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We finally got some chilly weather this week, which I don’t like if I have to go out in, but love when I can be home, snuggled under a blanket with a good book. I had told myself I wouldn’t read Christmas-themed books until after Thanksgiving but this week I broke out a series of Christmas novellas, partially because I need to review them for Netgalley and partially because I just needed a light-hearted escape and feel like I’ll need that escape for a long time to come for various reasons.
How is the weather where you are at? It is it time to snuggle under the covers yet? Or maybe where you live that time never comes because it is always pretty warm. Either way, I hope you are able to find some time to relax and decompress if you need to.
Without further ado, let us get on with our most clicked post for this week, which was:
I’m so glad you are here and participating in our weekly link-up of family-friendly, fun, educational, interesting, crafty, fashionable, and whatever else posts. I hope you’ll tell your followers about our post (feel free to copy and paste the graphic) and visit the blogs in the link-up.
Now it is your turn to link up your favorite posts. They can be fashion, lifestyle, DIY, food, etc. All we ask is that they be family friendly. You can link up posts from last week or even from years ago. You can share up to three links each week.
We are always looking for additional hosts so let us know if you want to help out and we are also looking for more links from fashion bloggers so let your fashion bloggers know!
Erin from Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs and I have been watching movies from September through November for our Comfy, Cozy Cinema.
For this week Erin suggested Wes Anderson’s The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014), which I had never seen and wasn’t sure I wanted to until I watched the trailer and thought it looked like a fun ride. It was a fun ride but it was also so much more. It was mildly offensive to me in some places and heart wrenchingly endearing in others. Overall, it had me laughing and then a few minutes later I would feel a peculiar sadness because I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to feel sad or impressed with how Anderson can twist social commentary up into a neat, comical, satirical package that sends the mind spiraling off onto paths it did not originally plan to take when it pushed play.
The best way to explain this movie is bizarrely ridiculous, quirky, strange and fun while also being oddly delightful. It is not, however, “clean” in parts so if you don’t like movies with some nudity, crude references, or swear words, this is not the movie for you. It is not usually the movie for me either since I don’t watch a ton of rated R movies, but I do, on occasion, watch some rated R movies – so I am not a total puritan over here.
The movie is a story within a story. It is also full of so many famous actors it’s a bit overwhelming. Instead of saying who all is in this movie, one could really say, “who isn’t in this movie?”
Among the actors in the movie are Ralph Fiennes, Edward Norton, Adrien Brody, Tony Revolori, Tilda Swinton, Jason Swartzman, Owen Wilson, William Defoe, F. Murray Abraham, Saoirse Ronan, Jeff Goldblum, Jude Law, Harvey Keitel, Tom Wilkinson, Bill Murray, and …many, many more
We begin with and author, portrayed by Tom Wilkinson as an adult, talking about his time at a hotel called The Grand Budapest Hotel and then we switch to a younger version of himself portrayed by Jude Law. Law is leaning on the front desk of The Grand Budapest Hotel, which has seen better days. There is an older gentleman in the lobby of the hotel and Law’s character learns that he is the owner of the hotel.
Eventually the two end up talking and we find out how the owner – a man named Zero Moustafa – came to own the hotel. So, we are being told a story by Law’s future self, who is being told a story by Zero’s future self. Zero as an older man is portrayed by F. Murray Abraham.
Zero tells of how he became a lobby boy under the tutelage of Monsieur Gustave H. (Fiennes), the hotel’s concierge, an eccentric man who liked to sleep with many of his guests.
One of those guests was a very wealthy Octogenarian (Swinton ) who ends up passing away. After she passes away, Gustave tells Zero (the younger zero is played by Tony Revolori) he must come with him to see the woman in her casket and say farewell to her. While at the mansion, Gustave finds out a will reading is going on and he has been bequeathed a very expensive painting called Boy With Apple.
The wealthy woman’s son (Adrien Brody) doesn’t want Gustave to have the painting and tells Gustave and Zero to leave the room. They do and Gustave takes Zero to see the painting. They are alone in the room so Zero suggests they steal the painting. They do and take off back to the Grand Budapest Hotel.
Unfortunately, the police arrive the next day – not to retrieve the painting but instead to charge Gustave with the murder of the wealthy woman.
All sorts of craziness ensue after the arrest (as if things haven’t already been crazy) and the friendship between Zero and Gustave deepens as zero works to help Gustave clear his name.
