The 20 Books of Summer Challenge is back this year with new hosts. This will be my first year participating and I can tell you I will most likely not read 20 books this summer. Much less than that.
So, I have a list of 15 books I plan to choose from, knowing full well I will get distracted a time or two or to read all of them. Count on me not reading all of them or even half. Ha.
For the challenge you can actually choose 10, 15, or 20 books.
The #20BooksofSummer2025 challenge runs from Sunday, June 1st to Sunday, August 31st
The first rule of 20 Books is that there are no real rules, other than signing up for 10, 15 or 20 books and trying to read from your TBR.
Pick your list in advance, or nominate a bookcase to read from, or pick at whim from your TBR.
If you do pick a list, you can change it at any time – swap books in/out.
Don’t get panicked at not reaching your target.
Just enjoy a summer of great reading and make a bit of space on your shelves!
They will alo have monthly summary posts where you can add progress reports and recommendations. The final one at the at the beginning of September will stay open for a while to catch all the last reviews.
If you’re planning to join in please do add your blog / planning post link to the Mr Linky on the hosts blogs, and you can download the logos and bingo card now. You can also use the hashtag #20BooksofSummer2025 on your socials.
And now my list of 15 books I will be choosing from this summer. These books are a mix of mysteries, romances, thoughtful, fluffy, and all in between. And of course I’ll probably read more Nancy Drew than I have listed here. They’re fast reads.
Summer of Yes by Courtney Walsh
Between Sound and Sea by Amanda Cox
The Clue in the Diary by Carolyn Keene
Roll of Thunder Hear My Cry by Mildred D. Taylor
The Inimitable Jeeves by PG Woodhouse
Prince Caspian by C.S. Lewis
Spill the Jackpot by Erle Stanley Gardner
‘Tis Herself by Maureen O’Hara
Death In A Budapest Butterfly by Julia Buckley
The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out a Window and Disappeared by Jonas Jonassen
But First Murder by Bee Littlefield
The Pale Horse by Agatha Christie
Britt-Marie was Here by Fredrik Backman
A Midnight Dance by Joanna Davidson
The Unlikely Yarn of The Dragon Lady by Sharon J. Mondragon
And bonus…my “take my time” read: Mansfield Park by Jane Austen
I am a mood reader so I will not be reading this list in order and if my mood dictates I have to choose off the list, I certainly will. Reading is a leisure activity for me, and applying too much structure takes the joy out of it for me, but making lists is also fun for me so…this is why I make a list.
Do you have a list of books you like to choose from for each season or do you just grab whatever you feel like reading next?
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.
Look for the post to go live about 9:30 PM EST on Thursdays.
First, let’s introduce 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!
Title: Peg and Rose Solve A Murder (Senior Sleuths Mysteries)
Author: Laurien Berenson
Date published: August 2022
Pages: 288
Source: Libby/ebook (also available in paperback/hardback wherever books are sold and maybe at your library)
Genre: Cozy Mystery
Description: Rose Donovan looks for the good in everyone. With her sister-in-law, Peg, that sometimes requires a lot of searching. Even a sixty-something former nun like Rose has her limits, and gruff Peg Turnbull sure knows how to push them. But after forty years of bickering, they’re attempting to start over, partnering up to join the local bridge club.
Peg and Rose barely have a chance to celebrate their first win before one of the club’s most accomplished players is killed in his home. As the newest members, the sisters-in-law come under scrutiny and decide to start some digging of their own. Bridge is typically seen as a wholesome pastime, yet this group of senior citizens harbors a wealth of vices, including gambling, cheating, and adultery . . .
By comparison, Peg and Rose’s fractious relationship is starting to feel almost functional. But as their suspect list narrows, they’re unaware that their logic has a dangerous flaw. And they’ll have to hope that their teamwork holds steady when they’re confronted by a killer who’s through with playing games . .
What I liked:
I loved the relationship between Peg and Rose. We know right from the beginning there must be a reason the two don’t get along but is it just personality differences or something more? The layers of that onion are pulled away as we continue the book and as Peg and Rose find themselves tossed into the middle of a murder mystery.
I enjoyed learning about the two women and how different each of their personalities were and why. Peg is very sassy, outspoken and bold while Rose is more demure, soft spoken, and a bit innocent or naïve depending on the situation.
