Challenge Accepted and Completed

Powell's in Portland, August 2015

In December, the leader of our online book club posted a genre challenge. I sort of forgot about it, and she posted a reminder last week. As I perused the list, I realized that I actually had satisfied each one, except for young adult, a genre I generally hate. I browsed the Kindle Unlimited YA offerings the other day until I found a novella that didn't sound too bad. Now, I'm finished with the books and will post a brief review of each. (I read all these and more this year.)

1. Contemporary Fiction. I read (and watched) Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt, which I discussed in some detail last week in this post. I gave the book 3 stars on Goodreads.

2. Historical Fiction. I finished up my lengthy Victoria Holt (aka Philippa Carr) binge with Daughters of England. Though this book was last in the series, it wasn't last chronologically, and I still enjoyed it a lot. Holt expertly weaves history with fiction to create believable plots and characters. The stories are inseparable from the history, as political events drive beliefs and behavior (same as now, even if we are unaware in the moment). I am used to Holt's abrupt endings, though I find that they are discordant with her meticulous storytelling otherwise. Four stars. 

3. Fantasy. The Gunslinger by Stephen King satisfied this genre. I found the novel to be ambitious, as it was clearly a setup for the next in series (good example of why I am not fond of series where each book does not stand alone, as Holt's do), but it only works well if you go on with the series, which I did not. I tried ~ I began The Drawing of the Three ~ but it was so gory and gross that I DNF. I gave Gunslinger 3 stars regardless for King's high quality writing. I don't have to enjoy plot and/or characters to appreciate his wordsmithery.

4. Science Fiction. Another Stephen King novel goes here: 11.22.63. I watched the miniseries first and mostly enjoyed it (discussed at the end of this post), and then at Roy's recommendation I read the book. I absolutely loved it! The descriptions were so lush with detail that I really did feel like I was back in the 1950s and early '60s. The butterfly effect was fully in play too, with several iterations of "what if," and I am always up for that sort of thought experiment. I highly recommend this epic novel (800+ pages, so set aside some time). This book received a 5-star rating from me.

5. Mystery/Thriller. I grabbed The Date by T.H. Murdock last week from the Amazon First Reads pile, and I'm glad I did. I gobbled up the whole novel in one day because it was that compelling. Murdock expertly layered in the suspense, shifting suspicion from one character to another, until the reader was completely hooked. I literally couldn't put it down until I knew whodunit. Another 4-star winner.

6. Romance. Love at the Lake by Julie Milo fit this category as well as one in another challenge. I gave it 3 stars for attempting to tackle the weighty subjects of dyslexia and adoption in an otherwise fluffy novel, but it didn't do either all that well because so much time was devoted to the fluff. I'm not one of those who hates "pure" romance novels (without any mystery or other element), but I need more of a plot than high school angst over whether or not a boy/girl likes the other boy/girl. Note: the characters were 23 years old, but still acted like teens.

7. Nonfiction. At a library sale, I found a "coffee table book" titled Love of Goldens by Todd R. Berger and had to get it for my daughter and son-in-law, who have a golden retriever (Rory). I love goldens too now! I gave this book 5 stars for the wonderful photos and adorable vignettes.

8. Biography/Memoir. I finished Peter Gethers' Norton the cat trilogy with his second book (read out of order), titled A Cat Abroad. While this middle section of Norton's life was enjoyable enough to get a 4-star rating from me, it wasn't as compelling as books one and three. The first book was our introduction to baby Norton and how he impacted the author's life, and the third and last one was exquisitely sad as we had to say goodbye to our sweet kitty friend. Abroad was exactly as titled ~ Peter takes his kitty on all sorts of trips, which were fun adventures, with vivid and descriptive writing, but I couldn't appreciate all the French language jokes, and it was not as emotionally gripping overall.

9. Literary Fiction. I read The Correspondent by Virginia Evans for my online book club, and it fits this genre. This book began in the most tedious way by flinging a boatload of characters at the reader (18 in the first 16 pages!) that were impossible to keep track of until later in the story. I kept going however and eventually became intrigued by the threads tying all these people to the main character. I also liked that the MC was cranky and unlikeable, but she was still interesting to read about. Three stars for this.

10. Young Adult. Incantation by Alice Hoffman is categorized as YA, so I chose it because I liked her writing in the past. What can I say about this book? It was about a family of Jews in Spain around the time of the Inquisition. Absolutely awful, yet fabulous writing. I'm glad it had fewer than 100 pages because idk if I could have read more about this terrible time. I gave it 5 stars, and I think it's important to be reminded about how evil humans are to one another, since we can become numb to the news. I haven't created labels for young adult or magical realism, but I think historical fiction plus fantasy will do for this novella.

11. Horror. In general, I avoid horror novels and movies, except when there is a promise of a solid story along with the gore/scariness. The Fourth Wife by Linda Hamilton delivered. I found this story to be fresh and intriguing, and I was fascinated by the relationships among the sister-wives. It was "gothic" in a way and full of creepy ghosts, despite being set in a 19th century house in Utah, not a crumbling old English mansion. Four stars.

12. Poetry or Short Stories. Odd category mix, as these are two very different genres. I read Poems for the Lost Because I'm Lost Too by Exurb1a, and I found the writing highly relatable even though the author is a young guy in Eastern Europe. His themes of existential angst, isolation, and meaninglessness resonated with how I have felt off and on over all the years of my life. He went off into the weeds a bit with his forays into the supernatural, and I skimmed those sections, but overall... yeah. Liked it! Four stars.

As a side note, I am not being hypocritical with my high ratings of most of these challenge books after complaining repeatedly that people rate books too highly ~ I read many books recently that merited 2 or 3 stars, but I focused on the better ones for these mini-reviews. For example, in the poetry category, I gave 2 stars to another book of verse, but why mention it when I can recommend Poems for the Lost?

No Cheat Codes

1000 piece panda puzzle

I have come full circle in the puzzle arena. When I first realized that some of the newer jigsaw puzzles have "cheat codes" printed on the reverse side of the pieces, I vowed never to use them. I knew that it would take all the fun out of struggling to find pieces, declaring that some must be missing, announcing that the puzzle is defective, moaning that nothing goes anywhere, and finally finishing triumphantly. But then one time I used the codes... just a little bit. The next time I used them more, and finally I said eff it, flipped all the pieces over, sorted them by code, and did the puzzle fast. I did that a couple more times, even though the end result left me feeling a bit unsatisfied. Yet once I began to cheat, I couldn't stop myself. It was an addiction, a sickness, a mindless compulsion. I was proud that I could complete a 1000 piece puzzle, by myself, in two nights. Yes, yes, it was a hollow victory, but a victory nonetheless.

Then came the panda puzzle: 1000 pieces of black bamboo stalks over a multi-colored background and a panda face. It looked really hard, something I might have avoided in the olden days, but I could just use the codes, right? Wrong! The panda puzzle doesn't have codes. The reverse side of the pieces are totally blank. I couldn't back down. Man vs puzzle! Or woman as the case may be. I put the edges together and sorted some of the colors, though that was really hard, wah. I found one of his eyeballs, put a bit of his face together, and managed to connect some other mini blobs here and there. My friend Lisa came over to help on Saturday, but we mostly snacked and chatted. It's now on the third night of the panda puzzle, and I am very dismayed at my lack of progress.

