Tag: reading

Tell Me More About: Mildred “Millie” Wirt Benson (The original Carolyn Keene)

On By Lisa R. HowelerIn books and reading13 Comments

Who was Mildred “Millie” Wirt Benson?

Mildred, or as many called her, Millie, wasn’t an amateur detective, but she was the co-creator of one of the most famous teen amateur sleuths in the United States — Nancy Drew.

For 50 years very few people knew that Millie helped create Nancy Drew.

Until 1980, many readers of Nancy Drew didn’t know that Carolyn Keene, the woman listed as the author of the Nancy Drew books, wasn’t actually a real person. She was a pseudonym for some 28 authors, men and women, who create and wrote the stories for the series.

It was a lawsuit between Grosset & Dunlap, the original publisher of the Nancy Drew books and the Stratemeyer Syndicate, the owner/creators of the stories, that brought Millie into the spotlight.

Really, though, Millie had been somewhat in the spotlight before that. She’d written some 130 books in children’s series under her own name from the 30s to the 50s and was an accomplished journalist and world traveler.

What she hadn’t really talked about a lot was her involvement with the Nancy Drew Mystery series.

She’d signed agreements saying she wouldn’t talk about how she’d written 23 of the first 30 Nancy Drew books. She’d written the books with the direction and input of Edward Stratemeyer, founder of the Stratemeyer Syndicate and the brains behind many juvenile series, including multi-million selling series like Nancy Drew, The Hardy Boys, The Bobbsey Twins, Tom Swift, and Rover Boys.

Millie was born Mildred Augustine in 1905 in Iowa, the daughter of a well-known doctor. She wasn’t treated like other girls at the time who were expected to learn how to sew and keep the house.

Instead, Millie was given freedom to explore her own interests and passions. One of those passions was sports. She felt women should have the same opportunities as men to participate and compete in sports she said in an interview with WTGE Public Media in the mid-1990s

“Girls were discouraged from all sorts of athletics,” Millie said. “And I fought that tooth and nail right from the start because I felt that girls should be able to do the same things that boys did.”

While Millie enjoyed sports, such as swimming and diving, she also loved to write, something her mother encouraged her to continue.

Her father, however, said if she wanted to make money, she should do something else and she admits that he was probably right.

She began selling her stories to church papers, but they only paid a few dollars.

She finally sold a story for a whole $2.50.

“That made me a writer,” Millie said in the interview, while laughing. “So, from then on, I was hooked.”

She attended the University of Iowa after school, majoring in journalism and working on the school newspaper. She also worked with George Gallup, the creator of the Gallup Poll.

After graduating, she landed a job at a newspaper, but at the age of 22, she wanted to see what else she could do and traveled to New York City to look for work.

It was there she wrote to Edward Stratemeyer looking for work. Stratemeyer was releasing a book series for juveniles. They were assembly-line type books where he wrote a paragraph detailing what he wanted in the book, including character names and plots. He would send the information he wanted out to writers he knew, and those writers would write the books under the pen name that Stratemeyer controlled and retained the rights to. The writers signed away their rights to credit for the books to Stratemeyer.

While Stratemeyer didn’t have anything for Millie at the time she contacted him, he reached out to her later and asked if she would write a book for the floundering Ruth Fielding series. She did and from there she began to write books for other series for the company. In the midst of all this she also married Asa Wirt in 1928 while attending graduate school.

Millie was reliable, dependable, and a good writer.  When Stratemeyer thought about his Hardy Boys series and how young boys liked the boy detectives and then began to wonder if girls would like a girl detective, he turned to Millie.

Stratemeyer had the basic idea of Nancy Drew, but many literary historians and Nancy Drew fans say it is Millie who flushed her out and made her who she became. Millie created a version of Nancy that Stratemeyer’s daughter, Harriet Stratemeyer Adams, later toned down and changed.

Millie’s version of Nancy was a lot like Millie. She was athletic, adventurous, bold and brash, and never backed down from a challenge. Harriet’s version made her a bit more “perfect” — a rule follower who was polite but still adventurous and who little girls could look up to.

Nancy was what so many girls in the 1930s weren’t allowed to be.

Young girls could live vicariously through her.

Stratemeyer passed away 12 days after the first Nancy Drew book was released. His daughters took over the business after they couldn’t sell it in the difficult economy. Eventually Harriet began taking more control of the Nancy Drew series. Other ghostwriters were working on the series in addition to Millie, who wrote 23 of the first 30 books in the series. In the 1950s Harriet began to rewrite Millie’s original books, changing Nancy’s character, updating some of the material, and, in many ways, stripping away the personality of Nancy that Millie had created.

Millie was working on her own books at that time and had dealt with the illness and death of her first husband and then being a single mother. It was disappointing to see the changes being made but she had other irons in the fire.

In the early 1950s, she was working for the Toledo Times, remarried to the editor of the paper, and being a mother to Margaret Wirt.

She was also writing a character she felt was even more Nancy Drew than Nancy Drew — Penny Parker in the Penny Parker Mysteries.

Penny didn’t see as much success as Nancy, but she didn’t have the mammoth marketing effort that Nancy had, says Millie.

In 1959 Millie was widowed again and afterward she began to live a life a bit more like Nancy Drew — international travel, adventures, independence, learning more about archaeology and even taking flying lessons and eventually earning several flying lessons.

It wasn’t until 1980 when Harriet decided to move the printing of Stratemeyer books from Grosset & Dunlap to Simon and Schuster that more of the public learned about Millie’s role in creating Nancy.

