sovay | Ain't got no rainbow, ain't got no cellar door

I don't normally booklog, but I have been spending a lot of time in baths with books lately. It looks like mysteries are a popular choice.

I don't think I read anything in the ER last Friday. I wasn't carrying a book.

Last weekend in the bath, I read Mary Stewart's Wildfire at Midnight (1956), Dick Francis' Slay Ride (1973), and re-read Margery Allingham's The Mind Readers (1965) and My Friend Mr Campion and Other Mysteries (2011).

This Friday in the ER, I read Anya von Bremzen's Mastering the Art of Soviet Cooking: A Memoir of Food and Longing (2013), Boris and Arkady Strugatsky's The Dead Mountaineer's Inn (1970, trans. Josh Billings 2015), and re-read Boyd McDonald's Cruising the Movies: A Sexual Guide to Oldies on TV (1985).

This weekend in the bath, I have been re-reading Elizabeth Peters for the first time since high school and college: Crocodile on the Sandbank (1971), The Curse of the Pharaohs (1981), The Deeds of the Disturber (1988), and The Last Camel Died at Noon (1991). Most of my mother's Amelia Peabody mysteries are in boxes at the moment; I'll have to get the rest out of a library. I remember being fond of The Hippopotamus Pool (1996). My favorite character remains Kevin O'Connell, the semi-reputable reporter. I view Amelia as a much more unreliable narrator these days.

P.S.

strange_selkie, it looks to me like burrito-wrapped Achilles is grieving the death of Patroklos; Thetis has just shown up with his new armor. Any second now he will un-burrito and go kill a lot of Trojans, not yet realizing that killing people does not console the loss of a loved one. [edit] My Brandeis advisor Leonard Muellner has an article on vase paintings of grieving Achilles! Take note of the concept of "multiform representation." We want a single canonical Iliad, the one true text from which all other versions depart; the epic tradition is a polyphony. We got the one we got, but it was just one.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

I got my first Amelias in the Orlando airport ... in March 1973, I have been hooked ever since, and then, finding out she also wrote as Barbara Michaels!

I have been hooked ever since, and then, finding out she also wrote as Barbara Michaels!

I realized only on re-reading The Last Camel Died at Noon that it must have been the reason I recognized the name "Blacktower" in

bookelfe's review of Barbara Michaels' The Master of Blacktower (1966). Since Camel is a gorgeous H. Rider Haggard parody-pastiche, evidently that family has all the Victorian literature happen to it.

(The Last Camel Died at Noon was actually the first Amelia Peabody I read, which set me up for something of a disappointment when none of the other books in the series turned out to be anything like it. I had the same thing happen with Reginald Hill and Pictures of Perfection (1994), which is the Austen pastiche of the otherwise rather gritty Dalziel and Pascoe series. I've read most of the rest by now, but Pictures is still my favorite and I still haven't read enough Austen to get most of the references!)

Edited 2016-02-22 08:32 (UTC)

I still have my original pile of Gothick Romances from the 60's and Master of Blacktower was one of my rereads.

My mother used to sing the song in your title, although if was a rain barrel that was lacking. I hope your dolly does not have the flu.

My mother used to sing the song in your title, although if was a rain barrel that was lacking.

This is definitely a rainbow! Which is more poetic, but perhaps less practical in the day-to-day.

I hope your dolly does not have the flu.

Thank you. Doppel-Abbie, the stuffed animal cat who shares my pillows, is in very good health.

I have electronic copies of all the Amelia Peabodys, which I know you are slightly less fond of on principle, but it can be hard to find all of them. Let me know if you need them.

Why's Amelia unreliable at this juncture of your authorial life? The colonialism inherent?

Thank you for the scholarly stuff on Epic Burrito. It is always interesting to ponder the oral epics that got away.

ETA: I have reached the point of personal moral decay/focused scholarly interest of my own at which I see the words Homeric Contexts and wonder why no one caught that typo; there are so many letters missing!

Edited 2016-02-22 14:03 (UTC)

I have electronic copies of all the Amelia Peabodys, which I know you are slightly less fond of on principle, but it can be hard to find all of them. Let me know if you need them.

Thank you. Is it possible to read them without a proprietary e-reader? I've just got Calibre, which enables me to proofread the e-book versions of issues of Mythic Delirium in which my work appears.

Why's Amelia unreliable at this juncture of your authorial life? The colonialism inherent?

That's certainly present, but her people skills are hilarious! I think I took her self-assessment at face value the first time I read the series. This time around I'm noticing how often her angle on a murder is correct, but her social interactions along the way proceed from a starting point of total misapprehension.

Thank you for the scholarly stuff on Epic Burrito. It is always interesting to ponder the oral epics that got away.

You're very welcome. I was delighted to find the article by Lenny.

ETA: I have reached the point of personal moral decay/focused scholarly interest of my own at which I see the words Homeric Contexts and wonder why no one caught that typo; there are so many letters missing!

I love you.

I may have mentioned this before, but I *strongly* recommend Eric Shanower's in-process graphic novel Age of Bronze (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_Bronze_%28comics%29).

Eric Shanower's in-process graphic novel Age of Bronze.

You have mentioned it. It is difficult for me to commit to open-ended, long-running series right now, but you have made it sound interesting.

Well, it's not the most suspenseful story in the world, at this point, at least in the sense of plot. I would hope that libraries would stock the collections.

I notice that you can't see any of Achilles' skin except one foot and the heel of the other. So whichever heel it's supposed to be, IT'S VULNERABLE. Uh-oh.

So whichever heel it's supposed to be, IT'S VULNERABLE. Uh-oh.

Small children quite correctly apply this principle to bedclothes coverage vs. night terrors.

Burrito Achilles is so funny--maybe he's just really, really cold.

Mastering the Art of Soviet Cooking seems like a book a character would be reading in a movie. In a movie, the character would be reading it in the bath. ... I 'm trying to decide what genre of movie it would be.

Burrito Achilles is so funny--maybe he's just really, really cold.

I've looked like that on trains when I'm trying to sleep.

In a movie, the character would be reading it in the bath. ... I 'm trying to decide what genre of movie it would be.

Let me know when you figure it out! It is a great memoir, both of the author's life and of food in the Soviet Union.

Ain't got no rainbow, ain't got no cellar door

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

Iliadic polyphony

Re: Iliadic polyphony

Re: Iliadic polyphony

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject