Beyond Rivalry

Welcome to the festival of Christmas goodness!

 

The Astonishing BetaMax Christmas: Click on the TV Guide to see the bazillion Christmas ads, Christmas shows, Christmas cartoons from days of yore, including ads by Folgers, Nyquil, McDonald's, Atari, Kodak, Tesco, Cabbage Patch kids, plus clips from Perfect Strangers, Teddy Ruxpin, Pee-Wee's Playhouse, the Muppets, One to Grow On, Will Vinton's Claymation, the annual CBS Christmas card, a Hall and Oates 'Jingle Bell Rock' video, some Max Headroom, ETC! Click the remote's channel buttons to change channels, and click on the TV Guide to see what's coming up in the next hour and a half or so.

 

If nostalgia from the 1970s and '80s isn't nostalgic enough for you, listen to Voices of Christmas Past, humdingers from 1898-1922, including Santa Claus Hides in the Phonograph, 'And the Glory of the Lord' from the Messiah, Christmas Morning at Clancey's, Uncle Josh Plays Santa Claus, Angels from the Realms of Glory, and 18 more!

 

Santas Working Overtime is a chaotic link dump of all things Xmas, from recipes and crafts to videos, audio clips, lists, quizzes, reviews,  podcasts and mix tapes, charity links, classical music, Christmas customs, cartoons, and on and on. For instance: John Cleese reading a somewhat updated and rather violent version of 'The Night Before Christmas' ("On Keith! And Banana! And whatever you're called.") Also: 10 Christmas Songs I'm Already Sick Of (and 10 Geeky Alternatives) at Wired. The one not listed here, which I'm sick of just thinking about, is 'The Little Drummer Boy.' OMG.

 

For Better or Werts' Yule Tube: Watch Christmas TV Shows Online! at freebies Hulu, TV4U, In2TV. Hulu has current Christmas shows from 30 Rock, The Office, ER, Psych, et al., and nostalgia from Barney Miller, Father Knows Best, Bob Newhart, Mary Tyler Moore, Married With Children, Chicago Hope, Picket Fences, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Family Ties, Bewitched, Spongebob, et al.

 

The classics Angels We Have Heard Are High, Cavalcade of Bad Nativities, and It Came Upon a Midnight Weird: Cavalcade of Bad Nativities II.

 

Similarly, Bad Gift Emporium. Rate each giftrocity; some are even available for purchase! Examples: Candy corn mouse butterknife set. Flipflop cheese plate ("Feet and cheese: could there really be a better match?"). Decoupaged fur-lined trash can. Submissive Jesus. Chanukah party music. Deer meat. A 'Butt Face' towel. Sea monkeys. You get the idea.

 

 

Classic Holiday Music with the Original Golden Artists. It's a radio show. Turn it on and hear what's playing. It's an eclectic mix of classical, country (All I Want for Christmas is My Two Front Teeth by Buck Owens), highly produced boys' choirs, Burl Ives, The Andrews Sisters, etc. But "No Rap or Rock."

 

Paperless Christmas advent calendar. Odd multimedia expectation.

 

The Five Most Terrifying Local TV Christmas Commercials

 

Make you own eggnog -- in 18 easy steps.

 

One of my favourites: Karen Carpenter singing Merry Christmas, Darling on Bruce Forsyth's show.

 

 

 

 

There's a lot going on here ...

 

 

It was 90 years ago today that the fighting of World War I between the Allies and Germany ceased, on 11 a.m. on 11 Nov. 1918 -- now variously commemorated as Veteran's Day (U.S. only), Armistice Day, Poppy Day, and Remembrance Day. The Treaty of Versailles officially ended the war (and some would say laid the ground for the next one) when it was signed the next year in June.

 

I started thinking about what else was going on in 1918.

 

NOTABLE EVENTS

 

The Spanish Flu epidemic, coming in waves from 4 March 1918 to June 1920, infecting from 500 to 950 million people worldwide and killing 20 to 100 million people,  likely quite a bit more than the number of people killed in World War I (8.5-10 million combatants plus about 10 million civilians, mainly of famine and illness other than the flu). The Spanish Flu was unusual in that it killed healthy adults (average age: 33) and spread even to the Arctic. It seems to have started in the U.S. state of Kansas.

