Signs That Agatha Christie Is About To Murder You

 

Courtesy of Beulah Maud Devaney of The Toast

In your previous life you were a medical practitioner and accidentally killed a patient while drunk. Since then you have stopped drinking, changed your name to something with the same initials as your previous name, and moved within 5 miles of the original murder. You have also married the dead patient’s spouse.

You have received a letter from a recent murder victim. You read half of it before stopping to inform your guests and entire staff about the letter. You then wander off to read the rest in your study, next to your collection of antique blowpipes.

At dinner you decide to tell a lighthearted story about a gruesome murder. The murderer escaped but had an unusual physical defect by which you would be able to identify them anywhere. You refuse to disclose any more details but glance meaningfully around the table before heading up to bed.

You noticed something odd at dinner but can’t work out what it was. You informed the table of this and then wandered off to the summer house for a nap.

You began life as a homeless street urchin but, in a vulgar retaliation against your social position, you built your own business empire and now own all of New York.

You have a dazzling cousin with a boy’s name who wears short dresses and enjoys midnight swimming with your fiance. She appears to be in danger of being murdered. You have invited her to stay with you.

You are surrounded by foreigners.

You have a maid called Hilda, Tilda, Greeta, or Gretel who you are horrible to. She has ugly glasses and watchful eyes.

You suspect that a murder has been committed so you tell no one and invite the murderer to dinner.

You have a much younger husband. You met him on a cruise just two weeks after your husband died. Your family doesn’t like his paintings.

Your husband has died after drinking a poisoned cup of tea that only you and one other person could have prepared for him. You continue to doggedly drink tea and claim the whole thing is a misunderstanding.

You are a handsome woman.

You agreed to divorce your wife months ago, but she keeps sending detectives to ask you for a divorce and some of your personalized writing paper is missing.

You organize a big family gathering and use it to insult all your guests. You then whip out your will and alter it at the dinner table while everyone finishes their semolina pudding.

Your mousey little wife is extremely unattractive (those glasses! that schoolgirl bob!) but also bears a passing resemblance to the glamorous film star you are having an affair with.

Worried that your past is catching up with you, you have decided to fake your own death with the use of a dead tramp.

You receive a vaguely lewd poison pen letter and decide to have a bridge party to celebrate.

One of your neighbours accidentally donated a priceless work of art to the vicarage jumble sale. You brought it on a whim and are now drinking tea beneath it.

You are traveling to meet your young lover when you notice your estranged husband getting on the same train. You assume last night’s ugly scene (where you told him about Alfredo’s sensuous spirit) has been forgotten and he is taking a spontaneous business trip.

You insist on dropping hints to your guests about Bunny’s “frightfully interesting time during the war.” Bunny is glowering.

You are being blackmailed by a swarthy fellow. Rather than give in to his demands you make a speech about good old England and then turn your back to write a note to your tailor.

You habitually wear dark glasses, big hats, false teeth, bulky coats and speak with a unique yet easy to mimic accent. All of your friends, family and staff used to be on the stage.

Everything tastes horrible.

Everyone hates you.

The Postage Stamp Vegetable Garden by Karen Newcomb

What, you say — a gardening book? Who sits down and reads a gardening book?  True confession time, I do.   This guide turned out to be ideal for my city-small garden and my raised vegetable growing beds.

 

 

The book opens with this great passage:

It’s a beautiful day. There’s not a cloud in the sky. The temperature is in the mid-80s. And there you are in your backyard, picking loads of vegetables from your own small garden tucked away in the corner of your property. Tomatoes, onions, corn, beans, you’ve grown them all—in fact, more than you ever dreamed possible from such a small space.
Impossible?

Of course not. That’s exactly what a postage stamp garden is intended to do and what you will learn to do in the next several chapters. The techniques outlined here allow you to double or triple the quantities of vegetables you might normally grow in any given space.

First published 40 years ago, in this newly revised edition, Ms. Newcomb introduces us to a radical style of gardening tailored for  “postage stamp” or small space gardens.  She advocates planting seeds much closer than recommended on the seed packets, with no neat rows and succession plant so you have crops all year round (depending on your location).

She goes on to explain the history of this technique.

