Category Archives: books

2025, books, Fantasy, History, Mysteries, Uncategorized

Alternative Histories

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The holidays brought me a nice cache of giftcards so yesterday I had a “gift card day”.  Dunkin for breakfast on the way to knee therapy.  Blicks Art Supply.  Barnes & Noble.  Taco Bell.  A great day.

I spent about an hour wandering around Barnes & Noble.  As a dedicated library patron, I have to admit that I haven’t been inside a bookstore since last year when Jacque’s sister was signing her latest book at Once Upon a Crime.  Nothing against bookstores but my pocketbook prefers the library system.

Anyway…  as I was checking everything out, I found two tables that had various history books piled up.  I’m assuming that B&N stores get table recommendations from headquarters with a few title suggestions but that most of the books are picked for display by store employees.  (That’s how it was back in my day in the bookstore.)  The history tables had the look of employees having a bunch of fun.  History of the World in Twelve Shipwrecks, History of America in Ten Expeditions, History of the World in Six Glasses.   Clearly this is a trend and it reminded me of a couple of titles I’ve read – A History of the World in 100 Objects and Orchid Muse: History of Obsession in Fifteen Flowers.  100 Objects started as a BBC radio series – I stumbled upon in once it was published in book form.  It looks at objects from all over the world, from as long ago as 2 million years.  It was absolutely fascinating.  Orchid Muse was a book I read last year as part of my Rivers & Ridges Book Festival experience.  The author was at the festival so I got to hear her speak – a lot of extra little details that weren’t in the book. 

I didn’t realize that history in a set number of lessons was a thing but if you do a quick internet search, you can find a glut of these books.  47 Borders, 50 Books, 50 Failures, 12 Maps, 500 Walks, 50 Lies.  I could go on but this is enough and it makes me wonder if authors are starting out to do a “number of things” or if they have an area of interest and publishers/agents push them in that direction?

Any other suggestions for “History of the World in”…….?

2026, books, Media, Mysteries

A Good Thing After All…

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One Good Thing.  That’s the name of my journal – short and sweet – one good thing a day.  Every now and then if I just can’t whittle it down, then two.  Doesn’t have to be earth-shaking. 

Every now and then, like yesterday, I am just not feeling it.  Gray and cold.  No good news in the world. Found out my supplement program has stopped doing the $50 of pharmacy freebies.  My checks haven’t come in yet.  The mail didn’t arrive.  I started three different books and none of them lit any kind of spark.  Just a crumby day.  What in heaven’s name was going to be my one good thing?

Back in December I went to get my hearing aids checked before my 3-year warranty was up.  It was pretty cursory but when “Opal” (name changed to protect the innocent) asked me if I had downloaded the app, I remembered when Jacque was helping Lou with his hearing aid once at a Blevin’s meeting using his phone.  Opal and I discussed it for a bit, what it could do for me and if it would fit my needs.  And then she said the magic words…. “do you ever listen to audio books?”  You all know I perked up immediately.  Turns out that even without the app, I can have audiobooks (and also my phone) stream through my hearing aids!  Who knew.

My phone does have the Libby app on it already but it hasn’t too useful.  If I had it too loud, YA would comment.  During the summer, when windows were open, traffic made it hard to hear sometimes.  If I would get up and leave the room, I’d have to remember to grab the phone.  I didn’t use this feature often.  But through my hearing aids, it’s a whole `nother world!  No irritating YA, no traffic noise, no having to remember to take the phone.  I can walk all over each floor of my house before I get out of range.  It’s amazing.

This has been life-changing for me and I’m trying not to regret that I spent three years not knowing about this.  Oh well.  Even though Opal clued me into this in December, since one of my “meh” books today was listened to via my hearing aids, I’m gonna take it!

One good thing for anybody else yesterday?

2025, books, Family, holidays, Kids, Uncategorized, Weather

Forts

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DIL texted me on Sunday to report they had arrived safely in Brookings from Mankato the evening before and were spending the blustery day playing board games and reading books.

She said that 7 year old Grandson was reading his favorite DogMan books in a blanket fort made up of sofa pillows and his infant sister’s bouncy chair. Any fort in a storm!

