I was in Antwerp, Belgium for the World Gymnastics Championships. An elegant city.
I like Antwerp best at night.
The Gymnastics competition was the highlight, however.
Canadian women qualified to the Paris Olympics 3rd in world in 2022. And the men qualified 4th in the world in 2023. Our best Olympic quadrennial ever.
Here’s where I spent about 50 hours of my life. 😀
I have a media credential.
Crooked House is one of Agatha Christie‘s favourites of her books.
I’d agree. This is a good one.
An unreliable narrator. It kept me guessing.
Towards the end of the Second World War, Charles Hayward is in Cairo and falls in love with Sophia Leonides, a smart, successful Englishwoman who works for the Foreign Office. They put off getting engaged until the end of the war when they will be reunited in England.
Hayward returns home and reads a death notice in The Times: Sophia’s grandfather, the wealthy entrepreneur Aristide Leonides, has died, aged 85.
Due to the war, the whole family has been living with him in a sumptuous but ill-proportioned house called “Three Gables”, the crooked house of the title.
The autopsy reveals that Leonides was poisoned with his own eserine-based eye medicine via an insulin injection.
Sophia tells Charles that she can’t marry him until the matter is cleared up. …
I haven’t seen the 2017 movie adaptation.
Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.
I can see why this book is so popular with young people.
Pippa is a charming protagonist. So sincere and energetic.
You can’t help but cheer for her and potential love interest Ravi.
A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder is a young adult mystery debut novel by Holly Jackson. The novel is the first in a series of three …
… 17-year old true crime enthusiast Pippa “Pip” Fitz-Amobi, a high school student in the fictional town of Little Kilton, Buckinghamshire (or Fairview, Connecticut in the US version).
In the novel, Pip plans to investigate a five-year-old murder-suicide case involving the murder of popular student Andrea “Andie” Bell and the suicide of her perpetrator Salil “Sal” Singh under the guise of a school project.
Her objectives are to exonerate Sal, whom she is convinced was falsely accused of killing Andie Bell, and to uncover the true perpetrator, whom Pip believes is still at large. …
I appreciate the plot based so much on smart phones and technology. It feels very contemporary.
BBC Three commissioned a TV adaptation.
If you like James Bond, you’ll probably like Citadel.
Brainless escapism.
Two spies whose memories were wiped after they both nearly died during a mission.
A dangerous new threat emerges, hellbent on “establishing a new world order”, so they’re forced to remember their pasts and save the world.
With a production budget of US$300 million, the 6-episode first season ranks as one of the most expensive television shows.
wikipedia
Richard Madden as Mason Kane is a very believable action star, however.
Stanley Tucci as Stanley Tucci 😀 is always great.
The romance is stupid, though. Totally not believable.
There will be a season 2 as well as international spinoffs in different languages. There is a great reveal at the end of season 1 to set that up.
Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.
Still buzzing at the historic 4th place Olympic qualification performance of Team Canada at the World Gymnastics Championships, I climbed the fire escape stairs to the top of the arena in Antwerp.
Busted.
Security called me down. As well as a Ukrainian photographer.
Many are taking smoke breaks on those fire escape stairs.
Though unsigned, turns out you are not supposed to climb the stairs. Oops.
Don’t tell the Gymnastics Media Manager, whatever you do. 😀
I have 13 hour days at Worlds. Got back downtown late and grabbed a burger. Also WINE to celebrate Canada going to Paris with 2 full teams.
As my burger arrived, some Gymnastics people from Canada and Australia stopped by. I got chatting with them. Burger got cold.
On return to the hostel, I threw the bag into the microwave. It caught fire.
Turns out that paper bag had a metal liner. Oops.
The night manager put out the flames. Doused my burger.
I had pizza, instead.
I won’t forget that day any time soon.
For me, Shari Lapena is the queen of the psychological thriller novelists.
I’m always THRILLED with each new book release.
Everyone Here Is Lying is another fantastic story.
William Wooler is a family man, on the surface. But he’s been having an affair, an affair that ended horribly this afternoon at a motel up the road. So when he returns to his house, devastated and angry, to find his difficult nine-year-old daughter, Avery, unexpectedly home from school, William loses his temper.