I felt that we learned a bit more about Peg than Rose in this book but that’s totally okay. There will probably be more of a focus on Rose in future books and there was a fair amount in this book as well.
I also really liked ….
That this book was clean. I know there is a lot of debate on what clean means but for me it means there was no graphic sex and no obscenities, or very minor ones. There were a few innuendos but they were fairly tame or they weren’t and I am just too big of a prude to have understood them.
Of note: It did take until the end of Chapter 11 to get to the mystery of this book, but since it was the first in the series I cut it some slack. Usually I hope for a mystery much earlier. Once this mystery occurred, though, the sleuthing took off full force and was fun to watch.
There were also some slow parts, for me anyhow, in the beginning involving Peg’s dog show judging.
I enjoyed learning about how much Peg loves poodles and judging dog shows but I really didn’t need the entire chapter about her showing her one dog. I didn’t need it, or feel the book needed it, but it was still enjoyable to see Peg at work.
Chapter 2 was literally one of the longest chapters I ever read in a book but the rest were much much shorter.
Content warnings:
There is discussion of loss in regards to a spouse and early pregnancy and there is some focus on grief from those losses. There is also mention of adultery.
I have been sharing my takes on the episodes from The Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew Mysteries show from the late 70s off and on for the last few months.
The show was, of course, based on the separate series of books from the 1930s and switched off between featuring The Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew each week for most of the first season. Eventually the “teen” sleuths would combine their efforts in joint episodes.
Up this week is a look at the episode called The Flickering Torch Mystery. I have absolutely no idea where the title for this one comes from by the way. There is no flickering torch.
But whatever…let us not focus on semantics.
This episode is certainly full of some weirdness, but not as weird as our next Hardy Boys — The Disappearing Floor, which actually came before this episode. Somehow I mixed up the order, so I am writing about this one first.
Now, when I say weirdness when talking about this show, I don’t mean to be slamming it at all. It’s just, well, a little weird sometimes. That doesn’t mean it isn’t a good show or doesn’t have some good episodes/storylines.
This episode does actually feature a fairly engaging storyline and if that doesn’t grab you then maybe looking at former teen heartthrob Rick Nelson all grown up will.
We enter this installment with Rick Nelson (Tony Eagle) on stage “singing”. My husband walked in at that moment and said that the musicians and Nelson were not really playing at first. Later, he says Nelson was, but the other guys still weren’t. Hey, that’s TV for ‘ya. No reason to really do what you can fake doing. Also, if you really want a sad story, look up how Rick Nelson died. It was not a simple plane crash, like I always thought. What a horrible situation for him and the others who died.
Fenton Hardy is off stage, clapping for Rick’s character, and we wonder why Fenton is there but we soon find out that he is helping security for Tony’s next performance, which will be where the Hardys live – The Tri-City area. Wherever that is.
Fenton says he will be ready with the help of his sons, even though they are “just your normal, average teenage boys.”
We flip right to Joe and Frank Hardy in a small airplane, doing flips. Or at least Frank is. When another plane runs into severe fog and starts to struggle because of an instrument failure, the boys are there to rescue the guy and help him land safely.
That’s when they realize the man, a Mr. Lou Haskel, is exactly who they are looking for because they are investigating a case of a missing man — Richard Johnston — for their dad, who is a private investigator in case you forgot.
The missing man, a sound engineer, left for work one morning and never came home. He was supposed to show up to an appointment with Mr. Haskel, but he never showed. The boys want to know if Mr. Haskel has seen him. He says he hasn’t but gives them a warning that his wife, who hired their dad, is known to “overreact” at times.
Thank you, Mr. Misogyny, the boys will keep that in mind.
Mr. Misogyny works for All Points Airway and the boys want to know why a sound engineer would be working for him. Mr. M says it is because he developed the sound system for the jet in front of them.
Ooh. Ah. Fascinating.
The boys want to see the inside, but Sexist Man says, “Nope..not right now. Have to get on with my day.”
They take that answer pretty easily and head off home to mull over what they’ve learned so far, which is very little.
Their Dad returns home with Tony in tow and they are starstruck because they have all his albums. Breaking all kinds of confidentiality they tell their dad what they’ve found out about Richard Johnston in front of Tony and his manager.
Tony’s shocked. “Richard’s missing? He’s the best sound engineer in the country. He’s supposed to be doing our sound at the stadium. What happened to him?”
