Welcome to the A Good Book & A Cup of Tea (A Monthly Bookish Link Party)!! This link-up is for book and reading posts or anything related to books and reading (even movies based on books!).
1. For Bloggers, you can link unlimited posts related to books and reading. They can be older posts or newer posts. These can be posts about what you’re reading, book reviews, books you’ve added to your shelf, reading habits, what you’ve been reading, about trips to the bookstore, etc. You get the drift.
2. Link to a specific blog post (URL of a specific post, not just your website). Feel free to link up any older posts that may need some love and attention, too.
3. Please visit at least two other bloggers on this list and comment on their posts. Have fun! Interact! Get some book recommendations.
4. Readers can click the blue button below to visit blog posts.
5. If you add a link you are giving me permission to share and link back to your post(s).
Thank you to all who participated in December and throughout 2025. Please be sure to visit other posts in the link-up and support each other!
It’s time for our Sunday morning chat. On Sundays, I ramble about what’s been going on, whatthe rest of the familyand I have been reading and watching, andwhat I’ve been writing. Some weeks I share what I am listening to.
What else can I start this post with but a bit of a whine about the arctic cold that has settled over Pennsylvania and much of the country…
It has definitely impacted my every day since I’ve mainly been trapped inside the house, due to having difficulties with breathing in extreme cold. And it has been EXTREME. We’ve had windchill warnings left and right with windchills being -25 in some cases.
Today, though, I am wrapping a scarf around my face and braving the cold so I can see my parents. I don’t have to go too far. From the house to The Husband’s truck and from his truck to my parents’ house.
I’ve almost forgotten what my parents look like at this point.
I am grateful they have wonderful neighbors who have been keeping an eye on them during the snowstorm and cold weather. Those neighbors have brought them food, cleaned their driveway, and checked in on them. The Husband has also taken food to them for me and stayed with my mom one day when my dad went to a doctor’s appointment earlier in the week.
I never thought I’d be happy to see temperatures in the mid-20s but that is what we are getting next week and that will make going places much easier.
What I/We’ve Been Reading
Just Finished
I just finished Miss Read’s Village Diary by Miss Read and enjoyed it maybe a little more than the first book.
I will read more books in the series this year.
In Progress
I’m currently reading Return of the King, The Blue Castle, and The Tiger in the Smoke by Margery Allingham.
I am enjoying all three. The Blue Castle is a re-read.
The Tiger in the Smoke is very hard to put down. I am very curious where it is going. It is my first Allingham. She’s a Golden Age mystery/crime fiction writer.
You might recognize the name of her main character, Albert Campion, if you’ve ever seen the British show Campion.
Up Soon
I plan to read Judi Dench’s book, Shakespeare, The Man Who Pays the Rent next. I have it on Libby so I need to get to it!
What The Family is Reading
Little Miss and I are reading The Singing Tree by Kate Seredy.
Two for Texas by James Lee Burke
What I/We’ve Been Watching
I’ve been watching Murder, She Wrote, Cagney & Lacey, the James Cagney movie The Public Enemy, and a great Lucille Ball movie entitled Lured. It was not a comedy movie and while I don’t know that she was the right actress for the role, the storytelling and suspense of the movie was worth pushing through Lucille’s misplaced casting.
George Sanders also made it worth it. He isn’t the traditionally handsome but he oozes sex appeal through the whole movie.
Last night I watched a documentary about the pianist and comedian Victor Borge. I added one about Fred Astaire to the watchlist that I want to watch with The Husband.
What I’ve Been Writing
I’m making a lot of progress on Gladwynn Grant Goes Back to School.
The first book in the series, Gladwynn Grant Gets Her Footing is free on Amazon in ebook form until Tuesday.
Erin (Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs) and I host a monthly bookish link party called A Good Book and A Cup of Tea. This link-up is for book and reading posts or anything related to books and reading (even movies based on books!). Each link party will be open for a month. You can find that link up for this month here.
Each week, I host the Weekend Traffic Jam Reboot with some great hosts. It goes live Thursday night but you can share any kind of blog posts (family-friendly) there until Tuesday of each week. You can check my recent posts on the sidebar to the right for the most recent link-party.
