I did re-read a number of the short (novella or short story length) mysteries in "Silent Nights" (A British Library mysteries collection). The well-known ones are in there (The Blue Carbuncle, which if I remember correctly, the only death is of a goose), and there's a Wimsey and a Campion story (not the somewhat-depressing one about how the time of a murder is established after the twist of a lonely old woman leaving 20-year-old Christmas cards on her doorstep to pretend/imagine friends and family - most of whom were now dead - had sent them to her this year).
And a creepy story called "Waxworks" and one or two others that were in a style I couldn't quite get through. And Edgar Wallace's "Stuffing," which has a tiny smack of Gift of the Magi to it, except really the only link is a kind but impoverished couple....and a sort of just desert.
The longest book I read was non-fiction. It was Patrick Nunn's "The Edge of Memory," which addresses the idea that possibly, just possibly, pre-literate societies had a very long memory of events, which were codified in oral histories or legends, and he explores that idea that possibly some of those stories go back 10,000 years or more....He posits that a lot of the stories of "vanished lands" or "islands sunk under the ocean" (like Lyonnesse or Ys) were actually very long-ago memories of that actually HAPPENING at the end of the last ice age, when sea levels rose again - in some cases, may have risen fairly rapidly.
Most of his discussion comes from the indigenous people of Australia (I do not know if "Aborigine" is still an acceptable term). That seems to be where he did most of his field research, talking to people to learn about what stories they own (in their cultures, different groups - essentially like tribes - are described as owning their legends, and the idea is that other groups are not to claim them). And I realized something: some of the impossible-seeming sea crossings, when you look at the distances now? Would be more reasonable sorts of island-hopping 12 or 14 or 18 thousand years ago, when sea levels were FAR lower - and I also realize possibly some islands that are close to landmasses and existed at those times, or earlier during other sea-level lows, that was how creatures got there. (I always wondered how the ancestors of the Galapagos tortoises got to their islands; I do not think of large land tortoises as being very capable swimmers, but if sea levels were far lower....)
He does mention Doggerland, which is something that's interested me from when I first read about it, and in passing Lyonnesse and Ys. (As I said, most of the focus was Australia and south Asia).
I don't know. The concept of "ancient memories encoded in legends" has been an idea that's intrigued me since the early 1990s when a professor of mine alluded to (what we moderns call) Glacial Lake Agassiz and how Native people in the region where it had existed had some legends about times when there was an enormous, freshwater, inland sea, and that some archaeologists posited that it was memories of distant ancestors of those people actually SEEING it and passing down their descriptions, and because they were so long ago, most folks who know the stories now think they are simply legends.
And yeah, I always kind of squinted at the idea a bit because the prof who talked about it was known to be a tiny bit of a crank in other ways, and so I was skeptical. But oh, it's an interesting idea.
And that extends to other things - could King Arthur actually have been a real guy, just so many hundreds of years before the usual Sword in the Stone portrayals? Or Robin Hood? And what real facts about the real guy are in there, buried under lots of accretions and syncretions?
I mean, I'm sure even modern history is distorted, there are even lots of things about World War I that have been changed and altered and misremembered and now have the quality of legend (for example: the Christmas Truce may actually have been two separate events where different things happened, and it's possible there never was a soccer/football game)
At the very end, Nunn does allude to some other things - like, how far back do fairy tales actually go? (Like Little Red Riding Hood) and the answer seems to be "much farther than you might think" (and then we're back at Proto-Indo-European and the roots of nature and things like "we see similar labyrinth designs in many parts of the world, could this actually be a very ancient thing that some early, early group of people came up with?)
Anyway. I don't know enough anthropology to know how much seems plausible and how much is "woo" but it's certainly interesting to think about.
I have another book by Nunn on a similar topic to read some other time.
On the way home on the train I started a very different book: Arthur Conan Doyle's "Uncle Bernac." This is a story set RIGHT after Napoleon had himself declared Emperor, during the time when some of the dedicated French Republic types were dismayed at what they saw as "wait this guy is just a new king now" and there were others who were thirsting for even MORE purges and terrors.
And in the middle of this, a young man - last name de Laval, so an aristocrat - whose family fled to England at the start of the whole thing - sneaks back into France because apparently he received a letter from his mother's brother who had taken over the family (the de Laval's) property, and even though he hates his Uncle Bernac for usurping and apparently being allied with Napoleon, he is intrigued....
I'm not very far in and already there have been two plot twists (one smaller one, one big one) and it's an exciting story and is interesting (And I admit I know far less about Napoleonic France than I thought I did). I'm not sure how Conan Doyle is regarded in the pantheon of authors - I know his Sherlock Holmes stories are well loved (and I enjoy them a lot) but I get the feeling a lot of people condemn him as a "genre" author and therefore less than a "literary" author - but he certainly writes in a way that makes you want to keep reading to find out what happens next.
One thing I like about this short novel is the lack of introductory exposition - you are pretty much dropped straight in the story and have to figure out along with de Laval what's going on here. I mean, I presume he lived and the ending is somewhat happy because he does remark early on something like "now that thirty years have passed and I and my wife...." and then it goes to Flashback Mode where he's heading for France as a young man.
It's a public domain book; I bought a cheap paperback copy done by one of those "scan and print" outfits (and there ARE typos in the book, which are slightly annoying, but sometimes you have to expect that). I think it's probably available free online through Gutenberg or somewhere; it's an interesting novel and might be worth reading if you like adventure.
The copy I have has "ANNOTATED" noted on the cover but there are no annotations anywhere, which is a tiny disappointment as I said I don't know much about the factions in Napoleonic France and having an explainer would have helped.
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