reading-is-hot – Page 2 – beckycochrane.com

How Everything (except me, maybe) Works

I found this book a while back and grabbed it because it wasn’t expensive and it does provide a surprising amount of information on a variety of subjects that a person lacking scientific, engineering, and mechanical know-how (i.e., me) can learn from.

For example, here is interesting information I found about ants. The picture of the Australian Red Fox is just a bonus because of the beauty and was photographed about to walk in front of an urban wall with a fox painted on it (not shown in the photo).

The pages don’t have numbers, so a bit of searching has to be done despite a table of contents, but it’s a fun book to browse. I always believe things like this will find their way into my fiction some way or another. I hope random research counts as “work,” because my work-in-progress is not…progressing. That’s okay.

I’ve watched all six movies in this collection, although only Pillow Talk (1959), Lover Come Back (1961), and Send Me No Flowers (1964), all with Rock Hudson as the love interest, and The Thrill of It All (1963), with James Garner playing her opposite, count as romantic comedies. One of the two suspense movies, Midnight Lace (1960), with Rex Harrison playing the husband, is one I’d never seen, and it is indeed a thriller (though probably tame by today’s version of that genre, which I don’t watch, suspense and violence being too hard on my nervous system). I’d seen clips from the Alfred Hitchcock-directed The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956), with Jimmy Stewart as the husband. It was good to watch the film in its entirety and know how it got to the scenes I’d already seen.

What are you doing when you’re not working?

Saturday No. 1

I got a working DVD of 1998’s You’ve Got Mail with Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan sometime last week. You may remember that I was watching my previous DVD version and it got to a halfway-ish point in the movie and stopped working. I think it was because there was some kind of tie-in between AOL, Microsoft, and the DVD, and it would play only on a computer with a certain version of Microsoft Windows that was released in 1997. Which is kind of funny, because 1997 is when I got my first Windows-based PC (before that, I’d only had Apple/Mac products). If I still had that computer, I probably could have watched the DVD.

The reason we got that computer was because I was reeling from several years’ losses of friends to AIDS, and my friend Lisa Y had, on a whim one day on a contract job we had, showed me how to access chat rooms. Tom said AOL was known for its chat rooms, so if we got a PC and loaded AOL on it, maybe I could find an AOL chat room with supportive people who’d experienced some of the things I’d been going through since 1989.

“Meeting” someone through communication via AOL email and Instant Messaging who turns out to be meaningful is basically the plot line of You’ve Got Mail. Among the people I met in the chatroom I landed in were Timothy, Jim, and Timmy, who became my friends and my writing partners, plus a stranger-then-friend who turned out to be a distant cousin from my father’s side of the family (what were the chances?).

That whole AOL experience is so LAST century, right? Yet in a viewer reaction to the movie, someone mentioned how outdated the technology is but NO ONE CARES because it’s still a good movie. I think it is, too. Like Sleepless In Seattle, there’s something so quietly sweet in the chemistry between Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan. I say that despite how the plot line has his character (Joe Fox) opening a big box bookstore that unapologetically aims to put her character (Kathleen Kelly)’s charming independent bookstore, inherited from her mother, out of business. By the time that movie came out, I’d been a bookseller in a chain, but I shopped at local booksellers, too, and I regretted every one lost. Ironically, ultimately, Amazon not only ate the independents, it continues the process of putting bookstore chains out of business.

Until last night’s conclusion of You’ve Got Mail, I hadn’t rewatched movies this week. I got in the mood to reread a book series that I first became acquainted with in junior high school. That’s a story for another time, but it’s provided a much-needed diversion from an anxiety-filled week.

Complete! and sort of Circular

As noted previously, during the Beryl power outage, I began rereading romantic suspense novels by Mary Stewart that I’ve been reading since the dawn of time when I was a teenager. After I finished the lot of them, I wondered how many I might be missing, so I looked up her complete list of works. There are the King Arthur books I’ve never read, and some children’s books, but turns out I actually own all of her romantic suspense novels. I shared photos of all the covers in previous posts, up to these two. Even though I’d reread both since 2020, I read them again.

They have two of my favorite male characters, and many of their qualities inspired male characters I’ve written (humor, sensitivity, kindness, strength, intelligence).

