Media Consumption March 4–18

Books

Finished
Jason Overstreet, The Striver's Row Spy (Renaissance #1) — Overstreet's first novel, I think. Historical fiction. Opens in 1919, when a young J Edgar Hoover hires Sidney Temple, a black recent college grad, and sends him to Harlem to spy on Marcus Garvey. Temple takes the job for his own reasons. Educational for me; I enjoyed looking up all the historical characters who appear in the novel. There's a second novel out in the series.

Cornelia Frances Biddle, The Conjurer, Deception's Daughter, Without Fear (Martha Beale #1–3) — Dickens-esque historical mystery set in 1840s Philadelphia. I got these as an omnibus. I think there are a couple more in the series, but Goodreads needs updating. I enjoyed this series because I learned some history and cared about the protagonist Martha Beale and her love interest, but there tended to be more "plot driven by pointless incompetence" than I preferred, so I don't plan to seek out the others right now.

Liz Williams, Snake Agent, The Demon & the City, Precious Dragon, Detective Inspector Chen #1–3 — urban fantasy / horror / science fiction / procedural. These are set in a near-future universe with magic where a city called Singapore 3, its associated Heaven, and its associated Hell (which are supposedly Chinese versions of Heaven and Hell) are interconnected, and various humans, demons, gods, and celestials (besides the dead) are able to travel between them under certain conditions. I have no idea how much the mythology/magic/worlds in these correspond to anything in Chinese culture. I like them, in part because there are so many different kinds of ideas and genres mashed together in a way that works pretty well. The second one is more meandering than I prefer, but first, third, and (so far) fourth one hang together well.

Reading
Liz Williams, The Shadow Pavilion (Detective Inspector Chen #4)

Gretchen McCulloch, Because Internet: Understanding the New Rules of Language — by the creator of the Linguathusiasm podcast.

Audiobooks

Finished
Elizabeth Edmondson, A Question Of Inheritance (Very English Mysteries #2) — cozy mystery with a little spycraft, set in 1950s England. Audiobook is narrated by Michael Page.

John McWhorter, Talking Back, Talking Black — short set of essays about Black English, aimed at an audience who is inclined to think Black English is "a lot of mistakes." I'm not that audience, but I enjoyed learning a little more about the vocabulary, grammar, sounds, and history of the dialect. I now know that "your ass" can be a pronoun. (This is not specifically a Black English feature.)

Bonus: article, not by McWhorter, about the pronomial and other uses of "-ass": https://daily.jstor.org/in-which-we-get-to-the-bottom-of-some-crazy-ass-language/

Listening
Karen Charlton, The Sans Pareil Mystery (Detective Lavender #2)

TV

Finished Miss Marple, "Nemesis"; "4:50 from Paddington"
Started Miss Marple, "A Caribbean Mystery"
The Joan Hickson Miss Marples are annoyingly inconsistent. So far my favorite BY FAR is "A Murder Is Announced".

Other

I'm really enjoying Spotify's "Funk Rock" playlist