booktastic

I was harassing Mr. Hall a few minutes ago about getting behind on his blogging (he maintains the Toys 365 blog) when it suddenly struck me that I’ve let mine get away from me, too.

Of course, life has been rather interesting this past week or so. Our lease is up at the end of this month and we’re moving to a different state. This is a rather big change of course, and my mind is not unlike a several-years-old computer… You start up a new program, and then suddenly the whole thing sloooowwsss dowwwwnnnn.

So I haven’t been reading. I haven’t even been listening to books. Well, I have, but I’ve been doing it with a distinct lack of enthusiasm.

I’ve been listening to The Camelot Caper by Elizabeth Peters. None of the Agatha Christie novels I wanted were available for download, so I clicked through the “If you liked ___, you will also like…” buttons (past dozens of Agatha Christie novels, I might add. So, Computer, so you think that if I enjoyed Agatha Christie I might like MORE Agatha Christie? What a deduction!!) until I came across this book. It’s apparently a parody of Gothic romance novels tied together with a mystery, which is not an unpromising combo. (I’ve only read one Gothic romance, Wuthering Heights, but I did enjoy it.) So, despite its rather crappy title, I downloaded The Camelot Caper.

The Plot: The heroine, whatshername, has been invited from America by her estranged grandfather to come to jolly old England and visit him before he dies. And bring the family heirloom ring, he adds. So she goes and almost as soon as getting off the plane she finds herself accosted by a mysterious man who seems to want to rob her or accost her in some way. He follows her around town until revealing his motive: he wants the ring. Well, she meets up with a skinny, big-nosed author of Gothic novels and they chase across England, avoiding and getting into scrapes and trying to figure out the significance of the ring.

Oh, it’s been light and enjoyable so far (I’m over 3/4 of the way through), but my heart just hasn’t been in it for the past few chapters. I don’t know why - maybe I’ve just been too distracted to really get into the book. I know that’s the problem I’ve been having with Dying for Chocolate - which, yes, I am still reading, one or two pages at a time. I got to a section in the book where not much was happening and got stuck.

I think our move is going to go relatively smoothly, so hopefully my brain will speed up again soon and I’ll be able to blog regularly on my bountiful reading. I had such a good momentum at the beginning of this year - I don’t want to lose it! — Mrs. Hall

P.S. Come to think of it, I really need to get back on track as far as reading goes - the mail yesterday brought not one but TWO books that I have to review in this blog. Not just for fun, mind you, but because I’m actually professionally employed to do so. Hooray for being a professional writer!

I was once in an Agatha Christie play; possibly her most famous play, The Mousetrap. I was featured as Molly, the young housewife (and, if I may say so without blushing too much, the ingenue of the play). It was an enjoyable experience, so it may come as somewhat of a surprise that, until last year (some eight years after the production of said play) - I had never, ever read an Agatha Christie novel.

I don’t know why. Possibly because I tend to avoid things that are overly popular on the supposition that “if everybody likes it, it can’t be any good” (a supposition that proves itself at least partially wrong when you consider the popularity of things like chocolate.)

But then I suddenly picked one up last year. I suppose it has to do with this mystery kick that I’ve been on: I was at the bookstore near where I worked at the time (Mustard Seed Christian Books - an unpromising name for a bookstore that I actually came to sincerely enjoy visiting) picking up a couple theological texts, when I happened to notice a copy of the Agatha Christie novel Murder at Hazelmoor (also published as The Murder at Sittaford) on the discount rack.

One dollar, it was tagged. I picked it up - it looked like a quick read, it was a mystery, and one couldn’t beat the price in this area of the world - so I threw it upon my stack of Thomas Mertons and beat a hasty retreat.

Oddly, of all the books I had picked up at that store, that was the one I was the most curious about… possibly because it was the one book I knew the least about. I had cracked it open and read the first couple pages before I even finished my lunch break that day.

The plot, as I recall it, is this: a group of people are at a dinner party and decide to have a seance (as they just randomly did in those days). It’s all fun and games until the “spirit” announces that a certain acquaintance of the group has just been murdered - which rather casts a pall over the party. Distressed, one of the party goers goes to check on the friend, and discovers that he has, indeed, just been murdered.

