Halloween Bingo 2021, the card. A reminder of how much I hate WordPress.

Gah – building these in WordPress sucks sooooo hard.  I wasn’t even trying to make anything fancy this year, just stick the card into a table, ready to mark the squares off as they’re played, but nooooo, WP has to think it knows better than you do what you want, and worse, shows it looking so neat and spiffy in your edit window, and then, when you click “preview”, you can see it really looks like a dog’s breakfast.

Anyway, it’s done.  Nothing fancy and I’ve yet to figure out what I’m going to mark the spaces with – nothing’s catching my fancy, and whatever it is has to be EASY.  I’m considering just a big X, but I can’t bring myself to be that dull.

Persuasion re-read

PersuasionPersuasion
by Jane Austen
Rating: ★★★★½
isbn: 9781435127432
Publication Date: January 1, 2012
Pages: 228
Genre: Fiction, Literature
Publisher: Barnes and Noble

 

I suddenly found myself in the mood for a Persuasion re-read on the eve of Halloween Bingo.  I’m not sure there’s more that I can say that I haven’t already said in my reviews here (original) and here.  It’s still not my favorite Austen but it moves up on each re-reading.  One of these days I’ll have to re-read Sense and Sensibility and see how my personal top 3 shake out.

O’the Eve of 2021 Halloween Bingo

Halloween Bingo is kicking off this Saturday, which here in Australia is tomorrow.  I’ve sworn off the fancy, involved planning I did in previous years because I suspect, with me fighting a slump, it will back-fire on me.

But today, with some special assistance, ahem, I sat down and jotted down a chart of my squares – mainly so I could get a handle on how I want to use the Spell Pack cards.  I have 7 squares on this year’s card that aren’t in my wheelhouse and only 5 cards that will let me change them in some fashion.

I think I’ve got it all sorted out.  I think.  The last two squares, Noir and Lethal Games are still hanging out there, giving me the side-eye and making me anxious.  But this year’s goal is not a black-out of the card, but to find the fun again.  That’s my HB mantra this year.  “Find the fun again. Find the fun again.”

So, the spell cards for this year are:

Wild card author:  I’ve chosen Ilona Andrews and I’ll use her books on the SplatterPlagues and Diseases squares.

Amplification: I’m choosing to read The Cannonball Tree Mystery by Ovidia Yu and using it on the Truly Terrifying square

Bingo Flip: I’ve flipped my Psych square for Highway to Hell with Christina, a/k/a Moonlight Reader.

Transfiguration Spell: I’m using this to change my Stone Cold Horror Square into – weirdly enough, because I normally HATE this square – Creepy Carnivals.  But I was digging through the TBR shelves last night and I found an old Jennifer Crusie/Bob Mayer book I’d forgotten about, and its setting is a possessed amusement park.

Call Conversion and Double Trouble  are cards that are more on-the-spot plays, so I haven’t included them, although I think I have at least one book that’s going to work for Double Trouble, though sadly not to cover either of the remaining dreaded squares.

As for Saturday’s start, I plan to pick up Naked Brunch by Sparkle Hayter, and Once and Future Witches, by Alex Harrow.  I’ve read both authors before, though I have to admit to some trepidation with Once and Future Witches; I loved, loved, loved The Ten Thousand Doors of January but OaFW feels from the synopsis like it’s going to be way too girl power for my personal tastes.  We’ll see.

This year’s mascot is a newbie, but she’s ready and raring to go.  Let the games begin!

Schott’s Original Miscellany

Schott's Original MiscellanySchott's Original Miscellany
by Ben Schott
Rating: ★★★★★
isbn: 9780747563204
Publication Date: November 4, 2002
Pages: 159
Genre: Non-fiction, Reference
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

 

I love these types of books.  I picked it up on a whim at a neighborhood tag sale, and when I got home, and opened it, I was giddy with the eccentric variety of useful facts contained within.

A page of English Public School plan, the solution to the Hampton Court Maze, English/Continental glove size conversions … all on two facing pages.  Then there’s seriously useful stuff, like the molecular structure of caffeine, the Glasgow coma scale, and how to read Hazmat warning plates.  And the generally useful stuff, like an egg sizes scales (both traditional and modern), clothing care symbols, and clothing/shoe size conversions between British, American and European standards.

MT and I laughed at some of the silly things it includes too, like Scottish clan war cries, WWII Postal Acronyms and the degrees of Freemasonry.

