Silent Movies - Mighty Like a Moose

Last week I talked about an affair that had a tragic ending for some, today's affair is very different.
If I tell you that Charley Chase is part of this one, you may remember that he was known for comedy. I think we deserve one after last week's drama.
I give you "Mighty Like a Moose" from 1926 (seems I'm stuck in this year at the moment, but that's mere coincidence!).

Let's start with the plot (spoiler alert!).

Mr. Moose has buck teeth and Mrs. Moose has a big nose.

The neighbor kids - no respect. I had to add this picture because it reminds me of the scene in "A Christmas Story" when the kids pranked their teacher by wearing fake buck teeth (from wax as you can read in the book that inspired the movie ... I'm digressing, sorry).

Both Mr. and Mrs. Moose have saved for months to surprise their spouse with a face lift - et voilà.

Mr. Moose's dentist has a before and after picture taken and also presents his patient with a set of false teeth so his family will still be able to recognize him. He also invites him to a party this evening, but Mr. Moose declines saying he's married.
Then he meets Mrs. Moose in the hallway, but they don't recognize each other and start flirting, so he invites her to the party. They both don't feel very good about betraying their spouse, but on the other hand they can't resist after seeing the effect of their respective surgeries.

They arrive at home separately and don't notice each other at first doing kind of a "dance" around each other - one comes into a room when the other one is just leaving it.
Once at the party, Mr. Moose tries to get a dance with his date, but instead she gets whisked away while he is asked to dance with a lady who only knows the polka (unfortunately I didn't manage to get a screenshot that really conveys how hilarious that dance is).
What no one knows is that the police is already waiting to raid the party as they suspect the doctor of alcohol possession (prohibition time!) and "arrest everybody for practice".
Mr. Moose has spotted the policemen and warns Mrs. Moose. They both turn around only to have their picture taken by the police. Remember, they don't know they're a married couple.

At home, Mr. Moose is surprised to find his date entering his house shortly after him. He overhears her telling the maid about the surgery and is shocked that his wife betrayed him. So he tells Mrs. Moose as her date that he can't live without her, then comes back with his false teeth, and finally stages a fight between "the date" and "the husband" (with the help of a swinging boot).

Unfortunately for him, Mrs. Moose has found the newspaper which also shows the before and after picture of her husband. When she slaps him for trying to trick her with the fake fight, he loses the false teeth.
Where are they? Oh, found them!

Mistaken identities have been the base for comedies for a long time. So when one reviewer writes that he doesn't understand how they didn't recognize each other, it made me laugh.
My favorite example - Clark Kent/Superman. For some weird reason, people still know who I am even without my glasses.
At least, we learn that Mrs. Moose has also bought new clothes her husband doesn't know yet.

I was also delighted at the immediate success of the surgeries. No bandages, no traces, no pain, the patient hops out of the chair and everyone is happy.
Don't we wish it really were that easy?
If you wonder, by the way, nose jobs have been around for quite some time - first in India around 600 B.C. In the West, they really caught on in the late 19th century and were not just used for mere aesthetics later, but also to help men wounded in the war. 

The fight Mr. Moose had with himself obviously wasn't realistic, either, especially at the end when he changed identities in seconds and always came from the same side.
All of that was cleverly edited, only Superman could have been this fast.

Does all of that matter, though? Of course it doesn't!
The whole movie used the wonderful choreography to make the audience laugh, and it sure worked for me.
I also enjoyed the funny title cards. My favorite was the one when Mr. Moose enters the house and gets attacked by his dog who doesn't recognize him with the new teeth so he has to put the fake set in.

This is of course a hint at RCA's Nipper listening to "His Master's Voice" (check out my post about Nipper if you don't know what I'm talking about).

Conclusion - is the movie realistic? No. Is it funny? Heck, yeah!
Even "laughing out loud" funny to me.
So far I enjoyed every Charley Chase film I have watched and I'm looking forward to exploring more of them.


Further reading:

Fritzi Kramer: Mighty Like a Moose (1926) - A Silent Film Review. On: Movies Silently, April 27, 2014

Tell Us About ... Poetry

Time again for the Global Writing Challenge on the second Thursday of the 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:
October - Birthday
November - Superstition
December - Why do you blog?

