Another New Twitter Header: The curious nature of Freud's desk and that creepy thing in the corner.

 

Barely five days after surprising us with a statue of Robert Raikes at the Victoria Embankment Gardens as a twitter, Robert Galbraith switched it for the above picture, quickly identified as a picture of Sigmund Freud's desk at the Freud museum of London.  However, as sharp-eyed Redditors, intrigued by the strange figure on the right-hand desk corner (which resembles nothing so much as a conjoined triplet figurine of Douglas Adams' Eccentrica Gallumbits) quickly realized,  the arrangement is not how Freud's desk is typically displayed, and certainly did not look like this in 2017, the year we expect much of Sleep Tight, Evangeline, to be set. What's the difference?  Find out after the jump. 

Nigredo storylines amid albedo imagery: the how and why of the oddly inverted alchemy of The Hallmarked Man.

I actually started this post way back in my initial reading of The Hallmarked Man;  occasionally making notes as idea occurred to me, but it quickly became clear to me that it was going to take multiple re-reads and in-depth consideration to make any sense of this.  As is common in Rowling/Galbraith books, expectations were regularly subverted, but the results were both intriguing and ultimately quite satisfying. 

I went into The Hallmarked Man thinking this would be a second albedo volume, following The Running Grave, which was clearly albedo with all of the baptisms, rivers, rain and cleansing showers we saw, along with Strike's own self-improvement, with his weight loss and smoking cessation. There were huge hints of this from the author's Tweets, which showed us silver ships and white swans. We were told that Dean Martin's "Silver Bells" would feature, suggesting Christmas, with snow and twinkling white lights. Even the title referred to a "hallmark"-- a stamp indicating the degree of purity in a precious metal. The scene was indeed set for a silverly-white, cold and snowy journey to purification, similar to what was seen in The Half-Blood Prince and Catching Fire. 

Another reason I was fully expecting  albedo was that, after Strike's nigredo-duo of Troubled Blood and The Ink Black Heart, and his albedo in The Running Grave, another albedo would fit well with the "extended play" model proposed by Kathleen on Hogwartsprofessor several years ago as a means of stretching a seven book series out to ten.  

Did that come to pass?  Well, not exactly.....

The Hallmarked Man paperback published: were there any errors corrected?

The news today from the Galbraith website is that The Hallmarked Man paperback is available for purchase.  To date, I have not bought any of the paperbacks, though I get the hardbacks and audiobooks on the day of publication.  One thing I am always curious about, though, is to what extent errors in the original text get corrected in later editions. I am always wondering if we'll get another substantial re-write like we did when Australian Vashti-saleswoman Mia Thompson was added to Cuckoo's Calling. 

If anyone out there is reading the paperback and notices any error corrections, please her me know either in the comments or in the direct messages.  The errors noted in THM to date can be found here:

General errors noted by myself and others:  

Substantial mix-up in dates and times in 96-98. 

Another list of errors and why I think they weakened THM as a whole. 

There are also lots of timeline inconsistencies highlighted in red in the timelines I have prepared for Robin and Strike's lives. 

Please let me know what, if anything, you find. 

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New Sleep Tight Evangeline Twitter Header, Robert Raikes Statue: Seven good reasons to be excited.

My friend and occasional fellow blogger Kurt quickly identified JKR/RG's new twitter header today as a statue of Robert Raikes at London's Victoria Embankment Gardens.  Robert joins the cities of York and  Portsmouth, some creepy dolls, a treehouse and a charm bracelet chock full of clues as header-hints given to date to the next book in the Strike series, which the author claims is 60% complete at Chapter 74.  Let's take a look at this latest clue and some reasons to be excited.  

Travel as a Strike fan: The things you notice.

 I am just back from a fantastic trip to Germany and Denmark, with day trips into the Czech Republic and Sweden. When you take a trip like that after months of immersion in the latest Strike book, it can't help but color your perspective. At the Gemaldegalerie in Berlin, for instance, two paintings jumped out at me. 

The first is this Marriage of Cupid and Psyche, by Pompeo Girolama Batoni. A few interesting facts to note: 

• Psyche's face is modeled after Batoni's wife, said to be one of the most beautiful women in Rome.
• That is Venus assisting her son in placing the ring on Psyche's finger, while Hymen, the god of marriage supports Psyche. 
• Zephyr, the west wind who orginally carried Psyche to Cupid, is blowing a blast of air on the happy couple. 
• All the gods are positioned on clouds, while the mortal Psyche stands on the floor. 

What struck me was the fact that this is one of the few depictions of the marriage I have seen that shows Cupid as a child, the way he is often depicted when alone. Not only do they appear to have the opposite age issue that Strike and Robin have, Psyche appears to be drifting dangerously close to Tim Ashcroft territory. Compare Batoni's painting to the one Galbraith tweeted.