Thursday May 31st, 2018
Books in May
- Two Kinds of Truth by Michael Connelly
I'd been looking forward to reading the next "installment", but as I started the book I began to think my increasingly poor memory had let me down about which books I have actually read. However all was well - memory still poor but I'd just read the first few chapters as a taster in the previous book (it seems so long ago...).
Anyway - still on top form Michael, and all the characters, old and new, as fresh as ever. The usual excellent plot with a new and an old case where the "two unrelated cases wind around each other like strands of barbed wire". - Love Like Blood by Mark Billingham
Pleased to have a Tom Thorne storyline with Nicola Tanner in a central role. It is interesting that Connelly and Billingham are moving on to key female detective protagonists. Both have had books centred on female characters previously so not really new I guess but they seem to be .. grooming them... if that's not too creepy.
I read a review saying that Tanner was "unappealing" - and I would not disagree entirely; however, MB has clearly tried to make her a very different character from ones we have seen before - maybe one he does not completely understand himself yet. Helen, for example, was a very appealing character with whom no doubt we could all empathise - but there is only so far you can go with such a character, and now she is (firmly I hope) embedded in Thorne's personal life. So I am looking forward to Tanner being fleshed out even more in further books; maybe, meanwhile, it's right for her to be mingled with characters we already know and love. She held her own well enough in Die of Shame but it was her interactions with other people that I felt made her more 3 dimensional (ie other characters found her less than appealing too!). - Dandy Gilver and A Most Misleading Habit by Catriona McPherson
So here the third book this month from one of my favourite authors, although to be fair it's Dandy that's my favourite in truth, rather than the author. I say "to be fair" because what I mean is I have not read any other of CM's novels - and feel I should, as I find her writing wonderful - the way she evokes the era and language in these books is quite brilliant.
In this one we see Dandy condemned to spend some time in a convent with its obviously limited facilities in the way of luxury; Alec appears somewhat luckier in all but home cooking, in which skill the convent excels.
The fundamental causes of the unravelled mystery turn out to be, as usual, wonderfully of their time. - Calling Out for You and Black Seconds by Karin Fossum
[read by David Rintoul]
I finally felt brave enough to go back to Karin Fossum, and was very pleased to find audio versions read by David Rintoul who is just perfect for these books. Interestingly, although these are police procedurals in essence, with Inspector Sejer in the driving seat, they are very much more than that. To me they have a slight Ruth Rendell feel to them as more psychological thrillers. These two alone serve as good examples as to how she manages to create plots and writing structures totally different from one another. The only thing they all have in common is how poignantly sad they are - reminding myself yet again that all murder stories are in fact going to be tragic.
I would also say that I am bound to agree with other reviewers that Calling Out For You is really very chilling as you are left at the end thinking that the horrible crime may be unsolved.
- Fallout by Sara Paretsky [read by Liza Ross] and Hard
Time [read by Jean Smart]
Fallout is the latest VI novel (18th), and is excellent. I loved the plot and the descriptions of the detection methods. I also loved that it was wrapped up with chemistry/physics/biology (which we may call "science" - but it was specifically those - o and government conspiracies to boot). I do agree with one reviewers comments that VI's niece is a total pain and I find it hard to believe that the VI character would put up with her for one second without being driven to commit murder herself. However, I can see that the author needs all that as a plot device - VI herself is pretty sensible and effective as a PI so everything would run far too smoothly without such irritations.
Hard Time is a fairly old novel (9th) and I was less keen on it. One reason was that the audio book I had downloaded was somehow scrambled and not only played some chapters out of sequence but also had some chapters entirely missing. [I was driven to read several chapters of the actual book to catch up with what was going on]. Very frustrating - but still not my favourite story - whereas Fallout does rank among my favourites.
- The Dead Sea Cipher by Elizabeth Peters [read by
Grace Conlin]
And
so last - and probably actually least.
I always spell it cypher but although it seems this is a "chiefly British" spelling, it seems in "modern usage" it should be cipher - and having got that out of the way - on to the book:
This has shades of Dan Brown, and James Bond, but mostly Mills and Boon (not intended as an insult). The heroine has an improbable occupation (opera singer) and is embroiled in a mystery while on a tour of the Middle East; she is pursued by two men - one is an irritation and the other handsome and charming. Guess which one is the baddie. The End.
