Silent movies - Bare Knees

If I tell you this movie is about a flapper going to live with her sister and her very reputable husband in a very reputable town, you can probably imagine what's going to happen. But can you really?
Today I'll be talking about "Bare Knees" from 1928.

First the plot (spoiler alert!).

We begin in the Longworth household on wife Jane's birthday, but her husband John is home late again - the fate of a County Attorney - while his best friend Paul has already been there for an hour.
Paul has given her perfume, John a stole (you can tell Jane prefers the perfume).

There's also a wire from Jane's sister Billie (Virginia Lee Corbin did a nice job) who turns up at the very respectable birthday party the same evening - a flapper from bob to bare knees.
The effect is amazing, from shocked looks to a few young men being very interested including Larry who works for John.
It's not just her outfit, though, that shocks the good people of Hanford City, it's also her flippant way of talking, her irreverence, and her gift, a diaphanous black negligee.

From then on, Billie's a thorn in her brother-in-law's side. She dances a Charleston at the party and leads the girls' baseball team into a game against the boys' team , all of them wearing short pants and tank tops and confusing the boys so much that they beat them 29 : 0 (funny, the newspaper article says that the girls won against the men). Of course she also smokes, drinks, and is a big flirt.
Jane lets her know she has never seen anything that vulgar, but when Billie has gone out, Jane longingly lifts her own skirt above her knees, not knowing she's seen by John.

Meanwhile, John has sent Larry to investigate the club ship "Ship Ahoy" and Paul tells him that Billie is there almost every night.
John reply is that he wishes she were like Jane because a husband doesn't have to worry about a wife like Jane. Then he goes to bed.
Plot twist!
As soon as John is gone, Jane is in Paul's arms!
While Jane is struggling in her marriage, Billie declines Larry's proposal "Marriage is like eating a mushroom ... you don't know if it's poison until it's too late."

Now things get a little confusing.
John tells Larry they will investigate the "Ship Ahoy" together.
Jane has asked Paul to meet her in one of the private dining rooms on the ship bringing along a travel bag to elope, but Billie has found Jane's note to John and is already there.
When John and Larry turn up, she claims that she's the one who wants to elope with Paul and Jane came to stop her which is of course a shock for Larry.

Are you still with me? Because now it's getting really weird. 
A big fire breaks out on the pier and while all the others make it out in time, Paul and Billie get caught in the fire. Neither of them can swim, though, so of course they decide to have some last fun and ride the rollercoaster which still runs with empty wagons.
Don't worry! Larry is already in the water on his way to save his love! Who is just crashing through the burning rollercoaster with her wagon. I wish the quality were better. That black "cloud" on the right? That's the wagon.
Don't worry! Larry is already in the water on ... yes, again, but we don't see how he saves both Billie and Paul. Not that Paul turns up again in the last scenes, so who knows, he might have drowned.

By now, John has found Jane's note, but has the maid burn it (wouldn't that be something you do yourself?). All he says to Jane is that a lot of women wear short skirts now and has she thought of bobbing her hair - and she falls into his arms.
Larry is visiting Billie and she reminds him of his proposal.
Happy ending all around (except for Paul)!

I thought the movie was off to a good start and quite amusing. I even liked the plot twist, who would have thought that of Jane?
The ending, though ...
I don't know that I would have had a great idea myself, but a fire and a rollercoaster? The only excuse I would have for that could be that it's symbolic in some way, but this isn't a deep movie, it's a flapper comedy.

It also was a little disappointing to me that Billie gave up so easily in the end. I guess that was to be expected, maybe she hit her head when they crashed into the water or she saw her life before her eyes and thought she needed to change something. I guess the main point is that I don't think she and Larry make a good couple. He's so boring. Will he be enough for Billie?

I could also really have done without Bessie the maid. No, that's wrong, I could have done with the running "joke" about her hurting feet and her walking around weirdly. My feet hurt all the time and I felt her pain, but it did absolutely nothing for the movie.

