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.
Autumn has arrived here and, unfortunately, we are losing a lot of our leaves before they can change this year. We still have some pretty trees and our yard is covered in pretty orange and yellow leaves.
The nights are getting colder and the cats want to cuddle more to try to keep themselves warm.
Last year we started lighting the wood stove in mid-October but hopefully, we can make it until November this year because we want to make sure we have enough wood to make it through winter. We have heating oil but we hate to turn the heat on until it gets very, very cold. As I am starting to write this Saturday night, it is actually very, very cold with a temp of 52. It’s supposed to drop as low as 44 by early morning.
We had a semi-busy week last week but we don’t have much planned for next week, other than schoolwork.
What I/we’ve been Reading
I am currently reading The Secret of Red Gate Farm by Carolyn Keene (A Nancy Drew Mystery) and A Handcrafted Murder by Isabella Alan.
I also started The Case of the Innocent Husband (A Mac and Sam Mystery Book 1)
Move Your Blooming Corpse by D.E. Ireland. I enjoyed this one and stayed up late Friday night to finish it while my cat laid on my chest and tried to lay on the book as well.
The Cat Who Brought Down the House by Lilian Jackson Braun
The Marlow Murder Clubby Robert Thorogood
Little Miss and I are reading The Four Story Mistake by Elizabeth Enright via Hoopla.
She has also started the first book in the Harry Potter series, which she somehow thought she wasn’t allowed to read until she was 10. I’m not sure where she got that in her head, but she’s started it now that she is 10.
What We watched/are Watching
This week I watched Kiki’s Delivery Service as part of Erin of Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs and my Comfy, Cozy Cinema.
Up next we will be watching Blithe Spirit (1945).
This past week I also watched part of a Nancy Drew movie, Just A Few Acres Farm on YouTube and more Lovejoy.
What I’m Writing
I’m almost done with Gladwynn Grant Shakes The Family Tree.
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 week Little Miss turned 10 and that’s pretty surreal for me.
It truly does seem like this time with her has gone by so incredibly fast.
It seems like just yesterday – or at least only a year ago – she was pulling herself up to a standing position on her little chair at 9 months old, ready to walk so she could follow her older brother.
She didn’t crawl.
She only rolled over once.
She didn’t even Army crawl.
All she wanted to do was walk and she did – very early and very fast.
She was very short, like her mom, so there were many people who couldn’t believe what they were seeing. How could she already be walking?
I don’t know either but Little Miss has always been a very determined little girl who knows what she wants and how to get it.
We celebrated her on her actual birthday with a trip to an area restaurant because she likes to go to restaurants. The food at the place is very good but The Husband and I had only visited there as a couple and hadn’t taken the kids yet. This was their first experience and they really enjoyed themselves. It was a rainy, misty, chilly day and most of the businesses in the small town we drove to were closed so we stopped by a free little library and then kept going home.
Thursday we all had dinner at my parents’ where we also played charades because Little Miss loves to do that.
Yesterday Little Miss had a sleepover with a friend. Remember when I said we weren’t doing any more sleepovers? Well, it was the only thing she’d asked for for her birthday and it was only with one friend.
We also took them roller skating, which my parents paid for as her gift because she likes to go skating, but we just don’t get around to take her to the roller rinks near us like we should. That is probably because there are three roller rinks in our area and they are all an hour away in one direction or the other. I am glad that my mom prompted us to do this because it really was a lot of fun for the kids.
I haven’t visited the rink we ended up going to for more than 25 years, so I wasn’t sure what to expect but the place really looked great. It is located along a lakeside campground, and it has been there for years and year and years. I don’t know how many because it didn’t say on their site, but I know it’s been a very long time because I was probably about Little Miss’s age when I first visited it.
I would definitely say that they have renovated over the years based on how great the skating rink floor looks, but some of it feels the same – the big round table-like seats where you sit to put your skates on, the booths where you can sit to eat, the garbage food they served (microwaved pizza, microwaved nachos and cheese, candy and sodas).
