Percy Grainger plus more

 There has been a Percy Grainger Symposium at BYU's School of Music for the past few days, and I attended it. My work paid for it ($309) as a non-travel professional development opportunity. And it was really good and interesting.

I was initially quite shocked, before it even started, to hear that the only attendees were all of the presenters plus only TWO PEOPLE. I was one of those two. That was shocking to me. Like, our MPMLA conferences are small, but we usually manage to get four or five more people than presenters, though I do have to admit that our "audience" is presenter-heavy, too.

I was glad I got the "include food" option because that way they got more $$ and I did not eat very much, so hopefully my money helped to fund the symposium. 

Here is the small audience from Thursday:

And some of those may be BYU students, because they were all told they could attend for free as their classes allowed. During the opening talk, given by a Percy Grainger expert from Connecticut, all the band students that you see below on the stage were also in the audience, so it was pretty full. I mean, this is the concert hall with many seats, but at least there were people to fill the part directly in front of the stage.

This was a fun session -- they played a Grainger arrangement of Ye Banks and Braes that was democratic polyphony--so we, the audience, could sing or whistle, and the band had various choices to make as well, and it was fun and sounded good.

And this was the ending session yesterday--first the many, many student participants who were in this session on choral music

And here the small audience, still pretty big because of all the students that were taking advantage of the opportunity to learn. Still just filling only the section of the concert hall closest to the stage. (My RA Megan is the smiling face at the right.)

And the plus more is that it was mine and Bruce's 46th wedding anniversary, so we went out for dinner.

We each got our own entree, and then got one piece of lemon bar to share.

Then this morning, back to the symposium. I went to the session that I thought would be least likely to have a lot of people in it, and I was not wrong. The first man was Allen Feinstein, and he is honestly quite a big deal in the music world in Boston, and further afield, and aside from the band students who were playing, there were only NINE people in the audience. (Which--the room was crowded. Because of students and instruments. But still.)

This image is from Dr. Feinstein's presentation:

 I took that picture for the QR code. This session was introducing a new, Grainger-inspired orchestrationi of a folk song called The Rainbow done by that young guy in the picture, Matt Fishman, who unfortunately died of brain cancer in 2024. The music was wonderful, and I would like to get the score for our library.

And then, after the musicians left...the audience got smaller for the next guy, who was doing EDM that was Grainger inspired, and the last guy was from White Plains, New Jersey, where the Percy Grainger House/Museum is and the audience was down to FIVE.

Well, I have presented to only TWO people, so I get it. But arrgh.

The next two pictures are from the session about Grainger's work with Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book. I had to take two pictures to get in all the students who were the performers. Obviously, they outnumbered the audience.

I think my favorite thing, even though I loved the Jungle Book thing, and also Mikayla Black did a band thing yesterday that I really liked, but my favorite thing was the piano program!! It was soooo good. Here are the performers for that event, which was pretty well attended because it was open to anybody as a free event.

And then I went back for the last session at four, which was like a roundtable discussion, with all FOURTEEN of us (presenters and me and a few students, but not all the presenters, because some were missing) and the guests from far away -- Connecticut, Boston, New Jersey, AUSTRALIA -- they were all completely delighted with how it turned out, and they couldn't be happier.

So I need to stop being shocked at what looked to me like poor attendance, and be happy for the six hundred students who got to learn Grainger music and participate in some way for the two days. I know that it was worth it to me--I learned a lot, and have a lot of material to look for that should be in our library!

The Past

 The past was very present for me yesterday--two different things happened that pushed me into the past in my thoughts. I can't remember which happened first, because they were sort of going on simultaneously.

One was that my brother shared with my sisters and my cousin a short essay he had written, and shared on Family Search, about someone we knew growing up, who I will call Merlin (not the Magician) and that was his actual name--weridly there were several Merlins in our little town, and none were Magicians! This Merlin was rather bold and brash, and in my brother's memory, that boldness was put to good use while serving as a missionary in France. This memory surprised me, because in my most potent memory of Merlin, his boldness was put to what seemed to me as harmful use as he tried to shivaree my cousin Lavon on her wedding night by locking her hand to his with handcuffs. However, as my cousin pointed out, Merlin demonstrated a "risk-in -the -moment quality...which also led him to share his testimony of the gospel openly, freely and often. Come what may." 

