Book of Beasts
E. Nesbit
Can't say I remembered or ever questioned who'd written Jack and the Beanstalk. The present book is a fantasy written for children. Not to be examined with any level of sophistication a child is yanked from his nursery to rule a kingdom. It's a magical kingdom where he is absolute ruler. He goes from passing laws to playing with his lego blocks.
The Fruits of History: The Popular Kids. Volume 1. Part 1.
Dennis Santaniello
In fact, a Kindle Version the app doesn't like.
Everything from slavery to the Banana Boat Song to going bananas.
The one negative repetition of much of the material.
Bananas, Apples, Oranges, and now cherries all appear to have originated in China.
And if life is a bowl of cherries why am I living in the pits.
Grapes in Iran. White grapes and wines in Germany as the growing season too short for red grapes to ripen.
Getting drunk on wine goes back to Noah and Lot. Then there was the drunk fest at Cana.
And Concord Grapes and Catalpa Plonk.
Strawberries. Grow wild over much of Canada. They're intensely sweet. Oakville was once the strawberry growing capital of NA, Canada gets no mention. Urban growth wiped out the strawberry fields.
Tomatoes and coconuts are fruit. Just don't be bonked by one.
Two Friends
Guy de Maupassant
Or more properly Deux Amis.
In the movie Paradise Ben claims that every hour spent fishing adds years to your life. Such may not be the case here.
The Telltale Heart
Edgar Allan Poe
First read this in high school and heard a version on 78 RPM Record.
And the moral of the story if such you would find is: Be sure your sins will find you out.
Roy Grace #17.5
Wish You Were Dead
Peter James
The Graces go on vacation. I've stayed at campgrounds that resembled the haunted mansion they arrived at here. Web sites often guild the lily. Prospects are often daunting. Like the screened in veranda at the visitor's centre with a long aisle of insect repellents or the O fic sign with the missing letters and the washroom with the non-functional plumbing or the trailer surrounded by hundreds of empty Bud Light Cans and the nearby sewage lagoon.
But nothing the match of this horror show.
The Lady, or the Tiger?
Frank R. Stockton
What do you call it? Modern Fairy Tale or horror story.
Door number one or door number two. Either a live tiger or forced marriage. No word on the damsel's willingness to participate in this weird procedure. In a sense a trial by ordeal in an arena packed with an audience.
The only question here is does the princess want her lover eaten by a tiger or married to her competitor for his affections.
Joe Pickett #1
Open Season
C.J. Box, David Chandler (Narrator)
Sounds like a pen name. The author is male. There are 26 books in the series.
Local cops accept the easy, lazy explanations for a crime that lands a dead outfitter on Joe's woodpile and another in a cabin with two dead hunters. In a town where everyone hunts a game warden is not the most popular man in town.
Twelve Sleep is fictitious, Ten Sleep is a real city. An endangered ferret in Wyoming is about as popular as Spotted Owls in BC.
