Yeah, I know, I’m supposed to save these news roundup posts until Sunday, but the week’s been strange.
We moved into this house, which we built new, in 2014, and since then the land has destroyed three mowers, leaving us with nothing at present to mow the lawn with. So, the fourth tractor is on order. If it weren’t for the continuing supply chain woes, some or all of these mowers could have been repaired–if anyone could get parts or employees to accomplish the task. Our mowers really weren’t built for such rough land or such high grass. So, they break down even though they’re nighly rated. Yes, we’re the 5th generation of the family to live here, but we didn’t expect that maintaining “the lawn” would become such a chore.
When “Bones” began airing on TV in 2005, my wife and I watched all the episodes. Now, with our “regular” TV shows on hiatus for the summer, we’re watching them again when we can’t find an old movie that fits our mood. The show is loosely based on the books and career of forensic anthropologist Kathy Reichs. After all these years, I finally became curious about her novels of which there are over thirty. So, I ordered the latest for a change of pace, reading-wise. Now I’ll find out how the Temperance Brennan in print compares with the Temperance Brannan on TV played by actress Emily Deschanel. This will be a change from Winterkill and The Watchmaker of Dachau. I’m looking forward to something that’s new to me.
I’ve finally found a way to include short excerpts from my novels on my limited-space website. I’ve stolen half of the ABOUT page. I decided nobody needed to know that much about me when they did need to know more about the flavor of the books. The HOME page now has a picture of a book with the word “excerpt” superimposed over it that links to the current excerpt. I began with Fate’s Arrows, the most recent novel in the Florida Folk Magic series.- Current temperatures here are in the 80s, decent weather for cutting grass if all of our mowers weren’t broken down. And we’ve gone without rain for several days as well. We’re fortunate that we don’t have a SoCal rainfall from tropical storm Kay or an Alaska weather problem from an incoming typhoon.
According to Publishers Weekly, “ALA officials reported 681 documented attempts to ban or restrict library resources in schools, universities, and public libraries through the first eight months of 2022, on pace to shatter the 729 challenges ALA tracked in 2021. The challenges thus far in 2022 have targeted some 1,651 different titles—already more than during all of 2021—with some 70% of this year’s challenges targeting multiple titles. In past years, most challenges sought to remove or restrict a single title.” This is a good time to be aware of banned books week.
–Malcolm
Our wet weather continues in NW Georgia as our county and the county north of us have gotten ten inches of rain in twelve hours. And there’s more to come. I’m glad we live on a hill, though I expect one of our roads into town is flooded. So much for my plan to pick up a few groceries today. (My wife ordered me not to leave the house!)
The nearby horse rescue farm (
As for the current war, Oliver Bullough, in 
If it’s dry where you live, I hope you have a great Labor Day weekend experiencing high-quality outdoor activities that don’t include soggy picnics or lightning-charred steaks on the grill. If it’s not dry, have fun reading and watching old movies on TV. (Yesterday, my wife and I stumbled into a “Starwars” marathon somewhere out there on DISH and now don’t know what planet we’re living on–if it’s Tatooine, things ought to be dryer outside than they are.)
Well, now that he was attacked by a coward, Salman Rushie’s name is showing up in op-ed pieces about getting a Nobel Prize. I think it should have happened already. One writer said Rushdie deserves the prize because he’s been a long-time proponent of our freedom to write. I applaud his stance–and his involvement with PEN America–but believe the prize should be based on the quality of his books, especially when his work is looked at over time.
I like this story in the Christian Science Monitor: 
We watch a few programs on HGTV. (Don’t quote me on this.) Everyone wants an open concept floorplan these days, you know, where the main floor’s about the size of a gymnasium that’s bigger than our house–including the yard. People want stuff to “flow.” Those who do the family’s cooking want to be able to see what their children and/or guests are doing while they (the cooks) are burning stuff in the oven. Ten years from now, homeowners will be hiring contractors to add a few walls and a little privacy. I guess if you can afford a house that costs $2 million, you can waste that money however you want.
I read The Satanic Verses as soon as I could get my hands on a copy. I thought it was a hoot. The book’s in the news again after the cowardly attack on Rushdie. A lot of commentators say it’s dangerous. Is it? I don’t think so even if it offends some people. But if it is dangerous, that’s good because people need to be shaken up enough to question why they believe what they believe and why they’re angry when others don’t agree with them.
I like everything John Hart has written except this debut novel. It has everything in it but the kitchen sink and the main character is an unsympathetic sad sack. I’m glad he got this approach out of his system before he started writing novels where the nasty stuff is within limits and the protagonists are the kind of people readers can get behind.
I liked The Seekers a lot for their pure, sweet voices. So I felt sad seeing 
This book of short stories has been more interesting than I expected. I bought it for the English translation of Hayashi Fumiko’s (1903-1951″ autobiographical story “The Accordion and the Fish Town” which I mention in my novel in progress. But, I’ve found more to like in this selection of works that show how the Japanese short story has developed over time. The book was released in 1997. While the novel has been king in the West, the Japanese focused on shorter works.
Speaking of rain, many of us are getting tired of water and flash flooding. And yet there are some nearby farms that haven’t gotten a drop. We’ve had some heavy showers even though North Georgia isn’t in the dark green area on this map.
Kenan Thompson thinks “Saturday Night Live” could end in three years: “50 is a good number to stop at,” he said on “Thursday on Comedy Central’s “Hell of a Week” when asked about rumblings that the show could be planning its exit. “Well, I need to start planning,” he joked, but acknowledged, “there could be a lot of validity to that rumor.” Personally, I haven’t watched it much since the original cast disappeared.
