PGMCC reading in 2017 - Volume 1

Read in 2017

Title Author Status Start/end date
Clouds of Witness by Dorothy L. Sayers Read 22/12/2016-04/01/2017 308pages
The Moving Toyshop by Edmund Crispin Read 04/01/2017-11/01/2017 204pages
Witches of Lychford by Paul Cornell Read 11/01/2017-13/01/2017 144pages
The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet by Becky Chambers Read 12/01/2017-21/01/2017 404pages
The Lost Child of Lychford by Paul Cornell Read 19/01/2017-23/01/2017 137pages
Ready Player Oneby Ernest Cline Read 24/01/2017-04/02/2017 374pages
Bleak House by Charles Dickens Reading 04/02/2017-18/03/2017 740pages
Verdict of Twelve by Raymond Postgate Reading 18/03/2017

Currently reading:

I am starting my 2017 reading with Clouds of Witness by Dorothy L. Sayers. This is a carry over read from 2016.

I am starting my 2017 reading with Clouds of Witness by Dorothy L. Sayers. This is a carry over read from 2016.

Let me be the first to desecrate grace your new thread with a post.

Happy reading in 2017, Peter!

>4 clamairy: Clare, I consider my thread well graced with your presence, and I hope your 2017 reading gives you much pleasure and relaxation.

"Once more into the breach dear friends!"

>5 pgmcc: Certainly, so then let me be the one to track mud in! ;)

>6 stellarexplorer: The more mud the better. Where there's muck, there's money!

2017 - The year of the duplicates!

>8 suitable1: To be sure! To be sure!

Great book to start out the year! Hope 2017 is a great year for you.

>10 majkia: Thank you! I hope 2017 brings you everything you hope for.

Hi Peter! I've tracked you down. You can run, but you can't hide!

I wish you all the best for 2017. You've certainly gotten off to a great start with one of my absolute favorite authors, Dorothy L. Sayers. Yay Peter Wimsey!

>12 karenmarie: Hi Karen! Happy New Year!
Glad to have you along for the read.

Wishing you a happy New Year and many hours of interesting and enjoyable reading.

Happy New Year! I look forward to following you on this thread, particularly noting that, based on post #1, you're going to be monitoring the start/begin dates for each title. (Except that you didn't specify the start date for Clouds of Witness, just that your currently reading it. Did you start on the first day of 2017? But it's interesting to me to see how long it takes people to get through certain types of books.

*Jill tosses a fistful of confetti at Peter and takes a sip of champagne*

*spits confetti out of mouth* >15 jillmwo: you really need to practice your aim.

I will definitely be rereading some of my Sayers books, if not all, and so look forward to seeing what a newbie thinks of them.

Happy New Year!

Wimseyphiles may be interested to know that BBC4-extra is broadcasting a dramatisation of Busman's Honeymoon, available to download / listen over the next 4 weeks or so. The first episode is at http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b007jwgl .

Happy New Year! I hope that 2017 is a great year for you in reading and in life.

I need to reread The nine tailors, as I haven't read it since starting to learn bell-ringing.

Happy new year! You are already tempting me to dive into my pile of Dorothy L Sayers books :)

Hmm, a Harriet Vane re-read might be fun for this year...

Oh no! I may have to re-read my Sayers fiction this year - just thinking about all those lovely books makes me happy. Last year 20% of my reads were rereads, so it's not out of the realm of possibility.

Fortunately, re-reading Sayers can be done on a regular basis without any loss of appreciation.

This Christmas and New Year break has been a poor period for reading and I have neglected LT due to reduced opportunity consequent on having a very social (and that does not mean drunken) week. (Honest, it doesn't mean drunken.)

Thank you to everyone for the good wishes for 2017. I am looking forward to what will hopefully be a fantastic year. I hope everyone has a brilliant 2017 and that it is better than 2016 in every way. Even if you have had a fantastic 2016 I hope 2017 is outstanding. I know that I am in a much better place at the start of 2017 than I was at the start of 2016. The past year was definitely an improvement on 2015 with regards to my personal and work life.

I am still reading Clouds of Witness. While I started this book on 22nd December I have made slow progress. This is due to being dragged into family activities rather than any lack of enthusiasm for the book. I am enjoying the book greatly.Sayers was a new author to me in 2016 and I read three of her Lord Peter Wimsey novels and started the fourth in that year. I do enjoy her books and the characters. I cannot make up my mind if she is holding up the British aristocracy to ridicule or if she espoused the life of the elite.

>14 Peace2: Right back at you with the New Year wishes. I'll be lurking on your thread.

>15 jillmwo: My first post listed "status/end date" and I think you may have misread "status" as "start". Having read your post I have amended the heading and will note start dates from here on. You will find the time it takes me to read books varies greatly due to a number of factors. These can include missing my reading opportunity to read on the bus because a neighbour gives me a lift; my wife coming into town to shop and giving me a lift home (something that happened several times in the run up to Christmas with the same impact on my reading opportunity; people in the house requiring social interaction (the death of any reading plan); or lack of interest in the book.

>16 MrsLee: As a "newbie" to Sayers, I am smitten. I was familiar with the Lord Peter Wimsey character having seen the TV productions. I had not realised how clever Sayers was. She includes so much additional material in her novels. They are so much more than just a "who dunnit".

>17 hfglen: Happy New Year, Hugh. I am looking forward to more of your photographs, both new and nostalgic.

>18 Sakerfalcon: Happy New Year, Claire. Remember when you are re-reading The Nine Tailors that it is a Gothic tale. You may be interesting in reading the ghost stories of M.R. James if you have not already done so. It was the references to items in James's stories that made me realise Sayers was writing a Gothic novel.

>19 imyril: Jump right in. The water's lovely. Happy New Year!

>20 Marissa_Doyle: I haven't reached the Harriet Vane stories yet. I understand the Harriet Vane character is regarded as Sayers writing herself into the novel. This is one of the things that confuses me about her representation of the British aristocracy; was she ridiculing these people or wishing to join them? Hopefully I will understand her intentions more as I read more of the novels and delve into Sayers' own history.

>21 karenmarie: Karen, I hope you do delve into the Sayers books.

>22 jillmwo: I can see that being the case.

My sister and her husband love jigsaw puzzles. They have a holiday home in Donegal and we stay with them occasionally for a long weekend. On our last visit (August 2016) I took the above photograph of their garden. As a Christmas present I had it made into a jigsaw puzzle for them. I just thought I would share this here.

The picture below is the view of their garden from the kitchen window. I had thought of this for the jigsaw but reasoned that the sky would be too much of a pain in the proverbial for them.



By the way, the view from their front window is below:

>24 pgmcc: That's a beautiful photo, and I bet it will make for a fun jigsaw puzzle!

ETA: Just saw the second picture you added. That's beautiful also!

>23 pgmcc:
And of course, all those secret spy trips can affect one's reading time.

>26 suitable1: Happy New Year!

Have you forgotten what I said about blowing my cover?

What a good idea, to make a jigsaw puzzle from a photo of someone's garden. I bet they loved it.

I think that Sayers' portrayal of the British upper classes is more than for or against them. She ridicules so many of them, yet lovingly portrays Peter and the Dowager Duchess. Since I don't know which of them you've read I don't want to say too much more.

>28 karenmarie: So far I have read The Nine Tailors, Murder Must Advertise, Whose Body and am currently reading Clouds of Witness. The first one was a book bullet, the second an enthusiastic follow-on read because I enjoyed the first one so much. The third and fourth are the start of my reading the novels in chronological order.

Oooh very pretty. I would SO SO need a gardener to maintain that though.

>30 Bookmarque: Happy New Year!

My sister was surprised when she saw the picture. She loves working in the garden but never really steps back to take a look at it. She and her husband were very impressed with the picture.

>29 pgmcc: Ah. You haven't gotten to Harriet Vane yet. At one time or another I've said that Murder Must Advertise is my favorite Wimsey and Busman's Honeymoon my favorite Wimsey/Vane.

They are all wonderful except perhaps for Five Red Herrings, which I've only read once ever. The other books I've read over and over. I also like The Documents in the Case and the collections of short stories which include the intriguing character Montague Egg.

>32 karenmarie: My brother-in-law bought my wife the short story collection for her birthday last year, so that is within reading distance for me. I have heard the same about Five Red Herrings so you are obviously not alone in your opinion.

>24 pgmcc: That is a beautiful garden. I'm impressed that they can tear themselves away from the glorious view to work in it though!

Those are beautiful pictures, and a lovely gift idea. I have to admit that I had to google Donegal. I am still trying to make sense of the average temperature chart. Wikipedia says the Average August highs are 17/62 C/F. That seems awfully cold for a mid-summer high. Is this right?

>45 pgmcc: Oh my, I want to live there! So beautiful! And what a great idea for a puzzle!

You guys are making me want to read a Sayers book. I've never read one.

What a brilliant gift idea - and such a lovely photo to make itvwith!

>35 stellarexplorer: Average August highs are 17/62 C/F.

It depends on the year. In a good year one would expect low to mid 20s. Exceptionally hot years would reach the high 20s. Donegal is almost 55 degrees North, latitude, and has the North Atlantic Drift washing on its shores. The North Atlantic Drift keeps Ireland ice free for the winter, but having an ocean washing up on the shore, and the associated clouds wafting across the heavens, can keep the temperature down and the chances of rain high.

1976 was an exceptional year and I spent June, July, August and September in Donegal carrying out a geological survey of North East Inishowen. I did not see a cloud the whole time and I was very tanned. The temperatures that year would have been high 20s.

I see. It sounds like summer high temps are relatively low throughout Ireland then, though more so as far north as Donegal? And ice free in winter, but it must snow at least in higher altitude regions?

>39 stellarexplorer: Sometimes is snows and sometimes it doesn't. Variation is probably the key element of Irish weather. I have heard it said of Scotland, but it can also be applied to Ireland: If you don't like the weather, wait five minutes, it will change.

The last big snowfall was the winter of 2009/2010. We have had very little snow since then. Usually if it snows it will only last a day or two. In 2009/2010 the first snow fell on Nov 29th and left before Christmas. Then it came back and we had snow for a couple of weeks in January.

