2021 Book Facts - just the stats

Kindle - 52

Print - 10, and most were childrens books

By men - 26

By women - 33

By both - 3

By the years:

1890s - 1

1900-09 - 2

1920s - 2

1940s - 7

1950s - 6

1960s - 1

1980s - 2

1990s - 1

2010-19 - 28

2020s - 12

2021 Book Facts - the rest of the list

 I read 10 fiction books this year.

The first I read was The Swiss Summer which I wrote a bit about here. I am currently reading a second book by Stella Gibbons, and am just as happy with it. Thanks again to the Dean Street Press for publishing these wonderful works by women whom most of us have not heard of. I also read three by Molly Clavering. You may read about her here.

I read three works of Japanese literature that I thought so original, so different from anything I have read before. 

I thought The Bishop's Wife by Robert Nathan to be quite odd, not anywhere near as good as the movie!

I wrote about the Boy... by Charlie Mackesy here. Not impressed.

The other fiction was the prequel James Runcie wrote - the prequel to the Grantchester mysteries, called The Road To Grantchester. It was excellent.

Only 3 non-fiction but all of them were utter gems! The Splendid and The Vile, Citizens of London, and A Child's Christmas in Wales. 

8 children's books. Most were so-so but Cynthia Rylant's The Old Woman Who Named Things and The Railway Children by Edith Nesbitt were wonderful.

1 mystery thriller still scares me to think of it.

1 book of poetry - A Shropshire Lad by A.E. Housman. I was sure I would love it, but I didn't. I loved some lines but was not interested in much of it. 

I'll save the stats for another post.

2021 Book Facts - the mystery edition

In 2021 I read 62 books, of which 39 were mysteries.

Finished the Harriette Ashbook series that I raved about last year.

Read two more E.C.R. Lorac books. Not sure if I have read all the ones available, but will check.

Read the latest in the Lady Hardcastle series by T.E. Kinsey. I see there will be a new one next year.

Read the first two in the Mydworth series by Matthew Costello and Neil Richards, and really enjoyed them! I want to read more this year. I claim to not like "historical" mysteries or fiction but yet I seem to read and like a lot of it! 

Another new series I like is the Heathcliff Lennox series by Karen Baugh Menuhin. And yes, you are right in wondering if she is related to Yehudi Menuhin. Her husband is his son. The author has a great website here.

I do like the Inspector Knollis books by Francis Vivian from the 1940s and 50s. In both this series and the mysteries by the Radfords, E. and M.A., there isn't personal information. The detectives just get on with solving cases and they are brilliant at it. No family life, no feelings - just the facts which can be very soothing! Another old book is by Christopher Bush, The Plumley Inheritance, first book in the Ludovic Travers series. This has been out of print for ages and is published by the wonderful, wonderful Dean Street Press. There are a whole lot more available! 

For some reason I haven't been able to figure out, I never watched the Grantchester series on PBS. When I heard the new season was coming up, I had my own little TV marathon, and watched them all. Years ago, I read the first two books in James Runcie's series. My little reports on them are here. Since it had been (gulp) seven years, I decided to read them again and then continue with the others. There was a treat in that he wrote a prequel published in 2019, so I read it first and then the rest of the books. I was in reading heaven within the pages of these books. If you have only read the books or watched the television version, they are very, very different. Both are extremely enjoyable but not the same.

And to end my year in mysteries, I read the latest entries in Karen MacInnery's Snug Harbor series; Harriet Steel's Inspector de Silva series; and Jacqueline Winspear's Maisie Dobbs series. I have written about the Whitstable Pearl series by Julie Wassmer. I just love them. Jack Murray's Kit Aston series (another historical mystery) is very appealing. I read the first and have more ahead of me. Last but definitely not least, are three books in the Devonshire series by Michael Campling with a different and interesting pair of amateur sleuths. 

My Year in Books - 2021

I saw this here, and I thought what a fun thing to do. And it was!

My Year in Books 2021.

How do you feel?  The Old Woman Who Named Things

Describe where you currently live:  On -  A High Wire in Nuala

If you could go anywhere, where would you go?  A Child's Christmas in Wales

Your favorite form of transportation:  The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse - the last named

Your best friend is: Dear Hugo

You and your friends are: The Railway Children

What's the weather like?  The Splendid and the Vile

You fear: the Valley of Lies

What is the best advice you have to give?  "Murder Isn't Cricket"

Thought for the day:  Sidney Chambers and the Persistence of Love

How would I like to die?  Sidney Chambers and the Shadow of Death (23rd Psalm)

My soul's present condition:  (and again) A High Wire in Nuala

Merry Christmas!

