What I've Been Reading (belated)

[thisbluespirit]

But better doing it now than later before I've forgotten everything...

What I've finished reading

I finished several of the things I was reading last time (it was three weeks ago), and also Polly of Primrose Hill by Kathleen O'Farrell. This was a random mid-century girls' story I found on the charity stall in my supermarket. I couldn't resist. It was actually fairly decent for what it was, while also being, well, a mid-century girls' story that's understandably fallen out of sight. Polly is an orphan. She reads a book about a large family with a grouchy grandfather with a beard and decides that what she needs is her very own cross bearded grandfather! (It is original in that much; she doesn't want new parents, because parents are unreliable and abandon you places. Crotchety old men are the way to go!) Luckily for her, she runs into a suitable grumpy and absent-minded old professor and asks him to adopt her on the spot. After refusing, he changes his mind and does, and so she joins his household. Naturally, the housekeeper and her son are secretly stealing things, his sick niece is in fact not sick and there is a secret passage and all ends happily. I read it in an hour and made myself ill, which wasn't the plan, but oh well.

I also found J. Jefferson Farjeon's Mystery in White. I still don't entirely know what to make of his writing, but it was certainly enjoyable with more than its fair share of murder tropes: our heroes are stranded on a snowbound train on Christmas Eve. There is a murder on the train, and they escape to a mysterious abandoned house where another (unconnected) murder has possibly taken place! One of them is an elderly professional ghosthunter who also feels the house is haunted. I feel sorry for the poor clerk, though, who likes fantasizing about adventure (his favourite is rescuing a crashed female aviator, who then falls in love with him) but spends the whole of this one in bed with a temperature. Life, and murder mysteries, are just unfair sometimes. Maybe one day a female aviator will crash in his vicinity and he can save her!

And I even managed to pick up HMS Surprise again, and have finished it! \o/ The sloth was debauched, yes. Also it all wound up with a tortoise.

The Winter Garden Mystery by Carola Dunn, which was a very cosy modern-but-set-in-the-1920s murder mystery. Someone recommended the Daisy Dalrymple books to me, and my friend just lent me this one, and it was fairly easy going, even for me, and I enjoyed it quite a lot. I eye the long list of sequels warily, though, because I can't help but feel keeping it going must spoil the fun inevitably, but I'll look out for the next few.

(I have only one criticism, which is that the author is much too keen on phonetic dialogue, to a quite ridiculous level at times. I mean, I know universal country bumpkinese is to be expected, ditto your Common Cockney, but rendering "chauffeur" as "showfer" is baffling and pointless, plus a hundred thousand down points for phonetic Welsh accents with all the 'v's written as 'f'. WHY. WHY. /o\ Luckily, these were kept to a minimum, or Daisy would have found herself hurled at the wall, despite her escapist charms.) I enjoyed it a lot otherwise, but how many more I read will definitely depend on how bad the phonetic dialogue gets!


What I'm Reading Now

The Mauritius Command, following on from HMS Surprise, which I have just started. I'm also taking (family history) notes from Anne Laurence Women in England 1500-1760, because it seemed like a sensible one to follow the general social history for the same period I was reading before.


What I'm Reading Next

Who knows? Something off the TBR pile, hopefully! Oh, and my friend also lent me the first of Robin Paige's Victorian Mysteries, so I suppose that should also get read sooner rather than later.

Comments

[kerkevik_2014]

Just bought The Ministry of Utmost Happiness by Arundhati Roy; loved the ten-part radio series the BBC recently did, and saw the hardback on the shelf today :-)

Looking forward to it, though book reading is slower and harder these days as I rarely feel able to manage more than a chapter at a time; makes me grateful I have so many poetry vooks to carry around with me :-)

[jhall1]

"She reads a book about a large family with a grouchy grandfather with a beard and decides that what she needs is her very own cross bearded grandfather! (It is original in that much; she doesn't want new parents, because parents are unreliable and abandon you places. Crotchety old men are the way to go!)"

You're not tempted to write a crossover with Doctor Who? :) If you did, the protagonist would discover that crotchety old men can be unreliable and abandon you places too, of course.

[unsentimentalf]

I cannot read anything with phonetic dialogue; it's like struggling through a foreign language word by word and I just give up.

[flowsoffire]

Your books sound fun!