She told WTGE that she could have pushed for her to get credit for the books she’d written. She could have gotten a lawyer and demanded more of the royalties.

She simply didn’t have the desire to put up a fight, though, she said.

“I wrote because I liked to write and I wanted to produce books that girls would enjoy,” Millie said. “And so I didn’t care too much but it got to be … my friends knew I wrote the books and that was sufficient for me. Eventually though it got to be that Mrs. Adams put out publicity to the fact that she was the author and people were reading that.”

One person who was reading all those stories was Millie’s daughter, who asked her own mother if she’d been lying all those years about writing the Nancy Drew books.

Millie hadn’t shared her role in the books with many but when her own daughter started to doubt her, she began to be more open about sharing her role in the creation of the character.

“I thought if my own daughter doubts my integrity, then it’s time I let the truth be known so when people asked me, I stuck my neck out and I told them the truth, which was that I wrote the books.”

Millie was subpoenaed by Grosset & Dunlap during the 1980 when the publisher sued the Stratemeyer Syndicate to keep them from publishing Nancy Drew with anyone else.

They wanted to prove that Harriet Adams didn’t have the right to say who could and could not publish past Nancy Drew books because she had not actually written them. As part of the case, the records that showed Millie had helped developed the series were also subpoenaed.

The truth was finally out there. Millie was the original Carolyn Keene.

Harriet, however, continued to claim she’d written the books right up until her death in 1982 and because the court records were sealed for years, it wasn’t until 1993 when the University of Iowa held a Nancy Drew conference, that Millie really became known as Carolyn Keene.

The conference at the university attracted the attention of literary scholars, collectors, and fans who wanted to know more about the original author and Millie was the main speaker.

Millie, incidentally, was the first woman to earn a master’s degree in journalism from the University of Iowa in 1927.

More fame than Millie imagined hit her after the conference. In some ways, life continued as normal despite the extra attention. She continued to write news and feature stories and her column for the Toledo newspaper.  Nancy fans began to contact her, though, asking about her role and for autographs. She was also inducted into the Ohio and then the Iowa Women’s Hall of Fame and her typewriter was enshrined at the Smithsonian.

Millie worked first at the Toledo Times, now defunct, and then at the Toledo Blade right up until the day she died, literally. She was writing her column for the paper, at the age of 96, in the Blade office, when she became ill and was taken to the hospital, where she later passed away.

In the article about her death, the Blade wrote about how her writing impacted young girls and women.

“Her books, Nancy Drew buffs have said, allowed teenage girls and young women to imagine that all things might be possible at a time when females struggled mightily for any sense of equality.”

“Millie’s innovation was to write a teenage character who insisted upon being taken seriously and who by asserting her dignity and autonomy made her the equal of any adult. That allowed little girls to dream what they could be like if they had that much power,” said Ilana Nash, a Nancy Drew authority and doctoral student at Bowling Green State University.

The article continues: “Going to work was a way of life for me and I had no other,” she wrote in a December column upon her pending retirement.

In the column, she explained that her legendary work ethic related to being hired by The Times in her third try during World War II.

“I was told after [the war] ended there would be layoffs, and I would be the first one to go. I took the warning seriously and for years I worked with a shadow over my head, never knowing when the last week would come,” she wrote.

Millie’s column was called, “On the Go With Millie Benson.”

Millie was described in the article about her death as fiercely independent and “always willing to go after a story she was assigned or had set her sights on.”

She almost never took a day off. In fact, the day after she was diagnosed with lung cancer in June, 1997, she was back at her desk working on her next column saying her desk was where she needed to be.

Millie once said in an interview that she never looked back on the books she’d written, “Because the minute I do I’m going into the past, and I never dwell on the past. I think about what I’m doing today and what I’m going to do tomorrow.”

I have had the opportunity to read a couple of books written by Millie, before Harriet got to them, and I have to say I did enjoy them. I didn’t know at the time that other books had been revised, and I had an original copy of Millie’s work, but when I found out, I could see the difference between Millie’s writing and other ghost writers/Harriet.

I am going to be purchasing a couple of books from Millie’s Penny Parker series to see what that series was like as well.

As president of the Nancy Drew Fan Club, Jennifer Fisher is considered a Nancy Drew and Mildred Benson expert. She operates the website nancydrewsleuth.com and donated her Nancy Drew collection several years ago to the Toledo library and now curates items to be added to the collection.

She is currently looking for information on Millie, from letters to manuscripts, to any memorabilia of hers that someone might have.

 On her site Jennifer details the life of Millie and talks about the impact her books (130 of them all together, including the Nancy Drew books) made for young women.

She also has a list of all of Millie’s books by series: https://www.nancydrewsleuth.com/mwbworks.html

Jennifer wrote about Millie in a special section on the site, including detailing the trial where Millie spoke about the conflict that eventually arose between her and Harriet Adams.

“On the stand when shown letters between herself and Harriet regarding criticisms and difficulties, she recalled that this was “a beginning conflict in what is Nancy. My Nancy would not be Mrs. Adams’ Nancy. Mrs. Adams was an entirely different person; she was more cultured and more refined. I was probably a rough and tumble newspaper person who had to earn a living, and I was out in the world. That was my type of Nancy.”

And it is that type of Nancy, and that type of woman, who so many women over the years have been drawn to despite the changes. Even with the changes later made to the books, the heart of Nancy, created by Millie, always remained.

