I usually watch an episode when I eat dinner and I wanted to watch a show that wasn’t too high-maintenance like Lost etc. Just something fun and not too-addicting. I’ve seen bits of it on tv but usually missed it when it was on but I knew that it could be fun. Of course it’s kind of a crime show (maybe I should just rename my blog, seems like I never blog about anything else ), but I also love the Holmesian deduction, the tributes to other great shows and movies like Twin Peaks or Police Academy and most of all that the show doesn’t seem to take itself so seriously! (which is something that is wrong with so many people, shows and even books)

Guess it doesn’t sound very much like high praise but to me Psych is like comfort food or, perhaps better, like the wonderful coziness of a Christie mystery. It works perfectly as stress-relief from thesis-writing.

What are you comfort shows?

Is there anyone who didn’t completely love The Suspicions of Mr Whicher? The bibliography alone had me squealing! I’m freaking out over my thesis (which btw is completely normal for me, it’s my m.o.) and have forbidden myself to check my feed reader, so I’ll just take a wild guess and say everyone else has already posted about this. Still, just to join in: I’m so excited!!!  Mrs. Robinson’s Disgrace will be released June 19 (I’m sure to be unemployed then, so major time for reading, yay ) and there’s no way this is not going to be completely fantastic!

Also, I know it’s January 16 already but hope you all had a great start into 2012 and have a wonderful new year!

from left to right:

Victorian Suicides: Mad Crimes and Sad Histories (Barbara T. Gates)

Victorian Sensation: Or, the Spectacular, the Shocking and the Scandalous in Nineteenth-Century Britain (Michael Diamond)

The Vatican to Vegas: The History of Special Effects (Norman M.Klein)

How the Girl Guides Won the War (Janie Hampton)

Living Dolls: The Return of Sexism (Natasha Walter)

Alien Constructions: Science Fiction and Feminist Thought (Patrizia Melzer)

In Other Worlds: SF and the Human Imagination (Margaret Atwood)

Mutants: On Genetic Variety and the Human Imagination (Armand Marie Leroi)

Typecasting: On the Arts and Sciences of Human Equality (Stuart Ewen and Elizabeth Ewen)

The Laboratory of the Mind: Thought Experiments in the Natural Sciences (James Robert Brown)

Human Voice: The Story of a Remarkable Talent (Anne Karpf)

VSI: Forensic Science (Jim Fraser)

The Windup Girl (Paolo Bacigalupi)

The Penguin Complete Novels of Nancy Mitford (Introd. India Knight)

Murder at Madingly Grange (Caroline Graham)

Putting together wishlists is almost as much fun as as giving and receiving books! I’m going to decorate cookies and bake some more Vanillekipferl and Zimtsterne now (I’m the designated baker in the family ). Wish you all a wonderful Christmas with lots of family, books and cookies!

This is me trying to blog more often (if not necessarily better). I treated myself to the newest Flavia de Luce book, I am half-sick of shadows, and of course read it straight away. I love that Bradley brings out a new book every year but somehow it’s still not enough. Also, I love that series too much to be capable of any criticism other than that it was much too short, which is really a big compliment from me because I usually feel that most books are about 50-100 pages too long.

I used a gift voucher to get the book but as always told myself that since I hadn’t technically spent any money on the Flavia book I was allowed to get myself something else (probably how these vouchers are supposed to work, get these poor bookaholics into the store and then see what piles they end up with at the check-out!). So, I got a dvd because I still have some shelf space for those Also with the festive season cover of the Flavia book I was in the mood for a Christmas-themed dvd so I got Hogfather. I probably don’t want to know what that says about my sense of humor or Christmas spirit (I watched Home Alone, too, in case that makes it any better).

I adored the movie and that made me wonder why I hadn’t read the discworld books yet and I got a couple from the library. But I’m not always good with fantasy so I don’t know how that’ll go (I got The Colour of Magic, Monstrous Regiment, Unseen Academicals and Equal Rites, I’ve heard that it isn’t much of a problem to read these out of order so let me know which one I should start with to get me hooked!).

At the moment I’m reading Nicola Upson’s Two for Sorrow, that’s her third mystery in the Josephine Tey series. Didn’t enjoy the first one that much but decided to try again, I’ always hopeful So far I love the true crime Josephine is writing about in the book and which is of course casting long shadows into the present. The murder is definitely not cosy, it’s not cool to describe it partly from the perspective of the dying victim. I wouldn’t consider myself especially sensitive when it comes to explicitly described nastiness but then I wasn’t expecting it in a cosy mystery! The parts before and after are much better though, and if you’ve read Singled Out you can nod knowledgeably in places.

What’s going on with everyone else? And just what do I call these random and pointless posts?