The runtime was a little over an hour, easy enough to handle and there were some charming bits (and nice clothes), but "Bare Knees" is not going to make it on my re-watchlist.

Tell Us About ... Dance

I have been asked if I'd like to participate in the Global Writing Challenge on the second Thursday of the month. This is the second time for me and I really enjoyed reading all of the posts about sunshine last month.
My posts will go live a little early (to avoid collision with the silent films), so if the posts of the others are not live yet, please check back later.
The current membership consists of Deb’s World, Suzy Turner, Within a World of My Own, Once Upon a Time Happily Ever After, Marsha in the Middle, Coffee and Cocktails at the Casa, and me. It's fun to learn how differently everyone interprets a topic.
You can play along and link up with us!
If that's too short notice for you, maybe next time? Here are the prompts for the coming months:
August - A Day in the Life
September - Poetry
October - Birthday
November - Superstition

Photo of German dancer Mary Wigman
by Jacob Merkelbach, 1922
Public domain via Wikipedia

The prompt for today was "Dance", chosen by Suzy.

Let me tell you right away that I have never been a dancer. I can't remember ever having been one of those children who hear a song on the radio or TV and immediately start dancing to it happily.
I had friends who took ballet classes early and later jazz dance, and once I was taken along to pick one of them up from class because we wanted to meet at her house afterwards and I was early. It was a world that was utterly strange to me, and I honestly never envied my friends for the experience.

Ballerinas Barbie and Cara from 1976
(Barbie and Cara swapped their outfits)

Peer pressure - aka my best friends - made me take the basic dancing class. Here in Germany, dancing schools have a long tradition with the oldest one existing since 1787.
Originally, classes weren't limited to dancing, however, they were also about manners, dress codes, and conversation. Of course, all of that has evolved and changed, even in my time already. Over time, the dress code has become less and less restrictive and new dances are being offered.
My own experience was, hm, meh (not just the dancing itself, but also the whole teenage mating dance ritual around it 😉). I just couldn't get into it and never contemplated going on to the advanced class (also called bronze today), much less silver, gold, and gold star.
As an adult I usually got around having to dance and mostly danced only at home with Merlin, Greebo or Ponder (sometimes even two of them).

That doesn't mean, however, that I hate dancing. I just want others who are so much better at it to do it for me to look at - classical ballet, musicals, tap dance, rock'n'roll, folk dance, I could keep going.
Those performances can be breathtaking, acrobatic, incredibly elegant, but also hilarious sometimes.
Here are just a few very randomly chosen examples for your entertainment. Unfortunately, the videos seem to show directly sometimes and sometimes they don't, also depending on your browser settings, so I always added the link in the description as well.

I can't condone kidnapping, but the barn raising dance from "Seven Brides for Seven Brothers" - wow, just wow.

Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman dancing a Scottish reel in "Indiscreet".

Audrey Hepburn doing a kind of expressionist dance in "Funny Face"

Bobby Banas (who also was in "West Side Story") and others doing the "Nitty Gritty"

Whitey's Lindy Hoppers in "Hellzapoppin'". No words.

You may think about Bollywood what you want, but the dances are amazing, here "Dola Re Dola Re".

I learned about "eccentric dancer" Jack Stanford through a YouTube suggestion.

Or how about this incredible snake dance by Janine Janik and Christian Arnaut?

In the 60s there was a couple named Fern on German TV, with short lessons for classic ballroom dancing, but also for "play dances" for parties, like the letkis (spelled Letkiss in Germany) which is based on a Finnish folk dance or the Hoppel Poppel (not the East German recipe!) in this video.
It never fails to make me snigger.

Enough, enough!
Of course I could keep going and going and going, but I think I've proven my point. I like to sing along with a song, but the world doesn't need me to dance, there are other things I can do better and like doing better.
Sometimes you just need to know your limits.


Now let's see what the others have to tell us (Debbie is still travelling).

Suzy shares why dancing has meant so much throughout her life, and how one night on the dance floor changed everything forever.

