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.

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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.

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[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.