Wednesday, January 07, 2026

Short Story Wednesday: Deal-Breaker, Allegra Goodman, From the New Yorker

 Pam is a woman in her fifties, unmarried but dating a man with a ninth-grade child. She has kept John a secret from her parents because she knows how excited they would be at the idea of a step-grandchild. On a visit, the truth comes out and they are thrilled to learn Pam and John are taking the child to a museum. But that doesn't happen because of a fall his ex-wife takes. Pam takes this hard because it's happened before. And you can see his first family will always take precedence over her and their relationship will probably not survive it.

This is part of a collection from Goodman about the Rubenstein family that is coming out soon. It didn't stand very strong on its own, there was too much you didn't know about the family, but it will probably be a good collection. What I have read from Goodman over the years has been enjoyable.  

Todd Mason 

George Kelley 

Jerry House 

TracyK 

Steve Lewis

Monday, January 05, 2026

Monday, Monday

 

Favorite TV: PLURIBUS, THE PITT, SLOW HORSES, ADOLESCENCE, THE LOWDOWN, THE STUDIO, MR. SCORCESE, THE GILDED AGE, PLATONIC,  TASK

Favorite movies 

  • Poster for One Battle After Another (2025)

    1

  • Poster for Sentimental Value (2025)

    2

  • Poster for Peter Hujar's Day (2025)

    3

  • Poster for Hamnet (2025)

    4

  • Poster for Blue Moon (2025)

    5

  • Poster for Twinless (2025)

    6

  • Poster for Lurker (2025)

    7

  • Poster for Sorry, Baby (2025)

    8

  • Poster for Marty Supreme (2025)

    9

  • Poster for Nouvelle Vague (2025)

    Cannot remember a colder, snowier period this early. 

    Reading John Updike's letters and Lily King's new novel.

    What are you up to?  

Wednesday, December 31, 2025

Short Story Wednesday:DIME DETECTIVE MAGAZINE

From James Reasoner's blog


Sunday Morning Bonus Pulp: Dime Detective Magazine, July 1936


Walter Baumhofer did some great covers for DIME DETECTIVE during this era, and here's another of 'em. The lineup of authors in this issue is top-notch, as well: Carroll John Daly with a Vee Brown story, T.T. Flynn, Frederick C. Davis, William E. Barrett, and Robert Sidney Bowen. Excellent writers, every one of them. DIME DETECTIVE was a consistently superb pulp during the mid-Thirties. 
 
Jerry House 
TracyK 

Monday, December 29, 2025

Monday, Monday

 


A very nice holiday with lots of good food, movies, reading, etc. Megan and I saw MARTY SUPREME, which was packed and I enjoyed it although it was not the best movie of the year for me. We went to Meadowbrook Theater with the whole family and saw A CHRISTMAS CAROL. They do it every year. Megan just beat the storm back to NY.

My arm is still hurting me so I might have to try and get a cortisone shot. Hope that works. I don't want to go to CA with a sore wing, as Phil always called it. And taking all this pain med (OTC)is making me nauseated. 

Sorry to see PLURIBUS end for the year. But glad THE PITT is coming back.  

Kevin did well his first semester at Madison. He is still hoping to design computer programs or games but so are all his classmates.  

What about you? 

FROM JEFF

 

I'm not sure I should bother with a long post as I have not been able to post anything here the last couple of weeks.  But I suppose I could send you a copy and have you post it for me.  For whatever reason, your blog seems to hate me.

Things are generally good, other than the weather, which is horrible. They predicted 4 to 8 inches of snow, with some forecasters going as high as 11 inches.  But we got lucky again, as Central Park got just over 4 inches and we only got an inch or two down here, enough to coat the streets and cover the cars, but not much more.  The plows came by repeatedly.

What with the weather, we've been staying in a lot. Jackie is plowing through SUITS. two episodes a day - she's near the end of season 6 - and I've been reading a lot of short stories.  We leave for Florida on Saturday morning, so will spend a couple of days before that packing. We're not from the Diane Kelley "Pack Two Weeks in Advance" school.

We watched various favorite Christmas episodes of British shows we like, plus A Christmas Story, It's a Wonderful Life, Meet Me In St. Louis and Love Actually, and we have our usual New Year's Eve movies set - Two For The Road and When Harry Met Sally... .

We're basically trying to finish shows where we're in the middle of a series - watched the last two BLUE LIGHTS episodes last night, and it was excellent.  Also have CHICAGO FIRE (season one), NCIS (season 21, I think), THE ASSASSIN, PLURIBUS, THE MORNING SHOW, LANDMAN (series 2), among others. If episodes are separate, we don't worry about it.  We'll be able to watch Netflix and the Amazon-related channels in Florida, but not Peacock (Chicago Fire).


Thursday, December 25, 2025

Wednesday, December 24, 2025