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

On December 29, 2024December 29, 2024 By Lisa R. HowelerIn Sunday Bookends24 Comments

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Our family had a lot to celebrate this year.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Christmas episode of The Dick VanDyke Show

Christmas in the Smokies

A ton of Mary Berry episodes

The Christmas episode of All Creatures Great and Small

Jingle All the Way

The Last Holiday

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

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

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

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

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

Last week on the blog I shared:

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

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

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

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

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

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

Now it’s your turn. What have you been doing, watching, reading, listening to or writing? Let me know in the comments or leave a blog post link if you also write a weekly update like this.

Sunday Bookends: Already in my old lady phase and so is my 10-year-old daughter

On November 17, 2024November 16, 2024 By Lisa R. HowelerIn everyday musings16 Comments

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

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

What’s Been Occurring

I am officially an old lady. I was telling my husband how much I enjoy prunes and a few minutes later I gasped and said, “Oh! I have a Murder She Wrote episode to finish! I’m so excited!”

My husband then reminded me I should brew a cup of tea before I got comfortable under my blanket on the couch. All I need is my slippers and a few more cats and my Old Lady Kit is complete.

The best thing is that my 10-year-old daughter, Little Miss, is watching with me, curled up under her own blanket with the dog curled next to her, saying things like, “There’s something wrong with the ginger here. Look at her eyes.” or “yeah, you could be friends under different circumstances because you literally killed a man…” and “Bro really needs some better pants.”

She’s starting her kit early.

Then she said, “Honestly, I would have liked to have had that lady as my grandma on my dad’s side.” (Since she never knew his mom for a variety of not-so-fun reasons.)

When I told her after the second episode that we could watch something else she said, “No! More!”

So we launched into our third episode.

Earlier this week Little Miss finished the art class we’ve been attending that was sponsored by the county library. Friday night The Husband took her to an art reception for her work and I stayed home with a sinus headache or neck thing…not sure which. It was so fun to see her so excited about her work, which the teacher had them name and then set a price on, if they wanted to.

I thought it was very interesting to see which drawing she decided to list as “not for sale” and which one she said she would sell for $20. Nothing would change her mind either.

What I/we’ve been Reading

The Christmas Gathering – a book full of three novellas by Shelley Shepard Gray, Lenora Worth, Rachel J. Good (because I needed something happy and light to read)

The Hound of the Baskervilles by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Christy by Catherine Marshall (this is my slow and easy read)

The Secret of the Wooden Lady by Carolyn Keene

The Maestro’s Missing Melody by Amy Walsh, which I reviewed here.

The Kamogawa Food Detectives by Hisashi Kashi

Little Men by Louisa Mae Alcott

Little Miss and I finished The Four Story Mistake and started And Then There Were Five in The Melendy Children series by Elizabeth Enright.

Little Miss is also reading Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets some nights.

The Husband is reading The Marlow Murder Club by Robert Thorogood because I told him to. Ha! Okay, because he really wanted to.

The Boy is reading The Hound of the Baskervilles.

What We watched/are Watching

Above I mentioned what an old lady I have become and I really have because last night I found a new-to-me series of Mary Berry on Amazon Prime and just about giggled with delight. Little Miss was very excited too. We absolutely love Mary Berry. The fact they have several specials or series with her on Amazon now that I didn’t see before has me very excited. One thing I love about her shows is that they don’t only show viewers how to cook but also provide some background about the dish they are cooking or some education about cultures.

The episode we watched last night was about an Indian wedding. It was extremely interesting.

Tonight we will be watching Chocolat, together via a watch party and YOU are invited. We will be pressing play together on the movie and chatting in our Discord server, which you can join here: https://discord.gg/TpWNxJ4Z

I really hope you will join us! If not, it will just be Erin and I chatting with each other and that’s not all bad either. Haha!

What I’m Writing

I finished the rough draft of Gladwynn Grant Shakes the Family Tree this past week and now I am in the rewriting and editing stage. It will be released in 2025.

On the blog this past week I shared:

What I’m Listening To

I am listening to The Hound of the Baskervilles some and reading it other times.

Recent Blog Posts I Enjoyed

|| A Visit to Lincoln Home by Amy’s Creative Pursuits ||

|| Third Days Tripping Our Way by Mama’s Empty Nest ||

Now it’s your turn. What have you been doing, watching, reading, listening to or writing? Let me know in the comments or leave a blog post link if you also write a weekly update like this.

