Top Ten Tuesday July 8: Books I’d Like to I Re-read (Share either your favorite books that you enjoy re-reading or books that you’d like to read again!) (Submitted by Becky @ Becky’s Book Blog)
I don’t reread books a lot but there a few I would read again, and I guess for this post, I need to come up with ten that I have reread or would reread. I think I can do that.
The Blue Castle by L.M. Montgomery
It took me until last year to read this book and I ended up loving it. I would love to reread it again this year and I probably will.
2. Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
I know! So cliché! But here is another one that I read late in life and now I want to read it again because it was so lovely and cozy and interesting. I never imagined I’d get so wrapped up in these characters. I used to roll my eyes at people who would gush about this book and the movies based on it and then I read it. Oh, my! I understand the gushing now.
3. Sarah, Plain and Tall by Patricia MacLachlan
This book is just as sweet and touching as the Hallmark movie from the 1990s was, which is how I first knew about the story. Of course, the book came first. I didn’t read the book until I read it to my daughter a couple of years ago and I just loved it. I also loved the sequels, especially Skylark.
4. At Home in Mitford by Jan Karon
I have read this one more than once and I could read it again and again. There is always something new that I pick up on in it. I have also read Shepherd’s Abiding, the Christmas book more than once but now I read certain sections that are my favorite instead of the whole book.
5 The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien
I read this one several years ago with my son and I would like to reread it but I have to finish The Lord of the Rings trilogy first. I have The Return of the King to read next.
6. The Cat Who Saw Ghosts by Lilian Jackson Braun
This is my favorite book of this series. It’s a lot different than the others in the series and sometimes I wonder if Lilian wrote it. The main character, Qwill, shows even more of his personality in this one and even shows his tenderness toward a young child in the book. The story/mystery is also a solid one. As with any long running series, there are aways going to be duds along the way, but this was not one of them.
7. To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee
I first read this book in sixth grade by myself and again in eighth grade, though I don’t remember reading it in eighth grade. I know it was part of our curriculum but I guess my teacher wasn’t very memorable in her teaching. I remember she said, “What do you mean you’ve already read it?” She was surprised a sixth grader had taken it upon herself to read something so deep and advanced, I suppose, and I didn’t do that very often but in this case, I did read it because my mom suggested it and then started to read it to me in her southern accent. After I heard her Southern accent reading it, that’s how I heard the narrator (Scout) for the rest of the book.
I know I didn’t understand the intricacies of the message of this book when I was a child so reading it again as an adult about three years ago with my son for his English was a much different experience. I sobbed through the second half of the book as an adult because I understood so much more about the story, about Atticus, about the world and the ugliness and also goodness, the third time around. It is a book I think needs to be read several times for the message to really hit home.
8. Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
This is another book that I read at an age that other kids these days probably wouldn’t have read it. I did not do that a lot so don’t let me mislead you into thinking I read a ton of classics or harder books as a child. I did this occasionally and this one was one of those. The language is a challenge since it is written in the 1800s, but I really had fun with the story. It was a lot of fun, much more so than Huckleberry Finn, which had a lot of serious moments mixed in with the adventure. I liked Huck Finn too, though. I hope to read this one again at some point soon.
9. The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett
This is a book I read for the first time with my daughter last year. I would read it again because I truly enjoyed the story, even the harder parts I didn’t like in the movie version I saw as a child. I wanted a bit more from the ending but I really enjoyed the other parts of the book and could see myself reading it again.
10. Roll of Thunder Hear My Cry by Mildred D. Taylor
This is a book with a lot of tough subjects, but one I haven’t read since I was about 11. I would like to read it again because I have a feeling it will hit me in a different way, similar to the way To Kill A Mockingbird did. I actually have this as one book I want to read this summer.
Are there books that you have reread or want to reread? Or are you more of a one and done person like I usually am?
I know I talk a lot on here about Agatha Christie, but I actually have not yet read a ton of her books. Quite a few, but not a ton.
Most of the Agatha Christie books I have read have been either Poirot or Miss Marple mysteries. I decided to read The Pale Horse, which is not about either of those sleuths when the Agatha Christie official website suggested it a few months back as one of the challenges for their 2024 reading challenge. I have not kept up on that challenge this year but might try for the remainder of the year.
This month they are suggesting Come, Tell Me How You Live, which is a memoir of Agatha’s travels with her husband Archie. This is perfect timing because I have been watching Travels with Agatha Christie with Sir David Suchet and though he isn’t talking about this book in the show, it would still tie into her traveling. The book he actually mentions would have focused on her trip with her husband Archie and this book was written after she remarried years later. It’s actually listed under Agatha Christie Mallowan. I will probably have to order it new or through Thriftbooks, but I think it would be a fun read.