 The history of this incredible gardening system began in the 1890s. Outside Paris, a few enterprising Frenchmen began raising crops using a new method they discovered. Over their land they spread an 18-inch layer of manure (plentiful in the day of the horse and buggy) and planted their vegetables so close together in this rich material that the leaves touched one another as the plants grew. Under this carpet of leaves, the ground remained moist, warm, and vigorous. During periods of frost, they set glass jars over the tiny plants to give them an early start. So good were the Frenchmen in devising fresh ways of growing things that they were able to produce nine crops a year. Such was the birth of the French Intensive method of gardening, an early form of what we now call intensive gardening.

The benefits of this technique, besides year-round vegetables, are quite attractive — you need less water (key here in California) and it requires less weeding (hear-hear!). Not to say that postage-stamp gardening doesn’t have it’s challenges – it does — but they are clearly and simply explained in this book.

She makes it easy to understand her concept of  “crop stretching” — that is, when succession planting in an area that has frost and winter (poor you) you should alternate your crops – early spring planted crops (spinach)  are replaced by later crops (beans).  Also, if you’ve just harvested slow-growing crops (broccoli) in late summer you now have a short growing season left, so plant a quick maturing crop such as green onions.   If your garden is in a temperate climate (like mine) you can plant the same crops in succession all year long (as with lettuce or spinach).  She goes on to explain “intercropping” — planting quick maturing crops between slower maturing crops.  You harvest the intercrops before the maturing crops have grown big enough to crowd the smaller plants out.  That’s getting double duty out of your postage stamp bed.

The author has given detailed drawings of sample garden layouts, (sorry for the poor photo) there are several designed to fit a 4×4 bed.  Look at all the produce! Click to make larger.

The last half of the book is filled with a vegetable by vegetable guide – Ms. Newcomb recommends heirlooms and gives a cute little postage stamp rating (1 to 4 stamps) to indicate which are best for postage stamp gardens.  And each section gives crop stretching advice — “you can follow beans with a planting of cabbage…”

There are additional sections covering:  Plants That Like Each Other; Herbs; Companion flowers; Composting and Pest Control.

After reading this book, I felt like a beginning gardener all over again.  Turns out I’ve been doing it all wrong — plant my vegetables once (or twice) during the year, always in neat rows, thin the small seedlings, and rejoice over what now appears to be very paltry results.

So, if you have a small garden or don’t want the work of a larger one, this is the book for you.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have seeds to plant.

 

The novels of Nicole Mones

Overheard in the bookstore the other day:

 “Have you read this?  It’s wonderful.”

“I don’t read novels, when I read I want to learn and educate myself.”

I’ve heard variations on this opinion before from smart and respectable non-fiction-only readers and I always nod and smile.  In truth, however, I have to quell the urge to grab them by the arm, march them into a comfortable chair, give them a cup of coffee and demand they read an author such as Nicole Mones.

A newly launched textile business took Nicole Mones to China for the first time in 1977, after the end of the Cultural Revolution. She traded textiles with China for eighteen years before she turned to writing.  Ms. Mones’ extensive knowledge of China’s culture, history and politics is woven throughout her books.  Her novels are enthralling, but each one is an education as well.  Ms. Mones is an author who obviously understands that there are readers who want to think and be entertained at the same time.

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Lost In Translation, Ms. Mones’ debut novel takes the reader into the world of Alice, an unlikeable American woman living in contemporary China.  Alienated from her Congressman father because of his overt racism, Alice seeks to leave America behind and become Chinese. She works as a translator by day and secretly haunts bars at night often having one night stands with Chinese men – trying to understand and connect with the xenophobic culture.

But things change for Alice when she accepts a translator position with an archeological team tracking the remains of the ancient and important Chinese treasure  — “the Peking Man”.  Alice becomes close to Lin a member of the team, while they navigate mysterious secret meetings and the threat of arrest. Working with Lin, she forms a close connection and better understanding of Chinese culture and history

The novel not only mesmerizes with the fictional characters and storyline, but goes further to weave in the historical significance of Peking Man as the first ancestor of China and the important writings of the French Jesuit priest-philosopher, Tielhard de Chardin, from whom the archeological team gains clues as to the whereabouts of the bones.  This novel has it all – an engrossing mystery combined with Chinese cultural history and a dash of sex and romance.

The title* captures the gist of the novel, namely the difficulties of trying to move between cultures, language, history and current society — never being sure what has been lost in translation.  (*No relation to the Bill Murray film of the same name.)

