Nancy Drew: Nancy’s Mysterious Letter by Carolyn Keene
I hope to watch:
Bette Davis movies for my Spring of Bette, including Now Voyager and Jezebel.
I’ve already watched It’s Love I’m After, The Working Man, and Another Man’s Poison for the feature.
How was your March, and what do you hope to read or watch in April?
If you write book reviews or book-related blog posts, don’t forget that Erin and I host the A Good Book and A Cup of Tea Monthly Bookish Blog Party. You can learn more about it here.
On Thursdays, I am part of the Weekend Traffic Jam Reboot blog link party. You can find the latest one in the sidebar to the right under recent posts.
Hello! Welcome to my blog. I am a blogger, homeschool mom, and I write cozy mysteries.
You can find my Gladwynn Grant Mystery series HERE.
Here is some advice for you if you decide to read Crooked House by Agatha Christie: If you think that you know who the guilty party is, but you’re uncomfortable with who you think the guilty party is, go with that feeling and your choice.
That won’t make sense until you read the book, so here is a little background on this one, which does not feature one of Christie’s famous detectives.
This book is a standalone novel that starts with the main character Charles Hayward planning to marry Sophia Leonides who he met in Egypt toward the end of the war. They hang out while in Eqypt and correspond some afterward, but drift apart until he returns to England two years later. It’s after his return that he reads in the paper that Sophia’s grandfather has died. He knows it is her grandfather because she once told him all about her family.
“’We live in a crooked little house . . .’”
“I must have looked startled, for she seemed amused, and explained by elaborating the quotation. ‘And they all lived together in a little crooked house,’ That’s us. Not really such a little house either. But definitely crooked — running to gables and halftimbering!”
In this case the crooked little house quote is a play on the nursery rhyme “There Was a Crooked Little Man,” but I am not familiar with that nursery rhyme.
Due to the blitz, Sophia’s extended family was all living in the house with the patriarch, Aristide Leonides, a short Greek man who commanded a lot of presence. Her family includes her younger brother and sister, her parents, her uncle and an aunt by marriage, her grandfather, a great aunt, and a step-grandmother.”
Charles reaches out to her by telegram, and she asks to meet that night at a local restaurant. The connection they had two years ago is still strong, and he still wants to marry her, but she says she can’t marry him now, and maybe never. She believes her grandfather has been murdered, and she doesn’t want to ruin Charles’ reputation as a member of the Diplomatic Service because she feels certain the murder was committed by someone in her family.
The main suspect is her step-grandmother, Brenda, with the tutor for Sophia’s siblings a close second because the family believes the two were having an affair.
In the first part of the book, we get to know the entire family, and it isn’t very pretty. Many of them are selfish and bitter people looking out for themselves, and the ones who don’t seem that way may be putting on an act. Maybe even Sophia is putting on an act. Figuring out who committed the crime will baffle Charles and Scotland Yard, and when you get to the ending — oof. It’s definitely a plot twist, one I saw coming, but still had to find out how and why.
I would definitely recommend this one if you’ve never read Agatha before or even if you have. I think it’s one of her best, and I read today that she called it one of her favorites to write. It is definitely a book that will stick with you over the years, making you think (and shudder a bit) long after you’ve put it down.
Some quotes from it I enjoyed:
“Curious thing, rooms. Tell you quite a lot about the people who live in them.”
***
“I think people more often kill those they love than those they hate. Possibly because only the people you love can really make life unendurable to you.”
***
“I’ve never met a murderer who wasn’t vain… It’s their vanity that leads to their undoing, nine times out of ten. They may be frightened of being caught, but they can’t help strutting and boasting and usually they’re sure they’ve been far too clever to be caught.”
***
“Murder, you see, is an amateur crime… One feels, very often, as though these nice ordinary chaps, had been overtaken, as it were, by murder, almost accidentally. They’ve been in a tight place, or they’ve wanted something very badly, money or a woman – and they’ve killed to get it. The brake that operates with most of us doesn’t operate with them… They continue to be aware that murder is wrong, but they do not feel it. I don’t think, in my experience, that any murderer has really felt remorse… Murderers are set apart, they are ‘different’ – murder is wrong – but not for them – for them it is necessary – the victim has ‘asked for it,’ it was ‘the only way.”
It’s time for our Sunday morning chat. On Sundays, I ramble about what’s been going on, whatthe rest of the familyand I have been reading and watching, andwhat I’ve been writing. Some weeks I share what I am listening to.