Carrauntoohil is the highest peak in Ireland. It is located in County Kerry (south-west of Ireland) and it is 1,038 metres (3,406 ft) high. We do not have areas of Ireland that have snow every year.

We are not totally frost free, but it is exceptional if the temperature drops below -9 degrees C. If there is a frosty morning it would normally be between -1 and -6.

This lack of regular extreme weather conditions means that we are perfectly unprepared for it when it arrives and it can cause chaos.

>39 stellarexplorer: summer high temps are relatively low throughout Ireland then, though more so as far north as Donegal?

I spent a lot of time in Donegal during my teens and worked on the farms during the summer and autumn. I noticed that the farming season in South East Ireland, County Wexford, while only a couple of hundred miles from Donegal, was about a month in advance of Donegal. I would be used to the barley harvest in Donegal starting towards the end of August and was shocked to find farmers in Wexford harvesting at the end of July and being finished in August.

>23 pgmcc: I am still reading Clouds of Witness. While I started this book on 22nd December I have made slow progress. This is due to being dragged into family activities rather than any lack of enthusiasm for the book.

Those pesky family activities will get you every time ;) Regardless, Sayers books never get old. Hope you're enjoying it!

Happy New Year! I am looking forward to following your reading :)

I tried a Sayers novel, but alas, I cannot stand Whimsy so that was it. The dialect killed me.

There. I said it.

(ducks)

>42 thehawkseye: I am enjoying it. I managed to get three reading sessions today (bus to work; lunchtime; bus home) and I am starting a fourth. I have 73 pages left and am feeling I am on the final straight.

Many Happy Returns to you.

>43 Bookmarque: Lord Peter Wimsey's accent and vocabulary are of the British aristocracy and hyperbolically pompous. Also, many of the attitudes expressed in his words and behaviour, and those of his peers (if you excuse the pun), would be considered entirely unacceptable in most civilisec communities today. Wimsey is supposed to be a humorous character. In Murder Must Advertise, Sayers has one of her characters describe him as a "Bertie Wooster" type. Wooster was the pompous, idle rich loafer cared for by his valet, Jeeves, in P.G. Wodehouse's comedy novels.

In the 1960s/70s, the actor, Ian Carmichael, portrayed both Bertie Wooster and Lord Peter Wimsey in TV dramatisations of the novels. He basically played the same character in both, the exception being that Wimsey had some brains about him and Wooster was a bumbling oaf. Jeeves is the real hero in Wodehouse's stories.

I would not describe Wimsey's way of talking as a dialect, more an accent with deliberate pomposity in relation to the words chosen, and, of course, an enormous bucket load of arrogance. No need to duck. ;-)

Yup, I know it is, but dialect (any version of English that isn't "proper" in terms of grammar and spelling) does my head in no matter where it comes from. The words on the page just grate on me something fierce. I had to listen to Their Eyes Were Watching God because I couldn't wade though the text. Plus I just didn't like the character. Wooster on the other hand, I like.

>46 Bookmarque: but dialect (any version of English that isn't "proper" in terms of grammar and spelling)

I would suggest Lord Peter would argue, along with all his aristo friends and relations, that their way of speaking is, "proper" (pwoppa!), and hence not dialect. The way we plebes speak would be dialect from his point of view. ;-)

I must say, I have to bite my tongue when reading some of the attitudes are being expressed. I have to conclude Sayers was setting that "class" up for ridicule. The sad thing is that there are still such people with such attitudes around.

It might be for speech, but none of them write that way, to they?

Actually, the problem of dialect and its use in establishing class and character is a biggie. When my son was younger, he was given a bowdlerized version of either Tom Sawyer or Huck Finn. On the grounds of simplifying the language, Jim's dialect in speech (being uneducated and a slave in the 19th century) was cleaned up. The young reader therefore didn't receive the clues needed to inform him or her of Jim's status at that point in history.

I have been on both sides of the fence. Like Bookmarque, I remember having to give up on something written by Alice Walker because I found the presentation of dialect in speech to slow my processing of the book and its point. I am less likely to notice some of the attitudes that trouble pgmcc sometimes simply because the speaker may not be murdering the King's English.

It's a bit of a Catch-22 for writers and educators (and bears of little brain like Winnie-the-Pooh who I seem to recall had issues of language with regard to written communications between him, Owl and Christopher Robin.)

Lovely photos.

>50 Peace2: Thank you!

>48 Bookmarque: Not having received a letter from any Lord or Lady I find myself unqualified to answer that question.

What did irritate me was Sayers' attempt to phonetically represent the Yorkshire accent. I did read Trainspotting without a problem, probably because I was well used to extreme Scottish accents.

>45 pgmcc: There is a much, much better Peter Wimsey/Harriet Vane series produced by the BBC in 1987 called A Dorothy L. Sayers Mystery that dramatized three books: Strong Poison, Have His Carcase, and Gaudy Night. Harriet Walter played Harriet Vane. Edward Petherbridge played Peter Wimsey. So much better than Ian Carmichael IMO.

>24 pgmcc: I think any one of your photos would make a splendid puzzle!

I don't know enough about Sayers to know whether she was mocking or admiring the upper classes. My impression is that she was holding up a mirror to society and their reverence of people who were possibly not worthy, but also showing that not all people of any class are of one type.

I finished Clouds of Witness yesterday morning and started Edmund Crispin's The Moving Toyshop on my commute home yesterday evening. I am finding the Crispin book entertaining but still have to bite my tongue when pomposity raises its head.

@MrsLee, and anyone else who has finished this book,my first impression is that Cadogan was mistaken about the road he was on when he found the toyshop originally. He thought he was dropped at a different junction, or he took the wrong road from the junction where he was dropped and hence the disappearance of the toyshop.

I have, as you will know, been wrong before.

I have read the first two chapters. Cadogan has visited the location with Fen at this stage.

I will keep you informed of my progress and of my thoughts and suspicions as they evolve. Hopefully my mistakes will keep you amused.

>55 pgmcc: Yes, so far I am amused. Your thinking is in line with mine in the reading of the book. I want to know at the end if you think the mystery was "fair." I thought it was, but then I am not a very analytical thinker, nor do I spend time going back and picking things apart.

Another of my favorites, Gervase Fen.

>56 MrsLee: and anyone else who has finished this book: My other thoughts to date are: Cadogan was mistaken about the building he climbed out of, hence his ending up in the grocer's shop rather than the shop with the cleaning equipment in the closet.

I looked at the map again and (going back and picking thins apart) checked the older roads entering Oxford on Google Maps. At roughly the spots marked on the sketch map for the first and second locations of the toyshop there is a church across the road. I think he was approaching Oxford along the Banbury Road when he found the toyshop but, after having been hit on the head and knocked out, he was transported to a building on the Iffley Road which is the road he thought he was on in the first place.

I have reached the part where they have met the person in the pub who is celebrating having inherited a large amount of money. I am thinking the solicitor is behind the murder and that he had a confederate. If he is an innocent pawn in the process of distributing the inheritance, then other suspects will be those receiving the money. I am curious to see who holds the list of beneficiaries and how much influence the solicitor has over the distribution of the funds.

>57 karenmarie: I am enjoying it.

>57 karenmarie: I agree, Fen is great fun. I also enjoy the "fourth-walling" that happens later.

Actually, @pgmcc, what I want to know is whether you're enjoying the farcical tone of The Moving Toyshop. I've picked it up again this afternoon (because you and @MrsLee had been talking about it) and I do think it's just a hoot of a book! Fen's relationship with his sports car, being one such example of Crispin's marvelous capacity for humor.

MrsLee and I differ in that she wants to know whether you find the mystery to be presented fairly to the reader and I just want to know if it's made you laugh out loud. (Or at the very least, snort derisively.)

>61 jillmwo: I very much appreciate the farce, and the humour. My favourite line to date is Fen's review of Cadogan's first book of poetry:

"This is a book everyone can afford to be without."

The back-firing sports car is, of course, a star of the piece, and Fen is obviously in love with the idea of himself flying around in the motor.

I have not laughed out loud (apart for the bit about the review) but I am greatly amused by the book.

>40 pgmcc: Your weather sounds rather attractive to someone (me) who is isn't fond of extremes. But like you said that can be a double edged blade. During the rare times you do have to deal with them they must be tough to handle.

>63 clamairy: A quarter inch of snow falling during a work day and compacting under traffic can cause one hour commutes to turn into three or four hour journeys. It happens infrequently enough for there to be many drivers who do not know how to drive in snow or on ice. On three occasions I can remember off hand left the office before six pm to drive home, a journey that is normally no more than an hour, and arrived home after eleven pm. Taking the bus has greatly shortened my commute (bus lanes) and the buses are relatively reliable in snowy conditions.

In addition, not having a regular fall of heavy snow the local authorities do not invest heavily in snow ploughs, so a foot or two of snow, with associated, localised drifting, can leave road transport crippled. As an employee of the national postal service I am in awe of the postal operatives who do their utmost to get the post delivered under such conditions.

>64 pgmcc: "I am in awe of the postal operatives who do their utmost to get the post delivered under such conditions."

As am I, in any country! And "a foot or two of snow" shuts down just about every part of the world, just for the record.

>65 clamairy: When my daughter and her husband were driving in snow to Wisconsin to spend Christmas with his folks (our turn next year) I sent her a message saying, "Safe journey. I hope Phil has the chains on the wheel."

She relayed a message from Phil, stating, "We do not need chains. People from Wisconsin know how to drive on snow."

I think his Wisconsin machoism was a bit insulted at my giving advice. :-)

I love teasing him. He is such good value for it.

Plus I think chains and studded snow tires are illegal here in Sconnie. I don't know why though. I loved my studded Hakkapeliittas. Ran them on a Subarau. Was like velcro.

The least sign of snow here and people are encouraged not to drive because so many of them are bad at it - schools close and buses stop running because narrow roads, a fair number of hills combined with bends and only minimal snow clearing equipment make it a pretty dangerous affair. Also there is a tendency for it to rapidly turn to ice making slipping and sliding even more likely, I guess.

