One of probably the most pleasant choices I made this 12 months was to declare a “summer of snob.” For a number of gloriously scorching and sunny months, my fiction (and generally nonfiction) studying was loosely organized across the theme of snobbery. Loopy heiresses, high-society murders and sophistication nervousness galore populated my studying listing, giving simply sufficient of a thematic by way of line to supply fascinating comparisons with out changing into repetitive or boring.
So I’m going to do one thing comparable this winter, and choose up a murder-mystery theme for the following month or two. It’s a style that I discover psychologically comforting, as a result of homicide mysteries exist in ordered, if violent universes: Bad individuals do dangerous issues in them, however they don’t get away with it. That makes for a pleasing departure from our far-less-tidy actuality.
I suppose I actually embarked upon this theme a number of weeks in the past. I’ve been watching “A Murder At the End of the World,” a miniseries from Brit Marling and Zal Batmanglij that looks as if what you’d get if you happen to cross-pollinated “Glass Onion” with “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo.” It’s basically a country-house homicide thriller up to date for the A.I. period, however to date it’s not fairly cozy sufficient for me. (Too many shiny billionaires, too few goofy eccentrics.) Still, I’ll watch the ultimate two installments to see the place it’s all going — the foreshadowing that All Is Not As It Seems has been so heavy that I might be amused if the massive twist seems to be that it was petty, low-tech human jealousy all alongside.
On the opposite hand, “The Appeal,” by Janice Hallett, which is about in an English village’s novice theater troupe, is as cozy as they arrive. And its Christmas-themed sequel, described as a “festive murder mystery,” sounds prefer it dials the comfortable issue as much as 11. It’s on my listing.
Of course, it’s doable to take coziness — thriller or in any other case — a bit too far. Dorothy Parker, famously, objected to A.A. Milne’s saccharine prose in “The House At Pooh Corner,” writing in her overview that “Tonstant Weader Fwowed up.” But “The Red House Mystery,” Milne’s tackle the country-estate homicide style, is far lighter on the bumbling anthropomorphized bears, and likewise numerous enjoyable. It ought to inform you one thing that Raymond Chandler, who presumably abjured cuddliness in all its types, was a fan of the ebook.
Reader responses: Books that you just advocate
George Fleming, a reader in Mount Vernon, Ohio, recommends “The Earl of Louisiana” by A.J. Liebling:
A tremendously entertaining ebook and a whole clarification of human nature. One for the ages.
Jill Berke, a reader in Miami Beach, Fla., recommends “Do No Harm” by Henry Marsh:
The writer, a British neurosurgeon, takes us inside his thoughts and fingers as chapter by chapter he explains particular situations affecting the mind. How he decides to function and what happens every time he elements a cranium to see the mind is a compassionate, sincere lesson to find the stability between actuality and hope for his sufferers. It’s a spot all of us inhabit once we are medically liable for a liked one or put together for our personal loss of life. Reading this superbly written ebook made me much less fearful to discover that stability and extra acutely aware of the lure of denial.
What are you studying?
Thank you to everybody who wrote in to inform me about what you’re studying. Please preserve the submissions coming!
I need to hear about issues you will have learn (or watched or listened to) that you just advocate to Interpreter readers. That might be a selected favourite from this 12 months, a ebook that modified your thoughts about one thing, or a favourite thriller that you just assume needs to be on my listing.
Source: www.nytimes.com