Sunday Sundries, 216

1. AOTW: No one really “stood out” this week, so my default adjustment is always this: I am the winner ("let me count the ways," as Elizabeth Barrett Browning said). Some dumb moves in traffic, some impatience at the health club, some words I'd like to reel back in--in other words, a typical week for me.

2. I finished two books this week ...

     - One, via Kindle, was another of the Jack Taylor novels by Ken Bruen (the penultimate one; I've ordered the most recent one): The Ghosts of Galway (2017). As I've written here before, I got interested in Taylor a few years ago when we were streaming the TV series about him--Jack Taylor (there were three seasons). We loved Iain Glen as Taylor, the former Galway (Ireland) cop, dismissed for drunkenness, now an unofficial PI.

The TV series was dark--but, by comparison with the books? The TV series was bright and effervescent. Something destructive to him happens in every volume--physical damage, the loss of loved ones, an unintentional killing, etc.

He's something of a vigilante, is Jack, and when the law seems impotent, Jack is not.

In this latest novel there are some creeps running around Galway killing people for the fun of it; Jack eventually takes the fun out of it for them. But, as I've said, there are a couple of midnight moments in the story, moments I'll not reveal.

Read the books!

     - I also finished another of Kate Atkinson's PI novels featuring her (damaged) detective Jackson Brodie, a former cop in Scotland: One Good Turn (2006); I love its subtitle: A Jolly Murder Mystery.

As I've said here before, I discovered, reading Atkinson's previous Brodie novel, that there is little distinction between her "literary" novels and her murder mysteries: Both are intricate, surprising (the very last sentence in this one stunned me), often humorous, and downright brilliant.

This one starts with what appears to be a "normal" traffic accident in Edinburgh. It ain't. Emerging from one car is a brute with a baseball bat--an implement and a dude that make several return appearances throughout.

Atkinson artfully weaves a number of stories together here--the stories of Brodie, some witnesses to the accident (including the author of some rather tame and conventional mystery novels), some Russian women who do housework--and other things, a creep-o who builds and sells houses that are gravely defective, the creep-o's wife, a character from the previous Brodie novel (Julia--with whom Jackson is living), a woman cop. And others. Atkinson leaps from story to story, sometimes winding the clock back a bit in order to do so, and I sit there, reading, my jaw residing on the table where it has fallen so often that it figured it might as well just stay there.

Lordy, she's good. One of the best I've ever read.

Oh, and allusive, as well--Shakespeare appearing to be a favorite. "Ozymandias" is there, too--among numerous other references.

The next Brodie is on my pile!

3. We watched the first season of Fargo (FX) but somehow forgot about the show. No more. Last night we started streaming, via Hulu, the second season, which begins with a sanguinary murder in a waffle shop. Tarantino, Sam Peckinpah, Errol Morris--these are influences, I think--not to mention the Coen Bros., who made the original Fargo film (1996).

So far, so fun. (Link to some Fargo TV video.)

4. Final word--a word I liked this week from one of my online word-of-the-day providers ...

     - from the Oxford English Dictionary

addulce, v. transitive. To make sweet or pleasant; esp. to soften, soothe; to mollify.

Forms:  lME adoulce,   15–16 addoulce,   16 addoulse,   16 adulce,   16– addulce,   17 adulse.

Origin: Of multiple origins. Partly a borrowing from French. Partly a borrowing from Latin. Etymons: French adulcir; Latin addulcire.

Etymology: <  Anglo-Norman adulcir, addulcir, Anglo-Norman and Middle French adoucir, Middle French adoulcir (French adoucir) to sweeten (c1170 in Anglo-Norman), to mollify (c1170 in Old French) and (especially in recent use) its etymon post-classical Latin addulcire (5th cent.) <  classical Latin ad- ad- prefix + dulcis sweet (see dulce adj.).

 rare and poet. after 17th cent.

  1477  Caxton tr. R. Le Fèvre Hist. Jason(1913) 26 Shalle not the Rigour..of my noble lady be myned and adoulced [Fr. adoulcie] by my habondaunt prayers.

1552  R. Huloet Abcedarium Anglico Latinum  Addoulce or mitigate with swetnes, Permulceo.

1592  G. Harvey Four Lett.  xv. 69 Then would I so my Melody addoulce.

1622  Bacon Hist. Raigne Henry VII  90 With great show of their king's affection, and many sugared words, seek to addulce all matters between the two kings.

1655  T. Fuller Church-hist. Brit.  ix. 203 The Queen having lately..Adulced him with fair language.

1679  M. Prance Addit. Narr.  18 For the addulcing and ascertaining his Friends and Partizans beyond the Seas.

1824  T. J. L. Prichard Welsh Minstrelsy  22 Described in poesy and picture, With glowing strain and vivid tint, Addulced by taste's most finish'd dint.

1912  H. Church Poems  153 Fain would I bring to thee a happiness That never was thy girdle, would addulce Thy lovely heart.