Additional resources:

Mildred Wirt Benson works: https://www.nancydrewsleuth.com/mwbworks.html

Mildred Wirt Benson biography on Nancy Drew Sleuth: https://www.nancydrewsleuth.com/mildredwirtbenson.html

Nancy Drew Ghostwriter and Journalist Mildred Wirt Benson Flew Airplanes, Explored Jungles, and Wrote Hundreds of Children Books: https://slate.com/culture/2015/07/nancy-drew-ghostwriter-and-journalist-mildred-wirt-benson-flew-airplanes-explored-jungles-and-wrote-hundreds-of-children-s-books.html

Millie Benson’s Fascinating Story, Author of the Nancy Drew Mysteries | Toledo Stories | Full Film    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kIs5sRWzEV8

Information on Millie from the University of Iowa: https://www.lib.uiowa.edu/iwa/Millie/

Sunday Bookends: Cool bookstores and I finally finished The Two Towers

On By Lisa R. HowelerIn Sunday Bookends32 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 past week was a long, rough week with some medical challenges for my elderly parents. I’m pretty wiped out but not as wiped out as my mom who is facing an exhausting situation. If you are a person who prays, we could all use some prayers, but especially her.

Yesterday, The Husband, the kids, and I headed an hour south to picturesque Lewisburg, Pa. for a small break and to visit a comic store for free comic book day. We also visited a couple of bookstores, one independent and another a Barnes and Noble built inside of a three-story former hardware store.

The Barnes and Noble is three stories and features an escalator to reach the second level. It is also a merchandise store for Bucknell University, which is a university that is considered Ivy League, but which I learned yesterday is not officially “Ivy League.”

According to various sites, including College Advisor, Bucknell is considered a “hidden ivy” because of its strong academic reputation and its high rankings in various educational programs.

Regardless, it is a well-known college and, from what we’ve witnessed a few times, quite the party college. There was a noisy frat party going on as we visited a playground after visiting the bookstores and having some lunch. Plenty of young women in sun dresses. There were more girls than boys around, so maybe it was a sorority party instead. Hmmm….

Well, anyhow…we enjoyed our visits to the comic book shop and bookstore. The bookstore, called Mondragon, featured a variety of used books and records.

I didn’t find anything I really wanted but I enjoyed looking at the wide variety. I did find one book of recipes by artist Georgia O’Keefe, and Little Miss found a fiction book about horses.

We didn’t buy any books at Barnes & Noble because I wasn’t super impressed with their selection and rarely buy new. It is, however, a very pretty store.

I finally did it this past week! I finally finished The Two Towers by J.R.R. Tolkien. It took me forever, thanks to life events, and reading a couple of other books.

I enjoyed it despite the wordiness, but I will be taking a bit of a break before I start in on The Return of the King, the final installment of the trilogy.

I’ve been reading Grave Pursuits by Elle E. Kay but it deals with a serial killer and that’s been a bit of a heavy topic with all that’s been going on in my life so I’m setting it aside temporarily. I am really enjoying it, and the writing style, though.

Instead, I am continuing All Things Wise And Wonderful by James Herriot, reading a chapter or two at night before bed.

I also started Two Parts Sugar, One Part Murder by Valerie Burns. I like it so far.

And I plan to finish The Hardy Boys: The Twisted Claw by Franklin W. Dixon this week.

The Husband is reading Snow by John Banville.

Little Miss and I are reading Magical Melons by Carol Ryrie Brink.

The Boy is listening to a Warhammer book. I don’t remember which one.

This week I have been watching Murder She Wrote and The Dick Van Dyke Show. Comfort watches.

This week on the blog I shared:

Nancy Drew is 95! History, creation, lasting influence, controversy, and more.

This past week I enjoyed a episode on the True Drew podcast about the 95th anniversary of Nancy Drew.

Now It’s Your Turn

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

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

Sunday Bookends: My 10-year-old’s opinion of the 1982 Annie, some dirt road traveling, and drop in crafternoons continue

On By Lisa R. HowelerIn everyday musings, Sunday Bookends12 Comments

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

The kids helped some friends of the family clean up their yard last week and while they helped, I took a tour on the dirt roads around the property. It was fun to look at the cows grazing on the hillsides, even though they aren’t fully green yet (the hills, not the cows), watch two young does walk in front of me slowly, admire the amazing sky and clouds that day.

I rambled a little bit more about last week in my post yesterday, if you would like to read it.

On Friday, we drove to pick up groceries. In other words, we didn’t do very much last week.

Yesterday, Erin from Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs and I held our monthly Drop In Crafternoon with a couple of other bloggers. We will be holding another one tentatively on May 10 at 1 p.m. and definitely on May 24 at 1 p.m.

The crafternoons are events where we gather on Zoom and craft at our respective  homes and chat while we work on various projects. There is one woman who creates with beads, another who colors, I sometimes draw or color, and Erin has been embroidering lately. We are calling them drop-in crafternoons because you can drop in and out during the time we are on. No need to stay the whole time if you can’t. Come late if you want or leave early.

Our conversations are usually about light things, including books, but somehow I got us on racism, or maybe Liz did, but usually the conversations aren’t super heavy. You will probably meet our cats, children, husbands, and dogs during the drop in so be warned.

 If you want to just drop in and say hello If you would like to join us shoot Erin an email at crackercrumblife@gmail.com and she’ll add you to our  mailing list.

Uh…nothing

I keep saying I am going to finish The Two Towers by J.R.R. Tolkien the next week, but I am sure I will actually finish it this week.

