This is a link-up where we not only allow you to share your past posts, but we encourage it. So, share away!
I hope you are having a lovely December as we move into the holiday and Christmas season.
Because I always talk about weather in this post, I will share that we had warm weather in the beginning of this week and then it plummeted back into the low 20s by Wednesday night. We didn’t light the fire for a couple of days but by Wednesday night we had to and today it was roaring to chase away temps that fell into the teens.
Let’s get right to our most clicked post for this week:
Before I share my highlights for the week, I just want to say/write that I am blown away by all the incredible posts I see on this link-up each week. Choosing highlights is hard for me because I enjoy so many of the posts. I’ve even started sharing some of them on my personal posts on Sundays where I chat about what I’ve been reading, doing, and watching – simply so more people will see some of the posts I didn’t get a chance to highlight.
I’m so glad you are here and participating in our weekly link-up of family-friendly, fun, educational, interesting, crafty, fashionable, and “whatever else” posts. I hope you’ll tell your followers about our link up (free to copy and paste the graphic) and visit the bloggers who participate each week.
Now it is your turn to link up your favorite posts. They can be fashion, lifestyle, DIY, food, etc. All we ask is that they be family-friendly. You can link up posts from last week or even from years ago. You can share up to three links each week.
We are always looking for additional hosts so let us know if you want to help out!
(*note: I honestly thought I had already posted this review on my blog months ago, but I couldn’t find it so I am posting it for the first or second time. One or the other.)
The Mystery at Lilac Inn by Carolyn Keene is the fourth book in the Nancy Drew series, which debuted in the 1930s.
For this book, Nancy becomes wrapped up at a mystery at an inn recently purchased by a friend, but she is also caught off guard when her own house is ransacked and her credit plate stolen. She later learns someone is impersonating her and running up her credit or stealing from people.
When diamonds disappear from her friend’s inn she decides she needs to find out who stole the diamonds as well as who is impersonating her. Are the two cases connected? She hopes to find out.
As usual, there is some ridiculous developments and tactics used to solve the mystery (such as her being sent off with her father’s blessing to explore a lake with a man they barely know and then go after known criminals on her own without any back up), but it wouldn’t be a Nancy Drew book if there wasn’t. These books were written in a different time and for young kids so they were full of non-stop action, no matter how giggle inducing that non-stop action was.
This book was later rewritten to remove some of the more derogatory connotations toward certain races. It was released again in 1961 after those changes were made under Keene’s name, which is, of course, a pseudonym. The Nancy Drew books, like The Hardy Boys books were written by several different authors over the years.
Normally I don’t like the idea of old books being changed because someone is offended but in this case it was needed, even if the stereotypes weren’t as bad as some classic books.
I did not like this book as much as the first book in the series, The Secret of the Old Clock. The plot was okay but does not hold us as well as others in the series, in my opinion.
(Top Ten Tuesday was created by The Broke and the Bookish in June of 2010 and was moved to That Artsy Reader Girl in January of 2018. It was born of a love of lists, a love of books, and a desire to bring bookish friends together.)
Today’s prompt was: Books to Read During a Storm (these can be cozy/comfy reads, books with storms in them, atmospheric reads for dark and stormy nights, light reads to combat the heavy weather, etc.) (Submitted by Astilbe.)
Reading during a storm — especially a winter storm — just seems very cozy to me. I would choose comfort reads but also books that would hold my attention. I’m sure there are more than what I have listed here today, but this is what I came up with for now.
The Long Winter by Laura Ingalls Wilder
This one is a rough read in some ways and it stresses me out when they almost run out of food because the train can’t get through but there are also fun moments in the book when the kids have a blast in the snow that just keeps coming and coming.
2. At Home in Mitford by Jan Karon
All of the books in this series are super cozy – even though they do deal with some tough topics later on. The first book and the book where there is a wedding are two of the coziest. Just a heads up: Home to Holly Springs is a bit of a tougher read so I don’t know if I would read that during a storm. It’s stormy enough on its own.
3. Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
This book can be read anytime, of course, but it is especially cozy to me during a storm.
4. Anne of Avonlea by L.M. Montgomery
I loved Anne of Green Gables, but this one was just as good if not a little better to me.
5. Miracles on Maple Hill by Virginia Sorenson
This book about a family who moves to the country to try to help their father’s PTSD after World War II is full of cozy, sweet, and thought-provoking moments.