I wouldn’t say that Murder at Hazelmoor was the greatest work of fiction I’ve ever encountered - but it was an enjoyable book. Exciting in spots, intriguing in spots, and the mystery was fundamental to the plot (an issue I take with lots of modern mystery novels, as I’ve mentioned before, is that the mystery is almost incidental to the plot). It was good, light mystery reading.

However, despite my enjoyment of this book and the volume of Agatha Christie’s work, it has taken me several months to pick up another one… possibly because I really didn’t know where to start. I abhor reading books out of sequence, so I had to do some research before I could start with Miss Marple or Hercule Poirot. I picked up a Poirot novel a few months back under the impression that it was the first, and quickly discovered that it was not - and had to lay it aside as a consequence.

However, this year I am making solid progress. I found a book that was the first of three in a series by Christie - The Secret Adversary, a “Tommy and Tuppence” book. (Christie evidently only did three books featuring the characters of Tommy and Tuppence - a pity, as I rather enjoyed the characters in this first book.) I followed this up immediately with Murder at the Vicarage, the FIRST Miss Marple novel, which I have almost finished.

I suppose the point of this meandering is that Agatha Christie novels really are good. Oh, not good in the “well-honed brilliant writing” kind of good - in sheer writing quality I would say they are above average, but only just - but they are good mysteries. She keeps you guessing, gives you clues, eggs you on, lays out red herrings… and so far, of each book I’ve read, some aspect of the resolution has come as a surprise. I may have guessed the murderer once or twice - but something else still took me unawares, so I have to give her credit.

I guess that here is another instance of something being deservedly popular.

I had bad luck downloading audio books yesterday. It has been some time since I downloaded one on account of the fact that I haven’t been at work much the past couple weeks - and for most of last week I had library fines, which meant I was prohibited from making any online downloads (as if that makes any sense at all.)

Yesterday I started out listening to music while I did my data-entrying at work, but that simply wasn’t cutting it. I slept little and poorly night before last and my brain was in need of more stimulation if it was going to remain working. So in the end, I decided it was time to download a book.

My first choice was one I actually tried to download last week (but couldn’t), Death on the Air by Ngaio Marsh. She’s considered one of the great mystery writers, apparently, and I figured I ought to give her a try. I selected Death on the Air from the library’s downloads because it said this about it in the book’s description: “Death on the Air and Other Stories serves as the perfect introduction to Ngaio Marsh and her creation, Inspector Roderick Alleyn, or as a nostalgic journey for their many fans.”

This turns out to be entirely misleading. I thought I was looking at the first book in the series here - not so. It’s a book of short stories and I have no idea where in chronology it takes place. Not only that, but the first part of this book is an introduction by someone else that entirely gives away some things about the main character - things that are a total spoiler for someone who hasn’t read the series.  I am most displeased with the Chicago Public Library right now. Turns out that the actual first book of Miss Marsh’s is called A Man Lay Dead - which the ChiPubLib does not have for download. Perhaps not surprisingly.

I irately moved on. Skipping around, I found that they had a Douglas Adams book I have never read, The Salmon of Doubt, for download. I knew that this book was published posthumously, and that it was the lost Dirk Gently novel (and I had been a huge fan of Adams’s Dirk Gently books, prefering them over the Hitchhiker books to a large extent - and I loved the Hitchhiker books) . The Chicago Public Library had this to say about it: “Rescued from his beloved Macintosh, The Salmon of Doubt provides us with the opportunity to linger and frolic one last time in the uniquely entertaining and richly informative mind of Douglas Adams. For the millions of readers who expressed their grief and shock at his untimely death, this is a treasure; his final book and our last chance to see new work from an acknowledged comic genius.”

Perhaps. However, upon opening the book on the player, I had a snag… The menu was confusingly laid out and I couldn’t find the actual start of the book. I found myself listening to first an introduction by Stephen Fry (not a problem in itself, as I am rather fond of said gentleman) - and then, perplexingly, what seemed to be another introduction by Richard Dawkins (yes, that Richard Dawkins, of “You Hear Me, God? I Don’t Believe In You!” fame) - which droned on until I felt inclined to switch it off. I never did locate the actual beginning of the Adams book.

So that was my second failure of the day. I went back to the website and finally located a book by an author I was interested in reading - a book which didn’t have spoiler-laden introductions or a confusing layout, and it was the first in a series - No Graves As Yet by Anne Perry. It promises to be the first (!!) in the “World War I” series.

