In the beginning I decided I would read 15 and then I decided on my own that I’d just read 10. I knew I had a lot going on this summer with health and stuff (not like I actually had a life and traveled. Har. Har.) and was also trying to finish the fourth book in my mystery series (which, sadly, is not finished) so I figured I might not even read that many.
In the end, though, I did manage to read 15 books.
First, my original list of planned reads:
Summer of Yes by Courtney Walsh
Between Sound and Sea by Amanda Cox
The Clue in the Diary by Carolyn Keene
Roll of Thunder Hear My Cry by Mildred D. Taylor
The Inimitable Jeeves by PG Woodhouse
Prince Caspian by C.S. Lewis
Spill the Jackpot by Erle Stanley Gardner
‘Tis Herself by Maureen O’Hara
Death In A Budapest Butterfly by Julia Buckley
The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out a Window and Disappeared by Jonas Jonassen
But First Murder by Bee Littlefield
The Pale Horse by Agatha Christie
Britt-Marie was Here by Fredrik Backman
A Midnight Dance by Joanna Davidson Politano
The Unlikely Yarn of The Dragon Lady by Sharon J. Mondragon
Now my final list of books read this summer:
A Midnight Dance by Joanna Davidson Politano
The Unlikely Yarn of The Dragon Lady by Sharon J. Mondragon
But First Murder by Bee Littlefield
The Pale Horse by Agatha Christie
The Inimitable Jeeves by PG Woodhouse
Prince Caspian by C.S. Lewis
Spill the Jackpot by Erle Stanley Gardner
The Clue in the Diary by Carolyn Keene
All Things Wise and Wonderful by James Herriot
The Wishing Well by Mildred Wirt
Killer in the Kitchen (A Murder, She Wrote book) by Donald Bain
The Scarlet Pimpernel by Baroness Orczy
Dave Barry is Not Taking This Sitting Down by Dave Barry
Carry On, Jeeves by P.G. Wodehouse
The Password to Larkspur Lane by Carolyn Keene
Here are a few follow up questions suggested by Emma:
Did you manage to finish all 10/15/20 books? If not, what kept you from completing the challenge? I finished 15 books when I actually thought I’d only get 10 done!
Of all the books you read this summer, which one(s) was/were your favorite and why? The Scarlet Pimpernel and The Inimitable Jeeves were my favorites. The Scarlet Pimpernel kept me turning the pages with its adventure and The Inimitable Jeeves was hilarous and fun.
Did you DNF any? Why? I did not finish the Courtney Walsh books. I just couldn’t get into them.
Which book surprised you the most, either by being better or worse than you expected? I expected Spill the Jackpot to be so much better than it was. I read another book in the series and really enjoyed it but this one was just not good at all.
Did you notice any patterns in the genres you chose or enjoyed this summer? As usual I read more mysteries than anything else.
Which one had the best cover? Some of my books had different covers than what I showed above. If the photo I used for The Scarlet Pimpernel on my graphic had been the cover I had had on my book, I would say that one, but, alas, I did not have that cover. So for me I think A Midnight Dance had the best cover but the Dave Barry book had the funniest.
Which one was the longest? And the shortest? All Things Wise and Wonderful was the longest and Prince Caspian was the shortest (I think)..
Did you read them mostly in print? ebook? audio? I mostly read my books via ebooks.
Hello! Welcome to my blog. I am a blogger, homeschool mom, and I write cozy mysteries.
You can find my Gladwynn Grant Mystery series HERE.
This summer I have been watching movies that Angela Lansbury starred in or co-starred. This week I watched my last movie for this particular event.
Up next will be Comfy, Cozy Cinema for autumn with Erin from Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs. The list of movies we are watching is at the bottom of this post.
On Wednesday, I decided the movie I had picked all the way back at the beginning of this marathon wasn’t really something I was interested in at all. I had not looked the movie up or watched anything about it before I picked it and I should have. So, instead, I decided to cap off my Angela Lansbury movie watching marathon with a TV movie from the show that made her a household name — Murder, She Wrote.
When Murder, She Wrote was canceled in 1996, Angela Lansbury and loyal fans of the show were heartbroken. Lansbury was also angry and disappointed. One thing that soothed the shocking blow was when CBS agreed to make a series of TV movies featuring the character to appease Lansbury and fans.
Sadly, none of the movies took place in Cabot Cove with the original cast, but they at least featured Angela as Jessica.
The last of those movies, The Celtic Riddle, which I chose to watch for this week, aired in 2003.
I thought it was interesting that Angela’s son, Anthony Shaw, was the director and producer for all four of the films. This movie was also dedicated to the memory of Peter Shaw, Jessica’s husband, who died that same year. I thought it was also interesting that Amazon just put the movie up this past week. Perfect timing for me!