 

The Sedition Act was passed in the U.S. at the behest of Pres. Woodrow Wilson and "forbade Americans to use 'disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language' about the United States government, flag, or armed forces during war." Under the act, members of the Industrial Workers of the World union (U.S. citizens) were imprisoned during World War I. Wikipedia says that in his book The Great Influenza, John Barry claims "that the reason there is so little information available today about the 1918 influenza pandemic is that the newspapers supported the act. The information might have lowered the morale of the civilians supporting the war effort and the morale of the troops fighting the war." The Sedition Act was repealed by Congress in 1920.

 

The UK allowed women over age 30 to vote and widened suffrage generally in Feb. 1918 "by abolishing practically all property qualifications for men [over 21] and by enfranchising women over 30 who met minimum property qualifications." The tripled the electorate from 7.7 million people to over 21 million. In December, Constance Markiewicz was the first woman elected to the British House of Commons. Women under 30 were not allowed to vote until 1928. (U.S. women gained the right to vote through the 19th Amendment, ratified in Aug. 1920.)

 

The Russian royal Romanov family was shot to death on 16 July at Yekaterinburg by order of the Bolsheviks. This included Nicholas II and Aleksandra, their daughters Olga, Tatiana, Marie, and Anastasia, and their son Alexis.

 

Lynching of black Americans continued in the U.S. South. In May, 8-months-pregnant Mary Turner was horrifically killed for opposing her husband's lynching: "She was taken from her home by a mob of several hundred, had her ankles tied, was hung upside down from a tree, doused in gasoline and motor oil and set on fire.  Whilst still alive, a member of the mob split her abdomen open with a knife, and the unborn child fell to ground, where it was repeatedly stomped on and crushed. Finally, Turner's body was riddled with bullets. After the incident, the Associated Press wrote that Mary Turner had made unwise remarks about the execution of her husband."

 

At the time of Finland's independence from Russian in late 1917, that country passed its Mosaic Confessors act, which went into effect in Jan. 1918 and which for the first time allowed Jews living in Finland to become Finnish nationals with full rights of citizens, and Jews who weren't Finns were to be treated like any other foreigner. Finland was engaged in civil war for the first part of 1918, between the socialists Reds (supported by Bolshevist Russia) and the non-socialist whites (supported by Germany); and when the Finnish Air Force was founded in March, the "blue swastika is adopted as its symbol as a tribute to the Swedish explorer and aviator Eric von Rosen, who donated the first plane. Von Rosen had painted the Buddhist symbol on the plane as his personal lucky insignia."

 

In Feb. 1918, Russia switched from the Julian calendar (which had essentially been in force since 45 B.C.) to the Gregorian calendar, and 1 Feb suddenly became 14 Feb.  Even stranger than daylight savings time, though only a one-time event. Speaking of DST, it first went into effect in the U.S. in March 1918, as did U.S. time zones!

 

Max Planck of Germany won the Nobel Prize for physics for his quantum theory of light.

 

Regular U.S. airmail service started in May 1918, among New York City, Philadelphia and Washington, D.C.

 

Forbes magazine produced its first Richest Americans list. The combined wealth of the 30 richest Americans was $3.7 billion. In 2007, the top 30 of the Forbes 400 were worth about $541 billlion.

 

The Raggedy Ann doll was introduced for sale in the U.S., based on a prototype produced to promote sales of the first book of Raggedy Ann stories, written by Johnny Gruelle.

 

Rinso, the world's first granulated laundry soap, was introduced by Lever Brothers.

 

On 11 Sept 1918, the Boston Red Sox defeated the Chicago Cubs for the World Series championship, their last World Series win until 2004.

 

U.S. Disasters:

• 9 July: The great train wreck of 1918 (two trains collided) in Nashville, Tennessee kills 101. (Other reports say 99 killed and 171 injured)
  
• 12 Oct.: The Cloquet Fire killed 453 people in the city of Cloquet, Minnesota and nearby.
  