Anyhow, on to The Pale Horse.
I didn’t actually read the description of this book before I started it but as I was getting into it I saw a review of it and became a little nervous. The review mentioned that it deals with the occult and seances, etc., and that is just not my thing. I decided to plow forward, though, and in the end the book did mention those topics but — without giving too much away — that is not where the story landed, shall we say.
The story is written in both third and first person, which threw me off a bit.
We start with a man named Mark Easterbrook trying to write a mystery and switch to an actual mystery when a dying woman asks for a priest to come so she can tell him something before she dies. We don’t know what she tells him, but we know that he is murdered shorty before she does tell him.
Eventually we are led back to the man we met in the first chapter and he finds himself trying to figure out why the priest was murdered and what three creepy women living together in an old inn called The Pale Horse, might have to do with his murder and the mysterious deaths of several others in the community.
When the priest died, he had a list of last names in his shoe and the police are eventually joined by Easterbrook to find out who the people on the list are or were. Sadly, some of them are in the past tense and Easterbrook is worried that if he doesn’t hurry up and figure out what is going on, more of them will be in the same tense.
One of Mark’s friends is a mystery writer, Mrs. Oliver, and she is friends, sort of, with the creepy women but she doesn’t enjoy the way they talk about occult and seances, etc. In this scene I am Mrs. Oliver:
Thyrza shot her a quick glance.
“Yes, it is in a way.” She turned to Mrs. Oliver. “You should write one of your books about a murder by black magic. I can give you a lot of dope about it.”
Mrs. Oliver blinked and looked embarrassed.
“I only write very plain murders,” she said apologetically
Her tone was of one who says, “I only do plain cooking.”
“Just about people who want other people out of the way and try to be clever about it,” she added.
I wasn’t sure where the book was going part of the time and that made me a bit nervous and I got even more nervous when Mark and a new friend of his decided they would set up the people they thought might be involved in the murders. I was also caught up in it all before that but was biting my nails (literally) once the plot moved to entrapment.
I’ve mentioned before that one thing I am not a fan of when it comes to Agatha is how she doesn’t add a lot of description of surroundings or characters. I don’t like a ton of description in my books but a little more than what she offers sometimes would be nice. Her lack of description was not an issue for me in this book, which felt like a more well-rounded novel to me than some of the ones from the series.
A description example I don’t remember reading much in other of her novels I have read (which remember is very few):
The vicarage sitting room was big and shabby. It was much shaded by a gargantuan Victorian shrubbery that no one seemed to have had the energy to curb. But the dimness was not gloomy for some peculiar reason. It was, on the contrary, restful. All the large shabby charis bore the impress of resting bodies in them over the years. A fat clock on the chimneypiece ticked with a heavy, comfortable regularity. Here there would always be time to talk, to say what you wanted to say, to relax from the cares brought about by the bright day outside.”
A couple of other quotes I enjoyed from the book:
“My husband’s a very good man,” she said. “Besides being the vicar, I mean. And that makes things difficult sometimes. Good people, you see, don’t really understand evil.” She paused and then said with a kind of brisk efficiency. “I think it had better be me.”
“People are so proud of wickedness. Odd, isn’t it, that people who are good are never proud of it? That’s where Christian humility comes in, I suppose. They don’t even know they are good.”
I considered Hermia disapassionately across the table. So handsome, so mature, so intellectual, so well read! And so — how could one put it? So — yes, so damnably dull!”
“Yes,” I said. “The supernatural seems supernatural. But the science of tomorrow is the supernatural of today.”
Have you read this one? What did you think?
Lisa R. Howeler is a blogger, homeschool mom, and writes cozy mysteries.
You can find her 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. Sometimes, I share what I’ve been listening to.
Thursday I received a package from Thriftbooks and inside was supposed to be a copy of Prince Caspian by C.S. Lewis (check), a copy of The Nancy Drew Scrapbook by Karen Plunket-Powel (check), and a Murder She Wrote Mystery (no check). Instead of the Murder She Wrote mystery, I found a very old book with a crumbling dust jacket and more dust than this mild-asthmatic with allergies was comfortable with. I barely looked at the book but I thought the title looked French.
Later that night after sending off an annoyed email to Thriftbooks to tell them they sent me the wrong book, I decided to take a closer look at the book, to at least find out the name.
I had never heard of the book, but it was called Murder A La Stroganoff by Caryl Brahms and SJ Snow. Inside the cover, it had a stamp that said it was from the Newberry Library, had been retired from their shelves, and was part of the Barzel Dance Collection. I searched a little more online and these books are fairly rare because it is a first edition from 1938 and the book is no longer in print. They did issue a paperback copy in 1985, but there are not a ton of the hardcovers published by The Crime Club, Doubleday & Co, New York out there.