I did find in my search a novella and a short story that were published under the guidance of Mary Stewart’s niece, Jennifer Ogden. I’d read neither of these and ordered this edition immediately, which I’ve finished reading today (after an eye exam and a long nap so my eyes could return to their undilated state).

The Wind Off the Small Isles and “The Lost One.” In The Wind Off the Small Isles, Stewart included an Easter egg via a reference to a character in her novel This Rough Magic, an actor named Sir Julian Gale. There’s also an excerpt from that novel at the end of the collection.

This Rough Magic ranks in my top-favorite Stewart novels because it draws from Shakespeare’s The Tempest in its plot. Thanks to the play and Stewart’s novel, my interest was piqued by the 1982 film Tempest. Like Mary Stewart’s novel, the film borrows a lot from Shakespeare’s play. The film is unseen by most people I know–unless I’ve made them watch it with me. (Of course, I own the DVD–do you know me?) Tim and Jim still quote from it.

Tempest was directed by Paul Mazursky and stars the late John Cassavetes (who has long served as a physical model, along with a few of his qualities as a film director/producer of independent films, for one of my secondary characters in the Neverending Saga); Cassavetes’s wife Gena Rowlands; and introducing the young Sam Robards (son of Jason Robards and Lauren Bacall) and future brat-packer Molly Ringwald. This was also the film in which I was introduced to the brilliant actor Raul Julia.

My Muses and inspirations can be found among many people, novels, films, music, and art.

ETA: Beautiful Gena Rowlands died on August 14, age 94. I will think of her reunited with her husband, the two of them making beautifully crafted films together for always. Thank you, John and Gena, for being muses to me.

In the box

Yesterday, I finished reading Louisa Morgan’s The Great Witch of Brittany, recommended to me by my friend Princess Patti. It’s the most recently written (2022) of a series that includes:
A Secret History of Witches (2017)
The Witch’s Kind (2019)
The Age of Witches (2020)

I haven’t read the others (yet), but I don’t think reading out of order will be a problem because this one provides a lot of context for the others. I always enjoy an author who has a compelling gift for world building and story telling. The Great Witch of the title is Ursule, a member of a Romani family that includes a line of witches. From childhood to matriarchy, the many-layered Ursule is an “outsider,” which is both curse and blessing–it puts her in danger, but it also leads her to discover her gifts.

Ursule is strong, brave, and almost always compassionate (and experiences a lot of heartbreak). For most of her life, she has one solid and trusted friend, a raven named Drom. Of course that appealed to me, corvid admirer that I am. Drom has his own way of communicating (though he actually does speak a two-word phrase, he’s not a talking animal). He’s guide, friend, protector, and supporter, and he has a sense of humor.

After I finished the book, I kept thinking about Drom, which led me to get out the box that holds my various animal decks and flip through them to admire the ravens and crows. The crow and raven cards pictured here are from Animal Spirits.

I either have to stop collecting animal decks, or I’ll need a bigger box.

Tiny Tuesday!

I just finished reading this novel from Ann Patchett, Tom Lake (which was really good and made me cry at the end), and in the process of reading, I discovered a small bookmark I’d forgotten (to add to the Sunday Sundries bookmarks I’ve already shared).

Lisa in Iowa (aka “Nurse Lisa”)’s two dogs (gone years ago to the Rainbow Bridge), featured front and back, from a holiday photo shoot. They were such good girls and provided a lot of stories and photos back in the day on LiveJournal.

Sunday Sundries

Today I hope to conclude the bookmarks discussion prompted by Mark L. It’s a shame he’s unable to see these posts at present due to various technical issues. I miss his comments and look forward to interacting with him again soon, both here and on his online journal.

These are the rest of the bookmarks I found inside books on the living room shelves. The first batch includes books I shelved unread (I don’t actually keep a TBR pile because I wouldn’t know where to stack it). I put bookmarks in them as little flags to help me find them when I’m looking for something to read. These are on my music shelves.

Joe Nick Patoski’s Willie Nelson: An Epic Life. I very much look forward to reading this when I’m ready for another biography. (I think the most recent three I read are on loan to Lynne: one each on Stevie Ray Vaughan, John Mellencamp, and Bruce Springsteen.) Willie’s bookmark advertises the animal rescue group Scout’s Honor Rescue. This was the organization to whom Lynne turned over two dogs she found tied to a fire hydrant on her way home from work one night. The poodle mix, Curly, was adopted immediately. When she took the chihuahua, Paco, to an adoption event, she realized she couldn’t let him go and adopted him herself. He was part of her family for years before crossing the Rainbow Bridge. I adored that little guy.