Now It’s Your Turn
What have you been doing, watching, reading, listening to, or writing? Let me know in the comments or leave a blog post link if you also write a weekly update like this.
I’m watching James Cagney movies this winter and up this week is The Public Enemy (1931), which was moved up in my list because I could not find Angles with Dirty Faces streaming anywhere! I was very disappointed because I really wanted to see it. I am going to look for that and Man of Many Faces (which I also could not find streaming) on BluRay or DVD so I can watch them sometime in February.
The Public Enemy is a bit of somber movie, more so than the previous movies I watched.
It appears to be a life lesson for would-be hoodlums, based on the warning at the beginning and end of the movie. The producers wanted everyone to be sure to know they weren’t glorifying criminals by making this movie, but instead warning people of what happens when they become one.
I strive not to place spoilers in my posts about the movies I watch but I will say this movie indeed showed the rough life that criminals have, usually self-inflicted.
The movie starts when our main characters — Tommy Powers (Cagney) and his friend Matt Doyle (Edward Woods) — are young boys.
They’ve already started a life of crime by sneaking into the movies and stealing buckets of beer. They steal little items and become pickpockets, and as they grow, the crimes grow with them.
The two go from being a couple of stooges for various crime bosses to leading the way in some major criminal actions, including creating a monopoly on beer production.
This was Cagney’s fifth movie and is said by film buffs to have catapulted him into a string of gangster roles he later worked hard to get out of.
This movie included one of his most infamous scenes – shoving a grapefruit in the face of his girlfriend – to show how far he’d fallen and how unfeeling he’d become. More about that a little later.
Tommy Power is the second son in the family and lives in his older brother’s shadow.
He and his brother and sister are raised by their mother. I don’t know if we are ever told where his father is. I don’t remember that part.
This movie is honestly just so well done. You really need to take your time to watch it and catch some of the subtlety in the scenes.
There is one scene where Tommy and Matt go to talk to Putty Nose, a gang leader who once convinced them to a do a job for him, promising nothing would go wrong.
I’m warning you now that there are spoilers ahead —
The job went wrong and Putty Nose disappeared. Tommy and Matt have been looking to get revenge on the guy for years and now they’re big shots in the crime world.
They track Putty Nose down and he starts begging for his life. Tommy and Matt are just standing there in nice dress clothes, fanc wool winter coats, and bowler hats, stone-faced for the most part, while Putty Nose begs the not to kill him. This is after Matt’s wedding, I should add.
The guy reminds them he knew them when they were kids and asks if they remember a song he used to play for them that they loved. He goes to the piano and starts playing, and Tommy has this friendly smile while he walks over to stand behind Putty Nose while he plays. Tommy keeps smiling and nodding and then slowly pulls a gun from the inside of his jacket while the camera pans away to Matt standing by the door.
There’s a gunshot and then —something I didn’t notice but my son did — you hear Putty Nose try to finish the song through a gurgling noise. Yikes. Then there is the sound of his body sliding across the piano keys and then to the floor.
It’s all off-camera, and it almost makes it more impactful because the camera is focused not Putty Nose dying but on how Matt’s expression changes from emotionless to ever-so-slightly dazed and horrified.
A few seconds after we hear the thud of the body hitting the floor, Tommy walks back into frame and says, “I’m going to go give Gwen a call. She’s probably home by now,” while he opens the door to leave.
He doesn’t look back, he doesn’t comment on what just happened. There is no remorse at all. It’s like he just stepped on a bug on the sidewalk while walking down the street, and he’s on to the rest of his life now.
Cagney pulls the scene off just brilliantly.
Like he pulls it off the whole movie. He makes the viewer both hate and love Tommy — feel sorry for him and not feel sorry for him at all.
Tommy makes his own bed, and he has to lie in it — literally at one point.
He is a man who wants it all and wants to be important, but, in the end, can’t hold on to anything that is important to him.
Jean Harlow is in this one as well, and I know she was supposed to be a big star back then, but my husband walked in and said, “She was so overrated,” and I based on this performance, I would have to agree.
