Is moderation a desirable virtue?

[todayiamadaisy]

Last day of the month, which means a late evening at work for me, running reports and rolling over variables once everyone else is done. Tonight I finished in time for The Masked Singer (Australian version), which is, unexpectedly, my mother's new favourite show. It is so unlike her, but then, it is weirdly hypnotic. Because it is filmed in Melbourne, currently under stage 4 restrictions, they are really leaning into the masks this year: not just the singers, but the backing dancers, the crew, the host (sometimes). The "audience" consists of stuffed toys and crew members dressed in animal costumes. One of the masked singers is a terrifying giant ventriloquist's dummy. It's like watching a fever dream. I keep thinking of when you see clips of old TV shows and wonder in amazement at what passed for entertainment back then, and how future generations are going to think the same about this. I don't think saying, "Well, there was a pandemic," is really going to explain it.

Anyway, they have had to halt production of it for a few weeks, as despite all the masks some of the dancers have tested positive to Covid-19. And because it is a self-aware show, I am 99% certain when they come back, someone is going to have to perform "Ironic".

I won't finish the book I'm currently reading tonight, so I can do this now:

August books read

* Underland - Robert Macfarlane (2019) ★ ★ ★ ★
Macfarlane writes so beautifully, I always want to like his books more than I do. This is the most successful of his books for me; appropriately, though, a book that talks so much about Deep Time took me a long time to read.

This is a trip through all the things beneath our feet: roots, fungi, caves, tunnels both natural and purpose-built, that use for preservation, information, exploration, and, sometimes, much darker reasons.

One discovery this book led me to: it's possible to feel claustrophobic while reading. I'm in no hurry to relive the caving and catacomb chapters.

* The Man Who Didn't Fly - Margot Bennett (1955) ★ ★ ★
A charter flight goes down in the Irish Sea. The flight was booked for four passengers, but only three took off. The missing passenger doesn't come forward. What happened to the man who didn't fly?

An oddly structured book, this: police quickly home in on a family — Mr Wade and his two daughters — who knew all four passengers, and who reluctantly tell the story of the last few days before the fatal flight. Also interviewed are the wife of one of the passengers and a mysterious Australian who has been lurking in the village. The book then turns into a logic puzzle, as the police and witnesses reassemble all the evidence to work out who was on the plane.

A weirdly talky book, mostly dialogue, mostly people talking at, rather than to, each other; it reminded me of reading a play. Not remotely believable, and with an unnecessary, improbable and cursory romance tacked on in the last chapter, but interesting enough structurally to hold the attention.

(The book also contains a short story by Bennett, "No Bath for the Browns", about a family that moves into a terrible new house.)

* The Unquiet Dead - Ausma Zehanat Khan (2017) ★ ★ ★
In present day Toronto, a wealthy businessman falls to his death from a cliff. It's initially classed as an accident, but the Community Policing Unit are called in when an anonymous tip-off suggests he was actually a wanted war criminal.

I'm really not sure how to rate this. I'm going with three for what it was trying to do. I think it really wanted to be a book about the Bosnian war and its survivors; that part was powerful and well done. But the detective framework around it didn't really work for me: the two detectives were so busy with all their own complicated backstories that they took their own sweet time mooching around and interviewing a handful of people in a very unconvincing investigation, improbably assisted by one of their estranged childhood best friends who now happens to be a writer living next door to the businessman. What really counts against the book for me is its terrible attitude to its female characters: Rachel, one of the detectives, is a mid-twenty-something detective who lives with her abusive parents, which is already an odd set up, and she hates every other woman on sight, whether or not they deserve it (and they mostly do, because they are mostly awful people).

* The Poisoned Chocolates Case - Anthony Berkeley (1929) ★ ★ ★ ★
Do you like the dénouement of classic detective stories where the detective gathers everyone together and explains everything? This is a whole book of that and it is great. A group of amateur detectives try to solve a real murder as a puzzle; each night for a week one of them goes through the facts of the case and suggests a culprit. It nods towards the artificiality of the form while being a beautiful example of it; the method and mores are very much of their time, but solving a true crime is still a modern preoccupation. In short: this was a lot of fun.

(As an extra, there are two bonus chapters in which modern writers add more explanations of the case.)

* The Near Witch - VE Schwab (2011) ★ ★
A mysterious stranger arrives in the village of Near, and children start going missing. Is it work of the stranger, or is it the work of a centuries-dead witch? Well, the book's not called The Near Mysterious Stranger, is it? But it takes some dull characters quite a bit of repetitive plodding around to work it out.

There's an author's note at the start of my edition of this explaining that this was her first book, re-issued after her later books, and that explains a lot. This is very much a First Book. Beautifully written but doughy and underbaked.

(This copy also included a prequel novella about the mysterious stranger before he came to Near. I gave that up after two chapters.)