Not reading and re-reading

I "read" two books that I gave up on, one Simon Brett (The Murder in the Museum) which was as usual with a Brett mediocre and I have no tolerance for that type of nonsense at the moment so remind me not to bother ever again and am now re-reading Josephine Tey, The Singing Sands. I have a second hand copy with a ludicrous cover, viz.

























Love the font, but the picture? Ha. I'll have to get back to a proper post on this, because I checked my archives and I haven't blogged about this one at all. It's worth a post.

Speaking of covers, one of the books I didn't read has a retro-cheesy cover deserving a photo, so I'm going to do a post for it later which is why I didn't bother writing more now.

 Reading Josephine Tey after Simon Brett is like ... like ... a drink of water when you're thirsty, if you'll excuse a worn metaphor. Such a difference in depth of writing. Brett must assume all his readers are pretty much illiterate. (I'm feeling snarky.)

Simon Brett, a duet

Here is an entry from 8 of March 2009, people. Why didn't I post it then? Who knows.

I got these two Bretts, so I thought I'd do them in one post. First I started reading The Witness at the Wedding, and after a while started feeling like I'd read it before. Sigh. Not only had I read it, but it's the only Brett I'd actually WRITTEN about. Double-sigh. All the ones I hadn't blogged about I was aware of having read, but this one felt unfamiliar. Typical.

The other one was Death Under the Dryer. Carole Seddon goes to have her hair cut and a dead girl is found in the back room at the hair dresser's. I don't have much to say about it - it's a Brett, so it's weak on characterization and the plot is shaky. But it has a certain charm, of that type that makes The Midsomer Murders so popular outside the UK. I think these books are best read when you are recuperating from an illness. Not demanding at all.

Dickson Carr and Simon Brett

So I felt I had to read John Dickson Carr's The Hollow Man, since it's such a classic, and since it was repeatedly referred to in Lovesey's novel Bloodhounds.

See how I've learnt to make links? Go me! Go my husband who explained the process. Of course, after he'd done that I managed to locate the Blogger help section. *eye-roll* Any day now, my five readers, I shall be editing my link list there on the right. Keep checking in to see the updates... :-P

But I digress. Anyway, amazingly enough one cannot find The Hollow Man in English at the library, but they did have it in Swedish. Den ihålige mannen it's called, aptly enough. So I borrowed it.

Book itself - not bad. Not bad. But I think I'll still have to find it in English some time. The translation was good, but distracting. I can't remember, from my last Gideon Fell mystery, vulgarities such as skitprat and håll käften (but in English). The tone doesn't feel right - but then I don't mix in upper-classy circles so what do I know. Maybe it is right.

The book itself is a locked room mystery, but I can't be arsed to summarize it at the moment. Bad me. I'm just going to write snow, three graves and Hungary, and that should be enough to trigger my memory if I ever forget the plotline.

After that I read a Simon Brett novel called The Witness at the Wedding. It's one in the Fethering series, of which I'm rather fond - not that it's Nobel Prize material or anything. Brett does quite a fine job of writing credibly about his middle-aged women, but he doesn't seem to quite trust that he does, but instead keeps over-explaining especially Carole's repressed motivations. Also, there is one major boo-boo. Carole's future daughter-in-law goes to see her neighbour Jude for some alternative physiotherapy, and tells Jude that she doesn't want Carole to know she's been there, because she'd worry. Later in the novel, Jude feels a little guilty about not telling Carole, but her promise to Gaby comes first. Then, suddenly, Carole knows. No relating of the telling. It's weird. And it's obviously the editor's fault, eh?

Right now I'm reading a collection of short stories, and the most exciting thing in it so far has been an amazing tart recipe. I mean, the stories are good and all, it's not that, but the tart sounds glorious. Wow. I'm going to have to post the whole recipe here tomorrow and make Frida look at it.