Couple of non-finishers...for future reference

 Murder, Curlers, and Kegs

by Arlene McFarlane

I was thinking this was a different book in the series, but no matter. AFter two chapters of this "mini-mystery" I quit. And shan't be trying the others. It's too full of goofy characters and it's straining to be hilarious. Not funny; not interesting.
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Underland
A Deep Time Journey
by Robert Macfarlane

This book is awesome. Yet I'm giving up on reading it, for now. I might pick it up again in the deep of winter when there are many more hours in the long nights. Here's a short passage of what I read,

Much of Paris was built from its own underland, hewn block by block from the bedrock and hauled up for dressing and placing. Underground stone-quarrying began in earnest towards the end of the twelfth century, and Prisian limestone grew in demand not just locally but across France. ...
The residue of over 600 years of quarrying is that beneath the south of the upper city exists its negative image: a network of more than 200 miles of galleries, rooms and chambers, organized into three main regions that together spread beneath nine arrondissements. This network is the vides de carrieres--the 'quarry voids', the catacombs.

Cool, huh? This book is packed full of so much cool stuff that it hurts your head to read it. It needs to be savored slowly, and I'm embarrassed to admit I ran out of steam power to handle it.