books – Page 6 – Rae Nudson

the cuckoo’s calling part 2

We enter part 2 of The Cuckoo’s Calling (Kindle here, my thoughts on part 1 here) to follow our heroes while they gather more clues. I actually feel more like I am in the board game clue than in a story. If security guard was in the wash room, and the boyfriend at the club, I propose Mr. Bestigui murdered Lula Landry in the drawing room with the candlestick.

As an editor/journalist/pretend police investigator, I like gathering clues and information. But as a reader, I’d like to get all of this info as the plot moves along or as characters develop. It seems like more talking than showing, more explaining than storytelling.

“Strike would have preferred Bristow not to intervene.” See what I mean? Telling me what’s in his head is just so boring.

But since we spent all that time interviewing and clue gathering, let’s see what we know.

Lula has a friend from rehab named Rochelle who met with Lula on the day of her suicide/murder.
Lula had an on-and-off relationship with that dumb guy who wears a wolf mask to avoid the paparazzi because, sure, a wolf mask garners less attention.
Mr. Bestigui is mad about 200 roses being spilled in Deeby Mac’s apartment. If those roses don’t mean anything this is the biggest, most annoying red herring ever.
Lula’s driver is obsessed with fame and celebs, and he was not her driver the night she died.
The apartment security guard was away from his post when Lula fell.
Tansy Bestigui heard some yelling in Lula’s apartment. The police don’t believe she could have heard anyone–they clearly don’t live in a place where you can hear things through the vents.

What do you guys think? Have any bets on who the killer is? Are their big clues I’m missing? If you’ve finished, no spoilers please! See my thoughts on part 1 here, and keep reading! I’ll see you back here next week.

(I bought this book on my own and am not being paid to write about it. But I am a part of the Amazon Affiliates program, so if you buy through my links on Amazon, I’ll receive a little bit of money for it.)

rocket, my screen-printed bike

“Seems to me,” the Lady said, “a boy’s bicycle needs to see where it’s goin’. Needs to see whether there’s a clear road or trouble ahead. Seems to me a boy’s bicycle needs some horse in it, and some deer, and maybe even a touch of reptile. For cleverness, don’t you know?”

In Boy’s Life by Robert McCammon, our hero Cory gets a brand new bike.

This isn’t just any bike. This bike is from The Lady. It’s brand new and made just for him. It’s red and had a headlight, and in the headlight it has an eye that looks out for Cory. It steers him away from danger and helps him get to adventure–fast.

“At this instant I felt at one with Rocket, as if we were of the same skin and grease, and when I grinned, a bug flew into my teeth. I didn’t care; I swallowed it because I was invincible.”

So in tribute to a book I loved, and in tribute to Rocket, a bike I wish I had, I made my own. Sort of. Mine’s a bit more two dimensional.

I started with a stencil. I traced and drew and doodled until I had a bike I liked. Then I traced it onto a transparency and used a craft knife/box cutter thing to cut out my stencil.

Continue reading “rocket, my screen-printed bike”

the cuckoo’s calling part 1

It is a not so secret desire of mine to become a police detective. It is my back up plan, my alternate universe career, and the subject of quite a few daydreams. I can’t stop watching cop shows or reading murder mysteries. (And yeah, I know that’s not exactly how it works in real life.)

So I like a good detective story. I feel like I am reading about my imaginary colleagues. And though solving a mystery in a book isn’t at all like solving a mystery in real life, I’m pretty good at it. (Well, I’m not the worst at it.)

I have just finished part one of The Cuckoo’s Calling by ~~Robert Galbraith~~ J.K. Rowling (Kindle here). I can’t say I never would have read this book if it didn’t come out that Robert Galbraith was a pseudonym for Rowling (that secret didn’t last long, did it?), but I can say I didn’t hear about the book until that story broke. So I picked it up, along with thousands of others.

Continue reading “the cuckoo’s calling part 1”

miss blue glass and miss green glass

In Boy’s Life, which I totally loved, two sisters named Sonia and Katherina Glass were almost perfect mirror images of each other–except one always wore blue and the other green.

