Just Off Piccadilly (Dance on My Heart)
May. 1st, 2017 10:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
todayiamadaisyA day late, but here: Weekly knitting update. Well, I looked at it.
Other stuff update: This week, I went to see a play, Coranderrk. It used transcripts from an 1881 parliamentary inquiry in which a group of Aboriginal farmers wanted control of their own farms. Which seems like the least they could ask, really.
I have written on my notepad "death v reception". Imagine what a deep thought that would be if I could remember what it meant.
April books read
* Curious Behaviour: Yawning, Laughing, Hiccuping, and Beyond - Robert R. Provine (2012) ★ ★
I wanted to like this so much more than I did. I picked up a few interesting facts — contagious yawning doesn't start until the age of two or so, which inspires images of scientists yawning at babies to find that out — but it was mostly very dry and not nearly as much fun as it could have been.
* Rivers of London: Night Witch - Ben Aaronovitch & Andrew Cartmel & Lee Sullivan (2016) ★ ★ ★
This is the second graphic novel set in the Rivers of London universe. It's a stand alone story, but I doubt it would make sense to anyone who hasn't already read the books. I didn't enjoy it as much as the novels —it's quite short and not as funny — but overall it was an interesting diversion. (Nightingale doesn't look anything like I imagined.)
* Something Fresh - PG Wodehouse (1915) ★ ★ ★ ★
This is the first in the Blandings Castle saga. I have read other Blandings books — the first one I ever read was the unfinished final book, Sunset at Blandings — and, feeling in a Wodehouse mood, I decided to see where it all started.
In short, it's a treat. This is very early Wodehouse, and it shows. Many of the classic elements are in place — a house party, people pretending to be other people at the house party, people pretending to be other people at the house party in order to steal a tiny but expensive object — but some aren't there yet. There's no Galahad, for example. No Empress either.
The writing isn't quite there yet either. It's light and breezy and always fun, but not consistently laugh-out-loud funny. Classic Wodehouse is like a brilliant cut diamond. This one is like an apprentice's piece: really good, but not yet up to masterpiece standard.
* The Best Australian Science Writing 2016 - Jo Chandler (ed.) (2016) ★ ★ ★ ★
This does what it says on the tin. Some of the shorter pieces seemed a bit disjointed. Overall, I preferred the longer-form pieces, including: a six-thousand-year-old self-cloned tree, the woman who is the first Australian to manage a project for the Mars Rover, the tick that can cause meat allergies, and the perils of being an amateur astronomer in Afghanistan.
* The Secrets of Wishtide - Kate Saunders (2016) ★ ★ ★ ★
This is the first book in a new detective series. The year is 1850 and the detective in question is Laetitia Rodd, fifty-two-year-old widow of an Archdeacon, now living in genteel poverty in London with her trusty housekeeper, Mrs Bentley. Laetitia's brother is a criminal barrister who sends cases Laetitia's way. Laetitia describes her work as the Management and Prevention of Scandals, and that's what this case is all about: the only son of one of the most important men in London wants to marry a poor widow ten years older, and Laetitia is called in to scope her background. She sorts that matter out quite early on and it all seems over, but then the bodies start piling up.
I enjoyed this a lot. It has the ingredients of a Victorian sensation novel — angelic young girls, fallen women, surprise children, missing people who turn up again when you least expect it, truly remarkable coincidences — and mixes them into a cosy mystery. Laetitia is clever and humane, the writing is bright and breezy, and the whole story is a romp.
Other stuff update: This week, I went to see a play, Coranderrk. It used transcripts from an 1881 parliamentary inquiry in which a group of Aboriginal farmers wanted control of their own farms. Which seems like the least they could ask, really.
I have written on my notepad "death v reception". Imagine what a deep thought that would be if I could remember what it meant.
April books read
* Curious Behaviour: Yawning, Laughing, Hiccuping, and Beyond - Robert R. Provine (2012) ★ ★
I wanted to like this so much more than I did. I picked up a few interesting facts — contagious yawning doesn't start until the age of two or so, which inspires images of scientists yawning at babies to find that out — but it was mostly very dry and not nearly as much fun as it could have been.
* Rivers of London: Night Witch - Ben Aaronovitch & Andrew Cartmel & Lee Sullivan (2016) ★ ★ ★
This is the second graphic novel set in the Rivers of London universe. It's a stand alone story, but I doubt it would make sense to anyone who hasn't already read the books. I didn't enjoy it as much as the novels —it's quite short and not as funny — but overall it was an interesting diversion. (Nightingale doesn't look anything like I imagined.)
* Something Fresh - PG Wodehouse (1915) ★ ★ ★ ★
This is the first in the Blandings Castle saga. I have read other Blandings books — the first one I ever read was the unfinished final book, Sunset at Blandings — and, feeling in a Wodehouse mood, I decided to see where it all started.
In short, it's a treat. This is very early Wodehouse, and it shows. Many of the classic elements are in place — a house party, people pretending to be other people at the house party, people pretending to be other people at the house party in order to steal a tiny but expensive object — but some aren't there yet. There's no Galahad, for example. No Empress either.
The writing isn't quite there yet either. It's light and breezy and always fun, but not consistently laugh-out-loud funny. Classic Wodehouse is like a brilliant cut diamond. This one is like an apprentice's piece: really good, but not yet up to masterpiece standard.
* The Best Australian Science Writing 2016 - Jo Chandler (ed.) (2016) ★ ★ ★ ★
This does what it says on the tin. Some of the shorter pieces seemed a bit disjointed. Overall, I preferred the longer-form pieces, including: a six-thousand-year-old self-cloned tree, the woman who is the first Australian to manage a project for the Mars Rover, the tick that can cause meat allergies, and the perils of being an amateur astronomer in Afghanistan.
* The Secrets of Wishtide - Kate Saunders (2016) ★ ★ ★ ★
This is the first book in a new detective series. The year is 1850 and the detective in question is Laetitia Rodd, fifty-two-year-old widow of an Archdeacon, now living in genteel poverty in London with her trusty housekeeper, Mrs Bentley. Laetitia's brother is a criminal barrister who sends cases Laetitia's way. Laetitia describes her work as the Management and Prevention of Scandals, and that's what this case is all about: the only son of one of the most important men in London wants to marry a poor widow ten years older, and Laetitia is called in to scope her background. She sorts that matter out quite early on and it all seems over, but then the bodies start piling up.
I enjoyed this a lot. It has the ingredients of a Victorian sensation novel — angelic young girls, fallen women, surprise children, missing people who turn up again when you least expect it, truly remarkable coincidences — and mixes them into a cosy mystery. Laetitia is clever and humane, the writing is bright and breezy, and the whole story is a romp.