I was able to harvest two beautiful Cinderella pumpkins, which are now gracing my hearth. I had to pick them before the squirrels started to feast on them. The garden is on its last legs, but I harvest onions and tomatoes daily and am still roasting and freezing green chilis.
Lots to cover book-wise since my last two posts have been about traveling. Here goes.
The story is a first-person narrative by a guy serving a life sentence in the fictional Shawshank penitentiary in Maine in mid-twentieth century. He, Red, relates the story of a fellow convict, Andy Dufresne, a brilliant financier accused of murdering his wife and her lover. While the story is all about Andy's decades-long implementation of his escape from prison--and this part is totally fascinating--equally compelling was Red's description of prison life. Warning--there are some pretty rough scenes, as should be expected in a prison story, but they are part of the story and not gratuitous.
The ending is sublime, and the insights that King conveys through both Red and Andy are remarkable. First published in 1982, this incredible story is definitely already in the Classics category as far as I'm concerned. Now, I truly do need to watch that movie!
Sweet Thunder, by Ivan Doig - the third book in the author's trilogy featuring the charming and irrepressible Morrie Morgan. The year is 1920, the place is Butte, Montana, and Morrie is up to his eyeballs in trouble. He and his lovely bride have inherited a monstrosity of a house, without the income to keep it liveable--the dastardly Anaconda copper company is throwing money and thugs at keeping the union from getting into their enormous profits--and Morrie, having a silver pen to go with his silver tongue, has been enlisted to write editorials for the union-backed newspaper.
Morrie is an absolute joy to spend time with, and the rest of the characters in his world are delightful and real and sympathetic, and just good company. I especially enjoyed reading about the newspaper business during its golden age--when morning and evening editions were a thing and newsboys fought for the best corners and "stop the presses" was really yelled when a story was breaking.
The Castle in the Glen, by Rhys Bowen - I picked this up in a bookstore in Carbondale, where we stayed when we went to the closing performance of the Aspen Music Festival in August. I figured it would be a fun addition to my Reading Scotland project. And it mostly was, but turned out to be only a 3-star novel for me. The basic idea is that 20-something Emma from Australia is living in London in 1968, working for the publishing house that published her novel. She is homesick and on the brink of abandoning rainy, gloomy London for sunny New South Wales, when she is asked by a world famous mystery writer to finish her latest novel, set n Scotland, because said writer is suffering from dementia.
Yes, pretty far-fetched. But okay, I will suspend my disbelief. A mere 405 pages later, Emma solves the mystery of who this famous writer really is, why she wanted Emma to finish her book, and the real-life mystery that the mystery novel was based on. For roughly three-quarters of the book, I was pretty into it, despite the writing being just so-so (after King and Doig, my standards were pretty high), but the last quarter of the book caused an abundance of eye rolling.
I did actually really enjoy Emma's travels around Skye--I looked up a bunch of place names, which was fun. One of my issues, however, was that Emma didn't really feel Australian. The Scots she meet didn't really feel like Scots. And the 1960s didn't feel like sixty years ago. It was a fun read, but I don't think Bowen is the author for me. Oh, and the castle wasn't in a glen--it was on a promontory The title worked though--I picked it up and bought it!
Desert Star, by Michael Connelly - another Renee Ballard/Harry Bosch novel. Renee is now head of an Open-Unsolved Unit at LAPD, and she recruits Harry as an unpaid volunteer for the unit. He eagerly signs up so that he can go after his "white whale" case--the one that haunts him because he was never able to track down the killer of an entire family. He knows who dunnit, but not where they are hiding.
The Waiting, by Michael Connelly - one of the best Connelly novels. I liked it so much I actually gave it 5 stars on Goodreads. Renee is still head of the Open-Unsolved Unit, which is all volunteer. This time she recruits Harry's daughter, Maddie, who is a uniformed cop with the LAPD, but wants experience to help her fast-track her way to detective. The plot is so interesting--DNA technology is now able to help the unit solve decades-old cases, using evidence originally deemed unusable.
What put this one over the top for me was how Connelly had Maddie solve the "Black Dahlia" unsolved murder from 1947. I thought how Connelly wove the real case into his fictional world was absolutely compelling.
In addition, Renee's personal story--her estranged mother is missing after the horrible fires that destroyed 80% of Lahaina in Maui in 2023--runs parallel to the cases she is working on and really fleshes her out as a believable character.
On to TV
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| Season 1 cast of Everwood |
Everwood on Netflix - this family drama from the early 2000s is getting lots of promotion on Netflix and apparently is currently trending. Anyway, we are enjoying it--a world-famous neurosurgeon from NYC loses his wife in a car accident and relocates to the fictional town of Everwood in Colorado with his 15-year-old son and 9-year-old daughter. Drama ensues.
My kids were young in the early 2000s, I was working full-time and trying to write in the evenings. So this one completely flew under my radar. I am really enjoying the teenage angst, the single-Dad struggles, the small town issues, and the medical dilemmas that both doctors deal with in small town America.
One of the funny things about the show is that the fictional town is three hours from Denver, in the mountains, and the characters are always going there like its 30 minutes away! I rarely go to Denver, and it's only 40 minutes for me :)
And, Chris Pratt is the other doctor's teenage son. So fun to see him in his early days on the screen.
Best Medicine on Hulu - I loved Doc Martin when it was a thing, but only just started watching Best Medicine, the American version of the UK show. Josh Charles, of The Good Wife, is Dr. Martin Best, a socially awkward surgeon who had to quit his thriving practice in Boston when he developed a blood phobia. He has relocated to a small town on coastal Maine. Love these small-town shows!
We're still in season 1, but it's like deja vu all over again--all the characters have been ported and Americanized and the story lines are eerily familiar. So much fun! Last night, Martin's parents visited and guess who was playing Martin's father? That's right. Martin Clunes, the original Doc Martin!
Oh, and Annie Potts, who I loved in Designing Women, plays Martin's Aunt Sally.
So happy to be in the Fall. Let the pumpkin spice rule supreme! Hope everyone has a wonderful October.