There is a lot of humor in this movie but also a dark undercurrent of commentary about the state of the world throughout the years in relation to wars, greed, and power.
I don’t know how to explain a Wes Anderson film if you haven’t seen one, but it is essentially like watching people act with little emotion yet still conveying emotions that make you think.
I’ve only seen drama movies with Ralph Fiennes so seeing him in a more comedic role was different for me, but, like Erin, I can’t imagine anyone else pulling this role off. I mean, maybe if I thought hard enough about it I could, but at this point, I couldn’t.
The script for this film was written by Anderson and Hugo Guinness, and, according to Wikipedia (reliable source? I’m not sure.), “Anderson customarily employs a troupe of longtime collaborators—Bill Murray, Adrien Brody, Edward Norton, Owen Wilson, Tilda Swinton, Harvey Keitel, Willem Dafoe, Jeff Goldblum, and Jason Schwartzman have worked on one or more of his projects. Norton and Murray immediately signed when sent the script.”
For some, this movie might not seem like a comfy or cozy movie and I get that. It’s more quirky than cozy. Like Erin mentioned to be yesterday (when she showed me part of her post), though, the part of the movie that is cozy is the friendship between Gustave and Zero. Zero is sort of yanked into Gustave’s world and become his friend without even knowing what it is going on, but it is still a friendship. Zero looks up to Gustave both as an employer and a person.
I think the theme of the movie can be somewhat explained with one of the popular quotes: You see, there are still faint glimmers of civilization left in this barbaric slaughterhouse that was once known as humanity.” As well as the extension of that, “There are still faint glimmers of civilization left in this barbaric slaughterhouse that was once known as humanity… He was one of them. What more is there to say?”
Have you ever seen this one? What did you think of it?
Also, we will be watching Chocolat, or next movie, together via a watch party at 7 p.m. on Sunday, November 17 and YOU are invited. We will be pressing play together on the movie and chatting in our Discord server, which you can join here: https://discord.gg/TpWNxJ4Z
I really hope you will join us! If not, it will just be Erin and I chatting with each other and that’s not all bad either. Haha!
Lately I’ve been watching very old movies that are not well known and really enjoying them. I’m not watching them for anything other than for myself, but I thought I’d tell my blog readers about them in case you are interested as well. Many of them really hold up.
I’ve been watching these movies either on Tubi (so there are commercials) or on Amazon.
A few weeks ago, I watched one called A Woman of Distinction starring Rosalind Russell and Ray Milland. I watched it on Tubi, but I saw yesterday that it is also on YouTube for free.
I had never heard of it before, but it was very good.
I loved the cameo in the beginning by Lucille Ball. She delivered a one-liner that was in her vein of humor and cracked me up. It was her only appearance in the whole movie, but it kicked off the tone of the rest of the movie.
The movie is about Susan Manning Middlecott, the dean of a college in Connecticut. She is one of the first women in this type of position in the country during this time (the movie was released in 1950) and she was a hero during the war, so there is quite a bit of fascination about her among the public.
A magazine article is written about her in Time Magazine and in it she declares that there is no room in her ambitious, career-driven life for romance.
On the other side of the country an astronomy professor has just landed on American soil, ready to present several lectures about – well, astronomy.
Ray Milland plays Professor Alec Stevenson, who is also a war hero but from England.
The public relations firm promoting his lectures needs a way to make his lectures more appealing to potential attendees and begins to brainstorm ways to draw attention to him. Maybe his accolades from his days in the British Army?
He shoots that down. He does, however, ask them where he can find a jeweler who might have sold a locket that he has in his possession. It belonged to an American nurse and was handed to him by a dying soldier. He wants to return the locket to her.
The woman with the PR company – Teddy Evans (Janis Cater)‑ is intrigued. This could be just the story to get some attention for the professor’s lecturers.
Teddy tags along with him to the jewelers and when she learns that the locket once belonged to Susan, she decides to leak a story to the media suggesting that Susan and Stevenson were once an item.
An article is placed in a newspaper by Teddy without either of their consent and it turns their world upside down. Teddy is deliciously evil, by the way, and played perfectly by Carter. Susan thinks the professor did it himself to get attention for his lectures so she boards a train to Boston to confront him, but instead runs into him, not knowing who he is.
