I saw a wonderful production of A RAISIN IN THE SUN yesterday. What a powerhouse that play still is all these years later. I also watched a wonderful Moroccan movie called THE BLUE CAFTAN on Criterion Channel. And a pretty good movie, DUMB MONEY at the theater. It's about the GAMESTOP investors.
Watching BAND OF BROTHERS on Netflix. I never saw it last time. Bravo to Ethan Hawke for a wonderful episode of RESERVATIONS DOGS. Also watching GOLD on Paramount.
We have had wonderful weather. Day after day of it.
Reading Emma Cline's novel THE GUEST. It is a great idea for a novel, a bit like SIX DEGREE OF SEPARATION.
Have appointments to get all three shots this week. Hope it's not too much at once.
So what are you up to?
19 comments:
Covid, RSV and flu? If any make you a bit woozy, spacing them out might not be the worst idea. Or as li'l RFK wants you to believe, run while you can. Or Ron DeSantis will yell at you.
Lotta rain in the mid-Atlantic, less here than in many nearby locations...but at least the temperatures are less Saharan/Death Valleyesque.
Was belatedly picking up on something you mentioned a few days back, that you'd never encountered THE SAINT MYSTERY MAGAZINE. As the Galactic Central pendant to the FictionMags Index notes:
"The Saint Detective Magazine was launched in Spring 1953 and published a story in each issue featuring Leslie Charteris' Saint, after whom the magazine was named. The title was changed to The Saint Mystery Magazine as of Nov-1958 and to The Saint Magazine as of May-1966. The new name didn't last long and the magazine folded in October 1967 after a very creditable 141 issues.
"It was briefly revived in 1984, but only managed a meagre three issues before folding. Much more successful were the overseas editions - a British Edition also ran for 141 issues, initially just reprinting material from the US magazine, but later publishing original material of its own. [An Australian edition followed...]
"There were also two hybrid magazines, which are often thought of as anthologies--The Saint's Choice ran for 7 issues in 1945/46, while The Saint Mystery Library ran for 14 issues in 1959/60."
Comprehensive cover gallery, as well: http://www.philsp.com/mags/saint.html
Hans Steffan Santesson, previously editor of the Unicorn Mystery Book Club, and of most of/the later years of FANTASTIC UNIVERSE and of the short-lived US edition of NEW WORLDS SF, was SAINT editor for most of its run, and the '60s issues of THE SAINT were particularly easy to find in secondhand stores when I began scouring for them in the '80s...the magazine was generally of good quality, though the usually ghosted Saint stories were also usually the weakest aspect (some were reprints from early days when Yin/Charteris would write them himself)...along with more Usual Suspects in the magazine, including the likes of Avram Davidson, such occasional cf writers as Theodore Sturgeon and Fritz Leiber were more likely to appear there than in EQMM or AHMM or MANHUNT. (The last issue of FU also had the first and only Jorge Luis Borges story, a metafictional historical crime-fiction vignette no less from THE UNIVERSAL HISTORY OF INFAMY, to first appear in English in a fantasy/sf magazine.)
My most relevant post: https://socialistjazz.blogspot.com/2013/03/what-did-jorge-luis-borges-and-mike.html
Hans Stefan Santesson, that was.
Looks like you had a busy and productive week, Patti; the Autumnal Equinox was working its magic.
As we get closer to hibernating season, bears are beginning to become a local problem. One got several neighborhood trash cans (including ours) on Thursday. My suggestion that autorities lay out several pic-a-nic baskets to trap them was met with disdain; doesn't anyone watch classic television any more? Speaking of animals, Firday was World Rhinoceros Day so Mark was hand-feeding Soman the Indian rhinoceros because Mark is cool. On one of his semi-regular jaunts to find and photograph venomous snakes, he came up empty-handed in the snake department, but took some great pictures of a mother scorpion carrying her babies on her back.
