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In spite of the constant stream of scammers and robocalls and robocall scammers that I get, I really must stop answering my landline with a curt Yes?! because occasionally there's a real well-meaning person on the other end. As today, the third call of the morning after This is VISA security and This is doors and windows, was my doctor's locum reviewing my bloodwork from Monday. My blood sugars are up from last year when I was evidently doing something right. 'Of course the holidays see a rise in blood sugar but do you think there's some changes you might make now?' Well, I allowed, I could stop drinking Black Russians. She agreed that would do the trick. Not that I've been drinking Black Russians this week, but I have been putting vodka into my cocoa. However, the bottle is finished and I won't buy another, so we'll see in another three months. But equally I'll be moving more now that the worst of the snow is (fingers tightly crossed) over for the nonce. Exercise, exercise.
This week I finished Lost Souls etc and Strange Houses. Doubtless read some Dr Priestleys-- yes, ok, Death in Wellington Rd with the poisoned pigs, and The Domestic Agency. Rhode's problem, more apparent in the former book than the latter, is that he never gives too much information. Mystery writers ought to give us more details than we can use. If they don't, every piece of information we get is significant, so that if Chekov's Australian cousin is mentioned in chapter 2, for sure he will turn up, probably as the murderer, by the end of the book.
The other problem is a hardwarish one: Kobo's Rhodes will occasionally just hang as I'm reading and refuse to go either forward or back. This only happens on my phone, but the upstairs tablet won't load Kobo at all. This happened last week so I went and bought The Mystery of the Yellow Room to see if it happened with other ebooks. Answer is no, not, and it's a fun read even with the Belle Epoque Gallic piling up of adjectives. (Yeah, OK, Lovecraft did it too. Not just the French.) But can I quibble at a translator who talks about 'the assassin' and not the more natural murderer. Assassins in English are political murderers, not people who shoot inoffensive young women in their bedrooms.
This week I finished Lost Souls etc and Strange Houses. Doubtless read some Dr Priestleys-- yes, ok, Death in Wellington Rd with the poisoned pigs, and The Domestic Agency. Rhode's problem, more apparent in the former book than the latter, is that he never gives too much information. Mystery writers ought to give us more details than we can use. If they don't, every piece of information we get is significant, so that if Chekov's Australian cousin is mentioned in chapter 2, for sure he will turn up, probably as the murderer, by the end of the book.
The other problem is a hardwarish one: Kobo's Rhodes will occasionally just hang as I'm reading and refuse to go either forward or back. This only happens on my phone, but the upstairs tablet won't load Kobo at all. This happened last week so I went and bought The Mystery of the Yellow Room to see if it happened with other ebooks. Answer is no, not, and it's a fun read even with the Belle Epoque Gallic piling up of adjectives. (Yeah, OK, Lovecraft did it too. Not just the French.) But can I quibble at a translator who talks about 'the assassin' and not the more natural murderer. Assassins in English are political murderers, not people who shoot inoffensive young women in their bedrooms.