Is a punctual person continually tardy?
Happy new year, f-list.
The apocalypse is happening everywhere but the City by the Sea, which is a little pocket of pleasant weather, blue skies and a cool sea breeze. Yesterday as the fires elsewhere worsened, I made a cake and pottered about in the garden. Today we can smell smoke from, well, everywhere, but I went to the New Year Market in Port Fairy and bought a new sun hat. It all seems disconnected from the devastation on the news.
December books read
* Double Entry: How the merchants of Venice shaped the modern world - Jane Gleeson-White (2011) ★ ★
This purports to be a history of accounting - and the first half is, covering the development of double-entry bookkeeping in thirteenth century Italy through to the Industrial Revolution. After that, it steps away from accounting as a topic and instead becomes a scattershot criticism of auditing failures and national economic figures, which have been done better and more in-depth elsewhere.
* The Little Broomstick - Mary Stewart (1971) ★ ★ ★ ★
A short, charming book about a little girl who meets a cat, finds a magic flower and stumbles into a school for evil witches. As a child I'd have loved this; as an adult I found it a pleasant diversion.
* Death on the Riviera - John Bude (1952) ★ ★ ★
Written in a more casual time, when Scotland Yard was happy to let two detectives mooch about the French Riviera for an indeterminate length of time on the off chance they'd stumble onto a forger, this is a sort of Boys' Own adventure about counterfeit notes, art fraud, cigarette smuggling and murder. It's genuinely funny in parts (e.g. when the English inspector laments that his travel phrase book doesn't cover requests to take a corpse to the morgue), and is otherwise a quick, light read.
* The Glass of Lead and Gold - Cornelia Funke (2018) ★ ★ ★
More of a short story than a novel, this is set in an alternative London populated with magical creatures as well as Dickensian urchins. It's a Christmas story about an orphan who finds a magic glass and learns a lesson about friendship. It's a bit heavy-handed, but not without charm.
* The Cornish Coast Murder - John Bude (1935) ★ ★ ★
A serviceable, if unevenly paced, classic era detective novel about a vicar helping the police to solve the murder of a local dignitary.
* The Murders Near Mapleton - Brian Flynn (1929) ★ ★ ★
This is apparently the fourth is a series of mysteries investigated by a sleuth called Anthony Bathurst, who seems like a cross between Sherlock Holmes and Lord Peter Wimsey. Perhaps I should have started with one of the earlier books, because I couldn't work out who he was or why Scotland Yard would let him be involved.
I found it oddly paced: the first part reads almost like a farce with people running around a grand house on Christmas Eve dealing with dead bodies, screaming maids and a missing host; then it slows down considerably while Bathurst and the police take their own sweet time solving the puzzle. And the mystery of the dead butler is never really investigated; Bathurst just announces at the end, "Oh, and this happened."
Still, it kept me entertained on a lazy Boxing Day afternoon, and that's all I was asking of it.
(It also features the sentence "It's all Lombard Street to a china orange on it, to my idea", which is a collection of words I'd never previously contemplated together, but apparently means "heavily weighted odds".)
* Antidote to Venom - Freeman Wills Croft (1938) ★ ★
I'm on a little bit of a Golden Age of detective novels kick just now, but this one didn't really work for me. It has an interesting structure - the first two-thirds or so are told from the point of view of one of the culprits, explaining how he came to take the action he did - and only the last third taken up with the investigation. The problem is that the culprit is a selfish and uninteresting little man, while the Scotland Yard detective's investigation is quite interesting (and he is amusingly petty at times). So... a misfire for me, but a worthy one.
I didn't get around to reading a Cartland to end the year, although I did sample a chapter of one on my Kindle. The heroine was called Kezia Falcon and her brother was Sir Peregrine. That is, Sir Peregrine Falcon. As if that wasn't enough nonsense, Peregrine and Kezia decide to pretend to be married in order to sell a necklace to a French marquis. I mean... obviously I will be returning to this at a later date, because it promises to be splendid.