>56 MrsLee: >57 karenmarie: >61 jillmwo: Further amusement for the The Moving Toyshop observers:


So I was wrong again. They did move the toyshop; well, the contents at least. I had thought such movement would have attracted too much attention in the early hours of the morning, but what do I know about how heavily the people of Oxford sleep.

I have seventy pages left to read. Rosseter has been shot, and the sleuth and his poetic friend are getting information from Miss Alice Winkworth. Sharman or Berlin are being put forward as the two serious suspects. For a proper twist the real murderer will have to be Sally. There was the throwaway line about the conspirators hearing someone moving about which was ignored.

I have laid my cards on the table. If I am wrong again, I am wrong again, but at this stage I put my money on Sally as being the murderer.

No doubt I have amused you all again.

For those of you interested in the work of Nick Harkaway, a new novel, 'Gnomon', has been announced as being published in October 2017. This announcement was in a list of 2017 books in The Guardian newspaper and has not found its way onto Amazon yet.

I have not requested any books on Early Reviewer for a couple of years as the selection now available to Ireland has reduced to only e-books, predominantly by non-mainstream publishers (you can interpret that as meaning self-published or what I would term pseudo-self-published). I have sampled a number of these books in the past and while I have found one or two reasonable works the rest have been very disappointing.

Reviewing this month's list of offerings I see evidence that I am not the only one disillusioned by what is on offer. For the first time in my experience I have found that in all but two cases, the number of copies on offer exceeds the number requested. Of the two exceptions, one had the same number of requests as copies on offer, and the other had more requests than copies available.

Call me prejudiced or bigoted if you want, but my experience has shown me that taking risks on e-books that have been self-published or pseudo-self-published, does not pay off.

>71 pgmcc: I’ve had the same experience regarding self-published books. There are undoubtedly some good ones out there, but it’s too much trouble to figure out which ones those are. I can't trust the reviews since some (many?) indie authors use unethical means to get their reviews. In the early days, I was burned by some indie books that had high ratings/reviews but horrible writing.

My spare time for reading is insufficient as it is, and there are too many books I want to read. I’ll let the people who have the time and interest find the good ones and then I might try them if they’re good enough to gain a significant amount of praise to the point where I can put more faith in the feedback. For example, I really enjoyed Wool, but it had tens of thousands of ratings on Goodreads before I tried it.

>72 YouKneeK: We are obviously of one mind on this matter. I agree totally with your stance.

I spotted, and reported, some authors who were using LT to spread false reviews and comments about their books. They had set up several user accounts and posted great praise for their own books. One had tens of user accounts. LT was able to identify that many of them had been set up on the same computer.

>70 pgmcc: Good news, well spotted. Thanks for the heads up.

>69 pgmcc: FWIW, I didn't think moving the whole shop was either practical or probable. I think the author isn't worried about either for this book.

Hi Peter! I very rarely read e-books at all, although among the last ones I read were the exceptionally good The Last Policeman series by Ben H. Winters.

Hi, Karen. It is not e-books I have a problem with. I do prefer physical books but the format does not affect the quality of the writing. The problem I have is that the books offered to Irish readers on the Early Reviewer scheme have a high proportion of pseudo-self-published books and the potential for these to be of questionable quality is higher than one would find in books produced through a more traditional, tried and tested publishing process. Don't get me wrong, some real duds have made their way through the traditional route, but my experience shows me that the chances of duds making it through the more self-help publishing route is higher and, like @YouKneeK, I have enough books I want to read without experimenting on books from sources that I have found to be dubious in the past.

Your recommending The Last Policeman goes a long way to my looking into that series. This might even be considered a book bullet. I see there is a trilogy in a single volume available. Shiny!

>76 karenmarie: >77 pgmcc: The Last Policeman trilogy gets a hearty thumbs-up from me as well. Really enjoyed the first-person narration in those books.

Same here, and not just because most of the story takes place in my native New Hampshire!

>78 ScoLgo: Talk about shooting fish in a barrel. I have no chance. :-)

>79 Bookmarque: Et tu @Bookmarque!

Go for it. You know you want to.

This reminds me of the comments from John Candy's character in the film, Stripes:

Don't hit a man when he's down. Kick him. It saves you stooping.

Another vote for the The Last Policeman. KICK

The series is also available as paper books, too.

Oh, can we make it unanimous that he read The Last Policeman? That one got read by one of my book groups and the participants really enjoyed it. As did my youngest son.

I don't think you have any choice in the matter, @pgmcc. Hie thee to the bookstore!

If feel like I am St Sebastian, but riddled with book bullets rather than arrows.

I am still not finished The Moving Bookshop and want to put forward another erroneous hypothesis. It is pointing too much at Sally. By my reckoning, it was the poet's agent. He must have been West. It is a bit disingenuous to pull a trick like that but he is the only character who had opportunity to pull off both murders. He could have hidden in the locked bathroom that is in the floorplan but not yet mentioned by anyone. A locked room is like a gun in a story: if a gun is introduced it has to be used.

There is a nice piece in the book that normalizes and excuses coincidences in books (where our two main characters are having coffee and Miss Winkworth happens to be in the same café when they are talking about her) so I would not put it past Crispin to have a coincidence of the magnitude of Richard's agent being the murderer. It is a bit like pulling a card out of a hat but I do not see the point of the agent appearing in Oxford if he is not inculcated in the main plot. Remember, he did excuse himself from Fen's rooms when Fen and Richard went to see Rosseter.

Laugh now!

Ok, so I bit the bullet and bought Witches of Lychford and The Lost Child of Lychford for the Kindle. I read the first two pages of the first one and I think I am going to enjoy it.

The Last Policeman is on the cards. After the book bullet mob that has assailed me I shall have to dip into this book or suffer the consequences.

I don't think you will be disappointed by the Lychford books.

Hi Peter!

Do you happen to be a Firefly fan? ("Shiny.")

With so many kudos for The Last Policeman series, I really hope that when you eventually get it you will love it as much as we all do.

A question for all you Last Policeman fans. Is it dead sober serious, or is there humor involved?

I must admit to having read them last year and not remembering too many details, but frankly I don't recall much humor. They are pre-apocalyptic novels, with the weight of the future event hanging heavily over everybody.

>92 karenmarie: Thank you for deflecting the bullet for me!

>93 MrsLee: My pleasure, ma'am! *smile*

>93 MrsLee:

If you want a little humor with your apocalypse, I recommend the Last P.I. series, which begins with Dover Beach. AFAIK it is only available as e-books.

>90 karenmarie:

Karen, I did enjoy Firefly, but I picked up Shiny from two American comedians who stayed in my house for a month in 2003. They appear to be doing quite well for themselves. They call themselves "The Pajama Men". If you happen to see that they are appearing near you it would be worth your while getting a ticket. They are quite off the wall and unlike anything you will have seen before.

I hope you realize that it was you that started stirred up the mob attack in relation to The Last Policeman. There appears to be a lot of praise for the trilogy so I will get around to it sometime. Thank you for the recommendation.

P.S. Did you note that it was the e-book versions of the Lychford books that I bought? I will read them on my phone.

>89 Sakerfalcon: Having read a few more pages I am inclined to agree with you. I have never been disappointed by any of Paul Cornell's books.

I haven't read The Last Policeman trilogy yet, though it has been sitting on my Kindle for a couple of years now. I keep meaning to get to it.

I have finally finished The Moving Toyshop. As those of you who have read the book and been reading my comments will know, I fell for virtually every red herring Mr. Crispin laid down for me.

I enjoyed the book. Crispin's writing was not as arrogant or supercilious as in his first Fen story, The Case of the Gilded Fly.

From Crispin's stories I picture him as one of those Oxford students who has no difficulty with the academic work and consequently has the time to get involved in the more social and prankster playing aspects of life in Oxford.

I am now reading The Witches of Lychford. It is good fun.

>99 pgmcc: I am reading it too! I keep getting interrupted by Real Life, though. Not that this is a bad thing.

>96 pgmcc: Hi Peter! Yes, I read the firestorm of comments after I mentioned The Last Policeman and was glad that others felt the same way I did about the series.

I just checked on youtube and found several things by The Pajama Men. Funny and clever.

I did notice that you bought the Kindle versions. I now have a BB myself, Witches of Lychford, but I bought it in paper. It will arrive after February 9th. It sounds like a really good book.

I'm reading gritty, gruesome American Tabloid by James Ellroy, about the Mafia, the FBI, the CIA, the Kennedys, and Cuba in the late 1950s. I'm glad to be reading it, but I am taking frequent breaks. If half of what's written is true, and this is fiction, not nonfiction, then some of my idols are going to get pretty seriously tarnished.

>100 clamairy: I find it interesting because I know that Paul Cornell lives in a small, rural English village and his wife is the local Church of England minister. He is obviously writing about things he knows from his own experience. This obviously includes the supernatural elements.

>101 karenmarie: If it's fiction it must be true.

>102 pgmcc: I had wondered how you knew him! So it's a local connection then?

>104 jillmwo: He was my Guest of Honour at the convention I ran one year. 7 years ago, actually. I remember the time because he gave my son a present on his 12th birthday (which coincided with the first day of the convention) and my son is 19 now. I got to know quite a few writes when I was organising conventions.

I have finished, and thoroughly enjoyed, Witches of Lychford. I have to regard this as a book bullet from my LT friends.

My next read, which I shall start on the bus ride home, will be The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet, another book bullet.

Witches of Lychford is one of the fifty books I grabbed from the library last night. I took a hit too.

>106 pgmcc: Hi Peter! Thanks for BBing me with Witches of Lychford. I'm looking forward to getting it in February.

And wow! Somebody here on LT mentioned The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet and I put it on my Christmas list for daughter. She came through, and I read it before the end of 2016. A very good choice, in my opinion, and I'll be interested in hearing what you think of it.

>108 karenmarie: Glad to be of assistance with regards to Witches of Lychford.

I have had a good start to 2017 with regards to reading. LT has had a big influence on my read. I first read a Dorothy L. Sayers book last year. I had always intend to read her books but someone started a group reading of The Nine Tailors and that prompted me to read the book.

I had noticed The Moving Toyshop in a bookshop some time ago and purchased it. When I learned it was Edmund Cripsin's second Garves Fen story I bought and read the first one, The Case of the Gilded Fly. I would have gotten around to "The Moving Toyshop" at some time but again, someone here mentioned it and I started reading it.

