|
navigation
current
archives
links page
profile
|
|
hardly worth noting
April 26, 2010
Fairly quiet weekend. It rained a lot. We went to Meijer to grocery shop. In addition to getting ourselves in on some great deals, I scored an additional pork loin (cut into chops) and a whole chicken for W&T, since they are always on the lookout for cheap eats.
So I went over there Saturday night after supper and took them their booty. They ended up with 10 gorgeous �-inch boneless loin chops and a whole 4.5 lb. bird for a ten-spot, which ain�t too shabby. And we had a blast of a visit, which somehow evolved into a reminiscence of funny stuff we grew up listening to�and all of us singing Allan Sherman�s "Automation". We are such a weird trio.
Really didn�t do much else to speak of�spent some time on the Internet, de-limed the showerhead, did the laundry.
We had (heavenly!) chicken & dumplings at the Lodge on Friday night, I made a baked cavatappi casserole with salad & breadsticks for supper on Saturday, and Spouse made his chop-suey for dinner last night, so I'd have to say we ate extremely well. And there are plenty of leftovers to take us into the week.
I have just about decided that I need to see the doctor about the missing period. As of today, it's two weeks late. Even if it's only peri-menopause, it's probably a good idea to get checked.
Bookstuff
"Meet Mr. Fortune", by H. C. Bailey--an omnibus of twelve short stories and one novel featuring Reginald Fortune. Although I've seen Reggie Fortune mentioned in various mystery reference books over the years, I'd never actually read any H. C. Bailey. So when I saw this at the booksale, I grabbed it. I started at the beginning of this, with the novel "The Bishop's Crime". This is evidently an error on my part, since the general consensus amongst mystery authorities seems to be that Bailey--and Fortune--are not at their best in the long form. If I survive this first 196 pages, I'll continue with the short stories and form my own opinion.
I'm not very far into the novel, just yet, but I'm beginning to see why Fortune is largely forgotten these days, while other characters from the golden age of British Mysteries have survived.
This prose! That dialogue! A tough slog, I'm telling you. But I'm rather intrigued that the character is sort of an early forensic examiner--medically trained and able to approach crime and evidence from a scientific viewpoint. As near as I can figure, he's actually a doctor--but since he's a trained surgeon and British, the correct form of address would be Mister.
I also finished the first of the "Motion Picture Girls" novels; I'd had to set it aside for a while (due to the "crazy-busys"), but I finally whupped through it.
Meh.
Not the best thing of its sort I've ever read, not the worst, either. The "mystery" in this one isn't very mysterious--a pretty straightforward case of discovering and foiling the theft of a friend's invention. But the real adventure in this first book is the main characters, Alice and Ruth DeVere, first getting their father, actor Hosmer DeVere, into silent movies, and then embarking on screen careers of their own. The sleuthing comes a distant second.
In this second novel, The Comet Film Company repairs to a farm in the New Jersey countryside for the summer, to "take rural plays", as they call it. So far, the "Queer Happenings" have been kind of tame�nothing I wouldn�t expect a bunch of New Yorkers to run into on their first foray into country life. But there will no doubt turn out to be a more sinister cause than mere inexperience.
I found a couple of Jasper Fforde hardcovers on the 2/$10 table at Walgreen's yesterday. I like Fforde well enough; I�m not a huge fan, but I have read the first two Thursday Next books and the first two Nursery Crimes Division books, and they were entertaining enough. For a fin apiece, I figured it was worth it to pick up "The Well of Lost Plots" (Thursday #3) and "First among Sequels" (Thursday #5) and throw them onto the "To Be Read" stack. Unfortunately, I got overcharged by two bucks by an incompetent clerk (and am too lazy to pursue it), so it wasn't quite the deal I thought.
Reading: "The Moving Picture Girls at Oak Farm; Or, Queer Happenings While Taking Rural Plays." by Laura Lee Hope (Copyright 1914). And "Meet Mr. Fortune", by H. C. Bailey--see above. The copyright on the omnibus is 1942; the stories themselves are circa '32-'42.
Surfing: My Mother's Jewelry Box.
Listening: Allan Sherman, Stan Freberg, and Tom Lehrer.
At Random: click here
|
|