Bookmarque’s Padded Cell 2024 - Shock Therapy (1)

Welcome to the Undisciplined Reading Room!

2024 is the 10th year I’ve had a personal thread and although I haven’t been as active on it as in years past, I appreciate all the camaraderie and silliness of the GD. Now that we have a better charts and graphs page, you can click this link to have an idea of what I am into for listening and reading (but as usual, exhaustive info will be coming) -

https://www.librarything.com/stats/Bookmarque/overview

You can find my previous threads here if you want to catch up on past insanity.
2023
2022
2021
2020
2019
2018
2017
2016
2015

I still participate in the Annual Books Read in lists so here they are (a list of lists!) -
Books read 2023
Books read 2022
Books read 2021
Books read 2020
Books read 2019
Books read 2018
Books read 2017
Books read 2016
Books read 2015
Books read 2014

My thread tends to be photo heavy since I am a photographer and am usually out in all seasons although lately it’s been stick season (no snow at all!!) and so I’ve been uninspired. Instead I’ve dusted off my jewelry benches and have gone back to creating modern designs in sterling silver & gemstones.

In the last couple of years I've dived headlong into audio dramas and so the number of actual "books" I've been reading has gone down. Plus I've also gotten more into shooting video and editing that takes up time as well as processing regular photos. Phew! So much for being retired.





So here goes another year in the pub!

Hooray! Settling in for popcorn at the movies, or videos, or pictures. Whatever. :)

Happy New Year & New Thread. And Happy Reading in 2024!



I obviously found this online, but you deserve an awesome pic, and I am not the person who can create it.

Happy New Thread!
It makes all the piffling worthwhile.

Happy reading and photography in 2024!

Here's to another great reading year and thread. Thanks for all the beautiful visual art distributed here and elsewhere.

Happy new thread!

Happy new thread! I can't wait to see what beautiful pictures you take this year!

Thanks peeps. If it would snow I'd be out there, but alas, bare ground. There are tons of Trumpeter swans on the river out back, but they're a few hundred yards away on the opposite bank. Uncooperative birds.

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It's chart and statistics time. Yay!!

I "read" 122 "books" this year. Have to use the quotation marks because a lot of what I consumed were audio dramas or audio books. For that reason I broke out a new category in my tracking that I'll get to later. For openers, here's how the year went -



And because I brought up format, here's the breakdown there -



The strong audio trend continues and physical books are at an all time low -



Not sure how long this will continue, but it's like this now and I don't feel at all bad about it. What I listen to makes me happy and suits my life in terms of the other stuff I do like photo and video editing, chores, workouts and jewelry making.

Happy New Year and Happy New Thread! I'm looking forward to more gorgeous photos and book talk here!

Happy New Year and Happy New Thread! Fun fact, last year was my first time I posted in the "Book Read in 20.." list, planning to do so again this year.

Thanks peeps. Glad you're joining us on the Books Read in List. It's kind of fun to see what floats to the top and to see if you and anyone else are reading the same thing.

Here's my category buckets for genre -



And LT's estimation -



I had to put the totals there manually in the screenshot since the function doesn't exist despite my begging. They're pretty close. Recent non-fiction is dumb though and I wish we didn't have to have it in our information. It's meaningless.

I mean to write about this when I first noticed it, but somehow failed. Not surprising, but if you take a look at the Audible Plus catalog you'll notice this -



Check the narrator.
It's a large language model reader for audio books. I hesitate to say AI because that's not what it is, but I think that's how it's announced when you click the sample.

For the most part, it's not noticeable that it isn't a person/actor. Mostly the nuances and pauses, pronunciation and cadence sounds right and normal. Mostly. I think that for most books this could be ok, especially if it's older or there isn't money to hire a professional. Certainly this would be preferable to some authors reading their own work. But not always and I wonder how this is going to affect how books get narrated or read in the future.

So far I've sampled a few and they're all women, some too breathy and weird, but others ok. There seems to be just a few voices so the narration is exactly the same for everything it's used for. There was one with an English accent, but the others I've heard are American accents. Mainly the books are very genre (romance, fantasy, etc) and seem to be "women's books", but I haven't investigated that far. Anyone else see this? Have you listened to one? How did it go if you did? Maybe you didn't know!

>13 Bookmarque: I swear the audio book I'm listening to is AI, although it claims to be a person. It's uncanny valleyish and weird. I'm considering DNFing it.

>13 Bookmarque: Oh. I will have sample some of these...

Yeah, I'm not sure how an artificial human will do for long periods. I think the verbal subtleties of a real voice are something we notice the absence of. People are so attuned to this kind of thing that it might be grating to listen to an artificial human for long (Bishop aside).

So more juicy stats and charts for you. Most of the media I got through was audio and here's how it went -







New authors only get that status for the first title then move to repeats after so some of the new ones were only for a moment. I got into a few new series like some of the Dresden Files comics at the end of the year and the Pleasant Green Universe which I didn't realize went beyond the Lovecraft Investigations.

The borrowing was mostly from Audible Plus or other streaming/subscription services. Because so many of the borrowed titles are audio dramas and women represent the usual small percentage of producers or directors for any kind of drama, the numbers are low compared to actual books.