More Scouts Honor memories: Tim fostered many dogs for the group (Tom and I fostered less than a handful). Pixie was Tim’s first foster fail and became Rex’s “little sister.” Later, someone reached out to Lindsey about a stray dog living in a parking garage and being cared for by several people. The property owner was going to call a kill shelter to pick her up. Scout’s Honor agreed to take her into their adoption program if Lindsey could catch her, and Tim agreed to foster her. That dog was Penny, who became Tim’s second foster fail and Rex’s second little sister. All three lived great lives with Tim, bringing much joy to friends from The Compound, Doll House, Houndstooth Hall, RubinSmo Manor, Fox Den, Fairy Cottage, and Green Acres/Half Acre Wood. Rex, Pixie, and Penny are reunited with one another and all their dog and cat buddies at the Rainbow Bridge.

That’s a bookmark for the Timothy James Beck novel I’m Your Man in George Plasketes’s biography Warren Zevon: Desperado of Los Angeles. It’s not his only bio waiting for me, and I suspect these were moved to the pile after I read Crystal Zevon’s I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead: The Dirty Life and Times of Warren Zevon.

The other bio is Nothing’s Bad Luck: The Lives of Warren Zevon by C.M. Kushins. The bookmark inside the Kushins book is from Garden District Bookshop in New Orleans. I didn’t buy the book there, but I’ve purchased others from them during various Saints and Sinners festivals, and anything New Orleans-related seems like a good bookmark for the untamed spirit of Zevon.

Somewhat related to New Orleans (if you read long enough, you’ll get the connection)…

I initially became aware of writer Mark Doty thanks to my friend James, who gave me one of Mark’s memoirs and invited me to attend a Mark Doty reading and booksigning with him back in the mid-nineties.

I continued to go to appearances Mark made in Houston. From one of those, there are two bookmarks in this copy of My Alexandria: Poems By Mark Doty. One is from Brazos Bookstore, which is almost certainly where I went to hear him read from the book in 1998 and had him sign it afterward.

The second bookmark is from Twelve Voices: University of Houston Creative Writing Program & Imprint, Inc. Doty was the John and Rebecca Moores Professor in the graduate program at The University of Houston Creative Writing Program for ten years.

Above are more books from his appearances. All are signed, and some are inscribed with specific messages based on our conversations.

Once, I admitted to Mark that a few years earlier (before he was part of their faculty), I’d applied to U of H’s MFA program in Creative Writing. I felt driven to do so by my late friend Steve’s plea that I create fiction from my experiences with the HIV/AIDS community and not let my friends’ stories be forgotten. I’d tried, with very little success, to do that, and wondered if a writing program might help me find my voice.

I knew what a longshot it was. From their own site, the program advises, Admission to our creative writing program is extremely competitive, with up to 20 new students across the two genres selected each year from the hundreds of applications received from around the world. I’d long been out of the academic world, and I had no outstanding writing samples to submit with my application. I was disappointed, but not surprised, not to be accepted into the program.

From then on, my inscriptions from Mark in his books always included encouragement and best wishes for my writing. And then, in a most unexpected way, I did find a voice for telling those stories when I began doing a fun writing exercise with my friends Timothy, Timmy, and Jim. I could recognize the spirit, humor, and sadness of the friends I lost and their larger community in what I was writing with them. When we had a draft of a first novel that grew out of that exercise, I began sending it out and got dozens of rejections. I shared that information with Mark at a signing in 1999 for his memoir Firebird, telling him I was happy to be writing but sad that the writing wasn’t finding a home. This is what he wrote when he signed his book that night.

Mark Doty. For Becky, who will be persistent–9/99 Houston.

Because of that, I decided not to give up on behalf of the entire TJB team. Timothy and I both read a first novel by another writer and agreed that his tone and subject were similar to what we were writing. It seemed worth reaching out to that author’s agent, who submitted the manuscript to Kensington, and all that writing and submitting ultimately turned into the five Timothy James Beck novels. Persistence can definitely pay off. Thank you, Mark Doty.