Here is a bit of description from online: Intrepid investigator Jessica Fletcher travels to Ireland to attend the reading of an old friend’s will, but a series of murders which follow have the police baffled. Jessica realizes that the will contains clues to the whereabouts of a secret treasure, as well as pointing to the real killer.
In the beginning of the movie, Jessica arrives at a mansion in a taxi and then rushes inside to the will reading. She sits down and receives several glares from the others in attendance. It’s clear she is not welcome but we don’t know yet why or even who the people are.
We slowly begin to learn about the family as a man gives his last will and testament on a video on a TV at the front of the room. The man has an Irish accent and it’s soon clear we — er, Jessica I mean — is now in Ireland.
There is a woman wearing sunglasses who looks sour, another sour-looking woman next to her, a free-spirited girl with a tortoise, a youngish man with spiked hair who is glaring, another young man, an older man who is drinking from a flask, a nervous-looking housekeeper, and another man who is sort of plain.
Each of those people will later either become suspects or victims after the man who passed away — Eamon Byrne — has his lawyer give each of them an envelope with a clue inside that will lead them to a treasure. His hope seems to be that they will work together to find out the meaning of the clues. That will be hard to do when each person seems to have a gripe against another person in the group.
The people in the room, it turns out, are his lawyer, his two daughters, his one daughter’s (Breeta’s) boyfriend, a man who wants to be Breeta’s boyfriend, a drunk man, and the housekeeper (Nora).
They will all have to join forces to find the treasure but before that can happen people in the group start dropping like flies. The saddest murder to me was the last one but I won’t spoil why.
Jessica isn’t very welcomed by the family and she especially isn’t welcome when Eamon leaves her Rose Cottage for once saving his life when he was visiting Cabot Cove. This is a small cottage on the property but not the main house, which his called, fittingly, Second Chance.
The problem is that Breeta (Sarah Jane-Potts) is living in Rose Cottage to be away from her money and power-hungry family members. While she’s at first hostile toward Jessica for being given the cottage, they eventually become friends as they try to figure out Breeta’s father’s riddle and who is killing people off.
An aside: The little cottage reminded me of the house my elderly friend Rev. Reynolds and his wife Maud lived in. Rev. Reynolds built his home to look just like an Irish cottage since he was from Northern Ireland. It was so cozy and warm. I loved visiting them there (except when he had another project for me) It brings tears to my eyes to think of it and the memories there. I’m so glad another couple is living there now and keeping the cozy feel of it alive. I need to go visit them soon since I met them through Rev. Reynolds.
Anyhow…back to the show:
The lead inspector in this movie, by the way, was quite amused by Jessica’s suspicions and deductions after the first murder. He looked like he was about to burst into laughter as she laid out her theory.
He seemed to think it was super cute that this old lady mystery writer thought the man might have been hit on the head. I really liked the actor — Timothy V. Murphy. I thought he played the part perfectly. I felt like he was saying in his mind, “Aw..she’s so cute. The mystery writer thinks she knows how to solve a real crime.”
(Excuse the reproduction here – it’s from my computer because there were not a lot of images online from the movie.)
Of course he had to eat his words when it turned out she was right and from then on, he treated her gently and seemed to want to take care of her and also believe every theory she had.
This video is also from my laptop so not the best reproduction:
The Irish accents in this were on point which made me look up the actors to see if they were actually Irish. With names like Cyril O’Reilly, Timothy Murphy, and Fionnula Flanagan how could they not have been Irish? I didn’t have time to research each actor but most of them did seem to actually be Irish and from Ireland.
I did recognize Fionnula Flanagan, but I’m not sure from what. I must have seen her in something or other, though. It will come to me eventually.
As in any Murder, She Wrote episode there were moments where I was like, “Well, that was a stupid move!” Like at one point Jessica runs out the door in the middle of her and Breeta and Breeta’s boyfriend, Paddy, (Cyril O’Reilly) brainstorming who the murderer is and she just says, “Wait here. I’m going to check something out.”
I literally said to the screen: “Jessica! Tell them where you are going! You can’t just run off places alone. That’s dangerous and you’re an old lady now!”
That’s the thing about these mystery shows —someone is always doing something dumb and the characters and us viewers just shrug it off like it is normal — well, after we yell at them of course. *wink*.
Also, Breeta’s boyfriend looked waaay too old for her. Like he could have been her dad old. When I looked up the actors, he was indeed 20 years older than her. Ick.
I feel bad in some ways, that Angela Lansbury, an Oscar-nominated actress, chose to be in these movies. They apparently didn’t have much of a budget because the rocks in the one scene were so clearly fake. Like plastic or Styrofoam fake. Eeek. Angela Lansbury loved Murder, She Wrote, though, and she liked the escape it gave people so I know that’s why she agreed to do them. I like watching the reruns for the same reason. She really gave us a gift by playing Jessica, even is she knew it wasn’t always “great TV” exactly.