 I want to thank my most loyal and kind readers. I love it that you are always there even when I rarely do a blog post. I am so hoping for, as The Kinks say, better things in the coming year. So here is our 2021 Christmas card for you. It may not have come through the mail but it is just as heartfelt.

Setting up the crèche

Band Aid - Do They Know It's Christmas 1984

1984. Look at all those young faces! There is a list of the performers here.

Amy Grant: NPR Music Tiny Desk Concert

A little Amy Grant for your Christmastime listening pleasure.

A Child's Christmas in Wales by Dylan Thomas

 

Each year I bring out this dear little book with all the other Christmas books. I don't think I have ever read it in its entirety until now. Most people seem to catagorize it as "prose poetry". Whatever it is called, I loved it so much, and I find myself admiring the film version even more because it is very true to Thomas' words. I've written about the movie here, if you would like to read it.

I had forgotten that I gave it to my mother.

It clutches at my heart and makes me cry - the way she wrote "my Nan". She died three years later.

Two years earlier, Tom had given her this album on the first Christmas after my father died.

I heard her play "And Death Shall Have No Dominion" a lot, and I think it was a comfort to her. There's a line "Though Lovers Be Lost, Love Shall Not". Deep fellow that Mr. Thomas.

And that depth comes through in "A Child's Christmas in Wales". His words convey so much feeling. He writes of "the distant speaking of the voices I sometimes hear a moment before sleep". Do we all hear those voices?  Of our long-dead parents or grandparents? And we never can remember because we fall into sleep right afterward? 

The heartfelt parts are balanced by the humorous remembrances like Miss Protheroe asking firemen who have been fighting a fire in the house, "Would you like anything to read?"

Thomas offers litanies of "useful presents" - "engulfing mufflers of the old coach days, and mittens made for giant sloths" and "useless presents" - "bags of moist and many-colored jelly babies" and "a tram-conductor's cap and machine that punched tickets". "And a packet of cigarettes: you put one in your mouth and you stood at the corner of the street and you waited for hours, in vain, for an old lady to scold you for smoking a cigarette, and then with a smirk you ate it."

After an adventure outdoors with friends, they "returned home through the poor streets where only a few children fumbled with bare red fingers in the wheel-rutted snow and cat-called after us..."

If you type his name into the blog's search, you will find more by Dylan Thomas, including the words that end both this book and the movie;

"Looking through my bedroom window, out into

the moonlight and the unending smoke-colored snow,

I could see the lights in the windows

of all the other houses on our hill and hear

the music rising from them up the long, steadily

falling night. I turned the gas down, I got 

into bed. I said some words to the close and

holy darkness, and then I slept."

Blow, blow thou winter wind (When Icicles Hang) - John Rutter, Cambridge...

The album cover shown is not where I know this song from. I have it on Candlelight: Seasonal Reflections and Celebrations. Such a beautiful song for the season. There are some notes in the "heigh-ho" verse that make me think of the Call The Midwife theme. The title comes from a Shakespeare poem in Love's Labor's Lost.

When Icicles Hang: 1V. Blow, Blow Thou Winter Wind by John Rutter 

Blow, blow thou winter wind,

Blow, blow thou winter wind, 

Thou art not so unkind, 

As man's ingratitude, 

As man's ingratitude, 

Thy tooth is not so keen, 

Because thou art not seen, 

Although thy breath be rude, 

Although thy breath be rude, 

Heigh-ho! Sing heigh-ho! unto the green holly; 

Most friendship is feinging, most loving mere folly:

Then heigh-ho, the holly! This life is most jolly. 

Freeze, freeze thou bitter sky, 

Freeze, freeze thou bitter sky, 

That does not bite so nigh 

As benefits forgot, 

As benefits forgot, 

Thou the waters warp, 

Thou sting is not so sharp 

As friend remembered not 

As friend remembered not

Heigh-ho! Sing heigh-ho! unto the green holly; 

Most friendship is feinging, most loving mere folly: 

Then heigh-ho, the holly! This life is most jolly.

