So what's been happening this past week. Jo worked and volunteered. I did some house cleaning and got my flu jab. Clyde has been feeling his oats somewhat, walking kind of tenderly. The vet thinks he's got arthritis in the knees of his back legs so he had a jab too. Not sure it's working yet but she did say it can take a couple of months for the complete effect to happen. Mind you, he's not getting any younger. Bonnie and I drove down to Nanaimo yesterday a.m. so she could have an eye check up with the specialist. She is based in Victoria but every 3 months or so does some work out of the animal hospital in Nanaimo. No change on Bonnie really, but at least glaucoma hasn't set in and she isn't in pain. Adjustment of her eye meds was the result. Also discovered that gas is almost $.20 a liter cheaper there than up in the Valley so I filled up the car. 100 kms distant and that much difference. The doctor said it's $1.79 down in Victoria too so she planned to fill up before she headed home. Wow! So what's up this weekend. Well, Jo is currently at the Thrift shop so I'm doing this BLog and then this afternoon and tomorrow I plan to clean out the gutters and make sure all the Xmas lights are working. Yup, it's true. I never took them down last year. 😎😁
So let's do a bit of book updating, eh? I've finished 2 books since my last reading update and will provide my reviews. I'll also provide the synopsis of any books I've started and also the synopses of those new books I got since my last update. And maybe, just maybe, if I've time, I'll continue with my look at women authors whose work I've been enjoying.
Just Finished
"A Murder Is Announced is the 5th book in the Miss Marple series by Golden Age artist Agatha Christie. As always it was an enjoyable, circuitous mystery with a satisfying ending.
In the town of Chipping Cleghorn an announcement is made in the local Gazette. A group of people are intrigued by it and show up at Little Paddocks, home of Miss Blacklock. The notice says, 'A Murder is Announced and will take place Friday, October 29th at 6:30 pm.'
The group are all friends of Miss Blacklock; Mrs. Cleghorn and her son Edmund, Colonel Easterbrook and his young wife Laura, friends and roommates Miss Hinchliffe & Miss Mugatroyd and the Reverend's wife, Mrs Harmon (a lovely character). With Miss Blacklock are her residents, Dora Bunner, a childhood friend, Julia and Patrick Simmons, brother and sister, Mitzi the immigrant cook and Philippa Haymes, a widow who works as a gardener locally.
All of these people gather at Little Paddock to await 6:30. At the exact moment, the lights go out, a flashlight is shone in their eyes, a voice tells them to stick them up, two shots are fired, seemingly at Miss Blacklock and then another. The body of the intruder is found, dead of gunshot, in the hallway.
Thus begins a fascinating investigation by the local police led by Inspector Craddock and also by a certain Miss Marple who comes to visit with Rev and Mrs Harmon, providing insight and ideas to the good inspector. It's nice in this story that Inspector Craddock willingly accepts Miss Marple's ideas and even is concerned for her safety. Especially as their will be other murders. Oh yes.
It's all most entertaining, easily paced and peopled with interesting enough characters for you to become involved, both to try and solve it yourself and also to hope those you like aren't the murderer. So many questions. Is Miss Blacklock the target? Are the others who they purport to be? Who is the Swiss waiter who conducted the 'robbery' and was murdered or who committed suicide? Was he working for someone else?
All excellent questions. Thank you. 😎😃👍 All will be revealed and it will be most satisfying. The setting is lovely. The people are interesting and entertaining and it's a nice, cozy, intelligent mystery for you to try and solve. Enjoy. (4.5 stars)"
"At the present time I have been enjoying 4 main adult graphic novel series; Neil Gaiman's Sandman, Alan Martin's Tank Girl, and Brian K. Vaughan's Saga. Last night I completed Saga, Volume 4 which consists of Chapters 19 - 24 of the series.
In this collection, we follow Robot Prince IV who is hiding out at a den of iniquity on another planet. As always we continue to follow Marko and Alana and daughter Hazel, star crossed lovers of warring races, as they hide out and try to survive on another planet. Alana works in the entertainment industry, creating dramas for the big screen while Marco, unemployed, takes care of Hazel.
Prince IV's wife has given birth but is attacked by an angry serf who takes the baby and runs off. Alana is taking drugs to keep her going in her job. Marco is thinking of having a relationship with Hazel's dance teacher. And oh yeah the other bounty hunters continue to search for the pair.
It's got a bit of everything; Hazel growing up; Mom and Dad starting to pull apart in their relationship, action, violence, sex. Great characters, fantastic bright colorful artwork by Fiona Staples. It was an entertaining, enjoyable read and I've got Vol 5 sitting on my bookshelf to read. (4.0 stars)"
Currently Reading
I'm making slow but steady progress on the many books I've got on the go but I have started one book since my last update.
"An electric collection of interviews—including the first and the last—with one of the 20th century's most prolific, influential, and dazzlingly original writers of science fiction.
Long before Ridley Scott transformed Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? into Blade Runner, Philip K. Dick was banging away at his typewriter in relative obscurity, ostracized by the literary establishment. Today he is widely considered one of the most influential writers of the 20th century. These interviews reveal a man plagued by bouts of manic paranoia and failed suicide attempts; a career fueled by alcohol, amphetamines, and mystical inspiration; and, above all, a magnificent and generous imagination at work."
"I don't always get to do as I please."
The rumor mill of Olympus is constantly churning, but Persephone and Hades are all anyone can talk about. With the constant gossip creating intense pressure on the pair, they decide to slow down their budding romance and focus on sorting out their own issues first.
