Entry tags:
- 2007 reading,
- authors:alistair maclean,
- authors:desmond bagley,
- authors:doc smith,
- authors:edmund crispin,
- authors:helen macinnes,
- authors:margery allingham,
- authors:michael innes,
- authors:ngaio marsh,
- authors:philip macdonald,
- authors:rex stout,
- authors:robert heinlein,
- books:lensman,
- books:michael shayne,
- characters:albert campion,
- characters:nero wolfe,
- jewelry,
- music,
- musicals:beauty and the beast,
- paperbackswap,
- reading,
- reviews,
- vintage style
This is a real update.
Since I have to. I guess.
;-)
Pith helmets are fantastic. Mine is the honest-to-goodness African explorer look. It's pretty big (the pith is at least 1/2" thick) but incredibly light. For ventilation, there are eyelets in the sides of the crown, and the knob at the top is actually a vent. Bro. No. 2 discovered that in a wind, the eyelets can whistle. :D I modified the sweatband, which, although accurately made of leather, was adjustable with velcro. So I removed the velcro, shortened both ends of the band, and put in a set of four metal eyelets in each end. Now it's adjustable with tape lacing through the eyelets. (It would look better if I had a nice brown woven tape instead of my bright white cotton, but it works.) The brothers have been taking trips canoeing on the Brazos, and the helmets worked quite well. Even when Bro. No. 3 left the edge of the overturned canoe on his helmet, it was a bit dented and dirty but still quite useable.
The garden train is pretty much finished. It's really delightful! I think Dad's putting together a PowerPoint of pictures that ought to be thoroughly entertaining. Yesterday he taped first his phone, then Bro. No. 2's camera, to the front of the engine to shoot some video. It was really neat to get a train's-eye view!
I know I've mentioned that our church has an orchestra in addition to the choir. It started, oh, at least eight years ago, with a couple violinists and flutists from the congregation. Now it's quite a respectable size, maybe 30 pieces on an average Sunday. (Yesterday we had 6 trumpets - wow, they were loud!) One couple wrote to the music minister and said that since they love to hear the symphony but can't afford to go all the time, they've been coming to the worship service instead! Most of the instrumentalists are volunteers, although they do pay some music students from TCU to round out the orchestration. It's rather a ministry in itself; people who wouldn't normally go to church are in there, both getting paid and hearing the Word preached.
Anyway, my point is that it's a fairly large and capable music ministry. The music minister is really a remarkable man. He does not put pressure on anyone, he doesn't reject people for not being good enough, there is no attendance kept of any kind. Sometimes his lack of perfectionism irritates me. But because of that, the morale is amazing, and the quality is really very good. Still, I was skeptical when I heard that they'd be putting on a musical. Beauty and the Beast, to be exact.
A church doing a musical? Bizarre! I thought. Well, bizarre and kind of cool and probably fun. They're doing it as an outreach, mainly to the neighborhood and city, with three performances at the end of September and no admission price whatsoever. I've never been involved in anything like that. Still, I was tempted at first, but I'm so busy during the school year I didn't want to commit to anything. Until I was asked to be a 'pit' singer. :D Basically, backup singers who will be in the pit with the orchestra, not extras or on stage or anything. They've been casting and working out the dancing and what not since May or June, but I've just started going to rehearsals. It's really pretty fun! There's a whole lot of talent in the church. The principals are all really good. It's a lot of fun to watch.
I just hope we get to be understated and professionally elegant in Beautiful Black, like the orchestra. But I've heard rumors of - get this - t-shirts. Yeah. :S
I finally got around to registering for school. I'm taking business law (as an undergrad - ha!) on Tuesday/Thursday mornings at 8. I get to sleep in for another hour! And Accounting Systems Analysis on Monday/Wednesday evenings at 7. To make up at work I'll be staying late on either Tuesday or Thursday, and going directly from work to (Tuesday) B&B rehearsal, or (Thursday) choir practice. (Speaking of, Christmas cantata practice starts the 30th. The final piece is for an all-male choir - how exciting! I may offer to join in as a tenor, since tenors are usually outnumbered 6 to 1.)