So today it’s “Look what I found in a box outside the uni library”-day. They have a box where they put rejected books that anyone is free to take home. I love that box, there are real gems sometimes. And sometimes unbelievably smelly, dusty and sticky books. But yeah, today’s find was pretty good:

Main Street by Sinclair Lewis

The Assistant by Bernard Malamud

The Bang and The Whimper: Apocalypse and Entropy in American Literature by Zbigniew Lewicki

Also, after freaking out over my thesis outline the last couple of weeks, I’ve decided to reward myself with a quick fun book. And I remembered today that a) I still have a gift voucher from my birthday and b) unbelievably I still haven’t read the new Flavia book, so tomorrow I hope to own this one:

Hope you’re all doing well and what are you reading?

I decided to break-in my new Kindle with E. M. Delafield’s Consequences, available as a free e-book from girlebooks. Reading on the train made me aware that e-readers still attract a lot of attention and without a cover to hide the text, I think at least three other people joined me in reading Consequences Does that happen to a lot of you, too? I should probably soon invest in a sleeve or cover. But my worst shared reading experience on the train was a psycho porn scene in American Psycho and the older very conservative looking woman reading over my shoulder seemed to understand English, unfortunately. I suppose it’s very vexing for a lot of people that with e-readers you can’t tell from the cover what book someone is reading.

Now Consequences is my third Delafield book and as I found even Diary of a Provincial Lady a little depressing, you can imagine what this novel did to me. We meet our heroine Alex Clare in 1889 when she is twelve years old and apparently the terror and black sheep of the nursery. She is soon send away to a Belgian convent and when she returns is prepared for her entrance into society and the marriage market. Failing to make a marriage and fleeing from parental disappointment, Alex joins a convent. But even this decision proves to have dire consequences.

Let me say that this is an incredibly powerful novel and that I enjoyed it as much as is possible, considering how tragic it is. And that is a huge compliment to Delafield’s talent as Alex is the sort of character I have a lot of problems with. Throughout the novel she is described as weak and passive, making the wrong decisions when she does assert herself and so desperate for love that she completely suppresses her self in an effort to please another person. As readers we bring our own experiences and personality to every text and that can be problematic. I have a low tolerance for people who always require a helping hand, it’s always been “get it together” in my family (but also “you can do everything”). So characters like Alex ask a lot of me in terms of patience and understanding but I’m hoping that it’s a testament to my growth as a reader (and person) that I am getting better at putting myself in the position of for example Alex and don’t dismiss her and characters like her from the start. But I also think that being very different from Alex, I could relate better to the people around here.

It’s easier to relate to Alex and not simply dismiss her when one looks at the society that produced her. As the daughter of a family of standing, she has only been prepared for one path in life, namely marriage. However difficult her life might have been before her entrance into society, Alex has been led to believe that her real life and fun and happiness will begin there. Imagine her disappointment and confusion when she is still herself and nothing has changed. No one around her understands her, least of all Alex herself, and although pretty she does not attract that great love for which she desperately yearns. Instead, she develops an infatuation for a nun and abandoning herself enters the convent. Convent life is just a smaller version of the world from which Alex has fled, her life is completely dictated by rules and makes it impossible for Alex to develop any independence. Also, the life of a nun asks for Alex to give up any human, earthly ties and thus the last  place Alex can be happy.

The most difficult thing about Alex is probably that she does not know what she wants, this is not the story of a heroine who bravely goes against every social convention to achieve her impossible dream. Alex is not heroic like that, her depression and “tragedy queen” demeanor is a thorn in everyone’s side. But then her environment is the very reason she does not even know what she wants, she has never been given the chance to think of exploring other possibilities than being pretty and attracting a husband and when that promise is not realized, she cannot imagine an alternative and flees into the only other option she is offered, life a in a convent.

I love heroic woman rebels against patriarchal society stories as much as anyone, but the sheer hopelessness and impossibility of that for Alex are exactly what makes Consequences such a powerful novel.

Other thoughts:

Things Mean A Lot

Iris on Books

Have you reviewed this book? Let me know and I’ll add a link!

The Herring in the Library by L.C. Tyler is the third Elsie and Ethelred book. Remember how much fun I had reading the last instalment? Well, my friend gave me got me this one so that I wouldn’t miss out on the duo vs the classic locked room mystery.

There Once Lived a Woman Who Tried to Kill her Neighbor’s Baby by Ludmilla Petrushevskaya. I’ve been wanting to try her works for a while now and this collection of stories sounds fantastic. And imagine how fun it is to tell friends that yes, that is the title of a book that I’m interested in and, no that doesn’t mean I’ve gotten weirder during the last year or so (I hope). Reader non-reader communications call for a translator!

