General Miscellanea

Sometimes I don't have a particular topic I want to discuss, so I'll fill this space with news bits and pieces, or as Stephen Colbert refers to a segment on his show, "Meanwhile."

Meanwhile...

We already finished season 6 of Bosch and it was every bit as good as the first five seasons. The downside of binge-watching, of course, is we have to wait another year, or maybe even longer now that filming is on hiatus, for season 7. I have to satisfy my Connelly cravings with the few remaining ebooks of his I haven't read (though none of them are about Harry Bosch).

Meanwhile...

We're going out shopping today after being home for a little over two weeks now. Running low on fresh produce and some other staples, as well as things we can live without, but we'll get while we're forced to be in the grocery stores. Of course, we'll be wearing masks and surgical gloves in our travels. Wish us luck--I hope we don't run into any covidiots while we're out.

Meanwhile...

The price of oil went negative for the first time ever yesterday. With that, investors are saying May is shot as far as manufacturing is concerned, though futures beyond that look hopeful. It's impossible to imagine that the price of oil -- not gas -- would get so low considering the oil shortages of the 1970s. Still, we don't plan to do any driving anytime soon.

Meanwhile...

We're about to hit our first triple-digit temperature days in the next week. What this will do for our daily exercise remains to be seen. We're not morning people and to shift our internal clocks to earlier than what they are now won't be easy. I don't want to be like stereotypical seniors generally are, up at dawn, in bed at dusk. Just because I'm sixty doesn't mean I have to act my age.

Meanwhile...

I'm getting a lot of reading and writing done during this long period of self-isolation. I have a 50-book target to read this year and I'm a little under halfway there already. My writing goals are a little looser. So far, I've finished five screenplays this year and I have two in progress as of this moment. I'm also in the middle of writing two novels and what I think will be a novella, though I'm not limiting that in case it wants to be longer.

Yours in miscellanea,

Michael

The Return of Bosch

For many years now, long before the Kindle and other e-readers, I began reading books on mobile devices. My go-to device back them was the venerable Palm Pilot and the books I downloaded were plain text classics from some long-forgotten source.

Since then, I've upgraded my reading devices to Kindles and iPhones and iPad, each one making the reading experience more enjoyable and certainly easier on the eyes than that little gray screen with the dark letter gave me! Along the way, I picked up audiobooks from Audible.com and read those when I would go to the gym or was doing some other mindless task, like doing housework -- in fact, I still do.

When I read (which is often, as you can see), I tend to gravitate toward thrillers, the more complex, the better. I began reading Lee Child's Jack Reacher books, first from Audible, and then (as luck would have it) via an app called Overdrive, which was eventually replaced with its improved app Libby. These two apps allow one to add one or more library cards to gain access to those libraries' digital content, both e-books and audiobooks.

Thankfully, all of the Jack Reacher books save for a couple were accessible to me this way. I listened to his entire series via the Libby app and only shifted to e-book format when I couldn't find them in the former format.

Looking for new authors of a similar caliber, I asked my uncle, another lover of thrillers, for his suggested. One of his top favorites is Michael Connelly, who has written a large number of books featuring (in most cases) the exploits of Harry Bosch, LAPD detective and general badass.

Like the Reacher books, I listened to every audiobook I could get of the Bosch series and only shifted to ebook format when I ran out of options. I'm still reading them as of this writing.

When I found out that Bosch was made into a series on Amazon Prime, I was, well, thrilled. Surprisingly, my wife was into it as much as I was and we binge-watched all five seasons, usually three or four episodes a night.

I'm happy to report that season 6 of Bosch has been released. Last night, we watched the first three of ten episodes, and the acting, directing, writing, and cinematography is as brilliant as the first five seasons were. What a treat!

And the best news of all... Amazon is in development of a Reacher series based on the Lee Child books. The only challenge, unfortunately, is that the COVID-19 outbreak could very well delay any further progress because of filming concerns. We'll see if this is true or not in the coming months.

Until then, I'll continue reading my thrillers and finding new authors. Steve Berry's Cotton Malone character is interesting...

Reading in Self-Isolation

Like most writers, I love to read and always have. When I was a kid, Santa or my parents or both would make sure I had stacks of books in lieu of toys, though I got plenty of those, too. Same with Easter, birthdays, and pretty much any other holiday.