First things first – He is risen! He is risen indeed! Happy Resurrection Sunday!
What a week last week was — or at least part of it.
I wrote about it on the blog yesterday for my Saturday Afternoon Chat but the gist of it was my husband had a wisdom tooth pulled under sedation at a dentist about 90-minutes away from where we live (it went very well), our youngest cat was sprayed with a skunk early Friday morning (he still stinks so bad after two baths), and Little Miss had nausea all week from possible food poisoning.
But then, to make the week a little better, Little Miss won a local Easter coloring contest from the small weekly newspaper in our county and received an absolutely huge Easter basket full of goodies yesterday.
We couldn’t even believe how big the basket was or how much stuff was in there. It was very kind of the newspaper to hold the contest and then provide such amazing gifts to the winners.
The owner/publisher of the paper is our neighbor but “an independent board of residents” judges the contest, he said, so he and his wife (who also works at the paper) were pleasantly surprised to see Little Miss win the first prize.
While picking up the gift basket, I apologized to him for stinking up the neighborhood since it was our cat that got sprayed, but he said he didn’t smell it luckily. He asked which cat it was and when I told him it was the youngest he said he feels bad for Cass (the youngest) because he keeps trying to get in fights with their old cat Oscar and Oscar has like 20 pounds on him.
“He keeps beating Cass up,” my neighbor said.
I told our neighbor that Cass is young and has to learn his place and stay in his own territory, so I guess he will have to learn not to push Oscar’s buttons. Then Oscar won’t have to beat him up. Ha.
We both did say we hope Oscar doesn’t hurt him too bad, though and I’ll be keeping more of an eye on him so he doesn’t go up there. Our properties run right together, though, so it might be hard to do. So far, Cass hasn’t looked beat up so I don’t think Oscar’s aim is to hurt him, but to tell him to head back home.
Yesterday The Husband was driving from the town where he works to the town where our closest Aldi is to pick our groceries when he called me.
As he usually does on this drive, he said to be about 10 minutes in, “Okay, I have to let you go. I’m getting to the Marie Antoinette, and I’m going to lose you.”
Non-locals would probably be confused by this. He’s almost to Marie Antoinette? What does that even mean? Wasn’t she the French queen who was guillotined? Yes, she was, and she’s also the French queen whose servants and fellow noblemen took a ship to the United States when the revolution started heating up to set up a community for her in what is now Pennsylvania. Many of those servants stayed in our area even after she was killed, while some returned to France.
Because there was a connection to her, though, there are sites in our area named after her — including an overlook called the Marie Antoinette overlook and an inn called the Marie Antoinette Inn.
My husband’s cell service disappears at the Marie Antoinette Overlook and then comes back about ten minutes later, but remains spotty until he reaches the town where the Aldi is. That’s why he announces he is at the Marie Antoinette, and he has to go.
Why did I explain all this? I have no idea. I just found it an interesting way to tie in our local history.
What I/We’ve Been Reading
Just Finished
The Singing Treeby Kate Seredy
In Progress
Right now, I am readingDamsel in Distressby P.G. Wodehouse (so much fun) and Heidi by Johanna Spyri.
I’m reading Heidi with Erin from Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs.
I am also reading Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis and Still Meadows by Gladys Tabor, which is a book with chapters for each month so I am probably going to read a chapter a month throughout the year.
Up Soon
Up next, I am reading A Caribbean Mystery by Agatha Christie as part of the Christie Challenge for 2026.
I am also looking forward to a Murder She Wrote book, Aloha Betrayal, sometime in April.
What The Family is Reading
The Husband just finished Hamnet. He loved it.
Little Miss and I are going to start Heidi this week as she said that sounded more interesting than the other book I was going to read to her for school.
What I/We’ve Been Watching
This past week I watched Shadow of the Thin Man and a lot of Murder, She Wrote.
I also watched the season finale of A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms with The Boy.
I am listening to The Best of Jeeves and Wooster on Audible. I don’t do well with audiobooks, though, so we will see how it goes.
This for Easter:
Some Housekeeping
Erin (Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs) and I host a monthly bookish link party called A Good Book and A Cup of Tea. 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. You can find that link up for this month here.
Each week, I host the Weekend Traffic Jam Reboot with some great hosts. It goes live Thursday night but you can share any kind of blog posts (family-friendly) there until Tuesday of each week. You can check my recent posts on the sidebar to the right for the most recent link-party.