I was not blown away by her, even though the scene with her was interesting because she sat on a settee, half on Cagney’s lap, while telling him what kind of man she thought he was and running her fingers along his neck and pressing his face into her cleavage. It was a very sensual scene for a movie made in the 1930s. From what I read, she wasn’t wearing bras under her dresses either.
According to an article written by Rob Nixon on TCM.com, Cagney once asked her, “How do you keep those things up?” in reference to her breasts.
“I ice them,” Harlow said, and then left to just what she’d said she did.
This was definitely a movie made before the strict film codes went into effect.
I was surprised to learn during my research that Cagney almost didn’t get the role of Tommy Power. Instead, he was initially cast as the quieter Matt Doyle, and Woods was cast as Tommy.
“But director William Wellman had seen Cagney’s tough performance in Doorway to Hell (1930),” Nixon wrote in his article. “And after three days of shooting – and much urging by screenwriters John Bright and Kubec Glasmon – he realized a big casting mistake had been made. Luckily, producer Darryl Zanuck allowed the two actors to switch roles, otherwise film audiences would have been robbed of one of the most ferocious and iconic performances of the decade, perhaps of all Hollywood history.”
This movie was not free of injuries for the actors.
One of the most famous scenes in the movie is where Tommy shoves a grapefruit in the face of his girlfriend when he’s mad at her. This was based on a real-life incident of a Chicago gangster named Earl Weiss who once slammed an omelet into his “jabbering” girlfriend’s face.
It was decided this was too messy, so it was suggested a grapefruit be used.
“What happened next depends on who tells the story,” Nixon wrote on TCM.com. “[Actress] Mae Clarke said Cagney was only supposed to yell at her in the scene and that the actor surprised her with his impulsive use of the breakfast food. Cagney claimed the grapefruit had been decided on beforehand but that it was supposed to brush past her at an angle that would only appear to be a bona fide attack. Whatever the truth, when the time came to get the shot, Cagney smashed the grapefruit directly (and painfully, the actress said) into her face, and Clarke’s very real look of horror and surprise was recorded for posterity.”
Cagney faced his own pain, though, when Donald Cook, who played his brother, hit him for real during one scene, knocking him across the room and causing Cagney to lose a tooth. Cagney theorized that Clarke had put him up to it as revenge but he never proved it and production moved on without any more incidents, despite the fact — I can’t even believe I’m reading this — that real bullets were used in some of the shooting scenes.
The movie was based on Bright and Glasmon’s novel Beer and Blood. Yes, I would love to find it! They were nominated for an Oscar for their screenplay for the movie.
There were some really great lines in the movie, one of them being when Tommy’s brother comes back from war and accuses Tommy of running a business of “blood and booze.”
Tommy shoots back: “Your hands ain’t so clean. You killed and liked it. You didn’t get them medals for holding hands with them Germans.”
Have you ever seen this movie? If so, what did you think of it?
Here is my revised list for the rest of the Winter of Cagney:
Welcome to the Weekend Traffic Jam Reboot, where we offer a place for bloggers to link up and get a fresh set of eyes on their posts. We also feature one blog a week, letting our readers know about the blog and providing a link so readers can learn more about it.Please feel free to post new blog posts or old ones you want to bring attention to again.
Look for the post to go live about 9:30 PM EST on Thursdays.
Negative 10, people!! Negative 10! Fahrenheidt! That is how cold it is supposed to be overnight tonight. I am ready for these arctic temps to go away already!
Tomorrow our high is 7. SEVEN! AGAIN!
On Monday our high is going to be 26 and I can’t believe I am saying this but I can’t wait for it to be 26F! Ha!
I hope you are all doing okay wherever you are!
Now, let’s introduce our current hosts for the Weekend Traffic Jam Reboot:
Marsha from Marsha in the Middle started blogging in 2021 as an exercise in increasing her neuroplasticity. Oh, who are we kidding? Marsha started blogging because she loves clothes, and she loves to talk or, in this case, write!
Melynda from Scratch Made Food! & DIY Homemade Household – The name says it all, we homestead in East Texas, with three generations sharing this land. I cook and bake from scratch, between gardening and running after the chickens, and knitting!
