May’s Mutterings: Rants and Ramblings
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Book review: Holy Warrior by Angus Donald
Holy Warrior by Angus Donald My rating: 4 of 5 stars The Outlaw Chronicles series (starring Robin Hood and narrated by Alan Dale) is gritty historical fiction at its best. At the end of the first book, Robin Hood makes a vow to go on crusade and help retake Jerusalem. In this book (the second…
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Book review: Render Unto Caesar by Gillian Bradshaw
Render Unto Caesar by Gillian Bradshaw My rating: 4 of 5 stars Gillian Bradshaw is an underrated historical fiction writer. I have read most of her books (I’m still working on the rest of them), and she does an excellent job integrating a compelling plot with interesting characters set in a historical time period. She…
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Hamilton (the musical) and Per Se (the restaurant)
We were in New York this past weekend in order to see “Hamilton,” the musical that seems to have taken the entire country (okay, maybe just the East coast) by storm. The tickets and a backstage tour by Leslie Odom, Jr. (the actor who plays Aaron Burr) were a Christmas gift to the kids. (I…
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Deer Valley (and meeting Congressman John Lewis)
We have some very lovely friends who invited us for a second year to join them at Deer Valley for Presidents’ Day weekend. Neither Jim nor I ski (growing up in Kansas means you don’t have a lot of mountains nearby), but the kids enjoyed it last year when they tried it. We started off…
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Book review: The Difficult Saint by Sharan Newman
The Difficult Saint by Sharan Newman My rating: 4 of 5 stars The Catherine LeVendeur mystery series is one of my favorite historical mystery series. In addition to the impeccable research and the excellent quality of the writing, what makes this medieval mystery series stand out is that the author incorporates into the series the…
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Life on the International Space Station (interview with Dan Tani)
As part of his 8th grade science project, our son had to do a podcast about life on the International Space Station. Fortunately, a friend of ours, Dan Tani, is a former astronaut who actually spent significant time on the space station. Dan very kindly came over to our house to be interviewed for this…
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Dinner at the Inn at Little Washington (again)
I know we were just there in December, but our son wanted to celebrate his excellent report card with a dinner at the Inn, and who are we to say no to that? So off we went in mid-January to enjoy another scrumptious meal (and many congratulations regarding his academic performance). The kitchen was kind…
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Movie review: Spectre
Spectre has a difficult act to follow (besides being spelled the odd British way). Skyfall (the previous movie) was generally recognized as one of the best James Bond movies, certainly of recent vintage. Spectre is a solid but not spectacular addition to the Bond series. The plot is interesting in the sense that you see…
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Movie review: Mission Impossible Rogue Nation
The upside (if you can call it that) of being snowed in with 30 inches of snow is that you can gather for family movie night every night of Snowzilla (as long as school is cancelled the next day, of course). We resumed Snowzilla movie watching with Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation. I am generally a…
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Movie review: The Martian
The book is on our to-be-read list, but 30 inches of impending snowfall seemed like a good excuse to watch this movie. And a bit to my surprise, it was excellent! Matt Damon obviously carries the movie, although there are strong supporting performances throughout by all the actors. (It was especially nice to see Sean…
Got any book recommendations?