Sally discusses why she can play music but she can't dance to it.

For Leslie, this month's prompt - dancing - brings lots of things to mind: a favorite memory, ballet, and a great Ginger Rogers quote.  Which will she write about? 

When Marsha was teaching, her students would beg her not to sing (she still did).  But, when it came to dancing, they were all for it. I mean, who doesn’t want to see their teacher make a complete fool of herself?  Read Marsha’s post to discover all the goofy things she and her class used to do!

Amy shares thoughts on dance through quotes and lyrics as pertaining to her life history thus far ...


And now you. Tell us about "Dance" and link up with us!

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

From my children's book cabinet (and my DVD shelf) - The Eerie, Indiana series

"My name is Marshall Teller. Not too long ago, I was living in New Jersey, just across the river from New York City. It was crowded, polluted, and full of crime. I loved it. But my parents wanted a better life for my sister and me. So we moved to a place so wholesome, so squeaky clean, so ordinary that you could only find it on TV: Eerie, Indiana."

That's from the prologue of the first book in a series which is based on the 90s TV show for kids "Eerie, Indiana". That means I can't talk about the book series leaving out the show.
As there are 19 episodes, though, and 17 books, I picked just the first one of each for this post.

The book is called "Return to Foreverware", a nod to the first episode of the TV show called "Forever Ware". It's by Mike Ford who wrote nine of the books.

Let's begin with the TV show. How to describe "Eerie, Indiana" ...
"Statistically speaking, it's the most normal place in the entire country. Statistics lie."
Actually, the town is exactly what its name promises. "The King" lives on Marshall's paper route, people move strangely synchronized, a straitjacket hangs on a laundry line, and that's just the intro.
Marshall's mother works as a party planner, but being a busy lady she's not so good with her own groceries. How lucky when her neighbor Betty Wilson and her twins Ernie and Bert turn up with a solution. Mrs. Wilson's late husband has designed a series of vacuum sealed containers called Tu.... erm, Forever Ware.

As a little gift she leaves a bologna sandwich in a container, as fresh as it was when it was made. In 1974!
It's even more suspicious when one of the twins slips Marshall a note saying "Yearbook 1964" as the family leaves.
Marshall and his friend Simon check the yearbooks and find a picture of Ernie and Bert looking the same as now, so they decide to snoop around a bit.
They don't expect to see this, though ...

... Mrs. Wilson tucking the twins in, but these are not beds, they are giant Forever Ware containers!
I'm not going to spoil the ending (spoil, see what I did there?).

The book sees Marshall and Simon looking for a weekend job.
They answer to the ad of Mr. and Mrs. Stewart - James and Martha! - who seem to be stuck in the 70s, not only with their clothes, but also their furniture. They get asked to declutter the attic.
What's weird is that Mrs. Stewart seems to have an extra soft spot for Simon. The boys learn that the Stewarts had a son who died years ago - Rod(ney) - and Marshall can't shake the feeling that they'd like to replace him with Simon. But is he the first? Why do they find pictures from a birthday party that always looks the same, but it's a different boy every time. What happened to Rodney? And what's in the basement?
Then Simon suddenly disappears and the Stewarts deny having seen him although his bike is in their garage.
Will Marshall be able to save him and can someone help him doing it (spoiler: Ernie and Bert will)?

Omri Katz as Marshall (whom you probably know
from Hocus Pocus) and Justin Shenkarow as Simon

"Eerie, Indiana" first aired on NBC. Joe Dante of "Gremlins" fame directed several episodes and was a creative consultant.
From the start, the writers Karl Schaefer and José Rivera intended for the show to be more than merely for kids. I wasn't a kid when I first saw it although I can't remember when and where that was, and the mix of humor, spookiness, horror, science fiction, and innuendos drew me in very quickly.
In reviews it was noted that the show reminded of "Twin Peaks", "Edward Scissorhands", "Twilight Zone" - a seemingly "normal" town where there's a lot more going on underneath the surface than you would expect.