The music they were playing was from the 90s and early 2000s so it felt even more like my teen years.
My friend – the mom of Little Miss’s friend — was there as well (she brought another one of her kids with her), and we were both chuckling at some of the music and our memories wrapped around them.
When I was a kid, we visited a different skating rink (now closed) with our church a couple of times, and my dad remembers how one night one of the ladies from the church sprained her ankle, my brother broke his thumb, and someone else was injured too, but we can’t remember how. What Dad can remember is that a lot of people came into church the next morning limping and groaning.
There was a roller rink in the town we used to live in that was over 100 years old. It is still going and still owned by the same family. I think we might try to visit that one again sometime this year, but the kids who visit that rink are a little rougher around the edges – shall we say. I visited it for one of the night skates with my nieces one year many years ago and there were these little cliques and gangs in various corners of the rink. It was like the social hub for the area teenagers in many ways. There was the cool kids group and the not-so-cool kids and then the kids who didn’t care about any of that – they just wanted to skate.
My nieces wanted snacks and I think they were flirting with some of the boys and I didn’t know what was going to go down so I finally pulled them away and took them home. It was all a bit overwhelming but it was the main place for kids to hang out in the town and the owners are good people who would keep them safe.
I love that we still have these old roller rinks around here. They are just good, clean fun for kids and gets them out of the house and doing activity that isn’t too strenuous but isn’t too boring either.
These two roller rinks near us still host the skating games they used to do back in the old days – limbo, four corners, and other games. Little Miss won the game of limbo and earned a free pass for another night of skating, so we hope to visit the rink again sometime in the future. They offer daytime skates in the winter so we plan to do that since this rink is located in the middle of nowhere where there are plenty of deer to it at night.
When we first left to drive there – at 6 I laughed and said, “I usually have my pajamas on at this time and am cozying up for the night.”
The Husband and I have always been homebodies and rarely go to events after 5 pm. Part of the reason I prefer not to drive at night is because I have horrible night vision. I can’t see well and our car’s headlights aren’t great. It makes me very nervous. Another reason I don’t like to go out after 5 or really socialize much at all is I had my fill when I worked 50-70 hours a week at small town newspapers covering every event imaginable.
As a natural introvert I had to force myself to be social to get the story and I forced myself so often I think I broke something in me. Now that I’ve been gone from newspapers for so long, even going to a store and having to talk to the clerk stresses me out.
The Husband doesn’t like to go out on his days off because he socializes constantly all week long in his job as a small town newspaper editor and reporter.
When we got back to the house after skating, I thought the girls might just fall right to sleep. They had spent the entire day playing outside (the trampoline, riding scooters, jumping in leaves, and then two hours of skating). They lasted a little longer and then fell asleep so hard that Little Miss’s friend didn’t even change positions for five hours.
We all slept downstairs – them on an air mattress and me on the couch. In our area there are a few ways to tell it is getting cold. One is that you start to see people around town wearing light, but still warm, jackets. Two, you’ll start to smell woodsmoke as people begin to light their fires. And three, family cats start to cuddle more.
Our cats are fairly aloof all summer but around anywhere from mid-September to the middle of October they will gradually begin to come inside earlier after being outside hunting, lurking, or harassing other neighborhood cats, all day. Once they are inside they will stare at one of the humans for a few second or minutes – usually me – and then pounce – running up onto the body of said human and laying on their stomach or chest, expecting the chosen one to be honored and in awe that they have been chosen.
They will then kneed, curl up, purr, rub their faces and body all over the chosen one and attempt to make the chosen one their bed for the next few hours, whether the chosen one wants it or not.
Our youngest cat (Scout) is the one who curls up on me the most but last night she picked The Husband as the chosen one before bed. About 5 a.m. Scout woke me up by crawling onto my chest and anytime I get woke up my brain tells me I have to go to the bathroom so I did that and came back to the couch which is when Scout made my hip her bed. Two hours later I was up again and had to move her for another bathroom break. At this point the older cat, Pixel, who normally hates to be anywhere near Scout and hisses at her for even existing, decided she’d put with Scout simply so she could now use my body as her bed.
