Still reading Ngaio Marsh as I circle around the You Again rewrite. Also reading a book on idea journals (kind of collage journal) and one on crochet stitches because I’m into scarf season and one on cats in an attempt to understand Emily. My iPad refused to recharge the other day and I panicked because what am I without my Kindle reader ? (Reading on the laptop is much harder.). How do people who don’t read make it through the day? Or worse, the night?
Still thinking about the new Good Omens audio. What I need is a sample to listen to. Because I could crochet scarves while I listened.
Enough about me, what did you read this week.
Hello! I read Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir and really enjoyed it. Despite the death, violence, necromancy, complex SFF world and Spoilery Things, it still managed to be funny, the MC is immensely likeable, and it’s well paced, getting more page turning as you go.
Only unspoilery caveat, I listened to the audiobook (excellent narration) and needed the sample chapter in print for the dramatis personae. A lot of characters with long, different names, sometimes referred to by their house rather than their name, was hard to keep track of in audio.
There is maybe another caveat re the way two of the characters who interact closely treat each other that some may find problematic – but I checked and I couldn’t find trigger warnings, so maybe ok. Example below.
“Nonagesimus,” she said slowly, “the only job I’d do for you would be if you wanted someone to hold the sword as you fell on it. The only job I’d do for you would be if you wanted your ass kicked so hard, the Locked Tomb opened and a parade came out to sing, ‘Lo! A destructed ass.’ The only job I’d do would be if you wanted me to spot you while you backflipped off the top tier into Drearburh.”
“That’s three jobs,” said Harrowhark.”
(PS re names, Nonagesimus and Harrowhark are the same person)
Oh yes, I’d totally be annoyed by the different names. Sounds like a fun read though, at least from what you quoted here.
“…a parade came out to sing, ‘Lo! A destructed ass.” That’s really funny, go ahead and call my sense of humor crude. I found it on Hoopla, and will check it out.
I finally finished Farrah Rochon’s Dating Playbook, recommended here. It’s one of the ones I was putting down and picking up last week, enjoying the characters but impatient with the plot. I enjoyed the characters a whole lot, but even after the end I feel that the plot could use some tightening up. Also Jamar’s knee made me highly conscious of my own knee, although I have never been carried off a football field and needed surgery.
I stayed up too late last night reading Elizabeth Moon’s Remnant Population. I have already read it once this year. I need to restrain myself.
I loved Remnant Population. A wonderful book.
I also loved Remnant Population
I read the third in Mary Robinette Kowal’s third in her sci fi series, “Relentless Moon”, which is a suspense-mystery-lady astronaut book, much longer than the first two and different narrator this time, all of which mixes the series up nicely. One of the elements I’ve enjoyed about this revisionist history of the American race to the stars is the historical backdrop of the ‘50’s and ‘60’s including the sexism, the racism, the anti-Semitism and how those could have played out in a much earlier space program.
I also read Michaela Grey’s latest, “Off the Ice” and RJ Scott/VL Locey’s “Desert Dreams”, which were both good, and Eliot Grayson’s “A Totally Platonic Thing”, second in her contemporary M/M series – it wasn’t as strong as the first one and, as a loyal Grayson fan, I will reluctantly say that contemporary is not totally her thing and that her paranormal and fantasy stuff is better.
I’ve mostly been dealing with a computer crash (new hard drive means having to rebuild my email list from scratch, plus re-imput the sign-ins and passwords for everywhere I ever go. Argh.
I did finish reading Sally Kilpatrick’s Much Ado About Barbecue, which I loved. Although I was a tad annoyed with myself for reaching the end and her notes and realizing that despite the Very Obvious title, I’d completely missed the parallels with Shakespeare’s play by the same name. And I was an English major. LOL
I really love any kind of genre fiction that parallels or heavily referenced Shakespeare…thank you for the rec!
I just got the new Susanna Kearsley ‘The Vanished Days’ from the library.
