Miss Bates 🇨🇦

missbatesreadsromance.comContemporary Murder Mystery: Katarina Bivald’s THE WOMAN WHO WOULDN’T DIE QUIETLY (Berit Gardner #3)Any ARC I may be reading when the school year is underway has the worst luck. I'm overwhelmed post-idleness with preparation and trepidation and read, at best, in fits and starts before collapsing into stupefied slumber. Thus it was for Bivald's The Woman Who Wouldn't Die Quietly. Like me, Bivald's murder mystery functions in fits and starts as her main sleuth, writer Berit Gardner, and DI friend, Ian Ahmed, work towards solving grande dame of a grand family, curator and mega-gallery owner, Margrethe's murder.

6 Sept

A good read spoiled by a weak middle and my inability to resist work and spend uninterrupted time reading it...sad, this making-a-living thing.

7 Sept

My perfect apricot-oat-bran muffins. Future me will be grateful to nab one before work for breakfast!

7 Sept

Also, Labour Day breakfast-for-lunch!

27 Aug

🤷🏼🇨🇦

27 Aug

No, you “loving” Quebec is a way to create rifts and weaken Canada. J'espère que les Québécois vous voient manipuler des mensonges.

Montreal Gazette@mtlgazette.bsky.social

Trade row over French ‘manufactured’ to hurt PQ in Quebec election, Trump official says montrealgazette.com/news/provinc...

25 Aug

🤷🏼Winter is coming. 🇨🇦And we’re always ready for it. Nous sommes prets.

Aaron Rupar@atrupar.com

Canadian Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne: "Canada will match the US tariffs dollar for dollar, rate for rate. Effective Sept 8, Canada will impose counter-tariffs of up to 15, 25, or 50 percent on $27.6 billion of imports from the US."

25 Aug

Memory eternal, Dolly. You were one of the good ones.

missbatesreadsromance.comContemporary Romance Review: Jeannie Chin’s THE COZY NOOK BOOKSHOP (Cozy Nook Bookshop #1)I'd read Chin's final Blue Cedar Falls series romance, The House on Mulberry Street and quite enjoyed it. And therefore was looking forward to her latest, first in a new series, and set in Vermont. Autumnal setting, small-town bookstore, grumpy forest ranger hero...much promise. And, for the most part, it didn't disappoint; it was a pleasant read. Before I comment further, the publisher's blurb fills us in:

25 Aug

A cozy autumnal romance, pleasant enough, but so low-stakes, it lacks a certain oomph...

23 Aug

It’s my book of the year.

Chris Hayes@chrislhayes.bsky.social

The book Cahokia Jazz is a revelation. One of the best alt-history books I’ve ever read. Highly highly recommend if you like alt history and/or noir.

23 Aug

We’ve faced mercantilism before.

God@thegodshow.com

Bless Canada for standing up to Trump.

At least we feed our sailors. 🇨🇦

cbc.caRead Mark Carney's full speech after trade talks with the U.S. collapsed | CBC NewsBelow are Prime Minister Mark Carney's remarks after Canada suspended trade talks with the U.S. and the Trump administration imposed new 50 per cent tariffs:

“Maitres chez nous.”

Susanna Kearsley@susannakearsley.bsky.social

"We have been under no illusions. We recognized from the start that America has changed...Our government understood, before many, that America would transform all of its commercial relationships...We recognized that sometimes its signature was written in pencil." 🔥🔥🔥

Et aussi en francais 👏🏼💪🏼

Mark Carney@mark-carney.bsky.social

Pendant plus d’un an, le Canada a travaillé sans relâche et en toute bonne foi avec les États-Unis en vue de négocier un nouvel accord commercial global. Nous avons été pragmatiques, patients et persévérants.

💪🏼👏🏼

Mark Carney@mark-carney.bsky.social

For over a year, Canada has worked intensively and in good faith with the United States to negotiate a new comprehensive trade deal. We have been pragmatic, patient, and persistent. Our goal has always been to get the best deal for Canadians, never a deal at any price or on any time frame.

👏🏼

James Boxall 🇨🇦🍁@jamesgis.bsky.social

Imagine.. Telling your best customer, longest ally, neighbour what & how they could trade with others & one of their official languages would be negated... 😮...we're not going to be a vassal state! We're standing up to the bully. An example for others to follow! #Canada #elbowsUp #glovesdropped

missbatesreadsromance.comVintage Crime Fiction Review: Celia Dale’s SHEEP’S CLOTHINGCelia Dale's Sheep's Clothing may be the best depressing book I've read. It was surprising (never read Dale before, knew next to nothing about her), sad, tragic, haunting, and fearlessly candid. Published in 1988, Dale's final novel is set in the impoverished London bed-sits of the elderly who fought England's war and now endure Thatcher's miserly ethos. Into these lonely lives, Dale sets two female ex-cons: the wily, middle-aged "thinker", Grace, and her hapless, pathetic, and willing-because-adrift accomplice, Janice.

18 Aug

Miss Bates was surprised how great Dale's crime novel was...she'll be reading more Dale.

13 Aug

There aren’t any olives & it’s more pitchfork than branch.

Montreal Gazette@mtlgazette.bsky.social

Hanes: Anglos should be skeptical of PQ leader’s olive branch montrealgazette.com/opinion/colu...

Emerged from Nolan’s “waterworld” version of The Odyssey and all I have to say is Emily Wilson, you were too generous. What a piece of overblown pontificating crap. Four hours (b/c the effin IMAX machine is 40 yrs old & went into stop/start & no sound mode) and 24$ I will never get back.

