This is an excerpt from my journal a few days back, but the lunch discussion was so interesting, I thought I would add it.
August 28, 2017
We had a simple hot dog lunch and some interesting discussion. I talked to Mom and Dad about Can You Forgive Her?, and I said it wouldn't suit every reader's tastes as the writer used quite a few lines to describe the green drawing room.
“It wouldn't be everyone's tastes in movies either,” said Mom.
It reminded me of my brother Bruce who can't appreciate some of the historical period movies I like. “All the scenes take place in one room!” he's said.
I guess I still had “drawing room” on the brain, so I said, “With some of the period movies I like, they think everyone just sits in the drawing room.”
Dad couldn't resist punning. “Yes,” he said, “and they don't even do any drawing!”
I got into a silly mood as I took a hot dog from the platter and said, “Come along, little dogie.” We then had a discussion as to why cowboys said “Come along, little dogie” to cattle. From the sound of the word, it seems more appropriate for dogs. Mom thought it might have been influenced by a Spanish word.
I looked it up later and had difficulty finding the information I wanted. I finally found a definition of dogie with a possible word origin. The Spanish influence was one theory, that it was taken from the Spanish word for lariat, dogal. Dogies, apparently, are orphaned calves. Ramon F. Adams, a writer on western Americana, had one explanation for it, that orphaned calves, weaned too soon, got swollen bellies and were called “dough-guts” which then became “dogies.”
“Come along, little dogies,” was not the end of my silliness. For some reason, I began to sing, “Tiptoe Through the Tulips.” I tell people sometimes that my brain is a random jukebox. When I'm in a happy mood, my random jukebox can make some odd selections of very silly and stupid songs. This is one example. When I was a kid, my oldest brother Tim had an album of K-Tel novelty songs from the '60s and '70s called Looney Tunes. Tiny Tim's “Tiptoe Through the Tulips” was on it. My brother's record seemed like a kiddie album to me, and I played it plenty of times, but why this particular song popped into my head at lunch time, when I hadn't heard it recently, I can not explain.
This brought up Tiny Tim and his falsetto voice in discussion, and we talked about what an odd character he was. The discussion then shifted to ukulele players, and I made the case that ukulele players are not considered as nerdy as they may have been at one time. I listed several “cool” modern ukulele players: Youtuber Dodie Clark, Grace Vanderwaal who won America's Got Talent and Iz Kamakowiwo'ole who had a hit with his version of “Somewhere Over the Rainbow/What a Wonderful World.” This then made me think of Disney's Moana, and in Saturday's quick walk-through of the Disney store, the “Lava Song” (which has a ukulele accompaniment) had been playing. Somehow, magically, and not unhappily, the “Lava Song” replaced “Tiptoe Through the Tulips” as the song stuck in my head.
Mom
woke me up on the intercom this morning to tell me she was confused
with her Kindle. She came across a word she didn't know and
remembered about the dictionary feature on the Kindle, but when she
looked up her word, she then lost her place in her book. It took me a
while to crawl out of bed and then reach for the phone on the side of
the desk furthest from the bed.
“Where
were you?” she asked, when I picked up the phone.
“In
bed.”
“Why'd
it take you so long?”
“I
had to get up.” I'm not sure if my explanation made sense to her,
but it did to me.
Mom and I both recently finished reading Laddie by Gene Stratton-Porter,
and now she is reading Her Father's Daughter
by the same author. She thought it might be the same book she'd read
as a girl, and now she's certain it is.
The
dictionary feature on her older model of the Kindle is a little bit troublesome. On my newer model, I can look up words without leaving
the page I'm reading.
“She
used the word bole for tree trunk,” Mom said of the author. “If
she meant tree trunk, why didn't she just say tree trunk? I think the
author's showing off her vocabulary.” Mom mentioned some of the plant vocabulary used. Gene Stratton-Porter is known for her "romantic outdoor stories" and knows a lot about botany and butterflies and birds, one of the things we like about her writing.
"She likes to write about characters who share her interest in nature," I said, but Mom thought there was more to it than that.
Mom came across something even more objectionable later in Her Father's Daughter, and that is that the main character (and perhaps the author) has a strong prejudice against the Japanese, and the word "Jap" is used quite a few times. I didn't even know that term existed pre-World War II. That's disappointing, as I loved A Girl of the Limberlost and Freckles and now Laddie. I hope it's an attitude the character comes to change in the story, but we'll see. It's things like this that remind me not to idolize authors or singers or other people I might have some reason to admire. They're not perfect in every way.
Later in the morning, I made myself ready for a hike at South Mountain Reservation with friends, Adrienne and Iris. We planned to have a picnic in the woods. My friend Debra had given me a cute insulated lunchbox which I had not yet initiated. The printed design features a vintage typewriter and the paper scrolling out of it reads "Get Carried Away." Now that I work from home, I don't have an every day need for a lunch box. I knew it would still be stowed away in the box she had mailed it in from Florida, and as I looked through the box, I made an interesting discovery. There was another small Christmas gift in there ... which I had not yet opened! It was a cute Victorian folding fan. I wanted to show it to Adrienne when she came, because she is a "fan" of the fan. At one point, she had tried to organize a girls' outing to an exhibit of fans, but it hadn't worked out.