Sadly, the book isn’t necessarily worth a ton without the dust jacket, which crumbled in my hands when I opened the package, but I couldn’t find one online being sold for less than $20 so, hey, if I ever do decide to sell it, I could make at least $20 off something I was shipped for free. With the dust jacket it could be worth up to $150. Apparently there aren’t a ton of these first editions out there and it’s a bit of a cult classic among mystery readers.
Thriftbooks did get back to me, by the way, and didn’t get the point that they sent the wrong book. Instead, they said they were sorry the book didn’t show up the way I wanted it to and that they didn’t have any other books with that title (they still think it is the Murder She Wrote book I first ordered) so to just keep the book and do what it with I wanted. They then issued me a refund for the book.
The book is a mystery and crime book with some satire mixed in about the ballet industry and is the second book in a series. I can not find a description of the book line but I think I actually want to read it so I might get a copy of the paperback instead of trying to read this older book which might bother my allergies.
I will be writing a blog post in the future about the book and its authors, though, because I fell down a rabbit hole researching what the book might be worth. I suppose that in the end getting the wrong book wasn’t such a bad thing.
Last week I finished The Pale Horse by Agatha Christie and The Clue in the Diary by Carolyn Keene (A Nancy Drew Mystery).
I’ll have reviews of both of them soon but I did enjoy them both. The Pale Horse was obviously more adult — I mean, not like “adult-adult” but more mature themes. But not like … mature-mature. *wink*
I’ve been enjoying some leisurely reading of P.G. Wodehouse’s The Imitable Jeeves.
The book is so funny and witty. It’s been a very nice escape. The Jeeves books are comedic books about Bertie Wooster, a British gentleman from London, who is always getting into somewhat weird situations where he has to be bailed out or helped by his valet Jeeves.
This book is exactly what I have needed this week.
I think I’m going to have to give up on The Happy Life of Isadora Bentley by Courtney Walsh before I even really get too far in it. I pushed through the first chapter wondering why the author was giving me so much information at once and when she was going to get to an actual story. The first chapter is entirely Isadora standing in a supermarket, thinking about her life with very little interaction with anyone else or action. It looks to me like the whole book is mainly her thinking about things and dumping a lot of info on the reader all in one go. I just can’t get into it, in other words.
I might try again this week, but otherwise I am going to move on to Prince Caspian and then But First Murder by Bee Littlefield.
This week I watched Gaslight (1944) as part of my Summer of Angela movie watching event and really enjoyed it. It isn’t a movie I’d watch over and over because it is pretty dark in some ways, but I did enjoy it. I also watched The Rains Came, a 1939 movie with Myrna Loy and Tyrone Powers and Abbott and Costello in The Jack and The Beanstalk. This morning I watched church with Lisa Harper as the guest pastor and followed it up with a couple episodes of Just A Few Acres Farm.
I’m working on Gladwynn Grant Goes Back to School and wrote a little more this past week. I hope to have more time to write this week since Little Miss is going to VBS and I’ll probably wait at the church for her to save gas.
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.
I hope you are all having a nice summer. Ours has been pretty tame, but we still have two months, so we will see if we find some adventure for July and August. I’ve been spending my summer reading, working on the fourth book in my cozy mystery series, and watching movies. I’ve also been helping my elderly parents some and figuring out some health issues (the good news is that things are getting a little better as I figure out some things. It’s going slow but, yes, I am seeing some progress and I am so thankful to God for that.)
Once again this week I want to mention the loss of a member of our blogging community a couple of weeks ago. Patrick Weseman, author of Adventures in Weseland passed away the week before last and we only learned of it after we posted our Weekend Traffic Jam Reboot post, which featured his blog.
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 Emma: Hello, I’m Emma Peach, a 49-year-old journalism graduate. I grew up in Cambridgeshire, then at the age of 26 I moved to Nottingham for 13 years (where I did a Masters in TV Journalism) before relocating to the North West in 2013. I’ve worked in broadcasting since 2001, mainly TV, but also online and radio. When I moved to Cheshire, I took the plunge and left my staff job to go freelance and have never regretted it!
I started Style Splash when my daughter was two years old; it was the culmination of finally feeling like I had regained my identity since becoming a mum. I’d always loved fashion and beauty so it seemed like the perfect creative outlet. I have to admit that I was more than a little intimidated by all the blogs featuring flawless 20-somethings wearing the latest designer clothes, but while there’s certainly a place for those blogs, along with the glossy magazines for us to aspire to, they don’t reflect the day to day existence of most people. Becoming a mum or reaching a milestone birthday shouldn’t create fashion boundaries…style has no age limit!