Otherwise, I had a lovely Mother's Day. I drove up to Los Angeles see my daughter and grands. Sharon and I exchanged similar gifts: we bought each other yummy scented candles! I played games and colored with the kiddos, which was really nice, as I hadn't seen them for a while. The drive home sucked though, as my GPS indicated there was something happening that was lengthening the trip time, but it didn't say what or offer an alternative. Since the freeway looked clear, I kept going but stayed in the rightmost lane in case I wanted to exit quickly. In Huntington Beach, traffic suddenly stopped, and now the GPS said there were multiple crashes ahead. Multiple! I got off on Beach Blvd, at which point the trip time dropped by 10 minutes. Hello! Why didn't you tell me to get off? I had to use my brain, which was so annoying. 

I began reading Maybe in Another Life by Taylor Jenkins Reid when I couldn't sleep last week, and it's pretty good so far (one of those alternate timeline type gimmicks). I generally like and sometimes love TJR's writing, so I will probably continue on with this, even though the main character hasn't impressed me much after 50 pages. On Goodreads, this book is tagged as a romance novel.

The other day, I began a "romantasy" novel on my Kindle titled Dire Bound by Sable Sorenson. It's for my online book club, as I would almost never choose a book like this on my own. I really don't enjoy the genre at all, nor do I enjoy graphic descriptions of violence and sex (what they now call "spice"). I guess there are exceptions for a well written story with interesting characters, but this doesn't seem to be one of those, so I think I will toss it in the DNF pile. Life is too short to slog on through books I am not enjoying!

Stephen King, on the other hand, has intrigued me with The Gunslinger, which is the first novel in his Dark Tower series, though it's very dark and violent. I picked up the rest of the series from the library yesterday. I'm not sure if I will read all the books though ~ book two (The Drawing of the Three) needs to be better than The Gunslinger for me to continue on to the third. It's a big time commitment as most of the novels in the series are ridiculously long. He's coming out with a new book in October (Other Worlds Than These) that's part of a different series, but he says we should read it because it "puts a cap on the Talisman novels and serves as the final Dark Tower book." Does this mean that I will have to read The Talisman and its sequel Black House? I suppose it does. Sigh…

That's a lot of reading! Anyone want to bet on which I will finish first: panda puzzle, TJR novel, or the second Dark Tower book? 

How Often Do You Spill Your Food or Beverage?

Apparently the reason why I never found love post-divorce is because I failed to spill my coffee or tea or Diet Coke on some hapless fellow. I never (as far as I know) dropped food on a man either. But according to contemporary romance novels, clumsiness with comestibles is the key to true love. While you don't see many governesses or companions in the Regency Romances getting scone crumbles on a duke or earl, in contemporaries it's de rigueur. I'm getting to the point where I want to DNF a book as soon as I see it ~ I even listed it as one of my Persnickety Peeves over a year ago. Back then, I called it an awkward meet cute, but I've since realized that it can happen anytime during the get-to-know-you stage. 

The latest one I read was in Life Derailed, for which I had high expectations as an exploration of how we feel about AI in our lives, and in particular would we rather have a customized, sensitive, kind, understanding, funny, and always available to chat AI boyfriend or an annoying human male? Alas, this was just a typical workplace romance with the usual tedious misunderstandings that melted away when the epiphany occurred. Regarding the spilled food, somehow our heroine Remi managed to get salad on poor Jason while he was sitting across the table. Salad! I had to stop reading to try to imagine how you could accidentally flip greens and pieces of tomato across the table onto a guy's shirt. I'm still having a hard time envisioning it.

I finished this book because I really hoped that more in depth discussion of AI with respect to relationships would materialize, but it never happened. I suppose I have to rewatch Her for that or one of the many various movies centered on this theme. I don't want to see robots gone bad; I want to see people preferring AI conversation to human interaction at least for a while. Anyway, I had other issues with Life Derailed, such as a mom character that could have been funny and interesting, but the author made her so over the top ridiculous that it ruined her, plus the author completely forgot about Remi's precious doggie Fitz, and she had Remi run off to an island for a month to write her novel without telling us what she did with poor Fitz. The novel did have some interesting scenes, so I gave it two stars instead of the one I was initially contemplating. 

What else? I read His and Hers, a mystery/ thriller, which was pretty good, but I liked the Netflix series more. One of the reasons is because they had only six episodes, so they had to discard some of the bloated side-plots, and that made the story more streamlined and easier to follow. The show made me realize that one of the things I dislike about first-person narration, which is "I have a big secret I am not divulging to the reader even though we are in my head and I am obviously thinking about it," works perfectly well on the screen because that "nyah nyah" doesn't occur. We didn't even need to see the protags getting blackout drunk all the time so they (and the reader) wouldn't remember/ know what they did because there was very little narration. I'm also getting to the point where I'm tired of excessive alcohol consumption used as a plot device. Be more creative! 

Yesterday I went to the Orange County Zoo with a friend. It was the first time I'd been there. Small zoo, but easy to walk the whole thing (twice) and see a variety of cool beasties, such as owls, eagles, snakes, lizards, big cats, peacocks, parrots, etc. There was a petting area as well, but I didn't want to touch any animals. It's always so weird to see the goats with their rectangular pupils, and they probably think the same thing about my human eyeballs. One of the things I enjoy most about a zoo is how excited the little kids get to see all the creatures.

Hope all my readers are having a good Monday!

First Reads of 2026

Before I get into the books, I want to say a word (or 500) about stats. As you know, Bob, one of the main reasons I gave up two relatively popular blogs is because I became obsessed with checking my stats. With Ultrablog, my obsession was tracking IPs to try to figure out who was visiting me ~ this rarely works now because peeps use their phones, and the IP and location changes. I also freaked out if a post received way fewer views/ comments compared to my average. With my more recent WP blog, I was obsessed with follower count as well as comments per post. Like many other bloggers, I quit worrying about views per post, as those are meaningless. Fast forward to this blog, where I don’t fuss about any stats whatsoever. I have noticed lately that WP bloggers based in the US and UK are wondering why they get an onslaught of views from places like Hong Kong and Singapore, when they don't have any followers from there. Welp, now that I have been commenting more on those WP blogs, I too am getting views from Hong Kong and Singapore. While my comments here are about the same as they've been all along, averaging only a few per post, my views overall have exponentially increased. What am I going to do about this? Nothing. I assume that the view counts are as meaningless as they've ever been, but I just wanted to feel included.

OK then. Let's start with my first DNF of the year: The Good Daughter by Karin Slaughter. This was one of our three January books of the month, which is the only reason I started it, as I have heard that Karin's books are horrendously gory and violent. Yep, it was horrible ~ technically a thriller, but really more like horror, at least at the beginning. I read about 10 pages or so and gave up. So, I have no idea whether the story is good or if the grossness abated, but I tend to believe not/ not. I won't ever try this author again. Yuck! Here's a thing about trigger warnings: they don't work that well for me because I can handle impossible goriness, such as supernatural shenanigans, but when it sounds realistic, I am out. Karin's sounded real. When I read, I picture what I am reading throughout the book, so those disturbing images stay with me. The ones from TGD are still kind of floating around my mind a bit.

The first book I read for the year was A Cat Abroad by Peter Gethers. I read his first Norton book, The Cat Who Went to Paris, six years ago and loved it. Then for some odd reason I skipped the second book in the trilogy and went straight to the third: The Cat Who'll Live Forever. This was also great, though as you might guess from the title, heartbreaking as well. It hasn't been that long since Gatsby died, so even thinking about that third book makes me cry. Recently, as I was (obsessively) rearranging my physical bookshelves, I realized that I had never read the second book, so I ordered a used copy. I loved it, though not quite as much as I loved the other two books because it’s very travelog-y, as one might expect. Since I have never been to Europe nor do I know any French, many of the funny moments don't do much for me. And not to be mean, but I don't have much (or any) sympathy for the travel mishaps of people who have gobs more money than I do. I can smile at the petty ironies and minuscule woes of their lives, but do I really care? Nah. Norton's behavior is still adorable however. Four stars (the other two received five each). This counts as a memoir on my genre hop list.

