book review

Sunday Bookends: The Get Rid of Hiccups Trick, what I thought of the Miss Marple Short Stories, and a Paris movie marathon being planned

/ Lisa R. Howeler / 13 Comments

It’s time for our Sunday morning chat. On Sundays, I ramble about what’s been going on, what the rest of the family and I have been reading and watching, and what I’ve been writing. Some weeks I share what I am listening to.

Throughout my childhood and teenage years my family and I would visit my mom’s side of the family in Jacksonville, N.C. for Christmas at my grandmother and aunt’s house.

One day when I was about 18 or so, my parents told me we were going to drive a couple hours west to see my mom’s aunt and uncle and cousins in a little town called Farmville.

I had  never met this part of the family before so I didn’t know what to think of them. The house was full of chatter as soon as we arrived. Chatter and offers of food.

“Y’all come on in here and get yourself some food,” Cousin Joyce said from the kitchen.

Conversations began to take the path they usually do in Mom’s family — several of them being held at once all at the same time, back and forth between each other. I did my best to keep track. The conversations were mainly between my grandmother, mom, aunt Dianne, Cousin Joyce, Cousin Janet and Aunt Mattie.

Uncle Ray — full name Ashley Ray Waignwright (isn’t the quentissintial Southern name?!), a short man with very little hair, wearing a pair of small, wire-rimmed glasses, and looking a bit somber, was sitting in a little rocking chair. He was participating in some of the conversations but not much. Mainly he was observing.

 At some point I developed the  hiccups. They were painful and wouldn’t stop.

Mom suggested I drink some water. Aunt Dianne said a spoonful of sugar. Someone else suggested holding my breath.

Uncle Ray narrowed his eyes.

“Heard what you been saying about me, girl.”

I was startled. Was he looking at me? I looked behind me. There was no one there. It had to be me he was talking to.

“I—I’m sorry?”

He frowned. “You. I heard what you been saying about me.”

“I-I – know I haven’t said anything.”

Mom hadn’t mentioned her uncle Ray was going senile but this conversation was getting weirder by the moment.

“You sure did,” he said. “You know it and I know it so you just need to apologize.”

“I—I .. but…”

His grim expression didn’t crack. “Where those hiccups gone?”

“What? What do you mean?”

A small smile tipped the corner of his mouth upward. “Your hiccups. They’re gone, aren’t they?”

I dragged in a ragged breath and let it out again.

The rest of the conversations had stopped during this exchange and I heard my mom laugh.

It was beginning to hit me now.

“He got you, didn’t he?” Mom asked.

Uncle Ray was smiling more now. Yes, he’d got me, and the panic I’d felt at thinking he thought I’d said something awful about him had been enough to stop the hiccups

I am juggling a few books right now – I know that sounds weird, but I do that because I read one during the day and one at night sometimes.  

I prefer to read my mysteries during the day and more relaxing or light books before bed. I’ve found if I read mysteries before bed, I dream about people dying or chasing me. Even with cozier mysteries. Not always, but sometimes. If the mystery is too good, I still read it at night and just put up with the weird dreams.

Anyhow, I just finished The Tuesday Night Club (Miss Marple short stories) by Agatha Christie and ended up liking it more as I continued it. It is a series of short stories involving several familiar characters from Miss Marple books all gathered together discussing mysterious cases they’d heard of or investigated and asking if everyone listening could figure out what really happened.

There was a lot of subtle humor in the book that ended up making the repetitiveness of how almost each story ended with Miss Marple solving the case presented by each person and then that person, who previously said they didn’t know the solution, or someone else in the room, saying that they suddenly had remembered she was right and they had heard what had really happened.  It was a bit tedious but not every story ended that way, luckily. I mean, Miss Marple did solve it every time, but there wasn’t always a sudden realization from someone else in the room knew what really happened.

I will finish Every Living Thing by James Herriot this week, as far as I know anyhow.

I’ve already started The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman and I’m not sure what I think so far. POV’s keep changing and there is a lot more detail about a lot of characters than I think is needed so….we will see if I can make it through or not. I’ve heard good things about it, so I’m sure I will end up liking it.

I will need a slightly lighter read for nights later this week so I will be picking up Little Men again or finishing up Nancy Drew: The Sign of the Twisted Candles.

Little Miss and I have almost finished Sign of the Beaver for history.

The Boy and I are still pushing through Frankenstein. I don’t want to talk about it. I just can’t wait to graduate him this year. We are starting Romeo and Juliet in March. Lord, be with us.

He’s also listening to No Country For Old Men by Cormac McCarthy

The Husband is reading Hot Property by Mike Lupica.

This week I watched Murder She Wrote, Victorian Farm, All Creatures Great and Small, Sonic the Hedgehog 3 with the kids (let’s be honest. I didn’t pay much attention to it.), my farmer on YouTube (Just a Few Acres), and Sinbad the Sailor.

Upcoming in April: Erin from Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs, and I are planning on a Paris themed movie marathon. We will keep you updated.

I’ll be starting book four in the Gladwynn Grant series soon and have decided I’ll probably only write six books in this series and, yes, I will wrap up that “love triangle” in book four or five. Probably book four. It’s boring even for me at this point.

On the blog I wrote:

I am listening to Frankenstein on Audible and hope to continue it this 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.

This post is linked up with The Sunday Post at  Kimba at Caffeinated Reviewer, The Sunday Salon with Deb at Readerbuzz, and Book Date: It’s Monday! What are you reading hosted by Kathyrn at The Book Date.

Sometimes there are issues with commenting on WordPress. If you can’t comment, but want to, please feel free to hit the contact link at the top of the page.

