Sunday Bookends: Sunday Bookends: Dick VanDyke, Hercule Poirot, and a cat falling off the roof

December 14, 2025December 14, 2025 / Lisa R. Howeler / 18 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. Feel free to link your posts about

I usually mention what I have been watching down below but today I thought I’d mention part of what I’ve been watching here because I have been watching a lot of clips of or interviews with or about Dick VanDyke since yesterday was his 100^th birthday and he’s still alive.

When I was a kid, I watched The Dick VanDyke Show on PBS in the evenings after dinner and it became a comfort watch to me. As my mom said last night, The Dick VanDyke Show was something you could watch and know it was just going to be good, clean comedy and fun.

The show still holds up today too. I still watch The Dick VanDyke Show, especially when I am down about something.

In fact, when I am down or sad about something my husband will ask, “What can I do? How about I make a cup of tea and find you a Dick VanDyke episode to watch?” Sometimes he doesn’t even suggest it, he simply turns an episode on and backs away — much like a man might toss a bar of chocolate to a woman on her period and run away.

Of course I have also watched Dick VanDyke in movies like Mary Poppins, but, for me, my memories of him will always circulate around The Dick VanDyke Show.

I loved this interview with him from People Magazine. My brother sent it to me last night and I cried because it was just nice to see him doing so well at his age and hearing all his memories of the various projects he was involved with over the years.

This past week we were plunged into deep cold and also had snow a couple of days which left it hard for me to back out of our steep driveway. Yesterday was my first day out all week and the kids and I took some bean soup to my parents…yes, that bean soup from my post yesterday.

We are facing below freezing temps today, but later in the week temps will rise into the mid-40s. Why do I give weather reports in my blog posts?! I have no idea, but I always do it.

Our cats aren’t sure what to think of the weather. Somedays they want to go out but within ten minutes they are back at the kitchen window begging to come in.

We had a bit of cabin fever this week so Little Miss took Zooma The Wonder Dog for a walk down the street. Scout decided she wanted to see what was going on but she didn’t last outside long, dashing back inside through our side door when I wasn’t looking.

Since I wasn’t looking, I panicked a bit later when I couldn’t find her in the house and it was getting dark

I feel like I spend most of my days counting fury heads and asking, “Has anyone seen…” whichever cat I haven’t seen for a while.

Cass is our “new cat” who we’ve had since the end of October. He is a he and not a she like we normally thought and we are getting much better at calling him “he” as we get used to that change. We called him “she” for the first month of his life.

Our cat Scout has always been the crazy one, climbing up trees and having to be rescued by the fire company or falling out of them and almost dying, but now Cass is the craziest because we’ve found him on our snowy roof twice this month and twice he stole chicken from the stove or counter when I wasn’t looking.

I discovered him on the roof after a small snowstorm this week when Zooma was barking at him and snow trickled down from the roof as I opened the door. Our son looked out his upstairs window to see if he could bring Cass in but he had already found a way down to the porch so he could come in the door the normal way.

Yesterday, the same thing happened, but this time Cass thought he could climb onto the open door frame and jump down. The only problem was once he got on the narrow door frame he tried to step on our wreathe which kept moving and then panicked. He had no idea how to get off the door frame so eventually our son reached up for him and Cass fell, upside down, into his arms.

I’ve learned to duct tape the knobs on the stove so he won’t hit them with his foot when he thinks he can jump up. I’m also learning not to leave food on the counter that I plan to eat unattended. I hope to break him of these stealing habits soon — probably with a spray bottle, which is how I had to stop Scout from climbing our window screens when we first adopted her.

I’m curious if he will calm down once he is neutered a few days before Christmas.

This is off the subject — I don’t know about any of you have bots on your site or not lately, but I have tons from China and have for about three months. I’ve contacted WordPress but have been told to ignore them unless I start receiving a ton of comments. That’s great, I guess, because right now I get 30,000 fake views a week from China and I’ve heard and read on forums that this happening to a ton of other blogs and sites in the United States.

REMINDERS*: Erin (Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs) and I host a monthly bookish link party called A Good Book and A Cup of Tea. This link-up is for book and reading posts or anything related to books and reading (even movies based on books!). Each link party will be open for a month. You can find that link up for this month here.

We are also hosting Comfy Cozy Christmas! As Erin said on her blog, “Anything holiday related – any December holiday – at all that strikes your fancy and you write about, please think about sharing on our linky.” You can find the link for that at the top of my page in the menu or here.

Each week, I host the Weekend Traffic Jam Reboot with some great hosts. It goes live Thursday night but you can share any kind of blog posts (family-friendly) there until Tuesday of each week. You can check my recent posts on the sidebar to the right for the most recent link-party.

At the beginning of the week I stayed up past 1 a.m. one night finishing Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier. While I felt it was a bit wordy at times and maybe even a little repetitive with all that comparison by the second Mrs. DeWinter of herself to Rebecca, I really enjoyed it and do think it is as good as so many reviews I have read said it was (that sentence doesn’t make much sense but hopefully you can decipher it.)

Last night I finished Hercule Poirot’s Christmas by Agatha Christie. It was very good, (though a bit rushed) but I think I’ll look for sweeter reads for the next couple of weeks as we make our way toward Christmas.

Little Miss and I also finished Caddie Woodlawn’s Family (also known from it’s original title Magical Melons).

