On being yourself

Of course, even when men feel completely free to behave as they choose, they usually end up behaving, if not like everybody else exactly, at least like a lot of other people. There is safety in numbers, and the desire for safety is not easily abolished; and in any case there are not so many different ways of behaving present in most people's imagination. The injunction or command to be yourself (as if you could be anyone else) ends up being the same as the command to be exactly as your neighbor.

~Theodore Dalrymple, The New Vichy Syndrome

Top Whatever Mystery Authors

Okay, so here we go. I could have made this list longer, included Ellery Queen, Doyle or maybe even Franklin W. Dixon, but I think I'll start here.

Number 5: Agatha Christie

Dame Christie was a very prolific author and she created several iconic characters. Everyone who knows anything about mystery stories knows about Poirot and Miss Marple. If you're a bit more familiar with mysteries, you might even know the names of Tommy and Tuppence Beresford, Inspector Japp, and Superintendent Battle.

What makes a good mystery story?

So! Mystery writers. I'll set out some criteria I might use when ranking mystery authors. I'll give an example in each case and we'll see where we are when I get to the end. If I haven't rambled on too long, then I'll tack on a list of my top whatever mystery authors. If it's a bit long, I'll save that for another post.

When evaluating mystery writers, I like to see a few different things. I don't like their work to seem too similar. Ellis Peters, when you read all the Brother Cadfael mysteries in the course of a month or two, leans too heavily on certain tropes and phrases. It's been a couple years since I read them, so if you put me to the test and demanded that I produce my bona fides I could not do it now. But I recall that was certainly my impression and it grew stronger the further in series I went.

Birthday Revels

It is my wife's birthday tomorrow. We will, of course, celebrate tomorrow with gifts and food and whatnot. But we were able to get someone to mind the children today, so today I will be taking my wife out to eat and we will most likely take in a movie.

Because my wife is awesome, she wanted to go, not to some fancy-pants restaurant where the appetizer costs enough to feed a family of 6 for a week, but to an burger joint. No, no, no, not one of those generic fast-food franchises, some place that takes a bit of pride in their cooking, but doesn't insist on you wearing a tie and speaking French to order.

Also! We intend to see the movie The Secret World of Arrietty if we can manage to find an appropriate showtime, since it's been in theaters a while. It is a Miyazaki film, so even if it's not great, it ought to still be one of the better films so far this year.

I promise, I will make the post about mystery authors. I just haven't had time to sit down and do it properly yet.

Antipodean mystery

If you've glanced over to the left you may have noticed that I've been reading a number of Ngaio Marsh mysteries of late. I'd been kinda itching to re-read a few of them that I'd only read once.

Marsh isn't the greatest mystery writer ever, but she's not the worst either. It just now occurs to me that I'd class her between Sayers (superior) and Christie (inferior) and that using that ranking also serves as an ordering of how many books each of them wrote. It doesn't hold entirely true, however, since I think Rex Stout was better than all three and he was rather prolific himself. Hum. Now I'm inclined to make a list of my favourite mystery writers ordered by how good their books are. Perhaps later.

For now, I'll just consider a couple of the Marsh books I recently read.

Why I don't use Wikipedia

Tycho of Penny Arcade wrote a post many moons ago, in conjunction with a comic illustrating his thesis, about why it is that Wikipedia is not the great thing it claims to be. This post and comic are relatively family-friendly (excepting the vulgar intensifier I redacted in the selection below), but if you're not familiar with their work, be warned. Tycho and his cohort Gabe are in no wise respectful of taboos.

The second response is:  the collaborative nature of the apparatus means that the right data tends to emerge, ultimately, even if there is turmoil temporarily as dichotomous viewpoints violently intersect.  To which I reply:  that does not inspire confidence.  In fact, it makes the whole effort even more ridiculous.  What you’ve proposed is a kind of quantum encyclopedia, where genuine data both exists and doesn’t exist depending on the precise moment I rely upon your discordant ****ing mob for my information.

Pensée for the day

All great amusements are dangerous to the Christian life; but among all those which the world has invented there is none more to be feared than the theatre.

~Blaise Pascal