Lisa from Boondock Ramblingsshares about the fiction she writes and reads, her faith, homeschooling, photography and more.
Cat from Cat’s Wire is a bookworm, movie fan, crazy cat lady, armed with beads, cabs, wire and a very jumpy brain which loves to go down rabbit holes!
Rena from Fine, Whatever writes about style, midlife, and the “fine whatever” moments that make life both meaningful and fun. Since 2015, she’s been celebrating creativity, confidence, and finding joy in the everyday.
We would love to have additional Co-Hosts to share in the creativity and fun! If you think this would be a good fit for you and you like having fun (come on, who doesn’t!) while still being creative, drop one of us an email and someone will get back with you!
WTJR will be highlighting a different blogger each week this year! We invite you to stop by their blog, take a look around and say hello!
I’m Kristin! I am a Mom to a 15 year old, HoneyBear & a 11 year old, SydneyBean. I am married to a supportive & amazing man who loves me despite my crazy gene! Together we have a Couples Podcast called How Was Your Week, Honey?
I am learning to live without my Mom, who passed in 2013 and the ups and downs of being pretty newly diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis. I love cooking, reading, crafts, and all things beautiful. I am an ally to the LGBTQ+ community and I go by she/her pronouns.
I enjoy politics, music, pop culture and sports. As a family we love to explore, adventure and learn about what we can do to love and care for our community!
Thank you so much for joining us for our link-up!
And now some posts that were highlights for me this past week:
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The Secret of Chimneys by Agatha Christie is the first of two books which feature Superintendent Battles and in the autumn my husband picked me up a gorgeous copy of it during a trip to a Barnes and Noble about 90 minutes away.
I had looked at the copy the year before so the gift was exciting and I enjoyed reading it as my third book this year.
Anthony Cade dominated the majority of the story, more so than Battle, and I was fine with that. He was a blast and had all the best lines. For some reason, I kept picturing Cade as Hugh Fraser, who plays Colonel Hastings in the Poirot TV show and movies, as I was reading.
From what I have read about this series, this is also where we Agatha readers meet Bundle – real name Lady Eileen Brent, but I also didn’t feel she dominated much of the story either. I read that she is even more in the second book of this duology, Seven Dials, which was recently released as a mini-series on Netflix. No, I haven’t seen it as I don’t a subscription to Netflix.
Sh was a fun addition who I would have liked to seen more of in the book really. So many Agatha fans seem to love her. This is not a complaint in anyway. Just an observation of a character I liked and wanted more of. I believe I will get that in the second book.
This one features a ton of political intrigue and some call it more of a thriller than a detective/crime fiction book, like many of Agatha’s other books. There is also a bit of romance, though, and I found the romance so sweet and the romantic lines swoon-worthy.
A quick description from the Agatha Christie site: A young drifter finds more than he bargained for when he agrees to deliver a parcel to an English country house. Little did Anthony Cade suspect that a simple errand on behalf of a friend would make him the centerpiece of a murderous international conspiracy.”
Chimneys, by the way, is the name of the house/estate – not an appendage on a roof.
Here are some quotes from the book that I enjoyed:
“Detective stories are mostly bunkum,” said Battle unemotionally. “But they amuse people, he added, as an afterthought. And they’re useful sometimes.”
“In what way?” asked Anthony curiously.
“They encourage the universal idea that police are stupid. When we get an amateur crime such as a murder, that’s very useful indeed.”
***
‘Lord no. It’s the red signal again. When I first saw you—that day in Pont Street, I knew I was up against something that was going to hurt like fun. Your face did that to me—just your face. There’s magic in you from head to foot—some women are like that, but I’ve never known a woman who had so much of it as you have. You’ll marry someone respectable and prosperous, I suppose, and I shall return to my disreputable life, but I’ll kiss you once before I go—I swear I will.’
***
“I wouldn’t go so far as to say I’ve got a plan. But I’ve got an idea. It’s a very useful thing sometimes, an idea. – Superintendent Battle
***
“You understand well enough, I dare say,” said Anthony, breaking the silence. “You know when a man’s in love with you. I don’t suppose you care a hang for me – or for anyone else – but, by God, I’d like to make you care.”
