Tuesday, August 22, 2017

Today is the tomorrow you worried about yesterday.

Dale Carnegie (1888 – 1955), the American writer and lecturer and the developer of famous courses in self-improvement, salesmanship, corporate training, public speaking, and interpersonal skills (so says Wikipedia), said that. He also wrote How To Win Friends And Influence People, but that is neither here nor there not what this post is about.

This post is about the answer to the question posed in yesterday's (August 21, 2017) post, "What do the following words have in common and what does the title of the post (Yesterday tomorrow) mean?" which was then followed by (surprise, surprise!) this list of words:

alibi, burglar, corpse, deadbeat, evidence, fugitive, gumshoe, homicide, innocent, judgment, killer, lawless, malice, noose, outlaw, peril, quarry, ricochet, silence, trespass, undertow, vengeance, wasted, x, yesterday

The answer, my friend, is not blowing in the wind, it is right here, in two parts:

1. What the words have in common is that they are used in titles to an alphabetic series of detective novels by American writer Sue Grafton (1940 - ). Clicking on the link in the previous sentence will show you each book's dust jacket and reveal a little about each book. Please do (click on the etc.).

2. Today, August 22, 2017, is the publication date of the most recent and eventually penultimate book in the series, Y Is For Yesterday. And at precisely at this point in this post I remind you of the title up there, today is the tomorrow you worried about yesterday.

It's that simple. I do apologize (British: apologise) for having caused any pre-apocalyptic concerns amongst my vast readership (at least four).

P.S. -- Ms. Grafton has already announced that the final book in the series will be entitled Z Is For Zero, which selection doesn't seem to have any connection to the previous 25 choices. Wait, neither did the word Yesterday.

P.P.S. -- This post is not meant to be a recommendation of Ms. Grafton's work as I have never read a single word of hers. Mrs. RWP has read a few of the books but stopped because of the strong language she encountered. Mrs. RWP recommends that if you like the genre but prefer milder language, read John Grisham.

P.P.P.S -- Lastly, it may be of interest to certain readers that Ms. Grafton herself says that she was inspired to begin the series, which began in 1982, after reading Edward Gorey's The Gashlycrumb Tinies.

(2009 photo by Mark Coggins, used in accordance with CC BY 2.0)

5 comments:

  1. Two of the books that I didn't dispose of in my recent clear out were Dale Carnegie's How to Win Friends and Influence People and Norman Vincent Peale's The Power of Positive Thinking. As I have never heard of Sue Grafton it is little wonder that I didn't have a scoobie.

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  2. Thank you for following yesterday's post with an explanation. Too often bloggers leave us hanging wondering what the real idea for the post was.

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  3. You truly are a mine of information Bob and not all of it is unimportant or irrelevant. What kind of strong language does Ms Grafton use? Words like muscular, heavyweight, lift, dumbbells, shout, aggression and confrontation?

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  4. Thank you for solving the mystery. I have read a couple of books from the series. They are a bit formulaic for my tastes.

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  5. If I make it to comment status then hurrah! If not then boo. I confess, I did not know the answer, though it made me think of the state of affairs that is politics in the US (and beyond) at present. I've never read anything by this lady, but the post is an interesting one none-the-less. Take care over there rhymes x

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<b>Always true to you, darlin’, in my fashion</b>

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