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Love Lev A C Rosen's historical mystery set in SF. I am still upset I had to learn from this book about whites only gay clubs. Here is the Facebook page of one of the whites only clubs that inspired the one in the book. Can you see any indication it was whites only? www.facebook.com/GLBTHistory/posts/jacks-baths-was-one-of-san-franciscos-longest-running-bathhouses-in-operation-fr/10152233415061176/

The mystery is perfect & the romance is not too sappy. Highly recommend for the great atmosphere created of SF in the 50s, the huge presence of Navy & its impact on San Francisco.

I was so looking forward to making some Sri Lankan food but sadly this book does not deliver on that end. For example, the author writes so beautifully of Neer mor which is a yoghurt based spicy drink that you consume in summer and then the recipe that follows is not for Neer mor but for a labneh like dish "similar" to Neer mor. I never knew what was for breakfast/lunch/dinner but also didn't know how these dishes were supposed to be eaten. They looked like plates you get at a 5 star restaurant and not like a filling meal.

Additionally, this book requires fresh grated coconut for almost all its recipes which makes sense but also I wasn't in the vicinity of a store with that which made it really hard to find a recipe to cook with. Oh well.

I don't understand why I do this to myself. I always end up reading a whodunnit that tries to be so smart that it fails miserably. I really wanted to yank the collar of the author by the end (if you get to it, you will know why).

This book even got a NYT author profile!! I cannot even. www.nytimes.com/2023/10/24/books/dann-mcdorman-west-heart-kill.html

Lovely southern mystery featuring a crotchety old lady who loves thrifting and her daughter who investigate the apparent suicide of a nun. Mystery is predictable but lovely descriptions of Louisiana, the racism that intersects with pollution, and almost no copaganda (except for a brief description of romance with a police officer).

The author provides great tools to observe how the sun, wind, water behave in your local environment and use that to guide how to conserve water, naturally cool your house, and get maximum solar powered electricity. I realized my home can easily save at least 1,000 gallons of rain water! Rain water is the purest form of naturally occurring water and it is pretty wild that we let it run off into sewage.

Look at the author's work here: dunbarspringneighborhoodforesters.org Pretty amazing how much greenery has been created in a desert.