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A Cup of Light transports us into the rarefied world of Chinese porcelain “pots” long treasured by emperors and collectors alike.

Lia Frank is an American appraiser of fine Chinese porcelain and is sent to Beijing to authenticate a collection of rare pots going up for international sale.  As she unpacks the crates, holding each delicate piece and “feeling” the refined porcelain, she discovers there are many more pots than originally estimated and that some of them are “fakes”.   But these are no ordinary fakes –these are forgeries so exquisite, so precise that she has to find the forger.  In Chinese culture when the copy is as beautiful as the piece it imitates then the forgery and the forger are greatly admired. 

Again an education here — with A Cup of Light you’ll discover the infamous Chenghua Chinese cups, visit the town of Jingdezhen where the truly priceless pots were manufactured for the emperors and learn how these pots were hidden and smuggled out (with some lost) during the 1931 Japanese invasion.  Also, if you’re like me you’ll cringe in embarrassment  as you learn that J.P. Morgan (yes that J.P. Morgan) tried to buy the entire contents of the Forbidden City in 1913 for twenty million dollars – so many of the priceless and culturally important pots were buried and hidden.  Luckily, old J.P. died and the deal was abandoned. 

Lia wears hearing aids and takes them out to achieve complete silence to exercise her memories.  Lia is a mnemonist and has memorized not only every pot she has ever examined, but also every catalog and history.  She uses the Greek/Roman mnemonic system to memorize and at first I found it unbelievable, but with a little research I found it was actually a real thing.  Ms. Mones also based this on the real missionary Matteo Ricci who taught young Chinese scholars tricks to increase their memory skills–an important advantage in a nation with countless laws and rituals which had to be learned by heart.  But I digress, when Lia goes into her memory files to help her determine which pot is real or fake, we get some fascinating Chinese porcelain history.  Also fascinating is the current day political intrigue intruding into Lia’s world of beautiful pots contrasted with her researching (remembering) similar shadiness throughout the history of Chinese porcelain.  

Ms. Mones was a textile trader in China for many years and her knowledge of the underworld of art smuggling and forgeries shines through. In each of her novels, the lead female characters have many flaws, but Ms. Mones always portrays them as competent, professional women with real work to accomplish.

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The Last Chinese Chef is probably my favorite of her novels.  This time, Ms. Mones, a contributor to the now sadly defunct Gourmet magazine, takes us into the luscious world of Chinese cuisine.

When Maggie McElroy, a widowed American food writer, learns of a Chinese paternity claim against her late husband’s estate, she has to go immediately to Beijing. She asks her magazine for time off, but her editor counters with an assignment:  to profile the rising culinary star, Sam Liang, who is about to open an imperial-style restaurant in Beijing.  When the restaurant opening is delayed Sam, who is half Chinese, half American, acts as Maggie’s translator and helps her track down the child and unravel the mystery of the parentage.

But readers – it’s the backdrop of the FOOD that is the heart and soul of this novel.

We understand the intricacies of Chinese cuisine. The concepts of texture and appearance are as important as flavor on the Chinese table. We learn about “guanxi” — the Chinese concept of relationships. We see that food is at the heart of Chinese relationships, one reason why all meals are shared in China and never individually plated. Chinese cuisine is very much about presentation  including  symbols and references which are understood instantly and connect its people not only to one another but to their culture and history.

This is not to say that the characters or the plot of The Last Chinese Chef aren’t compelling — oh they are.    Sam, the heir to the family’s cooking expertise, is sexy yet gentle – helping Maggie comprehend the often mystifying Chinese culture and re-awakens her interest in food by preparing her luscious dishes  (I know… sigh).  Sam decides to enter a Chinese cooking competition and we watch, smell and taste the tapestry of the food he prepares to practice.  Sam’s grandfather, Liang Wei, had been one of the last generation of chefs in the Forbidden City and the author of a highly regarded tome on the art of Chinese cuisine. Each chapter of the book starts with quotes of wisdom from this fictional but very realistic Chinese cook book.  Eventually, Maggie and Sam unravel the truth behind the child’s parentage, but by then Maggie doesn’t care so much, re-awakened from her grief and happily eating.

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 Night in Shanghai is Ms. Mone’s most recent novel.  I haven’t read it, but it’s next on my list.