I loved blanket forts as a child. The sofa cushions made great walls. My farming cousins and I tried to erect forts in trees in the groves, in the granary, anywhere we could find. It sure kept us busy. Perhaps this explains the allure of tents.

I was always so happy when we had snow days from school, as that was the only time my mom made waffles. We still call them Blizzard Waffles. Husband says he has sourdough discard and we can have waffles on New Year’s Day!

What were your favorite ways of making forts? How do you spend stormy days at home?

2025, Automotive, books, holidays, Technology

Park at Your Peril

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When you have fifteen kinds of cookies on the front porch during the holidays, you’re always open to ways to spread the wealth.  I usually make cookie platters for my local library, my vet and my hardware store guys.  It’s fun and between assembling the platters and delivering, it takes less than an hour, as all the recipients are very close by.

This past year, I really tested the Inter-Library Loan department of the library system so I decided that I should provide some holiday cheer for them.  I found out that ILL works out of the downtown library (not much of a surprise) and do a straightforward 9-5 schedule. 

I spent several weeks waffling about how to get the cookies downtown as I detest driving downtown and I detest paying a fortune for parking even more.  As of Monday afternoon, my plan was to take the bus.  A long trip two ways but only $2 out of my pocket and the bus stops literally at the front entrance door of the library.  I even went to the bank to get a few one dollar bills.

As Monday afternoon wore on, I wavered more and more about this plan.  I checked online and found that the library parking is only $4 for the first hour.  I even called the library; the librarian confirmed that this was true and that you could park near the elevators and come right up to the atrium.  She also said that if you were in and out in 15 minutes, there was no charge.

Of course, yesterday when the GPS got me to the library, that particular lot was full.  I went around a two block area about five times – no on-street parking open and all but one ramp had their “FULL” lights lit up.  Grrrr.  I considered just going home and dismantling the platter but I figured, I’d come this far….    At this point, I was pretty stressed.  There were two machines at the entrance of the only open ramp near the library and it took me a bit to figure out how to get a ticket.  Found a parking spot near an elevator but when I pushed the door open to the outside world, there was a small sign saying you needed the QR code from your parking ticket to get back in.  Luckily I hadn’t let that door shut, so I went back to my car to grab the ticket.

Delivery went really well but when I exited the parking ramp (about 20 minutes later), they charged me $17.  OUTRAGEOUS.  At this point, I just wanted to get home but my GSP wouldn’t open until I was actually out of the ramp.  More stress.  The fortunate part was that once I got going in the right direction downtown, I did know how to get home.  Even being directionally-challenged.

It’s all I can do to no look up “parking-induced anxiety” on the internet.  Not sure if it would make me feel better to know I’m in good company or if it would make me feel any more weird. And we’ll have to wait to see if ILL ever gets holiday cookies from me again.  Please don’t hold your breath.

Any directionally-challenged issues or parking anxiety for you this month?

2025, animals, books, Uncategorized, Words

Murder at Gull’s Nest

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As you all know, a lot of things strike my interest where books are concerned – recommendations from friends, stories online and titles.  Give me a good title and I’m all in.  At least to start with.

I see a lot of books on Facebook these days.  And as if they are tempting me personally, there are a lot of catchy titles.  Here are a few that I have on hold at the library right now that I chose simply from their titles:  The Dead Husband Cookbook, Inside of a Dog, Seven Reasons to Murder Your Dinner Guests, And Then We Hit a Rock.  Based on my luck with these kinds of picks, most of these probably won’t get finished.  And Then There Were Scones only made it about three chapters.  Awful.

So I approached Murder at Gull’s Nest by Jess Kidd with a bit of trepidation.  I think if the library started a section of Cozy Mysteries, it would probably be shelved there and to be fair, it did tick off all the cozy “boxes”, but not in a way that is run-of-the-mill way.  The characters are real, the story is compelling and importantly I wasn’t able to figure out the murdered until almost 75% of the way through the book.

