December 14, 2021 at 4:13 pm (Artists and Writers, Books, Conversations, Recommended)
Tags: advice, bestsellers, COVID Reading, crime, English writers, favorites, mysteries, novel, reading lists, Richard Osman, wisdom
Donna looks up, breathes out, and blinks tears from the corners of her eyes.
“Thank you. I’ve felt a bit stupid recently.”
“Loneliness is hard, Donna. It’s one of the big ones.”
“You should do this for a living, you know?”
“You are simply a little lost, Donna. And if one is never lost in life, then clearly one has never traveled anywhere interesting.”
“And you?” asks Donna. “You seem sad.”
“I’m a little sad, yes,” agrees Ibrahim. “I’m frightened, and I can’t see a way through it.”
“Up the next mountain would be my advice,” says Donna.
The Man Who Died Twice, p. 254
Richard Osman’s dialogue. That is all.
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December 13, 2021 at 5:37 pm (Books, plans, Recommended)
Tags: bestsellers, COVID Reading, crime, English writers, favorites, humor, Mendocino, Mondays, mysteries, novel, reading lists, Richard Osman, wisdom
Although perhaps he isn’t really boring, if everything you hear is true? Killings and gold and helicopters and whatnot? Though if you need killings and gold and helicopters to make you interesting then I suppose you are still boring at heart. Gerry never needed a helicopter.
The Man Who Died Twice, p. 160
Reading this book ever so much faster than she read The Birthday Boys (That book took two damn weeks!) but not trying to rush through because she enjoys the Fearless Four so much.
Next year, she will again join the Goodreads Reading Challenge, but will up her reading goal by 1 or 2. Mustn’t get too ambitious, but this year she almost doubled her reading goals, who would have thought?
Stay tuned.
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December 11, 2021 at 6:04 pm (Books, Conversations, Recommended)
Tags: bestsellers, COVID Reading, English writers, favorites, humor, Mendocino, mysteries, reading lists, Richard Osman, Saturdays
SPOILER ALERT
Call to Martin Lomax, The Man Who Died Twice, p. 83:
- Does he know an Andrew Hastings? He does. Does Andrew Hastings work for him? He does, no use lying, this is MI5 and they know already. Was Mr. Hastings working for him this evening? No, he was not. We regret to inform you that Mr. Hastings has been shot dead while trying to murder a member of the British Security Services, condolences for your loss, but I wonder if you would have any comment on that.
Is there a #3 installment of The Thursday Murder Club in the works? Because self wanted it, like, yesterday.
Stay tuned.
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December 11, 2021 at 6:23 am (Books, Eavesdropping)
Tags: bestsellers, COVID Reading, English writers, humor, mysteries, novel, reading lists, Richard Osman
This year is going out with a bang! I know, I can feel it. Dick’s Place on Main Street (Mendocino) — a fine, fine name for a bar, in self’s humble opinion) is always full, and now the Mendocino Hotel bar has re-opened — after almost two years. Lots of people wandering in and out, live music. Good times!
Self is on p. 79 of a very delightful book, The Man Who Died Twice. And the section she’s on is Joyce’s, who is such a droll character. Apparently, a man’s head has been blown off from close range. Joyce isn’t sure she wants to see what a man with no head looks like, but “just as they loaded the body onto the stretcher” Joyce gets a “quick peek before they zipped up the body bag and, yes, Poppy really had blown his head off.”
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December 10, 2021 at 3:00 pm (Books, Recommended, Sayings)
Tags: advice, bestsellers, COVID Reading, English writers, favorites, Fridays, Mendocino, mysteries, reading lists, Richard Osman, wisdom
Self was supposed to leave Mendocino today. She decided to stay a little longer. YAY!
Last night, she was reading a section in The Man Who Died Twice (Five Stars, maybe even Six) about REVENGE. It did not feature the Shakesperean “Revenge is a dish best served cold.” Or even the native Indian, or maybe the ancient Roman, wisdom: “If revenge is what you seek, dig two graves.” Instead, on p. 72, it said this:
- Revenge is not a straight line, it’s a circle. It’s a grenade that goes off while you’re still in the room, and you can’t help but be caught in the blast.
Courtesy of Richard Osman. You’re welcome.
There is a continuation.
This morning, Ibrahim (still laid up in the hospital after being kicked in the head by a band of schoolboy thugs) reflects on a client (Eric) who was sold a lemon by a car dealership who refused to cover the cost of the repairs. So the client had the car repaired at his own expense, then drove it through the dealership’s front window in the dead of night.
Eric’s daughter and the son of the car dealer had also been friends at school. Eric forbade his daughter from ever talking to the boy and so, as winter follows summer, they had got married two years later, with Eric refusing to attend the wedding.
And so forth. And so forth.
Never seek revenge, dear blog readers. Revenge sucks.
