Running a little behind on answering email, returning comments, etc. Soon!
What have you recently finished reading?
Artists in Crime (Ngaio Marsh). I’m really tearing through these books. I don’t think they’re as accomplished or interesting as Sayers’ Lord Peter books — not least because Alleyn is plainly reading from Wimsey’s crib sheet — but they’re just right to tuck myself up with and spend a few hours. I’m slowly getting fond of Alleyn, too.
What are you currently reading?
As usual, far too much, but only three things really actively. One is the current Ngaio Marsh I’m onto, of course, which is Death in a White Tie. Then I’m a chunk of the way into Steven Pinker’s The Language Instinct, which is interesting. I don’t know enough about linguistics to really argue with Pinker, but I’m not completely convinced that language is genetically coded into us. Mind you, it shares some features with other things — in the same way as it becomes harder to learn a new language as you get older, it’s also hard to learn to use senses you didn’t have at a formative age. Still, that might be more to do with the way we learn and the plasticity of the brain… Anyway, the third book is Out on Blue Six (Ian McDonald). I feel quite deja vu-ish about this one, though. Or maybe it’s just that people have copied it since: it was originally published in the year I was born.
Oh, and I’m also dipping into Long Hidden (ed. Daniel José Older and Rose Fox). I actually got myself a print copy since I was taking so long to get to the ARC and felt guilty. Interesting that there’s a Welsh story in here.
What will you read next?
Well, it’s a reasonably good guess that Overture to Death (Ngaio Marsh) is coming up next. Other than that, there’s tons of stuff from previous weeks that I keep ignoring, so I probably should refrain from starting anything new.
r at a Roman outpost in Thrace until, kidnapped by barbarian Visigoths, she finds her destiny to heal and also to be a woman and a wife.