I will probably read a couple of Christmas short stories by Dickens and L.M. Montgomery, as well as finishing reading A Christmas Carol to Little Miss. I will also read at least part of Shepherd’s Abiding by Jan Karon.

Coming up soon will be a book of short stories by Louis L’Amour, Damsel in Distress by P.G. Woodhouse, and Murder, She Wrote Brandy and Bullets. I’m also hoping to start Glorious Intruder by Joni Eareckson Tada as a slow read. After all that or somewhere in between I want to start The Silver Chair by C.S. Lewis.

This past week I rewatched part of Meet Me In St. Louis, Wartime Christmas, and on YouTube a couple episodes of Real Vintage Dolls House. I started a couple of movies too but have not finished them yet.

I’ll be making a formal announcement later, but I’ll be watching James Cagney movies this winter and I’m looking forward to it because I’ve only ever watched one Cagney movie, so I will probably add one of his movies into my Christmas movie watching this week.

This morning, we watched the first episode of the new season of Shakespeare & Hathaway. It wasn’t as good as the earlier seasons (we skipped Season 4 filmed during “You Know What” because the one episode was just bad beyond bad) but it was nice to see their banter again after a two-year break. We will see how the rest of the season is.

I also watched “my farmer”, Pete, on Just A Few Acres Farm, which I do almost every Sunday after watching online church.

I made a lot of progress on Gladwynn book four this past week. I thought I’d share a little description I put together:

Small town newspaper reporter Gladwynn Grant is not going to get involved in any more mysteries. She’s learned her lesson. The hard way.

Her resolve starts to crumble, though, when someone tries to drop an industrial size light fixture on the Brookstone School District Superintendent during an interview. Was Superintendent Ellerton the intended target, though? Or was it actually Gladwynn herself?

While all this is unfolding her ever-busy grandmother, Lucinda, has been told by her doctor she needs to rest more and run around less while Gladwynn’s sister, Iona, is feeling overwhelmed with her role as a mother of three.

A new friendship between State Police Detective Tanner Kinney and Pastor Luke Callahan, the two men family and friends like to joke are battling for Gladwynn’s affections, has Gladwynn a bit perplexed, but also relieved.

Will Gladwynn be able to help find out if someone wants Superintendent Ellerton out of the picture, all while trying to keep Lucinda resting, Iona from cracking, and everyone in town from spreading rumors about her and one of the men in her life?

Find out in the latest Gladwnn Grant Mystery, Gladwynn Grant Goes Back to School.

If you want to read the previous three books, you can find links at the bottom of the page. They are available as ebooks and paperbacks.

On the blog I shared:

I’ve been listening to Letters From Father Christmas by J.R.R. Tolkien.

The Mystery of Stillness by BettieG’s RA Seasons

Gingerbread and Pear Pudding by Scratch Made Food and DIY Homemade Household

Silent Movies: Christmas Dream by Cat’s Wire

Friday Morning Coffee Catch Up by Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs

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. You can copy my blog graphic to your computer if you want to participate in my link party or you can join the other awesome link ups below.

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. Stacking the Shelves is hosted by Reading Reality.

Hello! Welcome to my blog. I am a blogger, homeschool mom, and I write cozy mysteries.

You can find my Gladwynn Grant Mystery series HERE.

You can also find me on Instagram and YouTube.

Sunday Bookends: Snow. Beautiful book. Old movies.

December 7, 2025December 7, 2025 / Lisa R. Howeler / 24 Comments

Some husbands show their wives their love by buying them flowers or chocolate. My husband shows me love by buying me books and I’m here for it.

A couple of months ago he bought me My Beloved, the new book by Jan Karon, for my birthday/early Christmas gift. I haven’t read it yet because I gave it to my mom to read first.

Yesterday The Husband went Christmas shopping for the kids and came home with gifts for them but also a pretty copy of A Christmas Carol for me.

It’s a reproduction of a reproduction but that doesn’t matter to me. I love it, and I love how it includes the original introduction and preface that was in the 1922 version. To explain, there was a version of Dicken’s original version of A Christmas Carol published in 1922 by the National Book Trade Provident Society. Their version was republished this year by another publisher. So, a reproduction of a reproduction.Whatever it is, I love it. It’s little and cute and inside it features an introduction by GK Chesterton and original illustrations published in the original A Christmas Carol.

I read the story to my son several years ago so Monday I plan to start reading it to Little Miss.

This week we received our first snowfall of the year, and since the temps dropped so fast afterward, we still have snow on the ground and probably will for a while. Temps are going to stay very low for several more days.

I took this photo at my parents yesterday. I love this view.

Erin (Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs) and I host a monthly bookish link party called A Good Book and A Cup of Tea. This link-up is for book and reading posts or anything related to books and reading (even movies based on books!). Each link party will be open for a month. You can find that link up for this month here.

This past week I breezed through a novella called Christmas in Harmony by Phillip Gulley. I really enjoyed it. It’s part of the Harmony series by Gulley, which I recommend if you’ve never tried it.

I almost finished Rebecca and probably will finish it by tomorrow. It was very slow at first with so much melodrama and description but it picks up halfway through and now I have to read to the end, even though I did see the movie in the past. I forgot the ending of the movie so this will remind me if the two are the same.

I am taking part in the 13^th annual Ho Ho Ho Readathon from November 26 to December 17^th. I finished my first Christmas/winter themed book with Christmas in Harmony.

