Books, life the universe

Saturday 23 October 2010

And yet more reading . . .


Death at the Opera by Gladys Mitchell - e-book - the first I've read by this author and very enjoyable it was too. She is one of the Golden Age of detective fiction writers from the 1920s and 1930s. This story features psycho-analyst Beatrice Lestrange Bradley trying to find out why a school teacher apparently committed suicide during the school's performance of Gilbert and Sullivan's The Mikado.

Georgette Heyer's Penhallow - e-book - not what I was expecting because the reader knows who the murderer is and how it was done. The portrait of a family tyrant - Adam Penhallow - and the effect he has on his nearest and dearest deserves to be better known. It is an excellent psychological novel

Games People Play by Eric Berne - I first read this about 30 years ago and had forgotten a great deal of it. Very instructive about the way people operate and you find yourself looking out for the games people play in every day life.

Currently reading:

Georgette Heyer - Death in the Stocks - e-book - a body is found in the stocks on the village green. Superintendent Hannasyde is his usual self and the story exposes a very strange family set up.

Risk: the science and politics of fear by Dan Gardner - e-book - fascinating book about how bad human beings are at assessing relative risk

4 comments:

Carol said...

Thought you might be interested...Blog Jog Day is a one-day event where we all post links forwarding to each others Blogs--most are author and book sites. You can read more about it at http://blogjogday.blogspot.com. Our next Blog Jog Day is November 21st. Warm Regards!

NAM said...

Gladys Mitchell and Georgette Heyer - what a double bill! I've read quite a lot of Gladys Mitchell and particularly like the later ones with her secretary Laura Menzies, who is such a good foil.

And as I think we agreed before, 'Penhallow' definitely deserves to be better known.

Jilly said...

I think both Heyer and Mitchell are way better writers than many crime fiction authors writing today - with some exceptions of course before Martin Edwards. Anne Brooke and Leigh Russell stop checking my blog! I'm thinking more of the graphic violence brigade who I find virtually unreadable. Give me the Golden Age authors and people who write in similar vein, any day of the week.

Jilly said...

Thanks Carol for drawing my attention to this - I will be checking the site