Weekend update

[blinker]

Bad: dozing off at 4, thinking "it hasn't stopped raining yet, there's no way we're playing softball today" only to wake up at 5:30 and discover that it did stop raining. Hopefully they didn't actually try to have the game, because the field must have been a swamp after the past two days.

Good: actually managing to nap. Waking up and making cornbread from new-to-me bread cookbook picked up at Harvard Bookstore on Friday evening. Then throwing together some chicken soup with escarole and turkey meatballs from a back issue of Bon Appetit.

Bad: torrential downpours right after we finished staining new nightstands. Having to leave dried but not-aired-out nightstands in the kitchen overnight despite unpleasant fumes. Not being able to finish the tops with varnish yet.

Good: New furniture, and the staining turned out really well. Also, getting to sleep diagonally last night (and read in bed at an uncivilized hour) because the gf couldn't take the fumes anymore and escaped to the less malodorous spare room.

Bad: The book I chose to read in bed was a mystery novel in which the victim dies in a manner that squeamish people like me don't need to contemplate right before falling asleep.

Good: Said book (Ngaio Marsh's Death of a Peer is otherwise quite entertaining. And she was fairly prolific, so there are more. Maybe someone on my friends list will tell me which ones are good.

Comments

[lcohen]

i love all the theater ones but you won't necessarily since they won't speak to personal experiences. the first one she wrote, a man lay dead, is pretty bad, the way the first nero wolfe mystery is pretty bad--the author hadn't found her voice yet. actually, the second one (enter a murderer) is a theater one but he still has the stupid sidekick in that one that needs to be gotten rid of and disappears at a certain point.

artists in crime is where he meets troy. the theater ones, as best i can recall are vintage murder, night at the vulcan (also called opening night), death at the dolphin (also killer dolphin), and her last one, light thickens, which i don't remember very well and should reread. also at least one of her short stories, probably the first thing by marsh i ever read but damned if i recall the title although i should be able to track it down if you care....and then it comes to me "i can find my way out." at least i think that's it.

other ones that i think i like: a clutch of constables, false scent, final curtain (about an actor but not a production which is the distinction i think i'm drawing when i say something deals with the theater). death of a fool i remember being interesting but i don't recall why.....eh, try bunches of them--get them out of the library--it would be quicker to try to remember the duds, probably. have fun!

[porcinea.livejournal.com]

I'd say all of 'em were good. But I haven't read her first two. And lisa, I think you've missed a theatre one or two.

Ones I particularly like (enough to have purchased):

Photo Finish
Artists in Crime
A Wreath for Rivera
False Scent (theatre)
Death and the Dancing Footman
Colour Scheme
Death at the Bar
Overture to Death (theatre)

[lcohen]

my recollection of false scent was that it had theatre people but not a production, but that could be faulty memory. and speaking of faulty memory, i completely forgot about overture to death. although that one was amateur theatricals, right?

[pinkfish.livejournal.com]

Death of a Fool was also released as Off with his head (one is the US release, the other the UK release). This is my favorite mystery book ever, but for personal reasons. The murder for which the book is named takes place as part of a traditional sword dance, in which the St. George character is usually killed at some point in the play, by having him in the middle of the six sword dancers, who all draw their swords at once. The traditional play continues with the six dancers blaming one another for the deed. In this book, however, it turns out that the player really is dead.


Marsh really gets the folkie culture down pat, and even uses some of the folkie values in the plot. I won't tell you how.

I'm not a mystery novel fan, but I loved this one.