I write this not because I want your pity – God provides. He has in the past and he will again.
I say this to explain a couple of my actions recently.
Two weeks ago I joined TikTok to try to drum up some sales for my books and bring us in a little income. I did it despite having huge misgivings about the platform. HUGE MISGIVINGS.
I have made very little money from my books and that’s okay. I’ve had a lot of fun writing them and meeting other writers or connecting with my readers.
Still, if there was a chance I could bring in some sales, I needed to try.
So I started making videos for TikTok and Instagram and posts for Facebook.
Then, I became overwhelmed and, quite frankly, pretty disgusted with the insane amount of attention grabbing on social media. Yes, I realize I was starting to do the same to earn some money.
I share about my life on social media and on my blog. I like to connect with others and I don’t think there is anything wrong with that. I am not remotely interested in fame or being popular.
I am interested in making connections, having fun, and maybe bringing in a little income.
What I have seen on social media, though, has turned my stomach to the point I’m ready to walk away from the majority of it and go back to merely sharing my books on here, advertising by word of mouth and sharing for free where I can.
I have seen a woman crying in front of a camera when she sent her children to school and all I wanted to know was when did she set the camera up? Was it before she started crying or after or did she cry for the camera. I mean it seemed like a very realistic interaction with her husband but if she was so worried about her children going to their first day of school then at what point did she pause her worry in the moment to make sure the camera was set up correctly?
The worse example of this was the one of a woman climbing into her truck and sitting there crying with a box next to her. The box was her husband’s urn, the caption said. She’d just collected his ashes from the funeral home, she said. She and her children would have to live without him.
Yet, she’d had the forethought, before she went to get his ashes, to set her camera up on a tripod or something similar and record herself crying.
I’ve lost three aunts in the last five years. The last thing on my mind while I grieved them was that I should set up a camera to record myself crying.
I understand that it is good to connect with others going through something similar to us and one way to do this is through social media but when in the world did social media become our therapist and God?
Why in the world would people turn to their camera instead of praying to God? Why do we document every single second of our life? Nothing is sacred anymore. Nothing. Not even the death of a husband or the loss of a baby or the breakup of a marriage. People document all of it before they even process it.
There is a popular Christian speaker/author who documents her life tragedies in a new book every time one occurs. Sometimes I wonder if she creates drama simply so she can write about it and speak about it and make more money. The dust hasn’t even settled on one tragedy or crisis when she is writing about it and sending it to the publishers and then making Bible studies and speaking engagements around the book.
Her husband cheated on her, she wrote all about it and dragged him to counseling and they wrote all about it and held a renewal of vowels ceremony and she wrote a book. Then she developed breast cancer and wrote another book. Then she and her husband split – another book. This was all in about the span of four or five years. I don’t see how she ever had time to process any of what was happening to her. Some might say she was processing it through writing. I have processed some very serious situations in my life through writing but I have not shared all of what I have written. A lot of that is between me and God, not me, God and the rest of the world.
The term is narcissim, I think.
The desire to share your entire life with the world and then to watch the lives of others from your phone or computer without actually interacting with people.
There was a young woman on TikTok live that I saw last week that broke my heart. She might have been 15 and she was simply sitting in front of the camera with a red curtain behind her, wearing dark eyeliner and make up and a dress too old for her, her knees hugged to her chest while watching TV. She wasn’t doing anything other than watching TV while other people watched her and then once in a while she’d say, “Thanks for the rose.” I don’t know what a rose is on TikTok but I’m guessing some sort of payment? I have no idea but how sad is it that people were paying to watch a teenager sit and watch TV?
We live in a sick world and I don’t want to be part of it. I’ll continue to promote my books here and there, even on social media, but I just can’t put my entire life out there for everyone to see. It’s none of their business. Recording or documenting every second of my life just isn’t something that interests me in the least.
It makes me anxious trying to even keep up with videos to help get attention to my books. I can’t imagine the level of internal anxiety in those who record their whole lives for the world to see.
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.
I didn’t share a Saturday Afternoon Chat post yesterday because my week was fairly boring, but also because we were too busy yesterday for me to sit and write it. I like to start the post ahead of time but didn’t do it this week for some reason.
We didn’t do a ton during the week other than some cleaning at my parents, a bit of planning for homeschool next week, writing for me, and the last week of work for The Boy who is getting ready to start a half day at a career center next week, in addition to homeschool.
Yesterday we had a wonderful family day out. We visited one of our favorite restaurants, located next to a covered bridge and a creek in a tiny little town in the middle of nowhere in our county.
After lunch there we visited the local state park which is literally up the road from the restaurant. I had no idea the state park was that close, but really I should have known since I used to visit there with my family when I was younger.
I had not visited there in years. It seemed smaller than I remember but the trails and cabins are all throughout the 780-acre park so we didn’t see all of it, of course. The park, incidentally, is called World’s End State Park. I’ve always wondered where the name of the park came from so I searched online last night and according to Wikipedia: “The name Worlds End has been used since at least 1872, but its origins are uncertain. Although it was founded as Worlds End State Forest Park by Governor Gifford Pinchot in 1932, the park was officially known as Whirls End State Forest Park from 1936 to 1943.” So, there you go.