Thank you so much for joining us for our link-up!
And now some posts that were highlights for me this past week:
Today’s prompt is: Freebie/Throwback (Come up with a topic you’d like to do or go back and do an old topic you missed or just want to do again!)
So this week, I chose to share my last ten reads so far this year with quick, two to three sentence reviews for each.
I am telling you, guys and gals, I am reading so slowly this year! The number of books I have read so far is a very sad amount. I know what is important is that I’m reading at all, not how many I have read, but ugh! I feel like I am not spending enough time just relaxing and reading!
Of course, I also have started some books that took up quite a bit of time and then decided I couldn’t finish them. I also read two very long books that took me longer than most of the books I read.
Anyhow, on with the post!
The Horse and His Boy by C.S. Lewis
This third book in the Chronicles of Narnia series was a very fun read with a lot of humor, but yet also seriousness, thrown in. It is a children’s book, but there is a lot of spiritual wisdom if you read between the lines.
2. The Tuesday Night Club by Agatha Christie
Interesting and intriguing collection of short stories that are connected by the fact a group of people are sitting around sharing their stories about mysteries they experienced and either couldn’t solve or did later. This is a Miss Marple book and in many of the stories Miss Marple ended up solving the crime. This wasn’t my favorite Agatha Christie book but it was an interesting concept.
3. Chocolate Chip Cookie Murder by Joanne Fluke
I’ve heard tons about this series over the years and I’m not sure what I was expecting, but I did not like this book as much I hoped I would. I liked most of it, but toward the end it totally fell apart for me. I might try others in the series but at this point, my expectations have been lowered.
4. The Two Towers by J.R.R. Tolkien
It took me quite a long time to get through The Fellowship of the Ring but once I really sat down and got into this one, it took a lot less time. I very much enjoyed this one. I love the friendships, the fight of good against evil, the adventure, all of it. I do not like that the two “bad guys” have names that are so similar to each other, though. Up next in this series will be, of course, Return of the King, and I’m saving that for late fall, early winter.
5. The Twisted Claw by Franklin W. Dixon (A Hardy Boys)
This was the first Hardy Boys book I read and I ended up enjoying it. I’m looking forward to reading others.
6. Peg and Rose Solve a Murder by Laurien Berenson
I enjoyed this first in a new series and by a new-to-me author. I am looking forward to finding and reading book two soon.
7. Vera Wong’s Guide to Snooping (On A Dead Man) by Jesse Sutanto
This one was the second book in a series and it was not as good as the first, at least for me. I enjoyed Vera’s character like I did in the first book, but in this second book, things took a really dark turn and I was having a hard time pushing through. I didn’t connect with the characters in this second book like I did with the first either. It was still a pretty good book and I will read more in this series, if there is more.
8. The Wishing Well by Mildred Wirt
I enjoyed this juvenile mystery by the original Carolyn Keene. It is a book from the Penny Parker Mysteries and the wit and quick tongue moments in this book were Wirt at her finest. In these books Wirt is free to write how she wants and not how Harriet Adams of Stratemeyer Publishing wanted her to write.
This book felt very long to me because it was broken down into a lot of short stories with the related thread being James’ time in the military. It was a little tedious to me to read straight through, so I took breaks and read it a few times a week, a couple of chapters at a time. In the end, I really enjoyed the book, the stories about James in the military and his family life, and the stories about Tristan, which were hilarious. I could absolutely picture the actor who plays Tristan in the new series as I read stories he was a part of. When I was done with the book, I actually felt a little sad because it had been part of my life for at least three months, and I felt like I had been reading about family in some ways. I am looking forward to reading the rest of the books that I haven’t read yet in the series.
10. The Pale Horse by Agatha Christie
I finished this one just Sunday night and enjoyed it when I originally thought I wouldn’t. This book deals a lot with occult and mediums, etc., which is not my thing, so I didn’t think I would like it. About halfway through, I had to find out what happened and couldn’t put the book down. I felt a little stupid that I didn’t figure out who the guilty party was until it was revealed, since it was a little obvious, but I like how it was brought out, and I really liked the very ending. That’s all I will say about that.
What are some of the recent books you’ve read?
Lisa R. Howeler is a blogger, homeschool mom, and writes cozy mysteries.
You can find her 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.
The heat this past week was awful. Just awful. We couldn’t get out house to cool down part of the time. But we survived and are experiencing much nicer and cooler temperatures now.
I haven’t been adding a lot of books to my shelf lately, but I thought I’d share this lovely Little Women book I recently bought from an online used bookshop.
It is an illustrated copy from the 1970s and I absolutely love the feel of the book overall, the illustrations inside, and the beautiful outside of the book, under the outside cover.