Sunday Bookends: birthdays, baking pies, and finishing up the third Gladwynn book

On November 10, 2024November 10, 2024 By Lisa R. HowelerIn everyday musings, Sunday Bookends8 Comments

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

What’s Been Occurring

This past week was an interesting one in some ways and a regular one in others.

On Tuesday I had a not-so-fun experience at the polling place in my little tiny town. Lesson learned to mail-in ballots from now on. It had nothing to do, by the way, with who I voted for. It just had to do with adults who were rude to my child and it really ticked me off. This paragraph is completely unrelated to politics other than I was in a polling place for an election.

Thursday was better, though, because it was our son’s 18^th birthday. My neighbor asked how I felt having an 18-year-old.

I sent her this gif:

Then I told her I was also very proud of my son because he’s grown into a wonderful young man.

It’s all gone by so insanely fast, though. There is so much I miss about him being younger but so much that is also great about this age.

We bought him a War Hammer model set and he’s having a blast painting them. It is a new hobby for him. Little Miss and I traveled to my parents on Thursday to help make apple pies for The Boy because he prefers pie over cake.

My mom ended up coming down with a sinus infection that triggered a flare of her fibromyalgia while we were there. It was a little scary as she was in excruciating pain all over and having some trouble walking. That night she spiked a fever.

We still had a nice day and the next day she was much better and the fever was gone. None of us can really understand why whatever she had only lasted a day and went away, but I do know I prayed a lot that day and night for her healing.

The pie, by the way, was “great” according to The Boy who doesn’t easily give compliments out so Little Miss and I, with my parent’s directions, pulled it out after all.

Yesterday The Boy and The Husband had fun during a father-son day in a city about an hour away. They visited a comic book shop where he picked up some more figures to paint.

They then walked around town, visiting the local university and a used book shop where my husband picked this up for me:

He knows me way too well. That’s an original 1941 Hardy Boys book. I can not wait to read it – as long as the mildew smell doesn’t mess with my sinuses. Sometimes it does and sometimes it doesn’t.

I forgot to mention that on Friday we had an art class and then drove the 30-minutes north to pick up our groceries.

Yesterday I spent the day relaxing with an old movie and a new cozy mystery show and also worked on the final chapters of Gladwynn Grant Shakes the Family Tree.

I definitely am not used to Daylight Savings yet I’ve come to realize. I was so tired all day yesterday, for one, and then at one point I yawned and thought how I could go to bed soon. That’s when I looked at my laptop clock and it said 6:42.

“6:42? For real??” I cried. “I thought it was 8!!”

I suppose my body will get used to it – you know, by spring when we spring forward.

What I/we’ve been Reading

I am reading The Hound of the Baskervilles by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Christy by Catherine Marshall, and The Maestro’s Missing Melody by Amy Walsh

The Marlow Murder Club by Robert Thorogood. Yes, I enjoyed it and yes I just started the series and no it does not keep to the book.

The Secret of the Wooden Lady by Carolyn Keene (Nancy Drew)

The Farmer’s Son by John Connell

The Husband is reading The Housemaid by Frieda McFadden

What We watched/are Watching

This week Erin and I watched Bringing Up Baby with Cary Grant and Katherine Hepburn for our Comfy, Cozy Cinema.

I watched Harvey with Jimmy Stewart on my own.

I also watched the first two episodes of The Marlow Murder Club on Amazon (that is all that is out so far).

What I’m Writing

I sound like a broken record but I am finishing Gladwynn Grant Shakes the Family Tree.

This past week on the blog I shared:

What I’m Listening To

I am listening to The Shepherd’s Abiding by Jan Karon on Audible.

I am also listening to this song my Downhere:

Photos from Last Week

Now it’s your turn. What have you been doing, watching, reading, listening to or writing? Let me know in the comments or leave a blog post link if you also write a weekly update like this.

Book review/recommendation: Nancy Drew Mystery, The Secret at Red Gate Farm

On October 28, 2024October 26, 2024 By Lisa R. HowelerIn book reviews, books and reading, everyday musings6 Comments

I’ve been reading through the original Nancy Drew books, which, as many of us now know, were written by around 28 ghost writers. These first books I am reading, though, were written by Mildren Benson using outlines given to her by either Edward Stratemeyer or his daughter Harriet Stratemeyer Adams.

