Category Archives: Snow-Gauge Clif

Movies, Snow-Gauge Clif

Zero, Zero, Farewell?

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Even though it was spitting snow as I typed this post, I think the time has truly come to say farewell to Snow-Gauge Clif.

Snow depth in the front yard: Zero.

Snow depth in the backyard: Zero.

I know some of you might be wondering what Snow-Gauge Clif will do with no snow to measure. Worry not.

We have Hedge-Trimmer Clif.

There will also be Rake-the-Yard Clif and Paint-the-House Clif. And as the late, great Kurt Vonnegut might have said, so it goes.

While I love spring and the new growth it brings, I am always sorry to say farewell to winter. I am, after all, a northern woman. Born and raised in Maine, I have winter and short days in my blood.

But speaking of days…patio days are just around the corner, and that is indeed something to look forward to.

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Watching

Movie: Princess Mononoke
Written and directed by Hayao Miyazaki

I am a huge fan of Hayao Miyazaki. His animated films are not only filled with magic but often feature strong, sensitive portrayals of girls and women. (Kiki’s Delivery Service, Spirited Away, Howl’s Moving Castle.)

My favorite Miyazaki  film is Princess Mononoke, and I think it’s fair to consider it his masterpiece. The hand-drawn animation—a Miyazaki trade mark—is achingly beautiful, and the movie’s environmental theme of human needs versus the destruction of the natural world is as relevant today as it was in 1997 when the film came out.

Last week, my daughter Dee discovered Princess Mononoke would be playing at Regal, our local cineplex, and on Sunday we went to see it on the big screen, which is how it should be watched. IMAX would be even better, but our Regal doesn’t offer IMAX. Never mind. It was a visual delight to see Princess Mononoke on the large screen at Regal.

Along with exquisite animation, Princess Mononoke also has complex characters, especially the inhabitants of Iron Town, who are more than one-dimensional villains intent on pillaging natural resources. But naturally my sympathies were with Prince Ashitaka and Princess Mononoke as they tried to save the Forest of the Gods from the encroachment of the humans of Iron Town. The ending of the movie is somewhat surprising and offers a note of hope that we in 2025 would do well to heed.

If Princess Mononoke comes to a theater near you, don’t hesitate to see it.

Movies, Snow-Gauge Clif

And He’s Back!

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Last Monday, when there was no snow for Snow-Gauge Clif to measure, I wondered if he might be back the following Monday. After all, in Maine in March anything can happen. Snow was in the forecast for last Tuesday, and the weekend promised to be horrible with more snow—six inches—and worst of all, freezing rain that could knock out large swaths of power in central and southern Maine.

Being sensible Mainers, we prepared. Clif got more bricks of wood from a local hardware and farm store. When he went to the grocery store, he stocked up on canned soup. Water in buckets down cellar? Check. Propane for the camp stove? Check. Lamp oil? Check yet again. We were ready.

But every once in a while, the weather gods are on our side. While we got about three inches of snow and some rain, none of it was freezing, and we did not lose our power. Happy, happy day!

As soon as we realized the weather wasn’t as bad as predicted, we settled into an enjoyable weekend at home.

We played cooperative board games.

While we played, the snow fell softly, and in the dining room, we were surrounded by a snowy afternoon, which I love, even in March.

On Saturday night, we watched the excellent Michael Clayton, a 2007 movie about a world-weary lawyer (George Clooney) whose firm is mixed up with U-North, a company that makes a carcinogenic weed killer that kills people as well as weeds. (The resemblance to Monsanto is not a coincidence.) Unlike most environmental thrillers, the story focuses on the conversations between the lawyers—mostly men—and their reactions and decisions. In short, the story is told sideways. Without the wonderful cast and script, the movie would have landed with a thud. Instead, it soared. Such a good movie. If you haven’t seen it in a while, Michael Clayton is worth a rewatch. And if you’ve never seen the movie, well, do watch it.

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Sunday Morning

And lo and behold! On Sunday morning there was enough snow for  Snow-Gauge Clif to measure.

Three inches in the front yard.

Three inches in the backyard.

Will there be any snow for Snow-Gauge Clif to measure next week? Only the weather gods know.

