Sunday Sundries, 262

1. HBOTW [Human Being of the Week]: Charlie at the coffee shop each morning--always friendly to everyone, a big reader, a great sense of humor--makes me feel good every morning.

2. I finished two books this week--one from my bedside tower, another a coffee-shop book:

     - From the tower: Michael Connelly's latest novel about L.A. detective Harry Bosch--and about another major character Connelly's been using lately, Renée Ballard, a younger but very wise and efficient and fearless cop. (Bosch is retired now but is still sort of sneaking his way into cases).

They're working together on a cold case (the murder of a judge), and Ballard also has a case involving a homeless man who recently burned to death. The last, oh, ten pages are very exciting as they zoom in on the killer--a hitman who is, to say the least, not what you expect.

I've loved the Connelly books for a long time--have read all the Bosch novels + the Lincoln Lawyer ones (he makes more than a cameo in this one).

The Amazon Prime series Bosch is fun to watch, but it's not really all that much like the books. Two separate sources of fun! (Link to Prime footage.)

     - The second book I finished this week is the 2nd novel by Ian McEwan, whose early works (which I've not read) I'm beginning to read my way through. This one--The Comfort of Strangers (1981)--is more like a novella (only 127 pp).

It's the story of an English couple on holiday in some European city--unnamed--though, at times, it sounds like Venice (though people are speaking English). They roam around the city, often getting lost, and one day they encounter a local--a man--who helps them out and invites them back to his place.

And then ... as Yeats once wrote, things fall apart.

The local and his wife are not what the lovers expect, and their misjudgment has dire (!) consequences.

A thriller about naivete.

3. On Friday, Joyce and I went to the Cinemark in Cuyahoga Falls and saw the new Guy Ritchie film, The Gentlemen (about as ironic a title as you can imagine). It's in the world that Ritchie has dealt with so well in other years--the gangster film (with some comedy stirred in to make you forget some of the gore).

Hugh Grant (pictured above on the far right) plays off-type, though I guess he hasn't played the sort of bumbling young lover-boy in quite a while.

As usual, Ritchie toys with us throughout. Things apparently happen that didn't happen; narrators change (love the stories within stories); surprises abound. In the end he's gotten you to root for someone you might not be really predisposed to root for!

Ritchie is well known for the two wild Sherlock Holmes films he made with Robert Downey, Jr. and Jude Law as, respectively, Holmes and Dr. Watson.

But we've seen lots of his films and have come to be great, admiring fans of his work.

Link to trailer for The Gentlemen.

4. As I've posted here before, we've been streaming fairly rapidly through the series Upstart Crow, but we slowed down this week: We're nearing the end of them all, and we can't abide the thought of their being gone. They are such clever representations of the Bard and his world--full of funny anachronisms and invented words that everyone will recognize. Each episode deals with the creation of one of his plays (we've just finished Much Ado About Nothing), and each is just strikingly imaginative--and it's so fun to connect things that are happening in his life to things that will end up on the page (and on the stage).

I suppose we'll have to finish them, but I'm not sure we want to ...

5. This week we finished streaming Season 1 of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel on Amazon Prime, and I'm afraid I'm not totally hooked yet. I like her (Rachel Brosnahan), but (to me) much of it seems forced--sometimes cliched and predictable. Not always. Sometimes.

But we will charge on--hoping for that hook that will snag us and drag us into her world.

6. Final Word--a word I liked this week from one of my online word-of-the-day providers ...

     - from dictionary.com (a word I've wondered about)

fettle [fet-l]

noun: state; condition: in fine fettle.

The noun fettle is found most often in the stock phrase in fine fettle “in a good state or condition.” Fettle is originally a British dialect word (Lancashire in northwest England), a verb meaning “to shape, prepare, fix, arrange.” Further origin is obscure: fettle may come from Middle English fetlen (fetelen, fatelen, fitelen) “to shape, fix, put, bestow” and be related to the Old English words fetian “to fetch, bring to, marry,” fæt “cup, vessel, vat,” and feter “fetter.” Or fettle may be related to the Old English noun fetel “belt, girdle.” The sense “to shape, prepare” entered English in the 14th century; the metallurgical and ceramics senses entered English in the second half of the 19th century; the sense “state or condition” in the mid-18th century.

Bernie Sanders was, as usual, in fighting fettle.

     DAVID A. GRAHAM, "IS SANDERS WRITING OFF SOUTH CAROLINA?" THE ATLANTIC, FEBRUARY 22, 2016

Mathilde was in fine fettle. The month in Venice had healed all the wounds.

     IRVING STONE, THE PASSIONS OF THE MIND, 1971