I had hoped to take Little Miss to the swimming area there, which I went to a couple time as a kid, but it was closed because of high, rushing water, caused by heavy rains we had a couple of days ago. It was an insane storm that went on for two hours, with part of that time consisting of very heavy rain.
Not being able to visit the swimming area wasn’t a huge loss because it was not super hot yesterday. It was actually perfect fall weather – not too warm, not too cold. It was lovely and Little Miss was happy with being able to stick her feet in the edge of the creek. The rest of it was rushing water and wilder than I’ve seen a creek that close up in a long time. I am sure creeks have been that wild over the years, but I haven’t been that close to them before.
While we were by the water and put our feet in it, a young girl and her parents were making their way through the water and were making me very nervous. I was concerned the dad was going to get to close to the rapids and be swept away. Luckily, they were fairly close to the edge of the creek and being very careful not to get pulled down by the rapids. They were in swimsuits and swim shoes, so they were either camping there or had visited hoping to swim at the swimming area and were unable to.
The woman found a stick that looked like Moses’ staff in The Ten Commandments and she and I joked about parting the waters.
We were able to take Zooma the Wonder Dog with us to both places yesterday. Seating is outside for the restaurant and they welcome pets as long as they are on a leash. They even sell a “doggy meat bowl” for the dog’s that visit. Zooma, of course, received her own bowl. We were glad to be able to take her because many times we have to leave her home on our excursions.
She loved sniffing all over the parts of the state park we walked in as well but did not like when The Husband disappeared inside the visitor’s center without her.
We joke in our family about who Zooma loves more and the rest of the family says it is me, but I do notice she seems concerned when any member of the family disappears for too long. Yesterday she whimpered a couple of times when she couldn’t go where the rest of the family went or when one of them disappeared.
She was very happy when we were all together and she also passed out like a toddler who runs themselves into exhaustion when we arrived home.
Today Little Miss will have a couple of friends over for our last summer pool gathering before school begins on Monday. The pool is probably going to be way too cold to play in because the days and nights have been cooler, but we will see how it goes.
I can’t even believe summer is pretty much over. It went very fast and I feel like we didn’t do as much as we usually do as far as family outings and trips. It was a very hectic and stressful summer for many reasons and I am looking forward to a slower autumn. I laughed as I wrote the previous sentence because I said something similar in July about August and … well, it didn’t happen.
September will be a bit busy because my parents 60th wedding anniversary is September 8 and we are holding an open house/anniversary party on September 9. I was all calm about it and figured we could handle it but as we get closer, I feel a bit anxious about pulling it off. Thankfully my brother and sister-in-law are helping me since it was sort of their idea (and sort of mine too). We are renting a place down the road from my house and hopefully it all works out well.
What I/we’ve been Reading
I finished Ellie Alexander’s Meet the Baker Friday and two books I’ve been wanting to read came in from Libby this week: Crime and Poetry by Amanda Flowers and Paper Cuts by Ellery Adams. They are both cozy mysteries.
Crime and Poetry came first so I am going to start that first. This will be my third book by Amanda. I’ve heard great things about Paper Cuts and it will be my first by Ellery Adams.
I am also reading a few chapters a week of Anne of Ingleside by L.M. Montgomery. This is my first time reading it and it’s already a comfort read for me. I’ve been taking these books slow, partly because of the old language, and partly because I love to savor them. My husband purchased the series for me two Christmases ago so I’ve been making my way through them since then.
I am making a list of books I want to read this fall and I’ll probably ramble about them next week.
The Husband finished Born Standing Up by Steve Martin and now he is reading Plan B by Lee and Richard Child.
Little Miss and I are reading a cute mystery she picked up at the library sale a couple of weeks ago. I don’t have it in front of me right now and I don’t want to go find it, so I don’t know the title.
I plan to start Gone Away Lake by Elizabeth Enright, which Erin from Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs, and her son Wyatt sent to us, with her tomorrow as part of our school lessons.
The Boy is not reading anything right now but he will start The Red Badge of Courage later this week for school.
Photos from Last Week
What We watched/are Watching
It has been a Newhart week this week. I’ve needed the escape for sure.
I started The Misfits with Marilyn Monroe and will finish it this week. It’s depressing.
The Husband and I also watched an episode of Poirot.
Little Miss watched a ton of Bluey and Duck Tales and now she’s rewatching The Lion Guard.
What I’m Writing
I am still working on Gladwynn Grant Takes Center Stage and I shared the first chapter on Friday.
I hope to share additional chapters in the following weeks.
Now it’s your turn. 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.
This is my second book by Anthony Horowitz and this one was much different than the first I read.
I read Moriarty a couple of years ago and loved it.
I already knew before reading this book that Horowitz was brilliant but after reading this one, which is the first of a series where he incorporates himself into a fictional story, I have decided that he is even more brilliant.
A little background on Horowitz: He is the creator and writer for some well-loved UK mystery shows included Foyle’s War, Midsomer Murders, Injustice, and New Blood, among others. He is also the author of 50 books, including the popular teen spy book series, Alex Rider, Magpie Murders, and two Sherlock Holmes books.