Witches of Lychford is a pure BB.

The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet is also a BB.

The Last Policeman will be a BB when I get it. I wonder who fired the first shot for that one. Hmmmm!

I think we're even now, Peter. One BB for you, one BB for me. Oops. Well, as far as the series go, mine to you is 3 books, yours to me is 2 books. I'll have to pick up another BB from you sometime soon. *smile*

>110 karenmarie: Did I mention that there is a sequel to Witches of Lychford?

My library doesn't have Witches of Lychford. Bummer. I'm really trying to watch my pennies and not buy books right now. But I really want to read this one. Ah well, I'll keep an eye for it. I wonder if the library would buy it if I asked?

They do have The Last Policeman so I will get around to that one soon.

Clamairy already got me with Witches of Lychford. No need to rub it in.

>111 pgmcc: Yes, I know there's a sequel. I anticipate that I'll get it eventually, too. Sigh.

So glad to see that folks are starting off 2017 right! Lots of book bullets flying about and general agreement about specific titles being good reads.

What kind of conventions did you use to run, Peter? Literary festivals? Writer's retreats? Sci-Fi cons? OOoooh, did you perhaps do sherry parties like they had in the 1930's? Enquiring minds want to know.

>115 jillmwo:

It was a Fantasy, Science Fiction & Horror convention called The Phoenix Convention, or “P-Con” for short. We focused on the written word which, due to the interests of the person who started it, included comics, oops! I mean graphic novels. Other conventions included video, cosplay, games, etc... so we focused solely on the written word.

The Guests of Honour we had were:
2005 P-Con I Ken MacLeod
2004 P-Con II Juliet E. McKenna
2006 P-Con III Susanna Clarke
2007 P-Con IV Kim Newman
2008 P-Con V C.E. Murphy
2009 P-Con VI Paul Cornell
2010 P-Con VII Nick Harkaway (substitute for Iain Banks who cancelled late in the day)
2011 P-Con VIII Ian McDonald
2012 P-Con IX Bryan Talbot
(P-Con I & II took place in November. It was decided to move to March, so P-Con III did not take place until 2006 to avoid having two conventions only a few months apart.)

Charles Stross (Charlie to his Convention buddies) attended every P-Con. He was a great supporter of the event.

Another great supporter of the convention was Colin Smythe. He is a publisher of academic works but has the distinction of having been Terry Pratchett’s first publisher and continued to be Terry’s agent until Terry’s unfortunate death.

I became involved in organising it after P-Con III. It was a friend of mine, Pádraig, who started the convention up. During the preparation for the third convention he got married and during P-Con III he told me he wanted to step back from the convention organising and hand it over to someone else. He asked if I would be willing to take on the chairmanship for the following years. I declined to take it on by myself and said I would help is someone else took the chair. He asked another friend, Frank, who agreed to take it on with my help.

Frank was the Chairman for P-Con IV and V with me as co-chair. Sadly, after P-Con V, Frank died of cancer. I took on the chairmanship with the help of two of Frank’s children for P-Con VI, and with the support of my own family for P-Con VII and VIII.

At this stage I was getting a bit tired of organising the convention, although it was great fun and I got to meet some great people. As it happened, Pádraig decided he wanted to take back control of the convention and so I handed it over to him at the end of P-Con VIII.

He had plans for how he wanted to gather a committee about him and to run the convention. He managed to run P-Con IX. Because of a health issue he had, and the absence of pro-activity amongst the people he had brought onto the committee, P-Con X never happened and is not likely to happen.

While I had control of the convention I tried to get not just authors and readers together, but I invited along publishers, critics, agents, and book retailers. We had some great panels looking at the way technology was affecting the trade. At P-Con V I initiated a panel on the subject of e-books and where were they taking us. On the panel I had an author, a publisher, a well known blogger in the world of Science Fiction (Cheryl Morgan), and a librarian. It was my intention to run the panel for P-Con V and run it again at P-Con VII or VIII. It proved so popular, and the technology and industry were changing so much at the time, it became a regular feature. At the panel during P-Con III we had a situation that not only was there a verbal discussion going on in the panel room, but also a Twitter discussion was carrying on both within the room and globally. It was quite amazing to see how things were developing.

After Frank’s death I introduced a writing competition at the convention in his honour. I called it the Frank Darcy Award. People had to write a story of 100 words, no more and no less. It was judged by the Guest of Honour and a statue of a Phoenix (see below) was presented to the winner. That was great fun.



I am still in contact with many of the authors and have great memories of having met some lovely people, authors, guests and members of the convention. The old saying about hoping never to meet authors whose work you love lest you be disappointed, has proved unfounded in my experience. P-Con was fan financed. There was no commercial funding and at best we broke even financially. We paid the expenses for the Guest of Honour but all the other guests financed themselves.

For each convention we nominated a charity and held a charity auction. The guest authors and publishers were always very generous in not only offering their books and other items for auction, but also in buying items at the auction.

I hope you are not sorry you asked about the convention as you appear to have triggered a flood of memories and comments.

>115 jillmwo:
OOoooh, did you perhaps do sherry parties like they had in the 1930's?

We did not do sherry parties. What we did do on Friday evenings was open with something different each year. Frank started this for P-Con IV by organising two actors who recited two Edgar Allan Poe stories. Sound effects were involved and the atmosphere was wonderful. One of the stories was "The Tell-tale Cat" and the other, my favourite, "The Cask of Amontillado".

The following year I organised a book launch and reading by Brian J. Showers. He read from his collection of ghost stories, The Bleeding Horse and other Ghost Stories.

For P-Con VI I organised the performance of a radio play, Mildew Manor, by Kim Newman. My daughter was in the theatre industry at that stage and she stage managed and operated the sound effects. She organised a group of some ten actors who came along to record the play in front of the assembled membership of the convention.

For P-Con VII my son dressed up in period costume and, in the character of the Polish writer, Stefan Grabinski, read one of Grabinski's horror stories. We videoed the performance in front of the convention audience. Through a mutual friend on Facebook I managed to make contact with the person who had translated the story and was able to send him a copy of the video. Unfortunately the quality is not great, but it was fun.

For P-Con VIII I organised a book launch for a young author from Belfast, Wayne Simmons. He writes zombie novels and is having some success, but this gave him a bit of a boost.

The number of attendees (members) at P-Con peaked at about 200. It was a nice size for everyone to get to know others, and still big enough to run two streams of events over the weekend.

I've loved almost everything I've read by Kim Newman--I imagine he was an interesting guest-of-honor.

>118 Marissa_Doyle: He is a very interesting person. He attended all the P-Con events. Great support.

>117 pgmcc: That must have taken a considerable amount of planning and effort for many years. I'm glad that it sounds like it was well worth it.

I'm impressed, Peter. It sounds like a lot of fun and a lot of work.

>112 catzteach: I have found that my public library is quite receptive to requests from patrons. They have purchased several things that I recommended. I don't know if the fact that I'm a member of the Friends of the Public Library, or the fact that I work at all the book sales, influences this receptivity; my guess is not. I encourage you to go ahead and submit requests. In my experience, it helps if you can provide a one-sentence indication of why it would be a good idea to buy the book. Good luck!

A cool job for a secret agent. Did your cover get blown?

>123 suitable1: Shshshsh!

It was my approach to building up a network.

"Job!"

It was voluntary and all the work was done in my own time.

>116 pgmcc: and >117 pgmcc: You clearly have the Irish gift of the gab if you were able to bring so many cool people together at a con. Persuasiveness is key in attracting the kind of talent you describe.

>116 pgmcc: & >117 pgmcc: My mind is blown. I cannot even imagine doing such a thing! Kudos and so much more to you.

>116 pgmcc: That sounds like a great convention. I love the Phoenix statue!

I am enjoying The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet. I would classify it as very cosy space opera. At this stage I am about 150 pages into its four hundred pages.

I am enjoying the melding of styles and tropes from various SF movies, programmes and books. So far I have spotted Firefly, Andromeda, Space Truckers, Neuromancer, Dune and Silent Running.

I am enjoying the characters and looking forward to their adventures in the rest of the book.

> 128

Looks like I may be the only one who doesn't care for it.

>128 pgmcc: Glad you're liking it, Peter!

>129 suitable1: No, you are not alone. I rated it 2.5 stars.

>128 pgmcc: I got a pretty big Star Wars vibe, what with all the different species/aliens.

I have a training manual from work to get through!

>131 ScoLgo: I can see how you would get a Star Wars vibe, but I felt it a bit more like Firefly.

>133 pgmcc: Oh, I agree! I should have said, "In addition to Firefly, I got a pretty big Star Wars vibe..."

>134 ScoLgo: But is it about a heist?

>128 pgmcc: I hope you continue to enjoy it, too.

>132 pgmcc:
They give you homework? I thought you were too senior for that!

>137 suitable1: I'm writing it.

>138 pgmcc: Oh. My.

>132 pgmcc: and >138 pgmcc: In my experience, numbered steps and short words are the key to explaining/teaching of a process. (The occasional reminder of the possibilities for dire consequences should steps be omitted is also useful. Always provide the incentive to do it right! And if you can't offer wine and cheese, then the only things left are those dire consequences.)

>140 jillmwo: Thank you for the advice. I shall now enter a phase of considering dire consequence options.

A terrible thing happened me last evening. I went to the airport to collect my son and I forgot to bring my copy of The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet to read while I waited.

I saved the day, well, evening actually, thanks to the kind Green Dragoneer who suggested some weeks ago that I can use the Kindle App on my phone to read. Since receiving that advice I have installed the app and so was able to start reading The Lost Child of Lychford while waiting for my son's plane to arrive.

I have 91 pages of The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet left to read and am enjoying it. I am in the position of picking it up when I can and even engineering opportunities when I can do this.

As I stated before, I consider this a cosy space opera, but it is really a political book. I see plenty of parallels to real life and I interpret it as supporting a particular view of the world and how it should operate. The multi-species situation is obviously an allegory for a multi-racial society. The cross-species relationships are therefore, cross-racial. The relationship of Ashby with Pei has its Star Trek parallel with the first, on-screen inter-racial kiss on American television when Captain Kirk kissed Lt. Uhuru. Rosemary's relationship with Sissix is inter-racial, lesbian, and reflects the concept of "friends with benefits" that has appeared in recent years amongst generations younger than my generation.

