Just started Death and the Maiden
a mystery novel from the 1940s
by Gladys Mitchell.
The "detective" is Beatrice Bradley a psychoanalyst
and amateur sleuth.
I almost gave up on it after a few pages- the situations
were silly and improbable and the interactions seemed unnatural.
However, I am still reading it. There is just something good natured about
it (so far) that I am hoping for an interesting outcome???
Just finished The World of Jeeves by P G Wodhouse- over 650 pages
of stories about the same characters, but the writing is so excellent
it never get tiring. Possibly the best stylist ever.
Read Dune (Frank Herbert) a while back- liked it- especially the fact that it was not over-explained
and left room for mystery and wonder. So, I bought the next volume in the series, Dune Messiah.
Right off the bat, it started explaining things away. I stopped reading after 50 pages and may
never go back.
After the Jeeves book, I read Alfred Bester's The Stars My Destination.
Written in the mid 1950s, it is still one of the best scifi novels ever- well crafted,
interesting characters, marvelously inventive. Maybe a bit "preachy" toward the end.
And, just before that- read a book called Brilliant Blunderes
by Mario Livio (found it at a thrift store) It looks at varios scientists, Darwin, Lord Kelvin, Linus Pauling,
Fred Hoyle, and Einstein (I may have forgotten a few)- and looks, not so much at their
success, as at their mistakes and blind spots- was an interesting way to learn
about some major ideas in science history.