I have enjoyed it but, oh my, is it long and wordy. I like the wordy at times too, don’t get me wrong, but I just felt like I might never make it to the end. I am only about three chapters away from the end and I do know that it will end on a cliffhanger since each “book” in the series is actually two books of one huge saga of six books altogether so in many ways I still won’t be done. But I will at least be done with this installment.

I am not sure when I will read Return of the King but probably not until fall or winter.

I’ll need a little break from fantasy books for a while I think. I need a few good mysteries and a romance up next, I think.

I didn’t read any of the James Herriot book (All Things Wise and Wonderful) this past week, except for last night, but I will be diving into it again this week.

I also started Grave Pursuits (Pennsylvania Parks Book 1) by Elle E. Kay as something quick to read and I am enjoying it so far. Elle is a writer who lives about 90 minutes from me, and she writes about state parks and towns near me. I am looking forward to one she wrote that takes place in the town I live in. I’m curious to see what she writes about our tiny town. I’ll be digging into that one next.

I’m also reading The Hardy Boys The Twisted Claw.

Little Miss and I are reading Magical Melons (also called Caddie Woodlawn’s Family) by Carol Ryrie Brink, a collection of short stories about Caddie Woodlawn.

Two Parts Sugar, One Part Murder by Valerie Burns

Peg and Rose Solve a Murder by Laurien Berenson

I watched a Hardy Boys from the 1977 show last week and will be writing about it later. I also watched a few episodes of Murder She Wrote from the last season and missed Cabot Cove. She was living in New York City in these episodes.

Little Miss decided she wanted to watch the 1982 version of Annie last night (not sure what inspired this, but maybe a meme she saw making fun of it or something). I told The Husband we were watching it while he was at a work event, and he asked if it was because it was Carol Burnett’s birthday. I said I didn’t know it was her birthday, but it was perfect timing.

When we started it, I realized I must have seen the movie as a kid more than I remembered, because I had it practically memorized. I also realized how old I am because a movie about an orphan hits different now that I am older and think about all those children out there who just want a place to call home.

Another realization was how manipulative that little Annie was. Daddy Warbucks is going to send her back to the orphanage? She adopts a sad look and says, “It’s okay. I’ve already had enough fun just in the short time I’ve been here.” Daddy Warbucks isn’t going to go to the movies with them? “Oh. It’s okay. I don’t need to go to a movie. I’ll just practice my backhand. That girl at the orphanage who said she’d been to a movie once is a liar anyhow.”

Of course, I know that’s not really how they were trying to play her. I’m just having a little fun. In all honesty, I was surprised how nostalgic I was watching the movie.

I couldn’t wait to show Little Miss classic songs like “It’s A Hard Knock Life For Us” and “Little Girls.”

Here were some of her quotes during the movie:

“Why are they dancing? She told them to clean. Hey! You’re supposed to be cleaning! Not practicing your flips!”

“Oh. The little orphan’s got hands!”

“No! Don’t fall for that man! He looks like Professor Quirrell but squared up!”

“No! You can’t marry him! It’s like marrying Jeff Bezos! He pretty much is Jeff Bezos!”

That and when Grace comes out in her yellow dress “oh that dress is beautiful! Slay, girl!”

Watching it and all the great songs (Easy Street with Carol, Tim Curry, and Bernadette Peters for one) was a ton of fun and Little Miss didn’t even make too much fun of it so that was a win!

At the end I asked her what she thought.

“It was kind of a strange movie. We went from, ‘oh these children are sort of being abused, but I guess we’re okay with that.’ To ‘Oh my gosh that guy is chasing her and she’s hanging off this bridge and going to die’ to ‘oh, she has a family now. That’s – uh – cool”

I am making some progress on book four in the Gladwynn Grant Mystery series. You can find the other three here.

I don’t have a release date yet but I’m having fun pulling ideas together for the story.

Last week on the blog I shared:

Now It’s Your Turn

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

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

Sunday Bookends: He is Risen! And I feel like the books I am reading are very long.

On By Lisa R. HowelerIn everyday musings, Sunday Bookends, Sunday Salon9 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.

First things first – He has risen! He  has risen indeed! Happy Easter!

Remember when I was all like, “I need some warmer weather. It’s too cold!”

Well, I thought we’d go into the warmer weather gradually, not one day it’s 35 and I’m wearing a winter coat to a day later it’s almost 80 and humid.

That’s Pennsylvania for you.

I didn’t enjoy the humid weather yesterday, but I did enjoy nicer weather the day before when it allowed me to sit on the front porch and read some while Little Miss drew on the sidewalk with chalk.

I am going to miss my evenings watching Murder She Wrote with a blanket over my lap.

Oh wow. Did I just write that?

I am officially old, aren’t I? Talking about watching Murder She Wrote with my blanket and a cup of tea. *wink*

Oh well. It’s where I am in life and I am okay with that. I’ll just have to watch Murder She Wrote with a glass of lemonade or cold ice water instead.

Today we will have Easter dinner with my parents and maybe watch a movie together.

This doesn’t really go with the rest of this section, but I hit 103 subscribers on my little YouTube Channel yesterday. Whoot!

Guys, gals, blog readers! I feel like I may never finish the two long books I’ve been reading! I know I will and have moved my focus to just one of the books to make it even more likely I actually finish of them this week.

