Sunday, December 29, 2013

2013 Year In Review – geesh


OMG, it’s literally been 12 mos since my last post.  I’ve treated the year like rehab, but I didn’t mean to give up pop culture blogging.

Personal note, it may help explain:  went to Florida on holiday in February, bought a lake cottage in March, hosted a national trade conference via work in Indianapolis, worked, worked, worked, moved my mom into a condo near me and then took a new job that I will officially start the first week in January, 2014.  All excuses, I know, but my little brain can only handle so much.

Speaking of little brains, I’m not much of a reader.  So, this year, I really tried to read some books.  The lake cottage helped with no cable.  For the past 12 mos, I’ve completed 8 books.  Pathetic for most, impressive for me.  I finished the Andy Cohen book, and moved onto Tina Fey’s Bossypants.  I ready Lean In by Sheryl Sandberg.  God, I turned into a middle-aged woman looking for validation.  The book should have been an article.  Perhaps I should have written about it before it landed in the top 5 of the year’s best sellers….as if my opinion would have mattered.  Then I fell into a comfort zone – British mysteries.  I read a Linda LaPlante book.  She’s the creator of the Prime Suspect series starring my beloved Helen Mirren.  Then I was turned onto Deborah Crombie.  She’s an American, but writes about Scotland Yard detectives.  Oh, they are so yummy and simple.  The main character is Duncan Kincaid and his sergeant is Gemma James.  If you are an anglophile and like modern mysteries, these books are such treats.  Lovely, as the Brits say.

Robson
So, in the midst of reading (slowly, don’t judge), I also started watching (at the cottage on DVD via Netflix), Wire in the Blood with Robson Green.  He’s English and has been in a lot of BBC stuff and evidently is a pop star (or was).  He’s lovely too.  In Wire, he plays a psychologist who assists a police team with solving murders.  I tell you, between the books and BBC, I can’t keep the storylines straight.

Which reminds me of another book (now I’m just bragging) written by David Sedaris.  I read Let's Explore Diabetes with Owles.  More shorts about his life and observations.  But with my obsession with English mysteries, I always think about David’s story of going through customs in England (where he resides).  When the officer asked what he does (or why he’s there), he said he’s a writer/author.  The officer immediately assumed he wrote crime novels and seemed perplexed when David described his type of writing.  It makes me chuckle often every time I read a Crombie book or watch PBS.  I, along with David, don’t want to imply the Brits only like crime stories, but, if it walks like a duck….. 
Sedaris