At this point Scout was curled up on the couch by my knees and Pixel was using my hip as the bed. The couch isn’t very wide so this was a very uncomfortable position to be in but it is also a very rare occurrence for them to be so close to each other without Pixel smacking Scout repeatedly in the head, so I did my best not to move and upset the experience.
My hips, back, neck, and – well – my entire body paid for that the rest of the day but I think it was worth it.
Little Miss’s friend has gone home now and we will all be in our own beds tonight. I am truly looking forward to that because if the cats do curl up on or next to me, at least I’ll have more room – in theory anyhow.
How was your week last week? Do anything exciting or interesting? Let me know in the comments.
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!
Also, please take the time to visit the other blogs on the link-up and meet some new bloggers!
Erin from Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs and I are watching Comfy, Cozy movies this September and October and this week we watched Kiki’s Delivery Service, a Studio Ghibli animated movie.
We are also announcing a very fun and exciting giveaway for a comfy, cozy gift basket which you can enter to win at the giveaway link at the bottom of this post!
Kiki’s Delivery Service was released in 1989 in Japan by Hayao Miyazaki, a Japanese animator and filmmaker, and was based on a book called Witches Express Delivery Service.
The movie was animated by Studio Ghibli (which Miyazaki was a founder of) for Tokuma Shoten, Yamato Transport, and the Nippon Television Network.
According to information online, “The English dub was produced by Streamline Pictures for Japan Airlines international flights in 1989. Walt Disney Pictures produced an English dub in 1997, which became the first film under a deal between Tokuma and Disney to be released in English. It was released to home media in 1998.”
This was a very sweet movie with little action but a lot of heart.
First the background – Kiki is a witch and the tradition is that witches leave home at the age of 13 and travel away from their family for a year to learn what their skill in life is.
Kiki’s mother insists she take her old, reliable broomstick so Kiki flies off into the night with her all black cat JiJi and finds a small town to settle in. She ends up living with a baker and starts a delivery service – delivering packages with the use of her broom.
The bakery is owned by Osono and her husband, Fukuo, who are expecting a child.
Kiki also meets a friend – a boy named Tombo who wants to be her friend more than she wants to be his for most of the movie. Tombo likes to invent things – especially things with the potential to fly. At one point he invites Kiki to his aviation club but Kiki gets wrapped up in deliveries and gets caught in a rainstorm. This causes her to become very sick but Osono nurses her back to health and then pretends to have a delivery sent to Tombo so Kiki can see him and apologize.
During her first delivery, Kiki loses the toy she’s supposed to deliver and then she and her cat – who talks by the way – work to find a way to get it back to the child it belongs to.
Much of the movie is like this – just little stories or adventures that aren’t very exciting in some ways, but are calming and sweet.
It isn’t until more than halfway through the movie that more conflict arises because Kiki seems to be losing her powers, which she first notices when she can no longer understand JiJi.
Studio Ghibli is the design studio for many Japanese animated movies. Later many of these movies are dubbed into English and sometimes feature well-known American actors. In the one I watched (which was the Disney dubbed one from 1997) Kiki was voiced by Kiersten Dunst and the cat was voiced by Phil Hartman.
Kiki’s Delivery Service focuses on themes of independence and finding your place in this world.
It was the first Studio Ghibli film to find commercial success soon after being released – earning $31 million.
I wasn’t as swept up in this one as in previous Studio Ghibli films but as it continued it grew on me. It was a very quiet film and some of the Studio Ghibli films have a little more action so I wasn’t ready for it to be so toned down. Once I got into the story, though, I enjoyed it. The scenery and art, as in all Studio Ghibli films, was really beautiful.
I was rooting for Kiki – especially once she lost her powers and seemed confused about her next step.