The local fire chief, always a source of absolutely the worst take on things offers up this gem: “He probably turned Mom’s photo to the wall and took a plane to a place he’d never been before….” Implying that he simply walked out because he didn’t want to deal with his family.
Everyone promptly ignores that idiot and heads out to the venue to discuss security. Tony says he wants to stay back and “discuss some things” with the boys. Huh…whatever that means. At that moment, though, Fenton’s secretary, Callie, is trying to reach the boys on a CB radio.
She’s found a car over an embankment and wants them to come quick. Tony overhears it and says he’ll join them for more screen time and a bigger check — I mean because he wants to find out what happened to Richard.
They find the car over the embankment and if anyone was in it, they’re dead, Joe declares. For some reason the boys don’t call the cops at this point. Joe just ties a rope to a tree and lowers himself down to the scene. Luckily, Richard isn’t in the car, and they won’t have to tell his wife he’s dead. At least not yet.
Tony suggests they go back to the plane that Haskel didn’t want them to go in and start investigating there to see if there are any clues to where Richard went.
Inside the plane they find Richard’s equipment but only after they are chased by an angry pair of Doberman Pinchers.
Dipsy-Do police chief catches them snooping, by the way. Seems he shows up at just the right, or wrong, times. He scolds them a bit and they decide not to share anything about what they’ve found, probably because they know he will bungle the case.
Fingerprints that Joe pulled from a Tony Eagle tape inside the equipment box prove to the boys that Richard was in the plane, even though Haskel said he wasn’t.
Dun-dun-dun.
Later we are at the stadium, getting ready for the concert with Fenton talking to his staff about security and the boys heading to see Tony, who is in his dressing room arguing with his manager, Carl, about how he hasn’t been shown his finances lately. Tony says he doesn’t know how much money he has. The manager tells him not to worry about it, his finances are fine, so we clearly know something is up there.
Tony starts sleuthing when he asks his manager if he’s seen Richard Johnston. The manager says he hasn’t in a couple of weeks, but Richard said he’d be there that night for the concert.
“Come on, don’t worry…I’m going to go do something totally not suspicious now,” good ole’ Carl says as he leaves the room.
Okay, he doesn’t really say that, but that’s what it sounds like if you listen between the lines.
Meanwhile, Richard’s wife found a piece of paper in the floor of his car after the car was taken to the junkyard. It’s ripped up but the boys can see enough that they know there was something dangerous Richard was trying to warn someone about. The letter is a carbon copy so the boys ask if they can go to Richard’s office and find the original so they can learn what Richard wanted to warn everyone about.
When they get there they can’t find the letter, but they overhear someone talking outside the office and discover that Richard wanted to warn someone that something has been rigged to the sound system to —
Well, I think I’ll leave it right there because you might want to watch the episode yourself and learn what someone was supposed to be warned about.
Ah, who are we kidding? You probably won’t want to watch it or already have so if you don’t want spoilers, don’t read past these dots. . . .
.
.
.
.
.
And
.
Okay, so while Frank and Joe are snooping for the letter that will tell them what Richard was trying to warn someone about, they overhear someone on the phone saying that the Hardy boys won’t find out that once the sound machine hits a certain frequency Tony will be killed.
Then the person sets the office on fire to cover up the evidence, not knowing that the boys are inside. Eventually the boys are able to break out, just as the fire company shows up (rather quickly I might add, without it being clear who called them), and rush out to try to warn Tony.
The way the boys try to call the police station with their CB totally bewilders me, especially since it works. Can you really call a landline with a CB radio? I should Google this, but I’m ot going to….
What bewilders me more is how they don’t say to the officer, who answers, “Tell my dad or the chief Tony is going to be killed!” Instead, they ask to talk to the chief and the officer puts the phone down to go to look for the chief.
This wastes a ton of time, so Joe tries to call the operator again to patch it through to the police station. Sadly, this is before there were multiple phone lines so the operator can’t get through.
Joe and Frank drive as fast as they can to the stadium, race in and onto the stage and demand that the concert be stopped before Tony is killed. They are certain there is a bomb inside the sound system.
There isn’t, however, and now the chief and everyone who was evacuated from the building and missed out on the concert are extremely angry. The boys look like the boy who cried wolf.