We sat down with a snack last night, flipped on the TV, and “Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire” was running. We left it on the screen while deciding what to watch and got hypnotized into watching the whole thing. Normally, we would record it because there are way too many ads on the SYFY channel. Nonetheless, we had fun seeing it again. And, isn’t that cemetery really awesome?
Huffington Post: “Stuart Woods, an author of more than 90 novels, many featuring the character of lawyer-investigator Stone Barrington, has died. He was 84. 
The oldest of my granddaughters starts high school this fall. In trying to learn more about the place, I visited the website. What a mistake. Seemed Greek to me from the curriculums to the clubs. We had chess club, math club, and physics club. They have clubs like Taylor Swift’s music club which sound more like Facebook groups than H.S. clubs. Sigh. Her school begins with 9th graders, the system I’m used to.
As a journalism school graduate, I found this story in the Guardian discouraging: 
When your regular shows are on hiatus, we fall into the depths of nonsense by watching HGTV where people are buying houses with price tags that sound like they belong in San Francisco and/or feature open-plan houses where the entire main floor looks like a gymnasium with little clusters of stuff that remind of my high school’s career day. Many people say they entertain a lot and seem to want a home that reminds them of a cruise ship or a nightclub. We think most of these house plans, to use a technical term, are horseshit, especially when I see that our entire house will fit in the dining room/kitchen.
If you have a cat, does it like cantaloupe? Robbie always wants to know what we have on our plates. We tend to eat off of TV trays rather than sitting in the dining room, so it’s easy for him to walk across the furniture to see what we have. He wants to drink out of our water glasses; that causes a tug of war over who gets to hold the glass. Twice lately, I had the rind of a finished cantaloupe on my plate and wondered what he’d do with it. He licked the things for ten minutes. This seems a bit odd. Cats!
As you can see by the AccuWeather graphic, our heat wave in North Georgia has eased up a bit, leaving us with an outdoor sauna bath without anyone handing out fresh towels and cold beer. At present, my desktop weather simply says “rain off and on.” Other than not having fresh towels, we’re also not having grass dry enough to mow. The yard’s not looking its best right now. About all I’m doing outside these days is pulling the wheelie bin out to the road and going out to buy groceries (which ensures that I’ll have to keep moving garbage from the house to the road).
I was happy to see this news: “Novelist Jesmyn Ward has become the youngest person ever to win the Library of Congress Prize for American Fiction.” Her words are well controlled and still carry magic in them. According to Michael Shaub’s story on Kirkus, Ward said, the award “not only because it aligns my work with legendary company, but because it also recognizes the difficulty and rigor of meeting America on the page, of appraising her as a lover would: clear-eyed, open-hearted, keen to empathize and connect.”
We’ve been watching old movies at night because most of our “regular shows” have taken their usual long summer vacation. How long has it been since saw you Sydney Pollack’s neo-noir “Absence of Malice” from way back in 1981? Since my wife and I started out as journalists, it was fun seeing an old-style functioning newsroom. As Wikipedia notes, Variety called it “a splendidly disturbing look at the power of sloppy reporting to inflict harm on the innocent.” I always liked Melinda Dillon, Wilford Brimley, and then, Paul Newman wasn’t bad either. I kept expecting Sally Field to show up looking like the flying nun or Forrest Gump’s mom in which she’d explain the whole box of chocolates thing to Paul Newman.
On a completely irrelevant side note, our local Food Lion grocery store has finally started carrying Newman’s Own salad dressings and other products. The product shown here not only tastes great on a tossed salad but also works as a great marinade for steak. According to the company’s website, “When Newman’s Own first began, Paul Newman declared that 100% of the profits would go to good causes. The mission continues today through Newman’s Own Foundation. In total, more than $570 million has been donated to good causes since 1982.” By the way, Newman wasn’t wearing that crown in the movie.
Those of you who know me, whether you’ll admit it or not, know that I’m a fan of poet/engraver William Blake (1757-1827). So I was happy to see a story about him in The Marginalian, 
I’m picky when it comes to gumbo. I prefer cajun to creole and okra to filé powder. Yet, for today’s post, it’s a great symbol for a tasty mix. You might need some antacids if you’re not used to it.
I’ve just finished re-reading The Zoo Keeper’s Wife. I’m impressed by the willingness of people to fight, hide Jews who are escaping from the Ghetto, and risk their lives sabotaging the Nazis. I hope that if Americans face similar circumstances, they will be as strong as the people in Warsaw. (And Ukraine, of course.)
This Facebook meme is especially apt this week. Speaking of Facebook, and I’d rather not, it still hasn’t addressed the software fault on my author’s page. I have unpublished it, and it will go away forever if the fault isn’t fixed before the count-down-to-deletion ends. (13 days from the day I unpublished it.) Some people say that Facebook doesn’t need support because everyday users aren’t their customers. I beg to differ inasmuch as the company wants me to see my page as a business, one where I spend money to advertise my books and “boost” posts for wider audiences.
Filed under 
When a friend learned I was just finishing Robert Galbraith’s (aka JK Rowling) Troubled Blood, she wondered whether I thought she might like it. I told her she was on her own this time in making that decision. Why? The book features an old-style detective and is very long, very British (people are always stopping for tea), has a lot of characters in it, and takes its time working through a complex plot to the final showdown. I liked it, but then I’m old and eccentric. I’ve read most of the books in the Comoran Strike series and will probably read the next one.
sure he would grok the Internet or Facebook, but he would remember this picture taken near Santa Cruz, CA when I was little. Yes, I come from the San Francisco Bay Area and had family all over the place in that area when I was little. I’m the kid on the right who seems to be either cold or scared.
Malcolm's Round Table 