Cleopatra's Dagger

tags: mystery-ish

from GoodReads

A journalist in nineteenth-century New York matches wits with a serial killer in a gripping thriller by the prizewinning author of the Ian Hamilton Mysteries.

New York, 1880. Elizabeth van den Broek is the only female reporter at the Herald, the city’s most popular newspaper. Then she and her bohemian friend Carlotta Ackerman find a woman’s body wrapped like a mummy in a freshly dug hole in Central Park—the intended site of an obelisk called Cleopatra’s Needle. The macabre discovery takes Elizabeth away from the society pages to follow an investigation into New York City’s darkest shadows.

When more bodies turn up, each tied to Egyptian lore, Elizabeth is onto a headline-making scoop more sinister than she could have imagined. Her reporting has readers spellbound, and each new clue implicates New York’s richest and most powerful citizens. And a serial killer is watching every headline.

Now a madman with an indecipherable motive is coming after Elizabeth and everyone she loves. She wants a good story? She may have to die to get it.

I was encouraged by Amazon First Reads last month and was eager to read this highly rated First Reads for April 2022. Alas, it is back to normal FR because the novel is lamentable. Why oh why do these authors insist on being woke instead of writing a mystery suspense novel that everybody will appreciate, not just for the stupid virtue signaling millennials and maybe some ignorant older folks.

"Gripping thriller"...where in the book? There is very little suspense because the author was preoccupied writing about clothing and New York City images in the 1880s, Elizabeth family's wealthy privilege which Elizabeth abhors and feels her moral values is compromised🙄🙄🙄, the obligatory and clichéd beautiful, elegant but cold-as-ice mother, etc. etc. I also detested the unnecessary sexual assault to make the assailant a red herring. Writing style is also not very good as she contrived to sound 19th century.

Ugly. Not recommended for normal sane people.

The Pirates: The Last Royal Treasure

Today, March 2, 2022 on Netflix streaming - The Pirates: The Last Royal Treasure

tags: comedy, historical fiction, Korean movie, Netflix streaming

⭐⭐⭐⭐

from AsianWiki

A search takes place over the ocean to find the lost treasure of the Goryeo royal family, which disappeared without a trace.

Kang Ha-Neul has frizzy wiry hair and he screams a lot. There's too much screaming in this movie but I still like it.

Kang Ha-Neul

*********************************************************************************

The 2014 The Pirates movie with Kim Nam-Gil and Son Ye-Jin is better IMHO. It is no longer streaming on Netflix.

Rewinding The 80s

Some of my favorite 80s teen movies. 

The only Sean Penn movie I've ever seen.

Cooking With Fernet Branca

tags: cooking, dark humor, Italy, satire

⭐⭐⭐⭐

from GoodReads

Gerald Samper, an effete English snob, has his own private hilltop in Tuscany where he whiles away his time working as a ghostwriter for celebrities and inventing wholly original culinary concoctions--including ice cream made with garlic and the bitter, herb-based liqueur known as Fernet Branca. But Gerald's idyll is about to be shattered by the arrival of Marta, on the run from a crime-riddled former Soviet republic, as a series of misunderstandings brings this odd couple into ever closer and more disastrous proximity . . .

After reading while laughing out loud the funny Cookbook For Deplorables, I suddenly remembered the hilarious misadventures of Gerree Samper in Cooking With Fernet Branca. I read this book in 2005 and loved his absurd farcical relationship with Marta and vomit-inducing out of this world culinary inventions specially the Liver Ice Cream or Garlic and Fernet Branca Ice Cream. Marta finds the flavor is herb-y but doesn't seem to notice the garlic. She is as weird as Gerald. BTW, Garlic Ice Cream is being sold in California if you want to have a taste. 

I reread it and still love it for its satiric take on travelogues/memoirs such as Peter Mayle's A Year In Provence, which I also loved, BTW. I absolutely agree with Gerald's spot on description of Tuscan bread. I baked the Tuscan-style bread in 2010 for a blogging community baking challenge. Gerald notes:

"There is something radically wrong with Tuscan bread. Frankly it's a disgrace: the one thing to disfigure an otherwise classic cuisine. Even Italians from other regions make ribald remarks about it - like for instance that it's the only bread in the world to emerge from the oven already stale."

