small potatoes

A Perry Mason novel from 1935, The Case of the Counterfeit Eye, is about a guy with not just one but six glass eyes, one of them expertly painted to match the other bloodshot eye on the not infrequent occasions when he's out drinking. When one of his glass eyes is found at the scene of the crime, he's accused of murder and Perry defends him. According to this blogger, it's the only Perry Mason story that hasn't been made into a movie or TV episode. http://wsash.net/fandom/perry-mason-and-the-case-of-the-counterfeit-eye/

Perry takes both of their cases and goes crazy arguing against himself in court.

That was a great scene. They went from wanting to claw each others eyes out to bonding in an instant. I always thought Betty needed a more evolved friend like Helen to guide her through the sixties but that would have been a harder and messier story to write so perhaps it's just as well they didn't go there.

Adding to the several other great suggestions, you might try the Maisie Dobbs series by Jacqueline Winspear. I haven't read her but a friend who reads a lot of mysteries really enjoyed them.

It's great you can watch Mad Men with your dad. I've often thought about Mad Men in relation to The Dick Van Dyke show. Rob and Don are both part of a writing team creating a product of debatable value. Does this ad work? Is this sketch funny? It's can be difficult to form a consensus. They do their best and then Alan or the client might not like it and even if they do, the ad or the sketch might not resonate with the audience. After Don and Megan moved to Manhattan, I kept waiting for Don to trip over a footstool in the new apartment.

I think Leslie and Ron was a tribute to The Suitcase episode of Mad Men.

Good point. I can't remember any incidents of focalized jealousy in the early years, other than moving in quickly to interrupt his chat with Helen Bishop and even that was prompted by one of her friends.

You would expect a bombshell like Joan to arouse some jealousy in a wife. Maybe Don told Betty about Roger early on and eliminated her suspicions.

A new English teacher came to our high school my sophomore year in 1965 and immediately assigned Rabbit Run and The Centaur. They were the first two contemporary adult novels I'd read. At first it seemed like they were going to be tough sledding but I was pleasantly surprised to find that literature could be about two of my favorite subjects, sex and basketball.

I'm the same way about buying books. Revolutionary Road is his masterpiece but he's also a great short story writer. His Collected Stories came out in 2001 with an introduction by Richard Russo. Affordable copies seem to be fairly plentiful on ABE and Amazon. I love the one called A Glutton for Punishment.

I was talking to a friend recently about re-reading favorite authors. He said it was often disappointing, citing The Man Who Loved Children by Christina Stead and The Deptford Trilogy by Robertson Davies as books that he had loved on first read but couldn’t get into the second time around. I’m not much into re-reading books. I always want to move on to something else, some other author, or another book by the same author. I read the collected stories of John Cheever shortly after it came out and loved them. It’s a massive collection, though, and I stopped about two thirds of the way through. Ten or twenty years later, I picked up another copy. I had forgotten about reading them before until I was well into the volume and started having a sense of déjà vu. I enjoyed them the second time around as much as the first but damned if I didn’t stop again two thirds of the way through, maybe at the exact same spot. And now I can’t remember a single story off the top of my head. This anecdote says more about my shabby memory than it does about Cheever. I think he’ll hold up real well to re-reading. I hope you enjoy it as much the second time around as you did the first. I think there’s yet another copy of the collection sitting in my basement. One of these days, maybe I’ll go back for thirds.

You're talking about Pyrex bowls. We had a set of them when I was growing up. I visited friends in Wisconsin in 2009 during the break up of the Draper marriage. They have a booth at an antique store. On one of the shelves I spotted a set of Pyrex bowls for $50. I don't know whether that's a good price or not but I was happy to pay it. They shipped them to me without any breakage. Not that I'm a good cook or anything but those things are invaluable.

In part responding to news on another thread that Vince and Alexis were married back in June (and that one of our posters scooped the information), they had such magical chemistry in S5, the scenes with them together were magnificent. I wasn't impressed with the movie. The idea just occurred to me for a remake with Vince and Alexis in the lead roles. Not that it'll ever happen but I think they'd be perfectly cast.

Who do you like to read? For most of the seventies and eighties I didn't even own a TV. Cable changed all that. I've liked some other TV shows but none to the extent of Mad Men. You probably can't tell from my posting, but I'm a little bit obsessed with it. Richard Yates is a writer often mentioned as an influence on Mad Men. I haven't read any of his novels but have read a few of his short stories. I particularly like the one called A Glutton for Punishment.

I used to read books. Now I spend my spare time reading message board forums about Mad Men. It's kind of sad.

Oh, good. I couldn't remember the exact sequence.

That's fascinating. But that wasn't the last we saw of Kurt, was it? Did he get fired for coming out? I don't remember it that way.

Good eye. I hadn't noticed the connection until your post. And when his stepmom beats the crap out of him for being with Aimee, I suppose that's meant to explain why he likes to be slapped by prostitutes.