I truly wasn’t sure what to think of this book when I first started it and there was a point where I thought he was going to go on a rant about a social issue and really considered putting the book down. In the end, he didn’t go on the rant I thought he would. I also couldn’t put the book down for the very reason Horowitz says in the book he couldn’t walk away from the case he becomes wrapped up in – we both had to know who killed Diane Cowper.
I wanted to know how she died too and it was why I was up more than one night/morning until 1 in the morning reading it.
The book opens in a way that ensures that there is no way you’re going to put it down.
A woman walks into a funeral parlor and plans her own funeral. Later that day she is murdered.
Daniel Hawthorne is a former cop who becomes the consultant on the case. Horowitz has worked with him before as a consultant on a show called Injustice and now Hawthorne wants to know if Horowitz wants to write a book about him. As a quick reminder, the show is real, Hawthorne is not. There is a lot of blending of fact and fiction in this book and there were times I wondered which was which.
I knew there was some truth when Horowitz wrote about meeting with Hollywood heavy hitters like Peter Jackson and Steven Spielberg.
Horowitz was actually supposed to write the screenplay for the sequel to The Adventures of TinTin and it’s unclear why the project never took off but in this book the theory is that Hawthorne interrupted Horowitz’s meeting with Jackson and Spielberg and both of the men wandered off to pursue other projects.
When I first began reading the chapter where Horowitz started detailing his involvement with Tintin and what the comic and the movie was about, etc., I was bewildered. What did this have to do with who murdered Diane Cowper? Why did I care? Why was he writing about this?
It turned out to be one of the funniest chapters in the book and it made sense because it showed Hawthorne’s character – specifically how clueless he is about current events and current entertainment (he didn’t even know who Spielberg was) and how absolutely inconsiderate he is of others.
From the book:
‘Who are you?’ Spielberg asked.
Hawthorne pretended to notice him for the first time. ‘I’m Hawthorne,’ he said.
‘I’m with the police.’
‘You’re a police officer?’
‘No. He’s a consultant,’ I cut in. ‘He’s helping the police with an investigation.’
‘A murder,’ Hawthorne explained, helpfully, once again sitting on that first vowel to make the word somehow more violent than it already was. He was looking at Spielberg, only now recognising him. ‘Do I know you?’ he asked.
‘I’m Steven Spielberg.’
‘Are you in films?’
I wanted to weep.”
As the book progresses, and especially after this incident, Horowitz isn’t sure he wants to take on the project and continues to be unsure, even as he begins tagging along with Hawthorne as Hawthorne investigates Diane Cowper’s case. Hawthorne is extremely unlikeable, rude, and judgmental. Horowitz wants to walk away but if he does, he won’t know what happened to the woman whose death may have been related to an accident she was involved in a decade before.
There are tons of red herrings in this book. There are also tons of amazing descriptions by Horowitz, especially of Hawthorne.
Here is a couple I highlighted on my Kindle:
“He had the same silken quality as a panther or a leopard, and there was a strange malevolence in his eyes – they were a soft brown – that seemed to challenge, even to threaten, me. He was about forty years old with hair of an indeterminate colour that was cut very short around the ears and was just beginning to turn grey. He was clean-shaven. His skin was pale. I got the feeling that he might have been very handsome as a child but something had happened to him at some time in his life so that, although he still wasn’t ugly, he was curiously unattractive. It was as if he had become a bad photograph of himself. He was smartly dressed in a suit, white shirt and tie, the raincoat now held over his arm. He looked at me with almost exaggerated interest, as if I had somehow surprised him. Even as I came in, I got the feeling that he was emptying me out.”
And another one:
“Hawthorne nodded. I always knew when he was about to go on the attack. It was as if someone had waved a knife in front of his face and I had seen it reflected, for an instant, in his eyes.”
One aspect of the book I didn’t enjoy was toward the end when Horowitz added in this very long explanation and speech by one of the characters. It went on for pages and I really didn’t understand the point of it at all, unless it was to throw the reader off the scent. He did this a few times in Moriarity as well and I didn’t enjoy it. He seemed to forget he was writing a book and not a speech for one of the characters in the screenplay for one of his shows.
That one disappointment and a few other rambling explanations didn’t take away from the book overall, however, and I’m looking forward to reading the remaining three in the series. My husband says the third book is the best. A fifth book in the series is also being written from what I read this week.
I enjoyed this book as a reader, but also as a writer. Horowitz had some interesting personal insights about the writing process that I could relate to especially now that I am writing mysteries myself.
Here are a couple of the quotes I especially enjoyed:
“The hardest part of writing murder stories is thinking up the plots and at that particular moment I didn’t have any more in my head. After all, there are only so many reasons why anyone wants to kill someone else. You do it because you want something from them: their money, their wife, their job. You do it because you’re afraid of them. They know something about you and perhaps they’re threatening you. You kill them out of revenge because of something they knowingly or unknowingly did to you.”
And
“The modern writer has to be able to perform, often to a huge audience. It’s almost like being a stand-up comedian except that the questions never change and you always end up telling the same jokes.”