In addition to my blog, I write fiction, and you can learn more about my books here: https://lisahoweler.com/my-books-2/


You can also support my writing and chat about books, mysteries, old movies, vintage books, mystery shows, etc. for $3 a month at my Patreon here: https://patreon.com/LisaHoweler.

If you like my content you can subscribe to my posts for free here too.

Top Ten Tuesday: 10 books I never reviewed on my blog or social media

/ Lisa R. Howeler / 17 Comments

|| Top Ten Tuesday is hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl. ||

Today’s prompt is: 10 Books I Never Reviewed (Share the titles of books you never reviewed on your blog/tiktok/insta/etc. and if you liked them or not!)

This one was hard for me because I have actually reviewed most of the books I have read in the last two years. I had to search hard for those I had not reviewed in some fashion

  1. Anne’s House of Dreams by LM Montgomery.  – didn’t review and didn’t enjoy as much as other Anne books

2. The Saturdays by Elizabeth Enright — Loved this middle grade book but did not get around to reviewing it.

3. The Burning Issue of The Day (A Lady Hardcastle Mystery) by T.E. Kinsey – I liked this one okay but wasn’t really doing a lot of reviews at this time (2023) and didn’t like it as much as other books in the series.

4. The Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R. Tolkien – really liked it but for some reason never reviewed in on my blog or social media

5. An Amish Inn Mystery: Murder Well Played by Rachel O’Phillips – I like this book. I have no idea why I never reviewed it.

6. A Highland Christmas (A Hamish Macbeth Mystery) by M.C. Beaton – I don’t remember ever writing a review for this book. I liked it okay. It was very cozy, but I don’t know if I am a huge fan of Beaton’s writing.

7. Sarah, Plain and Tall by Sarah MacLachlan — I very much enjoyed the middle grade book but for some reason never reviewed it.

8. The Darling Buds of May by H.E. Bates — This book was super weird and full of possible references to incestual attraction. That’s all I gotta say about that one.

9. Death Without Company (A Walt Longmire Mystery) by Craig Johnson — I enjoy this series but rarely write book reviews for them. I am not sure why.

10. At Home In Mitford by Jan Karon — Despite being one of my favorite books and book series, I have never shared a review of this book on my blog or social media, that I can remember anyhow.

A bonus: And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie. Read it. Liked it. Never reviewed it and I don’t know why.

How about you? What books have you never reviewed? Maybe you are a reader who doesn’t even do reviews and that’s totally fine too. This list shows that I really don’t review every book. I do have fun writing reviews and telling other readers about the books I read though.

Book Review: Christy by Catherine Marshall

/ Lisa R. Howeler / 6 Comments

Christy by Catherine Marshall is a very dense book. It is full of life lessons weaved between poetic prose and hard realities of life in the Smoky Mountains in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Following the story of fictional 19-year-old Christy Huddleston, the book is fiction but based, very loosely, on the real-life experience of Marshall’s mother, Leonora Whitaker Wood.

The CBS series, Christy, starring Kellie Martin, and a couple of made-for-TV movies were based on the book. I watched the show in the 1990s but had never read the book. I didn’t even know the TV-movies existed until I was doing research for this post.

In both the show and the book, Christy travels to a small mission in the mountains of Tennessee from her home in Ashville, North Carolina to teach in a school full of mountain children who have very little material items but a lot of heart and heartache.

The small area where these children and their families are from is called Cutter Gap. The fictional area isn’t really a town since it is only a collection of cabins scattered across the mountains and through the woods, but there is a fiction town called El Pano, located near it. The families in Cutter Gap are poor, uneducated, and fighting for their lives against disease and judgment.

Christy arrives at the mission after listening to the mission founder speak about it and begins her work with Miss Alice Henderson, a Quaker woman, and Pastor David Grantland, a minister who has been assigned to the school.

Once she arrives she meets other colorful members of the community — Dr. Neil McNeil, resident Ruby Mae, and resident Fairlight Spencer (who becomes her best friend), as well as other colorful (shall we say) characters. She also begins to learn more about the history of the area, the hardships they have faced since the 1700s, and the way some of the men feel they have to take a criminal route in life to scrape out a living.

There is a lot of beauty mixed in with some very ugly tales within the 500 pages of Christy. I marked up a lot of the book to remember parts of it later. Even though I found parts of the faith message of the book contradictory and a little confusing at times, there were many parts that were extremely thought-provoking and moving to me.

Most of what I underlined in the book were quotes by Miss Alice, who was my favorite character in the book besides Fairlight Spencer. In the beginning of the book, I found it hard to connect Christy who was very hard-headed and brash at times. She came to the mission with head knowledge of God but not heart knowledge of him.

I couldn’t stand David Grantland through most of the book and wasn’t sure what to make of Neil McNeil.

I wanted to shake Christy a couple of times throughout the book and tell her not to rush into dangerous situations. Toward the end of the book, though, when she truly struggled with the faith that she had only really found since working at the mission, I related to her immensely. So much of what happened to the people she’d come to love in Cutter Gap seemed so cruel to me. Even though the book was fiction, I found myself questioning the goodness of God, thinking about some similar cruel situations of those I’ve known over the years. It’s something I had to sit and wrestle with mental and spiritually in the moments, hours, and days after finishing the book. In many ways I am still struggling with these questions about God and the goodness I sometimes don’t see.

Some of the sections I underlined in the book included:

“Evil is real – and powerful. It has to be fought, not explained away, not fled. And God is against evil all the way. So each of us has to decide where WE stand, how we’re going to live OUR lives. We can try to persuade ourselves that evil doesn’t exist; live for ourselves and wink at evil. We can say that it isn’t so bad after all, maybe even try to call it fun by clothing it in silks and velvets. We can compromise with it, keep quiet about it and say it’s none of our business. Or we can work on God’s side, listen for His orders on strategy against the evil, no matter how horrible it is, and know that He can transform it.”