I delight in collections of useful and less-than-useful information; as this book has a bit of both, it’s a gem of a find for me and my personal library.  And of course, I’m curious about whether or not there’s an updated edition.

I’d Rather be Reading

I'd Rather be Reading: The Delights and Dilemmas of The Reading LifeI'd Rather be Reading: The Delights and Dilemmas of The Reading Life
by Anne Bogel
Rating: ★★★★½
isbn: 9780801072925
Publication Date: September 15, 2018
Pages: 156
Genre: Books and Reading, Essays, Non-fiction
Publisher: Baker Books

 

So, I ended up finishing How About Never? Is Never Good for You? entirely too quickly last night and needed something else to read while waiting for sleep to claim me.  The bookshelf right next to my bed held this slim little tome and it felt just right.

And it was.  A slim volume of 21 essays about books, reading books, owning books, borrowing books, and becoming the books you read.  Each one well written and thoughtful, touching on subjects that any dedicated reader has faced before, be it library fines or a dearth of bookshelves and the space to keep them.

It was a pleasant, relaxing read that reminded me that slump or not, I’m a book nerd and will always, always be a reader.

How About Never? Is Never Good for You?

How about Never - Is Never Good For You? My Life in CartoonsHow about Never - Is Never Good For You? My Life in Cartoons
Rating: ★★★★
isbn: 9781250062420
Publication Date: December 8, 2015
Pages: 288
Genre: Memoir
Publisher: Picador

 

My life waiting for Halloween Book Bingo to begin has been frustrating.  I’m in the tail end of a weird book slump that feels like it’s lasted forever (over a year to be sure), and my recovery still feels precarious, like it could go either way.  Because of this, I’m not doing any pre-planning for Bingo, but I still know there are a few books I’m waiting to read that will fit, so I’m trying to hold off.

Last night, I was sooo bored with this plan that I almost scrapped HB all together and just started in on the small stack I’m trying to wait on, and in a last ditch effort to find something else on my TBR to hold my attention, I found How About Never? Is Never Good for You? on a very small outlier of my TBR pile.  I’d forgotten all about it, and honestly can’t remember where I bought it, only that I did so because I like most of the New Yorker’s cartoons, and I’d read Mary Norris’ Between You and Me which I thoroughly enjoyed, leaving me with a positive feeling about the staff’s extracurricular writing.

How About Never? Is Never Good for You? turned out to be a very engaging, and very fast read.  I knew nothing about Bob Mankoff before reading it and therefore had no expectations.  The subtitle is My Life in Cartoons which is a nice double play on words, as this memoir covers almost exclusively his career as a cartoonist and cartoon editor for The New Yorker, and the book is liberally sprinkled with cartoons, both his and others’ works, which is, along with the engaging writing, the reason the read goes so fast.

He discusses the rise of the periodical cartoon as an art form, the genesis of The New Yorker’s cartoons, the process by which the magazine chooses the cartoons each week, and the advent of, and the fiendish difficulty of, the “add a caption” contest and how not to win it.  And he does it all with a charming brevity that is just long enough to be interesting and just thorough enough that the reader gets something out of it.

All in all, it turned out to be a delightful way to kill 3 hours or so last night.

This is Improbable

This is Improbable: Cheese String Theory, Magnetic Chickens, and other WTF ResearchThis is Improbable: Cheese String Theory, Magnetic Chickens, and other WTF Research
by Marc Abrahams
Rating: ★★★
isbn: 9781851689316
Publication Date: September 6, 2012
Pages: 299
Genre: Non-fiction, Reference, Science
Publisher: Oneworld

 

I had high hopes for this book, coming from the founder of the Ig Noble Prizes, but alas it wan’t quite the chatty, easy to read format I’d expected.  This is, in fact, a collection of his columns from The Guardian, slightly expanded upon and cited out the wazoo.  This makes it an excellent reference for those times when you’re specifically looking for bizarre, twisted or otherwise outlandish research, but rather less excellent if you’re looking for an enjoyable sit-down read.

Still, it’s a comprehensive (one would hope) collection of some of the most head-scratching research being done out there in the name of science, and if you’re willing to read through the dry reportage, a few amusing facts.  My two favourites were the patent issued in the USA in 1977 for the comb-over – yes, the one you’re thinking of, that oh-so-sexy and not-at-all-obvious disguise for male pattern baldness.  And an Australian patent in 2001 for a “Circular Transportation Facilitation Device”.  Which is, you guessed it, the wheel.