A new Kearsley! I know what I am buying next! Thanks
I looked and it is only available as a preorder on Amazon uk with a publication date of 28 April 2022 🙁
She is an auto-buy for me. I enjoyed this book, although not as much as some prior books. Still trying to figure out why, but I think it has something to do with HOW the story was related by the characters. I just didn’t feel quite as personally connected.
This summer, we moved — again (third time in two years). I told my husband if I leave here, it will be to go to the nursing home or the funeral home.
Anyhoots, I just finished opening all the boxes. The last few contained books, and I decided to re-read many of them to see how they held up. This week, I started Glimpses by Lewis Shiner, published in 1993. Ray Shackleford is dealing with the death of his father and difficulties in his marriage. He runs a stereo equipment repair business and discovers that he can — with his mind — produce music that never happened (a simpler version of the Beatles’ Long and Winding Road sans the Wall of Sound production), record it, and play it back for others. Through the rest of the book, Ray “meets” and interacts with Brian Wilson, Jimi Hendrix, and Jim Morrison.
I’m three books into the Mary Balogh “Simply” series, which I’ve enjoyed — mainly the first and third volumes. I’m putting off reading the fourth so as to move further into Anne Bishop’s “Others” series — interest in the re-read sharpened by learning that she’s publishing a sequel to “Lake Silence” which turned out to be one of my favorites. It is set in the same world, but overlaps only slightly with the Lakeside 5-volume series, and starts with someone fixing herself a snack of eyeballs, which the landlady is not very happy about.
I thought while reading that one that it was a one-off, but the next one, “Crowbones,” is due to be published next March. Yippee! It’s set in a region shaped exactly like the Finger Lakes of New York State, the protagonist is a human, rather than a blood prophet or shifter, and I found it funnier and more touching than the first series. So, again — yippee!
Lake Silence was the book that got me to read all the rest of the Others series. I’m so happy the sequence is coming.
I love the Others series. Can’t wait for this book. Maybe I will do a winter reread of the rest after I get through December.
Having finished Anna Butler’s Taking Shield series in record time -that last book is the best but really difficult to read because it is so sad- I have just realised it is essential a sort of Battlestar Galactica prequel but with Egyptology.
Clearly Anna Butler has a passion for ancient Egypt since it also plays a big role in her Lancaster’s luck series too.
Having done that, I read CL Polk’s Midnight bargain and thorougly enjoyed it not that I expected anything else since it was recommended here!
LN, was it you who recommended Anna Butler last week? I am almost finished the first Lancaster’s Luck book and loving it.
Yes, it was me. I am always worried when someone decides to buy on my recommendation that they won’t like the book. I am glad you did!
I don’t think the other two books in the series are as good but the overarching story is satisfying and Rafe is such a lovable character in himself throughout that they are still worth reading.
I’m probably halfway through Spinning Silver by Novik. But I didn’t want to cart it with me on my weekend retreat, so I brought out Murderbot #1 as a reread. Now on to MB#2, with Spinning Silver still awaiting my return.
The book I enjoyed most this week is Carry On: Reflections for a new Generation by John Lewis. This is a short book, written while he was battling pancreatic cancer so none of the chapters is particularly long. Each section covers a single topic, but it also gives you an idea of how he developed into such an inspirational figure who demonstrated how to “Make Good Trouble”.
I’ve been reading (listening) to Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy, after starting it right before my surgery (October 1st) and thinking I’d be more bedridden/dysfunctional than I actually was and would need something really long, and then I didn’t need to listen for so many hours, but once I’d started I felt obligated to finish it. All fifty-ish hours of it! (Although I’m cheating by fast-forwarding through the singing of songs, which are probably forty of the total hours, or at least that’s how it feels.)
But, boy, does the story drag. If Frodo says “I can’t go on, but I must go on,” and Sam finds a way to keep them moving forward one more time, I’m going to start rooting for Sauron to win.
I’m on the wait list for the audio of Miss Moriarty, I Presume (Sherry Thomas), but nothing else really appeals at the moment.