As for the mystery, I didn’t fully guess the guilty party but was starting to get an idea of who certain people really were toward the end of the book.
Have you read this one? What did you think?
If you write book reviews or book-related blog posts, don’t forget that Erin and I host the A Good Book and A Cup of Tea Monthly Bookish Blog Party. You can learn more about it here.
On Thursdays, I am part of the Weekend Traffic Jam Reboot blog link party. You can find the latest one in the sidebar to the right under recent posts.
I also post a link-up on Sundays for weekly updates about what you are reading, watching, doing, listening to, etc.
If you would like to support my writing (and add to the fund for my daughter’s online art/science classes), you can do so here.
Hello! Welcome to my blog. I am a blogger, homeschool mom, and I write cozy mysteries.
You can find my Gladwynn Grant Mystery series HERE.
This week’s prompt was: Bookish Discoveries I Made in 2025 (New-to-you authors you discovered, new genres you learned you like, new bookish resources you found, friends you made, local bookshops you found, a book club you joined, etc.)
2025 was the year my husband I discovered a small bookstore in a tiny village about 30 minutes from where we live, which is sad considering we’d lived here for five years before we found it.
The store features mostly used books, some antique books, and a few new ones.
There are books from all kinds of genres, including a large history section.
The cozy mystery/mystery mass paperback section was the most exciting for me because they sell those for $1.50 each. I picked up some Murder, She Wrote books that I have enjoyed so far. The ones by Donald Bain anyhow. Not so sure about the Jon Land ones. I started one and … well, it was rife with odd writing in only the first few pages.
We haven’t been back since the end of summer but I think another trip there is due soon. I am hoping to explore their shelves for Nancy Drew books which they’ve had a collection of the last couple times we’ve been.
2. 2025 was also the year I discovered Storygraph to track the books I’ve read. I track my books in my reading journal but liked the idea of doing it via an app too. I don’t use Goodreads to track because my mom is connected to my Kindle/Goodreads account and reads a lot more than I do. I can’t find the books I’ve read in the mass amount she’s read so I wanted a place I could track my reads.
Storygraph does that for me. I enjoy logging on as I progress in a book and marking the progress as I go along. It also helps me keep a list of books I want to read.
I’m not as worried about the other stats it provides at the end of the year. I read to have fun and stats aren’t as important to me as they once were.
3. 2025 was when I discovered P.G. Wodehouse.
I have started with the Jeeves series by Wodehouse and have enjoyed the first two books I read. The dry British humor/sarcasm is perfect to me because it fits my sense of humor. That’s probably I’ve often preferred British shows, sitcoms, and books to American ones.
I’m looking forward to reading more of his books this year.
4. I discovered that my new favorite genre is “gentle vintage fiction.”
I would describe this genre as fiction that takes place in a small village or simple location and is written before the 1970s. They are usually books that are almost about nothing in particular. They detail the everyday lives of the main characters and take the reader on a leisurely walk that doesn’t lead to too much stress or sadness.
I would place the Miss Read books by Miss Read and P.G. Wodehouse books in this category.
I have a list of books in this genre that I hope to read this year, including more by both of those authors.
5. Another new author for me in 2025 was Sharon Mondragon.
I read two of her books in 2025 — Grandma Ruth Doesn’t Go To Funerals and The Unlikely Yarn of the Dragon Lady.
I hope to read the sequel to The Unlikely Yarn of the Dragon Lady sometime this year.
6. I discovered Murder, She Wrote books by Donald Bain in 2025.
They are actually not bad. The books give a more detailed look at Jessica’s personal life, with a lot of emphasis on her emotions as she solves the murders, and also on her being a widow. In the first book of the series, Gin and Daggers, she remembers her late husband Frank quite a bit, and it’s bittersweet to see her spending time in London in the same hotel she and Frank once stayed in.
Bain also included a lot of history of wherever Jessica was visiting in his books.
I haven’t read any of the books in the series by other authors but I will be trying a couple of them this year while also reading Bain’s books.
The attribution for the books is actually Jessica Fletcher and Donald Bain, but…you know…there is no real Jessica Fletcher so Donald really writes them. Other authors took over later because he passed away. line up. I plan to read more of them for fun in 2026.
