The Dream Within
Oct. 2nd, 2017 09:32 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
todayiamadaisyWeekly update, a day late. Well, a week and a couple of days. But with reason. I've been writing an essay. Not just any essay. My last one. The last one ever. That's the Masters degree finished. All done. I feel unmoored. More so than when I left work. I suppose this has been the one constant thing over the last year, and now it's gone.
I celebrated finishing the degree with a massive spending spree. Massive. I bought two books and some wool. I am hopeless at massive spending sprees. (I also made a cake.) The wool is for a jumper. There's a series of weekly updates to look forward to. It's a knit-along, so I can't start it until the first part of the pattern is released later this month. If I keep up to speed, I'll be finished by mid-December. Hahahahaha.
We are now on week four of the two week bathroom renovation. At least we have a shower and a loo now, although we have been without a washing machine for a week. Fortunately I have lots of knickers and socks to tide me over.
September books read
This time of year is normally when I race through the Booker Prize contenders. This year between being sick and writing that essay, I just wasn't in the mood for all that heavy duty reading. Sorry, 2017 Booker nominees. I needed something lighter this September. You'll have to get by without me.
* Crime at Christmas - CHB Kitchen (1934) ★ ★ ★
Stockbroker Malcolm Warren is invited to spend Christmas with one of his clients, Axel Quisberg. Christmas Eve is fairly dismal: Quisberg and his secretary, Harley, spend the night at a hotel trying to organise a business deal, while Warren is stuck with Quisberg's wife, stepchildren and assorted hangers-on, and sprains his wrist while dancing. Christmas morning is even worse, when Warren wakes up to find another guest, Harley's mother, dead outside his window.
This is a quirky little book that meanders along at a gentle pace. Warren frets his way through it, regularly taking to his bed when he finds it all a bit much. There is a mysterious flute player, a missing shovel, and an outrageous coincidence with something Warren saw sixteen years earlier. It all finishes with an odd chapter in which Warren is interviewed by a Reader, tying up all the loose ends. Cosy this isn't: it's easily the least festive Christmas story I've ever come across, but it's not without its moments.
* The Sudden Departure of the Frasers - Louise Candlish (2015) ★ ★
This is one of the new breed of domestic thriller about the secrets behind closed doors. In April 2013, Christy and her husband buy their dream house in a posh neighbourhood for a remarkably low price. But Christy has some questions. Just how glamorous was the former owner, Amber Fraser? Why did she and her husband leave their beautiful house in such a hurry and sell at such a bargain price? And why are all the new neighbours so hostile? When Christy is made redundant, she uses her time to unravel the mystery of... the sudden departure of the Frasers.
If the book only had Christy's chapters, it would have been an okay modern riff on Rebecca (Christy even borrows it from the library, just in case the reader hasn't noticed the similarities). Sadly, in between her chapters, we get the story directly from Amber Fraser herself, twelve months earlier. And Amber is tiresome. This mystery would have been better without knowing what was going on in her head.
I celebrated finishing the degree with a massive spending spree. Massive. I bought two books and some wool. I am hopeless at massive spending sprees. (I also made a cake.) The wool is for a jumper. There's a series of weekly updates to look forward to. It's a knit-along, so I can't start it until the first part of the pattern is released later this month. If I keep up to speed, I'll be finished by mid-December. Hahahahaha.
We are now on week four of the two week bathroom renovation. At least we have a shower and a loo now, although we have been without a washing machine for a week. Fortunately I have lots of knickers and socks to tide me over.
September books read
This time of year is normally when I race through the Booker Prize contenders. This year between being sick and writing that essay, I just wasn't in the mood for all that heavy duty reading. Sorry, 2017 Booker nominees. I needed something lighter this September. You'll have to get by without me.
* Crime at Christmas - CHB Kitchen (1934) ★ ★ ★
Stockbroker Malcolm Warren is invited to spend Christmas with one of his clients, Axel Quisberg. Christmas Eve is fairly dismal: Quisberg and his secretary, Harley, spend the night at a hotel trying to organise a business deal, while Warren is stuck with Quisberg's wife, stepchildren and assorted hangers-on, and sprains his wrist while dancing. Christmas morning is even worse, when Warren wakes up to find another guest, Harley's mother, dead outside his window.
This is a quirky little book that meanders along at a gentle pace. Warren frets his way through it, regularly taking to his bed when he finds it all a bit much. There is a mysterious flute player, a missing shovel, and an outrageous coincidence with something Warren saw sixteen years earlier. It all finishes with an odd chapter in which Warren is interviewed by a Reader, tying up all the loose ends. Cosy this isn't: it's easily the least festive Christmas story I've ever come across, but it's not without its moments.
* The Sudden Departure of the Frasers - Louise Candlish (2015) ★ ★
This is one of the new breed of domestic thriller about the secrets behind closed doors. In April 2013, Christy and her husband buy their dream house in a posh neighbourhood for a remarkably low price. But Christy has some questions. Just how glamorous was the former owner, Amber Fraser? Why did she and her husband leave their beautiful house in such a hurry and sell at such a bargain price? And why are all the new neighbours so hostile? When Christy is made redundant, she uses her time to unravel the mystery of... the sudden departure of the Frasers.
If the book only had Christy's chapters, it would have been an okay modern riff on Rebecca (Christy even borrows it from the library, just in case the reader hasn't noticed the similarities). Sadly, in between her chapters, we get the story directly from Amber Fraser herself, twelve months earlier. And Amber is tiresome. This mystery would have been better without knowing what was going on in her head.