Photo by Trust "Tru" Katsande on Unsplash

The prompt for today was "Poetry", chosen by Marsha.
Oh Marsha. If you asked me, I'd say don't have a poetic bone in my body. I have never written a poem myself, not even bad ones as a teenager - unless you count the group effort in our literature class - and the first thing I associate with poems is reciting them in German class, limericks in English class, and of course the various "Poesiealben" in my life, those of others and my own (if you don't know what those are, check out the link).

My first real encounter with poetry - except for nursery rhymes - was probably when I won this little book in the lottery of a church fest in the 70s.
I read the poems dutifully, all 28 examples of "great German ballads" as the subtitle tells us, (eight of them by Goethe, figures), because that's what you do when you win something (I also used the colorful plastic egg cups and spoons I won at the same fest), but the only one that really stuck was the fairy ballad "Erlkönig", possibly because of the creepy ending.

Having to recite and interpret poems in school didn't make them any more interesting to me. I have to confess that I often only started learning them by heart the day before which usually worked out fine. It happened only twice that I painfully stuttered my way through poems, Goethe's "Der Zauberlehrling" and Mörike's "Der Feuerreiter" (both of which are actually in this book). Isn't it weird how I still remember the embarrassment, but not the grades I got? The reason is probably knowing I deserved them both, but the embarrassment weighed heavier.
One year, I asked my German teacher what I'd get for reciting Schiller's "Die Bürgschaft". It had obviously been meant as a joke in a conversation, but she challenged the whole class to do that for an extra 1 (as small part of the "oral grade") and to her surprise about a third of the class did it. The ballad has 150 lines and I can only remember the first seven.
Don't dare ask me how much I remember of "Der Zauberlehrling"!

I like a lot of classical music, but when I still played the violin (in the 17th century) or sang in choirs (until the late 19th century aka before a thyroid surgery took most of my range away), I actively looked for it and now I stumble upon it.
It's the same with poems. I don't hate all poems that materialize in my path, on social media, for example, or as part of a novel.
These days, the only poems I read intentionally are by Bill Bilston. They materialized thanks to a friend sharing them on Facebook and stuck. Check out his homepage with the newsletter and you will probably understand why.
I even own one of his books (so far). That one won't surprise you, either.

What about song lyrics, though?
I found an article by René Ostberg on "Britannica" that ends with "The debate over whether songs are poems (or whether poems are songs) may never end. But no one can deny that poetry and music are art forms of universal power and beauty."
If lyrics aren't poems, what does that mean for a poem that has been turned into a song? Such as Franz Schubert's version of "Erlkönig"? Is it still a poem because a "poet" wrote it - and how do we define a poet? Can't a musician be also a poet? Feel free to debate that, but let me tell you that the German word "Poet" isn't used that much anymore, we say "Lyriker" instead. Exactly, just as in the English word "lyrics" for song texts which we call, well song texts, just in German.



Actually, we have a radio channel that has had a show called "Pop & Poesie" for a long time. You hear a song and the German translation. I always hated it because the translation was a voiceover and I wanted to hear the song. It became so popular, however, that the idea developed into "Pop & Poesie in Concert" in 2008. Actors and actresses perform the original and the German translations - open air in summer - and then a band performs the song. An important part of the concert is the interaction between moderator, performers and audience.
I hate crowds, so I have never been there, but in this format I can imagine you get to experience and feel song lyrics differently - like poetry.
There are certainly song texts I regard as such and I remember a lot more of those, believe me. So maybe there's a small poetic bone there after all.


Now let's see what the others have to tell us.

Amy uses poetry for fun with friends and family.  Her grandmother has a published book of poems and her mom wrote a Christmas poem each year for her cards. 

Suzy writes about the time she accidentally became a published poet, despite never really considering herself a poetry person!

Debbie looks back at posts from 2016 where she made poems using online magnetic tiles - it was part of a craze she went through!  Who knew it would prove useful 10 years later?

Sally shares some of her favorite American poets and poems.

Marsha writes about her two favorite poems.  I wonder if you’ll be surprised!

This month’s prompt threw Leslie for a loop.

Stop by her blog for more of the scoop.

Your turn! Poems - yes or no?


P.S. I forgot that I still remember some of Heinz Erhardt's poems, but since he was a German comedian, actor, poet, etc. you wouldn't know him, anyway.