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A Big Dose of Cute

In these uncute times, I have been looking for things to make me smile, and in doing so, I came upon Rico, a Brazilian porcupine who lives at the Cincinnati Zoo in Ohio. Like many people, I have mixed feeling about zoos. Even at their best, they can seem like jails for animals. But, dang, I enjoy seeing Rico on Youtube, and I expect zoo visitors enjoy seeing him in person. What I really like is to watch Rico eat, especially popcorn. (I am a huge popcorn fan.) In the video below, he is celebrating National Popcorn Day. I love his little claws, his puffy nose, and his black-bead eyes.  Somehow, I find it soothing to listen to those little crunching sounds he makes when he eats.

Chew on, Rico. Chew on.

 

Celebrate, Snow-Gauge Clif

Au Revoir, Snow-Gauge Clif?

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This post’s title should give a clue as to how much snow is in our yard. The answer? Not much. Just the tiniest clumps here and there in the shady parts of the yard.

Now for the grand totals.

The front yard:  0 inches

The backyard: 0 inches.

Just for fun, here’s a shot of the patio: All clear!

But even though the snow seems to be gone, Clif still has his snow gauge at the ready. Today, most of Maine is under a weather advisory with a forecast of up to five inches of snow in our area. So you never know. Next week, Snow-Gauge Clif just might be back to measure the snow.

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Last Wednesday, March 19, was a special day for Clif and me—we celebrated our forty-eighth wedding  anniversary. Really? Forty-eight years? We both agreed on how it seemed like a lot of years and not much time at all. Time is a funny thing, which is no doubt why I like to write about timey-wimey things in my novels. It always fascinates me how time is felt and how it actually passes. And what if we could go back in time? Hoo-boy, could we ever be ready for the future? I doubt it. Still, it’s fun, at least for me, to consider the possibilities.

After our daughter Dee got out of work for the day, we headed to Wei-Li in Auburn to have a tasty meal of Chinese food, a favorite cuisine for all of us.

Here we are, Ma & Pa, waiting for our food. When we met, my hair was almost black and darker than Clif’s, which was brown. Now, we seem to be a matched pair.

Soon our food came, and how good it was. We had rice, vegetable lo mein, and general tofu.

After all that good food, we were too full for dessert.

Now, onward to forty-nine years, and the year after that? Holy cats, fifty!

Hardly seems possible. Yet here we are, and I’m glad of it.

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Listening

NPR Tiny Desk Concert: Waxahatchee

I am a big fan of both alternative music and country/Americana. Waxahatchee, with its lead singer Katie Crutchfield, gives me both. I also like how her voice always seems to be on the edge of going out of control but never does. Finally, the sadness of the songs really speaks to me right now.

Movies, Snow-Gauge Clif

It’s M-e-l-t-i-n-g…

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Fans of The Wizard of Oz—the movie rather than the book—will understand the title’s reference.  But rather than the Wicked Witch of the West, it’s snow that’s melting.

Before we get to Snow-Gauge Clif, let’s take a look at the patio in the backyard. Time was when we hoped for the patio to be clear by April 22, Earth Day and my younger daughter’s birthday. Barring a nor’easter (more about that latter), the snow will be long gone by April 22.

And what has the temperature been? For this time of year in Maine,  pretty darned warm. No wonder the snow is melting away.

Here is Snow-Gauge Clif in the backyard. Snow measurement: 1 inch. Last week, it was 7 inches. There’s quite a bit of sun in the backyard and that, combined with the warmer temps, takes care of the snow.

In the front yard, not so much. The measurement is pretty much the same as it was last week: 12 inches. But rain is in the forecast for the next few days, and I expect it will whittle the snow away.

One thing I am grateful for is that our new driveway is not in the least bit  muddy. I had wondered if it would be, but when my brother  saw it several months ago, he told me that he thought it would be fine come spring.  And so it is.

The backyard, on the other hand, is mostly mud. Here is a print of one of Snow-Gauge Clif’s Sloggers. The mud is so thick it’s almost a-pull-off-your-Slogger kind of event when we walk in the backyard. Hope it dries up soon.

I’m tempted to state that Snow-Gauge Clif’s job is almost done for the year, but when I looked back at my blog for March/April 2024, I saw that we had a nor’easter last April that left us with a foot of snow. The storm knocked out our power and brought us smack-dab back to winter. Here is a picture from last April.

Therefore, as the old saying goes, it’s best not to count our chickens before they’ve hatched. We might get another doozy of a storm in April. Then again, we might not.

Only Mother Nature knows for sure.

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Watching

The movie Black Bag

Directed by Steven Soderbergh

Staring, very elegantly, Cate Blanchett and Michael Fassbender, who surely are one of the coolest spy couples ever.