Well, that was all well and good. But as I got going, I found that it just wasn’t the book for me that morning. Oh, it was well-written and intriguing and all of that. But I’ve been a bit fragile for the past couple days, and I’m rather in the mood for some light entertainment; one of the last things I want to listen to is somebody dealing with the traumatic and unexpected death of his parents. Jeez. What a way to start a morning.

Discouraged, I went back to the CPL website one last time.  Finally, I found something that promised to be what I was looking for: My Man, Jeeves by P.G. Wodehouse. It’s been forever since I’ve read any Wodehouse - that’s just the ticket as far as light entertainment goes - and the CPL website promised that this was Wodehouse’s first Jeeves book. I couldn’t remember if I’d read My Man, Jeeves (but if I had, it has to have been somewhere in the arena of fifteen years since I did so) - so I downloaded it. I’m relatively certain now that I have read it before, but it has proven to be just the ticket for this morning. It’s light, entertaining and nobody’s parents die in a disgusting and traumatic manner. (And even if they did, in a Wodehouse book they would simply brush it off with a “Dash it, what a spot of bally bad luck!” or something like that, and then dress for dinner.)

So I spent the rest of the day listening to Wodehouse, and it was quite pleasant indeed. The only problem is that I downloaded four books yesterday - and the limit at a time is six - and they make you wait like three weeks before your “loan period” is up and you can download more - so if I finish Jeeves too fast I haven’t got a lot of leeway to find new listening material. Oh well! I guess I really should go back and decipher my way through the Salmon of Doubt menu. Perhaps that will last me until my lending period is through! — Mrs. Hall

My plan for the day was this: grocery shopping, trip to the library (to finally return those overdue books) and post office to mail some bookmooch requests.

Well, I quickly talked myself out of the post office. It just seemed like a bit much for today - and my husband is going to have a good amount of free time this coming week, so I figured he can probably mail them for me. (I know, I know… I could have mailed them. I’m just lazy feeling today and didn’t want to walk the extra five blocks.) I did the grocery shopping shortly after getting up (so that we would have some food to eat for lunch) - and then at three, when my husband left to go to work, I walked the seven blocks to the library and returned my books.

I was returning Catering to Nobody, the Rita Mae Brown book and that other one I checked out (back when I posted that picture of the books I was checking out and complained about the size of the omnibuses… As I had anticipated, since I seldom feel like toting an enormous, heavy book that won’t fit into my purse along with me, the two omnibuses didn’t get read. It couldn’t have helped that I checked them out in December either, when I had a billion other things to do.) I meant to return them before we left for our very short Christmas vacation, because they weren’t overdue yet then.

That didn’t work out. (It’s a long story. Attempting to put it in a nutshell: my father-in-law, Mr. Hall senior, was giving us a ride from Chicago to Kansas City for Christmas. He drove up on the 22nd, was going to stay the night, and drive back down with us on the 23rd - and I thought we might have an opportunity to drop off my library books before we headed out of town on the morning of the 23rd. However, on the 22nd he heard some bad weather forecasts for Chicago and decided that, rather than get stuck up here, we’d better make the eight-hour-drive back that night. Hence, Mr. Hall and I spent the evening of the 22nd scrambling wildly to get ready for the trip which we hadn’t even packed for yet. My library books were forgotten about, but they were the least of our concerns.)

I also thought about returning them a couple days ago on the 1st, but talked myself out of that as well since the library was (I think) closed and I wouldn’t be able to pay my fines anyway… So I returned them today. And guess what? It turns out that the cost of Library fines at the Chicago Public Library DOUBLED on January 1st!! Cripes! Now, I’m not going to gripe about that too much - after all, it was my fault they were overdue, and 20 cents a day isn’t exactly highway robbery - but really? Doubled? Has the cost of training the librarians to be unsmiling and taciturn gone up?

Okay, okay, that was a little much; sorry, Chicago Public Library Librarians. And I must say that today I actually encountered the most cheerful librarian I have ever seen at the Chicago Public Library (any branch). She smiled and wished me a Happy New Year and everything.