I also see the book as normalizing the concept of different types of families. The examples are the forms of family found within Sissix's species, and, while it is not stated explicitly, but alluded to indirectly, Kizzy has two fathers. As life becomes more complex, different forms of relationships are becoming more mainstream and this book is treating this as normal. (My expressing a view as to whether or not I agree with this could, in my opinion, be considered a political comment and I will say nothing here in that regard.)

Broader political issues are included. We have different allies with different approaches to human/sapient rights and these alliances are apparently maintained to facilitate access to natural resources or other political or commercial reasons. I am sure we could all list off four or five such situations in the real world.

The book is pushing what would be referred to in some quarters as the "Liberal Agenda". I also see elements of Libertarianism present in the story.

Setting all that aside, I am enjoying the story and wondering where it is going to at the end.

This is a book that will require much suspension of disbelief. People smoking on spaceships is just not on. Apart from health problems, the high oxygen environment would make it highly dangerous from a fire risk point of view. The casualness of the maintenance crew is highly non-real space travel like. The compatibility of food stuffs across species is highly suspect. The immediacy of communications across vast distances is questionable. What I am saying here is that the story and the characters make the suspension of disbelieve easy as the story is not really about the technology or the physics; it is about the people, the prejudices, the politics, the conflict, and about how people can live with these.

>142 pgmcc: I think that was me. :o) You're welcome!

>143 pgmcc: Yup, yup. I pretty much agree with everything you say. I assumed they were smoking using devices such as inhalers or vaporizers, though.

>144 clamairy: Thank you for the Kindle App suggestion. It is proving very useful. I believe your advice was following the same situation when it occurred some weeks ago. On that occasion I ended up buying a Stephen King book that I found unreadable.

In relation to smoking. Jenks using a pipe and the atmosphere having redreed smoke that the visitors would be allergic to are explicitly mentioned.

As a reformed smoker of some 35 years standing I claim the right to be stereotypically reformed-smoker annoying in matters concerning smoking in work places and rest areas. Also, as a citizen of the country that was the first to introduce smoking bans in work areas it is only natural for me to uphold a clean-air stance.

:-)

>143 pgmcc: Sounds pretty accurate to me.

>145 pgmcc: Oh you're right, but I assumed that redreed was something akin to weed, so I was all for it! LOL

>147 clamairy: I would suggest in the interests of safety, anyone wanting to smoke the redreed should step outside to the smoking area. :-)

@pgmcc, all that stuff you hid under the spoiler tags in 143? I agree.

Gol darn it. I'm going to have to read the book soon so I can enjoy this thread! Thanks for the spoiler tags though. :)

I am now reading The Lost Child of Lychford having finished The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet.

>150 MrsLee: You are welcome. I am only too glad to be of service by hiding things from you.

>149 jillmwo: I am glad to hear it.

>147 clamairy: Naughty!

>146 SylviaC: I am glad I was not alone in my interpretation.

A final note on The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet.

The residents of the small, angry planet appear to represent a middle east nation, with the other clans being the other Arab nations. The message there was pretty obvious.

>154 pgmcc: Yup.

I enjoyed, The Lost Child of Lychford. I read one other book, The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet, after reading Witches of Lychford and before reading "The Lost Child...". I did not notice any diminishing of enjoyment between the two Lychford books; I do not know if that is because I had a rest from one before reading the other, or if I just like them.

"The Lost Child..." was a more personal book in the sense that we shared the thoughts and fears of the main characters. There was some of that in "Witches of Lychford", but the "Witches..." had a lot more going on in relation to soulless corporations destroying local communities and heritage, disenfranchised people being easily led by clever PR people, etc... I felt "The Lost Child..." was more a straightforward story in Lychford and an exploration of the motivations and history of the three main characters. I did not detect a strong political or sociological message in the second book.

I am looking forward to the third book.

>156 pgmcc: I'm glad to hear you liked the send book as much as the first. I'll probably read it after a couple of others that I have on the go.

Hi Peter! I loved all the The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet spoilers.

>158 karenmarie: I am glad you liked them. I enjoyed the gentleness if the book and the fact that it was working at other levels too.

I liked the spoilers too, but haven't read the book. I do assume that, given the significant portion of humankind that enjoys smoking stuff, some means will be found to do so on future spacecraft. Even if that was not the case therein. What if there were hobbits aboard?

>160 stellarexplorer: Yes, I thought redreed sounded a bit like pipe-weed! ;o)

>161 clamairy: :) Yes

>160 stellarexplorer:; >161 clamairy:; >162 stellarexplorer:

I thought the redreed was the equivalent of normal tobacco and "smash" was the hash type product. The smash was the stuff they wanted to keep hidden and it was the item to be thrown into the engine when the ship was to be boarded. Just sayin'.

In relation to hobbits onboard, well, I'm speechless. I don't know what to say. I think we will have to form a commission to see how this particular species and its practices can be accommodated within the GC. Also, are they as mild-mannered and gentle as they appear? Look what they did to the people of Mordor and their leader. Are we safe in letting them join?

>163 pgmcc: "Also, are they as mild-mannered and gentle as they appear? Look what they did to the people of Mordor and their leader. Are we safe in letting them join?"

I think it's fair to say that Frodo and friends were no ordinary hobbits.

>164 stellarexplorer: It could be case of, "the hobbit you know..."

HAPPY CHINESE NEW YEAR, EVERYONE.

Have a great Year of the Rooster!

From hobbits to roosters? Interesting segue...

>166 pgmcc: Ironically, my next-door neighbor's rooster recently died, so this is looking like the Year of the No Rooster.

That thing has been going off half-cocked from daybreak until sunset for at least the past decade. The silence is deafening.

There are usually one or two very lucky roosters who manage to get mixed in with all the hens in our barn. Shall I go and hug them to celebrate?

Cock-a-doodle!

We visited the Dublin Book Fair this morning. This is a gathering of second-hand book dealers in a hotel that occurs almost monthly. I go about once every couple of years. I usually come away with a few interesting items. Today was quite rewarding.


My copy of Narrow Boat does not have the dust cover and has a dark green hard cover. It is a 1948 reprint of the book published in 1946. The nerdy interest for me in this book is its author. Those of you who haunt my thread may recall that I am very interested in the weird tales of Robert Aickman. Apart from writing weird tales, Aickman set up an association in Britain to rejuvenate and preserve the in-land waterways. In this endeavour he was joined by L.T.C. Rolt. The both wrote books on the waterways and also wrote weird tales. Apparently there was a falling out between the two and I bought this little book about narrow boats (the type of boats that navigate canals) to complement the book of horror tales written by Rolt that I have, and to balance with my Aickman books. If that doesn't make sense I shall not lose any sleep.


Pick of the crop is this 1988 Folio edition of Uncle Silas by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu. Again, some of you will know that I am fond of Le Fanu's work. For those of you not familiar with his work, he was an Irish writer of ghost stories in the Nineteenth Century. His novella, Carmilla, is supposed to have influenced Bram Stoker in his writing of Dracula.


I am not inclined to read graphic novels, but some of you have waxed lyrical about this one. I succumbed to the book bullet when I found the hard cover edition at half price. (Half price was, of course, a marketing ploy and I suspect the dealer never expected to get the full price he had marked on it.)


I am a great fan of the stories of Guy De Maupassant and I find it hard to pick up a collection of his stories when I find one. This one was only going for €4. Also, the dealer was offering three books for €10 and that explains the next two books.


L A Noir is a trilogy I had heard of and wanted to read. The volume contains the three novels.


I have shied way from buying this before, but I was looking for a third book and my wife called me to come and have lunch before the diningroom was too full so I grabbed this and paid.

A pleasant day was had.

>172 pgmcc: I wish we had something like that around here.

That was a worthwhile day!

Hi Peter!

Both daughter and sister are Roosters (1993 and 1957 respectively).

Harriet Vane is a LeFanu scholar in the Sayers' books and I always thought LeFanu was fictional to go along with Harriet Vane's being fictional. Imagine my surprise when I realized he was an actual person and author!

There's also a video series based on Carmilla - from Wikipedia: Carmilla is a Canadian single-frame web series co-created by Jordan Hall, starring Elise Bauman and Natasha Negovanlis, based on the novella of the same name by Sheridan Le Fanu. The series premiered on the Vervegirl (rebranded as KindaTV as of January 2016) YouTube channel on August 19, 2014. U by Kotex is the executive producer of the web series. The series takes place at the fictional Silas University in Styria, Austria and is told through video journals (Vlogs) recorded by Laura, a first-year student. When Laura begins investigating the disappearance of her roommate, she is assigned a new roommate named Carmilla. I have never read the novella, but I watched the first season. It was amusing, but I didn't feel any need to continue.

I haven't read L.A. Noir, but I just finished Ellroy's American Tabloid and have The Cold Six Thousand, the second of that series, on my shelves. I loved American Tabloid and have high hopes for the 2nd and 3rd of that series.

>172 pgmcc: A bit jealous of the Le Fanu book from the Folio Society. (Stage whisper to others in this thread, *That dear man. I'm sure he's planned to send the Fanu to me as my birthday gift and he's just trying to surprise me*.)

>175 karenmarie: I'm a '57 Rooster myself. Big birthday approaching.

I know nothing of the video series based on Carmilla. I enjoyed the book, but then again, I like Gothic stories.

I am a new convert to Sayers' Lord Peter Wimsey novels. The first one I read was The Nine Tailors and I was surprised to see some of the chapters headed with quotes from Le Fanu's works. I was also amused to find allusion to elements in the ghost stories by M.R. James. "The Nine Tailors" proves to have all the elements of a Gothic story itself. It was having made these discoveries that I realized Sayers' works work on many levels and that she was having plenty of fun playing with her readers. She was a very clever and interesting person. One of those people one regrets never having had the opportunity of meeting.

>176 jillmwo: Just you close your eyes and put your hands out in front of you. Do not move. Just stand there.

