The problem is that I get clicking and lose all sense of time and purpose (like now). I've been spending the last hour getting excited about the Internet again and finding things I want to follow and incorporate into my ePhilanthropy class next summer. There is just so much information out there.
Side note: I've been unfocused the last couple months (plus having to do that last class I had missed) that I haven't been able to work on *my* class. I think I'm coming out of the fog now. So much to do and perhaps if Regis doesn't doesn't pick up my class as a regular, I can use this info for my workbook/seminar. Postscript: I hope I get that Web Manager job. That would be so fun.
Yes, I read the romance book last evening and yes it was silly but now it's out of my way and I can get back to crime bwa hahhaa!
Reading now the fourth book of twelve in Deborah Crombies series featuring Duncan Kincaid, a Scotland Yard superintendent, and Gemma James, a sergeant, in London, England. Published in 1996, MOURN NOT YOUR DEAD does contain a crime to be solved but I think most readers who read the previous book (if you're reading this in order) are more concerned about Kincaid and Gemma's relationship as the last book ended with a showstopper. Here's a description from Publisher's Weekly:
Alastair Gilbert, a high-ranking police officer, has been bludgeoned to death in his home in Holmbury, and Scotland Yard's James and Kincaid are called in to aid the local authorities who, over time, prove to be both efficient and fallible. Suspicion immediately falls upon the fragile-looking widow, Claire Gilbert, who, along with her daughter Lucy, Gilbert's stepdaughter, discovered the body. Shrewd and methodical interviews with some of the town's citizens (the pubkeeper and his son; the vicar and doctor, both women; an engaging psychic) show that Claire and Lucy are held in high regard and suggest that more pertinent information might be found in London, where Claire's first husband had been killed in a hit-and-run accident some years earlier-a case in which Alastair had been an investigating officer.I don't know what it is about these books, perhaps it is the skill and talent of the writer or maybe their worldbuilding, but the one finds oneself saying "I'll just start it" and then almost 100 pages later looking up and wondering where the time went. I think Deborah Crombie has a very loyal following, but in the general crime fiction arena, she's faded from view. I mean she's just THERE like Grafton, Muller, Peters, etc. Steadily cranking out quality novels year after year but not really causing a stir, if you know what I mean.
Worldbuilding is an under-used word in crime fiction. It is much bandied about in SFF because it is usually an obvious thing -- creating a world beyond what we know. But the essence of worldbuilding is creating a different reality from ours -- and that could be any fictional story. Wikipedia explains, "The goals of world-building are to create a context for a story. Consistency is an important step in the construction of a world, so it requires a foundation or baseline to provide the core concept of the setting" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worldbuilding. Perhaps that is something that we as readers perceive subtly when we feel a story isn't working for us. We've picked up a flaw in the author's worldbuilding of the novel.
It's Saturday. And **cold**. It's not supposed to get much warmer than 16 degrees. Yesterday a storm front moved in fast; the temps dropped quickly and the wind was terrible. Snow put a half inch on top of the ice I think. So I don't think we're going anywhere other than The Walking of the Beast. I could happily play on the Internet all day, or read, or watch an episode of MI-5 or start Foyle's War episodes or maybe the next disc of Veronica Mars will show up today. So many diversions with which we surround ourselves.
How melancholy all of a sudden. I need to do some playing around in the social networks and read the email marketing book before it's due back. I should vacuum downstairs. Continue my alphabetizing project (oy, that's been on hold for too long), start listing the other books that should go on the used bookstore online....
Okay, I was a bad girl. I've been checking the Book Depository daily for the next Steig Larsson for it to show available and just did so I got it. No shipping charges from the UK which is AWESOME. Just a present to myself for whatever reason I think of: making it this long without success in job hunting and not cracking up; belated Christmas present; a New Year's gift; replacing the MI-5 season two DVD that got lost in transit; or simply just because I'm worth it. :) Don't feel guilty... don't feel guilty...
And because of that splurge, I'm definitely reading the Lauren Willig from the library and not buying it (note to self).
Much love,
PK the Bookeemonster
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