Author Archives: smellincoffee

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About smellincoffee

Citizen, librarian, reader with a boundless wonder for the world and a curiosity about all the beings inside it.

If Books Threw a Party

Posted on April 4, 2024 by smellincoffee
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The Club

Posted on April 4, 2024 by smellincoffee

I have an interest in men’s clubs dating back to reading Around the World in 80 Days and The Time Traveler as a kid, and I have no idea why. Boys like clubs and clubhouses as a rule, I think, … Continue reading →

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Aged Veterans of the virtual TBR

Posted on April 3, 2024 by smellincoffee

Today’s prompt from Long and Short Reviews is “Books that have been on our TBR the Longest”. I dealt with my physical TBR last year, so I’m going to take a look at my Kindle library, sort by “Oldest”, and … Continue reading →

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Elizabeth’s London

Posted on April 3, 2024 by smellincoffee

Let us travel to a city which, in great part, no longer exists: Tudor London, much of which has been erased by time, fire, and ‘progress’, which holds burying swimming pools under concrete as a capital idea. I first read … Continue reading →

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Tudor teasing

Posted on April 2, 2024 by smellincoffee

To us, many of the flowers in an Elizabethan garden would look more like wild flowers than our carefully hybridised varieties, since modern varieties have been bred to maximise flower size and length of season, often at the expense of … Continue reading →

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Life Below Stairs

Posted on April 1, 2024 by smellincoffee

If, like me, you became interested in the goings-on of English servants via Downton Abbey, Alison Maloney opens with a word of caution. Many servants didn’t work in small armies at places like Highclere Castle. Instead, they were thoroughly leavened … Continue reading →

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Moviewatch: March

Posted on April 1, 2024 by smellincoffee

There was a….bit of a theme to this month’s movie watching, at least for the ones I watched solo. See if you can guess what it is. I bet you can! The Scout, 1994. Albert Brooks plays a scout who, … Continue reading →

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March 2024 in Review

Posted on March 31, 2024 by smellincoffee

Well, the year is one-fourth spent already. Criminy! March was fairly…all over the place. Didn’t do well with Lenten reading at all, but Opening Day was a solid performance, I think, and I even got a head start on Read … Continue reading →

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Summer of ’49

Posted on March 29, 2024 by smellincoffee

In the summer of 1949, young David Halberstam was fifteen years old, facing a father in declining health and thankful for the distraction that was baseball. The Boston Red Sox and the New York Yankees would provide it in spades, … Continue reading →

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Hunting a Detroit Tiger

Posted on March 28, 2024 by smellincoffee

Utility infielder Mickey Rawlings is in a fix. A man trying to organize baseball players into a union has been shot dead, and everyone is saying Mickey did it. In self defense, sure, so the police don’t care: indeed, the … Continue reading →

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