The Secret of Red Gate Farm is number six in the original series and was first released in 1931 with some rewrites of it done in 1961 by Adams.

In this book we find Nancy caught up in a mystery that starts on a train while she and her friends George (female George) and Bess are coming home from a shopping trip.

Let’s start with the summary: “Nancy and her friends, Bess and George, meet Joanne Byrd on a train ride home. Joanne lives at Red Gate Farm with her grandmother, but if they do not raise enough money to pay the mortgage, they will soon lose the farm! Nancy, Bess, and George decide to stay at Red Gate for a week as paying customers. Soon, they learn about the strange group of people who rent a cave on the property. They describe themselves as a nature cult called the Black Snake Colony.”

Nancy Drew books are written simplistically in many ways but the storylines are not light by any means. There are subjects of abuse, criminal underworlds, abandonment, parental loss and many other hard-hitting issues.

This one was no exception. A young woman goes to the city to look for work because her grandmother is going to sell the family farm because they are losing money. While there she meets Nancy and almost gets caught up in a gambling ring of some sort when she interviews for the job and the interviewer is super, super creepy. I’ve watched too many movies and written up too many stories for newspapers so I imagined all the horrible things that would happen to this girl and Nancy while reading these scenes. It made me a bit lightheaded, but since it is a Nancy Drew book I knew things would turn out okay in the end.

Nancy decides she and her friends will go with the young girl back to her farm and pay to stay at the farm while also encouraging others to do the same. Nancy’s idea is like an early Airbnb. People can rent rooms at the farm and this will help the farm owners pay off their dept.

While there Nancy and her friends notice people in the woods, wearing all white, and dancing in the moonlight. This doesn’t seem like your everyday farming community activity so they ask Joanne’s grandmother what that is all about. The woman says she’s renting her land to a group of people to help avoid selling the farm but she doesn’t really know what they are doing up there. Can we say “RED FLAG”?

In addition to that craziness, there is also a man trying to buy the rest of the farm but the grandmother is trying to push him off until she sees if other options work to raise some money.

Despite the simple and fairly innocent way the Nancy Drew books are written, this one was a little creepy for me because of the cult angle.

Even with the simple writing, the dark subject matter leaked through and left me a little unsettled part of the time. People wearing white robes, dancing weirdly in the moonlight? Shudder!

Then Nancy and her friends decide to infiltrate the group at one point and I swear I was about to faint from the tension.

Nancy Drew books might be written simply but their plots still hold together well in my opinion.

Either Stratemeyer or Mildred had quite an imagination.

Have you read this one in the series yet or before?

Top Ten Tuesday: How My Reading Habits Have Changed Over Time

On October 22, 2024 By Lisa R. HowelerIn books and reading, top-ten-tuesday18 Comments

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

Today’s topic is: How My Reading Habits Have Changed Over Time (submitted by Lydia @ https://lydiaschoch.com)

I don’t really know how to do this as a top ten list so I thought I’d just chat about it.

I started reading fiction fairly consistently when I was a kid and then even more when I was a teenager. When I was a “kid” – like under the age of 13 – I read books like the Little House series and the Chronicles of Narnia and sometimes I used a flashlight to finish a chapter because Mom had said I needed to go to bed and shut my light off but I didn’t want to go to bed yet.

I never read books quickly but I consistently had a book with me when I was a teenager. Back then I read mainly historical fiction and some clean/Christian romance. Now I read mainly mysteries – clean and cozy mainly.

In high school I got in trouble at least twice for reading in class. It’s not my fault my Roman-based epic was way more interesting than the football coach rambling about driver safety. Or a book from that same series (The Mark of the Lion series by Francine Rivers) was way more interesting than my history teacher who never really taught but mostly talked about football because he was the other football coach. Huh. Coincidence there? I think not.

I remember my mom came to a parent teacher conference, holding one of those books because we had picked it up at the local Christian bookstore (which only lasted about two years in our tiny community) and the teacher said, “Oh. Is that one of those books you got caught reading in class the other day?”

My mom, with her quick wit, said, “Yes, it probably is but it is based in history at least.”

I don’t think she meant that as a slam against that teacher but he was the one who used to start classes each year by holding up the text book and saying, “You can take this an use it to prop up a window.” Then he’d spend the rest of the year talking about who knows what from the front of the classroom with very little of it being actual history.