 

Red Sox Nation is sad today

Calendar of Crime 2022

I have been very slowly getting back into blogging more often. And what better way to keep myself going in this endeavo(u)r than to join a challenge. I am excited to participate in this one, offered by My Reader's Block. I am going to copy out the details here. I almost always have a mystery going so it isn't a "challenge" in the real use of the word, but it is a way to participate in the community of readers.

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 22, 2021

Calendar of Crime 2022

 

photo credit: Ellery Queen's Calendar of
Crime (Signet edition)

Ready for another year of mysterious months and dangerous days? I'm pleased to sponsor the 2022 edition of the Calendar of Crime--with slight variations in the prompts. Just a reminder that this mystery-based challenge allows readers to include any mystery regardless of publication date. If it falls in a mystery category (crime fiction/detective novel/police procedural/suspense/thriller/spy & espionage/hard-boiled/cozy/etc.), then it counts and it does not matter if it was published in 1892 or 2022. 

 

 

 

A larger version of the spreadsheet may be found HERE. Click on the 2022 tab at bottom.

 

The Rules
~Challenge runs from January 1 to December 31, 2022. All books should be read during this time period. Sign up at any time. If you have a blog, please post about the challenge. Then sign up via the form below and please make the url link to your challenge post and not your home page. If you don't have a blog, links to an online list (Goodreads, Library Thing, etc.) devoted to this challenge are acceptable OR you may skip that question.

~All books must be mysteries. Humor, romance, supernatural elements (etc.) are all welcome, but the books must be mysteries/crime/detective novels first.

~Twelve books, one representing each month, are required for a complete challenge.

~To claim a book, it must fit one of the categories for the month you wish to fulfill. Unless otherwise specified, the category is fulfilled within the actual story. for instance, if you are claiming the book for December and want to use "Christmas" as the category, then Christmas figure in some in the plot. Did someone poison the plum pudding? Did Great-Uncle Whozit invite all the family home for Christmas so he could tell them he plans to change his will?

~The "wild card" book is exactly that. If July is your birth month (as mine is), then for category #9 you may read any mystery book you want. It does not have to connect with July in any way--other than a July baby chose it. The other eleven months, you must do the alternate category #9 if you want to fulfill that slot.

~Books may only count for one month and one category, but they may count for other challenges (such as my Vintage Scattergories Challenge). If it could fulfill more than one category or month, then you are welcome to change it at any time prior to the final wrap-up.

~Books do not have to be read during the month for which they qualify. So--if you're feeling like a little "Christmas in July" (or May or...), then feel free to read your book for December whenever the mood strikes.

~A wrap-up post/comment/email will be requested that should include a list of books read and what category they fulfilled. [Example: January: The House of Sudden Sleep by John Hawk (original pub date January 1930)]

~The headquarters link in the left-hand sidebar will be updated in January for 2020 for easy access to this original challenge post, monthly review link-ups, and the final wrap-up. The final wrap-up link will not go live until the end of 2020, so please save your notification until that time. 

The costume

So here's our beloved Hazel in her Hallowe'en costume. I had never heard of The Mandalorian until she told us about it. You may read more here, if you are interested. She is wild about the show. Already the talk is about boys' and girls' clothing. Someone told her The Mandalorian was for boys. She doesn't care. She loves it! Today is the Trunk or Treat where parents park their cars and decorate them for Hallowe'en, and the little kids go from car to car for treats. 

Back by popular demand

Margaret didn't really plan on having a Hallowe'en party this year, but people asked and she did! Last year's party is here.

It was another warm evening. We haven't even had a frost yet! Unheard of around here. But it has meant that the lovely autumn has gone on for a longer time. 

The kids and parents were down the hill until it got dark and then they made their way along the trail to our house. There were even more creepy delights than last year.

This one probably wins the creepiness award! Tom moved the tractor down into the field so the spider would have a home. There were battery candles that lit up at night.

And here is a closeup.

The "graves" were made of styrofoam.

There were lights along the road to brighten the path.

The two last pictures were taken as I walked down the hill, not up to our house. Margaret's driveway is to the left by the orange maple tree.

When the kids arrived at our house this is what they found.

Some views of the path after dark

It was a spooky, magical, and wonderful time! Again, we are so very lucky to be a part of it. Many people thanked us and I told them this is all Margaret and Matthew and Hazel. Year two of putting together a great party. One of the mothers took a picture of all the kids and put it on Instagram with the words, "Best Halloweeen Party Ever".