And even more importantly, the language was fabulous; I do love a good turn of phrase:

  • “Outside, the sky is brightening, which is of no concern to the room, daylight being dissuaded by heavy velvet drapes and the somber yews that crowd about the window.”
  • “Nora steps into a cheap café and orders a pot of tea. When it arrives it is what she hoped for:  decent and strong with a skin a mouse could skate on.”
  • “Humans can’t tolerate emptiness for long… if I’m empty then I can receive, if I can receive it means it comes from somewhere outside of me, if it comes from outside of me I’m not alone!”
  • “Jesus, who would want to read about a failed old nun, with her stipend, and second-hand shoes.”

So I’m recommending this book to everybody and have requested a couple more Jess Kidd titles

Have you read something recently just because it had a good title?  How did that turn out?

2025, books, Fantasy, Mysteries

What She Said…

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At a funeral in September, the father of my deceased friend came over to talk to the rest of us from her book club.  He was proud of how intelligent she had been and how much she had loved reading.  He surprised us by asking us each if we had a favorite book and what character would we like to be in that book.  At the time I answered A Christmas Carol, which I read every December and that I would like to be Mrs. Cratchit.  She was considered a good person but wasn’t a doormat.  This is my favorite quote from her “I wish I had him here.  I’d give him a piece of my mind to feast upon, and I hope he’d have a good appetite for it.”

But I’ve had a couple of months and I have a couple more.  I always admired Helen Burns, the little friend of Jane Eyre who dies from mistreatment at the “school”.  “It is not violence that best overcomes hate – nor vengeance that most certainly heals injury.”  Good words for our current times.

While The Martian is one of my favorite books of all time, I wouldn’t want to be Mark (the main character).  A little too distressing for me.  I want to be Melissa Lewis, the captain of the mission, who turns around when they’re almost back to Earth when they find out that Mark is still alive.  “All right team, stay in sight of each other.  Let’s make NASA proud today..”   Even though I’m sure she got court-martialed when they all got back home, even after saving Mark. 

I’m not sure which character in Wrinkle in Time I would want to be but my favorite quote is early on in the book when Meg’s mother says “But you see, Meg, just because we don’t understand doesn’t mean that the explanation doesn’t exist.”  My hero Neil deGrasse Tyson has said something very similar.

Do you have a character you’d like to be?  Or a good quote from a book you like?

2025, books, Fantasy, Movies

Way Back Monsters

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If you were at the Blevins Book Club on Sunday, then you knew this was coming. 

I found an annotated copy of Frankenstein which among a ton of other information, included a list of all the Frankenstein (and quasi-Frankenstein) movies.  You all know I can’t keep away from something like that.

Of the first three Frankenstein films, only the first one from 1910 has survived.  It’s a short and is interesting because the “creation” is not made by putting body pieces together but by pouring a bunch of chemicals into a big vat and then heating it up.  For 1910, it’s actually some very interesting visual effects.  (It’s about 13 minutes long so it’s easy to satisfy your curiosity on YouTube, but too long to post here.)

The monster is an interesting blend of clown, yeti, caveman and monster from the black lagoon and doesn’t actually kill anyone before he seems to repent his very nature and “disappears” into the big mirror in Victor’s study.  But the pantywaist nature of Victor was spot-on.  See the monster and fling yourself out of the room and fall prostrate on the bed.  Monster comes into the room – fall prostrate on the floor.  Next time you see the monster, fall back prostrate in your chair.  The film maker clearly got that part of the book right.

Anyway, the next two films, Without a Soul (1915) and Il Mostro di Frankenstein (1921) have been lost and not much is known about them. The plot of Without a Soul included a dream sequence in which the doctor lives the Frankenstein story fairly closely, but then he wakes up.  The only thing really known about Il Mostro is that many consider it the first Italian horror film.

That’s it up until Universal came up with their massive laboratory, lightning technology and green, neck-bolted creature in 1931.  Which they promptly copyrighted, even going so far as to sue someone planning some kind of Without a Soul re-make.  

There are supposedly some references/appearances of the monster in two films by Sidney Lanfield in 1936 but I’m not willing to watch One in a Million or Sing, Baby, Sing again. 

Have you seen any Frankenstein movies?  Any favorites?

2025, books, Fantasy, Food, Gatherings, Mysteries

When the Moon Hits Your Eye..

