egret

Mysteries by Charles Finch:  A Beautiful Blue Death, The September Society, The Fleet Street Murders - These are very pleasant cozy mysteries set in Victorian London where Lord Lennox reads a lot of books and solves mysteries as a hobby. In the last one I read he has married and been elected to Parliament which are both interfering with his mystery solving, much to his consternation. There is a certain amount of flustering over the servant problem as the servants keep insisting on behaving like real people, which Liberal Lord Lennox admits they are but you know society has a structure for a reason. Very charming and entertaining. Originally these were a recommendation from my sister and believe me, if my sister and I both like something, it’s very broadly attractive. I think the other thing we agree is good is Keanu Reeves LOL

Obery M. Hendricks, Jr, Christians Against Christianity - A justified screed on why conservative/evangelical Christians are wrong to support Trump and Christian nationalism.

Tom Bower, Revenge. Scandalous royal family gossip about the Duke and Duchess of Sussex. As an American, I enjoy British Royal Family gossip as a soap opera distraction. It’s entertaining to read about PROTOCOL and TRADITION and TASTE and TACKY when it has nothing to do with me. So I read this gossip book from the library during a terrible brain melting heatwave and it distracted me from how hot it was. 

Lynette Eason, Too Close to Home and Don’t Look Back. These are from the Women of Justice series of Christian mysteries by Eason. In each one a woman law enforcement officer solves crimes and falls in love with another LEO, often having to lead him first to church and/or Christ. Eason is good at creating genuinely scary situations that keep you in there, and her characters are likable and relatable. The villains are a little wildly over the top and I guessed who the second one was about a quarter of the way through, but I didn’t get bored listening. So I endorse these if you like Christian mysteries. If not, the proselytizing might put you off. Currently listening to the 3rd one which is A Killer Among Us. Oh, did I mention that all the main character women are sisters? So you hear about what’s happening with the other sisters as you move through the series. Another thing these books lean into is the danger of stalkers and women’s safety of movement. I would like to dismiss this as paranoia but it’s really not. I follow a discussion group about walking and people are always sharing their playlists and books for listening to while walking to prevent boredom. I’m always a bit amazed because I never listen to headphones when I’m walking because I need to listen to what’s going on around me to stay safe. I can’t even say this is just a woman’s issue: No one should be so lost in the clouds while they’re walking around in public. Perhaps this comes from living in a city my whole life. But I think even in the country I would listen for bears or something. OK, this is a tangent. 

Loves of His Life - Lesley Ann Jones - this is an older rehash/update of her Freddie Mercury biography focusing on his relationships. I pre-ordered her dubious book about his alleged secret daughter, which is releasing on his birthday, but in the process of doing so I found this unread and lurking on my Kindle. Main new contribution is a theory that Freddie was more traumatized by the Zanzibar revolution and the income extremes around Mumbai than he liked to discuss and that trauma explains his avoidance of Africa and India for the rest of his life. (I don’t totally dismiss this theory and add that the one time he did return to Africa — to shamefully perform at Sun City during the boycott — he lost his voice, which sounds psychosomatic as heck.)

Currently: Alaska Twilight by Colleen Coble.  Another Christian one that’s not even the beginning of the series. It’s about a wildlife photographer traveling in Alaska to film a guy who gets too close to bears. She has brought a dachshund into the Alaskan wilderness and if that little dog is eaten by a bear I will stop listening. Listening to it because it reminds me of Werner Herzog’s Grizzly Man documentary and because other things I have on hold have not arrived yet. Still have not finished Herland and have de-emphasized it in favor of writing my fall syllabi. 

In a recent New Yorker (paywalled link to article), Hua Hsu wrote a favorable review of the fanworky film Pavements, which is about the band Pavement. He liked it. But he also considered the big picture:

I think he's right about the branding and the IP monetization. I believe musicians should be paid for their work, and paid well. But I also remember making mixtapes, impossible now because of DRM, so we are reduced to sharing playlists and hoping the recipients have a compatible streaming service. Sometimes I feel sad about my long gone vinyl collection which included a significant number of one-off bootleg pressings of various artists. As our individual access to creative technology increases (entire films made on smartphones now), our fannish field of operation becomes more heavily policed and gatekept. Official merch is never as interesting as the fan productions. I wonder how many of our fandomI forget  debates are influenced by an internalized version of this policing and gatekeeping? Not to mention the external problem of legal liability.