I didn't want to carry the lunch bag loosely in my hand while hiking, so I found another bag I hadn't yet initiated, a Zumba cross-body bag that was given to me in my reporting days after covering a Zumba fundraising event. So, the combination of these two bags worked, one inside the other, but I had to find the proper footwear and the tread on my sneakers is wearing thin. I have two pairs of dance shoes that look like sneakers but aren't suited for hiking. The soles on these are made to slide on the dance floor. I dug around in my closet and found an old pair of Timberland boots I forgot I even owned and put those on my feet. As the fall weather hit when the calendar flipped to September, I thought I might need something more than a T-shirt, and the sweatshirt I selected has a writer's theme as much as the typewriter lunchbox does, a purple hoodie that reads "Weapons of Mass Creation" and displays a row of pens and pencils.
I make myself sound semi-athletic with my mention of Zumba bags and two pairs of dancing shoes and Timberland boots, but I have had mysterious symptoms over several months and haven't had recreational exercise in just as long. Just as mysteriously, I've begun to feel better. I knew we had a tempting chunk of brie in the refrigerator, but, other than that and some other less French cheeses, not very much for the makings of a sandwich. I went out to the grocery store and bought some sliced ham and a wonderful whole grain croissant full of sesame and other seeds for my sandwich. Because I was feeling adventurous and there are so many interesting things in the store near me, I decided to try a drink I've never had before and a snack I've never had before. I decided on something called Blossom Water with pomegranate geranium essence and was probably partly intrigued by the beautiful fruit and floral designs on the bottle. I also bought Dang sticky rice chips in a coconut flavor which came in a snack bag big enough to share with friends. I made my sandwich on the croissant with brie, ham, Dijon mustard and mayonnaise.
There was one more thing I had hoped to pack, and that was a book of poetry. In a Grace Darby Mystery in progress, my English professor sleuth goes hiking in the woods with a poetry book, and this part is somewhat autobiographical. In previous solo hikes, I've brought a book of poetry with me. I downloaded two free or cheap poetry books onto my Kindle, one of nonsense verses by Edward Lear and one of 100 Favorite Poems by Dover Thrift Publishing. The nonsense poem collection wasn't my first idea, but silly ones seemed fun for sharing with friends. In the end, between running late and some other confusion, I skipped the "poetry in the woods" idea.
At home, last night, I read the beginning of Lear's The Jumblies.
They went to sea in a Sieve, they did,
In a Sieve they went to sea:
In spite of all their friends could say,
On a winter’s morn, on a stormy day,
In a Sieve they went to sea!
And when the Sieve turned round and round,
And every one cried, ‘You’ll all be drowned!’
They called aloud, ‘Our Sieve ain’t big,
But we don’t care a button! we don’t care a fig!
In a Sieve we’ll go to sea!’
While I was at the store, things got a little crazy with our plan. Adrienne came to the door to pick me up, and Dad told her that I had gone out to buy a lunch, at least that's what I had told him to say. What Adrienne heard was that I had gone out for lunch, which must mean that I had gone out to meet them, and she left. After a bit of messaging back and forth and talking to Dad, he agreed to drive me over to the park and use the GPS feature on his new phone. It wasn't perfect in its navigation, and Dad wasn't always trusting it, so we took the scenic route and we passed a lot of the interesting recreational places in the area, the Turtle Back Zoo, the associated McCloone's Boathouse restaurant, mini golf and the zipline and ropes course. Finally, we met up with Adrienne and Iris. Dad rolled down his window and told them, "This GPS is good for two things, getting you lost and then getting you unlost."
We met at the dog park there, and Dad, who had looked over the map, advised us to look through the Meadow Sculpture Garden nearby. This was not my first time at South Mountain Reservation, but I had not been in this section and didn't know about a dog park or a wildflower meadow or a sculpture garden before today. There were a few sculptures near where we stood, but we were not terribly impressed by them. They were very modern. One looked like a column of lobster crates, and another looked like a teetering stack of pots.
This one had "canoe" in the title, I think.
We entered the fenced off area -- fenced to keep the dogs out -- and saw clearly marked signs for the Wildflower Meadow and a trail called the Lavender Loop. We went into the meadow first, and the path there was barely the width of a person with tall wildflowers on either side, sometimes swinging into the path. I wish I could identify as many plants as Gene Stratton-Porter, but we saw goldenrod and purple thistles and some daisy-like flowers. Some flowers we spotted by the path might have been a butterfly bush, I thought, and I noticed some little orange flowers that were somewhat bell-shaped and hollow inside that I could not identify. One impressive plant had dangling clusters of bright berries, but not of a variety we recognized or trusted to eat. The stem of this plant was just as fuschia as the berries, and Adrienne commented that this was my color and that I should grow some in the backyard and accessorize myself with it.
Iris and Me
Adrienne at entrance to meadow
I really loved this area. Other things of interest were hidden away here and there among the flowers, a cozy little sculpted wooden bench, a birdhouse and a man-made station for pollinating insects. A central sculpture reminded me of a dress form. A second sculpture was called "Sunflowers." Adrienne called them "steel sunflowers," but we read "water bottles" among the materials in the identifying plaque, and then we saw the center of the sunflower was made up of clusters of water bottles.