Now It’s Your Turn
What have you been doing, watching, reading, listening to, or writing?
Thursday morning, as I mentioned in my Weekend Traffic Jam Reboot post (don’t forget to link your posts there, fellow bloggers!), The Husband had a tooth extracted with IV sedation and we thought it was going to be a lot worse than it was. The tooth was close to the sinus and broken so it was set up with an oral surgeon about 90 minutes from us.
I don’t drive as much as I once did because of my autoimmune conditions (vertigo, weakness, fatigue, aches and pains. All the good stuff.) but there was no one else to take him, so I had to suck it up and do it.
Long story short, the procedure went well and he was only a bit loopy on the way back, and the drive went well as well. That’s a lot of wells, but, well….that’s how I do it on here. Repeating myself and overusing words.
But I digress …. The Husband actually drove us to the dentist so I would know the route and then I drove home.
I thought he was tracking fairly well, but on the way home, he told me three times in the 90-minute drive that they couldn’t find his vein at first and he told me twice that they asked if he wanted a shot to numb him or the IV sedation. They’d told him when he first called that he’d have to do IV sedation so that’s what he got.
He also asked me twice if I had his prescriptions so we could drop it off at the pharmacy on the way into town. I told him both times that I did.
In the early evening, he came downstairs after a long nap to get some food I’d made him (soft food of course) and said he didn’t even remember saying those things, let alone more than once.
Luckily, that was about the extent of his loopiness. He did ask about 15 minutes into our drive home if he thought I was really that loopy or if I was messing with him so maybe he was actually repeating his stories on purpose. I don’t think so, though, because yesterday he insisted he didn’t remember those conversations at all.
I appreciated the prayers of friends and family because I certainly felt them.
Now, I would not have let my husband drive to his appointment had I known he’d barely had any sleep at all due to nerves and our kitten waking him up at 1 a.m. by yowling. This is a new thing that the kitten that was dropped off at our house in October has been doing for a week or more.
We have no idea why he is so loud and cries so much late at night and in the middle of the night. Actually, thinking back, it all started the week of Daylight Savings Time. First, he was crying at 6 because The Husband usually gets up at 7. Then he started yowling at 5:30.
Eventually, it was 4 and then 1.
He’s an inside/outside cat so the night before The Husband’s dentist appointment, The Boy put the cat outside via his upstairs window. The kitten, Cass, frequently climbs up the trellis, on to the roof, and walks to The Boy’s window and meows (loudly) to be let in and we know he can easily climb back down again. I actually watched his descent the other day and was very impressed since there really isn’t enough room for a cat to walk on top of the trellis. Cats really are amazing.
But they can also be annoying and Cass has been annoying.
So Thursday night, everyone was exhausted from a long day and Cass started again. The Husband was exhausted, still sore, and dealing with the aftereffects of the sedation so he took him downstairs and put him outside about 1:30.
About 8 a.m. I wake up to yowling from Cass and notice the bathroom door is closed. I figure he got locked in by someone who wanted him to shut up so I got to the door. I can hear water running and The Boy telling Cass to calm down.
I open the door and find out that little monster climbed on to the roof, to my son’s window, and yowled to be let in. When The Boy opened the window he was hit with the overwhelming odor of skunk.
The kitten, who is usually inside at night, had finally had his run in with a skunk and probably hadn’t been smart enough yet to leave it alone. So The Boy was trying to wash him. He still smelled horrible so he was put in the garage until later in the day when I let him out to explore outside.
The kids washed him again with a suggested mixture we found online but he still smelled horrid so he spent another night in the garage last night.
We all worried he might get himself hurt but the garage is safer than being out with the other wild creatures all night. Our basement isn’t finished and is full of dirt that The Boy is allergic to our we would have put him there.
I don’t know if some of my longtime blog readers will remember, but our cat Scout used to be the crazy one. Climbing a tree and falling out of it and almost dying and then climbing a tree and getting stuck in the tree so the neighbor (who is on the borough/town council) called the fire department for us. They came out with a huge ladder truck and rescued her.
Cass is taking the cake, though, and making us all exhausted and stressed in the process.
Little Miss was sick with a stomach thing this week too so we’ve had quite a crazy week. We think she and I had food poisoning from some fried chicken we picked up at a supermarket in the town where she has her art classes. Mine was more mild and I thought it was due to something else, but her nausea lasted all week and she threw up once. She only started to feel much better yesterday.
