Ann Cleeves

For Your Weekend

Kim8 Comments

This August morning is one of the magical kind, that makes me wish I was taking the day off to spend at a beach or on a new trail in a forest. The colors outside are a perfect balance of blue sky, green landscape, and golden sunlight.

I may not be on holiday today, but I will enjoy quiet moments in the garden, picking a few flowers (if the bees will let me.) I’ll make some herbal sun tea and hang laundry on the clothesline. And perhaps Alan and I will drive down to Seneca Lake to eat our dinner and walk along the water’s edge.

It’s been a while since I shared weekly sources of inspiration, learning, or enjoyment, but I’m picking back up with a few of my favorites.

Podcasts

What Could Possibly Go Right?: Conversations With Cultural Scouts Podcast with Vicki Robin (author of Blessing the Hands That Feed Us: Lessons From a 10-Mile Diet and other books) is one I’ve been listening to since its inception last year.

Episode #50 with Katharine Wilkinson “Making Our Hearts Public in Climate Conversation” discussed allowing our emotions to be present when we talk about the climate crisis.

The Goal Digger Podcast with Jenna Kutcher: This week I needed some entrepreneurial inspiration (AKA a kick in the pants business-wise). Yes, Jenna is bubbly and always sounds a bit extra, but she is a super smart entrepreneur with a seven-figure business. Here are two I listened to this week:

What You ACTUALLY Need to Do Before Leaving Your 9 to 5

The Quick-Start Guide to Content Creation and Promotion

Books

I’m currently reading the captivating Rooted: Life at the Crossroads of Science, Nature, and Spirit by Lyanda Haupt which has flavors of one of my favorite books: <a href="http://Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants“>Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer. When I finish Rooted, I’ll blog more about it.

Yesterday I finished reading The Heron’s Cry (Two Rivers Series) by Ann Cleeves. If you’re a mystery lover, you’ve probably read the Vera Stanhope series and Shetland series and possibly seen both series on tv. The Two Rivers series features DI Matthew Venn, who lives near the sea’s edge with his husband, Jonathan, who runs The Woodyard, a local non-profit that supports both differently-abled people and artists. They’re a fascinating pair, along with Jen Rafferty, the detective on Venn’s team. And the mystery aspect is very satisfying as well. More about this book in an upcoming post. Publishing date is September 7th.

I’m also reading People We Meet On Vacation by Emily Henry. This is a bright, upbeat novel that so far seems to be about two friends who are figuring out whether they want to just be friends or if they’re in love with each other. The protagonist, Poppy, is a travel writer who works for R+R, a popular travel magazine. She’s best friends with an Instagram influencer and, yes, she gets to travel around to different locations. I love the travel aspect, as I am most likely staying close to home for the rest of this year, anyway. More on this book when I finish it.

Visual Art

Jonna Jinton is a Swedish artist/musician/videographer and more. Her Youtube videos are stunning vlogs of her life in Northern Sweden: the landscape, the music, the close-to-nature lifestyle, her latest creative projects, and more.

Here’s a video I watched last week: Summer in the North

My Garden

Even though I haven’t had as much time as I hoped to spend weeding and planting this summer, the flowers and vegetables are abundant. To hear the humming of dozens of bees collecting pollen from the flowers makes me so happy. It feels good to know I provided some food for these valuable pollinators in the middle of the neighboring GMO cornfields that surround us. I’ve scattered the photos in this post.

Enjoy your weekend, friends!






Two British Mystery Series To Read This Summer

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Last Friday, Anne Bogel of Modern Mrs Darcy shared an article from The Guardian about thrillers by women. In it, I found a few new-to-me authors I wanted to check out. After doing some reading on Amazon and Goodreads, I selected the first in Ann Cleeves‘ Vera Stanhope mysteries, called The Crow Trap, and the first in Elly Griffiths‘ Ruth Galloway mysteries, called The Crossing Places.

There are several similarities to both series that helped me choose them:

1. They are set in the North East of England–Vera in Northumberland and Ruth in Norfolk.

2. They both feature women as the main characters; Vera Stanhope is a detective inspector and Ruth Galloway is an archeologist who is often asked to help in murder investigations.

3. Both women are independent, strong, quirky, middle-aged, and not beautiful by traditional standards.

4. The settings, both in rather remote places, are dark and atmospheric, the murders well-planned and the mysteries will keep you guessing until the end.

5. Both authors weave writing about local natural history, birds, and other local wildlife into the books.

I had watched some of the Vera Stanhope series on PBS a while ago, but never thought to look into the books the series is based on. I listened to The Crow Trap on audiobook and loved the narrator, so I’ll definitely be continuing the series in that format.

Vera, in character and looks, is unusual for a DI (as I mentioned earlier), but her sad, lonely past and present, excess drinking, and tendency toward brooding thoughts are on par with plenty of male detectives in other series. Her way of catching possible suspects off guard by pretending to take them into her confidence with warm, friendly chat is unique among the British detectives I’ve read. She’s likable, with all her rough edges and insecurities about her size and appearance, and she’s wily and always gets her murderer in the end. The latest in the Vera Stanhope series was published in 2017: The Seagull. Have you read it yet?

Because I simply could not wait for the library system to bring The Crossing Places (the first in the Ruth Galloway series) to my local library, I bought it for Kindle and read it two sittings. Ruth lives in a cottage near the Norfolk coast with salt marshes nearby. The changing seascape, the wind, the darkness and the isolated quality of her home makes me jumpy just reading about it. She works at a local University and helps the police in their investigations; the fact that she digs up bones for a living does help with the dark, creepy feel.

As often happens to main characters in mysteries, Ruth had a few brushes with death in the first book because she got too close to the truth; those scenes had me on the edge of my seat! I bought the next two in the series for Kindle as well: The Janus Stone and The House at Sea’s End and look forward to gobbling them up. And, if you are lucky enough to have discovered this series years ago and are all caught up, the new release in the series is The Stone Circle.

(Like I mentioned earlier, I am thoroughly enjoying the Vera Stanhope audiobooks. If you’ve never given Audible a try, now is a really good time! You can get two free audiobooks just for trying Audible free for 30 days.) 

If you’ve read either series or have one to recommend, I’d love to hear about it in comments!