Fever Beach

By Carl Hiaasen.

Hiaasen's books are always full of Trashy bad guys pulling off trashy crimes while trashy investigators try to stop them in trashy ways. 

It's a fun read. Not high brow, though it's smart with its social commentary. 

Pillion and Box Hill.

Wikipedia says Pillion is a 2025, romance, comedy, dark drama film. We saw it a while back. It was OK. I thought I'd read the book (Box Hill) that it was based on.

The story in both is focused on an S&M romance between Colin and Ray. 

Both the movie and the book have the same emotional and narrative core though their structures are very different. Near the end of Pillion Ray abruptly vanishes with no explanation. Box Hill doesn’t have that mystery. About 3/4 of the way through the book Ray dies in motorcycle accident. This leads to a long section where Colin rebuilds his life.

The Domestic Revolution

By Ruth Goodman

Goodman is a historian and a reenact-or of history who has much experience on living with wood, peat and coal fuels. In this book she digs into how different fuels influenced architecture as well as how we live.

Coal smoke is more dirty than wood smoke. As such coal heating pushed the development of chimneys and iron stoves.

Toasting and toast became more popular with coal stoves as it’s difficult to evenly toast with a wood fire.

Soap and cleaning— wood ash can be purified into lye. Wood ash and fat can make soap. The same is not true for coal ash. When wood ash was the dominant fuel, people didn’t buy soap. They made their own or just used ashes; ash on greasy dishes makes its own soap. It wasn’t until coal became dominant that people needed to buy soap.