Jewelry Round-Up

 Most of these beads came from a kit from Candie Cooper, and initially I was going to add them to my collection of raku beads and make a necklace (I'm thinking on some silk sari, or an interesting novelty yarn), but the more I looked at the beads the more I liked them all by themselves. I added a few more and voila:

I used some of the raku beads I already have to make earrings:

That upside down bead was totally on purpose

But wait! I forgot to post these earrings I made last month!

 I love those pink flower beads, and I have to find a use for the rest of them.

Book Round-Up

The Word is Murder by Anthony Horowitz: a meta-ish cozy riff on the Sherlockian/Watson partnership, where a fictionalized Horowitz teams up with a disgraced former cop. I should have loved it, but I didn't; it left me cold. 

In preparing this post, I realized I never wrote about the other Horowitz book I read!

 Magpie Murders by Anthony Horowitz: I liked this mystery quite a bit more, in part because there's a mystery within a mystery -- Susan Ryeland is the long-time editor of Alan Conway, and when he dies mysteriously she must not only solve his murder but figure out what happened to the last chapters of his last manuscript. We are treated, then, to both a contemporary whodunit and a pastiche of a Golden Age cozy. Lots of fun.

D: a Tale of Two Worlds by Michel Faber: D is for delightful. This was a wonderful middle-grade novel about a girl -- Dhikilo, a refugee from Somaliland -- who is sent on a quest to return the letter D to the world. It reminded me very much of The Phantom Tollbooth, one of my favorite childhood books. A reviewer on Goodreads complained that the choice of the letter was arbitrary, but early on a politician states that "iversity [sic] was all very well, but not if it got in the way of forging a strong, safe nation." It seems quite clear to me why Faber chose D.

Arsenic and Adobo by Mia P. Manansala: Another delightful read. This is the first in Manansala's cozy mystery series, set amongst the Filipino community in a small town in Illinois. The writing was a little green, not surprising given that this is Manansala's first novel, but I loved the characters and the story. Can't wait to read the next two!