My sister Colleen asked why did Merlin do that to Lavon, so I asked her, and she said that he and other friends of her husband, Dennis, decided that doing the shivaree thing would be fun. But when the moment came, he was the only one with enough moxie to actually do it, which he tried to, only my cousin David calmly and gently talked him down, and he released Lavon. (For whom none of the experience had been fun!) 

However, our conversation caused me to look at Merlin differently--I could see the value of the boldness of his character. Whereas I had painted him as a villain (and my cousin David as a hero) I could see that the same personality traits he often put to very good use in following through as a missionary, and as a salesman in his career. I see the whole experience at Lavon's reception through different eyes, as I can now imagine Merlin following through on a commitment (that was a stupid commitment) but still, he was seeing it differently than I was. And so I can forgive him--I had been holding a lifelong bias because of it and I didn't even realize it!

The second thing that was happening while I was also discussing the Merlin stories in Gmail was happening on Facebook, where I saw that my friend Irene had posted this picture:

And I read the name, and I was like: I know him! So I posted: Huh. I knew Mark at BYU! He was in my ward, rooming with a bunch of guys from the Rugby team. In my FHE group.

And I messaged Josie, because Irene is the mom of her two friends Lydia and Eliza, who she has been good friends with since she was about eight years old. Whereas Irene and I only see each other occasionally, and mostly only interact on Facebook, and not much because I actually do not spend much time there any more. 

So I was conversing with Josie, who was conversing with Lydia and Eliza. I did not know that Irene had been in a weirdly there but not there relationship with Mark for NINE YEARS. And that she had been very present for him as he was dying of cancer.

I knew Mark when I was 17, which was how old I was when I finished high school early (compared to most people who finish at 18) and then went to BYU (where I was a terribly flaky student) and was in the BYU 100th Branch. Our apartment of girls, and Mark's apartment of guys, were in the same FHE group, and they also gave us Mike and Tom Nibley, sons of the rather renowned BYU professor Hugh Nibley, who lived at home but proximate to our housing units. 

Most of the guys in Mark's apartment were on the rugby team, although one was a BYU yell leader, and unknown to most of us, Tom was actually Cosmo, the BYU mascot, that year.

So my memory of Mark was of a tall, blonde and very cute kind of surfer dude from Compton, California, who mostly wore Hawaiian shirts. There was this one Hawaiian shirt that was clearly a favorite that he wore every week, I am sure. So fun to see him in the slide show for his funeral, which I watched a few times, wearing the exact same shirt as a young dad holding a baby! 

I had a crush on Mark (and, serially, on many of the guys in my FHE group!) but did not realize that he was born in 1950, so the same age as my brother! He must have thought of me as just a kid, since I was 17 and he was 24 (actually, no, he would have already turned 25!) when we met.

I observed Mark to be commitment shy, and in the few years, 3-4, that I knew him, he managed to stay unsttached to any girl, though his obituary informed me that he did marry and have five children, but his children's ages are like my younger children's ages, and I didn't have David until I was 25, so Mark would have been in his thirties before he married and had children.

The weirdness for me was putting Mark (the way I remember him at ages 24-28) with Irene (who I have only known as a married and then divorced (and widowed because he then died)) mom of six, And that just about broke my brain.

I am happy for Irene that she spent nine years having fun with Mark, because he was a very, very fun person to be around, and apparently never lost that, according to the obituary. And I am sad for Irene because while she was devoted to him, I think he was less devoted back, and at least he never became officially her boyfriend or fiance or husband, and that must have been painful for her upon his death. Where did she fit at that funeral last fall? I don't know.

I just know that thinking about these two men from my past, Merlin and Mark, caused me to see them differently in the present, and caused me to modify some of my thinking about them in the past, so my memories have altered somewhat. Weird. 

Nowruz Mobarak!

Today is the first day of Nowruz; and therefore the first day of the Persian New year. This is the day that marks the arrival of spring! 

Quoting from Wikipedia (with some of my own edits, so not exactly quoted): Haft Seen or Haft sin (Persian: هفت‌سین, lit. 'Seven S's') is an arrangement of seven symbolic items whose names start with the letter "س" (pronounced as "seen"), the 15th letter in the Persian alphabet; "haft" (هفت) is Persian for "seven". Haft sin is traditionally displayed at Nowruz, the Iranian New Year, which is celebrated on the day of the vernal equinox, marking the beginning of spring. Nowruz is a celebration of the beginning of spring and the start of a new year celebrated in more than 20 countries. With its special customs and traditions, such as the Haft sin table, this celebration symbolizes renewal and harmony with nature.