Carl, Tony’s manager, is incredulous. How dare these teenagers ruin the concert and say something was going to happen when it wasn’t! There’s no death threats against Tony, he says and then reminds them that Tony is on his way to London the next day.
The boys are gently scolded by their father for putting themselves in danger and not having all the facts, which makes Frank even more determined to figure out what the letter actually said. The evidence is gone, but surely if he jots some letters down on a blank piece of paper next to the piece of the letter, he will completely figure out what is going on. Somehow, he decides the name that is cut off is actually Haskel.
Richard was trying to warn Haskel that there is a bomb wired into the sound system of the plane that is flying Tony to London Joe summarizes, from very little information provided by Frank.
When the scene shifts to Carl and Haskel bidding Tony farewell and telling him to enjoy his trip to London, but declining to go with him, the viewer can see guilt written all over them.
The boys make it to the airport just as Tony’s private jet is starting down the runway.
Once again, they beg the police chief to listen to them, but they’ve already been wrong once, so they’re told to go cause trouble somewhere else.
The boys won’t be silenced, though, so they take off with their van to follow the jet and force it to stop before they take off. Richard is found inside the airplane, where the extra gas would be stored and the plot by Haskel and Carl unravels.
Carl was taking Tony’s money and investing it in the airplanes owned by Heskel and also charging Tony extra every time he chartered the plane. Their plan was to kill Tony before he found out what they had been doing, especially since Tony kept asking to see his financial records. Richard found out about the plot when he checked out the system for the jet star (the name of the charter plane Tony used) and discovered that a high frequency feature had been added. He knew that was dangerous, so he tried to warn Haskel. Haskel, though, knew since he’d planned the plane to explode with Tony inside so he kidnapped Richard and stowed him in the bottom of the plane.
By the time he was found, it had been almost a week and as far as I know he was in there without food or water. Somehow, though, he was standing and chatting with everyone else like he was totally fine, instead of being in a hospital to be treated.
I am going to say that the story in this episode is not related to the book with the same title since this is the description of the book: Two unexplainable plane crashes near an airport on the East Coast plunge Frank and Joe Hardy into a bizarre case. From the moment Frank and Joe find a radioactive engine in an airplane junkyard, unexpected dangers strike like lightning. Despite the repeated attempts on their lives, the teenage detectives pursue their investigation, discovering two vital clues and others that provide the solution to one of the most baffling mysteries the boys and Mr. Hardy have ever encountered.
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.
Look for the post to go live about 9:30 PM EST on Thursdays.
First, let’s introduce 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!
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.
Look for the post to go live about 9:30 PM EST on Thursdays.
We have had some lovely sunshine and weather where we are this week. It’s been a long week, though, because my mom fell at home Monday. She’s okay but has had some other issues and my dad threw his hip out while trying to help her so the kids and I have been over there every day trying to help out as much as we can. It’s been nice to visit with them and be told how to do things again. It’s like living with them all over again. *wink* (Just a joke…it’s been nice to be able to help them.)
On to the show….
Your 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!
I love volunteering for disaster relief, delivering meals to the disabled, working for common sense gun violence prevention, and promoting better climate science legislation
Thank you so much for joining us for our link-up, Lisa!
Everyone else, please remember that this is a link-up where you can share posts from the previous week or posts from weeks, months, or even years ago. All we ask is that they be family-friendly!
And now some posts that were highlights for me this past week:
Since we couldn’t get to Paris for Spring, Erin from Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs and I have been watching movies this spring that take place in Paris.
This week we watched The Intouchables, a 2012 movie I suggested when I searched for movies that took place in Paris.
This was a rated R movie and had subtitles so it probably wasn’t the best choice for a movie watching event, but I’ll do a little better next time I choose movies. Despite those “drawbacks”, I really enjoyed this movie and felt it was fantastically acted and presented.
This movie was remade in America and retitled The Upside, starring Kevin Hart and Bryan Cranston. I have not seen the remake, but from what I’ve read online and just watching The Upside trailer, the original is much, much better.
The movie is based on the true story of Philippe Pozzo di Borgo and his French-Algerian carer Abdel Sellou, which Philippe wrote about in his 2001 memoir A Second Wind.
In the movie, the characters’ names are Philippe (Francois Cluzet) and Driss (Omar Sy). Driss needs a job after getting out of jail and arrives at Philippe’s mansion after seeing an ad for the job of helping to take care of Philippe, who is a quadriplegic.