This movie, clocking in at a brisk 90 minutes, is a delight from beginning to end. Intelligence officers Kathryn (Cate Blanchett) and George (Michael Fassbender) are a married couple. When the movie begins, George receives intelligence that there is someone in the agency who is leaking top-secret information, and one of the suspects is his wife, Kathryn. George then proceeds to unravel the mystery of who is leaking the information, and a cat and mouse game ensues. This movie is a sheer delight. Every piece fits beautifully to come together as a satisfying whole. If you like spy-thriller movies, don’t miss Black Bag.

 

 

Food, Snow-Gauge Clif, Winter

No Escape

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Dreary March has come to central Maine. We are in a no-man’s land between winter and spring, a time of dirty snow, fog, and gray skies.

On the other hand, northern Maine, the land of my ancestors, is still in winter’s firm grip. Last weekend, they got a foot of snow, and the drifting was so bad some roads had to be closed. Ah, winter! However, in a few weeks, March will come for them, too. In Maine there is no escape.

Behold the end of our driveway and across the road, both of which scream March.

Dirty snow or not, Snow-Gauge Clif must do his job.

In the front yard, the snow measured 17 inches, only 1 inch down from last week. The front yard is very shaded, and the snow melts slowly.

On the other hand, the sunnier backyard measured 7 inches, 5 inches down from last week.  More sun, quicker melt.

To cheer myself up from the March blahs, last Wednesday I headed to the little town of Wayne—population 1,189 and named after Revolutionary War General Anthony Wayne—to A Small Town Bakery. On Wednesdays, a group of women meets to discuss matters big and small, and it’s so nice to get together with like-minded folks. Plus, I seem to be addicted to the bakery’s blueberry muffins. (Sorry, no picture! Next time.)

The bakery has a funky, mismatched, comfortable look that reminds me of bakeries in the 1970s. It’s a look that I’m fond of and brings back memories of my teenage years.

And I absolute love these chickens.

If my house didn’t already have an—ahem—abundance of ornaments, those chickens would be coming home with me. I can almost hear them clucking to each other.

But fear not. I didn’t come home empty handed. I brought back a loaf of the bakery’s utterly delicious anadama bread, a New England specialty. I could have a slice right now. Toasted, of course.

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Last week also brought something not quite as pleasant as bread and blueberry muffins. I had my annual sinus infection that for some odd reason usually arrives in March. It’s as though my body is mourning the end of winter and the beginning of purgatory. The infection begins gradually with the aching of teeth and then progresses to a painful throbbing that comes and goes in waves. No fun, but as it always goes away by itself in a week or so, I don’t bother with antibiotics. Don’t want to overuse them.

I mention this because I inadvertently found a method to relieve the pain, and I thought I would share it here with those who might not know about this method. (Took me sixty-seven years to figure it out.)

One night, when the wave of pain was bad enough so that I could not fall asleep, I decided to to do some deep breathing to focus on something else. To my astonishment, the pain went away. When the pain came back five or so minutes later, I did some more deep breathing. Again, the pain went away.  I did this off and on until I finally fell asleep.

The next day, I thought, what the heck. Is deep breathing really a solution to the pain brought on by sinus infections? To Google I went, and sure enough, it is. Also, headaches, too, which fortunately I seldom have.

So there you have it. An easy and natural remedy for sinus infection pain. Obviously, some infections must be treated by antibiotics, and it’s up to individuals to decide if treatment is necessary. But for me, who has a history of sinus infections and know that they go away on their own, the deep breathing method is a godsend. I only wish I had known about it sooner.

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Listening

What better way to say a sad farewell to winter than with Led Zeppelin’s “Immigrant Song”? (Remember, I’m a child of the 70s and a huge Led Zeppelin fan.)

I come from the lands of the ice and snow…where the harsh winds blow.

 

 

Food, Movies, Snow-Gauge Clif

A Weekend of Drinks, Food, and Movies, and the Return of Snow-Gauge Clif

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For some reason, last weekend turned out to be a flurry of having friends over and eating out.

Our merriment started on Friday afternoon when we invited our friends Dawna and Jim over for wine and appetizers.

We tried to solve the problems of the world as we sat around the dining room table, sipped wine, and nibbled on appetizers, but of course we didn’t have much luck.

As we talked, our jade plant glowed in the sun. Clearly, Jade was on our side. She, too, wonders what the heck is going on in this country.

On Saturday morning, we headed to Waterville to the Maine Film Center for the Nigerian movie Mami Wata, the final movie in the wintertime film series Cinema Explorations.

This wonderful movie is set in a remote African village where the water deity Mami Wata is revered even though she is mostly absent. When a stranger is washed up on the shores, the power balance shifts, leading to conflict and death. This fable of a movie was filmed in an impressionistic way, which adds to the power of the story. What a fine way to end the film series!

To celebrate the successful film series, our friend Joel, who coordinates Cinema Explorations, joined us for brunch at one of my favorite restaurants, Front and Main.

I had some delicious ployes, Acadian buckwheat pancakes popular in northern Maine. Front and Main makes ployes a little thicker than is traditional. but my, my, they were tasty.

Then, on Sunday, to kick off the Academy Awards ceremony, we went to Tj’s Place in Winthrop for drinks, snacks, and pizza.

I had a pomegranate martini, and it was excellent.

Clif ordered onion rings, which he said were properly cooked and delicious. (Dee and I aren’t fans of onion rings.)

We also had pizza.

Afterwards, full of food and drink, we headed home to await the start of the Academy Awards ceremony. Two of our favorite movies—Flow (go Latvia!) and I‘m Still Here (go, Brazil!)—garnered awards. Best picture of the year went to Anora, a film about an exotic dancer. It was not our favorite movie of the year. We all felt that it lacked nuance and focused too much on the explicit sex. Granted, the subject lends itself to this treatment, but didn’t Anora have any other qualities or interests that didn’t involve sex? Say, model trains or mahjong? It seems not. Ah, well…we were apparently in a minority about this movie.

Still, all in all, it was a good night for independent films, small movies with relatively small budgets, and we are always in for those kind of movies.

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And Now the Moment You’ve All Been Waiting for…the Return of Snow-Gauge Clif

Longtime readers of this blog always look forward to the first Monday in March, which brings the return of Snow-Gauge Clif (aka my husband, Clif). Each Monday, Snow-Gauge Clif will grab his trusty red yardstick to head outside and measure the depth of the snow. He’ll continue to do so until all the snow is melted, usually sometime in April.

Here he is, on March 3, this first Monday in March, in the front yard.

Snow measurement: 18 inches

And here he is in the backyard, which gets more sun than the front yard.

Measurement: 12 inches

Will the snow be gone by the beginning of April, or will it be gone by the end? We never know the answer to this nail-biting question. Each year is different. So stay tuned for the Monday adventures of Snow-Gauge Clif.

News, Snow-Gauge Clif

One Heck of a Nor’easter

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Last Thursday, the predicted nor’easter hit Maine, and it was every bit as bad as the meteorologists had anticipated—lots and lots of wet, heavy snow, the kind that breaks branches, which, in turn, fall onto power lines. The storm blew in early Thursday morning, and by 5:00 a.m., our power was knocked out.

Up came the folding table and the camp stove. We might not have had power, but gosh darn it, we did have hot tea, a soothing drink in a cool house. Temperature: 55°F. Clif started a fire in the wood furnace down cellar and brought up a bucket of water for the toilets.

It was chilly, even with the wood furnace, but at least it was up to 60° by midmorning. Settling on the couch, I wrapped up in a blanket and read the delightful A Vicarage Family written by Noel Streatfeild. Published in 1963, A Vicarage Family is a semi-autobiographical novel about, well, growing up in a vicarage in an English village in the early 1900s. Teenage Vicky, a stand-in for the author, is difficult, moody, and intense, a writer in the making, and the episodic novel revolves around the challenges, many of them self-inflicted, that she faces. As the snow fell, I read, glancing up occasionally to stare out the picture window at the white landscape.

Dee, who works from home, is prepared for power outages, which have been all too common this winter. She bought a big battery, which allows her to use her computer for the whole day. In this era of weird weather, those who telecommute must be prepared.

Fortunately, the high winds that came with the nor’easter did not make it inland, but Facebook friends who live on the coast reported that the wind was gusting at 50 mph. Because of the heavy snow, along with the wind at the coast, there were widespread power outages from central Maine to the midcoast to southern Maine. By 1 p.m., half of Central Maine Power Company’s customers were without power—330,000 out of 675,000.

When it came time for lunch, we were all chilly and ready for canned soup and grilled cheese sandwiches, which Clif prepared on the camp stove.

Even though it was canned soup, it tasted pretty darned good as my Yankee husband would say. (A shameless self-promotion photo, I know, featuring a mug advertising my third book.)

Here are more pictures of this snowy April day.

Behold our driveway. It was beginning to look a lot like Christmas, don’t you think? We got about twelve inches of snow.

A closeup of the trees.