It’s about the little-known story of black musicians in the Chinese jazz age.  You can watch the book’s trailer HERE.

(Who knew that one day book publishing/marketing includes film-style trailers.)

 

 

 

 

Her by Harriet Lane

You may remember my review of Harriet Lane’s previous novel Alys Always.

I greatly admire Ms. Lane’s spare and visual writing style –she’s a writer who can paint so much in so few words.

Her is her second novel and like Alys Always it’s creepy minimalist writing at its best.

Told in the first-person narrative from two women’s perspectives, the novel teases you along  in alternating chapters. 

Nina spots Emma in North London — a woman she knows from her childhood and contrives a way to connect with Emma — we know not why.

Emma is a harried, scattered mother of two kids.  She is also vulnerable and clueless – she doesn’t remember Nina and takes her to be a new friend. You cringe as Nina (obviously a psychopath) begins to orchestrate a series of devious and manipulative events to successfully insinuate herself into Emma’s life.

Emma’s messy, but ordinary domestic life is the perfect stage for Nina to play out her menacing plan.  True friends – maybe not.  Nina purposely messes with Emma — household items go missing, babysitting plans go awry, a child seems to get temporarily lost — these haphazard domestic incidents provide a ominous backdrop.  The reader knows this is a household about to unravel in a most disturbing way.

And so we are intrigued…what’s going to happen?  Why is Nina so intent on connecting with Emma?  What was the past incident that is causing this evil charade?

As in her previous novel, Ms. Lane is very good at painting the seemingly normal, but creepy stalker.  Slightly “off” people who seamlessly infiltrate themselves into innocent lives.  You read along, nervously aware that something terrible is going to come of all this, but unsure what, how or why.  That is the mark of an intelligently constructed thriller. 

This book has been compared to the currently popular thrillers  Gone Girl and Girl on a Train.  I’ve read both books and Her is far superior writing and I think more thrilling and creepy.  Again, it’s the minimalist writing – an around-the-campfire ghost story teller who pauses for utmost effect to let your imagination fill in around the silence.

My only quibble is with the reiteration of the same event from each woman’s point of view — there isn’t enough difference in the two voices to make the re-telling fresh and so at times the narrative seems to slow down – but perhaps this is Ms. Lane’s intention –  maybe it’s supposed to be a slow burn.

Stick with it my friends, the author kicks up the tension and the last chapters are evil and frightening.  To some, the ending may feel unfinished and you may be wondering WHY? —  but that is the chilling nightmare.

 

The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo

While reading this book, I kept thinking of my sister.  From a very young age, she loved organizing and keeping things in order.  Her room was always neat as a pin with everything in its place.  She would put away the toys while we were still playing with them and loved organizing anything – mom’s kitchen drawers, my jewelery box…anything slightly messy was at risk of little sister putting it in order.

It’s no wonder I was reminded of my sister — Marie Kondo also grew up wanting to organize and tidy things – from her classroom, to her siblings rooms to her parents kitchen and has turned this lifelong passion (obsession?) into a phenomenon in Japan.

The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up is a small book – purposely designed to take up very little space.  It has a calming clouds and sky image on the cover and easy to hold it in your hands. From the beginning I really warmed to the word “tidy” – such a sweet, old-fashioned word, which seems gentler and more approachable than many other guides and television shows focused on getting organized or how to clean out your awful hoarding mess things. This book is translated from Japanese, so some of the writing is a bit clunky, but nonetheless,  I gathered some new ideas, and shook my head at others, while making my way through this book.

She divides people who can’t stay tidy into three types:  “Can’t throw it away”, “Can’t put it back”, and “first two combined.” Well, that rang true right off the bat. Ms. Kondo goes on to bust the usual practice of cleaning one closet or one drawer at a time.  She advocates cleaning out things (not spaces) in a certain order – and not putting anything back until you’ve finished the process of discarding.  This may be practical in tiny Japanese homes, but I wonder how it would work for the multi-storied, many-roomed homes of America.  For example, Ms. Kondo wants you to take every single piece of clothing in your home and place it on the floor – the mere thought gave me an instant headache.  But it appears that’s the goal —  to overwhelm her clients with the staggering amount of clothing they posses and seldom (or never) wear. As a person who changes sizes with regularity (I have three sets of clothes: fit me now, maybe fit me soon, and in my dreams…) this is a very scary proposition.