Now that is style. They adopted a uniform, dressed as themselves, and went with it. Plus monochrome can really be a great look. I don’t own enough of one color (except black) to pull off monochrome looks very often–and I have a pretty strong aversion to matching. But in honor of Miss Blue Glass and Miss Green Glass, let’s take a look at some killer blue and green clothes and accessories we could wear in our own lives.

I’m really into blue. It’s one of my favorite colors and I just think it’s beautiful–like the ocean and sky. Plus blue jeans are blue, so you’ve got that going for you. But I was surprised at how much I liked these greens.

Gorgeous, right? Emerald and mint are really growing on me. Maybe soon I’ll give up mismatching for one day and pick a color and stick with it.

boy’s life by robert mccammon

Last week, when I was walking to work, I saw people putting leaves on trees. There was someone on a ladder, someone in a raised platform, and someone on the ground, and they were all using wire to put fake leaves on a tree that had none.

When Cory, the narrator in Boy’s Life by Robert McCammon (Kindle here), is riding on a train with a man who looks suspiciously like Frankenstein’s monster, Cory thinks, “Were these three insane, or was I?”

That’s how I felt.

Cory lives in the small town of Zephyr, Alabama, in the 1960s, and he tells the story of the year he turns 13. His town is full of wonderful absurdities, his adventures are plentiful, and his love for his family and friends is strong and true.

I love a lot of things about this book. But the thing I love most is Cory’s voice. A lot of books use children narrators–children can ignore danger and logic in a way that adults can’t–but adult attitudes, vocabularies, and thoughts tend to sneak through. Cory’s voice is consistently strong and interesting, and he tells stories the way kids see them: big and real and exaggerated and in your face. “Writer? Author? Storyteller, that’s what I decided to be,” Cory says. And a storyteller he is.Continue reading “boy’s life by robert mccammon”

God bless you, but… (embroidery no. 12)

When a dome falls over your entire town, cutting you off from the rest of the world, things can get a little stressful. One of my favorite parts of the book (and show!) was watching how people handled that stress–whether it was admirable or terrifying.

This embroidery is from Under the Dome and, well, has language that’s a little NSFW. Click through the jump if swear words won’t offend.

Continue reading “God bless you, but… (embroidery no. 12)”

under the dome: emergency kits

I have a friend who is always prepared. She has the band-aids, the directions, and the back-up plans. I’d like to have her in my corner if ever I see a disaster like a giant dome falling over my town. Which is something I think a lot about. Not just a dome–any kind of disaster. What would I do? How would millions of people get out of New York City when most don’t have cars? But seriously, if someone could tell me it would ease a lot of anxiety.

During Hurricane Sandy, and a few other storms we’ve had to button down our hatches for, I knew what I would need to grab to get out of the city if I needed to evacuate. Luckily, we had warnings for those storms, and I knew would eventually pass. In Stephen King’s worlds, it’s almost never that easy. As we saw in Under the Dome on Monday night, you have to be ready for every kind of disaster. Even–especially– for the one’s you’d never see coming.

So, basically, I should have made an emergency kit a long time ago. What would you need? Let’s start with the basics.

flashlight (with batteries)
bottled water
first aid kit
canned food/snacks
cat food
#fatcat’s carrier
swiss army knife
thermal blanket
maybe some different weather prep depending on your area
an extra phone charger probably couldn’t hurt (like this super cool solar charger!)

If you’re in Stephen King’s world, though, you might need some different things.

a Geiger counter, in case you run into radiation
a stake or cross, for any vampires in your small town
a current newspaper from your town, so in case you wander into any other worlds or time travel so you will know which world you came from and what day it was there
probably some penicillin, unless you are allergic to it like I am
a tranquilizer dart or two for any large, crazy animals. or people.
mayyybe think about keeping some extra propane tanks on hand
if you have guns handed down to you from your father and your father’s father and his father’s father, you should probably bring those, too

Anything else? What am I missing?