6. Hadley Beckets Next Dish by Bethany Turner
This is a fun anytime read but during a storm it would be great because it is so cheerful and relaxing. It is a romantic comedy.
7. Moriarty by Anthony Horowitz
I share this one because I actually read it during a winter storm a few years ago. I couldn’t put it down. We were all trapped in the house. The Boy had a friend over and they were watching things downstairs and Little Miss was watching with them. I was upstairs, under the covers, not feeling great that day, but breezing through this book at hyper speed because I needed to know what happened.
8. The Wonderful World of James Herriot: A collection of short stories by James Herriot
I have not read this or even own it but I want to. I have read other books by Herriot and this collection may include some of the same stories but I would love to read them all again. His stories are often very, very cozy.
9. The Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R. Tolkien
Once I got past all the tree descriptions, I actually ended up falling in love with this book, especially the characters. I am looking forward to reading the Two Towers this next year.
10. The Blue Castle by L.M. Montgomery
This is an enchanting book and hands down my favorite to read in 2024. It’s a great book anytime but would be especially mesmerizing during a storm!
How about you? Do you have a list of books that would be perfect to read during a storm?
The Marlow Murder Club is about three women from different walks of life who unite to solve murders in their town. The characters are quirky and fun, and the story is intriguing and funny.
Judith Potts is swimming naked in the Thames River when she hears a gunshot from her neighbor’s property. Swimming naked is something she does to relax and clear her mind. On this night, though, she is not relaxed because she can’t get out of the river to find out what has happened to her neighbor, Stefan. Instead, she has to swim back to her house and call the police who go to her neighbor’s house, but find nothing they say.
Judith decides to return to her neighbor’s house the next day and finds him floating, dead, in the river. She’d already decided the police weren’t doing their job when they didn’t find him the night before. Now she really believes she could do a better job finding her neighbor’s killer so she starts asking questions around town herself.
She meets Becks Starling, the vicar’s wife while looking for information about the murder. Becks, normally a bit refined and proper woman, is hiding in the closet in the church choir room when Judith finds her, trying to avoid dealing with members of the congregation. Before long Becks is pulled into the mystery as well, seeing it as a way to break out of her mundane life of helping her husband with church business.
Not long after the first murder, there is another one – this time a taxi driver. Judith runs into Suzie Harris, the second murder victim’s dog walker.
While Judith is fairly eccentric, slightly uptight, and methodical, Suzie is a bit of an airhead and all over the place. She is scattered and drives a bit of a beat-up dog walking van.
Judith begins to wonder if the two murders might be connected and suddenly we have three women joining together to find out what in the world is going on in their small town.
Each woman has their own “secrets” to work through as well.
DS Tanika Malik is on the police force and the head investigator on the murder since the main investigator is currently on an extended break. Judith is more than willing to help her but Tanika isn’t interested – not at first, at least. Soon, though, she sees she’s going to need some extra help and lets the women help as much as they can.
The exposition at the end of the book was quite long and, as my husband said, would be better suited for TV, which is fitting since Thorogood created the hit cozy mystery show Death in Paradise and also wrote a mini-series TV version of The Marlow Mystery Club for Amazon. I watched the show after I read the book and it was good and well-acted, but did have a few changes from the book. The confrontation with the guilty person – or one of them – was drawn out like in the book and a bit unrealistic but still a nail-biter and fun to watch.
Overall, I really enjoyed the book. I guessed at least part of the mystery before the end, but I didn’t mind because the characters and how they got to the solution were so interesting and fun.
For people who prefer their books without swear words, sex, or violence this one almost fits that bill. There is no sex or violence, but there was a large swear word very close to the end of the book that did not fit with the rest of the book and came out of nowhere. It didn’t take away from the rest of the story, though, and I’d still recommend the book.
Oops! There has been a minor snafu for our Comfy, Christmas Link-Up! Our link-up closed earlier than we wanted, so we’ve had to open a second one.
All this means is that if you want to link a Christmas/holiday themed post you won’t be able to add one in the first link-up, but you can in the second/new one. Those posts that were shared in the first link-up are still available to read and I hope you will visit them here:
But you can also find it under the menu item Comfy, Cozy Christmas at the top of the page. We’ve had bloggers participating this year and sharing their holiday-themed posts with us and we love it! Let’s keep the comfy spirit flowing right now. We all need it!