From here, we took the Lavender Loop and followed the lavender paint markings on the trees and occasional signs. Here and there were little informative signs on some plants or animals. One fun little part of the path was called a bog bridge, slightly raised planks that stretched on for quite a while. It all seems very dry at the moment, and one gulch we crossed is probably a creek at a wetter time of year. The bog bridge took us to the Aqua Loop, and here the trees were marked with an aqua green. Walking on the path, Iris shared one amusing incident in her life, the embarrassment of accidentally stumbling upon a nudist beach. Oh my!
I don't remember where along the path we were when we stopped for our lunch, but we found a nice boulder to lean or sit on, and my water bottle fit quite nicely into a little crevice in the rock.
The girls and I (and this will include our friend Jin who is visiting her family in South Korea) hope to visit a couple of other parks in the near future, Verona Park for paddleboats and Anderson Park for an arts and crafts fair.
I have been thinking that the little snippets of life I post to Facebook are a diary of sorts, and compiling these bits together should give you an idea of my recent activities.
December 1st I got a Christmas decorating injury. I must have sliced my finger on a cardboard box and -- sorry if this is disturbing to some of you -- actually sliced into my fingernail at the root end. Who knew that Christmas decorating was dangerous? December 3rd Some news. I got my new proofs this morning and approved them. "Action Men with Silly Putty" should be available in print in the next three or five days. I'll make a big announcement when it is.
December 5th Last week, I wrote up a draft for the first chapter in the Paloma book (a biography.) I still need to fill in some blanks for chapter one and got some new information from Paloma's mom. I helped Mom decorate the house and prepare a special Christmas luncheon for her Bible study ladies on Friday. I arranged the fruit salad plates and helped serve. Mom made a terrific seafood medley with crab, shrimp and scallops in an alfredo sauce over rice. Dad put his origami skills to work with some fantastic napkin folding. (He folded trees with green napkins and pinwheels with red ones.) I finished off the week going to see Handel's "Messiah" by the Cathedral Choir at Hawthorne Gospel Church with friends Jeannie and Iris. Friend Stan was part of the choir, and his son was the tenor soloist. It's been a wonderful Christmas season so far.
Soprano soloist Winnie Nieh
December 5th I just got my copy of Maria Lynn Hurty's "Christmas Crazy to Jesus Joy" Advent devotional. I read her reference to the "greasy grimy gopher guts" song and thought, "That's my Maria." She does make a spiritual point of it, I promise. I'm pretty sure she serenaded me with that song once upon a time. I know she taught me the "My Reindeer Flies Sideways" song to the tune of "Pomp and Circumstance." Really, it looks like a lovely book with some nice thoughts, beautiful photography and some Maria humor.
December 5th Well, here it is. "Action Men with Silly Putty" is now available in print. $:) 8.99 It would make a good Christmas present for someone or maybe just a gift to yourself. December 7th I did some transcription today from one of my interviews with Miss Paloma. Earlier, I helped to rearrange the furniture to make room for the Christmas tree in the front room, and Dad assembled it. Decoration for the tree will happen tomorrow. Already, two packages arrived at the house with gifts I've ordered. I did all my shopping online. Tonight, I plan to watch the live "Hairspray" on NBC. December 10th Mom and Dad got a new high-def TV on a Cyber Monday deal. When it was first set up, we didn't have the new cable box, so I enjoyed connecting it to my Youtube account to play my Youtube lists and recommendations on the big high-def screen. Some of the musicians I follow make very visually pleasing videos, often taken in nature scenes, so it was very enjoyable to see them in high-def. We watched Piano Guys, a cellist named Tina Guo and The Harp Twins, Camille and Kennerly, among others.
December 10th I'm putting more ornaments on the tree today. We have a number of bird ornaments, airplane ornaments, star and angel ornaments. For some reason, I tend to arrange these on levels towards the top of the tree, birds then planes, then stars, then angels. This is what I try to do anyway. Right now, unless I move him, I've got a little boy flying a kite that is somewhere in the airplane level and practically in the realm of the angels. (This thought was not in the original post, but I thought I would add it here. That kite has a lot of lift!)
December 11th
My family seems to know I like to cuddle up in blankets in cold weather. One year, for Christmas, I received a Snuggie. Another year, I received another brand's version, what my brother dubbed the "blue burrito." The blue blanket zips and snaps around you and transforms you into a kind of burrito. Well, it's blue burrito weather. In fact, I have that and an additional blanket. December 12th I have to report for jury duty tomorrow. Do you think that if I tell them I'm a mystery fiction writer, I won't get assigned to a case? So, the day went by fine. I was in the jury pool for a criminal/murder case. I suppose it could have worked as a research opportunity as a couple of you pointed out. On the questionnaire, I did mention my mystery novel and named "Forensic Files" as a TV show I watch. Anyway, I wasn't selected, and I don't need to return tomorrow. I was able to do a lot of nice reading on my Kindle and finished the book I had started. December 15th I made up a new word for the state of today's weather ... bbrriness. December 18th I'm watching a movie starring two of my favorite classic actors, Cary Grant and Jimmy Stewart, "The Philadelphia Story."