This week I’ll be starting A Christmas Carol with my daughter and also continuing Hercule Poirot’s Christmas and A Christmas Scrapbook, a short story by Phillip Gulley.

I will also be reading excerpts from Little Women and Shepherd’s Abiding (a Jan Karon book and part of the Mitford series) at some point.

If you want to know more about the challenge, hop over here:

https://caffeinatedbookreviewer.com/2025/10/13th-annual-ho-ho-ho-readathon-sign-up.html

Little Miss and I will finish Magical Melons or Caddie Woodlawn’s Family (which the name was changed to) by Carol Ryrie Brink this week. This is the sequel to Caddie Woodlawn, which we listened to on Audible. We’ve been slowly reading it along with other school books for quite a while now. Each chapter is like its own short story. I really enjoyed a chapter we read this past week about Christmas and ended up crying over it. I’ll share more about the book in a future post.

I have a Murder, She Wrote book, The Murder of Twelve, by Donald Bain on tap for sometime soon, but will probably end up reading more Christmas stories/books throughout December.

This week I watched an old movie called Ball of Fire, part of the PBS Little Women mini-series, and tried to watch a movie called Wonder Man with Danny Kaye but couldn’t get into it.

I honestly can’t remember what else I watched this past week so I guess it wasn’t very exciting.

Today I will be watching some sort of Christmas movie but I am not sure which one yet.

I added a couple thousand words to Gladwynn Grant Goes Back to School last week.

Last week on the blog I shared:

I am listening (off and on) to Letters from Father Christmas by J.R.R. Tolkien.

Now It’s Your Turn

Hello! Welcome to my blog. I am a blogger, homeschool mom, and I write cozy mysteries.

You can find my Gladwynn Grant Mystery series HERE.

You can also find me on Instagram and YouTube.

Sunday Bookends: It’s A Wonderful Life Radio Play and a Beatrix Potter-based cozy mystery series

November 30, 2025 / Lisa R. Howeler / 15 Comments

Yesterday the kids and I went to see The Husband in the play version of It’s A Wonderful Life. Attending the play has become such a wonderful kick off to the Christmas season for us since he was also in the play last year.

This play is set up as a “radio play” where the characters are radio personalities presenting a play for an audience who only had access to a radio not a TV. This means the characters are reading from scripts but there are sound effects and voice changes that bring it all alive.

Each actor plays a couple of different characters so they have to change their voices or tones throughout. The Husband played four different characters but my favorite was Mr. Potter who I think he pulled off perfectly.

After the play an older man approached by husband and told him he had brought his blind adult son. The son thanked my husband and said the production came alive for him because of the voice changes and the sound effects added in.

My husband was so touched that the production meant that much to the young man, especially since there wasn’t a huge crowd there.

I hope more people attend the production today because the play version almost touched me more than the movie version, which I totally loved. I teared up a couple of times during it — especially at the end when George realizes how special his life is and how lost those in his life would be if he’d never been born.

It’s also interesting to note that Philip Van Doren Stern who wrote the original short story was born in the small town where my husband performed the play. He didn’t grow up there, but he was born there in 1900 and his father lived there for a time. (source Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Van_Doren_Stern)

If you don’t know the story, Stern wrote the short story for Christmas cards he and his daughter were sending out in 1943. He tried to get the story published but publishers didn’t pick it up so he self-published it. Later the short story was used for a full play and then for a screenplay for what has become one of the most famous Christmas movies of all time.

Now that we’ve seen the play, I feel like I can fully immerse myself in the Christmas season and am looking forward to making a list of Christmas movies to watch and Christmas books to read.

I thought I should mention here like I did in yesterday’s post that the girl kitten I’ve been writing about that was dropped off at our house a few weeks ago, is not actually a girl. We discovered some appendages this week that girl kittens do not have so our girl kitten is a boy kitten, but we are sticking with the name Cas.

It explains a lot about his behavior and his incessant yowling too.

We will also be hosting Comfy Cozy Christmas starting tomorrow! As Erin said on her blog, “Anything holiday related – any December holiday – at all that strikes your fancy and you write about, please think about sharing on our linky.”

Last night I finished The Tale of Hill Top Farm by Susan Wittig Albert.

The concept of this book was a good one — Beatrix Potter, the children’s book author as a amateur sleuth — but when I finally got into the book, she wasn’t actually doing much sleuthing. She wasn’t even really the main character at times. There also wasn’t a ton of real “mystery” involved.

Instead, Beatrix wandered around talking to people and drawing pictures and meeting children while other characters (including the talking animals who were only understood by each other) did most of the solving of the very simple mysteries. There was more than one POV while I thought Beatrix would provide the main one.

The main mystery was a bit of a letdown for me in the end, but overall, the book had some cute, sweet moments. This was definitely a very, very light mystery with no gruesome of violent aspects (other than an owl making a meal out of some rats) and that isn’t a bad thing at all.

I don’t know if I will read more of this series or not yet. I’ll have to be in the mood for a leisurely wander rather than a strict whodunit if I do. That happens a lot so I’m sure book two will be read sometime in 2026.

I’m still reading Rebecca by Daphne DeMauier and will probably finish it this week unless I get wrapped up in Christmas movies and specials.

I might finish Nancy Drew: The Triple Hoax but I won’t finish it in time for Nancy Drew November.

I’m not really liking it, so it isn’t a priority for me.

I just ordered a copy of Letters From Father Christmas by J.R.R. Tolkien and it won’t be here until a week before Christmas, but I think that will be perfect timing.