Here is our Hadis's haft sin table:

Here are some of the traditional things of which there are more than 7, so you can choose your own 7: 

Sabzeh (سبزه) – wheat, barley, mung beans or lentil sprouts grown in a dish. (represents rebirth)
Samanu (or Samani) (سمنو) – wheat germ sweet pudding. (represents fertility)
Senjed (سنجد) – oleaster (wild olive).
Serkeh (سرکه) – vinegar. (represents patience)
Seeb (سیب) – apple. (represents beauty)
Seer (سیر) –  garlic. (represents good health)
Somagh (سماق) – sumac. 

Sonbol (سنبل) – hyacinth. (represents Spring)

Sekeh or Sekke (سکه) – coins. (represents Prosperity)

Saa'at  (ساعت) – clock. (represents passage of time - vernal equinox)

Other symbolic items that can be used to accompany Haft-sin include a mirror, candles, painted eggs, goldfish, and traditional Persian confections. A "book of wisdom" is also commonly included.

There is a Nowruz table in the BYU Library. I saw the poster for it this morning, and took a picture to share with Patrick and Hadis.

And I accepted the poster's invitation to come and learn about Nowruz, even though I already have been aware of Nowruz for a long time due to association with Lloyd Miller and Katherine St. John. Lloyd, before his death in 2024, was the best scholar (in this country) on the subject of music in Iran, if not the entire middle east. Wikipedia explains about Lloyd thusly: "Miller spent seven years in Iran on a Fulbright scholarship. Known as Kurosh Ali Khan, he hosted a television show in Iran during the 1970s and worked as a journalist for several Iranian publications. His mother, Maxine Adams Miller, authored Bright Blue Beads: An American Family In Persia." (Which I have read.) Katherine, Lloyd's wife, is an expert on Persian dance (again, an expert from this country) and you can read about her here. Patrick, Josie, David, and me all took at least one class from Lloyd or Lloyd/Katherine. Also Uncle Wally and Auntie Judy took one of their classes with me and Josie one year. Josie even owns one of Lloyd's many instruments, a Persian santur. 

We didn't know then, when we began our long friendship with Lloyd and Katherine, that Patrick would one day meet Hadis, and the Iranian connection would be therefore even stronger. Here are the two of them on today, Nowruz.

Today has been a good day for Hadis, because she got to talk to her family for the first time in too long. They all live in Iran, and their daily lives (and internet connectivity) have been upended. This is a huge worry for Hadis and Patrick. The timing for Hadis was also horrible, because she was at the point of renewing her visa in Austria, when suddenly she had no contact with her dad, and he had been supporting her while she was pursuing her advanced degrees. She needed her housing contract, her school plans, her employment plans, all ready for her visa interview. She needed all her ducks in a row...without which, the only alternative being to return to a country that is being blown to bits. Dealing with all of that while being unable to even talk to her family, to even know if they were okay still, has been super difficult. So she felt a renewal of joy and faith when today her sister made it possible for her to speak with her parents. Hurray! (Star Link still works, but regular cell phone service does not.)

Current events are wreaking havoc for Hadis and all the many people like her whose lives have been shaken/destroyed/irrevocably damaged by the decisions of politics that do not consider, nor care about, the lives of ordinary people who are just trying to live their lives. 

So, back to the Nowruz display in the library:

First, the whole thing. This was the first year and they hope to make it better each year. 

 You can compare what you see here to the list of Haft sin possibilities.

And then posters of explanation:

I find this last one a little bit hard to read. This was true even while standing in front of it. I will have to tell them that small criticism, because maybe next year they can make the writing easier to read. 

In other news, we also had St. Patrick's Day earlier this week, which always brings to mind my son Patrick, even though his name was not chosen with St. Patrick in mind at all. Today I was covering at the 5th floor Humanities Help Desk, and it was sooooo boring. It is "Spring Day" so no students, and I was alone with intermittent construction noise. Luckily, there is a duck collection up there to look at and laugh at the funny names the students have come up with. Including St. Pat-duck.

Patrick said, "I would accept this as a nickname as long as you power through pat. Pa-duck."

Book Plot Dreams

 It has been a very long time since I have had a book plot dream--a dream that is long and involved and makes a compelling story that could turn into a book with a bit of imagination and some perseverence! 