A more timely and relevant invention for us in these pandemic days is the US patent awarded in 2007 for a “Garment Device Convertible to One or More Facemasks”.  A/K/A a bra, that in an emergency, can be quickly converted into a pair of protective face masks.  It was awarded an Ig Noble prize in 2009 for Public Health, but one has to wonder just how Ig Noble the invention remains?

What Cats Want

What Cats Want: An Illustrated Guide for Truly Understanding Your CatWhat Cats Want: An Illustrated Guide for Truly Understanding Your Cat
by Yuki Hattori
Rating: ★★★★
isbn: 9781526623065
Publication Date: November 3, 2020
Pages: 160
Genre: Non-fiction, Reference
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

 

MT found this last year and bought it for our nieces who were adopting a couple of kittens.  He liked it so much he bought a copy for our library too.  It’s a very easy read, with small bits of information about every facet of raising happy cats.

I’d say the book is far more suited to those like my nieces, for whom having cats in the family is a wholly new experience.  Veteran cat-slaves will find a lot of what they already know here, although I really appreciated the charts showing the different meanings of cat expressions and tail positions.  The chart of differing meows was harder to interpret.  I’d also have liked the book to address more pragmatically the issue of different foods for different stages of life (we have two “senior” cats and one kitten, all of whom think they should be eating out of all the bowls – how to seperate diets?).

But for anyone I knew who was getting their first cat companion, or even their second or third, this is the book I’d give them as an excellent introduction.  Lots of information easily and attractively presented.

The Toll-Gate

The Toll-GateThe Toll-Gate
by Georgette Heyer
Rating: ★★★
Publication Date: January 1, 1954
Pages: 283
Genre: Fiction, Historical, Suspense
Publisher: Heinemann

 

Well, that was a fun, funny, and tedious read.  I was both entertained and exasperated, and not a little impatient, the entire time I read it.  I’m not quite sure how that works; it’s a first for me.

The book starts off at a house party to celebrate the 6th Earl of Saltash’s engagement.  Other than the fact that Captain Staple is at the party, it and all the details and characters involved have absolutely nothing to do with the rest of the book and never again come into play.  So the first chapter and half of the second are entirely irrelevant.  It’s only once Captain Staple leaves the house party that the story really begins.

Staple gets a late start, and gets caught in a storm that leaves him lost in the moors, until he finds himself at a toll-gate, late at night, being run by a terrified 10 year old boy.  Looking for a place to shelter, Staple stops, and learns that the boy’s father, the real toll-keeper, was only supposed to be gone an hour but never came back.  The next morning, Staple experiences love at first sight when he lays eyes on a woman, the squire’s daughter, passing through the gate on her way to church.  Needing an excuse to stay, Staple tells the boy he’ll stick around to figure out what happened to his father, intending to woo the squire’s daughter at the same time.

What unfolds is a bit of a rollicking adventure that was almost entirely ruined by Heyer’s heavy use of obscure British slang and vernacular.

“Prigged his tattler, too, but I sold that.  I’m a great one for a pinch o’ merry-go-up, and this little box just happened to take my fancy, and I’ve kept it.  I daresay I’d get a double finnup for it, too,” he added.”

In context, I can ascertain the speaker is referencing a theft, but the entire book is written like this, which is what makes this well-plotted adventure so damn tedious.  By midway through the book, I got the impression that Heyer was purposefully laying it on as thickly as possible, either to prove something to herself, or torture her editors and readers.  Perhaps at the time of publication, readers wouldn’t have struggled with the senseless dialog, but I’d have appreciated a glossary – or perhaps just a great deal less verisimilitude.

Today was a mighty big day …

After almost 6 months of being on the inside looking out, as Easter-cat and Carlito ‘took the air’ in our backyard garden, two important milestones for Pikachu arrived today: she’s grown big enough that we are (semi) confident there is no way she can find her way out of the garden, and it finally hit 20 degrees (I wasn’t supervising in cold weather).

So it was that on a spectacular blue-sky, pre-spring day, Pikachu got her first taste of the great outdoors:

Of course everything was new, exciting and demanded minute examinations.

Eventually, after a respectable first-foray, it was time to wallow in the freedom.

MT and I were both a little anxious about whether or not she’d completely blow us off – with her colouring a mere shadow renders her invisible – but she was as good as gold.  She mostly stayed within site, and frequently raced past our legs as if to say “here I am!”.  And when she wore herself out with exploring, she raced over, jumped into my lap, and started purring for Australia.

Rarely have I seen such unbridled kitten joy.  Now, how to explain the cold-front coming through tomorrow…