I’ve also had the pleasure of interacting with Mark at Saints and Sinners literary festivals in New Orleans. At one of those, I went to a panel where he had his attendees do a writing exercise by giving us a prompt. What I wrote gave me a scene I hoped to use in a Becky Cochrane contemporary romance novel if the publisher wanted a third, but my editor wasn’t enthusiastic about my third Coventry idea (I believe it was titled A Coventry Homecoming). Last year, I modified what I wrote during Mark’s panel and included it in the sixth novel of the Neverending Saga. Hold on to your scribblings, writers, you never know when you may find a place for them. And published or unpublished, NEVER STOP WRITING. (I have to remind myself of this constantly.)

I know with certainty that I’ve read this Louise Penny book, although it has a bookmark in it. I think that little angel was probably another bookmark that belonged to my mother and remained tucked inside the novel even after I finished reading it. Louise Penny is among my favorite authors and I’m up-to-date on all her novels. Except…

Recently, Tom and I were talking about the novel Bill Clinton cowrote with author James Patterson. I bought it, read it, liked it. (They wrote a second, but I don’t have it. Yet.) Tom asked me if I’d ever read the novel Hillary Clinton cowrote in 2021 with Louise Penny. And I said, “I’m pretty sure I got it from Murder By The Book, but I haven’t read it yet.”

Sure enough, there it was on the bookshelf with its “flag,” a bookmark from Detering Book Gallery, a fantastic bookstore, now closed, that was managed by our friend Steve V. No bibliophile who experienced Detering could ever forget what a joy it was. This political thriller would be a strong contender for my next read except that every.single.day, I’m heartsick because of politics.

The Clinton/Penny book is on what I guess could be called my executive branch shelf, where I spotted another book with a bookmark.

Both books were published in 2005, and I don’t remember if I read President Carter’s, but I definitely know I purchased, read, and relished all of Harley Jane Kozak’s Wollie Shelley mysteries after I got them from Murder By The Book.

Sadly, I just missed a booksigning at Murder By The book with my friend Dean James, writing as Miranda James, for his latest Cat In The Stacks Mystery, Requiem For A Mouse. You can bet I’ll be getting it from MBTB soon and adding it to his shelf, where here, you might spot a couple of bookmarks. I must have been reading the Southern Ladies Mystery Dead with the Wind at Mister Car Wash, judging by the bookmark. On the shelf in the background, another Murder By The Book bookmark is tucked among those Cat In The Stacks paperbacks.

I believe this concludes three Sundays of Bookmark Inventory. Thanks for following along. Sometimes, this site contains the only writing I can find the heart or energy to do. These three posts gave me a chance to express my deep regard for other writers and their work, my commitment to my own writing, and my gratitude for readers, including those of you who read here. Writing can feel like hollering into the void sometimes, so thank you for when you comment here or email or text me to let me know you’re still out there reading me.

Tonight, we’ll start seeing the impact of Beryl on our side of Houston. Possible street flooding, trees down, power outages. We’re preparing as best we can. I’ll update when I’m able. Everyone stay safe.

Sunday Sundries

I introduced the sundries topic last week and asked for suggestions on content for it. Today’s theme, suggested by Mark L, required a bit of foraging and was fun. As a child, Mark began a bookmark collection; he still uses bookmarks from that collection as an adult. Having grown up in a house full of readers, bookmarks were definitely part of my environment, both for pleasure reads and textbooks.

Though I read a lot of ebooks now, and they open to the page I’m on each time I pull one up on my iPad or phone, I still have a need for bookmarks because I continue to read and reread physical books. Here are photos of some I found (they don’t include Tom’s, who always has a physical book with a bookmark in it on the bookcase closest to his reading chair).

First up, let’s hear it for the booksellers!

This shares a bit of the bookmark evolution at my favorite Houston bookstore, Murder By The Book. I have many because I shop there a lot, and have also attended many booksignings and even had a couple of my own signings there. There are six (oops, plus one) shown here, but there are more throughout the house. Brazos is another Houston bookstore that’s a favorite. A lot of my literary choices and books about music and music figures come from Brazos, and ~~next week~~ in two weeks, it may figure into a story about an author I plan to share. The Independent Bookstore Day bookmark may have also come from a local bookstore visit. On my links to the right, there’s one to the Independent Bookstore Finder throughout the U.S. Whenever possible, I order through my local booksellers, but I also order from independent booksellers who host booksignings and publicity for authors I admire and read.