The only thing I remember from his class is how he told us all not to mess around with pimples and other spots on our skin because his mom had one she didn’t get checked and it was cancer. I don’t know if she died from it or not but that unlocked a new fear for me.

In college I mainly read textbooks. I didn’t seem to have time for reading fiction. I started working full time my senior year of college and there was no time for reading. I was taking classes twice a week and working like 60 hours a week, sometimes seven days. That’s about the time I killed my thyroid and my mental health but I was young and stupid.

I don’t really remember picking many fiction books back up again until a few years ago when I really got back into reading again. When I had my kids I was working full time at newspapers or writing blog posts or completely immersed in photography and homeschooling while taking care of kids. I didn’t take a lot of time for myself or to escape the stress of life by reading fiction. I wish I had because it would have helped all the stress back then.

Now I always have a hard copy of a book and my Kindle in my purse or with me wherever I go. I may not always read the book but I have it with me “just in case.” Instead of watching TV or surfing online all the time, I now carve out time for reading, even on the days I think I don’t feel like reading. I’ll find that once I start reading, I get caught up in the story and I start to relax and forget about all the things I was stressed about. I think I recently heard that reading even 15 minutes a day can help a person relax and reset their emotional state. Something like that anyhow. I don’t know – just go with it and pretend I’m smart. *wink*

Now that I am reading more, I have gotten caught up more than once with feeling like I have to read what other people are reading instead of what I want to read. It’s crazy that even at my age I can be influenced by what is popular or talked about a lot or what others say I should or shouldn’t read. Luckily, I have pushed aside a lot of that in the last year and now I really am reading what I want to read.

Sure, I see recommendations and sometimes I take them but I don’t just read a book because a lot of people claim it is good. Yes, I have read books that I’ve seen recommended a few times, but I don’t feel like I have to anymore. I do it because the book actually interests me.

Honestly, I find myself leaning away from books that are heavily recommended more than I lean toward them. I’ve been burned more than once by books that were supposed to be so amazing and then turned out to be complete duds or pushed agendas or morals that didn’t fit with mine.

Becoming an independent author opened my eyes to the publishing world and how reviews can be bought, essentially, or reviewers can be swayed to give a book a good review because they either don’t want to be excluded from other advanced reader groups or because they don’t be the one to step out of line and say, “I didn’t like this book everyone else liked.”

Before this year I was susceptible to getting wrapped up in all those “BookTok” (not on TikTok though. What a nightmare that app is!) “Bookstagram” drama sessions about – well, everything about reading. This year, though, I couldn’t care less what some Bookstagrammer says I should or shouldn’t read or what I shouldn’t or shouldn’t say on social media.

I read books, I share about the ones I like, I move on. Life is way too short to be so dramatic about reading. Good grief. Reading is for leisure and enjoyment. There was a time when only the rich could read books and then it became so everyone could read books as long as they had a good education and were taught to read.

Now we teach children to read at a young age so the world is opened wide to them. They can learn so much from books – fiction and non-fiction. This can be a bad thing, of course, if the subject matter is not age appropriate but in the vast majority of cases being able to read is a wonderful thing.

Because reading is a gift, I don’t believe we should try to finish books that don’t bring us joy. I do not continue reading a book I am not connecting with. A couple of years ago I made way too many commitments to read books and review them without knowing what I was really getting into. This year I have been reading books because I want to.

I read a couple of books for author friends and ran into trouble because the books were okay but they simply weren’t for me. Then what do I do? I don’t want to keep reading the book simply because the person is a friend if it is taking the joy out of reading for me. That’s why I’m now deciding that if I do read a book by an author friend, I’m not going to tell them I am reading it in case I don’t enjoy it.

Life is too short to read books qw aren’t enjoying. This is something I’ve heard said in reading circles again and again and it is something that we readers need to heed more.

Sometimes I do break my own “rules”, though. I’m reading one right now that isn’t one I’d probably finish if it was just me reading for fun, but I’m reading it to review for a magazine. Just because the book isn’t really for me, doesn’t mean it won’t be for someone else. The fact I am pushing myself through this book, though, has made me decide I probably won’t be doing reviews for magazines anymore unless I have already read the book first and enjoyed it.

My motto the rest of this year and next, therefore, is to read what I want and review it only if I want to.

I hope I can keep up with that because taking the pressure off something that should be done for enjoyment and relaxation is what I really need in my life right now.