I know I will be rereading Little Women this year and other years. I might not read it all the way through again, but there are favorite sections I will definitely read over and over after I finally read it for the first time last year.
When I posted about this edition on my Instagram, several people commented that they had the exact same copy. Do any of you have a copy like this too?
I am still reading The Pale Horse by Agatha Christie but will have it done later this week. I’m not sure what I think of this one, but will probably go for a Miss Marple book for my next Agatha read.
I am also reading The Clue in the Diary by Carolyn Keene. It is a Nancy Drew mystery and it is the first book where she meets Ned Nickerson, who readers of Nancy Drew will know is her boyfriend throughout the series.
I am reading The Imitable Mr. Jeeves by P.G. Wodehouse off and on.
I just started The Happy Life of Isadora Bentley by Courtney Walsh. It is too soon for me to decide if I will like it or not.
Up next I hope to read Prince Caspian by C.S. Lewis.
Little Miss and I are listening to Prince Caspian at night but she can hear it better because the phone is closer to her and I am closer to the air conditioner, which means I really can’t follow the story at all. That’s why I am glad I am going to be reading it soon.
The Husband is reading Glitz by Elmore Leonard.
The Boy is listening to Perturabo by Guy Haley. It’s a Warhammer book.
Little Miss just started the fourth book in The Harry Potter series, Harry Potter And The Goblet of Fire by J.K. Rowling.
I rewatched The Manchurian Candidate with The Boy last night. I picked up even more than I did when I watched it. Earlier in the week I watched Bedknobs and Broomsticks and an episode of Ludwig. This week I hope to watch Agatha and Me With David Suchet, more Ludwig, and Gaslight with Angela Lansbury for my Summer of Angela.
I’ve been listening to old Jack Benny radio programs before bed.
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.
Welcome to my June newsletter! That’s right. I’m going to try to do this once a month again and here on my main blog instead of Substack. I’ll have a page set up for you to find past newsletters.
All three Gladwynn books on sale
All three ebooks in the Gladwynn Grant Mystery series are on sale this week on Amazon.
You can read descriptions of each of the books at the links.
Update on book four in the Gladwynn Grant Mystery series
I’m working on book four of the Gladwynn Grant series but I wouldn’t say I am working on it steadly.
Alas, I am working on it here and there, but I have plenty of ideas. I hope to release it in October and will have a cover reveal by the end of July.
The book will be called Gladwynn Grant Goes Back To School. There will be a mystery, of course, since this is a mystery series. I can tell you that it will involve the local superintendent and that another family member of Gladwynn’s might show up for a visit. One we haven’t met yet.
There will be, of course, just a touch of romance like the other books.
I’ll have a description of the book by next month’s newsletter.
Admiring my roses
I always look forward to when the flowers bloom in our yard and this year was no different. The roses were beautiful this year but didn’t seem to last as long. The heatwave we had this week and the fact I failed to water them didn’t help.
Here are a few photos of them while they were blooming.
A Giveaway
I always had fun doing giveaways on my Substack Newsletter so I thought I’d do that with this newsletter. I would like to send one person a paperback copy of Gladwynn Grant Gets Her Footing.
If you are interested in a copy you can simply tell me what your favorite book genre is in the comments and I will randomly choose a winner by next week.
Find me on social media:
I wanted to close by reminding readers of my newsletters that I am on YouTube now (still figuring it out and only doing shorts for now). You can find my channel here: https://www.youtube.com/@goodbooksandtea
I want to thank everyone who supports my writing, whether here on the blog or by borrowing or buying my books, or just reading them at all. It really means a lot to me since writing is a distraction for me from other stresses in life.
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.
We had a crazy heatwave for four days last week! Yuck! I locked myself inside but our small portable air conditioners (we have windows that roll out and not many other options for AC) couldn’t keep up so it was still fairly hot inside. My daughter and I froze wet washcloths and laid them on the backs of our necks, drank a lot of drinks with ice (not those drinks!), and took cold showers to keep cool throughout the week.
How was the weather where you are? Were…well, you know what I mean!
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 Adventures in Weseland: IJust me and my adventures in life. Life is an adventure and I try to have fun. I love being out in the world, taking pictures and being able to share them with people who come across my little space on the internet. Thanks for stopping by and peace be with you.
Thank you so much for joining us for our link-up, Patrick. You will be missed and our hearts go out to your family during this difficult time. I wish you were here to see the outpouring of love for you.
And now some posts that were highlights for me this past week:
Here I am with another recap of an episode from The Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew Mysteries show from 1977.
As I’ve mentioned before, in the first season of this series, the episodes switched back and forth from Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew episodes and in the next season, they started to join together. Eventually, they began to phase out the Nancy episodes and focus more on The Hardy Boys. A new actress also started as Nancy when Pamela Sue Martin became disenchanted with the parts that were being written for her character.