Now to the backyard.

My poor clothesline took a beating. Clif had already repaired it once, and the way he bolted it now prevents us from being able to fold it down for the winter. Clif feels confident he can repair it again. Fingers crossed.

With such widespread power outages, we were sure we were going to go for days without power, but we were one of the lucky ones. Our power came back on at 2:15 p.m. on Thursday, and it stayed on. Oh, were we happy.

Other folks have not been so lucky. Despite the crews working tirelessly since Thursday, there are still 9,000 customers without power this Monday morning on April 8. As the title states, this was one heck of a storm.

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Snow-Gauge Clif

All this snow provided Snow-Gauge Clif with opportunities to measure snow. (Was it only a few weeks ago when we foolishly wondered if we were done with snow?)

By Sunday, when the pictures were taken, the weather had become so warm that much of the snow had melted. Snow-Gauge Clif measured three inches of snow.

For readers who live in places where there is little or no snow, here is the giant curl of dirty snow plowed by our kind neighbor next door. When the town’s snowplow goes by, it leaves a wall o’snow at the end of the driveway, a formidable barricade when the snow is deep and heavy, the way it was after this nor’easter.

Now, let’s hope the weather gods are done playing tricks on us. Please, no more snow until next winter.

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Listening

Moon Shadow by Cat Stevens

In honor of the solar eclipse, whose path goes right over Maine today, here is a classic by Cat Stevens. I listened to “Moon Shadow” many, many times when I was a teenager. Somehow, the song seemed appropriate for today.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Snow-Gauge Clif, Spring

Has Spring Sprung?

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The front yard is dry enough for raking, and in my own slow, creaky-kneed way, I have almost finished with the front lawn clean-up. We had plenty of high wind this winter, which meant lots of sticks, acorns, and pine cones to pick up.

You might be wondering when this task had ever been accomplished by mid-March. The answer? Never.

Here is what mid-March—March 20—looked like last year. This might be stating the obvious, but there was no raking the front yard last year during mid-March. That task waited until mid-April.

Some readers might recall that we had a bad storm in December that knocked our power out for many days. Because it rained so much and the ground was super-saturated, a tree—roots and all—fell over.

Fortunately, it fell in the side woods away from our house, which means we don’t have to do anything about it. Nobody ever goes there, and it is barely on our property.

On a good note: The mud has dried up in record time. No more  footprints on the path in the backyard.

Will the weather gods play tricks on us and send snow our way? Possibly, but because all the winter snow has melted, whatever snow might come now will soon be gone.

This week promises to be busy one filled with good things. Clif and I will be celebrating our anniversary, I will be visiting a friend I haven’t seen since the pandemic, and with our books, we will be going to a spring craft fair on Saturday.

More about all this excitement next Monday.

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Listening

Continental Breakfast: Courtney Barnett + Kurt Vile

This is one of the sweetest music videos I have ever seen, and watching the two musicians—Courtney Barnett and Kurt Vile—interact with family and friends and each other never fails to make me smile.

Watchin’ the waves come in at nightFrom my back porch stoop, porch swing swingin’ on its ownSee it’s just an inhabitant of some holy ghost
Books, Snow-Gauge Clif

Au Revoir, Snow-Gauge Clif

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The title of this post tells it all. Today, March 11, our yard is officially free of snow, and there is nothing for Snow-Gauge Clif to measure. In the past, we would hope to be snow free by our youngest daughter’s birthday on April 22. Some years we were. Other years, we weren’t.  This year, we are way ahead of April 22.

First, the front yard, with Snow-Gauge Clif,

and a broader view to chronicle our snow-free yard.

To the backyard.

Therefore, unless we get some snow in March—and we could—it is time to say au revoir to Snow-Gauge Clif who was only with us for two weeks this year. What the heck! Can this really be happening in Maine? A snow-free yard in mid-March? It seems that it is.

Onward to yard work, usually an April chore.

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Reading

Crewe Train by Rose Macaulay
Published in 1926

The story of a girl—who doesn’t like to read, doesn’t like art, doesn’t like theater, and is what we Franco-Americans would call lazy—is not a natural fit for me. And so it was with Denham Dobie, the protagonist in Crewe Train. My initial take on Denham was that she was a boring lump of a young woman, and I almost stopped reading the book after the first twenty pages.

But then something unexpected happened—Rose Macaulay’s writing and her sympathy for this unsociable, unambitious character won me over. By the end, I was as worried about Denham as I would be if she were a member of my own family. Well, all right. Maybe I’m overstating the case. Still, I brooded about Denham.

