FINDING MY XANAX AT 148 BONNY MEADOW ROAD

I’ve always been an anxious sort of person, but it really kicked in when I got to 5th grade. We had just moved back to California, and I enrolled in a school where all the other kids hated me. Oh, you can file this under paranoia, but fifteen years ago I met my wonderful 5th …

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MY FIRST 2018 OBSESSION

Happy New Year everybody! This time of year calls for reflection on the past, followed by the making of resolutions to guide us into the future. One of the hardest resolutions for a follower of GAD fiction to make is to stick with the times, and for me that is doubly difficult when it comes …

THE EVIDENCE OF THE TATTERED PAPERBACK: Fifty Years of MotOE and Me

Two hundred posts are something to celebrate. It’s time to talk about the book that changed my life. The fact that Agatha Christie is my favorite author has as much to do with her place in my own history as her position as one of the greatest mystery writers of all time. She did not …

TEN REASONS YOU SHOULD LOVE CARDS ON THE TABLE (And Deplore The TV Version)

Human beings are complex creatures. One moment we’re happy and the next, we’re blue. And sometimes we find ourselves at war with our emotions. Take me, for instance. Today, I’m a jumble of mixed feelings. I’m feeling good about bridge. You see, last summer, I decided to learn a game that had always seemed fascinating …

WHAT’S YOUR FAVORITE SEASON OF BUFFY?

I’ll bet everyone misses the blissful idylls of summer vacation after school lets out . . . except for the parents, who can’t wait for the hallowed halls of academia to take their kids back in September. As scholars go, so go we teachers, riding the waves of a much-needed break from school routine. Summer …

EYEBALL THIS, PAL! The Case of the Counterfeit Eye

“ You do the darndest things! You’re half saint and half devil! There isn’t any middle ground – you go to both extremes!” That’s Della Street, confronting her boss, Perry Mason, at the end of his sixth adventure, 1935’s The Case of the Counterfeit Eye, for playing as much the morally ambiguous action hero as …

ANATOMY OF AN ADAPTATION: Hercule Poirot’s Christmas aux Francaise

All month, the Tuesday Night Bloggers are dedicating April as “Anything Goes” month, and all our entries begin with the letter “A.” I seem to have found my niche by focusing on the greatest “A” of all: Dame “A”gatha Christie, of course! I’ve honed the focus even further from the author’s depiction of actors in …