Wednesday: phone calls

I walked with M.

I had a good phone call with J., altho neither of us in the best place.

Also, I got a phone call from MIL’s friend J. She thinks it really is time to line up services for MIL in the home — MIL had been talking about that, but I / we had not taken steps to make it happen. She recommended a service and gave me a name at that service, so I relayed an update to the family members and either R. or I or together we’ll make the call in about an hour.

I’m also waiting on a call back about a kids birthday party. I’m psyched about it! Should be fun — haven’t been around primary school kid energy in a little while now.

_Caravan to Vaccares_, Alistair MacLean SPOILERS

I used to read a lot of Maclean back when I was young, and for whatever reason we were chatting about him somewhat recently on cocktail zoom. P. was surprised to learn I’d been a fan, and it got me thinking. I’d been rereading Mary Stewart, and thinking a lot about those rereads in the context of the hypothetical JAK monograph I want to write, and also my general theory of how prolific commercial authors do their thing.

Anyway. I checked to see if MacLean’s work was available in e-book format — not sure I’d ever looked before! — but there it was. I started with this one, in part because of the Romany-like communities in the Liaden universe, and their relationship to The Uncle. Vacation destinations familiar to the reader — or which the reader might want to become familiar with! — form the backdrop to Stewart’s This Rough Magic and many JAK novels set on tropical islands or in Las Vegas or Arizona. In this case, the vacation destination is Provence, and the specifics are the Camargue, the Rhone, and Les Baux. Vacation activities figure very prominently in this novel — festival, a religious celebration, a bullfight, riding horses, fancy dresses, a luxury hotel and fine dining.

A great deal is packed into a very short time frame — again, similar to Mary Stewart novels, and some JAK novels, creating tension and excitement and limiting the ability of the less-informed participants to stop and think and make better decisions or at least compare notes and figure out what the hell might really be going on. Whereas in a Stewart or Krentz novel, the heroine often is stuck trying to figure out which of two men might be Mr. Right and who is definitely Mr. Wrong, we’ve got a heroine and the heroine’s friend, each of whom has a man, and they are each trying to figure out which on might be the bad guy while each liking the one they have, and the men seeming to really dislike each other.

Also, like This Rough Magic, Albanian shenanigans! So that’s pretty entertaining.

It’s a fun, but dated, read. I’m looking forward to Seawitch, which is another one I remember particularly enjoying Back in the Day.

ETA: In case you are wondering, yes, Madam Will You Talk is on my list of probable rereads, also set in Provence.