Sunday Sundries, 214

1. HBOTW [Human Being of the Week]: Today, a neighbor with a snowblower worked his way up and down our street, both sides, doing the sidewalks and driveways of all of his neighbors after our major snowfall last night. Time for a Nobel Prize, I think!

2. We're glad to hear that True Detective is back for another season--we'll start streaming on HBO as soon as we finish a couple of other series we're working on. Link to trailer.

3. I finished just one book this week--Case Histories (2004)--the first in Kate Atkinson's ongoing detective series featuring Jackson Brodie, a series that has now reached four novels--with another scheduled for 2019. I first read all of Atkinson's "literary" novels first, thinking that these Brodie novels would be lighter fare, saving them for later.

I was wrong. Case Histories is brilliantly conceived and executed--no different in "literary" values than, oh, Life After Life, Atkinson's superior novel that I think is one of the best I have ever read.

So much of Atkinson's style is evident here: multiple (overlapping) stories; leaps back and forth in time; puzzled, damaged people; Surprise (yes, with a capital letter!). The principal cases are these: the disappearance of a little girl spending the night in a tent in the back yard with her sister (30 years previously); the murder of a young woman at work one day; a frustrated mother--and another murder.

Atkinson weaves these stories together--takes us back and forth in time with electrifying skill and subtlety--leads us to conclusions that both surprise and shock.

Brodie himself is a terrific character: He resembles some of the greats in the genre (Philip Marlowe, etc.) but is unique in so many other ways.

Can't wait to read the remaining volumes!

4. We had fun on Friday evening--dinner at Dontino's (an Italian restaurant in North Akron, a restaurant Joyce has gone to since her girlhood) with our son, daughter-in-law, and two grandsons (13 and 9). Time, uncooperative, flew, and before we knew it, we were heading home--but with our heads aflutter with memories and ever-deepening affections for all of them. Pic shows Joyce with her grandsons amid the ruins of supper!

5. My dental implant area is healing well--saw the surgeon this week, and he was pleased. I'll see him again in about six weeks for the Next Step. I'm now chewing (gingerly, gingerly) on both sides once again.

6. I am whupped from all the car-cleaning and shoveling this morning. We did manage to get out to the grocery store (our Sunday task) but found very few shoppers there. And I mixed the week's batch of multigrain sourdough bread--pic on Facebook to follow! Now, I'm half-dazed as I type, yearning for the nap that will follow when the bread is out of the oven!

7. Last Word: A word I liked this week from one of my various online word-of-the-day providers:

     - from the Oxford English Dictionary

ranivorous, adj.: Of an animal, esp. a bird: that feeds on frogs. Also humorously of a French person.

Origin: A borrowing from Latin, combined with an English element. Etymons: Latin ranivorus, -ous suffix.

Etymology: <  scientific Latin ranivorus (1800 as a specific name; <  classical Latin rāna frog (see ranid n.) + -vorus: see -vorous comb. form) + -ous suffix.

 rare. 

1821  J. Latham Gen. Hist. Birds  I. 181 Ranivorous Falcon.

1878 Fraser's Mag.  18 504 Frenchmen..were not the ranivorous and capering creatures they supposed.

1940  L. E. C. Hughes  & C. F. Tweney Chambers's Techn. Dict.  702/1 Ranivorous (Zool.), feeding on frogs.

1996 Re: M813  in alt.religion.scientology(Usenet newsgroup) 20 Mar. Our ranivorous Continental chums.