Excuse the reproduction here – it’s from my computer because there were not a lot of images online from the movie.
Despite all those weird little quirks and fake rocks in the movie, the story itself and the acting wasn’t too bad.
I will say I guessed the killer about ten minutes into the show because of his expressions (smiling and five seconds later frowning menacingly) but the mystery may be harder for you. They did a good job of dropping red herrings throughout the show to distract me and others, though.
I don’t know that I’d watch this again and again or even … again once, but it was a fun little escape, much like the show. I think this autumn I might watch the other movies and see what I think of those too.
But for now, this is the end of my Summer of Angela.
If you’d like to read what I thought of the other movies I chose you can find the links to them here:
If you were to ask me which ones from this list were my favorites I’d have to say Gaslight and The Manchurian Candidate. The biggest surprise for me was The Pirates of Penzance and the films that made me forget Angela as Jessica Fletcher was The Manchurian Candidate followed by A Life at Stake and then The Picture of Dorian Gray.
Up next, Erin from Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs and I will be watching movies for Comfy, Cozy Cinema. Yes, we do know those two words are pretty much the same word and, no, we don’t care if that bothers anyone. *wink*
Here is the list of what we will be watching and the dates we will be writing about those movies:
You can also find impressions of movies we watched in the past Comfy, Cozy Cinemas HERE.
Have you ever seen this TV movie? What did you think of it?
Hello! Welcome to my blog. I am a blogger, homeschool mom, and I write cozy mysteries.
You can find my Gladwynn Grant Mystery series HERE.
It’s time for our Sunday morning chat. On Sundays, I ramble about what’s been going on, whatthe rest of the familyand I have been reading and watching, andwhat I’ve been writing. Some weeks I share what I am listening to.
I wrote about what’s been going on in my Saturday Afternoon Chat yesterday if you want to catch up there.
I will add that it is very chilly right now where I live. Yesterday morning it was 33 degrees in the morning for a little bit in a town near us that is located in one of the highest elevations. I know I said I wanted cooler weather but that’s ridiculous for August.
A reminder that I — and now my new co-host Erin from Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs — host a monthly bookish link party. It’s called A Good Book and a Cup of Tea but I’ve changed the link name at the top of the page to “Bookish Link Party” so it makes more sense. It’s a link up for any post related to reading or books and you can post throughout the month. The new link up for September will go up tomorrow morning .
Another reminder that Erin and I will be hosting a Comfy, Cozy movie watching marathon again this year, and we already have our list of movies.
Erin made this cool graphic for it:
Also, Erin and I host a monthly Crafternoon meet up where we get together on Zoom with other bloggers/crafters and do a craft while we chat about life and books and all kinds of other things. We do our best not to focus on religion or politics so we don’t depress ourselves.
If you are interested in the crafternoon, you can find more information here:
This past week I finished a Nancy Drew Mystery: Password to Larkspur Lane by Carolyn Keene and A Betti Bryant Mystery: But First, Murder by Bee Littlefield
I’ll have reviews up for them both soon, but did share quick ratings on Storygraph.
I enjoyed both, even though Nancy Drew always has some weird things in it with her being almost kidnapped and her or her dad not calling the police! Oy! Those old juvenile mysteries. I swear! Ha!
But First, Murder was a lot of fun and the perfect follow-up to the first book, Clueless at the Coffee Station. I don’t usually like books written in first-person present tense, so it shows you how good the book must have been for me to continue despite that.
I really enjoy Bee’s writing style.
Finishing Bee’s book brought my total books read for the summer to 15, even though I had figured I might only read 10 because I am also writing my own book and have a lot going on personally.
I was going to take a little break on starting another book while I write reviews for the ones I’ve just finished this summer, but then I remembered my husband had bought me a Murder, She Wrote book on Kindle so I started Gin and Daggers by Donald Bain last night. It takes place in England so I’m looking forward to it.
I’ve also started, Come, Tell Me How You Live by Agatha Christie. It’s a type of memoir about her travels with her second husband. I’m only a few pages in but I am enjoying it.
I hope to start The Unselected Journals of Emma M. Lion: Vol. 1 by Beth Brower soon because a bunch of people on Instagram keep mentioning this series.
I also have The Crime at Black Dudley by Margery Allingham on my radar and have for a while so Emma Lion might get pushed aside for that one first. I’ll see what my mood is since I am a mood reader
Little Miss and I are still reading The Good Master by Kate Seredy. We are also listening to The Moffats by Eleanor Estes at night.
Little Miss and I tried to watch our first Korean Drama yesterday – Bon Appetit, Your Majesty. We did not end up finishing it. It was not very good.