I plan to read at least one more Agatha Christie before the year ends and I think it will be Partners in Crime, my first Tommy and Tuppence mystery.

I also hope to read another Murder, She Wrote book but that might wait until after my Christmas reads, which including reading at least parts of Shepherds Abiding by Jan Karon and Little Woman.

I watched my first James Cagney movie, Strawberry Blond, this week. I enjoyed it and will be watching it for my planned Winter of Cagney that I will be starting in January. I will be doing that at the same time I rewatch all of the Thin Man movies in order. It will be a fun month of old movies.

I also watched my second Bette Davis movie, Another Man’s Poison, (my first was All About Eve) this past week, and hope to watch more of her movies soon for Spring of Bette.

I watched The Barney Miller Show and episodes of TJ Hooker and Hunter with The Husband. We also watched a Murder, She Wrote episode. This week I hope to watch some more old movies, maybe a couple of Christmas movies, and some movies based on Agatha Christie books or stories. I also hope to watch at least one The Hardy Boys Nancy Drew Mysteries episode so I can recap it on the blog.

I am working on book four of the Gladwynn Grant Mystery series. If you would like to read the first three before it releases in February, you can find them on Amazon and Kindle Unlimited (until the end of December): https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CBB42YM6?binding=kindle_edition&ref=dbs_dp_rwt_sb_pc_tkin

On the blog last week I shared:

Yes, I have already listened to this:

Now It’s Your Turn

Hello! Welcome to my blog. I am a blogger, homeschool mom, and I write cozy mysteries.

You can find my Gladwynn Grant Mystery series HERE.

You can also find me on Instagram and YouTube.

Sunday Bookends: I think I’ll stop tracking how many books I read and just…gasp! Read!

November 23, 2025November 23, 2025 / Lisa R. Howeler / 24 Comments

Before I get too far into this post, I want to mention that today is my husband’s birthday and my brother and sister-in-law’s anniversary.

Happy birthday to The Husband and happy anniversary to Butthead and Kim. Er….Bryan and Kim.

I have to say that I feel a bit bad telling this next story, considering it is my husband’s birthday, but I am going to do so anyhow because he’s a good sport. And please know that this story is shared in good humor, not as an actual complaint – since you can’t hear my tone which would be one tinged with laughter.

Last night he picked me up from my parents where I had been visiting them after he dropped me off. He suggested I sit in the back with our dog who tries to push her way into the middle console and bump against his arm while he’s trying to drive if there isn’t someone in the backseat with her.

I did so and when we got home, after dark mind you, my husband asked the dog if she was going to exit through the front door or would wait for me to move so she could exit through the back door. The dog stayed sitting next to me, so The Husband closed the door and walked into the house.

I thought he was going to go turn the outside light on and come back to help me with my bags, but instead when the dog and I got out of the car I found out we were totally alone in the driveway and backyard.

We’ve been married for 23-years and the man didn’t even open the door for me. Gasp! I was certain he would look out the back door to see if I was coming but after a few minutes, Zooma the Wonder Dog and I were still outside in the cold. I went inside and said, “Hey! Thanks a lot for leaving me!”

I found The Husband staring at The Avengers movie with the kids.

“I could have been eaten by a bear!” I told him.

“You wouldn’t have been eaten by a bear,” he insisted. “We’re located in a fairly safe neighborhood with a fairly well lit driveway. You were fine.”

For the record, we live on the end of a street at the far end of a tiny town, surrounded by the woods, and a couple of months ago Zooma the Wonder Dog had a stand off with a black bear in our backyard – a few hundred feet from where I was standing (alone and in semi-darkness).

“I just read a story about a black bear chasing a boy into a Dollar General in Pennsylvania!” I told him.

“What part of Pennsylvania?” he asked.

“Pittsburgh area but we still have bears around here you know!”

Chivalry is dead, ya’ll. Dead.

Something else that is also dead is my desire to worry about the number of books I am reading each year.

In 2026 I am simply going to read whatever I want and take as long as I want to read the books I choose. It isn’t that I worry about how many books I’ve read in a year too often anyhow, but sometimes I do find myself feeling bad I’m not reading more, usually because I am comparing myself to other bloggers or readers on social media.

It’s really silly to compare ourselves to others, especially at my age, but luckily it is a very brief comparison when I do so.

This year, I chose books I wanted to read, not books others said I should read, and I hope to do the same next year. I still want to list the books I read in my reading journal because I enjoy doing that and looking back at them at the end of the year, partially so I can recommend them (or not) to others, but I think next year I’ll simply list and not number. Or maybe I’ll just stop overthinking it? That might work too. *wink*

We will also be hosting Comfy Cozy Christmas starting the day after Thanksgiving! As Erin said on her blog, “Anything holiday related – any December holiday – at all that strikes your fancy and you write about, please think about sharing on our linky.”

I finished The Whispering Statue last week. It’s a Nancy Drew mystery and it had a lot of plot issues, but yet, it was also an interesting mystery, or had interesting aspects.

I am still reading Rebecca by Daphne De Maurier — a few chapters a week.

I added The Tale of Hilltop Farm by Susan Wittig Albert to break up the drama of Rebecca.