I've been really good and done a fair amount of sewing. I now have a dark brown faux linen skirt (8-gore 1940s pattern), a black wool suiting skirt (8-gore trumpet-flared adapted by me), and a green faux linen skirt (straight front, flared two-piece back, late 1930s). The covered buttons are for the blouse half of that last pattern. I do love the skirt. The front hangs like a pencil skirt, but the back gives it ease so it doesn't pull when I move; and it flares and drapes in the back without adding any width.
I've also cut out another 8-gore skirt from the wool blend dark-plum-with-gray-pinstripe I got from![[profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
laurenmonkeyabout a year ago. I won't be able to wear it for months (thick, rather prickly wool), but it'll look smashing and warm when I do. I'm planning on getting a gray suit jacket off ebay to got with it. There's one in Ebay Stores right now that would do nicely...
I also need to start seriously planning some Civil War wardrobe upgrades. I've needed these skirts for so long that they took precedence, and with the plum wool I'm doing some minor stash-busting. But my big stash is of course CW fabric. And I really need some of those things! The Fort Washita soiree is this December, and before that there's Tyler in October. Possibly Liendo Plantation in November, although the weather's been bad for the last two years. I think this will take a separate post.
The garden train is pretty much finished. It's really delightful! I think Dad's putting together a PowerPoint of pictures that ought to be thoroughly entertaining. Yesterday he taped first his phone, then Bro. No. 2's camera, to the front of the engine to shoot some video. It was really neat to get a train's-eye view!
I know I've mentioned that our church has an orchestra in addition to the choir. It started, oh, at least eight years ago, with a couple violinists and flutists from the congregation. Now it's quite a respectable size, maybe 30 pieces on an average Sunday. (Yesterday we had 6 trumpets - wow, they were loud!) One couple wrote to the music minister and said that since they love to hear the symphony but can't afford to go all the time, they've been coming to the worship service instead! Most of the instrumentalists are volunteers, although they do pay some music students from TCU to round out the orchestration. It's rather a ministry in itself; people who wouldn't normally go to church are in there, both getting paid and hearing the Word preached.
Anyway, my point is that it's a fairly large and capable music ministry. The music minister is really a remarkable man. He does not put pressure on anyone, he doesn't reject people for not being good enough, there is no attendance kept of any kind. Sometimes his lack of perfectionism irritates me. But because of that, the morale is amazing, and the quality is really very good. Still, I was skeptical when I heard that they'd be putting on a musical. Beauty and the Beast, to be exact.
A church doing a musical? Bizarre! I thought. Well, bizarre and kind of cool and probably fun. They're doing it as an outreach, mainly to the neighborhood and city, with three performances at the end of September and no admission price whatsoever. I've never been involved in anything like that. Still, I was tempted at first, but I'm so busy during the school year I didn't want to commit to anything. Until I was asked to be a 'pit' singer. :D Basically, backup singers who will be in the pit with the orchestra, not extras or on stage or anything. They've been casting and working out the dancing and what not since May or June, but I've just started going to rehearsals. It's really pretty fun! There's a whole lot of talent in the church. The principals are all really good. It's a lot of fun to watch.
I just hope we get to be understated and professionally elegant in Beautiful Black, like the orchestra. But I've heard rumors of - get this - t-shirts. Yeah. :S
I finally got around to registering for school. I'm taking business law (as an undergrad - ha!) on Tuesday/Thursday mornings at 8. I get to sleep in for another hour! And Accounting Systems Analysis on Monday/Wednesday evenings at 7. To make up at work I'll be staying late on either Tuesday or Thursday, and going directly from work to (Tuesday) B&B rehearsal, or (Thursday) choir practice. (Speaking of, Christmas cantata practice starts the 30th. The final piece is for an all-male choir - how exciting! I may offer to join in as a tenor, since tenors are usually outnumbered 6 to 1.)
I've been really good and done a fair amount of sewing. I now have a dark brown faux linen skirt (8-gore 1940s pattern), a black wool suiting skirt (8-gore trumpet-flared adapted by me), and a green faux linen skirt (straight front, flared two-piece back, late 1930s). The covered buttons are for the blouse half of that last pattern. I do love the skirt. The front hangs like a pencil skirt, but the back gives it ease so it doesn't pull when I move; and it flares and drapes in the back without adding any width.