Sir Peregrine Falcon though. She must have been running out of names.
The apocalypse is happening everywhere but the City by the Sea, which is a little pocket of pleasant weather, blue skies and a cool sea breeze. Yesterday as the fires elsewhere worsened, I made a cake and pottered about in the garden. Today we can smell smoke from, well, everywhere, but I went to the New Year Market in Port Fairy and bought a new sun hat. It all seems disconnected from the devastation on the news.
December books read
* Double Entry: How the merchants of Venice shaped the modern world - Jane Gleeson-White (2011) ★ ★
This purports to be a history of accounting - and the first half is, covering the development of double-entry bookkeeping in thirteenth century Italy through to the Industrial Revolution. After that, it steps away from accounting as a topic and instead becomes a scattershot criticism of auditing failures and national economic figures, which have been done better and more in-depth elsewhere.
* The Little Broomstick - Mary Stewart (1971) ★ ★ ★ ★
A short, charming book about a little girl who meets a cat, finds a magic flower and stumbles into a school for evil witches. As a child I'd have loved this; as an adult I found it a pleasant diversion.
* Death on the Riviera - John Bude (1952) ★ ★ ★
Written in a more casual time, when Scotland Yard was happy to let two detectives mooch about the French Riviera for an indeterminate length of time on the off chance they'd stumble onto a forger, this is a sort of Boys' Own adventure about counterfeit notes, art fraud, cigarette smuggling and murder. It's genuinely funny in parts (e.g. when the English inspector laments that his travel phrase book doesn't cover requests to take a corpse to the morgue), and is otherwise a quick, light read.
* The Glass of Lead and Gold - Cornelia Funke (2018) ★ ★ ★
More of a short story than a novel, this is set in an alternative London populated with magical creatures as well as Dickensian urchins. It's a Christmas story about an orphan who finds a magic glass and learns a lesson about friendship. It's a bit heavy-handed, but not without charm.
* The Cornish Coast Murder - John Bude (1935) ★ ★ ★
A serviceable, if unevenly paced, classic era detective novel about a vicar helping the police to solve the murder of a local dignitary.
* The Murders Near Mapleton - Brian Flynn (1929) ★ ★ ★
This is apparently the fourth is a series of mysteries investigated by a sleuth called Anthony Bathurst, who seems like a cross between Sherlock Holmes and Lord Peter Wimsey. Perhaps I should have started with one of the earlier books, because I couldn't work out who he was or why Scotland Yard would let him be involved.
I found it oddly paced: the first part reads almost like a farce with people running around a grand house on Christmas Eve dealing with dead bodies, screaming maids and a missing host; then it slows down considerably while Bathurst and the police take their own sweet time solving the puzzle. And the mystery of the dead butler is never really investigated; Bathurst just announces at the end, "Oh, and this happened."
Still, it kept me entertained on a lazy Boxing Day afternoon, and that's all I was asking of it.
(It also features the sentence "It's all Lombard Street to a china orange on it, to my idea", which is a collection of words I'd never previously contemplated together, but apparently means "heavily weighted odds".)
* Antidote to Venom - Freeman Wills Croft (1938) ★ ★
I'm on a little bit of a Golden Age of detective novels kick just now, but this one didn't really work for me. It has an interesting structure - the first two-thirds or so are told from the point of view of one of the culprits, explaining how he came to take the action he did - and only the last third taken up with the investigation. The problem is that the culprit is a selfish and uninteresting little man, while the Scotland Yard detective's investigation is quite interesting (and he is amusingly petty at times). So... a misfire for me, but a worthy one.
I didn't get around to reading a Cartland to end the year, although I did sample a chapter of one on my Kindle. The heroine was called Kezia Falcon and her brother was Sir Peregrine. That is, Sir Peregrine Falcon. As if that wasn't enough nonsense, Peregrine and Kezia decide to pretend to be married in order to sell a necklace to a French marquis. I mean... obviously I will be returning to this at a later date, because it promises to be splendid.
Sir Peregrine Falcon though. She must have been running out of names.