Saturday Reading Wrap-up - 9/13/25

It's Saturday the 13th. Which isn't unlucky or anything, but I'm weirdly pointing it out.  Anyways...

Not a lot to report this week.  I didn't pick up any new books since the last update.

Books Read: 

31) Tales from the 'White Hart' by Arthur C. Clarke (9/11/25) - SF - 5 stars.  Neither new to me nor underappreciated.  Picked this up for 25c from a thrift store.
No review.  

No DNFs.

Currently reading... the one new-to-me Agatha Christie I bought the other day.  I wasn't sure I was going to read it right away or save it, but I needed it, so I started it.  Sometimes a gal just need a little Agatha to make things seem better, ya know?

What have you been up to reading-wise?

 

Heartsick

I don't have the heart to do a 'this n that' today.  Frankly, I'm sick to my stomach over the assassination of Charlie Kirk.  There is no other word for it.  He was assassinated.  You can call it a horror or a tragedy - it's certainly those, too - but that doesn't change the fact that he was assassinated.  

From all I knew of Charlie, he was a good man.  He advocated for discussion over violence, and they killed him for it.  He was trying to get people to talk about issues and to think for themselves.  Well, we can't have any of that now, can we?  Feh.

There's a lot of crap out there this morning with people saying vile things.  Those people can wither up and die for all I care.  If you're one of them, please go far, far away from me.  

I'm not sure what this will mean for our country.  Hopefully, it'll be a watershed moment and those following the advocates of violence wake up and see that theirs is not the side to be on.  Hopefully, freedom will win this battle.  

Right now, though, I'm heartsick.  And yes, it's the anniversary of 9/11 - don't think I haven't considered whether Charlie's assassination wasn't planned to coincide with this.  It probably was.  

'Never forget' turned into 'only remember on 9/11' and then ignore the causes altogether.  

I'm gonna go watch TV.  Something totally not involved in any of this until I can stomach being online again.  

Peace.  Out.

At the Movies with B.E.

Welcome to At the Movies with B.E.  This week, I'm going to try adding a ranking system using a 😻 (smiling cat face with heart-shaped eyes emoji) or a 🙀 instead of stars.  Hokey or not?  :shrug:  Anyway, let's get on with it...

Murders in the Rue Morgue (1986) - starring George C. Scott, Val Kilmer, and Rebecca De Mornay.  I remember watching this when it was on TV way back when, so I loaded it up for watching.  It's a little "80s" but still a good treatment of the story.  😻😻😻😻

Ladies in Lavender (2004) - starring Maggie Smith and Judi Dench.  I found this while searching through various Roku suggestions.  I admit I was a little hesitant, but we went ahead with it, hoping it didn't turn out to be shitty.  I'm so glad we did.  This is a lovely little movie about two spinster sisters in Cornwall in the 1930s and what happens after they find a young man washed up on the beach.  They take care of him until he's well and care for him afterwards, until he becomes a part of the town.  The ending was awesome and we really enjoyed the movie, despite the fact that they never really delve into why he washed up on the beach.  I think he was trying to get to America, but the exact nature of his problem was never addressed.  :shrug:  Oh, well, I can live with that.  I can always make something up in my head to cover that.  😻😻😻😻😻

Toast (2010) - has Helena Bonham Carter, but she wasn't the star.  The only other person I recognized was the guy who was in that one series about the young surgeon with Asperger's.  This movie started out okay and then got tense and then was okay and then got weird and then sucked.  We didn't finish it, but we watched most of it, which was enough of it to adequately give an opinion.  I was really bummed because it held the promise of being a really good movie and with some tweaks, it could've lived up to that promise, but it didn't.  :sad trombone noise:  🙀🙀

My Family and Other Animals (2005) -  this is based on a book by Gerald Durrell (as was a TV series called The Durrells on Corfu - which we watched on PBS years ago).  It's a goofy and funny show about a family who leaves dreary, rainy Britain for the sunny life on the Greek island of Corfu, and all the things that happen to them.  It was fun to watch, even if it did star the gal who played Dolores Umbridge in the Harry Potter movies.  Definitely not a movie with anything major to say about anything, which is a nice change. 😻😻😻😻😻

I found several more movies to watch that I'm really looking forward to.  One in particular is called The Hippopotamus.  It looks like loads of fun, so fingers crossed.

Labor Day

Marketing Monday has been pre-empted in favor of this post.  In Deep Wish is free now through Friday, though.  Jus' sayin'.

Labor Day... I don't celebrate it.  Don't get me started.  But it's a day off for a lot of people, and when I was working, it was a day off for me, too, since the businesses were usually closed.  As a writer, I don't have holidays or days off or whatever when I'm working.  Every day can and sometimes is a work day.  (Not right now.  I've been a toad.)

I did get a good deal on some clothes this morning, so thanks for that, Labor Day.  I have two new pairs of pants and a shirt that should be here Friday.  This is for a trip I'm taking down the road apace, but I couldn't turn down 40% off.  I'm a sucker that way.

So, basically, Labor Day is good for shopping.  It's also good because it marks the end of summer, which means, for me, the summer people go home.  Yay.  Of course, it also means that this weekend is seeing my neighborhood full of strangers in strange cars and someone has been shooting off fireworks and firecrackers.  :eyeroll:  Tomorrow... Ahhh.

I can't see much purpose in having this national holiday otherwise.  Another day for government workers to take off, I guess.  Oops, I said 'don't get me started' and yet, there I go.

Anyway, have a great day wherever you are and whatever you celebrate.  And if you're on vacation somewhere, be courteous of your fellow humans, eh?  The world will thank you for it.

Saturday Reading Wrap-up - 8/30/25

Not a big reading week for me, but I did finish one, so let's get to it.

I bought some new-to-me books at the thrift store this week: a suspense, two literature, two SF. I also picked up a new ebook - paranormal romance.  Those should keep me for a while, I think.

Books Read:

30) Primordial Threat by MA Rothman (8/28/25) - SF* - 5 stars.  I hadn't read this author before, although I follow him on FB, but it's not underappreciated.  I snagged it when the author put it on sale for 99c.
No review.  He's got a boatload of reviews and there's nothing I could add that would gain him sales.

No DNFs.

Currently reading... I haven't picked out what I'm going to read next.  The urge is to read the Agatha Christie I picked up on 8/21, but I have so much to choose from right now that I might leave that until I need it.

What's on your reading list lately?

Thursday This n That

 I obviously have no idea what day it is.

This coffee is strong this morning.  Yay!  (Of course, I made it, so yeah, not surprising.)

The toadiness is strong with me.  Is it my superpower?  Slower than a sleepy snail, weaker than a reused teabag, able to ignore all tasks with a single yawn... It's ToadLady!  :ribburp:

Anyway...  

Ever since I cancelled DirectTV, they've been sending stuff to us in the mail.  Kinda reminds me of an abusive, old ex-boyfriend - 'I still love you, I'm sorry, I've changed, I can do better, I'll do anything to get you to come back to me'.  Meh.  Like I told the guy on the phone when I cancelled, there is nothing they can offer me that's better than free.  Unless they want to start paying me to have their service.  Wouldn't that be something?  Heh.

I saw something this morning... a teacher who was told she can't mark the black kids as tardy anymore because 'it's part of their culture'.  Wow.  You have to laugh at this stuff or you'll spend your life crying.

It's Labor Day Weekend.  I got all my shopping done early in the week because there's no way I want to be anywhere near town right now.  Vacationers abound, getting in their last hurrah before fall settles around us.  Go forth, ye weekend people, get it out of your system for another year.  See ya after Memorial Day 2026.  Woot.

Someone let two geese roam around the neighborhood.  There was a gray one and a white one, and they had trouble staying out of the road.  A few days ago, Hubs pointed out the profusion of white feathers that started just south of our driveway and ran for about a hundred feet south of there.  No blood, guts, or corpse, but I doubt the goose survived the encounter.  It either got hit and something dragged it off, or it got attacked and the winner took the spoils.  I'll say again... people shouldn't let their domesticated animals wander free in the wilds.  It never works well for the domesticated animal.  I have a feeling it's the same dude who let his guinea fowl roam.  (Btw, he no longer has any guineas left... wonder why?)

