todayiamadaisy (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
todayiamadaisy) wrote2014-03-01 02:48 pm
todayiamadaisy) wrote2014-03-01 02:48 pm
Entry tags:
Lights, Laughter and a Lady
I know you've all been on tenterhooks to find out if the mobile home detox van accepted my batteries and compact fluorescent bulbs, even though some of their literature said not. Well, wonder no more: they did. Phew.
I suspect my reading will be curtailed this year, as I've started a Masters degree. Time I would normally spend reading will now be spent, er, reading, only it will be articles about organisational behaviour and change management instead of the usual nonsense.
Speaking of the degree, I came home the other day to find the university had sent me a welcome pack:
Surprise stationery is always welcome. I am particularly taken with the crayon highlighters, which I have never used before. And now that I have used them, I won't be going back to the felt-tip kind, because the crayons are fab. Second best is the magnetic whiteboard. (Oh, and there was also a pin with the university logo on it, which I have stuck into my pinboard. I forgot that when I took the photo.)
February books read
* Happy are the Meek - Andrew M. Greeley (1985)
* Hell! said the Duchess: A Bedtime Story - Michael Arlen (1934)
My mother bought a stack of 50c paperbacks to take on holiday with her last year, and somehow one of them ended up on my shelves, so I read it before I returned it to her. The cover of Happy are the Meek is decorated like an illuminated manuscript, saying it's a Father Ryan mystery, and the blurb reads thusly: He was found in a locked room, the only key in his pocket, a broadsword through his ribs. Who among Wolfe Quinlan's host of enemies could so justly have destroyed him? Given all that, I expected it to be a Brother Cadfael-style mediaeval murder mystery. I bet my mother thought the same (later: yes, she did). So imagine my surprise when it turned out to be set in Chicago, 1984. Not what I expected. It was all right, I suppose. It started out as a cosy murder mystery and ended with a rogue priest attempting to sacrifice a virgin in a burning church to appease Satan. As happens.
It was written in 1985 and specifically set in 1984, and the period details were more interesting than the plot. At one stage, Father Ryan watches the news, which is full of stories about the Los Angeles Olympics, particularly the contretemps between Mary Decker and Zola Budd, so the interested reader could pinpoint the exact date if she so wanted (I didn't). Also, the victim's wife was described as having fluffy, blonde hair with frosted highlights, and when she goes to bed she wears an off-the-shoulder, peach-coloured lace and satin short romper suit. Think about that for a moment. Bask in the 80s-ness of it.
I read Hell! said the Duchess because of the title, obviously. Also, the blurb described it as 'a wonderfully outré Art Deco fantasy'. I was looking for another book by the same author, but it didn't have either of those things in its favour. This book was a hoot. It's Vile Bodies crossed with a Gervase Fen mystery and spliced with a bit of HP Lovecraft. It is about the beautiful, virtuous, widowed Mary Wingless St. Cloud Bull, Duchess of Dove and Oldham, who is accused of, oh, terrible things: '... of using foul language, of unsuitable intimacy with men who had not been to public schools, of consorting with loose-livers, and of immorality in a big way'. At the same time, the young, single men of London are living in fear of Jane the Ripper, a heavily perfumed murderess who attacks men in the street before taking them to their home to mutilate. Could Mary Dove also be Jane the Ripper? Yes and no, is the answer to that.
Sometimes the humour was a little forced (e.g. the German ambassador, Count Musselsaroffsir), but overall it was a witty delight about demonic possession.
What both February's books have in common is being generally quite good with abrupt and unsatisfying endings.
I suspect my reading will be curtailed this year, as I've started a Masters degree. Time I would normally spend reading will now be spent, er, reading, only it will be articles about organisational behaviour and change management instead of the usual nonsense.
Speaking of the degree, I came home the other day to find the university had sent me a welcome pack:
Surprise stationery is always welcome. I am particularly taken with the crayon highlighters, which I have never used before. And now that I have used them, I won't be going back to the felt-tip kind, because the crayons are fab. Second best is the magnetic whiteboard. (Oh, and there was also a pin with the university logo on it, which I have stuck into my pinboard. I forgot that when I took the photo.)
February books read
* Happy are the Meek - Andrew M. Greeley (1985)
* Hell! said the Duchess: A Bedtime Story - Michael Arlen (1934)
My mother bought a stack of 50c paperbacks to take on holiday with her last year, and somehow one of them ended up on my shelves, so I read it before I returned it to her. The cover of Happy are the Meek is decorated like an illuminated manuscript, saying it's a Father Ryan mystery, and the blurb reads thusly: He was found in a locked room, the only key in his pocket, a broadsword through his ribs. Who among Wolfe Quinlan's host of enemies could so justly have destroyed him? Given all that, I expected it to be a Brother Cadfael-style mediaeval murder mystery. I bet my mother thought the same (later: yes, she did). So imagine my surprise when it turned out to be set in Chicago, 1984. Not what I expected. It was all right, I suppose. It started out as a cosy murder mystery and ended with a rogue priest attempting to sacrifice a virgin in a burning church to appease Satan. As happens.
It was written in 1985 and specifically set in 1984, and the period details were more interesting than the plot. At one stage, Father Ryan watches the news, which is full of stories about the Los Angeles Olympics, particularly the contretemps between Mary Decker and Zola Budd, so the interested reader could pinpoint the exact date if she so wanted (I didn't). Also, the victim's wife was described as having fluffy, blonde hair with frosted highlights, and when she goes to bed she wears an off-the-shoulder, peach-coloured lace and satin short romper suit. Think about that for a moment. Bask in the 80s-ness of it.
I read Hell! said the Duchess because of the title, obviously. Also, the blurb described it as 'a wonderfully outré Art Deco fantasy'. I was looking for another book by the same author, but it didn't have either of those things in its favour. This book was a hoot. It's Vile Bodies crossed with a Gervase Fen mystery and spliced with a bit of HP Lovecraft. It is about the beautiful, virtuous, widowed Mary Wingless St. Cloud Bull, Duchess of Dove and Oldham, who is accused of, oh, terrible things: '... of using foul language, of unsuitable intimacy with men who had not been to public schools, of consorting with loose-livers, and of immorality in a big way'. At the same time, the young, single men of London are living in fear of Jane the Ripper, a heavily perfumed murderess who attacks men in the street before taking them to their home to mutilate. Could Mary Dove also be Jane the Ripper? Yes and no, is the answer to that.
Sometimes the humour was a little forced (e.g. the German ambassador, Count Musselsaroffsir), but overall it was a witty delight about demonic possession.
What both February's books have in common is being generally quite good with abrupt and unsatisfying endings.