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The Cuckoo’s Calling by Robert Galbraith (2013) – BR00239 (R2024) – 🐸🐸🐸🐸⚪

The PolyBlog
May 1 2024

Plot or Premise

Robin Ellacott has always wanted to be a private detective, and temping for one for a week seems like a possible dream come true before she goes off to be properly married to her new fiancé. She didn’t count on Cormoran Strike being both good and highly in need of office help for his new case — a brother of a celebrity who committed suicide wants Cormoran to find out if it really was suicide.

What I Liked

The case is deliciously messy, with therapy, adoptions, birth mothers, sordid histories, difficult families, etc. And for the first time when Cormoran and Robin both want the same thing but are afraid to say it outright, it’s fun to see them struggle to keep Robin past the first week (even if their reluctance to speak candidly is way overused as a plot device later). And I love the solution to the issue of the witness who couldn’t have witnessed what she claimed to have seen and heard, yet smacks of some semblance of truth.

What I Didn’t Like

There is a lot of confusion about what happened the night Lula died, and major players are relatively ignored for long periods of time with very little explanation of why. Some of it lacks a way to coerce cooperation if the person isn’t interested in cooperating with a private detective; some is just a red herring left to rot too long in the story.

The Bottom Line

Cormoran is good until Robin helps him be great

Posted in Lilypad Reviews, Lilypad-Library | Leave a reply

Streaming Oscar nominations for 2023

The PolyBlog
January 28 2024

Back in the day, I used to watch almost every big movie that came out. Life has changed since then, and I was looking at the list of 120 nominations that were just released that make up the main telecast. Of the 120 nominations across the 23 categories, even if I was in the industry and got a ballot card, I couldn’t have voted — I actually haven’t seen ANY of them. Yet. And every year, someone complains that the voting process is obviously flawed as many voters in the industry have not, in fact, seen all of the movies. There’s just too many, of course. Seems obvious at first blush.

But I was wondering today how many are available for streaming already and if I could watch SOME of them at least before the telecast. As I was searching through the list, I didn’t want to check availability of a movie more than once, so I did a quick spreadsheet and coloured coded movies that showed up more than once. I noticed some interesting things that I might not have noticed without the aid of a spreadsheet.

Of the long list of best picture nominees (10 instead of the long ago list of only 5), the not-surprising carry-over is that they also qualify for multiple other awards. No surprise, as I said, because, of course, if it had a good director, actor, actress, screenplay, score, or any of the other 22 categories, it had a better-than-average chance to rise up to the level of being a best picture nominee. Makes sense, right? And every year, the release of nominees includes “counts” as to how many categories the top nominee covers. 14 for this movie, only 7 for that one. So you know there is SOME repetition, of course.

But what DID surprise me is that even for just the 10 best picture nominees, they account for 71 nominations out of the 120 nominees in total. 10 pictures cover 60% of the night. And when you eliminate the ones they weren’t even eligible for (animated, documentary, shorts), that rises to 75% of the nominations. So with just watching 10 movies, a lot for some people, you could cover a huge swath of the ballot.

In fact, you would cover:

  • Best picture — all of them
  • Best director — all of them
  • Best actor — all but one (Colman Domingo for Rustin)
  • Best actress — all but one (Annette Bening for Nyad)
  • Best supporting actor — all of them
  • Best supporting actress — all but two (Danielle Brooks for The Color Purple and Jodie Foster for Nyad)
  • Best original screenplay — all but one (May December)
  • Best adapted screenplay — all of them
  • Best cinematography — all but one (El Conde)
  • Best costume design — all but one (Napoleon)
  • Best makeup and hairstyling — all but two (Golda and Society of the Snow)
  • Best original song — all but two (from Flamin’ Hot and American Symphony)
  • Best original score — all but one (Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny)
  • Best production design — all but one (Napoleon)
  • Best film editing — all of them
  • Best sound — all but two (The Creator and Mission: Impossible Dead Reckoning Part I
  • Best visual effects — none of the five but only two aren’t covered already by the previous additions

What does that mean? It means if you take the 10 best picture nominees, add in Rustin, Nyad, The Color Purple, May December, El Conde, Napoleon, Golda, Society of the Snow, Flamin’ Hot and American Symphony, plus the other four that are visual effects (Napoleon plus Creator, Godzilla, Mission: Impossible, Guardians of the Galaxy), you get all 95 of the main nominees in just 10 + 10 + 4 = 24 movies. Sure, the animated and docs and shorts don’t have a lot of overlaps, almost 25 there too but it wouldn’t really be fair to suggest it’s covering 50 movies. Not really.

I find it particularly telling that if you JUST use the top four categories, you’d get to 12 movies; add in supporting, it jumps to 13 movies; and 14 would cover everything down to cinematography plus film editing. That’s almost doable in a month if you were hardcore.

Hence my curiosity as to what is available in streaming format at the moment. I looked them up on JustWatch.com to see what was available and what wasn’t…If they were available with a subscription, I said “Apple”, “Netflix”, “Prime”, “Disney”, “Crave”, “Paramount”. If they were available only to buy or rent, I added a $ after each one. Here is the full list, if interested.

AwardMovieAppleNetflixPrimeDisneyOtherNominee
Best PictureAmerican Fiction—————American Fiction (Ben LeClair, Nikos Karamigios, Cord Jefferson and Jermaine Johnson, Producers)
Best PictureAnatomy of a Fall Apple $—Amazon $——Anatomy of a Fall (Marie-Ange Luciani and David Thion, Producers)
Best PictureBarbieApple $ Amazon $ CraveBarbie (David Heyman, Margot Robbie, Tom Ackerley and Robbie Brenner, Producers)
Best PictureThe Holdovers Apple $—Amazon $——The Holdovers (Mark Johnson, Producer)
Best PictureKillers of the Flower MoonApple—Amazon $——Killers of the Flower Moon (Dan Friedkin, Bradley Thomas, Martin Scorsese and Daniel Lupi, Producers)
Best PictureMaestro —Netflix———Maestro (Bradley Cooper, Steven Spielberg, Fred Berner, Amy Durning and Kristie Macosko Krieger, Producers)
Best PictureOppenheimer Apple $—Amazon $——Oppenheimer (Emma Thomas, Charles Roven and Christopher Nolan, Producers)
Best PicturePast Lives Apple $ Amazon $  Past Lives (David Hinojosa, Christine Vachon and Pamela Koffler, Producers)
Best PicturePoor Things —————Poor Things (Ed Guiney, Andrew Lowe, Yorgos Lanthimos and Emma Stone, Producers)
Best PictureThe Zone of Interest —————The Zone of Interest (James Wilson, Producer)
Best DirectingAnatomy of a Fall Apple $—Amazon $——Justine Triet (Anatomy of a Fall)
Best DirectingKillers of the Flower MoonApple—Amazon $——Martin Scorsese (Killers of the Flower Moon)
Best DirectingOppenheimer Apple $—Amazon $——Christopher Nolan (Oppenheimer)
Best DirectingPoor Things —————Yorgos Lanthimos (Poor Things)
Best DirectingThe Zone of Interest —————Jonathan Glazer (The Zone of Interest)
Best Actor in a Leading RoleMaestro —Netflix———Bradley Cooper (Maestro)
Best Actor in a Leading RoleRustin Netflix   Colman Domingo (Rustin)
Best Actor in a Leading RoleThe Holdovers Apple $—Amazon $——Paul Giamatti (The Holdovers)
Best Actor in a Leading RoleOppenheimer Apple $—Amazon $——Cillian Murphy (Oppenheimer)
Best Actor in a Leading RoleAmerican Fiction—————Jeffrey Wright (American Fiction)
Best Actress in a Leading RoleNyad—Netflix———Annette Bening (Nyad)
Best Actress in a Leading RoleKillers of the Flower MoonApple—Amazon $——Lily Gladstone (Killers of the Flower Moon)
Best Actress in a Leading RoleAnatomy of a Fall Apple $—Amazon $——Sandra Hüller (Anatomy of a Fall)
Best Actress in a Leading RoleMaestro —Netflix———Carey Mulligan (Maestro)
Best Actress in a Leading RolePoor Things —————Emma Stone (Poor Things)
Best Actor in a Supporting RoleAmerican Fiction—————Sterling K. Brown (American Fiction)
Best Actor in a Supporting RoleKillers of the Flower MoonApple—Amazon $——Robert De Niro (Killers of the Flower Moon)
Best Actor in a Supporting RoleOppenheimer Apple $—Amazon $——Robert Downey Jr. (Oppenheimer)
Best Actor in a Supporting RoleBarbieApple $ Amazon $ CraveRyan Gosling (Barbie)
Best Actor in a Supporting RolePoor Things —————Mark Ruffalo (Poor Things)
Best Actress in a Supporting RoleOppenheimer Apple $—Amazon $——Emily Blunt (Oppenheimer)
Best Actress in a Supporting RoleThe Color PurpleApple $—Amazon $——Danielle Brooks (The Color Purple)
Best Actress in a Supporting RoleBarbieApple $ Amazon $ CraveAmerica Ferrera (Barbie)
Best Actress in a Supporting RoleNyad—Netflix———Jodie Foster (Nyad)
Best Actress in a Supporting RoleThe Holdovers Apple $—Amazon $——Da’Vine Joy Randolph (The Holdovers)
Best Writing (Adapted Screenplay)American Fiction—————American Fiction (Written for the screen by Cord Jefferson)
Best Writing (Adapted Screenplay)BarbieApple $ Amazon $ CraveBarbie (Written by Greta Gerwig & Noah Baumbach)
Best Writing (Adapted Screenplay)Oppenheimer Apple $—Amazon $——Oppenheimer (Written for the screen by Christopher Nolan)
Best Writing (Adapted Screenplay)Poor Things —————Poor Things (Screenplay by Tony McNamara)
Best Writing (Adapted Screenplay)The Zone of Interest —————The Zone of Interest (Written by Jonathan Glazer)
Best Writing (Original Screenplay)Anatomy of a Fall Apple $—Amazon $——Anatomy of a Fall (Screenplay by Justine Triet and Arthur Harari)
Best Writing (Original Screenplay)The Holdovers Apple $—Amazon $——The Holdovers (Written by David Hemingson)
Best Writing (Original Screenplay)Maestro —Netflix———Maestro (Written by Bradley Cooper & Josh Singer)
Best Writing (Original Screenplay)May December—Netflix———May December (Screenplay by Samy Burch; Story by Samy Burch & Alex Mechanik)
Best Writing (Original Screenplay)Past Lives Apple $ Amazon $  Past Lives (Written by Celine Song)
Best Animated FeatureThe Boy and the Heron—————The Boy and the Heron (Hayao Miyazaki and Toshio Suzuki)
Best Animated FeatureElementalApple $—Amazon $Disney—Elemental (Peter Sohn and Denise Ream)
Best Animated FeatureNimona—Netflix———Nimona (Nick Bruno, Troy Quane, Karen Ryan and Julie Zackary)
Best Animated FeatureRobot Dreams—————Robot Dreams (Pablo Berger, Ibon Cormenzana, Ignasi Estapé and Sandra Tapia Díaz)
Best Animated FeatureSpider-ManApple $ Amazon $  Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (Kemp Powers, Justin K. Thompson, Phil Lord, Christopher Miller and Amy Pascal)
Best Documentary Feature FilmBobi Wine———Disney—Bobi Wine: The People’s President (Moses Bwayo, Christopher Sharp and John Battsek)
Best Documentary Feature FilmEternal Memory—————The Eternal Memory (Nominees to be determined)
Best Documentary Feature FilmFour Daughters—————Four Daughters (Kaouther Ben Hania and Nadim Cheikhrouha)
Best Documentary Feature FilmTo Kill A Tiger————NFBTo Kill a Tiger (Nisha Pahuja, Cornelia Principe and David Oppenheim)
Best Documentary Feature Film20 Days in Mariupol————Google $20 Days in Mariupol (Mstyslav Chernov, Michelle Mizner and Raney Aronson-Rath)
Best International Feature FilmIo Capitano—————Io Capitano (Italy)
Best International Feature FilmPerfect Days—————Perfect Days (Japan)
Best International Feature FilmSociety of the Snow—Netflix———Society of the Snow (Spain)
Best International Feature FilmThe Teacher’s Lounge—————The Teacher’s Lounge (Germany)
Best International Feature FilmThe Zone of Interest —————The Zone of Interest (United Kingdom)
Best Animated Short FilmLetter to a Pig—————Letter to a Pig (Tal Kantor and Amit R. Gicelter)
Best Animated Short FilmNinety-Five Senses—————Ninety-Five Senses (Jerusha Hess and Jared Hess)
Best Animated Short FilmOur Uniform—————Our Uniform (Yegane Moghaddam)
Best Animated Short FilmPachyderme—————Pachyderme (Stéphanie Clément and Marc Rius)
Best Animated Short FilmWar is Over!—————War Is Over! Inspired by the Music of John & Yoko (Dave Mullins and Brad Booker)
Best Live-Action Short FilmThe After—Netflix———The After (Misan Harriman and Nicky Bentham)
Best Live-Action Short FilmInvincible—————Invincible (Vincent René-Lortie and Samuel Caron)
Best Live-Action Short FilmNight of Fortune—————Knight of Fortune (Lasse Lyskjaer Noer and Christian Norlyk)
Best Live-Action Short FilmRed, White and Blue—————Red, White and Blue (Nazrin Choudhury and Sara McFarlane)
Best Live-Action Short FilmThe Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar—Netflix———The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar (Wes Anderson and Steven Rales)
Best Documentary Short FilmThe ABCs of Book Banning————ParamountThe ABCs of Book Banning (Sheila Nevins and Trish Adlesic)
Best Documentary Short FilmThe Barber of Little Rock—————The Barber of Little Rock (John Hoffman and Christine Turner)
Best Documentary Short FilmIsland In Between—————Island in Between (S. Leo Chiang and Jean Tsien)
Best Documentary Short FilmThe Last Repair Shop———Disney—The Last Repair Shop (Ben Proudfoot and Kris Bowers)
Best Documentary Short FilmNai Nai & Wai Po—————Nǎi Nai & Wài Pó (Sean Wang and Sam Davis)
Best CinematographyEl Conde—Netflix———El Conde (Edward Lachman)
Best CinematographyKillers of the Flower MoonApple—Amazon $——Killers of the Flower Moon (Rodrigo Prieto)
Best CinematographyMaestro —Netflix———Maestro (Matthew Libatique)
Best CinematographyOppenheimer Apple $—Amazon $——Oppenheimer (Hoyte van Hoytema)
Best CinematographyPoor Things —————Poor Things (Robbie Ryan)
Best Costume DesignBarbieApple $ Amazon $ CraveBarbie (Jacqueline Durran)
Best Costume DesignKillers of the Flower MoonApple—Amazon $——Killers of the Flower Moon (Jacqueline West)
Best Costume DesignNapoleon——Amazon $——Napoleon (Janty Yates and Dave Crossman)
Best Costume DesignOppenheimer Apple $—Amazon $——Oppenheimer (Ellen Mirojnick)
Best Costume DesignPoor Things —————Poor Things (Holly Waddington)
Best Makeup and HairstylingGoldaApple $—Amazon——Golda (Karen Hartley Thomas, Suzi Battersby and Ashra Kelly-Blue)
Best Makeup and HairstylingMaestro —Netflix———Maestro (Kazu Hiro, Kay Georgiou and Lori McCoy-Bell)
Best Makeup and HairstylingOppenheimer Apple $—Amazon $——Oppenheimer (Luisa Abel)
Best Makeup and HairstylingPoor Things —————Poor Things (Nadia Stacey, Mark Coulier and Josh Weston)
Best Makeup and HairstylingSociety of the Snow—Netflix———Society of the Snow (Ana López-Puigcerver, David Martí and Montse Ribé)
Best Original SongFlamin’ Hot———Disney—“The Fire Inside” from Flamin’ Hot (Music and Lyric by Diane Warren)
Best Original SongBarbieApple $ Amazon $ Crave“I’m Just Ken” from Barbie (Music and Lyric by Mark Ronson and Andrew Wyatt)
Best Original SongAmerican Symphony—Netflix———“It Never Went Away” from American Symphony (Music and Lyric by Jon Batiste and Dan Wilson)
Best Original SongKillers of the Flower MoonApple—Amazon $——“Wahzhazhe (A Song for My People)” from Killers of the Flower Moon (Music and Lyric by Scott George)
Best Original SongBarbieApple $ Amazon $ Crave“What Was I Made For?” from Barbie (Music and Lyric by Billie Eilish and Finneas O’Connell)
Best Original ScoreAmerican Fiction—————American Fiction (Laura Karpman)
Best Original ScoreIndiana Jones and the Dial of DestinyApple $—Amazon $Disney—Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny (John Williams)
Best Original ScoreKillers of the Flower MoonApple—Amazon $——Killers of the Flower Moon (Robbie Robertson)
Best Original ScoreOppenheimer Apple $—Amazon $——Oppenheimer (Ludwig Göransson)
Best Original ScorePoor Things —————Poor Things (Jerskin Fendrix)
Best Production DesignBarbieApple $ Amazon $ CraveBarbie (Production Design: Sarah Greenwood; Set Decoration: Katie Spencer)
Best Production DesignKillers of the Flower MoonApple—Amazon $——Killers of the Flower Moon (Production Design: Jack Fisk; Set Decoration: Adam Willis)
Best Production DesignNapoleon——Amazon $——Napoleon (Production Design: Arthur Max; Set Decoration: Elli Griff)
Best Production DesignOppenheimer Apple $—Amazon $——Oppenheimer (Production Design: Ruth De Jong; Set Decoration: Claire Kaufman)
Best Production DesignPoor Things —————Poor Things (Production Design: James Price and Shona Heath; Set Decoration: Zsuzsa Mihalek)
Best Film EditingAnatomy of a Fall Apple $—Amazon $——Anatomy of a Fall (Laurent Sénéchal)
Best Film EditingThe Holdovers Apple $—Amazon $——The Holdovers (Kevin Tent)
Best Film EditingKillers of the Flower MoonApple—Amazon $——Killers of the Flower Moon (Thelma Schoonmaker)
Best Film EditingOppenheimer Apple $—Amazon $——Oppenheimer (Jennifer Lame)
Best Film EditingPoor Things —————Poor Things (Yorgos Mavropsaridis)
Best SoundThe CreatorApple $—Amazon $Disney—The Creator (Ian Voigt, Erik Aadahl, Ethan Van der Ryn, Tom Ozanich and Dean Zupancic)
Best SoundMaestro —Netflix———Maestro (Steven A. Morrow, Richard King, Jason Ruder, Tom Ozanich and Dean Zupancic)
Best SoundMission: Impossible Dead ReckoningApple $—Amazon $—ParamountMission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One (Chris Munro, James H. Mather, Chris Burdon and Mark Taylor)
Best SoundOppenheimer Apple $—Amazon $——Oppenheimer (Willie Burton, Richard King, Gary A. Rizzo and Kevin O’Connell)
Best SoundThe Zone of Interest —————The Zone of Interest (Tarn Willers and Johnnie Burn)
Best Visual EffectsThe CreatorApple $—Amazon $Disney—The Creator (Jay Cooper, Ian Comley, Andrew Roberts and Neil Corbould)
Best Visual EffectsGodzilla: Minus One—————Godzilla: Minus One (Takashi Yamazaki, Kiyoko Shibuya, Masaki Takahashi and Tatsuji Nojima)
Best Visual EffectsThe Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3Apple $——Disney—Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 (Stephane Ceretti, Alexis Wajsbrot, Guy Williams and Theo Bialek)
Best Visual EffectsMission: Impossible Dead ReckoningApple $—Amazon $—ParamountMission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning, Part One (Alex Wuttke, Simone Coco, Jeff Sutherland and Neil Corbould)
Best Visual EffectsNapoleon——Amazon $——Napoleon (Charley Henley, Luc-Ewen Martin-Fenouillet, Simone Coco and Neil Corbould)