I am still teary over a novel I finished this morning: The Midnight Library by Matt Haig. It begins very slowly, and I might have DNF'd it except that a couple peeps in my book club loved it. So, I kept going and am sure glad I did! Nora, the MC, is a whiny, sad sack of a person, and I didn't relate to her all that much, at first. The premise is that after she tries to commit suicide she hovers in a state between life and death where she visits a fantasy library that contains all the stories of her life that might have been as well as a huge tome of regrets. As Nora chooses other lives to slip into, she's guided both practically and philosophically by her old primary school librarian (the one person from her past who had shown her unconditional kindness). As Nora's epiphanies accumulate, I begin to resonate with them, especially the ones about living to please other people. Whether struggling to keep a straight A average for my mom or to be accepted by my peers or to find a boyfriend, my earlier life was also dominated by the need to receive praise from others. My first paragraph about blog stats is a good example. I internalized all this dreck to such an extent that I felt guilty when not writing a bestselling book while working full time. Why can't I do more? Other people do more. Why can't I achieve any level of socially blessed success, blah blah blah. Anyway, TML explores these ideas plus the obvious conclusion that being yourself is enough. Going after your own dreams is not selfish. Relinquishing old dreams and being content with what you have (where I am now) is just fine too! None of these are radical concepts, but Haig presents them in a fresh and emotionally relevant way, so TML received five stars from me. It also counts as a fantasy book on my genre hop list.

Speaking of the genre hop challenge, it's not my intention to complete the entire list the first quarter. I may expand the categories into subgenres or simply read two or more from each. While A Cat Abroad counts as a memoir, it's not a biography, so I will try to find one of those I might enjoy (the category is biography/ memoir). Also, I noticed at the bottom of the hop list is a bonus category to reread five favorite books, which I may do too. The whole point is to read books I love, and if I can't give a book three or more stars, I probably should consider tossing it in the DNF pile. Of course, sometimes I'm digging a book and then get really annoyed at the ending, so there's that. 

Hope your new year is going swimmingly so far ~ mine is, literally, with all this rain. Back to the office tomorrow I go, hi ho, hi ho.

PS: I found a way to add a DNF shelf to my Goodreads without it marking the book as "want to read," which was so annoying. I had to do it from my laptop. Apps aren't always all that and a bag of chips.

PPS: Nope. Goodreads insists on marking my DNFs as "read," which wrecks my count. I have deleted the DNF shelf once again.

Year in Books

Goodreads says that I read 190 books in 2025. The shortest one is 28 pages (Grandma’s House by Amy Tackett, one star, yuck), and the longest is 693 pages (The Miracle at St. Bruno’s by Philippa Carr, two stars, meh). The average page count is 284, and my average star rating is 3.1. Included in this count are many short stories and novellas ~ unless they’re in a collection, GR counts them as one book.

This is too many books, and unlike everyone else in my book club, my goal for 2026 is to read fewer books. Not only did I slog through a whole bunch of stuff I didn’t even enjoy, but also I read way too fast to retain much of anything. I have been tossing loads of books into the DNF pile, and I need to double down on that. Unless it’s a discussion book for one of my clubs, there is no reason to continue on with something I dislike. And so what if it’s just a “mood” and I might enjoy it later? One chance per book. There are simply too many others out there to try. 

Last year I began a 100-book challenge, and although I read way over 100 books, I failed at the challenge. It’s just too annoying to spend time hunting down books to meet the arbitrary criteria of these challenges. That said, I am participating in a genre hop challenge next year because I really to want to get out of the psycho thriller and Regency romance rut. Of course, I will gobble up plenty of books in each of those genres, but once a month (minimum) I will also add in something else. I’m really looking forward to it!

I previously mentioned that I would start reviewing my books read in 2026 on GR, and I’ve already begun to do that this month to get in the habit. I also said I would add a DNR tag to my GR shelf, but I changed my mind on that because it’s a hassle. If I get all fuzzy-brained and start a book I previously marked DNF, who cares? Most likely I will still hate it on the second try, but if not, then cool.

Weekend Recap

Happy last day of November. I had a fun friendsgiving, which included several board games, but my opinion of Thanksgiving food, even if perfectly prepared, remains unchanged: I don’t like it. I especially dislike turkey and do not eat any of it (chicken is fine, I like chicken, but everybody else wants turkey). Stuffing can be tasty, but only the way my mommy made it. Green beans and mashed potatoes are okay, but why bother? Now, I do enjoy a baked sweet potato with butter, but I don’t want them all syruped up in a casserole. Yuck. Then we come to the pie ~ I love pie! Why can’t I just have pie? I brought an apple crumb pie from The Flaky Apple Pie Company, baked it at the host’s house, and it was utterly delicious! Everyone loved it. Next year I’m getting cherry. Every pie they make is wonderful. If it were up to me, I would have an all-pie and only-pie Thanksgiving.

I have been trying to watch season two of A Man on the Inside, but I keep falling asleep. Maybe I shouldn’t put it on at 10pm when I am already in bed. I did watch the entirety of Red Joan, a Netflix WW2 drama about “the bomb,” starring Judi Dench and Sophie Cookson, both playing a British woman Joan Stanley at different ages. The story is loosely based on the life of a KGB spy and depicts Joan as a naive Cambridge physics student who becomes sympathetic toward communism due to her boyfriend’s influence. After graduation, she works in a nuclear research facility and passes information to the Soviets via her boyfriend’s sister. Normally I do not watch anything set in this time period, but I love Judi, and the premise sounded interesting, so I did. It was fabulous! I highly recommend it. 

I watched couple of Christmas romcoms too, which weren’t bad, but they were completely forgettable, so I can’t tell you what they were without going to my watch history… and I CBA. I am planning to see Song Sung Blue at the theater with game friends on Christmas Day and The Housemaid with book club peeps later that weekend. Looking forward to those as well as seeing my family for Chanukah. I did a puzzle on Friday; it was only 500 pieces, so I completed it in a few hours. I think I prefer those as opposed to the 1000 pieces ones, which take several days or a week. I am trying not to spend so much time reading the news and social media, except for my FB book club group, so solo games are a good distraction.

I have a lot of social plans coming up, the idea of which stresses me out a bit, even when I deliberately set it all in motion. To ease my anxiety, I spent too much money on Black Friday sales as well as other stuff I “needed.” Now I’m stressed about that instead. I console myself with the thought that I could have spent even more but didn’t. The nice thing is that most of my stuff will be arriving in separate packages, so I will have several fun mail-opening events, woohoo. 

As far as books, I guess I took a little break ~ the last book I read was on November 26. That was What She Saw by Mary Burton, a solid mystery novel, to which I awarded four stars. Yesterday I began a John Grisham novel, The Brethren, which is mildly intriguing, and I will probably finish it. I have several of his in my TBR pile. I’m trying to understand why I don’t fling this book into my DNF donation bag as opposed to all the romances and thrillers that have been so flung, and I guess it’s simply because he’s a better writer. His characters in this book are not likable, but they hold my attention regardless, and the plot threads make me wanna find out what happens and how they tie together. Is it worth noting that Grisham narrates in third person past tense, which is how books should be written, instead of the first person head hopping present tense atrocities we keep seeing in new fiction? Yes, there are exceptions, and I have enjoyed some FPHHPT novels, but that’s despite the FPHHPT not because of it. 