I have been reading both The Two Towers by J.R.R. Tolkien and All Things Wise and Wonderful by James Herriot, switching off between the two depending on my mood, and they are taking forever! They seem so long. I read them on my kindle at night and I swear that I will be reading for an hour, look down at the percentage and realize I’ve barely made a dent in the book!

I finally realized they are both 400-page books, which isn’t really a lot, but can drag a book out when you’re only reading a chapter here and there. Even though they are long books, I am really enjoying them. I am especially enjoying The Two Towers even if it is a bit wordy.

I love the characters and all their different quirks, even if I have gotten a bit lost since we met up with King Theoden and his peeps. Now I am getting too many characters thrown at me, but that’s how fantasy books are so I am just taking it all in stride.

I hope to dig into a book of short stories by Louis L’Amour this week that my husband picked up at the library for me but I have also started a Hardy Boys book and am enjoying that. That, of course, won’t take me long to read since it is only about 200 pages long.

Little Miss and I finished The Littlest Voyageur by Margi Preus this week and really enjoyed it. It was about a squirrel who travels with river voyagers in Canada and learns the hard way that a fur trade is going on. It dealt with the subject of the fur trade in a very cute way and didn’t become as preachy as I thought it was going to. There was a lot of history woven into the book, which on the surface seemed to simply focus on a squirrel and his dream to become a river explorer.

The Boy is reading Warhammer books. I don’t remember which one he is on now.

Last week it was old mystery shows. The Rockford Files with a guest appearance by Tom Selleck early in the week. That episode was hilarious. Then it was Murder She Wrote, including a two parter where Jessica was in Ireland. Those two were very good. I’ve watched some real duds but this was in season 12 so they must have had better writers by then.

Yesterday I watched a 1934 movie called She Had to Choose. It was interesting and had me shouting at the screen a couple of times because I was so stressed at some of the decisions being made. As is with most movies from that era, it was about 60 minutes long.

I also rewatched Paris Blues for the Springtime in Paris feature that Erin from Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs and I are doing until the beginning of May.

You can learn more about it here and if you want to jump in you can link up your impressions of the movies at any time at the link on the page.  /

I’m working on the fourth book in the Gladwynn Grant Mystery series. I actually wrote an entire paragraph this week. Ha! I hope to write even more this upcoming week.

If you want to read the other three books in the series you can find them here: https://www.amazon.com/stores/Lisa-Howeler/author/B07Y3W52FD?ref=ap_rdr&isDramIntegrated=true&shoppingPortalEnabled=true&ccs_id=654deb79-0e34-4d05-94d1-a81a4bd0ca0d

Last week on the blog I shared:

While I wash dishes I listen to a book and right now that book is The Two Towers.

Also, this:

and this:

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.

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

Top Ten Tuesday: Literary Friendships

On By Lisa R. HowelerIn books and reading, everyday musings, top-ten-tuesday11 Comments

Top Ten Tuesday is hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl.

Today’s prompt is: Ten Unpopular Bookish opinions, but I decided to change the topic up and share a list of top ten literary friendships (for me anyhow) instead because I could only think of one or two unpopular bookish opinions I have.

  1. Lt. Tragg and Perry Mason from the Perry Mason Mystery books by Earle Stanley Gardner.

Are these two really friends? No. They are usually on the opposite side of things or competing for information but there is still a kind of friendship between the two. They play off each other, exchange witty banter, and would probably miss each sparring with each other if one of them was gone. Tragg in the books is much younger than the one depicted on the show from the 1960s, by the way.

2. Sherlock Holmes and John Watson from the Sherlock Holmes books and stories by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Of course these two are close friends -solving crimes together with John Watson having to deal with an erratic, drug-addicted, brilliant Sherlock Holmes. John saves Sherlock from danger and himself more than once.

3. Sam and Frodo from The Fellowship of the Ring trilogy by J.R.R. Tolkien

In the movies, it’s Sam that does most of the work for Frodo it seems. I’m only on the second book of the trilogy so I will have to see if the books are the same. Frodo, a hobbit from Hobbiton must carry a magic ring to Mount Doom to throw it in and destroy it to stop evil from taking over Middle Earth. Sam, loyal beyond anything imaginable, sticks close to Frodo’s side, battling Orcs, huge spiders, and many other perils to make sure his friend makes it safely to his destination. I would love to have a friend who is even half as dedicated to me as Sam is to Frodo.

4. Anne Shirley and Diana Barry from Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery

These two young ladies become fast friends when Anne Shirley is taking in my Marilla and Matthew Cuthbert. Diana lives not far from the Cuthbert farm and she and Anne quickly become “bossom buddies” or “kindred spirits” after meeting. I love their friendship, which survives many ups and downs and challenges.

5. Nancy Drew, Bess Marvin, and George Fayne from The Nancy Drew Mysteries by Carolyn Keene

Teen amateur sleuth Nancy Drew often solves her mysteries with the help of her friends Bess Marvin and George Fayne. Bess and George are cousins. Bess is a bit plump and afraid of everything and George is brash and, honestly, sometimes rude to her cousin Bess.

The interaction between these three are fun and keep the books interesting as readers watch to see what trouble the girls will get into next and whether or not Bess will faint during the investigation.

6. Hercule Poirot and Captain Arthur Hastings from the Hercule Poirot Mystery series by Agatha Christie

Some might call Captain Hastings, lackey and friend of infamous private detective Hercule Poirot an idiot since he always seems to stumble into trouble or ask really ridiculous questions but he is a support system for the brash and sometimes blunt Poirot. Hastings’ presence helps to soften the interactions Poirot has with interviewees and others as he conducts his various investigations.