Here is a quick description of the book from online: “The author of Peter Rabbit and other tales, Beatrix Potter is still, after a century, beloved by children and adults worldwide. In this first Cottage Tale, Albert introduces Beatrix, an animal lover and Good Samaritan with a knack for solving mysteries. With help from her entourage of talking animal friends, Beatrix sets out to win over the human hearts of Sawrey, where she’s just bought an old farm–and plans to stay.”

Up soon I plan to read an Agatha Christie book but I haven’t decided which one yet.

I have been watching mostly old shows again but also movies with the kids who are making their way through the Marvel movies. This would be a first time for Little Miss (11) and many times for The Boy (19).

This past week it was The Avengers and Iron Man 3. I hate Iron Man 3 so I tried to do other things while it was on. It was like watching a train wreck. It is the worst of the series for the Iron Man part. We just skipped the second Thor movie (The Dark World) because it is also horrible.

I also started a Bob Hope movie called I’ll Take Sweden. Frankie Avalon is also in it and it’s ridiculous. I had to go to bed before I could finish it.

And I watched a couple of YouTubers this week, including The Cottage Fairy who has been gone for a long time after having a baby but put up a new video this week.

On the blog I shared:

I’ve been listening to The Jack Benny Show at night before bed.

Now It’s Your Turn

Hello! Welcome to my blog. I am a blogger, homeschool mom, and I write cozy mysteries.

You can find my Gladwynn Grant Mystery series HERE.

You can also find me on Instagram and YouTube.

Sunday Bookends: Loss and comfort reading, watching

November 16, 2025 / Lisa R. Howeler / 12 Comments

Last week I mentioned our cat Scout had been injured. She was unable to put weight on her back paw.

We had a vet appointment for her last week but thought she was doing better and canceled it. Sadly, she came back into the house that day and was not doing better so we now have another appointment for next week and are on a cancellation list.

She is allowing us to touch her paw now and is less cranky. She is also learning how to run on three legs, like when she slips out the door and tries to run off down the street. We’ve let her outside a couple of times, either because we thought she was better, or yesterday because I knew she could get away from a predator fast even with her injury. I watched her run on three legs at me across the yard the day before when I called her inside.

The animals have been a comfort to me this week as we mourn the death of a close family friend.

This weekend I focused on comfort shows and books and shut down social media and news sites. It’s been so nice, I’ll probably continue it into the rest of the week.

This week I finished Nancy Drew: The Mystery of The Fire Dragon and started The Mystery of The Whispering Statue for Nancy Drew November.

I also finished At Home in Harmony by Philip Gulley.

I really enjoyed The Mystery of The Fire Dragon, even though the Nancy Drew books are pretty simply. I definitely loved the heartwarming stories in At Home in Harmony and will read more of the books in the series. The chapters are a series of short stories that connect with the same characters.

As I mentioned, I am reading The Mystery of The Whispering Statue but I am also reading Rebecca by Daphne De Mauier.

I plan to read The Triple Hoax, a Nancy Drew Mystery, later this week and follow it with Pure Poison, another Nancy Drew Mystery.

Then I will start My Beloved by Jan Karon.

Little Miss and I are reading a book about two young girls who went through the Civil War — one as a regular citizen in the South and the other as a undercover boy/soldier for the North.

This week I watched Murder, She Wrote, The Dick VanDyke Show, and started a movie called A Weekend At the Waldorf but it got a bit boring so I bailed for now. I also rewatched a couple of All Creatures Great and Small episodes as a comfort watch.

My son has been showing his sister all the Marvel movies so this week we watched Captain America: The First Avenger and The Avengers. Or I should say rewatched since I’ve seen most of these movies more than three times over the years, some of them in the theaters.

This is a comic book house for sure.

This past week on the blog I shared:

|| In Which I Find Comfort in a Book by Linda Stoll ||

|| An Autumn Chat About Prayer by Homespun Devotions ||

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.

Hello! Welcome to my blog. I am a blogger, homeschool mom, and I write cozy mysteries.

You can find my Gladwynn Grant Mystery series HERE.

You can also find me on Instagram and YouTube.

Sunday Bookends: Our son turns 19, injured cat, new mystery book to read

November 9, 2025November 9, 2025 / Lisa R. Howeler / 36 Comments

Our son turned 19 on Friday. We had a chilled day that day and didn’t do a lot at his request but yesterday he and his dad went to a college town a couple of hours away and explored the town, visited a comic shop, had breakfast and lunch, and just generally had a great time.

The Boy picked up this awesome double record of Johnny Cash at a used book/record store.

The Husband found this for me at a store —

I used to drink these all the time in college and was thrilled to have a bit of a blast from the past.

We call him “The Boy” by the way as a sign of affection because he is the only boy grandson out of seven grandchildren on my husband’s side. Someone my husband knows was afraid the term would offend our son (she was very polite in her concern), but we mainly only use it online and sometimes my husband will jokingly say, “Where is the boy?” when he walks in the house. We obviously call him by his given name offline.

I also don’t use his real name on my blog to protect his privacy a little because I used to use it and … it was sort of weird for him, even though I no longer share anything too personal about his life here. He wasn’t angry about me using his real name but I felt like I should protect him and Little Miss as they grow. They are okay with me occasionally posting photos at least.

Today we plan to go to my parents and have lunch with them and make apple pie together for The Boy’s birthday, which is a tradition because he is not a cake fan.

On Friday night, our cat Scout was unable to put weight down on her back paw.