If you haven’t gathered, I would recommend this book if you enjoy a good mystery. As for it’s clean rating, it is not clean in many ways but it is also not overly graphic, there is no sex, and the cursing is minimal but when it does happen it is the big ones (think the one that starts with “f” – if your mind will even allow you to think of it.)
A sinus thing that wasn’t exactly an illness but a weather change thing hit me last week so I ended up forgetting to finish watching my one Marilyn movie and watching the other one. In other words, I have a good excuse for being late on my Marilyn movie impressions.
I’m going to be sharing about two Marilyn Monroe movies this week since I have been so behind on watching and writing about them. They are two very, very different movies on different ends of the spectrum – Monkey Business and All About Eve.
First up: Monkey Business.
Cary Grant is an absent minded professor in this screwball comedy that he stars in with Marilyn and Ginger Rogers.
Ginger is the straight man (woman) in this one with Cary being more of the goofball with the biggest bottle cap glasses I have ever seen him in. They looked more like something Jerry Lewis would wear.
This is very early Marilyn, so she almost likes like Norma Jean probably looked before she became Marilyn, but not quite. She still has the pouty lips and short hair, but the hair looks darker to me in th is film.
Marilyn plays the secretary of Cary’s boss and in their first scene together she shows Cary the stockings he invented and how they look on her legs. Cary’s character, showing his true nerdy self, is more interested in the stocking than the legs they are covering, of course.
The premise of the movie is rather silly but silly is a wonderful escape from life so I liked that it was silly.
Cary is working on a formula that could help people look and feel younger. It also, apparently, makes them more virile – ahem. The monkey they test it on is very interested in the female monkey, despite being 84 in monkey years. The monkey Is also able to move around like a young monkey after taking the formula.
This is after many of the tests did not yield any results.
(As I side note here, I must say that I don’t know many other actresses who have a hip sway like Marilyn. I am completely jealous of it and the shape of her. Sigh.)
It’s the monkey that finally mixes the winning concoction for a type of youth formula and then proceeds to pour it in the water cooler. Cary and his fellow professors don’t know this, of course, so when Cary decides he’s going to be the guinea pig and take his own formula and then wash it down with the water from the cooler. So Cary believes that his formula is what helps him when he suddenly can see without his glasses and then becomes like a teenager and runs off with Marilyn’s character to buy a new car.
After Ginger learns that Cary tested the formula on himself, she decides she should be the test subject and she takes the formula, which we know doesn’t work, but it tastes so awful she washes it down with the cooler water.
Now she becomes the young and crazy 20 something year old.
She ends up with teenage angst complete with crying and breaking down at Cary. It’s a hilarious but ridiculous scene. I have a feeling Ginger had a blast filming it.
Ginger even gets a chance to dance a bit in the film, even though that isn’t the main focus, when she’s feeling a lot younger.
The film is a low-key romance with the two of them realizing even under the influence of the formula how much they love each other.
Luckily the formula does wear off and when both have had it wear off, they decide the formula could cause more harm than good. Cary is going to destroy the formula and that’s when they decide to make a pot of coffee with the water from the cooler. Ah, yes, I’m sure you know where this is going. Craziness is about to ensue so hold on to your seats.
You’ll have to watch it to see what happens, which reminds me, you can watch it for free on YouTube here:
I pulled a bit of trivia off of IMbd about the movie and some of it was very interesting. Here are a few tidbits:
The exterior shots of the Oxly Chemical Co. office building where Barnaby works were actually shots of the Executive Building on the 20th Century Fox studio lot. The building is now known as the Old Executive Building.
The sports car used in the film was a red 1952 MG TD Roadster, which was put into storage by 20th Century-Fox after filming wrapped. It was purchased by Debbie Reynolds in a 1971 sale of Marilyn Monroe memorabilia (despite the fact Monroe herself never owned the car). It sustained a dent in the front bumper when Cary Grant hit a fence while driving it. Reynolds had the transmission rebuilt, then put it up for auction in 2011. It sold for $210,000.
Among the movie star photos Marilyn Monroe taped to her bedroom wall when she was a foster child were several of Cary Grant. She was thrilled to be co-starring with him in this film, a break-through role in her then fast-rising movie career.
Forty year old (forty-one at the time of release) Ginger Rogers was the oldest leading lady to ever star in a Howard Hawks picture.
Marilyn Monroe plays the character Lois Laurel. The real Lois Laurel is the only daughter of comedian Stan Laurel of the comedy team Laurel & Hardy.
Shares a title with the otherwise unrelated 1931 Marx Brothers comedy “Monkey Business,” though the films have some vague connections: Early in his career, Cary Grant was partly inspired by Zeppo Marx, the team’s parodic juvenile straight man. In addition, the 1931 film co-starred Thelma Todd, whose life, career, and mysterious death parallel Grant’s co-star here, Marilyn Monroe.
This movie was so much fun and I really did enjoy it. I mentioned above that Ginger must have had so much fun filming that one scene but I have a feeling they all had a ton of fun. It was absolute ridiculous and hilarious fun.
All About Eve
Now, Marilyn is not a main actress in this film, but it was one of her first movies and she was considered a standout in it, and my husband suggested it, so I included it in my list to watch this summer. Marilyn was 23 when the movie was made and just about to break her career wide open.