When Jack's feeding tude was removed three weeks ago, the hole in his stomach did not close properly (normally, it would close within hours). Not only is it leaking stomach acid, but whenever he drinks, some of the liquid comes squirting out. Surgety is being scheduked to repair it.
On other family doings, Christina actually interacted with adults, something that is remarkably difficult with her schedule of kids, animals, household chores, and work. Her evening out included dinner, a comedy show at a local theater, and talking with grown-ups.. She got home from this wild fling at ten pm, way past her normal bedtime, overslept, and got up at 5:15 the next morning (an hour later than her usual rising time). Amy has been helping friends get their new home in order and has found that she really enjoys home repair. That's going to be helpful because her mother was trying to move an air conditioning unit from a kitchen window to a dining room window and dropped the unit out the window onto the lawn. The AC cord ripped an eighteen-inch gash on the kitchen wall. **sigh** Amy is still tryiong to get used to her 10-hour works shifts, because that extra hour is a killer. Walt will be headed to the Everglades in a couple of weeks with a camera. Christina, Jessie, and Erin will be heading to New Orleans about the same time to catch a performance of WICKED.
The library book sale was this weekend. I picked up 37 books, while Christina (that piker!) only bought 25. Christina, Jessie, and Erin have beentracking their reading with an online app this year. So far, Christina has read 47 books, Jessie 68 books, and Erin 112 books. I just did a quick count and I beat their combined scores with 338 books read thus far this year.
Adding to that count this week were three Monk novels by Lee Goldberg (completing my read of all fifteen books): MR> MONK GOES TO HAWAII, MR. MONK AND THE BL;UE FLUE, and MR.MONK AND THE TWO ASSISTANTS. THE TIN ROOF BLOWDOWN was a Dave Robicheax novel by James Lee Burke, taking place during and just after Katrina his New Orleans. FIX by J. A. Kornrath, Ann Voss Peterson, & F. Paul Wilson brought Wilson's Repairman Jack tegether with Kornrath and Peterson's female government assassin Chandler to save New York from a deadly plague. Among the collections and anthologies I finished were Bill Pronzini & Jack Adrian's HARD-BOILED, Murray Leinster's THE RUNAWAY SKYSCRAPER AND OTHER TALES FROM THE PULPS, the anonymously edited 1888 collection WEIRD TALES. GERMAN, Joe R. Lansdale's THINGS GET UGLE: THE BEST CRINME STORIES OF JOE R. lANSDALE, Marjorie Bowen's THE BISHOP OF HELL AND OTHER STORIES, , and Peter Cannon's tribute to writer Frank Belknap Long LONG MEMORIES AND OTHER WRITINGS. Currently reading Rex Stout's long-lost first mystery, THE LAST DRIVE; published as a six-part serial in GOLF MAGAZINE (!) in 1916 and unknown until researchers discovered it in 2011; Stout repurposed the murder method for his first Nero Wolfe novel, FER-DE-LANCE, eighteen years later.
I hope you have a glorious week as we head into October, Patti. Stay safe.
No one will ever beat Jerry for the number of animals and family members that turn up in his posts. Nor Todd for the number of magazines mentioned (mostly now gone). My only mags these days are New Yorker, New York, and Atlantic Monthly. And mostly they sit as decoration rather than reading material. Shame. And no animals at all.
I hope you don't have a lot of side effects from your shots, Patti. I agree with you about A Raisin in the Sun; it really has a lot of power to it.
We will probably get our Covid-19 Booster shots later this week when they're available at our local Rite-Aid pharmacy. I ordered the free Covid-19 test kits from covidtest.gov. Western NY Covid rates keep climbing. We wear our masks whenever we leave the house.
Our weather-guessers are predicting a rain-free week. The temps are pleasant: low 70s. Low humidity. No Canadian smoke right now.
Diane is busy preparing for the Family Reunion we're hosting this upcoming weekend. Diane's sister, Carol, will be driving here from Ohio and staying with us for the Reunion weekend.
