What I've Finished Reading

Some of the stories in Chicks in Chainmail are still witty and fun, but the main source of enjoyment for me was as a window into the recent past. It has something of the same feeling of strained currency as "Uncle Charlie's Poems," (from the 1890s) and I'm not sure what it is that makes it feel strained rather than ( Read more... )

Crossposted to Dreamwidth as usual.

What I've Finished Reading

Aunt Dimity's Death develops into a very mild mystery with the help of a ghost - Dimity's spirit carefully preserves plausible deniability by communicating through written messages that only specific people can hear. She also subtly alters reality to make Lori a good cook for the ( Read more... )

I owe osprey_archer a post about Shirley in exchange for a donation to the ACLU. This is not that post! I thought I would be able to burn through Shirley before I had to go out of town, but I can’t do it and still do justice to the book, which is very dense and deserves a lot more justice than I’m accustomed to providing. So I want to go through Shirley a ( Read more... )

As usual these days, crossposted to Dreamwidth.

What I've Finished Reading

The Maias isn't shy about being a story made of words, or a satire of Lisbon literary layabouts. The characters - at least the male characters - are bright but not deep, and the female characters are less bright and less deep. It may also be the least gothic incest story ( Read more... )

What I've Finished Reading

If I say that Murder on the Orient Express doesn't hold up as well on re-reading as Roger Ackroyd or Death on the Nile, I hope you all know I don't mean it in a bad way. Orient Express is an extremely efficient machine for producing a couple of very impressive experiences in the reader, and once that result has been ( Read more... )

What I've Finished Reading

The Clan of the Cave Bear ends with a cliffhanger and a sample chapter from Jean M. Auel's latest, but I'm not biting. I don't regret the time I spend reading it, but I also don't know when I've been this disappointed in a novel for not being the long short story it was clearly meant to be. I definitely can't handle ( Read more... )

"I do not play games. You know that. Murder is not a game. It is serious. And anyway, Hastings, you should not use that phrase -- playing the game. It is not said anymore. I have discovered that. It is dead. Young people laugh when they hear it. Mais oui, young beautiful girls will laugh at you if you say 'playing the game' and 'not cricket.'"
( ( Read more... )

What I've Finished Reading

Picnic at Hanging Rock by Joan Lindsay.

Confronted by such monumental configurations of nature the human eye is woefully inadequate. Who can say how many or how few of its unfolding marvels are actually seen, selected, and recorded by the four pairs of eyes now fixed in staring wonder at the Hanging Rock? Does Marion ( Read more... )

Doctor Who is back! I've been trying to catch up on Classic Who by watching an episode a day. ( Some adventures in time and space )

What I've Finished Reading

So I knew there was going to be some vintage bigotry in Enter Sir John, but it's mostly fairly subtle in the first half of the book. Thus I was completely unprepared for the nature of the HIDEOUS SECRET that Martella Baring heroically risked her own life to conceal, and which drove the real murderer to start smashing ( Read more... )