Jane Would Never Wear This Outfit

Book Review:  Dear Daughter by Elizabeth Little

3.5 stars

This is a pretty entertaining mystery.  A Paris-Hilton-esque teenage party girl (called Janie by the press) is convicted of killing her mother, and when she is released from prison 10 years later on a technicality, she decides to investigate who really killed her mom and learns the truth about her mother's past.  The plot is inventive and the narrative is funny, sharp, and clever.  Well, too clever, really.  I mean, yes, we are given to understand that our protagonist spent a lot of time in the prison library reading widely while looking for mentions of a word that she thought was the key to figuring out the identity of her mom's murderer, and no doubt this bright girl picked up a lot from that, but the Harvard-educated author out-did herself at times with language and references that simply did not ring true to the character at all.  Witty pop culture references, even references to 1980s SF movies like Star Wars ("these aren't the drones you're looking for") -- I am totally on board.  But other things were just too implausible.  For example (I wish I had written down the actual quote but this is the gist), the protagonist refers to a bunch of improbable things "sigma-ing up to inevitability."  Instead of using the much more typical language "adding up to," she displays an unbelievably high level of mathematical and conceptual sophistication by referencing the Greek letter used as a symbol for summation.  The author put just a bit too much of herself into her party girl character.  Of course, I much preferred the book erring in this direction.  A mystery novel written from the perspective of a total airhead would not be a book I could finish reading.

The Scarf + Necklace Combo -- Thursday, 10/2/14

How to wear a scarf and necklace together was a reader question last month on the Already Pretty blog, and it was amusing to me to realize that I do not struggle with how to do this.  I mean, I'm not saying I do it in any kind of super-fashionable way; merely that I feel like it is easy to do to my own satisfaction.  (Other things in this category of "fashion-related things some people find challenging but I do not": pattern mixing, wearing flats with dresses/skirts, putting colors together.  Things I do find challenging: how to wear boots, what color of tights to wear, how to wear not-skinny pants/jeans without the '90s and the '00s wanting their bottoms back.)

I really like wearing a button-up shirt with a pendant, pearls, or other subtle necklace in the v of the neckline with a long scarf worn under the collar, tied loosely, and left to dangle sort of like a slouchy men's tie.  And fall is the perfect time of year for this combo so here ya go:

 And here's the whole outfit:

*Blue-green 3/4 sleeve button up shirt (Kohls)
Grey pinstripe pants (thrifted, Dockers)
Grey leopard scarf (Target)
Grey leopard flats by Fergilicious (6pm.com) [Double dose of leopard, but the shoes are subtle, I think]
Silver pendant (thrifted)