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The iconic phone box

I'm old. So old that I have plenty of memories of standing in a yellow "Telefonzelle" (literally "phone cell") for a phone call, either because I didn't want anyone to listen in at home - calls to my boyfriend - or because I was out and about. Yes, so old that I spent half of my life without a cell phone.
Not all of those memories were good ... like the time I called the ex to tell him I flunked my first driving test. Others were weird ... like the time I had a kind of party line effect and one person didn't understand that I had not even called them.

I remember the times when there were no telephone cards and you could only pay with coins, even those when a local call was really cheap even if you talked longer than a few minutes.
At the time, you could still see the coins you put in run down the chute behind a little window. Making an international call made your money disappear faster than ice in hot water.

That brings back memories
although my very first ones are
of black phones.

The wrong telephone model, but
the right phone box (on the right).
Picture by Juergen Rosskamp,
 CC BY-SA 2.0 DE 
via Wikimedia Commons

The title, however, may give you an idea of "the iconic phone box" (hint: not calling it phone booth) I really want to talk about.
It's of course the British phone box in red - the K series from K1 to K8 (K standing for kiosk).

K2 and K6 (the most common model) telephone
 boxes in Smithfield Market
Picture by Mike Quinn, CC BY-SA 2.0,
via Wikimedia Commons

As you can tell, however, it's not a Random Saturday post which is a sign that I'm not going to talk about its history in detail.
Instead I'm going to show you my latest Lego project.
I've had the set around since October 2025 and there's a reason why I had completely forgotten about it until now.
Now it was high time, however, to get the (Lego) box off the floor and the (phone) box on my shelf.
At least, I kept telling that myself for a few weeks. Until we had a partial power failure in the house. To distract myself during waiting for either a technician fixing it remotely or having to come to us to check it out, I finally grabbed the box and started.
Two days later, they found the problem hadn't been solved and turned the power off for repairs (actually the whole block had been affected). So cut off from everything (except contact via my 18 year old cell phone which was charged for a change), I managed to keep going. Silver linings, eh?

This phone box is based on the K2 kiosk.
There were telephone kiosks even before the K1 which was made from concrete with a teak door.
Only with the K2 which was designed by Sir Giles Gilbert Scott (like the cheaper K3 and later the K2 successor K6) and chosen by the GPO (Post Office) out of five models in 1925, phone boxes got their red color.
The first K2 was erected in Charing Cross Road 100 years ago - in March 1926 -, the others were set up mostly in London as it was a costly design.
Today, around 200 of them still exist and are listed Grade II (buildings etc. of special interest in a national context).
If you are interested in more details, check out the article cited below.

It almost took me 100 years to build the kiosk, at least it felt like it - all my own fault too as I had to bring in the wrecking ball more than once to fix a few very stupid mistakes. But hey, I have those inexplicable bouts of patience and determination, just ignore the bite marks in the bench and the tears on the phone box, please 😜

I love the fence, it reminds me of some in front of
houses in my old neighborhood which I loved even as a child.

Detail views

K2 interior for comparison
Picture by Murgatroyd49,
CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

The phone box has a light brick. You press a button on top of the kiosk
and it lights up. It was hard to press the button and take a good picture
of the whole kiosk in the dark at the same time, but you get the idea.

It will look really good next to my London bus, don't you think?


Source and further reading (very interesting article):

Nigel Linge, Neil Johannessen, Andrew Hurley, Andy Simmons & Andy Sutton: Sir Giles Gilbert Scott’s K2 Telephone Kiosk — A Design Classic. In: Industrial Archeology Review, 46, 2024, 2, pp. 87 - 98. DOI 10.1080/03090728.2024.2410137 (open access)

Weekend Traffic Jam - Week 172

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.

About a week ago, we had some thunder, and sun, and rain, and sun again, and the sky surprised us with some amazing clouds and a golden light.
There was also a beautiful full moon later shining through the fast travelling clouds, but I didn't think of taking a picture.
My sister, however, took these pictures in the late evening. What do you see in the clouds?

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 Try It - Like It - Create It.

Janet from Try It - Like It - Create It says: "You have to try something before you know you like it. Try it – Like it – Create it explores crafting, new products, travel and recipes. Try it – Like it – Create it shares it and reviews it all!
Janet Van Lone Trieschman is a mom who loves to create. She left a career as a college professor teaching Graphic Design to raise her family. Looking for a creative outlet, Janet started a website; Try it – Like it – Create it."

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.

Soma shows us her Scotland inspired work.