Today's video - "A Film By Nancy Meyers" by Chris Stapleton and Jimmy Fallon

This is SO much fun!!!

Today's poem - An old nursery rhyme

 One For Sorrow (Two For Joy) is an old English nursery rhyme.

One for sorrow,
Two for joy,
Three for a girl,
Four for a boy,
Five for silver,
Six for gold,
Seven for a secret,
Never to be told!
Eight for a wish,
Nine for a kiss,
Ten for a bird,
You must not miss.

The rhyme is referring to magpies, but I use it for "our" crows. I'll say, "one for sorrow" is here, which rarely happens. Just now there were "seven for a secret". And I got this picture out the front door window when there were "four for a boy" and one is starting to fly off.

I think I knew this rhyme before Anthony Horowitz' Magpie Murders, but maybe not. And, in case you haven't heard, it is going to be on PBS next year! 

Today's song - This Happy Madness - Stacey Kent

I've been hearing this lately on a jazz station I listen to, and thought I'd share it. Stacey Kent is one of my very favorites, and I have been buying her albums for years. In the early days of the blog, I offered a Stacey Kent week. Of course hardly anyone read my blog in those days, let alone commented!     

Mashed potatoes and shallots/New to me guacamole recipe

This is a recipe from a woman whose blog I used to read and enjoy. And then she just stopped. Happily, it is still on the internet. 

I went to my blog to find the exact recipe, and I don't have it under "recipes". I did find it here and decided I'd post it so I could have it in my recipe list. 

This is Tara's blog. The last entry was in 2010. A lot of the people whose blogs I follow commented, and if any one of you knows anything about her since that time, - like a new blog somewhere? - I'd love to know.

So, back to the recipe.

Chop up shallots, as many as you need. It will depend on how many mashed potatoes you are making. 

Sauté in butter and olive oil (you choose portions of each) until well-done, even crispy.

Cook potatoes until soft, and mash with butter and salt.

Add shallots and mix in well.

Serve. Yum!

I also made guacamole from a recipe a friend gave me recently. 

Put 2 avocados through food processor. This didn't make them completely smooth, but were just right.

Chop shallots very finely and add to avocados. Squeeze half a lemon and strain juice into mixture.

That's it! And it was very good. I'm not an eater of raw onions, but this was alright. Shallots aren't as sharp a taste as onions can be. But the next time, I might try sautéing them a bit. I have no idea how it would turn out, but worth a try.

I used to post to Weekend Cooking, but I haven't been allowed to in ages. 

Addendum: It worked this time! 

Quote du jour / Philip Larkin

Today at 3:21 pm Eastern time the sun goes into Libra, beginning the autumn season.

I came across this quote today and thought it perfect for the blowsy, over-stayed-its-welcome cleome! It looks so out of place amongst all the autumnal colors around these days. Unbelievably, we haven't had a frost yet!

Autumn has caught us in our summer wear.

Philip Larkin (1922-86)

That pink just doesn't fit! 😂

Past times

 

I have lately been watching a program which is on Britbox - Bergerac. I'm sure all my English friends will know the series. The other evening as Jim pulled up to the gas pumps to have his car filled with gasoline, I got to thinking about what I enjoy about the older shows.

No CCTV

No cell phones

Airplanes with outdoor steps on and off the plane

And the thing I probably miss the most - gas stations that pumped your gas.

I will easily admit that I have never filled up my own car. I hate the smell. I didn't want any residue on my hands. I hate the crowds, with cars always lined up behind you. I wonder is it just my age or do older people pump their own gas?

Even in my children's childhoods, we went to the gas (also known here as service) station. They put gas in the tank, cleaned the windshield [they even kept bottles of washer fluid on the shelves with customers' names on them], added washer fluid when needed, checked the tire pressure and all the while chatting with John at the town gas station named for his father and another fellow who had it before him. 

John and I were light years apart politically but it didn't matter a bit. He was kind to my kids, he was a booster for all the sports teams in town, we loved the Red Sox, and I liked hearing him talk about his favorite band Credence Clearwater Revival. He was full of local stories he knew from living in this little town his whole life. 

We have lost something special in pumping our own gas, We've lost connection and personal service, and even friendship. It makes me ache with longing for such a simple thing that we all took for granted.