Driss doesn’t really want the job, he just needs his paper signed to show his parole officer that he is looking for work. He lets Philippe know that up front and not really in a very polite way. Not much is polite about Driss who has had a rough upbringing and was in jail for stealing.
Driss is in a for a surprise, though, because what Philippe’s assistant and others see as Driss’s rudeness, is refreshing to Philippe and he hires Driss to help care for him. He likes how Driss doesn’t pity him like others in his life. Driss doesn’t care about his disability and treats him as disrespectfully as he does everyone else.
Philippe let’s Driss know that part of the payment for the job includes a room in the mansion.
It’s a win-win for Driss who has recently been kicked out of his family’s home and needs money and a place to stay.
It’s also extremely overwhelming to him. At his family’s home he had to fight for time in the bathroom and to take a shower. At Philippe’s he is given his own bathroom with a large bathtub where he can relax and enjoy himself.
He definitely takes advantage of Philippe’s generosity, but he does begin to take his job seriously as he realizes all that it entails.
As the movie goes on the viewer learns how Philippe became a quadriplegic and more about his family, including his teenage daughter, who Driss often butts heads with, and how he became so rich.
We also learn more about Driss and his background, how he became involved in crime, his family, and what talents and dreams he has.
An unlikely friendship forms as Driss works to encourage Philippe to loosen up and live life again, while Philippe works to have Driss become a little more responsible.
Driss’s one big effort is to encourage Philippe to go on an in-person date with a woman he only writes letters to. Philippe is much more “sophisticated” and academic than Driss. He is “high society” and proper, but Driss dismisses all of this by asking him things like how he is able to feel pleasure if he can’t feel from the neck down, if he wants to be in a relationship again, and other off-colored topics that no one else in Philippe’s life would ask.
There is so much I loved about this movie, with the actors being at the top of that list.
They were both absolutely perfect for their roles.
Sly’s subtle and no-so-subtle expressions to convey his emotions were great. Cluzet’s calm delivery in response to Sly’s more boisterous personality was perfection.
The movie has many messages but for me it shoed how a life can be changed when a person is shown that they are worth more and capable of more than they think they are. Driss and Philippe do this for each other.
Philippe shows Driss he can do more than steal and scrape by for a living. He opens Driss’s eyes to his talents and his intelligence and even a kindness Driss didn’t know he had. Driss opens Philippe’s eyes to all that he still has left in life despite his hardships and trials.
Their friendship was unexpected and what both of them needed to survive.
One spoiler I will give to relieve any worries that this movie will take a dark turn and end with Philippe’s death (which was my big worry) is that the real-life Philippe and Driss remained friends for years. Philippe passed away only two years ago at the age of 72, and lived a full, rich life as a philanthropist, friend, father, and husband.
From what I read online, this movie is beloved in France..
According to an article on Wikipedia: Nine weeks after its release in France on 2 November 2011, it became the second highest-grossing French film in France, after the 2008 film Welcome to the Sticks. The film was voted the cultural event of 2011 in France with 52% of votes in a poll by Fnac. Until it was eclipsed in 2014 by Lucy, it was the most-viewed French film in the world with 51.5 million tickets sold.
Film critic Roger Ebert reviewed the film shortly after it came out.
He did and he didn’t like it.
“The success of the film, despite its problems, grows directly from its casting,” Ebert wrote. “Francois Cluzet, who acts only with his face and voice, communicates great feeling. Omar Sy is enormously friendly and upbeat. He reminded me of the African immigrant played by Souleymane Sy Savane in Ramin Bahrani’s “Goodbye Solo” — a film that avoided the traps that “The Intouchables” falls into.”
Ebert continues, “The appeal of a film like this, and it is perfectly legitimate, is that when we begin to feel affection for the characters, what makes them happy makes us happy. Caught up in the flow of events, we allow many assumptions to pass unchallenged. The writer-directors, Olivier Nakache and Eric Toledano, are cheerfully willing to go for broad gags, and their style is ingratiating. But at the end, by looking through the foreground details, what we’re being given is a simplistic reduction of racial stereotypes.”
Umm…okay? He wrote this a year before he died so maybe he was sick at the time.
Did I ever mention that sometimes I thought Ebert was a pretentious jerk? If not, then I have now.
I enjoyed this film immensely and did not see the things Ebert saw.
Up next, Erin and I will be watching Charade. We both have a ton going on with our families and have had to cancel the group watch of the movie we had scheduled for this Sunday. Instead, we will be watching it on our own and invite all of you to do the same and share your thoughts on our blog, and then link up here.
If you want to share your thoughts on any of our movies and have links to your blog you can share at the link up below.
She’s looking pretty good for someone her age, isn’t she?
The first Nancy Drew book, The Secret of the Old Clock, was released on April 28, 1930. Two more books, The Hidden Staircase and The Bungalow Mystery. Since then, there have been millions of books published, TV shows and movies produced, spin-off series launched, and culture impacted.
Who would have imagined that children’s stories about a teenage girl sleuth would launch a worldwide phenomenon? I doubt even Nancy’s creator Edward Stratemeyer would have imagined it.
The concept for Nancy Drew was created in the 1920s by Stratemeyer who also created the idea of The Hardy Boys. Well, if it wasn’t Stratemeyer alone who created her, it was a combination of him and those who worked with him at The Stratemeyer Syndicate.
The Syndicate was Stratemeyer’s brainchild, created after he’d already found success writing stories for children, starting when he was a child himself.
According to a 2018 article in The New Yorker, Stratemeyer was born in 1862 in New Jersey. He was the youngest of six children. As a child he spent a lot of time reading the popular rags-to-riches tales of Horatio Alger and William T. Adams (a.k.a. Oliver Optic). In his teens he bought his own printing press and created his own stories. At the age of 26 he sold his first story, “Victor Horton’s Idea” to Golden Days, a popular boys magazine at the time. He was paid $75 for the story and his father, who previously had seen his writing as a waste of time, suggested he write more.
He did write more, under a variety of pen names. Then he became an editor at Good News, another child magazine. Eventually he became a ghost writer for various children’s book authors, wrote many of his own, and turned out ideas for other authors to create characters. Many said he wasn’t a great writer, but he was great at ideas.
As his ideas began to sell books, he decided to form a syndicate or a publishing company which would produce books in an assembly line style. By 1910 his syndicate was producing ten or more juvenile titles with about a dozen different writers. By 1920 tens of millions of books produced by the Stratemeyer Syndicate were circulating with surveys showing that in 1926, ninety-eight percent of children listed at least one Stratemeyer produced book as their favorite.
According to the article in The New Yorker, this is how it worked:
“Stratemeyer would come up with a three-page plot for each book, describing locale, characters, time frame, and a basic story outline. He mailed this to a writer, who, for a fee ranging from fifty dollars to two hundred and fifty dollars, would write the thing up and—slam-bang!—send it back within a month. Stratemeyer checked the manuscripts for discrepancies, made sure that each book had exactly fifty jokes, and cut or expanded as needed. (Each series had a uniform length; the standard was twenty-five chapters.) He replaced the verb “said” with “exclaimed,” “cried,” “chorused,” and so forth, and made sure that cliffhangers punctuated the end of each chapter—usually framed as a question or an exclamation. Each series was published under a pseudonym that Stratemeyer owned. As Fortune later noted, it was good business for children to become attached to a name, but it would be bad business for that name to leave the syndicate with the ghostwriter.”
And this, eventually, would be where the name Carolyn Keene, the “author” of Nancy Drew came from. In reality, there was no Carolyn Keene. There were only a large number of writers who wrote the books the way Edward Stratemeyer, and later his daughter, Harriet, wanted, just like they had all the other titles and series.
Series produced by the Stratemeyer Syndicate included Tom Swift, Bobbsey Twins, Rover Boys, Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew Mysteries, Motor Boys and some 50 others.
Nancy Drew’s first book came out April 28, 1930. Twelve days later, Edward Stratemeyer, who had already published millions of books was dead of pneumonia at the age of 67.
His two daughters were left with the question of what to do with the company. Should they continue it? Sell it?
Eventually, the daughters would take over the business, but Harriet would become the driving force behind the company, including helping to make Nancy Drew a worldwide phenomenon.