• 25 Oct.: The Princess Sophia sank on a reef near Juneau, Alaska and 353 people died in the "greatest maritime disaster in the Pacific Northwest."
• 1 Nov.: The Malbone Street Wreck, which was "the worst rapid transit accident in world history," occured in Brooklyn approaching the new Prospect Park subway station, killing 97 and injuring 100 people.

 

 

BIRTHS

Jan: Gamal Abdel Nasser, pres. of Egypt 1956-1970; Oral Roberts, evangelist; Nicolae Ceauşescu, Romanian dictator

Feb: Muriel Spark, Scottish novelist (Prime of Miss Jean Brodie); Joey Bishop, American entertainer; Don Pardo (SNL announcer); Bobby Riggs, tennis player

March: Mickey Spillane, American writer; Howard Cosell, sports journalist; Pearl Bailey, singer and actress; Sam Walton of Wal-Mart

April: Betty Ford, first lady; William Holden, actor.

May: Jack Paar, American TV host; Mike Wallace (60 Minutes); Julius Rosenberg, American-born Soviet spy

June:

July: Ann Landers and Abigail Van Buren, advice columnists; Ingmar Bergman, Swedish film director; Nelson Mandela, pres. South Africa

August: Leonard Bernstein, American composer and conductor; Ted Williams, American baseball player

Sept.: Paul Harvey, American radio broadcaster

Oct.: Rita Hayworth, American actress

Nov.: Art Carney, American actor (The Honeymooners); Billy Graham, American evangelist; Spiro Agnew, American VP

Dec.: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Russian writer; Kurt Waldheim, Austrian president and Secretary-General of the UN; Anwar Sadat, President of Egypt; Helmut Schmidt, Chancellor of Germany 1974-1982

 

 

DEATHS

Gustav Klimt, Austrian painter (b. 1862); Claude Debussy, French composer (b. 1862); Manfred von Richthofen (The Red Baron), German World War I pilot (b. 1892); Tsar Nicholas II of Russia (b. 1868) and his family, in the Russian Revolution; Stanley Steamer co-inventor Francis E. Stanley (in an auto accident) (b.1849); Joyce Kilmer poet (Trees) (b. 1886); tobacco magnate R.J. Reynolds (b.1850); Wilfred Owen, English poet (killed in action) (b. 1893); Edmond Rostand, playwright (Cyrano de Bergerac) (b.1868);  Guillaume Apollinaire, French poet (b. 1880)

 

The question presupposes that you are sane, of course.

 

My sanity enhancers are:

 

I work out for 30 minutes almost every day, and I take a 30-minute walk most days

I very rarely weigh myself

I spend time meditating and reflecting

I hang out with my dog a lot

I don't rush

 

Like Tyler, below, I rarely check my portfolio and I avoid TV ads and commercial radio.

 

Tyler Cowen (Marginal Revolution) offers four:

"I try to listen to beautiful music at least once a day, I don't check my portfolio even in the best of times, I hug a loved one at least one more time than was expected (with adaptive expectations this is hard to sustain over time but I have my tricks), and also I avoid television advertisements as much as possible."

 

You can weigh in at Mindapples (or here of course, in the comments) with your five, and also name 5 famous people you'd like them to pose the question to.

 

More on the project at the British Psychological Society Research Digest.

 

Dinners since last post, so these are from 24 Aug - 6 Sept.

 

Last Week

 

Sunday: We ate out for lunch so just had sparse leftovers for dinner: a couple of tofu corn cakes, the green salad with tuna, and T. had half of his lunch meal that was left over. I think we had a new red wine with that, Bohemian Highway 2006, a Calif. cab sav., which I bought the day before at Whole Foods for $6. Sugar-free fudgesicle for dessert

 

Monday: I steamed two ears of corn-on-the-cob, and I made a one-dish meal of whole wheat rotini with pesto, steamed green beans, and grilled mahi-mahi. I grilled (really, broiled) the mahi-mahi on skewers in the oven for about 6 mins. total, after marinating them for a while in balsamic vinegar, olive oil, fresh chopped basil, and black pepper. Split a Negra Modelo for dinner. Sugar-free fudgesicle for dessert