How has what and how you read changed over the years?

Sunday Bookends: Adventures with the parents, fall foliage, and reading more mysteries

On October 13, 2024October 13, 2024 By Lisa R. HowelerIn Sunday Bookends35 Comments

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

What’s Been Occurring

Yesterday Dad, Little Miss, and I took my mom leaf peeping before all our leaves are gone. We didn’t have a very pretty year because of the warmer, dry temps we had in August and part of September but we did see some pretty trees on our drive.

We drove on some back roads (a.k.a. dirt roads) near my parents and eventually ended up at a house and former farm where some of my dad’s distant family used to live.

Throughout my whole life anytime we decided to go for a drive around the area or anywhere else, what normally would have been a routine or sightseeing trip became a weird adventure. My parents are 80 now so I thought our days of adventure were over but once again a simple leaf peeping trip became a little weird. First we passed a field of modern art sculptures all lined up in a field – sort of weird.

And when we stopped at the distant relative’s house things also got very weird.

We didn’t know who still lived at the house Dad used to visit as a kid, so Dad climbed out of the car and disappeared over a hill between the house and garage for a bit while he looked for the homeowner. While waiting for him, Little Miss, Mom and I watched another car rip into the long driveway, continue between two trees and stopped near our car. I rolled my window down and apologized for being in the way but the woman frowned and just said, “That’s fine.”

She went into the house without even asking why we were in her drive. I decided it was time to look for Dad in case she was really ticked off at us for being there, so I climbed out after telling my mom that the woman looked very familiar. I thought she looked like the manager of our local Dollar General.

A few minutes later, my dad and another man were walking from the back of the house, up the hill, and the woman, who had left the house to put the dog on a lead, marched toward my dad with her finger pointing at him and said, “You get your car out of my driveway!”

I panicked. Our trip was taking a very dark turn and I wasn’t sure how I was going to get my dad away from the crazy woman. But Dad was smiling and so was the man. I couldn’t see the woman but then she was patting my dad on the shoulder and I realized she was messing with my dad – probably how he picks on her when he stops in at the Dollar General.

In the end, we all had a good conversation and Dad shared some memories of visiting the former farm years before – like when he was 12 or 13.

After that, we took the long way home, and Little Miss and I spent the afternoon having dinner with my parents before heading home.

Today I have to pick up The Boy from a friend’s house and we will stop for lunch at my parents on the way back. Hopefully, we don’t have another weird adventure.

What I/we’ve been Reading

The Case of the Innocent Husband (A Mac and Sam Mystery Book 1), Murder Handcrafted by Isabella Alan, and The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler.

The Secret of Red Gate Farm by Carolyn Keene (A Nancy Drew Mystery)

The Cat Who Brought Down the House by Lilian Jackson Braun

The Marlow Murder Club by Robert Thorogood

Little Miss is reading the first Harry Potter book at night. I love that she’s reading but she starts too late at night and then I have to tell her that it’s time for bed and she tries to make me feel guilty by saying things like, “But I only have 15 minutes of the chapter left to go!”

Stupid Kindles and their ability to tell you how many minutes of a chapter you have to go.

We are also reading The Four-Story Mistake by Elizabeth Enright on some nights. For school/during the day we are reading Johnny Tremain.

The Husband just finished The Labours of Hercules by Agatha Christies and is getting ready to read book 99. He is going to read The Satanic Verses by Salaman Rushdie for book 100.

What We watched/are Watching

Last week I watched a lot of Lovejoy and Murder She Wrote, Blithe Spirit with Erin for our Comfy, Cozy Cinema, and Reading Rainbow for old time’s sake.

What I’m Writing

I am still writing Gladwynn Grant Shakes The Family Tree and announced on Instagram that I will be pushing off the release date to 2025 so I can take some more time on it. I was pushing myself too hard to get it done before the end of October and now I realize that I am stressing myself out about a book that I am not under a publishing contract for and that I am writing more for fun than anything else.

If anyone would like to read books one or two, though, you can find them here: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0C1KSQJXP

On the blog last week I didn’t share a ton since I was working on the book, but here is what I did share:

What I’m Listening To

I was listening to Ever After by Karen Barnett but I am not a big fan of the narrator so not sure I’ll finish it.

Photos From Last Week

Now it’s your turn. What have you been doing, watching, reading, listening to or writing? Let me know in the comments or leave a blog post link if you also write a weekly update like this.