Started a new and pretty darn funny drama series -



Don't know if the source novels are as funny, but the performances in these dramatizations are pretty hilarious. The mysteries, such as they are, as definitely secondary.

>17 Bookmarque: I'm sure my mother-in-law gave me The Quiche of Death 30 years ago and I found it very amusing.

>18 clamairy:
That sounds like one of jillmwo's experiments with poison. Do not be giving her any more ideas. She has plenty of her own.

>19 pgmcc: Mum's the word!

>19 pgmcc: and >20 clamairy: Too late! A new (and highly practical) book on poison arrived just today! Wait'll you hear!

>21 jillmwo: I thought of you when reading a post on FB the other day. The woman had painted the trim of her kitchen "Arsenic Green."

>22 MrsLee: Er, Lee, in the 19th century Scheele's Green was a very common colour for paint and wallpaper. It was based on arsenic, and contributed to Napoleon's early demise. I'd be acutely wary of eating anything that had been in that woman's kitchen.

ETA: more notes on pigments in my own thread.

>24 MrsLee: Yes, this FB group is made up of Old House owners who are renovating their homes. Literally EVERY post has several folks who give the warning of arsenic, lead and asbestos. :) The paint this woman used is a modern, arsenic-free paint, only colorfully named. Is arsenic green? Jill? Have you learned that yet? I always assumed it was a clear or white crystal or liquid.

My imagination went wild thinking of a woman who grows a special garden of deadly plants, then works arsenic into the paint of her kitchen. Possibly other poisons into other parts of her kitchen? Could be a real nutjob like the aunts in Arsenic and Old Lace. "Insanity runs in the family, in our family it practically gallops." *loose quote*

Is arsenic green anything like the avocado of yore?

>24 MrsLee: and >25 Bookmarque: Apparently green was a shade difficult to create in a dye for some reason. In the 18th century, arsenic was part of the dye formulas that were developed; there were two varieties, Scheele's Green and Paris green. The dyes containing the arsenic were largely unstable. Time and exposure to moisture tended to launch the deterioration and release the gaseous toxicity. So it's not that arsenic is by itself green; it was the combination of the one with other dye elements that made it so. None of my sources really go into much more detail than that. (Chemistry as a science was developing throughout the 19th century trying to catch up with all the various crimes committed through various forms of poisoning. There is a book entitled The Inheritor's Powder that probably could tell you more about arsenic.)

Edited to add the following: Scheele's Green was invented in 1775 by Carl Wilhelm Scheele, who was a Swedish chemist. It was an artificial colorant that was made by heating up sodium carbonate, adding arsenious oxide, and stirring until the mixture was dissolved. Copper sulfate was then added as the final ingredient which ends up giving it its vibrant green color. According to color historian Victoria Finlay, Scheele invented this green “almost accidentally.” A year before the color went into production, he wrote to a friend that he thought users might want to know about its poisonous nature. “But what’s a little arsenic when you’ve got a great new color to sell?” Slightly paraphrased quote shown in this edit was found here: https://laafa.edu/poisonous-pigments-scheeles-green/

OMG that is SO cool. Chemistry is the answer to everything, isn't it?

There is a mushroom in North America called the Amethyst Deceiver (here's one in the yard a few years ago) -



By itself it is not harmful and is a delightful purple/lavender color, totally natural. Also natural is its ability to absorb and concentrate normally occurring arsenic in the soil, thus its name. Kind of benign, but not really.

>25 Bookmarque: Not the same shade. I am no artist or colorist or I would be able to describe better, but to my eyes it had more blue in it, somewhere in the nature of a green turquoise or teal. It was in a home from the 1950s if that helps. There is a movement called Mid Century Modern and they use a lot of the atomic styles and colors from that time.

You know what gets my goat? The young whipper snappers in this group that keep talking about "vintage 90s."

>24 MrsLee: and >25 Bookmarque: Just a quick follow-up to the discussion of arsenic green. I was looking at something today about Samuel Johnson and there was a quick note to the effect that the use of arsenic green paint was known to be hazardous (poisonous) so that those painting walls with it got what was essentially "hazard pay". Today's little odd factoid of history.

No worries. I will now cease disrupting the photographic discussion.

>29 jillmwo: , do not hold back about a topic you are so passionate about. If poisoning is your thing, and you have expertise in the subject, go for it.

>29 jillmwo: Oh I love a good poison story even if it isn't deliberate! Kind of like the amethyst deceiver up there. Have you read A is for Arsenic? It's a book reviewing the poisons Agatha Christie used in her novels. Quite fun.

Now the last of my charts and stats. A new one for this year and one I had to think about to set up. I know sometimes genre strays into things it shouldn't like graphic novel or children's book. Those don't tell you what type of story it is and so I've tried not to use them except as labels for other things. Like how a straight narrative is different than a drama with actors. So -



I used narrative rather than novel because I read a few non-fiction things and novel wouldn't fit those. I wanted a term that describes basic, straightforward story telling without sound effects or pictures. I did separate it from a short story, which is a slightly different form, but could fit into the straight narrative bucket, but how else to separate unless I include novels somewhere, but I got stuck. If anyone can fine tune this or think of better ways to categorize this, I'm open to it.

And since so many of these are audio and I tracked the places I "borrowed" from as part of a subscription service -

I've been busy at the workbench and have lots of new goodies in the Etsy shop. You know I don't flog my stuff here that much, but I thought I'd let you guys know I'm having a sale -



Gift boxed with free US shipping by 1st class mail. I can and have shipped out of country and it's no problem, just costs a bit.

http://thewiresmith.etsy.com

>33 Bookmarque: Great stuff, I have bookmarked it for when I need gift ideas.

>33 Bookmarque: Lovely stuff, as usual!

Thanks peeps.

Just started a new audiobook with one of my favorite narrators - Stephen Hogan. He's an English actor, but has narrated a lot of books and does work with BBC Radio for dramas and stuff. I just hope the book is as good.

You make beautiful things. I’ve also bookmarked the page so it’s handy when I need it. :)

Here's another in the works -



It's a piece of beach glass (the real thing) in a sterling silver prong setting. It's not done, but about 1/2 way through the process. I'm making three; one each for me and my two oldest friends who love the ocean (one lives on an island in Maine). It's a surprise for them - one is a February birthday and the other will just be a Valentine's gift.

>38 Bookmarque: Oh, lovely! I have a lot of this, understandably. (But there isn't as much to be found as there used to be.)

>38 Bookmarque: Very nice and very cool!

Thanks guys. The first one is done! Now on to the second.

>41 Bookmarque: Lovely!

Thanks much!

While making it I mostly listened to Charles Paris: A BBC Radio Collection starting Bill Nighy. While fun and laugh-out-loud funny at times, I found the mysteries/crimes themselves to be pretty shallow and uninvolving. The characters and situations (all ridiculous) are more the focus than is figuring out who done it. It wasn't a total bust, but I'm not going to get the second collection right away. Oh and Nighy does a brilliant drunk.

>41 Bookmarque: Looks beautiful!

>43 Bookmarque: I need to find more things with Bill Nighy in them. I like him a lot. Not up for radio dramas at ghe moment though.

Nighy is a hoot. We just saw him in Role Play which is a tolerably bad movie on Amazon Prime, but Bill is great in it. Steals the scene totally.

>45 MrsLee:
Forgive me if I have mentioned these films before:
- Page Eight
- Turks & Caicos
- Salting the Battlefield
The above three films constitute "The Worricker Trilogy".

- Wild Target

I love him in the above films.

He was in Galaxy Quest? Are you sure you don't mean Alan Rickman?

>48 Bookmarque:
Sorry. Slip of my memory. You are correct.

Bill Nighy was also in the UK version of State of Play.

>47 pgmcc: I heartily will second the Worricker Trilogy recommendation. I watched all three of those films last year and greatly enjoyed Nighy's take on the spy game. (I actually think he may have been portraying one of the denizens of the pub, but can't say for sure).

Um... I think you may have meant to say Wild Target, with Emily Blunt, Martin Freeman, and Rupert Grint?

>50 ScoLgo:
You spotted my other deliberate error.

>47 pgmcc: Noted. Thank you! My personal favorite (because I haven't seen that many films with him in) is The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel. I thought he did such a great job of being two different men. One with his critical wife, and another with a woman who is learning to explore her world with an open mind.

Audible has refreshed their monthly sale titles and I picked up -



Pandora's Jar by Natalie Haynes which reframes, refocuses and reorients Greek myths telling the stories of now villainized women such as Pandora who did not do one thing we attribute to her evil ways. Ditto with Medusa, Clytemnestra, Jocasta and others. Well, maybe not Medea, but she is a lot more nuanced than the ruthless child killer we know. Mostly these myths, like that of Eve, have been drastically changed so to make women the scapegoats for all evil and let men off the hook of responsibility, merely victims of our wiles and unable to help themselves (burkas anyone?). So far it's great. And I love the cover.

>52 MrsLee: That is not a programme I have watched, but I did note it has an amazing cast.

>53 Bookmarque: It's been a couple of years since I read Pandora's Jar, but I still remember how much I enjoyed it. A fascinating read.

>53 Bookmarque: I'm definitely tempted!

So far it's pretty great and surprisingly funny. Worth the $6 for sure.

>57 Bookmarque: I will look for the next time the sale notification pops up on my phone.

>53 Bookmarque: I read a book by Robert Graves a few years ago and in it he proposed the theory that all the women of the myths had been downgraded because they represented the female goddess worship which was in place before the Greeks took over with their male gods. Something like that. He had quite the fixation over it, but I don't know how much of his theory is followed today.

>59 MrsLee: You're probably thinking of The White Goddess. I used to have a copy decades ago, and Graves did indeed have something like a fixation about it, but he wasn't taken seriously by mainstream archaeologists even then.

>60 haydninvienna: I dumped my lazy bone and checked my library. It was The Greek Myths, vol. 1. He seemed to work that theme into every myth.

Haynes brings up Graves a few times in the book, not flatteringly. I quite liked it and was glad that she didn't go too heavily into the underlying feminist theme of female oppression at the hands of men. We are oppressed and have been for thousands of years, we know it, we know it's better now, but not gone and I'm glad that it didn't veer into ranting territory. Light barbs and sharp rejoinders were about it. I may move on to some of her other books, she has a follow up to this one called Divine Might that basically does the same thing, but with goddesses instead of more-or-less regular women. It has an equally excellent cover, although how you fight a battle with all that hair blowing around is beyond me!

My husband gives the best Valentine's Day presents -

>63 Bookmarque: Nice!

>63 Bookmarque: I'm applauding :)

>63 Bookmarque: Well done him! I got a pot of tulips from the half off shelf. :D I am not complaining, I intend to plant them and enjoy in the future.

Thanks guys - we haven't had the movies in ages since we had them on laserdisc. Yes, we are old, but before DVD was a thing it was that or VHS. Once we got at TV bigger than 26 inches, it was really obvious how bad VHS was, so laserdisc. Am looking forward to seeing them again even though George Lucas is the devil with this complete revisionist treatment of Han. Funnily enough, there's a website that lives for the Original Trilogy and there's a guy who has spliced in the original scene in the bar where in fact, Han did shoot first. With proof (not sure what that is yet) that you own Star Wars legitimately, he will send you a download link for the format of your choice (MP4, etc.). I'm seriously tempted. Damn you George Lucas! I hope he took out the stepping on Jabba's tail thing too. Oy vey.

Some of you might remember this scene from earlier in late spring and fall. Yesterday I woke up to a few inches of snow, so practically bolted out the door. With temps getting into the 30s and 40s next week, it's not long for this world.

We are snowy right now, too. It’s so pretty!

>68 Bookmarque: Glad you got some snow!

>68 Bookmarque: So pretty! We've had lots of snow this winter, but for now it has melted.

>68 Bookmarque: So pretty!

>68 Bookmarque: So beautiful!

Thanks guys! It got into the low 40s today, so the snow is on its way out unless something drastic happens. Here's another shot at the river, but looking downstream from a different location.



As I type I'm anxiously awaiting the delivery of a new camera. Fed Ex tells me it will be delivered today, a day early, but the box hasn't been scanned since yesterday so who knows. Have been too distracted to do much besides watch videos and clean stuff. I did finish up a couple of earrings though -



Just a down and dirty cell phone pic, but maybe tomorrow I can shoot them properly with the new rig!

>74 Bookmarque: I love the color contrast of the light in the sky and the snow on the ground.

Pretty bling, too. :)

Thanks much. Hope you're feeling better, btw.

Went out with the new camera today and this brave little American Goldfinch came to show off his winter plumage.

>76 Bookmarque: What a lovely photo!

>76 Bookmarque: Very pretty.

>76 Bookmarque: Excellent display of goldfinch plumage in that photo!

>76 Bookmarque: Great shot. It might just be wishful thinking on my part, but I thought that I noticed that the male goldfinches here looked a little bit brighter than they did a month or so ago.

>76 Bookmarque: Adorable! I love seeing the differences between birds with the same name but on different continents.

Thanks guys, here he is again -





I wasn't right on top of him, but he knew I was there and was a bit wary, plus keeping an eye out for predators or maybe a prospective mate. They go around in little herds together during the winter. 1/2 a dozen birds or so. Very cute.

I know what you mean Sakerfalcon - every time I see an English robin, I shake my head and say that's not a robin, but I know it is. Same with a tit - that's a chickadee!!

>82 Bookmarque: Thanks for the pictures, nice to see colorful birds this time of year.

Thanks much! He'll be brighter come spring/summer when he puts on his breeding duds.

Here's one of our resident rodents wishing I would go away already.

>84 Bookmarque: Your squirrel is very black compared to our greys. My daughter lives in Redwood City and she also has black squirrels. I've never seen them up here.

>84 Bookmarque: Beautiful shot. I had tons of black squirrels in Connecticut, but I have not seen one here yet on the Isle of Long. I do miss them.

>84 Bookmarque: Awww. So cute! I've never seen a black squirrel irl...

Thanks peeps. Insofar as species go, this is still a gray squirrel, but a black morph. It's thought that this particular variation came through interbreeding between gray and fox squirrels - only fox squirrels have a gene that causes this pigmentation. Black ones are concentrated in the northern part of the species range, and especially around the Great Lakes.

The Red Squirrel is the native Irish squirrel. For many decades they have been on the decline with the invasive American Grey Squirrel dominating and pushing out the Red Squirrel. In recent years there has been a campaign to plant more traditional Irish woodland trees and these suit the Red Squirrel and the Pine Marten more than the fir trees that have dominated for commercial reasons since the 70s. As the reinstated natural Irish woodlands are becoming more common and covering more ground the Red Squirrel and the Pine Marten are seeing resurgence.

>89 pgmcc: This is good news. I was pretty horrified to learn within the last few years why Ireland had lost so many of its native woodlands. As this might swerve into politics I will stop here, but I am still angry about it.

Hm, you don't often hear about North American species invading Europe, it's almost always the other way around. Bad both ways though.

Here's a bendy little White-breasted nuthatch. I love these little dudes.

>91 Bookmarque: This one is so cute!

That is such a perfect pic of a white-breasted nuthatch :) I did a christmas card of the WBN one year, in exactly the same position, but from a photo of my own. I love them.

>91 Bookmarque: My children used to call them the upside down birds.

>91 Bookmarque: Oh how lovely!

Thanks guys. They are such little clowns. Here's the same one only sillier -

Awww! When I was at home during lockdown I was able to watch a family of British (orange breasted) nuthatches on the tree outside my window. They were absolutely delightful!

>94 MrsLee:
The ones I saw last summer were always upside down.

Oh, I really like that photo in your >96 Bookmarque:

>96 Bookmarque: Such a great capture of the nuthatch looking right at the camera :D

>96 Bookmarque: Cute!

Thanks guys. It's crazy warm today so I hung out in the yard with some critters -



If you sit long enough, critters get curious about you. After a while this little one walked so close to me I could have touched it. Very cute.

>102 Bookmarque: Is it the way he was standing or are there surprisingly fat cheeks on that chipmunk?

Fat cheeks stuffed partly full of seeds to take back to the borough. Like hamsters they can pack a ton in there. 2 acorns is about the limit -

What a cutie!

>104 Bookmarque: Awwww. Such a cute one! This is a great capture, too.

Those are great photos! It's amazing how close creatures will come if you stay still for long enough.

Thanks guys - the first is from yesterday, the second is from a few years ago, but still in the yard and might be a direct ancestor. They only live about 2 years.

I thought I posted this one, but it's also from the side yard and I kind of like the two shots together since they have a similar palette -



It's a 12-image stack of an Indian Pipe flower after going to seed. I loved it because it has a couple petals still attached when the usual thing at this stage is for them to be shed. While I was taking the bracketed images I heard a splash a snort and a squeak just behind me. Our local otters were none to pleased at my presence in their favorite part of the backyard. Funny.

>107 Sakerfalcon: Mostly what joins me when I sit a long time in the yard are ants. lol

>109 Bookmarque: Great picture!

I never tire of your pictures! I’ve never seen a black squirrel, either. We have gray squirrels like crazy here. And those chipmunks! Super cute!

Thanks everyone, glad you like the pics. I'm hoping we just slide into a nice early spring at this point.

Today I'm heading to the bench to work on some jewelry for the shop - Mother's day is coming up so if you'd like to get something from me, that would be great. If you don't see what you want or would like something modified, let me know.

And since practically everyone here in the GD has swooned over the Murderbot Diaries, I've decided to take the plunge. The first couple of books are available as part of the Audible Plus library so I've added the first part of the first book. Weirdly the first book is divided into four separate, but unabridged, audiobooks while the latter part of the series is in much longer installments. But for free, I'll give it a try even though Science Fiction isn't really in my wheelhouse.

>113 Bookmarque: Well, I hope you will like Murderbot! It's one of my favourite series, but I do know that it's not everyone's cup of tea.

So far I like it and have moved into the 2nd part of the 1st book -



The break between comes when Murderbot leaves Mensa (sp?) and goes off in its own.

>115 Bookmarque: It's nice that you are enjoying the books :)

It's less alien and forced than I expected. I find a lot of fantasy & sf quite a struggle since the whole "worldbuilding" is too removed and weird for me to accept. Most of it feels like authorial showing off, but this feels a bit more about story than about effects.

And some stuff that will be going into the shop -



Cat hair sold separately.

Ok, on further investigation I guess all those 3 hour audio books are the full books - novellas really. Some folks on Audible wished they were all in one release since it looks like the later books are 3 and 4x as long. Glad I checked here to see exactly how the series is constructed. I'm especially liking ART as a character.

>118 Bookmarque: Yes, almost all of the books are novellas, with one full-length novel (Network Effect). ART is wonderful, I agree!

Done with the first novellas in the series and what's part of the Audible Plus library. Pretty good. Murderbot as a construct and as a character reminded me of a lot of different things, primarily Data from Star Trek in the sense that both weren't fully human, but similarly composited of organic and mechanical parts. The difference is that Data actively wanted to be more human while Mb does not. It's actually kind of grossed out when it has to grow hair...funny. But in the end, it does sort of get attached to certain humans and can even (gasp) make eye contact and doesn't mind being touched. That reminded me of some autism characteristics, too. But I really wanted it to "do the thing with the hand" or something like it a la Bishop in Aliens. That was a scene played for laughs as well as to illustrate how an artificial person could function and since Mb really has no sense of humor (only of irony), it would have been hard to take. Anyway...that's my journey so far. I'll see if I want to dive back in again. A solid 3 stars for the four installments.

And a dose of cute as a bonus -

>120 Bookmarque:
Fantastic picture.

>120 Bookmarque: A lovely photo!

Nice to hear that you liked the Murderbot novellas :)

>120 Bookmarque: Chipmunks are so much fun to watch :) Great photos!

Thanks peeps.

As usual, spring is perverse in Wisconsin. After a winter of high temps and basically no snow, we're now getting snow and temps in the teens. Typical. But it can make for some fun photos when I get a cooperative subject -



This is a male Wood Duck vocalizing to a nearby female who was checking out a possible nesting site. It's an old Woodpecker nest that is in hot contention every spring - Woodies, Hoodies (Hooded mergansers), various woodpeckers like Pileated, squirrels and even Kingfishers have a go at it. I never know who gets it since the canopy grows in and it's impossible to see the opening in the tree. But I love to see the ducks flapping around and checking it out. The blowing snow really adds something to this shot which I got by opening a window and shooting straight across the backyard.

>124 Bookmarque: Awesome photo. And yes, it's Second Winter here too, after First False Spring.

>124 Bookmarque: I love this! It would make a nice Christmas card!

>124 Bookmarque: Love the photo, and the story that goes with it.

>124 Bookmarque: This is a great photo, I love it!
We had some snowfall yesterday and the day before, most upsetting. Someone who is in charge of the weather has forgotten to note that it's almost April, lol.

>124 Bookmarque: and >126 Sakerfalcon: I think Sakerfalcon is right. It would make a delightful card for any winter holiday.

>129 jillmwo:
Hear! Hear!

Thanks guys, glad you like it. They're such gorgeous birds.

So I bet you thought I forgot all about my Stephen King project, but I haven't! I finished Secret Window, Secret Garden the other day.



Read in the original hardcover (Four Past Midnight) again, this one took me forever to finish and it was mostly because Shooter is such a cruel villain. Just couldn’t put that into my head for a while, but I got through it. All I could see was Johnny Depp and John Turturro though since I’ve seen the movie, too. A theme King explores quite a bit in his stories is where they come from and this falls into that collection. This bit reminded me of Lisey’s Story which also deals with where ideas come from - “They seemed to feel there was a Central Idea Dump somewhere (just as there was supposed to be an elephant graveyard somewhere and a fabled lost city of gold somewhere else), and he must have a secret map that allowed him to get there and back, but Mort knew better.” SW,SG deals with guilt as well, specifically guilt about plagiarism, but also I wonder if Mort felt guilty about his success. At one point he talks about his ex-wife writing a novel that quietly died and never saw the light of day, so by contrast his success could make him feel a bit guilty.

Anyay, the pacing is good and I really liked that just when King gives Ted a break he deals him a hell of a crack on the head with Mort’s suspicions of why Shooter is tormenting him. There’s a great description of him on p. 327 - “...he saw Shooter, saw him clearly, standing in the bathtub in his black round-crowned hat and his yellow shitkicker work-shoes, his lips split over his mail-order dentures in a grin which was really a grimace, sweat trickling down his own face, running down the deep lines grooved there like water running down a network of galvanized tin gutters, with the hammer from the toolshed raised to shoulder-height like a judge’s gavel. Just standing there in the tub, waiting to bring the hammer down. Next case, bailiff.”

Considering that Shooter is really Mort, it’s a pretty telling portrait of how he really sees himself.A mere 10 pages after this we get our first real whiff of madness. Outsiders witnessing what Mort doesn’t believe is really happening. It’s a nice moment and I wish it ended just as delicately, but it doesn’t and Shooter - the name, the pronunciation and what it sounds like is just the warm up act. When the ex comes into the cabin and finds the destruction and chaos and that name scrawled on every conceivable surface, it’s a nice moment. Penny dropped hard. It goes a little nuts there, but the epilogue comes quickly and with a little lick of the supernatural at the end. Uncle Steve just can’t resist.

I have Rose Madder going now and sometimes have to skim over the revolting and basically irredeemably twisted Norman parts, but I like Rose's blossoming to push a metaphor. I haven't read it since 1995 when it first came out, but I remember a little of the central idea of the story and I think I'll enjoy revisiting that.

>124 Bookmarque: Great photo!

Because I loved it on my first reading and Marissa has been doing a deep-dive into Elizabeth Hand’s work and I suggested we read it together, I’m 88 pages into Mortal Love. Which puts me in mind of that old song, 88 Lines about 44 women and this is almost as nutty. I remember it a bit, but it’s such a convoluted novel with so many threads and timelines, that it’s only impressions. So far we have several storylines that seem a bit too disconnected to make sense, but the threads are there and eventually will weave into a whole. More or less.



I have my notebook from the first time I read it and this time different things jumped out at me (blue glowing fingernails, the brachet appearances (also scars obliquely referenced a second time) and of course the acorns. The first time I didn’t write down anything about Nick’s bizarre behavior after specifically inviting Daniel to meet Larkin and then getting hostile and warning him off. To no avail, but why put them together in the first place? I think my feminist hackles are more easily raised than they first were and I was really insulted and incensed by the opening scenario where a woman is locked up in a mental hospital for being alluring and sexually open. She seems to have no say in the matter. Infuriating.

Anyway…I also noted how sad Val’s story was from start to finish. It seems like it hangs out in the middle of everything, but it bridges the past and the present quite well and I’m pretty sure the other threads will be attached like spokes on a wheel. All in all quite mysterious and satisfying. I like this so much better than a lot of her other books. My purchase date is some months after my first reading dates, so I must have gotten this from the library and then decided I needed a copy.

To keep following my re-read of Mortal Love with Marissa, check out this thread - https://www.librarything.com/topic/359711#n8489466

In the mean time, I am having a good time with an Audible collection of BBC Radio adaptations of the entire Holmes canon -



Unlike with Poirot, I don't associate a specific actor and voice with either Holmes or Watson so the two gents in these roles are just fine to me. Some complained about Holmes's maniacal laughter in the reviews, but it doesn't bother me. I've always found his character pretty manic and off-kilter so it suits. The production is good and the adaptations seem spot on, although they did have to squash full-length novels down a bit more than I might have liked. Everything works though and there are some bits of info about the productions sprinkled between when relevant. I particularly loved the one with Brian Blessed! Who wouldn't? The man's a treasure. Anyway...27 hours and 47 minutes to go!

And another episode featuring Brian Blessed!! Woo hoo. Quite a lot of fun even without him.

Went out into the yard for a while today since it was warm and mostly sunny, something it will not be tomorrow. If I sit quietly long enough, many birds get brave so I was happy that the light cooperated for this male House Finch as he eyed me with suspicion. He would often vocalize to a nearby female, but you could barely hear him. She eventually joined him, but never posed so nicely and then the light quit being so nice.



It also was good to test some of the memory cards I'm bringing to Norway in a couple days. Not that you can't get memory cards there if needed, but I doubt I could get these really fast ones that I need for certain things. Anyway...I also have a brand new Prey novel with Lucas and Letty Davenport. That will find a way into my bag I'm pretty sure!

>136 Bookmarque: Even I'm excited about your upcoming trip and I don't get to go! :) Hope you have a marvelous time whatever the weather, and I know you will share some of it in photos with us.

>136 Bookmarque: Thanks for the picture and have a great time on the trip!

>136 Bookmarque: I was in Norway a few times, but for work, and I never got to see the fjords or any of the other fantastic landscape. It is a place I have drempt of going to cruise the fjords. I hope you enjoy it. Your photography skills will certainly do justice to the landscape, so I am looking forward to seeing the pictures you share from the trip.

>136 Bookmarque: What a lovely little bird!

Adding my voice the good wishes for your trip, and looking forward to some photos!

Thanks peeps! Leaving tomorrow afternoon for an overnight to Amsterdam and then to Alesund which is the region we'll be in. It's going to be rainy basically the whole time we will be there, but that should make for dramatic skies and decent waterfall light and so I'm hoping for the best. I've never been to Norway so it will be a new experience and one I hope I can do justice. The landscape looks incredible. We will have two boat excursions on fjords and a lot of driving either right on the coast or up in the hills.

Oh and I've been corrected - the bird is a Purple finch, not a House finch.

>141 Bookmarque:. We're all going to be waiting for the photos you are able to take! Crossing my fingers that this trip fulfills all your hopes for it! It's got to be exciting!!

>136 Bookmarque: Lovely capture! He's got great color. Every once in awhile I see one that's more vivid than the others, and I get excited because I think it might be a Purple Finch. (But it never is.)

Thanks ladies. I hope the build up won't make the reality a disappointment, but I suspect that even Stevie Wonder couldn't take a bad photo in Norway. And before anyone gets all upset at me for that, Wonder himself did Canon commercials back in the day (and Kannon, too) and said basically the same thing. It was funny and he knew it.

Anyway...I've never had Purple finches until I moved to Wisconsin. I guess they will have to make up for the lack of Cardinals, Tufted titmice, Mockingbirds, Brown thrashers and Red-breasted nuthatches - all of which were in the yard almost daily in NH. Oh well.

Am still making my way through the Holmes dramatizations and just listened to one with one of my favorite character actors in BBC radio - Ed Bishop! He was American, and is most closely associated with Philip Marlowe since he read a bunch of the novels and played Marlowe in many BBC adaptations. I just love him. He didn't have much of a screen career however he did have a small role in 2001: A Space Odyssey. It's always a treat to hear his distinctive voice in the older BBC productions.

Oh and I never realized how many times Holmes lets off criminals because they committed their special crimes for "good" reasons. A righteous revenge on a horrible human is mostly the reason.

>144 Bookmarque: I could take a bad photo in Norway, but I suspect you'll do much, much better.

>144 Bookmarque: I had Purple finches in Northern Illinois. I also had all those other birds you are saying you don't have. I use the Merlin app, and it says I have Brown thrashers and Red-breasted nut hatches here, but I have yet to see them with my own eyeballs.

No pressure on the photos. We just have faith in you because we have seen what you are capable of.

Thanks guys. I am notorious for creating so much anxiety over my travel photos, but in the last few 'big' trips, I've relaxed into the moments and things went better. Balancing taking photos and immersing myself in a place is tougher than it looks. Oftentimes the camera can act as a barrier between me and what I'm doing or seeing and I have to realize that I don't have to photograph absolutely everything. Another long and hard-learned lesson is not to fight the light or conditions. Going in with too many expectations is never good - take what there is and make it work. Part of my long, unending journey as a photographer.

Here's a decent example. I was sitting by the feeder (same session as Mr. Finch above), but the Juncos were more shy and since they feed on the ground, they didn't perch as showily. So I decided to sit and watch a bit and after a while I realized that they would sometimes have a little kerfuffle that made one go up into the bushes. By making the intervening trunks and branches work for me, I got this shot -



It relates their behavior and my experience more fully rather than trying for the same photo as the finch when they don't act like finches. Silly old me would have been frustrated and angry that I couldn't get a more typical portrait. Smarty new me likes this unusual view of a very usual bird.

>147 Bookmarque: That is perfect. They are definitely more elusive than finches. I have noticed that this year I have some eating from my feeders, though. I guess they can adapt!

I agree about trying to enjoy the moment instead of constantly trying to take photos. I'm not even using a camera, just my phone, but I am trying harder to just appreciate what I'm seeing.

>147 Bookmarque: I think it was somewhere midpoint in my first son's wedding event that I realized I was missing the moment trying to capture every moment. I may have swung too far the other direction now because I rarely take photos of people and events anymore.

Thanks folks. They are such sweet little birds and I love having them around. Got a good night's sleep in my own bed last night and so I've begun sorting through my Norway pics. This one is from the very last full day there and it's on the island town of Alnes. These little buildings caught my eye while walking the beach and watching the surfers. Yeah, Norwegian surfers, who knew?

>150 Bookmarque: One of the things I love when looking at photos of Norway are the huge rocks by the dark sea. The little building with the cheerful red roof sort of highlights the heaviness of its surroundings. So beautiful.

>150 Bookmarque: Beautiful! Norway is a special, special place.

Thanks guys. Norway was indeed special. We had a lovely time. Not a photography trip, per se, but of course I took a lot of shots. None were especially thoughtful or planned, but I have enough "seat time" as my old track driving instructors called it, to be able to adjust to different subjects and conditions as they arise. Like with these two Eurasian Oystercatchers that flew onto this rock on the same beach. It's not the best shot ever, but the one facing us didn't cooperate for long because it tucked its head and one foot in for a nap for the rest of the time we saw them.

>153 Bookmarque: I love oystercatchers and that's a great photo!

Thanks Sakerfalcon - I was very happy to see them and that they picked such a great place to land that wasn't too far from the path.

Finally finished the Sherlock Holmes drama collection and as a palate cleanser I'm onto one of John McWhorter's Great Courses lectures -



Admittedly I'm a McWhorter fan, but damn he's so much fun to listen to. This lecture series came out last May and includes a nice PDF as well (I think all the Great Courses do) and is up to his usual standard of organization and delivery.

>150 Bookmarque: >153 Bookmarque: Awesome. I'm glad you had a good trip.

>153 Bookmarque:
I love watching oystercatchers.

>153 Bookmarque: Saw Black Oystercatchers at Saldanha Bay (Western Cape) some years ago. Your Norwegian ones are clearly related. Picture excellent as usual.

Thanks guys. I think it was my first time seeing oystercatchers of any kind so it was special.

So here's a 2-image stitch of the road (1 1/2 lanes at its widest here) into Oye, Norway on the Hjørundfjorden where we stayed (it's a village of about 25 poeple). These huts are scattered throughout this region, but not so many are so well preserved. This and another few nearby are now historical landmarks. They were used by young women and girls who tended cows that grazed up the mountains. The girls would lead them down, milk them and then deliver the milk to other folks to pick up and bring to town for sale or to be processed into butter or cheese. They slept in the huts overnight and then brought the cows back up. It was a rough, hard existence for the most part and I believe it continued into the 20th century.



This valley is one of the most narrow in all of Norway and one of the narrowest accessible by road. Avalanches occur regularly and when the sun is strong, you can hear the ice crack, break off and fall down the steep slopes. We heard many stories and saw some roadside monuments to villages that were destroyed by avalanches either directly or indirectly when rivers were blocked and villages flooded.

>159 Bookmarque: The view is amazing! Breathtaking!

>159 Bookmarque: Now that's a very special photo! And the accompanying stories are interesting -- the young women having to stay overnight in the huts and the avalanches!

Thanks peeps. This is where we ended up, but looking back from where we came - this is the town of Oye on the Hjørundfjorden, population 25. The hotel is the yellow/red building at the curve in the road (still 1 1/2 car widths). Strangely the sauna is on a pier in the harbor so you have to walk down to it. You can, however, take a plunge in the fjord if you so desire. Husband desired, me, not so much.



And here is the view right behind me and to the right -



Those are boathouses on the harbor of the fjord.

>159 Bookmarque: >162 Bookmarque: Awesome!

Such amazing landscapes! I love the mossy roofs of the huts.

I love these views! They are almost surreal.

Those photos will be wonderful to look at on hot summer days.

I'm absolutely loving your photos of Norway. It looks like an amazing trip.

Awesome photos. They look so much better on my PC than on my phone!
:o)

Thanks guys. Am still working my way through them. I won't post them all here, but you can look at them on Smugmug as I get them done - https://wickeddark.smugmug.com/Travel/Norway-2024

And a teaser -



This was shot while on a cruise in the Hjørundfjorden with a local boat captain. He was great and told a lot of stories about the villages and farms on the fjord.

>169 Bookmarque: Thanks again for sharing. I used to have a manager from Norway, after seeing these pictures, I'm not sure why he left.

Thanks Karlstar. It's a beautiful country, at least the bit I saw, but harsh environment and rugged terrain. Nothing that different from where I've always lived weatherwise, but you have to be tough.

Recently finished another Lisa Lutz book as an audio - The Accomplice. I'm a bit hit-or-miss with her and I liked the surprising ending and tone to the book. Recommended if you like a slow-ish burn mystery with distinctive characters who are odd, but not cartoonishly so.

Norway looks amazing! Definitely have to put that on my bucket list. Thanks for sharing photos.