the backyard at my parents’ house.
Today we stayed inside from the warming temps and watched movies and relaxed while our son went to visit a friend.
Last night some neighbors were shooting off fireworks, which always freaks out Zooma the Wonder Dog.
She hates gunfire (which does happen here occasionally), thunder, and fireworks and lately when she hears any of those she has been getting so nervous she just paces back and forth and goes to each of the family members and paws at us. She was doing this last night. We tried to let her out to see if she needed to use the bathroom, gave her an extra treat, and do other things we thought she might want but finally decided it was indeed the fireworks upsetting her.
So last night I finally got a clue – after looking online and after an hour of her pawing and pacing and refusing to settle. I closed all the windows and turned on the fan and air conditioner for some white noise. Then I wrapped a blanket around her (thankfully yesterday was a cool day) and rubbed her temples and she started to close her eyes and finally flopped over on the couch next to me and fell asleep.
The poor thing had had a long day at my parents, running all over their property, and I knew she had to be exhausted. She laid next to me asleep under that blanket for a good hour.
I think the blanket is a comfort to her because in the winter our daughter covers her up like she is a baby and they fall asleep together that way.
She is a bit of a spoiled dog and she pretty much knows it.
Tonight I also I want to offer up prayers for the people of Kerrville, Texas and the surrounding area. I’m sure many of you know about the flooding there so I won’t go into detail. I’ve been struggling with the news of this since last night. My 10-year-old daughter has gotten a lot of hugs and kisses since I first heard yesterday. I haven’t been able to stop thinking about those girls and their families and the other victims.
I know that it seems to be common these days for people to try to politicize absolutely everything, but in this case, I wish people just wouldn’t.
The fingers of blame have been shot out at everyone from the current administration, the past administration, meteorologists, camp leaders, media, and everyone in between.
The fact is that sometimes some people might be to blame for a response to a weather event, but sometimes weather is going to do what weather is going to do. That doesn’t make the aftermath any easier or less horrifying, of course.
In 2011, when I lived 45 minutes north of where I live now, we were told by the National Weather Service we would get heavy rain from the remnants of Tropical Storm Sandy. There might even be flooding, we were told. It could be significant flooding, especially since our town was along two rivers that converged right at the end of town. We were not told the whole town might flood, though. That hadn’t happened since the remnants of Hurricane Agnes in 1972.
What we were not told until the middle of the night, mainly because forecasters didn’t know this was going to happen, was that the storm system had stalled over our area. That meant that rain kept falling and falling and falling. Hours earlier, business owners in our town’s business district were told they would get some damage, but their businesses should be fine. Homeowners were told to get to higher ground, but they should be okay.
By 2 or 3 a.m., though, it was clear those assurances were absolutely wrong. One business owner recalled to my husband that when they got the middle-of-the-night call from the fire department, they were told, “We were wrong. The weather people were wrong. The river is coming over its banks. You’re going to lose everything. You can’t come into town, though because there is water over the bridge and it’s not safe.”
The business district was destroyed. The next day, people were in boats on main street, just like in the photos I had seen from 1972. It was completely surreal.
People who hadn’t left their houses were trapped on their roofs. A few houses floated downstream, just like the photos we are seeing in Texas. As far as I know, the owners were not in the houses at the time. We did not have the high number of fatalities like they have in Texas.
I’m sure a lot of blame flew around after that flood, but most people understood what really happened was that nature did what nature does — acted in an unexpected way for us, but an expected way for it.
No one, or at least very few people, could have predicted that storm system would stall and dump more than 10 inches of rain on the area overnight and even more the next day.
From what I am reading about Texas, a similar situation occurred, but even worse because dams overflowed. I watched a video of how fast it all happened and yes, people knew there would be flooding, but flooding that wiped out entire towns? No. They didn’t predict that because the area had been a drought about two months ago. A lot of news channels are choosing not to share that because they want to stir up controversy.
While some responses might have been lacking (I have no idea yet), most people were completely caught off guard — even officials. This area isn’t like a city or even a well traveled rural area, from what I understand. This is true wilderness without not a ton of communication and that’s how people want it. These are campgrounds. They did have cellphones in some areas but even then they were keeping an eye on the water, but had no idea it was about to break loose further upstream.
I just wish the hyper-political people in our country (those who see life through political lenses only) would keep their mouths shut until we can at least bury the dead.
I should also add that there are still people missing in North Carolina from the flooding last autumn which surprisingly people have stopped talking about. That entire area is still devastated, and people are living in temporary housing, and others are still waiting to bury their dead.
There is too much tragedy in the world for us all to keep up on it, so I don’t blame people for not knowing about what is happening in N.C. still. I can’t take it all in most days. I disassociate myself by watching movies, reading books, and then writing blog posts about it all.
I simply wish we didn’t all have to start dividing each other even more during these tragedies. Screaming that this or that party is to blame for this or that natural disaster isn’t going to help these families through their grief. I hesitate and hate to say this, but I think in this situation, no amount of warning was going to help stop some of this from happening.
Even if they had known the rivers would rise fast, I don’t see how they could have known it would rise up to 20 feet in less than an hour. That’s just not something that normally happens….which brings me to another topic that I probably won’t write about on this blog ever because I usually try to keep posts here as happy as I can.
All this being said, I’ll be back to happier topics tomorrow in my Sunday Bookends when I write about Thriftbooks sending me the wrong book but it turned out to be a possible collectible.
Next week Little Miss and I will be going to VBS, helping my parents, and dealing with some heat again. Maybe we will even find some time for swimming.
What have you been doing and what do you have going on next week?
Lisa R. Howeler is a blogger, homeschool mom, and writes cozy mysteries.
You can find her Gladwynn Grant Mystery series HERE.