8. I rediscovered my love for The Chronicles of Narnia in 2025 and decided to re-read the series, which I had not read in 30 years. I read The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe in 2024, but in 2025 I read The Horse and His Boy, The Magician’s Nephew, Prince Caspian, and The Voyage of the Dawn Treader.
I will be reading The Silver Chair and The Last Battle this year.
9. In 2025, I discovered more Golden Age Crime Fiction authors such as Dorothy Sayers and Margery Allingham. I read one by Dorothy Sayers and enjoyed it and hope to read more of her and Allingham this year as well as discover other authors in this era/genre.
10. In 2025, I let go of reading what I thought others would want me to read or suggested I read – unless it was a super good suggestion. I just mean that I worried a lot less about reading what was popular or everyone else was reading and just read whatever I wanted to. If it interested me, then I read it, even if I hated it later. I also stepped out of my comfort zone several times to try a book that looked interesting to me but that I wouldn’t have tried in the past. I definitely plan to do more of this in 2026.
If you write book reviews or book-related blog posts, don’t forget that Erin and I host the A Good Book and A Cup of Tea Monthly Bookish Blog Party. You can learn more about it here.
On Thursdays, I am part of the Weekend Traffic Jam Reboot blog link party. You can find the latest one in the sidebar to the right under recent posts.
I also post a link-up on Sundays for weekly updates about what you are reading, watching, doing, listening to, etc.
If you would like to support my writing (and add to the fund for my daughter’s online art/science classes), you can do so here.
Hello! Welcome to my blog. I am a blogger, homeschool mom, and I write cozy mysteries.
You can find my Gladwynn Grant Mystery series HERE.
I am currently re-reading The Blue Castle by L.M. Montgomery and have decided to read the book with my blog readers in the month of February, if you/they so wish.
I will be posting about the book throughout the month and will offer posts where we can discuss the chapters we’ve read and the book as a whole once or twice a week.
I plan to write a bit about the book and why I enjoyed it, as well as a little background on how others feel about the book, to kick things off on February 1.
I’m looking forward to discussing this book, one of my favorites, with all of you!
If you don’t know what the book is about, here is a quick description of the book that is so different than her Anne books:
An unforgettable story of courage and romance. Will Valancy Stirling ever escape her strict family and find true love?
Valancy Stirling is 29, unmarried, and has never been in love. Living with her overbearing mother and meddlesome aunt, she finds her only consolation in the “forbidden” books of John Foster and her daydreams of the Blue Castle–a place where all her dreams come true and she can be who she truly wants to be. After getting shocking news from the doctor, she rebels against her family and discovers a surprising new world, full of love and adventures far beyond her most secret dreams
If you write book reviews or book-related blog posts, don’t forget that Erin and I host the A Good Book and A Cup of Tea Monthly Bookish Blog Party. You can learn more about it here.
On Thursdays, I am part of the Weekend Traffic Jam Reboot blog link party. You can find the latest one in the sidebar to the right under recent posts.
I also post a link-up on Sundays for weekly updates about what you are reading, watching, doing, listening to, etc.
Hello! Welcome to my blog. I am a blogger, homeschool mom, and I write cozy mysteries.
You can find my Gladwynn Grant Mystery series HERE.
It’s time for our Sunday morning chat. On Sundays, I ramble about what’s been going on, whatthe rest of the familyand I have been reading and watching, andwhat I’ve been writing. Some weeks I share what I am listening to.
As I am starting this post on Saturday night, we had temps — er – temp of 5. In the morning snow is supposed to start and when it all ends Monday night, we are supposed to have close to 18 inches of snow.
I really hope we don’t get as much as they say, though, because the high temp is supposed to be 15 degrees, which I think means this will be a very heavy, wet snow. We live in a rural area so that could mean power outages. We have a woodstove that could keep us warm downstairs but we would have to worry about our pipes freezing since we do not have a generator. I believe that’s something we will need to invest in at some point soon. Our neighbors have generators, which I think they purchased after a tornado hit here on our street about six years ago, wiping out power for several days.