So, where does that leave me? Of the 53 overall titles in the long list…

Available to watch with a subscription to a specific streaming service (23)

  • The ABCs of Book Banning
  • The After
  • American Symphony
  • Barbie
  • Bobi Wine
  • El Conde
  • The Creator
  • Elemental
  • Flamin’ Hot
  • Golda
  • The Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3
  • Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny
  • Killers of the Flower Moon
  • The Last Repair Shop
  • Maestro 
  • May December
  • Mission: Impossible Dead Reckoning
  • Nimona
  • Nyad
  • Rustin
  • Society of the Snow
  • To Kill A Tiger
  • The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar

Available to buy or rent online (8)

  • 20 Days in Mariupol
  • Anatomy of a Fall 
  • The Color Purple
  • The Holdovers 
  • Napoleon
  • Oppenheimer 
  • Past Lives 
  • Spider-Man

Not available to stream (22)

  • American Fiction
  • The Barber of Little Rock
  • The Boy and the Heron
  • Eternal Memory
  • Four Daughters
  • Godzilla: Minus One
  • Invincible
  • Io Capitano
  • Island In Between
  • Letter to a Pig
  • Nai Nai & Wai Po
  • Night of Fortune
  • Ninety-Five Senses
  • Our Uniform
  • Pachyderme
  • Perfect Days
  • Poor Things 
  • Red, White and Blue
  • Robot Dreams
  • The Teacher’s Lounge
  • War is Over!
  • The Zone of Interest 

I found it interesting making the spreadsheet. My impression was that there were WAY more that were available to rent or buy online than already free through a subscription service. Except that certain movies over-represented early because almost ALL of the ones available ANYWHERE are ALSO available on Apple or Amazon for rent or buy…they just happen to ALSO be available if you already have a subscription.

For the ones that are not available ANYWHERE, a large number of them are short or animated or documentaries, or some combination therein. I thought they might be available on YouTube, but not yet. I set up some alerts to let me know if/when they show up on a streaming service.

Okay then, my list is set.

Posted in Lilypad Cinema, Lilypad Reviews | Tagged movies, oscars | Leave a reply

Tidying up some (e)book collections

The PolyBlog
January 8 2024

Ah, January. When a young reader’s heart turns to updating all of his lists of various books to read, collect, etc. Okay, so I’m not exactly young and most people’s hearts may not turn that way. But mine does in January.

This past fall, I did a deep dive into Calibre, the ebook library manager program that I use. I’ve used the Windows version on my computer for about, umm, 10 years now, I think. I’ve often had multiple “libraries” of ebooks on my computer … ones that were waiting to be looked at, others that were actually part of collections / series that I’m working on, some from the library that I hadn’t sorted out yet when I would get to them. Tons of books I got way back in the heyday of Kindle ownership where people gave away dozens of ebooks free each day in the yearly teens of the new millennium. Plus books I had read, were reviewing, etc.

I found it hard to effectively manage my ebooks in multiple libraries, and I looked online for the forums, asked questions, explained how I “saw” my library and asked for tips on how to do it better. Which a bunch of fellow bibliophiles responded to with lots of suggestions. In the end, all of them basically said, “Put them all in one library and let the computer give you filtered views when you want to see different “sets” of books”. It is, after all, mostly a giant database with links to the book files.

I am now quite happy with the majority of my setup in the library. I’m down to 10 main workflow categories, all mutually exclusive ones that books “move” through from acquisition to having been read and reviewed:

  1. TBR: Fiction
  2. TBR: Series
  3. TBR: Non-fiction
  4. ACTIVE
  5. REVIEWING: Backlog
  6. REVIEWING: Current
  7. FINAL: Fiction
  8. FINAL: Non-Fiction
  9. FINAL: Reference
  10. FINAL: Did not finish

Admittedly, the TBRs categories are nominally huge but I won’t be reading all of them. Some of them came from a huge data dump of free books I got at some point, and while I weeded out a bunch (from 20K down to 10K), there’s probably another 5K to get rid of at some point. It’ll still lead me with about 20 years’ worth of reading. 🙂

But as I was playing with the recent additions, I realized that there are some other features I can add to the library manager that will actually give me some stats. Every January, I set goals, but somewhere as the year goes on, I kind of lose track. Dead tree versions are particularly problematic to keep track of, but even the ebooks get backlogged. But I went through basically everything I have from #5 to #10 above.

It brings my total up to about 475 books that are in the “read” stage or beyond, even though my actual reviewed list is a little less than half of that (225 or so). For the 475, I’ve added the years in which I’ve read them…goes back all the way to 1978, but there are lots in the last 7-8 years…and that gives me a bit of data to play with and share. The reviews could be new or old, but there’s a reason the backlog grew. 🙂

  1. 20 books read, 16 reviews
  2. 22 books read, 5 reviews
  3. 58 books read, 53 reviews
  4. 78 books read, 17 reviews
  5. 32 books read, 9 reviews
  6. 57 books read, 19 reviews
  7. 63 books read, 18 reviews
  8. 1 book read (so far), 0 reviews

So that means 137 recent books reviewed, plus another 88 old ones added to the website. That still leaves 47 to review from the last year or so, and another 187 in backlog.

Of course, I also have 332 ones to read “soon” in my “active” folder. Which I used to have all synched to my Kindle, which was looney toons to manage. So, I cut that back to about 20 for now. I probably should add a new category around 4B to the top set which is “Books to read this year”, and only pull 10-20 of those forward to the Kindle.

What I don’t know what to do is how to prioritize my TBR list. 🙂 Do I read the first / next one in each series? Or binge my way through like a rabid reader hooked on Netflix more than phonics? Do I set myself a rigid balance of Fiction to Non-fiction?

A lovely first-world problem to have, I know. What really warms my cockles is that I’ve managed to write about 20 new reviews each year over the last seven years (while still putting everything else up, and blogging almost 2M words), and averaging about 47 books a year. My goal is always 52, which I managed to surpass 4 times. And that’s just on the stats I *know* that I have so far. Other books will turn up and add to those titles, again mostly dead tree versions.

But for the first time in a really long time, I kind of feel like my library is mostly where I want it to be and I know what’s happening with it. Now I can start prioritizing dumping the dead tree versions of some old stuff while reading the 332 books I have in my active list hehehe

Posted in Lilypad Reviews, Lilypad-Library | Tagged book review | Leave a reply

Border Radio by Gene Fowler and Bill Crawford (1987) – BR00238 (R2023) – 🐸🐸🐸⚪⚪

The PolyBlog
October 31 2023

Plot or Premise

Subtitled “Quacks, Yodelers, Pitchmen, Psychics, and Other Amazing Broadcasters of the American Airwaves”, this book recounts the history of Americans setting up rogue radio stations across the Mexican border and blasting their shows all over the world.

What I Liked

I first heard about rogue radio stations from ZZ Top. They released an album way back in ’75 that included the song, “Heard it on the X”, and it’s referring to one of these stations. It was an “outlaw” station, which has that immediate appeal to it…subverting the rules, blasting rock ‘n’ roll, etc. And so the legend is quite attractive.

But the reality is way more magnificent than the legend. The book gives a great account of attempts by various people to establish radio stations and build a business empire with it. Some of it was pure snake oil sales, cancer cures, etc. Others were the start for mainstreaming hillbilly music, R&B, country and western, and later rock ‘n’ roll too. Individually, any of the chapters are fascinating. International conferences to try and deal with it, duels, armed gangs taking over stations, politicians running for election, bigger and bigger transmitters, FCC investigations, it has it all.

I particularly enjoyed the sections dealing with early rock ‘n’ roll, and Wolfman Jack.

What I Didn’t Like

The organization of the book is terrible. It appears that many of the chapters were originally released individually for journals and newspapers. As such, they cover a particular person’s story arc, their rise to fame and their regular drop to ignominy. However, for the next chapter, they frequently have to repeat some of the information from a previous chapter. Almost every chapter covers 1920 to 1950, and thus, many of these people were broadcasting at the same time, tripping over each other with the same issues, mostly competing but sometimes collaborating. After the first chapter, I wanted to rip the book apart and put it back together completely chronologically. Too often, I was reading a segment and thinking, “Oh, wow, that was the same experience as person X a few chapters back”. Then I would flip back and go, “Oh, no, it isn’t; it’s the SAME story, same person, slightly different name and intro”. So I didn’t recognize them. Then later, I’d see the same story, assume it was a repeat, only to realize no, this time it was actually someone new. If it was told in chronological order, I probably would have given it a 4 or 5 stars. In its present form, it gets 3 for content, and about a 1 or 2 for frustration. And I wanted WAY more about the rock ‘n’ roll era in the 60s and 70s.

The Bottom Line

Come for the music, stay for the snake oil shenanigans

Posted in Lilypad Reviews, Lilypad-Library | Leave a reply

Fortune by Ellen Won Steil (2023) – BR00237 (R2023) – 🐸🐸🐸⚪⚪

The PolyBlog
October 28 2023

Plot or Premise

Three women carry a dark secret from their homecoming dance, and an eccentric billionaire’s death may force the secret into the light.

What I Liked/Didn’t Like

The premise of the story is that an unidentified baby was found buried in a park 18 years before, and a billionaire’s widow offers a $1M lottery if people will donate their DNA to solve the case. The three girls are affected by the premise, and you know something happened with a baby that ties them somehow to the case; you’re not sure what, but they’re “involved”.

I struggled to finish the book…normally, if I’m reading a book that isn’t singing to me, I stop, and I don’t review it. Equally, if it is a debut author and I’m likely to rate it less than 3 stars, I also don’t review it. But I liked the premise of the DNA lottery. It was new, it was diffferent, how would it affect the ending? So I kept with it.

The writing was okay, but I was increasingly unsatisfied. There are multiple scenes with intentionally vague language to hide the “solution”, but it only works because the story has a slight PoV shift before each one. It’s not quite as egregious as someone thinking of a killer and using the personal pronoun “they” instead of “he or she” or “Jack or Jane”, not because it fits their actual pronoun or how they think of that person, it’s just “they” so the reader doesn’t figure out the mystery too early.

Plus, there were a couple of weird coincidences and a completely wonky character shift in a tertiary character at the end. And one deliberate misdirect to make you think one of the characters might have been raped, but wasn’t, and yet the possible rape was one of the few things explaining her weird behaviour as a high-schooler prior to the secret event. Plus, all three women are each acting “off” during the day of the secret event, to make you think they’re possibly pregnant, yet it has nothing to do with the outcome and is never explained.

By this time, I was 3/4 of the way through, so I had to finish. And yet I expected to be ticked at the ending — I thought it would either be something trite and superficially handled OR it would be a giant twist that made no sense. But then something wonderful happened.

The author tied up the story with a neat twist. Sure, part of it relied on a giant coincidence that I wish had been handled better, but the explanation explained stuff way better and didn’t end like any of the two obvious solutions. And the epilogues were pretty good. A bit short, but interesting. I had to bump it up to 3 stars. I confess that not all of the stories are tied up equally well. Some behaviour is explained, other bits are left dangling and seemingly the antithesis of the rest of the character’s behaviour, but whatever. It was worth finishing.

Disclosure

I received a free copy of this book from Amazon, however, I am not personal friends with the author, nor have I interacted with them on social media.

The Bottom Line

Good solution, average book

Posted in Lilypad Reviews, Lilypad-Library | Tagged Amazon.ca, book review, Good Reads | Leave a reply

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