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Music – Lioness at Large

Music

Literature Reviews

Ngaio Marsh: Swing, Brother, Swing (aka A Wreath for Rivera)

Blurb: Lord Pastern and Baggot is a classic English eccentric, given to passionate, peculiar enthusiasms. His latest: drumming in a jazz band. His wife is not amused, and even less so when her daughter falls hard for Carlos Rivera, the band’s sleazy accordion player. Aside from the young woman, nobody likes Rivera very much, so […]

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Literature Reviews

Q1 / 2022 Reading Recap

Well, as it turned out 2022 began as 2021 had ended — all work and no play, albeit with the addition of a hospital detour to boot.  (Nothing serious, just way more painful and, all told, protracted, than it had any right to be.)  So I’m back to posting one summary post for the first […]

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Literature Reviews

Donna Leon: The Jewels of Paradise

Blurb: Caterina Pellegrini is a young Venetian musicologist hired by two competing cousins to find the truthful heir to an alleged treasure concealed by a once-famous, but now almost forgotten, baroque composer. Sworn to secrecy, Caterina can solve the mystery only by searching through the papers contained in the composer’s two chests that have not […]

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Fun and Games Literature Music Reviews

Ngaio Marsh: Off With His Head (Death of a Fool)

Festive Tasks Master Update Post HERE Festive Tasks, Door 19 — Community Traditions & Folklore: Read a fairy tale, or folklore story, or books based on either.   Marsh’s third (de facto) holiday mystery, though not exactly set on Christmas but on and around Winter Solstice — because here her focus is on creating (with […]

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Fun and Games Lifestyle Music

Holiday Music

Festive Tasks Master Update Post HERE Festive Tasks, Door 8 Another multi-page post; as before, one page per task. Task 1: What’s your favorite type of music to listen to during the festive season? Rock? Classical? Opera? Country? Definitely classical. I have Classic FM playing in the background pretty much all year around anyway (when […]

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Fun and Games Literature Reviews

Ngaio Marsh: Death and the Dancing Footman

Festive Tasks Master Update Post HERE Festive Tasks, Door 15 — Correspondence: Read a book that includes a billionaire, a villain, or some other character who is especially smug or pretentious.   This isn’t strictly a Christmas mystery — the holiday never gets an express mention — but it has all the trappings of a […]

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Fun and Games Literature Music Reviews

Edmund Crispin: Swan Song

  Festive Tasks Master Update Post HERE   As part of my Detection Club reading project, I am slowly and intermittently making my way through Edmund Crispin’s Gervase Fen series: not, so far, in publication order, which hasn’t made much of a difference in the books I’ve read to date, though in this particular instance […]

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Cooking - Food - Drink Fun and Games Lifestyle Literature Music

Festive Tasks: Door 7 – Gifts

  Festive Tasks Master Update Post HERE   Task 1: Are you a fan of gift giving, or is it a burden? Have you figured out a way to balance the commercialization of the season with the desire for a sense of meaning (whether religious or not)? Tell us about it and, if you want, […]

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Literature Music Reviews

May 2021 Reading Recap

Still a lot of work on the back end of the blog, including on my “featured authors” pages (see the right column on the main Literature page and the introduction of my April 2021 recap post).  So, contrary to plans, still no new posts in my alphabet blogging series in May.  However, the time-consuming back end […]

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Cats Literature Music Reviews

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 […]

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Cats Literature Reviews

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 […]

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Literature Reviews

Ngaio Marsh: The New Zealand Books, plus Grave Mistake

The first book by Ngaio Marsh that I ever read happened to be her very last one, Light Thickens, which is as much concerned with a production of Shakespeare’s Macbeth as it is with the murder of one of the cast members.  To a mystery fan without any Shakespearean inclinations, this might have proved fatal, […]

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Literature Reviews

Christianna Brand: Death of Jezebel

Print copies of Christianna Brand’s fourth Inspector Cockrill mystery, Death of Jezebel, are notoriously hard to come by even at collectors’ prices, never mind within the price range affordable to the average reader, and it baffles me why that should be the case — it’s easily one of the strongest entries in the series.  Luckily, […]

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Blog Lifestyle

An Alphabet of My Likes and Dislikes: “F”

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 […]

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Fun and Games Lifestyle Music

A Retro Playlist for a First Day of Carnival Party: 1970s-80s Disco & Dance Music

24 Festive Tasks: Door 10 – First Day of Carnival, Task 2: Burn a few calories from the meal above [in Task 1: your First Day of Carnival meal] and have a dance party.  Tell us what songs / artists get your toes taping.  Let’s build a playlist! Let’s go full on retro and make […]

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Fun and Games Lifestyle Literature

A Bubble Bath and Books

24 Festive Tasks: Door 5 – Bon Om Touk, Task 1: Bon Om Touk takes place on the end of the rainy season with the change of the water’s flow on Tonle Sap River.  The flow direction changes twice a year.  The change in November symbols the calm of the earth that is no longer […]

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Fun and Games Literature

Ngaio Marsh: Off With His Head (aka Death of a Fool)

24 Festive Tasks: Door 10 – First Day of Carnival, Book: Read a book about starting over, rebuilding, new beginnings, etc., or a book where things go “BOOM!”, or with fireworks on the cover.   I decided on a minor Ngaio Marsh mini binge, following up Tied up in Tinsel (my NYE book) with another one […]

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Fun and Games Literature Reviews

Brother Cadfael: An Ideal Teacher

24 Festive Tasks: Door 14 – Diwali, Task 2: Goddess Lakshmi in her eightfold form is referred to as the Ashta-Lakshmi.  Vidya-Lakshmi is the 7th of her 8 forms.  “Vidya” means knowledge as well as education, not just degrees or diplomas from the university, but real all-round education.  Thus, this form of Goddess Lakshmi is […]

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BookLikes Imports Cats Cooking - Food - Drink Fun and Games Lifestyle Linked Items Literature Music

Creature Comforts

24 Festive Tasks: Door 9 – World Philosphy Day: Task 3 How do you stay zen / sane over the holidays or in other stressful periods? My only salvation in stressful times: Creature comforts.  Lots of them.  And BookLikes! 2019 was a hell of a year in virtually every respect, and I don’t mean that […]

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BookLikes Imports Cooking - Food - Drink Fun and Games Lifestyle Linked Items Music

My All-Time Favorite Gifts

24 Festive Tasks: Door 20 – Christmas, Task 4: What was the best Christmas / holiday present you ever received – the one that meant the most to you or gave you the greatest joy?  (This can be anything; objects / material gifts as well as something someone did for you, or anything else – […]

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