I was looking for some examples of thrillers that aren’t too dark and that don’t feature a cop (or cop-equivalent, like ex-military or detective) or lawyer as the protagonist, so I’d love suggestions. I’m particularly wondering if there are examples of something like a Jayne Ann Krentz romantic suspense (heroine is just a regular person thrown into a suspenseful situation) withOUT the romance.
I reread “Lord of the Rings” a year ago and kept asking myself “Why did I like this so much 40 years ago?”. It must be because at that time there was nothing else like it.
I reread “Lord of the Rings” some time in the last 5 years and loved it more than I did when it became popular — the 1970s?
The first Massssssss Market paperback edition in the US was released in 1965 and that’s pretty much when it took off. I’d read it from the library – I think I checked TWO TOWERS out first — several years before, but it wasn’t a cult favorite at that time.
Now it looks as if there’s another edition whenever a new artist comes up with a successful pitch for cover illustrations. Every five years or so.
I’m listening to it now and still love it. There is just so MUCH in those books, social commentary, especially about what war does to everyone on multiple levels, the layered Christ allegory, and the part that keeps hitting me just now is these good people committed to doing hard the ngs to save others who won’t even thank them for it.
I guess I just can’t get over how much Tolkien seemed to understand people at their base level, and thought they were worth saving anyway. All of them. Even Gollum.
I read almost exclusively fantasy for all my teenage years, and I’ve never finished LOTR.
Have you tried any of Harlan Coben’s standalone thrillers. Meaning his non-Myron Bolitar books.
A few of them do have cops or ex-military as the protagonists, but others don’t. I’ve listed some of them below. I’m not a big fan of thrillers, but Harlan Coben is a really good writer.
The Boy from the Woods is quite good.
Six Years is very interesting.
Other ordinary person Harlan Coben thrillers:
Caught
Hold Tight
Promise Me
The Innocent
Tell No One
No Second Chance
Gone for Good
The Stranger
I read C.L. Polk’s standalone Midnight Bargain, reread Witchmark, then read its sequels Stormsong and Soulmark, as I was reminded that I liked the first book.
I liked the standalone well enough, but it made clear to me that I’d forgotten a lot about Witchmark, as I kept trying to fit it into the same world – which it doesn’t.
(Re)reading the trilogy, each of which follows closely upon the conclusion of the previous book but picks a different protagonist and viewpoint, I found myself enjoying it less the longer it went on. It started to feel a bit heavy-handed, like a (moralising) comment on several problems in the present day world.
It started out with “a greedy oligarchy is bad” and “enslaving others for the power and wealth of a few is bad” (messages anyone can get behind, I’d think), and ended up feeling like it was pushing a much more heavy-handed message that anything except this specific form of democracy is unacceptable and will corrupt everything and everyone around it, no compromises are possible.
Maybe because I’m from one of the better-functioning northern European constitutional monarchies, but I think there is more than one way to organise a succesfully democratic country, and to get to one from the cryptic semi-feodal-style system the books started with.
Or maybe I just wasn’t in the mood for reading anything that reminded me too much of what is wrong in the world, even if the setting is fantasy.
Inhaling A J Lancasters Stariel books. They’re so wry and soothing and the extended family is both argumentative and sweet ( in their own way). It’s so nice to read a romance where characters talk to each other if they have problems.
I’m about halfway through Freya Marske’s deeply wonderful Edwardian M/M adventure-romance (with wizards) A Marvellous Light. Really good characters, and really smart use of the “what if magic, but you’re one of the people who doesn’t have any” scenario. We’re in the middle of our delayed-by-Covid film festival so I haven’t been reading a lot — I did however take Tammy’s recommendation & watch the lovely I’m Your Man, which I think a lot of people here might enjoy. A far more subtle and humane exploration of mid-life love than I expected from a film that can be reduced to the capsule description, “lonely academic is hired to test a sexbot”.
Since I last posted here I’ve finished the new Penric & Desdemona novella, Knot of Shadows — unsurprisingly, I adored it. I never fail to enjoy Bujold, but this one struck me as near-perfect.
