![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
What i've Been Reading Wednesday
Nov. 14th, 2018 12:29 pmOn a Wednesday and before it's been much more than a month since the last! I'm still rather weird about reading, but heigh-ho.
What I've finished reading
Since last time, I've finished David Olusoga's Black & British: A Forgotten History, which was excellent. (Indeed, I meant to get it and save reading or consulting it for later, but once I'd opened the book, I was sucked in and there I was, reading another 500+ page history book, which I had very much intended not to be doing in order to try and unweird myself (save in daily bits for family history note-taking), but what can you do sometimes?)
Talking of which, I also came to the end of The Weaker Vessel by Antonia Fraser, which was overall very good and useful, although it has to be said, that it contained a lot more exciting women in the pre-Civil War and Civil War period, and the Restoration could not quite compete, but that's hardly the fault of the book.
In general, because of being weird, I've been trying to unweird myself with inconsequential Regencies, which have been variable as ever. But I did also read one of the British Library's Golden Age reprints, this time Quick Curtain by Alan Melville, which as the introduction points out, is almost more of a parody of a crime novel than a crime novel, and so it was. It was a theatrical setting by an author from the industry, and I'm always up for a parody and theatrical people sending themselves up, so it was entertaining and easy to read. I did wish the detective and his son would stop with the double act, though. I wanted to thwack them with a rolled up newspaper after the first chapter, although they were okay when they split up. But it was a very easy read and pretty enjoyable exercise in genre subversion.
(The introduction also mentioned Death at Broadcasting House, which reminded me that I recorded the 1934 film off Talking Pictures (how could I not with that title), but this is not much of a sidenote as I still haven't watched it.)
I also read Excellent Women by Barbara Pym, which I did enjoy a lot, even though I was a little too tired to cope to begin with. Thanks to the people who both recced her and warned me the Angela Thirkell comparison was a little off, because while I can see the connection, those two things are not the same indeed, no.
What I am Reading Now
Sixteenth-Century England by Joyce Youings, for family history purposes, plus another Regency for the fluff value. I am about four pages into the former and have made notes about farming, so there's not much more to say. It's an older title, but hasn't yet been supplanted, so is a good place to start.
Some occasional secret Yuletide-y stuff, but nothing that is not a re-read.
What I'm Reading Next
I don't know! But I did get Jane and Prudence by Barbara Pym from the library when my friend took me last week, so hopefully I'll be able to muster up the strength to read it soon. I don't know, the unweirding myself is not really happening. I need a bit of a run of better days to regain stamina or a book that magically works and I'm not getting that yet. So, who knows?
What I've finished reading
Since last time, I've finished David Olusoga's Black & British: A Forgotten History, which was excellent. (Indeed, I meant to get it and save reading or consulting it for later, but once I'd opened the book, I was sucked in and there I was, reading another 500+ page history book, which I had very much intended not to be doing in order to try and unweird myself (save in daily bits for family history note-taking), but what can you do sometimes?)
Talking of which, I also came to the end of The Weaker Vessel by Antonia Fraser, which was overall very good and useful, although it has to be said, that it contained a lot more exciting women in the pre-Civil War and Civil War period, and the Restoration could not quite compete, but that's hardly the fault of the book.
In general, because of being weird, I've been trying to unweird myself with inconsequential Regencies, which have been variable as ever. But I did also read one of the British Library's Golden Age reprints, this time Quick Curtain by Alan Melville, which as the introduction points out, is almost more of a parody of a crime novel than a crime novel, and so it was. It was a theatrical setting by an author from the industry, and I'm always up for a parody and theatrical people sending themselves up, so it was entertaining and easy to read. I did wish the detective and his son would stop with the double act, though. I wanted to thwack them with a rolled up newspaper after the first chapter, although they were okay when they split up. But it was a very easy read and pretty enjoyable exercise in genre subversion.
(The introduction also mentioned Death at Broadcasting House, which reminded me that I recorded the 1934 film off Talking Pictures (how could I not with that title), but this is not much of a sidenote as I still haven't watched it.)
I also read Excellent Women by Barbara Pym, which I did enjoy a lot, even though I was a little too tired to cope to begin with. Thanks to the people who both recced her and warned me the Angela Thirkell comparison was a little off, because while I can see the connection, those two things are not the same indeed, no.
What I am Reading Now
Sixteenth-Century England by Joyce Youings, for family history purposes, plus another Regency for the fluff value. I am about four pages into the former and have made notes about farming, so there's not much more to say. It's an older title, but hasn't yet been supplanted, so is a good place to start.
Some occasional secret Yuletide-y stuff, but nothing that is not a re-read.
What I'm Reading Next
I don't know! But I did get Jane and Prudence by Barbara Pym from the library when my friend took me last week, so hopefully I'll be able to muster up the strength to read it soon. I don't know, the unweirding myself is not really happening. I need a bit of a run of better days to regain stamina or a book that magically works and I'm not getting that yet. So, who knows?