Eventually both of them have to try to explain that there is no romance between them and never was. They’d never even met until this story was falsely put in the papers.
This movie features one of the most hilarious scenes I’ve ever seen in a movie involving a college student and Russell in a car. My dad is not a movie watcher, but I convinced him to watch this one with me and my mom after I had seen it and he really enjoyed that scene and the rest of the movie.
In addition to that scene, the man who played Susan’s dad was very funny.
There were several twists and turns to this one. There is romance, of course, but it wasn’t over the top and was actually very sweet.
I am not sure if I really agreed with the ending of the movie or with some of the things her father said (like she wasn’t a complete woman without a man.), but I still liked the movie overall. As for what her dad said, um…no…but I think what he really meant is that it would be nice for her to have a family and it would make her feel whole to have a family. Not that a man makes her feel whole. Either way it was awkwardly worded.
This movie was apparently one of many that Rosalind Russell starred in where she was a career-driven woman made to feel bad about being one, instead of focusing on how she could be both a career woman and have a family. I’ve always found it odd that our society seems to think you can either only be a mother or only be a career woman and if you choose one then you must ridicule the other. Movie makers in the 40s and 40s certainly seemed to think this way.
Rosalind Russell’s husband felt Rosalind did both well. After her death he wrote, “Rosalind’s ability to play a career woman who eventually succumbed to true love was consistent with her own life. She was a successful actress and an exemplary wife and mother.”
An article on TCM provided these views of the movie:
Variety called A Woman of Distinction, “a loosely-tied grabbag of screwball and nonsensical doings about two warring-but-loving pedagogues. Sans much logic, the Rosalind Russell-Ray Milland teamwork is good.”
The New York Times critic Bosley Crowther called it a “custard-pie farce,” with Russell “behaving like Mabel Normand in a Keystone comedy. She is letting herself be sprayed with water, smeared with mud, tumbled backwards out of chairs and generally booted and battered. Anything for a laugh.”
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 past week was an interesting one in some ways and a regular one in others.
On Tuesday I had a not-so-fun experience at the polling place in my little tiny town. Lesson learned to mail-in ballots from now on. It had nothing to do, by the way, with who I voted for. It just had to do with adults who were rude to my child and it really ticked me off. This paragraph is completely unrelated to politics other than I was in a polling place for an election.
Thursday was better, though, because it was our son’s 18th birthday. My neighbor asked how I felt having an 18-year-old.
I sent her this gif:
Then I told her I was also very proud of my son because he’s grown into a wonderful young man.
It’s all gone by so insanely fast, though. There is so much I miss about him being younger but so much that is also great about this age.
We bought him a War Hammer model set and he’s having a blast painting them. It is a new hobby for him. Little Miss and I traveled to my parents on Thursday to help make apple pies for The Boy because he prefers pie over cake.
My mom ended up coming down with a sinus infection that triggered a flare of her fibromyalgia while we were there. It was a little scary as she was in excruciating pain all over and having some trouble walking. That night she spiked a fever.
We still had a nice day and the next day she was much better and the fever was gone. None of us can really understand why whatever she had only lasted a day and went away, but I do know I prayed a lot that day and night for her healing.
The pie, by the way, was “great” according to The Boy who doesn’t easily give compliments out so Little Miss and I, with my parent’s directions, pulled it out after all.
Yesterday The Boy and The Husband had fun during a father-son day in a city about an hour away. They visited a comic book shop where he picked up some more figures to paint.
They then walked around town, visiting the local university and a used book shop where my husband picked this up for me:
He knows me way too well. That’s an original 1941 Hardy Boys book. I can not wait to read it – as long as the mildew smell doesn’t mess with my sinuses. Sometimes it does and sometimes it doesn’t.
I forgot to mention that on Friday we had an art class and then drove the 30-minutes north to pick up our groceries.
Yesterday I spent the day relaxing with an old movie and a new cozy mystery show and also worked on the final chapters of Gladwynn Grant Shakes the Family Tree.
I definitely am not used to Daylight Savings yet I’ve come to realize. I was so tired all day yesterday, for one, and then at one point I yawned and thought how I could go to bed soon. That’s when I looked at my laptop clock and it said 6:42.
“6:42? For real??” I cried. “I thought it was 8!!”
I suppose my body will get used to it – you know, by spring when we spring forward.