Tomorrow we are going to my parents for Easter, Monday we are going to pick up Little Miss’s new glasses and look for a new dresser she’s been asking for.
She says she needs at least three drawers so she can separate her sweaters, shirts, and pants.
She’s become quite fashion conscience lately and has also started sorting her clothes by colors in her drawers — not sure what that is about but we’ll go with it. I’ve heard of people doing weirder things.
So that was my week — not very relaxing or fun, but that’s life.
How was your week?
Do anything interesting? Or have an interesting week coming up?
Let me know in the comments.
If you write book reviews or book-related blog posts, don’t forget that Erin and I host the A Good Book and A Cup of Tea Monthly Bookish Blog Party. You can learn more about it here.
On Thursdays, I am part of the Weekend Traffic Jam Reboot blog link party. You can find the latest one in the sidebar to the right under recent posts.
Hello! Welcome to my blog. I am a blogger, homeschool mom, and I write cozy mysteries.
You can find my Gladwynn Grant Mystery series HERE.
Welcome to the Weekend Traffic Jam Reboot, where we offer a place for bloggers to link up and get a fresh set of eyes on their posts. We also feature one blog a week, letting our readers know about the blog and providing a link so readers can learn more about it.Please feel free to post new blog posts or old ones you want to bring attention to again.
Look for the post to go live about 9:30 PM EST on Thursdays.
This morning The Husband had a tooth extracted with IV sedation and we thought it was going to be a lot worse than it was. The tooth was close to the sinus and broken so it was set with an oral surgeon about 90 minutes from us.
I don’t drive as much as I once did because of my autoimmune conditions (vertigo, weakness, fatigue, aches and pains. All the good stuff.) but there was no one else to take him, so I had to suck it up and do it.
Long story short, the procedure went well and he was only a bit loopy on the way back.
He actually drove us there so I would know the route and then I drove home.
He did tell me three times in the 90-minute drive that they couldn’t find his vein and twice he told me they asked if he wanted a shot to numb him or the IV sedation. They’d told him when he first called that he’d have to do IV sedation so that’s what he got.
He also asked me twice if I had his prescriptions so we could drop it off at the pharmacy on the way into town. I told him both times that I did.
In the early evening, he came downstairs after a long nap to get some food I’d made him (soft foods of course) and said he didn’t even remember saying those things more than once.
Luckily that was about the extent of his loopiness. He did ask about 15 minutes into our drive home if he thought I was really that loopy or if I was messing with him so maybe he was actually repeating his stories on purpose to mess with me.
I don’t think he was, though.
I appreciated the prayers of friends and family because I certainly felt them.
Little Miss has been sick with a stomach thing this week too so I’ve been up with her a few nights which means bedtime can’t come early enough today!
Anyhow, on to our hosts introductions!
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 Ramblingsshares about the fiction she writes and reads, her faith, homeschooling, photography and more.
Cat from Cat’s Wire is a bookworm, movie fan, crazy cat lady, armed with beads, cabs, wire and a very jumpy brain which loves to go down rabbit holes!
Rena from Fine, Whatever 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.
We would love to have additional Co-Hosts to share in the creativity and fun! If you think this would be a good fit for you and you like having fun (come on, who doesn’t!) while still being creative, drop one of us an email and someone will get back with you!
WTJR will be highlighting a different blogger each week this year! We invite you to stop by their blog, take a look around and say hello!
Hi – I am a retired School Librarian who loves to read, cook, decorate, travel, and enjoy the good life with my amazing husband of over 40 years! Hope to share my journey of downsizing and enjoying life!
Thank you so much for joining us for our link-up!
And now some posts that were highlights for me this past week:
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Thank you to everyone who participated last month! Be sure to tell your followers about the link-up so we can all get more recommendations for our bookshelves.
Now some tips and guidelines about the link party:
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.
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Have fun everyone and I hope you find some wonderful book recs by visiting the links throughout the month!
Today’s prompt is: Buzzwords or Phrases That Make Me Want to Read (or Avoid) a Book (These words or phrases can be in the title, synopsis, marketing materials, reviews, author blurbs, etc. and immediately pique your interest or immediately make you say “NOPE”. Examples include: fae, forbidden romance, morally grey characters, unreliable narrator, found family, magical worlds, love triangle, marriage of convenience, dark academia, stranded, dragons, dual points of view, starting over, etc.)