This movie was nominated for 14 Oscars and won six, including best picture. It is the only film in Oscar history to have four women nominated, including Bette Davis, Anne Baxter for actress and Celeste Holm and Thelma Ritter for supporting actress. Released in 1950, it made $3.1 million, more than half of it’s $1.4 million production costs.
Bette Davis is a famous stage actress named Margo who Eve Harrington, played by Anne Baxter, goes to meet one night after watching her show every single night during its run.
This is my first movie with Bette, by the way, and it did not disappoint.
Eve is very peculiar to say the least as this movie starts. She tells the actress and the producer and writers about her sad life of losing her husband early in their marriage and staying in San Francisco to make a new life for herself and her love of acting and the theater.
You know right away that something just feels off about her, even though the movie starts with her being honored as a well-known actress. She really inserts herself into the lives of these people and weasels her way into the acting jobs she wants, pushing others out of the way for it.
With her sob story, Margo welcomes her into her home and she becomes her confidant, her assistant, and everything you can think of that requires Eve to wait on Margo. It’s clear that Eve wants Margo’s job and as time goes on it is clear she’ll find a way to get it, mainly by being Margo’s everything. Actually, she’s a little too everything. She starts doing things that Margo doesn’t ask her to do and making herself look better than Margo. It’s a very strange obsession.
Margo begins to notice how attentive Eve is to her boyfriend and everything else. She also begins to compare herself to Eve and feel old around her. To her it’s time for Eve to move on because she has a feeling Eve is much more interested in taking her place, not just waiting on her. |
Marilyn doesn’t come in until more than 40 minutes into the movie and I didn’t even recognize her. She was beautiful, sure, but her hair was styled differently and she was a minor character. It was clear she was ready for stardom though and George Sanders uttered a premonition of sorts when he said, “Well done. I can see your career rising in the east like the sun.”
And soon after this movie, it did just that.
Her character Miss Casswell has the middle name of the author of the short story that was never credited for her part in the movie – Mary Orr.
She’s so young looking in the movie – it’s crazy. And, of course, she’s sort of passed off as someone sent in to make producers and directors happy because she’s sexy and flirtatious.
I searched online to see what critics said of Marilyn’s performance and found a few opinions. Here s one:
Lyvie Scott on Slashfilms.com said Marilyn stole the scenes she was in in All About Eve and I’d have to agree. She had some of the best lines, such as where Eve says she doesn’t know what she’d talk about with Dr. Dewitt (George Sanders) and Marilyn says, “Don’t worry about it. You won’t even get a word in the whole time.” Or something along those lines.
A bit off topic here, but George Sanders always reminds me of John De Lancie who played Q on Star Trek.
Scott wrote of Marilyn, “Monroe’s role in “All About Eve,” though small, is one of the most memorable of the film. It’s difficult to focus on anyone but Monroe when she’s in the room. Knowing just how famous she would become, it all feels like a testament to her inescapable star power.”
Scott, of course, details what others detail about Marilyn on film sets throughout the years. She was often late and had a hard time nailing her lines and was a bit difficult to work with overall. Marilyn tried to blame her inability to remember her lines on nerves and that very well may have been the case since she was acting next to Bette Davis and the fact that she’d only come off the success of one other film, “The Asphalt Jungle” before this.
Davis wasn’t really buying her excuses. According to Scott’s article: “Unfortunately, Davis was less than impressed with Monroe. Famously temperamental on set, she was already put off by the younger actress’s tardiness. And after so many retakes for a scene which, to her, must have been a breeze, Davis apparently snapped — and Monroe had to excuse herself to vomit offstage.”
It’s just so humorous to me that in this movie they pan Marilyn’s audition to be the understudy of Bette’s character when she would rise to stardom faster than almost all of them, except Bette. She might not have been as good of an actress, especially when compared to Bette, but she still seemed to shoot up even faster – probably because of her looks (aka breasts and hips).
I’m talking more about Marilyn in this post because my feature is called Summer of Marilyn, but I should be talking about Anne Baxter and Bette Davis more, especially considering Marilyn was only in this movie about ten minutes, if that. Both of the other actresses were very good in this, even though I could not stand the way Anne Baxter talked and how overly dramatic and maudlin she was. That was, however, her character so, in other words, she was brilliant in making me hate her.
As for Bette – wow. She knocked it out of the park. Here is what Roger Ebert said about her performance on his site:
Growing older was a smart career move for Bette Davis, whose personality was adult, hard-edged and knowing. Never entirely comfortable as an ingenue, she was glorious as a professional woman, a survivor, or a b***** predator. Her veteran actress Margo Channing in “All About Eve” (1950) was her greatest role; it seems to show her defeated by the wiles of a younger actress, but in fact marks a victory: the triumph of personality and will over the superficial power of beauty. She never played a more autobiographical role.”
Besides Bette and Anne Baxter, George Sanders was absolute perfection at being a dirty, crooked journalist. His speech toward the end of the movie was just absolutely outstanding and
She seems so innocent and idealistic but deep down she’s just pretty selfish to me. She wants a career and she doesn’t care whose coat tails she rides, or whose head she steps on, to get there. She’ll do it with big, watery eyes and a tipped head, of course.
