hello! this newsletter is late and this time it is NOT my fault! it is the fault of the small box that pours the internet into my home. it died. rip small box. we’ve chucked it and replaced it with another and ye, it is time to give you my thoughts about medias once again.

read: A Dreadful Splendor by B.R. Myers (2022). Picked this up blind at the library and it was good! I cut my teeth on 1990s gothic romances so I am always game for a modern go. This stars a Victorian spiritualist who is shuttled off to a Great House in the country to avoid jail time and ends up trapped between two people who both want her to do specific things in a séance for their own ends. Took her ages to finally twig to the genre she was in but other than that it was chewy fun.

read: A Short History of Tomb-Raiding: the Epic Hunt for Egypt's Treasures by Maria Golia (2024). My study of Egyptian history never progressed past the obligatory elementary school obsession with hieroglyphs brought on by reading The Egypt Game; I am far more familiar with the various Egyptian Revival trends in decorative arts. Not only was this a fascinating history of tomb-raiding (as old as the tombs themselves!), it also gave me a really good sense of the sheer chronology of the region. And (puts on librarian cardigan) I loved reading about how the information was passed down.

watch: Death in Paradise Series 13. I have been catching up on Death in Paradise, including watching Detective Neville Parker’s departure. I was a big fan of Neville’s potential romance with Florence, so was thrilled that she came back (a little less thrilled with how they handled it—no kiss? at all??). With Florence and Neville heading off into the sunset to travel together, I found myself wishing that this was the Death in Paradise spin-off show. I would love to see cautious Neville and confident Florence solving crimes and learning to be together around the world. (I am underwhelmed by the spin-off we do have. This is also how I learned there’s apparently an Australian one too??)

read: Blood on the Tracks: Railway Mysteries edited by Martin Edwards (2018). The British Library Crime Classics, in addition to reissuing Golden Age detective novels, also puts out short story anthologies on themes. This is the first one I’ve read, and I really enjoyed it. Turns out there are so many ways to murder (and disguise murder) using trains. It was also a great way to experience crime writers I’ve never read before, which I’m always interested in doing. Martin Edwards is a scholar of the genre, and this was a timely reminder.

read: Gallows Court by Martin Edwards (2019). After years of reading Edwards’ forwards to classic crime, I finally read some of his fiction. My experience is probably not typical, because as a fellow scholar of Golden Age murder mystery, I was hyper aware of the things he was doing in service of that history and I found it hard to turn off that part of my brain and just enjoy the story. And I did enjoy the story! This is the first in his series following Rachel Savernake, the wealthy daughter of a judge, and it was packed with layers and layers of intrigue. I loved that he let the climax of the book be as dramatic as someone writing in the 1920s might have, realism be damned.

food: Summer Dishes. We’re in farmers market season, and I signed up for a CSA through a local berry farm to give myself plenty of raw materials to bake with, and boy do I have them! I’m trying to only cook with seasonal produce, which has been fun and delicious. Some recent successes: Farmer’s Lunch Pasta (Julia Turshen), Braised Asparagus and Leeks with Butter Beans, Strawberry Shortcake, and Blueberry Ricotta Cake (Yossy Arefi).

read: How to Fake it in Society by KJ Charles (2026). Listen. I am never not going to enjoy a KJ Charles romance. She’s just that good. But this one missed me, I think. I loved a lot of things about it, it just didn’t crackle. I also have this thing where if one character is lying to another about something major (like who they are) I am going to be anxious about that the whole time. And that’s almost this whole book so it was not what I’d describe as a restful reading experience.

read: Brutalist Interiors edited by Derek Lamberton (2025). I grew up outside Washington, DC, so brutalist architecture not only appeals to me, but is a peculiar signifier of Something Special. To this day, visiting DC and riding the Metro feels like coming home. This was published by Blue Crow Media, who also puts out maps of cities designed to help you find modern or brutalist architecture, so it’s more than just a beautiful book of photographs (although it is that). Crucially, there is an essay devoted to the Metro, as well as to Moshe Safdie’s Habitat 67 in Montréal, which I visited at the beginning of May. In fact, the essay is written by critic Blake Gopnik, whose family lived in the apartment designed for the head of Expo 67, and where Safdie’s family later lived. Safdie subsequently donated it to McGill, which maintains his archive, and it was that apartment that I toured. To really bring it all full circle, I bought this book in the bookstore of the Canadian Centre for Architecture. Highly recommend the book, and visiting all of these places.

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