Wednesday could now get civil partnered if it wanted
What I read
Finished Bleeding Hearts.
Dug out my collection of the five mysteries published as Orania Papazoglou and republished (? not all of them) as Jane Haddam. These are: Sweet, Savage Death (1984), Wicked, Loving Murder (1985), Death's Savage Passion (1986), Rich, Radiant Slaughter (1988), and Once and Always Murder (1990). They feature the first person narration of Patience McKenna, a romance writer (under pseudonyms) and writer on more general issues, who subsequently becomes a true crime writer. They are all, except the last, set in the romance-writing community, in which the writers are depicted as hard-headed hard-working professionals irked by the popular perceptions of the field, even when they play up to them. The actual mysteries all centre on financial shenanigans of various kinds. The plots are a bit baroque, or perhaps it's more that they don't have the room to develop - these books are all a whole lot shorter than the Demarkian mysteries. Also, one feels it was a wise decision to move away from a protag who keeps falling over bodies (and nearly turns in to one on more than one occasion - and I do feel that recovery from arsenic poisoning was a little implausibly rapid) to one with a reason to get involved beyond that series of unfortunate accidents. The final one ventures more into New England Gothic with Patience's family and home town.
Martha Wells, Exit Strategy (MurderBot #4) (2018) - I hear there is more to come? a novel?
On the go
I haven't abandoned Everfair, it's just very easy to temporarily put aside.
Elizabeth Hawes Why Women Cry: Or Wenches with Wrenches (1943) - my attention was drawn to Hawes by a paper at a conference during the summer, and I was reminded that I'd meant to look up her books by a very tangential allusion in Nobody's Girl Friday, to which this book has a lot more relevance than I anticipated in issues over women's work in the US at that period. Some of it is Of Its Period and some of it is: hello, did Betty Friedan know her, perchance?
Up next
Also have Hawes' Fashion is Spinach (1938). This entry was originally posted at https://oursin.dreamwidth.org/2825794.html. Please comment there using OpenID. View
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