The film is mainly about jealousy and ambition and the tangled web that both can weave, but it is also very much about the dread of getting older, especially for women. Margo feels that Eve is stealing everything from her because she is young. Off screen, Bette Davis was terrified of growing old and this part fit her well, as Ebert said. When she was talking about the dread of growing old in the movie, she was speaking from personal experience, not just from the experience of the character.
At one point she says, “Funny business, a woman’s career — the things you drop on your way up the ladder so you can move faster. You forget you’ll need them again when you get back to being a woman. That’s one career we gals have in common is being a woman.”
So far All About Eve has been one of the best films I’ve watched but not because of Marilyn, even though she was great in it. The best film I watched with her in it was a tie between Niagra and Some Like it Hot. We will see if The Misfits knocks one of those movies off the list when I watch it later this week.
Have you seen either of these movies? What did you think?
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.
Last week I finished The Word is Murder by Anthony Horowitz. I enjoyed it very much and will have a review up for it at some point this week (I hope! My plans keep getting messed up each week, so we will see).
This week I am reading Meet Your Baker by Ellie Alexander. It is a cozy mystery.
I also plan to read a couple chapters of Anne of Ingleside because I enjoy the little stories in the book and it’s just something lovely and light to read.
I may also start one of the books I picked up at the library book sale last week. As I mentioned in my post yesterday – I went a little crazy with picking up books. My son claims I won’t read any of them and tried to say I hadn’t read any of the ones I’d picked up at the last sale. That’s actually untrue. I read at least one or two and my daughter and I read a few together as well. This year I picked up a lot of books we can use for homeschooling so I am very sure I will read those too.
I really want to finish When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit by Judith Kerr that I picked up from the library but it has an awful smell to it because it is so old and it is giving me a headache. I have to be careful with mildew smells. They tend to overwhelm me. I got halfway through the book before it really bothered me so maybe I can push through because I am enjoying it. It is a middle grade book but it has a lot of deep themes.
The Husband is reading The Devil’s Hand by Jack Carr.
Little Miss and I finished The Boxcar Children: Surprise Island this past week and have not started a new book yet. She’s reading Saving Winslow by Sharon Creech on her own or I read some at night.
I also ordered her her own copy of Fortunately the Milk by Neil Gaiman and she breezed through most of that on two car rides this week. I thought she’d love to hold the book and look at the photos since we’ve mainly listened to it and the other copy we have is my son’s. He’s very possessive about it because that’s one of the main books his dad read to him when he was little and it’s a core memory for him. She was happier when she opened that book than when she opened a stuffed toy I picked her up this past week and if you knew Little Miss, you would know she’s obsessed with what she calls “stuffies.” I wish I had taken a photo of her holding that book and jumping up and down.
What’s Been Occurring
Things were crazy last week and I wrote about it in yesterday’s post if you want to check it out.
Writing it all out here again would be tedious, traumatizing and exhausting so I don’t think I will.
Photos from Last Week
What We watched/are Watching
I watched All About Eve and will have a post about it and Monkey Business for my Summer of Marilyn feature this week. I also plan to watch The Misfits and write about it. that will close out my Marilyn Monroe feature for this summer and then Erin from Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs and I will be joining together for a fall and winter feature of movies that I will update you on later.
This week I also clamored for comfort watches like All Creatures Great and Small (the new one), Anne of Green Gables from 1985 (Which Little Miss and I are making The Husband watch with us), and Newhart.
I will probably watch a lot of those same shows this week. What I’m Writing
I’ve been working on Gladwynn Grant Takes Center Stage off and on and I hope to write more this week but, again, my plans have been all over the place. I also have several blog posts started that I hope to finish.
Now it’s your turn. 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.
Today is National Book Lovers Day so I thought I’d share a few books that impacted me as a person and a writer. Of course, my main book would be the Bible, but I will focus on my fictional impact for this post.
Little House on the Prairie and The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe would be at the top of the lists for my formative years as these are two of the first books I read on my own. I then, of course, read the entire series of both. I’ve now read the Little House series to my daughter and have read The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe to her as well.
My mom didn’t read a lot to me growing up. What she did do was read herself. All the time. I mean all the time. It fueled my love for reading and while I took a break for several years for some reason, I am back to reading full-time again.
To get me into To Kill A Mockingbird, Mom read the beginning to me in her Southern (North Carolina) accent. She brought the story alive for me and I took off from there. She gave me Roll of Thunder Hear My Cry and I sobbed like a baby. Both books made me aware of racism in our world, shattering some of my innocence, but in a needed way.
Later I would find The Cat Who books by Lillian Jackson Braun at the library and these and Nancy Drew ignited my love of mysteries. Later there was At Home in Mitford and the whole Mitford series by Jan Karon, which I still read today because each time I open the books it feels like coming home. There was also Francine River’s books, of course, which showed me that Christian Fiction doesn’t have to be boring.
Of course, I can’t forget the first book I ever took out of a library – the school library – King of the Wind by Marquerite Henry. It was hardcover, solid, and the horse on the cover was gorgeous. I was so proud to carry it home and read it. I read this with my daughter a couple of years ago, though, and am shocked at how depressing that book was. I must have forgotten that over the years.