Last night was only my second ever dream of that nature. The only other time was sometime between 2001 and 2005; I am not sure exactly when, but it was in the Orem house while I worked at BYU and Nancy still lived at home. I told that dream to Nancy, and it was just as creepy when I told it to her as when I dreamt it--it was one of my horrible nightmares. I am very good at having nightmares--lucky me--but they are less terrifying as an adult than they were when I was a child. The book plot dream of that particular nightmare would have been of the horror genre, had I fleshed it out into a book. And I don't read horror; I don't watch horror. I found that, though I tried to write it--because given a book plot, it seems one ought to write it--but I could not dwell in the horror. So I gave up! That book plot dream was particularly difficult because the setting was the Orem house, which meant that I was creeped in my own house for weeks if not months after that dream. Also that dream included baby goats, and I am pretty sure that my subconscious got that idea from my cousin Darrel's miniature goats, one of whom once gave birth to a literal litter of goats--some crazy number like nine. Which rarely happens! 

So last night's dream was gracious enough to not be so entirely creepy--it was more like a cozy mystery, which is a genre that I do enjoy. There is mystery and tension but also humor and it is not entirely dark. However, to turn this book plot dream into an actual book would require some research, because the setting was Prince Edward Island, where I have never been except in the pages of the Anne books by L.M. Montgomery! 

In the dream, I was going to an academic conference in PEI (most likely Charlottetown) and given the venue I asked Nancy if she wanted to fly and meet me there just for fun because PEI--a place we both have a wish to see. The dream happened out of order, like books sometimes do, jumping around in time, but the gist of if was that Nancy had brought her baby with her (this was not Phoebe, who is no longer a baby but it was a baby girl--having had much opportunity to look at the baby, she was completely unfamiliar to me, like not any of Nancy's actual babies) and when we met up, we ended up on this road that in my rental vehicle which was a large pickup truck that real me would never rent unless compelled to, I could not turn around on this one road, and we were headed the wrong direction, so Nancy was going to hop out to get to the destination on time, while I would look for a place to turn around, then a place to park, and bring the baby and meet her.

Of course you can tell already that I was not successful in doing my part. So Nancy got to where we were headed, but I did not, and so I was walking and walking and walking in completely unfamiliar territory with this baby, and so finally I got on a bus just to rest my weary feet, and then the bus driver announced this was the last stop before Cavendish, and I knew I needed to stay in the city I was in (presumably Charlottetown) so I quickly got off because I knew Nancy was not in Cavendish.

There were also scenes at the conference--me sitting on the second row (I usually sit at the front because I am very blind and I want to be able to see) and talking with another conference attendee--setting up for someone being able to say that I actually was at the conference once the police got looking for me and the baby, since we had disappeared.

There was me with a dead cell phone trying to find a way to call Nancy and let her know that we were okay; we just didn't know where we were. Dream me tried to borrow cell phones to call someone, but I couldn't actually call Nancy, because I don't know her cell phone number!! I know Bruce's and Rosie's except that I always get the numbers mixed up, so I don't really "know" them, and the only other number I know is Josie's. Thanks, cell phones--I used to remember lots of phone numbers, but since you remember them for me, I have let them lapse in my brain. Also true of me in the dream!

So, my intent was to call Josie, the only number of anyone in my family that I actually know without mixing up the numbers, and ask her to call Nancy, but it was very hard to find a person who would let me use a cell phone, and I could actually make it work. I had no success.

There were also room scenes--I did succeed in getting a hotel room. There were in fact two hotel rooms: my actual conference hotel room, and the room that I got after I got lost with the baby. 

And then there of course had to be a creepy scene, because this was my dream, and even though I do not watch or read horror, my brain is really good at fabricating a little horror. This part involved some sister-in-law who wanted me to give the baby to her (I don't know whose sister-in-law it was!) because she couldn't have any babies, and Nancy already had lots of babies so she didn't need it. And she was also, if that didn't work, trying to convince me to just keep the baby and run away with it, and I was like "Why would I want another baby? I already have six, and six is enough!" But the villain of this scene was very creepy, I must say, and I was trying but not succeeding to get away from her.

Well--you might not see the latent book plot in there, but I do! It would take some work to turn the idea into a book that made sense, but it might turn into an interesting book.

However, it turns out that I am a writer of non-fiction, so a cozy mystery is probably not in the cards for me!

Flashback to 2012

 Today I randomly came across a picture on a friend's Facebook page, which was taken in 2012. I clearly did not have this picture, which was taken by one David Nielsen on November 15, 2012, and goes with this blog post. 