I’m sure many of you, if you are in the Northern and Middle U.S. are facing a similar situation as us. Stay safe out there, everyone.
Since we are going to be snowed in, I have been planning how to get through it all without worrying too much. I plan to watch movies, read books, and sip tea or cocoa.
To keep themselves occupied, Little Miss has been video chatting with her friend and The Boy has been chatting with his friend and playing video games. The Husband has been cleaning the house (he’s much better at that than I am) and reading and doing a little work for the newspaper he is at the editor at.
He expects to be snowed in Monday and will work from home. As long as we have power that is.
Erin (www.crackercrumblife.com) and I held our Crafternoon Zoom call yesterday and it was very nice to chat with people from all over the world. We chat while we craft and if you are interested in taking part, please let me or Erin know. It is just a relaxed time to chat, make new friends, and forget about our troubles. We keep conversations as free of politics or hard stuff as much as we can.
UPDATE:
It is 12:24 P.M. as I am finishing up this post and it is about 10 degrees out (-12 C) and we have about six inches of snow on the ground. The snow is supposed to stop sometime tonight and we are expected to have up to 18 inches of snow when it is all done.
What I/We’ve Been Reading
Just Finished
I didn’t finish anything this weekend.
In Progress
I’ve been reading Miss Read’s Village Diary by Miss Read, The Blue Castle by L.M. Montgomery (a reread), and just started Return of the King by J.R.R. Tolkien.
I’m enjoying all three. Miss Read’s books are such easygoing, relaxing reads.
Up Soon
I hope to finish Miss Read this week so I can add The Tiger in the Smoke by Margery Allingham to my reading line up.
I read the first few pages about a month ago and it intrigued me.
Cat from Cat’s Wire needs to let me know if it is good or not. *wink*
After that I plan to start the February Agatha Christie Read for the Agatha Christie challenge, Mrs. McGinty’s Dead.
What The Family is Reading
Little Miss and I started The Singing Tree by Kate Seredy. We’ve also been listening to Winnie The Pooh on Audible.
The Husband is reading….
What I/We’ve Been Watching
I loved this YouTube video about how to read more classic books.
And this video about how to cut back on buying books you never read.
I watched After The Thin Man, the second movie in The Thin Manseries, yesterday, and earlier in the week I watched episode two of season six of All Creatures Great And Small.
Today I hope to watch another old movie, probably a James Cagney, for my Winter of Cagney.
I’ve had to change my schedule of Cagney movies again because I have found yet another movie that is not streaming anywhere and can’t be found for very cheap on DVD. Two movies now, Man of a Thousand Faces and Angels With Dirty Faces, are going to have to be taken off my list as I figure out how to watch them in the future.
The Husband says these movies are most likely no longer in print and have not been licensed for streaming, hence my challenge in finding them. Man of A Thousand Faces costs $40 most places and is mainly on BluRay and Angels With Dirty Faces (a movie with Cagney and Humphrey Bogart) is on DVD but $19.95. I will probably set the aside for another time and slide two Cagney movies that I can find streaming into my list instead.
David Phelps with Laura Osnes singing a song from The Phantom of the Opera.
Photos From Last Week
Some Housekeeping
Erin (Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs) and I host a monthly bookish link party called A Good Book and A Cup of Tea. This link-up is for book and reading posts or anything related to books and reading (even movies based on books!). Each link party will be open for a month. You can find that link up for this month here.
Each week, I host the Weekend Traffic Jam Reboot with some great hosts. It goes live Thursday night but you can share any kind of blog posts (family-friendly) there until Tuesday of each week. You can check my recent posts on the sidebar to the right for the most recent link-party.
Now It’s Your Turn
What have you been doing, watching, reading, listening to, or writing? Let me know in the comments or leave a blog post link if you also write a weekly update like this.
What I like about winter is how, when it snows or is icy outside, I have an excuse to stay at home, drink tea or cocoa, and read books or watch movies.
What I don’t like about winter is that sometimes we get a snowstorm that dumps so much snow on us I can’t get out of my driveway for a week, and I am stuck inside and unable to have the choice to go anywhere if I want to.