December 18th We had a lovely Christmas cantata yesterday. The worship team proceeded down the aisle with electric candles. One of the little girls in church dressed as an angel and sat by the manger scene with a little lamb puppet. We sang with a a combination of CD accompaniment and live piano. We even had a small brass section, two trumpets and one saxophone, playing for the processional, recessional, Christmas carol singalong section of the program and in the foyer before and after the concert. Hot chocolate and cookies were served. It was all lovely. One friend commented (slightly paraphrased), "You know how you are watching a Christmas movie and everything is so cozy, and you wish you were there? I felt like I was in a Christmas movie. I was there." December 19th I've been enjoying reading friends' posts about their Christmas baking. Yesterday, I baked peanut butter blossom cookies with Hershey kisses. Today, I hope to make gingerbread men with a new Kitchen Aid mixer. December 20th I just made some gingersnaps for Christmas. I tried out a recipe from a food blogger and adapted it slightly with some seasoning ideas from an Alton Brown recipe. These have a combination of fresh grated ginger and minced crystallized ginger instead of ground ginger. Mom, Dad and I all taste tested them and decided they are pretty good. I added a half cup flour to one half of the dough for making gingerbread boys tomorrow.
So, I've been neglecting this blog and even Google + for a while now. I'm hoping that will change very soon once things start settling into a new pattern. My life has been going through some change, good change ultimately.
For the past ten years, I have worked for a local newspaper in northern New Jersey, part of the North Jersey Media Group. North Jersey was taken over by Gannett ("USA Today") and changes started happening. There were new meetings and there were interviews, and eventually there was a question of whether I would be staying on with the company in a new position or if I would be among those laid off. I was among the lay-offs, which, although it was not the outcome for which I was hoping, I began to see it as a new opportunity to do something different, to venture out with some freelance writing.
Some of the last month with the company was stressful. I covered four towns, and now that many New Jersey towns have Board of Ed elections on Election Day, I had a lot of candidates to interview between BOE and town council candidates for four towns. One town had 10 candidates for Board of Ed alone. I put in some overtime during Election Week.
Leaving my job was bittersweet. My small office had moved into a bigger office, set in a nice New Jersey community among a beautiful downtown. We were there for several months, and I made new friends. I enjoyed several social events with the new coworkers, ice cream socials and book club meetings, which culminated in a final farewell party at a local restaurant. At the same time, I was assured God had good things in His mind for me and my future.
I joined the Upwork site for freelancers and set up a profile before my final day at the office. Within a week of being out of work, I was contracted for a new project, ghostwriting the biography of a remarkable young woman, an 11-year-old Florida girl, Paloma Rambana, who is legally blind and successfully lobbied the legislature for funding for visually impaired children.
It's really a suitable project for me for several reasons.
1) It combines my journalism and creative writing skills. 2) I like kids. 3) I especially like this age group. My first book had 11-year-old characters. 4) I like feel-good uplifting stories.
Already, I have interviewed my girl twice by Skype, and it has been delightful getting to know her as she swung her phone or tablet around and gave me a virtual tour of her room and her artwork on the walls.
Paloma has been featured in the news quite a lot previously, often Florida news but also in "People" magazine and "Huffington Post."
Here is a very short clip of my young subject with Senator Marco Rubio.
And here she is addressing the American Legion, telling them about some of her activist efforts.
So, I am grateful to have a new project and to be working from home.
In other news, just yesterday, my mystery comedy novel, "Action Men with Silly Putty," came out in print format and is available on Amazon. This is big news. The process turned out to be slightly longer and more complex than I expected at first. I am happy to be able to make the announcement that it is finally available and in time for Christmas. I know many readers prefer traditional print books. The print version is $8.99.
Please, give it a try for yourself or as a Christmas gift. It's a mood lifter. One reader, who read the ebook version, said he released so many endorphins by laughing while reading that he may no longer have depression by the time he finished.
This book was not what I initially expected. I purchased the book some time back when it was promoted directly to my Kindle. By the time I came arond to reading it, a few days ago, I had forgotten any book description. The title and cover art seemed to suggest a cozy mystery to me. After only reading a few pages, I could see that this mystery involved a serial killer and a very gruesome crime, gruesome along the lines of Hannibal Lecter, or, in true crime, Jeffrey Dahmer.
Actually, the book has elements of both a thriller and a cozy mystery. Considering the disturbing nature of the crimes, the author does spare us highly graphic descriptions. Even so, psychologically speaking, the suggestion of these crimes is still quite disturbing. Towards the end of the book, the writer, via his characters, seems to almost make a humorous self-reference. Since I don't think it contains any spoilers, I'll include the excerpt.
Just before the excerpt, a policeman describes a scene from a thriller novel he read.
"'Nice,' I said, wondering what sort of a warped mind could think up something like that I'd hate to meet one of those thriller writers in person.
'It was actually pretty good. Held back on some of the really gross stuff. Sort of like Stephen King-lite.'"
That excerpted bit might give you an idea of the writer's style.
Between the more intense scenes and scenes with some gruesome suggestions, there is quite a bit of humor, mostly in the interactions between the main heroine and her male police partners, which provide some comic relief. Some of this humor is rather crude. Her partner Harry McGlade is presented as an "uncouth" character. Occasionally, between the disgusting nature of the crime and the crude jokes, I felt like I needed a brain scrub, but I kept on reading. I wanted to see the crime solved. I wanted to see justice done, and most of all, I wanted to see the heroine survive and overcome her danger.