Books returned and paid for, I wandered out into the stacks, even though I had agreed with myself that I was not going to check out any new ones. I idly strolled over to the Mystery section thinking that I was just going to “glance around” since I happened to be there - after all, it seemed like a waste to walk seven whole blocks to the library and then immediately walk home again. However, then I spied Dying for Chocolate, the next Diane Mott Davdison book after Catering to Nobody - sitting on the shelf. I hemmed and hawed for a moment, thought about sitting and reading it for a while at the library… Then just gave in. After all, it was just a little bitty paperback, and I’m already more than half way through A Monstrous Regiment of Women - I’ll be needing a new book soon. (A lame excuse: I already have plenty of books to read… but the title of this one has always appealed to me…)

So, in the end, I did still come home with a book in my bag (promising the cheerful Librarian to bring her some more fines in about a month’s time). But no more until this one is read and returned! And that’s final! — Mrs. Hall

As some of you may know, I spent three hours last New Year’s Eve reading Visions of Sugar Plums while locked in a women’s toilet and waiting for my husband to get off work. Well, I can’t top that for a New Year’s Eve reading adventure this year, but I did have one, if minor and disguised as a misadventure…

Yesterday, New Year’s Eve, I got off work early. I wasn’t even scheduled to work yesterday, but they said we could come in to pick up extra hours (and that we didn’t have to worry about the dress code, and I was that eager to pick up the “Nostalgia City” t-shirt I bought over break) so I went in and worked until three-thirty. Then I ran by Trader Joe’s and picked up a couple groceries (including a bottle of Moscato for the evening’s celebrations) and called my husband to see if he needed me to drop anything by the Zoo where he currently works. He would be working until nine, you see, but he didn’t need anything, so he told me to just head on home. We would be spending New Year’s Eve quietly, together, with that bottle of Moscato and a lovely ball of fresh mozzarella cheese from Trader Joe’s.

It takes me about an hour to get home from my temp job. I ride one bus for twenty minutes, then wait ten minutes for my transfer bus, and ride that for another thirty minutes. I did so, and got home at about five-thirty; cold, and ready to put down my heavy grocery bag and put up my feet. I regretted not wearing my gloves on the walk from the bus to my door as it was colder outside than I thought, and my hands had gotten quite chilled. At the door, I paused, put down the grocery bag, and opened up my purse. I reached into the small, inner pocket where I usually clip my house key.

It wasn’t there.

Sometimes it falls out into the bottom of the purse, so I reached in and hunted around for a while. It still wasn’t there.

So I took everything out of my purse and looked through every nook and cranny, looked inside my wallet and inside gnarled twists of old receipts, and still nothing. That was when it finally struck me that the last time I’d actually used my key was when I let my in-laws into the house two days before, when I was wearing my old winter coat.

I was wearing my NEW winter coat.

I sighed. My feet had gotten very cold: I was only wearing canvas shoes and one pair of socks, as I hadn’t expected it to be very cold out that day - and my hands were getting colder every minute. For just a second I contemplated waiting on the porch until my husband got home - but five hours in fifteen degree weather? Without proper winter boots? Not even to mention the bananas I had bought would go black. I dismissed that thought pretty quick.

I walked around the house shaking the windows to see if any of them were loose - a futile gesture, as I know I keep the windows locked tight. I checked the back door to see if the neighbors had left it open - no such luck. For just a few moments I contemplated phoning our landlord, Mr. Komarek, and asking him to let me in… but I couldn’t see doing that to him on a cold winter night, especially as he’d recently been kind enough to pick up our mail for us while we were away for Christmas. And the thing that I used to do when I was locked out of the house - go and hang out at my almost-next-door friend Georgia’s until Mr. Hall got off work - wasn’t going to happen. My friend Georgia moved to England earlier this year, and I don’t have any other friends in the neighborhood.

I was left with only one option.

I sighed, picked up my grocery bag and trudged back out into the night and down to the bus stop. I had no other alternative but to ride the bus to Mr. Hall’s workplace, get his keys, and ride back again. I would ride the bus there (forty minutes), chat with Mr. Hall for a moment or two explaining where my keys had gone (ten minutes at least), wait for the returning bus (ten to fifteen minutes) and then ride it home again (thirty to forty minutes). At least an hour and forty minutes of wasted time before I could relax for the evening, all because I’d forgotten to put my keys back in my purse.

There was naught to be done about it, so I decided not to fret about it. I experienced a few moments of anxiety that Mr. Hall might get sent home early from his job and I would have spent the bus-ride in vain, but I didn’t worry about that too much since I had no other options and riding the bus was better than being out in the cold anyway. And I could read!

