Teaser Tuesday: Beast in View

June knocked on the door and waited, swaying a little, partly because the martini had been double, and partly because a radio down the hall was playing a waltz and waltzes always made her sway. Back and forth her scrawny little body moved under the cheap plaid coat.

-- Beast in View by Margaret Millar.  This won the Edgar Award for best mystery in 1956, the third year the award was given.

Teaser Tuesdays is hosted by Should Be Reading, where you can find the official rules for this weekly event. 

Mailbox Monday

Thanks for joining me for Mailbox Monday this holiday weekend! MM was created by Marcia, who graciously hosted it for a long, long time, before turning it into a touring event (details here).

Dolce Bellezza is hosting in June, where she also just launched the seventh Japanese Literature Challenge.  Be sure to visit her elegant and inspiring blog. 

I ended up with a huge stack of books last week.

First, I went to a lunch event where Alyce Cornyn-Selby from Portland's Hat Museum was the speaker.  She is a real live-wire!  In addition to restoring her 1910 mansion and founding the Hat Museum, she has driven across the country in an old roadster with no top (the car, not her), and written over a dozen books, including one I got:



What's Your Sabotage? The Last Word in Overcoming Self-Sabotage by Alice Cornyn-Selby.

Second, I stopped by to see my friend Rachel at Second Glance Books because she has decided to close shop in July and redirect her time, talent, and treasure to other book-related ventures, like the Rose City Used Book Fair.  Follow the Second Glance facebook page for further developments.  I walked out with some great books, as always:



The Elizabeth David Cookery Book Set, which includes French Provincial Cooking, Mediterranean Food, French Country Cooking, Summer Cooking, & Italian Food -- five of David's classic books on cooking, with thousands of recipes.




Here's How, Mixed Drinks by W. C. Whitfield (Author) and Tad Shell (Illustrator), with a wood cover.



Mr. White's Confession by Robert Clark, an Edgar Award winner.



A Private View by Anita Brookner



Pope Joan by Donna Woolfolk Cross

Third,  I hit an estate sale where I found a treasure trove of vintage mystery paperbacks, some with really cool old Penguin covers.  I ended up with quite a stack of Agatha Christie, Rex Stout, and Ngaio Marsh books, all perfect for the Vintage Mystery Challenge hosted by Bev on My Reader's Block.

What books came into your house last week?

Kitchen Remodel, Week Fourteen: Let There Be Light!

We got light fixtures, knobs, and pulls this week.  With all those details in, it is hard to accept that we still have no tile, so are a long way from finishing.

I love the old fashioned "Edison" blubs in these Schoolhouse Electric fixtures.  One of Portland's oddest but best stores is Sunlan, home of "the light bulb lady," where you can buy any kind of light bulb ever made.  These look as much like the artisanal light bulbs on Portlandia as you can get.

Two books I read this week had a cooking theme.  The Hills of Tuscany by Ferenc Máté was a typical but still wonderful ex-pat memoir about a couple who moved to an old country house outside of the village of Montepulciano.  There are all kinds of descriptions of Tuscan food and wine that made me want to stomp grapes and smoke my own prosciutto.

Son of Holmes was an early effort by John Lescroart, who went on to write a successful mystery series, and spin offs, set in San Francisco and featuring lawyer and sometimes bartender Dismas Hardy. 

Son of Holmes is set in France in the early days of WWI, where a master spy rumored to be the son of Sherlock Holmes is under cover as a chef in a provincial town.  He drinks a lot of beer -- a LOT of beer -- and putters in the kitchen, but there isn't much discussion about the food he is supposedly cooking. 

WEEKEND COOKING

Hosted by Beth Fish Reads

Book Beginnings: Maximum Bob by Elmore Leonard

Please join me every Friday to share the first sentence (or so) of the book you are reading, along with your initial thoughts about the sentence, impressions of the book, or anything else the opener inspires. Please remember to include the title of the book and the author's name.

TWITTER, ETC: If you are on Twitter, Google+, or other social media, please post using the hash tag #BookBeginnings. I am trying to follow all Book Beginning participants on whatever interweb sites you are on, so please let me know if I have missed any and I will catch up.

MR. LINKY: Please leave a link to your post below. If you don't have a blog, but want to participate, please leave a comment with your Book Beginning.



MY BOOK BEGINNING

Dale Crowe Junior told Kathy Baker, his probation officer, he didn't see where he had done anything wrong.

-- Maximum Bob by Elmore Leonard. 

I haven't read an Elmore Leonard book in years.  I o.d.ed on them a while back so had to take a long break.

The Top 100 Books of the Twentieth Century by Image Journal

Image is a literary and arts journal (among other things) with a mission to "support and showcase art shaped by the faith traditions of western civilization." A central part of Image's calling is to showcase contemporary writing that "grapples in a serious way with religious faith."

Image compiled its Top 100 Books of the Twentieth Century list during the flurry of Top 100 lists made around the turn of the Millennium. The intent was to provide a "resource for those just starting to explore the great tradition and wondering where to begin." (Like so many other book lists created around this time, Image's Top 100 list is no longer available on Image's website. I first created my post back when the list was still available.) 

In selecting books for this list, Image listed an author only once in order to feature 100 different writers. Only "creative writing" was included – fiction, poetry, drama, and creative nonfiction. The editors selected works that "manifest a genuine engagement with the Judeo-Christian heritage of faith, rather than merely use religion as background or subject matter."

The idea of this list intrigues me. I don't know if I will ever finish all the books on it because there are a lot of poetry book and I am not a big poetry reader. It also includes some books that are out of print and hard to find, which is too bad. 

The books are listed in alphabetical order by the author's last name. I noted if I've read a book, if it is on my TBR shelf, or if it is available as an audiobook from my library.

Collected Poems by W.H. Auden

The Diary of a Country Priest by Georges Bernanos

Sabbaths by Wendell Berry

77 Dream Songs by John Berryman

Souls Raised from the Dead by Doris Betts

The Woman Who was Poor by Leon Bloy

The Stories of Heinrich Boll by Heinrich Boll

A Man for All Seasons by Robert Bolt

Something Wicked this Way Comes by Ray Bradbury ON OVERDRIVE

Selected Poems by George Mackay Brown

Godric by Frederic Buechner

Recovered Body by Scott Cairns

Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather FINISHED

The Man Who was Thursday by G.K. Chesterton FINISHED

The Satin Slipper by Paul Claudel

Many Things have Happened Since He Died by Elizabeth Dewberry

Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard FINISHED

Selected Stories by Andre Dubus

Four Quartets by T.S. Eliot FINISHED

The Sin Eater by Alice Thomas Ellis

Silence by Shusaku Endo TBR SHELF

Collected Poems (The Residual Years; The Veritable Years) by William Everson

The Trip to Bountiful by Horton Foote

The Lady's Not for Burning by Christopher Fry

Saints and Villains by Denise Giardina

The Cypresses Believe in God by Jose Maria Gironella

Diaries by Julien Green

The Power and the Glory by Graham Greene FINISHED

Virgin Time by Patricia Hampl

Mariette in Ecstasy by Ron Hansen

A Soldier of the Great War by Mark Helprin ON OVERDRIVE

Mr. Ives' Christmas by Oscar Hijuelos

The Mystery of the Charity of Charles Peguy by Geoffrey Hill

Earthly Measures by Edward Hirsch

Great River by Paul Horgan

The Never-Ending by Andrew Hudgins

A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving FINISHED

In the Crevice of Time: New and Selected Poems by Josephine Jacobsen

Questions for Ecclesiastes by Mark Jarman

Collected Poems by Elizabeth Jennings

The Anathemata by David Jones

The Last Temptation of Christ by Nikos Kazantzakis

Three Cheers for the Paraclete by Thomas Keneally

Ironweed by William Kennedy FINISHED

I Know This Much is True by Wally Lamb FINISHED

Traveling Mercies by Anne Lamott FINISHED

A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle ON OVERDRIVE

The Stream and the Sapphire by Denise Levertov

The Mercy by Philip Levine

Till We Have Faces by C.S. Lewis FINISHED

Light by Torgny Lindgren

Lord Weary's Castle by Robert Lowell

Salvage Operations by Paul Mariani

Viper's Tangle by Francois Mauriac FINISHED

Charming Billy by Alice McDermott FINISHED

Collected Poems by Thomas Merton

If I Had Wheels or Love: Collected Poems by Vassar Miller

A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter Miller FINISHED

Collected Poems by Czeslaw Milosz

Black Robe by Brian Moore

The Truest Pleasure by Robert Morgan

Chronicles of Wasted Time by Malcolm Muggeridge

Complete Poems by Edwin Muir

Collected Poems by Les Murray

Dakota by Kathleen Norris

The Aubrey/Maturin Novels by Patrick O'Brian ON OVERDRIVE

Short Stories by Flannery O'Connor TBR SHELF

If You do Love Old Men by Virginia Stem Owens

Jacob Have I Loved by Katherine Paterson

The Mystery of the Charity of Joan of Arc by Charles Peguy

The Moviegoer by Walker Percy FINISHED

The Francoeur Trilogy by David Plante

My Name is Asher Lev by Chaim Potok 

The Presence of Grace by J.F. Powers

Three Gospels by Reynolds Price

Hunger of Memory by Richard Rodriguez

The Mind of the Maker by Dorothy L. Sayers

Bread and Wine by Ignazio Silone

New and Selected Poems by Louis Simpson

Collected Stories by Isaac Bashevis Singer

One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn ON OVERDRIVE

Memento Mori by Muriel Spark FINISHED

Hapgood by Tom Stoppard

Collected Poems by John Heath Stubbs

Collected Poems by Allen Tate

The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien FINISHED

Saint Maybe by Anne Tyler 

Kristin Lavransdatter by Sigrid Undset FINISHED

In the Beauty of the Lillies by John Updike TBR SHELF

The Blood of the Lamb by Peter de Vries

Returning by Dan Wakefield

The Book of the Dun Cow by Walter Wangerin, Jr. ON OVERDRIVE

Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh FINISHED

Night by Elie Wiesel FINISHED

New and Collected Poems by Richard Wilbur

All Hallows' Eve by Charles Williams

Wise Virgin by A.N. Wilson FINISHED

Cloudstreet by Tim Winton

Beyond the Bedroom Wall by Larry Woiwode

In the Garden of the North American Martyrs by Tobias Wolff


UPDATED 

October 26. 2023. So far, I've only read 20 of the 100 books. But there are several on my TBR shelf or available as audiobooks, so I will try to pay this list more attention -- even the poetry!