Ready Player One certainly hits the nostalgia buttons for those of us who grew up during the emergence of computer games. I was not into many games, but I recognize most of the films mentioned. I also remember the earliest computer games and platforms.

Every time one of Sayers' Lord Peter books gets mentioned, I think it's my favorite..... Nine Tailors is sooooo good. Atmospheric, with an interesting mystery, flooding, fens, interesting people.

My sister already had her 60th on January 9th.

Sayers was an interesting, brilliant, and contradictory woman. For all her religious belief and serious scholarly work in Christian doctrine, she had a son out of wedlock and had him raised as a nephew.

>180 karenmarie: I was surprised that she produced a translation of Dante's Inferno. (Oh dear! Three Dan Brown books appeared in the Touchstones before the correct work.)

In Umberto Eco's book on translation, Mouse or Rat: Translation as negotiation, he praises her Inferno translation.

Touchstones have been very strange for quite a while now, haven't they?

I have the James Brabazon biography of Sayers and read it a very long time ago.

>172 pgmcc: What an impressive haul. And congratulations in advance of your birthday. I think we might have time to quickly initiate the adoption of some new rules about how many books we should buy ourselves during a birthday week. ;o)

>183 clamairy: The concept of rules about birthdays and books delights and terrifies me in equal proportions.

>184 pgmcc: I'll take credit for the delight but not the terror. :o)

Wow! Just think what might happen if the Thingaversy and birthday fell in the same month.

Bankruptcy.

I am just wondering if the number of books to buy would be the birthday years to the power of the Thingaversay years, or the Thingaversary to the power of the birthday years. I may need a quantum computer to sort this out.

Well, I'm safe from any repercussions. The birthday is in January and the Thingaversary is in June or July. I can space out MY payments....

>187 clamairy: LOL

Oh dear .. my birthday and Thingversary are just days apart. I could be in trouble.

I finished Ready Player One. It was an entertaining read. It was also a book-bullet as far as I remember.

Many people on LT talked about this book in glowing terms. The main point people made was that it was a nostalgia pack for those who played computer games in the 1980s. As I did not play many video games in that decade I thought I would be a bit lost, but I was wrong. Not only does the book talk about video games, but it also references music tracks and films. I faired best with remembering the films, and remembered many of the earlier computer game consoles and computers.

Do not let the talk of video games put you off, or mislead you too much. This is an entertaining story about life in a tough time, socially challenged people escaping the harshness of life in the real world by immersing themselves in a virtual universe where they can make friends, and, as the cover states, a battle between good and evil.

I didn't find any significant quotable quotes that were not quotes from films of yesteryear, but I did enjoy the read. If this book had any underlying messages, they are, "it's good to have friends" and "get out more".

Part Two of the book is headed with a quote from Groucho Marx that is worth repeating: "I'm not crazy about reality, but it's still the only place to get a decent meal."

I give this book a solid four stars and I will probably watch the film when it comes out. I may not go to the cinema to see it, but then that would be in keeping with the ambiance of the story.

I am starting Bleak House by Charles Dickens. @karenmarie has initiated a group reading of this book here, and I am going to read along with that thread. Karen had a thread on Great Expectations that I enjoyed last year.



This is a big book (740 pages of story; 60 pages of notes; 34 pages of introduction and historical context), so I am not likely to get through it any time soon.

Now to dive into a Dickens of a world!

MESSAGE FOR PEOPLE WITHIN STRIKING DISTANCE OF BOSTON MA.

The New England Science Fiction Association is holding its annual convention in Boston on the weekend of 17th - 19th February 2017 at the Westin Boston Waterfront Hotel.

Convention details can be found here.

Brandon Sanderson is the Guest of Honour, but I am mentioning this because Ken MacLeod, one of my "buy-it-as-soon-as-it's-published" authors is attending. He is based in Scotland and it could be a rare opportunity for people to meet him in the US.

This is not an advertisement for the convention, but merely a word to my friends that someone whose work I love is going to be in Boston and you might find it of interest to go along to the convention.

PS: I have no association with Boskone or commercial link with any of the Guests.

>193 pgmcc: I look forward to your review. I really enjoyed my read of it and I enjoyed the recent BBC production that starred Gillian Anderson.

>192 pgmcc: I agree with much of what you said, plus I absolutely loved the giant robot/Kaiju battles. I'm a Gozilla & friends fan from waaay back. The only game I played with any regularity in the 80s was Ms. Packman, but I was familiar with most of them. I enjoyed the movie references as well. I'll probably pay to go see it in the theater just for the Kaiju battles. If they're done correctly, and I can't imagine Spielberg will disappoint, I'm going to need a big screen!

>193 pgmcc: I'm so tempted to join you all, but I have a bunch of ebook loans that will pile onto my Kindle at once, despite the fact that they were requested over several months time.

>194 pgmcc: Thanks for this info.

>196 clamairy: One thing I was disappointed with was the absence of Space Invaders. I played that every lunchtime in the staff common room. It was a table game and I could have my sandwich and drink on the table as I played it. It was the big one until the new fangled PacMan came along.

>191 Sakerfalcon:

You probably need to get a new birthday.

>193 pgmcc: Well, now. I just downloaded Bleak House (the free version) to my Kindle through Amazon, and was offered the Audible version to go with for $2.99. After hunting around for a decent sample I found this on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2c9lWn-83Dc and raced back to immediately snap up that offer. I might be able to join that shared read after all.

>192 pgmcc: I was also never a video game player (indeed, I'm still not) and still really liked Ready Player One.

>193 pgmcc: Bleak House is my favourite of the novels by Dickens that I've read. Hope you enjoy the read!

>199 clamairy: Hi Clare! I, too, snagged the free Kindle version of Bleak House and will probably alternate between it and my hadcover. We'd love to have you in the group read. (I've gotten behind in my personal schedule and am working on catching up this morning).

>201 karenmarie: Thank you!!! I'll hopefully be able to start the audio as soon as I finish my current audiobook. I also have a decent Modern Library trade paperback version of Bleak House, along with a very old hardbound copy that is too fragile to read. Well, it might be safe if I sat at a table with it and maybe wore gloves. LOL That's not going to happen.

I shall follow the Bleak House read along with interest - although I don't think I've got time to read it again just at the minute. It was a college text mumble mumble years ago and I remember liking it more than I did Great Expectations - don't remember a huge amount just now though, apart from the fact that most people preferred GE to BH (possibly because of how much thinner it was!). Maybe when my TBR pile is a little lower I could consider a re-read.

>202 clamairy: Ahh, I'm not the only person with multiple copies of a book kept for a variety of reasons. I have some books that are too fragile to read, too, but enjoy keeping them on my shelves.

Hi Peter! Hope you're doing well this Wednesday.

>204 karenmarie: I am doing fine, thank you, Karen. I trust Wednesday is treating you well.

On my way to work this morning, as the bus travelled along the quays on the Liffey, I looked up from Bleak House in time to see the name of the next stop displayed: "Inns' Quay, Chancery Place".

I had a little chuckle to myself.

Bleak House is everywhere, isn't it?

and it goes on and on and on...

Well, I have just started The Corporation Wars: Dissidence. I expect great things since it has been highly touted.

>208 suitable1: I hope you enjoy it.

Well, you guys just made me buy Bleak House for my Kindle. So.

>210 Meredy:. :-)

>210 Meredy: It should have been free. Aren't you a Prime member? Or did you opt for an annotated edition?

>210 Meredy: Hi Meredy! Here's the group read thread in case you're so inclined:

Bleak House Group Read

Two books fell into my possession today:

Verdict of Twelve by Raymond Postgate, a strong recommendation from @jillwmo that at least seven Green Dragoneers have taken on board.



Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen. Many of you will know I like Gothic tales and this is held up as a parody of Gothic tales. I am looking forward to reading it. Earlier today, @MrsLee coined the phrase, "The lighter side of the dark side". This might be an example of that.

>210 Meredy: I hope you enjoy Bleak House. I am making my usual slow progress through this tome and am enjoying it immensely. I even bought a copy to give to one of my colleagues who is a solicitor so that she could read the first chapter and enjoy its descriptions of the Chancery in London. (Don't worry, it was a very cheap Wordsworth edition and was less than three euros. Cheaper than a cup of coffee.)

>214 pgmcc: You've not read this Austen before? You're in for a treat! :o)

>214 pgmcc: and >216 clamairy: I must confess that it is the only one of the six Austen novels that generally leaves me cold. I have never been able to enjoy it (even recognizing the light humorous tone). It just never works for me.

But your mileage may indeed vary!

>217 jillmwo: It has a special place in my heart as it was my first! (Although it really isn't much like the others at all.)

>216 clamairy: >217 jillmwo: >218 clamairy:

I believe Northanger Abbey will be my first Austen. I have seen a number of TV adaptations of various Austen books but have never read any. I am looking forward to it.

The divergence of responses to the book by two such illustrious Green Dragoneers piques my interest all the more and urges me on to dive into the story at an early opportunity. Given the flaw of averages, I will probably fall between the two responses stated. (I bought a book called The Flaw of Averages and can never resist the urge to use that phrase.)

>219 pgmcc: An Austen virgin? How did this come to pass? :o) In Jill's defense I can only add that if someone has read her other books first and is expecting more of the same then this one would surely disappoint. It's certainly lacking the depth of the others. Since this is your first foray I do hope you will appreciate it.

>219 pgmcc: And a third opinion, for what it's worth, Northanger Abbey is the only Austen book I love. Thought I didn't care for her writing at all until I read that one. Not that the others were poorly written, no, never that. I simply didn't like their tone. It makes me question myself all the time, but there it is.

>221 MrsLee: It makes me question myself all the time, but there it is.

Never question your reaction to a book, or anything else for that matter. I am used to having reactions to books that are vastly different to those of other people. I'm five foot seven inches tall. I have greenish grey eyes. My shoe size is 12. I know people who are over six foot tall and people who are less than five foot tall. I know people who have brown eyes and people who have blue eyes. I know people with shoe size 5 and others with shoe size 13.

I never doubt that I am 5' 7", have greenish grey eyes, and wear size 12 shoes. I do doubt my weight but then that is a much more complex matter. I would argue that I am simply vertically challenged.