Oh, and I’m reading Julian May’s The Many-Coloured Land aloud to my partner. She’s never read the series. I’d forgotten how much fun it is.
I’m so glad you got a chance to watch I’m Your Man. Is it in theatres in New Zealand or did you catch it on a streaming service?
Film festival theatrical screening, in one of only two (so far) of our cities not to have its branch of the national festival cancelled by Covid. A wide release later is pretty plausible; but our covid situation is fast-evolving and no one really knows what next year will look like for theatres. (Or for much else!)
(Having said that, I’m about to head out the door for three more festival films, so I’m not complaining! We’ve been very lucky so far).
Please let me know anything you’d recommend.
And PS – I downloaded A Marvellous Light and looking forward to it. Thank you.
Almost finished reread of Skinny Dip, Carl Hiaasen.
Hearts are still wonky. Usually gray hearts will up count, now reverse. Red hearts decrease.
Skinny Dip is my favorite Hiaasen.
He is so funny. Lucky You made me laugh a lot.
Will order Lucky You. Thanks for the recommendation. Skinny Dip is my favourite so far.
Friend and I watched the Shadow and Bone series on the ‘flix and she said, “There are books?!!” and I said, ” Of course, but I haven’t read them in six years.”
So I did a re-read of Leigh Bardugo’s Grishaverse and caught up on the Six of Crows duology. Nicely done world building, plot driven and not too much YA angst. I burned through them and they made for several enjoyable evenings. Love the snappy banter of the secondary characters.
Also dipping into manga – SpyxFamily – an assassin, a world class spy and an abandoned child with ESP have to pretend to be a family for a mission – all while not knowing the abilities of the others. So basically a fake relationship trope 🙂 It’s fun and funny.
I read all the current books in Lindsay Buroker’s 2 newest series – Dragon Gate (3 of 4 books available) and A Witch in Wolf Woods (3 of 4 books available). There may be more in both series, but as of now she has publishing dates for the 4th book in both series set. So, not so long a wait.
I think Lindsay is in top form in both of these series; lots of humor, action romance and some angst.
The Witch in Wolf Wood series feature Morgen who is a divorced software programmer in her 40’s who had been bequeathed her grandmother’s house in a mysterious town. She goes to the town to check up on her bequest and finds werewolves and witches. Unfortunately, the witches and werewolves are involved in a struggle and Morgen finds herself in the middle.
The Dragon Gate series is set in a fantasy world and features a widow with a teenage son who find the artifact – the Dragon Gate. The world is dominated by mages who can read minds so any bad thoughts are severely punished. There are, however, some mages who are not so power hungry so there is some hope for change. And, of course, the Dragon Gate may be a major game changer if only the normals and helpful mages can figure out how.
My new books last week.
Lyssa Kay Adams’s Isn’t It Bromantic was a lovely story about the book club exclusively for guys in Nashville, where the members read romances to become better men for their loved ones. It’s #4 in the series, and I enjoyed it as much as I enjoyed the other 3 books. I especially loved the hero. The heroine was much less sympathetic, but that seems to be the pattern of the entire series. In every book, a wonderfully sensitive man makes the woman he loves the focus of his life and her happiness his priority, while the bitchy, angry woman always concentrates on something else, some ‘big’ goal that has nothing to do with the guy who loves her. Even though she ostensibly loves him too. As romance novels go, such couple dynamics makes this series unusual. In most other f/m romances I’ve read, the heroine is the more adorable of the two protagonists, at least for me. Has anyone else read this series?
Also read two books by A.J. Demas – One Night in Boukas and Something Human. While I enjoyed the first one – a fascinating fantasy mystery with romance elements – I disliked the second one. It focused on a homosexual couple and their inner conflicts – religious and secular – while it included very little action. It was mostly info dumps and inner monologues about the heroes’ homosexuality and their subsequent lack of choices. Pretty much a self-pity fest at one remove. Didn’t work for me.
K.J. Charles’s Gilded Cage also didn’t work for me. She is undeniably a good writer, and the book has all the necessary ingredients of a well-written story, but I disliked all the characters. None of them was sympathetic. All of them had the ethics of career criminals (because they all are career criminals). Not my favorite class of people at all.