I've also cut out another 8-gore skirt from the wool blend dark-plum-with-gray-pinstripe I got from
laurenmonkeyabout a year ago. I won't be able to wear it for months (thick, rather prickly wool), but it'll look smashing and warm when I do. I'm planning on getting a gray suit jacket off ebay to got with it. There's one in Ebay Stores right now that would do nicely...I also need to start seriously planning some Civil War wardrobe upgrades. I've needed these skirts for so long that they took precedence, and with the plum wool I'm doing some minor stash-busting. But my big stash is of course CW fabric. And I really need some of those things! The Fort Washita soiree is this December, and before that there's Tyler in October. Possibly Liendo Plantation in November, although the weather's been bad for the last two years. I think this will take a separate post.
My break-neck reading pace, fueled by PBS, has slowed down. (Running out of credits has something to do with that.) I finished nearly all of the two dozen Nero Wolfe books before having to mail them off. I really didn't enough the later ones (from the 1950s and 1960s) that much. The earliest ones from the 1930s have a lot more zest to them. Archie's more pugnacious and whimsical, the action's more interesting, and the characters more complete. So I ordered two of them that I haven't yet read, Fer-de-Lance and Some Buried Caesar.
I also ordered the last of the Lensman books, Children of the Lens. Talk about an exciting series! I'm also very amused by a comment on Wikipedia (with no reference, unfortunately) that "an early draft of the Star Wars script refers to the light side of the Force as "Arisian,' " the race of good super-beings in the Lensman books.
In my quest to find more mysteries, I've also dabbled in Margery Allingham, Edmund Crispin, and Ngaio Marsh, as well as one each of Michael Innes and Philip Macdonald.
Allingham's the exception in this group, since her books are far more suspense/thriller instead of a typical whodunit: the action just moves along, with no careful presentation of clues for the reader to solve. Her character, Albert Campion, is a very likeable fellow, neither private detective nor leisured gentleman; instead, he is left pleasingly vague, a man with connections high and low, lawful and decidedly non, and with any amount of foreign and domestic knowledge.
Crispin's stories, while there's enough info for the reader to work with, have an exuberant, erratic, and whirlwind tone that I've rarely come across. Gervase Fen is an Oxford don, Professor of English, and cheerfully and wildly eccentric - 'random' is perhaps the best word. The dialogue is excellent and reminiscent of Lord Peter's more literary humorous piffle, and occasionally breaks the fourth wall. If I do want to solve the mystery, the fantastic and imaginative is a good way to go. All three that I've read have been in third person from the point of view of a friend of Fen, and a different friend each time; Fen is never himself telling the story. The first book, The Case of the Gilded Fly, was slow getting started; but by The Moving Toyshop, which I just finished, Crispin's got his stride.
I've read three Marsh books, two from the 1930s and one (alas!) from the 1970s. Her character is CID detective Roderick Alleyn, quite likeable and with a pleasingly whimsical turn of phrase in ordinary conversation. He doesn't talk piffle, filling the air with fun and purposeless words; he says ordinary things, expected things, in humorous ways. For example, his assistant, Inspector Fox, is either "Brer Fox" or "Foxkin" in private conversation. :D And when searching an apartment and Fox finds something, does Alleyn say simple, "What did you find?" No: "How now, brown cow?" "If you mean me," Fox responds with easy imperturability. Unfortunately, while I like Alleyn a great deal, with or without Fox, very little else about the books grabbed me. In two, multiple chapters led up to the murders, introducing a slew of characters I found (a) unpleasant, (b) uninteresting, (c) infuriating, or (d) pleasant but too doormat-like. The development even after the murders was slow and rather dull. The third book was pretty good, on the whole (it had also the most fantastic setting: a pantheistic cult), and at least I wasn't bored by the climax of any of the three. Perhaps her best creations were Alleyn and Fox (oh, and his 'Boswell,' Nigel Bathgate) and she just didn't have quite enough spark for the plots or the rest of the cast.
The Michael Innes book, Death by Water, was okay. It was part of a deal on PBS, so I didn't lose anything by it. It was one of the later of his books (1968), and the "Golden Age" mystery authors of my reading didn't fare too well after 1960, so I'm reserving judgment on Innes. As a mystery, it was well-written and had a good number of turns. I'll be interested in trying some of his earliest work, from the 1930s.
