Tuesday Twaddle

Recent arrivals (all purchased, clockwise from top left):

• The Joy of Botanical Drawing by Wendy Hollender
• The House on the Cerulean Sea by T. J. Klune
• Tokyo Ueno Station by Yū Miri
• The Extraordinary Life of Sam Hell by Robert Dugoni

I've already read two and both were excellent. My thanks to Paula and Eileen for the Sam Hell recommendation!

Books finished since last Monday Malarkey:

• Agnes at the End of the World by Kelly McWilliams
• Skunk and Badger by Amy Timberlake
• One Fine Day by Mollie Panter-Downes
• Tokyo Ueno Station by Yū Miri
• 5-Minute Pete the Cat Stories by James Dean
• The Extraordinary Life of Sam Hell by Robert Dugoni

I set aside Notes on a Nervous Planet by Matt Haig. It just wasn't the right book for the moment, although I love his writing and I am freaking dying to read his new release, The Midnight Library. That may be my next purchase. We shall see. 

Currently reading:

• Challenger Deep by Neal Shusterman

I finished The Extraordinary Life of Sam Hell, last night, and decided to set aside Lolly Willowes, which I started at the same time as Sam Hell and which is a very, very good book but maybe a little too similar to One Fine Day, stylistically. I will return to it, I just lost track of the characters after getting immersed in Sam's story and then started thinking about the fact that it had the same sort of atmosphere as One Fine Day, in a way (mostly because it's an older title; the two books are otherwise nowhere near the same), and decided that I didn't want to restart it to familiarize myself with the characters, right now. I'm only on p. 15 of Challenger Deep and I am in a flighty reading mood, obviously, so don't be surprised if it also doesn't stick.


Posts since last Malarkey:

• Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria? by Beverly Daniel Tatum, PhD (book review)
• A Castle in the Clouds by Kerstin Gier (book review)
• Fiona Friday - Fun with ribbon (cat photo)
• The Thing About Jellyfish by Ali Benjamin (book review)
• Minnie's Room by Mollie Panter-Downes (book review)
• The Readers' Room by Antoine Laurain (book review)
• Agnes at the End of the World by Kelly McWilliams (book review)
• Fiona Friday - Claimed (cat photo) 

In other news:

Last week I watched a series called The Other One, a British comedy about a wife and daughter who find out the man of the house was a bigamist, after his death, and have to deal with both their grief and their newly intermingled lives.

There are only 7 episodes, including the pilot, and I can't recall which channel I watched this show on. BritBox, maybe? I don't think it was Acorn. Bottom line, it's more stupid than funny but The Other One is what I'd call stupid with heart, particularly in the relationship of the half sisters, Cathy and Cat. When they each find out about the half-sister they never knew, both are . . . kind of thrilled. They may be grieving and Cathy goes a little nutso, at one point. But, they both appreciate having a sister and Cat, in particular, is determined that "sister" must mean "friend". Also, best final episode ever. While I didn't find the series exactly laugh-out-loud funny, we were in hysterics over the ending. It was worth it for the ending alone.

We took a few short foodie road trips over Labor Day weekend. One was to the butcher and the grocery store in our favorite little MS town. Husband had heard the grocery store carried BBQ sauce from one of our favorite restaurants, The Blue Rooster, so we went to check that out and bought a bottle. We were surprised to find that they also carry the BBQ sauce made in my hometown (which I naturally think is excellent), Head Country.

That was Friday. Huz took off an extra day to make it a 4-day weekend. On Saturday, we drove to Donna's Produce #6, our favorite outdoor produce market. I just ate some of the honeydew we bought. Oh, wow. Best honeydew I think I've ever tasted. We also went to a little shop that's new, not far away. It's basically a storefront for a meat processing establishment, I think, but they had some terrific variety for such a small store. We bought crab-stuffed green peppers and ate them for supper on Saturday. Yum. Too crowded, though, and a bit ironically everyone at the outdoor market wore masks except for the cashier but there were a lot of under-the-nose or -chin mask-wearers in the meat market. So, if we go back to the meat store during the pandemic it'll have to be a quick in-and-out.

I can't remember what we did on Sunday. Hmm. On Monday, we were going to go fetch food from my favorite sandwich shop (they also do pizza) but they were apparently closed so that was a #fail. Later, we drove younger son's car back to his apartment. We had a socially-distanced chat on the patio on Saturday afternoon, but Kiddo and Daughter-in-Law came in separate cars, went to run some errands after, and then he was too tired to drive his car home. We planned to grab some chili con queso from our favorite taco place while we were in town dropping off Kiddo's car but they appeared to be closed, too, so that was another #fail. We're finding, though, that just taking a 30-minute drive is incredibly refreshing and helps blow away that trapped sensation that you get during a pandemic.

Our mask mandate ends in a couple weeks so we may feel a little less confident about shopping, at that point, and we're trying to squeeze in as many errands as we can, till then.

If you're American, how was your Labor Day weekend?


©2020 Nancy Horner. All rights reserved. If you are reading this post at a site other than Bookfoolery or its RSS feed, you are reading a stolen feed. Email bookfoolery@gmail.com for written permission to reproduce text or photos.