As soon as my bus came (which was a relief, as my feet were getting really cold by that time) I whipped out the book I happened to have with me, A Monstrous Regiment of Women. I had just gotten to a rather interesting spot when the bus dropped me off near Mr. Hall’s workplace, so I really didn’t notice that half of the bus ride at all. I had no problem with motion-sickness as (oddly!) since I started wearing my New Winter Coat it simply hasn’t been an issue.  I suspect it is because my new winter coat is more breathable and I don’t get as stiflingly hot.

I chatted with Mr. Hall for a few minutes at the Zoo as expected - it was a slow night at the Zoo, and I was actually able to do him a favor; he had gotten a Christmas present from the Zoo (a Zoo mug and a book about the Zoo) and I agreed to tote them home for him. I pocketed his keys as well, shook his hand (no overt displays of affection at work) and trudged back to the bus stop to wait.

This was probably the worst part of this excursion, as it is always extremely cold at that particular bus stop, and my feet hadn’t quite recovered from their previous chill - and it was too dark to read. I kicked my feet on the ground, trying to get the blood flowing to them, and trying not to be annoyed with the odd hoard of children who kept frolicking around me (who seemed unaffected by the cold). It was forever before my bus finally came. Actually about fifteen minutes, but it seemed like forever.

But it did, and I whipped my book out again. It got more interesting and I barely even noticed the time passing. I was a little worried that I’d get so “into” the book that I would miss my stop and ride all the way out to Cicero… but I didn’t. (Thank goodness). My feet warmed up again, and at long last I got off my bus at the corner and made the short, chilly walk up to the block to our apartment, and let myself in again. It was seven-thirty when I got home, so it had been exactly two hours since I first realized my keys were missing.

However, I’d read a hundred pages of my book, I can’t say the time was wasted! And once again, I had an odd New Year’s Eve reading adventure. — Mrs. Hall

P.S. Happy New Year! Mr. Hall and I had a quiet, pleasant, and even romantic New Year’s Eve and beginning to 2009. We turned the lights down low, drank our wine, listened to George Harrison and gazed at the lights on our Christmas tree. All and all, a lovely evening.

A few posts ago, I told you my opinion of The Cereal Killer by Diane Mott Davidson. That was a pretty decent book and I enjoyed it quite a bit (even though it was slightly disconcerting when - listening to the audio book - the main character described details of a physical romantic encounter. Up until that point I could totally pretend that this was friend talking to me about her life… but that kind of weirded me out. But - that was just a minor issue, and I probably wouldn’t even have cared if I had been reading, rather than listening to, that book.)

Well, as I mentioned, that was the third book - so I went to the library and picked up the first, Catering to Nobody. It is so-named because in it, the main character’s business is temporarily (for almost the entire book) closed down.

This means that one of the main things I liked about the third book — the fact that the main character was constantly talking about food –  was more or less absent from this one. Oh, don’t get me wrong - food did come up on a good number of occasions, and the actual recipes are featured in case you are interested in making them - but it just wasn’t there as much as in the third one. (Which is another problem with reading books out of order!! I hate reading a book from “later in the series”, then going back and reading the first book and not liking it as well!!)

However, as a mystery novel it was pretty interesting. I didn’t find the setting of the mystery (an ObGyn doctor scandal) quite as personally interesting to me as the focus of The Cereal Killer (which was a higher education scandal, an area I have more experience with and more interest in. Higher education, I mean, not higher education scandals). However, that is not to say that it wasn’t interesting at all, or that you would only enjoy it if you spend a lot of time at your ObGyn… Just a personal preference there.

I enjoy and like the main character, Goldy, even though her views on things are rather different from my own. However, now having read two books, I must say that I take mild issue with the fact that the character often doesn’t push some points hard enough… Let me explain. Let’s say, for example, she has an idea that her friend Marla knows a clue which may solve the mystery. Goldy asks her about it surreptitiously,  Marla stonewalls her a bit or says she’ll talk about it later… and Goldy just lets it slide, feeling she can’t pursue the matter.

Things like that happen a lot in the book - so much that it almost feels a touch forced, like it’s a device to draw out the length of the story. Oh well, I suppose there are worse ways to draw out the length of a mystery story… like by shoving a semi-unrelated short story about cannibals or Mormons into the center of the book.