All the vets around her in the Middle of Nowhere Land are closed for the weekend so we’ve tried to make her comfortable until we can get in somewhere. If she were yowling the whole time and it was clearly broken, we’d call the emergency line of the vet we usually go to. For now, she’s just extremely angry we won’t let her outside, so I am guessing she’s going to be okay.

She also bit me this morning while I tried to see if there is something in her paw or if it had been cut. We think, however, that the paw got pinched between the bed and the wall when Scout tried to curl up with Little Miss on Friday morning.

I am not the type of person who can handle a cat being in pain or upset, so this has been emotional for me. Having a new kitten in the house has also thrown things off, and our eldest cat has been angry and hissing and also trying to bite. I’m about to take them all to the no-kill shelter and be done with it, but, of course, I really can’t do that. They are family, and we just need to adjust to living as a family with a new member.

I am reading my first book for my Nancy Drew November, The Mystery of the Fire Dragon. I will have it finished today. Honestly, it’s pretty good other than Nancy getting hit in the head AGAIN and no one taking her to the hospital AGAIN. This time it was a flowerpot that fell from a third story window. In reality she’d be dead.

I am also reading Rebecca by Daphne De Maurier. Earlier this week I mentioned on Instagram that I was reading Rebecca by didn’t say by who and some very young Bookstagrammer said, “Oooh…what’s that?”

I felt very old. Another person thought I was reading Rebecca Yaros and said they loved Fourth Wing. Siiiiigh.

I’m really enjoying Home the Harmony by Phillip Gulley. I was reading it before bed the week before last but laid it aside most of this week to read Nancy Drew and Rebecca. Last night I picked it up again and ended up laughing so hard at one part. The book isn’t really a cohesive story, but a series of short stories about the same characters, with the main character being a Quaker minister. I am fairly certain I read part of this book if not all of it when I was in my 20s, and it seems familiar, but I don’t remember a lot of it so it’s like reading it all over again. I am enjoying it and would recommend it for a light, humorous and touching read.

Coming up, I hope to read another Nancy Drew, but my husband also picked me up a fancy copy of The Secret of Chimneys by Agatha Christie. I’ve never read or heard of this one so I might bump one of my planned autumn reads to read this one instead.

After that, probably more toward December, I want to start My Beloved by Jan Karon. I am so excited for it but my mom loves Jan Karon so I let her read the copy The Husband bought me first. She hasn’t shared what she thinks of it yet, but I hope it is good.

Little Miss and I are reading a Civil War-based book right now for school called Secrets of Civil War Spies by Nancy LeSourd.

This past week I watched a movie called Storm in a Teacup with Rex Harrison and Vivien Leigh. I believe it was released in 1937 and is an English movie. It was a lot of fun and I enjoyed seeing both actors when they were so young.

I watched a couple of later episodes of Murder, She Wrote, my farmer (Just A Few Acres) on YouTube, and more The Hardy Boys Nancy Drew Mysteries from the 1970s. The Hardy Boys Nancy Drew Mysteries are both good and horrible at the same time.

I just wanted to leave a little note to thank any of my blog readers who have taken the time to read my cozy mysteries, the Gladwynn Grant Mysteries. Those stories are fun for me to write, and I appreciate anyone who indulges my little hobby. I would love to say writing books is more than a hobby but for now it’s essentially a time consuming hobby and I’m finally okay with that.

I am working on book four, Gladwynn Grant Goes Back to School, and it is taking me a while but I do have much of it outlined so I am hoping I can get it finished and released by February.

I have links to the books at the bottom of this post.

This 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.

Hello! Welcome to my blog. I am a blogger, homeschool mom, and I write cozy mysteries.

You can find my Gladwynn Grant Mystery series HERE.

You can also find me on Instagram and YouTube.

Sunday Bookends: My ebook is free, K-Pop Demon Hunters Sing Along, and classic Pizza Hut

November 2, 2025November 4, 2025 / Lisa R. Howeler / 23 Comments

Last night, The Husband, Little Miss, and I went to a theater near us to watch K-Pop Demon Hunters Sing Along on the big screen.

There weren’t as many people as I thought there would be and Little Miss was a bit embarrassed by her old mom singing and trying to dance. I was trying to fill in for her friend who wasn’t able to attend with us.

Afterward we visited one of the last classic Pizza Huts in the country for some dinner.

Here is a video I saw on YouTube that talks about it.

I ordered a salad since I’m not supposed to be eating gluten but I did taste some of the pizza Little Miss and The Husband ordered. Little Miss ordered her own personal pan pizza with green peppers, roasted red peppers, banana peppers and extra cheese. She was so excited to have her own pizza and said, “I can eat the toppings off if I want to since it is my own pizza!”

The Boy was spending the weekend at a friend’s house. It felt weird to go out to eat without him.

Earlier in the week, the Cat Distribution System found us and dropped off an all-black cat. This is strange since all of our pets (the two cats and a dog) are black and white. We are not sure where this kitten came from but it wants in our house and is very lovable. An abandoned house was pulled down on the street below us and my son says a lot of stray cats lived there. We think they are trying to find somewhere warm to go but what I can’t figure out is why this one cat wants to adopt us. We really don’t need anymore pets and feel the cat is probably full of fleas so we’ve placed it our garage with some food and a bed at nights and plan to give it flea medicine today.

My kids had decided in less than five minutes we were adopting the cat while I was still trying to say it could be a neighbors. The cat hasn’t gone home since Thursday, however, and even The Husband who doesn’t even like the cats we have (because he misses the cats we had for 19 years and refuses to open his heart to other cats. Yes, those cats were that old!) has been cradling this cat and suggesting we can make it work with three cats.

