weekend bonus

Three 50-word stories about my sources for free books.

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The library BookBub Amazon Prime
The last book I purchased was White Fragility in 2020. I borrow most of the books I read each year from the Wake County Public Library. I’ve added a field to my list of books that I’ve read in 2025 to indicate where I got the book and its format. BookBub is a service that alerts you to cheap or free downloads of ebooks on amazon.com. I only get one that sounds interesting if it’s free — or once I got a $1.99 one for free with a balance on an amazon.com gift card I’d earned participating in a focus group. I get free book downloads from two services available as an Amazon Prime member. At the beginning of each month First Reads presents 9 or so free books to choose one — and sometimes two — from, and Prime Reading lets you borrow up to 10 ebooks or audiobooks at a time.

Three 50-word stories about “the nosy neighbor.”

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The trope An instance A good fit
The “nosy neighbor” is a well-known, and some would argue, timeworn trope in entertainment. Some say it’s time to jettison the archetype altogether. Others argue they represent real-life people and should stay — but “be ‘relatable’ and ‘3D’ while serving their purpose.” Lamentably, it’s women most often portraying this character type. Arguably, Gladys Kravitz from Bewitched, is the most famous “nosy neighbor.” One present-day meme describes her as “The Original Doorbell Camera.” She was a grotesquely stereotyped shrewish gossip — always on the lookout for delicious secrets and rumors by peering suspiciously around her living-room window curtains at least once an episode. Crime fiction is a genre in which nosy neighbors thrive — busybodies, gossips, sleuths. They’re the busybody who, over their morning coffee, witnesses a murder while spying on the house next door, and the town gossip who realizes there’s something not right about the family down the block and relentlessly snoops.

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Three 50-word stories about Bob’s morning routine—all done before I even get up.

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“Solitary” Connections Crosswords
“I won my Solitary game on the first try today,” he says as I’m pouring my coffee. “It was one of those games where the cards just all fall into place, and you’re done.” He’s referring to the card game solitaire — the only game in town according to The Carpenters. Typically, I do Connections just after midnight when the new one comes out. I show my results to him when I get to the breakfast table. He gets out his worksheet, and we compare our journeys to the answers. “I got blue, green, purple, then yellow,” he says comparing them. “I gave myself a B+ today,” he reports. He is referring to the L.A. Times crossword puzzle that I printed and left at his place at the kitchen table to complete his morning routine. His grading rubric is loosely based on how many answers involve having to look up something.

Three 50-word stories about ejaculations comprising “gravy.”

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Good gravy! Ohmygravy! Gravy for God
I was on the phone recently with an insurance company’s customer service rep, when she made a mistake twice in a row entering something into her computer and exclaimed, “Good gravy!” It struck me, because she sounded like a young person from whom I’d more expect something like a “WTF?!?” Within just hours of that “Good gravy!” incident, a friend solved the NYT’s Wordle puzzle on the first try and shared those results on her Facebook timeline with the exclamation, “Ohmygravy!” I immediately wondered if more people say that than I think or if I was experiencing the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon. Curious, of course, I did some research. According to one source, the history of saying “Good gravy“ is that it was said by those who didn’t want to utter “Good God!” and take the name of the Lord in vain, thus expressing surprise or anger without a hint of profanity.

Sources: “Good Gravy” by Lisa Adams