Read Philip Pullman’s The Rose Dust till the last and final page! The end of a long wait and the conclusion of the trilogy… I have mixed feelings about this ending. I enjoyed most of the book with its alternative 1930’s impressions and the chaotic trek through an imaginary Middle East, but the story itself is lacking structure and strength. Especially for the final hundred pages, where the pace changed, slowing down as if to delay the finale. Suddenly the style became heavy, the story unconvincing, the characters more and more verbose, and the pages overloaded with mostly meaningless info-dump. (Warning: spoilers!) The worst was during the passage of the main characters into one alternative world, with an even heavier go at conglomerates like TP and the destruction of the rose fields and the old ways. Now that I have finished the book, I have no clear understanding of the nature of “Dust”, the importance of the rose fields, and the reasons for the actions of most of the characters…
Cooked Brussels sprouts on 31 January, when else?! With hardly any bitterness left, once grilled! And a week-lasting vegetable curry with plenty of mushrooms and onions (and chili) while in Warwick, with the addition of a ready-made Jalfrezi sauce that proved way too mild (and originates from the British Raj, rather than genuine Bengali cuisine). As did an otherwise fantastic fish curry at Kayal, the reference Kerala cuisine in Leamington Spa and a favourite of mine in the area (along with the Korean barbecue in Coventry!). A week that also reached 100km of running, thanks to evening sessions, in preparation for the Sainte Baume trail. I also went through a scary NYT piece on the rise of food delivery in the US urban areas. With the disturbing impacts on health, budgets, pollution, socialisation, and the new Lumpenproletariat of delivery drivers. (The nadir being this story of a data analyst working a second job as a food delivery driver to pay off his debt from ordering too much food delivery! Not the most efficient data analyst around, then!)
Watched the 2018 Japanese TV show Unnatural (for Unnatural Death Investigation Laboratory, UDI Lab), featuring a group of forensic scientists with enough personal issues to feed the ten episodes. Very light despite the setting, always far from realistic, but rather homely and pleasant for its (indirect) depiction of modern societal issues in Japan.
El lector de cadaveres (
ed (until a terrible movie came out!). Although van Gulik apparently took the idea from a 18th-century Chinese detective crime novel 