I have only one criticism, which is that the author is much too keen on phonetic dialogue, to a quite ridiculous level at times. I mean, I know universal country bumpkinese is to be expected, ditto your Common Cockney, but rendering "chauffeur" as "showfer" is baffling and pointless, plus a hundred thousand down points for phonetic Welsh accents with all the 'v's written as 'f'. WHY. WHY. /o\ Luckily, these were kept to a minimum, or Daisy would have found herself hurled at the wall, despite her escapist charms.
OMG, tell me about it! There are LOADS of this on the kind of classical books taking place in the American South I've been reading recently. You get the hang of it after a while, but it just painfully slows one down :/

[sallymn]

We have or have had an amazing number of those girls' stories, I don't think that was one of them but (surprise!!) I do find the story elements familiar....

[thisbluespirit]

It's hard when reading is difficult, yes. :-/ I'm glad poetry works for you!

[thisbluespirit]

LOL, I feel that would be too cruel for a slight children's novel of Yore!

[thisbluespirit]

Luckily, it came in small doses, but if there had been any more of it, I would have been tempted to throw it across the room. The rest of it was pretty enjoyable, though.

[thisbluespirit]

This doesn't even have the excuse of being that elderly (1995, I think), but, yes, so much of it is just mystifying and counter-intuitive and classist and patronising. ("Let me render your strange/quaint accent in alien ways to translate it for normal people who talk properly!" Blah.)

Still, it was otherwise very enjoyable! I hope your books also are.

[thisbluespirit]

Orphan finds new family is pretty much a staple, though, so, yeah. It was just a random find - our supermarket has started having a table full of old books being sold for charity and people dump almost anything on there, which has its own special charm. Charity shops weed out too much these days; you get all the same nice, clean, boring titles!

[liadt]

Crotchety old men are the way to go! Sounds my kind of orphan;p

A debauched sloth, def a 'surprise'. Is this the same book with a bear in?

I can't read books with lots of phonetic dialogue; it's too hard!

Good luck with the note taking.

[flowsoffire]

so much of it is just mystifying and counter-intuitive and classist and patronising.
That's a lot of unfortunate adjectives for one book! ;)

I hope your books also are.
Very much so, thanks! :)

[thisbluespirit]

A debauched sloth, def a 'surprise'. Is this the same book with a bear in?

Someone told me about the sloth, so not such a surprise! It's not the same book that had the bear in it (that was Post-Captain), but it is the same series. Stephen Maturin, the ship's surgeon is something of a naturalist and collects animals and brings them on board. One time he gave a cabin over to some bees!

[bruttimabuoni]

I can't remember if I recommended Catriona McPherson's Dandy Gilver mysteries to you already? Another interwar-set modern-written lot of mysteries, and I think it's very well sustained. The series is set in Scotland, and the heroine is boringly married (and not about to cheat), which gives it points for originality against a lot of the modern cosies. Sometimes the mystery is less fun than the setting, but I think that's fairly typical....

[thisbluespirit]

I don't think you can have done, because I've never heard of them! I will definitely keep an eye out for them, because I can't deny I enjoy a modern cosy or two. :-)

It has been quite a long while since I've been able to read as regularly as this, though!

[liadt]

Bees? More a liability than a naturist if you ask me;p But it turned out all right because he was a tip top bee charmer?

[dimity_blue]

Polly of Primrose Hill sounds very entertaining, if rather improbable.

If you ever come across Cat With No Fiddle by Mollie Chapman, I recommend it. It's a rather improbable adventure about a missing heir. I think you'd like it.

I feel sorry for the poor clerk, though, who likes fantasizing about adventure (his favourite is rescuing a crashed female aviator, who then falls in love with him) but spends the whole of this one in bed with a temperature.

How unfair is that? I'd be really annoyed at having a mystery going on around me and I have to sit it out.

[thisbluespirit]

Nope. Stephen's ideas of what is a great thing to have on board a ship rarely match up with the reality.

[thisbluespirit]

It was nothing to seek out, but it give me an enjoyable hour, and what more can you ask of a 50 odd years old obscure girls' story?

I shall look out for that one, then!

How unfair is that? I'd be really annoyed at having a mystery going on around me and I have to sit it out.

It really is, poor clerk guy whose name I've already forgotten.

[sallymn]

Oh I know, three hundred Harlequins and Mills and Boons, and nothing someone like me would actually want to READ.....