7. Piglet and Winnie the Pooh from the Winnie the Pooh series by A.A. Milne

Oh, who can forget these darling friends. Of course we could add in Eyore and Rooh and Tiger too but Piglet and Winnie are the closest of the group and the most darling. When I think of them I think of a cartoon I once saw of them walking away from our view, hand in hand. Piglet says to Winnie, “Winnie?” Winnie responds, “yes, Piglet?” and Piglet simply responds, “Just checking you are still there.” Or something along those lines. It always makes me weepy.

8. Scout, Jem, and Dill from To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee

This is my favorite book and has been since I was in sixth grade. The friendship between young Scout Finch, her brother Jim Finch, and their friend Dill during the tumultuous summer when their father represents a black man accused of rape in Alabama in the 1930s, is bittersweet, heartwarming, and impactful. This book and their friendship hit me even harder when I reread it as an adult two years ago with my son for his English course.

9. Huckleberry Finn and Jim from Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain

Huckleberry is a young boy whose abusive father disappears and reappears over and over again, pulling Huckleberry from the warm and (sort of) comforting home with Widow Douglass and Miss Watson. When Huckleberry decides to run away from the widow and Miss Watson and his father to have an adventure on the Mississippi River, he meets runaway slave Jim. The two continue on their journey together and form a storm, unlikely, friendship that forces Huckleberry to examine his ideas about slavery and black people.

10. Digory Kirke and Polly Plummer from The Magician’s Nephew by C.S. Lewis

Digory and Polly meet one afternoon, begin to play by hopping across the rafters in the attics of the connecting row houses and it all takes off from there. Polly is pulled through a portal when she touches a ring that belongs to Digory’s evil uncle and Digory has to follow her. Evil queens, talking animals, and much more will await these children who become fast friends thanks the adventure they are thrown into.

Are you familiar with any of these literary friendships and if so, do you have a favorite?

Sunday Bookends: What is that family doing?

On By Lisa R. HowelerIn Sunday Bookends28 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 past week was a fairly relaxed one until yesterday.

Little Miss needed some cheering up, so I suggested that after I picked up a friend of The Boy’s we head up to the town where we used to live to watch The Minecraft movie.

The kids were excited but since I wasn’t really interested in watching the movie, so instead I headed to an Italian Deli and Bakery near the theater after I dropped them off and picked up some cookies and cannoli, headed back to the park across from the theater and sat in my car reading books and eating fudge filled cookies.

Well, I ate one cookie actually and then I ate some string cheese and drank a natural ginger ale. It was nice and relaxing, as the rain fell around me.

One weird thing and funny thing that happened while I was sitting in the car: a car pulled up next to me and parked and then three people got out – they looked to be about the age of a mom, a dad, and maybe a 12-year-old boy. The park has a sidewalk that goes all the way around, and this family started walking on the sidewalk and then walked all the way on the other side of it toward the hospital, which is across the street from the park. They disappeared from my sight, so I went back to my book. About ten minutes later they passed in front of my car again, and I noticed all of them were looking at their phones. The mom said something to the boy, and he laughed, but they kept their eyes on their phones.

Then they started another loop around the park. I thought maybe they were playing something like Pokemon Go (is that still a thing), but they were just walking in a circle, staring at their phones.

They did this four more times, then crossed the street near the gas station, came back again, walked to their car, got in and left.

It was kind of, well, creepy … and funny. I have no idea what was going on, but it felt like some kind of Twilight Zone episode. Part of me wanted to ask them what was going on, but in this day and age, I think it is just better not to know.

For some reason, the movie didn’t start for almost 45 minutes after it was supposed to start so we got home a lot later than I wanted to. Remember when I told you last week that to get anywhere with places like theaters we have to drive 45 minutes north, south, east or west? To get to the theater, we had to drive 45 minutes north and then 45 minutes back home.

I was pretty tired by the end of the day and ready for my blanket and tea.

I didn’t actually have tea when I got home, and the evening wasn’t as relaxed as I wanted but maybe I can find some relaxation tonight instead.

This past week I finished Chocolate Chip Cookie Murder by Joanne Fluke and The Horse and His Boy by C.S. Lewis.

I am still reading The Two Towers by J.R.R. Tolkien and enjoying it.

I am also reading All Things Wise and Wonderful by James Herriot.

Next week I am going to be looking for another mystery but I might step out of my comfort zone and try a Christian regency romance by Joanna Davidson Politano. We will see how that goes.

I forgot to ask The Husband what he is reading before I wrote this. He’s taking a brief nap after a busy morning so I’ll update this later or share next week.

Little Miss and I are going to be finishing up The Littlest Voyageur this week for school and she is finishing up the third Harry Potter book.

I had to step away from Great Canal Journeys. It was becoming too heartbreaking to watch with Pru’s mental and physical health declining.

Pru is the wife of the canal riding team and it’s starting to really wear on me to watch her forget what she’s doing some days. I have elderly parents and them developing dementia is a huge worry for me.

Last week I watched How to Steal A Million as part of the Springtime in Paris feature I am doing with Erin from Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs.

You can still jump in to watch the movies on the list and write about them. We have a link up where you can link to your posts until May 10th. The link and our list of movies and where you can find them can be found at the link at the top of my page.

This week we are watching Paris Blue with Paul Newman (swoon), Joanne Woodward, Sidney Poitier, and Diahann Carroll.