In the very beginning, the heroine is kidnapped by the killer. I felt optimistic however, knowing this woman has a police background, and the story, in parts, is told from her point of view. This gave me hope that there would be a positive outcome.
The title "Shaken" and the drink shaker on the cover art is having a little fun with the main character's name. She is Jacqueline Daniels, aka Jack Daniels. Other books in the series also have drink references in the title. Jack Daniels, at this point in her story, is a former policewoman who is now a private investigator.
The story flips back and forth between scenes in different time periods, the present time and Jack's captivity and scenes from her former investigations with her partner or former partner, Harry McGlade and Herb Benedict. Gradually more information is revealed as the mystery is unraveled.
Because the writer uses his initials, I did not know until I finished reading that he was a man. As I read, I changed my mind several times whether or not the writer was more likely to be a man or a woman. The main sleuth we are concerned with is a woman after all. The crude "guy humor" among the male police partners was one element that caused me to think the writer was more likely male. In another observation, I really felt the understanding of female psychology was quite good, and that's not something I always feel when reading about female characters from a male writer's perspective.
Not all of the humor is crude in nature. I did find the interactions between the officers to be interesting and entertaining and began to feel like they were rather interesting characters I could know.
Over all, it's an interesting blend of light and dark.
I have to say I have been very inspired by the bloggers and vloggers I have "met" and seen on Google +. So, I decided to experiment with my webcam and make a recording of myself reading the first chapter of my novel.
I am a novice at making videos, so this is a no frills video without any fancy editing. I think the reading is not bad, and I hope you enjoy hearing my book excerpt. If any of you more experienced vloggers have some suggestions for improving or have any tips for me, I would be open to input.
This is a long excerpt, about 20 minutes, so you may need to fit this in when you have some time or listen for a few minutes and see if the story captivates you.
With the help of various craft shops on etsy.com, the book lover can completely accessorize herself with books or at least items relating to books.
I always have a satisfying feeling when ordering from Etsy, because I feel like I am helping to support a creative entrepreneur. I have a kind of empathy for all artists, even if my "art" is different in nature.
You can order this Write On bracelet above for $39.95 from A Likely Story shop on Etsy. This is the very bracelet that I bought from this shop, and I love it. Part of the charm of this bracelet is that it is made with manual typewriter keys. To me, the manual typewriter is such a fun and romantic symbol for writers. I don't actually want to use one -- I've been too spoiled by computers and modern software -- but I like its old-fashioned charm and look. The charms include both open and closed books, reading glasses, typewriter, computer, coffee mug and memo pad with pencil. I liked this one for myself, because it seemed to represent different aspects of me as a writer and reader. The last item seems to resemble the reporter's notebooks I carry for my newspaper work. The books could represent ones I've written as well as ones I read. It had the charming typewriter as well as the writing instrument I actually use -- the computer. The coffee cup, I must say, fits me very well too. You know you're a frequent Dunkin Donuts customer when sometimes your coffee is made before you reach the counter.
There are a variety of similar bracelets from A Likely Story for authors, librarians, writers and bibliophiles. How about this Got Books? bracelet for $39.95? One of these book covers says "Romance novel" and another says "True story" to represent your diverse reading material.
For the mystery lover, either writer or reader ...
The ptierneydesigns Etsy shop has jewelry for mystery lovers, either writers or readers. Above is her mystery writer's wearable art pin for $19.75. The pin is a kilt pin. The collected charms include reproductions of book covers for The Moving Finger by Agatha Christie, Fer-de-Lance by Rex Stout, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Arthur Conan Doyle and Murders in the Rue Morgue by Edgar Allen Poe. The other charms are a revolver, an inkwell, a red herring and a cleaver. Just imagine what a conversation starter it would be to have a cleaver on your pin. Somehow, the cleaver looks more menacing to me than the revolver. It looks more, er, accident prone. Hopefully, you can assure your friends that you're only interested in reading (or writing) mysteries, not in acting them out.
This reminds me of the item below. This mug declares, "Pay no attention to my browsing history. I'm a writer, not a serial killer." I must say that I've had a few Google searches that might make me appear suspicious.
The mug is not an Etsy item, but you can get that mug here for $10 from teechip.com.
Back to my previous thought, I love ptierneydesigns shop. She has so many nice things for the mystery lover, including many charm bracelets themed around specific mystery books and writers. How about a bracelet that is a tribute to several of the great fictional detectives?
This one features Charlie Chan, Ellery Queen, Miss Marple, Sherlock Holmes, Hercule Poirot and Nick Charles. The detectives' images are handmade with plastic and covered in sealant. The pewter charms include a fedora, fingerprint, knitting, calabash pipe, mustache and handcuffs. Mystery lovers, I'm sure you can guess which of these detectives are represented by some of these objects. You can purchase this one here.
Here is a purse that is almost identical to one I have, available from the NovelCreations shop on Etsy. You can purchase this one for $60.00 here. The purses from this shop are made with real book covers with cotton fabric on the sides, handles and button and strap closures. A Jane Austen cover isn't the only possibility. There are lots of other options like To Kill a Mockingbird, Pride and Prejudice, Charlotte's Web and even Gray's Anatomy. Maybe, you'd like a purse with a Shakespeare plays cover or Beauty and the Beast.
Can you tell I'm a bracelet lover? What about a twin set of kindred spirit rings for you and a friend inspired by the Anne of Green Gables series?
