September 7, 2023: Recommendations
Thursday, Day 1102:
Brief check-in: Working hard these past two weeks to get my blood sugar stable and my exercise working better for me as I have additional medical tests over the next 2 months to figure out whether there is anything wrong besides aging with a chronic condition. But overall, I am feeling good about my progress! However, still very slow progress so far on the next novel, although I finally had a day yesterday where I achieved my 500 words a day goal.
The new novella, Dandy and the Dognappers has now been out for 2 weeks, and it has sold 687 books, and it has over 40 reviews on Amazon already! Needless to say, that feels good.
Meanwhile, here’s what I’ve been doing to entertain myself and can therefore recommend.
TV watching:
We finished watching the second season of Dark Wind and have started the second season of Chelsea Detective, which we are enjoying. We thought Reservation Dogs had ended, but it hasn’t, and the last two episodes were trippy…literally. Murders in the Building has continued to be fun. And we were sorry to see Deadloch end, and it doesn’t look like the second season is coming to US any time soon…boo, hiss. We also watched the first season of One Lane Bridge. I would recommend you give it a try. We were not entirely satisfied with it because it left so many story lines only hinted at, which I assume will be dealt with in next season. Unfortunately, we hadn’t fallen in love with any of the characters enough to be sure we want to watch that next season.
However, we have started watching the new seasons of Unforgotten (with new lead, so lots of psychological drama over the loss of the old head of the team) and are quite happy with it. If you haven’t watched this Masterpiece Theatre series, which focuses on cold cases, I would start at the beginning with season 1. I think at least the first season is on Amazon Prime or BritBox. And we have started the next season of Van der Valk, police procedural set in Amsterdam, but I think I am enjoying it more than my husband, so we shall see if we continue it. Also, rewatched a Dectorists special we had only seen once, and rewatched Gosford Park, which we actually own because we like it so much and watch it every couple of years.
Listening:
I finished Laurie King’s The Murder of Mary Russell, and I did go on to Big Sky, the most recent book in the Jackson Brodie series by Kate Atkinson. I just finished listening to that—so it looks like it takes me about 2 weeks to finish an audiobook. The books in the Jackson Brody series always start with several different characters and plots that appear to be unrelated, and then slowly the strands of plot come together. This was the first I had listened to, rather than read, one of these books. I found that with all these different characters, listening (versus reading) made it harder to keep track of everyone. However, I fairly quickly I overcame that difficulty and appreciated how the strands came together. Yesterday, I started listening to Louise Penny’s latest, A World of Curiosities, and it is comfortable being back in Three Pines.
Still listening to A History of Rock Music in 500 Songs on my walks, and I am now up to 1959 and Ray Charles and the emergence of the subgenre of soul music.
Reading:
I did indeed start The Dictionary of Lost Words, and I am definitely liking it. As I may have mentioned, I am trying to choose for my reading before bedtime those books where I don’t want to speed read through for plot, which is my usual style of reading. I only make it about 10-15 minutes before my husband is ready to turn the lights out, so this definitely slows my reading down. Good for a book where the language is more important than plot, and that certainly fits a novel about the creation of the OED!
As usual, I hope these recommendations will give you something to try in the coming weeks, and next Thursday I will again turn to substack newsletter recommendations.
In case you aren’t sure how you got here, I’m Mary Louisa Locke, the author of the USA Today best-selling Victorian San Francisco Mystery series and the Caelestis Science Fiction series. This is my newsletter reflecting on my life as an indie author trying to age gracefully. If you aren’t already subscribed but are interested in doing so, you can subscribe for free by clicking the little button below. If you enjoyed this post, please do click on the little heart and/or share with your friends, and I always welcome comments!