But that's easier said than done.
Hades struggles to find support in his personal life, with Zeus trivializing his feelings and Minthe resorting to abusive patterns in their relationship. And while Hades tries to create healthier boundaries where he can--like finally putting a stop to his sporadic, revenge-fueled hookups with Hera--he still feels lonely and adrift.
Persephone feels equally ostracized as her classmates shun her for her connection to Hades, and she can find no refuge at home, with Apollo constantly dropping by unannounced and pushing his unwelcome advances. And on top of it all, the wrathful god of war, Ares, has returned to Olympus to dredge up his sordid history with the goddess of spring, threatening to surface Persephone's dark and mysterious past and ruin her tenuous position in the land of the gods.
Despite agreeing to take it slow, Persephone and Hades find themselves inextricably drawn toward each other once more amid the chaos. The pull of fate cannot be denied.
This edition of Rachel Smythe's original Eisner-nominated webcomic Lore Olympus features exclusive behind-the-scenes content and brings the Greek pantheon into the modern age in a sharply perceptive and romantic graphic novel.
This volume collects episodes 76-102 of the #1 WEBTOON comic Lore Olympus."
From the amazing imagination of bestselling author Holly Black and acclaimed illustrator Ted Naifeh, a mysterious and wonderful faerie saga, for the first time in one volume.
Rue Silver's mother has disappeared... and her father has been arrested, suspected of killing her. But it's not as straightforward as that. Because Rue is a faerie, like her mother was. And her father didn't kill her mother -- instead, he broke a promise to Rue's faerie king grandfather, which caused Rue's mother to be flung back to the faerie world. Now Rue must go to save her -- and defeat a dark faerie that threatens our very mortal world."
The Corporation expects Sutty to report back so the non-standardized folk stories and songs can be wiped out and the people 're-educated'.
But Sutty herself is in for an education she never imagined."
Not long ago, the celebrated activist and public intellectual Naomi Klein had just such an experience―she was confronted with a doppelganger whose views she found abhorrent but whose name and public persona were sufficiently similar to her own that many people got confused about who was who. Destabilized, she lost her bearings, until she began to understand the experience as one manifestation of a strangeness many of us have come to know but struggle to define: AI-generated text is blurring the line between genuine and spurious communication; New Age wellness entrepreneurs turned anti-vaxxers are scrambling familiar political allegiances of left and right; and liberal democracies are teetering on the edge of absurdist authoritarianism, even as the oceans rise. Under such conditions, reality itself seems to have become unmoored. Is there a cure for our moment of collective vertigo?
Naomi Klein is one of our most trenchant and influential social critics, an essential analyst of what branding, austerity, and climate profiteering have done to our societies and souls. Here she turns her gaze inward to our psychic landscapes, and outward to the possibilities for building hope amid intersecting economic, medical, and political crises. With the assistance of Sigmund Freud, Jordan Peele, Alfred Hitchcock, and bell hooks, among other accomplices, Klein uses wry humor and a keen sense of the ridiculous to face the strange doubles that haunt us―and that have come to feel as intimate and proximate as a warped reflection in the mirror.
Combining comic memoir with chilling reportage and cobweb-clearing analysis, Klein seeks to smash that mirror and chart a path beyond despair. What do we neglect as we polish and perfect our digital reflections? Is it possible to dispose of our doubles and overcome the pathologies of a culture of multiplication? Can we create a politics of collective care and undertake a true reckoning with historical crimes? The result is a revelatory treatment of the way many of us think and feel now―and an intellectual adventure story for our times."
He's being chased by brigands who are only waiting for the right price before they kill him.
Somehow he has to placate his girlfriend, who is very angry about that slave girl.
He must meet Themistocles, the military genius who saved Greece during the Persian Wars, and then defected to the hated enemy.
And to solve the crime, Nico must uncover a secret that could not only destroy Athens, but will force him to choose between love, and ambition, and his own life."
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| Michelle Spring |
Between the worlds of academia, art, and politics, someone slipped into a woman's life and snuffed it out in a burst of rage, leaving Laura Principal to untangle a wicked web of secrets and hypocrisy. What Laura finds is the perfect suspect. Unfortunately, a better one has found her. . . ." (4 stars)
The maid asks Laura to help her find some missing money, but overnight she disappears. Neighbors say she was abducted; the Butlers insist no such person ever existed. But beneath the vicious underpinnings of affluence—in clubs, country houses, and charming mews—Laura uncovers the unbelievable truth. Proving it, though, could be fatal." (3 stars)
On the surface, Daryll fit the mold of a child murderer perfectly--a hopeless boy, abused and cast off by a wretched family. Yet as Laura Principal probes deeper, several curious facts reveal themselves. And with each step closer to the truth, Laura senses someone in the corner of her eye, a threatening presence . . . standing in the shadows . . . watching her every move." (4 stars)
Katie Arkwright wore white, a vision of purity. But when Laura starts probing into the missing woman's life, she finds that Katie concealed a dark side. The deeper Laura searches into a tangled past, the more tension mounts in every corner of Cambridge--where someone waits, coiled to strike. And strike again." (4 stars)
Katie Arkwright wore white, a vision of purity. But when Laura starts probing into the missing woman's life, she finds that Katie concealed a dark side. The deeper Laura searches into a tangled past, the more tension mounts in every corner of Cambridge--where someone waits, coiled to strike. And strike again." (4 stars)
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