What I/we’ve been Reading
I am reading The Hound of the Baskervilles by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Christy by Catherine Marshall, and The Maestro’s Missing Melody by Amy Walsh
The Marlow Murder Club by Robert Thorogood. Yes, I enjoyed it and yes I just started the series and no it does not keep to the book.
The Secret of the Wooden Lady by Carolyn Keene (Nancy Drew)
The Farmer’s Son by John Connell
The Husband is reading The Housemaid by Frieda McFadden
What We watched/are Watching
This week Erin and I watched Bringing Up Baby with Cary Grant and Katherine Hepburn for our Comfy, Cozy Cinema.
I watched Harvey with Jimmy Stewart on my own.
I also watched the first two episodes of The Marlow Murder Club on Amazon (that is all that is out so far).
What I’m Writing
I sound like a broken record but I am finishing Gladwynn Grant Shakes the Family Tree.
I am listening to The Shepherd’s Abiding by Jan Karon on Audible.
I am also listening to this song my Downhere:
Photos from Last Week
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 so glad you are here and participating in our weekly link-up of family-friendly, fun, educational, interesting, crafty, fashionable, and whatever else posts. I hope you’ll tell your followers about our post (feel free to copy and paste the graphic) and visit the blogs in the link-up.
Now it is your turn to link up your favorite posts. They can be fashion, lifestyle, DIY, food, etc. All we ask is that they be family friendly. You can link up posts from last week or even from years ago. You can share up to three links each week.
We are always looking for additional hosts so let us know if you want to help out and we are also looking for more links from fashion bloggers so let your fashion bloggers know!
Erin from Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs and I have been watching Comfy Cozy mmovies This week we had to switch up the movie we were watching because Amazon and Frevee and all the other free streaming services removed Skylark, which is the second movie in the Sarah, Plain, and Tall series.
Instead we chose Bringing Up Baby at my suggestion because I wanted something funny and goofy but also cozy.
I’ve seen this movie twice before and it is absolute chaos and craziness. Everyone except poor Cary Grant is off their rocker and it is glorious.
The movie stars Cary Grant and Katherine Hepburn. Katherine is absolutely batty in this film which makes it all even more hilarious.
Cary Grant’s character (Dr. David Huxley) is a paleontologist who accidentally runs into Katherine Hepburn’s character (Susan Vance) a totally nuts socialite who immediately latches on to Cary and decides she’s going to become obsessed with him and make his life a living hell.
In the beginning of the movie, David has been building a dinosaur skeleton for years and the last piece of it has just been found. He and his fiancé – Alice Swallow – are thrilled that the intercostal clavical has been found and will be arriving soon in the mail. Alice – a very uptight, proper women who says the point of their marriage will be to only advance his research and not for love — also knows that more money needs to be secured for his research so she tells David he must go golfing with an important doner.
This is where he meets crazy Susan who tries to steal his car, takes off with him riding on the footboard while he tries to tell her it is his car, and then leads him on various crazy adventures. He runs into her again at a dinner where he is trying to secure a donation from a woman named Elizabeth Randall who is considering a $1 million donation.
The scenes at the dinner party include this a hilarious scene where Katherine’s dress gets ripped and she and Cary have to make their way through a crowded dining room with Cary against her back to make sure nothing is scene. It is so classic and hilarious and always has me laughing.
David thinks he has shaken Susan loose after a bizarre journey with her where she tries to wake up the doner he’d been trying to meet at the golf course and David ends up knocking him out with a rock.
The next morning the clavical arrives and David is thrilled, but somehow Susan gets his number and, thinking he is a zoologist rather than a palentologist, she asks him how she should take care of a leopard named Baby that her brother sent her from Africa.
David promptly tells her he doesn’t care about her Leopard and doesn’t know anything about it, but when she trips and falls while on the call, he thinks she’s being attacked. She’s thrilled he thinks this and hams it up even more, which sends him flying out the door to her apartment to “rescue” her.
Of course, when he gets there, Susan is fine, but yet another plot twist is coming up when Susan says she needs to go to Connecticut with the leopard because she doesn’t want her aunt to find the leopard there when she decides to visit. The aunt is going to give Susan $1 million someday and if the aunt finds the leopard there, she won’t give her the money.
So Susan decides they need to take Baby to the country in Connecticut and begs David to take her. Somehow David gets caught up in taking her, even though it is his wedding day and he needs to be in New York to get married. While in Connecticut, Susan realizes she is in love with David.