Deb is talking about silliness.

Lynne has created a table setting with thrifted finds.

Amalia tells us about the lychee eating Captain of the Guard.

Esme has a ham courgette mushroom quiche (prepared by Rochelle) for us (obviously I'd skip the ham being vegetarian).


Let's link up!

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Silent movies - Flesh and the Devil

This is not the first time I present a movie based on a book by German dramatist Hermann Sudermann (see here), but this is the first time I have one for you starring Greta Garbo and John Gilbert. Interested?
Prepare for "Flesh and the Devil" from 1926.

Here's the plot (with spoilers!).

Ulrich von Eltz, his sister Hertha, and Leo von Harden have been friends since childhood.
Ulrich and Leo are soldiers in a hussar regiment together.
 

When they are on home leave and get off the train to meet Hertha (who's desperately in love with Leo) and Leo's mother, Leo falls in love with a woman also getting off the train.

He meets her again at the first ball of the season and they begin a passionate affair.
Unfortunately, Felicitas "forgets" to tell Leo that she's married, and her husband surprises them and challenges Leo to a duel, but to avoid a scandal, a dispute at cards is given as the official reason.
Leo shoots Count von Rhaden and is advised by the military court to enlist in the African service for five years.
He asks Ulrich to look after Felicitas while he's gone. Ulrich visits Felicitas, and not knowing about her affair with Leo, he falls for her immediately. When he offers her his advice, she's not interested, but when she hears that he's rich and that "his purse is Leo's", he has her attention.

Leo is allowed to return after three years. Of course, he hurries home, but is shocked to be welcomed at the station by Ulrich and his wife - Felicitas.
He's determined to avoid them both from now on, but he can't stay away when Felicitas tells him how much Ulrich suffers from his friend's absence.

Felicitas keeps trying to seduce Leo, and despite the pastor delivering a fiery sermon aimed at them, they finally can't resist and decide to go away together that night.

Felicitas has packed and is waiting for Leo, but Ulrich comes back from a trip earlier than expected. He brings his wife an expensive diamond bracelet as a gift, and when Leo arrives to take her away, she lets him know that she isn't brave enough to leave and asks why they can't just stay and go on like this?

Leo is disgusted by the idea and tries to choke her when Ulrich storms in (we got a choking scene in the other Sudermann based movie as well, by the way). Felicitas claims that Leo wanted to force her to go away with him and choked her after she refused. Outraged, Ulrich challenges Leo to a duel in the morning.
The next morning - the men are already on their way to the Isle of Friendship where they became blood brothers as children - Hertha makes her way to Felicitas's room and implores her to prevent the duel.

Ulrich warns Leo that he will shoot to kill, but Leo just lifts the gun not pointing at Ulrich which makes his friend suddenly realize that Leo has loved Felicitas even before he did. They know that their friendship is more important than falling out over a woman.

Meanwhile, Felicitas has given in to Hertha's pleas. On her way to the island, however, she hits some thin ice and drowns without anyone hearing her cries for help.

Wow.
To be honest, I had expected some eye rolling as this kind of plot is usually too dramatic for me, and you may think the same from seeing the pictures.
That's not surprising as Sudermann's novel that the movie it's based on is from 1894, and having some experience with old "Engelhörnchen" or adventure novels that delve into military or student or Western bromances, I had been prepared. There's a lot of hugging.
 

My best friend and I never had the guts to become
"blood sisters", maybe a sculpture like that
would have helped us with that ... 😉

It's rather weird, but part of me feels the urge to make fun of the movie for its drama, its overacting in some scenes (I really thought Garbo overdid it in the scene with Hertha), the heroic bromance, and also for some of the comic relief moments, for example with the tippling pastor.

Another part isn't happy about the misogyny typical for that time.
Felicitas is the villain of the movie and there is no doubt she is the big manipulator, but it seems that she gets the whole blame because she's a woman, and I thought that wasn't quite fair.
At one point, the pastor says to Leo: "My boy, when the devil cannot reach us through the spirit ... he creates a woman beautiful enough to reach us through the flesh." (hence the title, in German the book and film are just called "Es war" (It was)).
Which of course gives Leo immediate absolution from giving in to temptation even after Felicitas is married a second time. To his best friend. Whom he hasn't told about the real reason for the first duel. His best friend, his blood brother. I wonder why he didn't tell him? Was he ashamed? Not ashamed enough, though, not to repeat the mistake? Because Eva, sorry, Felicitas was "beautiful enough" (which is an insult to women in itself in my opinion).