Welcome to my Sunday Chat where I ramble about what’s been going on in my world, whatthe rest of the familyand I have been reading, watching, listening to, andwhat I’ve been writing.
Somewhere around Christmas I take advantage of a Black Friday/Cyber Monday sale and get a month of the Hallmark channel on Amazon so I can watch some of their ridiculously sappy movies.
This year I missed the sale but still thought I’d get a subscription for a month.
Amazon said I could indeed have that subscription.
For $7.99 a month.
$8.
Hallmark Channel thinks they are worth $8 a month. Like I’m going to watch more than two or three of their movies. Ever.
I looked at one of the movies I thought I might watch and they wanted me to pay $5 just to rent it. I’m sorry but Hallmark movies are not worth $5 to watch and they are not worth me paying $8 a month when I am already paying for other channels and services. That thought made me want to find out how much those other services had jumped up to and I about fell off the couch.
We had five other subscriptions and most of them were $8 or $9 a month. I ended up unsubscribing from a few and keeping the subscription of one when they offered me more than 50 percent off for the next three months. The Husband and I have decided we will rotate subscriptions – getting some of them every other month instead of every month.
For example, I will be choosing to add PBS Masterpiece back in January so I can watch All Creatures Great and Small’s new season.
What is insane to me is how we left cable for streaming to save money and now companies are charging so much for their services, breaking them into all these individual channels they want you to pay for, we were paying almost as much for streaming services as we did for cable.
It’s really out of control. Luckily, we have the choice to not sign up for certain services and we also have a huge DVD collection so I think this first word problem will not overwhelm us.
Last week was a very cold week so we didn’t really go anywhere – mainly because it was a very cold week. Had it not been such a cold and miserable week I might not have noticed how much we were being ripped off by Amazon and the other streaming services.
We got the woodstove going and ran the fire all week. It was nice and cozy in the house most of the days – except one day when I let the fire go too low and almost shivered out of my clothes while getting dinner ready.
Thankfully, next week is supposed to be warmer. By warmer, I of course mean highs of 40 a couple days and one day of a high of 51. Still not sandals weather, but we will take it. We will most likely still light a fire during the day to keep us from having to use the heating oil because the nights are still expected to be very cold.
Lighting fires will be easier thanks to a delivery of wood we received Saturday morning. It will probably be our last delivery of the winter season.
As I began writing this post, I tried to think why I didn’t read more books this week. I had time but I guess I spent a lot of it writing blog posts, building fires, cooking dinners, and maybe a bit worrying about my sister-in-law who is still in the hospital with health issues. I’d love if you could say some prayers for her.
I was also reading Johnny Tremain for school with the youngest and doing homeschool with her.
I’m still working on A Death in Marlow, which is actually a very easy read and I’ll probably finish this week. I was distracted from it this past week by A Quilt for Christmas by Melody Carlson which was a fun, quick, cozy Christmas read and then shared a review of it. I also plan to share a review this week on The Marlow Mystery Club, which I read a couple of weeks ago.
I am continuing to read The Hound of the Baskerville’s by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle fairly slowly with The Boy for school and I hope to read another Christmas-themed novella this week – Catching Christmas by Terri Blackstock.
The Husband has started his 111th book of the year, High Priest of California by Charles Willeford.
The Boy is reading The Hound of the Baskerville’s with me but is sort of dragging his feet right now.
Little Miss is listening to Caddie Woodlawn at night before bed and reading Harry Potter and The Chamber of Secrets but took a break from reading it this week.
I watched three Hallmark Christmas movies this past week. They were sort of awful and sort of good at the same time – like any Hallmark movie.
I also watched Just A Few Acres Farm’s videos quite a bit this week. It is so relaxing to watch him do simple things like rebuilding a tractor engine or feed the cows.
Don’t forget that Erin and I are hosting the Comfy, Cozy Christmas link up, which you can find at the top of the page. The link-up is for any holiday-related posts .
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.
From now until January 2nd, Erin from Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs and I will be sharing all of our cozy holiday posts, about movies, gift guides, baking, books, and other surprises we may have in our stockings!
We would love for you to join in with us and share your holiday posts here as well!
These posts can be about movies, about books, about what you are doing and baking, etc. As long as it is holiday related.
It doesn’t have to be just Christmas, just seasonal from any walk of life, culture, or faith that happens between now and January 2nd is welcome! And now, let the festivities commence!!
