Escape from Passion
Sep. 2nd, 2017 03:38 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
todayiamadaisyApparently this year has been the worst for flu in Australia for fifteen years. Including me. What a sheep.
Anyway. I'm back on my feet again. I haven't done much the last couple of weeks, but for closure, here is my knitting update: I have finished my cardigan.
It is so warm. I've been wearing three layers of tops all winter, but I only need two when one of them is this cardigan. As for what it looks like on... the cardigan and I look exactly like the pattern photo. Exactly. Ha.
Actually, not exactly. My sleeves are longer than that. More like seven-eighths length, even though I knitted to the length it said in the pattern. Apparently I have tiny T. Rex arms.
August books read
* Family Skeleton - Carmel Bird (2016) ★ ★ ★
Carmel Bird's Red Shoes (1998) is one of my favourite books, and I had high hopes for this, her latest. It shares some DNA with Red Shoes: an unusual narrator, a gossipy tone, unexpected connections where a new character turns out to be a cousin of someone mentioned in passing chapters earlier. Bird is good at creating outside lives for her characters, suddenly zooming in on someone on the periphery and saying, by the way, he'll die in a skiing accident later this year.
In Family Skeleton, the narrator is just that: the skeleton in the closet. Whose skeleton? Ah well, that would be telling. The skeleton tells the story of Margaret O'Day, widowed matriarch of a family of wealthy funeral directors; we also get to read some of Margaret's journal. The story jumps back and forth in time, telling and re-telling snippets of Margaret's childhood and courtship in between present day segments where a distant American cousin visits to do some genealogical research.
The first half is a bit slow; the second half, after Margaret finds out a family secret that she wants to keep from the visiting cousin, picks up the pace considerably. I realised early on that I was more interested in, well, pretty much everyone other than Margaret, but overall, it was an enjoyable read.
* The Perplexing Theft of the Jewel in the Crown - Vaseem Khan (2016) ★ ★ ★ ★
Ashwin Chopra, retired police inspector, runs a detective agency in Mumbai. When one of his old colleagues is accused of stealing the British Crown Jewels, Chopra is called in to investigate, with the help of his baby elephant, Ganesha.
This was wildly improbable. The Crown Jewels aren't allowed out of Britain, so they wouldn't be in Mumbai anyway, and if they were stolen, there would be more than two police detectives and one private investigator on the case. Also, if they were stolen, I doubt Queen Elizabeth II would take to her bed in shock. She's made of stern stuff. And I'm not sure that baby elephants really can solve criminal investigations. Nonetheless, the book was a lot of fun.
* An Excellent Mystery - Ellis Peters (1985) ★ ★ ★ ★
I do feel calling a book “An Excellent Mystery” is a bit like calling it “A Great Read”. Stand by for the sequel: “Page-turner!”
I wanted something cosy to read during my convalescence, and this fitted the bill perfectly. It’s so cosy there’s not even a murder. It proceeds at such a leisurely pace it’s over halfway before the characters even realise there is an excellent mystery to be solved. It’s gentle, humane, and a bit of a history lesson about the civil war between King Stephen and Empress Maude.
* Rattle His Bones - Carola Dunn (2010) ★ ★ ★
This is a traditional cosy murder mystery set in the twenties. Journalist Daisy Dalrymple is interviewing staff at the National History Museum in London when one of them is stabbed and crashes into a dinosaur skeleton, leading to a murder investigation, the discovery of missing jewels, and the possible involvement of dispossessed eastern European aristocracy. It’s an easy, fun, competent read (with several foreign and regional accents rendered phonetically, which I hate, but that's my issue).
* A Colourful Death - Carola Dunn (2010) ★ ★
Carola Dunn's Daisy Dalrymple books (see above) are lightweight, murdery fun, so I had high hopes for this. Alas, no. This is a different series, about a crime-solving old lady. It's long, trying to be complex, and plodding. A pity, because the two protagonists (widowed charity shop worker and Aikido practitioner, Eleanor Trewynn, and her niece, Detective Sergeant Megan Pencarrow) could have been interesting. They just needed a better book. Certainly one that didn't make the culprit obvious from the moment the crime is discovered. Also one that didn't turn the police into idiots. I mean, I'm no expert, but I don't think they let suspects and witnesses sit in on interviews with other witnesses. Also, the cutesy acronym, CaRaDoC, used for the Cornish police just irritated me.
I spent a lot of the book trying to work out when it was set. It seemed modern — everyone drives, and Eleanor lives next to a Chinese restaurant — but was also oddly old-fashioned. I eventually guessed it might be the 1970s, although that was never set out. (It was only when I reached the end of the book and read the advertisement for the next book that I realised that it was the 1960s.)
