Original song by Brendan Coulter.
@BrendanCoulter17 on Instagram.
Brendan remembers his friend Josh Neuman, who died in an Iceland plane crash.
Only age-22.
Josh created the most popular skateboarding videos of all time, and his YouTube channel had approximately 1.2 million followers at the time.
Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.
The May 2023 book by Nora Roberts is great.
Great story telling. Engaging.
My theory is that Nora is increasingly moving away from romance. In this book no bodice is ripped until well into the second half of a long book.
This one is about identity theft. The conman not only takes the identity and steals the money — but also murders the victim.
Morgan Albright … bought a small house in the perfect neighbourhood outside of Baltimore, living with a friend and working two jobs to make ends meet.
Morgan’s life is happy and fulfilling, and she is making progress on her financial and career goals.
Her perfect world is shattered when someone breaks into her home and murders her roommate.
At first, the police assume it was a random act of violence, but after discovering the killer stole Morgan’s identity and her entire savings, they realize the crime fits the profile of a serial killer named Gavin Rozwell. …
Kirkus
l learned a lot from this book. Roberts does a lot of research into the back stories of her characters. In this case, Morgan has to move home with her Mom and Grandmother and reinvent her life working in a small town.
Yes the plot is a bit cheesy. And the characters a bit cliche.
But the story kept me going. It’s entertaining.
I enjoyed the 2023 biography of Agatha Christie.
A surprising life story for such a successful author.
Enter historian Lucy Worsley, whose declared intention is to rescue Christie, who died in 1976 at the age of 85, from the misperceptions that cling to her life and her works of fiction. …
… she revisits the most notorious episode of Christie’s life: her disappearance for 11 days in December 1926 …
Her gift for dialogue and for manipulating social stereotypes, as Worsley demonstrates, was formidable, keenly attuned to the proliferating class anxieties of the 20th century; numerous characters are, interestingly, transitional or dispossessed in some way …
Guardian Review
Over the past few years I’ve been reading her 70+ books. Many are very good.
Despite the books, magazines, TV adaptations, movies — Agatha had money troubles most of her life.
When asked “occupation“, Agatha stated “House Wife” her entire life.
She loved buying and maintaining homes. Loved shopping. Did have a social life.
Yet she was incredibly prolific and productive as a writer. Her plots she jotted down in notebooks.
One of the things I like best about Agatha are her books in exotic settings. She loved to travel. And her second husband was an archeologist. Agatha spent a lot of time with him on his digs in the Middle East.
Click PLAY or see a preview on YouTube.
… fast-moving encapsulation of German history …
… Hawes sees the birth of Germany as we know it with the partition of Charlemagne’s kingdom into West Frankish (France) and East Frankish (Germany) …
Kirkus
I read this wanting to know more about the history of Germany. It’s not nearly so well known to me as Great Britain and/or France.
The author argues that historically and culturally, eastern Germany is quite different from the rest.
It’s been true for hundreds of years. And was true in 1933 when the east of Germany voted more for Hitler.
Eastern Germans are more likely to be anti-American, anti-NATO and anti-Western.
Some are pro-Putin.
Alternative for Germany (AfD) party is one of your typical right wing hate groups: anti LGBTQ, anti-Muslim, anti-Gay marriage, anti-everything.
Here’s where the AfD party was most popular in the 2017 federal election.
The author almost argues that it would have been better if Germany had not unified.
Despite trillions in subsidy provided by the west, many in the east would rather go back to the Soviet Union.
If there is ever a referendum on separation, I hope it happens.
As teenagers, we were blown away when first visiting the Deutsches, the world’s largest museum of science and technology.
I’m talking about the main museum founded 1903. There are two more branches , one in Bonn, and one in Nuremberg.
There is a huge line-up for entry so I bought my ticket online. No lineup for me.
It’s great for kids as there are so many hands-on exhibits.
50+ science subject areas.
Click PLAY or see the entire museum in 4 minutes on YouTube. Some impressive drone work.
IF the world ends, we could rebuild modern science from scratch IF we had everything in the Deutsches Museum. 😀
In 1976 we Canadian tourists were intrigued with the Foucault Pendulum. And it’s still there.
A demonstration of the Earth’s rotation.
Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.
Bridge making is an art and science well covered in the Deutsches Museum.
I saw the very desk used by the Curies.
Maria Salomea Skłodowska-Curie, born in Poland, was the first woman to win a Nobel Prize, the first person to win a Nobel Prize twice, and the only person to win a Nobel Prize in two scientific fields. Her husband, Pierre Curie, was a co-winner of her first Nobel Prize, making them the first-ever married couple to win the Nobel Prize.
