Death at the Dolphin

This is my first Ngaio Marsh (who is, along with about a dozen other women, the Queen of Crime). I was not particularly impressed. I don't read murder mysteries so that I can read half a book before someone dies. All it says to me is that the writer is not particularly good at mysteries and so can't write an entire book centred around the murder. The lead up was interesting, though in my opinion out of place in a murder mystery. Sometimes the lead up to the murder contains a few red herrings and some information relevant to catching the killer. What I most particularly didn't like was the fact that, as in Sherlock Holmes stories, all the important evidence is kept from the reader. What that says to me is that the author is afraid that the reader will be able to work it out for themselves too quickly, and that the author should therefore not be writing mysteries.

I enjoyed this, but I wouldn't recommend it and I'm not particularly interested in others by this author.

Shakespeare's Language

This book was very interesting. I picked it up at the Hout Bay Library sale for the excessive amount of R5 (it was the most expensive book I bought that day, that sale was incredible!). I'm not really sure what I expected, but this was fascinating.

Essentially it looks at a bunch of Shakespeare's plays (not all of them) and talks about the language that he used, what it meant and what patterns there are. There's a lot of talk about the frequency of words in certain plays and how what he touches on in one play is developed fully in another. It was very interesting to read about the concepts that seem to underline particular plays and the ways that Shakespeare used language in order to get the ideas across in various ways.

If you have any interest in the way people use language, you should read this book.