Mid-way through, I was on the verge of saying that I wasn’t excited enough by Catering to Nobody to track down the next book in the series. However, by the ending I was thoroughly engrossed and found the ending good and satisfying, so I will be locating the next book. Although it must be said that after discovering the title of the next book is Dying for Chocolate, I really had no choice in the matter.

I can’t resist a book with chocolate in the title. I seriously can’t. — Mrs. Hall

I had a very nice Thanksgiving, thank you. Mr. Hall had a rare day off and we relaxed for the first part of the day (well, he relaxed: I baked two pies and a turkey and sweet potatoes while preparing mashed potatoes, stuffing, gravy, fried squash and buns… not that I’m complaining. I think I enjoy cooking more and more…) ate around three, then put up our Christmas tree. (Yes, a bit early, but, well, he’d gotten a deal on a tree…)

I had yesterday off and took it easy… Well, mostly easy; I had a lot of Thanksgiving dishes to wash and Christmas cards to address. Today I had to get back on the ball and run my usual weekend errand: grocery shopping for the coming week.

I also made a library trip today. At long last I had to return  How to Write and Market a Mystery Novel, and decided I would look for several mystery novels: the first “The Cat Who…” book (The Cat Who Could Read Backwards), the first Goldy Bear book (Catering To Nobody), the sequel to The Mistletoe Murder (the inexplicably titled Tippy-Toe Murders) and, finally, if possible, the sequel to The Beekeeper’s Apprentice - which I thought was Locked Rooms.

I was very annoyed. They didn’t have the first “The Cat Who…” book - but had about ten others. I thought about picking up the first Dick Francis novel, and carried that around for a while, but I don’t think that’s the kind of mystery I’m into right now and put it back. Then I went and looked for Tippy-Toe only to be disappointed in that respect as well - they had about six others, but not that one.

Then, since I was coming up short, I decided I would try a couple new authors. I browsed until I found things that looked appealing; I picked up an Anne Perry novel called The Face of A Stranger (which I could only find in a three-book anthology with its first two sequels, unfortunately). Then I went back to the “The Cat Who…” books and looked at them for a while, trying to figure out if maybe I had just missed the first book… I hadn’t. But next to it I saw books by Rita Mae Brown that looked like more of what I was looking for. I did some research, discovered Wish You Were Here was the first in that series, and almost couldn’t find that… until I found it, also in a three-book anthology with its first two sequels.

I took this picture with my phone to illustrate a fact: namely, that these two books are huge. Don’t forget - I’m on foot. Anything I take with me when I go places, I have to carry. This makes the enormous Rita Mae Brown book especially problematic because I’m not sure it will even fit in my purse. The size of both of them also necessitated me not picking up that many other books at the library today.

However, I did find one of the books I wanted - I located Catering To Nobody. What a relief to actually find one of the books that I was interested in picking up! Plus, it was a conveniently-sized paperback.

Then I remembered that I had also come to look for Locked Doors, and went looking for it, and found it! Then I suddenly experienced a moment of doubt: what if I was wrong? What if it wasn’t the direct sequel? I had turned down several likely novels today because I didn’t want to read them out of order - and I especially didn’t want to read these books out of order. So I flipped open to the front of the dust jacket, hoping it would begin with something like, “In this second installment of the Mary Russel series…”

AND PROMPTLY HAD AN ENORMOUS PLOT DEVELOPMENT RUINED FOR ME!!! I was so peeved. And NO, it WASN’T even the direct sequel to The Beekeeper’s Apprentice: that honor goes to the much more interestingly-titled A Monstrous Regiment of Women (which the library didn’t have, by the way). So I didn’t get the book I wanted, and now I’ve had a plot development of the series spoiled!! DRAT! DARN! HECK! Why on earth would they put something like that on the dust jacket of the book? Why?

Oh well, it was something that I’d anticipated anyway - but even so, it’s annoying to have it spoiled. So I came home from the library in a really bad mood. Mr. Hall was working today so I didn’t have anybody to brighten my day, so I directed my anger at the remainder of the dirty dishes in the sink. Now the sink is significantly cleaner and I feel somewhat better. Plus, I had a new bookmooch book in the mail when I got home - The Mysterious Affair at Styles, the first Hercule Poirot story. Thank goodness for another book that I don’t have to feel bad about reading because it’s out of proper order! (Oddly, though, it’s another anthology book: rather inexplicably paired with the last Hercule Poirot story, Curtain, which I won’t be able to read until I track down all the other Hercule Poirot novels… *sigh*).  — Mrs. Hall

P.S. I forgot to look for “The Mysterious Benedict Society.” Drat! However, since I technically came home with seven books, I feel somewhat vindicated.