I wish I could score as big as Jerry House did at that Library Book Sale. There's one in October, but last year I only found a couple music CDs there. Stay safe!
Yeah, I rarely get anything much at our library sales. Although there are books for sale all the time and I sometimes get something good there.
Beautiful blog
Oh, yes, BAND OF BROTHER was excellent. We saw it 20 (?) years ago.
After plenty of good weather - 70s, sunny, low humidity, nice cool breeze - we are stuck in the Tropical Storm Ophelia mess, with rain and wind and cold, raw weather ALL DAY Saturday and Sunday and today. Yuck. Since June, we've been well above the normal rainfall (which is good, but not all at once).
Really enjoyed the Eagles Farewell Tour concert, with Steely Dan opening. We've seen each of the groups a number of times, including on the same bill at Citi Field (with the Doobie Brothers) in July 2017. The new (opened less than two years ago) UBS Arena near Belmont Park (just across the Nassau County line in Elmont, NY) is nice. We got prepaid indoor parking, but had to wait nearly half an hour until all the cars on the lower levels left before we could get out after the concert. We stayed in the Long Island Marriott (yes, that meant driving the wrong way after the concert), which gave us a nice evening snack, a good buffet breakfast, and an upgrade to a tenth floor suite.
Reading Ann Cleeves's THE RAGING STORM, the third in her Matthew Venn series. These are set in North Devon, rather than the Northumberland of VERA or the Scotland of the SHETLAND series. They are well written but Venn leaves me cold as a character. Also reading a Captain Leopold short story collection by Ed Hoch.
We'll pick up our new glasses at Costco tomorrow, but will wait another week or two to get the new Covid shot.
MHz Choice is showing the 2013 Israeli series HOSTAGES. Five armed masked men burst into the house of surgeon Yael Danon and tell her that unless she makes sure the Prime Minister dies during the minor surgery she will perform on him, her family will be killed. (And if the plot sounds familiar, yes, there was an American failed remake.) While she is maneuvering, her family has problems galore. The husband owes so much to a loan shark (we're guessing gambling problems) that their house is being foreclosed (though she doesn't know that yet). The 17 year old daughter is (again, secretly) pregnant. And the grifter younger son is selling test answers online, among other scams. It's certainly tense.
Some people rated WHO KILLED ERIN CARTER? (Netflix) as the Worst Series Ever. It isn't that bad (yet, at least), though there is a big credibility gap. Five years ago, our title heroine (?) took her five year old daughter and absconded from England. Now she is a substitute teacher in Barcelona, with a new husband who's a nurse. But in the supermarket with her daughter, she foils a robbery and kills one of the robbers, who seems to recognize her (which is so far out on the credibility scale). One big problem for me is, she is a tiny thing, 5'2" and weighs next to nothing, so it is believable that she keeps getting beaten and thrown around. Yet, she always seems to come out on top at the end. The husband is totally clueless, but his best friend, a cop, keeps helping her clean up for some inexplicable reason. I suppose eventually we will find out what her secret past was. It reminds me of a much better American series, IN FROM THE COLD (also Netflix). In that one, a former Russian spy living undercover as a New Jersey housewife, is discovered and forced back into her old life.
Still watching the other series mentioned previously.
The Lions had a good win on Sunday makig them 2-1.
I didn't see amy movies this week and watched few tv shows.
Read mostly short fiction this week-Patricia Highsmith, Gene Wolfe, Michael swanwick. Still reading Silver Nitrate. Have the new Stephen King and new Adrian Mckinty on hand.
I liked the first two of the Ann Cleeves new series so will look for this one.
I missed the DL game (at RAISIN) but will try to catch the next one. I have got to start Silvia's VELVET IS THE COLOR OF THE NIGHT for my book group.
Patti, you have been enjoying some good entertainment lately. I have never seen BAND OF BROTHERS. And good weather too. Our weather has been strange lately, much cooler than usual for September here. I wonder how long that will continue.