You can see these rings frame a bit of text from a book page. That text happens to include the words Diana, Anne and kindred spirits. It's a perfect gift for you and a fellow Anne of Green Gables loving friend. My friend Betty often calls me her kindred spirit, and I gave her one of these rings a couple of Christmases ago. These rings are available for $33.00 from CSLiteraryJewelry.
I know the Christmas season is past, but birthdays come all year long.
For the past several years, I have been tracking my reading on Goodreads.com. I liked the site as a reader even before I had an author page. Goodreads has a tremendous database of books. You can even add rare or out of print books yourself to the database. It's an excellent way to track your reading year by year and over a lifetime, keeping a digital record rather than a list on paper. There are many features of this site of which I have not taken advantage, but I do like Listopia lists. You can look over book lists in a given category, and, if you're a bibliophile, it's hard to come away from this without adding to your to-read list.
This year, in 2015, I've read 47 books. That's a fair amount, but my goal was to read 100 books. In 2013 and 2014, I came close to this goal, reading 90 and some books.
The Goodreads site gave me some interesting end of the year facts and statistics on my 2015 reading. According to Goodreads,com, those 47 books represent 10,382 pages.
The shortest book I read, only 18 pages, was Ezcape from Sobibor by David Fischler. This was a mistake. I thought I was downloading the book on which the movie was based, telling the true story of Jews that escaped this horrible Holocaust death camp. I failed to notice the Z in Escape. The story started out like a history, referencing the names of the key historical people. I wasn't anticipating the zombies, Holocaust victim avenging zombies that survive the gas chamber and wreak havoc on their persecutors. I'd like to think the writer had good intentions and that he found it satisfying for a kind of justice to be done this way, but, I found it, to put it in the politest terms, odd. I didn't like it ... at all.
The longest book I read in the past year was Jim Henson: The Biography by Brian Jay Jones, 608 pages.
I found myself really relating to this man as I read his biography and feeling like I was a lot like him. I'm also a puppeteer, on a smaller scale. I'm not on television. It wasn't merely the puppeteering connection I felt with Jim, and I wouldn't say that our style of creativity is similar. Every time, however, I read about some personality characteristic of Jim, it sounded just like me. He was quiet, soft-spoken, peaceful and diplomatic and hated conflict. He liked to stay out of the spotlight and let Kermit speak for him. He was also highly driven in his creative endeavors. One funny scenario I remember from the book is that Jim was in a position where he needed to fire someone from "The Muppet Show", after it got into the press that this person had bad mouthed a guest on their show. When the person was sent to Jim, however, Jim couldn't go through with it and ended up giving the guy a bear hug.
Personality typing is one of my little interests. As I read, I became convinced that Jim Henson was, according to the Myers Brigg system, an INFP just like me. (I realize that means little to you if you are not already familiar with the system, but, if you are curious, go to the link.) I did a Google search for Jim Henson and Myers Brigg and found the Wikipedia article on INFP listed Henson as a celebrity example of the type.
I learned so much from reading this book. I did quite a bit of reading on his life and career before I even began reading about either "Sesame Street" or "The Muppet Show." I found details about his early career quite interesting and had to look up vintage Wilkins Coffee commercials on Youtube to see his early work.
The average length of books I read in 2015 was 247 pages.
The most popular book in 2015 is "1984" by George Orwell. The least popular book is "Holidays in Verse" by Marie Clark Miller.
I see that "1984" seems to be required reading for most high schools, but it wasn't required reading for me as a high schooler or even for one of my college classes as an English major. It was always on my reading list as a book I should probably read some time, but I wasn't always in the right spirit of it. Now, I have read this influential book, and it makes me think of much of the nonfiction I've read on repressive governments.
It doesn't surprise me that "Holidays in Verse" is the least popular of my 2015 reads. I added it to the Goodreads database. It's a book written by my paternal great aunt. My cousin who joined us for Thanksgiving brought it to show that I was not the only writer in the family. My Great Aunt Marie was better known as a painter, but she illustrated this book of her children's poetry with her paintings. I'd love to learn more about this aunt. Some searches on Google brought up some interesting things, even her autographed photo for sale.
I did read the Escape from Sobibor by Richard Rashke, the book I had meant to download when I downloaded the zombie story. This is another sort of book for which you may need the right spirit. I remember sometimes wanting a break to think of something more cheerful. Sobibor, of course, is far from cheerful, but the story of the prisoners' escape and survival gives hope. The writer went to a lot of work in tracking down the survivors and traveling around the world to visit with them, giving updates on their (then) current lives.
In the past few years, I've been reading both a lot of mystery fiction and true crime books. The nature of the crime in The Devil in the White City is perhaps a bit more grisly than the average crime book that I read, but it was written in such a way that I was not overwhelmed with the grisly details.
This book tells the story of the man pictured below, H.H. Holmes. He had a hotel especially built with some murderous purposes in mind with a gas chamber and incinerator room among them. He was doing his murderous business at the time of the Chicago World's Fair. The writer alternates between telling the story of the planning of Chicago World's Fair, which I found tremendously interesting, and the story of Holmes and his murders. It was an interesting look at a murderer with some con man characteristics. He apparently seemed very gentle and likeable.