While the makers of the movie and critics said the movie focuses on themes of maturity and independence, I also saw a strong theme of friendship, family, and trust.
Coming up next week will be the 1945 version of Blithe Spirit.
Feel free to link up your own impressions of the movies at our link-ups. The links close at the end of the week but feel free to leave your blog post on future link-ups, even if it is for another movie.
Also, Erin and I are announcing our Comfy, Cozy Gift Basket Giveaway today.
I’m just going to copy what Erin wrote to share here because I am lazy *wink*: “We have some fun little goodies to be sent off to one winner, with more surprises to be added as well! We want to celebrate the season and this is just one way we would like to do that this year.
You can enter anytime between today and October 15th, and the winner will be announced on our blogs on Thursday, October 17th. Please enter via Rafflecopter and it is only open to those 18 or older living in the US.” You can enter here: https://www.rafflecopter.com/rafl/display/3614a4fa2/?
Book Title: Trouble Shooter (A Hopalong Cassidy book)
Author: Louis L’Amour
Genre: Western
Description:
Hopalong Cassidy is one of the most enduring and popular heroes in frontier fiction. His legendary exploits in books, movies, and on television have blazed a mythic and unforgettable trail across the American West. Now, in the last of four Hopalong Cassidy novels written by Louis L’Amour, the immortal saddleman rides againthis time into a lonely valley of danger and death.
Hopalong Cassidy has received an urgent message from the dead. Answering an urgent appeal for help from fellow cowpuncher Pete Melford, he rides in only to discover that his old friends has been murdered and the ranch Pete left to his niece, Cindy Blair, had vanished without a trace. Hopalong may have arrived too late to save Pete, but his sense of loyalty and honor demands that he find that cold-blooded killers and return to Cindy what is rightfully hers.
Colonel Justin Tradwar, criminal kingpin of the town of Kachina, is the owner of the sprawling Box T ranch, and he has built his empire with a shrewd and ruthless determination. In search of Pete’s killers and Cindy’s ranch, Hopalong signs on at the Box T, promising to help get Tradway’s wild cattle out of the rattler-infested brush. But in the land of mesquite and black chaparral, Cassidy confronts a mystery as hellish as it is hauntinga bloody trail that leads to the strange and forbidding Babylon plateau, to $60,000 in stolen gold, and to a showdown with an outlaw who has already cheated death once… and is determined to do it again.
My Thoughts:
Trouble Shooter by Louis L’Amour was not listed under L’Amour’s name when it first came out in 1951. Instead, it was released under the name Clarence E. Mulford, the original creator of Hopalong Cassidy, the main character of the book. When Mulford retired, he asked L’Amour to carry on Hopalong’s tradition in four novels, which included Trouble Shooter, The Rustlers of West Fork, The Trail to Seven Pines, and the Riders of High Rock.
The books were published on L’Amour’s name in the 1990s when they were re-released.
I ended up liking Trouble Shooter a lot more than I thought I would when I first started it. Once I realized that the book was written in the style of another writer and that it was written in the 1950s, I began to adjust to the style of writing and storytelling. I found myself pulled into the story a bit more as it went along, despite the old style of writing, which included what writers call “head hopping.” This is where the thoughts of each character involved in a scene are shared instead of the point of view being from just the one character. This can get a little bit confusing but L’Amour didn’t over do it.
The way the sentences were structured threw me off at times but I thought the prose really was well-written. I wasn’t as interested in the lengthy description of Hopalong Cassidy climbing a mountain or riding long distances in the middle of nowhere and would have loved for the female characters to have been flushed out a bit more, but I still liked the overall story.
I didn’t expect the ending to take such a dark turn since most of the book was mild when it came to the discussions of violence. There was very little to no descriptions of violence at all and any descriptions offered were very surface level. There were no obscenities in the book and no sex at all – not even hinted at.
This was definitely a stripped back Western. There were some descriptions but none of them went on for pages. There were some slow parts for me but I wanted to know the answer to the mystery introduced in the beginning so I kept reading.