I later also read Misty of Chincoteague and still can’t spell the name of the place without looking it up.
My daughter and I have worked our way through several of Henry’s other horse books over the last two years.
Anne of Green Gables has been another important book in my adulthood. I loved the Kevin Sullivan movie as a kid and finally read the whole book and not just parts of it about two years ago. I then read it to my daughter, eliminating some of the more flowery language so she wouldn’t get too bored.
Three years ago my son and I read Silas Marner by George Elliot and I don’t know that it impacted me much other than to open my eyes to the classics, which I have woefully neglected over the years.
I’m sure I’m forgetting some very important books in this list but I can always write a follow-up post to share some more. It is my blog and I can blog more if I want to!
How about you? What are some books that have impacted you over the years? Fiction or non-fiction. Fun or serious? I’d love to know. Really!
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.
This week I haven’t been able to read anything other than The Word is Murder by Anthony Horowitz because I just have to know what happened. This is a book where the author has made himself part of the story and it’s brilliantly done.
I’ve mentioned before that Horowitz has created or written for several well-known television shows including Foyle’s War, Midsomer Murders, Poirot, Injustice, New Blood and Collision.
He also is the only author approved by the Arthur Conon Doyle Estate to write Sherlock books and he has written two — Moriarty and House of Silk.
His other books include the Alex Rider series (for teens), The Magpie Murders, the Power of Five, Diamond of Five.
At one point I thought the book might be wandering into territory I didn’t want to read about and I considered dropping it but then Horowitz, writing as himself since he is the main character/narrator of the book, said he was only continuing to talk to the rude consultant to the police because he had to know what happened to the victim. It was how I felt too. I can’t stop reading until I know what happens so more than once I’ve been up late reading the book, desperate for a resolution.
The book starts with a woman walking into a funeral parlor and arranging her own funeral. Odd enough but then later that day she’s murdered – strangled in her home by a cord on her curtains. A man named Hawthorne is called in as a consultant and Horowitz decides to write a book about Hawthorne and the investigation. Hawthorne is rude and blunt and Horowitz starts to second guess the decision but he’s already invested and needs to know what happened to the victim so he pushes forward – much like the reader.
Horowitz does such a wonderful job crafting the story and weaving in humor that you can’t help but want to push forward, though.
This is the first of four books in the series. I started reading book four when I saw my husband’s library book on the kitchen table, opened it to see what it was about, and couldn’t put it down. That’s when he told me it was book four and he had the other books in his Kindle. Our accounts are connected so I downloaded the first book immediately.
I’m also listening to Death by the Seaside by T.E. Kinsey when I drive somewhere or wash the dishes and I hope to finish When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit by Judith Kerr this week as well.
Little Miss and I will be finishing up the second book in the Boxcar Children series this week – Surprise Island.
The Husband is reading. I can’t tell you what because he was attending a car show for work (he is a newspaper reporter/editor) so he’s not here for me to ask.
What’s Been Occurring
I wrote about what’s been occurring in my post yesterday and the only new thing that has happened since then is that Little Miss and I went swimming yesterday afternoon at my parents. We will be doing the same this afternoon.
I’m still hoping for a fairly relaxed week coming up. I have to take our van to a local scrapyard to see if they will buy it off us and take Little Miss to gymnastics and then that’s about it. I’d like to spend a good part of the week putting my grandfather’s poems in scrapbooks before my parents’ 60th wedding anniversary party in September.
I’m really looking forward to fall this year, which I’ve mentioned a couple of times recently. Summer just feels so busy and I really want some days where I can stay inside and accomplish some of the things I need to do for my books and journals and stock photography since those are my own sources of side income right now. Plus they are fun.
What We watched/are Watching
This past week we watched Guardians of the Galaxy 3 (we actually still have to finish it), The Super Mario Brothers movie, Newhart, Designing Women, and I finished Monkey Business with Cary Grant and Marilyn Monroe because I kept getting interrupted while watching it. This upcoming week I am watching All About Eve with Marilyn.
I also watched a video with Darling Desi on Youtube where she talked about how she is ready for fall. I’m right there with her.
What I’m Writing
This past week I worked on Gladwynn Grant Takes Center Stage and am going to work on it through August and hope to finish it by the beginning of September so I can continue on Cassie for the Apron Strings book series. My book for that series comes out in August of 2024.
Little Miss and I have been listening to a playlist that includes a lot of Christian musical artists while we swim. Those artists include: Matthew West, Elevation Worship, Crowder, Keith Green, MercyMe, and a few others.
Blog Posts I Enjoyed This Past Week
I am severely behind on blog posts but did read a few. I’ll leave a link to some of my favorites next week.
Now it’s your turn
Now it’s your turn. 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 hoping August will be less so and at least this week it should be less crazy.
In July we had a lot of activities – summer reading, camps, swimming, appointments, new trucks to pick up, and friends of Little Miss and The Boy coming over. It was all a bit crazy at times.
We tried to go swimming at my parents at least once a week in July to take advantage of the pool my dad had worked so hard on throughout May and part of June.