Five that make me say nope (for now anyhow) and five that make me say yep!
First, five phrases/words that make me say “nope” and I want to clarify that just because these phrases make me say ‘nope’, I do not look down or judge those it says ‘yep’ too. These are personal preferences driven by my personal likes/dislikes and personality. There is a reason behind each of them and at least one of them is because of my background in newspaper reporting and some of the things I had to cover over that 14 years. Not all pleasant, let’s just say.
Also, don’t take my little, one-sentence response to the “nope” ones too seriously. I’m being dramatic as a joke….or am I? *wink* There are a couple I really hate, so I’m being a bit serious in my response.
“Marriage of convenience”
I got some people royally mad at me recently for saying this on Instagram, but I was not polite about my absolute hatred for this trope, and I regret that. I could have said it in a much nicer way.
I very rarely willingly read a book with marriage of convenience in it. However, I will say that I have read a couple over the years who have pulled it off nicely. I didn’t know there was a marriage of convenience in them when I started but I pushed through because they were just nicely and tactfully handled.
2. “Forbidden romance”
Code words for “age gap”, inappropriate romances, or just a very cliché story. I will probably be gagging at all the side-glances, warm rushes, and “could he really be looking at me?” moments within the first few pages
3. The words ‘gory’, ‘horrific’, or ‘spine-chilling’.
This probably indicates a horror-type book and … nope! Not going to read it. Not my thing. Will be up all night with nightmares.
4. Phrases like “steam up the page…” “will have you fanning yourself…” “will leave you breathless with desire.”
Gag. No thank you. Sounds way too much like erotica, also known as Completely Unrealistic Expectation of Romance and Love Central.
5. “Politically significant” or “culturally significant”
Fiction or non-fiction I probably won’t touch this book. I can not stomach anything political and what is culturally significant to some is not usually earth shattering to me.
Now Five phrases that make me say ‘yep’!
“Fun cozy mystery”
Sign me up. Fun and a cozy mystery? Yes. This is the escape I need a lot of the time.
“2. Loveable characters in a small town.”
Yes, please. As many books with this written on it as possible, please.
3. “Heartwarming” or “Gentle.”
I love anything with heartwarming or gentle feelings/vibes. My shelves are stocked with these type of books.
4. “Queen of Mystery.”
This probably means it is an Agatha Christie book and, yes, despite some mysteries having “unsavory” topics in them, I do like mysteries — even ones that aren’t cozy.
5. “Amateur Sleuth.”
I love a good Amateur-Sleuth-As-The-Main-Character book. I know they aren’t going to be an expert at solving the crime and might even make some fun blunders along the way.
A bonus to the nope list: Anything that says ‘BookTok’ or suggests a book was popular on ‘BookTok’. It’s an immediate pass for me. And anything that says “hot vampires”. No. Just no.
How about you? What phrases or words make you pick up a book or what phrases make you run away?
If you write book reviews or book-related blog posts, don’t forget that Erin and I host the A Good Book and A Cup of Tea Monthly Bookish Blog Party. You can learn more about it here.
On Thursdays, I am part of the Weekend Traffic Jam Reboot blog link party. You can find the latest one in the sidebar to the right under recent posts.
Hello! Welcome to my blog. I am a blogger, homeschool mom, and I write cozy mysteries.
You can find my Gladwynn Grant Mystery series HERE.
The cinematography in The Third Man (1949 ) is outstanding. The play of light with shadows, figures stepping in and out of light and dark both visually and metaphorically, makes this a movie you can’t look away from. If you do, you might miss a subtle exchange of looks, a quick smirk, someone moving in the shadows. You have to be on high alert while also relaxing into the story. You’re on the edge of your seat but also have plenty of moments to sit back and admire the superb acting of Orson Welles and Joseph Cotton.
The movie is set in post-World War II Vienna, Austria at a time when four political powers America, Russia, England, and France were overseeing a corrupt post-war environment.
Cotton plays Holly Martins, a writer of pulp Westerns, who arrives without any money as the guest of his childhood friend Harry Lime (Welles). The problem is, when Martins arrives, he finds out Lime has been killed, hit by a car.
Martins wants to know how his friend died and why, and learns there was a “third man” who was present during the accident. This leads him down a path that gets him mixed up with Lime’s girlfriend and British intelligence and knocks him right into the middle of complicated moral and ethical issues.