The Curies announced the existence of an element they named “polonium“, and of a second element, which they named “radium“, from the Latin word for “ray”. In the course of their research, they also coined the word “radioactivity“.
Marie died in 1934, aged 66, at the Sancellemoz sanatorium in Passy (Haute-Savoie), France, of aplastic anemia, likely from exposure to radiation in the course of her scientific research.
Pierre Curie died after being struck in the street by a horse-drawn vehicle.
There’s a good section on the Enigma machine, employed extensively by Nazi Germany during World War II.
The Brits famously broke the Enigma machine code at Bletchley Park. Gordon Welchman, who became head of Hut 6 working on that project, admitted they wouldn’t have been successful without consulting cipher-breakers Poles who had cracked Enigma in 1932.
It would take hundreds of hours to look at all 28,000 exhibited objects in the Deutsches Museum.
I downloaded the app and took a “highlights tour” with audio. Recommended for the first time visitor to the museum.
Second in the series after The Escape Artist.
This one’s better.
Jim “Zig” Zigarowski, a mortician who spent most of his career at Dover Air Force Base.
Nola Brown is a badass. And a U.S. Army’s artist-in-residence–a painter.
Zig is called in to personally work his magic on the body of Mint, a former member of the military whose colleagues insist on an open-casket funeral.
Zig comes through …
… an even bigger surprise when Nola Brown, the infamous mystery woman who saved his life in THE ESCAPE ARTIST, shows up at the funeral.
What could possibly be their connection? …
bookreporter review
Well researched. This crazy plot is based on real technology.
Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.
Excellent TV comedy set in Tasmania.
A lot of profanity and crude references. Nudity in the first few minutes.
Smart, hilarious dialogue. Lots of Aussie slang.
All 4 key police officers are played by queer actors … BUT lesbians will probably be shocked anyway. As well as entertained.
Actually, this show could offend pretty much anyone. 😀
On the upside, all the murder victims are heterosexual, white men. It’s about time.
The surviving men march to reclaim the night. That’s good comedy.
It’s a small town. The remaining straight men finally charter a bus to flee to safety.
Deadlock is a comedy/parody that skewers police procedurals, forensic scientists, small town life, arts festivals, food culture, straight life, alternative life…the list goes on.
And with all that there is a pretty reasonable murder mystery. …
IMDb
I didn’t guess the killer.
Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.
The town choir was a highlight for me.
Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube. In real life, they are the Melbourne Glee Club.
Click PLAY or watch an interview with showrunners Kate McCartney and Kate McLennan on YouTube.
If somehow a season 2 gets the green light, it will likely be set in Darwin.
Lake Tegernsee is surrounded by an alpine landscape of Upper Bavaria, and has an economy mainly based on tourism.
It’s about an hour by train from Munich. Even closer to Austria.
I cycled the 18.8-km loop around the lake. Plus side trips.
Then — on Claudia’s recommendation — had soup and a beer at famed Restaurant Bräustüberl.
I tried the leberspatzlesuppe (liver dumpling soup). Not visually appealing, but tasted great.
I drink only 1 beer / year. But where better than Bavaria on a hot afternoon?
A TV quiz show host became one of our most successful murder mystery authors when he published The Thursday Murder Club novel in 2020.
The most borrowed library book one year in England.
The sequel — The Man Who Died Twice — was a big hit, as well.
The Bullet That Missed is #3. Also charming and funny.
As this installment opens, the four septuagenarian members of the club—former MI6 agent Elizabeth Best, retired nurse Joyce Meadowcroft, psychiatrist Ibrahim Arif, and longtime union organizer Ron Ritchie—are investigating another murder from their cold-case files.
It seems that Bethany Waites, a local TV journalist, was about to crack a huge tax avoidance scheme when her car went over a cliff 10 years ago …
The mysteries are complex, the characters vivid, and the whole thing is laced with warm humor and—remarkably, considering the body count—good feeling.
Kirkus
Reviews are great. But I personally found this the weakest of the 3 books.
The silly plot dragged.
Quite a few new characters. Too many?
The more Ibrahim Arif, the better. He’s my favourite.
Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.
Reconnaissance is often a good idea.
For bigger cities, I find buying a Hop-On / Hop-Off bus ticket is a good way to grok the big picture for tourists.
Usually 24-hours is enough for me. I do the afternoon day 1. Morning day 2.
Typically I’ll ride the entire loop first, deciding on priorities for later.
In Munich I want to visit and/or revisit:
And more. There’s an interesting Italian market called Eataly, for example.
When I went looking for a good bus video, I found my cycling guru Ryan Van Duzer from 2012.
He was vlogging for Viator Travel at the time.
Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.
Rick McCharles 