 

Tuesday: You guessed it: leftovers! The rest of the pesto pasta mahi dish, and I made two more ears of corn, plus I made another green salad with the usual ingredients (including egg but minus tuna), and then at the last minute I cooked up (pan-grilled) about 12 jumbo shrimp coated in Old Bay and divided those among the pesto pasta mahi dish and the salad. Split another Negra Modelo with that. Sugar-free fudgesicle for dessert

 

Wednesday: I ate alone; T was out fishing until late. Two jumbo soy dogs with low-fat cheese, one corn cake. Glass of Bohemian Highway red wine. For dessert, a serving of grapenuts and a half-serving of raisin bran with low-fat milk.

 

Thursday: Stir-fry of mahi-mahi (marinated in rice wine, soy sauce, a litte peanut oil, and black pepper), green beans, shredded carrots, spicy and mesclun greens and spinach, broccolini, leeks, summer squash, scallions, garlic, ginger, and whole wheat rotini. Served with the Bohemian Highway red wine.  Sugar-free fudgesicle for dessert

 

Friday: Leftover veggie/mahi-mahi stir-fry, a couple of leftover corn cakes, and we finished the Bohemian Highway red wine. Sugar-free fudgesicle for dessert

 

 

This Week

 

Saturday: Ate out: artichoke and black olive pizza, anemic garden salad (iceberg lettuce, tomatoes, green pepper, onion, black olives, italian dressing), a glass of Avalon cab sav 2005. Sugar-free fudgesicles for dessert

 

Sunday: Gardenburger (flame grilled style) with swiss cheese, lettuce and ketchup, and salad: mesclun greens, hard-boiled egg, cucumber, red pepper, shredded carrots, garbanzo beans, black and green olives, whole wheat rotiini and caesar dressing. Half a Negra Modelo. Sugar-free fudgesicle for dessert.

 

Monday (Labour Day): A slice of leftover artichoke and black olive pizza, the usual summer salad (see above ingredients, with tuna), wistful end-of-summer gin and tonics! Sugar-free fudgesicle for dessert.

 

Tuesday: Tacos made with Morningstar soy crumbles sauted in taco spices and sauces with onions, and served with corn taco shells, diced tomatoes, mixed Mexican cheeses, romaine lettuce, black olives. With a Negra Modelo. Sugar-free fudgesicle for dessert.

 

Wednesday: Stir fry: shrimp, whole wheat rotini, broccolini, spinach, leeks, summer squash, shredded carrots, garlic and ginger, green beans, red bell pepper, water chestnuts, soy sauce, rice wine, and peanut oil. Split a glass of Avalon cabernet sauvignon 2005, which I quite like. Sugar-free fudgesicle for dessert and some moose tracks (toffee) ice cream.

 

Thursday: I ate alone - T. was volunteering: Taco salad from leftovers: soy crumbles, lettuce, cheese, tomatoes, black olives, broken taco shell. A Geary's Autumn Ale. Sugar-free fudgesicle for dessert.

 

Friday: Leftover stir fry from Wed. and Swiss chard sauted with garlic. 3/4 of a Geary's Autumn Ale. Sugar-free fudgesicle for dessert and some moose tracks (toffee) ice cream.

 

Saturday: Scrambled eggs, half-English muffin, cooked spinach, with 1/2 glass of Avalon cab sav.  Sugar-free fudgesicle for dessert and some moose tracks (toffee) ice cream. After dinner: Half-glass of Bartlett's dry blueberry wine (accidentally aged about 10 yrs -- we forgot we had it -- and it's tasting fine!).

 

Joe Posnanski blogs in some depth about favourite childhood foods that don't taste the same to the adult palate. And so far, there are 167 comments.

 

Q.v., Baseball Card Gum ("As a child it tastes like: Bubble blowing magic.  As an adult it tastes like: Sugared sandpaper"); Beanie Weenies; Candy Cigarettes; Cotton Candy; Dinty Moore Beef Stew; Fig Newtons; Fluff; FunDip; Hungry Man (Turkey TV Dinner); Kentucky Fried Chicken; Necco Wafers; Pink Snowballs; Pop Tarts; Spaghetti-O’s; and Tang.

