No health within us and nothing to read

In my current state of slightly uncomfortable loose-endishness, all I seem to want to do is read Sherlock Holmes pastiche. There's certainly enough of it around. Alas, what remains to me now is a series that might be called Mrs Hudson Knows Best, and the inevitable had-to-happen: a Canadian writes Holmes and at once puts him on a steamer bound for Canada with a bunch of Irish refugees who are probably (horror!) the dreaded Fenians. That the Fenian threat ended by the early '80s is neither here nor there. We are going to see Holmes in the middle of bitter winter Ottawa, god help us.

I ought to lap up Jeanne Larsen's Silk Road like cream. In fact I've been trying to read it since 1996, which is apparently when I bought it, in Tokyo (vaguely vaguely, a 2nd hand English bookstore in Ebisu), from someone who evidently bought it in Malaysia, going by the bookseller's stamp on the title page. I should lap it up even more now when I understand the pastiches that she's using (Ming storytellers, Buddhist chronicles, Daoist tales) plus the varying version of events these sources give to supplement the first-person narration (oral tradition in action, playing with texts, meta meta yum) plus the delight of a Karin-like gallimaufry of duelling Great Western Mothers, Jade Emperors, Guan-yin, petty bureaucrats in the Heavenly order, and uppity pearl spirits. I still find it a slog, alas.