Amusing enough to listen to as an accompaniment to crafting.
Thursday May 24th, 2018
Red
This is a marvellous play and not what I was expecting.
To be clear, I was expecting a marvellous play - I just thought it might be a bit beyond my intellectual grasp to understand in what way it was marvellous - and actually that probably still is the case. What I did understand, was that it was splendidly entertaining and I was gripped throughout.
The set was gloriously like an artist's studio, and the actors (Alfred Molina, and Alfred Enoch) were terrific. In an amazing physical feat, they managed to paint a huge canvas on stage with a base coat (in red of course), most realistically at break neck speed - which is in reality how it has to be done to achieve the required evenness of coat. From the little I know of such things, this kind of canvas preparation is quite a challenge without the additional stress of doing it in front of an audience! But party tricks aside, the structure of the story, and Rothko's verbal sparring with his assistant were all fascinating. I loved it.
As usual, Michael Billington gives a wonderful and properly intellectual review which better explains why and how the production and actors made for such entertainment.
Sunday May 20th, 2018
Roman London
Today we went to the Museum of London for a short guided tour of the Roman walls. We got ourselves in the mood by wandering around the excellent free exhibits while waiting to join our party. As was explained to us - the view above is not really very Roman but much later. The actual Roman parts are only the first few feet of the visible walls.
However this gloomy interior below was what we had really come to see: a locked area of the car park with the remains of a gate and probable guard post area.
The angles for my photos were limited owing to the low lighting conditions. [However, the cool interior was a welcome relief from the remarkably hot weather we are experiencing here at the moment].
Saturday May 19th, 2018
Monet and Architecture
I got "club" tickets for this on spec with the idea of taking my sister, since both "Monet" and "Architecture" are definitely her thing. But of course in the end she could not make the date and Rob took the place.
The exhibition was structured around Monet's (long) life with paintings collected together chronologically according to where he lived or visited at the time - and some showing several of identical subjects painted (in rotation apparently) at different times of day as the sun moved round - none of your Van Gogh: 3 paintings in an afternoon stuff. I found all that as interesting as the paintings themselves since I realise I did not previously know much about him. However - always wonderful to see Monet's work - a privilege.
Friday May 11th, 2018
The Future Starts … at the V&A
We went to the preview evening for The Future Starts Here exhibition - and unfortunately some of the exhibits had not actually "started here" - the house robot had absolutely HAD IT UP TO HERE with sorting the laundry (haven't we all) - but that probably did not affect the overall experience so much. It surprised me that it was really quite "political" if that's the right word - with items questioning if democracy was really working for this century, pointing out the truly appalling consequences of rising worldwide temperatures (for whatever reason), and catering for the increasing number of single people living and dining out alone ("We are now all connected, but are we still lonely?"). I tried out (sat in) a prototype driverless car/taxi, and was particularly taken with a tree project designed to help keep public spaces and trees healthy by having the public report in by email if they see issues with the trees; what happened was a wholly unintended performance art project, with people writing to specific trees (and getting replies), or penning odes to their favourite trees.
Really not sure what I took away from it all though - it seemed quite glum. It was intended to show "now", to avoid having to look back in future years on inevitably foolish predictions, but also to show that any particular future is not inevitable - we can make choices. Some found it "refreshingly hopeful" but it seemed to make it clearer to me that we aren't getting to grips with making any helpful choices. Now I feel much as I did after watching the documentary series All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace which showed (among many other things) that our attempts to influence our environment* have all too often ended in making things worse.
* when I was at school we were told about an idea put into place to stop the high rate of water evaporation from reservoirs in hot climates by putting a layer of another less volatile liquid on top. This meant that the water underneath the top layer heated up - not a problem in itself - until in the end it reached a temperature such that the rate of evaporation was equal to what they had started with. I can't find any reference to this pre-1970s project on the web (I've probably misremembered it) - but there are many references to more recent scientific research still trying to solve the same problem in Australia and California today.
Thursday May 3rd, 2018
Union Chapel
Another outing with Rob to the Union Chapel to see a bright young thing (Freya Ridings). In fact I was not taken with the music although she is clearly very talented and has a beautiful voice (and was very struck by having packed out the chapel).
I was very taken with the free roses though, and struggled home on the train with a bunch - they seem to have stood up to the trauma very well indeed.