Philip Macdonald - His The Polferry Riddle (1931) I find I am getting mixed up with Allingham's The Gryth Chalice Mystery. So I can't recall details to analyze. But I can say that I enjoyed it, and I'm more hopeful of revisting this author.
Now that I'm in the groove, I might as well keep on writing about what I've been reading. An incidental conversation with a friend about authors whose style changes (like Alistair MacLean) brought up the name of Robert Heinlein. I'd read a few short stories and heard of his style and had no desire to investigate further. However, she provided me some titles, I requested a few, and then I wandered onto (surprise!) Wikipedia. It turns out that this subset is actually known as the Heinlein juveniles. They were part of an agreement to turn out a book for young readers every year. The protagonists in the ones I've read have been/start as boys, approximately 18 years old. (A good age for lots of things to happen.) They do vary quite a bit in intensity and content. Space Cadet, the earliest I've read, has plenty of interesting training details and isn't uninteresting even as a coming-of-age story; still, by the time there's some real action it's pretty late in the story. Simply put, not a whole lot happens. The Star Beast, Tunnel in the Sky, Time for the Stars, Citizen of the Galaxy, and Have Space Suit, Will Travel are all quite good. The last is probably my favorite. Time for the Stars has one of the saddest parts I've ever read; but the very end is absolutely, splendidly squee!-ful that I could've said it out loud. I think I did.
The father of the friend who showed me the Heinlein juveniles also has some MacLean books. We talked about them briefly, and he lent me a Helen MacInnes book at random. Wikipedia calls her specifically an espionage author, not just suspense/thrillers. I read Prelude to Terror, one of her last (1978). I really didn't care for it, but not because of language or hanky-panky. (There was more there than in a MacLean, but it was about as subtle and non-intrusive as you could get.) Perhaps that's why it's an "espionage" novel and not suspense, or thriller, or action; but I did find it rather dull. It was slow getting started; the writing was wordy, with a lot more third-person thinking and puzzling than necessary; there were tense moments, but not a whole lot ever really happened. The suspense was really not there. Specific things MacLean didn't do, at his best, she did: Her narrative went into the bad guys' councils, so the reader knows everything they do. The only suspense there is "Will they succeed?" which, since of course the bad guys won't, isn't much in the way of suspense. She reveals double agents hidden with some well-timed and senseless suspicion on the good guys' part. No surprises, no unexpected betrayal. She doesn't use levels of deception or hide things from the reader; everything's out there. And her characters, while quite varied and interesting in outline, are badly undeveloped; even the girl who becomes so central to the story is just a shadow. It's sad, since I really had hopes of discovering a new fun author. Maybe, just maybe, her first books (WWII) were better.
Speaking of MacLean, a month or two ago I tried three novels by Desmond Bagley, who'd been recommended as being similar. No, I do not like them. I read The Spoilers, The Freedom Trap, and The Tightrope Men. They were interesting enough, but at times seemed to drag (that's a common criticism for me, hmm?), and the action wasn't much. The plotting was exasperatingly nebulous, too, poles apart from MacLean's meticulously logical detailing. My biggest objection, though, is how they slip into worldview territory. Not that that's necessarily a bad thing, even in this genre; but it was unexpected and off-putting. Even my favorite of the three, The Tightrope Men, ended with a seriously depressing, bad taste in my mouth. It wasn't as bad as The Spy Who Came In From The Cold (John Le Carré), but it was that same jaded, cold, postmodern mindset. Not even cynical, for there's no humor in it. Part of why I like the "I Spy" TV show is that it touches on these thoughts, which are understandable; an agent's lot is not a happy one. But that's not its focus. Things need to be kept in perspective. Bagley's books are decent stories and not poorly written, but there's nothing there, not even the exciting bits, that I want to re-read. For me, that is an indictment indeed.