There were a few scenes to make us see how evil Felicitas was (so much that she had to die at the end).
We don't get to see the first duel completely, we only know Count von Rhaden died when his widow tries on black hats with a smirk on her face.
When the pastor delivers his accusatory sermon, she just looks at him and slowly refreshes her lipstick. In church!
When they receive their communion, the pastor turns the cup with the wine a little for each person, but she deliberately turns it back to press her lips to the same spot as Leo.

You may expect from me now to say that I didn't like the movie, but you would be wrong. I noticed all of these things, and yes, there was a bit of eye rolling here and there, but overall I really enjoyed the movie and Garbo is the main reason for that.
It's not difficult to see how this movie became her breakthrough.
She plays the femme fatale wonderfully and her scenes with Gilbert - which are quite steamy - profited from their budding relationship starting while shooting the film (which was of course very interesting to the audience).
Garbo kept working with the director Clarence Brown and the cinematograph William H. Daniels, if you watch the movie, you'll understand why. The light, the mood, it was the perfect stage for her - and for the whole story.

Countdown of the first duel

I watched the movie with a score by Carl Davis (you may know his work from "Pride and Prejudice" with Jennifer Ehle and Colin Firth) who wrote a lot of beautiful silent film music. It really enhanced the overall feeling.

Time for my final words - the movie absolutely gets a recommendation from me.

P.S. Oh hey, I almost forgot to mention the alternate ending that they didn't use. You see Ulrich and Leo sit with Leo's mother when Hertha comes out telling them that she's going to move to Munich now that she's 18. She gets in the carriage, but Leo runs after it. He makes her get out and they are standing there, lost in each others' eyes.
Glad they didn't use that!
P.P.S. Pet peeve alert ... it sure doesn't look as if they let a German handle the German phrases ...


Further reading:

1. "JEC": Flesh and the Devil (1926). On: A Cinema History, June 2018
2. Brandie Ashe: Feminist Fridays: Flesh and the Devil (1926). On: True Classics, September 10, 2010

A Good Book & a Cup of Tea - September 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 August party.

Lydia writes about the books she read on her travels in July (set in the countries she went to).

Veronica started her "Battle of the First Lines, 2026". Which book will have the best first line?

Erin tells us about bookish places she visited.

Marsha is a knitter and reviewed the book "The Friday Night Knitting Club" by Kate Jacobs.


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).

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My August 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.

"Hildur - Die Toten am Meer" = "The Secrets from the Deep" by Satu Rämö, first published in 2024
(Hildur 4)

Hildur Rúnarsdóttir is a police officer on the west coast of Iceland.
Four skeletons are found on the farm of Hildur's late parents. A badly hurt kitchen worker escapes off a cruise ship. And a close friend of Hildur's mother dies unexpectedly in her nursing home.
Are these cases connected?

I skipped the third book in the series because it was about animal abuse, but wasn't too enthusiastic about this one, either.

"Zwei Sommer mit Christiane" (contains the books "Recht nette Mädchen" and "100 Tage mit Christiane") by Barbara Hug, first published in 1954 and 1957

The first book tells the story of the four Andresen daughters Andrea, Martina, Petra, and Christiane who live in a small town in Southwest Germany with their mother.
The second book, set a few years later, tells the story of Christiane taking care of Martina's son while she and her husband are in Italy for work.

In this heat, I needed a nice and quick read (one of many re-reads over the years in this case) and I have loved these two books since childhood. They are not as fluffy as they may sound as they also touch on the topics of displaced persons after the war, poverty, community, and thinking about the future.

"The Third Man" by Graham Greene, first published in 1950

Rollo Martins is invited to post-war Vienna - still divided among the Allied powers - by his old friend Harry Lime. When he arrives, however, he learns that Harry has died in a traffic accident. Rollo meets Major Calloway who tells him that Harry was involved in a racket with diluted penicillin, but Rollo doesn't believe him and starts investigating on his own.

I re-watched the movie for a random Saturday blog post and then read the novella which was just a treatment for the movie originally and differs a little from it in some details.

"Miss Buncle Married" by D. E. Stevenson, first published in 1936

Miss Buncle, now married to her publisher Mr Abbott, has found a new house at Wandlebury and has just as much interest in her new neighbors as she had in those in Silverstream, but will she write a book about them?

