Erin O'Riordan writes smart, whimsical erotica. Her erotic romance novel trilogy, Pagan Spirits, is now available. With her husband, she also writes crime novels. Visit her home page at ko-fi.com.
Of course the Wallflowers were one of my top artists this year; we finally got to see them live. I listened to plenty of both Jacob Dylan and his dad Bob.
My favorite podcasts have hardly changed at all since last year.
Of course my top artist is Lady Gaga again this year. It's always Lady Gaga. I just like so many of her songs.
I think this is the first time one of the songs from my Halloween playlist, the charmingly innocent 1950s bop "Batman, Wolfman, Frankenstein or Dracula" by the Diamonds, made my top 5. I guess I hit the Halloween playlist hard this spooky season. I indulged my urge to listen to songs that made me feel nostalgic.
Tell me some fun facts about YOUR Spotify Wrapped in the comments. Were you surprised by anything?
Told by the hotel's former general manager who appeared in the 4-part Netflix documentary (The Vanishing at the Cecil Hotel) that centered on the case of Elissa Lam, this 1st person account gives context and humanity to the hotel's wild reputation.
Amy Price seems like a decent woman and apparently she's a creative and talented interior designer and jeweler. I still feel terrible for Elissa Lam's family. So does Amy Price.
I hope she doesn't stop at writing just this one book because she seems like she has an aptitude for storytelling.
I borrowed this book from the Indianapolis public library through the Libby app. I was not obligated in any way to review this library book.
Here's a song which I feel is very cool: "Ava Gardner" by SuperKnova. Deliberately crafted in an homage to "Buddy Holly" by Weezer, instead of Buddy Holly and Mary Tyler Moore, it asks us to imagine roleplaying the love story of Ava Gardner and Frank Sinatra.
Frank Sinatra and Ava Gardner at a table in a restaurant in Schiphol Airport (Amsterdam) on December 13, 1951 Photo Ben van Meerendonk. Via Wikimedia Commons.
For one brief season, FX/Hulu had a series based on the first part of Octavia Butler's time travel novel Kindred, which I haven't read. I starred the wonderful Mallori Johnson as the novel's heroine Dana James. It also featured Australian actor Ryan Kwanten, who played Jason Stackhouse on True Blood. He played one of the worst characters, a plantation owner. But the series got canceled, so I don't know how the story ends.
These are some of the books discounted at Audible.com through November 30, 2023. Please note that I am affiliate and if you make a purchase after clicking through these links, I may earn a small commission.
Here's one you can read if you're trying to make yourself really, really sad.
If you, too, were a fan of the U.S. tv series Person of Interest, you might remember that Flowers for Algernon was a favorite book of Samantha Groves.
Speaking of tv series, you may remember actor Kate Mulgrew from such series as Star Trek: Voyager or Orange Is the New Black. This is her memoir of taking care of her dying parents.
November 2, 2004: Vincent Van Gogh’s 47-year-old great-grand-nephew Theo Van Gogh, a filmmaker, is shot and then has his throat slit while riding his bicycle on the east side of Amsterdam. His killer is a 26-year-old man, Mohammed Bouyeri, who has ties to Egyptian terrorist group Jama'at al-Muslimin, a radical Islamist offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood. Van Gogh was a vocal critic of some Islamic practices, especially those associated with fundamentalist Islam.
November 3, 1793: Playwright and early feminist Olympe de Gouges is executed by guillotine by the French Revolution’s Revolutionary Tribunal. Although convicted of “seditious behavior” and attempting to reinstate the monarchy, of which de Gouges is not guilty, her real “crime” is criticizing the Revolution and wondering in writing if it had gone too far.
November 4, 1918: One week before the Armistice that will end the war, the poet Wilfred Owens is killed in the First World War.
November 4, 1982: The family of Dominique Dunne takes 22-year-old Dominique off life support after medical tests reveal that she has no brain activity. The young actress has been in this state since she was attacked and strangled by her estranged boyfriend on October 30th. Her killer was convicted of manslaughter rather than murder and sentenced to only six years in prison. Dunne’s parents, Dominick and Lenny Dunne, became advocates for crime victims after the outrage of their daughter’s killer’s light sentence.
November 7, 1837: Anti-slavery newspaper editor Elijah Parish Lovejoy is shot to death by a pro-slavery mob in Alton, Illinois, which is near Illinois’ border with “slave state” Missouri.
November 8, 1965: 52-year-old journalist Dorothy Kilgallen dies at home of an apparently accidental overdose of alcohol and barbiturates.
November 12, 1981: Popular 1950s actor William Holden dies after slipping on a rug in his bedroom, striking his forehead on the bedside table, and bleeding to death while apparently too intoxicated to help himself in Santa Monica, California.
Suzanne Vega reads the account of Holden’s death in the newspaper while sitting in a diner and memorializes this diner trip in her song “Tom’s Diner.” She was a frequent patron at Tom’s Restaurant, on the corner of Broadway and 112th St. in New York, while she attended Barnard College.
Vega performs the song “Tom’s Diner” a capella on her 1987 album Solitude Standing. In 1990, English music producers Nick Batt and Neal Slateford, working under the artist name DNA, add an instrumental background to Vega’s track. The collaborative version was certified gold in the U.S. and was a #1 hit in four European countries.
The lyrics include:
“I open
Up the paper
There's a story
Of an actor
Who had died
While he was drinking
It was no one
I had heard of
And I'm turning
To the horoscope
And looking
For the funnies”
The day Vega describes must have been Nov. 18, 1981, when the New York Post carried the story about the discovery of Holden’s body. We know Vega read the story in the Post because it was the only one of New York’s then-daily newspapers that had “funnies,” or comic strips.
November 13, 1974: 23-year-old Ronald DeFeo Jr. shoots to death the other members of his Amityville, Long Island family: his father Ronald DeFeo Sr., mother Louise, sisters Dawn and Allison, and brothers Marc and John. John, the youngest, was nine years old. The house in which the familicide occurs will later become infamous as the focus of the Amityville Horror book and films.
November 14, 1916: Masterful British short story writer H.H. Munro, who published under the pen name Saki, is killed by a German sniper while serving in the First World War. His last words are reportedly, “Put that bloody cigarette out!”
November 15, 1959: Herb and Bonnie Clutter and two of their four children, Nancy and Kenyon, are murdered by Dick Hickock and Perry Smith in Holcomb, Kansas. The murders form the basis of Truman Capote’s “nonfiction novel” In Cold Blood. All four were shot, and Herb is also stabbed.
November 20, 1934: Poet, printmaker, and adventurer Everett Ruess is seen for the last time when he sets out to explore the Escalante River Basin in the Utah desert. Ruess’s two donkeys are discovered in February or early March 1935 in a corral he’s made for them. No other sign of Ruess is ever found.
November 22, 1963: C.S. Lewis dies in Oxford of kidney failure. Approximately seven hours later, Aldous Huxley dies of laryngeal cancer in Los Angeles. This news is overshadowed by the assassination of U.S. President John F. Kennedy on the same day.
November 28, 1694: Matsuo Bashō dies. A wandering poet and teacher who owned almost no worldly possessions, Bashō is considered Japan’s greatest writer of haiku.
November 30, 1900: 46-year-old Irish writer Oscar Wilde dies of meningitis. His health has been in decline since he was imprisoned and sentenced to hard labor after being convicted of “gross indecency.” His crime was being in a relationship with Lord Alfred Douglas, whose father did not like Wilde.
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