Book Review/Recommendation: Trouble Shooter by Louis L’Amour

On October 2, 2024 By Lisa R. HowelerIn book reviews, books and reading, everyday musings3 Comments

Book Title: Trouble Shooter (A Hopalong Cassidy book)

Author: Louis L’Amour

Genre: Western

Description:

Hopalong Cassidy is one of the most enduring and popular heroes in frontier fiction. His legendary exploits in books, movies, and on television have blazed a mythic and unforgettable trail across the American West. Now, in the last of four Hopalong Cassidy novels written by Louis L’Amour, the immortal saddleman rides againthis time into a lonely valley of danger and death.

Hopalong Cassidy has received an urgent message from the dead. Answering an urgent appeal for help from fellow cowpuncher Pete Melford, he rides in only to discover that his old friends has been murdered and the ranch Pete left to his niece, Cindy Blair, had vanished without a trace. Hopalong may have arrived too late to save Pete, but his sense of loyalty and honor demands that he find that cold-blooded killers and return to Cindy what is rightfully hers.

Colonel Justin Tradwar, criminal kingpin of the town of Kachina, is the owner of the sprawling Box T ranch, and he has built his empire with a shrewd and ruthless determination. In search of Pete’s killers and Cindy’s ranch, Hopalong signs on at the Box T, promising to help get Tradway’s wild cattle out of the rattler-infested brush. But in the land of mesquite and black chaparral, Cassidy confronts a mystery as hellish as it is hauntinga bloody trail that leads to the strange and forbidding Babylon plateau, to $60,000 in stolen gold, and to a showdown with an outlaw who has already cheated death once… and is determined to do it again.

My Thoughts:

Trouble Shooter by Louis L’Amour was not listed under L’Amour’s name when it first came out in 1951. Instead, it was released under the name Clarence E. Mulford, the original creator of Hopalong Cassidy, the main character of the book. When Mulford retired, he asked L’Amour to carry on Hopalong’s tradition in four novels, which included Trouble Shooter, The Rustlers of West Fork, The Trail to Seven Pines, and the Riders of High Rock.

The books were published on L’Amour’s name in the 1990s when they were re-released.

I ended up liking Trouble Shooter a lot more than I thought I would when I first started it. Once I realized that the book was written in the style of another writer and that it was written in the 1950s, I began to adjust to the style of writing and storytelling. I found myself pulled into the story a bit more as it went along, despite the old style of writing, which included what writers call “head hopping.” This is where the thoughts of each character involved in a scene are shared instead of the point of view being from just the one character. This can get a little bit confusing but L’Amour didn’t over do it.

The way the sentences were structured threw me off at times but I thought the prose really was well-written. I wasn’t as interested in the lengthy description of Hopalong Cassidy climbing a mountain or riding long distances in the middle of nowhere and would have loved for the female characters to have been flushed out a bit more, but I still liked the overall story.

I didn’t expect the ending to take such a dark turn since most of the book was mild when it came to the discussions of violence. There was very little to no descriptions of violence at all and any descriptions offered were very surface level. There were no obscenities in the book and no sex at all – not even hinted at.

This was definitely a stripped back Western. There were some descriptions but none of them went on for pages. There were some slow parts for me but I wanted to know the answer to the mystery introduced in the beginning so I kept reading.

A couple of lines I enjoyed and thought were well-written:

“Hopalong Cassidy had drawn his gun as he always drew, with flashing, incredible speed. Once his hand was empty, then filled, and the gun blasting death.”

“The heat was a living thing, and he touched his lips only a little with the water in his canteen, then pushed on. Dust devils danced across a vast, empty distance marked by nothing but the trail of two riders. And then out of the north came another trail, a trail of several riders that moved in and obliterated the trail they followed.”

“Through the storm clouds the afternoon sun sent streaks of cathedral light across the sky and first spattering of drops fell, dappling the ground and making the dust jump.”

“Even if he isn’t dead, he might have reformed, and if a man has reformed, I’d have to judge him according to what he is now, but I’d advise him to keep his name to himself.”