The Pluto Files by Neill DeGrasse Tyson. I’m still in mourning for pluto, can you tell?

The Poisoner’s Handbook by Deborah Blum. Crime, the birth of forensic medicine, New York during the Jazz Age- is there anything better?

The Disappearing Spoon by Sam Kean. Chemistry madness! I never really got into chemistry in school, we always seemed to do the same stuff over and over again. I only really got interested once I started reading about it on my own. This one sounded interesting as well as entertaining and perfect for those without much background knowledge. Also, how great is that cover?

Never thought this would happen, but I’ve joined everyone in the future and am now the proud owner of an e-reader Probably my dad got tired of me always borrowing his kindle. I love this version and I’m sure I’ll often use it to read free ebooks in fantastically large fonts but right now it comes in super handy for reading and carrying a ton for articles for my thesis.

Hope everyone is doing great and reading all kinds of fantastic books!

Happy Halloween everyone!

I celebrated yesterday with a friend by watching funny/creepy movies and stuffing ourselves with cupcakes. Got a class first thing tomorrow so tonight I’ll just devote the rest of the evening to appropriate reading: a short story from A. M. Harte’s Hungry For You, which she was kind enough to provide me with and which comes highly recommended by Jessica of The Bookworm Chronicles, who can get me to read both creepies and cozies anytime!

What’s everyone reading/ been reading for Halloween?

Little Hands Clapping by Dan Rhodes is pretty much what you’d expect from this fantastic cover: strange and funny.

This starts with the setting, a suicide museum in Germany. It is actually supposed to be a museum that wants to dissuade unhappy people from committing suicide but does not succeeds in this at all! And so the old man, the museum’s guard, has to get up early every so often to call the doctor and take care of a body. The doctor’s way of taking care of the bodies involves a giant freezer!

The second story revolves around Mauro and Magdalena the two most beautiful children of a small village in Portugal. It seems quite natural to everyone that they were meant for each other, and they seem to think so, too, until they move to the city to study and things change. You can imagine how these two stories might connect.

This isn’t a novel that is very strong plot-wise, what could have been shocking twists are instead revealed pretty soon and without much flourish, which makes them all the more disturbing somehow. Despite all the horror that is going on in this novel, it’s really about love and human relationships. Magdalena’s story was very engaging and I also found that although these characters are created as bizarre and often whimsical, there’s something very touching and heart-warming about them.

I’m wondering what it says about me that in novel that features incest, necrophilia, cannibalism and suicides, what disturbed me most was the eating of spiders. Yuck! But then I read Roald Dahl’s twisted tales for adults when I was about eleven, it’s hard to be  disturbed by anything else after that. Also, Rhodes is funny (you know, in a creepy and  twisted sort of way)!

Have you reviewed this book? Let me know and I’ll add a link!

Ten Little Herrings by L. C. Tyler is the second book in a series of homage-spoof-parody to the classic mystery starring crime-writer Ethelred Tressider and his literary agent Elsie Thirkettle. I had the first book, The Herring Seller’s Apprentice out from the library a while ago but didn’t get around to reading it. On my last library visit I was really in the mood for cosy and lighthearted crime but found only the second instalment. Oh well, I didn’t want to wait and just started reading this one. And I’m glad I did because it was lots of fun!

Ten Little Herrings takes on the classic of crime fiction, the country house murder. The country house in question is a hotel in France and just why and how Ethelred and Elsie come to be there, I’ll let you find out for yourselves.

Apart from Elsie and Ethelred, most other guests are part of a convention of stamp collectors. They are a much more deadly bunch then you’d first assume (or possibly not, if you’ve read The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie) and it doesn’t take long before they start murdering each other. While Ethelred ponders, Elsie pounces, and the result is just hilarious. What I really enjoyed was the alternating point of view, Ethelred provides a bit of background information and Elsie does most of the chasing.  The sleuthing is noticeably done by amateurs, but always with perfect grammar!

I tend to side automatically with characters (and people) who love chocolate and Elsie was no exception. This gets her into all sorts of trouble but I thought she had a perfectly good reason Also, gotta love her publishing ethics, even if I do feel a bit sorry for Ethelred:

The Elsie Thirkettle Agency quickly attracted a number of promising young authors of high literary merit, but I managed to dump most of them.  It’s a question of quality, not quantity, you see.  The agricultural revolution was all about getting two crops a year out of a field that previously gave you one.  It’s much the same with books.  The royalties on a book that has taken five years to produce are usually much the same as on one written in six months.  I can double-, sometimes treble-, crop my authors.

If the weather in your part of the world is anything like it is here at the moment – cold, wet, very windy- then put the kettle on and curl up with Elsie and Ethelred!

Have you reviewed this book? Let me know and I’ll add a link!