I did like the dog, though.
Anyway. I'm back on my feet again. I haven't done much the last couple of weeks, but for closure, here is my knitting update: I have finished my cardigan.
It is so warm. I've been wearing three layers of tops all winter, but I only need two when one of them is this cardigan. As for what it looks like on... the cardigan and I look exactly like the pattern photo. Exactly. Ha.
Actually, not exactly. My sleeves are longer than that. More like seven-eighths length, even though I knitted to the length it said in the pattern. Apparently I have tiny T. Rex arms.
August books read
* Family Skeleton - Carmel Bird (2016) ★ ★ ★
Carmel Bird's Red Shoes (1998) is one of my favourite books, and I had high hopes for this, her latest. It shares some DNA with Red Shoes: an unusual narrator, a gossipy tone, unexpected connections where a new character turns out to be a cousin of someone mentioned in passing chapters earlier. Bird is good at creating outside lives for her characters, suddenly zooming in on someone on the periphery and saying, by the way, he'll die in a skiing accident later this year.
In Family Skeleton, the narrator is just that: the skeleton in the closet. Whose skeleton? Ah well, that would be telling. The skeleton tells the story of Margaret O'Day, widowed matriarch of a family of wealthy funeral directors; we also get to read some of Margaret's journal. The story jumps back and forth in time, telling and re-telling snippets of Margaret's childhood and courtship in between present day segments where a distant American cousin visits to do some genealogical research.
The first half is a bit slow; the second half, after Margaret finds out a family secret that she wants to keep from the visiting cousin, picks up the pace considerably. I realised early on that I was more interested in, well, pretty much everyone other than Margaret, but overall, it was an enjoyable read.
* The Perplexing Theft of the Jewel in the Crown - Vaseem Khan (2016) ★ ★ ★ ★
Ashwin Chopra, retired police inspector, runs a detective agency in Mumbai. When one of his old colleagues is accused of stealing the British Crown Jewels, Chopra is called in to investigate, with the help of his baby elephant, Ganesha.
This was wildly improbable. The Crown Jewels aren't allowed out of Britain, so they wouldn't be in Mumbai anyway, and if they were stolen, there would be more than two police detectives and one private investigator on the case. Also, if they were stolen, I doubt Queen Elizabeth II would take to her bed in shock. She's made of stern stuff. And I'm not sure that baby elephants really can solve criminal investigations. Nonetheless, the book was a lot of fun.
* An Excellent Mystery - Ellis Peters (1985) ★ ★ ★ ★
I do feel calling a book “An Excellent Mystery” is a bit like calling it “A Great Read”. Stand by for the sequel: “Page-turner!”
I wanted something cosy to read during my convalescence, and this fitted the bill perfectly. It’s so cosy there’s not even a murder. It proceeds at such a leisurely pace it’s over halfway before the characters even realise there is an excellent mystery to be solved. It’s gentle, humane, and a bit of a history lesson about the civil war between King Stephen and Empress Maude.
* Rattle His Bones - Carola Dunn (2010) ★ ★ ★
This is a traditional cosy murder mystery set in the twenties. Journalist Daisy Dalrymple is interviewing staff at the National History Museum in London when one of them is stabbed and crashes into a dinosaur skeleton, leading to a murder investigation, the discovery of missing jewels, and the possible involvement of dispossessed eastern European aristocracy. It’s an easy, fun, competent read (with several foreign and regional accents rendered phonetically, which I hate, but that's my issue).
* A Colourful Death - Carola Dunn (2010) ★ ★
Carola Dunn's Daisy Dalrymple books (see above) are lightweight, murdery fun, so I had high hopes for this. Alas, no. This is a different series, about a crime-solving old lady. It's long, trying to be complex, and plodding. A pity, because the two protagonists (widowed charity shop worker and Aikido practitioner, Eleanor Trewynn, and her niece, Detective Sergeant Megan Pencarrow) could have been interesting. They just needed a better book. Certainly one that didn't make the culprit obvious from the moment the crime is discovered. Also one that didn't turn the police into idiots. I mean, I'm no expert, but I don't think they let suspects and witnesses sit in on interviews with other witnesses. Also, the cutesy acronym, CaRaDoC, used for the Cornish police just irritated me.
I spent a lot of the book trying to work out when it was set. It seemed modern — everyone drives, and Eleanor lives next to a Chinese restaurant — but was also oddly old-fashioned. I eventually guessed it might be the 1970s, although that was never set out. (It was only when I reached the end of the book and read the advertisement for the next book that I realised that it was the 1960s.)
I did like the dog, though.