I really enjoyed the first "Miss Buncle" book, but think I liked this one even better because it's calmer. I didn't laugh as much, but I grew fonder of the people, especially Barbara and Arthur as a couple.
"The garden — as a garden — did not interest Arthur very much, but the garden and Barbara combined interested him enormously. Barbara was enchanting in the garden, so eager and pleased and happy, so surprised to find the things that she had planted — or caused to be planted — in the Autumn were really coming up. Barbara was more Barbara-ish than ever when she was in her garden, and Arthur could never have enough of the blend."

"Lulu in Hollywood" by Louise Brooks, first published in 1982

The book contains seven autobiographical essays by dancer and silent movie star Louise Brooks, for example her view on Bogart, on Gish and Garbo or on her experience on filming in Berlin. There's also a later edition with an eighth essay.

I had heard about Louise Brooks before, but haven't seen a movie with her yet. The most interesting essay for me was the last one on her filming "Pandora's Box" in Berlin (pet peeve alert - in the filmography it says "Die Buchse der Pandora" which gave me another eye roll because it's "Büchse", a "Buchse" is a socket!).

"The Three Investigators in The Mystery of the Flaming Footprints" by M. V. Carey (the books were published attributed to Alfred Hitchcock), first published in 1971 😸
(The Three Investigators 15)

Why has the eccentric man called The Potter disappeared just when he's expecting his daughter and grandson? Who are the men watching Mrs. Dobson and Tom and why do they do it?
Once again, the Three Investigators get confronted with the secrets of a small European country.

I read this series a long time ago and am going through it again bit by bit after writing a blog post about it.

"The Red House Mystery" by Alan Alexander Milne, first published in 1922

Antony Gillingham just wanted to visit his friend Bill Beverley who's staying at the Red House, but instead he and Matthew Cayley - the cousin of the house owner Mark Ablett - find a body in the office!
Gillingham becomes a veritable "Holmes" and makes Bill his "Watson".

I hadn't known that Milne wrote a mystery - just this one - before seeing it in a book post by Jeanie from "The Marmelade Gypsy". Thank you, Jeanie, I enjoyed this one a lot! What a pity that Gillingham stayed a one hit wonder.

"Take Six Girls: The Lives of the Mitford Sisters" by Laura Thompson, first published in 2015 (also as "The Six")

You would think this is just a biography of the six Mitford sisters Nancy, Pamela, Diana, Unity, Jessica, and Deborah (there was also a brother Tom) who are known for their very different positions on life and politics in their time (communism, anti-semitism, fascism to name just a few keywords).

It's not that easy, though.
It was interesting if you already know something about the family - I had seen documentaries - but you are better prepared for a lot of names (and nicknames!) and time jumps, and you really should have read Nancy's novels first because they get referenced a lot as well as names that were never explained.
In short, this is not really what I expect from a biography.
I was never in danger of DNFing, but I felt there was some fangirling/whitewashing - I can't excuse fascism even for a bit just because someone has a strong personality, intelligence, a gorgeous face and elegance, and that's just one example.
Maybe it's too difficult to explain the Mitford "phenomenon" in just one single book.

"Bekenntnisse des Hochstaplers Felix Krull" = "Confessions of Felix Krull" by Thomas Mann, first published in 1922 (the first fragment)

The unfinished novel (written from 1910 to 1913 and late 1950 to 1954) tells the story of Felix Krull who, after the suicide of his father, a bankrupt maker of sparkling wine, goes to Paris to work in a hotel and then substitutes for the Marquis de Venosta on a trip around the world paid for by the Marquis's parents who try to tear their son away from a French singer (and if you think that was a long sentence, you should see the book).
The narrative ends with Krull being in Lisbon, the first destination of the trip.

According to Wikipedia, - I honestly didn't feel like checking more sources - the novel is supposed to be a parody on Goethe's autobiography "Aus meinem Leben. Dichtung und Wahrheit" (Poetry and Truth). Remind me not to read that one because I seriously struggled through this one (and I don't care how autographical parts of it are).
It's practically a miracle and a sign of my dedication to this project (reading at least one German classic a month) that I didn't DNF it. There were big parts which bored me almost to tears.
I say narrative, but nothing really happens in hundreds of pages! The protagonist is a smug little punk, and the pompous rambling - which I guess is the parody part - made me happy for not having to put up with this kind of speech in daily life.