This time around I am writing about a Nancy Drew centered episode called The Mystery of the Fallen Angel.
*Disclaimer: These posts do spoil the entire episode. Also, I do joke around a lot about the cheesiness or plot holes or the “weird” 70s hairstyles, clothes or music, but please know it is all in good fun. I have fun watching these and the mysteries are often very interesting. Please don’t leave me comments enraged that I am making fun of your favorite show. *wink* I make fun of my favorite shows too!
To me, this was one of the better episodes I’ve seen so far. It was fairly well written, simply put together, and Nancy’s character was less whiney or rude than in other episodes.
We start out at a carnival. George and Nancy are playing a carnival game and they are winning. The man running the game isn’t altogether pleased with them winning and reminds them that the event is for charity.
Nancy lets him know she’s going to give the toys they are winning to the children.
Next, we find Ned in with a fortune teller. She looks at his palm and tells him that’s “too masculine.” (Snicker).
“You’re too dominating of a man for the average girl to handle,” she says.
Ned blushes and scoffs. Laughing nervously he says, “Oh…so that’s my problem.”
The fortune teller suggests that his forcefulness is what causes women to run from his advances.
“Oh. That’s because of my forcefulness?” Ned says with wonder.
The fortune teller says, “Yes, trust me.”
Switching scenes, we see a glass of champagne being poured for Carson Drew, Nancy’s dad. He’s telling a man named Robert that this is the best benefit they’ve had so far.
Robert thanks him and says the benefit is one excuse to “keep the old place” now that all the kids have moved out.
The wife laughs and asks how they could possibly downsize anymore.
“We’re already down to 18 rooms a piece,” she says.
Jocular, rich-people-laughter follows.
Outside we see a young man with long dark hair and a sports jersey sneaking around in the dark. He knocks on the back door and a woman lets him in. Both looked panicked and she says, “We’re going to get caught, Henry. If only you could tell people who you are.”
And – oh! Who is this young man? He looks very, very familiar.
Now I shall confess that I took a photo of the actor while I was watching this the first time and asked my husband who it was. I knew he looked very familiar.
The answer I got back was, “A. Martinez. Longmire.”
Yep. A Martinez was in this one. Maybe one of his first shows? Not sure, but he was very good and it was a sign of good acting to come, in my humble opinion.
Anyhow, without giving us much more information we switch to another scene of a group of bikers pulling up and a woman scolding them for not being there to help run the carnival.
“Where have you guys been? I pay you to work for the carnival, not to go joyriding,” she says in a thick New York accent.
She tells them to all get back to work and tells the one girl to go home. The young girl says she’d prefer to stay there, she’s having fun.
When the woman leaves, the man says they’ve got important work to do later. He hugs the young girl, squeezes her face and tells her to lighten up but she says, “I’m just not used to all this.”
“There’s a lot you’re not use to, but you better get used to it,” he says. “Tonight’s your first lesson.”
We don’t know what that means but we are certain to find out at some point.
Later Henry is caught leaving the house by the rich wife who asks if she can help him.
He says he got lost and Robert says, “You’re Henry Salazar, aren’t you?”
Henry doesn’t reply but says he has to be going.
When he leaves, Robert tells Carson he’s the kid who used to work in Foster’s drugstore until old man Foster caught him with his hand in the till.
“That was never proven, as I remember,” Carson says.
“Still,” Robert says. “I don’t like him hanging around here.”
Henry sneaks back to say goodbye to Tina and makes her promise she won’t say anything about who he is or who she is. He says she’ll get into big trouble if she says anything and we aren’t sure if that is a threat or a reminder.
Next, we see the young carnival girl looking worried outside, a window opens in the mansion and the other carnival workers are — gasp! Inside the mansion!
The girl blows a whistle at the moment that Nancy, George, and Ned walk by. Ned is telling a joke, and they are laughing but hear the whistle, which I gather is to alert the carnival workers it’s all clear.
Ned, Nancy, and George shrug the whistle off and keep going and then we see all the carnival workers nonchalantly returning to their places at the carnival…somehow no one noticed they were gone. Hmmm…
Oh well. Back to the mansion where chaos has ensued because the rich lady, Clara, went to put a pin back into her safe and discovered all of her jewels are gone. She let out a scream like she found a dead body and George, Nancy, Ned, and Carson go running.
Clara and John clarify that the jewels weren’t worth a ton but they were insured for over a million dollars. The sheriff comes rushing in not long afterward and greets Nancy and Carson then asks if anyone touched anything.
“Of course not!” Nancy says, clearly offended.
The sheriff is immediately apologetic. “Sorry. I forgot who I was dealing with for a moment.”
