The Social Calendar

My quest for a life outside work continues.

The other night at Barnes & Noble I picked up one of their activity flyers as per my wont, but this may have been the first time I’ve really looked at what they had on the schedule.

At the end of February–last Monday of the month, to be precise–their mystery discussion group will be taking a look at Peter Tremayne’s first Sister Fidelma mystery, Absolution by Murder. Sister Fidelma is a sixth-century Irish nun, and Absolution by Murder has her investigating a murder at the Synod of Whitby, a religious convocation where the differences between the Celtic Church and the Roman Church were hammered out.

Why, I’ve read that! It was a few years ago, before I moved to North Carolina. I’d picked up a collection of the Sister Fidelma short stories–Hemlock at Vespers–at a bargain bookstore in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and after reading a few decided to try one of the novels. The book is in the attic, I think–I don’t recall unpacking it after the move.

So, last Monday in February. Looks like something non-work-related on the social calendar. Who knows, I may meet people.

Also this week I’ve seen an advertisement in the local free weekly for a bar I would like to try–Horniblow’s Tavern. What’s the appeal? Actually, it was the square-rigged ship in their ad and the way “Horniblow” sounds suspiciously like Horatio Hornblower. A quick look at MapQuest, and it’s only about three miles from my house. Maybe next week sometime.

Published by Allyn

A writer, editor, journalist, sometimes coder, occasional historian, and all-around scholar, Allyn Gibson is the writer for Diamond Comic Distributors' monthly PREVIEWS catalog, used by comic book shops and throughout the comics industry, and the editor for its monthly order forms. In his over ten years in the industry, Allyn has interviewed comics creators and pop culture celebrities, covered conventions, analyzed industry revenue trends, and written copy for comics, toys, and other pop culture merchandise. Allyn is also known for his short fiction (including the Star Trek story "Make-Believe,"the Doctor Who short story "The Spindle of Necessity," and the ReDeus story "The Ginger Kid"). Allyn has been blogging regularly with WordPress since 2004.

4 thoughts on “The Social Calendar

  1. Sister Fidelma, huh? Laura’s a devoted fan of those books. She said the first couple of books were reasonably interesting as historical fiction but a little shaky as novels (Tremayne’s a historian, IIRC), but the books keep getting better and better as fiction and as mysteries. She was looking for some kind of Cadfael methadone at the time. She’s also really keen on Bernard Knight’s Crowner John novels, which are much more violent and funny and less cozy than the Cadfaels and Fidelmas.

  2. I read five or six of the Cadfaels in college about ten years back. I couldn’t tell you which ones, though–at the time Mysterious Press had released (or re-released) them in a rather haphazard order. I’ve always meant to complete the set and give the series a proper read, but for a variety of reasons I’ve not.

  3. We’ve got UK paperbacks of most of the Cadfaels, as well as a big hardcover called The Cadfael Companion, which I tracked down for Laura through abebooks. And we’ve got the whole TV series on DVD. I only read one of them myself, back in 1985, but I liked the TV series…

  4. In a similar vein…

    I picked up last week The Last Templar by Michael Jecks. I’ve seen some of his books in Borders, imported from England, but now Avon Books is releasing his medieval mysteries featuring one of the last Knights of the Temple on this side of the Atlantic.

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