A quick one as I am getting home late from seeing a play RADICAL EMPATHY. As you can imagine it was not a comedy. Also saw the movie FOLK TALES about a school in Norway that tries to get teens to get off their phones and out of their heads and learn some skills, like dog-sledding.
Reading ABSOLUTION by Alice McDermott. Also THE BODY KEEPS THE SCORE (Van Der Kolk)
Watching THE GILDED AGE (HBO), CODE OF SILENCE (Britbox) and various other things.
A very nice three days here. Hope you are enjoying your weather too.
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I have good news, we have a new cat. His name is London, he is two years old, and he weighs ten pounds. We are used to small female cats. We got him on Thursday afternoon, and he seems to have adjusted very well to life in a new home in the last three days. He loves to be petted and will butt your hand to remind you to pet his head. He purrs a lot and loudly. He doesn't meow (at least not since he has been with us), but he chirps and trills a lot. The only bad habit he has (so far) is he wants to eat our food.
We have been watching ELEMENTARY, BURN NOTICE, and DEATH IN PARADISE. All of those are shows we are rewatching. A new show is THE LIBRARIANS: NEXT CHAPTER, which I don't like as well as previous LIBRARIANS shows but they are still fun.
Glen finished the short story book, THE ROOM OPPOSITE AND OTHER TALES by F.M. Mayor. He liked a lot of the stories. He is still reading BORN TO BE POSTHUMOUS by Mark Dery, the Edward Gorey biography, and is about a quarter of the way into it. At this point, he is finding it slow. He will probably find another book to read along with that one, maybe a mystery.
After I finished reading NINEFOX GAMBIT by Yoon Ha Lee (science fiction), I moved on to PERPLEXING PLOTS: POPULAR STORYTELLING AND THE POETICS OF MURDER by David Bordwell. I am enjoying it although the writing is very dense. There are later chapters on Erle Stanley Gardner and Rex Stout, Patricia Highsmith and Ed McBain, and Donald Westlake and his Richard Stark books, which I am looking forward to.
Congratulations on the new cat, Tracy! What's angle/argument of the Bordwell book?
Tolerable temperatures over the last couple of days here have been welcome, but can'i expect that to last. How are you finding THE GILDED AGE? And ABSOLUTION? Am arguing with myself as to whether to drive the 40 miles to Phoenixville to hear/see Lisa Scottoline and her daughter speak of their new books, then back...met LS briefly when she came to the Fairfax County (DC suburbs) Borders I worked at, decades back; very pleasant and I like her work...80 miles round trip for a reading. Toll roads, no less.
Still working through the HAVE I GOT NEWS FOR YOU UK episodes, and have caught up with the US audio podcast pendant series episodes so far.
Of course he wants to eat your food, Tracy. He's a cat. And there is food. And congrats to London for finding a great family!
We've been alternating between blistering heat and driving thunderstorms. Have not been beaching -- too hot, too wet, sharks in the water, and a bad bacteria count, Ptah!
The only thing of importance this week was Kaylee's wedding (she's evidently spelling her name woth "K" now) -- a low-key courthouse wedding on Thursday morning. They wanted to keep it simple, but we crowded out the small chapel and some had to view it from the hallway. Flying in for the festivities were Jessie's best friend from high school as well as two of Jessie's sisters-in-law. Both husband and bride were joyous. He has a difficult history with his family -- his mother evidently abandoned him when he was a teenager and they have not spoken in years. No one from his family showed up, but our family contingent more than made up for it. (As an aside, I find it very sad when famiies do not act like families.) But it was a happy day and we are thrilled beyond imagining for both of them; he's a great guy. Evidently they had decided to get married mainly for legal reason, although making a firm commitment to each other was also a large part of it. If anything happened to him (God forbid), they did not want his mother making all the legal decisions, most likely against his wishes. This makes a lot of sense to me, who got married a lo-o-ong time ago merely because we were in love. I wish them both a long and bright future as they go together to meet all the challenges that might face them.
I have my television back now and will be catching up on a lot of programs over the nexr week. What I don't have back is my bank account. Following my ransonware attack, my bank no longer recognizes my passwords. I'll be spending most of today on hold as I phone the bank to try to straighten everything out.
Not much reading this week, for obvious reasons. I read T. Kingfisher's southern Gothic horror novel A HOUSE WITH GOOD BONES (my FFB this week), a John Farris horror novel, YOU DON'T SCARE ME (a sort of metaphysical ghost story), and Janet Evanovioch and Steve Hamilton's THE BOUNTY, the final book in Evanovich's Fox & O'Hare series of spy-guy caper novels; most of the earlier books were written with Lee Goldberg and had that distinctive Goldberg touch; one book was written with Evanovich's son, Peter, who evidently came up with the plot for this one, steering wildly away from the original vibe of the series and ending up with a slam-bang action novel with echoes of the filn NATIONAL TREASURE. **sigh** I also finished the Frits Leiber collection, HORRIBLE IMAGININGS. I've given up temporarity on Stephen Graham Jones's THE BUFFALO HUNTER HUNTER; i may get back to it later. Or not. I'm about halfway through the more than 2200 listings in Lee Goldberg's UNSOLD TELEVISION PILOTS, and having a great time with it.
Speaking of great times, that what I wish for you during the coming week, Patti. Stay safe.
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