Things Previously Missed
Apr. 13th, 2014 03:56 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
abracanabraI think I've done a decent job of making up for the extended non-socialization of the last few weeks! On Wednesday, I went on my first solo+2 outing since Theia's birth! We went to the Midtown Global Market's Wee Wednesday and watched a live band doing children's music. This Saturday was the monthly "Writers and Tea" gathering at Patisserie 46 that a friend of mine organizes, and today (Sunday) was a MinnSpec meeting in Uptown, with Emma Bull as the guest speaker.
Of late, I have been discovering wonderful entertainment media that I somehow missed until they were well established and/or finished. This is awesome! Finding something I like, and then learning that there are nineteen more books that I can get *right now*? Best feeling ever!
In related news, I have been mainlining everything that Kerry Greenwood has written so far. Her Phryne Fisher series is a lovely set of historical cozy mysteries that I can apparently devour like a pan of brownies sitting on the kitchen counter. Which is a thing that gets devoured. Fast. They are happy reads with a wonderfully liberated and entertaining main character who collects other interesting characters like stray kittens. They are also occasionally written in ways that are structurally interesting from a writer's point of view. Generally speaking, two mysteries are solved in each book. You don't necessarily know which one is going to be the "main" mystery and which will be the side-line until you're quite a bit in. In one of these books, the big mystery that takes up the first third of the book just . . . drops away, most of the rest of the book is occupied with the second introduced mystery, the plot climax is the end of the second mystery, and the first mystery is solved as a minor postlude. In another one of these books, the first mystery, which opens the book, is NEVER EXPLICITLY SOLVED. The second mystery is, but all the reader is told about the first mystery is that Phryne has solved it and she'll tell her friend about it when she gets back. Which we do not see in this series. And yes, clues to the first mystery are liberally handed to the reader. Still, it's a huge departure from standard genre conventions to not do a reveal in the end. Kerry Greenwood's Corinna Chapman series is also a mystery series with an enjoyable collection of characters, and there is something to think about in how it handles its "fat, size 20" protagonist and her attitude towards her weight and her attitude towards other people's attitudes towards her weight.
I've also started watching Royal Pains on Netflix.
And reading the Jim Butcher Furies series. LOVE.
Of late, I have been discovering wonderful entertainment media that I somehow missed until they were well established and/or finished. This is awesome! Finding something I like, and then learning that there are nineteen more books that I can get *right now*? Best feeling ever!
In related news, I have been mainlining everything that Kerry Greenwood has written so far. Her Phryne Fisher series is a lovely set of historical cozy mysteries that I can apparently devour like a pan of brownies sitting on the kitchen counter. Which is a thing that gets devoured. Fast. They are happy reads with a wonderfully liberated and entertaining main character who collects other interesting characters like stray kittens. They are also occasionally written in ways that are structurally interesting from a writer's point of view. Generally speaking, two mysteries are solved in each book. You don't necessarily know which one is going to be the "main" mystery and which will be the side-line until you're quite a bit in. In one of these books, the big mystery that takes up the first third of the book just . . . drops away, most of the rest of the book is occupied with the second introduced mystery, the plot climax is the end of the second mystery, and the first mystery is solved as a minor postlude. In another one of these books, the first mystery, which opens the book, is NEVER EXPLICITLY SOLVED. The second mystery is, but all the reader is told about the first mystery is that Phryne has solved it and she'll tell her friend about it when she gets back. Which we do not see in this series. And yes, clues to the first mystery are liberally handed to the reader. Still, it's a huge departure from standard genre conventions to not do a reveal in the end. Kerry Greenwood's Corinna Chapman series is also a mystery series with an enjoyable collection of characters, and there is something to think about in how it handles its "fat, size 20" protagonist and her attitude towards her weight and her attitude towards other people's attitudes towards her weight.
I've also started watching Royal Pains on Netflix.
And reading the Jim Butcher Furies series. LOVE.