Four stars Bill and I love movies. We love cheese and crackers and wine (for me), beer (for him), and grapes. We don’t have money to spare and even if we did, I have serious cheapskate tendencies. To meet all these conflicting impulses, we developed a new hobby a few years ago. We select a […]
The Making of Home: The 500 Year Story of How Our Houses Became Our Homes by Judith Flanders Judith Flanders backed into writing nonfiction histories of how normal people lived because she started out by writing a biography of four Victorian sisters (the McDonalds as told in A Circle of Sisters) who married extremely well. […]
Chaos Reigning by Jessie Mihalik Third volume in the Consortium Rebellion Trilogy Jessie Mihalik has finished (for now) her space opera trilogy about the Consortium running the universe (not the galaxy; apparently our unimaginably vast galaxy — The Milky Way — doesn’t offer a big enough scope) and the von Hasenberg family. There are six […]
Mini Farming: Self-Sufficiency on 1/4 Acre by Brett L. Markham One star (so don’t waste your time); nonfiction gardening and self-sufficiency This book has a history. “Mini Farming” has been out for a decade, having been originally published back in 2010. At that time, it showed up at our local library in the new books […]
Violence: A Writer’s Guide by Rory Miller This book is excellent. Even if you aren’t a writer, it’s worth a read to get a better understanding of violence in all its forms. If you are a writer, well! What a fabulous resource. The author, Rory Miller, is a long-time corrections officer, Army vet, and a […]
Secondhand: Travels in the New Global Garage Sale by Adam Minter I have a longstanding interest in garbage, recycling, waste management, and sustainability. The culture of unknown civilizations can be deciphered by their garbage heaps. That’s what archeologists are: history’s garbage analysts. What we throw away shows what we use. How we discard objects and […]
Quilt As-You-Go Made Modern: Fresh Techniques for Busy Quilters by Jera Brandvig I make quilts, although my quilts aren’t sewn like anyone else’s. Technically, they are not even quilts although the finished product looks like a crazy quilt. I’m working out my procedures and eventually will write it up as a book and, before you […]
This just came in the mail, a cultural history of Ruritania that was published this year. This’ll help me out on the Complete, Annotated Secret of Chimney’s project.
The Business of Being a Writer by Stephen Goldin and Kathleen Sky I’ll get the most critical piece of this review over with right away. This book was published in 1982. Yes, you read that right. 1982. I was 22 that year and the concept of becoming a writer needed another three decades to gestate. […]
Because of our ongoing interest in all things Agatha Christie, we’ve begun watching movies based on her books. There are a lot of them so we’ve got plenty of filmed murder in our future. The adaptations will vary wildly in quality and fidelity to the source material as I’m sure you can imagine. I’m going […]