Friday Round-Up

By the end of the week, I’ve often accumulated odds and bobs that are too brief for a full post, or not quite relevant to crime and fiction and Canada.

Since I’m woolly-headed with a cold, here are some things I’m reading, writing, and thinking about as February comes to a close, in descending order of relevance:

Denise Mina’s plans for next September’s Bloody Scotland crime fiction festival, where she’ll be the second guest programmer. (Gratuitous photo of Sir Ian Rankin, the first one to take on this programming role; I very much appreciated his courtesy to fellow guests barrelling out of hotel elevators, and I will forever treasure his “Hiya!”.)

Mina in this interview: “I came to crime writing from academic writing, and with academic writing it’s the absolute opposite, so it’s like you’re trying to swim with concrete shoes on, and with crime writing it’s like floating on the pool and drinking a daiquiri.”

Louise Penny and Mellissa Phung’s The Last Mandarin: I’m still thinking about the novel, and it’s changed my mind about both thrillers and the benefits of writer collabs. A very good read and, an interesting second international thriller for the Three Pines writer.

This is more related to creative nonfiction: my students, and my own work-in-progress:

Two wonderful personal memoir/cultural pieces in the New Yorker: Jill Lepore’s recent “Living in Tracy Chapman’s House” and a 2018 piece by Michelle Zauner, “Crying in H Mart.” Both are about memories of place and youth; Lepore is interested in how we become ourselves, as young adults, while Zauner is writing about mourning her mother. They’re linked by a preoccupation with a food: the Moosewood-inspired bad but cheap vegetarian meals of Lepore’s post-college communal living days and Zauner’s adventures in Asian food court dining. At two in the morning, when I couldn’t sleep and was waiting for the Lemsip to kick in, they were wonderful company.

Gratuitous photos of Inverness and its environs, because Bloody Scotland is held in the compact city of Stirling, the gateway to the Highlands.

The view through a stony bothy down to the water on a tour around Loch Ness.

The view of the Inverness Castle from an adjacent bridge, as the sun is setting.