Tom Holmberg

Watched the first part of "Around the World in 80 Days" on "Masterpiece Theater." I always have to wonder when they film classic books why the writers think they can write a better story than the original classic that has lasted a hundred years.

I wasn't sure if I read it here or elsewhere. Sorry for stealing your info. 😏

I read that one year Amazon gave their employees a can of cranberry sauce for Thanksgiving. Thanks for giving!

"The American gameshow Wipeout on ABC was accused of being "a blatant copycat" of shows such as Takeshi's Castle and Most Extreme Elimination Challenge, and a copyright infringement lawsuit was filed by Tokyo Broadcasting System against ABC in late 2008, claiming the obstacle-course game show closely resembled several Japanese shows." Although Baba Ganoosh hasn't been a contestant on" Wipeout" yet.

That's a ripoff of those old Japanese torture-the-contestant shows.

Yes, that's the same problem we had exactly, and, according to the assisted living people, many other seniors have.

There's also the issue of magazines immediately and repeatedly sending renewal notices. There was one magazine that she paid for 25 years of renewals. Fortunately they were honest enough to return the money, unlike the charities which wouldn't stop sending requests after we asked them to stop and even after we refused delivery of their mail.

What annoys me is if you donate to a charity they immediately start inundating you with endless requests for more money (and they sell your name and address to other charities that inundate you even further). My mother, who had senile dementia (which we were unaware of) was being swamped by requests (and when we had her moved to assisted living, they told me that this was a common problem with their residents). I took her checkbook away and had all mail delivered to me, but it took years for the requests to end.

That's typical of a lot of trilogies in any genre. I prefer a series, with each novel a standalone book, to a trilogy.

Apparently the woman who runs this so-called "charity" has an annual compensation of almost $1 million (although her father who started it was compensated over $2 million a year). How many starving Russians could be fed with that? So a cute bear blanket or a stuffed polar bear isn't quite so egregious.

I don't find that stereotype, or the "hipster" senior stereotype. that funny as they are both overused.

There's an old joke: Why don't Baptists have sex standing up? Because someone might think they're dancing.

We have mandatory masks, but we've even reopened the meeting rooms and discussion rooms (though who knows what will happen with omicron). Covid is still keeping the numbers of visitors down, but I have to wonder if we'll ever get back to pre-Covid normal. Though they just closed the library's cafe.

Thank your lucky stars.

I finally learned why Hans Gruber from "Die Hard" is so mad, because his father Hans Gruber Sr. was killed in a toilet by Derek Flint.

And starving Russian Jews.

There's the "24 Hours in Ancient History" series (4 books) covering Rome, Athens, Egypt and China. Also: "What Jane Austen Ate and Charles Dickens Knew: From Fox Hunting to Whist-the Facts of Daily Life in Nineteenth-Century England" by Daniel Pool "Jane Austen's England: Daily Life in the Georgian and Regency Periods" by Roy Adkins

I'm reading "Doan and Carstairs: Their Complete Cases" (ISBN 9781618272287) by Black Mask author Norbert Davis. The book is an screwball mystery anthology of two novellas and three novels following the adventures of chubby, baby-faced hard-boiled dick Doan, and his assistant Carstairs, an enormous Great Dane with a superiority complex. The books were written during the war (WWII) years.

I'd also mention that "Three Men in a Boat", the source of Willis' title, is a very funny book. Worth reading if you haven't.

There might be a confusion here between "reciprocal borrowing". which is borrowing within a library's regional system, and "interlibrary loan", which might borrow from any library that owns an item regardless of location. I can see smaller libraries opting out, but at least where I live all libraries do it, and they might borrow from out-of-state if that is necessary.

Her best book, IMO, is "To Say Nothing of the Dog".

I read the book "Berezina" by Sylvain Tesson (ISBN 9781609455545) not too long ago. Its a travel book about the experiences of a group of Frenchmen and Russians following the path of Napoleon's army's retreat from Moscow in WWII era motorcycles during a Russian winter. Tesson, being French, is both smart and smart-assed. I picked this book for a nonfiction book club. Oddly most of the members didn't finish it. I picked it because I thought it was very readable. ?

All libraries should be able to Interlibrary Loan (ILL) any older book they don't own from another library. Most libraries have a procedure to recommend new books they don't own for purchase (that doesn't automatically mean they'll purchase it, but they'll definitely consider it).

I was on a flight to NYC (LGA) on a day that it was about that temperature and the plane was stuck on the tarmac after landing because the taxiway was so soft that the tires sunk in and the plane couldn't taxi itself to the terminal!

Maybe they can get the guy who wrapped the pony in the Capital One ad to show her how to do it.