It's Wednesday!

[evelyn_b]

After a sumptuous supper of cold cereal, I had to restrain an urge to snatch at the food like a snarling mongrel. I tried a sip of the wine, a silky blend of apple and oak. Kick-ass private detectives hardly ever live like this. We're the Gallo aficionados of the jug-wine set.

I don't have much new to report.

My reading time has been severely curtailed and when I get a minute to myself, almost the only thing I want to read is my best girl Kinsey Millhone. She's a not-like-other-girls narrator done beautifully right, even if I'm never going to love her (typical of narrators in the 1980s? Or just of Sue Grafton?) habit of describing people by exactly how many pounds overweight they are. I love her prickliness and her deliberate, defensive self-isolation, and I love that it's impossible to offer her food in any context without her casually but compulsively reminding the reader of her own lazy self-catering. She's the perfect guide to her own endless string of ridiculously over-the-top misadventures (she's about to get marked for death AGAIN after getting chased around the desert by a hitman and losing both her car and her apartment to fire, and as if that weren't enough her landlord's hypochondriac brother is visiting and driving everyone crazy) and also the perfect guide to the petty insurance-fraud cases that pay her bills. She's not always the perfect guide to whatever supporting cast she's investigating, because her prejudices get in the way, but you won't get far in the private-eye game if you keep your good-faith goggles on all the time, will you?

In I is for Innocent, Kinsey has what she thinks is a clear case against some asshole who obviously murdered his wife, and she's sure she can sew it right up if she can just talk to enough people about what an asshole he was. But can it really be that simple? Of course it can't; we're only a third of the way in. Things are just starting to unravel. My expectations are high.

I did finish The Martian and it was just as delightful all the way through. In addition to the endless problem-solving, I also really enjoyed how transparently Mark was the star of Andy Weir's daydreams, right down to his fellow astronauts reminiscing about how great his stupid jokes were.

No promises for next week, either - but at least I made it to Wednesday this time?

Comments

[evelyn_b]

It's nothing bad - just ordinary busy season that happens every year, and it won't last too long. But I am also glad for Kinsey. <3