It certainly wasn't all fun and play. The second episode in which a boy finds that his retainer gives him the powers to read the minds of dogs who want to overthrow the humans is downright creepy to me, so much so that I often skip it, but I have also been traumatized by "Lady and the Tramp" (as an adult) or "Bambi".

Anyhow, as it's said in a lot of videos and articles, the show was ahead of its time. It was cancelled after 18 episodes were aired between 1991 and 1992 ending on an episode in which Marshall finds out by way of a script that his reality is in fact a TV show. Only in the re-run in 1993, the last episode was aired as well.
In 1997, the show was bought up and broadcast again and got popular enough again to not only inspire a spin-off produced in Canada (just as short-lived, but not as good), but also the book series. In fact, it gained kind of a cult following as you can also see from the many comments of people who had seen it as kids and still bemoan its short life.

Mike Ford writes on his homepage: "One day my editor called me and said, "We're doing these books based on this TV show, but none of the writers we know have ever heard of it." When she told me what it was, they probably heard me scream in space. I loved the show. And that's how I got the job."
I remember getting the books from the USA (at a time when postage was still affordable) and being called into the customs office. The lady asked me to show her the invoice and to her surprise, the whole stack of books had been so cheap that I didn't even get to the limit for having to pay tax.

"Eerie, Indiana" inspired other shows like it (the "Stranger Things" connection is mentioned a lot and Alex Hirsch said that his "Gravity Falls" (another one I'm a fan of) was "a blatant rip off of Eerie, Indiana") and still has its fans today, that's not a bad legacy.
You may recognize one or the other actor, by the way, for example "Gomez Addams" John Astin as the owner of the "World O' Stuff" store, a soul collecting René Auberjonois or young Tobey Maguire as a ghost.

How many people actually ever knew about the books or still do is difficult for me to say, I can't even say how I learned about them. Unsurprisingly, they are no longer in print, though.


Further reading:

1. Gwen Ihnat: Eerie, Indiana was a few dimensions ahead of its time. On: AV Club, October 30, 2017
2. Justin Young: Eerie, Indiana Paved the Way for Supernatural's Success. On: CBR, February 28, 2026

Weekend Traffic Jam - Week 163

Welcome to the Weekend Traffic Jam Reboot!
My posts for the link up will go live on Thursdays at 9:30 p.m. EDT or, if you live in the future like I do, on Fridays at 3:30 a.m. CE(S)T.

An art I never had the patience for is Origami. Thinking about it, I don't even know much about the history (do I see a blog post coming?).
My sister, however, has the patience and the talent. And the patience. So much patience. I don't mean that in a sarcastic way, I find it amazing.
These are just a few of the pieces she made, the other photos didn't turn out well.
I can't help but thinking that they would make great outfits for paper dolls (are you old enough like me to remember those?) and the two at the top practically scream vintage Barbie!

Are you ready for the weekend?

As part of the reboot, we will be featuring a different blog every week.
How about stopping by and saying hello? Let them know we sent you.

This week our spotlight is on Two Chicks and a Mom.

Donna, Staci, and Ali Rose from Two Chicks and a Mom say: "Wife of Larry , mom to 8, G-ma to 5; former SAHM turned RN. My 'things' are working out, scrapbooking for the family, cooking, crafting, sewing projects, yard work, and blogging. Most of my family, me included, are Star Wars/Star Trek, and Marvel fans/nerds."
"I'm Staci and one of the 'chicks'. Currently I'm a Senior at BYU-Hawaii on Oahu. ... I enjoy fitness, food, traveling, outdoors, cooking/baking, crafts, music, movies, and family."
"Hi, Ali Rose here! ... Some of the things I enjoy include spending time with family and friends, listening to music, watching TV shows, playing with my pets, and traveling. Hope you enjoy the things I bring to the blog!"