This was upon the occasion of us doing the Indonesian Saman dance performance at Kingsbury Hall. I no longer remember all the names of people--but I found them by sleuthing! From the left, Tanielle, Sara (who later married Tanielle's brother), Josie, Fenima, Anggi, me, Nadia, Chalece (who later married David, who took the picture). 

Someone (Anggi or someone for her) also took a video! Which is available here: https://www.facebook.com/anggitaputri61/videos/577085260249/ 

Or! Here. (Thanks to Nancy!)

Nancy also danced this with Josie and I (and Tanielle and Anggi and other people not the same as these) on March 1, 2012 at SLC, and all the pictures and the video from that performance are available at this link. 

Books Read in February

 February was a busy month, but I managed to read six books.

1. Absolutely Truly by Heather Vogel Frederick (2014) tells the story of a family whose military father is injured in an accident, losing an arm, just before he is scheduled to leave active duty. They had just bought a house in Texas near their mother's side of the family. But their dad's career plans as a pilot that he had set up for himself will no longer work--as a one-armed man he can't be a pilot. He is also adjusting to a prothesis, and he is also mentally wrangling with himself through this hard time. His parents ask him to move to his hometown of Pumpkin Falls, New Hampshire, to take over the family bookstore with his sister. The book relies on the viewpoint of the daughter, Truly Lovejoy. Good story.

2. The Christmas Ring by Karen Kingsbury (2025). I got the idea to look for Karen Kingsbury books in our library because she was one of the authors Susanne had read in January. We didn't have the title she had read, so I picked the shortest (page numbers are a part of the description of items in catalog records) as a trial read, which was this one. And it was good--characterizations were sympathetic and believable and likeable, which is important to me. And it had a interesting plot. So I liked it. But also -- AARRGH -- because two things were bugging me the whole time I was reading it. Which speaks to my anal brain more than anything else! 

First, the ring itself. It had an inscription on it that said "maison." This is a French word--logical since he found the ring while in the war, on D-Day, in France. But "maison" means "house." Only in the book, they are making it mean "home." And it just...doesn't. It reminds me of when our next-door neighbors had hung a welcome home sign on their maison when their son returned from his mission to Quebec, and it said "Bienvenue Maison." In French you would actually say "Bienvenue chez vous" to someone you didn't know well, or "Bienvenue chez toi" to someone you know well, like your son. So, if you want an inscription on a ring to express the concept of "home" in French, you wouldn't simply put "maison" because anyone who understands French is going to think "house." Like, the building. To express the idea of belonging you need chez + a person. So for a family, home is "chez nous." If you are saying, "Let's go home" you could say "Rentrons à la maison" or "Rentrons chez nous." But without the "à la" part it wouldn't work. Like, you couldn't say "Rentrons maison." Even though "rentrons" means "let's return" and "maison" means "house." That would just be wrong. I mean, people might understand but it would register as wrong first. And then it would be "Oh, you mean..."

Second, the dates!! Arrgh!! The book was written in 2025, so presumably the "four years later" which is the last chapter of the book takes place in 2025. At this point, the daughter, Sadie, is getting married after she has graduated from university. So she is about 22 years old. Vanessa, her mother, was a military widow, and she had also supposedly married her husband around age 22 and had trouble conceiving so the one daughter did not come easily. If that is true, even if she was impatient about conceiving, she would have to have been older than 22 when Sadie was born. Okay. So far we have Sadie born in 2003, and so Vanessa had to be born in 1980 or earlier (giving her one year of impatience before Sadie was born, which is hard for me to reconcile with trouble conceiving). Now, the ring was found, and engraved, by Billy, Vanessa's great grandfather, who was a young, unmarried American soldier when he found the ring on June 6, 1944. So, he needed to be something like 18 years old, at least, unless he lied on the enlistment papers, which some young men did. But let's say he was 18--then he had to be born in 1926, or possibly earlier if he was older than 18, but probably not much later or he would be too young. If he quickly found that French girl he married and engraved the ring for, he might have had a child born in 1946, and that would be Vanessa's grandparent. And if that child married and had a child in 1966, that would be Vanessa's parent, and then Vanessa was born in 1980? Nope, that doesn't work, unless her parent was 14 when she was born. How do we get five generations in between 1926 and 2003? 1926 - 1946 - 1966 - 1986 - 2006. That works, if everyone has a baby at age 20. But Sadie was born in 2003, or she couldn't be 22 in 2025, so somebody has to be younger than 20 at some point, and if the circumstances of Vanessa are true, it couldn't be her...So my brain was unable to suspend disbelief and just accept the story.