Grossett and Dunlap produced the books produced by Stratemeyer and they greenlighted the Nancy Drew series after receiving this memo from him:
“These suggestions are for a new series for girls verging on novels. 224 pages, to retail at fifty cents. I have called this line the “Stella Strong Stories,” but they might also be called “Diana Drew Stories,” “Diana Dare Stories,” “Nan Nelson Stories,” “Nan Drew Stories” or “Helen Hale Stories.” […] Stella Strong, a girl of sixteen, is the daughter of a District Attorney of many years standing. He is a widower and often talks over his affairs with Stella and the girl was present during many interviews her father had with noted detectives and at the solving of many intricate mysteries. Then, quite unexpectedly, Stella plunged into some mysteries of her own and found herself wound up in a series of exciting situations. An up-to-date American girl at her best, bright, clever, resourceful and full of energy.”
One of the first writers of the series was Mildred Wirt Benson (just Mildred Wirt when she wrote the series). In fact, Stratemeyer had her in mind when he conceptualized the series.
She wrote twenty-three out of the first thirty books in the Nancy Drew series.
This would become a source of controversy in 1980 when Harriet tried to claim she had written all of the Nancy Drew books herself under the Carolyn Keene pseudonym. A court case involving Grosset & Dunlap and Simon & Schuster about who owned the rights to produce Nancy Drew books drew Mildred out of the woodwork and made Harriet admit she’d helped to write the books, and at one point rewrite them, but she was not the primary writer for most of the books.
When Harriet rewrote the Nancy Drew books in the 1950s she changed the sleuth’s personality from Benson’s original vision of her being more spunky and assertive than Benson had made her.
Mildred had been working for the Syndicate since 1926 when she had answered an ad at the age of 21. The ad had stated that the publishing house was looking for young writers who could come up with new ideas for juvenile books.
She wrote for other Stratemeyer series, but it was Nancy that would become the breakout success. Not that Mildred told a lot of people about her role in the books, partially because she was not supposed to as part of her agreement with the syndicate, who she worked with the syndicate until the early 1950s when management changes changed her role.
Mildred wrote the first Nancy Drew book at the age of 24.
In an interview with WTGE Public Media in Toledo, Ohio, the city where Mildred eventually settled down, she said she didn’t know when she was writing those first books that Nancy would become as big as she did.
“In fact, I don’t think anyone ever anticipated the success such as Nancy Drew has had,” she said. “But I did know that I was creating something that was an unusual book. I knew from the way I felt as I wrote that I was writing something that would be popular.”
While Harriet took the opportunity in 1973, after her sister’s death, to claim she helped her father create Nancy Drew, the 1980 court case blew that out of the water and Benson was subsequently credited with helping to create Nancy. Harriet was, however, a contributor to changes to the books Mildred wrote (taming Nancy Drew down readers say) and the promotion of them, as well as helping ghost writers write later editions.
Later Benson would name the second book in the original series, The Hidden Staircase, as her favorite book to write. Over the years she agreed to sign Nancy Drew books, but only those she had actually written.
Other titles Benson worked on for the syndicate included Kay Tracey and Dana Girls mysteries. After leaving the syndicate she wrote the Penny Park mystery series, which was about the daughter of a newspaper editor who was trying to become a newspaper reporter herself. She called Penny the favorite character she’d ever created, even over Nancy Drew, because she considered Penny “a better Nancy Drew than Nancy is.”
In 1944 Benson began writing for the Toledo Blade and continued to work there for 58 years, focusing mainly on journalism for the rest of her life. It’s why the Toledo Public Library held a Nancy Drew Convention on Friday to celebrate her 95 years.
Benson was a true Nancy Drew and you can read more about her in my separate post here.
Though Nancy Drew was written during the Great Depression, her books didn’t focus on the struggles of everyday citizens. Instead, Nancy was jetting off on trips, driving nice cars, taking flying lessons, learning new skills, being bold. She loved fashion but she also wasn’t afraid of getting her hands dirty.
She could wear pearls and a dress one evening and wear jeans and sneakers the next.
Nancy Drew books never focused on the macabre. Very few books discussed murders. There was very little description of violence. There was absolutely no sex show or even discussed. Nancy had a boyfriend (Ned Nickerson) but they didn’t even kiss.
In other words, Nancy didn’t drink, didn’t smoke, and didn’t go out with boys who did.
Nancy’s image was very important to Harriet, who wanted Nancy to be someone young women could look up to and strive to be like.
Cara Strickland wrote in a 2018 article for JTSOR Daily, that Nancy’s books were “intended to be safe for children, but also functioned as an escape from the heavy realities of their cultural moment.”