“What do you do when strength is called for and you have no strength? You evoke a power beyond your own and use stamina you did not know you had. You open your eyes in the morning grateful that you can see the sunlight of yet another day. You draw yourself to the edge of the bed and then put one foot in front of the other and keep going. You weep with those who gently close the eyes of the dead, and somehow, from the salt of your tears, comes endurance for them and for you. You pour out that resurgence to minister to the living.”

“I’d long since learned that no difference in viewpoint should ever be allowed to cause the least break in love. Indeed, it cannot, if it’s real love.
…But relationships can be kept intact without compromising one’s own beliefs. And if we do not keep them intact, but give up and allow the chasm, we’re breaking the second greatest commandment.”

“The secret of her calm seemed to be that she was not trying to prove anything. She was—that was all. And her stance toward life seemed to say: God is—and that is enough.”

This was one of the few books I’ve read that I became completely immersed in when I read it. Everything around me disappeared – the language and descriptions were so vivid. I could see the mountains, picture the cabins and the people, and sometimes even smell, sadly, the smells.

It took me a little over a month to read through the book because it was so dense. I felt like I really got to know the characters that way and this was both a good and a bad thing.

It was a bad thing because, toward the end, some of the events hit me so hard and left me on my couch on a cold Sunday afternoon with a warm fire in our woodstove burning and me crying until my sides hurt.

I like to be immersed in books but at that moment I thought that maybe I wouldn’t like to be so immersed if it was going to be this painful to continue to read on.

I won’t give away too much but there was a death in the book that I could not make sense of in the least. Much of the book seemed to want the reader to see that there was hope still available, even in the midst of darkness, anger, and sadness, but when we had almost reached the end it was like that message was yanked out from under us with such a ferociousness that it made my head spin.

When I was reading the book, I was thinking, “Wow. There are so many deep messages about our relationship with God in this book” but then I was like, “But there were some really theological muddy waters in this book and I’m not sure how I feel about that.”

There was a lot of talk about superstitions and instead of dispelling them by saying God is in control, there were times the characters tried to explain it away by science or simply telling the mountain people that their beliefs were faulty. There is little to no mention of Jesus in this book. Yet this book is marketed as a great Christian book. That confuses me a little. Still, the story, overall, was very compelling, interesting, and realistic (maybe a bit too realistic).

I saw a review of this after I read it that tagged the book as being “heartfelt” and “family-friendly.”

The book was NOT family-friendly. There are discussions of rape, abuse, murder, molestation, and many other disturbing and triggering topics. There are not, however, extremely graphic descriptions of these subjects.

There are times this book seems to push that there is truth in superstition, even though, I’m sure that’s not what the author, a well-known Christian author, meant to do.

In the end, Christy was a painfully beautiful book that wrung me out emotionally. It challenged my thinking, built me up, tore me down again, and left me with a glimmer of hope that Christy and the people of Cutter Gap found some joy and happiness beyond the time frame addressed within the book’s pages.

I would be remiss if I did not mention that the ending of this book is very open-ended and, to me, somewhat abrupt. It does not answer all of the reader’s questions. Or it didn’t answer some of my questions at least. It left me with a bit of mystery and with a strong desire for a sequel.

According to more than one article online, notes for a sequel to the book were discovered in Catherine Marshall’s things after her death by her family. Those notes have never been revealed, however. Part of me would love to know what happened to Christy after the events at the end of the book (which were wrapped up a bit too quickly for me), but part of me agrees with the blogger of Taking Up Room who wrote, “Christy ending on a question mark has never failed to get my brain thinking, even after dozens of times of reading the book. In a way, it means the story never really ends. Adding more might just spoil whatever ending fans have come to in their own minds, and that’s no fun. I say keep the mystery.”

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In addition to my blog, I write fiction, and you can learn more about my books here: https://lisahoweler.com/my-books-2/

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Sunday Bookends: He wasn’t even listening and already a DNF book

/ Lisa R. Howeler / 31 Comments



It’s time for our Sunday morning chat. On Sundays, I ramble about what’s been going on, what the rest of the family and I have been reading and watching, and what I’ve been writing. Some weeks I share what I am listening to.


The other day I became overwhelmed with worry that I have failed my son, the high school senior. Like maybe I didn’t teach him enough or well enough during our six years of homeschooling. The last two years have been tough. He’s had senioritis both of those years. He’s so ready to be done with high school. Getting him to do his schoolwork has been torture.

I went to him a couple of nights ago while he was preparing his dinner plate and felt very overcome with emotions. I apologized to him and told him I hoped I had taught him what he needed for the future.  I told him that I did my best but sometimes it was hard when he didn’t seem interested in learning so I would try to back off and let  him explore the subjects he was really interested in. Maybe that was the wrong thing to do, I told him. Maybe I should have been  more strict or —

I looked at him and my kid has this dumb grin on his face.

I’m practically crying and he’s grinning at me? What’s this about?

He’s not really looking at me either. So —

He laughs this really stupid laugh , looks up at me, and his smile fades. “What?” he asks. “What’s going on? Why do you look like you’re going to cry?”

That’s when I remember that my son’s long hair covers his ears and in his ears are probably  . . . Yes. Earbuds.

He’s been listening to a podcast the entire time and didn’t hear even one part of my lamenting speech.

“Were you saying something serious?” he asks. “What happened?”

I fill him in briefly and he laughs another stupid laugh and sas, “I was totally not listening at all.”

Apparently he isn’t really concerned that I might have screwed up as a parent so I suppose I shouldn’t be either.