Storage solutions (sorry Container Store) are poo-pooed as just a method to perpetuate hoarding.  OK that does make sense but Ms. Kondo goes too far when keeping a spare button box is discouraged because when a button falls off it is usually time to get rid of the clothing?  The question mark is mine.  Should we also not keep a sewing box to make repairs?

When it comes to childhood memorabilia and other things from the past – Ms. Kondo makes good sense with this advice;   “It is not our memories but the person we have become because of those past experiences that we should treasure.  This is the lesson these keepsakes teach us when we sort them.  The space in which we live should be for the person we are becoming now, not for the person we were in the past.”  Whoa — I had to write that down.

This book does point out that mess is often about unhappiness and that tidying can bring happiness – OK that, too is true.  I always feel better when I’ve cleared out a drawer or a closet.   But I’m not sure it’s linked to the spirituality that Ms. Kondo promises.  This little volume is packed with some pretty “out-there” suggestions – greet your home when you enter it.  Say thank you to items before you put them away. Folding clothes with an open palm transmits positive energy.  Do my clothes really need energy of any sort?

Stockpiling is obviously discouraged (sorry Costco, Sam’s Club) and once again I thought of my sister – when she uses one can of tomato sauce, she replaces it with one can of tomato sauce.  No impulsive buy 3 get one free sales for her.  Even though my house is tiny, I have a pantry.  I live in fear of running out of chicken broth. I just looked and currently have three cartons.

The book advocates only keeping things that truly give you joy – which I understand, but what about my the pragmatic things in your life?  My food processor is ugly, it takes up space in my cupboard and it doesn’t actually bring me said “joy” –but when I need it – wow is it practical.  Ms. Kondo lost me with her advice on clearing out books (natch),  She advocates taking each book off the shelf and deciding if the book in your hands brings you joy before deciding whether to keep it.  She feels books left on the shelves have a certain inertia and tend to stay there. Has she never wanted something to read, not sure what, and found the perfect book on your own shelf…now that’s joy.

I fear her OCD  (she empties her purse every single night, placing each of the contents in its own little place, and puts her watch into a little box every night so it can “rest” overnight)  — seeps into her advice, loosing credibility for the real world and the rest of us.    I agree with other reviewers that the book only talks of throwing things away rather than donating, recycling or selling items you’re discarding.  Does Japan have a bottomless landfill?

I shook my head over the impracticality of much of her advice. Ms. Kondo is obviously a single woman and able to keep everything she owns exactly in place …obviously she doesn’t live with messy children or a “I’ll find a use for this someday” husband. Her business is thriving in Japan and this book is a best-seller…but I must admit I only got a few good pointers from the book and overall I found it preachy and overly-simplistic.  So do as I did – get this book from your library – gather what you will from reading it – and then return to your library — no need to add this book to your clutter.

The Most of Nora Ephron

From The New York Times Book Review  “Nora Ephron was the person everybody wanted to hang out with, in part because she was funny and charming but more critically because she made the people she was with feel funny and charming . . . She was the one who listened and then finally tossed in the one fabulous line that brought everything together. Her best writing was exactly the same . . . It takes a particular combination of winning voice and brutal candor, of intimacy and objectivity, to turn what happens to you into a story that means something to the wider world . . . The Most of Nora Ephron gives her fans a chance to rummage through her desk . . . This is the kind of collection meant for snacking . . . She would want readers to meander, sampling things they had never tried or bits that look especially tasty. But I was surprised by how satisfying the big chunks are.” 

Nora Ephron died in June of 2012 and her obituary, also by the New York Times is beautifully written HERE

I can’t top either the NY Times review or their obituary, so please bear with me while I uncritically just gush – I love Nora Ephron – always have, always will.

You know the question — which people dead or alive would make up your perfect dinner party. Well Nora was, and is, always on my list.  I’ve read almost everything she wrote and adore her films – Sleepless in Seattle , You’ve got Mail and Julie and Julia, just to name a few…

A friend gave me this hefty volume of almost everything Nora Ephron wrote.  It’s been next to my reading chair ever since and I’ve been making my way through it little by little.