Finally, Michael Shayne. The ones from the 1950s and 1960s are just blah. Shayne is colorful and entertaining enough, but the sex-drenched if un-explicit flavor is too much for the tolerable plots to compensate for. But the Thrilling Detective writeup is enthusiastic enough about the first books to really pique my interest. Wonder of wonders, I did acquire through PBS Dividend on Death (1939), not only one of the first, but THE first. Quite good, thoroughly enjoyable, and full of action. I also chanced This Is It, Michael Shayne from 1950, trying to narrow down my range. Eh, I thought. It had too much dialogue and questioning and far too little action, though granted it all took place within twelve hours. I also thoroughly detested a central character. I was vindicated when that character turned out to be the culprit, but it didn't make me want to re-endure the book. So I'll keep working on the 1940s ones, and forget about anything post-1950.
I also ordered the last of the Lensman books, Children of the Lens. Talk about an exciting series! I'm also very amused by a comment on Wikipedia (with no reference, unfortunately) that "an early draft of the Star Wars script refers to the light side of the Force as "Arisian,' " the race of good super-beings in the Lensman books.
In my quest to find more mysteries, I've also dabbled in Margery Allingham, Edmund Crispin, and Ngaio Marsh, as well as one each of Michael Innes and Philip Macdonald.
Allingham's the exception in this group, since her books are far more suspense/thriller instead of a typical whodunit: the action just moves along, with no careful presentation of clues for the reader to solve. Her character, Albert Campion, is a very likeable fellow, neither private detective nor leisured gentleman; instead, he is left pleasingly vague, a man with connections high and low, lawful and decidedly non, and with any amount of foreign and domestic knowledge.
Crispin's stories, while there's enough info for the reader to work with, have an exuberant, erratic, and whirlwind tone that I've rarely come across. Gervase Fen is an Oxford don, Professor of English, and cheerfully and wildly eccentric - 'random' is perhaps the best word. The dialogue is excellent and reminiscent of Lord Peter's more literary humorous piffle, and occasionally breaks the fourth wall. If I do want to solve the mystery, the fantastic and imaginative is a good way to go. All three that I've read have been in third person from the point of view of a friend of Fen, and a different friend each time; Fen is never himself telling the story. The first book, The Case of the Gilded Fly, was slow getting started; but by The Moving Toyshop, which I just finished, Crispin's got his stride.
I've read three Marsh books, two from the 1930s and one (alas!) from the 1970s. Her character is CID detective Roderick Alleyn, quite likeable and with a pleasingly whimsical turn of phrase in ordinary conversation. He doesn't talk piffle, filling the air with fun and purposeless words; he says ordinary things, expected things, in humorous ways. For example, his assistant, Inspector Fox, is either "Brer Fox" or "Foxkin" in private conversation. :D And when searching an apartment and Fox finds something, does Alleyn say simple, "What did you find?" No: "How now, brown cow?" "If you mean me," Fox responds with easy imperturability. Unfortunately, while I like Alleyn a great deal, with or without Fox, very little else about the books grabbed me. In two, multiple chapters led up to the murders, introducing a slew of characters I found (a) unpleasant, (b) uninteresting, (c) infuriating, or (d) pleasant but too doormat-like. The development even after the murders was slow and rather dull. The third book was pretty good, on the whole (it had also the most fantastic setting: a pantheistic cult), and at least I wasn't bored by the climax of any of the three. Perhaps her best creations were Alleyn and Fox (oh, and his 'Boswell,' Nigel Bathgate) and she just didn't have quite enough spark for the plots or the rest of the cast.
The Michael Innes book, Death by Water, was okay. It was part of a deal on PBS, so I didn't lose anything by it. It was one of the later of his books (1968), and the "Golden Age" mystery authors of my reading didn't fare too well after 1960, so I'm reserving judgment on Innes. As a mystery, it was well-written and had a good number of turns. I'll be interested in trying some of his earliest work, from the 1930s.
Philip Macdonald - His The Polferry Riddle (1931) I find I am getting mixed up with Allingham's The Gryth Chalice Mystery. So I can't recall details to analyze. But I can say that I enjoyed it, and I'm more hopeful of revisting this author.
