cimorene

Last Tuesday's false alarm about getting sick aside - at least, I still THINK it was a false alarm - I now can't breathe through my nose. It started feeling mildly congested Friday morning and by dinnertime I had to take a Sudafed. I'm still inclined to consider Tuesday a false alarm though, because I've certainly never had a complete recovery from the sore throat phase of a cold/flu followed by two days of perfect, symptom-free good health and high energy before the onset of head congestion. Although I guess it's possible my immune system was winning at first but got overtaken.

I finished reading all Catriona McPherson's literary output and the series remained a favorite throughout (My mom and

waxjism's mom are the only people in my immediate circle who read mysteries but I have talked mine into them already with my review, and will give one to my MIL as a gift at the next opportunity.)

I also read the whole Rivers of London series because three people on my Tumblr feed had simultaneously started posting about them and I happened to catch a couple of quotes that I liked. (Then I read some fanfiction about them - not all of it, but most of it - and I started trying to talk my family and

waxjism into reading them but none of them have yet. My parents don't do ebooks, and they're both sitting on about a year-long to-read pile which in my dad's case is regularly augmented by free review copies, but they and my sister at least agreed, after being plied with quotes, that they were persuaded.)

I've also continued reading the output of British contemporary detective writer Ruth Dudley Edwards, and still like her wit, plots, and characters; however, contrary to expectation, the introduction of the apparently well-known Baroness "Jack" Troutbeck has put me off rather. You see, the first book she appears in has as its central topic Political Correctness Gone Mad (a very 1990s idea and that's when it was written), which is a subject that usually ends up pissing me off. The book also contains cynical people who don't actually believe what they're saying becoming the PC Police for dastardly reasons, gullible students being stirred up to activism against sexism and racism by sneaky puppetmasters, all the smart characters in the books being united in eyeroll about the idea of affirmative action, etc, etc. I got through it someohow, mostly with one eye closed, but then when I picked up the next book in the series, it was to find out the narrator is going to be assisting Jack and the Tory party with something, and given the last book's track record, I don't know if I can stomach it.

I also read the first 1½ Campion books by Margery Allingham, but I'm finding the second one pretty impossible and am on the verge of giving up. I know she started writing very young, so I wonder if there's anyone who can recommend one of the better ones to start with? Part of the problem is that they are tending a little more towards action-thriller than simple detective stories, which is not my preference, and on top of that they're flavored strongly with Gothic, and then on top of THAT they've been too tropey for my taste so far.