Hours later, Avery’s family declares her missing.
Suddenly Stanhope doesn’t feel so safe. And William isn’t the only one on his street who’s hiding a lie. As witnesses come forward with information that may or may not be true, Avery’s neighbors become increasingly unhinged.
Who took Avery Wooler?
Foundation is not must-watch TV.
BUT season 2 was better than season 1. The story much easier to follow.
The ending clearly sets up season 3. The Mule is coming.
Lee Pace is particularly good as Brother Day. I’d watch the show simply for his performance as the egomaniac dictator of the universe.
The rest of the cast is strong, as well.
Visuals and cinematography are first class, of course.
Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.
I’ve been a fan of Wade Davis for decades.
An academic and adventurer. He crossed the Darién Gap at age-20, for example.
This book is a summary of his Massey Lectures:
The Wayfinders: Why Ancient Wisdom Matters in the Modern World (The CBC Massey Lectures 2009)
Very good. Smart and succinct.
Davis compares cultures quickly and easily, looking for lessons for us who haven’t lived with Amazon tribes for years.
Of the thousand key point, one really struck me. His discussion of how the British — on arrival — could not understand the Australian aborigines.
These are and were a people with no notion of linear time.
Theirs was one of the great experiments in human thought. The notion that the world existed as a perfect whole, and that the singular duty of humanity was to maintain through ritual activity the land precisely as it existed when the Rainbow Serpent embarked on the journey of creation.
… But in life there is only the Dreaming, in which every thought, every plant and animal, are inextricably linked as a single impulse, the inspiration of the first dawning.
Had humanity followed this track, it is true that we would have never placed a man on the moon.
But we would most certainly not be speaking of our capacity to compromise the life support of the planet. I have never in all of my travels been so moved by a vision of another possibility, born literally 55,000 years ago.
TED Blog
Edmund Wade Davis CM (born December 14, 1953) is a Canadian cultural anthropologist, ethnobotanist, author, and photographer.
Davis came to prominence with his 1985 best-selling book The Serpent and the Rainbow about the zombies of Haiti. He is professor of anthropology and the BC Leadership Chair in Cultures and Ecosystems at Risk at the University of British Columbia.
I watched the first 20 episodes of Blindspot. There are 100 altogether.
The premise is intriguing.
A mysterious, tattooed woman with no recollection of her past or identity shows up in Time Square NYC.
The FBI discovers that her tattoos contain clues to crimes they must solve.
Jaimie Alexander as Remi “Jane Doe” Briggs is excellent.
I also like Ashley Johnson as Patterson. She’s very convincing as the nerd who wants to do the best possible job.
I was far less convinced by Sullivan Stapleton as Kurt Weller, head of the FBI Critical Incident Response Group. He looks the part of the tough guy. But isn’t believable.
The show is 72% on Rotten Tomatoes and lasted 5 seasons. A lot of people like this kind of mindless shoot-em-up where the heroes never seem to get hit by AK-47 bad guys.
They survive car crashes without a bruise.
No need for a search warrant for these agents. 😀
It’s non-stop thriller. Like 24 — but not nearly that good.
Seems to me there is a template for every episode. Cliche dialogue is not only allowed, but preferred.
I can imagine writers being asked to ‘dumb it down‘.
Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.
Excellent.
Adler-Olsen is a Danish crime fiction writer best known for his Department Q series.
The first book in the series is The Keeper of Lost Causes. (2013)
Carl Mørck used to be one of Denmark’s best homicide detectives. Then a hail of bullets destroyed the lives of two fellow cops, and Carl—who didn’t draw his weapon—blames himself.
So a promotion is the last thing he expects. But Department Q is a department of one, and Carl’s got only a stack of cold cases for company.
His colleagues snicker, but Carl may have the last laugh, because one file keeps nagging at him: a liberal politician vanished five years earlier and is presumed dead. But she isn’t dead…yet.
I particularly enjoyed Mørck’s sidekick, Assad.
It was adapted in a 2013 Danish film.
Click PLAY or watch it on YouTube.
Rick McCharles 