Okay, I'm starting to wake up.  Thanks for being around for the process.  Have a great day and an awesome weekend.  Stay safe.  :hugs:

At the Movies with B.E.

It was a slow week for movies, so I'll add in some other stuff.

Murder by Death (1976) - with all-star cast, this pokes fun at all the major sleuths of the early twentieth century - Miss Marple, Charlie Chan, Nick and Nora Charles, Sam Spade, & Hercule Poirot - but in an almost homage kind of way.  There's still a mystery to solve and a surprise ending, so loads of fun.  Hubs hadn't seen this before and he seemed to enjoy it, despite its occasional camp and cheesiness.  Me, I'm all about camp and cheesy sometimes.  ;o)

Here are some non-movies we've watched or are currently watching:

Emily of New Moon (1998) - I added this to my save list because we really enjoyed Anne of Green Gables, and this was also LM Montgomery.  What could go wrong?  OMG, this was so sad - first her mom dies and then her dad dies, she's forced to live with a nasty aunt who kicks her cat out of the carriage in the middle of the woods.  I hoped in other episodes the story would get better, but I went through the first season looking at each episode's synopsis, and nope.  Every episode was tragic.  We vetoed watching anymore.

A Touch of Frost (1992) - We are super enjoying this series.  I love DI 'Jack' Frost.  The writing is good, the characters are awesome, the plots are thrilling. Good stuff all the way around.

The Last Detective (2003) - Also super enjoying this series.  DI 'Dangerous' Davies is the nice guy who finishes last.  He gets all the nothing cases, but he's a good man and a smart detective, so he manages to solve each of the nothing cases that ends up being a something case.  Smart and funny, with heart.

Life (2007) - this series stars Damian Lewis (who played Dick Winters on Band of Brothers).  I'd seen this advertised way back when it was on TV but, at the time, I didn't want to see this actor on a show like this.  I'm glad I got over it.  So far, it's been a pretty good series.  I was afraid they were going to insert a romantic thing, but from the last episode we watched, I think they kyboshed that.  We'll see.

I'm still watching too much TV, but it's getting better.  What things have you watched lately?

Saturday Reading Wrap-up - 8/23/25

I know I haven't been the best reader lately.  I have been the best anything lately, though, so it's not too surprising.  Anyway, let's get to the books...

I picked up 6 new hardcopies - 2 hardcover and 4 paperback - and one new ebook this week.  The ebook is paranormal romance.  The hardcovers are both romantic suspense and the paperbacks are mystery, crime noir, western, and NF.  I found an Agatha Christie I didn't have and hadn't heard of, a Zane Grey, a Don Hamilton, a Victoria Holt, a Phyllis Whitney, and the NF is by J. Edgar Hoover about the Communist menace.  Should be interesting.

Books Read:

29) Five Complete Hercule Poirot Novels (8/18/25) - mystery - 5 stars.  Neither new to me nor underappreciated.  I picked this one up in June of 2024 from a thrift store.  It was 50c.
Review: "This took a while to get through, because I was reading other books between stories, but it was an excellent collection for this Poirot-lover."

No DNFs this week.

Currently reading... a SF I'd been looking forward to for a while but didn't have the budget to buy.  Then the author put it on sale for 99c.  Woot.  So far, it's pretty enthralling.

What have you been reading lately?

At the Movies with B.E.

It wasn't the most jam-packed week for movies*, but this is what we watched.

Much Ado About Nothing (1993) - starring Kenneth Branagh and Emma Thompson.  I love Shakespeare, but this is particularly good.  If you haven't seen it, I totally recommend it - even if you aren't that into the Bard.

Death Wish (2018) - Okay, so I swore I wouldn't watch this because I'm generally against when Hollyweird remakes old favorites. Then I saw that it starred Bruce Willis and I love Bruce, so I gave it a whirl.  I'm glad I watched.   It was awesome.  This movie was definitely not harshing on the Charles Bronson version and it was also totally not-woke.  I liked the juxtaposition of Bruce as a mild-mannered, peaceful surgeon before his family was attacked and the man he had to become to gain justice.  The end was satisfying and cool.  Yay.

I tried watching a couple other things, but they were duds, so I stopped.  Nothing worth mentioning here, even to pan it.