If you would like to read more about Louis L’Amour, you can do so here:

https://louislamour.com/aboutlouis/biography.htm

Sunday Bookends: Remembering Maggie Smith, reading the same books, and some blog posts I enjoyed recently

On September 28, 2024September 29, 2024 By Lisa R. HowelerIn Sunday Bookends31 Comments

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

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

What’s Been Occurring

What a weird coincidence this week that Erin (Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs) and I watched a movie with Maggie Smith and a day after we posted out those she passed away. We had watched Ladies in Lavender with her and Judi Dench and wrote about it and then that night I was thinking how upset Judi would be when Maggie passed away. I also wondered which “dame” would actually pass away first – I thought it might be Joan Plowright.

The next morning Erin texted me to tell me that Maggie had died and I honestly felt like I had lost a friend. I haven’t even watched her very much in things like Downton Abbey or Harry Potter (though I did watch Harry Potter with the kids just recently). I stopped watching Downton when they killed Matthew off. It ticked me off so bad I refused to watch the show again.

I’ve seen Maggie in a few movies since then, though, and just sort of fell in love with her spunk and attitude, but also a tenderness I saw in her.

I’m slightly ashamed to admit that I cried more over her death than the death of my mother-in-law the week before – partially because I had more sentimental connection with Maggie – whom I’ve never met – that my husband’s mother. That’s a very long, sad story that I won’t go into here.

I was looking for clips of Maggie to share on Instagram since I had a clip of her and Judi and Joan Plowright from Tea With the Dames go viral last year on my Instagram, when I remembered I had seen that she’d been on The Carol Burnett Show one time.

If you want to see that clip, I’ll share it below in my What I’ve Been Watching section.

I’m really hoping to watch an Agatha Christie movie with Maggie that I just learned about Friday as well.

What I/we’ve been Reading

I was working on the third book in my Gladwynn Grant Mystery series last week so I didn’t read as much as I could have.

Therefore I am still reading the same books I was reading – Move Your Blooming Corpse by DE Ireland and Kristen by Dawn Klinge, but have added The Secret at Red Gate Farm, a Nancy Drew to the mix.

I finished nothing! Nothing, people! See above. *wink*

Murder Handcrafted by Isabella Alan (An Amish Quilt Shop Mystery)

The Cat Who Brought Down the House by Lilian Jackson Braun

The Marlow Murder Club by Robert Thorogood

Little Miss and I are reading The Four Story Mistake by Elizabeth Enright via Hoopla.

The Husband is reading Fear and Loathing On the Campaign Trail 1972 by Hunter S. Thompson

The Boy is listening to Beowulf and a book of short stories.

What We watched/are Watching

Last week I rewatched most of Ladies in Lavender to write about it for our Comfy, Cozy Cinema, since I’ve seen it before.

I mentioned above that I enjoyed watching Maggie Smith and Judi Dench in the movie and then the next day Maggie passed away. It was heartbreaking.

Erin and I have a few movies with either Judi or Maggie or both in it on our Comfy, Cozy Cinema this time around and I swear we didn’t do it on purpose. We both chose movies on our own and then whittled the list down, not even thinking about who was starring in them. We both even forgot about Judi and Maggie being in a couple of the movies.

This weekend I’ve been watching some clips of Maggie from various shows or interviews, including this one from The Carol Burnett Show:

I had no idea Maggie sang until I saw this clip with her and Carol on YouTube:

I have also been continuing to watch Lovejoy, an old British show that sometime has a mystery and sometimes just a conman story. I hated how this series ended so I’ve watched it before but seem to have forgotten some of the episodes so I am rewatching them. This is a show my husband always watched and turned me on to.

What I’m Writing

Gladwynn Shakes The Family Tree, of course.

On the blog I shared:

What I’m Listening To

Ever Faithful by Karen Barnett on Hoopla

Photos from Last Week

Recent Blog Posts I Enjoyed

|| Review: Hillbilly Elegy by Stray Thoughts ||

(I appreciated this non-partisan and just straight review of J.D. Vance’s book. Not a fan of him as a politician but I’m also not a fan of any politician at this time.)

|| Words for Wednesday: Confined by Mama’s Empty Nest ||

(Boy, could I relate to this one.)

|| His Encouragement by Christian Fiction Girl ||

(A great reminder of God’s faithfulness during challenging times. )

|| Book Review: Cassie, Apron Strings Book Eight by Leslie’s LIbrary Escape ||

(This one is a little biased on my part, but this was a really nice review of my book Cassie.)

Now it’s your turn

Now it’s your turn. What have you been doing, watching, reading, listening to or writing? Let me know in the comments or leave a blog post link if you also write a weekly update like this.