Near-Total Failure To Get My Act Together Wednesday
I guess we're back down to one post a week, since work shows no signs of slowing down and I can't seem to manage my time any better. Oh well.
What I've Just Finished Reading
The Singing Sands was great, and if anything To Love and Be Wise was even better. At least, most of the grouchiness that in other books gets channeled into regional politics is shifted onto the vast wasteland of contemporary fiction, where it is no less over the top but significantly more enjoyable. There's a habit Grant and his friends have of latching onto a single phrase and driving it into the ground -- here it's the banal observation by one of the policemen that a murder suspect (thought to have pushed a charming stranger into the river) seems like "more of a push-ee" than a pusher. Grant and Marta repeat the word "pushee" over a dozen times and make it the key to the suspect's character, in a very persistent, fixed way that is typical of Tey. The solution to the mystery, and Grant's response to it, was unexpectedly and refreshingly generous, one of the gentlest endings I've seen to anything that started out as a murder mystery -- though maybe the perpetrator's good looks had something to do with that.
Also read The Poisoned Chocolates Case by Anthony Berkley and started The Innocence of Father Brown. All of this should have gone into a Murder Monday post, but it's not Monday anymore and it won't be Monday again for days
After Many A Summer had Shocking Plot Twists! and a Grimly Funny Satirical Ending! both of which fell a little flat for me. The descriptions of Jo Stoyte's house and the Beverly Pantheon pulled more weight, satirically and otherwise, than all the long philosophical discussions OR the soap opera or the immortality plot. I didn't regret having read it, but I wasn't overwhelmed with gratitude for the recommendation, either.
What I'm Reading Now
Finnegans Wake! I'm only on Page 12, it makes almost no sense, and I love it already. I'm going to follow the example of Stephen Crowe and make a sketch for every page I read (mine will not be good sketches, but that can't be helped). This should help me keep from getting too lost and keep me from skimming when I'm tempted to skim.
The Silmarillion is brewing secret cities and secret drama all over the place. Galadriel is staying with Melian, who keeps trying to get her to talk about the thing she doesn't want to talk about. The fact is, her cousin Feanor and her brothers killed Melian's in-laws and stole their ships, and it's not the easiest thing to talk about even without the embarrassment of being a guest in the house of the bereaved. Poor Galadriel. She has such an unimaginably long life ahead of her, and she's already dug a trench between the things she can bear to remember and the things she can't.
Also started: the aforementioned Innocence of Father Brown. It's SUPER PREACHY and very charming and full of clever turns of phrase and Evil Atheists. One Evil Atheist turned out to have killed a millionaire because the latter might have been about to convert to Catholicism and give his millions to a bunch of reactionary organizations! While I understand this concern, I can only advise my fellow evil atheists to be more circumspect in their future propaganda efforts. :(
Father Brown himself is my favorite type of detective, the False Innocent. Like Miss Marple, everyone automatically tries to protect him from any hint of the nastier side of life despite his being the least squeamish and most clear-sighted person in any given room. The best story so far is the first one, in which he allows a jewel thief to attempt to con him in order to identify him and set a trail for the authorities. Flambeau, the jewel thief, has turned up again, and I hope he becomes a regular semi-nemesis; he's not a very complex character so far, but he has a lot of potential. Actually, I wouldn't mind if the whole book turned out to be The Adventures of Flambeau, The World's Greatest and Most Theatrically-Minded Criminal, with occassional appearances by Father Brown.
What I plan to read next
At Swim-Two-Birds is next on the 99 Novels list, and if I start it soonish I'll probably finish it before I get through Finnegans Wake. Other than that, I'm not sure yet! I have to do some re-reading for a paper I might be working on, but I don't know yet how I'm going to pace that.
What I've Just Finished Reading
The Singing Sands was great, and if anything To Love and Be Wise was even better. At least, most of the grouchiness that in other books gets channeled into regional politics is shifted onto the vast wasteland of contemporary fiction, where it is no less over the top but significantly more enjoyable. There's a habit Grant and his friends have of latching onto a single phrase and driving it into the ground -- here it's the banal observation by one of the policemen that a murder suspect (thought to have pushed a charming stranger into the river) seems like "more of a push-ee" than a pusher. Grant and Marta repeat the word "pushee" over a dozen times and make it the key to the suspect's character, in a very persistent, fixed way that is typical of Tey. The solution to the mystery, and Grant's response to it, was unexpectedly and refreshingly generous, one of the gentlest endings I've seen to anything that started out as a murder mystery -- though maybe the perpetrator's good looks had something to do with that.
Also read The Poisoned Chocolates Case by Anthony Berkley and started The Innocence of Father Brown. All of this should have gone into a Murder Monday post, but it's not Monday anymore and it won't be Monday again for days
After Many A Summer had Shocking Plot Twists! and a Grimly Funny Satirical Ending! both of which fell a little flat for me. The descriptions of Jo Stoyte's house and the Beverly Pantheon pulled more weight, satirically and otherwise, than all the long philosophical discussions OR the soap opera or the immortality plot. I didn't regret having read it, but I wasn't overwhelmed with gratitude for the recommendation, either.
What I'm Reading Now
Finnegans Wake! I'm only on Page 12, it makes almost no sense, and I love it already. I'm going to follow the example of Stephen Crowe and make a sketch for every page I read (mine will not be good sketches, but that can't be helped). This should help me keep from getting too lost and keep me from skimming when I'm tempted to skim.
The Silmarillion is brewing secret cities and secret drama all over the place. Galadriel is staying with Melian, who keeps trying to get her to talk about the thing she doesn't want to talk about. The fact is, her cousin Feanor and her brothers killed Melian's in-laws and stole their ships, and it's not the easiest thing to talk about even without the embarrassment of being a guest in the house of the bereaved. Poor Galadriel. She has such an unimaginably long life ahead of her, and she's already dug a trench between the things she can bear to remember and the things she can't.
Also started: the aforementioned Innocence of Father Brown. It's SUPER PREACHY and very charming and full of clever turns of phrase and Evil Atheists. One Evil Atheist turned out to have killed a millionaire because the latter might have been about to convert to Catholicism and give his millions to a bunch of reactionary organizations! While I understand this concern, I can only advise my fellow evil atheists to be more circumspect in their future propaganda efforts. :(
Father Brown himself is my favorite type of detective, the False Innocent. Like Miss Marple, everyone automatically tries to protect him from any hint of the nastier side of life despite his being the least squeamish and most clear-sighted person in any given room. The best story so far is the first one, in which he allows a jewel thief to attempt to con him in order to identify him and set a trail for the authorities. Flambeau, the jewel thief, has turned up again, and I hope he becomes a regular semi-nemesis; he's not a very complex character so far, but he has a lot of potential. Actually, I wouldn't mind if the whole book turned out to be The Adventures of Flambeau, The World's Greatest and Most Theatrically-Minded Criminal, with occassional appearances by Father Brown.
What I plan to read next
At Swim-Two-Birds is next on the 99 Novels list, and if I start it soonish I'll probably finish it before I get through Finnegans Wake. Other than that, I'm not sure yet! I have to do some re-reading for a paper I might be working on, but I don't know yet how I'm going to pace that.