We watched K-Pop Demon Hunters a couple of times last week because of Little Miss. We are watching it again tonight because she wants her dad to see it. I would like the song Golden to please leave my head now. Thank you. I probably will not watch it again with them for this very reason. It’s a good song, but….enough is enough already.
I watched The Celtic Riddle, a Murder, She Wrote movie for my last Summer of Angela movie and will be posting about that tomorrow.
I also watched my farmer on YouTube – Just A Few Acres Farm and another YouTuber, Under A Tin Roof.
And of course a couple regular episodes of Murder, She Wrote.
And I watched Nonnas on Netflix. What a sweet film. If you have Netflix it is a good one.
I’m not very cool. I don’t watch a lot of modern TV, which is weird since I am not even 50 yet. *snort*
Last week I figured out an issue with the fourth book in the Gladwynn Grant Mysteries and once that was addressed I felt I could move forward with finishing the book. It will still be a bit but I’m on my way to get it done at least.
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.
Welcome to the Weekend Traffic Jam Reboot, where we offer a place for bloggers to link up and get a fresh set of eyes on their posts. We also feature one blog a week, letting our readers know about the blog and providing a link so readers can learn more about it.Please feel free to post new blog posts or old ones you want to bring attention to again.
Look for the post to go live about 9:30 PM EST on Thursdays.
Now, let’s introduce our hosts for the Weekend Traffic Jam Reboot:
Marsha from Marsha in the Middle started blogging in 2021 as an exercise in increasing her neuroplasticity. Oh, who are we kidding? Marsha started blogging because she loves clothes, and she loves to talk or, in this case, write!
Melynda from Scratch Made Food! & DIY Homemade Household – The name says it all, we homestead in East Texas, with three generations sharing this land. I cook and bake from scratch, between gardening and running after the chickens, and knitting!
Lisa from Boondock Ramblingsshares about the fiction she writes and reads, her faith, homeschooling, photography and more.
Sue from Women Living Well After 50 started blogging in 2015 and writes about living an active and healthy lifestyle, fashion, book reviews and her podcast and enjoying life as a woman over 50. She invites you to join her living life in full bloom.
We would love to have additional Co-Hosts to share in the creativity and fun! If you think this would be a good fit for you and you like having fun (come on, who doesn’t!) while still being creative, drop one of us an email and someone will get back with you!
WTJR will be highlighting a different blogger each week this year! We invite you to stop by their blog, take a look around and say hello!
A little about Sally: My life is a musical. And during this strange pandemic year, I am feeling more than ever like Alice in (my top 10 favorite movie) the 1951 Disney “Alice in Wonderland,” living in a world of my own. With so much time and attention devoted to my idiosyncratic obsessions and the analysis thereof (because there is no such thing as a good hobby that doesn’t involve building spreadsheets), I realized that the only missing piece was a written narrative.
I thought: “Oh sure, what the world needs now is another middle-aged fat lady blogging about clothing, outfits, capsules, and wardrobes. Not really. But also…maybe yes?” Because on reflection, it’s not as though there are so many of them already. And there certainly is not one that has enough rabbit content!
So here we are!
Thank you so much for joining us for our link-up!
And now some posts that were highlights for me this past week:
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.
Even to your old age and gray hairs I am he, I am he who will sustain you. I have made you and I will carry you; I will sustain you and I will rescue you
Isaiah 46:4 NIV
I need this verse right now. There is a lot going on in my life these days but I’ll write about that in another post someday.
For now, I’ll share that Friday was a weird day. I spent it painting rocks with my daughter in our yard and that ended when a bumble bee took off after me and I mean took off. It had it in for me. It stung me twice in the stomach after climbing down my pants (yes, my pants) and then proceeded to come after me again when I brushed it off, climbing in my shirt under my arm and stinging me again right after it crawled all over my face.
And, yes, it was a bumble bee and not a yellow jacket. It was possessed.
Surprisingly, the stings actually didn’t hurt hardly at all. They were swollen and red and I was convinced I was going to have a reaction because I’m a hypochondriac freak but in the end I was okay.
What sucked was how I was being brave and pushing aside some of my weird physical symptoms I deal with on a daily basis and playing with Little Miss in the yard and this is what happened.
That’s sort of my life story. I’ve always been afraid to fly. One day I probably will, and — well … let’s not even go there, shall we?
The thing is, that little bumblebee was actually cute. When I looked down at my waistband he was peering up over it at me all fluffy and cute. Then I started screaming and he flew off and came back at me full force. Looks can truly be deceiving.
The Unlikely Yarn of the Dragon Lady and Carry On, Jeeves.
This week I will be reading But First, Murder by Bee Littlefield and A Nancy Drew Mystery, The Password to Larkspur Lane.
Little Miss and I are reading The Good Master by Karen Seredy and at night we are listening to The Voyage of the Dawn Treader by C.S. Lewis, but I’ve either been too tired or can’t hear it well, so I’ve missed the whole story. Luckily it is one of my planned fall reads.
The Husband is reading Hostage by Robert Crais.
The Boy is listening to Red Tide, a Warhammer book.
We got Netflix for a month and only a month. The price for that service is absolutely nuts to me. My daughter wanted to watch KPop Demon Hunters and my husband and I want to watch The Thursday Murder Club.
I did watch Find Me Falling, a movie with Harry Connick Jr. that I had heard about earlier this year. It was okay. It used a trope I totally hate, and there were parts that fell flat to me, but it was heartwarming and that was what I needed.
Last week, I also watched The Long Hot Summer for the Summer of Angela and then several Murder, She Wrote episodes. I was very disappointed in one, though, where Jessica let the murderer go because he was old and a friend, and the victim was a member of the mob.
I also watched another episode of Ludwig.
Tonight, we are watching the new Superman movie because The Husband and The Boy watched it and loved it. Little Miss saw it with them but wasn’t terribly impressed.
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.
Welcome to the Weekend Traffic Jam Reboot, where we offer a place for bloggers to link up and get a fresh set of eyes on their posts. We also feature one blog a week, letting our readers know about the blog and providing a link so readers can learn more about it.Please feel free to post new blog posts or old ones you want to bring attention to again.
Look for the post to go live about 9:30 PM EST on Thursdays.
Let’s get right to it and introduce our hosts for the Weekend Traffic Jam Reboot:
Marsha from Marsha in the Middle started blogging in 2021 as an exercise in increasing her neuroplasticity. Oh, who are we kidding? Marsha started blogging because she loves clothes, and she loves to talk or, in this case, write!
Melynda from Scratch Made Food! & DIY Homemade Household – The name says it all, we homestead in East Texas, with three generations sharing this land. I cook and bake from scratch, between gardening and running after the chickens, and knitting!
Lisa from Boondock Ramblingsshares about the fiction she writes and reads, her faith, homeschooling, photography and more.
Sue from Women Living Well After 50 started blogging in 2015 and writes about living an active and healthy lifestyle, fashion, book reviews and her podcast and enjoying life as a woman over 50. She invites you to join her living life in full bloom.
We would love to have additional Co-Hosts to share in the creativity and fun! If you think this would be a good fit for you and you like having fun (come on, who doesn’t!) while still being creative, drop one of us an email and someone will get back with you!
WTJR will be highlighting a different blogger each week this year! We invite you to stop by their blog, take a look around and say hello!
A little about Nancy: Colors 4 Health, the place where colors and a healthy lifestyle intersect. I’m a Health and Lifestyle Writer and Wellness Blogger, and Author of “Colors of Joy: A Woman’s Guide for Self-Discovery, Balance, and Bliss.”
Thank you so much for joining us for our link-up!
And now some posts that were highlights for me this past week:
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 a tame week for the most part. Things picked up Friday when I picked up a friend of Little Miss’s and they had a sleepover before we all went to visit an old-school mall near Scranton, Pa. yesterday morning.
The mall has a small selection of stores still left but like many malls of today there are a lot of empty store spaces.
I didn’t walk as far as anyone else but one of the most exciting things for Little Miss was finding an escalator to ride up and down on.
That’s the main reason she wanted to go to a mall. She’d heard me tell stories about going on an escalator at the mall we used to go to when I was growing up and wanted to experience it herself.
Her brother and dad were able to visit the mall about two weeks ago but that was the first day of a two-week illness for her and me (which would have been over sooner if it hadn’t been for that stinking sinus drainage she got! Poor kid!). I had never visited that mall. The one we used to go to was in New York State and the other one was an hour south but has since closed.
If you’re new here, we live in a very rural area that requires us to drive about an hour in any direction to find larger stores/malls/movie theaters, etc.
We don’t have a lot of buildings with escalators or elevators near us, so it is quite a treat when we get to visit one. I can’t believe it’s taken us until Little Miss is almost 11 to take her somewhere she could ride an escalator!
Yesterday there was a mechanical horse ride at the mall, but The Husband couldn’t get the change machine to work so Little Miss simply announced she wanted to go back on the escalator again. That was just as exciting to her and her friend as a mechanical horse ride.
The escalator was in a JC Penny Store. Yes, this mall still had a JC Penny and it has two stories.
Erin from Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs knows that I don’t have much of a social life or get out much so she challenged me to go into a store and buy one thing I wouldn’t normally buy — like lipstick (she knows I don’t wear makeup so that’s probably why she suggested that. Ha!) I went into the first store I came to, which was Claire’s and grabbed a planner, some hairbands that were on sale, and tinted lip balm (when I originally wrote this I accidentally typed “tainted lip balm”. Well, that definitely would be something I don’t normally buy!). It shows how long it has been since I’ve been at a mall because when that woman with her black lipstick and black hair, wearing a Halloween costume in August, said to me, “That will be $42,” I went all old lady on her.