I forget where I read an article about the cancelled Prince documentary but it sounded like it would have been amazing. I don't really have the heart to look for it.


source: Hsu, Hua. "You're Killing Me: Pavement Inspires a Strange, Ironic, Loving Bio-pic." New Yorker, 26 May 2025, 66-67.

Even though it's technically Thursday, but I'm just on my way to bed now. 

I keep starting posts on here and then abandoning them halfway, posting them privately so I can come back and edit/finish them later, but by the time I come back the post is drastically out of date. Short version: I am fine. 

Books I've Read Lately

I've read more Ben Aaronovitch with great delight. The Rivers of London books are the best series I've read in ages. I finished Whispers Underground and was absolutely devastated by Broken Homes and am waiting on tenterhooks for my hold on the next book to reach me via Libby. (These are audiobooks for me, and they are fantastic.) I feel like everyone else must have read them and not told me about them. But if you don't know them, they are about magical policemen in London fighting crime with spells.

While I wait for that I started another Victoria Gilbert cozy mystery series - the Hunter & Clewe series about a 60-year-old asexual librarian who is cataloging the rare book collection of a wealthy handsome hermit in North Carolina. Together they solve mysteries that are sort of related to books. There's a big cast of townspeople and mansion staff, long lost mysterious relatives, they are very cozy. The book collection being cataloged is focused on early neglected/"forgotten" women mystery writers so there are lots of reading recs mentioned in passing. There are only two books so far, A Cryptic Clue and A Killer Clue, but I enjoyed them both as bedtime audio books.

For actual ebooks I read with my eyes, I slogged through Say Nothing by Patrick Radden Keefe which I felt was so bogged down in its focus on just a few people that there was never much of an overview of the Troubles. The whole last third was just complaining that Gerry Adams was a bad man keeping many secrets -- um, he was the head of the IRA so . . . yeah. It's like Keefe used a whole lot of interviews with other people, people who were involved in a complicated and deadly violent terrorism/resistance movement, and then he was all disapproving when they weren't all the nicest or most transparent of people or had trauma, drinking problems, and unreliability that made their stories hard to tell. There was a lot of "can you imagine such a pretty girl doing such an awful thing?" Keefe was not the person to write this book. There is a whole lot of debate elsewhere about Keefe's past connections to US intelligence agencies as well as the shitshow over the Boston College taped interviews and surprisingly only one brief mention of Noraid, which held regular fundraisers in Boston. I have not seen the Netflix adaptation because I don't have Netflix so I can't speak to that. (Full disclosure: an early mentor of mine was a woman who did a lot of work for Noraid. Lobbying and media work, not gunrunning -- as far as I know! She was always so chic!) 

The Day the World Stops Shopping by J. B. MacKinnon - I read this because I am on a low-buy year mostly out of spite because I hate the government and don't want to support their exploitative economy, even though I know my meager purchases or lack thereof don't have much of an impact. I ended up skimming the second half because this got too much into economic theory for me and i got bored. 

Currently reading What We Hide by Colleen Coble and Rick Acker, which is a Christian mystery about a divorced history professor who discovers murder and precolumbian art missing presumed stolen from the college museum. But it looks like she's a suspect because she found the dead body and the only good lawyer she knows is her ex-husband with whom of course she is still secretly in love if only they can overcome the tragic death of their baby and get back together. It works as a bedtime audio book while I wait for some of my holds to come through on Libby. I'm actually enjoying it. 

 I finished reading Moon over Soho, having finished Rivers of London on New Year's Eve. I can't believe I had never heard of these! So yes, these are my cozy paranormal mysteries of the moment. 

I also finished Jenn McKinlay's A Merry Little Murder Plot, so seasonal! But also so meta that I think she might be tiring of the Library Lovers series. Or maybe I'm tiring of it. Anyway, I'm totally caught up with it and will have to wait a while for another one. I will binge Aaronovitch's spooky cops instead. 

 I haven't accomplished much because I've been on my bad nocturnal schedule and keep canceling appointments. I LIKE BEING NOCTURNAL. It's not really working out in real life though. 

Reading:

The Murder Rule by Dervla McTiernan (2022 audiobook): I usually like McTiernan, even though her books are dramatically moody. I find I will tolerate emotional drama in an audiobook much more easily than when I'm reading text. Anyway, this is about a young woman pretending to help someone she intends to harm in order to avenge her mother for something, and she needs to be a fake friend to all these other people to accomplish this revenge. It's all interspersed with chapters from the diary her mother kept as a younger woman which I guess will eventually explain what is being avenged, but I haven't finished listening yet. I must finish soon as it's due back at the library. I like it enough to keep listening, and who doesn't like stories about fake friends and revenge?