Tomorrow is weigh-in day for Inky and me!

Regarding Meet Cutes

If you’re a fan of romance novels and/or romcoms, then you know about the meet cutes. We all probably have our own favorites… mine tend to be the ones that hinge on mistaken identity. For example, in Nobody Wants This, Joanne starts talking to Noah at a party and mentions that there’s an old rabbi at the event, but of course Noah is the (hot, young) rabbi. That was funny! I enjoy when people’s assumptions are smashed and they have to adjust their views and expectations. I even like when it happens to me IRL because that’s all part of learning and growing, and I am not done yet.

However! There’s one type of meet cute I absolutely despise, and unfortunately it’s the most popular one. It occurs with astonishing regularity in both novels and movies, and every time I see it, it makes me cringe. Lately, I’ve been DNFing any book or show where it happens, although I am finishing a romance currently that has one of these annoyances because it’s for my book club.

Have you guessed what it is?

It’s the clumsy, spill some food/ beverage or a bag of groceries meet cute where one of the protagonists (and almost invariably the woman) trips and dumps out her coffee or whatever and the hero naturally has to help her clean it up. Then she is super embarrassed while he stays calm and helpful. If it’s a bag of groceries, some feminine product will be on display to make everything even more awkward. Ughhh. I hate this so much!

Yes, I have used it, but that was a long time ago before I decided it was way overused and awful. Lazy writing! And I have been a lazy writer at times, especially when I write to prompts in a hurry. That’s another reason why I am sticking to my vow of not writing any new fiction or poetry unless I feel it’s good. 

While Waiting for the Rapture...

Happy Rosh Hashanah! Happy Autumn!

The word rapture is a romance novel word, so I have fond feelings toward it. Here's the noun definition from Merriam-Webster:

1. an expression or manifestation of ecstasy or passion

2a. a state or experience of being carried away by overwhelming emotion

b. a mystical experience in which the spirit is exalted to a knowledge of divine things

3. often capitalized : the final assumption of Christians into heaven during the end-time according to Christian theology

You can be enraptured by something powerful, intense, beautiful, etc. It implies an element of bliss, of being transported outside yourself, outside of the ordinary. (You can see why romance writers use it.) According to the dictionary, rapture probably originated as a biblical translation of a Greek word meaning to seize, hold, or snatch up. Raptor, as in a bird of prey, is also part of this etymology. There's also rapt, as in paying close attention, which is hard to do with all our electronics distracting us. There is a Rapture scheduled for tonight, and I guess we won't bring our phones when we're transported up into heaven, but I will miss playing solitaire. Oh, what am I saying... they aren't going to take me; I'll be left behind with the rest of the non-Christians. Party!

Yesterday (Monday) I took the notary exam to renew my commission for the seventh time (and hopefully last, since in four years I will be close to retirement). The Scantron boxes seem smaller now, and I felt like Monk in there trying to mark them all perfectly and getting annoyed when my eraser left a smudge. I don’t notarize that often (and basically only for work), so I have to re-memorize the tedious facts each time. I'm tired! I’m crossing my fingers that I passed, since it would be very embarrassing to tell the peeps at work if I didn't.

I finished a book today. It was a rare one-star rating for me on Goodreads, and I feel bad about that, but fair is fair. (Usually, I will DNF a book if it's heading into one star territory, but I managed to slog through this one until the end ~ 450 pages!) The book is This Side of Dark by Caren Hahn, and it's categorized as a thriller/ suspense novel, but it isn't much of either. Not only are there multiple POVs, but there are also multiple personalities within one of the main characters! There is little motivation for why Grace feels such an intense friendship for River (the DID character) to the point that Grace will cover up a murder to protect River. The real horror however is that River is having a baby even though she loses track of time while dissociating, and one of the personalities is violent and promiscuous, while another is a young child (a fourth identity is teased at during the ending). None of this is addressed as far as being a danger to a baby. There's a budding romance involving Grace and another MC that gets derailed and dropped. There are other loose ends that the author fails to resolve, such as River's family issues, what really happened to River's husband or her mother, how the murder of the little girl Diana occurred (was there sexual abuse as implied?), etc. What a mess of a novel. Oh, and it's non-chronological too, utilizing that popular gimmick of before/after X event and flipping throughout instead of telling the story straight. 

Other people loved the book though, so what do I know? (Many of the gushing reviews are from ARC readers, but I'm sure that has nothing to do with their five stars.)

Happy September

I canceled most of my long weekend plans due to the beastly heat wave, which worsens my migraines. I'm glad I did that because my headaches have been manageable indoors. Later today, my friend L is coming over to hang out/ play games, so that will be nice. I read a psychological thriller ~ They Never Learn by Layne Fargo. This flips the usual male serial killer motif to a woman, which is fun, although the plot gets more and more preposterous as the story goes on. I enjoy a killer who outwits the police as opposed to one who mainly depends upon law enforcement's indifference or incompetence. Alas, we can't have everything in one novel (usually). Since the story and characters mostly intrigued me, and I loved the ending, I gave it 3.5 stars in my reading journal (rounded up to 4.0 on Goodreads because you can't do halves there), which I began today to keep better track of the books I read. 

I recommend the psycho thriller The Devil Inside by Mark David Abbott. It's another turnabout type of story with an abused husband this time. He plots revenge upon his horrible wife, with a shocking twist at the end segueing into the sequel Flipped, which is told from the wife's POV. I gave Devil four stars and Flipped three. Flipped wasn't as fun because it was basically a retelling of Devil with a bit extra, but if you read Devil, you kinda have to read Flipped!

I started The Thursday Murder Club on Netflix the other day and found it too boring to finish despite the stellar cast. I did finish Rent a Groom (Prime), which is the tired old story of a couple "fake dating" (or engaged) due to family pressure or whatever, but then (surprise!) they fall for each other. There are some funny moments. A Perfect Match on Prime is another snoozer I managed to get through without DNFing. The premise is a bit different: a woman who runs a dating site matches herself with someone whom she decides is wrong for her because they're so different re pizza toppings or some shit, so she tries to tweak the site's algorithm to get her "perfect match," but as it turns out... you guessed it. I have noticed something weird about Prime romcoms (not the "famous" ones, but random romcoms I never heard of before with actors I don't know): there is like zero physical affection. I don't think the leads even kissed during the two movies I just mentioned! 

Back to Netflix. I watched the first episode of S2 of With Love, Meghan and enjoyed it. Idk what people expect from a show like this, but it was fun to see her whip up some delicious looking onion tarts and PB smores, plus dye a few scarves in pretty color combos. I will probably watch the whole season, as I did S1, though admittedly I sometimes fell asleep before the end of an ep. I also began the series On the Waterfront, which is a family/ crime drama about some peeps in Florida who start running drugs to save the family biz from bankruptcy. It's interesting enough to keep watching, but I stopped after one ep and will resume later, maybe tonight.

I DNF'd a whole bunch of books this week. There are so many TBR, and I have limited time (both daily and overall, given my age), that there is no point in wasting precious hours on ones that don't grab me from the start. I donated some physical books to my local library; others I plan to theme up in holiday gift baskets. As far as my Kindle, I bumped the unwanted ones off my TBR list by marking them read, as opposed to deleting them entirely (in case I change my mind), but I think that caused Goodreads to count them as read too, which I told it not to do. GR says I read 208 books this year, which is ridiculous because at most I finish 12 per month, including short stories and novellas, which GR counts as finished books. 

Whatever. I am trying to avoid obsessing over trivia and to quit deleting everything that irritates me in an impulsive purge. It's an ongoing process...