Marsha from Marsha in the Middle started blogging in 2021 as an exercise in increasing her neuroplasticity. Oh, who are we kidding? Marsha started blogging because she loves clothes, and she loves to talk or, in this case, write!

Melynda from Scratch Made Food! & DIY Homemade Household - The name says it all, we homestead in East Texas, with three generations sharing this land. I cook and bake from scratch, between gardening and running after the chickens, and knitting!

Lisa from Boondock Ramblings shares about the fiction she writes and reads, her faith, homeschooling, photography and more.

Cat from Cat's Wire has what she calls a jumping spider brain. She has many interests and will blog about whatever catches her attention - crafts, books, old movies, collectibles or random things.

Rena from Fine Whatever Blog writes about style, midlife, and the "fine whatever" moments that make life both meaningful and fun. Since 2015, she's been celebrating creativity, confidence, and finding joy in the everyday.


Here are some of my picks from last week's link up.

Joanne has some beautiful garden photos for us.

Mireille wanted short sleeves, so she grabbed her shears and made it happen.

Pat is looking at clouds.

Angie had a lovely visitor in her garden.

Kathrine shows three styles for a graphic tee.


Let's link up!

Guidelines:
This link party is for blog posts only. All other links will be deleted.
Please link only blog posts you created yourself. Please link directly to the URL of your blog post and not the main address of your blog.
Please do not link to videos, sales ads, or social media links such as YouTube videos/shorts, Instagram or Facebook reels, TikTok videos, or any other social media based content.
Please do visit other blogs and give the gift of a comment. 

Notice:
By linking with Weekend Traffic Jam Reboot, you assert that the content is your own property and give us permission to share said content if your post or blog is showcased.
We welcome unlimited, family friendly content. This can include opinion pieces, recipes, travel recaps, fashion ideas, crafts, thrifting, lifestyle, book reviews or discussions, photography, art, and so much more!
Thank you for linking up with us! 

 

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Silent movies - The Charlatan

While checking the channels on my new TV stick, I came upon one that, much to my surprise, offered me several silent movies. I randomly picked one of them, so let's talk about The Charlatan from 1929 today.

Here's the plot (with spoilers).
A woman goes to sideshow fortune teller Count Merlin. She's shocked when he calls her by a current name, but then the name she had before ... and he's looking into her past in his crystal ball.

Before marrying a rich man, Florence Talbot had been a trapeze artist and the wife of clown Peter Dwight. One evening she took off with Richard Talbot. Peter never got over her also taking their daughter Ann.
What Florence doesn't know is that Count Merlin is actually Peter Dwight and he still wants his daughter back after all these years.

Florence has her eyes on another man by now, her doctor Walter Paynter, and she'd elope with him rather sooner than later.
At a dinner party, Mrs. Deering who took her to Count Merlin and is the District Attorney's wife, suggests to invite the fortune teller to the Talbots' house.
Merlin and his helpers accept and he reads palms and shows off his "disappearing lady" act. His audience draws cards to determine who will be disappearing in the afternoon. It's Florence.

Someone has different plans, though, and places a sharp pin in the back of the box (of course we all know there's a hidden compartment) on which they put some kind of liquid.
Indeed the trick fails this time and they find the dead Florence in the back of the cabinet. Dr. Paynter immediately determines poison as the cause of death and of course Count Merlin is the main suspect.

District Attorney Deering questions him, but Merlin and his helpers abduct him and Merlin disguises as Deering and goes back to the house to question all the suspects - the cuckolded Richard Talbot, the lover Dr. Paynter, the cheated Mrs. Paynter, but also Ann's boyfriend who has tried to leave the building.

Then he reveals that he's Peter Dwight, Florence's ex-husband and Ann's father.
And the murderer is ....

Richard Talbot

 !

The movie is another one based on a play.
You know "The Jazz Singer" with Al Jolson started the big talkie wave in 1927, and indeed "The Charlatan" had talking sequences which are lost, however.