“I’m sorry? How much? What in the world did I buy?”
Turns out the lip gloss was $10 each and I had grabbed an extra one for Little Miss because she likes to pretend to do makeup with her friends. The planner was $15 and I do not think that they gave me the sales price on the hairbands.
Live and learn! And what I learned is I really don’t miss malls as much as I thought I d.
The kids had a lot of fun though and we even found a Barnes and Noble down the road to visit for a little while. Each girl picked out a book to read.
They also came home with a candle, a mug, a small stuffed animal, and friendship necklaces each. I loved how excited they were with those little things, but they did try for $10 little hamsters at Barnes and Noble which I turned down because we were there for books and not toys and had already gotten a couple of stuffed animals.
That’s one change from when we used to visit Barnes and Noble back in the day (20-some years ago) — there wasn’t a whole toy section, that I remember anyhow. I am sure bookstores are simply trying to diversify, but I like my bookstores to mainly carry books.
We only grabbed one book while we were there because I just ordered several books from Thriftbooks and I couldn’t think of any books I wanted that were new. The Husband picked up an Erle Stanley Gardner that we will share since we both like his books (or some of them anyhow).
I did want to look at journals, but I’ve gotten used to buying $5 dollar store journals and couldn’t bring myself to spend $18 or more on one. They had a huge 50 percent off cart of journals, but I didn’t see that until we were getting ready to leave so I left that for another day.
The mall and other stores aren’t super far away so we could definitely visit again someday soon.
I do feel like I’ve gotten old, though. The visit to B&N didn’t excite me as much as I thought it would. Maybe it was because I was having a bit of a stinky autoimmune day or maybe it’s because I’ve discovered I like little stores with used books more than I like big stores full of new books. Plus, there are so many books that I just wouldn’t read — like all those BookTok books — out in prominent places which means I would have had to hunt for any books I would really want to read.
Overall, it was a really nice trip, and I would love to go again when I am having a better health day and had had a little more sleep the night before. One of the nicest things about the trip was seeing the beautiful green hills of Pennsylvania. Summer is winding down and some trees are changing already, but for the most part green is dominating our views and I’m fine with that. I am, however, looking forward to the cooler temps of this week.
This morning as I got ready to cast my Sunday morning episode of Just A Few Acres Farm to the TV, I saw a notice that Bob from the Bob and Brad Physical Therapy YouTube Channel had passed away. It hit me very hard as I have watched this channel for years and gone there numerous times over the years to get ideas on how to help the various cricks and pains I get in my neck and muscles.
Bob was diagnosed with cerebral ataxia a few years ago, and it affected how he spoke and walked. I had no idea it would take his life, but apparently, it caused a cardiac event the week before last, and he passed suddenly. Brad and their new host (he stepped in a few years ago) and Bob’s son spoke about Brad during the episode announcing his death and I was a sobbing mess.
I was happy Bob donated his organs and saved at least three more lives, if not more, but it was so depressing for me to hear about I was glad I had not made plans to do anything today.
Right before I was about to post this today, I noticed my blog stats had gone crazy. I usually get 200-250 views a day, and yesterday I had over 5,00,0 but with no comments to match that I can see. The visitors are actually lower than I get too. And all the views are from the Netherlands. That’s all I know! Does anyone know where to find out where these views are coming from? All I can find is “Google search” and I don’t even see a ton of views on any one post. I am beginning to think something is wrong with WordPress’s stats.
I have a monthly book-related link party if you are interested. You can find the A Good Book and A Cup of Tea link party at the top of my page or here. It is for posts about books that you are reading, have read, book reviews — just anything book-related really. So even posts about book collections, authors etc. etc.
We will be holding another one next Sunday, August 24th from 1 to around 3 p.m.
The Crafternoons are events where we gather on Zoom and craft at our respective homes and chat while we work on various projects. We are calling them drop-in crafternoons because you can drop in and out during the time we are on (usually from about 1 to 3 p.m. EST US time). No need to stay the whole time if you can’t. Come late if you want or leave early.
If you want to join in, email Erin at crackcrumblife@gmail.com and she will add you to the mailing list.
This past week I finished Dave Barry Isn’t Taking This Sitting Down by Dave Barry (humor columnist for the Miami Herald). It was very funny! It was a collection of his columns from 2000.
Right now I am reading Carry On, Jeeves by P.G. Wodehouse and will probably finish it this week.