Dog Days

It hasn't been that hot here, relatively speaking, but I still feel the lethargy of August. I don't feel like doing much, going anywhere, or exercising (though the last one is normal for any month). I have no desire to get back to any of my WIPs, paint, or start anything new. I simply consume: books movies, social media. Let others produce the content because I CBA. Blogging is different. It's like keeping a diary, and I have no problem rambling on about nothing. I did 99 notarizations at work on Friday, and my hand has been killing me since. Plot twist! It's my left hand that hurts not my right, which is weird. Maybe it's the way I hold my notary journal open with my left hand while I write with my right? No clue.

Last week I read a silly thriller by Samara Cove called How to Make Your Neighbors Disappear. It's a fast, fun story of six neighbors in Silent Ridge Road who all have dark secrets and many of whom have no problem committing murders or other felonies to advance their goals. Nothing deep or meaningful here, just a bunch of creepy characters who slither through the pages. I enjoyed it. Three stars. I have DNF'd a bunch of other novels I downloaded on my Kindle because there are so many, and if even one thing irritates me about the writing, I am immediately out. 

I watched this supercute romcom on Prime Saturday afternoon ~ Match Me If You Can. I made sure to give it a thumbs-up in hopes that Prime will suggest more movies like this instead of the usual garbage they shovel at me (same goes for Netflix and Hulu). This is a 2023 film directed by Marian Yeager, the screenplay by Betsy Morris. It stars Georgina Riley as Kit Parsons, a supposedly undesirable "nerd," but she's actually beautiful and would have no problem finding a man in real life. Her counterpart, Riley Detamore (played by Wilson Bethel) is also an adorable, successful "nerd" whom plenty of women would probably like to date in reality. That's OK. These movies are fantasies, so I go with the flow. I enjoyed the premise of this one, which is that when Kit drunkenly and impulsively signs up for a dating site (owned by Riley), she receives a message that she has no matches and should get a dog instead. She then begins a campaign of trashing the dating company on her blog, goes viral (as it always happens with fictional blogs), and gets a restraining order from the dating company. She's set up by an unethical podcaster who tricks her into breaking the gag order, so she ends up spending a night in jail and going to court. The outcome is sweet and cute; Kit even gets revenge on her mean boss. The whole movie is just wriggly with happiness like a new puppy, and sometimes I just need that in my entertainment.

I also watched I Want You Back on Prime, which I also liked a lot! Two in a row, woohoo. Directed by Jason Orley, written by Isaac Aptaker and Elizabeth Berger, this one stars Jenny Slate and Charlie Day as two brokenhearted thirty-somethings (Emma and Peter) who work in the same building and are dumped out of the blue. They find each other sobbing on the stairs, become friends, and decide to team up to break up their exes' new relationships. Jenny tries to seduce Logan, who is now seeing Peter's ex Anne, while Peter hires Emma's ex Noah as his personal trainer, and as they hang out, Peter tries to get Noah to be unfaithful to his new girlfriend Ginny. The twists and turns are fun, and I really dig that all these folks seem "ordinary." They have regular jobs, and none are over the top beautiful. They're just people, trying to navigate changes in their lives, and coming to terms with the idea that maybe what they had before wasn't so great after all. Really well done.

That's all. Taking my friend L out for Thai food tonight as a belated birthday dinner. Looking forward to seeing her and having some yummies.

Inky Updates

I went DNF on Mansfield Park by Jane Austen for a book club challenge because it is absolutely the most tedious thing ever. Here's an SSC (short shameful confession): I don't like Jane Austen's writing! Sacrilege, I know. I like the movie version of Sense and Sensibility, and the Pride and Prejudice miniseries is in my watchlist. But the books! Gah! P&P was horribly boring too, but nowhere near as bad as Mansfield. I couldn't help but think how Victoria Holt would have written it: she would have stayed strictly in Fanny's POV and cut out all the endless drivel about what the other family members thought of Fanny. 

For example: "I arrived at Mansfield Park at the age of ten because my parents could no longer afford all the children they kept producing. I was keenly aware that my aunt and uncle were doing me a favor by allowing me to live in their home, and I tried to be as grateful as they said I ought to be, but in fact I was miserable. I missed my loving siblings, even if we didn't have enough to eat some days. The cousins pointed out to me at every opportunity how lacking my education had been, and I grew wary of uttering a word and proving them correct. Of course, my silence was also criticized and labeled as disrespectful. It seemed I could do nothing right and my very existence was an affront to the Mansfield Park denizens, though I did hear my aunt and uncle congratulating themselves on their massive act of Christian charity by taking me in; I supposed they had earned a large number of credits on the heavenly scorecard."

After that, we leap ahead to her teen years ~ as the book does, but without 20 pages of excruciatingly dull dialog among the other family members. My Victoria Holt fan fiction would sum up five years in one paragraph and then move on to an actual plot (idk if MP has a plot because I didn't read that far in). Oh well. My pristine copy of Mansfield will be yet another donation to the Fountain Valley Library.

I watched F***, Marry, Kill (Lucy Hale is as adorable here as she was in The Hating Game). It’s kind of a thriller romcom…  funny, cute, suspenseful. I recommend it! I've also begun a new series my friend J recommended: The Watcher. It's fun and silly and would be better with someone else in Jennifer Coolidge's role as the realtor. I absolutely can't stand her ~ she was annoying in Legally Blonde, and it's been downhill since. Or is that uphill? It's certainly tiring to watch her either be an idiot or an ahole or something in between. The rest of the cast and show is pretty good however.

*

OK, here's the news everyone has been waiting for: I'm really happy with the way things are going with Inky. Today is her fourth day with me in her new home.

1. She knew to use the litterbox right away, and all is good in that department.

2. She seems pleased with normal grocery store cat food and treats, so I don't have to spend an ungodly amount of money (yet) ordering special food from Chewy.

3. So far, she's staying mostly in "cat realm" ~ under the bed and on the dining room chairs. She doesn't seem interested in jumping on counters, knocking over my knickknacks, or rooting through the trash.

4. She's still shy and skittish, but she has occasionally let me pet her for a few seconds, and she licked a cat treat off my finger. I think that's great progress!

5. Saturday afternoon, I sat on the floor and spoke to her very softly and lovingly... and she began to purr! I was so happy I almost cried. Since then I've petted her several times (briefly and carefully), and she purrs each time. 

6. She loves all the kitty toys ~ soft mice, crunchy balls, laser pointer, feather on a stick, etc. ~ and she is very kittenish and cute (she is a little over a year old by the shelter's estimate). 

7. My daughter and son-in-law came up on Sunday to have lunch with me and meet Inky, but she went back under the bed and wouldn't come out even for a squeeze treat (concentrated noms in a little tube).

8. After they left, my other daughter FaceTimed me to meet Inky; by that time we were alone again in a quiet house, and Inky was all playful and adorable. 

More updates soon. My eyes are better, so I plan to read and review books again as well.

One Hundredth Post

My first post on this reanimated blog was on August 12, 2024 ~ an impulsive act due to my desire to write about a movie. On my old WordPress blog, I would post a hundred times a month, filling the space with all kinds of pointless crap. Well, there’s still plenty of pointless crap here too, just at a much slower pace. And now I’ve hit the 100 post milestone, woohoo.

I thought at first that I would write lots of in-depth reviews, but it turns out that’s boring, so I mostly just write a few lines about what I’ve read/ watched, and that’s enough. I don’t do prompts or post pics or links to songs, nor do I say much about politics. All that is a giant drag, but it fills most of social media, as opposed to any original thought. I try to form my own opinions, not that I feel compelled to shout them all in public. 