Okay, this year I have had a propensity for picking up series mysteries - and starting with the wrong one. This one wasn’t entirely my fault. I was looking for a book to download and listen to from the Chicago Public Library website - I was hoping to try one of those “The Cat Who…” books, but the earliest one in the series they had was 13 or something, and that’s just a bit too late in the series. Finally, after clicking through several pages of “If you like this book, you will also like..” I saw this, and there was no indication of whether it was the first, third or seventh in the series.

So I looked it up. Turns out The Cereal Murders was the third in the series. I remembered this book from a previous encounter: I was in the basement of Powell Books in Hyde Park Chicago (a marvelous used book store: I recommend it. It seems to go on forever) looking for inexpensive things to read, and saw this on a shelf. I contemplated it because the cover appealed to me, but I wasn’t really into mysteries at the time, and put it back.

I was reminded of that when I was on the library website, and decided to download the book. After all, it was only third in the series, that wasn’t so bad.

It’s an audiobook. (I apologize to those of you who don’t consider listening to audiobooks as “reading” - it’s really my only option at work, since if I sat there at the computer with a novel in hand my bosses might get suspicious). The thing about audiobooks is, I have begun to be of the notion that a lot of how much one enjoys an audiobook is due to how good the reader is. If the reader doesn’t quite work for you, it winds up being very distracting from the book. On a recent audiobook, I was distracted the every time she tried to do a “male” voice. All her “men” sounded exactly the same - because it was just her, the reader, doing a gruff, gravelly voice. Well, not all men are gruff and gravelly.

However, the reader for this book was very good. She didn’t try to “sound like” a man when she read the male parts - she just changed her tone or inflection, which worked beautifully. The only part where I was distracted by the author herself was when she had to re-enact someone’s scream and death gurgle (which she did quite well, I might add. It did make me laugh, but just because it was unexpected)… but, if that’s how it was written, that’s how she had to do it, so I don’t fault her that one.

Anyways, I suppose I’d better talk about the book itself. I enjoyed it! It’s the story of a caterer who becomes involved with a bizarre higher-education-related murder when, at an event she is catering, she finds the dead body of the valedictorian. Our heroine is Goldy Bear (yeah, yeah, perhaps the naming of characters in the book didn’t always work for me, but what can you say? That’s a minor issue), and the story is told from her viewpoint, first person (which helped the audiobook, I might add). The mystery was enough a focal-point of the story that I didn’t spend a whole lot of time wondering when she was going to get back to mystery solving… And the climax of the book was the solving of the mystery, and it was exciting. Although perhaps I wasn’t paying as much attention to the mystery element as I should have because I was distracted by another element.

Our heroine is a caterer, and spends the majority of the book talking about food. Manicotti, extreme nachos, chocolate dipped biscotti, slices of sourdough bread slathered with pesto… *Passes out, revives self several minutes later and goes on.* I was sitting there at work listening to this book and literally salivating. Now, I’m not sure how it would have come across if I’d read the book: there’s a certain amount of your reaction which is dictated by a reader when you listen to the audiobook rather than reading the novel itself. It could be she just made it all sound really good with her tone and inflection. But I can say this: I wanted to go home and cook. As an added bonus, this book includes the actual recipies for the most prominent foods mentioned. I didn’t listen to them (honestly, what fun is listening to a recipe? “Two cups flour. Two teaspoons cinnamon. One teaspoon sugar…”) - but now I want to buy (or bookmooch, or library) a copy so that I can check those recipes out.

So if you like food and enjoy cooking and reading mysteries, I can recommend this novel. I finished it at work today and promptly came home and made Alfredo pasta from scratch, and served it over some store-bought noodles that my Mother assured me were almost as good as “home made” - and they were. All and all, today brought both good reading and eating experiences. — Mrs. Hall

I’ve been in a Victorian mood lately. Granted The Beekeeper’s Apprentice is WWI, not Victorian, but one of the main characters is essentially a Victorian character - so, same difference. I wanted to immediately pick up the sequel to that book, Locked Rooms, but as luck would have it, Bookmooch hasn’t got it. I shall simply have to track down a library copy.