I should also mention that to calm Baby they have to sing, “I Can’t Give You Anything But Love, Baby.”
The movie is – as I said earlier – absolute chaos from start to finish.
Cary and Katherine are the perfect pair to play against each other in a screwball comedy and had some experience with it already since they also starred opposite each other in Sylvia Scarlett (1935), and Holiday , which released the same year as Bringing Up Baby (1938). They also starred together in The Philadelphia Story in 1940.
This is a risqué movie in many ways with a lot of double entendre moments and innuendos that are clean but a bit sassy. I suppose some people could make the double entendre moments more crude, but there are people who can do that with anything.
I wanted to know about the leopard that was used in the film and while looking up information about it, I thought it was interesting to read that the Jack Russell Terrier in the film was the same dog used to play Asta in The Thin Man film series, which is a favorite series of mine. The dog’s real name was Skippy incidentally. The tame leopard (Baby) and another leopard (you will have to watch the movie to know what that is all about) were both played by a trained leopard named Nissa.
The trainer was a Swedish woman named Olga Celeste, who would stand by with a whip during shooting. According to Wikipedia, at one point, when Hepburn spun around, her skirt twirled and Nessa lunged at her. She was subdued when Celeste cracked the whip. After that Hepburn wore heavy perfume to keep Nessa Calm but Grant was terrified of Nissa and a stand in had to be brought in with his scenes with the leopard.
This movie has some terribly hilarious quotes including:
Cary: “In moments of quiet, I am strangely drawn to you, but well there haven’t been any moments of quiet with you.”
Cary: “It never will be clear while she’s explaining it.”
Cary: “You don’t understand: this is my car!”
Katherine: “You mean this is your car? Your golf ball? Your car? Is there anything in the world that doesn’t belong to you?
Cary: “Yes, thank heaven, YOU!”
Katherine:” Anyway, David, when they find out who we are they’ll let us out.”
Cary: “When they find out who you are they’ll pad the cell.”
The movie was directed by Howard Hawks. The screenplay was written by Dudley Nicholas and Hagar Wilde and was based on a short story by Wilde that appeared in Collier’s Magazine in 1937.
Have you ever seen this chaotic comedy? What did you think of it?
Next week we will be watching Grand Budapest Hotel and the following week we will be having a group watch of Chocolate on November 17 at a time to be announced.
I’m sorry this post is late, but we had to change our movie this week for the Comfy, Cozy Cinema because it turns out that Skylark is no longer streaming anywhere.
Erin and I decided to change the movie to Bringing Up Baby — a screwball comedy with Katherine Hepburn and Cary Grant. This is streaming on Tubi for free and several other streaming services. It is also on YouTube for free, but I can’t guarantee the quality of it.
If you decide to watch the movie and write about it, you can share your thoughts with us on our link on Thursday.
Also, we will be watching Chocolat together on November 17 at a time to be announced. We will be pressing play together on the movie and chatting in our Discord server, which you can join here: https://discord.gg/TpWNxJ4Z
Today the theme was top ten covers with [an item of your choice] n the front and I chose top ten covers with cats because I have a lot of books with cats on the front. That’s probably because I read a lot of cozy mysteries and cozy mystery readers and authors like cats in their books and on their covers. Sometimes they barely mention a cat in the book but they still put a cat on the cover. Cozy mystery readers and authors also like dogs but today I went with bookcovers with cats on them.
The Cat Who Sniffed Glue by Lilian Jackson Braun
When I looked through my The Cat Who books I was actually surprised by how many of the covers didn’t have cats on them. They had paw prints, but no actual cats. It looks like there are some knock-off covers online but those are not the official covers so I did not include them. A couple of the books, such as this one, did have cats on them, though.
2. The Kamogawa Food Detectives by Hisashi Kashiwai
I have not read this one yet but I hope to this winter. I have had it on my list for a while and planned to read it but got distracted by some other books first. Yes, the story of my life.
2. Mums and Mayhem by Amanda Flowers.
The cat is part of the story in this series but not a huge part. The fox pictured here is more a part than the cat.
4. Read and Buried by Eva Gates
I’ve only read one book in this series and it was pretty good. From what I remember, the cat was a big part of it.