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If  you don’t like this post – it’s Jacque’s fault!

As those of you in Blevins know, I sometimes like to bring something for the potluck that aligns somehow with one of the books we’ve read or is a favorite of the author.  Walter Mosley got espresso chocolate brownies.  Louise Penny got miniature croissants with chocolate sauce on the side.  For the book Broken for You by Stephanie Kallos I was very pleased with my cupcakes adorned with shards of “glass” – made by melting Jolly Rancher candies and then breaking it up into sharp-looking pieces.

This month I was in the mood to do something fun but wasn’t sure what to make.  I didn’t think I’d get an answer in time from John Scalzi about his favorite food and I figured the only way I would find out about Mary Shelley’s favorite would be if she communicated from beyond the grave.  Not my cup of tea.

I decided that moon pies would be fun, except that all the commercially available moon pies have gelatin in them- that’s why I haven’t had a moon pie since I was a kid.  So I headed to the internet and found a relatively straightforward recipe using marshmallow cream.  Marshmallow cream is easy to make but purchasing a jar of marshmallow cream from the grocery store is even easier.  I made the graham biscuit dough, rolled it out, cut it with a crimped cutter and baked.  That turned out to be the easy part.  Marshmallow cream is incredibly futzy to work with.  First I tried to pipe it from a pastry bag, but getting the cream into the bag was just about impossible and having a star piping tip was worthless as the cream settled into a star-less blob anyway.  I abandoned the bag and just used a spatula but at this point had cream all over.  I had to put the sandwiches in the freezer for a bit and then I started the chocolate.  I was really having trouble just dipping the whole cookie so I switched to icing the top and the sides with a spatula instead.  I had chocolate EVERYWHERE (think both hands, handle to the double boiler, the counter, spoon, the spatula, the floor….).  I had to use my teeth to pull up my sleeves at one point.  There’s something to be said about having stuff made in factories with enrobing machines:

But in the end, it was very satisfying to make them and they turned out to taste great… quite rich so if I ever try this again, I’ll make them smaller.  Of course, we’ll have to read another book about the moon!

Tell me about a favorite book and what food you would bring to represent it to a potluck!

2025, books, gardening, Music, Nature, Poems

Autumn Musings

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My BFF suggested we go see Ann Reed last week; I haven’t seen Ann in a live performance for many years so I was excited to go.   She has such a huge repertoire, I hate to admit that this is still my favorite:

She (along with Joan Griffith) did a great set and in between many of the songs, she shared haiku with us, some of hers and some that she had found along the way.  When I went looking on the internet afterwards, I discovered she has a book entitled Our Daily Breath: Haiku & Photographs.

During my search I found a website, Haiku Universe, that will sent you a daily haiku or short poem.  You know me, I couldn’t resist.  It’s been fun the last week or so to get a little haiku every day.  Here’s one I particularly liked (by Tomas O’Leary):

then it came to me
like a bomb in my lunch bag –
it was my day off.

So I’ve had haiku on my mind.  Here are a couple of mine:

My orthopedists
Are both about twelve years old.
Having bad knees stinks.

It’s that time of year –
All of my hard work, yard wise
Fills up many bags.

Do you have any fall clean-up/organizing that needs doing?  Any haiku or poems speaking to you?

2025, books, Movies, Science, space, Travel, Uncategorized

Sci Fi

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I have never been a big fan of Science Fiction books or movies. I like Star Wars and Star Trek, but I really don’t consider them real Science Fiction, as they just seem to be Westerns that happen hundreds of years from now.

As I was contemplating the recent 550 mile drive from Dickinson to Luverne, I thought about one of the few Science Fiction books I love from my preteen years, A Wrinkle In Time by Madeleine L’Engle, in which she describes people traveling through space using a tesseract, which is instantaneous travel by making folds in space and time. It would have been been so great to just roll up the Great Plains and get to Luverne instantaneously instead of driving eight hours! I suppose would have gladly accepted an offer from Scotty to “beam me down” to Luverne as well.

What are your most favorite and least favorite Science Fiction stories and movies? Where would you like to be teletransported?