Welcome to Litsy!

I have to leave for a coffee date I've been looking forward to, but Wimsey is just about to do the Big Reveal! This is why I wish I lived somewhere with better public transit.

Okay, so this book just had a scene in which the characters have a detailed conversation about which trains and buses are best to take, and now I keep picturing the characters as the cast of SNL's The Californians.

Time notation in this novel is different than I've seen it before. I've been able to find an explanation for "point format" (using a point rather than a colon between the hour and minute), but I'm not sure about the absence of the zero before a single-digit minute (1.7 vs 1.07). My hypothesis: That the zero as a placeholder is an addition that came about after digital clocks were introduced.

Does anyone have insight into this history?

While it was pleasant to spend a couple of days with Netflix true crime shows, I am very glad that I have enough energy and focus to read a bit today! Although I'd read that the more recent strains aren't supposed to mess with your sense of smell as much, I'm definitely not able to smell or taste like usual. But with a teen just back from sleepaway camp, maybe it's not all bad that my sense of smell is diminished. 😂

Home from traveling and at the hair salon getting the boy-teen cleaned up for camp and a really cool musical performance opportunity that came up for him. This is such a busy summer, just one thing after the next! It's nice but tiring.

In other news: The dialect in this novel is really slowing me down. The interactions are clearly funny, but I feel like the sloth from Zootopia with how long it takes me to get the jokes.

Travel day! Spent the 5+ hours on the plane trying to nap then giving up and watching Amelie, and now I'm trying to get some reading in on the hour-long train ride. The train is not nearly as air conditioned as I expected it to be. 🥵

This was a decent Lord Peter Wimsey mystery, but lacking compared to the previous book (Strong Poison). The mystery was nicely twisty-turny, but the characters needed more fleshing out for me to follow who might have done what. I kept flipping back to Lord Peter‘s initial list of suspects to remind myself of who was who. And I loved the Scottish setting, but the “dialect” often made the dialogue hard to follow! One more for #SeriesLove2023!

“…with a sky full of bright sun and rolling cloud-banks, hedges filled with flowers, a well-made road, a lively engine, and the prospect of a good corpse at the end of it, Lord Peter‘s cup of happiness was full. He was a man who loved simple pleasures.”

😂😂

Not my favorite of Sayer‘s Lord Peter Wimsey series but I persevered and ultimately ended up enjoying the book as a whole. The setting of the Scottish Highlands where Wimsey is vacationing was a nice place to visit vicariously in my reading, however the book focused quite a bit on the intricacies of the Scottish railroad system which was a bit dry at times.

Anyone else seen the Literature Clock? It tells the time using passages from books. 🙂
literature-clock.jenevoldsen.com

Maybe I'm too exhausted these days, but I found the focus on train timetables too tiring. There was a fun bit at the end where Peter re-enacts the crime, though.

Book mail! I SHOULD write, 'send help I keep buying books when I have already so many unread ones', but I don't want help, I want more time to read. I tell myself there are worse vices 😄

I'm following along with the podcast As My Whimsy Takes Me (https://asmywimseytakesme.com). They're still talking about the divine Strong Poison, which I finished rereading, so I got a jump on the next book in the series.

I've read this one in full before, but it's not my favorite — so much focus on the mechanics of the murder rather than on characters and relationships — so I went with the 3-hour BBC radio adaptation to refresh my memory. #libby

#BookMail Pt18 This is Bk6 in the Lord Peter Wimsey series, I‘m trying to collect the whole series in these editions before they stop distributing them. Lord Peter is in Galloway, Scotland on a fishing trip when artist Sandy Campbell is found dead in a stream with a fractured skull. Everyone assumes it was an accident, except Lord Wimsey when he realises there is something missing from the scene.

Probably my least favorite Sayers so far, mostly because there is little character development and a complicated time-table crime story. Yet, still 3.5 stars!

Well-written, clear characters, and atmospheric.

⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2

This is the reason I don't go in the city very often! The books by the tagged author are #blameitonlitsy purchases as is some of the sci fi. I should be rather busy for a while

As I just rambled elsewhere: "I am reading Five Red Herrings by Dorothy Sayers again. I am more appreciative this time because this version had a good intro that pointed out how embedded Wimsey is in the mystery and how it's never just a mystery, he always cares and that helps you care. Also it has a very clear sense of place. And it is very literally written based on a train timetable. It's all very clever."

What could be better than a nice British murder mystery that depends on railway and bus timetables? If that nice British murder mystery also includes my favorite literary crush, Lod Peter Wimsey. Yes, technically this is a radio play and not an audiobook, but it‘s still one of my favorite Sayers stories, and the dramatization was so funny that I laughed out loud multiple times.

An old favourite for bedtime listening tonight, with a touch of Peter Wimsey. And not read by Ian Carmichael but Patrick Malahide - who played Roderick Alleyn in the TV adaption of Ngiao Marsh's books. But don't worry. It's not as confusing as that sounds.