Wow .. a book on idea journals sounds fascinating.. Would you please share the name of the book.. Thanks !!
https://smile.amazon.com/Make-Your-Ideabook-Arne-Carlos/dp/1570767610/ref=sr_1_9?keywords=idea+book+journal&pd_rd_r=2c692307-62df-424c-af2f-b7b3e08a0461&pd_rd_w=xaVx7&pd_rd_wg=lFDEi&pf_rd_p=4fa0e97a-13a4-491b-a127-133a554b4da3&pf_rd_r=VKRVKCS4KG3CTJM91PTK&qid=1636661522&sr=8-9
I reread Unseen Academicals — one of my very favorite Terry Pratchett books — and Venetia — a Georgette Heyer I hadn’t read in a long time because I thought I didn’t like it. I thought wrong. I really enjoyed watching Venetia’s sense of independence and her determination to win Damerel.
They’re such great characters.
That’s why Venetia is one of my favorites. She may live in a backwater and has been denied her due attention, but she is smart, determined and can really see through the limits that society seeks to place upon her.
One of my favorites too. Heyer really depicted the connection between Venetia and Damerel as a meeting of minds that deepened into love, rather than some of her other mainstay love themes. And I felt that the other family members, with their various strengths and weaknesses were truly believable, even the ghastly mother-in-law of the irritating older brother.
If I’d just read the description of the book as a match between a sexy rake and a beautiful isolated spinster I don’t think I would even have picked it up — too darn hackneyed and formulaic. But it wasn’t that way at all.
I am almost finished with Heated Rivelry by Rachel Reid, which is surprisingly sweet. M/M hockey romance, suggested here. I also read Paladins Grace, which was also a sweet sort of romance.
And we watched Love Hard on Netflix, which was a pretty decent romcom for a cheap, made for tv jobbie. Lots of tropes, but self aware enough to make it fun. And an amusing play on Die Hard and Love Actually.
Heated Rivalry is probably my favourite M/M hockey romance – yes, surprisingly sweet and super romantic. The two lead characters are such boneheads (technical term) to each other and yet…ultimately in love. The sequel (well really the end of an arc that runs through her Game Changers series) is coming out in April. Can’t wait.
It really is so sweet. Not what I expected at all from those characters. I also appreciate the fact that the arc didn’t include a pubic accidental outing and media storm, etc. I also thought it was nice to have a somewhat realistic long term solution to their problems rather than wrap it all up dramatically in the last chapter. But that’s me. I really like low drama at this point in my life.
Books this week include the first three of Rachel Vincent’s “Soul Screamers” series about a teen Banshee, and half of her first “Wildcats series” book, Lion’s Share. I haven’t thrown it at the wall (that’d destroy my Kindle), but it has Too Much Sex For Me. I’d repeat that, but I’m so incredulous, too disbelieving to do so.
That made me turn back to the monthly (it seems like) reread of the “Wearing the Cape” series. I’m up to Book 5, Ronin Games, and loving it.
Did I finish Three’s a Clowder in time for last Thursday? Can’t remember, not looking back. It’s done and I loved it.
It’s Veterans Day. I’m a vet. Go me.
It’s Official Weigh-in Day #30. 252.6, down 0.8 from last week despite the GTH day last Monday – Golden Corral. 4,000 calories. 120 carbs. 3,500 mg sodium.
Thank you for your service.
🙂
Go vets!
Are you in the Navy Log?
https://www.navymemorial.org/navy-log
My mother was a big fan of the site and determined to get everyone she’d ever served with included.
http://navylog.navymemorial.org/sharp-jean
My Dad is in there !!!
He was in the Navy for WW2.
I’m not in there. Neither is my father, bronze medal winner James F. Jordan, TMC(SS). He died on his submarine, the USS Drum, when I was 16 months old. I should probably join and fix that. Not this week, though.
https://www.al.com/live/2012/07/submariners_family_members_rem.html
It is just possible that my mother might have met your father, if any of his subs ended up in the sub yards at Mare Island in 1945-46. She worked on their electrical equipment.