Pray for me. I’m losing the battle to keep our household to two cats and a dog.

Erin and I are also hosting a monthly bookish link party called A Good Book and A Cup of Tea. You can find that link up for this month here.

Also, my book Gladwynn Grant Gets Her Footing is available for free in ebook form on Amazon until tomorrow (Monday) night. It’s a cozy mystery:

I am currently reading Hero Debut By Angela Ruth Strong and Rebecca by Daphne De Maurier.

Hero Debut is a romantic comedy and has most of my attention right now as it is light and easy to read.

I’m also reading At Home In Harmony by Phillip Gulley off and on before bed. Each chapter is like a short story of its own and centers around a Quaker pastor.

For November, I am planning on reading a selection of Nancy Drew books for an event I created for fun — Nancy Drew November.

I’ll be listing which books I am going to read in a post later this week.

I am very anxious to read My Beloved by Jan Karon but I think I’m going to wait to start it until further into November so I can read it slowly for the Christmas season.

Last week I watched a movie called Phffft! with Jack Lemmon and Kim Novak. It was funny and cute.

I also watched a couple of The Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew Mysteries episodes.

Last night I watched a couple of episodes of Murder, She Wrote from the early 1990s. It was interesting to see Kevin Sorbo and Mickey Rooney in the two episodes I watched. I’m fairly certain the one actor was Patrick Swazy’s brother. His name was Don and he looked exactly like Patrick so I’d say they were brothers. Of course, Mickey was playing a horse trainer. That’s a role he was used to from his movie days, that is for sure.

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.

Hello! Welcome to my blog. I am a blogger, homeschool mom, and I write cozy mysteries.

You can find my Gladwynn Grant Mystery series HERE.

You can also find me on Instagram and YouTube.

Sunday Bookends: New additions to the TBR

October 26, 2025 / Lisa R. Howeler / 22 Comments

This past week I received book-related stickers in the mail and was thrilled because I love stickers and putting them in books. I don’t have a lot of places to stick these stickers but it is still fun to have them. I have a reading journal, so I stuck some there and Little Miss took some for her phone.

Do you keep a reading journal? I was all excited to get one (which is just a journal with blank pages that I fill in) but then I ended up not taking the notes about the books I was reading, or doing much of anything I planned to do with it. I do keep a list of the books I’ve read throughout the year (which is much lower this year than last year) in it. I also keep a list of books recommended to me, books I want to read, my favorite books read, movies I’ve watched, and movies I want to watch.

I have a list going of Nancy Drew books I’ve read so far in it and that list actually isn’t that big. I think next year I will start a list of The Hardy Boys books I’ve read. So far, it’s exactly one.

I also ordered a set of magnetic bookmarks with cats on them last week. That was also exciting for me, but I will lose them quickly because I always seem to. I don’t know how. I lay them down next to me, get up, and they’ve fallen into some sort of portal! For example, I stood up tonight while reading to go pick up my kids after they were trick-or-treating and I dropped the bookmark and it was gone. Just gone. It’s possibly buried in my all-black purse, but even the purse seemed like some sort of portal because when I looked inside, it was gone.

Luckily, I have about 20 other bookmarks I can choose from to replace it. And then lose them as well.

In addition to the stickers and bookmarks, I also received an order of five books from Thriftbooks.

One of them is for Little Miss for school. It’s called Secrets of Civil War Spies by Nancy LeSourd.

The other four were:

Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier

Bombs on Aunt Dainty by Judith Kerr

The Silver Chair by C.S. Lewis

Murder, She Wrote: Aloha Betrayed by Donald Bain

The week before I received three new Nancy Drew books via the True Drew Podcast shop.

Those books were two from the 80s and 90s: The Nancy Drew Files Win, Lose or Die and The Nancy Drew Files Pure Poison. I also ordered an original book, The Mystery of the Fire Dragon.

This week I finished Trick or Treachery by Donald Bain, a Murder, She Wrote book. I finished it in three days after Little Miss told me I couldn’t finish it by the weekend. I showed her. I finished it three days early. She may have had an ulterior motive because with me reading she could get away doing what she wanted during the day. Hmmm…wait a minute!

I also started Home to Harmony by Phillip Gulley and The Nancy Drew Files Win, Place, or Die by Carolyn Keene. The Nancy Drew book is one of the books from the 1990s series. I’m about 50 pages from the end, which isn’t saying much since these books are only 150 pages total. I’ll finish it today. I have to say, I know these books are for kids or preteens, but the plot of this one really isn’t that bad. This is the first one I’ve read as an adult from this particular series. I am certain I read one in high school.

The Husband ordered me a copy of the latest Mitford book by Jan Karon (My Beloved) as a surprise, and it came yesterday. I’d had a bit of a rough few days with a sore tooth and feeling overwhelmed in life, so it was a wonderful surprise that brought me to tears.

I am going to start it sometime in November or maybe even December because it has a Christmas theme. I will not lie, I opened the book after I took a photo of it and inhaled deeply. It was so comforting.

Little Miss and I finished The Good Master this week, and we have been listening to — I kid you not — a Murder, She Wrote book before bed at night.

She said she’s actually enjoying it, so she requests it.