Jerry, I am sorry to hear about the problems related to Jack's feeding tube removal. I hope all goes well with the repair.
We went to the Planned Parenthood book sale three more times in the last week, including yesterday. I got a huge number of books yesterday because the books were half price on the last day and there were a lot of them that appealed to me. At least 10 short story books, several books by fiction authors I would like to try. Glen got some very good history nonfiction books (one of them titled SOLDIER, SAILOR, FROGMAN, SPY, AIRMAN, GANGSTER, KILL OR DIE); also Nick Hornby's TEN YEARS IN THE TUB, and THE WHALEBONE THEATER by Joanna Quinn. Both Glen and my son stayed under 10 books each day. I bought way more than that each day.
We are still watching THE CHELSEA DETECTIVE and DEADLOCH. And ONLY MURDERS IN THE BUILDING. We are only a few episodes away from finishing the original PERRY MASON series. We recently bought a DVD set of THE INVADERS with Roy Thinnes, and will start watching that when we finish Perry Mason.
The only books I finished this week were TODAY A WOMAN WENT MAD IN THE SUPERMARKET, which I did a Short Story Wednesday post on, and I CAPTURE THE CASTLE by Dodie Smith. I did not care that much for I CAPTURE THE CASTLE. There were interesting parts, but I kept waiting for it to get better, and was disappointed.
Glen read THE CLASSICS RECLASSIFIED by Richard Armour; he is now reading 1941: FIGHTING THE SHADOW WAR: A DIVIDED AMERICA IN A WORLD AT WAR. He bought both of those at the book sale, although the Richard Armour book was a replacement for a previous copy, not in as good shape.
Rereading all the comments, I am sorry I missed Jerry's report of the feeding tube issue.
I have been running around all day today. I take an exercise class Monday morning, which is actually just a DVD from the seventies, I think, and half of the exercises on it seem downright bad for me. All this toe pointing. Why was that thought of as necessary. Then I visited a friend in a senior housing place. It looks like a resort.
I think I watched a lot of Perry Mason in the sixties but have never seen it since. How does it hold up? My mother was crazy about Raymond Burr and loved Ironsides too.
Have read some Nick Hornby but I don't remember that one. Is it essays?
I am starting to get very worried about the 2024 election. Trump seems to be shifting to a more reasoned agenda. All fake of course.
Patti, I believe the Nick Hornby book is essays/articles written for a column in Believer Magazine called Stuff I’ve Been Reading. I read a similar book, Polysyllabic Spree, several years ago.
We enjoy the Perry Mason episodes from the sixties. Glen can identify a lot of the cars they drive, Perry and Paul Drake drive a lot of convertibles. We like the characters. The stories in the last season (nine seasons, some of them with 30 or 40 episodes) don't seem as good as the plots in the earlier ones, but still fun to watch.
Megan wrote a few pieces for Believer a while ago.
I am going to look for the PM. Probably one of the channels I have. Thanks!
Yes, she wrote a piece on FLOWERS IN THE ATTIC.
I assisted at the Rotary Club's latest fundraiser which was a music festival with four bands. 14.5 volunteered for hours on Saturday and I took Sunday to recover with naps and extra water. I've not heard how well we did as fundraising. This was the first year and can take time to build.
Listened to and enjoyed Ben Sanders's AMERICAN BLOOD. Akin to James Sallis and Cormac McCarthy with the Southwest setting and amoral people. Same sparse writing as Sallis.
Not as much TV. HULU does not want to work on the living room TV and I've not updated the login on my tablet. Need to fix that so I can resume watching the final season of ARCHER.
I love James Sallis' writing. McCarthy is darker to me.
Patti, if you're up earlyish or relatively late, your local broadcast station in the MeTV network will also have a PERRY MASON "classic" episode for you. "Weekdays at 8 AM Weeknights at 10:30 PM" as their website notes it. WDIV's third channel, and for your cable or other array, this: https://www.metv.com/wheretowatch/affiliate/505
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