A couple of lines I enjoyed and thought were well-written:
“Hopalong Cassidy had drawn his gun as he always drew, with flashing, incredible speed. Once his hand was empty, then filled, and the gun blasting death.”
“The heat was a living thing, and he touched his lips only a little with the water in his canteen, then pushed on. Dust devils danced across a vast, empty distance marked by nothing but the trail of two riders. And then out of the north came another trail, a trail of several riders that moved in and obliterated the trail they followed.”
“Through the storm clouds the afternoon sun sent streaks of cathedral light across the sky and first spattering of drops fell, dappling the ground and making the dust jump.”
“Even if he isn’t dead, he might have reformed, and if a man has reformed, I’d have to judge him according to what he is now, but I’d advise him to keep his name to himself.”
If you would like to read more about Louis L’Amour, you can do so here:
Today’s topic is: Books I Read/Avoided Because of the Hype (and did you make the right choice?)
For this one, I decided to share eight books I read because of the hype and two I avoided.
First, the ones I read because of the hype:
How To Solve Your Own Murder by Kristin Perin
It was the hype on Netgalley that hooked me on this one. Reviewers were calling it the Knives Out of mystery books so I decided to give it a go and I ended up really enjoying it – with the exception of a couple issues and two unnecessary swear words.
The Secret Garden by Francis Hodgson Burnett
I’ve heard a lot about this book over the years and had seen the movie years ago so figured I needed to give it a try. I ended up enjoying it but wanted more from the ending.
Little Women by Louisa Mae Alcott
I think I got sick of women gushing about this book and having no idea what they were talking about. I’d seen a few versions of the movie but never read the book. Now that I have I think the book lived up to the hype. I fell in love with the book and plan to re-read it each Christmas season now.
Around the World in 80 Days by Jules Verne
I’ve heard a lot about this classic book over the years, but, again, never read it. I finally did that last year as part of my son’s English curriculum and ended up feeling like the book did live up to the hype.
The Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R. Tolkien
After all of my family fell all over these movies and my much, much older brother read it in high school or college or whatever (I can’t remember. It was sooo long ago.), I figured I’d better try it too. I didn’t think I was going to make it because of all the tree descriptions but I ended up falling in love with the characters and, in the end, the book. I can’t read to read the other two installments.
The Extraordinary Deaths of Mrs. Kipp by Sara Brunsvold
This was huge in Christian Fiction circles when it came out.
I think the hype is warranted for this one but I’ve never been able to actually finish it. Not because it isn’t good but because the topic is heavy and I have older parents and I’m struggling with that so the topic of an elderly woman with a terminal illness is a hard one for me to read. I do plan to finish it though.
The Mistletoe Countess by Pepper Basham
In this instance, I didn’t make the right choice for me. I found the main characters irritating, the marriage of convenience trope ridiculous, and the suggestive comments about the sex the morning after really uncomfortable, even though they weren’t graphic. This was a Christian fiction book and this book and the reaction of Christian readers to it, was particularly grating to me because I was condemned for a kiss scene in one of my books by Christian readers but they had no issues with this author’s main character being giddy over getting to have sex with the man she was “forced” to marry and then daydreaming about their night together the next morning for a full page and a half.
It was weird to me but I’ve learned there are as many hypocritical Christian fiction readers out there as there are crooked politicians. It’s weird the things Christian Fiction readers will embrace and the things they will reject. It seems to change every other month or so. I have just never understood the readers of that genre and their absolute love for marriage of convenience books.
That trope is so disgusting to me – being forced to marry someone you don’t love and then supposedly falling in love with that person. I mean what cheap thrill do these women get out of that? I have no earthly idea.
The Mysterious Affair of Styles by Agatha Christie
I had heard a lot about this first Poirot book within the cozy mystery reader circle over the years and so when my husband suggested it, I decided to give it a go. I ended up really liking it but not liking the antisemitism buried in some places. Great story, but Agatah had some issues there, which is something I wrote about on the blog earlier this year.