When the book opens, Denham is living in relative freedom with her father, also unsociable, in Andorra, a small country between Spain and France. When Denham’s father dies, Denham’s aunt—her mother’s sister—takes her back to England in the hopes of training her to be a proper young lady. But this is no Pygmalion story, and Denham is no Audrey Hepburn.

Initially, Denham does try to please her fashion-conscious aunt. She  falls in love with and marries a kind but conventional man named Arnold, who likes to mess about in boats and play games with Denham. But Arnold also likes London and books—he works as a publisher—and plays and dinner parties. He likes being around people, and Denham does not. For her small talk is a misery, and she would much rather be  rambling around outside.

Denham and Arnold are an odd, uneasy couple, and I wound up feeling sorry for both of them as they tried to accommodate each other’s opposing tastes.

I won’t reveal the ending except to note that the casual cruelty of Denham’s aunt sets in motion an unhappy chain of events. Crewe Train, while not a tragedy, is a sad book despite its flashes of humor.

One more thing to note: Crewe Train was published in 1926, and in my experience, writers of that time frequently included racist words and descriptions in their books. So it is with Crewe Train. Not the worst I’ve read—that honor goes to the otherwise delightful Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day—but not good all the same.

Nevertheless, Crewe Train is a book worth reading. Denham, for all her flaws, feels like a woman ahead her time, flailing as she tries to live on her own terms, unencumbered by possessions, free to wander the countryside, unconcerned with domestic duties.

All Denham wants is a simple life, not so easy for women of her class and generation in the 1920s.

 

Snow-Gauge Clif, Winter

Enter…Snow-Gauge Clif

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First, the good news. All around the world, blog readers have been waiting for Snow-Gauge Clif, and this week he is making his first appearance on the first Monday in March, the way he has for many years.

But—and I expect readers knew there would be a but—I’m not sure how many more weeks you will have of Snow-Gauge Clif. Normally, he goes into April, sometimes to the middle of the month. This year, unless there are some major snow storms, he’ll be lucky to make it to the middle of March.

Let’s begin with yesterday’s temperature. (This year’s photos were taken on Sunday, March 3.)

For Mainers, this is an eye-popping temperature in March. Heck, once upon a time, we were lucky to get this temp by the end of April.

Not surprisingly, the mud is in full swing. In the backyard, the footprint left by my Sloggers tells the story. Squish, squish. I’m itching to get back there and do some clean-up. Not until the mud dries up.

The ice on the patio is m-e-l-t-i-n-g.

Will the ice be gone by next weekend?  We shall see. At this rate, we’ll be having drinks on the patio by the beginning of April.

And, now, the man you’ve all been waiting for—Snow-Gauge Clif!

In the front yard in 2024, where there’s  a bit more snow than the backyard.

For a comparison, here’s last year’s picture taken on the first Sunday in March 2023.

Now to the backyard this year, 2024.

In the backyard last year, 2023.

In March 2022, on the first Sunday of March, front yard and back.

This is an El Niño year, which always brings a warmer winter. But. Not. This. Warm. I can’t recall a March with so little snow.

Stay tuned for next week.

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Reading

The Curse of Pietro Houdini
By Derek B. Miller
Originally published: January 16, 2024

I have read some very good books this year—An Owl on Every Post (Sanora Babb); Offshore (Penelope Fitzgerald); Emily Wilde’s Encyclopaedia of Faeries (Heather Fawcett)—but if I read a better book than The Curse of Pietro Houdini by Derek B, Miller, I will be surprised. Beautifully written and meticulously researched, The Curse of Pietro Houdini follows the perilous journey of fourteen-year-old Massimo, orphaned during the American bombing of Rome in 1943.

Fleeing Rome, Massimo meets Pietro Houdini, who saves the teenager from a vicious beating from thugs. Onward the two go, first to Montecassino, a Benedictine Abbey, where Houdini presents himself as a “Master Artist and confidante of the Vatican.” After that it’s on to a little village. Along the way there is an art heist, gold theft, murder, and great sorrow. But there is also wisdom and humor, love and generosity, which Miller deftly balances with the horrors of World War II.

The characters in The Curse of Pietro Houdini—among them Massimo, Houdini, Brother Tobias, and even the mule Ferrari—are vivid and quirky but never cartoonish. The shifts in perspective among the characters are nothing short of brilliant, and, yes, I have a serious case of writer’s envy.

This is a book to buy for yourself and a book to buy for others.