Now that I'm in the groove, I might as well keep on writing about what I've been reading. An incidental conversation with a friend about authors whose style changes (like Alistair MacLean) brought up the name of Robert Heinlein. I'd read a few short stories and heard of his style and had no desire to investigate further. However, she provided me some titles, I requested a few, and then I wandered onto (surprise!) Wikipedia. It turns out that this subset is actually known as the Heinlein juveniles. They were part of an agreement to turn out a book for young readers every year. The protagonists in the ones I've read have been/start as boys, approximately 18 years old. (A good age for lots of things to happen.) They do vary quite a bit in intensity and content. Space Cadet, the earliest I've read, has plenty of interesting training details and isn't uninteresting even as a coming-of-age story; still, by the time there's some real action it's pretty late in the story. Simply put, not a whole lot happens. The Star Beast, Tunnel in the Sky, Time for the Stars, Citizen of the Galaxy, and Have Space Suit, Will Travel are all quite good. The last is probably my favorite. Time for the Stars has one of the saddest parts I've ever read; but the very end is absolutely, splendidly squee!-ful that I could've said it out loud. I think I did.
The father of the friend who showed me the Heinlein juveniles also has some MacLean books. We talked about them briefly, and he lent me a Helen MacInnes book at random. Wikipedia calls her specifically an espionage author, not just suspense/thrillers. I read Prelude to Terror, one of her last (1978). I really didn't care for it, but not because of language or hanky-panky. (There was more there than in a MacLean, but it was about as subtle and non-intrusive as you could get.) Perhaps that's why it's an "espionage" novel and not suspense, or thriller, or action; but I did find it rather dull. It was slow getting started; the writing was wordy, with a lot more third-person thinking and puzzling than necessary; there were tense moments, but not a whole lot ever really happened. The suspense was really not there. Specific things MacLean didn't do, at his best, she did: Her narrative went into the bad guys' councils, so the reader knows everything they do. The only suspense there is "Will they succeed?" which, since of course the bad guys won't, isn't much in the way of suspense. She reveals double agents hidden with some well-timed and senseless suspicion on the good guys' part. No surprises, no unexpected betrayal. She doesn't use levels of deception or hide things from the reader; everything's out there. And her characters, while quite varied and interesting in outline, are badly undeveloped; even the girl who becomes so central to the story is just a shadow. It's sad, since I really had hopes of discovering a new fun author. Maybe, just maybe, her first books (WWII) were better.
Speaking of MacLean, a month or two ago I tried three novels by Desmond Bagley, who'd been recommended as being similar. No, I do not like them. I read The Spoilers, The Freedom Trap, and The Tightrope Men. They were interesting enough, but at times seemed to drag (that's a common criticism for me, hmm?), and the action wasn't much. The plotting was exasperatingly nebulous, too, poles apart from MacLean's meticulously logical detailing. My biggest objection, though, is how they slip into worldview territory. Not that that's necessarily a bad thing, even in this genre; but it was unexpected and off-putting. Even my favorite of the three, The Tightrope Men, ended with a seriously depressing, bad taste in my mouth. It wasn't as bad as The Spy Who Came In From The Cold (John Le Carré), but it was that same jaded, cold, postmodern mindset. Not even cynical, for there's no humor in it. Part of why I like the "I Spy" TV show is that it touches on these thoughts, which are understandable; an agent's lot is not a happy one. But that's not its focus. Things need to be kept in perspective. Bagley's books are decent stories and not poorly written, but there's nothing there, not even the exciting bits, that I want to re-read. For me, that is an indictment indeed.
Finally, Michael Shayne. The ones from the 1950s and 1960s are just blah. Shayne is colorful and entertaining enough, but the sex-drenched if un-explicit flavor is too much for the tolerable plots to compensate for. But the Thrilling Detective writeup is enthusiastic enough about the first books to really pique my interest. Wonder of wonders, I did acquire through PBS Dividend on Death (1939), not only one of the first, but THE first. Quite good, thoroughly enjoyable, and full of action. I also chanced This Is It, Michael Shayne from 1950, trying to narrow down my range. Eh, I thought. It had too much dialogue and questioning and far too little action, though granted it all took place within twelve hours. I also thoroughly detested a central character. I was vindicated when that character turned out to be the culprit, but it didn't make me want to re-endure the book. So I'll keep working on the 1940s ones, and forget about anything post-1950.
roses_for_ann, I have you to thank for this dilemma:
Blue. And silver. And deco. My winter coat is navy. And it's on (sort of) sale for this week, plus free shipping. But it's still not a steal, and I certainly don't need it. Agh! What to do?