A British noir film, The Third Man was directed by Carol Reed and produced by Reed, David Selznick, and Alexander Korda. The cinematographer was Robert Krasker, who won an Academy Award for Best Black-and-White Cinematography for his work on it.
It was written by Graham Greene for the screen, and later a novella was released.
According to information online, Korda was someone who repeatedly told Welles he would fund his projects, but at the last minute, would pull out.
“My whole time with Alex was things like that,” Welles once said. “I kept doing projects for him which I did not abandon, but which he did.”
When it came to casting for the film, everyone knew Welles fit the part (with Greene essentially describing Welles when he described Lime) so Korda asked him. Welles agreed but then, as revenge for Korda’s past behavior, proceeded to tour Europe to film scenes for Othello (1952).
Korda wanted the contract signed and Welles locked in, so he sent his brother, Vincent, after Welles. Over the next week, Vincent had to chase Welles to Rome, Florence, Venice, Naples, and Capri because Wels would make sure they picked up and move to a new location each time Vincent was almost to them.
“I knew I was going to do it,” Welles later said, “but I was going to make it just as unpleasant as possible.” I loved this part of the story shared by TCM.com:
“On the way back to London via a privately chartered plane, Welles played one final, brilliant prank on Alexander Korda. Vincent asked him to hold a basket of fruit that he had gathered for his brother during the pursuit. This was post-war Europe, so fresh fruit was an exceedingly rare item. “It was going to be offered as a great present,” Welles said. “He’d gone and picked each piece of fruit. It was too good to be true! I knew Alex wouldn’t touch any of it if it had been bitten into.” So, when Vincent was asleep, Welles carefully took a bite out of each piece.”
Yes, Welles was literally chased down for this role, and it paid off because the character he played became known as one of the most iconic villains in cinema history.
I can’t say enough about the brilliant imagery in this film. Maybe it is my photography background/experience and my absolutely obsession with black and white photography that had me gawking in amazement and visually enamored with so many of this movie’s scenes.
Here is a still from a scene in the cemetery.
Anna is standing in the middle of the shot, the focal point of the photo, and on either side of her are rows of naked trees, forcing the viewer’s eyes to follow the trees down to Anna and only then wander slowly to Holly, watching her walk away. There is a barren feeling to the scene — the nakedness of the trees, the pale white of the sky showing it’s an overcast day, Anna with her head down, clearly in thought as she’s walking away, Holly watching her with a hint of sadness in his gaze.
Then there is this still from one of the most famous scenes in the movie.
Orson Welles in Carol Reed’s THE THIRD MAN (1949). Courtesy: Rialto Pictures / Studiocanal
There’s a chase through the sewers going on, Welles’ character is on the run and what is so incredible about this entire scene is how the tunnel forms a tunnel for our eyes, once again bringing our focus right to the man running in the middle of the scene, toward the light, toward freedom that he may or may not ever reach.
It was hard for me to take my eyes off this film, not only because of the story but because of the visual smorgasboard.
There are quite a few reviews of the movie online, with many of them agreeing that The Third Man is one of, if not the, greatest noir film ever made.
Tom Spoors from Loud and Clear Reviews writes: “Almost every frame of The Third Man is a visual marvel, employing all kinds of cinematic techniques. There’s plenty of dutch angles, sure, but what I found even more interesting is the way that Reed uses shadows. He puts his main character in a situation and a location that is brand new to him, and builds this world to be one constantly cloaked in mystery. Reed places silhouettes around every corner, plasters every wall with them, creating a city that almost doesn’t feel real. It’s an atmosphere that I don’t think has ever been captured again to this extent, and perhaps the biggest reason why the moviehas gone on to be one of the most critically acclaimed noirs of all time. Simply put, no other film in its genre looks or feels quite like it.”
Philip French of The Guardian wrote about the movie: “From the moment the first audiences saw the opening image of Anton Karas’s zither filling the screen with the nerve-jangling Harry Lime Theme (before, indeed, they had heard the word “zither”), they knew that with the second collaboration between director Carol Reed and author Graham Greene they were in for something special. At its end they recognised (British spelling) they’d seen a near-perfect work, what we now call a noir classic.”
It’s become a tradition for me to share and then disagree with the late film critic Roger Ebert’s reviews on here but this time I can’t.