I told him not to worry about it and walked back into the living room shaking my head. Sheehs. Kids. *wink*

Did I write last week that I decided not to finish The Definitive Oral Biography of Anthony Bourdain? I could go back and look, I suppose, or I could just run the risk of repeating it. I’ll run the risk.

So, yes, I DNF’d that book on Anthony Bourdain. I was terribly bored and a few chapters in I realized that reading broken up tidbits of people’s memories of Anthony wasn’t very interesting. There really wasn’t a story to the book. It was more like random memories and thoughts and interviews just tossed together in written form. If it had been filmed and I had been watching it, I might have been a little more interested, but this simply did not hold my attention.

I did enjoy reading Kitchen Confidential by Anthony himself — even though I didn’t enjoy aspects of it (how many times did he need to share the crude nicknames he had for his co-workers or how many times he shot up or snorted something before going to work on the line at well-known restaurants?). I did not enjoy reading how others met him or what interactions they had with him as much.

Anyhow, moving on to my current reads. I am reading The Tuesday Night Club, a series of short stories with Miss Marple, by Agatha Christie.

I also decided I needed something sweet and light one night this past week and got caught up in Every Living Thing by James Herriot, so I am also reading that. I absolutely love the sweet and interesting stories in his books but this one, where he is now older with children, is especially endearing.

I am listening to Frankenstein but I keep getting distracted so I may switch to actually reading it. I do enjoy Dan Stevens narration.

Little Miss is getting close to the end of Harry Potter: The Prisoner of Azkaban.

The Boy is listening to Frankenstein. Okay, he isn’t, but he will be soon because even though I am “making” him do it for school he does actually want to read it.

This week I watched The Exile with Douglas Fairbanks Jr., The Victorian Farm, All Creatures Great and Small, and a couple episodes of The Dick VanDyke Show.

Up next in my Winter of Fairbanks Jr. movie marathon was supposed to be Chase a Crooked Shadow but I can’t find it streaming anywhere. I did find it on DVD and do plan to order it because it looks good from the trailer I found. Anyhow, I am switching to Angels Over Broadway, which I found on YouTube, for this week.

I really swear I checked some of these before I put them on the list and I swear that they were streaming but now they are not. I will update any of the movies I can’t find streaming in my Winter of Fairbanks Jr. post this week.

So far it looks like the rest are on Amazon, Hulu, or other streaming services.

I found the Sun Never Sets here: https://archive.org/details/sun.-never.-sets.-1939

I guess Fairbanks Jr. wasn’t in a ton of super popular movies because they are not easy to find.

Gladwynn Grant Shakes the Family Tree is out on Amazon and Barnes and Noble: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DW1VCWDD

Last week on the blog I shared:

I am listening to Frankenstein, narrated by Dan Stevens, but I have a hard time focusing on it so we will see how that goes. I may have to switch back to the book again.

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 post is linked up with The Sunday Post at  Kimba at Caffeinated Reviewer, Stacking the Shelves with Reading Reality, The Sunday Salon with Deb at Readerbuzz, and Book Date: It’s Monday! What are you reading hosted by Kathyrn at The Book Date.

Top Ten Tuesday: Ten Most Recent Additions to my Book Collection

/ Lisa R. Howeler / 23 Comments

|| Top Ten Tuesday is hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl. ||

Today’s prompt is to share The Ten Most Recent Additions to My Book Collection (or to your to-read list!)

This one wasn’t too hard for me to do because I had ordered five from Thriftbooks right after Christmas and before that there was a  used book sale at our library and I picked up a few (I promise it was actually just a few this time).

1. The Clue in the Diary (Nancy Drew, Book 7) by Carolyn Keene

2. The Sign of the Twisted Candles (Nancy Drew, Book 9) by Carolyn Keene

3. The Password to Larkspur Lane (Nancy Drew, Book 10) by Carolyn Keene

4. The Littlest Voyageur by Margi Pereus

5. The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osmond

6. Christy by Catherine Marshall

7. The Scarlet Pimpernel by Baroness Orczy

8. The Mystery of The Flying Express by Franklin W. Dixon (this was an original copy by husband picked up for me at a used bookstore)

9. Summer of Yes by Courtney Walsh

10. The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers by JRR Tolkien

Have you read any of these? What are your last ten additions to your TBR?

Sunday Bookends: It’s cold. No. Really cold. Reading the same books but planning for others. Crafternoon Again! And some podcasts I want to listen to.

/ Lisa R. Howeler / 25 Comments

Due to the illness of children or the cold of the northeast I have not left my house in two weeks and though I am a homebody, I must admit it is becoming a little depressing.

And based on the fact I feel like I am starting to get sick and dangerously cold temps are set to hit the area Monday through Wednesday this week, I have a feeling I will be in my house at least another week. At this point I’ve told my parents, who only live seven minutes from us, that I might not see them until after the spring thaw.

Our house is located on a hill, has a steep driveway, and we are down to one car, so that also makes winter travel difficult.

Yesterday I was alone for much of the day because Little Miss was at a friend’s house and The Boy was sick upstairs, while The Husband was at work. This was a strange situation for me because I’m rarely alone. I didn’t know what to do with myself. I eventually decided to work on a blog post (the second part to my Civil War letters posts), start watching Gunga Din, and read a chapter in my Agatha Christie book. I also was very brave and went out into the cold darkness of our backyard to retrieve a couple pieces of wood for our woodstove.

Then it was back inside where I realized I should cook some dinner for me and The Boy.

He’s had a horrible headache and watery eyes and no appetite, but he was finally able to eat a little bit around the time the mom of Little Miss’s friend brought her back home.

Today we are seeing how the weather is since we were supposed to get a snow storm but now it looks like it’s moved further east (I see you Poconos and NJ…good luck!) and I might visit my parents or … again…tell them I’ll see them in the spring thaw.

Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday are bringing temps where we are expected only to reach about 11 as a high. Lows will be below zero due to windchill and other factors. I asked The Husband to bring some wood from our pile behind the garage into our laundry room so we don’t have to go out into the bitter cold to replenish the supply we have in our living room by the stove.

We do have some heating oil but do our best to use as little of that as we can because of how expensive it has been the last couple of years.

A quick reminder that we are having another Crafternoon Zoom Call next Sunday (the 26th) at 1 p.m. If you are interested in being a part of it, you can email me at lisahoweler@gmail.com or Erin (from Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs) at crackercrumbs@gmail.com.

If you don’t know what that is – it is where we all get together and chat together while doing crafts or other projects. We’d love to have you join us and stave off the gloom that can come with winter sometimes.

With all this cold and being trapped inside a lot you would think I would have plenty of time for reading and I do, but I also have other projects I am working on, so alas, this will not be an exciting section, because I am still reading the same books.

Christy by Catherine Marshall is a super long book and so I am taking breaks and reading A Body in the Library by Agatha Christie (do I really need to type her last name?) for something “lighter”.

I also hope to get back to Bourdain: The Definitive Oral Biography by Laurie Woolever this week.

If you are not aware of what Christy is here is a description:

The train taking nineteen-year-old teacher Christy Huddleston from her home in Asheville, North Carolina, might as well be transporting her to another world. The Smoky Mountain community of Cutter Gap feels suspended in time, trapped by poverty, superstitions, and century-old traditions. But as Christy struggles to find acceptance in her new home, some see her — and her one-room school — as a threat to their way of life. Her faith is challenged and her heart is torn between two strong men with conflicting views about how to care for the families of the Cove. Yearning to make a difference, will Christy’s determination and devotion be enough?

After these books I have a couple of books I want to get to including Frankenstein by Mary Shelly (for English with The Boy) and Miss Morgan’s Book Brigade by Janet Skieslen Charles, but I also want to read a Nancy Drew. Oh my gosh! Why does there have to be so many good books out there to read?!

Little Miss and I are reading The Sign of The Beaver by Elizabeth George Speare for school and listening to Peter Pan by J.M. Barie at night.

The Boy will be starting Frankenstein this week.

The Husband is reading The Rum Diary by Hunter S. Thompson.

(For anyone new, The Husband is just a joke nickname for my husband since he jokingly calls our son “The Boy”.)

This week I’ve watched three old movies I had never seen before — The Prisoner of Zenda, which I wrote about on the blog, The Stranger, and Gunga Din.  I’ll be writing blog posts The Stranger and Gunga Din soon.

I also watched the first episode of season five of All Creatures Great and Small and am so excited that it is back for another season. I can’t wait to see Tristan again.

I watched a few episodes of my favorite YouTuber farmer, Just A Few Acres Farm, while I waited for him to release a new episode.

The Advanced Readers Copies of Gladwynn Grant Shakes the Family Tree have been sent out to my advanced readers. I pushed back the release date to give them some time to read the book and me some time to tie up some loose ends.

It is available for pre-order here:

I am working on a monthly writing update and some movie impression posts for my Substack, which people can subscribe to for free or pay about $3 a month to receive exclusive posts I plan to offer in 2025.

This week on Substack I shared:

|| Classic Movie Impressions: The Ghost and Mrs. Muir ||

This week on this blog I shared:

Podcast I listen to daily:

Our Miss Brooks – rebroadcasts of the old radio show. I listen to these as I go to sleep.

Podcasts I am occasionally listening to because I don’t seem to just put them on since I am doing other stuff:

Little House 50 for 50

Pop Culture Preservation Society

True Drew: A Podcast for All Things Nancy Drew

Podcasts I want to listen to this year:

The Matthew West Podcast

The Life Without School

Lisa Harper’s Back Porch Theology

Now It’s Your Turn

What have you been doing, readin’, watchin’, and listenin’ to this past week? Let me know in the comments!

This post is linked up with The Sunday Post at  Kimba at Caffeinated Reviewer, Stacking the Shelves with Reading Reality, The Sunday Salon with Deb at Readerbuzz, and Book Date: It’s Monday! What are you reading hosted by Kathyrn at The Book Date.

Five hodge-podge mini-book reviews

/ Lisa R. Howeler / 9 Comments

I haven’t had much time to sit and write up full book reviews lately so I thought I’d share five mini-book reviews today.

Death Comes to Marlow by Robert Thorogood

Description:

Judith (our favorite skinny-dipping, whiskey-sipping, crossword puzzle author), along with Becks the vicar’s wife, and Susie the dogwalker find themselves in a head-scratching, utterly clever country house, locked-room murder mystery. 

Holiday festivities are now January doldrums when Judith gets a call―Sir Peter Bailey, a prominent Marlovian is inviting notable citizens to his house the day before his wedding to celebrate. 

Judith decides to go―after all, it’s a few houses up the Thames and free champagne, for sure. During the party, a loud crash inside stops the festivities. The groom-to-be has been crushed to death in his study. The door was locked from the inside so the police say suicide, obviously. 

My Review:

This was the second book in the Marlow Murder Club series. I did not enjoy it as much as the first book. This one was all over the place and very repetitive. I rolled my eyes way too often. I still love the characters but why the suspects were suspects was repeated and twisted around so many times it simply became obnoxious. We really needed another story to sort of break up the monotony of them running around in circles in this one. There was one side story related to the vicar’s wife Becks, but it came in way too late in the book and didn’t break up the way he kept saying, “We don’t know who killed him! Here is all our evidence….again.”