Last week on the blog I shared:

When I am doing dishes during the week, I listen to The Two Towers by J.R.R. Tolkien, and the rest of the week, I read it.

Photos from the week

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

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

Sunday Bookends: A trip to a used book sale, the same books, more canal journeys

On By Lisa R. HowelerIn everyday musings, Sunday Bookends23 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.

I want to start by sharing that today is my sister-in-law Kim’s birthday so happy birthday to her. She had a heck of a 2024 and is an overcomer. Looking forward to her having a much better 2025.

I shared a bit yesterday about our week last week, which was fairly uneventful, other than a trip to a used book sale at a library near us. I picked up 19 Hard Boys Mystery books for 50 cents each. That was a fun find. These books, like Nancy Drew, are a bit dated, of course, and written for younger kids but they still have pretty good mysteries. They are also a fun escape from life.

Little Miss also picked out some cozy mysteries for me to try out. She’s picked out a couple duds over the years but also some very good ones so we will see how this bunch works out.

You can read more about our week last week here.

I wish I had something more exciting to report but I am still reading The Chocolate Chip Cookie Murders by Joanne Fluke, The Horse and His Boy by C.S. Lewis, and The Two Towers by Tolkien.

I did finish Whose Body? By Dorothy Sayers last week.

The Husband is reading Big Trouble by Dave Barry.

I’ve still been watching Great Canal Journeys every night. Not much else. The Husband has been watching Shogun.

I watched an episode of Great Canal Journeys when they visited Scotland and I was absolutely blown away by this huge device that lowered their boat from one level of the canal to the larger canal below and two huge steel statues of horse heads they visited during the episode.

I watched Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris as well last week and will be watching How to Steal A Million today or tomorrow.

I’ll also be watching another Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew Mysteries episode this week so I can write about it on the blog.

Last week on the blog I shared:

A book sale, a trip to a garden center, and what’s up with the turkey vultures in our area?

On the Frontier by Transmissions from the Northern Outpost (I’m biased. This is my brother)

Nadine’s Private Island by Cat’s Wire

Photos from this Week

Now It’s Your Turn

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

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

A book sale, a trip to a garden center, and what’s up with the turkey vultures in our area?

On By Lisa R. HowelerIn Saturday Afternoon Tea15 Comments

Today for our chat I am pulling out some tea, cocoa, lemonade, and even iced tea. What are you in the mood for?

This week’s weather isn’t really calling for lemonade since it will still be fairly cold, but I think lemonade can be good on any day.

I’m going to be having some peppermint tea with local, raw honey in it as we chat. My husband made it and oh wow. It’s so good.

*sniff* I needed this. (She said dramatically like she’s making a silly YouTube video.)

It’s gloomy and raining outside, but I don’t mind too much because I have my tea, my blanket, and a good book.

We did have some nice, warmer days this past week — nice enough that we spent a couple of afternoons and evenings outside playing and simply enjoying the warmth.

The Husband had three days off this past week so were able to spend time as a family relaxing on Thursday and then traveling to another town on Friday for a used book sale and a trip to a park.

On Thursday while we were sitting outside there was a huge flock of turkey buzzards or vultures circling the woods behind our house and then our house itself. It was really stressing me out, especially as their numbers started growing and they started lowering themselves. As far as I knew there were no dead animals around us but there were three living ones — my two cats and our dog — in the backyard.

At one point, Zooma the Wonder Dog ran into the yard and jumped up toward the birds. One of them began to lower itself and I yelled at it to go away. I then yelled at all of them.

“You get out of here! Go on! Go! You’re not taking my dog today!”

The Husband said I sounded like Fran Drescher from The Nanny while I was yelling. I didn’t take the remark as a compliment.

Either way, the birds started to move away. At one point there were close to 30 of them swarming the sky over my house. I searched online and learned that circling vultures doesn’t always mean they are looking for carrion, or dead animals, to eat.

Sometimes, if it is in the evening hours, they have probably arrived in the area that day and are preparing to roost for the night. I hope that was what has happening but later my neighbor told me the birds were circling when her dogs were out too.

Online is says buzzards/vultures can not physically lift a dog and also don’t take live dogs, but….I don’t know. This isn’t the first time this has happened when we’ve been outside.

Also, locally we call these birds “turkey buzzards”, but they are actually turkey vultures, according to information online. In the UK, buzzards are some other types of birds. Either way, these are pretty ugly and creepy birds and whatever they were doing, I didn’t like it.

Yesterday, The Husband, The Boy, and Little Miss and I traveled to a town about 45 minutes east of us to visit the library there for their bi-annual book sale. We also picked up some lunch at the local supermarket, visited a park to have a picnic, picked up our groceries (through pick up), and visited a garden store before stopping at a playground on the way home.

The most exciting find for me at the book sale was a box of The Hardy Boys Mystery books from the early 1940s. These books were actually published in the 1990s, but they are reprints of the originals, which were written in the 1930s or 40s.

The books were 50 cents each because they were in the children’s section. I double checked with the library ladies, but they insisted they were only 50 cents, so I picked up 19 of the some 28 books they had, including a book with three books in one.

They had three Nancy Drew Mystery books, but I already own those, so I didn’t get them.

Little Miss also picked out four cozy mysteries for me. She really enjoys doing that and has grabbed some great ones for me in the past. I was really excited that she grabbed another Amish Inn Mysteries for me to add to my growing collection of that series.