Two books I avoided because of the hype:
50 Shades of Gray
Yes, this self-proclaimed prude tried this book because I had NO idea what it was about. I barely made it into it when it hit me what was going on and the book was returned to Amazon for a full refund and I never touched it again. Sex is one thing. Abuse and domination is another and I do not read those kinds of books at all.
Fourth Wing
I know. I know. But ….just not my thing. Not a fantasy or a smut reader so I avoided it. So many people loved this book and if you did – that’s awesome. It’s just not my thing. That’s all!
What are some of the books you read or avoided because of the hype?
I love the Lady Hardcastle Mysteries and once again I was not disappointed. An Assassination On The Agenda is the eleventh book in the series and released earlier this year.
Description:
July 1912. Lady Hardcastle and her tenacious lady’s maid, Florence Armstrong, are enjoying a convivial gathering at the home of their dear friends, the Farley-Strouds. The only fly in the idyllic ointment seems to be the lack of musical entertainment for the forthcoming summer party—until, that is, Lady Hardcastle’s brother Harry calls with news of a murder.
Harry dispatches them to Bristol on behalf of the Secret Service Bureau, with instructions to prevent the local police from uncovering too much about the victim. It seems an intriguing mystery—all the more so when they find a connection between the killer and an impending visit from an Austrian trade delegation, set to feature a very important guest…
Summoned to London to help with some very important security arrangements, the intrepid duo will have to navigate sceptical bureaucrats, Cockney gangsters and shadowy men in distinctive hats in their attempts to foil an explosive—and internationally significant—threat.
My thoughts:
Once again, the pairing of Lad Hardcastle and her partner in solving crime, her maid Florence “Flo” Armstrong was the breeding ground for early 1900s humor and entertainment.
In this installment we see the two women, already known to be spies and operatives for the British government in the past sent on yet another mission. This time they are summoned from their country home to Bristol and their goal is to find out about a group of men who may be trying to commit an assassination that will start a war.
We see Lady Hardcastle’s brother Harry and sister-in-law Lavinia (nicknamed Jake) again in this book and as usual I love the bantering between the siblings, which fits in nicely with the bantering between employee and employer, though Lady Hardcastle always treats Flo as her equal.
I read this one on my Kindle but when I had to do dishes or drive somewhere I listened to it on Audible with amazing narration by Elizabeth Knowelden, who is the narrator for most, if not all the other Lady Hardcastle books on Audible.
I was provided with a complimentary copy of this book but was not asked to give anything other than my honest opinion. Let’s be honest, I was going to read this book even if a complimentary copy had not been provided to me.
A Simple Deduction by Kristi Holl is part of the Amish Inn Mystery series published by Annie’s Fiction.
The series is written by different authors but features the same characters and location.
Description:
Liz is offering something new, A Sherlock Holmes weekend. She asks for help from a magician to pickpocket the participants and then give the items to Liz for safekeeping. But more possessions start to disappear even with people locking their doors. Liz needs the help of all her sidekicks to solves this mystery.
My thoughts:
I have read two other books in the series before this one and when I started this one, I wasn’t sure I was going to like it as well as the other two books written by Rachael O’Phillips. Once I got into it, though, I was swept up in the mystery and wanted to know what had happened.
In this book, Liz Eckhardt, the main character, hosts a mystery weekend at her Amish-themed inn. Liz isn’t Amish herself but her mother was before leaving the order and her friends are as well.
Her friends Sadie and Mary Ann own a sewing supply shop that they run out of the other side of the inn, renting the space from Liz.
In this story, Liz is caught up in her planned mystery and also some thefts that happen that are unrelated to the mystery weekend.
She has six guests staying at her inn and thinks that they will have a nice weekend but when personalities clash and possessions of the guests start disappearing, she has a bad feeling things aren’t going to go as well as she hoped.