I devoured books and almost always could be found with a book in my hand or the latest Hardy Boys mystery bookmarked on my nightstand. A true bibliophile.

Back in the day, Scholastic Book Club (which I note is still around) would have our teachers hand out a catalog every year--maybe before the holidays, I don't remember--and my mom and I would go through the whole thing and I would pick out the ones I wanted.

I didn't get every choice, but I got a lot of them. They would arrive in a big box, though I don't remember whether it came to the school or directly to our home via the post office. Either way, I would be awash in reading material for a few months.

So naturally, this self-isolation is working out well for us readers. On Goodreads.com, I signed up to read fifty books this year. Last year, I exceeded that by twenty-four! I read them mostly by e-reader and in audio format. The latter is perfect for me while I'm doing other mundane tasks that require little or no concentration (housecleaning, working out, food prep, for example).

The thing is I have all the time in the world to read as it is. Officially retired from the 9-to-5 grind for almost seven years, I adjusted easily to my new normal once we were able to move into our new house. That allowed me time for writing and reading to my heart's content...that is when I'm not doing some of my other hobbies.

I'm not bragging--I know the heartache working people have right now. The uncertainty of one's job when you have a family to raise or college loans to pay off sometimes seems overwhelming. I know if I was still working, I'd be sweating out this pandemic for more reasons than running out of toilet paper.

What I'm saying is if you're at home anyway and you're not working, why not pick up a book? I'm not even suggesting reading mine (though that would be nice 😆), but I think reading is good for the brain, if not as an escape, then as another source of knowledge.

Yours in the word,
Michael

The Name of the Blog

In case you haven't figured it out, I call this blog "Love in the Time of Corona" as a play on the famous 1985 book Love in the Time of Cholera by Colombian writer Gabriel García Márquez. A movie of the same name was released in 2007.

From Wikipedia:

The main characters of the novel are Florentino Ariza and Fermina Daza. Florentino and Fermina fall in love in their youth. A secret relationship blossoms between the two with the help of Fermina's Aunt Escolástica. They exchange several love letters. However, once Fermina's father, Lorenzo Daza, finds out about the two, he forces his daughter to stop seeing Florentino immediately. When she refuses, he and his daughter move in with his deceased wife's family in another city. Regardless of the distance, Fermina and Florentino continue to communicate via telegraph. However, upon her return, Fermina realizes that her relationship with Florentino was nothing but a dream since they are practically strangers; she breaks off her engagement to Florentino and returns all his letters.

A young and accomplished national hero, Dr. Juvenal Urbino, meets Fermina and begins to court her. Despite her initial dislike of Urbino, Fermina gives in to her father's persuasion and the security and wealth Urbino offers, and they wed. Urbino is a physician devoted to science, modernity, and "order and progress". He is committed to the eradication of cholera and to the promotion of public works. He is a rational man whose life is organized precisely and who greatly values his importance and reputation in society. He is a herald of progress and modernization.

Even after Fermina's engagement and marriage, Florentino swore to stay faithful and wait for her. However, his promiscuity gets the better of him. Even with all the women he is with, he makes sure that Fermina will never find out. Meanwhile, Fermina and Urbino grow old together, going through happy years and unhappy ones and experiencing all the reality of marriage. At an elderly age, Urbino attempts to get his pet parrot out of his mango tree, only to fall off the ladder he was standing on and die. After the funeral, Florentino proclaims his love for Fermina once again and tells her he has stayed faithful to her all these years. Hesitant at first because she is only recently widowed, and finding his advances untoward, Fermina eventually gives him a second chance. They attempt a life together, having lived two lives separately for over five decades.

Urbino proves in the end not to have been an entirely faithful husband, confessing one affair to Fermina many years into their marriage. Though the novel seems to suggest that Urbino's love for Fermina was never as spiritually chaste as Florentino's was, it also complicates Florentino's devotion by cataloging his many trysts as well as a few potentially genuine loves. By the end of the book, Fermina comes to recognize Florentino's wisdom and maturity, and their love is allowed to blossom during their old age.

 A link to the entire article is here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Love_in_the_Time_of_Cholera

I remember reading the book when it first came out and loved it. I never did see the movie, however.