The second and third books in the trilogy are equally witty with more of Gerald's acerbic humor and odd culinary experiments

Amazing Disgrace

Rancid Pansies (an anagram of Princess Diana)

A Train To Moscow

tags: historical fiction, Russia

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

from GoodReads

In post–World War II Russia, a girl must reconcile a tragic past with her hope for the future in this powerful and poignant novel about family secrets, passion and loss, perseverance and ambition. In a small, provincial town behind the Iron Curtain, Sasha lives in a house full of secrets, one of which is her own dream of becoming an actress. When she leaves for Moscow to audition for drama school, she defies her mother and grandparents and abandons her first love, Andrei.

Before she leaves, Sasha discovers the hidden war journal of her uncle Kolya, an artist still missing in action years after the war has ended. His pages expose the official lies and the forbidden truth of Stalin’s brutality. Kolya’s revelations and his tragic love story guide Sasha through drama school and cement her determination to live a thousand lives onstage. After graduation, she begins acting in Leningrad, where Andrei, now a Communist Party apparatchik, becomes a censor of her work. As a past secret comes to light, Sasha’s ambitions converge with Andrei’s duties, and Sasha must decide if her dreams are truly worth the necessary sacrifice and if, as her grandmother likes to say, all will indeed be well.

It's been a while since Amazon offered a worthy First Reads book. A Train To Moscow is one of  2 free First Reads book for March 2022 I downloaded. I hope there will be more quality books in the future.

The novel starts when Sasha was just 6 or 7 years old and ends when she's in her 30s. The precocious girl is strong-willed and defies her mother and grandparents. She sets her mind in becoming an actress after hearing on the radio Anton Chekov's play Three Sisters because she wants to be a thousand characters instead of living as Sasha. I like the author's writing style, the vivid descriptions of Russia and its caste system during that time, and the story. This is the author's first fiction book.

Highly recommended.

Cookbook For Deplorables

tags: cookbook, humor, non-fiction, political satire

🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟

from GoodReads

As if fighting an invisible enemy hasn’t been enough of a challenge for everyone, we’ve also had to listen to an inordinate amount of antagonistic political discourse for the last four plus years. To stay sane, we need to take a step back and try to find some humor in these trying situations. It was important for me to laugh again in my everyday life, and I thought many of you might enjoy a little laughter as well. Since we are all confined to our homes now and cooking more, I pulled out some of my old recipes and renamed them to have some fun. You’ll not find diet food in these pages—only comfort food recipes, and if needed, fortifying cocktails to help you deal with the crazies.

For everyone who has been branded as deplorables, irredeemables, ignorant rubes, uneducated, ill-informed, racists, misogynists, populists, apologists, xenophobes, homophobes, selfish, chumps, rednecks, Bible-thumpers, Nazis, Uncle Tom, intolerant, bitter clingers, and blah, blah, blah, I hope you enjoy the recipes and have many laughs in the process.

Remember, laughter is the best revenge. Love, Laugh, Live.

Great simple recipes with funny names and caricatures. One of the funniest but yummy recipes is TRUMP'S SUPERMAN SPAGHETTI WITH EXTRA BALLS (Make them HUGE). 

The cookbook triggered so many hate-filled, sense of humor-challenged leftists on Goodreads and Amazon rated the book 1 star, as expected. 😂😂😂

Highly recommended for readers and cooks with sense of humor.

Korean Dramas 2022

2 new Korean dramas started streaming on Netflix. I hope they are both good up to the last episode

Twenty Five Twenty One

Saturday and Sunday

from AsianWiki

Twenty-Five, Twenty-One tells the love story between Na Hee-Do (Kim Tae-Ri) and Baek Yi-Jin (Nam Joo-Hyuk). Na Hee-Do is a member of her high school fencing team. Due to the South Korean financial crisis, the high school fencing team gets disbanded. Getting through all the difficulties, she becomes a member of the sabre fencing national team.

The South Korean financial crisis also causes Baek Yi-Jin’s father's business to go bankrupt. This leads to a life change for Baek Yi-Jin, from living the life of a wealthy person to a poor person. While studying, he works part-time jobs like delivering newspapers. Later, he becomes a sports reporter for a broadcasting network.

31 year old Kim Tae-ri, second from the left on first photo, plays an 18 year old High School student 

Forecasting Love And Weather

Saturday and Sunday

from AsianWiki

A story depicting love and work lives of employees at the Korea Meteorological Administration. Jin Ha-Kyung and Lee Shi-Woo are two people employed there.