Is this a conspiracy involving you, Clare and Jill? The three of you have presented me with such divergent views that I am becoming more curious regarding what my own reaction will be to this book.

"Vive la difference!"

>221 MrsLee: That's how I feel about Dickens. I love A Christmas Carol but haven't been able to make it through any others—and not for lack of trying.

>222 pgmcc: Note that I am not part of this particular conspiracy, having only read Pride and Prejudice.

>223 SylviaC: I can see you are innocent of any collaboration.

I trust you are feeling better after your recent bout of illness.

>224 pgmcc: Thank you. I am feeling much better, except for the insult of a head cold being thrown into my recuperation. I hope you are well, yourself.

Only the Chosen shall truly love and adore ALL Dickens and ALL Austen ;-)

>226 BookstoogeLT: Well, I have yet yet to read anything by either of them that wasn't thoroughly enjoyable, so at least I have that going for me. ;o)

>227 clamairy: All Hail Clamairy!

>214 pgmcc: I just finished Verdict of Twelve based on @jillmwo's recommendation and will be interested in what you think.

Although I am enjoying Bleak House, I'm still a Janeite at heart, not a Dickensian.

>229 karenmarie: Arggh! My copy of Verdict of Twelve was purportedly shipped on January 31 and has yet to arrive... (drums fingers on arm of chair impatiently while reading one of ~500 other books on TBR).

I am about to read Chapter X of Bleak House. I am putting a note here regarding my thoughts on the happenings at the end of Chapter IX.

Mr. Guppy has just spoken to Miss Summerson to inform her of his feelings for her. At this point in the story I am not sure of his motivation. I suspect it is not love but selfish speculation. He has seen the portrait of Lady Dedlok and noted the strong similarity of looks between Lady Dedlok and Miss Summerson. I suspect he believes there is a family connection and that he will be able to uncover evidence of this relationship and it will prove profitable in terms of inheritance from some estate involved in the Jarndyce and Jarndyce case.

As some of you will know it is my habit, on occasion, to express my interpretation of a story as I read it. This habit is the companion of my habit of getting such plot lines wrong, but I enjoy looking back over them and seeing what I thought at various stages of my reading.

>231 pgmcc: Mister Guppy...
I just like saying his name. It rolls so evilly off the tongue :-)

>232 BookstoogeLT: >231 pgmcc: Visions of a fish swimming in a circle in a bowl with a top hat and coat tails....

All jokes aside, the fish was named after its "discoverer", a certain Mr Guppy.

>234 hfglen: Did he wear top hat and tails?

Probably not while doing field work. Quite possibly at conference dinners.

ETA: On the other hand, I believe he was an American ...

And this is why I need to hang out on these threads more often - learn new things all the time!

As I have demonstrated many a time before, I am always a sucker for the red herrings dropped in plots by misdirecting authors. In Bleak House I have reached the point where a lady has been asking about the locations relating to the death of the document copier who lived over the old lumber shop. At this point I believe Dickens wants the reader to believe the lady, pretending to be a servant, is actually Lady Dedlock. I cannot think of another chacter it might be. I suspect the dead man to have been her lover prior to his fall from funds and that they are the parents of Miss Summerson. I expect to be proven wrong in the near future.

I love your 'spoiler' speculations, Peter! Having attained the halfway point in my edition of BH, and getting ready to embark on chapter XXXII, I've got a bit more knowledge than you. I can't say one way or the other how accurate your inferences are so they don't become spoilers in themselves, but please! Keep on.

>239 karenmarie: I am glad I amuse you. I can just see you sitting there laughing at me.

:-)

I like looking back over my inferences when I have finished a book to see just how wrong I was. I have found Wilkie Collins to be particularly good at plastering red herrings throughout a plot.

I am absolutely not laughing, Peter! You're smart, articulate, and logical. It's all good.

:-) back at'cha!

Ouch!

Let me present my haul from my trip to the Trinity College annual book sale where donated books are sold to raise money for university research material.



The organisers hold some special items back for an auction at 5:30pm and the one that caught my eye was a first edition of John Le Carré's The Spy Who Came in From the Cold, the book I consider seminal for virtually every Cold War spy story. I was not staying for the auction and I do not have many hundreds, even thousands, of euros to spend on a book, so I went to the auction display area and held this sacred object in my hands for a few moments.

The books I did take home with me, and the reasons I picked them, were:

Those Barren Leaves by Aldous Huxley; - it was an Aldous Huxley. I have only read his Brave New World but have wanted to read more of his works.

The Portable Poe edited by Philip Van Doren Stern; - I have a beautifully bound (Octopus Press) complete works of Poe but it is too beautiful and delicate to bring on the bus to read. "The Portable Poe" is more robust for reading on the go. In addition, it has material other than Poe's fiction and poetry; it has criticism and other commentary on Poe and his work.

Pagan Babies by Elmore Leonard; - I have enjoyed a couple of Leonard's other works (Freaky Deaky & Get Shorty) and picked "Pagan Babies" on the strength of those previous reads.

The Midden by Tom Sharpe; - I enjoyed Porterhouse Blue and want to try more Sharpe. I understand some of his books are not as good as "Porterhouse Blue" but now I can check this particular one out. (By coincidence, my wife and I had lunch in a bar restaurant called, "The Porterhouse". It is a craft beer establishment which sells delicious food.)

Hide My Eyes by Margery Allingham; - This one is for my wife. She loves Agatha Christie and some years ago I bought a few Margery Allingham novels for her which she enjoyed. I might even try this one myself.

Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens; - As some of you know I am pretty well hooked on Dickens at this stage and this is one that I have not had up to now.

After lunch we went home and this evening the whole family went to a local hotel to enjoy a lovely dinner to celebrate my sixtieth birthday and the thirty-second birthday of one of my sons-in-law.

Happy Birthday, Peter! A significant one (meaning that it ends in 5 or 0). Looks like a good book haul and nothing could be better than a lovely dinner out with family.

>244 karenmarie: It was all very nice, thank you, Karen. Now I am heading to be with Bleak House. I am about one third through the book.

Watch out for the Midden. I had previously read Riotous Assembly and loved it. But the Midden just didn't work for me, at all :-(

I hope your increasing age (happy birthday!!) won't make you take a jarndyced view of things.

>247 Jim53:. :-)

@pgmcc, I hope you had a great birthday celebration. If the accounting in #243 is any indication, you must have had some hours of enjoyable browsing! As always, I look forward to your commentary.

>245 pgmcc: I'm Bleak Houseing it too. I'm on XLVIII of LXVII, or page 610 of 830. I was sweating it for a while, thinking I'd not get it done by the end of February, my personal goal, but I'm now confident.

>253 pgmcc: Ha, Jim. Jarndyced. Very good.

My family arranged a little celebration on Saturday for my 60th birthday. I had no idea who was coming and was very impressed when I found over fifty people attending. All but one of siblings attended, my daughter who lives in Boston came over with her husband, people I have worked with over the past 30 years came along, friends from my time organising Science Fiction conventions and working on the Albedo1 fiction magazine, my cousin who is two days older than me, some nephews and nieces, etc... My wife did all the organising with the help of my conspiring offspring and a few in-laws. I have to share two pictures:

The cake my wife prepared for the occasion.


The books that I received as gifts on the night.


The books are:

Moby Dick, a classic I have been intending to read but now, rather than reading the cheap Wordsworth edition I was going to use I can read a beautiful Everyman's Library edition.

A Classical Primer that includes summary information on Greek and Roman life and learning, from the languages to literature, philosophy, art, and much more besides. (The first Touchstone suggestion for this was, For Whom the Bell Tolls.

How do you Build a Time Machine?

The making of Trump by David Cay Johnston. (From my brother who could not attend the party.)

The Secret Life of J. Edgar Hoover by Anthony Summers. (Also from my brother who could not attend the party.)

In the Land of Youth by James Stephens, a 1924 edition with a handwritten inscription to someone in Johannesburg, dated 1940. (First touchstone suggestion, "Alice in Wonderland".)

The John Carter Trilogy by Edgar Rice Burroughs. (First touchstone suggestion, "The Restaurant at the End of the Universe".)

Fossils The Key to the Past by Richard Fortey. My son's best friend is at university studying Science and is doing a Geology module, which he is finding fascinating. He knows I did my primary degree in Geology and I made some positive remarks about his course and he bought this for me. It is beautifully illustrated and laid out. A wonderful book to dip into.

Rather a good haul I thought.

Of course there were other gifts:
- Gift voucher for a meal in a lovely French restaurant that I have mentioned here before (Chez Max)
- Many, many book tokens. (I think there was a bit of a theme going on Saturday.)
- Lottery tickets
- A voucher to have my portrait painted
- A framed photograph from my cousin of the two of us when we were four-and-a-half years old. We replicated the photograph on Saturday.
- A framed photograph of me when I was 18 months old
- A bottle of Bushmills Whiskey
- Many bottles of lovely wine

It was a great evening.

Congrats, happy birthday, and that cake is awesome!

>252 tardis: Thank you!

I forgot to mention, the bottom layer was fruit cake and the top two were chocolate biscuit cake. (Chocolate biscuit cake = broken up biscuits (cookies in American) in melted chocolate, then allowed to set.)

How wonderful that you had that celebration, Peter. Happy birthday and many more.

Wow, Peter, how fantastic! Congratulations.

And tell your wife that I appreciate the effort of making that lovely cake. It's very clever. I have taken cake decorating classes and made all daughter's birthday cakes when she was little and can attest to the hours and hours these things take.

People seem to think that you like books. Happy Birthday! The cake is fantastic.

>251 pgmcc: Congratulations & many happy returns!

- A gathering of friends
- A pile of books
- A bottle of Bushmills

It simply doesn't get much better than that... ;)

Happy birthday! Love the cake! I had no idea John Carter was that old!

Sounds like a fantastic party. The cake looks amazing! And now you have all those super books to read and other gifts to enjoy ... you should be able to make the celebrations last for months!

Sounds wonderful. I hope you enjoyed the cake and enjoy the books just as much. Congratulations!