You can find the link to our Christmas posts under the header Comfy, Cozy Christmas 2024 at the top of my main page.
This is a link-up where we not only allow you to share your past posts but we encourage it. So share away!
I hope all of you have a wonderful Thanksgiving!
Little Miss and I made pumpkin pies last night and today The Husband and I made the rest of dinner to take over to my parents and give them a break from cooking for once.
The Husband woke up very early to put the turkey in and I made the mashed potatoes. The Husband also made sweet potatoes like his grandfather used to make – baked in the oven with brown sugar on top.
I’m so glad you are here and participating in our weekly link-up of family-friendly, fun, educational, interesting, crafty, fashionable, and whatever else posts. I hope you’ll tell your followers about our post (feel free to copy and paste the graphic) and visit the blogs in the link-up.
Now it is your turn to link up your favorite posts. They can be fashion, lifestyle, DIY, food, etc. All we ask is that they be family-friendly. You can link up posts from last week or even from years ago. You can share up to three links each week.
We are always looking for additional hosts so let us know if you want to help out and we are also looking for more links from fashion bloggers so let your fashion bloggers know!
The Secret of the Wooden Lady is the 27th book in the original Nancy Drew series written by – uh, “Carolyn Keene.” Of course, most readers of Nancy Drew know there were a number of people who wrote Nancy Drew, including Mildred Benson and about 27 other authors.
This is the eighth book of the original series I have read and at first, I wasn’t sure I liked it as much as a couple others.
It seemed a little discombobulated and was a little slow in the middle of the book after starting off with a bang (not a literal bang this time).
Most of the book took place on an old clipper that an elderly sea captain wants to buy, but can’t because the original title can’t be found. In addition to the deed being lost, the captain has been experiencing some weird events involving thefts on the ship as well as seeing what he fears might be ghostly figures.
Nancy knows about what Captain Easterly is dealing with because he knows her father, Attorney Carson Drew, — described in the book as tall and handsome — and Captain Easterly has written him a letter.
Carson wants to help the old man find out what is going on and invites Nancy to go with him to Boston and look for the title and find out if someone is prowling around on the clipper at night.
Nancy is excited about having another mystery to solve and while she waits for the next day when she and her dad will leave, she gets a call from her friend Bess. While she and Bess are on the phone, Bess says she hears someone in the house. Her parents aren’t home and she’s nervous. Suddenly the line goes dead and Nancy, appropriately, freaks out and runs to her car to go see what’s happened to Bess.
She tried to call the police before she left, but the lines were busy. This was the 1930s so I suppose that is a plausible situation.
I was freaking out for Bess when I read this part. It was late at night and I was brushing my teeth and getting ready for bed and when I read the part about the phone going dead I was like, “Oh my gosh! What happened to Bess!”
My daughter was very confused until I explained to her it was a character in the book I was reading.
You will have to read the book to find out what happened to Bess, but it is a bit of a spoiler to say that Bess and her cousin, and Nancy’s other friend, George, are invited up to Boston by Carson Drew when he has to leave the city to find out more information about the title and doesn’t want to leave Nancy alone. That’s pretty nice of him since he usually he doesn’t seem too worried about his daughter investigating things alone.
It doesn’t take too long for the girls to learn that what happened to Bess and her family might be related to what is happening aboard the clipper – The Bonny Scot.
Before Nancy had left for Boston she went to a dance with Ned Nickerson, by the way. Ned is her “boyfriend” but he’s not necessarily called that. He is the young man who clearly cares for her but she’s always too busy solving crimes. Ned is sad she’s running off to Boston because he was hoping to take her out again before he has to go off to his summer camp job.
Luckily, it turns out that Ned’s camp isn’t too far from Boston, so we end up with Ned and two of his friends – apparent love interests of Bess and George that might have been mentioned in previous books I haven’t read yet – arriving to help out with the mystery as well.
Like I said above, the middle of this book was a little slow but then things picked back up again and the girls were thrown into more dangerous situations than the characters on a CW show, which is saying a lot.
As always, the book is simply written with more “telling” paragraphs that move the reader along at a fairly fast and furious pace, but these books were originally written for younger readers so that is understandable.
While I liked this one, The Case of the Whistling Bagpipes remains my favorite of the ones I’ve read so far.
You can read reviews of three of the other books I’ve read here:
