Dinner @ the PM

Becky and I walked down to the Parkside Meadow for dinner this evening. We caught a little bit of a rain shower on the way there especially just as we were getting ready to enter the restaurant. It was sunny on the way home.

We had a nice dinner. The dining room was pretty crowded with mostly old folks at some tables and families with kids at other ones. I had a nice fish fry and Becky had  a good beef on weck sandwich.

Grammie Let's Draw

The other day I was sitting in the kitchen with our 2 year old granddaughter Autumn when she looked up at one of Becky's drawings on the wall. Autumn said "Look, I like that." I told her Grammie made that artwork. Autumn then jumped off her chair and ran into the front room exclaiming "Grammie! Let's draw!"

Dashiell Hammett - The Authors List

Dashiell Hammett - The Authors List. I've read six books by this author... all between 1981 and 1983. They included all five of his detective mystery novels and a collection of short stories. The Maltese Falcon was the first of his novels I read and it was also one of my favorite all time movies.

I loved his novels and wish he wrote more of them. Especially with Sam Spade and the Thin Man characters too.

Dashiell Hammett books I've read:

• The Maltese Falcon, 1930 - Jan 1981
• Red Harvest, 1929 - Apr 1981
• The Dain Curse, 1929 - Jun 1981
• The Glass Key, 1931 - Jan 1982
• The Continental Op, 1930 - Mar 1982
• The Thin Man, 1934 - Nov 1983

Easter Dinner @ Dave & Donna's

Dave and Donna had us over Saturday evening for an Easter Party and Dinner. There were about 22 people all total. Donna had her usual Polish Easter meal and also her spectacular assortment of desert... the usual Gasper Special as seen in the pic.

Sean and Ashely came into town today and they went to D&D's too. The kids had a great time.

Umberto Eco - The Authors List

Umberto Eco. On The Authors List with 7 books that I've read. I discovered him in 1984 when I read The Name of the Rose which is one of my favorite novels and a fascinating historical murder mystery set in a medieval monastery. I read it a second time years later and would love to read it again. I liked the 1986 movie staring Sean Connery too. 

Then I went on to read more of his novels over the years as they were published. There are only a couple of his novels I didn't read.

A few years ago I read a couple of his art history books examining beauty and ugliness that Becky has in her art book collection. I was interested in this other aspect of one of my favorite novelist so I had those two books next to my reading chair for awhile and read the articles over a rather long period of time. Some interesting pandemic reading.

Umberto Eco books that I've read:

• The Name of the Rose, 1980 - Jul 1984
• Foucault's Pendulum, 1989 - Aug 1989
• The Island of the Day Before, 1995 - Apr 1996
• Baudolino, 2001 - Dec 2002
• The Prague Cemetary, 2011 - Nov 2012
• History of Beauty / On Beauty, 2004 - Mar 2021
• On Ugliness, 2007 - Jan 2022

Venetian Vespers - A Novel

Venetian Vespers by John Banville, 2025. I just finished Banville's latest crime novel, a puzzling historical mystery that takes place in Venice 1899 which I read in six days. It is  a very strangely haunting noir novel in a fascinating location. Some interesting but creepy people too.

This is the 14th John Banville I've read.

Orson Scott Card - The Authors List

Orson Scott Card. The Authors List with 7 books read. Six of the seven books read were part of the Ender's Game series of science fiction novels. The series started out very interesting but starts to drag as they go on. The author also politicizes in some obnoxious social issues. He continues to write lots of science fiction novels but I'm just not into them or him anymore.

Orson Scott Card books I've read:

• Enders Game, 1985 - Mar 2000
• Speaker For The Dead, 1986 - May 2000
• Xenocide, 1991 - Aug 2000
• Ender's Shadow, 1999 - Feb 2001
• Shadow of the Hegemon, 2001 - Mar 2001
• Empire, 2006 - Dec 2006
• Ender in Exile, 2008 - May 2010

Have A Nice Day - Kitchen Listening

Have A Nice Day - Kitchen Listening. Super Hits of the 70's: Have A Nice Day Volumes 1-6.

An incredible collection of 70's hits from Rhino Records. This very entertaining set of 72 songs in about 4 hours and we played it in a couple of sessions while making meals and hanging out. A lot of crazy weirdly giant brain washed hit songs along with some great classics. There were a few really big hits on the radio that I never heard much because of my time at sea in the early 70's and these volumes here are from those early years of the decade. There are 25 CD volumes for the decade.

And the sign said long-haired freaky people need not apply. We had a great laugh eating dinner when the song "Timothy" from The Buoys came on. 

What It Is - Kitchen Listening

What It Is! Funky Soul and Rare Grooves: 1967-1977 - Kitchen Listening. A wonderful various artists compilation of funky soul music in a 4 CD set of 80 songs from that decade that was released in 2006 from Rhino Records.

This set makes for an incredible listening experience that goes on for a little over five hours. One of the things I loved about this collection was the deep cuts and the not well known but fantastic artists represented here.

I came of age musically as a teenager in Philadelphia and this was a lot of the stuff I listened to growing up into young adulthood. I started out with Motown and doo-wop but quickly got into that funk with James Brown and beyond. I saw a lot of soul and funk bands during this decade too including JB. More on the album on AllMusic.

Louis L'Amour - The Authors List

Louis L'Amour. The Authors List. I've read 7 of his Western novels. I read them all in 1972 while on a six month Navy Mediterranean Sea cruise. 

During those months at sea I read a lot of novels from Edgar Rice Burroughs and H.G. Wells. Also the first Godfather book and The Exorcist but I ran out of books and was looking around for something to read. A large number of my fellow sailors were Country Western dudes from the South and the West and they were reading lots Western novels so that's how I got into Louis L'Amour... a classic writer of that genre. I read 7 novels during that cruise.

He wrote 89 novels in his lifetime plus another 14 short story collections and a couple of non-fiction books. The author described his works as frontier stories.

Louis L'Amour books I've read:

• Sackett, 1961 - May 1972
• Hondo, 1953 - Jun 1972
• The Sackett Brand, 1965 - Jul 1972
• Killoe, 1962 - Aug 1972
• The Daybreakers, 1960 - Aug 1972
• Lando, 1962 - Sep 1972
• The Broken Gun, 1966 - Oct 1972