As I said, this was a random choice and I didn't expect much from the movie. Actually, I don't know what I expected at all, but not a murder from the title.
I was really pleasantly surprised about this old whodunit. You may remember "The Bat" which was more or less people running from one room to the next. This movie wasn't at all like that. We had a nice introduction to the backstory, a solid build-up of motives for our suspects, we had a neat little murder (and no bodies got left on a staircase), and there was the clever idea how to enable our main character to investigate in a very good disguise.

There were a few small things that made me giggle a bit, for example Dr. Paynter calling the poison something similar to Curare, the South American virus, or the way Merlin accused one suspect after the other (which I have seen in more modern mysteries as well), but that really didn't take away from me enjoying this film very much.
It was a little like watching an episode of a TV crime show today (at a runtime of an hour), a Poirot (with all the suspects in one room at the end) for instance, just in worse film quality and with less elaborate sets.


I didn't really need a source for this post except the info about the movie being based on a play, but here's another review, anyway.
Fritzi Kramer: The Charlatan (1929) - A Silent Film Review. On: Movies Silently, February 3, 2013

A Good Book & a Cup of Tea - July 2026 link party

Welcome to the A Good Book & A Cup of Tea (A Monthly Bookish Link Party)!
This link up is for book and reading posts or anything related to books and reading (even movies based on books!).

Each link party will be open for a month.
My co-hosts for this event are Lisa from Boondock Ramblings and Erin from Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs.
You can link up with any of us.

Here are my favorite posts from the June party.

Gail presents the books she read in June.

Veronica shares queer books she loved since last Pride Month and describes them in five words.

I have never read Laura Ingalls Wilder myself, but Lisa's post about Charles Ingalls was very interesting.


These are the guidelines:

1. For bloggers, you can link unlimited posts related to books and reading. They can be older posts or newer posts. These can be posts about what you’re reading, book reviews, books you’ve added to your shelf, reading habits, what you’ve been reading, about trips to the bookstore, etc. You get the drift.
2. Link to a specific blog post (URL of a specific post, not just your website). Feel free to link up any older posts that may need some love and attention, too.
3. Please visit at least two other bloggers on this list and comment on their posts. Have fun! Interact! Get some book recommendations.
4. Readers can click the blue button below to visit blog posts.
5. If you add a link you are giving me permission to share and link back to your post(s).

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

My June books

This is an overview of the books I have finished in a month (not necessarily started in the same month) and those I have read to Gundel (marked with 😸).
I will be adding a short explanation why I chose a book or how I found it and possibly if it's a re-read candidate, but I'm usually not going to add real reviews or ratings (Gundel also refuses to give ratings). Should you want a little more information on a book you're interested in, though, just let me know.

A very weird reading month with several DNF. What was interesting to me was that for a moment I even hesitated to add the third one to the list, almost if I was trying to hide my "failure". Then I noticed myself how ridiculous that was. Reading shouldn't feel guilty, no matter if you liked something or not. So I had the bad luck to pick books that I didn't want to finish. Now what? Will my library throw me out in shame? Well, they didn't, all that happened was that I wish I had used the time for other books instead.
When I had to add a fourth one toward the end of the month, I blamed that on the heat at first, but if it was the heat, why was I happy enough with the two other books I read at the time (albeit slowly)?

"Peter Ustinov: The Gift of Laughter" by John Miller, first published in 2002

Peter Ustinov - theater and film actor, playwright and novelist, director, producer, humanitarian, university chancellor, interviewer, entertainer - was an amazing man.
This is his biography.

When I mentioned Ustinov the other day, I noticed that I had never read his full biography (I read his mother's book ages ago). He had always been wildly popular in Germany, so it was really time I did, and I enjoyed reading it.

"Das Dorf in den roten Wäldern" = "Still Life" by Louise Penny, first published in 2005
(Chief Inspector Armand Gamache 1)

When one of the residents of the small village Three Pines is found dead, Armand Gamache and his team are called in. Has it been a hunting accident or something more sinister?