The volume divides her work by her professions:

The Journalist:  Nora’s early essays from the 1970’s and most of which I’d never read before.  Her essay Journalism: A Love Story overflows with her delight of landing a position at the Post and the legends she encountered — never jaded or blase – she had found her true passion and was greatly in awe of the profession.  The Palm Beach Social Pictorial is a hysterical send-up of a Palm Beach newspaper for which her friend, Liz Smith often wrote a column.  Nora recounts sections from the paper – the goings-on-about town, the ladies who lunch wearing diamonds with their tennis whites, the older women with their younger men and then this – “Bill Carter (now UN ambassador to UNICEF) proved he really does love children by bringing his latest airline hostess”.

The Advocate:  Includes her inspirational  commencement address to Wellesley class of 1996 – contrasting both the sea changes and the backward progression of women’s roles since she attended in 1962.  Imploring the class to break the rules and make some trouble on behalf of all women.

The Profiler:  It’s well worth reading each and every one of these essays — her intimate and often colorful portrayals of the significant women of her age, including Dorothy Parker, Jan Morris, Helen Gurley Brown and Julie Nixon Eisenhower.  Her parody of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo called Lisbeth Salander, The Girl Who Fixed the Umlaut has been passed around among readers of the best-selling series.  If you’ve read any of Stieg Larsson series, you should read the essay HERE (Warning, like Larsson’s books – contains graphic language.)

The Novelist, The Playwright, The Screenwriter: Here this gargantuan book includes the full novel Heartburn, the play Lucky Man and the screenplay When Harry Met Sally.  I’ve already read Heartburn, dipped into Lucky Man but could not stick with it and skipped When Harry Met Sally (I couldn’t read it without replaying the film in my head).

The Foodie:  Nora appreciated food, the New York restaurant scene and the foodies in her life, but here she has to poke fun at it all. Some of her most giggle-worthy essays are in this section.  She reports straight-faced about the Pillsbury Bake Off — which makes the essay all the more funny and she rants about the absurdity of egg-white omelettes.

The Blogger:  Nora (see I feel like I can call her just Nora) was a blogger during the Bush/Cheney administration and her blog gave her full license to rant – with humor and political incorrectness.  Read it and cringe –or weep depending upon your politics.  Her blog also gave her license to finally reveal and confirm the identity of Deep Throat from the Watergate investigation…she self-righteously points out that she knew it all along, but wisely kept her mouth shut.

Personal:  This final section is the best with pieces taken from her other (much more lift-able) books of essays – I Feel Bad About My Neck and I Remember Nothing.  This section also includes my favorite essay Nora ever produced – called On Rapture, an essay about reading. You can read it HERE on Oprah.com  I had this essay ripped out of Oprah’s magazine where it first appeared, and in my reading nook for years.   In On Rapture Nora recounts her delight reading  The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michal Chabon which I promptly read and was (like Nora) simply transported away – please add it to your reading list.  Another essay in this section, Considering the Alternative talks about death, dying and the loss of her dear friend.  “I want to talk to her. I want to have lunch with her. I want her to give me a book she just read and loved. She is my phantom limb, and I can’t believe I’m here without her.”  True confession time – a few tears slipped down my cheeks.

The final two essays are lump-in-your-throat reading, as by this time Nora (and only one or two others) knew of her diagnosis.

What I Won’t Miss:  Dry skin, Email, Bras, Fox (News), Small Print

What I Will Miss:  Waffles, The concept of Waffles, Fireworks, Laughs, My Kids, Dinner with Friends, Pie

I totally enjoyed this book and am very grateful to have it.  (The full length novel, screenplay, and play notwithstanding).  The Most of Nora Ephron will have its hefty place on my shelves, for awhile at least.  I may need to go back and re-read certain essays.  Also, I know I’ll be talking with someone and say – “oh but Nora wrote the best essay on that…here let me get it for you”.  That’s Nora for you.

If you want the collection of most everything Nora has written and you’ve been lifting weights – then this is the book for you. Otherwise go for her books of her most recent essays I Feel Bad About My Neck and I Remember Nothing.

OK I’m done gushing – I just love Nora Ephron and she would have a place of honor at my imaginary dinner party…along with

Ruth Reichel, John Adams, Julia Child, Eddie Izzard, Deborah Cavendish (the Duchess of Devonshire), Dame Judi Dench, Sir John Gielgud, Paula Poundstone, Molly Ivins, Maryalice Fischer, Pat Conroy, Maggie Smith, Jane Heath Donohue…and others.

My cast of characters may change over time, but Nora will always be on the list.