Tag: Hoopla

Program, Pages, and Philm – A Mystery and Romance

On By TimelessladyIn Pages, Philm, Programs5 Comments

Photograph of Agatha Christie courtesy of Wikipedia Commons

I love mysteries, and Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None is very good. I recently watched the story for the first time through an Acorn Subscription on Prime Video. The television broadcast was divided into three parts and was very suspenseful. I didn’t figure it out, and that is a very good thing. There were some actors well-known to me and a few new faces.

Miss Christie’s mystery and older versions of the movie have been around for decades. The book was first published in 1939, and a movie, which is free on YouTube now, was released in 1945. Miss Christie was a talented individual, and I am listening to an audiobook biography of her life, titled Duchess of Death by Richard Hack.

The classic Somewhere In Time, starring Christopher Reeve and Jane Seymour, is a romance movie for the first weekend of February. I can watch it over and over again and never tire of it. Christopher Plummer, a favorite hero of mine in The Sound of Music, plays a very believable villain.

All of these are fairly easy to find through video subscriptions, prime video, youtube, public libraries, and Hoopla, a free service through public libraries.

Pages, Philm & Place – Chester Zoo/England

On By TimelessladyIn Pages, Philm, Place16 Comments

I’m reading Our Zoo by June Mottershead. The book tells the story of how the Chester Zoo in England came into existence. Goodreads has some interesting comments from readers who enjoyed the book.

I found the book by watching the six-episode series Our Zoo. The series can be found on Paramount, Hoopla (available free through some libraries), and other streaming services. I enjoyed this adaptation of the true story.

The Chester Zoo is still open in Upton-by-Chester, Chester, England. The website has excellent photographs of the zoo through the decades.

Here’s a short video that looks behind the scenes of the series.

Pages – Kindred

On By TimelessladyIn Pages4 Comments

I read Kindred for the first time in 1979/80. Written by Octavia Butler, the story is about time travel, a setting I love. Flash forward to 2022, and I am utilizing my Hoopla app, reading/listening to Kindred once more as an audiobook. It still entrances me. My interest was renewed when I recently heard that the book was going to become a mini-series. I hope it is true, and most of all I hope they faithfully follow Ms. Butler’s excellent writing.

Pages – Becoming Mrs. Lewis and Hoopla

On By TimelessladyIn Pages17 Comments

I’ve been planting in the garden like a madwoman, hence, not as much time as I’d like to blog and keep up with the never-ending housework. Happily though, I’ve been reading, or should I say listening, to a good book while I am tending to the weeds and seeds. Becoming Mrs. Lewis by Patti Callahan is a wonderful novel about the friendship and love of Joy Davidman and C.S. Lewis. As with the best of books, any nagging thought or worry I’m facing at the moment disappears when I’m listening to the story. You can read a good synopsis of the story on GoodReads/Becoming Mrs. Lewis. I’ve found that fiction based on true-life often prompts me to delve further into biographies and photo records of the subjects; this has been the case with Joy Davidman and C.S. Lewis, the main characters in the novel.

I’m listening to this book on a digital streaming service called Hoopla.

“Hoopla Digital is a web and mobile library media streaming platform for audio books, movies, music, ebooks, comics, and TV. Hoopla allows library patrons to download or stream media content. Hoopla Digital is a division of the Holland, Ohio-based company Midwest Tape, and is housed in the same facility.” Wikipedia

I joined Hoopla free through my local library. Many libraries offer Hoopla. Check with yours to see if you can download and use this free service.

I am sometimes hesitant to use photo images of book jackets for my ‘pages’ reviews. Here’s a good article written by The Librarian Who Doesn’t Say Shhh, that puts most of my fears to rest over violating copyright laws when I use a book cover image on my blog: Book Cover Images.