We are also reading the Civil War themed book for school and finishing the second Caddie Woodlawn book, which we forgot to finish when we got distracted by The Good Master.

The Husband is reading….? Oops … forgot to ask but it was Boone’s Lick by Larry McMurty.

The kids and I watched Mrs. Doubtfire last night. It has been years since The Boy has seen it and Little Miss has never seen it.

Earlier in the week I watched Petticoat Junction and yesterday I watched part of The Big Trail with John Wayne from 1930. That movie — wow. That was a crazy journey with very realistic scenes of the wagon trains traveling into the West.

I think I will write a post about it once I finish it. I would love to know more about the making of that movie.

I also watched another two-part Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew Mystery. Yes, I’ll definitely recap this one because it was a crazy ride with more romance between Nancy and Frank.

Last week on the blog I shared:

This post linked to my blog post about Murder, She Wrote. That was interesting….Being used as a source for an article.

|| Throwback Tuesday: Why I Don’t Ask Comprehension Questions and What I Do Instead by My Slices of Life ||

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.

Hello! Welcome to my blog. I am a blogger, homeschool mom, and I write cozy mysteries.

You can find my Gladwynn Grant Mystery series HERE.

You can also find me on Instagram and YouTube.

Saturday Afternoon (Evening) Chat: Winter has come early and everything is 45-minutes away

October 25, 2025October 25, 2025 / Lisa R. Howeler / 13 Comments

*This was supposed to publish this afternoon, but I forgot to hit…yes…publish. Hahaha!

Winter is coming early to Pennsylvania, it seems.

Temps have dropped into the mid-to-high 30’s at night and aren’t reaching much above 55 most days.

We have been inside a lot, bundled up under blankets and sweaters, with The Husband determined not to turn the main heat on until November 1.

I, however, have been turning our electric heat on in the hallway upstairs at night to try to chase away some of the chill. Shhhh.. we will keep that our little secret.

I am a fan of curling up under blankets and tossing a warmed-up rice pack at my feet so I don’t mind keeping it cozy in the house but having it just a touch warmer on some nights would be nice.

This past week was fairly non-eventful. The Boy visited his grandparents most days, helping them with various household chores and projects.

On Thursday, Little Miss and I visited them and helped around the house.

Yesterday we stayed home and did some school and housework of our own. Tonight, I will be taking the kids downtown for a trunk-or-treat and then trick-or-treating around town if they want to do that.

I don’t usually walk around, but instead sit in the car, sipping hot cocoa and reading a book. I am hoping The Boy will go with us and walk around with his little sister and her friend so I don’t have to. I am not a huge fan of trick-or-treating or walking around a small town in the dark with a knee that sometimes gives out.

I think we will probably have lunch at my parents tomorrow and Monday night The Husband and I have to drive . . . can you guess how long of a drive to pick our car up from the mechanic?

If you guessed 45-minutes, you were right.

I swear everything is 45-minutes away from us now.

This is a mechanic we used when we lived up that way and was able to fix something on our poor, war-torn car that mechanics in our area couldn’t. The Husband hit a deer — again — with this car two weeks ago. We have now hit a deer with it every fall for the last three years. The last time, Little Miss and I were with him. Each time the deer has smashed in the hood and kept going. I’m not sure if they made it any of those times, but they weren’t along the road afterward. Those creatures are a lot more solid than they look out in our yard or fields. They are all muscle and that makes even more of an impact when you are going along at 40 miles per hour, which is about how fast he was going the last two times. Not sure about that first time.

On Tuesday, The Husband and I might go to a theater to see Pyscho on the big screen. Guess again how far away the theater is….

This past week I received some used books in the mail from Thriftbooks which I will talk about more tomorrow in my Sunday Bookends post, but I also received some book and reading related stickers.

I am such a nerd — I couldn’t wait to open them up and look through them and then decide where to put them. I placed them in my reading journal which is much messier than I intended for it to be. I always think I’m going to keep my journals neat but instead they become a bit of a free for all of all my notes about books and movies and blog post ideas.

I was also excited to receive some magnetic bookmarks earlier in the week.

Yes, my life is very, very exciting. You should be jealous.

This upcoming week promises to be just as “exciting”

The Husband ordered a special book for me that came today too. I was so excited to see a hardcover copy of My Beloved by Jan Karon. It will probably be the last Mitford book so I am excited to have it in my hands. I don’t even care if it is awful, though I doubt it will be. To read more of Tim and Cynthia’s story is just so exciting for me. And an update on Dooley and Lace too? Squeal! I can’t wait.

So how was your week last week? Do anything exciting? Let me know in the comments!

Boondock Ramblings

A little bit about a lot of things

week in review

Sunday Bookends: Sunday Bookends: Dick VanDyke, Hercule Poirot, and a cat falling off the roof

Sunday Bookends: Snow. Beautiful book. Old movies.

Sunday Bookends: It’s A Wonderful Life Radio Play and a Beatrix Potter-based cozy mystery series

Sunday Bookends: I think I’ll stop tracking how many books I read and just…gasp! Read!

Sunday Bookends: Loss and comfort reading, watching

Sunday Bookends: Our son turns 19, injured cat, new mystery book to read

Now It’s Your Turn

Sunday Bookends: My ebook is free, K-Pop Demon Hunters Sing Along, and classic Pizza Hut

Sunday Bookends: New additions to the TBR

Saturday Afternoon (Evening) Chat: Winter has come early and everything is 45-minutes away

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