Sayers, Dorothy - Clouds of Witness

I ended up liking this much better than Strong Poison, mostly because I found the mystery more engaging.

Wimsey's brother, the Duke of Denver, has been accused of murdering his sister's fiancee. Despite the fact that the mystery is centered around the Wimsey family, Lord Peter doesn't make that much of an impression on me in this book, even when compared to the not-so-character-based Strong Poison. I didn't mind so much, though, because the supporting characters were for some reason more appealing to me. Also, as mentioned before, I was more interested in the mystery itself and so the resolution of it was more satisfying for me.

There seemed to be much more hidden passions and secrets in this book than in Strong Poison (this is going to get compared to SP very often, because I have no other Sayers benchmark), and because of that, the backstory geek in me was much happier about the revelations concerning Denis Cathcart (the murdered man), Mary Wimsey and Gerald Wimsey.

I also grew rather fond of the Wimsey family as the book progressed. Come to think of it, I grew rather fond of Peter as well, so nix the bit about him not making that big of an impression. I was quite possibly won over by his affection for his brother and his rather dashing last minute... er... dash to save Gerald.

Have now bought Murder Must Advertise and am trying to save it for the flight back.

(no subject)

Going to pick up the boy soon!

So far, I have eaten way too much food, all of it good, gone up on a Ferris wheel, met up with old high school friends, tried Southern Comfort with lime juice (actually pretty good), gotten a facial, and opened a lot of chocolate. Have I mentioned the eating? It doesn't sound like I've done a lot, but it feels like it, and all of it is meals!

I've had a very good Szechuan fancy dinner (Christmas), assorted dumplings and baozi, a lot of street food, a buffet dinner, beef soup with shaved noodles (they're sort of uneven because people just shave them off a block of ... noodle stuff), fancy Japanese food (yummy!), and home-cooked curry and assorted other stuff. And fruit. One of the happiest things about Taiwan is that there is never a season in which fruit is scarce. Right now I am drowning in wax apples (lien wu), ponkan oranges (sort of like satsumas, but a lot bigger and sweeter), and dates. My stomach is very happy with me right now.

There's also an article on the increase of female readership for comics, thanks to manga, in the NYT here.