He’s been in similar situations with them before, after all since Nancy can’t keep her nose out of police business.
The sheriff wants to know if they saw anyone suspicious walking around or in the house and — Of course! Snap! Robert and Clara immediately think of Henry. He was in the house. He must have taken the jewels!
Carson backs up the couple by saying that Henry did seem suspicious, which he adds he hates to say since he seems like a good young man who Nancy went to school with.
We don’t know how the sheriff finds Henry but after the commercial break (though they are cut out of the YouTube videos I watch) we see Nancy in a jail cell with Henry, telling him she works as a part time investigator for his attorney, Carson Drew.
Carson is going to take on his case and she wants him to tell her why he was in the mansion.
He refuses. He didn’t steal Mrs. Jordan’s jewelry but he won’t tell Nancy why he was in the house.
She wants to know if had anything to do with seeing Tina.
“Tina who?”
“The Jordan’s maid. I thought you two knew each other.”
(Um…how did she make this connection? I’m not sure but I think I missed a scene where Nancy saw them together in the house.)
Henry says he doesn’t know here and never met her and there is no reason to get an innocent person involved in anything.
(If he doesn’t know her then how does he know she’s innocent. Right? Right?!)
“I do not know her. I did not rob the Jordans,” he tells Nancy.
Nancy tries Tina. She won’t say anything either.
The Jordans are pleased that Carson is going to defend Henry. The sheriff doesn’t know why the man would care about defending a man who might have stolen things from him.
“If he’s guilty, the law will take its course without my direction,” Robert Jordan says. “If he’s innocent, I don’t want to be responsible for destroying anyone’s life.”
The sheriff wants to look into Tina now. Nancy, though, says there were tons of people there the night of the carnival, including the carnival workers.
While leaving with Carson, Nancy says she wants to check into the carnival workers and see if they could have been involved in the theft of the jewels.
Carson is one of the most laid-back dads I’ve ever seen (in the books and the show) and sometimes expresses concern for Nancy’s safety but usually only sends her on her way with a small laugh and a “You be careful now,” like she is playing make believe in the backyard.
This time around, though, Carson actually expresses concern!
“That might not be too safe,” he tells Nancy.
“I’m just going to go ask a few questions,” Nancy assures him.
Carson isn’t buying it. “Nancy, people don’t like having their lives pried into.”
Right?! Yet your daughter is doing it all the time, dude, and usually you don’t seem to care too much, just letting her gallivant around, sticking her nose where it doesn’t belong. (Remember I am joking around in these posts, not actually slamming the show. Just having a little fun.)
“I’m not going to pry,” Nancy insists. “Just observe.”
“Well, you be careful while you’re observing,” Carson says with a nervous laugh.
Nancy’s idea of observing is dressing up in a bikini top under a buttoned down shirt, and pretending she’s a runaway to try to get a job with the carnival.
Ned and George don’t like this at all and warn her against it. In true Nancy fashion, she ignores them and moves forward, but does thank them when they say they’ll be showing up to the carnival later in the day to check on her.
Nancy struts into that carnival with an attitude. Her hair is all feathered, her cleavage is showing, and the mom in me is like “Oh no. No. I don’t like this one little bit.”
But I can’t do anything about it so I just have to watch Nancy try to make herself fit in by jumping on a motorcyle and taking off when a guy tells her he bets she doesn’t know how to ride it. Then, after the carnival owner hires her, I have to keep watching when these creepy dudes later put her in the cage of a ride and spin her upside down up in the air to try to get her to admit she’s a narc.
I’m telling you these guys are creepy! They are definitely the r-word type and Nancy is truly putting herself at risk. If she was my daughter, I’d be flipping out on her. I don’t care if she is 18 now. I think she’s 18 in the show. I’m not actually sure. She’s still my child and I’d be fuming mad if I saw her doing these things.
So, after these guys try to get her to confess who she is, the young woman we met earlier )who was afraid she was going to blow their mission – whatever it was) says she knows Nancy. Nancy, she claims, is a friend of her sister’s and that she’s there to try to bring her home since she ran away from home.
She’s lying of course. We also learn her name is Anne.
Nancy thanks Anne when they are alone, but the girl tells her to get lost because she is in danger.
“You be gone by tonight or you’re on your own!” she tells Nancy.
This whole episode had me anxious. The creepy guys, Nancy putting herself at risk and being away from friends and family, the young runaway girl.
Boy was I relieved when Ned and George showed up and the three of them joined together to find out if the carnival workers are the real thieves of Mrs. Jordans jewels. They don’t find the jewels, but they do find a van full of stolen televisions and other electronics. These carnival workers might not be jewel thieves, but they are thieves of some kind.