The Husband found The Count of Nine by Erle Stanley Gardner and said he has it on Kindle, but I said to grab the paperback. I never know when something might happen to one of our accounts, causing us to lose all of our books so I prefer to have paperbacks or hardcovers of books I know we will enjoy on our shelves. Our shelves are getting overrun, though. We are going to have to do something – like knock out a wall, build on, and create an entire room to be our library. I’m not sure the husband or our bank account will go for that but it would be very cool.

Anyhow, after the library sale we grabbed some lunch from the local supermarket and headed to a park. The kids played by the creek for a bit and then we headed to a small garden store that also sells . . . well, a lot of different stuff. It is a very relaxing place, and they carry some natural soda that I can actually drink. I can’t drink sodas anymore because of my corn allergy so it’s a treat to have some natural soda once in a while. This is also one of the local places where I can pick up some raw honey.

From there we made a stop at Walmart and Aldi (Aldi was just a  pick up thankfully) and then on to another park that has a zipline, slides, and access to a creek. Little Miss usually loves to explore the creek but this time she and her brother played on the zipline instead.

I’m not sure if I have ever explained this or not but when I write the word “local” that often means something different for people in my area. Local for us can be anything from 5 minutes to an hour away. When you live in a rural area, it can take a long time to get to “civilization.” For us, it is about 30 minutes one way to pick up groceries at an Aldi and in that town, there are a couple supermarkets and smaller stores but nothing larger like a Walmart. Forty-five minutes southeast, where we went yesterday, there is an Aldi, a Walmart, and a larger supermarket that carries more natural items. About an hour south, there are larger stores like Walmart, Target, Gamestop, Barnes and Noble, etc. About 90 minutes north we can find those stores as well.

Local, in other words, clearly means different things depending on where you live – a rural or urban area. If that wasn’t obvious already.

This upcoming week we don’t have a ton going on. The last night of the church program Little Miss goes to was last week. We might attend a library event in the town where The Husband works but other than that there is nothing on the agenda until the weekend when The Husband is taking Little Miss to an Easter egg hunt he is taking photos at for the newspaper.

How about you? How was your week last week and what do you have coming up for this week?

Top Ten Tuesday: Ten books I did not finish (DNF’d)

On By Lisa R. HowelerIn books and reading, top-ten-tuesday22 Comments

Top Ten Tuesday is hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl.

Today’s prompt is: Books I Did Not Finish (DNFed) (feel free to tell us why, but please no spoilers!)

My reasons for not finishing a book are rarely because the book is bad or not worth reading. Most of the time it is completely related to the fact the book and my personality don’t mesh. Also, in some cases I don’t finish a book at one time but go back later and finish it. That’s most likely going to be the case with many of the books here, so if you loved one of these books on my list, know that adding them to a DNF list doesn’t mean I hated them.

  1. A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens

I tried! I tried! I wanted to read a Dickens. It about killed me. It was so wordy! Worse than I expected. I read part of this book in high school and enjoyed it but for some reason I could just not get into it now that I am an adult. I do want to try again someday, however.

2. Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

I don’t know if it is fair to mention this one since it was just a DNF for me and I might go back to it but for now it is a DNF and I’m reading some other books. I wanted to read this with my son for his British Literature class but…it was just so heavy. I couldn’t get into it. I have an audiobook with Dan Stevens and I’m really enjoying his narration so I am going to try to get back into it.

3. Bourdain: The Definitive Oral Biography by Laurie Woolever

I wanted to like this book. I did. It was just so choppy and dull as watch sap harden in the winter. The stories about Anthony could have been interesting but they were all chopped up and some of them were from people who truly didn’t know him that well. I skipped to the end and read a couple quotes from his daughter but for the most part this was just a chopped-up mess of stories. I didn’t get it at all. I have heard there are other, much better biographies out there so I will try them in the future.


4. All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr

I did not hate this book. I just couldn’t get into the style of writing, the tiny little chapters, and the bouncing back and forth between character in every other chapter.

5. Little Men by Louisa May Alcott

I will go back to this one but it just didn’t pull me in like Little Women did. I am a mood reader so I think I was simply not in the mood for it when I tried to read it.

6. The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency Alexander McCall Smith

I think this one just didn’t catch me at the right time. I could not get into it at all but I am willing to try again sometime in the future.

7. A Fatal Footnote by Margaret Loudon

I didn’t even make it through five pages of this one. The author kept changing the name of her character and repeating the name over and over. She’d write, “Penelope didn’t know why Millie was looking at her that way but Penn was uncomfortable with it.”

What? Why keep changing her name and in the same sentence or paragraph? She seemed allergic to using pronouns instead of the names she kept using too. It would have been one thing if a character said to her, “Hey, Penn!” instead of Penelope but for the author to be changing it in the prose….it was weird.

8. Anne’s House of Dreams by L.M. Montgomery

This was just not my favorite book of Montgomery’s. It was so sad and depressing to me. I might go back someday and finish it but it was a slog for me. I skipped ahead to the end but really didn’t go back and read the rest so I consider it a DNF.

9. What’s the Worse That Can Happen by Donald Westlake

My husband is a huge Westlake fan and I read one book by him, Call Me A Cab, and liked it but so far I haven’t really been able to get into the rest of his books. I do plan to try this one again at some point.

10. Death At A Scottish Christmas by Lucy Connelly

    I know we cozy mystery readers have to suspend belief at times but this one…well, it was a bit too much suspending belief. I couldn’t finish this one at all. I don’t plan to try again.

    What books have you not finished? Will you ever go back and try them again?