Just started today: Black Harbour: Slavery and the Forgotten Histories of Black People in Newfoundland and Labrador by Xavier Michael Campbell and Heather Barrett. (ebook, 2023). I was aware that Newfoundland shipbuilding included the construction of purpose-built slave ships, and somewhat aware of the role of salt cod and rum in the Triangular Trade, but there is a lot more I was not aware of, so I'm glad I found this. I remember years ago corresponding with someone from Jamaica about whether they could be related to my Coombs family and at the time I thought no way, but now, perhaps I should have thought, yeah maybe way. My family has never had the kind of intergenerational wealth I associate with white people historically connected to the slave trade -- my grandmother used to reminisce about chasing other people's goats to steal a drink of milk -- but they do go back to the 18th-century in Newfoundland so they were definitely colonizers.

Still reading: They Knew: How a Culture of Conspiracy Keeps America Complacent by Sarah Kendzior (ebook, 2022). All the mafia-adjacent conspiracies about the criminal enterprise trying to take over the US. I like Kendzior and subscribe to her newsletter. You might enjoy this recent essay she posted there which pretty much sums up how I feel about American politics right now: Fearing the Reapers: Trump, Biden, and Careers of Evil

Finished

1. The Lies in Our Marriage by Anna-Lou Weatherley (Audible audiobook, 2023). A Detective Inspector Dan Riley mystery. These are melodramatic but I enjoy them. Very expressive reading by James Lailey, complete with appropriate screaming and sobbing. In this one, a middle-aged woman is tormented by suspicions that her husband is a vicious killer.
2. Beware the Past by Joy Ellis (Detective Matt Ballard series), audiobook, 2018. Too over the top, even for me. Ellis features diabolically clever serial killers and they become preposterous after awhile. In this series, the good guy cops aren’t interesting enough to offset it. (I have enjoyed her other series.)
3. Indie Microblogging by Manton Reece. ebook, 2024. This is half about micro.blog, which Reece founded, and half about the history and hangups of social networking. It makes a strong case for a decentralized web and a blogging revival. Some technical sections but still readable for nontechies like myself. I found it interesting. Creative Commons version available at book.micro.blog/introduction/
4. Five Bloody Hearts by Joy Ellis, audiobook, 2019. Book 2 of Det. Matt Ballard. Curiously lackadaisical in pace and not terribly compelling. The psychologists from her other fens series show up in this one, which I liked as a universe-building detail. 
5. The Dying Light by Joy Ellis, audiobook, 2020. Book 3 of Det. Matt Ballard. Truly awful book. I am done with Matt Ballard. He's getting worse instead of better. 

The problem with Joy Ellis is that she is very pro-cop, and all her police and military characters are heroic and upstanding and noble. Therefore, because cops must always be shown to be pure and unsullied, all the bad guys in her books are irredeemably evil, and they end up being somewhat comic-book-like caricatures instead of the more complex shadings I associate with good mysteries. Admittedly, I listen to these books while I'm attempting to fall asleep at night, so I like that they are simple and easy to follow. I like them like I like Law and Order episodes. But the Matt Ballard series is just bad. 

Currently

I'm back to Joy Ellis's Nikki Galena series when I'm sleeping. When I'm awake I'm reading Carol J. Adams's vegan theory books. 

Future

Need to start my SF anthology project.

Books

The Unexpected Mrs. Pollifax by Dorothy Gilman (1966) - audiobook. This was pleasant and sufficiently distracting to listen to while struggling with insomnia. It's the first in a long series but I couldn't get into the 2nd one and thing one was enough. Retired widow becomes a spy.

TV

Finally finished Happy Valley which was fantastic. As I expected it to be.

I've gone back to trying to get along with FamilyTree Maker again. For awhile I've been just using it for backup while working on Ancestry's website and in notes I keep in Apple Pages. However, I dislike writing all my notes in the narrow column offered by Ancestry.com. I've tried various formatting tricks, but it's very light on features. Also, so much clicking around. Apple Pages is fine but then I have my notes in two places. Also, I dislike having to create workarounds because Ancestry won't provide a task list -- which they USED TO PROVIDE but got rid of so they could spam my landing page with unwanted hints. Very form over function, Ancestry.