On NPR's All Things Considered today, a selection of summer songs from Tom Moon's 1,000 Recordings to Hear Before You Die. You can hear audio at NPR for 'I Want to Take You Higher' from Sly and the Family Stone's Stand! (I think I would instead choose 'Dance To The Music' or the obvious 'Hot Fun in the Summertime'), 'Poinciana' from Ahmad Jamal's But Not for Me: Live at the Pershing, and "L'estate: First Movement" from Vivaldi's Four Seasons as performed by Janine Jansen.  Moon also cites Springsteen's Born to Run album.

 

Entertainment Weekly lists its 100 Greatest Summer Songs of All Time ('Hot Fun in the Summertime' is #9 on their list); Pop Culture Madness lists 40 Beach Music Vacation tunes.

 

The most summery song I know is The Catalinas' 'Summertime Calling Me' (1975). Brings back those Myrtle Beach days. Lately, I'm loving Springsteen's 'Girls in the Their Summer Clothes.'

 

 

 

I feel like blogging what I'm eating and making for dinner these days, I'd love to hear what other people are eating and making, too. I'm trying to incorporate more fish and fiber into my diet. A lot of that happens at breakfast (fiber -- 10 gms. in the oatmeal!) and lunch (fish and fiber) but I'm focusing on dinner here.

 

Last Week

 

I was on vacation in Boston, MA, and in Rehoboth Beach, DE. To the best of my memory, this is what I had for dinner (I didn't cook any of it):

 

Saturday: I attended an outdoor wedding of people I don't know with X, who does know them. Ate some appetizers like spicy cold shrimp and spanikopita (one of my favourites), along with champagne, then dinner for me was veggie kabobs and something else veggie with rice. Red wine with dinner, and lots of water. Dessert (the wedding cake) was scrumptious, moist red velvet cake. We ate outside, overlooking a meadow, and it was idyllic. I talked with my tablemates (an interesting ex-Presby pastor now working with juveniles in the prison system and his wife, an Episcopal Sunday School teacher/learning disabilities teacher) about Girard and mimetic theory! God knows what I said.

 

Sunday: My friend R. made dinner. It was broiled or baked flounder, baked macaroni with cheese (and maybe tofu in it?), and some veggies I can't recall but I'm sure they were good. We had X's delicious chocolate chip cookies for dessert, and blueberries and other fruit. Dogfish beer and brewed iced tea for drinks.

 

Monday: We (6 of us) went out to a Chinese place (Confucius) which was very good. (It was the only place we could get into at 9 p.m. without an hour's wait.) As Ch. said, it shouldn't be called Chinese; it's gourmet. I had excellent crispy fried halibut, as did Ch. I thought it was going to come with the head on and I was prepared to cut if off and ignore it, but thankfully it was headless (and more importantly, eyeless). X had sweet and sour flounder (yum), R had spicy duck that she was very pleased with, and the two vegetarians had veggie fried rice and some kind of broccoli rabe. We also shared out some appetizers, like a yummy garlic spinach. Some of us had wine, I think, and some had beer, and I had a pot of hot jasmine tea. Our only complaint with this place was that it was annoyingly loud and there weren't that many people in the room we were in. Must be the acoustics. Still, fun. I brought back half my dinner and Ch. ate it for lunch the next day.

 

Tuesday: R. made dinner again (for 8 people), with help. She marinated and grilled shark, mahi-mahi, and bluefish, and all were tender and delicious. We also had corn cakes with tofu (yum!), maybe ratatouille?, a tomato/avocado/? salad, fresh pesto pasta, and other veggies. Red wine to drink. Then various ice creams and X's chocolate chip cookies for dessert, and sliced peaches and plums. I had a blast with Ch and N especially, laughed to the point of pain.