I felt like I was able to get to know Liz and her friends better in the other two books. In this book her character felt very flat for the majority of the book. I wanted to know a little bit more about her as a person – her likes and dislikes, etc. but I didn’t really get that until halfway through.
It turned out to be fine, though, because I became more interested in the mystery itself and still found Liz and her friends likable. I would have liked there to have been more of Sadie and Mary Ann like there were in previous books, but again, I still enjoyed the book.
This was a very clean cozy mystery with some prayer mentioned, but no faith message at all other than some mention of forgiveness.
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.
What a weird coincidence this week that Erin (Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs) and I watched a movie with Maggie Smith and a day after we posted out those she passed away. We had watched Ladies in Lavender with her and Judi Dench and wrote about it and then that night I was thinking how upset Judi would be when Maggie passed away. I also wondered which “dame” would actually pass away first – I thought it might be Joan Plowright.
The next morning Erin texted me to tell me that Maggie had died and I honestly felt like I had lost a friend. I haven’t even watched her very much in things like Downton Abbey or Harry Potter (though I did watch Harry Potter with the kids just recently). I stopped watching Downton when they killed Matthew off. It ticked me off so bad I refused to watch the show again.
I’ve seen Maggie in a few movies since then, though, and just sort of fell in love with her spunk and attitude, but also a tenderness I saw in her.
I’m slightly ashamed to admit that I cried more over her death than the death of my mother-in-law the week before – partially because I had more sentimental connection with Maggie – whom I’ve never met – that my husband’s mother. That’s a very long, sad story that I won’t go into here.
I was looking for clips of Maggie to share on Instagram since I had a clip of her and Judi and Joan Plowright from Tea With the Dames go viral last year on my Instagram, when I remembered I had seen that she’d been on The Carol Burnett Show one time.
If you want to see that clip, I’ll share it below in my What I’ve Been Watching section.
I’m really hoping to watch an Agatha Christie movie with Maggie that I just learned about Friday as well.
What I/we’ve been Reading
I was working on the third book in my Gladwynn Grant Mystery series last week so I didn’t read as much as I could have.
Therefore I am still reading the same books I was reading – Move Your Blooming Corpse by DE Ireland and Kristen by Dawn Klinge, but have added The Secret at Red Gate Farm, a Nancy Drew to the mix.
I finished nothing! Nothing, people! See above. *wink*
Murder Handcraftedby Isabella Alan (An Amish Quilt Shop Mystery)
The Cat Who Brought Down the House by Lilian Jackson Braun
The Marlow Murder Club by Robert Thorogood
Little Miss and I are readingThe Four Story Mistakeby Elizabeth Enright via Hoopla.
The Husband is readingFear and Loathing On the Campaign Trail 1972by Hunter S. Thompson
The Boy is listening to Beowulf and a book of short stories.
What We watched/are Watching
Last week I rewatched most of Ladies in Lavender to write about it for our Comfy, Cozy Cinema, since I’ve seen it before.
I mentioned above that I enjoyed watching Maggie Smith and Judi Dench in the movie and then the next day Maggie passed away. It was heartbreaking.
Erin and I have a few movies with either Judi or Maggie or both in it on our Comfy, Cozy Cinema this time around and I swear we didn’t do it on purpose. We both chose movies on our own and then whittled the list down, not even thinking about who was starring in them. We both even forgot about Judi and Maggie being in a couple of the movies.
This weekend I’ve been watching some clips of Maggie from various shows or interviews, including this one from The Carol Burnett Show:
I had no idea Maggie sang until I saw this clip with her and Carol on YouTube:
I have also been continuing to watch Lovejoy, an old British show that sometime has a mystery and sometimes just a conman story. I hated how this series ended so I’ve watched it before but seem to have forgotten some of the episodes so I am rewatching them. This is a show my husband always watched and turned me on to.
(I appreciated this non-partisan and just straight review of J.D. Vance’s book. Not a fan of him as a politician but I’m also not a fan of any politician at this time.)
(This one is a little biased on my part, but this was a really nice review of my book Cassie.)
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.
