Book completed

An Expert in Murder, by Nicola Upson. This is the first in her Josephine Tey mysteries, in which the real-life mystery writer who published as Josephine Tey helps to solve a murder mystery set among the cast and crew of her real-life play, Richard of Bordeaux, about Richard II. In real life, this play was what made John Gielgud famous, so of course he's in the book too, as John Terry. I was impressed with the research necessary to pull it off! It's well written and entertaining and makes me want to read the play, which fell out of favor when WWII began due to its general message of pacifism. The author also does very well at dropping us into existing relationships, as if there had been previous books in the series.

Early on, though, there was a chapter where we met a whole lot of characters, and when one of them started to refer to something mysterious they'd done, I wished I hadn't been quite so overwhelmed with characters so I could remember whether we readers are supposed to know what they're talking about. It was probably my fault, though, for taking a break of a few days between the first chapter and the rest of the book.

My other thought is that I'm already reading the Maisie Dobbs series, which deals heavily in the aftermath of the first World War, so I should wait to continue this series until I've finished the other. (There was also a bit of thematic crossover with Rivers of London, though those are much easier to tell apart, of course!)

Day 684: Classical music zombie

Yesterday I had a headache, and it didn't go away overnight - it woke me up a couple hours early today and wouldn't let me get back to sleep. That was okay, since most of what I had on my schedule for today was to watch the new Delgani String Quartet concert online, live, at 3 pm, and I could do that just fine while reclining on my bed. They perform on Sunday and Tuesday, and I have tickets for Tuesday, but both concerts are livestreamed, so my new pattern is to watch them online on Sunday then go see it in person Tuesday, by which point I'm reasonably educated about the pieces in question. I'd been too busy to watch the pre-concert talks before now, so I did some of that before the concert as well. And then they encouraged us to shut our eyes to listen to the first piece, which was by Pulitzer-winning Alaskan composer John Luther Adams - it sounded a bit like wind chimes. So I did that, and then I shut my eyes again to listen to the second piece, Benjamin Britten's first string quartet. I thought I was awake... but then the piece ended and I felt much more rested, so I guess I slept a little! The second half was a late string quartet by Beethoven, op. 132.

Also today I watched a really interesting Nova episode about the Mayan city states in the southern part of their territory, some of which were rather large, but which were largely abandoned around 800-900 A.D. But now I'm getting pretty sleepy again...