I also tried using MacFamilyTree. MacFamilyTree is very pretty. However, its Notes field is wayyyy down the page for the focus person, so there's a lot of scrolling. There's the decision of how many notes to use: one giant note for everything? Separate notes for each topic? There are additional note fields attached to the fact fields and citation fields and it's a little confusing about where to record what. Most of all MFT doesn't sync with anything. I did find a unique use for MFT. It has a next-level 3D family tree view that lets you twirl and twist your tree around on your screen. Normally I find this disorienting and ignore it. But when I was trying to find unattached people in my tree, it was easy to twirl the 3D tree around and look for the detached people floating alone in space, and either attach or delete them as necessary. It is nice software, but the way it organizes information isn't the way my brain wants to organize things. Also, I think of all these companies, Synium (MacFamilyTree makers) are the only ones to make other types of software: family trees are not their only focus. And something about the software seems less genealogically informed than the other software. The citations are confusing. The notes are confusing. I think they need more UI testing by genealogy nerds. But don't listen to me -- Apple gave it an "app of the year" award, perhaps hoping people will put on the new Apple view goggles to look at the 3D trees! 

So now I am back to Family Tree Maker, because it has useful notes fields with formatting tools and it syncs with Ancestry. Except that since April it is having problems syncing reliably with Ancestry for reasons that are either Ancestry's fault or Russia's fault but certainly not the fault of anyone at MacKiev (owners of FTM). Ahem. Full disclosure: One time I complained about feeling like a beta tester for FTM despite having paid full price -- I said this in a Facebook discussion group for FTM users. The owner/CEO of MacKiev stalked me back to my personal FB page to message me and complain and demand that I delete my comment. I have little faith in the sanity or wisdom of the management of FTM, and let's remember that they inherited/bought the bones of the program from Ancestry and did not develop it from scratch themselves. I understand that they are in the middle of a war zone but while that is unfortunate I still need my software to work. Their chat help desk is usually helpful and always polite, so they've got that going for them. 

So I fired up FTM, updated it with the latest update, synced with Ancestry despite the Orange sync weather status, and all went well. Now I'm working directly in FTM and will only sync up to Ancestry going forward. This will make my Ancestry pages look weird but no one is paying me to make Ancestry look nice. So far I really like the big Notes field with bolding and italic and colors and bulletpoints. I also like the non syncing "research" note field that I am using for research logs. I like the to do lists. I think I will be OK so long as I only ever sync in one direction. I guess the worst case scenario is that I just don't sync things, but I have a software design that I get along with. My big learning after several years with FTM on both Mac and Windows is: NEVER try to sync bidirectionally. Pick your work space -- Ancestry or FTM -- and do not change it. Sync up or sync down, never both. Also, do not wait too long to sync. If there is too much data the program chokes and crashes. MacKiev recommends a convoluted process of compacting your database frequently and repeatedly (because I guess their compacting routine is inefficient). None of the other software requires database maintenance. And let's be real, we are talking people's family trees, not giant mainframes of data. Nevertheless, I ritualistically follow the maintenance steps and perhaps you should too. Remember to back up. 

Other options I have tried and rejected:

RootsMagic: I can't stand the drip drip drip syncing where you have to approve each change as it happens. It also has an ugly layout.

Legacy: Doesn't have a Mac version, but I used it a decade ago on Windows successfully. It has a free version that I think was all I ever used, but you can pay for more features. Does not sync with anything.

Reunion: Solid program, doesn't sync with anything, extremely outdated interface. Super super support though. You could email those guys and they would email you back your own personalized program the next day with the problem solved. I think they are also the most expensive option. I also liked that it defaults to Mac programs for everything. Those are some hardcore Mac people. I could imagine going back to them if all else fails. 

BrothersKeeper: This was the first program I ever used, back in the 90s on MS-DOS. We didn't even have Ancestry then. We just hung out in AOL chatrooms shouting out our surnames and looking for connections. It is still available but I haven't looked at it in decades. Truly old-school website. I have only good memories.

Gramps: I think of this as my retirement program. It looks like a hard uphill slog to figure out how it works with the many "applet plug-ins." Just that phrase turns me off. It does not look attractive. But it is free and open-source and perhaps when I am retired I will have time to play with it. Though likely not. 

Links are provided as a convenience and are not endorsements of any particular program, nor are they part of any affiliate scheme. I just thought you might want to look for yourself. 

x-posted to genealogy