I have a confession: when I shared the link to my Kitty vs Man post and a bunch of Facebook friends showed up to read/ react/ comment, that felt pretty pretty pretty good. Sometimes I miss that type of feedback, so the next time I write a funny (not book reviews, since most of my friends don’t read fiction for pleasure, which is something I will never understand), I will share it on FB. Don’t hold your breath ~ it could be another year before I am clever again.

Speaking of books, yesterday I almost abandoned the 2025 Reading Challenge because every book I started for the “recommended on Facebook” category was a DNF. The heck with this, I thought, imma read what I want instead and get through these huge TBR piles. But then… epiphany! There’s nothing sacred about the challenge; it’s just a bunch of random ideas jumbled together. So why can’t I simply change their categories into my own based on the books I wanna read when I can’t fit something into theirs? No reason whatsoever.

For my first self-created challenge category of “woman falls in love with her rapist,” I read The Demon Lover by Victoria Holt and gave it two stars. Usually, I rate her books higher, but this one was so annoying. This wasn’t my first encounter with the WFILWHR trope from Ms. Holt, but it was especially galling here given that the “heroine” was supposed to be highly intelligent and independent. I barely even consider Demon Lover to be a romance novel, bleh. 

The second SCCC is “MC falls in love with the boy next door.” The India Fan by Victoria Holt inspired this challenge category, and I enjoyed the novel very much. It was truly romantic (as well as historical fiction), and the novel contained exciting adventures/ travel along with local color and interesting side characters. Yay!

Onto the next hundred…

Three Movies and a Book

I actually went to see a movie in the theater! My friend L and I had the entire place to ourselves Sunday afternoon, which doesn't bode well for the future of movie theaters, especially because the film we chose received good ratings. Drop was classified as horror, which is why some other friends declined to go, but I see it has been reclassified as mystery/thriller. That makes sense ~ I would call it psychological suspense. Anyway, we enjoyed it, and it reinforced our hatred of online dating. After that, I had a delicious veggie sandwich at Boudin Bakery. It is fun to leave the house sometimes, lol.

Also this past weekend I watched 99 Homes on Netflix, starring Michael Shannon, and it was entertaining, though it became a bit preposterous. It's based on the sad reality of evictions during the 2008 foreclosure crisis, but it veers into absurdity at times, such as when a super wealthy house flipper partners up with a random construction dude and brings him to high-level meetings. It has an intriguing ending however, which generated an interesting Reddit discussion.

The Residence is a popular comedy on Netflix, so I checked it out. Hated it! DNF'd episode one and will not try again. I loathe the new way of TV writing/ editing with super short scenes and random snippets of convo flickering past as if the entire show is a montage of previews. Is this due to viewers' short attention spans? It gives me a headache and also irritates me on Bachelor Nation shows. I'm never sure if I'm getting the real gist of a conversation when all they show are truncated snips. Some of the other "reality" shows I've tried are even worse (like Mormon Wives).

Behold the Monster by Jillian Lauren allowed me to check off the true crime nonfiction box on my 2025 Reading Challenge. Sort of. When I requested the book, I didn't realize that Jillian had taken great liberties of fictionalization to the point where I wasn't sure where her actual interviews with Sam Little (serial killer) ended and her imagination began. For example, were all the parts about Sam's childhood abuse real, or did she enhance those same as she did his victims' stories? I found it interesting at first, especially when she did a dive into genetics, but after a while I became bored. Jillian went into great detail about police bureaucracy and such, and I didn't care at all about the layout of buildings and offices blah blah blah. Nor did I need vivid descriptions and back stories on the officers. It was all too much, and the book was too long. I got the feeling Jillian was doing an assignment and needed to pad her wordcount. Two stars.

Weird coincidence ~ right after I began the book, Jillian Lauren (Shriner, married to a rock musician) got shot by the cops outside her own house in Los Angeles (see this article). Jillian's waving a gun at the police kind of makes sense because while I was reading the book, I got an eerie feeling that she was a bit too in sync with psycho Sam. Not every writer who creates monsters is a monster of course, but Jillian seemed to go above and beyond what she needed for the book. Case in point, she has the urn of his ashes in her garage. 

A Slew of Reviews (No Fooling)

Happy April 1! I've been busy consuming other people's creativity, so without further ado, here are my latest reviews. 

Jar of Hearts by Jennifer Hillier – four stars. (Spoilers be here!)

I found this suspense novel compelling even though I didn’t like or relate to any of the characters. The writing was excellent though, and Hillier kept the suspense ratcheted up throughout the story. I hesitate to use the ridiculous nonword “unputdownable,” but it truly was. I simply could not stop reading until the very end. Speaking of the ending, I was a bit perturbed because I didn’t think that Georgina had earned a happy one ~ she was an even worse person than I initially assumed. It appeared for a while as though Geo was simply a naïve teenager who fell for a very bad boy. Well, it turned out that the boy was indeed bad, as bad as they get, but Geo was equally horrible for the part she played in their friend’s murder. She was bullied into helping Calvin dispose of the body, but as soon as they were done with the gruesome task, Grace could have gone to the police. She made a conscious choice year after year to not come forward. Keeping the secret contributed greatly to the parents' suffering ~ and Grace only served five years for her crime! (Yes, she never confessed to the full extent of her participation, and Calvin kept it a secret too, but even so.) 

There was an incredible twist at the end that I didn’t see coming, and that was fun to read. It was a bit farfetched, but I still enjoyed it. Otherwise, not only do I think that Geo deserved a harsher penalty, but also I wish Kaiser hadn’t still been in love with her at the end. It would have been more satisfying for him to have said, yep, I had a mad crush on you as dorky high school boy, but now as a grown-ass man (and a cop!) I see what a terrible person you are, and my love has died. That’s the ending I would have written, but I am no longer writing books, and Jar of Hearts kept me interested until the last word. Maybe you can call it a hate-read, but that's OK: it still counts as good writing. Besides being a book club selection, this book also fit into my 2025 Reading Challenge category of taking place on the West Coast (Washington State).

Behind Closed Doors by B.A. Paris – three stars (SPOILERS!).

I was turned off from this psychological thriller immediately because it was another one of the "perfect marriages whose shiny exterior hides beastly abuse" stories that we have seen a zillion times already (yawn), but I persevered because (1) it was a book club selection, and (2) it fit my 2025 Reading Challenge category of having a four-star review (on Goodreads). Despite my boredom with this trope, I tried to be fair ~ the solid writing and satisfying ending boosted the rating to three stars from its initial two. It's hard to feel sympathy for the female MC, Grace, as she ignores all the red flags flying from Jack because no other man was willing to tolerate Grace's lifelong commitment to her semi-disabled sister. She never stopped to question why Jack was so eager to embrace both women into his life. I mean, duh. Wouldn't that be your first question after all these other guys rejected you for it? But we don't have to like the MC to get invested in the story. We can think she's stupid and still want to find out what happens.

The first twist is that Jack the monster really wants Millie, Grace's sister with Down Syndrome, though we never understand why. Why is the idea of torturing a disabled person more exciting than torturing a fully functional woman? You would think the author might give us a clue as to what is going on in Jack's evil brain. Jack briefly mentioned his backstory after his marriage to Grace, but it didn't explain much, plus we aren't sure if we can trust what he says in the first place. His father abused his mother; Jack ended up getting turned on by that; he killed his mother; his father took the fall for it. But Jack's father was also a monster, so why would he go to prison for his son? Is he still alive? How did Jack become a lawyer with all the necessary background checks when this scandalous info was in his past? Yes, he changed his name, but given his high profile cases, you would think an opposing attorney would have investigated and outed him. OK, let's move on.