Which, in spite of me obsessing over these things--the story was good; how the ring was lost and found, and how that intersected with Vanessa meeting Ben, who became her second husband. Like, it was a fun story, and well told. Just my brain and the inscription and the dates were messing with me!!

3. Miss Benson's Beetle by Rachel Joyce (2020). This is the book my Literary Ladies Book Group was reading for the month. I had trouble reading this book because of the latent sadness in it! It is a wonderful, well written book, which I highly recommend, but for me it was so sad. The three people -- Miss Benson, Enid Pretty, and Mr. Mundic (Miss Benson's stalker) all have such sad things in their past lives, and the foreshadowing is there for sad things ahead. I found a quote that says "These two women go on the adventure of a lifetime looking for a rare beetle- what they find in the end, is the rarest thing in life, friendship." And that is true! Read it! You might not feel the sense of prevailing sadness like I did! Or the sadness might not bother you!! I made myself finish this really good book by waving the metaphorical carrot under my nose of vol.7 of...

4. The unselected journals of Emma M. Lion vol.7 (2023) by Beth Brower. I was so happy to meet my ficitonal friends, the characters of these novels, oncd again! Delightfully, the kiss Emma shared with Niall Pierce at the end of book 6 did not ruin the foursome friendship these two enjoy with Young Hawkes and the Duke of Islington! They are trying really hard not to share any more kisses, because how scandalous!! Only the butler catches them in one!! Mind boggling for him!! And then Emma and Islington are caught in what looks like an embrace (really not!) and so he has to claim guardianship of Emma or marry her (gasp!! they would fight ALL THE TIME), and that makes the gossip column, and her Aunt confronts Islington about it--what horror is going to befall Emma? Read and find out!

5. Francis S. Collins came to BYU as a forum speaker, and it was really, really good! He spoke about science and religion, and so I interlibrary-loaned his book The language of God: a scientist presents evidence for belief (2006) and it was also really good. When he was speaking, he used a scripture James 1:5 which he said he knew we would all know--he knew his audience! And he played his guitar and had the audience sing with him, new words for a tune we know well. Oh yes--it was the tune that in our church we sing to the words, "In Humility, our Savior."

However, let us move on to the book! I am going to share a quote from it, from page 211, that addresses the conflict between science and religion: "The God of the Bible is also the God of the genome. He can be worshipped in the cathedral or in the laboratory. His creation is majestic, awesome, intricate, and beautiful--and it cannot be at war with itself. Only we imperfect humans can start such battles. And only we can end them."  

So basically, for him, there is no conflict between the two that has not been invented in the imperfect minds of humans. He discusses Creationism (when faith trumps science) and Intelligent Design (when science needs divine help), but he himself is a believer in BioLogos (science and faith in harmony) and I think that is also where I land. We just are not going to be able to know everything in this life--it is too short--so we can move forward in faith that when science discovers things that are true, then those truths are going to be in harmony with God who is the author of truth. We don't have to understand everything because faith. 

6 Veronica Mars. So Bruce found the TV series, and we have only watched one episode so far, but it was good, and I knew there was a book relationship, so I found the first book (there are sadly only two) and read The Thousand Dollar Tan Line (2014) and it was really good! I was worried it wouldn't be, because the genesis of the idea was that Rob Thomas had a book deal with Simon & Schuster for a book about a son of a sheriff, but then before he actually wrote the book, he got a TV deal only they wanted a daughter instead of a son. The TV show ran from 2004-2007. Next came a movie, which the studio opted not to film, so there was a kickstarter which raised a bunch of money quickly, and the movie came out in 2014. And then there was a TV season 4 in 2019. When a book is written AFTER the media, it is often not so great, but this book was really good. It doesn't try to retell anything that was filmed; it is a grown up Veronica Mars, 28 years old and a lawyer, who returns to her hometown to help her dad after he is almost killed, and decides that actually running the PI business is more interesting to her than lawyering is. I already have the second book on hold, and am sad there are only two. But we are just starting to watch the TV series, so there is that consolation. Rob Thomas wrote the book with Jennifer Graham, who also writes under the name Jennifer Donaldson.