I like to listen to Joe Cocker occasionally. His gravelly voice isn’t conducive to lengthy listening, but in small doses I find Cocker’s singing enjoyable. Organic was released in 1996 and I’d classify this CD as “mellow.” Randy Newman plays on it and so does Billy Preston. Cocker does a nice job covering songs like “Into the Mystic” and “Don’t Let Me be Misunderstood” (with a reggae arrangement).

My favorite song on this CD is “Can’t Find My Way Home,” the Steve Winwood classic. But there’s plenty to like on this collection of cover songs. Are you a fan of any of these songs? GRADE: B+

TRACK LIST:

1. “Into the Mystic” – 3:31 (Van Morrison)
2. “Bye Bye Blackbird” – 3:31 (Morton Dixon, Ray Henderson)
3. “Delta Lady” – 3:16 (Leon Russell)
4. “Heart Full of Rain” – 4:48 (Michael Dan Ehmig, Tony Joe White)
5. “Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood” – 3:52 (Bennie Benjamin, Gloria Caldwell, Sol Marcus)
6. “Many Rivers to Cross” – 4:23 (Jimmy Cliff)
7. “High Lonesome Blue” – 4:10 (Cocker, Tony Joe White)
8. “Sail Away” – 3:00 (Randy Newman)
9. “You and I” – 4:35 (Stevie Wonder)
10. “Darling Be Home Soon” – 4:11 (John Sebastian)
11. “Dignity” – 3:13 (Bob Dylan)
12. “You Can Leave Your Hat On” – 3:46 (Newman)
13. “You Are So Beautiful” – 2:43 (Bruce Fisher, Billy Preston)
14. “Can’t Find My Way Home” – 3:53 (Steve Winwood)
15. “Human Touch” – 3:46 (Bruce Springsteen)
16. “Anybody Seen My Girl” – 3:02 (Kevin Moore)
17. “Something” – 3:18 (George Harrison)

You’ll find some very strange short stories in Angela Slatter’s The Heart is a Mirror for Sinners and Other Stories. Being a fan of Lovecraft’s work, I enjoyed “Reading Off the Curriculum” which features a conniving student who decides he can use The Necronomicon without his professor’s approval. “Lavinia’s Wood” takes Lavina Whatley from Lovecraft’s famous story, “The Dunwich Horror,” and gives her a new eerie story.

Jack the Ripper stories have mined most of the possibilities of that tale, but Angela Slatter decided to see what would happen if a woman explored the Ripper case. “Ripper” presents a different kind of of investigator with surprising results. “Ripper” is the longest story in the book and takes its time to unfold with unpredictable results.

I also enjoyed Slatter’s “Author’s Notes” where she writes about how each story in The Heart is a Mirror for Sinners and Other Stories came about and what effects she was trying to achieve. Angela Slatter is certainly a new author to keep an eye on. I’ll be buying her next book. GRADE: B+

TABLE OF CONTENTS:

Previous Publication Credits xi

Introduction 1

The Soldier 5

Egyptian Revival 21

Neither Time nor Tears 49

No Good Deed 65

The Little Mermaid, in Passing 87

But for an I. 97

Ripper 119

Better Angels 211

The Heart is a Mirror for Sinners 225

Our Lady of Wicker Bridge 239

Reading Off the Curriculum 255

Change Management 267

Lavinia’s Wood 281

Finnegan’s Field 295

Author’s Notes 327

I enjoyed the Miss Fisher series on PBS and now a DVD of Miss Fisher and the Crypt of Tears showed up at my local Public Library. Miss Fisher is a wealthy woman who loves to investigate crimes. She also packs a gun.

Miss Fisher and the Crypt of Tears feels more like an Indiana Jones movie as Miss Fisher (Essie Davis as Phryne Fisher) gets involved in an investigation into a village that was destroyed by a sandstorm. Miss Fisher helps to rescue a young Bedouin girl called Shirin from imprisonment in 1920s Jerusalem. Then, of course, a couple of murders occur and Miss Fisher finds herself embroiled in a complicated plot.

If you’re looking for some light entertainment, you’ll enjoy Miss Fisher and the Crypt of Fears and the Miss Fisher TV series. GRADE: B+

The first thing you’ll notice while reading My Life As A Villainess is the many missing letters. You’ll be reading one of Laura Lippman’s essays and you’ll see “…even if their partner is under twenty fi e.” (p. 62). Every few pages, words will be missing letters which becomes annoying.

If you can get over the missing letters, you’ll find a range of essays where Laura Lippman writes about her life and her career. Lippman worked as a reporter for 20 years so there are some great War Stories about her former profession. I was interested in Lippman’s transition from a reporter to full-time writer. I found these essays revealing and compelling. GRADE: B+

TABLE OF CONTENTS:

Introduction: The Accidental Essayist – 1

Part I: Game of Crones

The whole 60 — 9

Game of crones — 28

Natural selection — 48

The art of losing friends and alienating people — 67

Part II: This be the other verse

My father’s bar — 91

The thirty-first stocking — 99

Swing, interrupted — 111

Revered ware — 118

Part III: My life as a villainess

The Waco kid — 125

Tweety bird — 149

My life as a villainess — 164

Part IV: Genius

A fine bromance — 179

Saving Mrs. Banks — 202

My brilliant friend — 223

Men explain The wire to me — 243

Acknowledgments — 269

Credits –271

These has to be the weirdest start to an NFL season ever! No OTA’s, no Pre-season games, little hype, and a constant worry that a Covid-19 outbreak could cancel the season.