It was hard for me to deal with the section where Jack killed the puppy that he had given Grace and forced her to bury the dead body in the backyard. I almost DNF'd the book at this point. Human murder OK, but doggie murder? No way. Just no. One of last month’s books, Allegedly, described the aftermath of a cat's murder, which was incredibly gory and disgusting, but we hadn’t really gotten to know the cat at all, plus it was possible the death was quick and the maiming came afterward. The doggie in Behind Closed Doors suffered however, which was super upsetting to read, but even so the suffering was "only" imagined after his death, not described during. Anyway, I kept reading. At least Jack got exactly what he deserved at the end.

Saraband for Two Sisters by Victoria Holt (Philippa Carr) – four stars.

I vaguely remembered loving this romance novel from my teen years, and yay I was not disappointed. Usually, books/movies are not as good as I thought they were, but this one still intrigued me last week. I’m a huge fan of the way Holt creates momentous events layer upon layer, so the reader is aware that something big is coming that will change the MC's life, but we have no idea what it could be. It’s not easy to write in this way without sounding clunky or shoveling a ton of boring backstory at us, but the first-person narrative technique Holt uses, usually from a teenaged girl protagonist, works well to build the suspense. In this case, there are twin sisters, Angelet and Bersaba, who share some similarities, but ultimately are very different, especially in regard to romance. Spoiler: they both go after the same man. Like many a good gothic novel, there’s a mysterious house with a secret door to a hidden passage that no one is supposed to explore because it is “very dangerous.” The servants in the house are suspicious as well. Fun! This book fit my 2025 Reading Challenge category of involving a vacation, for Angelet is sent away on an extended holiday when Bersaba contracts smallpox. Due to this trip, Angelet meets the man who will change both sisters' lives. 

Anora – Academy Award for Best Picture, Director, Actress, etc.

Seriously WTF? A female stripper (Ani/Anora) is introduced to a wealthy young Russian dude (Vanya) at the sex club where she works because she speaks a little Russian. Vanya and Ani negotiate $15,000 for her to spend a week with him and ditch her job. Vanya and Ani have tons of graphic sex all over his lavish NY mansion ~ he is obviously loaded with money ~ and impulsively jet off to Vegas with friends where they get married on a whim. Vanya seems to have the idea that he will be allowed to stay in the USA indefinitely if he marries an American (I guess the screenplay was written before Trump II). Soon after they return to NY, his mother back in Russia orders her thugs to come after the couple because she’s enraged that her son has married a prostitute. As these goons break in and assault Ani, Vanya runs out of the home and leaves her to them. A tedious scene ensues where Ani screams “mother*cker” about 5000 times. Such wonderful writing/acting, eh? Sooo creative.

It occurred to me that I didn’t care about any of these obnoxious characters, so I DNF’d this movie and read the ending on Wikipedia. It still boggles my mind that Anora won awards, since it is literally p0rn with a very thin plot. 

More reviews soon.

The Return of the Bachelor

I have some new reviews for you, but I am super tired, so we'll see how far I get tonight before I pass out on my laptop. Let's get the TV show out of the way first. I can't believe The Bachelor is a "reality" show, as each season has a formula, and it's pretty much the same for either a bachelor or bachelorette. Early on, one of the contestants establishes herself as an aggressive minx, constantly "stealing" the bachelor away for extra one on one time (Devin played the male minx during Jenn bachelorette season). The minx will barge in on a group date or another girl's tête-à-tête with the bachelor at the mansion and demand a private convo with him. Several other contestants will act (or pretend to be) horrified by this obnoxious behavior and gossip about how uncool it is. Sometimes one of them will even cry. Someone will moan about she may not be able to continue if so and so doesn't rein it in or leave the show. One of them will decide to take a stand and confront the minx. It doesn't go well. OMG, now we have all this drama in the house! The bachelor gets wind of it and is very displeased ~ he sternly reminds them that this is about his journey for love and they all must respect the process blah blah blah.

While all this is going on, the dates continue at their rapid pace as the bachelor tries to find his true love among the women pre-selected for him. Same goes for the bachelorette seasons, at least the ones I have seen. The weird thing to me is that the bachelor doesn't seem to have very much chemistry with either the minx or her nemesis (compared to the others), yet he keeps giving them roses so they stay on the show. It's almost as if... [crazy conspiracy theory alert]... the whole thing is planned out in advance by the producers in order to create conflict out of nothing at all and ramp up the drama factor. I know, I know, that's pretty nuts of me to imagine. What can I say? I'm really tired and loopy. I still enjoy the show, somewhat, but my interest has waned, especially because most of the couples break up sooner or later. I was disappointed that Jenn chose Devin, as I had considered him a jerk the whole time, and then he brutally dumped her almost immediately after the finale, proving that I do in fact have good radar to flag a bad guy... just not in my own dating life.

None of this applies to the Golden Bachelor/ette as old people have their own set of problems, generally involving family and relocation issues. I was talking about geographical undesirability with one of my coworkers yesterday, reminiscing about how men in Los Angeles freaked out about the idea of dating someone forty miles away in Orange County. Some of you may remember I wrote a whole poem about it. I wonder if that guy ever found anyone within five miles of the West Side. You think I am joking? I am not! Five miles was his limit. He's still handsome, for an oldie ~ I look him up occasionally on his law firm's website. Not that I am interested in dating, of course!

Sometimes I use bold for emphasis, and sometimes I use italics. Which is better? Should I save italics for book and movie titles? I don't like to use a lot of bold though because I find it distracting. You know what else I hate? When writers/bloggers put words in "quotes" for no "reason." It drives me batty. 

I read Imaginary Strangers by Minka Kent for my two-word title reading challenge box, and I gave it only two stars. Ridiculous plot, unlikeable characters, present tense... just ugh. The main "conflict" was a woman being unable/unwilling to tell her very nice husband about her terrible past, so therefore when some shit starts going down she supposedly has to handle it by herself and lie to him constantly, but you know what? The entire story could have ended on page one if she had been honest with him. It would have been a much better book in that case, lol. I started and DNF'd two others: Dead Girls Don't Blog by Pamela Frost Davis and Requiem for a Dream by Hubert Selby. Dead Girls was boring AF right from the start; Requiem was written in vernacular (Black and Jewish, or what the author imagined them to be), but without speech indicators, which made it even harder to follow, and I gave up immediately. I actually saw the movie a while back, and it was OK. Anyway, I refuse to read books I hate or that require a lot of effort, and if that means I don't finish the challenge, so be it. I will still read 100-125 books this year, but I may not complete every challenge category. Whatever, who cares, amirite?

Must go crash... more tomorrow...

Hey, it's tomorrow! February 7. I have returned to finish my post at early dark thirty... and my search bar says it's National Wear Red Day. WTF is that? Oh, it's to raise awareness for women's heart health, just in case someone doesn't know that heart disease is still the No. 1 killer of American women, not breast cancer, which gets more attention, or trans migrants invading our bathrooms. Cardiovascular disease is the No. 1 killer of new moms too, so it's not just us old crones who need to be aware. I am aware... I just don't do anything about it. Well, that's not entirely true. I do watch what I eat and try to avoid stress (aka dating), but I know I do not get enough exercise. 