Tomorrow we are getting a snowstorm that could dump almost two feet of snow on us.
Today we have temps in the single digits.
Neither situation is good and has our family in lockdown mode.
Luckily, today’s boredom should be helped with a Crafternoon zoom call (those are still a thing we do and if you are ever interested in participating, let me or Erin know), and then a zoom art class for Little Miss.
The art class is with Cornell in Ithaca, NY, and was suggested by my sister-in-law who is also attending.
Crafternoon is where a bunch of bloggers hang out on Zoom and chat while doing crafts.
At our vet appointment a couple of weeks ago the vet estimated his age around nine months which means he really is a kitten/child and he shows it a lot.
My cats are going stir crazy with all the cold weather we have been getting and keeping them inside a few more days is not going to be fun. The youngest is especially crazy lately.
He likes to chase our feet and toes for one, but yesterday, after The Husband and The Boy brought in the groceries, he got into the meats before I could get them put up (I was on the phone with my mom). He gnawed the plastic off a beef roast and then gnawed part of the roast as well. While we were putting that up, he stuck his head in another bag and tired to eat some raw chicken. Yes, we do feed him.
I was hoping that the temperature would rise when the snowstorm came in and I could let him back outside to get some of his energy out, but it appears that our high temps during the storm will be 15. That means Little Miss won’t be able to go out and play in the snow like she usually does.
This could definitely mean downed power lines and power outages in this rural area with a lot of trees, which does have me on edge. I am more on edge for my parents than us since we have the benefit of a woodstove to help with heat and they don’t.
But I’ve been working on not focusing on “what ifs” so I will try my best not to worry about all those things for now.
Thursday, the kids and I headed to my parents’ house to help clean up a bit and do some things before they and we get snowed in.
The Boy helped my dad get his generator ready, and I cleaned the kitchen and vacuumed the living room floor.
The Boy also took Zooma the Wonder Dog for a long walk in the cold temps, but at least it was 34 that day verses the 1 degree it was here this morning. It’s 5 now. It’s supposed to get to only 8 today. Three degree warm up! Whoot!
It’s so cold out there that last night our back porch was snapping and cracking and going off like a gunshot. I wonder if it will explode like the trees might out west. I guess we will find out.
I am preparing a list of movies today that I want to watch during this winter storm event which could last through Tuesday or longer for me, since my driveway is so steep.
They will most likely be classic movies – before 1970.
Making the list is The Public Enemy with James Cagney from 1931 because I can’t find Angels with Dirty Faces streaming anywhere (even YouTube!) and that was the next movie in my James Cagney line up. I really should have double checked if these movies were streaming before I chose them. You think I’d learn but I never do. I will have to adjust my list yet again.
I also plan to rewatch After the Thin Man.
I hope to be able to watch a John Wayne film too. Or some sort of Western. I’ve been itching for one.
I’m sure there will be some Cagney & Lacey and Murder, She Wrote watched as well.
Maybe even an episode of The Rockford Files since The Husband will be home from work part of the time.
How is the weather where you are? Gross and nasty or fairly pleasant? I always hesitate to ask this because there is always some Southern California resident who is like, “I just went for a walk in my shorts and flip flops and now I’m having a mimosa on the veranda,” and I want to throat punch them (not really!) but I’ll take even that today. I can live vicariously through you. Ha! Seriously, if you live somewhere warm – like Australia or New Zealand or something – feel free to tell me because I actually love knowing there are other parts of the world that are nice and warm when I am cold and trying to light the fire in the woodstove.
If you write book reviews or book-related blog posts, don’t forget that Erin and I host the A Good Book and A Cup of Tea Monthly Bookish Blog Party. You can learn more about it here.
On Thursdays, I am part of the Weekend Traffic Jam Reboot blog link party. You can find the latest one in the sidebar to the right under recent posts.
I also post a link-up on Sundays for weekly updates about what you are reading, watching, doing, listening to, etc.
If you would like to support my writing (and add to the fund for my daughter’s online art/science classes), you can do so here.
Hello! Welcome to my blog. I am a blogger, homeschool mom, and I write cozy mysteries.
You can find my Gladwynn Grant Mystery series HERE.