I really loved the description of the first Ferris wheel built for the World Fair with the idea of outdoing the Eiffel Tower. If this crime story seems too grisly for you, perhaps you would enjoy this bit of comic relief. The first Ferris wheel was quite a novel and fearful thing at the time, and each of the cars held a lot more passengers than just one or two. This story of a terrified passenger stood out to me.
Wherritt staggered in panic from one end of the car to the other, driving passengers before him like 'scared sheep,' according to one account. He began throwing himself at the walls of the car with such power that he managed to bend some of the protective iron. The conductor and several male passengers tried to subdue him, but he shook them off and raced for the door ... As the car entered its descent, Wherritt became calmer and laughed and sobbed with relief -- until he realized the wheel was not going to stop. It always made two full revolutions. Wherritt again went wild, and again the conductor and his allies subdued him, but they were getting tired ... A woman stepped up and unfastened her skirt. To the astonishment of all aboard, she slipped the skirt off and threw it over Wherritt's head, then held it in place while murmuring gentle assurances. The effect was immediate. Wherritt became 'as quiet as an ostrich.'
I also read Agatha Christie's Murder on the Orient Express.
I had already seen two film versions of it, the 1974 version, starring Albert Finney, Lauren Bacall, Ingrid Bergman, Sean Connery, John Gielgud, Vanessa Redgrave ...
And the 2010 version starring David Suchet as Hercule Poirot. After watching a number of episodes of the BBC "Poirot" series, Suchet and Poirot, to me, have become synonymous in my mind. Now, when I read a Poirot novel, I visualize Suchet.
The story, as you may know, has a very interesting twist ending. I enjoyed reading the novel even after knowing the surprise ending, but the story itself was filled with so much complexity and complications, I found it enjoyable still.
Another historical true crime book I read was The Suspicions of Mr. Whicher. The victim of this 1860 murder was a two-year-old boy who was found with his throat slashed in a privy. It was interesting to learn that this crime story was influential on the English manor mystery and on early mystery fiction writers.
This prompted me to read The Moonstone by Wilkie Colllins, one of the books the writer believes was influenced by this case. I had already read Collins' The Woman in White in recent years and enjoyed it.
I did enjoy this classic mystery of a stolen diamond. There is a lot of confusion and misunderstanding between some of the key characters. At times, I found the behavior of Rachel Verinder to be very strange, like she was making strange assumptions, and I began to wonder if Collins really understood women or if Victorian women were just different in nature than today's women. I remember there was a time when the plot seemed predictable and I was losing some interest, but then it turned and became suspenseful again.
Last year, my friend Debra recommended the BBC series The Paradise to me, and I watched the full season on Netflix.
I liked it so well that I was motivated to read the book on which the series was based, The Ladies' Paradise by Emile Zola. Sometimes, I am motivated to read books because the movie version is coming out or sometimes motivated to read a book because I saw a movie based on or related to the book. There are some differences between the original book and the drama, character names for one, but also plot differences.
You wouldn't think a story about a department store could be very exciting, but it is multi-faceted, a story about big business pushing out smaller independent ones, about a woman's career ambitions and romance. I like descriptive passages and was surprised at Zola's ability to beautifully describe rather feminine things, so you had a real feeling of the fictional atmosphere. Here's an example ...
At first stood out the light satins and tender silks, the satins a la Reine and Renaissance, with the pearly tones of spring water; light silks, transparent as crystals -- Nile-green, Indian-azure, May-rose, and Danube-blue. Then came the stronger fabrics: marvellous satins, duchess silks, warm tints, rolling in great waves; and right at the bottom, as in a fountain-basin, reposed the heavy stuffs, the figured silks, the damasks, brocades, and lovely silvered silks in the midst of a deep bed of velvet of every sort -- black, white, and colored -- skillfully disposed on silk and satin grounds, hollowing out with their medley of colours a still lake in which the reflex of the sky seemed to be dancing. The women, pale with desire, bent over as if to look at themselves. And before this falling cataract they all remained standing, with the secret fear of being carried away by the irruption of such luxury, and with the irresistible desire to jump in amidst it and be lost.
The final metaphor is wonderful too. These descriptive passages may not be to every reader's taste, but I love it.
The Princess Bride is another book I saw in movie form first -- several times.
The dialogue, of course, is just like the movie dialogue, but I think reading the book would be worthwhile for his humorous narrative style which can't completely translate into a movie script. I felt I got more backstory on some of the characters which was not included in the movie. I also enjoyed reading the book's extras and learning about the author.
In mystery fiction, it seems there is an almost endless supply of books in this genre, and, if you discover new fictional characters or a new author you like, most likely, you've discovered a series. After reading The Dante Connection by Estelle Ryan, I would like to read more books from this series. This mystery features an art-related crime, which got my attention immediately. Also, Genevieve Lenard, the key sleuth, is a person with both Asperger's and a genius IQ, so I was very intrigued by the character and both of her strengths and weaknesses. She writes Mozart in her head when she is deeply stressed. She doesn't understand idioms which leads to some occasional humor and doesn't have a natural instinct for reading body language, but through study and several degrees, body language is her area of expertise which helps her in her detecting.
I don't read much science fiction, but I do like time travel stories. I also love blue Morpho butterflies.
The Blue Butterfly by Lynn Murphy involves both. In fact, butterflies are the method by which the characters, the four members of the Donovan family, travel through time. I thought it was an intriguing concept.
