This and that

* Sooper sekrit project is done and has been blocked. I'll take a photo and post it once the recipient has received it. Hopefully it will dry today and I'll be able to pack it up and send it tomorrow. I'm happy with how it came out, especially since it's a gift - I'm willing to accept more imperfection in stuff for "just me."

* And speaking of stuff for "just me," it will be nice to get back to some more selfish knitting. I don't know whether to pull the long-stalled grey cardigan back out and try to figure out where i am on it (maybe that's a weekend project) or to work on one of the blankets or the socks/hats I have partially started. But I do want to finish some things just to get them off the needles. But I also want to start new things...new sweaters, new socks. I look at my "stash" and kind of despair at how huge it is, and realize I shouldn't ever buy any more yarn (but the problem is? Buying yarn is FUN and making a pilgrimage to Whitesboro or somewhere for yarn is a thing and a nice reward).

And I will admit, in all the various emotions I was mired in last week and this week, at some points, I very darkly thought: well, maybe I should just throw out the offer, "hey, I'm probably dying*, tell me your color and fiber preferences and I'll box up a bunch of yarn and send it to you" with the idea of eliminating as much of my stash as possible.

(*This was after I consulted Dr. Google after the unexpected thing happened, and of course it told me "You could have....endometrial cancer!" I mean, I know not to consult Dr. Google, but it's very hard not to when it's a health thing you're not comfortable bringing up with your MD colleague or the person you kinda sorta know who is a nurse, but you feel like you want information. I've felt progressively less...non-natural....this week so I'm hoping it means the weird abdominal twinges were just weird twinges and not evidence of something somewhere that shouldn't be there)

But still, I really do need to work down my stash, or consider putting some yarn up for sale or giveaway.

* And "Bats in the Belfry" maybe isn't going to be a "give up on it" book after all. Yes, the body count is higher than I'd like it to be, but a somewhat-sympathetic character (or so I thought) who was attacked and was apparently at death's door (and was also being portrayed as "maybe he was the villain after all") looks like he's going to survive and maybe won't be the bad guy after all? It is frustrating though sometimes with the more police-procedural type mystery because sometimes characters you are cheering for turn out to either be a bad guy or a victim. (With "cozies," it's easier to tell, and generally the rule followed in cozies is that sympathetic characters don't get whacked)

One of the interesting things about the author - ECR Lorac - is that she (yes, like JK Rowling, she used initials/a pseudonym so people wouldn't know and those he-man-woman-haters-club members who wouldn't read a book by a "girl" might pick up her work) was not just an author. She was also known for her embroidery work, being regarded as somewhat of an artist in that area. She also did calligraphy.  Her given name was Edith Caroline Rivett. (The "Lorac" is "Carol, through the looking glass" and she also wrote other novels under the name of "Carol Carnac."

She wrote a LOT of books. Only a few are back in print, most of them through the very nicely done "British Library Crime Classics" series (here in the US sometimes done under the imprint of Poisoned Pen Press, and I admit I'm enough of a book snob to prefer the British Library editions -the books look v. similar but there's a slight difference in size and design).

Lorac was also a member of "The Detection Club," which was apparently kind of an elite group of crime writers. So she was apparently well-respected by her peers in her time.

I read "Fire in the Thatch" first; I think frankly it's a better book than this one (more interesting setting, for one thing, though yes, a pretty sympathetic character winds up being the victim).

One book blogger suggests one reason most of her novels - despite the writing being fairly good for these sorts of quickly-turned-out popular novels - are not in print is that Inspector Macdonald is kind of "boring" - we see very little of his home life or personal life (in this book a character asks him if he's married and he simply says "no," one gets the sense that his job is what he's married to). And yeah - one of the reasons I love Inspector Alleyn is the glimpses of his life with his girlfriend (later wife) and his aristocratic background. And it's the "is he actually a lesser member of the Royals" extended gag in the Albert Campion books that helps make them so fun. And yet....sometimes a character with little backstory is appealing to people. (Fanfiction! I could conjure up a whole lot of goofy fanfiction about Inspector Macdonald (whose first name is, I guess, Robert. A funny thing: one of the book introductions the series editor made a comment about "she cared so little for his personal life that at one place his name is given as Thomas, when it's really Robert" and actually, apparently, he missed a Biblical allusion I got - Macdonald is skeptical about something and he dryly comments to someone else something like "yes, that's why I'm known as Thomas" which seemed to me an allusion to Doubting Thomas.

He's Scots, as you might guess from his surname, and apparently a couple places Londoners make fun of his slight accent. (Lorac, to her credit, does NOT try to render it in print. One thing that grates on me some times is when authors try to write dialog in dialect, with funny spellings to mimic the different pronunciation. It can, very rarely, be done well, but when it's done badly, it's grating and borders on offensive).

I dunno, here's my headcanon: since these stories were mostly 30s and 40s, Macdonald is a WWI veteran. He never married either because "his girl" didn't wait for him while he was at war and he decided it wasn't worth looking for someone else or because he simply was never interested in a marriage.  He lives alone, either in rooms at a club or a small apartment somewhere in London. His main interest outside of work is being able to travel to the countryside and walk, which is why he enjoys cases that get him out of the city. He takes a dim view of frivolity and particularly people who look rich but are really living beyond their means (there are a couple in the current book).  He feels a genuine sympathy for younger people who are innocent but get caught up in unpleasant situations (the way he treats the "ward" of the main victim in this story, especially when she has to identify a body...)

I will say I ordered copies of the three other books by Lorac that have been reprinted recently; with some of these British Crime Library things I read one by an author and go "meh" and don't read any more, but her writing is better and the stories more interesting than most of these.

And yeah, of late, I've been reading mostly detective fiction. I try not to beat myself up for that. I want to read more complex stories and "classics" but these past six months....my concentration has not always been the best and sometimes what feels like super-violence (even the swashbuckling, almost cartoonish kind in "The Three Musketeers" feels like too much) and yes, there is violence and death in detective fiction (almost always; it's rare the story revolves around something like a theft or fraud) BUT the difference is that it's very clearly portrayed that the murder is wrong and is upsetting the natural order of things, and the detective's job is to unravel it so the perpetrator is found out and punished (or removed from society; in some cases the perp does away with themselves, which solves the problem of a trial) and, as a result, restoring order in the world.

And that's what I like. The idea of an orderly world; the concept that the world CAN and SHOULD be orderly. And also, I think, the underlying idea that there are individuals who can restore order when it's upset. And more: that there are rules that are major taboos to violate (murder being the one here, but there are also other lesser taboos like lying or "running around" on your spouse). I am fundamentally a rule-follower and a person who likes order, and I think that's why I like mystery novels.