Monday night reading

I did go through the bookcases more this weekend, found a few more books to donate. But also found a few I definitely want to keep - my big book of Sherlock Holmes short stories and the Folio Society edition of Father Brown stories.

 It's funny, I'm generally not a big re-reader, but some of the mystery stories - especially the short stories - I like to keep on hand. They're a form of comfort reading I guess. I enjoy the atmosphere of Holmes' London, and the puzzle-nature of those stories in particular.

Honestly, I think I'd find a real-world Holmes annoying; I'd probably like Dr Watson better. 

 But Fr Brown - I admit I now conflate the Chesterton character with the BBC-mysteries version played by Mark Williams. And yes, the BBC Fr Brown is much less - dare I say orthodox? - than the Chesterton version, and is forgiving of some things I'm not sure a 1950s era British priest would so lightly forgive.

I admit it had been some years since I read the *stories* about Fr Brown, and I was reminded (happily) of how good they are, and how much I enjoy Chesterton's writing. And his Fr. Brown is more tolerant than I remembered him as, and better-humored.

 

Yes, I put "Far from the Madding Crowd" aside for a bit, I need something a bit simpler (some of the more complex sentences, for a tired 21st century reader, take a little more parsing than I might want) and I KNOW sad things are going to happen in that novel, and.....well, it's been a sad couple of weeks (most recently: one of the long-term, beloved AAUW members passed away this weekend) and I need stories that end happily, where the good people are forgiven and made whole and the only people who suffer are the wicked. (It pains me that in real life, more often it's the people who are basically decent that suffer, and seemingly the wicked prosper). And there is a humor in the Fr Brown stories, as he quietly, bemusedly, observes human nature.  

***

My mom did get her landline back. She had been concerned something might be wrong with the wiring *in her house* (none of the neighbors she asked had a landline, so they didn't know) but apparently it was "upstream" in the Frontier wiring because midday today she noticed the screen on her phone was operating again, and then she tried calling out, and found she could.

I'm glad; I spent a while Sunday night trying to talk her through getting the ringer louder on her cell phone and the model she has is so far different (it's a flip phone), I couldn't figure out how. And it's old enough (pre-pandemic!) that there's no manual online any more.

But I'm ready for the bad little surprises to stop.