Have you seen either of these?  Did you watch anything awesome this week?

*we ended up watching several new-to-us TV shows instead.  If you want to hear about those, let me know and maybe I'll add those to the ends of these posts.

Sunday Update - Week 33

This week... Well, it was HOT.  And I was a toad.  Okay, I wasn't entirely a toad all week.

I wrote Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday for 3182 words.  Then I lost track of where I was going next and turned back into a toad.  I'll try to get untoaded today.

Marketing was done.  Rumor Has It was free and I moved 57 copies - 40 of which went on Friday.  Not sure why the spike that day, but there it is.  Also, someone read Unequal this week and someone else is working on Dying Embers, so I am seeing some fundage for this month.  Not sure which book will be up for free this week.  Stay tuned.

Reading occurred.  I didn't bother doing a post yesterday because TOAD.  We'll see what I can accomplish next Saturday.  

No baking because HOT.

No activity because HOT.  Weight: 172.0

I'm still watering my deck garden.  My first tomato got picked.  We had it sliced up on hamburgers and it was yummy.  My second tomato got some kind of funk and turned gray from the bottom.  (It's not touching anything, so not sure what the hell happened there.)  In happier news, I have a third tomato.  It's tiny yet, but it's there.  And one of the tomato plants is still flowering, so there's hope for more.  Something ate all the leaves off one of my dogwood trees.  I think it was a grasshopper, because a discarded grasshopper exoskeleton is laying in the pot.  Did I ever mention how much I hate grasshoppers?  Filthy little bastards.  The rest of the trees are doing okay.  So are the green peppers, but those will never make it to big enough for fruit before the end of the growing season.  :shrug:  They were an experiment anyway, so no big loss.

The fawns are growing.  Sissy's fawn is a pretty big little guy.  (Assuming buck fawn because it's big, but I haven't seen nubs yet, so not sure.)  The twins are thriving.  Life is good.  Hubs is making sure they have fresh water once, if not twice, a day.

In family news, one of my extended family was attacked by a pitbull.  He was out running - he does marathons, so he was training - minding his own business, and some numbnuts was walking his pit without a leash.  He saw the dog and gave it a wide berth.  It didn't matter.  The pit went after him anyway, ruinating his left hand and then, after the owner and the guy got the dog off, it came back for more and attached to his right arm.  He's had surgery to repair the damage, so now it's a waiting game to see how much function he'll regain.  I'm pissed, to say the least.  Poor dude can't work now and who knows when he'll be able to work again.  He's freakin' IT, so all his work is hands.  And he's the nicest guy ever.

Okay, I think that's all the excitement I can take for one day.  Have a great day, wherever you are.  (And if you're walking/running, watch out for dogs with stupid owners.)  

Thursday This n That

Finn looks like a little-bitty kitty until he's not next to Sawyer.  It's only then that you realize he's a big cat.  Sawyer, however, is a BIG cat.  Which works for me.  I like big cats.  Kira was big.  Max was big.  I'm not sure how I'd handle an actual little kitty.

Today's bird is a red-headed woodpecker with an acorn.  Neat birds, but we rarely get them in our yard.  They prefer to hang out by the river.  Not sure why.

I sat down yesterday to watch Much Ado About Nothing (the Kenneth Branagh version) by myself because Hubs really wasn't that interested.  Within about ten minutes, he showed up and sat down, and we watched it together.  I'm sneaky that way.

Yes, I actually do love Shakespeare.  

I'm getting the urge to go thrifting to buy used books again.  No, I haven't read all the used books I already own, and I don't care.  =op

I picked my one good tomato yesterday.  The other tomato would be almost ready to pick if it wasn't already going bad.  Not sure what happened there, but it's turning gray from the bottom up.  Eww. Oh, and I have a third tomato now.  It's about double the size of a kidney bean.  Fingers crossed it doesn't catch the creeping crud and it grows big enough to eat.  Growing food ain't easy, lemme tell ya.  Anyway, I'll slice up that one tomato and we'll have it on sandwiches.  Yay.

If your post to a book group is not book related, I will block you. Just sayin'.  Also, if you're an insufferable turd, I'll block you.  Needless to say, I've been blocking a lot of people. LOL

Okay, I think that's enough out of me this morning.  What's up with you?

