A Coronation of Love
Jul. 31st, 2015 08:40 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
todayiamadaisyI've been mostly reading articles about Thinking and Decision-Making this month, so it's a short book list. The Booker long list came out yesterday. I am trying to pick which six of the thirteen will become the shortlist in order to get a start on reading.
July books read
* Miss Pym Disposes - Josephine Tey (1946)
Well. What an interesting little book this was. It is a murder mystery, of a sort. The murder doesn't happen until three-quarters of the way through, so there's quite a lot of getting to know the characters and wondering Who Will Die and Who Will Do It?
Miss Pym is teacher turned pop psychology book writer. She is invited to speak at a college run by one of her old school friends, and enjoys it so much she ends up staying at the college for a month as a permanent guest until the end of the college year. One of the students dies on the last day, and Miss Pym stumbles across the evidence that points to it being murder and the murderer being someone that she likes. What should she do?
As an added bonus, while I was reading this, I went to my mother's house for dinner one night and found this very same book on her coffee table. What a psychic connection we have. She also enjoyed the book, and, unlike me, thought Miss Pym did the right thing in the end. (Although she did agree with me that the staff and students at the college made way too much fuss about one girl getting a job that they all assumed another would get.)
And an extra added bonus a couple of weeks later: Apparently there is now a series of mystery stories written by someone else, in which Josephine Tey herself is the sleuth. I've not read any of them, but I'm a bit over that sort of thing, I must say. Real people as fictional sleuths, I mean. Ever since I read one a few years ago in which Immanuel Kant solved a crime... and committed it as well. Although if it is a trend that's here to stay, which real-life historical figure would you like to read about solving crimes? I'm quite taken with the idea of Genghis Khan, P.I.
* The Song Collector (apparently aka The Song of Hartgrove Hall) - Natasha Solomons (2015) (abandoned)
I tried with this, I really did. The first few chapters alternate between 1946, when teenaged Fox and his soldier brothers return to their family home after the war, where Fox meets his oldest brother's girlfriend, Edie, and 2000, when old man Fox is grieving the death of his wife, Edie. Thus knowing both the beginning and end of the story, I skipped to the end of the book to see if it was worth reading the substantial middle, and, no, it wasn't. If you enjoy well-written family sagas, this would probably be right up your street, but it just wasn't my cup of tea.
July books read
* Miss Pym Disposes - Josephine Tey (1946)
Well. What an interesting little book this was. It is a murder mystery, of a sort. The murder doesn't happen until three-quarters of the way through, so there's quite a lot of getting to know the characters and wondering Who Will Die and Who Will Do It?
Miss Pym is teacher turned pop psychology book writer. She is invited to speak at a college run by one of her old school friends, and enjoys it so much she ends up staying at the college for a month as a permanent guest until the end of the college year. One of the students dies on the last day, and Miss Pym stumbles across the evidence that points to it being murder and the murderer being someone that she likes. What should she do?
As an added bonus, while I was reading this, I went to my mother's house for dinner one night and found this very same book on her coffee table. What a psychic connection we have. She also enjoyed the book, and, unlike me, thought Miss Pym did the right thing in the end. (Although she did agree with me that the staff and students at the college made way too much fuss about one girl getting a job that they all assumed another would get.)
And an extra added bonus a couple of weeks later: Apparently there is now a series of mystery stories written by someone else, in which Josephine Tey herself is the sleuth. I've not read any of them, but I'm a bit over that sort of thing, I must say. Real people as fictional sleuths, I mean. Ever since I read one a few years ago in which Immanuel Kant solved a crime... and committed it as well. Although if it is a trend that's here to stay, which real-life historical figure would you like to read about solving crimes? I'm quite taken with the idea of Genghis Khan, P.I.
* The Song Collector (apparently aka The Song of Hartgrove Hall) - Natasha Solomons (2015) (abandoned)
I tried with this, I really did. The first few chapters alternate between 1946, when teenaged Fox and his soldier brothers return to their family home after the war, where Fox meets his oldest brother's girlfriend, Edie, and 2000, when old man Fox is grieving the death of his wife, Edie. Thus knowing both the beginning and end of the story, I skipped to the end of the book to see if it was worth reading the substantial middle, and, no, it wasn't. If you enjoy well-written family sagas, this would probably be right up your street, but it just wasn't my cup of tea.