purplecat

Reading: A Lady of Quality by Georgette Heyer. I've never read any Georgette Heyer though I've seen various members of this parish enthuse about her. I appealed some years ago to claraste who sent me a short list of recommendations. I've no idea if the list was in any particular order, but this was the first one on it. claraste labelled it "determined spinster". My initial thoughts were that there were an awful lot of info dumps delivered via flashback, and quite a lot of long dialogue sections doing much the same. Then I realised I wanted to know what happened next...

Listening: The usual really. I made Mum listen to podcasts while we drove which at least has caused me to catch up. I don't think she was impressed, even when I removed the more Who-ish ones from the list (possibly this was a mistake, the others, at least at the moment, are all a bit Radio 4 serious business-ish).

Watching: Ms. Fisher's Modern Murder Mysteries which B. discovered while acquiring Miss Fisher and the Crypt of Tears for me as a birthday present. It's a clever idea - modernising the Miss Fisher concept to the 1960s - another decade with a distinctive style. Peregrine Fisher is just different enough from Phryne Fisher to be interesting in her own right, and the set up - in which she is aided and abetted by the Adventuresses Club set up by Phryne allows her to be less of an all-rounder. The clone of Jack Robinson, however, is sufficiently clone-like that I've already forgotten his name. The stories are full of 1960s style but feel slightly too languorous at their 90 minute length. I'm not familiar enough with Australian culture to comment on racism (a criticism levelled at the Miss Fisher series and the books it is based on), but so far the only Italians have been mafiosi or associated with mafiosi and I don't think I've seen anyone else who isn't whiter than white so I suspect it isn't doing a lot better. Still, it's fun on its own terms.