"Tennis Shoes" by Noel Streatfeild, first published in 1937
(Shoes 2)

Dr. Heath and his father had been good tennis players, but the father is too old now and Dr. Heath suffered a leg injury in World War I.
What about the children, though - the twins Jim and Susan, the younger Nicky, and David? Have they got what they need to become successful tennis players?

This is the second book in the "shoe series" although the only connection are the shoes in the title.
I never played tennis, I don't watch tennis, but I needed some light after Felix Krull and the book worked perfectly - although I have to admit that I wasn't a fan of Dr. Heath's methods of motivating and educating his children.

"Go Gentle" by Maria Semple, first published in 2026

Adora Hazzard, former comedy writer turned philosopher who tutors the twins of a rich couple, lives in New York and has started a "coven" in her building of single women who have each others' back - then she happens to meet a man and her life is not what it was before.

I'm not sure what this book wants to be. I liked the idea of the coven, I enjoyed the philosophical quotes, but then we get flashbacks (trigger warning sexual assault), art crimes, and a romance all of which seemed very muddled to me. Spoiler:

Spoiler: Adora is the heroine of the day in the end. With huge happy ending and a super rich man.

At about 60 % I was very close to DNFing. Maybe I should have.

"Death on the Cherwell" by Mavis Doriel Hay, first published in 1935

Four undergraduates of the Persephone College in Oxford meet on the roof of the boathouse to form a secret society when a canoe comes floating in which they find the body of their bursar Myra Denning.
The young ladies wonder how a drowned woman can get back into her canoe ...

I have a soft spot for vintage crimes at Cambridge and Oxford (time to read "Gaudy Night" for the umpteenth time, I think), probably because I work at a university made up of a lot of concrete.
I really liked this one.

"Goodbye, Mr. Chips" by James Hilton, first published in 1933 (in the Christmas edition of "British Weekly") and in 1934 (as a book)

Mr. Chipping was the Latin master of Brookfield School - a public boarding school - for decades and has helped out even after his retirement.
Now he remembers his life in and for the school.

A re-read (in English this time, I own the German translation) for a future blog post about the novella and adaptations.

A fun little P.S. This is listed as a translation of the book into Urdu. Obviously I can't read Urdu and can't tell you if that's true ... and I have absolutely no idea how that cover is supposed to make any sense if it is!

"To You Mr. Chips!" by James Hilton, first published in 1938

In this book, Hilton talks a little about his own school experiences and tells some more Mr. Chips stories.

When I re-read "Goodbye, Mr. Chips", I happened to find out about this book which I didn't know before.

"Bright Young Things: Lives in the Roaring 20s" by Alison Maloney, first published in 2012

The book gives you short glimpses into the life of the "smart set" mostly in the London of the 1920s.
It includes chapters about jazz, cocktails, scandals, debutantes, and more.
A quick read with quotes and short biographies, a nice appetizer to start you off if you are interested in that time.

"Victorian Fairy Painting" by Jeremy Maas et al., first published in 1997

The book was published on the occasion of the exhibition "Victorian Fairy Painting" which travelled from London to Iowa City, Toronto, and New York.
It includes a catalog with short biographies and comments and essays on fairy painting, writing, music, and illustration, but also the connection to the stage, especially Shakespeare.

I stumbled upon this one after finding the sketchbook by Charles Altamont Doyle which I listed in my July roundup.

"Japanese Gothic" by Kylie Lee Baker, first published in 2026

After murdering his roommate in college, Lee flees to the house in Japan that his father has moved to. However, something is strange about this house that used to belong to samurais. Who is the girl looking in from another world and time?

Every, now and then I think I should read a book outside my comfort zone. This shouldn't have been one of them.


DNF

"The Suspicions of Mr Whicher or The Murder at Road Hill House" by Kate Summerscale, first published in 2008

The non-fiction book tells the story of a child murdered in Victorian England and of Jack Whicher who was one of the original eight members of London's new "Detective Branch" at Scotland Yard.

I watched the TV show whose first episode is about this case and wanted to read the book more because of Whicher than the case, but I gave up quite early as it was so boring to read. 



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 co-host with  Lisa from Boondock Ramblings and Erin from Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs. You can find out more about it here or directly click through to the current party via the image in the right hand column.