I had only known the second adaptation of "Three Pines" with Alfred Molina - which didn't include this book - and thought I'd give the books a try. I think I enjoyed the idea of Three Pines and Gamache more than the actual mystery and the end was a bit weak and obvious, but it was a quick read and the series will stay on my list for now.

"The Three Investigators in The Mystery of the Coughing Dragon" by Nick West (the books were published attributed to Alfred Hitchcock), first published in 1970 😸
(The Three Investigators 14)

When the Three Investigators are asked to find the missing dog of Alfred Hitchcock's friend Mr. Allen, they don't expect being confronted with a dragon in a cave!

I read this series a long time ago and am going through it again bit by bit after writing a blog post about it. This book is the thirteenth in the series.

"The Correspondent" by Virginia Evans, first published in 2025

Sybil is 73 and an avid letter writer.
She writes to family, friends, authors, neighbors - and in these letters she's telling us about her life now and then and about her greatest regret.

I had seen the book mentioned on blogs, but didn't read any reviews. When it popped up in the new entries on OverDrive, I placed a hold, and it was worth waiting all those months.
I've noticed before that the letter form appeals to me (that started with "Daddy Long Legs"). This is actually a book I'm going to buy to keep.

"High Wages" by Dorothy Whipple, first published in 1930

Set in the 1910s, this is the story of Jane who starts as a salesgirl at a draper's shop and eventually goes on to open her own shop after World War I.

I happened to catch the title on a blog I don't usually follow and got intrigued by the salesgirl to business owner story.
After reading the non-fiction book "The Bookshop, The Draper, The Candlestick Maker" by Annie Gray, I really enjoyed this book not just for the story itself, though, but also for the descriptions of the shops.

"Peter Pan: The Story of Peter and Wendy" by J. M. Barrie, first published as a novel in 1911 under the title "Peter and Wendy"

Peter Pan, the captain of the Lost Boys, is a mischievous boy living on the island of Neverland. He wants to stay a little boy and have adventures forever.
One night, he's taking the children Wendy, John, and Michael Darling to the island, so Wendy, the eldest and only girl, can become their mother.

From the digitized book I read

I had seen Peter Pan as a play and wanted to read the book as well before watching the first movie adaptation.

"Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens" by J. M. Barrie, first published in 1906 (most of it had already been part of the 1902 novel "The Little White Bird")

You might call this Peter Pan's origin story - how he flew out of the nursery window as he heard plans about his adult life being made and went to live in Kensington Gardens with the birds.

I hadn't heard about this at all before I started reading up on Peter Pan for a silent movie review.
The illustrations by Arthur Rackham are beautiful.

"Agnes Aubert's Mystical Cat Shelter" by Heather Fawcett, first published in 2026

Agnes's cat shelter needs a new home after a duel between magicians destroyed several buildings. Is it coincidence that she ends up in a building where one of those magician's runs his illegal shop from the basement?

Cats! That looked like enough for me to read this book.
I think after this one I'll be giving up on Fawcett's books, though. It reminded me way too much of a movie I have seen (I don't know the book it's based on yet) and love, but I didn't feel the same enthusiasm about this book.

"Miss Buncle's Book" by D. E. Stevenson, first published in 1934

Miss Buncle needs money, so she writes a book, and as she has no imagination, she writes about her own village.
The book becomes a best seller and Miss Buncle's neighbors are not amused to learn about themselves being seen through someone else's eyes.

After reading "Celia's House" last month and liking it a lot, I continued with this book and had a lot of fun with it.

"Hildur - Die Spur im Fjord" = "The Clues in the Fjord" by Satu Rämö, first published in 2022
(Hildur 1)

Hildur Rúnarsdóttir is a police officer on the west coast of Iceland. Still haunted by her two sisters disappearing 25 years before, she specializes in missed children cases.
This time, however, a pedophile is found with his throat cut, and he isn't the last body. Together with her Finnish colleague Jakob, she's trying to connect the dots.