The Hound of the Baskervilles by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Description:

The Hound of the Baskervilles is the third of the four crime novels by British writer Arthur Conan Doyle featuring the detective Sherlock Holmes. Originally serialised in The Strand Magazine from August 1901 to April 1902, it is set in 1889 largely on Dartmoor in Devon in England’s West Country and tells the story of an attempted murder inspired by the legend of a fearsome, diabolical hound of supernatural origin. Holmes and Watson investigate the case. This was the first appearance of Holmes since his apparent death in “The Final Problem”, and the success of The Hound of the Baskervilles led to the character’s eventual revival.

One of the most famous stories ever written, in 2003, the book was listed as number 128 of 200 on the BBC’s The Big Read poll of the UK’s “best-loved novel”. In 1999, a poll of “Sherlockians” ranked it as the best of the four Holmes novels.

My review:

I really expected to like this a lot more than I did. Conan Doyle is a classic crime writer – the father of the detective/crime novel so it has to be great, right?

Sadly, this book really dragged for me and my son who read it with  me for his British Literature class. Maybe it was because Sherlock wasn’t even in half of it. During that half it was Watson writing letters to Sherlock to tell him what had happened. There were way too many conversations about what might have happened and very little action for me. I also couldn’t stand the “lord of the manor”, Henry Baskerville. I would guess Conan Doyle was making him obnoxious because he was an American and the British like to  make sure Americans know what they think about us. So maybe I wasn’t supposed to like him, which worked well because I didn’t.

I didn’t hate the book, but it was not one I would necessarily rush to read again anytime soon. I’d really like to read the short stories and the other three novels instead and then go back to this one later on to see if I like it any better.

Johnny Tremain by Esther Forbes

Description:

Fourteen-year-old Johnny Tremain, an apprentice silversmith with a bright future ahead of him, injures his hand in a tragic accident, forcing him to look for other work. In his new job as a horse-boy, riding for the patriotic newspaper, the Boston Observer, and as a messenger for the Sons of Liberty, he encounters John Hancock, Samuel Adams, and Dr. Joseph Warren. Soon Johnny is involved in the pivotal events shaping the American Revolution from the Boston Tea Party to the first shots fired at Lexington. Powerful illustrations by American artist Michael McCurdy, bring to life Esther Forbes’ quintessential novel of the American Revolution.

My review:

I read this one with Little Miss for English/History. The book is broken into sections with six chapters in each section, so we read a couple of the chapters each day for a few months.

I ended up really like this one even though the older writing style and the subject was a little difficult at times. There were some chapters where I skipped some of the more descriptive paragraphs to get to the point and move forward, but overall, this book was very well done, very educational, and had me crying more than once with the real life lessons within its pages.

Tooth and Claw by Craig Johnson

Description:

Tooth and Claw follows Walt and Henry up to Alaska as they look for work after they both returned from serving in Vietnam. While working for an oil company in the bitter cold of winter, they soon encounter a ferocious polar bear who seems hell-bent on their destruction. But it’s not too long until they realize the danger does not lurk outside in the frozen Alaskan tundra, but with their co-workers who are after priceless treasure and will stop at nothing to get it.

Fans of Longmire will thrill to this pulse-pounding and bone-chilling novel of extreme adventure that adds another indelible chapter to the great story of Walt Longmire.

My review:

I really enjoyed this novella. I’m a fan of the Walt Longmire Mystery books, with the exception of Hell is Empty, which I hated. I haven’t read one of the books since that one, which was early in 2024. I love Johnson’s writing, though, so I knew I couldn’t stay away for long. When I needed a short book to finish out the year, I remembered my husband had just won this one in a Goodreads giveaway. It is a story separate from the other books so I knew there wouldn’t be any spoilers.

I read it around Christmas, which is usually reserved for cozy books, not books where a man-eating, monster Polar Bear is terrorizing scientists in the arctic, but I could not put this book down. It was constant action, and I enjoyed it. I might even read another one of the full-length novels soon.

The Christmas Swap by Melody Carlson

Description:

All Emma Daley wants this holiday season is a white Christmas. But the young teacher and struggling musician sure can’t find that in sunny Arizona. Luckily, there’s someone living in a perfect mountain home in the Colorado Rockies looking to make a vacation trade this year.

West Prescott is an in-demand songwriter and talented musician who put his own singing career on hold to write songs for celebrity acts to perform. When his mother convinces him to do a vacation trade for Christmas, he never imagined one of the houseguests would be so sweet–or so strikingly pretty. Naturally, he decides to stick around, and, to get better acquainted, he poses as the house’s caretaker. But when Emma’s friend Gillian discovers his true identity and sets her sights on him, things get . . . messy.

My review:

 I really liked Carlson’s book, A Quilt for Christmas, and thought this would be similarly heartwarming and well-written. It was not. This book was a very cheesy romance that would not end. I feel so bad saying this but it was such a short book I had no time to connect to the characters and in the end I really didn’t care if I did or didn’t. These ridiculous romances where people meet and three days later are in love and changing their lives around for each other drive me nuts. I had no idea that was what was going to happen in this book. It’s like the two books were written by two different people. Every author has hit or miss books, though, and every reader is different in their likes and dislikes so while this book was not for me it might be the perfect light read for someone else. I won’t give up on trying Carlson’s books, but I will be a bit more careful and read the descriptions better from now on.

Have you read any of these books? What did you think of them if you did?

Sunday Chat: A nice, calm Christmas, getting ready for the first book of 2025, and join us for a cozy crafternoon

/ Lisa R. Howeler / 24 Comments

Welcome to my Sunday Chat where I ramble about what’s been going on in my world, what the rest of the family and I have been reading, watching, listening to, and what I’ve been writing.

