Animals
J.R.R. Tolkien: The Hobbit – Performed by Andy Serkis
Like its magnificent sequel, The Hobbit is, I think, many things to many people: the first exposition of the universe that would become Middle-earth; prelude to The Lord of the Rings; a bite-sized visit to Middle-earth whenever you don’t feel up to the full blow of the War of the Ring(s); one of the most […]
Read More
Kylie Logan: The Scent of Murder
Blurb: The way Jazz Ramsey figures it, life is pretty good. She is 35 years old and owns her own home in one of Cleveland’s most diverse, artsy, and interesting neighborhoods. She has a job she likes as an administrative assistant at an all-girls school and a volunteer interest that she’s passionate about — Jazz […]
Read More
Martha Grimes: Jerusalem Inn
Festive Tasks Master Update Post HERE Festive Tasks, Door 13 — Holiday Shopping: Read a book about someone who works retail, or that has a retail establishment on the cover (shop, café etc). Of all the early Richard Jury books by Martha Grimes, this is probably my favorite — not only because it’s got, […]
Read More
Amy Pershing: An Eggnog to Die For
Festive Tasks Master Update Post HERE Festive Tasks, Door 17 — Food & Drink: Read a book about food, or where the main character is a chef, gourmand, or bartender, brewer or distiller. Sigh. I think it’s fair to say at this point that food-related cozy mysteries aren’t necessary my kind of thing, at […]
Read More
Donna Andrews: The Twelve Jays of Christmas
Master Update Post HERE Festive Tasks, Door 4 – Decorating: Read a book that has an object that can be used as a Christmas decoration on the cover. I started reading Donna Andrews’s Meg Langslow books a few years ago, with a Christmas book as it happened, and and this point returning to her […]
Read More
Karen Baugh Menuhin: Murder at Melrose Court
Festive Tasks Master Update Post HERE Door 12 — Northern Hemisphere: Read something with snow or ice on the cover or read a ghost story. I read the second book of this series, The Black Cat Murders, as my (you guessed it) “Black Cat” square book for this year’s Halloween Bingo, and while there […]
Read More
THINGS SIMON’S CAT IS THANKFUL FOR (Thanksgiving Collection)
Happy Thanksgiving, Everybody!
Read More
Festive Tasks: Door 5, Task 4 – Charlie, the Gothic Romance Virgin Eater
Festive Tasks Master Update Post HERE Task 4: (Cheeky) If you have a cat (or can borrow one from a friend), take a picture of him/her looking particularly fierce and ready to eat a naughty child. If you really want to go all out, photoshop a giant version of your cat onto a picture, prowling […]
Read More
Peter Temple: The Broken Shore
Festive Tasks Master Update Post HERE Festive Tasks, Door 1 — Southern Hemisphere: Read a book set in the Southern Hemisphere, or that has a beachy scene on the cover. This is the first book of Peter Temple’s second series, after the Jack Irish books (set in Melbourne); here, featuring a burned-out cop named […]
Read More
Martha Gellhorn: Travels with Myself and Another
Festive Tasks Master Update Post HERE Festive Tasks Door 10 – Peace, Book: Read a book in which the ending of a conflict is a major theme. Gellhorn is a sharp observer and she has a way with words — I’d just wish she’d liked people and, for that matter, the places she […]
Read More
Martha Grimes: The Dirty Duck
Festive Tasks Master Update Post HERE Festive Tasks, Door 5 – Animals, Book: Read a book that has an animal on the cover, or involves someone who works in conservation. I reread the first two books from Martha Grimes’s Richard Jury series — The Man With a Load of Mischief and The Old […]
Read More
Festive Tasks: Door 5, Task 2 – Cats
Festive Tasks Master Update Post HERE Task 2: Show us your feline and non-feline pets. Try to get as many of them into a picture as you can without causing mayhem or the fur to fly and share it with us. If the animals just don’t feel the love, multiple photos are ok too, […]
Read More
Halloween Bingo 2021: Card, Spells, Markers and Book Pool
Phew! I’ve had blog display issues for the better part of August due to a stupid WP plugin acting up (and of course, it was a plugin allegedly intended to “facilitate” the import of content into my chosen theme — haha, right), but luckily they were resolved just in time for Halloween Bingo! (Gosh … […]
Read More
Mystery Writers of America Presents: Odd Partners
A few years ago, I read a Mystery Writers of America short story compilation named Face Off, which featured short stories where two different authors’ series detectives / protagonists teamed up to solve a given crime, with each of the authors writing part of the respective story. I thought that was an interesting (and surprisingly […]
Read More
An Alphabet of My Likes and Dislikes: “W”
This is a post belonging to a new blogging project — the title is pretty much self-explanatory, I think; the project’s introductory post can be found HERE. Credit for the idea: BeetleyPete. As always, the only thing linking the two items mentioned in this post in my mind is that they both start with the […]
Read More
Arthur Conan Doyle: Sir Nigel
I didn’t quite want to limit my “birthday boy” look at Arthur Conan Doyle’s work to the predictable Sherlock Holmes binge, so I decided to take a look at one of his historical novels in addition. Well, I suppose I have to hand it to Sir Arthur for mastering, with panache, genres as diverse as […]
Read More
Catherynne M. Valente: Space Opera
Catherynne M. Valente wrote Space Opera as a dare, after a publisher (Saga) had said it would accept a novel from her based on the Eurovision Song Contest sight unseen. The novel had been sitting on my TBR pretty much ever since it was published, and what with May being both the month in which […]
Read More
April 2021 Reading Recap
First things first: The persistent bug preventing followers / readers to comment on my posts straight off the post (i.e., other than by using the WP Reader) has finally been weeded out, thanks to my hosting service’s IT team … so you can, at last, comment even if you’re not using the WP Reader. (I […]
Read More
Ursula K. Le Guin: No Time to Spare
Ursula K. Le Guin is an author I’ve only started to discover very recently. I knew that she fought hard against the qualification as a genre (sci-fi / fantasy / speculative fiction) author; and she has always had all my support to the extent that “genre” is used as synonymous with “less worthy” (or, as […]
Read More
An Alphabet of My Likes and Dislikes: “U”
This is a post belonging to a new blogging project — the title is pretty much self-explanatory, I think; the project’s introductory post can be found HERE. Credit for the idea: BeetleyPete. As always, the only thing linking the two items mentioned in this post in my mind is that they both start with the […]
Read More