Merry-making

[vanillafluffy]

I ordered J's gift from Amazon---she told me a while back that she wants a copy of "The Joy of Cooking" that isn't falling apart, and she doesn't mind it used---so I found her a slightly used hardcover copy for a penny, then popped $6.99 for expedited shipping. I'm going to give it to her with some tea, which she also specifically mentioned, and cookies. So she can have a nice cuppa and a nibble and decide what she'd going to cook. *smirk* (She knows nothing about LJ, so I'm safe enough discussing it here. SBJB is our only mutual friend who's liable to see this, and I'm confident she won't blab.)

Have also been slogging away at Yuletide. It's one thing to be intimately familiar with canon, another thing to try to extrapolate it sympathetically. My issue is, the source material has a Very Large Cast, and I'm trying to touch base with the old familiars without overwhelming readers who may not have the first foggy clue---assuming there are any. And, of course, give my recipient something that resembles what she's hoping for.

Finished reading "The Baker Street Letters" (Michael Robertson), which I found disappointing. The premise: A barrister who's renting 221B Baker Street sets his screw-up brother in charge of answering the letters that arrive for Sherlock Holmes. Brother hares off to L.A. in response to one letter, and gets embroiled in a murder. Despite the allusions to Sherlock, there's no deductive reasoning involved at all, and the plot isn't a mystery to anyone who's ever watched TV or for that matter, read any mystery novel more complex than Nancy Drew. Thank goodness it's a library book and therefore cost me nothing but time.

Have started "A Nose for Justice" (Rita Mae Brown), featuring a Dachshund and a German shephard in the middle of a mystery set in Nevada. So far, the dogs are more interesting than the people...I've liked RMB in the past, although more for her novels than her mysteries. I'm still on the fence about this one. Remember: Show, don't tell.

.

Comments

[nwhepcat.livejournal.com]

For a writer of a handbook for writers, Rita Mae Brown sure does a lot of annoying, amateur stuff in her mysteries (I wrote copy for at least one of them when I worked at her publisher). I kept thinking "THIS is why you learned Anglo-Saxon?" (She insists you have to know Latin and A-S to be a good writer.)

[vanillafluffy.livejournal.com]

This one not only has a cast of characters at the beginning, complete with a summary of each person, the description when the character appears virtually restates the summary. Geez Louise! It's all very cookie-cutter; I reread Venus Envy recently, thinking I might offer it for Yuletide, and it wasn't written as if the reader was an idiot. Mystery readers are usually smarter than the average bear---it doesn't show much respect for the audience.

.

[nwhepcat.livejournal.com]

That is shockingly condescending! What has happened to her -- or is it her editor? ::wonders what her previous editor is up to these days -- I loved reading mss. with her comments to the author. She did not treat readers like idiots.

[pwcorgigirl.livejournal.com]

I bought several books for the only child on my Christmas list and wound up keeping one of them: Damosel: In Which the Lady of the Lake Renders a Frank and Often Startling Account of her Wondrous Life and Times. (The child's parents are religious fanatics and I was afraid this one had enough wizardry in it to raise their objections.) It's turned out to be a great read.

[vanillafluffy.livejournal.com]

Poor kid! The book does sound cool, though. I'm thinking of passing on a gently-read children's book to a little girl who attends my church...the artwork in the book I'm thinking of is really lovely, though, so I may yield to the impulse to keep it and find something else.

.

[pwcorgigirl.livejournal.com]

I have to buy especially Godly Christmas cards for these folks and be sure to never wrap the kid's gifts in paper that has any Santa-type stuff on it. It's a real PITA, but I can sometimes slip subversive literature under the parents' radar. :D

You may have something else in your library your little friend would like just as well. It's a very sweet thing to do.

[vanillafluffy.livejournal.com]

She's a cute kid. Yesterday, her folks took her to Universal Studios and she got to meet The Grinch! She was toting a stuffed Grinch to church today and very voluble about her adventure. And since her mother is still on the sunny side of 30, it reminds me that I *could* be a grandmother if life had gone a bit differently....

Godly folks can be quite a trial. Heaven fobid you should say "Happy Holidays" and not "Merry Christmas"! (No pun intended.) Or abbreviate it as "Xmas". *sigh* Ah, well ONE of us has to practice tolerance; let it begin with me....

.