The Buffalo Bills face the New York Jets in their home opener. Rain is in the forecast. No fans in the stands. The Bills are 6 1/2 point favorites, but who knows what will happen under these bizarre conditions. How will your favorite NFL team fare today?

In 1980, Diane and I bought a new Magtag washer. The Maytag washer worked tirelessly and reliably for 40 years. We only had repairmen come out a couple times to fix minor problems. But, with the Second Wave of the coronavirus about to hit, Diane decided she wanted a new clothes washer instead of dealing with any potential problems a 40-year-old appliance would present during a pandemic.

The last time we had the Magtag serviced a few years ago, we asked the repairman what washer should we consider if we wanted to replace the Magtag. “I would recommend a Speed Queen washer,” he said. “They’re the closest thing to these old Maytag washers around.”

Since we hadn’t used the Government Stimulus Debit Card yet, Diane and I decided to buy the new Speed Queen washer with Government money. How are you and your washer getting along?

Here’s another book I’ve had on my shelves for decades. I bought The Virgin & The Wheels (1976) because of the cool wrap-around cover by Don Maitz. The Virgin & The Wheels consists of two novellas: “The Virgin of Zesh” and “The Wheels of If.”

“The Virgin of Zesh” is the fourth book of de Camp’s  Viagens Interplanetarias series and the third of its sub-series of stories set on the fictional planet of Krishna. Chronologically, it is the fifth Krishna novella. Originally published in Thrilling Wonder Stories, February 1953, “The Virgin of Zesh” tells the story of Earth missionary Althea Merrick, who is stranded on the planet Krishna and fleeing from an unconsummated marriage to a corrupt and cruel Viagens Interplanetarias official. Merrick joins a scientist and poet who travel to a utopian Terran colony on the island of Zesh.  Of course, many things go wrong. Althea Merrick finds her faith shaken by events. GRADE: B+

“The Wheels of If” is an alternate history science fiction story first published in the magazine Unknown Fantasy Fiction for October, 1940. “The Wheels of If” first appeared in book form in de Camp’s collection The Wheels of If and Other Science Fiction (1948).  Lawyer Alister Park finds himself in alternate histories and needs to solve the puzzle of how to get back to his own time-line. GRADE: B

The Virgin & The Wheels collects two entertaining novellas from de Camp’s early writing career. If you’re looking for fun and diversion, here it is.

Back in 1989 when I bought a copy of Cher’s Heart of Stone, her 19th studio album, I loved the Optical Illusion Art cover. Op-Art was big in those days and having Cher sit next to a heart of stone that looks like a skull if you look at it the right way was memorable. The album was first released with the Op-Art artwork and later re-released the album with a more conventional cover. This original front cover album art is a painting by Octavio Ocampo that features Cher sitting beside a stone heart. However, when examined from a distance, it’s clear this is also a painting of a human skull in profile (note the midriff folds of Cher’s dress forming the teeth. The artwork was changed shortly after its release, making this copy with the original artwork a collector’s item.

Heart of Stone contains several hits that made the charts. “If I Could Turn Back Time” made it to Number Three on the Billboard chart. The album sold 4 million albums and Cher went on the road for her Heart of Stone Tour (1989-1990). Heart of Stone was Geffin Records first Number One International album. Are you a Cher fan? GRADE: B+

TRACK LIST:

When a writer takes off six years, can he pick up where he left off–or does he lose a step? That’s the question I had when I picked up Jim Butcher’s latest Harry Dresden novel, Number 16 in the series. Butcher’s last Dresden novel was published in 2014. Skin Game packed a lot of action into a caper novel (you can read my review here).

Since the Harry Dresden novels feature plenty of combat, I was wary of the title Peace Talks. Somehow, I figured Dresden would end up fighting for his life…and I wasn’t wrong! Just a few pages into Peace Talks Dresden faces death from the Hounds of Tindalos (created by Frank Belknap Long in his 1929 story of the same name and H. P. Lovecraft mentions the creatures in his 1931 short story “The Whisperer in Darkness”). Later, at the Peace Conference, all Hell breaks loose and Chicago–and maybe the rest of the world–face annihilation by a Power that threatens to be impossible to defeat. We’ll find out the Fate of the World in the next Harry Dresden novel, Battle Ground, due to be published in late September 2020. GRADE: B

After watching two episodes of Hilary Swank’s new series, Away, I am walking away. I like Hilary Swank and I like the premise of an international mission to travel to Mars. But, from showrunner Jessica Goldberg (“The Path”) to executive producer and writer Jason Katims (“Parenthood,” “Friday Night Lights”) the emphasis of this series is on family drama.

Hilary Swank plays Emma Green, the mission to Mars commander. But two of her crew members–the Russian engineer and the Chinese chemist–don’t trust Emma. Even the pilot from India and the botanist from Africa are shaky allies. So there’s a lot of drama with the crew. I could deal with that, but then there’s all the family drama. Just before the flight to Mars, Emma’s husband (Josh Charles) has a medical emergency. Emma’s teenage daughter (Talitha Bateman) specializes in angst.

So, not enough action, not enough Science Fiction, and too much emoting by all the actors on the screen. I have plenty of other TV programs to watch. GRADE: C-