Yay for You Again!
This week in reading: finally read Another Time, Another Place (St. Mary’s) and then started the Time Police spinoff with Doing Time. Always fun to romp through history.
Sharon Kendrick’s new HP is a Christmas second chance romance, Confessions of His Christmas Housekeeper. Pretty great take on the classic amnesia trope.
I read RJ Palacio’s ‘Pony’, which is a western but not about horses, even though it’s got a horse on the cover. It’s being marketed as middle-grade, but to me it reads more like an adult novel with a 12-year-old protagonist. It’s got that folksy voice that some American writers do so beautifully, and it’s gorgeously written. I loved it.
Now I’m reading Patricia Wrede’s ‘Thirteenth Child’, kind of another western. It’s fairly slow going, but in a way that appeals to me. The only thing that’s bothering me is that I’m more than halfway through and the protagonist – the thirteenth child – is still a lot too passive. I’m hoping that will change soon – she’s just figured out what she wants to do with her life, so that should make a difference.
I read Thirteenth Child years ago and remember liking it. I don’t remember what happened of if she finds her feet in that book. I bought the second one, but it had been so long since I read the first that I needed to start over and never did… I should dog those out.
I’ve read the entire Frontier Magic trilogy dozens of times. Eff Rothmer is a favorite character because she grows throughout the series, although she never does become comfortable with the spotlight.
Some of our neighbors seem to think Veteran’s Day is an excuse to blow shit up in the street. Sigh.
10 things this week including a novella, a short story, and a collection of Christmas novellas by Barbara Metzger, which were all enjoyable. Read two M/M romances in which one MC has a terminal diagnosis. In the first (‘Last Romance’ by Matt Burlingame), he actually dies; in the second (‘Never Fade Away’ by E.L. Esch), there’s remission. Both had good parts and not-so-good parts.
Then read two by Keira Andrews, an author I generally enjoy; in one (‘Honeymoon for One’) she tried to do a little too much (so many conflicts). The other was ‘Beyond the Sea,’ probably my fave of the week. The MCs are complete strangers who survive a private-plane crash on a Pacific island and spend about 7 weeks dealing with various traumas while surviving through teamwork and falling in love.
Second-most-enjoyed of the week, ‘Devouring Flame’ by E.J. Russell, which is the 3rd of her Enchanted Occasions stories. This one deals with social justice like the others but via an action-packed alliance between MCs during which they deal intelligently with the ways they went wrong before (second-chance romance).
A pretty good entry in the Vino & Veritas world, ‘Aftermath’ by L.A. Witt, features a badly injured MC with mobility challenges and ED (you don’t see that every day in romance!); the internal monologue got a bit repetitive and a deus ex machina pushed the guys back on track; I’d’ve preferred if they got there on their own, but still enjoyed this.
I”ve downloaded Aftermath and started it – enjoying so far. Thank you.
AWAKEN THE KITTEN WITHIN, by David Michie, the further adventures of HHC, the Dalai Lama’s cat, on her way to greater enlightenment. I like our cat and her friends — this book has her encounter the odious President of the Swansea Aberystwyth Cat Fanciers’ Association and his wife, whose opinion of HHC shifts amazingly when they’re told that she isn’t a stray as they thought, but:
The article, from that day’s UK media, was the front page of the Swansea and Aberystwyth Cat Fanciers’ Association magazine. It featured a photograph of the odious President and his wife, kneeling next to a wall on which the Dalai Lama’s Cat was sitting. Only it wasn’t me. Even I could see that from the top of the filing cabinet. The cat in the picture was a Persian of sorts, with blue eyes and luxuriant whiskers. There the resemblance ended. “The highlight of our visit to Dharamshala was a personal audience with His Holiness’s Cat.” Tenzin read the caption out loud. “You’ve reached a new level of celebrity, HHC!” He half-turned to me, “We now have people faking having met you.”
