Books, exercise, clothes, and other assorted stuff
Partners in Crime, Agatha Christie's collection of Tommy and Tuppence short stories references a number of (now) obscure mystery authors/books and I thought it might be fun to try some of them, if I could find them. I've managed to get ahold of A Clue in the Air by Isabel Ostrander and Courier to Marrakesh by Valentine Williams. Interestingly, Ostrander writes about a male detective and Williams has a female main character in this book (told 1st person, even).
I've started on A Clue in the Air, and it's not bad, though I keep tripping over the giant differences in what's acceptable now and what was acceptable in 1917. Societal attitudes to all kinds of things have changed. A lot. Mostly for the better. The place of women, how people talk about and think about people who aren't white, and, most extremely, how class is viewed are different. And yet, sadly, except for the fact that we're a whole lot less class conscious, I'm not sure the stereotypes have really changed a whole lot. We just hide them better. (At least to our eyes. Perhaps not to someone from 2101.) But I can't wait to see what the world looks like in Courier to Marrakesh's version of the 1940s.
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I want to take advantage of the exercise room that my apartment building sprouted a couple months ago, but I've been horribly lazy about actually going and buying something I can work-out in. Jeans and khakis just aren't appropriate work-out wear. Unfortunately, it looks like just finding a pair of sweat pants is going to be a major pain in the ass. All the ones for women are pre-shaped and low-rise (even from Title Nine) and it's surprisingly hard to find stores that carry men's sweat pants in small. Ugh. Clothes shopping always makes me wish I were several inches taller, proportionately larger, and male. -_- I might be able to find something at JC Penney, though. I hope.
On the bright side, my ranting about clothes shopping (and how much I'd like to stuff designers into their own clothing) prompted my mom to suggest that for pants in general, I might try uniform suppliers. She was pretty sure that they haven't succumbed to the low rise madness. And, for the most part, it looks like she's right. Now if I can just find somewhere where I can try them on, as opposed to blindly ordering them on line...
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I've gathered up some books on editing and proofreading to see if I can get good enough/get my nerve up to try and make some money that way. And I'm going to a meet up of local ghost hunters tomorrow. We'll see if they're interesting or crackpots. But, hey, it's an attempt at being social, so that's something.