That Crossroads bookmark evokes so many memories. There were two LGBTQ+ bookstores in Houston, since closed, Lobo and Crossroads (I believe both stores are mentioned in The Deal, and my late friend Steve R worked at Lobo for a while). TJB and Cochrane/Lambert had signings at both, and Crossroads was my favorite place to go people watch, work on writing, and buy books. I met many people who became friends through Crossroads (including John, who I followed from there to two different Borders locations to Murder By The Book), and when Tim first moved here, he worked there! I miss Crossroads so much.

Then–speaking of the tenacity of independent booksellers who doggedly keep going in a hard market–yet another, older Murder By The Book bookmark slipped in. The Bookshelf was a used bookstore in Huntsville, Alabama where I used to shop. It’s “temporarily closed” since sometime in 2023. I hope they make it. Then there’s Borders, a chain since closed, but it was a vital place that hosted booksignings for us. When people complain that chains drove indies out of the market, I think they provided far more good than people appreciated. I still enjoy going to Barnes & Noble, where I can get a lot more personalized information than online algorithms offer.

Finally, a few neat connections.

I’m not sure about the cherub bookmark, whether it was a gift to me or belonged to my mother. But I’m sure that’s a Greg Herren bookmark from his Bold Strokes book Lake Thirteen. Also, back in the days of Live Journal, at least as far back as 2005, I think, other writers/authors and I agreed we needed to use the reading-is-hot tag on our blogs and websites. I still use it. A lot of readers helped us by sending photos of themselves reading in beds, bathtubs, etc. It was a fun time. I don’t remember where the bookmark came from and imagine it was probably not connected to that effort, but it certainly illustrated the theme. The bookmark on the far right was from the late Linda Raven Moore, who maintained several sites, including Markeroni, to which contributors documented with words and photos their visits to historical and local locations that had markers explaining their significance. I very much miss Linda, as I’m sure many do. On LiveJournal, she was whytraven.

These are some that belonged to and were used by my mother.

They live in a metal box where I have many small mementos belonging to her. The one on the far right is imprinted with the word JOY. I have a vague memory about the one made with yarn, but I’m not sure of its accuracy.

I’ve shared these on here before. They’re bookmarks made for Tom and me by his mother with beautiful beads. I’ve used them several times in thick, heavy books.

Finally, here are some I designed (and had printed by a company I’m not sure still exists; it’s in the old ‘hood) to give away at readings and to people who sent us novels to be signed.

Notice there isn’t one for the fifth book, When You Don’t See Me. I can only speculate that for me, some of the serious themes and painful events in the characters’ lives didn’t lend the novel to a whimsical bookmark.

There are also serious themes in Three Fortunes In One Cookie; that didn’t stop me then.

Regarding the websites listed on these two bookmarks–Tim no longer has an active website (which I miss very much), and I finally shut down cochranelambert.com this year since it had been inactive for so long (and websites aren’t cheap).

ETA: Later, I went to open one of my display cabinets, and found these three bookmarks with beautiful original art that were gifts from Geri. I don’t use them because I want the art to remain intact, and that’s fine. Even utilitarian items can be appreciated for their aesthetic value.

Thanks, Mark, this was a good journey, and as always, I found other things along the way that merit a little more storytelling. In fact, there are enough of those to require a Part Two on the Bookmarks sundries topic. Hope to see everyone next week when I share them. AND PLEASE give me more topics (I do have several thanks to visitors to this site, two who left comments, and others from people who tell me via other channels). As always, thank you for visiting and engaging.

Random Saturday musings

Back in March of 2019 is when I think I posted using Keri Smith’s Wreck This Journal for the first time. The page I chose to do involved fruit stickers, and it looked like this.

I may have added a few since then.

Here’s a new one I did this month. Another way to test my memory.

When I did it, I kept wondering what smelled so wonderful. Well, it was a couple of pages prior, done in April 2019, and still smelling as FABULOUS as ever: splashes of Chanel N° 5.

It took me more than five years to have the nerve to do this one. It is done as of yesterday.

Author Keri Smith warned it would be difficult.

Did you flinch a little when you saw that I did it? Even book lovers who read the cheapest of paperbacks protect the spines. (And most of us use bookmarks to keep from bending down the pages.)

No worry about cracking the spines or bending the pages when I read ebooks on my iPad, including this latest one from Carolyn Haines in her Sarah Booth Delaney mystery series. Of course, my iPad has fallen to the floor a couple of times and now has thin cracks across the surface of the glass. I don’t blame the dogs, who ran into power cords and pulled it down. I blame whoever makes covers for devices like this one. When my old iPad that I had for many years stopped working, it still had a flawless screen because of the great case that kept it well-protected. When I replaced the iPad, I couldn’t find a case even close to that one in quality or protective features. So I deal with those hairline cracks; it’s worth it to read my favorite writers. Carolyn Haines is certainly among that group.

Hump Day

Since I mentioned author Donna Leon in Monday’s post, I decided to poke around and see which novels in her series I hadn’t yet read. There are two, and I’d forgotten I downloaded one of them quite a while back (and I immediately added the other). I’ve been kind of low-energy this week, so though I’ve done some writing, I also began reading Give unto Others (number 31 in Leon’s Commissario Brunetti series).

Along the way, I was struck by this excerpt and copied it, redacting information that might constitute spoilers.

These words from Leon so perfectly summed up a character in the Neverending Saga whose actions in the past (before my narrative begins), and years later in the first book of my series, negatively impact people’s lives for decades.

I can think of only three characters I’ve ever written who are irredeemable. Do I think people like them exist? Yes. Everyone is capable of redeeming themselves; some never make that choice. Unlike in life, where you often read about the irredeemable in the headlines, when you’re a writer, you get to mete out a satisfying justice for those characters.

There were a few things from the overall series that I missed from Give unto Others, but those made sense in context of the time it was set. As soon as I finished it, I started reading number 32, So Shall You Reap. Just as with the Martin Walker books, I learn so much about culture and history from the many details authors deftly weave into their plots. Some of those things I missed from the previous book were back, to my delight.

I believe the next novel in the series comes out in July. The next Martin Walker novel in the Bruno series is due out in September. These are things I can look forward to while I write my way through the summer and fall forecast of heatwaves and hurricanes, and I also have a couple of other favorite series/authors with books just out or on the way.

Mindful Monday

I’d saved that a while back, but over the last few days, it really hit home for me as I read the three Martin Walker ebooks that had been waiting on my iPad for a while. I’ve already posted about the other two; this was the third I finished Saturday night:

There’s another in the series coming out in the fall. I’m really looking forward to it.

In the last two novels, Walker scattered a lot of global topics among the mysteries, the denizens of St. Denis, and the food (always the food!). I found these new storylines riveting (and not cumbersome): election interference, countries on the edge of war, the manipulation of public opinion via social media and disinformation, global politics, the rise of tech billionaires, the historical and cultural significance of migration from centuries past. There are many cozy things about the Bruno books, but the books themselves are not cozies. They fall into the same smart writing as Donna Leon and Louise Penny, two others among my favorite writers (with series set in Venice and Quebec, respectively), in which family, friends, and fellowship are always part of the theme but aren’t the full stories of their characters’ lives.

In Walker’s series, Bruno himself seems to be changing, but in all the ways that matter, he’s still the good human he’s always been.

Wikipedia background on Martin Walker: Born in Scotland…Martin Walker was educated at Harrow County School for Boys and Balliol College, Oxford. He lives in the Périgord/Dordogne in Southern France with his wife with whom he has two daughters.

Walker was on the staff of The Guardian from around 1971, working in a variety of positions, including bureau chief in Moscow and the United States, European editor, and assistant editor. Walker resigned in 1999 after 28 years with the newspaper.

Walker joined United Press International (UPI) in 2000. While at UPI he was also an international correspondent. He is now editor-in-chief emeritus of UPI. He also holds a variety of other positions, including senior scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, D.C.; senior fellow of the World Policy Institute at The New School in New York; member of the board of directors of the Global Panel Foundation (Berlin, Copenhagen, Prague, Sydney and Toronto). He is also a contributing editor of the Los Angeles Times’s Opinion section and of Europe magazine. Walker also is a regular commentator on CNN, Inside Washington, and NPR.