This week I’m joining up with Kimba at Caffeinated Reviewer, Deb at Readerbuzz, and Kathyrn at The Book Date.

“Let’s just use paper plates for Christmas dinner,” I told my mom.

We’ve had a lot going on and some members of the family haven’t been feeling well from  couple different health issues.

Plus it was only the six of us so there was no need for anything fancy.

I heard a small “uh-huh..” on the other end of the phone and figured she was agreeing with me. The next day, though, The Husband, kids and I walked into a kitchen that had been set with a Christmas tablecloth and very fancy plates and goblets.

“These were my Mama’s,” Mom said of the plates. “And we thought we better get them out now because we might never have a chance to use them again.”

I figured that might be their dark humor since they are in their 80s and often say odd things like this to us.

Mom said she actually meant because we might not want to take the time to drag them out again. I added that we might not want to take the chance of them getting broken since I am quite a klutz.

The plates, by the way, were made in Baveria and were a gift of some kind to my grandfather when he used to work for Pepsi Co. That was probably 50 years ago.

The crystal glasses were gifts to my parents on their wedding day. They’ve been married 60 years.

There were also a set of glass water glasses that belonged to my paternal grandmother.

Somehow, we made it through dinner without breaking anything. My husband also made it through washing the plates without breaking anything.

After dinner we had a quick gift opening session that was quite quick this year since we were all broke. *snort* It was a nice time, though, and it was preceded by the reading from the Bible of the Christmas story, which we do every year.

Our family had a lot to celebrate this year.

My sister-in-law, who had been in the hospital  for an entire month for heart issues, came home on Christmas Eve. She was/is still dealing with a Norovirus she caught while there and will have  lot of new routines she’ll need to do for her condition, but she is home.

The Husband has been dealing with a health issue which could have been so much worse but has been caught and is being treated now and we are very, very thankful for that.

Money is tight right now, but we were all together and found a lot of time to watch movies and simply have fun.

It was a cold week and that was nice in some ways because it meant we had the white Christmas Little Miss had wanted.

We have electric heat upstairs and downstairs we have heating oil and a wood stove.

Thursday we didn’t light the fire because we simply didn’t get to it, and it was a reminder how well it helps to heat the rest of the house when we have it lit because I had to put four blankets on me to get warm that night. I had also taken a shower right before bed and my hair was wet so that, and the fact I’d forgotten to turn on the electric heat upstairs didn’t help at all.  The fire was definitely lit Friday, but we didn’t have to light it last night because we are having a small warm up this weekend with temps in the 40s and 50s.

This weekend we have been relaxing and enjoying our time together since The Husband is off work until the week after next and The Boy doesn’t have to return to tech school until Thursday.

We hope to see the Christmas lights at a local golf course Monday if it doesn’t get rained out.

I will finish Shepherd’s Abiding by Jan Karon’s today or tomorrow and that will be my final book of the year. My first book of 2025 will be Christy by Catherine Marshall, which I have already started and am really enjoying.

It is a book based very loosely on the life of Marshall’s mother and takes place in the early 1900s.  

This past week I finished Tooth and Claw by Craig Johnson – a novella part of the Walt Longmire series.

I kept trying to read Shepherd’s Abiding to keep with the Christmas spirt, but I kept going back to Tooth and Claw to see if Walt and Henry got away from the psycho polar bear.

Little Miss is very close to the end of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets.

The Husband is reading World Traveler by Anthony Bourdain which is also on my TBR.

I watched a lot of Christmas movies or Christmas-related shows last week including

The Christmas episode of The Dick VanDyke Show

Christmas in the Smokies

A ton of Mary Berry episodes

The Christmas episode of All Creatures Great and Small

Jingle All the Way

The Last Holiday

Then I also watched the North and South mini-series. Good grief..that was depressing in many ways. Then I watched another depressing film called Me Before You.

The Husband and I also watched Hombre – again depressing, but Paul Newman was in it so that was good.

I watched a lot of Murder She Wrote one day as well.

I will hopefully watch some more uplifting movies and shows this week.

I’m editing Gladwynn Grant Shakes the Family Tree and brainstorming ideas for the fourth Gladwynn Grant book. You can pre-order Gladwynn Shakes the Family Tree (a cozy mystery) here:  https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0DR6BG3ZR?

Last week on the blog I shared:

I also wanted to offer a quick thank you to everyone who took part in our Comfy, Cozy Christmas link up. That was so much fun. You can still add posts or just read the ones that are already there at this link: https://lisahoweler.com/comfy-cozy-christmas-2024/

A quick reminder for January plans for this blog and Erin with Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs.


Erin and I are planning some Cozy Crafternoons on Zoom in January and February to try to beat those winter blahs that happen after Christmas. The plans for now are two a month.

We will just all meet up on the date and time, and individually work on whatever we want – embroidery, coloring, knitting, crocheting, jewelry making, etc, while chatting.

Erin says she will be embroidering during the session. I might be writing, drawing, or editing photos.

If you are interested in learning more send an email either to me at lisahoweler@gmail.com or to Erin at crackercrumblife@gmail.com. That way we will have your email for the zoom link! Our first scheduled crafternoon is January 11th at 1 pm EST.

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.

Sunday Chat: Merry Christmas, Christmas movies, and looks like we will have a white Christmas afterall

/ Lisa R. Howeler / 12 Comments

Welcome to my Sunday Chat where I ramble about what’s been going on in my world, what the rest of the family and I have been reading, watching, listening to, and what I’ve been writing.

As always, I’m joining up with Kimba at Caffeinated Reviewer, Deb at Readerbuzz, and Kathyrn at The Book Date.