 

Wednesday: The least best meal, at the Rusty Rudder in Dewey Beach. It was buffet for R and me, and crabcakes for Ch and X. (The kids all defected.) What was really fun was time on the deck by the canal, in the sun, beforehand, with beachy drinks (hurricanes for me), listening to Calypso music and eating a half-pound of Old Bay-spiced hot shrimp -- the kind you can't get where I live now, alas. Even the buffet was good for me, with all-I-wanted yummy crab balls (my second dose of the day), pan-battered fried shrimp, crab-stuffed flounder, lotsa veggies and green salad. We four shared a bottle of red wine with dinner.

 

Thursday: The best, 4 dozen large Maryland blue crabs. Mmmm! Plus those yummy corn cakes again, ratatouille, the tomato/avocado salad, and probably other things I ignored in my obsession with the crabs. I think I ate a dozen and there were 7 of us crab eaters at the table (plus two vegetarians). Drinks, thanks to J and Ch, were Modelo Especial, PBR, Blue Moon, and various (locally brewed) Dogfish beers. And iced tea. Ice creams (including cookie dough) and fruit for dessert. X shot some video of this dinner.

 

Friday: Before we went out to eat, we had lovely vodka cocktails at the beachhouse. Our last beach meal was at Porcini House Bistro and Treetop Lounge (they don't have a website), on 2nd St at Wilmington Ave, which I heartily recommend for nice, fairly high-end Italian dining in a casual yet elegant space. We wanted to eat in the treehouse (upstairs deck) but because it was raining buckets right up until meal time at 7, we sat in the glassed-in front porch, very comfortably. (And they contacted us in the afternoon to let us know our reservation for the treehouse would be honoured inside.) Again, it was 9 of us (including two minors, who are both vegetarians). We had two bottles of red wine with dinner, shared out some appetizers, and I had a green salad and the half portion of crab risotto for dinner. The risotto was OK (could have been more crabby -- but then, what couldn't?), but X's mushroom soup was heaven (this said by a mushroom hater), the salads (including the caprese, with ripe summer tomatoes) were fresh, the steak, flatbread and fish-eaters seemed happy with their lot, the truffled mac & cheese (using orichietti) was perfectly creamy and savory, the desserts (chocolate mousse, lemon tart, and something else) were delish, and the service was extremely attentive -- until we were charged for 3 bottles of wine (at $39 per pop) instead of 2. That put a slight damper on the evening but we got it worked out and left happy.

 

Saturday: I was in Jamaica Plain and ate at a place fast becoming a favourite, Alchemist Lounge. They have absinthe! X and I didn't order that this time but I got the lovely, wonderful St. Germain Champagne cocktail (then a glass of red wine) and she had the Leatherlips IPA from Haverhill Brewery. We started with guacamole and chips, and then for dinner, I had the broiled haddock (with rice and asparagus) and she had the fish and chips. (I've tried to find the St. Germain elderflower liqueur since but have not been able to ... )

 

This Week

 

Sunday: Home again. We ordered out for Chinese. Mine was shrimp cashew with white rice, T's was shrimp lo mein.  A bottle of Gritty's Vacationland Summer Ale with dinner.

 

Monday: More of the Chinese.

 

Tuesday: I made a hybrid meal of macaroni (whole wheat rotini) and cheeses (cheddar and Parmesan) with a roux/white sauce (butter, flour, mustard powder, milk -- should have added white wine, will do so next time), baked that with thawed frozen peas and a couple of cans of albacore tuna, with breadcrumbs and Parmesan on top. and served it with cooked spinach and a green salad (mesclun, red pepper, cucumber, black and green olives, shredded carrots, corn, Caesar dressing). Red wine with dinner.

 

Wednesday: Same as Tuesday.

 

Thursday: Same as Wednesday, with the addition of a hard-boiled egg in the salad. We finished up the bottle of wine we started on Tuesday, a Portuguese red wine I got cheap ($6?) at Whole Foods, Cerejeiras Vinho Regional Estremadura 2007. It was so-so. I don't think I'd buy it again.

 

Friday: I made the pan-fried tofu-corn cakes we had at the beach (corn, tofu, egg, milk, flour, butter, baking powder, scallions, salt, pepper), and a salad of mesclun, cucumber, red bell pepper, shredded carrots, black and green olives, garbanzo beans, whole wheat rotini, and albacore tuna, with Cardini Caesar dressing.  With the Gritty's Vacationland beer.