STEAK AND CAKE, by Elizabeth Karmel. I never knew there were so many ways to serve steak (Tomahawk Steak, anyone?) and each steak recipe is accompanied by a dessert. They all look promising. Alas, no side dishes, so this is for the extreme steak enthusiast!
OUTWITTING SQUIRRELS: 101 Cunning Stratagems to Reduce Dramatically the Egregious Misappropriation of Seed from Your Birdfeeder, by Bill Adler . . . . Sometimes you have to believe that if the creativity and energy that bird feeders put into thwarting squirrels were directed toward world peace or eliminating traffic jams, we’d have no more earthly problems. “My thanks go first to squirrels who volunteered to let me test the squirrelproofness of various feeders on them. Second, I want to thank the hundreds of birds who patiently waited out these squirrels while the squirrels prevented them from getting to the seed. A number of humans also gave invaluable assistance.” A fun read whether you feed birds or not, or have squirrels around or not. I enjoy this kind of thing — one of my uncles battled gophers, and he and my dad turned it into a joke that ran for years as Dad found this or that sure-fire suggestion or gadget and the gophers outsmarted them all.
I read the new Penric, which was sad, but also good.
I am still listening to the Charlotte MacLeod mysteries, now I’m on to the Peter Shandy series. The reader is really pretty good, except that he’s giving the western Massachusetts farm folk Southern accents.
Waiting for my new glasses, when reading a book will be easy again.
I love the whole series. With the new Penric, Bujold finally fires the Checkov’s gun placed on the mantle in the first chapters of Curse of Chalion. Actually, it may have been a double-barrelled gun. Hiding from the Daughter’s soldiers, he finds the body of someone who has successfully prayed for a death miracle. The first barrel gets fired when Casaril repeats the miracle. The other barrel is the possibility of revenants possessing the soulless corpse which must be burned, which, well, it’s been four novels and ten novellas later? Ka-blam!
Walt Kelly was a genius. I always loved the “Friday the 13th” running gag. Well Friday the 13th done snuck up on a Saturday this month, and I suffer under its curse.
What I mean to say is, I have nothing to take to work for dinner tonight, unless I run to FL* in the next 20 minutes for a steak or something – and I just started a nosebleed.
I lied.
Not about the nosebleed. If I had a tampon, I’d shove it in my left nostril. Truth.
But a quick perusal of the fridge and shelves yielded potatoes, onions, and Jimmy Dean already cooked sausage links. Also my spice turntable, from which I nabbed the garlic pepper and habanero powder.
When things quieted down at work, I prepared lunch, all in the 1200 Watt microwave. It started with dicing two red potatoes, about 168 grams. I had already-prepared diced onion, so I added 92 grams to the potatoes in a disposable bowl**, seasoned them with the garlic pepper and a shake of habanero powder, sprayed them with cooking spray (buttery flavor), and put them in the MW for three minutes. While that was heating, I broke an egg into each side of my omelet maker. Okay, I sprayed the sides with the buttery spray, then added the eggs (100 grams). I made sure the yoke was almost thinking about being evenly spread. When the potato mix came out, the eggs went in for one minute. I sliced up the sausage (three links, 68g). The eggs came out not quite cooked, which was the goal. The sausage got dumped onto the opaque side of the omelet device and the device was closed. While that was happening, the ‘taters and onions went back for two more minutes. Then the omelet for another minute.
Believe me when I say this was a delicious lunch. And all done in a microwave – very little cleanup. I wish I had two more potatoes and two more eggs.
Dinner will be three more sausages, French beans with crispy fried onions, parmesan cheese, and bacon pieces, all in another Dixie bowl.
* Food Lion, my friendly neighborhood grocery store
** Dixie Ultra(TM)
Gary, I hope you never have tampons available.
Pardon me while I roll on the deck, laughing my anatomy off. I hope I never keep a supply of those things, nor the panty liners, nor pads, handy for the dotter or granddotters, again. I have been the holder of the emergency supplies before. (These days, it’s more likely chocolate, or orange soda.)