Hey, Delaware and Delaware-adjacent friends! Come hang out with Jenny Adams and me one month from today at Bethany Beach Books--we like to kill people on paper!
#BookReview Have His Carcase by Dorothy L. Sayers
Read on audio
Narrator: Stephen Jack for RNIB
Pub. 1932, 499pp
Victor Gollancz
I picked up this novel for the continuation of the relationship between private detective Lord Peter and novelist Harriet Vane that started in Strong Poison, and I’m looking forward to going on to her famous novel Gaudy Night after this one as they appear together again there.
This novel has a grisly murder (or was it suicide?) centred around a seaside town that Harriet’s visiting. She discovers the body on the beach and Lord Peter hot foots it down to help her try to figure out the details and ensure she’s not considered a suspect. Throughout the mystery Lord Peter and Harriet seem to have more creative ideas than the local police and Harriet even moves into the victim’s old lodgings!
The victim, Alexis, was a dancer at a large hotel and had been engaged to be married to one of the wealthy guests, and the mystery concerns the question of why would he have contemplated suicide when he had a secure life ahead of him?
There are so many quirky little moments to lighten the mood as things progress, such as this description of a policeman taking notes during an interview:
“The pencil happened to be an indelible one and had left an unpleasant taste in the mouth.he passed a pink tongue along his purple stained lips, looking to Mr Perkins’s goblin-haunted imagination like a very large dog savouring a juicy bone .”
Lord Peter continues to try to romance Harriet and she is still not having any of it, resulting in some amusing exchanges between them and this book is strongest when they’re interacting.
I also enjoyed the description of Harriet reading through the books on the victim’s shelves as she tried to jog her subconscious for her detective novel, then turning to crosswords to try to get her writing going again.
The eventual solution was rather long winded with an overlong description of solving a cipher (which was tedious on audio), but otherwise entertaining. It took me a long time to read and the ending was rather abrupt, with Lord Peter and Harriet solving the mystery then speeding off to London to go out to lunch! A good read but not my favourite of hers so far. #bookstodon#audiobook#AmReading@bookstodon
If you’re a fan of podcasts, there are over dozen of them dedicated to #JaneAusten and the Brontes! If I’m missing any, let me know so I can update the list!
8 days til pub day, the AMOLM virtual tour has begun, & I'm starting to organize all the book swag in my house for the onslaught of upcoming in-person events. If you're interested in a deleted scene from AMOLM and a BOOK GIVEAWAY, head over here: http://www.twochicksonbooks.com/2024/06/blog-tour-misfortune-of-lake-monsters.html
I took my own approach to reading the Horus Heresy books where I read the White Scars books first because the White Scars are cool. I enjoyed them, they were good books.
But this lured me into a space of reading the first two Horus Heresy books and I very much regret that. I cannot imagine getting through False Gods and then intentionally reading Galaxy in Flames.
The #JaneAusten Literacy Foundation is asking the public to vote on the short story compeition! There are three finalists. Voting ends at midnight GMT (7 pm EST) in TWO DAYS (june 21)!
Registration for #JASNA AGM opens TODAY! This year, the theme is “Austen, Annotated: #JaneAusten's literary, political, and culturual origins." The event is held in Cleveland, OH on October 18-20.
Book 23 of 2024: Paris Daillencourt is About to Crumble
2.75 stars
I expected this to be a cute romance in a charming setting, but this was...not that. The protagonist's anxiety was extreme to the point that I found the book stressful to read. It felt like the central romance was fundamentally incompatible; they spent most of the book upsetting and talking past each other. The bake-off theme was also pretty underutilized, in my opinion. I like to imagine that behind the scenes, those cozy baking shows are friendly and collegial, but the producers in the book were portrayed as mean and predatory.
I was really expecting some low-intensity fluff, so I'm pretty disappointed. It was fairly well-written, it just didn't feel like a romance novel to me.
Book 24 of 2024: Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel
4.5 stars
I picked this one up because I enjoyed Station Eleven, which means I went in knowing basically nothing about the plot or premise. Honestly I think this is the best way to experience a book like this.
The mystery unfolded like a puzzle, no less enjoyable when it became a little predictable by the end. I loved many of the characters and settings, particularly the lunar colonies and the parts clearly inspired by Mandel's experience writing a book about a pandemic shortly before an actual pandemic.
I admire her lyrical prose and very effective use of spec fic to explore some thought-provoking themes. It actually felt quite similar to Cloud Atlas in scope and structure. And similarly to David Mitchell's books, there's apparently quite a bit of crossover between this book and Glass Hotel. I'll have to read that soon!
There's going to be a joint Sea of Tranquility/Glass Hotel adaptation with the same creative team who adapted Station Eleven. That's one of my favorite TV shows of all time, so I am incredibly excited.
The #JaneAusten Literacy Foundation is asking the public to vote on the short story compeition! There are three finalists. Voting ends at midnight GMT (7 pm EST) on June 21.
I'm reading through the Clarke Award nominees, and I'm getting very tired of all the wallowing in dystopian futures that have been constructed solely to indict the trajectory of the present.
Like, I get it, SF is and has always been political. And that's fine! But can we please have a STORY as well? And fewer footnotes referencing Supreme Court case outrages?