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the Trojans and makes the horse possible. But instead of revisioning Homer, Nolan wanted to make his own point and make it better than Homer. The “Greeks” called that hubris. OTOH, Nolan’s laughing all the way to the bank.

12 Aug

Final thought: Nolan chose the wrong epic. His talents, such as they are, would have better served The Iliad. But he wanted to make his lofty political points and went with The Odyssey. But The Iliad is the most anti-war narrative I’ve read & Odysseus is clever & utterly warrior code amoral in it.

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Overall, do watch the brilliant O, Brother, Where Art Thou? Also, best Sirens scene ever.

On a happier note, went to our wonderful downtown Simons store & petted the full price Liberty shirts. Also, bought my fall and winter Bleu Foret socks. The best and only socks I can wear b/c no elastic!!!! I’m allergic.

Some good news, folks.

Montreal Gazette@mtlgazette.bsky.social

Partial solar eclipse and meteor shower will be visible from Montreal on Wednesday montrealgazette.com/news/partial...

On a more sober note, now I’m home and hydrated, I had the same thoughts as Wilson. Didn’t read her review till after the film. Nolan really wanted to make Lord of the Rings/Star Wars. Polyphemus looked like Gollum; yes, Agamemnon, like Darth Vader and all the battle scenes like the Orcs.

But what really bugged me was the misinterpretation of The Odyssey’s ethos: the “Greeks’” understanding of the gods as random and capricious. And of Odysseus as a reluctant special ops guy. His most important mission not the Trojan Horse (not Homer’s btw), but of the Paladium’s theft, which breaks

Great boom of thunder, humidity turning the house into a sauna; now, the deluge. There will be no walk tonight and I am soooo tired of this hot, sticky weather. Autumn cannot come soon enough.

It’s a rare thing the CAQ and I agree on anything, but we do on this.

Montreal Gazette@mtlgazette.bsky.social

U.S. alcohol won’t be back on Quebec shelves unless trade gains are made, Fréchette says montrealgazette.com/news/provinc...

And even if they’re back, who says Canadians will buy them? I walk right by American fruits and vegetables. Remember the grape boycott, like that. This is a grapeless year even though the fruit of the vine is delicious.

Well 🐝, you’re gormless today because GORM IS A WORD.

Okay 🐝, gloam is a WORD.

7 Aug

🤷🏼America…

Mark Carney@mark-carney.bsky.social

We're building our strength at home.

7 Aug

Walked out on the balcony to check out the heat (38C) and saw my first nightly creature in the front yard, a black critter with a white stripe. Hightailed it inside pronto. 🦨

7 Aug

I’m on the covid lockdown flashback episode of The Four Seasons and yes, it’s funny, but it also made me cry. The masks, the fear, the joy of seeing friends.

6 Aug

Hey 🐝, why is “bardic” not a word? Ever heard of Shakespeare?

missbatesreadsromance.comHistorical Romance Review: Virginia Heath’s PRIDE COMES BEFORE A FALL (Miss Prentice’s Protegees #3)I enjoyed Heath's first two Miss Prentice's Protegees' romances well enough, but had to reread my reviews to recall their bits and pieces, telling me they were pleasant, but forgettable. I think I'll remember Pride Comes Before A Fall, however, because it was the best of the lot. Portia was always my favourite of the four heroines because of her crusading, reforming spirit.

5 Aug

Heath's Pride Comes Before A Fall is the best of her witty series, Miss Prentice's Protegees.

5 Aug

I’m really enjoying my latest show, The Four Seasons. If I was a privileged American woman, I’d be Kate, the Tina Fey character. Also, we share a name. 🤷🏼

3 Aug

Saw amazing Hadestown. Left cinema awash in tears, though I teach the damn myth every year. We all know how it ends. Never underestimate the power of narrative.

3 Aug

Saw it with an introverted friend. We didn’t sit together. We looked at each other at the end, said it was amazing. And left to research it. No dinner (I hate eating out, dread every invitation) or coffee. Best outing ever. We’ll chat later this week once it’s sunk in.

missbatesreadsromance.comContemporary Romance Review: Victoria Lavine’s NOT THAT KIND OF PROPOSALIn her acknowledgements, Lavine writes about the sophomore book curse and how nervous she was about her second romance given the excellence of the first (which I loved and reviewed). As a reader, I…

1 Aug

missbatesreadsromance.com/2026/08/01/r... Lavine’s second romance is as good as her first, Any Trope But You, which I loved. @atriabooks.bsky.social

30 July

So, I have this teensy addiction to acquiring Liberty shirts, which hoisted on petard, I have to iron.

30 July

Rant: this is the second time a man, a stranger to me, and store employee, has told me to smile. Costco in this case, Metro Grocer in the previous. I don’t have to help you erase the power of the crone with a smile, dude.

30 July

Given I’m less than five feet and weight about 125lb, how scary am I?

28 July

I have *sniffs tearfully* reached the end of Dept. Q and I can only say thank goodness we’re getting another season.

25 July

Dept Q is doing nicely making up for the end of season 3 of Blue Lights. My love for Akram is boundless.

Spelling bee rage: YES, “KINE” IS A WORD. Read your Bible, Bee!

Even though I reached “amazing” stage today, I’m still mad about “kine”. It’s a word, darnit.

Marty’s a Seinfeld fan? I love him, but now my cup of Marty-love runneth over.

Montreal Gazette@mtlgazette.bsky.social

Martin St. Louis’s favourite TV show comes to life in Jerry Seinfeld meeting montrealgazette.com/sports/hocke...