I am also reading But First, Murder (A Betti Bryant Mystery) by Bee Littlefield and Nancy Drew Mystery: Password to Larkspur Lane by Carolyn Keene (I’m sure I’ll finish it this week. These books are so short.).
I’ll be reading Come, Tell Me How You Live by Agatha Christie Mallowan next. This is an autobiographical book by Agatha Christie about some of her travels with her second husband, who was an archaeologist. I read the first couple of pages already, and her humor really comes through. I am looking forward to getting into it more.
Little Miss and I are reading The Good Master by Kate Seredy.
This weekend The Husband and I watched an episode of Rizzoli and Isles, a show I’d totally forgotten about. I watched a Murder, She Wrote episode and a coupe of Quantum Leap episodes. I also watched a couple episodes of my favorite farmer’s YouTube Channel — Just A Few Acres.
For my Summer of Angela feature, I watched A Life At Stake.
I made some progress on Gladwynn Grant Goes Back to School this past week and hope to make a lot more during this upcoming week. I am shooting for a November release. We will see how that goes!
I hope to finish up The Unlikely Yarn of the Dragon Lady by Sharon J. Mondagon this week. I hadn’t been listening to it consistently so it’s taken a bit for me to finish it. This week I plan to find some time during dishwashing, etc. to listen.
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.
Welcome to the Weekend Traffic Jam Reboot, where we offer a place for bloggers to link up and get a fresh set of eyes on their posts. We also feature one blog a week, letting our readers know about the blog and providing a link so readers can learn more about it.Please feel free to post new blog posts or old ones you want to bring attention to again.
Look for the post to go live about 9:30 PM EST on Thursdays.
Let’s introduce our hosts for the Weekend Traffic Jam Reboot:
Marsha from Marsha in the Middle started blogging in 2021 as an exercise in increasing her neuroplasticity. Oh, who are we kidding? Marsha started blogging because she loves clothes, and she loves to talk or, in this case, write!
Melynda from Scratch Made Food! & DIY Homemade Household – The name says it all, we homestead in East Texas, with three generations sharing this land. I cook and bake from scratch, between gardening and running after the chickens, and knitting!
Lisa from Boondock Ramblingsshares about the fiction she writes and reads, her faith, homeschooling, photography and more.
Sue from Women Living Well After 50 started blogging in 2015 and writes about living an active and healthy lifestyle, fashion, book reviews and her podcast and enjoying life as a woman over 50. She invites you to join her living life in full bloom.
We would love to have additional Co-Hosts to share in the creativity and fun! If you think this would be a good fit for you and you like having fun (come on, who doesn’t!) while still being creative, drop one of us an email and someone will get back with you!
WTJR will be highlighting a different blogger each week this year! We invite you to stop by their blog, take a look around and say hello!
A little about Erin’s blog: I try to create a culture of celebration in our home. For life, for the little things, for wonder and for whimsy. I try to find the beauty around us and teach my son Wyatt to find it, and appreciate it and love it as well.
We are a homeschool family, and we love it. We love the freedom it gives us to explore a topic or idea more deeply, and I like that I can adjust our schedule around Wyatt’s other needs. Wyatt has cerebral palsy and epilepsy, and his week often has therapy, doctor’s appointments, naps peppered throughout which would make a traditional school schedule difficult. He is also an asynchronous learner, and I love that I can tailor learning to where Wyatt is at that moment.
We have a house full of animals and will probably add more because we like a zoo. We have one cat, Miso, who is a rescue. She is 14 years old and my little floofy girl. We also have one leopard gecko, Luna, a pictus gecko named Harlow, a pacman frog named Freddy, and two crested geckos, Applejack and Oliver. We love all of our little friends!
My husband Billy, Wyatt, and I are all curious, creative, stubborn humans which makes for some fun times around here.
Thank you so much for joining us for our link-up!
And now some posts that were highlights for me this past week:
“I made up my mind that I would pop back and do the strong, manly thing by lying low in my flat and telling Jeeves to inform everybody who called that I wasn’t at home.”
The Inimitable Jeeves was my first P.G. Wodehouse book and I enjoyed it so much I’m already reading another one in the Jeeves series.
This book was originally presented as a collection of short stories which appeared in The Strand magazine in the U.K. The stories were later compiled into a novel. The first collection of short stories was Carry On, Jeeves, which I am reading now.
A little background on this series of short stories/books first.
Bertie Wooster is a “English gentleman” who is considered one of the “idle rich.” He doesn’t have a job. He mainly lives off his rich aunt Agatha and, probably, a trust fund.
Jeeves is Bertie’s valet or male attendant, if you don’t know what valet means. I wasn’t totally sure of the meaning of the word “valet” myself when I first heard the term years ago.