I just received another reading recommendation from the friend (Mrs. Gooch) who recommended The Beekeeper’s Apprentice; it’s called Silent in the Grave by Deanna Raybourn.  This book has a lot going for it: it’s another mystery,  another from the Victorian era, and at present the recommender (Mrs. Gooch) is batting 100%. So I have resolved to look it up immediately. Of course, Bookmooch doesn’t have that either!

I suppose this means a trip to the library is in order. I would do that today, but today is another one of those nasty semi-rainy days… and Chicago has apparently decided that winter starts this week. After a week of 60-70 degree weather, it’s suddenly 30 degrees outside.

I’ve already done my grocery shopping and weekend errands, and I just don’t feel up to going out again, so I guess I’ll just stick with A Christmas Story for the weekend. I’m not sure what I’ll use for my transit reading this week, but my “audio” reading will continue (even more authentically) with this Victorian mood I’ve been in; I downloaded an audiobook of Dickens’ Bleak House . This is one of the four or five Charles Dickens novels that I haven’t read, so I’m quite looking forward to it. The only problem with it is that Bleak House is a pretty long book, somewhere in the region of 900 pages… so the audio book (especially the unabridged version I picked) is apparently SEVEN MILLION HOURS LONG. Oh well! I would never consider an abridged version of a book (sacrilege!), and listening to it for five to eight hours a day at work… I should get through it before the rental period expires. At the end of the month. — Mrs. Hall

I finally finished The Beekeeper’s Apprentice! On my bus ride home last night I read so much that, upon arrival at home I only had about 40 pages left to read… So, even though it cost me an hour of sleep, I stayed up and finished it because I had to know what happened.

And now it’s done, and I am sad.

As I said already, at first I was afraid this was going to be one of those “woman smart - man dumb” books. I had strong misgivings when the heroine of the book, Mary Russell, first encountered Mr. Holmes. He had been retired for twenty years, you see, and living out in the country raising bees (hence the title). And, of course, the first thing she does is go, “I’m smart and sassy!” (I’m extremely broadly paraphrasing) and showed him up in something… I don’t think I could have handled two-hundred-something pages of that.

But it wasn’t. Oh, there were a few moments of that, but this is more of a story about a partnership between two equally smart crime-solvers than a feminist tome.

Other fears: I was afraid that this was going to turn out to be another of those books where the author has Holmes doing a lot of things that he would never possibly do. In that respect, I was relieved; I feel that the portrayal of Holmes in the book was extremely faithful to the original. And I was also afraid that the book was going to be very mean to Watson. It initially was a bit crispy about him, but wound up being nice.

Regarding this book as a mystery: At first, I felt that the mystery didn’t exactly flow. It felt more like a series of short stories (which isn’t a bad thing. I mean, that’s in keeping with the form of some of the original Holmes stories). However, by the end it wound together into a cohesive whole. Plus, as far as my main complaint about modern mysteries (that they don’t spend enough on the solving of the mysteries) - this book left me pleased. Although they did occasionally take a hiatus from mystery solving, the issues were never wholly forgotten - and when they were working on it, they really were working on it, not just pulling the typical move of modern mystery sleuths (who we may refer to as “hunch followers”. There is a story behind this which I will relate later).

So anyway, to get back to the point - yes! This book was successful as a novel, as a period novel, as a book written to be faithful to someone else’s work, and as a mystery. I enjoyed it so much, I want to share it; I think I will send my copy to my sister-in-law, Miss Hall. I will definitely be looking up the sequel, which I think is called Locked Rooms.

However, that takes time - and this morning I immediately needed new reading material. So - with seconds to spare before running for my bus - I snatched up my husband’s copy of A Christmas Story from the bookshelf because it was the first thing at hand that I hadn’t read. It’s kind of a shift from a period mystery to an anecdotal tale of a child’s Christmas, but I suspect it will be both enjoyable and a quick read.  Well, I should say that I know it will be those things: namely because I only read for an hour and yet I’m already about half way through the book. It’s very like the movie (in tone; I find myself automatically hearing it in Jean Shepherd’s voice) and yet has a lot of other detail and amusing anecdotes. I haven’t laughed out loud yet, but I did smile a lot - and on a smelly, packed bus, that’s definitely something. — Mrs. Hall