This would, I think, be considered a YA novel, but I enjoyed it. The parents of the family are a physicist and a historian. Their children, Mollie and Jake, are highly gifted kids with their own areas of intellectual interest. When their parents disappear, Mollie and Jake go traveling through time after them. Suspenseful situations arise, because their time travel discovery is not fully understood. They will be led back in time to a time in history in which they have been thinking. They are not completely sure if they are completely able to direct the where and when of their travels, so parents separate from children and brother from sister. Various family members visit Matisse's Paris, the Titanic, the French Revolution, Darwin at the Galapagos Islands, etc.
I almost left I Am Malala off the list, not because it was not a highlight, but because I read it in early 2015 and thought it might be harder to remember my impressions. Another blogger reminded me of how special this book is. Malala Yousafzal is the Pakistani girl who, after becoming visible as an advocate for girls' education, was shot by the Taliban and survived. Although the girls' experiences are different, it reminded me somewhat of Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl. I was so impressed by Malala's intelligence, the depth of her thoughts and the beauty of her words in expressing herself. She says she does not remember being shot, but, while still in the hospital, looked at her injured self in the mirror with a scientific curiosity.
I am currently reading The Map Thief by Michael Blanding. It's a true crime story about a rare map dealer who became a thief, cutting rare maps with an X-Acto knife from books in various libraries. It also has a lot of history and intriguing details about this man's life.
In 2016, already I have several mystery fiction books I wish to read.
From Amazon, "When fashionista and television celeb Gina Monroe goes home to attend the funeral of her late grandmother, the last thing she expects to encounter is murder. And the reading of the will is anything but fashionable as unanswered questions arise. Who is the dead woman in the woods behind the family house? And why is she dressed in Milano designer clothes?"
From Amazon, "Crime is merely a hedgerow away in the sleepy British village of Halfereton, pleasingly nestled among gently rolling hills, cozy Old World cottages, and the latest unsolved murder.
As England's most reluctant murder host, Hugo Anstead is even more reluctant to believe that the latest village murder was anything but accidental.
But ambitious journalist and voice of the village Marjorie Branell-Markson can't dismiss the accidental death of local resident Camilla Alden, whose death might not have been as accidental as it seemed. And when a mysterious French railway timetable is found in her garden, she crosses her fingers indelicately, convinced that coincidences always lead to more crime. And she is right. Soon, another wide-eyed local becomes the focus of a string of crimes, and is attacked before she realizes the connection between her recent travels in France--and Camilla Alden's death.
But there's more than cafe and croissants on the menu, as the village's Amateur Sleuth Society travels to France to uncover the secret of a mysteriously illuminated fifteenth-century religious monument...before there's another murder.
Pack your bags for The French De Ception...and don't forget your passport!"
From Amazon, "In a landscape strewn with dollars, how do you catch a killer who's playing for higher stakes than money?
Ex-detective Evan Adair has a gift for working out how the dead got that way, but the truth never brought anybody back. After twenty-three years at the NYPD and a devastating private loss, he wants no part of another investigation.
But an old colleague comes calling with a tantalizing riddle. A Wall Street wunderkind, a young quant with everything to live for, has taken a bizarre public dive from an opera balcony. Was the fall his own idea? And his injuries, as it turns out, weren't enough to kill him. So how -- and why -- did he die?
Soon there is another death, this one a vicious knife attack. The dual investigation draws Adair into the byzantine worlds of finance and high-stakes biotech. He finds secrets with long histories and numbers that can talk -- if only he can figure out how to listen."
From Amazon, "Digital photographer Maggie Thornhill has been asked to do the impossible. Authenticate a Van Gogh painting, missing since World War II, by simply using a photograph. The challenge is presented to her by her long-time friend, Ingrid Rettke. When Ingrid is murdered, Maggie makes it her mission to analyze the photograph, find the painting and in doing so, track down the killer.
The photograph in question was passed down to Ingrid by her grandfather, Klaus Rettke. Maggie learns that Rettke was a key member of the German ERR, the Nazi organization appointed to confiscate art from the Jews. Obscure references in Klaus Rettke’s diary convince her that Rettke stole the painting from the Nazis.
Maggie works with homicide detective, Frank Mead, and two art experts, Emil Kahn and Henri Benoit, to track down the painting and the killer. Complicating her life, Maggie’s in the middle of a divorce, she is attracted to Mead, but also to Henri, who tries to seduce her.
She develops a software program to match certain key criteria of known Van Gogh paintings with those of the painting in the photograph. However, even using the latest digital photography methods, authentication of a painting must rely heavily on the word of experts and the provenance, or history, of the work.
Maggie heads to Paris to trace Rettke’s footsteps, hoping they’ll lead to the lost Van Gogh. After piecing together all her clues, she now believes there were actually four paintings: an original and three forgeries. She begins to fear for her life when one of those copies comes to light and its owner is murdered.
Encountering deception within deception in the high-stakes art world, she peels the layers back to reveal not one, but two killers. Both art experts have killed for the painting. Now one is dead and the other intends to kill Maggie. To stay alive, she reveals that she has the genuine Van Gogh. Now she must protect the precious painting . . . and herself from the killer."
My to-read list is almost infinite, which is why I hope to do a lot of reading in 2016!