What was I talking about again? Oh, reviews. I actually read a book I liked a lot (cue trumpets) ~ The Younger Wife by Sally Hepworth. This suspense novel satisfied the challenge request for three or more POVs. Here we had POVs from two sisters, Rachel and Tully, plus Heather (their father's younger girlfriend/wife), all nicely separated by chapter and in past tense. The characters were well developed and interesting, and the plot revealed a few twists I did not see coming. There is domestic violence depicted in this book, so that may be a trigger warning for some readers. I do have triggers myself, but they mostly involve bad writing and the Holocaust, two things I refuse to deal with in fiction. In fact, I have learned to avoid any book set between 1920-1960 for this reason. Anyway, if you can handle reading DV, I highly rec The Younger Wife. I gave it four stars, not five, because there were a few first-person interruptions from another character in present tense. We absolutely did not need these.

It's Friday! Tomorrow I have a games with friends event at Stonefire Grill, and Sunday is my book club potluck lunch and discussion. In between, I will be reading my next Victoria Holt novel: Voices from a Haunted Room. Hope everyone has a good weekend!

Happy Merry Festivities!

I am pleased to report that I am on a break from work until January 2, woohoo! I do enjoy my job, and my coworkers are cool, but sometimes it's good to take a week or so off. Generally, I just take long weekends; this year though I had some extra days and decided to use them now. I know you are all (all five of you) wondering what exciting events I have planned for this vacation, and I will tell you: absolutely nothing. Yep, it's a stay-cation, and I couldn't be happier about that. I will be spending time with friends and family, and also I will relax by myself to take walks and paint and read and write. Last night, Christmas Eve, was spent obsessively curating a list of 100 books to read in 2025 to conform to a new reading challenge pile of requirements. I still have one blank spot ~ a book with a 25-year-old main character. I have not found any book descriptions so far that give a precise age, but I shall be on the lookout. Suggestions welcomed, but it has to be a new-to-me book, and I have read a lot. I also reserve the right to switch out books pre-reading if I run across better ones for my list. Being frugal, I tried to find a spot for every unread book I currently own (physical or Kindle), plus I tried to find some that are free on Amazon Prime. Some possibly will be available at the library as well.

A couple days ago I finished reading The Landower Legacy, another Victoria Holt gem, and I gave it five stars. Such a good read! It was full of romance and betrayals and scandals and mental illness and bees and all kinds of fascinating stuff. One thing that stands out to me in many of the VH books is how death can come for anyone at any time ~ just like now, of course, except that in our comfortable contemporary Western existence, we can tend to forget this. Contemporary romances are usually too upbeat to mention any deaths, except for all the orphaned protagonists whose parents died in car crashes ages ago. VH books are set in the late 1800s, so death via common illness and/or childbirth is a very real thing. (We may be seeing that again here soon, if certain idiots get their way regarding vaccines.) To be honest, Landower wasn't really a five-star book, but since I have given other enjoyable books four stars, and Holt's best are better than that, it's only fair that they should get five. Most books get three, which (again) I will emphasize is not a "bad" rating; it simply means that I liked the book, but it also had several flaws. Two stars means I didn't like it, and I rarely give one star. If a book is that bad I simply DNF it.

Speaking of. Last night, I started a romance novel on my Kindle: Dance with Me New Year's Eve by Alana Highbury, but it was just too awful to finish. I had high hopes for it too because it had a You've Got Mail type of trope, where the main characters hate each other in real life (they work for the same company and have to collaborate on a project), but they connect very nicely anonymously in a chatroom online due to their mutual love of a TV show. The problem was that the female MC was so awkward, shy, and weird that I just wanted to smack her; the male MC was such a total ahole that I wanted to push him off a cliff. In You've Got Mail, we had lots of opportunities to see the MC's away from their bickering with each other and also away from their computers, so we developed a sense of them as complete people. We didn't get that in DWMNYE, as it was simply relentless awkwardness and assholetry throughout. Online, they weren't that different either! She was still lacking self-confidence and overthinking every word she wrote, while he was abrupt and off-putting. What was the point of all this? Clearly, we are supposed to wait for these unlikeable characters to fall in love and become less annoying, but why? I decided that a better course of action was to DNF this book in disgust.

There's a reason why the hater dater trope is one of my nopes: it's generally executed so ham-handedly that the reader also hates the MC (invariably the man) because he actually is hateful! If the writer wants to portray him with many aspects, s/he needs to actually show those other sides to him. Give him a dog, for crying out loud, like Joe had in You've Got Mail. Anything! But if he is 100% ahole, why would we want the heroine to be with him? This guy, Jeff, was an absolute beast at work (and he wasn't even Roxy's boss, so he should have been told off by higher-ups), and honestly idk if anything else he did could make up for that, not even kindness to animals. There was no reason for him to be such a jerk to Roxy, unless she was supposed to be an unreliable narrator, but I didn't care enough to read on and find out. Though this book hit only two nope tropes before it went DNF, the awkwardness plus hater dater themes were so bad in themselves that I just gave up.

Isn't it interesting that I always have more to say about the books I hate as opposed to the books I love? I guess that's true in general, which is why I used to host the Monday peeve and never did anything like the Friday favorite. Oh, speaking of peeves, I found a way to fix my annoyance at grocery clerks and bank tellers who ask personal questions. Instead of being rude (which I don't really like to do as it isn't their fault they are forced to ask me idiotic things like "are you on your lunch break?"), I don't ignore them or say something grumpy now ~ I turn the question right around on them! I did this yesterday at the bank, and the teller was happy to moan about how she was forced to work half a day on Christmas Eve. I didn't have to say a word about my schedule. Remember: most people would rather talk about themselves given a chance.

I, of course, am not most people. My holiday plans and daily activities must be kept a state secret from clerks and tellers, so I can divulge them on my blog. Today, I plan to play board games and eat (more) cookies with some friends, and Sunday I will be with my family. Hope all five of my readers have a joyful Christmas and/or Chanukah!

DNF: Sex, Murder and a Double Latte

Going forward, I am going to classify as DNF (did not finish) any book that hits three or more of my nope tropes. Life is too short to be annoyed by fiction when real life gets more annoying by the minute, though of course my life is much better than it used to be. I will be referring to my Persnickety Peeves list for my strikes, but I reserve the right to add more nope tropes as the mood moves me. 

Today’s DNF is Sex, Murder and a Double Latte by Kyra Davis. I am bummed about it because I have two more in the series, but rules are rules, amirite? The first strike is that Sophie Katz, the protagonist, is a writer. The second strike is that she has a stereotypical Jewish mother. The third strike is that the meet cute is a ridiculous setup where the “hero” is rude and buys the last newspaper, and so she must hate him despite his gorgeousness. However, I didn’t think it was fair for me to use strike one, since it says on the jacket that she’s a writer, and I chose this book prior to creating my “main character can’t be a writer” rule, so I waited for a fourth strike. I didn’t have to wait very long: on page 29 we discover that Sophie has a gay male best friend who is a hairdresser. Omg. I’m done.

(I see that I do not have “gay best friend” in my list of nope tropes, but it should have been in there, plus I stipulated that the list was open-ended.)

Luckily, this wasn’t a book club assignment, but just a novel I found in the Huntington Beach Library and grabbed because it was pink and had a fun title. Since I did that, I also picked up Kyra Davis’ Passion, Betrayal and Killer Highlights at the HB library and downloaded her book Chaos, Desire and a Kick-ass Cupcake to my kindle. Hey, it’s the rule of three, and you know how I feel about rules.

I am thinking of adding another peeve to the list: friends that come over and randomly scarf up stuff in the kitchen a la Seinfeld. No one does this in real life, and while it was fine as a running TV gag, I don’t like it in books. Actually, I’ve only seen it in this particular book, but it bugged me. Maybe that’s too nitpicky. Heaven forbid that I should nitpick! 

Onward to further annoyances.