A Reading Update

As you can tell, I'm sure, from recent posts, I've been reading tons and tons o' murder mysteries lately. And something about it is very satisfying. I like feeling like I'm reading with a purpose, and I like feeling like my reading is centered on something--some theme, some goal. Over the last week, I've finished the first Sherlock Holmes novella A Study in Scarlet and P.D. James's A Mind for Murder. Oh, I've also read Edgar Allen Poe's three tales of "ratiocination:" "Murders in the Rue Morgue," "The Mystery of Marie Roget," and "The Purloined Letter." And I'm feeling in this state of synthesis where I'm living and breathing and thinking mystery, you know? When I get really into a writer or a genre or a class or whatever, I find myself going about my life, almost constantly mulling it all over in my mind. And I rather like that feeling--it seems to give me a sense of purpose. So two of the Poe stories I could do without, but "The Purloined Letter" is pretty smart. And in A Study in Scarlet, Watson and Holmes refer to Poe's Dupin. And, I don't know, it feels cool and smart and interesting to be tracing the development of something. And intertextual references always excite me anyway. So all this to say, I guess, that I'm just having a lot of fun with work, and that really seems like how it should be.