Welcome to Litsy!

I've been wanting to reread this series for quite some time, so I was pleased when the first book was chosen as this month's read for the #BakerStreetIrregulars, giving me an excuse to kick off the series reread!! This book was just as funny and entertaining as I remember, with just delightful characters and a romp of a mystery. I remember reading that Peters wasn't intending this to be a series originally, so this one ends with a HEA epilogue ⬇

The conclusion to The Hoboken Chicken Emergency is just as ridiculous and fun as the first two. Nick and his two friends are bored in the summer heat and decide to try creating art. They make new friends, participate in an art contest, and visit a museum under the chaperonage of a giant chicken dressed as a nun. 😂 Somehow Pinkwater makes it work.

#SeriesLove2024 @TheSpineView @Andrew65
#100YearsofBooks (2005)
#BacklistReadathon

Either you find Pinkwater's snarky, offbeat humor to be hilarious, or you find it to be completely bizarre and not particularly funny. I'm in the pro-Pinkwater camp and while this isn't as funny as The Snark-Out Boys and the Avocado of Death, it's still great fun.

I think I'm in the minority here, but this one just wasn't for me, despite having really enjoyed some of Harper's other books. This story was just relentlessly depressing. With a strong focus on abuse and how that reverberates through a family even when the abuser is gone, plus some bonus content regarding rape, divorce, community ostracizing, depression, suicide, isolation, etc. I was just honestly sad the entire time I was reading this. ⬇

This book gets full marks for being absolutely lovely, with tons of beautiful photographs. However, while the theme was good, the material was very repetitive. They gave the steps for planning a garden (found in virtually any gardening book: hardscape, focal points, anchor plants, filler plants, groundcover), then said, “you can replace any of your regular plants with edible plants!!“ and then covered the same steps for your front yard, back yard⬇

When I was ambivalent towards the first Lord Peter book, I had SO many people tell me that the series gets better as it goes along, so I've had the second book sitting about for quite some time waiting for me to pick it up. I did enjoy this one more (and found Lord Peter less annoying), but I also thought the mystery was a little weak. Still, I'll get around to book 3 one of these days. Soft pick.

Wow, reading the GR synopsis made me realize that my 1931 edition is LITERALLY an entirely different story from the later version! Maybe that's because this one didn't have a super cohesive mystery. It's mostly Nancy and her friends riding around mountains getting almost eaten by wild animals 😂 I was cracking up at the way some of the situations resolved themselves at the end (wife of husband with amnesia perfectly happy he's coming home with a ⬇

So in the end, the first book was my favorite of the four, but this was still a satisfying conclusion. There was one plot gimmick that mildly annoyed me (see spoiler), but these books are so ridiculous that I just kept rolling with it haha 100% absurd, shallow melodrama that I totally was into 😂

I've had mixed results with Goudge's books, but this one was a win for me. She tends to write books that are more like interconnected character sketches for the first half of the story, so it's a slow start. But she also writes compellingly realistic and relatable people. Religion plays a big part here, but her characters don't use it as a crutch or a bandaid or an excuse. ⬇

Not the tagged book, but by the same author. This horse story has languished on my shelves for decades, and I'm not sure why I've never read it. Published (and set) during the Korean War, a young man leaves for the armed forces. His younger brother, who has a club foot and is ineligible to fight, stays behind and raises the colt they're convinced can be a champion harness racer. While fairly typical horse book fare, I still really enjoyed this ⬇