At the Movies with B.E.

Hound of the Baskervilles (1939) - This is THE definitive Sherlock Holmes movie.  So good, even after all these years.  

Bookworm (2024) - a weird little movie with Elijah Wood as an absentee father who suddenly shows up and takes his daughter on an adventure.  It's set in New Zealand, so there are some amazing scenes, but yeah, the story was definitely weird.  Good weird, but weird nonetheless.

A Month in the Country (1987) - starring a young Colin Firth and young Kenneth Branagh.  Plus, Natasha Richardson (who died way too early, in my opinion).  It was just a nice movie.  Not much to it, but nice.  Two men after WWI, struggling with their own horrific memories of war and striving to accomplish their own goals.  Set in the beautiful English countryside.

And Then There Were None (1945) - I thought I'd found a later version of this with Oliver Reed that I remembered enjoying, but it ended up being in another language with subtitles, so I searched again and found this.  I don't remember ever seeing this one.  It was pretty good.  It had a bunch of lesser actors I remember from several other old movies (the maid from Rebecca, Uncle Willie from Philadelphia Story, etc.) and Barry Fitzgerald (he was the matchmaker in Quiet Man, among other fine roles).  Definitely an enjoyable adaptation.

In the hopper are a WWII movie and a veterinarian movie set in Devonshire, plus we still have a couple Sherlock Holmes movies to watch.

Saturday Reading Wrap-up - 8/9/25

 Hello!  Sorry I forgot to post last week.  You didn't miss much. Trust me.  Unfortunately, not much has gone on since the last wrap-up either.

I did pick up one new ebook. It's a fantasy I saw on a FB group and it sounded interesting, so I downloaded it.  We'll see.  Due to DNFs, I only have two unread ebooks left. One is an SF and the other is a fantasy.

No Books Read.  That's right, folks, I haven't actually finished reading anything since the last update.  Derp.

DNFs:

8/8/25 - legal thriller - free.  Maybe I was just so irritated after the previous DNF that this one irritated me more than it would've otherwise, but it did irritate me, so there ya are.

8/8/25 - YA Action/Adventure/?? - free.  It was going along fine, introducing all the hero characters and the general premise, but then the scenes with the villains started and meh.  I actually got about a quarter of the way into this one, which cheesed me off.  I hate wasting time on books I won't finish.  Bleh.

8/1/25 -  YA UF - free.  It made me remember why I hated high school.

Currently reading... I think I'll start the next Hercule Poirot story so I can finish that omnibus.  We'll see.

Have you been reading anything good lately?

Thursday This n That

Earlier, I saw some silly ditz 'digital content creator' saying that you don't have to be a writer to be an author.  Wuh?

Yesterday, I read a headline that went something like 'law students think tests are discriminatory' because they're too hard.  Like the person who posted the link said 'tests are supposed to help discriminate between the capable and the incapable', so yeah.

What is with all these words that people are putting asterisks into now?  I write a bunch of crime fiction, but words like rape, murder, killer, etc. are forbidden?  I don't even like putting asterisks in when I type fuck, I'm sure as hell not going to do it when I talk about rape or murder or killers.  Pardon me, but fuck that shit.

I wrote a note to FB in answer to their limiting my number of marketing posts.  Now, I don't seem to be getting the block, but I'm also not getting any reach.  Brilliant.  Wish in One Hand has traditionally flown out the door when I run a freebie.  I got 21 downloads the first day, then I wrote FB that note and the next day I got 4.  :eyeroll: :facepalm: :headdesk: 

Just got our Brightspeed 'final bill' thing.  They owe us $24.  It would've been nice if they'd just put in a check.  But no.  I'll most likely have to call them and struggle to get my credit back.  Fun.

I've been watching The IT Crowd.  It's pretty funny.  If you're a nerd, which I am.

I'm up to 50 miles walked for the year.  I posted that to FB and one of my friends (someone I've 'known' since like 2006 when I got my first blog) said something like 'well, you better turn around and go home'.  This is why we're friends.  LOL

If I wore jeans, I'd be buying myself a pair of American Eagle right now.  Sometimes I miss wearing jeans.  :shrug:

Dollar General has the best ice cream.  It's Caramel Swirl.  Caramel flavored ice cream with a ribbon of smooth caramel.  No chunks.  It's awesome.  I'm not a fan of chunks in my ice cream.

