Lily Fairbairn
Half-elven
Here in South Texas it's a very pretty day, sunny and cool. Sunny we'll be able to count on for months to come, but cool? Not so much. The last renovation to our new home---a new bathroom vanity---should be finished today. We're settling in nicely.
On paper I've read Mallowan's Memoirs: Agatha and the Archaeologist, the autobiography of Max Mallowan. As he acknowledges in the title, he's known more for being Agatha Christie’s husband than for his archaeological work, so it’s interesting to read about the latter, not least because he worked in Syria/Iraq almost 100 years ago. Archaeology was a very different discipline back then, but Mallowan and his colleagues were slowly pushing the scientific boundaries. His book includes some interesting behind-the-scenes anecdotes about Agatha's life and work.
I also read Pekoe Most Poison, by Laura Childs. It’s very ordinary cozy, with more attention paid to details of the protagonist's tea shop than to the plot, which depends too much on various characters being oblivious to logic. I see that this is the eighteenth in Childs’ tea shop series, so perhaps it’s not surprising she’s just painting by the numbers.
I've now segued into a re-read of the fifth in Kerry Greenwood's Corinna Chapman series, Forbidden Fruit. This installment takes place during the Christmas holidays. I've smiled again and again at Corinna's attitide toward the December weather. We were once in Australia in December, and as heat-hardened Texans were not at all surprised by the sight of people clad in shorts and T-shirts strolling past Christmas decorations. What threw us for a loop, though, was seeing those decorations during very long, bright days. [shocked]
The newest Smithsonian has a good cover story on Westminster Abbey. There's also a nice article on live oaks, trees with great personality. There is a magnificent one in our new front yard, and many more in our new neighborhood, much to our delight. We keep expecting to hear a faint hroom, hroom in the wee hours of the mornings they all gather for a moot.
Speaking of Tolkien (aren't we always?), I listened to the audio of a series of Great Course lectures by scholar Dimitra Fimi, The World of J.R.R. Tolkien. She considers influences, languages, themes, elves---nothing that would surprise TORn's scholars but which I found interesting.
I also listened to one of Dorothy L. Sayers' Peter Wimsey novels, Unnatural Death, read by Ian Carmichael---he played Wimsey in a series of dramatization back in the 70s and 80s and has the perfect voice. The novel itself is set in the 1920s, and while Sayers' genius with dialog shines through even today, so many assumptions and habits of the time period are so outmoded the story hasn't held up well.
Now I'm listening to another non-fiction audio, Powers and Thrones: A New History of the Middle Ages, by Dan Jones, who also narrates. We're barely out of the Roman era yet, with much history to come, but so far I'm finding the accessiblity of the material and of Jones's delivery to be entertaining as well as informative.
I well remember a neighbor many years introducing me to a new friend with, "This is [Lily]. She reads history for fun!" You'd have thought I had two heads [
]
I'm also listening to Haunted Ground, by Erin Hart, a mystery that begins with a peat-cutter in Ireland finding the head of a bog body, a plot I cannot resist. (I've used a smiliar beginning myself.) Hart is one of those mystery writers who spends as much time on the life stories and psychology of the characters as on the development of the plot, but the lovely Irish voice of the narrator (as well as her abiity to do the occasional American accent) is carrying me along, curious to see what happens.
So what have you been reading?
On paper I've read Mallowan's Memoirs: Agatha and the Archaeologist, the autobiography of Max Mallowan. As he acknowledges in the title, he's known more for being Agatha Christie’s husband than for his archaeological work, so it’s interesting to read about the latter, not least because he worked in Syria/Iraq almost 100 years ago. Archaeology was a very different discipline back then, but Mallowan and his colleagues were slowly pushing the scientific boundaries. His book includes some interesting behind-the-scenes anecdotes about Agatha's life and work.
I also read Pekoe Most Poison, by Laura Childs. It’s very ordinary cozy, with more attention paid to details of the protagonist's tea shop than to the plot, which depends too much on various characters being oblivious to logic. I see that this is the eighteenth in Childs’ tea shop series, so perhaps it’s not surprising she’s just painting by the numbers.
I've now segued into a re-read of the fifth in Kerry Greenwood's Corinna Chapman series, Forbidden Fruit. This installment takes place during the Christmas holidays. I've smiled again and again at Corinna's attitide toward the December weather. We were once in Australia in December, and as heat-hardened Texans were not at all surprised by the sight of people clad in shorts and T-shirts strolling past Christmas decorations. What threw us for a loop, though, was seeing those decorations during very long, bright days. [shocked]
The newest Smithsonian has a good cover story on Westminster Abbey. There's also a nice article on live oaks, trees with great personality. There is a magnificent one in our new front yard, and many more in our new neighborhood, much to our delight. We keep expecting to hear a faint hroom, hroom in the wee hours of the mornings they all gather for a moot.
Speaking of Tolkien (aren't we always?), I listened to the audio of a series of Great Course lectures by scholar Dimitra Fimi, The World of J.R.R. Tolkien. She considers influences, languages, themes, elves---nothing that would surprise TORn's scholars but which I found interesting.
I also listened to one of Dorothy L. Sayers' Peter Wimsey novels, Unnatural Death, read by Ian Carmichael---he played Wimsey in a series of dramatization back in the 70s and 80s and has the perfect voice. The novel itself is set in the 1920s, and while Sayers' genius with dialog shines through even today, so many assumptions and habits of the time period are so outmoded the story hasn't held up well.
Now I'm listening to another non-fiction audio, Powers and Thrones: A New History of the Middle Ages, by Dan Jones, who also narrates. We're barely out of the Roman era yet, with much history to come, but so far I'm finding the accessiblity of the material and of Jones's delivery to be entertaining as well as informative.
I well remember a neighbor many years introducing me to a new friend with, "This is [Lily]. She reads history for fun!" You'd have thought I had two heads [
]I'm also listening to Haunted Ground, by Erin Hart, a mystery that begins with a peat-cutter in Ireland finding the head of a bog body, a plot I cannot resist. (I've used a smiliar beginning myself.) Hart is one of those mystery writers who spends as much time on the life stories and psychology of the characters as on the development of the plot, but the lovely Irish voice of the narrator (as well as her abiity to do the occasional American accent) is carrying me along, curious to see what happens.
So what have you been reading?
