Wednesday Reading Meme
Jan. 31st, 2018 09:16 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
osprey_archerWhat I’ve Just Finished Reading
Aunt Dimity and the Buried Treasure, which was delightful. It’s technically a cozy mystery, but the kind where no one dies and the biggest mystery is “Can Lori find her ghost aunt Dimity’s long-lost admirer and tell him that Aunt Dimity didn’t mean to break his heart that time that she accidentally broke his heart?” (Spoiler alert: yes.) Also featured: eccentric but charming villagers, food descriptions (there’s a really unfair scene where Lori eats a blackberry tart and now I want a blackberry tart), and metal detecting that leads to reminiscences about times past, some funny and some sad.
I enjoyed the book so much that I popped out to the library & got another one (this is not the kind of series where it matters if you read them in order), Aunt Dimity Beats the Devil, in which our heroine investigates an old private library in a creepy and possibly haunted house on the moors, and through that investigation solves a decades-old mystery from the World War I era.
I probably won’t read the whole series, on account of there are twenty-odd books, but they are such perfect rainy day books that I will undoubtedly read a few more. One of them is called Aunt Dimity and the Lost Prince! It’s probably nothing to do with the Frances Hodgson Burnett book but… you never know.
All this coziness so enchanted me that I had to check if there was a new Most Comfortable Man in London book out, only to discover that 1) there isn’t, but one is coming out in February, BUT 2) it’s about serial killers and I loathe and detest serial killer mysteries, so UGH. At least I’m forewarned, I guess?
And there is a new Charles Lenox short story on Amazon, a Christmas story, which is exactly the kind of puzzle story that Lenox is best suited for and also gives all appropriate prominence to its cozy Christmas aspect: the story ends with all the best Comfortverse characters gathering for a Christmas party, drinking Lady Jane’s special punch (spiked with cherry liqueur) around a roaring fire as they munch contentedly on seed cakes and open presents.
What I’m Reading Now
I’m still stuck two chapters into Frances Hardinge’s A Skinful of Shadows. I’ve been avoiding it for no better reason than the vague lethargic sense that it’s going to be harrowing, and… it’s too cold out there for me to want to be harrowed. :( All I want to do is read mysteries where our pleasant detectives have cups of tea and possibly baked goods by a warm and happy fireside, is that too much to ask?
What I Plan to Read Next
I put Aunt Dimity’s Death on hold. It’s the first book in the series and I might as well see where it all began, you know?
ALSO, it’s almost February! So it’s time for my next book challenge book!!! The Cloister Walk, here I come!
Aunt Dimity and the Buried Treasure, which was delightful. It’s technically a cozy mystery, but the kind where no one dies and the biggest mystery is “Can Lori find her ghost aunt Dimity’s long-lost admirer and tell him that Aunt Dimity didn’t mean to break his heart that time that she accidentally broke his heart?” (Spoiler alert: yes.) Also featured: eccentric but charming villagers, food descriptions (there’s a really unfair scene where Lori eats a blackberry tart and now I want a blackberry tart), and metal detecting that leads to reminiscences about times past, some funny and some sad.
I enjoyed the book so much that I popped out to the library & got another one (this is not the kind of series where it matters if you read them in order), Aunt Dimity Beats the Devil, in which our heroine investigates an old private library in a creepy and possibly haunted house on the moors, and through that investigation solves a decades-old mystery from the World War I era.
I probably won’t read the whole series, on account of there are twenty-odd books, but they are such perfect rainy day books that I will undoubtedly read a few more. One of them is called Aunt Dimity and the Lost Prince! It’s probably nothing to do with the Frances Hodgson Burnett book but… you never know.
All this coziness so enchanted me that I had to check if there was a new Most Comfortable Man in London book out, only to discover that 1) there isn’t, but one is coming out in February, BUT 2) it’s about serial killers and I loathe and detest serial killer mysteries, so UGH. At least I’m forewarned, I guess?
And there is a new Charles Lenox short story on Amazon, a Christmas story, which is exactly the kind of puzzle story that Lenox is best suited for and also gives all appropriate prominence to its cozy Christmas aspect: the story ends with all the best Comfortverse characters gathering for a Christmas party, drinking Lady Jane’s special punch (spiked with cherry liqueur) around a roaring fire as they munch contentedly on seed cakes and open presents.
What I’m Reading Now
I’m still stuck two chapters into Frances Hardinge’s A Skinful of Shadows. I’ve been avoiding it for no better reason than the vague lethargic sense that it’s going to be harrowing, and… it’s too cold out there for me to want to be harrowed. :( All I want to do is read mysteries where our pleasant detectives have cups of tea and possibly baked goods by a warm and happy fireside, is that too much to ask?
What I Plan to Read Next
I put Aunt Dimity’s Death on hold. It’s the first book in the series and I might as well see where it all began, you know?
ALSO, it’s almost February! So it’s time for my next book challenge book!!! The Cloister Walk, here I come!
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Date: 2018-01-31 02:32 pm (UTC)Serial killers. The worst. ( well okay there are many contenders for that title, but serial killers are definitely among the finalists)
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Date: 2018-01-31 03:24 pm (UTC)Serial killers must sell or mystery writers would stop using them, but I am soooo tired of them and also not at all convinced that they're a good fit for 19th century investigative techniques, such as they were. How do you catch a killer who has no comprehensible motive - and therefore gives you no way to limit your pool of suspects - without modern forensic science? Hope that someone catches him in the act, I guess?
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Date: 2018-01-31 05:07 pm (UTC)The newest MCMIL sounds like Finch-Lenox is going out of his way to ignore his strengths and put maximum stress on his weaknesses. Not only is it a serial killer story with loads of action scenes, it's a series prequel, so instead of continuing the character development of Team Comfortable, it's just going to ignore it.
I know I shouldn't judge a book before I read it, but the description makes it sound even more deliberately alienating to his audience than Oxford Angstfest: No One Got Killed But We Had Some Intense Discussions About Life and Stuff: A Serious Novel of Ideas for Non-Philistines. And I don't get the impression that Finch has the chops to alienate his audience and get away with it, though I'm always up for being proven wrong. I preordered it anyway, so we'll see.
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Date: 2018-01-31 09:08 pm (UTC)Your concerns about the new MCMIL book are all my concerns, too. It's going to be A Burial at Sea all over again, with the serial killer and Lenox away from the rest of Team Comfortable, in that book because he was on a ship and in this because we've skipped back to the past.
If Finch had to do this plot, it's too bad he couldn't at least have done it in flashback. I quite enjoyed the flashbacks to Lenox's schooldays when we got them, and his first case might be fun to flashback to even if it has to be a serial killer, as long as we could get updates on the lives of Team Comfortable, as well.
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Date: 2018-01-31 05:28 pm (UTC)This reminds me of the time my cousins showed me Tampopo (1985): we watched it with bowls of ramen in front of us, because they knew we would all want ramen as soon as the plot got underway and we shouldn't have to pause the tape to run out and get some. I thought this was very sensible. I hope you can get something suitably blackberry-ish soon.
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Date: 2018-01-31 08:55 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-01-31 09:10 pm (UTC)+1.
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Date: 2018-01-31 05:40 pm (UTC)Okay, now that sounds like fun. Possibly even more fun in less cosy hands...
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Date: 2018-01-31 08:57 pm (UTC)