February 2025 – Kristina Mason's Blog

The Welcome Stench of a Cosy Mystery

Posted on February 22, 2025February 22, 2025

I love a good cosy mystery. It’s defined as a mystery without gore or anything particularly triggering. Agatha Christie’s books are a prime example. There is a new crop of current day authors out there writing books based in the 1920s in the same vein as her. In either case, the majority of books are based in beautiful countryside, quaint cottages or stunning manor houses. If it’s in the city, it’s in the clubs and vast apartments of the rich and famous. The trope is well known.

Writers in the past, such as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Agatha Christie and Margery Allingham, all mention the London fog in their books, but in passing. When characters are in the countryside, mud is mentioned, but nothing that evokes the senses. Some of my favourite current authors who write stories based in the 1920s have the same way of glossing over the grit and grime.

Off to the Library Without a Plan

Posted on February 21, 2025

I am very organised when reading and finding new fiction authors. I have a large spreadsheet that lists potential authors to try, with links to their Goodreads ratings and whether I can find them at the library or whether I have to buy them. When I read the author and like them, I start a new tab where I keep track of what I’ve read and my thoughts on their books, colour-coded by whether I’d read it again.

Regarding choosing authors based on reviews, Goodreads has become more and more full of unreliable guff, so I’ve decided to throw that out the window. Where does that leave me? Well, I’ve decided to go against my very anal retentive instincts and rush in headlong without a plan.

As Long as We are Curious, We Still Have Hope

Posted on February 7, 2025February 7, 2025

This is a blog post about Thomas Kuhn’s “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions”, but in a very roundabout way.

I have an interesting history with science. My earliest science memory was being in year 7 chemistry class. We were dealing with very diluted acids and I managed to spill some all over my then boyfriend’s crotch and stained his jeans. It’s one of those things that still haunts my thoughts many decades later. In high school we had physics class, and the teacher let everyone cheat because the majority of the class was on the football team and he was the coach. I didn’t learn much there.

It wasn’t until I was well and truly out of school that I found science interesting. There was no one to spill acid on, and no burly jocks to peer over my shoulder and steal my (probably wrong) answers. Using science to look backwards, and look forwards, makes the present seem less binding. There are endless possibilities of things that could have happened, and what will happen, and we don’t know all there is to know about either.