Got anything to add today?

At The Movies with B.E.

Time again for another trip to the movies.  This past week, I watched:

All of Me (1984) - Steve Martin and Lily Tomlin.  If you haven't seen this, you're missing out on a hilariously fun movie.  Lily plays a rich lady who's dying and has plans to put her soul into a beautiful young woman, but the vessel falls out a window and hits her lawyer - played by Steve - in the head.  So, now she's in his body with him and he has to get her out.  Comedic genius on the part of Steve Martin with some cute verbal bits by Tomlin.

Swallows and Amazons (2016) - this was a sleeper I found when I was just looking for something nice to watch.  It's about these kids in England on holiday in 1935.  They go to a home on a lake and get permission to take the boat out to this island, where they stay the night, but there are other kids who have already claimed the island and they have a 'war'.  It all works out and they become friends, and they defeat some Russian spies, too.  We really enjoyed this one.

Death on the Nile (1978) - Peter Ustinov as Poirot.  Need I say more?  Personally, I prefer David Suchet as Poirot, but I love Peter Ustinov, so I couldn't really go wrong watching this. It's a pretty good adaptation, if you can get past the '70s kitsch. 

The Mirror Crack'd (1980) - this had a star-studded cast, including Elizabeth Taylor and Rock Hudson.  Angela Lansbury made a fine Miss Marple.  (Margaret Rutherford was the best Miss Marple, but that was a longer time ago.)  I've never seen another adaptation for this book, so I guess this would be the best one.  Not the best Agatha Christie based movie I've ever seen though.  Fun, but I'm not a huge fan of Elizabeth Taylor.

Jesse Stone: Benefit of the Doubt (2012) - Another awesome Jesse Stone.  Although this one did kind of leave things hanging that weren't addressed in the next and final movie of the series.

Jesse Stone: Lost in Paradise (2015) - This was the final Jesse Stone movie.  It was a pretty good one, even if it did start out a little sad.  I was sorry to have finished this series of movies and I definitely know we'll be revisiting these at least once a year from now on.

Murphy's Romance (1985) - a cute little romance between a divorcee (Sally Field) and a older pharmacist (James Garner).  She moves out to a small town in AZ, I think, to start her own ranch and escape from her life in CA.  She meets the pharmacist and over time they become friends.  Then her ex shows up like he's trying to win her back, and it's clear to everyone but her that Murphy 's tossed his hat into the ring for her.  Anyway, it all works out in the end.  HEA abounds.  Yay.

That's it for me... I know, it was a lot.  It'll taper off this week, as I'm running out of movies and watching more shows.  Eh, maybe I'll start talking about those, too.  We'll see.  Did you watch anything good lately?

At the Movies with B.E.

Okay, twice in a row.  This is a trend.  Anyway, here are the movies I watched in the past week:

The Name of the Rose (1986) - I hadn't seen this one in a really long time, but I remembered liking it, so when I found it, I slapped it on my Save list.  I still liked it.  Hubs totally didn't.  To each his own, and perspectives, etc.  It's rare that we differ on things, but when we do, the thing is entertainment.  :shrug:

Jane Eyre (although strictly speaking this was a mini-series in 1983) - this is the version with Timothy Dalton as Rochester :swoon:.  I saw this one back when I was living in Illinois, so it had to be 1992.  There's a lot cut from this to make it short enough for TV, but all in all, a pretty faithful adaptation of the book.  And did I mention Timothy Dalton :swoon:?  Hubs enjoyed it, but he had a completely different and interesting perspective on the whole thing, which actually made the discussion of it enjoyable.  He really didn't appreciate Rochester's treatment of Jane.  I never thought about it that way before.

Jesse Stone: No Remorse (2010) - this was #6 in the series.  It was pretty damn good, too, like the others.  Something about Tom Selleck in this role makes me happy.  I really need to pick up the books.

Jesse Stone: Innocents Lost (2011) - another good installment of Jesse.  

