Tuesday, June 20, 2017

Bertrice Smalll, Patricia McCallister and Dean Koontz

I was re-reading The Silk Merchants Daughter, vol. 3 and realized at the end that I should look up the fourth daughter Serena's book.   It was not listed on Amazon.  So I googled Bertrice Small and discovered to my dismay that she had died in 2015.  Well shoot.  Amazon feed suggested Patricia McCallister's book Snow Raven.  So I purchased that one and discovered that this particular book fits nicely in Small's Historical Novel niche.  Snow Raven is the tale of a spirited woman who has decided to meet her fiancĂ© for a meet and greet.  She is captured by the younger brother of the Wolf of Badan sumpin sumpin and she is taken hither there and who happens to be mortal enemies to her fiancĂ©.   This action upsets the various monarchies involved in both Scotland and England who demand they marry.  There are subplots and spirited this and that.  Gorgeous descriptions of clothing, meals, landscapes quite poetic.  Eventually the villains meet their comeuppance, evil plots are foiled etc.  I enjoyed the book thoroughly.

Also quite coincidentally I watched the last five damn minutes of Odd Thomas and based on that alone, decided to download the first two chapters of the book.  My brother gifted me with many Odd Thomas books a decade ago but with time and shrinking font size of books, neglected to read this one by Dean Koontz.  Thank you Dean, this was a perfect book.  I am in mourning and haven't quite decided if I can navigate the remaining Odd Thomas books.  Maybe in a month or two I will brave a sample of two chapters worth of the next book in the series.  I shall have to watch the entire movie now just to see if casting is worthy of the 400 lb Ozzie and the other magnificent characters who know, love and fear  the Odd one.  Sniff.

Sunday, June 11, 2017

Late night comedy

I recently discovered the I Heart Radio icon on my Kindle apps.  There is a sub category of comedy.  Lots of short bits by various stand up comics.  Extremely funny, and laugh out loud mostly except for the stand ups sound like they are experimenting.

I got to thinking what if I tried Stand Up?  Hmm, first of all there is a generation gap...of several generations.  The average audience is up to the minute. Who would want to listen to Grandma?

Pretty sure menopause jokes would not umm resonate.  And I have listened to The Moth Hour which is sometimes funny and the audience seems pretty accepting.  So the best I could hope for is an audience of empathetic NRP hipsters.  I don't even have an NPR type name like Ndinka Apenbaum.

Soooo....relying on life experience here goes. I worked for 35 years in Health Care, specifically medical records.  That basically meant that I could spell it and did not have to smell it.  One of my very earliest doctor was a lovely old fellow who needed help changing the tape on the dictation machine.  All he wanted was for me to take the tape out and turn it to side B.

Prior to that my early life experiences including learning practical things.  I have yet to determine why it did not occur to Mom to tell me to subtract the monthly bank fee BEFORE writing the bouncing check. 

One time I was short of enough change to purchase soap at the laundromat and looked around, there was no one in the place but there was a pay phone.  So thinking fast I dialed zero and asked the operator if she could give me change for a quarter.  No ma'am.  I also learned that colorful yarn booties would shrink to a size minus zero when washed in hot water. Pretty sure Mom told me about that but I forgot.

G'night folks, you have been great!!!