Gail from Is This Mutton recommended the fourth book in the series, so I gave this a try.
I could have done with less repetitions and detailed descriptions of workouts, but the next book is on my list, anyway.

"Cinder House" by Freya Marske, first published in 2025

This is a retelling of Cinderella, but with a interesting twist.

The book was a random OverDrive find.

"Return to Foreverware" by Mike Ford, first published in 1997
(Eerie, Indiana 1)

The friends Marshall and Simon take a weekend job with the Stewarts (James and Martha who used to have a son called Rod(ney)) decluttering their attic. Something is weird about the couple, though, who seems to be stuck in the 70s.

The book is first one of the series based on the TV kids' show "Eerie, Indiana".
I re-read it for a blog post.

"Der Steppenwolf" = "Steppenwolf" by Hermann Hesse, first published in 1927 😸

Harry Haller sees himself as two souls, the human and the steppe wolf. Torn between both, he tries to make sense of the world and his life.

Since school I hadn't read any German "classics" and decided to try and read one a month now. No idea how this project is going to go.
This probably wasn't the best book to start with.
If I hadn't read it loud, I'm quite sure it would have become a DNF, it's definitely not going to go on the re-read list.

"Classic Movie Comedians" by Neil Sinyard, first published in 1992

This volume introduces us to some of the big comedians of the screen. There's a chapter on Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Harold Lloyd and Harry Langdon, Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy, W. C. Fields, and the Marx Brothers.

Sinyard is a British film critic and obviously a big fan of Chaplin as he didn't just get a chapter more than ten pages longer than all the others (Lloyd and Langdon even had to share one), but is also constantly mentioned in the other chapters. As a short introduction it was okay and a quick read with a lot of pictures. 

"Coming Up for Air" by George Orwell, first published in 1939

George Bowling is sure there will be war again soon. He begins to remember his life as a child and young man in Lower Binfield before World War I, and having won some money at a race, he decides to go back there for a few days trying to find the idyll of those times. He quickly finds out, however, that you can't go back.

This was one of my ex's favorite books. I stumbled upon it by accident the other day and thought I'd finally give it a go.


DNF:

"Theo of Golden" by Allen Levi, first published in 2025

An old man turns up in the town of Golden and makes friends with the residents there by buying the pencil portraits hanging on the walls of the coffee shop, giving them to the people in the portraits, and listening to their stories.

I kept seeing the book on blogs and thought the idea with the portraits was quite interesting. Then I kept struggling through half the book merely because I thought I must have been missing something. I wish I had listened to my gut earlier. Definitely not for me.

"Something Wicked This Way Comes" by Ray Bradbury, first published in 1962

Two 13 year old friends, Jim and William, have to deal with the nightmares of a traveling carnival and its leader Mr. Dark who holds strange powers.

I managed a little more than a third of the book, but while the idea was interesting, I didn't like the style at all. It felt as if the author enjoyed more playing with language than telling the story and in this case that just didn't work for me.

"The Female Detective" by Andrew Forrester, first published in 1864

The book tells us about several cases of Mrs Gladden, the first professional female detective in British fiction.

That was right up my alley, I thought, but after a third I gave up because I found the writing terribly dry and boring. I couldn't help thinking that a woman would have written this differently (and made it more interesting).

"The Librarianist" by Patrick deWitt, first published in 2023

This is "the story of Bob Comet, a man who has lived his life through and for literature, unaware that his own experience is a poignant and affecting narrative in itself."

I admit that the title and cover drew me in, but there wasn't enough book talk and too much dull flashback. I had really enjoyed the first part when Bob spontaneously volunteers at a senior center, but the longer the flashback, the more the narrative affected me in the wrong way. I made it through half the book and wasn't even interested in the ending.


By the way, if you write book reviews or blog posts about other book-related matters - even movies based on books - please check out "A Good Book and a Cup of Tea", a monthly bookish blog link party that I host together with Erin from Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs and Lisa from Boondock Ramblings. You can find out more about it here.