Wednesday Reading Meme

[osprey_archer]

What I’ve Just Finished Reading

I don’t usually count rereads, but then I don’t usually reread books straight through - just open them up and dip in wherever the book happens to fall open. But it’s been so long since I read Ngaio Marsh’s Artists in Crime that I did reread the whole thing: Alleyn takes a few books to gather character, but Troy just steps onto the page fully formed in all her prickly glory.

Their courtship is so very thirties. They meet! Troy is rude to him! (She wanted time alone to paint and he interrupted, quite without meaning to.) Of course that can mean nothing but love in their future.

I also dug in and finished The Summer Before the War. In theory the book sounded like something I ought to really like, but in practice it never caught fire for me. Oh well. Not every book does, I guess!

What I’m Reading Now

I’ve been rereading Ngaio Marsh’s Clutch of Constables, another Troy-centric mystery. Troy spontaneously takes a riverboat cruise and ends up embroiled in a murder investigation! As one does when one marries a detective.

I’ve also started Frances Hardinge’s A Skinful of Shadows, but only just started it so I don’t have much to say about it yet.

What I Plan to Read Next

The library FINALLY has The Black Arrow for me! (I broke and put a hold on one of the copies that is not 100 years old. I WANTED TO SEE THOSE ILLUSTRATIONS DAMMIT. Oh well.)

Comments

[evelyn_b]

Is there still a chance the hundred-year-old one might arrive? At least this way you can get started!

In theory the book sounded like something I ought to really like, but in practice it never caught fire for me.

That is the story of my life with so many books, most recently To Say Nothing of the Dog, which has been recced to me approx. 500 times and to which my main reaction was, "At least now I never have to do that again." It happens!

Your book arrived! It's the most beautiful thing I've seen in at least 48 hours. Thank you! <3

[osprey_archer]

I never got on with Connie Willis's books. One of my friends really loved them in high school so I tried, I really tried, but they all fell flat for me. How can a book about time travel and the Black Plague seem emotionally flat and dull? And yet it did.

Your book arrived too! I meant to mention it in this entry except - I won't be reading it till February so that seemed misleading. But it is always v. exciting to get a package and I have added the card to my bulletin board.

[evelyn_b]

Was it emotionally flat and dull because the historical research was superficial and the characters too dumb to live? That was TSNotD's problem.

\o/ I hope you enjoy it!

You may be pleased to learn that my copy of Artists in Crime has the all-caps tagline "THE ART OF DETECTION GETS CLOUDED BY DESIRE."

[osprey_archer]

In the Black Plague one, both the future Oxford where time travel exists and the medieval Black Plague past seemed thin and superficial, so it may be a failure of imagination as much as research. I don't recall the characters being particularly dumb, but they didn't have a lot of personality so perhaps that just set my expectations for their intelligence low.

In TSNotD, there was the additional problem that I'm pretty sure the book is meant to be humorous and I just didn't get it. I read Three Men in a Boat years later (Willis is apparently riffing heavily off of that), which is mildly amusing, but it didn't help me understand TSNotD any.

[evelyn_b]

Future Oxford was a huge disappointment! I was so hyped for the idea of an academic time-travel team and Willis did absolutely nothing interesting with it - no petty professional rivalries or personality clashes (because no personalities to speak of), no bureaucratic complications, no wise or foolish undergraduates, no dreaded impending conference panels on the implications of time travel for the future of pedagogy, nothing. I know it's just a jumping-off point for the time travel story, but come on! No one even had an interesting AOS to either talk about or be sick to death of talking about.

As for the alleged Victorian age, it was 100% default holodeck program settings. No bones, no flesh, no fun.

(I'm also just a little annoyed that the one time-traveler spent all those months reading detective fiction in the 1930s and apparently didn't manage to read anything but Christie and Sayers, which you can get in any decade. Where is your intellectual curiosity??)

I had already read Three Men in a Boat but it didn't help. It just made me expect a funnier book than I got.

[osprey_archer]

Do you think maybe they think they've invented time travel, but actually what they've created is a super-advanced holodeck? Because that would make everything make so much more sense, including why there are no impending conferences about What Time Travel Means for the Future of Historical Pedagogy, because outside of this weird small cult at Oxford that insists "It's really time travel, guys!" everyone else has realized it's just a weird holodeck.

Even a weird academic cult ought to have petty professional rivalries and personality clashes, though.

And for goodness sake, time traveler to the 1930s, branch out a little on the authors! At least pretend you've read Margery Allingham or something.

[evelyn_b]

Do you think maybe they think they've invented time travel, but actually what they've created is a super-advanced holodeck?

Yes, absolutely! It would explain so much.

[thisbluespirit]

Their courtship is so very thirties. They meet! Troy is rude to him! (She wanted time alone to paint and he interrupted, quite without meaning to.) Of course that can mean nothing but love in their future.

So, true. And obviously the best way!

[osprey_archer]

Nothing says true love like bickering!

[evelyn_b]

They are very polite about it, though! More like a couple of hedgehogs bumping into one another than the classic bickerspark.

-is now re-reading Artists in Crime

[osprey_archer]

Now I want fanart where Troy & Alleyn are both hedgehogs I HOPE YOU ARE HAPPY.

(It would be adorable.)