Also, I just read this thing on the Internet (because of course I did) about how if you are in a house and electricity went out and you don’t have water, you should check the freezer for ice cubes. Those will be safe to drink. Any other tips, figurative boy scouts of the world?

This is the one of a few Under the Dome related posts this week. Check back later for more, and you can see other posts here:

tv: under the dome (ep. 1)

Our world is getting smaller all the time. We’re more connected than ever–I was just in a meeting with colleagues from Paris, London, and Tokyo. They called in and participated in a meeting in New York. I took a vacation with my family, and we came from all over the country to meet in one place–in Florida, where none of us live.

That’s what makes Under the Dome so scary. When a dome falls over the town of Chester’s Mill, the world shrinks to the size of the town, and those who are inside lose their connections to the outside. Angie likens it to a fishbowl, but at least fish can be fed from the outside.

They can see through the dome, which almost makes it worse (but allows us to see some killer explosions). [SPOILERS] When Duke falls because of an exploded pacemaker, the U.S. military is bustling around just outside the dome’s boundary. They have the equipment to help, and the communication to get to a doctor, but they don’t even notice Duke go down. Linda is left alone with the dead sheriff, looking at all those resources just beyond her reach. (And it’s not like they could have helped him anyway.)

Duke dying was a twist, even though he dies in the book in the same fashion. The show has departed from the book in some cool ways, and because Duke was around for so long in the premiere, I thought they might have spared him. Or at least waited a few episodes. But his death, the only one so far of a character we’ve come to know a little bit, changes the game and raises the stakes. Now who will run the police force that Big Jim is so ready to increase? And what was Duke trying to tell Linda about the town?

A lot of Chester’s Mill is familiar to me, but these characters’ backgrounds and families are different from the book. This world looks just as interesting as the one I’ve read about though, and I can’t wait to see where these new mysteries take us. (Like why was Barbie burying Julia’s husband?!)

They’ve certainly taken us to some creepy places so far. The show, like many of King’s novels, did a good job of letting dread creep in, with images like a neatly halved cow and a messy arm that’s missing a hand. The seizures and repeated phrases (a technique King uses often) added a sense of doom as well. Junior, Big Jim’s clearly troubled son, went from creepy to campy and back again. But when he was creepy, he was really creepy.

I can’t wait to see more of Chester’s Mill, and to spend time with these off-kilter characters. The variations from the book will keep me on my toes, and so far the adaptations are smart and interesting. Hopefully you’ll keep watching with me–after all, we’re all in this together.

This is the first of a few Under the Dome related posts this week. Check back later for more, and you can see other posts here:

Trapped (or reading Under the Dome)

Under the Dome airs on CBS on Mondays at 10 p.m. Eastern. you can download the first episode from Amazon on June 28, I’ll update with the link when it posts. EDIT: The first episode is available!

family book club: icy sparks

Normally I’m begging for authors not to explicitly spell things out for their readers. We’re smart, and we can tell who is sad without having to read “John is sad.”

But in Icy Sparks by Gwyn Hyman Rubio (Kindle version here), I needed some things to be spelled out. It was an easy read, but one that left us with more questions than satisfactory answers when we held our quarterly book club meeting. (This time, we did it in person while we were all on vacation. Photo from my mom.)

Icy Sparks is about a young girl in the South during the 50s who deals with tics and urges she can’t explain or control. She becomes an outcast and spends some time at a mental institution for observation. It’s a coming of age novel (kind of like Middlesex), and Icy goes through a lot without fully understanding why.

Continue reading “family book club: icy sparks”

past favorites: nero wolfe

So you’ve got your sunscreen on, your piña colada is cold, and you’re sitting by the pool. Now what?

This article I saw in the New York Times about different authors’ best summer reading experiences got me thinking of my own. Picking a beach read is an art, and one I’ll gladly devote time researching. Right now I’m reading Joyland by Stephen King–it’s good so far.

I like mysteries, and scary stories, and a good series. My favorite beach reads are the Nero Wolfe books by Rex Stout, and they can encompass all those things.

Continue reading “past favorites: nero wolfe”

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