“Of all the movies I have seen, this one most completely embodies the romance of going to the movies. I saw it first on a rainy day in a tiny, smoke-filled cinema on the Left Bank in Paris. It told a story of existential loss and betrayal. It was weary and knowing, and its glorious style was an act of defiance against the corrupt world it pictured. Seeing it, I realized how many Hollywood movies were like the pulp Westerns that Holly Martins wrote: naive formulas supplying happy endings for passive consumption.”
If you haven’t seen the movie, you really need to and find out if this scene below is a flashback or … what’s really going on….
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It’s time for our Sunday morning chat. On Sundays, I ramble about what’s been going on, whatthe rest of the familyand I have been reading and watching, andwhat I’ve been writing. Some weeks I share what I am listening to.
I broke my book buying ban for March and April yesterday when The Husband, Little Miss, and I visited a used book sale at a local library.
Okay. Fine.
I actually broke it two weeks before when I purchased two books online at the beginning of March.
But I really broke it yesterday when I came home with 11 books and The Husband came home with four more.
Actually, if I want to get technical, he purchased the books for me so maybe I didn’t really break my book-buying ban. Ahem.
Well, whatever, I have 11 new books and will probably also read at least two of the ones he picked up.
Oh, I forgot he picked up a fifth book at an indie bookstore in the same town.
So we have a book addiction.
It could be worse. It could be drugs.
Here are the books we picked up yesterday:
Have you read any of them?
I plan to do my best to renew my commitment and not buy any books in April.
Wish me luck?
What I/We’ve Been Reading
Just Finished
I finished Crooked House by Agatha Christie Friday and oof. What an ending. I had figured out less than halfway through who the murderer was but was really hoping I was wrong.
I was not wrong. Sadly.
Even though I knew, I wanted to know how Agatha would get us to the solution and what the guilty party would have to say for themselves.
If you have not read this one, I would highly recommend it.
In Progress
I started Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis this past week, and have to admit I already feel a bit stupid. Clive is much smarter than me and your average, every day citizen.
Looking for a pallet cleanser after Crooked House, I turned to A Damsel in Distress by P.G. Wodehouse.
Up Soon
I am planning to start Heidi this week as a buddy read with Erin from Still, Life with Cracker Crumbs for the month of April.
While I’m reading Heidi, I’ll also be reading A Caribbean Mystery by Agatha Christie for the 2026 Reading Christie Challenge.
I hope to start Thrush Green by Miss Read after those two.
What The Family is Reading
Little Miss and I will finish The Singing Tree by Kate Seredy this week and plan to start Rascal by Stirling North.
What I/We’ve Been Watching
In an attempt to bond with our son, I watched the first episode of A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms Wednesday night. We were sitting in our car waiting for Little Miss who was attending a meeting of a kid’s church program. I thought I’d hate it because I knew it was connected to Game of Thrones, which I refuse to watch for many reasons. Still, he likes the show and I wanted to connect with him so I braced myself and dove in.
I was pleasantly surprised with the first episode. It wasn’t as bad as I feared. It was actually very good.
We had time when the first episode ended so I suggested we watch the second one. The Boy was surprised.
He may have been even more surprised when I suggested we watch episodes three, four, and five Thursday.
We still have episode six, the last episode of the season, to watch this week.
There is harsh language, some nudity, and violence (less than I expected of all) so I wouldn’t recommend it for everyone, but the story is really interesting and a lot lighter than GoT.
Looking for lighter fare after Crooked House and episode five of A Knight of The Seven Kingdoms, I watched a couple of episodes of Two’s Company, a British sitcom.
I also watched the Christmas special of All Creatures Great and Small and the 1942 movie, Her Cardboard Lover, with Norma Shearer and Robert Taylor earlier in the week.
This week I hope to watch a Bette Davis film to get ready for my Spring of Bette feature.
I am also working on book four of my cozy mystery series. This week I restructured it and it is working so much better. I hope to release it in the fall.
Photos From Last Week
I
Some Housekeeping
Erin (Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs) and I host a monthly bookish link party called A Good Book and A Cup of Tea. 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. You can find that link up for this month here.
Each week, I host the Weekend Traffic Jam Reboot with some great hosts. It goes live Thursday night but you can share any kind of blog posts (family-friendly) there until Tuesday of each week. You can check my recent posts on the sidebar to the right for the most recent link-party.
Now It’s Your Turn
What have you been doing, watching, reading, listening to, or writing?