Ned and George also let Nancy know that Henry was let out on bail, but he jumped it. The cops are looking for him. Just lovely!
Nancy tells George and Ned to write down the serial numbers of the electronics before they leave to try to find out if the items are stolen. The three of them then part ways, Nancy back to her ruse and Ned and George to find out if the TVs are stolen.
Nancy runs into Henry while he’s snooping around the carnival. He tells her that her dad told him she was following the carnival to try to find out if the workers were involved and that he also found the van with the TVs. He tells Nancy that Tina was arrested as his accomplice. He has to find out who really stole the jewels so she doesn’t have a crime pinned on her that she didn’t commit. He admits he knows Tina but won’t tell Nancy how.
They part ways and Anne finds Nancy at the game booth she’s working at later and says that Vince, the head bad guy, knows someone was in his van. They found out who the person is and they’re going to find out why they think Vince is guilty of something.
Nancy isn’t sure what that means and then Vince’s creepy henchmen tells her that shes’s taking a ride with them so they can show her how they deal with spies.
Nancy is put on the back of a bike and driven to a rural area where Henry is in the middle of a circle of motorcycles while they taunt him.
Nancy watches this for a while and then she has had enough. She jumps on the bike the other guy (essentially her kidnapper) got off and roars toward the other bikes, somehow knocking them all over (it’s television, people). She gets Henry on the back of her bike ,and they take off toward the carnival, all the bikers soon in pursuit (once they get their bikes back up). This leads to a windy and twisty chase among the carnival booths during which a lot of the bikers crash out.
Eventually the cops show up and stop the highspeed bike chase. Ned and George are with them. Nancy stops her bike and thanks Ned for calling the police. As an aside (yes, I do a lot of these), I noticed that Nancy was a lot nicer to Ned in this episode than previous ones. She even compliments him by saying, “Ned, you are without a doubt the smartest, neatest, most…”
“Most forceful?” Ned asks, harkening back to the fortune teller’s comments at the beginning of the show.
“Most forceful man I know,” Nancy agrees.
Anne, the young woman who tried to help Nancy, says she was forced to help the burglary gang. She’s scared to go with the police, but Nancy says Carson will help her. This poor guy. Nancy is always finding people for him to help, and he rarely gets paid by them, which will actually be commented on at the end of this episode. It does have me wondering how this man has time to make money with all the pro bono work he does.
To wrap things up with the Jordans, Carson and Nancy visit them, and Nancy asks Mrs. Jordan to open the safe in front of them. The Jordans are a bit offended but agree. While working on opening the safe, Mrs. Jordan breaks down and confesses she doesn’t know how to open the safe. She never has. The safe was already open when she came in the room.
Nancy says George and Ned uncovered in their investigations that the Jordans are broke (how did they find this? I have no idea!) and says she believes the couple sold the jewels off and then when they had no more to sell, they pretended the jewels were stolen so they could get the insurance money. The Jordans admit that this is exactly what they did and are ashamed.
Nancy says it was very convenient for the couple that Henry walked into the house that night. She asks if they were willing to let Henry go to jail for their crime of insurance fraud and they said they were sure Carson would find out that Henry didn’t do it and if he didn’t, they were going to confess before Henry’s case went to trial. They even asked Carson to represent him so he would find out that Henry wasn’t guilty, they say. Robert asks Carson to not only forgive them but represent them in their insurance fraud case. He agrees, saying he can’t let their 20-year friendship end over this mistake. (Carson is way too nice.)
Another aside — does George have another job? I mean Ned works for Carson but what does George do? She doesn’t go to school. She doesn’t appear to work anywhere. She runs around with Nancy solving crimes so does Carson pay her too? And if he does, how does he since he keeps taking cases on for free for Nancy? Of course, he does have wealthy clients like the Jordans so maybe that is how.
There is also a final wrap up scene with Henry and Tina. It turns out that Tina is Henry’s sister. She’s in the United States illegally from Mexico and Henry was helping her get her green card and papers so she could stay legally. He didn’t want anyone to know who she was so she wouldn’t be deported.
Carson says he will help her get her papers and make sure she’s not deported. Luckily this is the 70s and not today or Carson might have a pretty hard time keeping Tina from being sent back to Mexico.
As I mentioned above, this was one of the better episodes in my opinion. The story wasn’t too bad, the writing was better than others and Nancy was a lot nicer to Ned all around.
If you want to read other episode recaps you can do a search for Hardy Boys Nancy Drew via the search bar to the right.
Up next, I will be recapping The Hardy Boys episode Wipe Out.
Lisa R. Howeler is a blogger, homeschool mom, and writes cozy mysteries.
You can find her Gladwynn Grant Mystery series HERE.