 

Saturday (ate dinner alone): Green salad as on Friday (with tuna and beans), plus a couple of corn cakes. Lots of decaf iced tea.

 

A few websites that offer excellent comprehensive and/or in-depth information about crime novels.

 

 

LISTS

 

Stop, You're Killing Me! lists more than "2,500 authors, with chronological lists of their books (nearly 29,000 titles), both series (2,900+) and non-series." Also offers indexes by location, jobs and professions, historical time period of series character, and diversity (ethnicity, age, etc.), as well as category read-alike lists and lists of mystery award winners.

 

Clerical Detectives maintained by Philip Grosset: Excellent and expansive website offering information about authors and in-depth summaries of books in more than 50 series featuring clerical detectives -- 'any detective with a significant church or religious background' including priests, ministers, monks, nuns, ex-nuns, rabbis, church administrators, a church organist, and the clerk of a Quaker Meeting. Also has 'A Beginner's Guide to Detective Nuns.'

 

BiblioMystery: Mysteries Involving Libraries and Librarians, maintainted by Candy Schwartz at Simmons College in Boston: Extensive list of library-related mysteries with their publication info and one-line synopsis of plot. These include "mysteries in which books, manuscripts, libraries of any kind, archives, publishing houses, or bookstores occupy a central role, or mysteries in which librarians, archivists, booksellers, etc. are protagonists or antagonists (and preferably the location or occupation is important to the plot or theme). Not academic mysteries or mysteries which happen to be about journalists, authors, or literary figures unless libraries, books, manuscripts, archives, and so on, are important to the plot." Excellent. Look also at their Wishlist of similar books.

 

Thrilling Detective, a website specialising in private eyes and tough guys (and gals). Besides the regular magazine they publish, they also offer a "never-complete listing of private dicks and janes, and selected other tough guys and gals, listed by character, with all appearances in novels, short stories, film, television, radio and other media."

 

Euro Crime offers an extensive bibliography (works listed chronologically, series in order) for European crime writers. "Currently includes authors born in Europe and only lists their crime novels (and not an author's other types of novel)."

 

 

NEWS and REVIEWS 

 

** For current crime novel news and annotated links to current reviews, Sarah Weinman's Confessions of an Idiosyncratic Mind blog is excellent, a must-read. 

 

Cluelass Bloodstained Bookshelf, listing books recently published and forthcoming (up to almost a year in advance). 

 

Euro Crime blog offers "snippets about British and other European crime fiction, tv and film."

 

Reviewing the Evidence offers weekly crime fiction reviews as well as an archive of past reviews.

 

Overbooked offers ongoing listings, synopses, and reviews of crime fiction, mysteries, suspense novels, and thrillers that have received good reviews from Kirkus, Booklist, Publisher's Weekly, and/or Library Journal.

 

January magazine reviews crime fiction and offers interviews.  They also have a blog that covers crime and other genres.

 

Rap Sheet is a blog of crime fiction-related news.

 

 

DISCUSSION LIST

 

Dorothy-L  is an emailed "discussion and idea list for the lovers of the mystery genre." Topics include announcements by authors of forthcoming crime fiction; reviews, criticisms, comments, and appreciations of mysteries in the form of books, plays, and films; mention of great mystery book shops; and info on mystery awards and events.

 

 

 

A short McSweeney's list: Phrases I'd Rather Not Be Used At My Funeral by Harry Burt, with my anxious additions:

 

"autoerotic asphyxiation" [likewise: "left 10-inch clawmarks"]

"found by cadaver dogs" ["according to the forensic entomologist"]

"hopped up on goofballs" ["ate her weight in Oreos"]

"minutes from rescue" ["last-second airline flight change"]

"prehensile tail" ["cascading sheets of mucus"]

 

["salvaged what we could," "leaned over the rim a smidge too far," "must have been in unimaginable pain," "what's that on his forehead? 'syawliarT'?"]