It is becoming a trend in Korean dramas always pairing older actresses with younger actors. I'm not liking it but I am a KDrama addict and also I love the lead cast of both dramas. 

Twenty Five Twenty One female lead, Kim Tae-ri is 31 years old playing an 18 year old High School student set in 1998. She looks young and is believable as a teenager, IMHO. Nam Joo-hyuk is almost 27 and playing a 22 year old college student so the age gap is more acceptable. Forecasting Love and Weather female lead, Park Min-young is 35 and the male lead, Song Kang is almost 27, 8 years younger. I liked the first episode of both dramas. I'll ignore the age difference. 

Razor: Becoming a Hero

tags: fantasy, mystery, supernatural

⭐⭐⭐⭐

from GoodReads

A mourning husband can’t live with his guilt… ... he decides to die, not by his own hand, but in heroically helping the vulnerable.

Since the peaceful Cotswold countryside offers limited opportunities for heroism, despite the presence of some weird and dangerous inhabitants, he ventures further afield.

To his annoyance, new and unlikely friends mysteriously appear everywhere he goes, foiling his plans and sending him back to square one.

Will he succeed or will he come to terms with his grief first? Was his wife as blame free and perfect as he thought or will lurking suspicions of infidelity be proved right?

'It was ironic that having nothing left to lose except his life, his life had become interesting again.'

The book is from the same author of Inspector Hobbes. Ray/Razor finds it is not easy to kill oneself specially when odd people start appearing to interrupt him while he is helping other people. He hopes to be murdered instead of the people he tries to rescue. 

The book is equally funny and sad. Ray's misadventures in committing suicide becomes a bit repetitive towards the middle but the story picks up and is still enjoyable. 

Don't Call It Mystery

tags: comedy, dorama, Japanese, mystery, philosophy, police procedural

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

from AsianWiki

Totono Kuno is a university psychology student. He has curly hair, which he has a complex about. He doesn't have any friends or a girlfriend. His memory and observation skills are very good and he is also skilled at making conclusions from a given set of facts. A murder case takes place in a park near Totono Kuno’s home. The victim is a university student that attended the same school and Totono Kuno becomes a suspect in the murder. He is interrogated by detectives at the police station. During the interrogation, Totono Kuno becomes aware of hidden clues behind the student's murder and also the personal worries of the detectives. But a weapon, which contains Totono Kuno’s fingerprints, is found.

This Japanese series is almost perfect IMHO. Only 4 episodes have been aired so far but I am rating it 5 stars because it has the perfect balance of comedy, mystery, and drama with great background music. During police interviews on the first episode, Totono Kuno ends up interviewing the detectives and learns about their personal problems and the same time is able to find the true murderer. He uses philosophy and psychology to solve the mystery. The ongoing joke is he prepares his favorite curry but as soon as he sits down to eat, he gets interrupted by either the door bell or his cellphone. The viewers never get to see him eat his curry dinner.

I can't wait to see the next episodes. Japanese doramas usually have only 10 or 12 episodes which I like as the story is not stretched with unnecessary plot twists.

Through My Window

tags: dramedy, Netflix streaming, Spanish, teen romance

⭐⭐

from IMDB

Raquel's longtime crush on her next-door neighbor turns into something more when he starts developing feelings for her, despite his family's objections.

When I was young, I watched a lot of High School rom-com movies, Molly Ringwald's Sixteen Candles is my all-time favorite. Pretty In Pink is okay too. This movie from Spain based on a Wattpad book has teenage romance and it reminds me a lot of Pretty In Pink. The similarities: the main female character Raquel has a single parent, a mother. Raquel has a male best friend, Yoshi, who is just like Duckie, always declaring his love for her and that they will eventually marry. But just like Andie, Raquel thinks she is in love with the neighbor, Ares. I was waiting for Yoshi to declare "His name is Ares? That is not a name! That's a major appliance! Or something similar. Ares is a wuss just like Blane although in this movie there is no Steff and his rich friends. The people who do not approve of Raquel are Ares's father and older brother. Rich snobby family, ordinary girl. Cliché much? Ah, and there's the prom too where she went alone. 

The script and acting are lame, IMHO. Too contrived and the boy Ares suddenly has a family sob story that makes him even more pathetic. The only difference from Pretty In Pink is there is a lot of teen sex in this movie plus some nudity.

Not recommended.