Invitation to a Murder (2023)  - searching through all the things to watch, I stumbled across this.  The blurb for it sounded interesting, and it delivered.  It seemed like it was going to be a knockoff of And Then There Were None, but ended up as a nice, all around nod to Agatha Christie.  Not a thrilling movie, but a good one.  

Have you watched anything good lately?  Got any good suggestions for things I might want to watch?  

Saturday Reading Wrap-up - 7/26/25

 Yeah, yeah, it's been a while, but then again, it's been a while since I finished a book.  Here's what's happened since last I posted a Reading Wrap-up...

I picked up one new ebook.  It's by a popular author that I've been wanting to read and when I saw he put this on sale for 99c, I snapped it up.  That one's a SF.  I also still have a YA action/adventure, a UF, and a legal thriller to read.  Yay!

Books Read:

28) The Devil's Angel by Margaret Bernard (7/26/25) - UF*# - 5 stars.  New to me and underappreciated.  Free off Amazon's Top 100 Contemporary Fantasy free list.
Review: "I really enjoyed reading this. It has an interesting premise, a thrilling plot, and intriguing characters. The end and lead-in to the next book(s) was so-so, but not enough to lose it a star. All in all a good book."
Note: Available in Audiobook.

DNFs:

7/15/25 - UF - free.  Thinking about it now, I'm pretty sure this was written by AI.  At least I hope no human writes like that.  It was pretty bad.

7/15/25 - UK thriller - free. I don't remember exactly why I DNF'd this puppy.  Lame characters, poor dialogue... something like that because the premise was good.  :shrug:

Currently reading... since I just now finished the UF, I haven't started another ebook.  I'm still working on that Hercule Poirot omnibus.  One story left to go on that, I think.

What have you been reading lately?

Thursday This n That

Sawyer has been playing with his favorite jingly-ball for about an hour now.  He bats that thing around the house like Pele going down the field for a goal.  Yes, he woke me up, but it's hard to be mad at him when he's being good and playing.  I'd rather have him doing that than scratching the bedroom walls and meowling at 3am, as he is wont to do.

My freebie thing this week isn't going great.  On the other hand, people have been reading DE in KU, so I can't be too depressed.

Getting old blows.  I mean, it's better than the alternative, but come on.  The strange thing is I still feel young in my head.  My body is a whole 'nother story.  

I can't believe Ozzy Osbourne died.  I was never a huge fan of his, but he was a fixture of our culture for so many years.  Now, there's a case of Heaven won't take him and Hell's afraid he'll take over, if ever there was one.  (A joke... I hear he was a nice person, and his antics on stage in the '80s were staged or rumors or PR.)

Also, Malcolm Jamal Warner (Theo from The Cosby Show) died this week.  That was a real shocker.  He was younger than me.  The poor man drown.  =o(

Hang on a sec... I need a smoke and some more coffee... Thanks, I needed that.  Now where was I?

Why are the katydids so freakin' loud this year?  Holy crap, it's like an alien invasion out there.  Or Day of the Triffids.  OMG, Howard Keel was in that movie?  I haven't seen it since I was a kid, but I never would've thought Keel was the MC.  By the way, the Joshua Tree National Park looks like a scene out of DotT.  Creepy.

Wow, that was some free range thinking right there, eh?

No matter what you read about what's going on in Gaza, do your research.  A certain section of the populace are putting forward blatant lies.  Don't get suckered.  Actually, that pretty much goes for everything.  Do your due diligence and don't look like a moron.  K?

Finn and Sawyer are rasslin' now.  Finn sounds like he's being killed, but he's the aggressor.  One of these days, he'll really be in trouble, but because of his prior drama, I won't react to his caterwauling.  Cat who cried wolf and all that, doncha know.

Okay, since I've bookended this post with cats, I should probably let you go.  Have a great day wherever you are.  :hugs:

At the Movies with B.E.

Okay, so not really 'at' the movies.  I'm home.  I'm always home and I don't do theaters anyway.  Still, I've been watching some things that I'd like to share.  Maybe I'll make this a regular post.  We'll see.