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December 9, 2021 at 10:48 pm (Books, Conversations, Recommended)
Tags: bestsellers, COVID Reading, English writers, favorites, humor, Mendocino, mysteries, novel, reading lists, Richard Osman
Self is quite enjoying reading about this shady Martin Lomax. He’ll probably end up getting bumped off. In the meantime, there’s this pesky journalist who asks to use his toilet.
“The equipment shed is nearer.”
No one ever comes in the house unless it’s business. No one. First it’s toilets, and then you never know what. MI5 think they can just break in? We’ll see about that. Martin Lomax has many friends. Saudi princes, a one-eyed Kazakh with a one-eyed Rottweiler. Both the Kazakh and the Rottweiler would rip you apart without hesitation. No one comes into the house without his invitation.
The Man Who Died Twice, p. 53
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December 9, 2021 at 9:31 pm (Books, Recommended)
Tags: bestsellers, COVID Reading, English writers, favorites, humor, Mendocino, mysteries, novel, reading lists, Richard Osman
Free of the cumbersome toil of struggling through the last days of Robert Falcon Scott’s inept Antarctica expedition, in which everybody wound up dead, self is now reading a mystery, the delightful second installment of the Thursday Murder Club series, by Richard Osman. May the main characters live to be in their nineties because she needs their wry, self-deprecating humor, dammit!
Martin Lomax interior monologue, p. 53:
- He is certain that somebody will end up dead, and he just needs to make sure it’s not him.
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
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May 13, 2020 at 1:00 am (Books, Conversations, Personal Bookshelf, Recommended)
Tags: bestsellers, corona virus read, novel, reading lists, science fiction
Though Book # 2 of The Expanse nine-volume series (NINE!) started off slow, somewhere in the middle (yes, yes, who has the patience to wait 300 pages before the authors begin firing on all cylinders, but she loved the first book, and besides she already ordered the next two, she couldn’t just let it go) it began to be . . . exciting.
Something has happened to Jim Holden’s leg. Amos, the Big Man, the ‘enforcer’ of this rag-tag crew, has been hurt by an explosion.
“Gotta get up, big man,” Holden said, pushing himself to his feet. In the partial gravity of their spin, his leg felt heavy, hot, and stiff as a board. Without the drugs pouring through him, standing on it would have probably made him scream. Instead, he pulled Amos up, putting even more pressure on it.
I will pay for this later, he thought. But the amphetamines made later seem very far away.
“Naomi,” Holden said. “Can you control Amos’s suit from there?”
“Yes.”
“Shoot him full of speed.”
This is kind of — uh, sorry — addicting, actually. There’s even a huge Marine (of Samoan ancestry, therefore huge?) who reminds self a lot of Murderbot, the main character in Martha Wells’s excellent series, The Murderbot Diaries.
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
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April 16, 2020 at 3:54 am (Books, Conversations, Personal Bookshelf, Recommended, Women Writers)
Tags: bestsellers, novel, reading lists, satire
“I watch them like a hawk, I really do. Well, I try, but I’ve got twenty-eight kids, two with ADHD, one with learning difficulties, two gifted kids, at least four whose parents think they’re gifted, and one who is so allergic I feel like I should have one hand on the EpiPen at all times and — “
— Big Little Lies, p. 270
So far, it’s all about Mothers Club. But self is still here! After 270 pages. Liane Moriarty is quite a storyteller. Self just didn’t expect the novel to be so thoroughly satirical.
There are no boring parts. Even though it’s mostly about THE PARENT TRAP, how parents guilt themselves into trying to provide the ‘perfect’ environment for their kids. (A lot of parents must be reading this book and identifying with the characters here)
Also, for some reason, suburban life in Australia is exactly like suburban life in northern California. Who knew?
There are really only two ‘good’ men. Thankfully, one of them is married to a main character. So we get to read a lot about him.
Stay tuned.
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April 15, 2020 at 12:08 am (Books, Conversations, Personal Bookshelf, Recommended, Women Writers)
Tags: bestsellers, humor, novel, reading lists
Self began reading this book right after she read the collected short stories of Ernest Hemingway, how she does not get whiplash, she doesn’t know. Things get even more whiplash-y when she begins the next book on her reading list: Outlander.
P. 163: How is Liane Moriarty going to pull all these threads together? She has the ENTIRE Kindergarten Mommies routine down pat.
But there has to be something about this book MORE than just a satire on Kindergarten Mommies, because it did become a huge US bestseller (Self keeps forgetting it’s NOT set in America: the characters don’t speak Aussie patois. They don’t even curse! Not even the bad ones)
“Where’s Jackie today, Jonathan?” asked Gabrielle. The mothers were all mildly obsessed with Jonathan’s wife, ever since she’d been interviewed on the business segment of the evening news a few nights back, sounding terrifyingly precise and clever about a corporate takeover and putting the journalist in his place. Also, Jonathan was very good-looking in a George Clooney-esque way, so constant references to his wife were necessary to show that they hadn’t noticed this and weren’t flirting with him.”
Too. Funny.
Stay tuned.
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