The mysteries in a Nancy Drew book were simple, yet also featured complex elements, such as red herrings and miscommunications.
They were fast-moving, full of minimal descriptions, and void of deep exchanges among the characters. They didn’t make you think much beyond what mystery was unfolding and how it was being solved.
The goal of the books wasn’t to address current events or push agendas. Their goal was simply to show the book’s heroes prevailing over evil and setting the world right again.
Young readers loved this, and now, many adults do as well.
The lack of mention of current events also made sure the books remained timeless.
Yes, the books, especially the earlier ones, are certainly dated. There are aspects that some in today’s world might see as culturally insensitive, old-fashioned, or out of touch.
They still, however, show us a young woman who is brave, curious, driven, and determined to solve mysteries to help other people.
From that first book in 1930 came 600 different titles, including spinoffs and updates. Later came movies (the first appearing in 1938), TV Shows, video games, comic books, podcasts, and, of course, merchandise of all kinds (lunch boxes, t-shirts, bookmarks, socks, etc. etc.).
Nancy Drew was originally published by Grosset & Dunlap, but during the lawsuit filed in 1980, as mentioned above, Simon & Schuster won the rights to publish Nancy Drew books after the first 56 because in 1979, the Syndicate had switched to Simon & Schuster. Grosset & Dunlap retained the publishing rights to the first 56 books and eventually Simon & Schuster purchased the Stratemeyer Syndicate in 1984.
The Nancy Drew Mysteries (original series) ran from 1930 to 2003 and produced 175 different titles. Nancy Drew Girl Detective ran from 2004 to 2012. The Nancy Drew Diaries started in 2013 and continue through today. Many fans of the original, more sanitized versions of Nancy, haven’t appreciated the more modernized version of Nancy. So much so that some of the series were discontinued.
The original Nancy Drew series, without the more modern social aspects the more modern series might have, remains the perfect escape from a world growing increasingly chaotic and frightening. Now, though, it isn’t only younger readers craving that escape. People, mainly women, of all ages, are losing themselves in Nancy Drew mystery books. Whether they are revisiting them from when they were young girls or finding them for the first time, they are filling a void that other books can’t for them.
“I guess I would say that I’m a fan of the Nancy Drew book series because it is a comfort to me,” Avery wrote to me this weekend. “Reading the books now as an adult instantly transports me back to a simpler time, when I was a girl, and Nancy was a constant companion to me, whether at school, on a road trip, or just laying on a blanket in the backyard on a sunny day and reading one of her mysteries. Nancy Drew showed me from a young age that women can be capable, skilled and smart. She modeled all of the best qualities: how to be a good friend, a good daughter and a good detective! And it always struck me as really cool that my mother and grandmother, who got me into the series, read the books before I did and it was something we could share and talk about together.”
On her website, Avery shares: “In Nancy, I saw a young woman who was not only capable, smart and resourceful when she solved mysteries, but a character that shared my strawberry blonde or “titian” hair color. Back in April 2023, my dad and I happened to go to an estate sale where I bought 70+ Nancy Drew books I had never read or seen before–later paperbacks from the 1990’s–and the idea for @TrueDrewPodcast was born!”
Laura Puckett, a reader and mom, also started reading Nancy when she was young.
“My memories of Nancy Drew started when I was quite young,” she writes. “Right after piano lessons my mother would take me to the library, and I would take the direct path to the sgelf with all the yellow book spines. Finding the next mystery that I hadn’t read, I would barely contain my excitement while looking at the cover to see which adventure I’d get to go along with Nancy on. These books accompanied me on road trips, in my hammock, in my bed before sleep, and so many other places. They are a pleasant part of my childhood and helped me fall in love with reading.”
Mystery author Trixie Silvertale started reading Nancy Drew books when she was five or six years old.
“It was very meaningful to read about a female main character. The fact that she was intelligent and broke a few rules, but did the right thing in the end, was a really great role model… Even though I didn’t realize it at the time! I always think of those books fondly.”
Are the stories in a Nancy Drew Mystery earth-shattering or life-changing? Not usually.
Are they hard-hitting and full of globally impactful wisdom? Nope.
Are they full of gritty stories and swoony romantic scenes? Not at all.
And all those reasons are why so many readers still find themselves reaching for them at libraries, bookstores, and thrift shops today. 95 years after they were first introduced.
