Music at Home

Tweet Disney Valentine’s play list. Steve Lucky Facebook Sat 8pm and Tue 6pm. Mitch Polzak Fri 6 to 9pm, Tue banjo hour. https://www.mitchpolzak.com/polzak-ponderosa. Lavay Smith https://www.facebook.com/events/537932303557928. Tony and Willie https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NosKQSkzh54. Andre Thierry https://www.facebook.com/andrethierry/videos/10217035780668960. Rick Estrin and the Nightcats https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tRCKYozqm-s&feature=youtu.be. William Casanova on Spotify. El Cerrito Free Folk Festival https://www.elcerritofreefolkfestival.org. SF Folk Fest https://sffolkfest.org/program-2020. Polka Cowboys…

Books to Read

Tweet Bios Little Wonder: The Fabulous Story of Lottie Dot, the World’s First Female Sports Superstar by Sasha Abramsky. The Divine Miss Marble: A Life of Tennis, Fame, and Mystery by Robert Weintraub Dutton.

Videos at Home

Tweet Streaming Services Kanopy YouTube Disney+ – Hamilton, Frozen II, Soul, Summer of Soul. National Geographic story behind Hamilton the person D23 on Hamilton the musical Netflix, Vimeo HMC Online (Harvey Mudd College) CMC Online (Claremont McKenna College) Race Last Black Man in San Francisco Dirty Gertie – Kanopy Loving – CCC Lib DVD A…

Marie, Dancing

Tweet Marie, Dancing by Carolyn Meyer and performed by Carine Montbertrand was a very engaging story around the model for Edgar Degas’s famous statue La Petite Danseuse de Quatorze Ans (Little Dancer of Fourteen Years).  Degas and his friend and collaborator Mary Cassatt (often in the company of her sister Lydia) are depicted painting some…

I Loved, I Lost, I Made Spaghetti

Tweet I Loved, I Lost, I Made Spaghetti, written and read by Italian Brooklynite Giulia Melucci, was a mildly amusing and self-indulgent memoir of meals cooked and boyfriends lost over twenty years.  Melucci’s reading was easy to listen to – though I wouldn’t recommend listening on an empty stomach.  The book would have been more…

Judith Fertig

Tweet The Cake Therapist Judith Fertig’s first venture into fiction stays well within the realm of baking: the protagonist is an innovative baker who uses her somewhat mystical ability to associate flavor preferences with emotions and experiences to evoke transformative responses in those who eat her confections.  The story shuttles between a contemporary timeline with…

Carly Phillips

Tweet Cross My Heart Cross My Heart is a contemporary romance with skullduggery and redemption to drive along the plot.  The reading by Marie Caliendo works well for the central couples but is a little off for the older characters, especially the mothers.  The hero and heroine have been emotionally static since they were separated…

Kristen Callihan

Tweet Darkest London series Regency romance thrillers with paranormal elements. Firelight I liked the story – but I would have preferred the heroine to be a little less invincible and a little more trusting; and the hero to be a little less like Beast.  Callihan makes creative use of the restrictions of the couple’s secrets…

Katie Lane

Tweet The Overnight Billionaires The conceit of this series by Katie Lane is that three extremely hunky Beaumont brothers working to charm their way out of the Southern bayou, inherit shares in a San Francisco-based lingerie business (French Kiss), decide to run the company instead of selling out, and fantastically succeed in both business and…

Catherine Coulter

Tweet Contemporary Thrillers Power Play (2014) by Catherine Coulter and read by MacLeod Andrews and Renee Raudman had some likeable and despicable characters but with an overly burdened plot (or should I say “plots”?) and mystical elements (most notably a villain capable of instant hypnosis), this audiobook was just okay.  I did like the reading;…