Jeeves gets Bertie out of the many predicaments Bertie gets himself into by being too nice or too arrogant by thinking he can fix a situation. In this book Bertie gets himself in trouble in a variety of ways, including helping his old school chum Bingo who is in love with a new woman every other month.
He also has to try to dodge his Aunt Agatha who is always trying to marry him off because she feels he is simply too lazy.
“It is young men like you, Bertie, who make the person with the future of the race at heart despair,” she says at one point. “Cursed with too much money, you fritter away in idle selfishness a life which might have been made useful, helpful and profitable. You do nothing but waste your time on frivolous pleasures. You are simply an anti-social animal, a drone. Bertie, it is imperative that you marry!”
The tongue-in-cheek and sarcastic humor in this book was exactly what I needed right now. Honestly, it is a type of humor that I feel like I am going to need consistently from now on. Because the chapters are short stories all their own it makes it easy to read a chapter here or there, put it down for a bit, and then pick it back up and still know what is going on
I love how Jeeves not only always solves the problems that Bertie has but how he also gets away with lowkey (and sometimes not so lowkey) insulting Bertie throughout.
Speaking to a valet who was going to fill in for him when he was on vacation, Jeeves says of Bertie, “You will find Mr. Wooster an exceedingly pleasant and amiable young gentleman but not intelligent. By no means intelligent. Mentally he is negligible — quite negligible.”
Bertie is, of course, offended.
“I suppose, strictly speaking, I ought to have charged in and ticked the blighter off properly in no uncertain voice. But I doubt whether it’s humanly possible to tick Jeeves off. Personally, I didn’t even have a dash at it. I merely called for my hat and stick in a marked manner and legged it. But the memory rankled, if you know what I mean. We Woosters do not lightly forget. At least, we do somethings — appointments and people’s birthdays, and letters to post and all that, but not an absolute bally insult like the above. I brooded like the dickens.”
Insults or not, Jeeves is always there for Bertie, especially when he thinks Bertie is wearing the wrong outfit or the wrong piece of clothing for specific outfits.
“The cummerbund?” I said in a careless, debonair way, passing it off. “Oh, rather!”
“I should not advise it, sir, really I shouldn’t.”
“Why not?”
“The effect, sir, is loud in the extreme.”
I tackled the blighter squarely. I mean to say, nobody knows better than I do that Jeeves is a master mind and all that, but dash it, a fellow must call his soul his own. You can’t be a serf to your valet. Besides, I was feeling pretty low and the cummerbund was the only thing which could cheer me up.
“You know, the trouble with you, Jeeves,” I said. “is that you’re too — what’s the word I want? Too bally insular. You can’t realise that you aren’t in Piccadilly all the time. In a place like this a bit of colour and touch of the poetic is expected of you. Why, I’ve just seen a fellow downstairs in a morning suit of yellow velvet.”
“Nevertheless, sir —”
“Jeeves,” I said firmly, “my mind is made up. I am feeling a little low spirited and need cheering. Besides, what’s wrong with it? This cummerbund seems to me to be called for. I consider that it has a rather Spanish effect. A touch of the hidalgo. Sort of Vicente y Blasco What’s-his-name stuff. The jolly old hidalgo off to the bull fight.”
“Very good, sir,” said Jeeves coldly.
Oh gosh, I love their banter and how Bertie calls everyone “the blighter.” I now go around saying this to myself when thinking about certain people in my life.
I love Bertie’s struggle to be a proper English gentleman while also trying to have fun and rebel against the upper crust he is a part of. There is a lot of satirical commentary and digs on the rich of England in these stories.
I have been told there was a television show in the 1990s based on the stories, starring Hugh Laurie, but I’m not ready to watch it yet. I prefer to hold on to the versions of Bertie and Jeeves I have formed in my imagination for now.
As I mentioned earlier, I am currently reading Carry On, Jeeves and plan to read more of the stories and books in the series in the future.
According to the web site Fantastic Fiction, there are 15 books in the series:
My Man Jeeves (1919) The Inimitable Jeeves (1923) Carry on, Jeeves (1925) Very Good, Jeeves (1930) Thank You, Jeeves (1934) Right Ho, Jeeves (1934) The Code of the Woosters (1938) Joy in the Morning (1946) aka Jeeves in the Morning The Mating Season (1949) Ring for Jeeves (1953) aka The Return of Jeeves Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit (1954) Jeeves in the Offing (1960) aka How Right You Are, Jeeves Stiff Upper Lip, Jeeves (1963) Much Obliged, Jeeves (1971) aka Jeeves and the Tie That Binds Aunts Aren’t Gentlemen (1974) aka The Cat-Nappers
Have you ever read this book or any of the Jeeves books? How about any of Wodehouse’s other books?
Lisa R. Howeler is a blogger, homeschool mom, and writes cozy mysteries.
You can find her Gladwynn Grant Mystery series HERE.