The first movie up is A Birder's Guide to Everything (2013).  If you know me, you know I'm a bird nerd, so when I saw this title on the Roku movie list, I had to stick it in my Save pile.  I sat down to watch it on Saturday morning.  It was fun and lighthearted in places, serious and heartwarming in others.  It's about a teenage guy who's into birding.  He sees a duck he hasn't seen before and he's pretty sure he's identified it as one thought to be extinct, so he convinces his friends to take a trip to try and find the duck again.  So, here's these three boys and a photography-nerd girl on the road, looking for a duck, and things happen.  It's kind of a coming-of-age thing, and a friendship thing, and a family thing with birds.  Think The Big Year combined with Stand by Me.  The main character was played by an actor I've never seen, but the MC's best friend was Spencer in the newer Jumanji movies.  And Ben Kingsley was in it, too.  I really enjoyed it.  So far, Hubs hasn't seemed interested in it, but I'll convince him to watch it.  I think he'll enjoy it almost as much as I did.  

Next up is an older title... The January Man (1989).  It's a quirky suspense starring Kevin Kline and Mary Elizabeth Mostrantonio.  Kline plays a disgraced police officer called in to help with a crime the NYPD hasn't been able to solve, because he's some kind of crime-solving savant.  Once a month, someone is strangling a young woman and this has been going on for 11 months now.  (Which is a little far-fetched that they wouldn't bring in help earlier than after the 11th death, but I rolled with it.)  The movie also has Alan Rickman, which was cool.  Love Alan.  I'd seen this ages ago and loved it, and it held up pretty well to my memory of it.  (Although, I don't remember the nudity.  Maybe I'd only ever seen it cut for TV. :shrug:  Eh, it was the '80s.)  Hubs liked it, too.  

We also watched several Jesse Stone movies.  They star Tom Selleck as an ex-LAPD officer who's now the police chief in a small town in Massachusetts.  They're gritty and suspenseful, and we really enjoy them.  We'd seen a couple before, but we're trying to work our way through them all. We're going to start over from the chronological beginning and re-watch the first five before we move on to #6, just to get everything straight in our heads.  (And because they're awesome enough to re-watch.

Next up on my watch list was Dragonslayer (1981) - a movie I haven't seen since my folks took me to the theater to see it when it came out (probably because my brother wanted to see it and I begged to go, too).  It's still pretty awesome.  A group of townsfolk show up at a sorcerer's place to get him to come take care of their dragon problem, but something happens and the sorcerer's apprentice ends up going instead.  There's daring-do and magic, surprises and romance, and a happy ending.  Yay!  

Finally, I found a movie from 1980 that my father loved.  I mean, he must've loved it because he rented it like every other weekend.  And I loved it, too - but hey, I was a kid.  It's called Hawk, the Slayer.  I made it about 15 minutes in before I gave up.  It's really really bad.  Hokey beyond measure.  Bad acting.  Bad writing.  Bad special effects.  So bad I'm not even linking to it.  Sorry Dad, but it's the truth.  Even for 40 years ago, it's bad.

All in all, not a bad week for movies.  I have several movies ready to go on my Save list for the coming week.  No spoilers in case I do this again next week.  I really should spend less time in front of the tube, but I doubt that'll happen.  

Saturday Reading Wrap-up - 7/12/25

 Not the best reading week I've ever had, but not the worst either, so let's get right to it.

No new books.  I still have 6 unread ebooks - three urban fantasy, two thrillers, and a YA action/adventure.  And of course, I have scads of unread hardcopies in case of emergency. ;o)

Books Read: 

27) Space Academy Dropouts by Phipps & Suttkus (7/6/25) - SF humor*# - 5 stars. New to me and underappreciated at the time of download.  Free off the Book Barbarian newsletter.
Review: "This is a pretty neat story, with loads of fun characters. I really enjoyed reading it."

No DNFs.

Currently reading... the next story in that Poirot omnibus.  I'm on The ABC Murders.  I'll probably finish it today and then read another ebook.  The omnibus has two more stories after this.  Unfortunately, I didn't notice when I bought it that Death on the Nile has damage to the last third or so of the story - like the top quarter of all the pages was ripped out.  I won't be able to read that.  Good thing I've already read that story in other formats, and I've seen the movies.  Still, damaged books make me sad.  =o(

Okay, your turn.  What's been on your reading plate this week?