Six degrees of separation: from scandals to pancakes

Posted on October 1, 2022 by WordsAndPeace

Picture found at: https://www.melindatognini.com.au

#6Degrees

Six degrees of separation:
from scandals to pancakes

Time for another quirky variation on this meme.
There’s really no common point between the type of scandal featured in the book we were supposed to start from, and pancakes, except that pancakes is comfort food, and sometimes it helps…

Using my own rules for this fun meme hosted by Kate at Booksaremyfavouriteandbest
(see there the origin of the meme and how it works
– posted the first Saturday of every month).

Here are my own quirky rules:

1. Use your list of books on Goodreads
2. Take the first word of the title (or in the subtitle) offered and find another title with that word in it – see the titles below the images to fully understand, as often the word could be in the second part of the title
3. Then use the first word of THAT title to find your text title
4. Or the second if the title starts with the same word, or you are stuck
5. To help you understand what I’m doing, you will find in orange the word that will be used in the following title, and in green the word used in the previous title

Notes on a Scandal

1. Fire Season: Field Notes from a Wilderness Lookout, by Philip Connors
My review with a few excerpts is here.

2. The Mystic of Fire and Light: St. Symeon the New Theologian, by George A. Maloney
This is a great and very accessible translation to Symeon’s (949-1022) hymns. My review with excerpts is here.

3. The Mirror and the Light, by Hilary Mantel
I am so glad I can honor this great author (1952-2022) through this post.

VERDICT: With her exquisite style, Hilary Mantel gives a magnificent end to her Cromwell trilogy. Another masterpiece.
My full review, with long excerpts, and links to my reviews of the first two books.

4. Dead‘s Man Mirror, by Agatha Christie

The volume contains actually three stories: “Dead Man’s Mirror”, “Murder in the Mews”, and “Triangle at Rhodes”.
These were not my favorites.

5. Living with a Dead Language: My Romance with Latin, by Ann Patty
I enjoyed this book a lot. Here are a few short thoughts on it.

6. Pancakes in Paris: Living the American Dream in France, by Craig Carlson

VERDICT: Eye-opening memoir of an American living his dream to open a restaurant in Paris. Meet the real France.
My full review with a few excerpts is here

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Visit other chains here

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HAVE YOU READ AND ENJOYED ANY OF THESE BOOKS?
IF YOU HAVE CREATED A CHAIN,
PLEASE LEAVE YOUR LINK IN A COMMENT

Top Ten Typographic Book Covers

Posted on September 27, 2022 by WordsAndPeace

Top Ten
Typographic Book Covers

TTT for September 27, 2022
#TopTenTuesday

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This was more difficult than I thought.
Of course, I could have chosen the super easy way, and just put in French books, as most just have the title on the cover, like for the very first book I listed (which I’m currently reading).
I think it’s actually a neat thing, so that you don’t get influenced by the cover. Would you like your book covers to mostly be words, what do you think?
And you can do really smart things actually, see for instance Red is my Heart here below.

As usual, I went chronologically, starting by books I read most recently.
The last two do have some illustrations, but it is so simple, that I thought I could add them here. Plus what they did with these two titles is very smart when you know the content.

Have YOU read
or are YOU planning to read any of these?
Please leave the link to your own post,
so I can visit.

Friday Face Off: clocks

Posted on September 16, 2022 by WordsAndPeace

The Friday Face-Off was originally created by Books by Proxy:
each Friday, bloggers showcase book covers on a weekly theme.
Visit Lynn’s Books (@LynnsBooks) for a list of upcoming themes.
Please visit also Tammy at Books, Bones & Buffy (@tammy_sparks)
thanks to whom I discovered this meme.

This week, the theme is
“Rage against the machine – anything, cogs, clockwork, AI“

I’ve gone simple with Clocks, and featuring here one of Agatha Christie’s novels:

The Clocks was published in 1963. I listened to it when I did my project of listening to all of Hercule Poirot. This is #30 in the series.

It’s great at the beginning, then I found it a bit slow. The plot was much more complex than it looked, despise what Hercule Poirot said.
The neat thing is the reference Agatha Christie makes to many authors of crime fiction – in Chapter 14.
There’s also a cool description of how books can take over your place or your world!

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“Sheila Webb, typist-for-hire, has arrived at 19 Wilbraham Crescent in the seaside town of Crowdean to accept a new job. What she finds is a well-dressed corpse surrounded by five clocks. Mrs. Pebmarsh, the blind owner of No. 19, denies all knowledge of ringing Sheila’s secretarial agency and asking for her by name — yet someone did. Nor does she own that many clocks. And neither woman seems to know the victim.
Colin Lamb, a young intelligence specialist working a case of his own at the nearby naval yard, happens to be on the scene at the time of Sheila Webb’s ghastly discovery. Lamb knows of only one man who can properly investigate a crime as bizarre and baffling as what happened inside No. 19 — his friend and mentor, Hercule Poirot. “

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Click on the picture below if you want to identify the various editions
You can also right click and ‘open image in new tab’ to zoom in

My favorite cover is the Dutch edition, for its cleverness. Funny that no other illustrator thought of that! Too bad it’s not more artistically done.

Have you read this book?
WHICH COVER IS YOUR FAVORITE? WHY?
My next participation may be on Friday, September 23:
“Tough Travel Tropes – Coming of Age”