I wrote a little bit about Little Miss and me and how we play in the pool in a post last week. She, of course, is very creative and likes me to rate her jumps from the ladder into the pool in the voices of the characters from the books we’ve read together over the last couple of years.
Most of the events we had weren’t the entire day but they were in the middle of the day so it would make traveling or attending other events a challenge. It was okay, though, because it gave us something fun to do without draining a ton of our time and energy – or at least it shouldn’t have drained our energy but there were some weeks where we felt a bit drained from all the running around.
There were a couple 45-minute trips, up and back, to either drop cars off places and pick them up or pick up the new truck (last week).
Being so busy didn’t give me a lot of time to blog or read blogs. I did have some time to read and work on book two of my cozy mystery series, however. I’m really enjoying writing this series. It’s a ton of fun.
This week I need to shift into homeschool planning mode, even though it doesn’t start for another couple of weeks.
Usually, we start school after Labor Day, but this year The Boy will be attending a career center near us and school starts August 24th for him so I decided Little Miss and I will start the same day, but with a reduced schedule. We will probably read a few books, or watch some educational videos each day to ease our way back into the school year. Math, which neither of my children enjoys, even though they are both good at it, will wait until sometime in September.
I won’t give The Boy any assignments after school those first days when he starts at the career center and instead will start adding his homeschool lessons in very slowly as we get closer to September. The career center classes are from 8:30 to 11:30 each day and then he will have homeschool lessons in the afternoon throughout the school year.
This should probably be in a separate homeschool post and most likely will be put in a separate one too, but I am truly looking forward to our homeschool year this year. By the end of last year, I had found a groove for homeschooling that works much better for us as a family. A more laid-back groove that will allow us to learn in a more relaxed and free way. There will be more emphasis on reading, exploring, hands-on activities, music and art and less focus on strictly following a curriculum, worksheets, busy work, and anything else that public schools focus on and call a real education. I don’t want my kids to have to prove they know something by filling out worksheets, taking tests, writing essays or regurgitating to me what they’ve learned.
We will, of course, have to do some of those things to help me know what areas we might need more work on and because those are the kinds of things I need to show a little bit of at the end of the school year to our evaluator, but it will not be our main focus this year and I’m so excited.
We have a few more summer activities for August – including a local firemen’s carnival, trips to local state parks, and a vacation Bible school at the local Catholic Church, which is held by all the churches in town – Catholic and Protestant.
We also are planning at least one or two more trips to a local state park and maybe to an amusement park a couple hours away. It’s hard to get too far away because of The Husband’s schedule. A lot of the events he covers during the summer are on the weekends.
How about you? How was your July and what’s on your schedule for August?
Here are a few photos from the month of July. With all the activities we took part in, I am surprised I didn’t take more photographs. This isn’t all of the photographs I took. I have some on my phone as well but in August I hope to take even more on the Nikon.
This is my grandmother, the namesake of the main character in Gladwynn Grant Gets Her Footing.
My grandmother’s middle name was actually Gladwyn or Gladwin, we aren’t exactly sure of the spelling because it is spelled different ways on different documents. I like how Gladwynn looked when I wrote it, though, so that’s what I named my character.
Also, after she got married, Grandma was a Robinson, not a Grant, but I liked the name Gladwynn Grant more. Alliteration and all that.
Why did I base the main character of my cozy mystery series on my grandmother?
One, I love the name. Two, my grandmother had spunk.
My grandmother didn’t often show her emotions outwardly.
She wasn’t super affectionate.
She wasn’t necessarily sentimental.
She wasn’t a jokester and I don’t know that I’d call her vivacious.
These are all things I could use to describe my Gladwynn.
I could use other words to describe Gladwynn that I have also used to describe Grandma: determined, bold, and resilient.
My grandmother was born in 1909. She lived through the Great Depression, two world wars, and many other wars and tragedies. Her only sister, her only sibling, ended up in a mental hospital late in life after being diagnosed with schizophrenia. She lost her husband thirty-four years before she passed away.
She developed macular degeneration in her 80s and almost completely lost her eyesight, but didn’t let that stop her. She found ways to help her see better, and found a machine to enlarge the print for her so she could read the newspaper or write checks. She went out to dinner with family and she loved her family in her own special way.
She was quiet, reserved, and subtle, but also never backed down, never gave up, and never stopped living life to the fullest.
She passed away two weeks before her 94th birthday from a heart condition that doctors were amazed she’d lived with for so long.
That condition didn’t show up until her 90s, despite years of battling high blood pressure. She was tiny and spry and right up until a few weeks (maybe a few days?) before she passed away she was able to squat down to look at her TV and bounce right back up again like she had the legs and knees of a 20-year-old.
When I took this photo she was out in her backyard, cleaning out a ditch with some kind of gardening tool. She was wearing a pair of gardening gloves and sitting on her bottom, a position she’d gotten into all by herself. I can’t remember her age here. Maybe 88?
All I know is that this is the version of Ula Gladwynn Grant Robinson that I love to remember. Even though she wasn’t always open with her feelings, she did enjoy laughing, she smiled and she, on occasion, even told me she loved me.
I miss her, and my maternal grandmother, terribly, but I will do my best to keep them alive in my memories, my heart, and my stories.