5. A Fatal Footnote by Margaret Loudon
This one was on my fall TBR but I don’t think I’m going to get to it so I am pushing it off until winter. My daughter picked this one out because of the cat, which looks a lot like our cat Scout.
6. Apple Cider Slaying by Julie Anne Lindsey
I don’t really remember there being cats in this book but I liked the cats on the cover at least.
7. We’ll Prescribe You A Cat by Syou Ishida
I have not read this one yet, but it is on my list and I like the name because cats often help me when I don’t feel well or I am down. Sometimes they drive me crazy too.
8. Gladwynn Grant Gets Her Footing by Lisa R. Howeler
Yes this is my book but it has a cat on the front so…I shamelessly added it. It is on sale on Amazon and can also be read on Kindle Unlimited if you are interested. *wink*
9. Save the Cat! Writes a Novel by Jessica Brody
This is a writing craft book that I have read part of and would like to read more of but have put it somewhere and can’t find it.
10. The Crime That Binds by Laurie Cass
I’ve had this one on my shelf for over a year so I really hope to get it read soon. This series looks so good and I am interested to see how the cat fits in to the story.
How about you? Do you have books with either cats on the cover or a lot of books with similar images?
It’s time for our Sunday morning chat. On Sundays, I ramble about what’s been going on, whatthe rest of the familyand I have been reading and watching, andwhat I’ve been writing. Some weeks I share what I am listening to.
Today I sit here as a parent amazed I didn’t spend most of yesterday in the emergency room after my 10-year-old daughter took fall after fall while riding scooters and playing with her friend.
The first one I saw (more may have happened before) was her coming off a steep hill, full speed, on the scooter, hitting the side along the road, and flying off the scooter, meeting the ground with her face. I actually didn’t fully see that one. I was recording the ride and saw the aftermath of her holding her wrist and saying, “That’s it. I’m done.”
She wasn’t done though and an hour or so later she and her friend were back at it and this time she swerved to avoid our cat and ended up on her knees on the pavement.
That incident was after she’d been rocking back and forth on a stool she was sitting on to eat her supper and the stool tipped and she landed on her arms on the legs of it. That time I was certain she’d broken her arm because a long red mark spread up her skin.
“This is it,” I said to myself and then did the mental gymnastics of how I would drive my husband’s big, ridiculous truck up to the ER since he’d taken the car to work, and tell the mom of Little Miss’s friend to meet us there, while explaining it wasn’t her kid this time. Her kids have a history of breaking bones. Her one son broke both his arms in the span of a month.
“I’m okay,” Little Miss said after a few minutes of rubbing the arm.
And back she went to eating her supper.
Later they rode the scooters, she skinned her knee, and when it got so cold we were all shivering and so dark I worried any cars coming up our street would run over them we went inside where she promptly tripped over the dog and almost fell into the coffee table and then turned on a lap and while walking away from it it fell and almost hit her in the head.
At that point, I felt like we should invest in bubble wrap and wrap it around her several times.
She was so tired last night she fell asleep in the middle of reading Harry Potter which was nice because usually I have to argue with her and tell her to put her book down and go to bed.
Zooma The Wonder Dog was also exhausted after having a long walk earlier in the day with The Husband, chasing the girls up and down the street, barking crazily at our neighbors, and almost getting run over by The Husband while he was backing out of the drive to head to work.
Today Little Miss is limping and sore. Luckily, she doesn’t have to do anything or go anywhere.
We are staying home as a family since The Husband actually has a day he doesn’t have to go anywhere.
Next week we have to go somewhere at least once place every day and The Husband has meetings or play rehearsals every single night. On Monday we have an appointment at the vet for our dog. On Tuesday we have art class. On Wednesday night Little Miss has Kid’s Club at a local church. On Thursday – oh, wait. I think we don’t have to go anywhere on Thursday. On Friday we have art class again and grocery pick up, or I might pick the groceries up on Saturday to avoid as much running since I did the art class and pick up this past Friday and it made it a very long day.
By the way, if you are new here, I call my husband The Husband for the sake of the blog as a joke. I nicknamed my son The Boy for the blog because The Husband jokingly calls him that sometimes so then I thought I’d call my husband The Husband to be funny. He does have a real name, of course, and since my name is the domain of this blog, anyone could find it out if they truly cared to know. And everyone who knows us knows his name and that I don’t walk around calling out, “The Husband, where are you?”