Oh, happy belated birthday, my friend! :o) And many happy returns of the day as well. Nice haul there. I'm sorry I missed the actual day because I would have loved to embarrass you on Facebook. I just had a peek and I see there are pictures of your bash there, but it never showed up in my feed because you didn't post them yourself. My apologies. I hope that cake was as good as it looked!

>261 clamairy:
Yah, my invitation got lost in the mail, too.

Thank you for all the good wishes. We had a great evening and early morning. There is logic to having a celebration in a hotel within walking distance of one's home. Not only can you relax and have a drink without worrying about driving, but your siblings and their families have somewhere to stay and can visit you the following day to continue the celebration.

Yes, the cake was as good as it looked. I am still...reading it!

>261 clamairy: Did you spot my singing Johnston's Motor Car? It's the only song I know the words for.

>262 suitable1: I must "tut-tut" at your demeaning the postal service.

An additional benefit is no clean up! *smile*

>263 pgmcc: No disrespect, maybe it was lost by FedX!

>265 suitable1: FedX? No wonder it went missing.

;-)

>264 karenmarie: Good point!

Being an international woman of mystery, naturally I was present for the celebration, but I went incognito.

>268 jillmwo: What kind of outfit is a cognito?

>263 pgmcc: I did not. I'll have to check it out. Will my ears bleed?

My September and October 2017 reading is sorted.

PUBLICATION DATES:

September 7th: A Legacy of Spies by John Le Carre

September 28th: The Corporation Wars: Emergence by Ken MacLeod

October 19th: Gnomon by Nick Harkaway.

(No touchstones that I can find for the first two.)

>271 pgmcc: Always good to have something to look forward to!

>272 SylviaC: My thoughts precisely. It's like holidays. Always have something booked so you have something to look forward to.

>271 pgmcc: Nice of son to let dad's release hit the shelves first and wait a few weeks till his own comes out.

>274 AHS-Wolfy: He is very considerate that way.

There is a charity book sale taking place in the canteen at work today in aid of an organization that provides services to children and adults with intellectual disabilities. I picked up a few books (Quelle surprise!) and I had to rush onto LT to share news of picking up this one.



It is a lovely hardback book and I am looking forward to a few hours of entertaining story telling.

You can get a flavour of who Finn MacCoul was by reading the article here.

Ooh, that looks like fun. So good of you to make the sacrifice for charity.

>277 Jim53: My altruism knows no bounds. I spent a full two euros on that book.

>276 pgmcc: I always loved the tale of Finn and his wife when the other giant visits. (Don't want to spoil it for anyone who isn't familiar)

>276 pgmcc: You say you bought several books, but I note that you only admit to one particular title and spending just two euros. So now, 'fess up. What other damage was incurred when you went to lunch in the canteen?

>280 jillmwo: The books were all priced at €2. Other books I picked were:

Not Dead Enough



and

A Star Called Henry



I also picked up a book proof of the book below for my wife. It is about De Valera (third president of the Irish Republic and one of the commanders during the 1916 Rising and leader of the political party, Fianna Fail, of which my wife is a member), Fianna Fail ("Fail" pronounced "Fall" in Irish) and The Irish Press.

De Valera, Fianna Fail and the Irish Press



I donated a tenner and was leaving with four books when the person in charge of the stall insisted I took a fifth. He handed me Eichmann and the Holocaust from the Penguin "great ideas" series.

Bleak House

I have reached the point where Mr Tulkinghorn has been killed by gunshot. The reader has had two suspects pointed out: Lady Dedlock had motive and left the family home discreetly; Mr George has admitted to being at the crie scene and has access to guns. I think the French Maid who left Lady Dedlock's service when Rosa came on the scene is the guilty party.

I have also started contemplating how this whodunnit would end if it were in a book or TV show withfamoys sleuths investigating. So far I have worked out the endings for the following: Kojak; Miss Marple; Oirot; Castle; Colombo.

More on that to follow.

>281 pgmcc:

They made you take a book? What's a feller to do?

>283 suitable1: I know! The pressure of it all!

>282 pgmcc: Time will tell, won't it, Peter? *smile* I'm glad you're persevering.

>285 karenmarie: I am more than persevering. I am really enjoying it. It is real life that is keeping my reading opportunities to a minimum.

>282 pgmcc:

Kojak ending to Bleak House.

KOJAK




Kojak takes his lollipop out of his mouth and yells, “CROCKER!”

Before popping his pop back into his mouth he says, “Stavros, get me a pastrami on rye and a coffee.”

Stavros, “Yes, boss!”

Crocker arrives.

Kojack, “Drive me down to the Lower East Side. I got something I got’a try out.”

On arrival at the Lower East Side, Kojak’s 1974 Buick Century, with flashing red light, lurches to an angled halt exercising the front suspension to excess, and the bald detective steps out of the car, hat, coat and lollipop firmly in place. Hands in pocket he walks nonchalantly over to the closed door of a warehouse building with the words, “George’s Shootery”, emblazoned across its side.

He reaches for the door handle and finds the establishment locked. He turns to face Crocker, who is still catching up with him having carefully locked the car and ensured all the lights are off before joining the Lieutenant, and nods at the door. He has resisted the urge to shout, “CROCKER”, because he is only allowed to shout, “CROCKER”, once in every episode.

Crocker shoulders the door open as two back-up patrol cars arrive. Crocker draws his gun, the four back-up patrolmen draw their guns, and the five of them rush through the now open door. Kojak, follows them at a walk, hat, coat, and lollipop still firmly in place.

The scene changes to inside, “George’s Shootery”. Phil is cowering in the corner with his hands above his head and a rifle at his feet and two patrolmen are covering him with their weapons. The other two patrolmen have Mr. George bent over the counter of his establishment putting hand-cuffs on his wrists. (Why are they not called “wrist-cuffs”?) Crocker is reading him his Miranda rights.

Kojak ambles up to the counter, takes his lollipop out of his mouth, and says, “You’re booked, cowboy!”, before replacing his lollipop in its natural position.

THE END!

Loose end: What happened to the pastrami on rye, and coffee, that Stavros was getting for Kojak. Was it allowed to go cold and was it thrown out? Did Stavros eat the sandwich rather than waste it? Was Stravos so efficient that he had the sandwich and beverage ready for Kojak before he left the precinct and Kojak had his lunch on his way to the Lower East Side? If Kojak did eat the sandwich and drink the coffee what did he do with his lollipop while he was eating and drinking? Did he store it on the dashboard? Did he throw it away and was it a different lollipop he had in his mouth when he arrived at the warehouse? Was Kojak so efficient that by the time he got back to the precinct the sandwich and coffee had just arrived?

Endless questions are raised when the writer leaves a loose end. Do writer's leave loose ends like this deliberately to force the audience into a lifelong debate about what happened to the pastrami on rye and coffee?

Now I know why they classify these shows as "Mysteries".



"Who loves ya, baby?"

>287 pgmcc: Oh, that was excellent!

Can't wait for the 'Columbo' ending... ;)

>288 ScoLgo: Thank you! It was fun writing it. I hope I will get some time at the weekend to do the others.

>287 pgmcc: great fun.

HAPPY ST. PATRICK'S DAY, everybody.

And Happy St Patrick's Day to you too. Though it must have just started for you, it's already half over here (& I've only seen one suitably-costumed leprechaun-like figure so far).

>291 pgmcc: Happy St. Patrick's Day! I hope you celebrate suitably.

>291 pgmcc: Happy St. Patrick's day to you too! I'm wearing a green shirt in honour of the day.

You sure Kojak wasn't Irish?

Happy St Patrick's Day! I hope you do something fun to celebrate.

Thanks for the reminder! Our workplace is full of humbugs when it comes to fun holidays, but I think I will set the tone (the emerald tone) today. :)

May you be blessed today with the gift of sunshine, and if a bit of rain falls, may it sprinkle rainbows along your path.

Happy St. Patrick's day, Peter!

I liked the Kojak ending. It makes me desperately want a pastrami on rye. There are no good delis here in central North Carolina, USA!

Thank you for all the good wishes for the day that's in it. I am taking a calm approach to celebrating Paddy's Day. I watched coverage of the parade on television and was delighted with the number of people visiting from around the world, as well as the variety of the floats and bands from across the globe. The Hawaii All-Stars Marching Band and the Illinois University Marching Band were great. The Inishowen contribution represented the birth of life from the oceans with a Merman; the ongoing evolution of life with a mythical figure who is half man, half stag (18ft tall); and the end of life with the Crow of Death. This was all done in an ancient motif with many mythical dancers swarming around.

The visitors interviewed as the watched the parade were from the USA, Canada, Italy, Korea, Spain, France, New Zealand, Australia, Brazil, Argentina, Mexico, The Philippines, and many other countries. It is fantastic to see so many people enjoying themselves in the streets I walk everyday on my way to and from work.

I am now attempting to make the rest of the day a DNBR day. That will involve finishing off the remaining seventy pages of Bleak House, a book I am really enjoying.

I am now attempting to make the rest of the day a DNBR day

That sounds like the ideal way to celebrate any special day!

>300 Sakerfalcon: In my book (if you'll excuse the pun), a DNBR day is a special day.

>299 pgmcc:

How about a snake hunt?

>302 suitable1: Sounds like a good idea, but somebody chased all the snakes away.

Happy St. Patrick's Day, @pgmcc! One assumes you've got a pint of Guinness readily at hand as you finish off that final seventy pages.

>301 pgmcc: Very true!

Duh. It took me a bit to figure out DNBR. Make it so!

>304 jillmwo: Thank you, Jill. There could easily be something of that ilk awaiting after the seventieth page.

>306 karenmarie: I was wondering if anyone would bite. :-)

>306 karenmarie: >307 pgmcc: The US Nuclear Regulatory Commission defines DNBR as, "Departure from nucleate boiling ratio (DNBR). The ratio of the heat flux needed to cause departure from nucleate boiling to the actual local heat flux of a fuel rod."

Hmmm... heck of a way to spend St Patrick's Day... ;)

I have finished Bleak House and enjoyed it greatly. Now I shall sample Verdict of Twelve, a book-bullet fired by @jillmwo with ample enthusiasm to inflict wounds on many GDers.



Having reached post 309 I think it time to start Volume 2 of my reading thread for 2017.