Wednesday's nose is always in a book
What I read
This was a week during which I discovered that various entries in series I follow were e-available.
So, I read Sharon Lee and Steve Miller, Dragon in Exile (2015), which was very enjoyable, even if it embodies to the max that truism that the longer a series, whatever the genre, the more likely that it will aspire to the condition of soap-opera. This one, with its various plot strands and ongoing elements, was pretty much just like coming in in the middle of a long-running soap opera. However, nonetheless, very enjoyable, if not the place for the new reader to begin.
This also pretty much applied to Simon R Green, Property of a Lady Faire (Secret Histories no 8) (2014), which nonetheless, hit that spot that these hit.
I also picked up a Poirot mystery that I hadn't read, at least not within memory, One, Two, Buckle My Shoe (1940) and after reading a sufficient number of Christies, I depose that one begins to be able to decode certain elements of the plot ahead of Hercule himself (who at first seems to have been plunged into a narrative of spies and political plotting that is more one where one would anticipate Tommy and Tuppence doing their thing).
There was actually a certain resonance in terms of whoops - they dunnit??? - in Ianthe Jerrold's The Studio Crime (1929), although that mixed up the plot with a complex disguise subterfuge that I suspect that the Queens of Crime would have spurned. I thought it a nice touch that our idle young man about town who Fights Crime was from a family In Trade (large and sumptuous department store) rather than haut-aristo background but still wealthy and with no need to actually work. However, one or two points felt like 'ahem, fact-checking?' - I do not think that the College of Heralds is or was the place to approach about changing one's name, and would a Greek businessman, even if he did deal in rugs, wear a fez, associated with the traditional enemy?
I also finished the book I was reading for review and suspect that the publishers no longer hire copy-editors, because there were a number of WTF moments that a competent copy-edit would have obviated.
On the go
Well, still The Player's Boy for trennels read-through, and Solar Flares.
Have just started Vivien Gornick, Approaching Eye-Level (1996) which is coruscatingly brilliant.
Am also rather skimming my way through volume of scholarly essays with a view to providing a cover-puff - partly because it is a pdf that my Kobo does not play entirely nicely with, and partly because, time pressure to get a sense of it so that I can say something.
Up Next
Well, I still have the other Ianthe Jerrold to get to. This entry was originally posted at http://oursin.dreamwidth.org/2265871.html. Please comment there using OpenID. View
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