What I/we’ve been Reading
I’m juggling three good books and finding it hard to switch between them because I am liking each of them.
The Marlow Murder Club by Robert Thorogood
The Maestro’s Missing Melody by Amy Walsh
Grime Doesn’t Pay by Jay Larkin
Two of them are mystery books – one involves murder, the other doesn’t (or at least not yet). The Maestro’s Missing Melody does have a mystery in it but isn’t hard hitting or a strict mystery book.
I’ve decided to share a description for each in case you are interested:
The Marlow Murder Club:
Judith Potts is 77 years old and blissfully happy. She lives on her own in a faded mansion just outside Marlow, there’s no man in her life to tell her what to do or how much whisky to drink, and to keep herself busy she sets crosswords for The Times newspaper.
One evening, while out swimming in the Thames, Judith witnesses a brutal murder. The local police don’t believe her story, so she decides to investigate for herself and is soon joined in her quest by Suzie, a salt-of-the-earth dog-walker, and Becks, the prim and proper wife of the local vicar.
Together, they are the Marlow Murder Club.
When another body turns up, they realize they have a real-life serial killer on their hands. And the puzzle they set out to solve has become a trap from which they might never escape….
The Maestro’s Missing Melody (this is part of a series but there is no reason to read them in order. I’ve read two so far and they are not connected in any major way):
For aspiring musician and college student McKay Moonlight, winning a summer internship with Scottish master fiddler Huntley Milne was a dream come true. When a last-minute change moved the internship program from the Scottish Highlands of her ancestors to a village she’d never heard of along the River Deben, McKay was determined to make the best of it. However, she didn’t expect to make such a terrible first impression on her summer mentor.
Hosting a bunch of college students was the last thing Maestro Huntley Milne needed. He was already up to his ears in problems, with Aunt BeeBee being placed in a care home, resulting in him having emergency custody of his tween nephew and niece. Then he met McKay Moonlight, and the chaos really began.
Grime Doesn’t Pay:
Fired from her boring office position, Jenny lands her dream job at Aunt Audrey’s Angels cleaning agency, where she pursues her twin passions of cleaning houses and solving mysteries. Inquisitive, resourceful and persistent, the cleaner-turned-sleuth stumbles across mysteries wherever she works, including theft, extortion and fraud. Along the way, she enlists the help of a police detective, a private investigator and an attractive lawyer. When Jenny herself is framed for a jewelry heist, she needs all her courage and tenacity to outsmart the criminals and reveal the truth.
I didn’t finish anything this week. I’ve just been reading along. A couple of weeks ago I finished one called The Case of The Innocent Husband, but I don’t think I mentioned that here. It was pretty good.Up
I have a tentative November TBR list that includes finishing the books I am currently reading and then adding The Secret of the Wooden Lady (A Nancy Drew Mystery), The Hound of the Baskervilles by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Miracle in a Dry Season by Sarah Loudin Thomas, and Christy by Catherine Marshall.
Will I get through all these? Eh, probably not but at least The Hound of the Baskervilles, which I am reading with The Boy for our British Literature class.
This week Little Miss has been reading Harry Potter, The Sorcerer’s Stone. The Husband is reading a book by Michael Connelly that I forgot the name of. The Boy is going to be starting The Hound of the Baskervilles with me this week.
What We watched/are Watching
This past week I watched Dracula for the Comfy, Cozy Cinema and wrote about it on the blog. Up next for Comfy, Cozy Cinema was supposed to be Skylark. Big problem. It has been removed from all streaming services when I thought it was still there! Oops! That was my mistake. So Erin and I decided to watch Bringing Up Baby with Cary Grant and Katherine Hepburn, which I have watched a couple of times and enjoyed. My dad is not a movie watcher but even he sat and watched this one and laughed so hard during it. This one is streaming on various services.
I’ll put up a post later today or tomorrow to let people know we’ve had to switch movies.
The other day I watched a movie called The Rage of Paris. I don’t know if the name matched the movie, but it was so funny and just fun to watch. It was made in 1938 but it really held up great.
I also watched a movie of Detective Kitty O’Day. That one was interesting and only about an hour long. It was released in 1941.
What I’m Writing
I will be finishing up Gladwynn Grant Shakes the Family tree this week and I am so excited! It has been a loooong haul on this one but it has also been a ton of fun. I’m already brainstorming ideas for book four.
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.