I live in an area where we get a lot of snow during the winter – or at least enough to make the roads slippery. I have lived in this area my whole life but I am still not a fan of driving in snow. It makes me very nervous and when I am done doing it my entire body hurts from tensing all my muscles.

I avoid it whenever I can but twice this week, I ended up driving in potentially slippery conditions. On Wednesday I drove home in snow after taking my daughter to Kid’s Club, which is a weekly kid’s program at a church about 20 minutes from our house. Listening to an audiobook of Johnny Tremain helped keep me distracted from being worried we might careen off the road into an embankment, especially when the snow started to stick to the road about five miles from our house.

I recorded a quick video while I was driving slowly, and it was so funny because the audiobook didn’t stop playing as I recorded and when I played it back the woman’s sort of creepy voice was talking about the many deaths that happened during the Revolutionary War while the snow swirled in front of us. (If you push play be aware it is very loud!)

We made it home and I vowed not to do it again but on Friday my dad needed to go to an MRI and I needed to pick up groceries. We knew we were supposed to get snow but we weren’t sure how much, so we headed out anyhow. This was after I got my dad’s car stuck twice earlier in the day. I’m borrowing his car while our truck is broke down.

 I kept my hands tight around the steering wheel on the way to where we get groceries while we got stuck behind a long line of cars due to a very slow truck and a shiny sheen showed up on the road.

That’s when Dad decides to remind me not to get too close to the car in front of me because I don’t want to have to slam on the brakes and possibly skid across the road since the temp had dropped to 29 degrees. That’s always fun in winter by the way – watching the thermometer on your car drop below freezing and wonder if that’s going to be cold enough to freeze the road as well or if it was warm enough that the road  hasn’t had a chance to freeze yet. This is something those who don’t live in colder climates have to worry about.

So, on Friday, for 15 miles, I had to make sure I stayed back and stayed calm while Dad reminded me gently that I was too close to cars. He made me a bit nervous so I made him drive home and guess what – he pulled up too close to cars and didn’t slow down at all. Why that hypocrite. *wink* Honestly, he’s a pretty good driver but it was nice to harass him a bit by telling him he was too close to the cars in front of us.

Once we were home, though, I decided we won’t be leaving the house again until Christmas Eve when we will head to my parents for the evening and then head back again on Christmas Day.

The Husband does have to go to work today and Monday but then he is off for a week and we are looking forward to him having that time.

We did receive a few inches of snow on Friday and with today’s artic temps and still cold temps the next few days, it looks like we will have our white Christmas after all.

Our family has a lot to be grateful for this Christmas. The month of December has been a beast – beating my family down physically, emotionally, and sometimes even spiritually. Through it all it has been tough to be upbeat but as I write this I am grateful for miracles – for surgeries that won’t have to happen, for medical conditions caught quickly and didn’t cause more damage than they could have, and for healing that is slowly coming.

It isn’t always easy to be happy at Christmas and I just want anyone who isn’t celebrating this Christmas, for whatever reason, that it’s okay. You feel the way you feel and if you don’t feel cheerful, then you don’t. Christmas is something we can celebrate at any time of the year because of why we celebrate. I’m hoping many of us have better days to come.

I had planned to read all Christmas books leading up to Christmas and I did read a couple but didn’t fill all of my reads up with Christmas.

I finished The Hound of The Baskerville’s by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

I finished The Christmas Swap by Melody Carlson this past week. I did not enjoy it as much as A Quilt for Christmas and it honestly felt like a completely different writer.

 I then finished Johnny Tremain which Little Miss and I have been reading all school year for history (in between other lessons).

That brought my book total read for the year to 66 and as I told friends and family – that is too close to 666 in my head (not the number counting up…but you know what I mean) so I am reading Tooth and Claw by Craig Johnson to bring it to 67.

After Tooth and Claw I am diving back into Christy by Catherine Marshall and starting either Castles in the Air by Donald Westlake (which my husband recommended) or Little Men.

The Husband is reading The Midnight Library by Matt Haig and that will be his 115th book of the year.

The Boy is supposed to be finishing The Hound of the Baskerville’s this week.

Little Miss is reading Harry Potter and The Chamber of Secrets.

We have been cramming as many Christmas movies or Christmas-themed shows we can fit in before Christmas.

This past week we watched Miracle on 34th Street (my husband’s favorite), Elf, Home Alone, and White Christmas.

On my own I watched The Bishop’s Wife and The Chosen special The Messenger.

We still want to watch Rudolph The Red Nosed Reindeer, A Christmas Story, and Santa Claus is Coming to Town. I also hope to watch past Christmas episodes of All Creatures Great and Small since I don’t have streaming that allows me to watch the latest season yet.

I am still finishing corrections on Gladwynn Grant Shakes the Family Tree, which you can now pre-order on Amazon here: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0DR6BG3ZR?

This week on the blog I shared:

A quick reminder for January plans for this blog and Erin with Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs. I’m going to copy what she has been posting on her blog because I am behind this week!


“Lisa from Boondock Ramblings and I are planning some Cozy Crafternoons on Zoom in January and February, to beat those winter blahs that happen late winter after Christmas. We are thinking we will have maybe two per month, so four in total. We will just all meet up on the date and time, and individually work on whatever we want – embroidery, coloring, knitting, crocheting, jewelry making, etc, while chatting or you could even have the sound off and just feel part of the group without the chatter, if you like it quiet. It is sort of open and flexible but also social. I will probably be stitching away – my friend has requested a small pillow with an embroidered possum on it, so I will be working on that in January for a while. Anyway, if you are interested in learning more send an email either to me at crackercrumblife@gmail.com or to Lisa at lisahoweler@gmail.com. That way we will also have your email for the zoom link! Our first scheduled crafternoon is January 11th at 1 pm EST.”

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.