What I'm Reading Wednesday

[thisbluespirit]

What I've Finished Reading

Since last time, another Daisy Dalrymple book, Die Laughing (the other library came up trumps). Daisy had toothache and tried to go to the dentist, only to discover her dentist dead in the chair. Scotland Yard (aka her husband Alec) was, as ever, much put upon by this.

I finished off two comparatively short social history books that I was taking notes from for family history, Early Victorian Britain by J F C Harrison and Mid-Victorian Britain by Geoffrey Best. I also managed to finally skim to the end of my hopelessly-in-need-of-editing bio of Jasper Tudor by Terry Breverton. I'm keeping it, though. With it, I may never need another book about the Wars of the Roses, but it's hard to find the bits that are just on Jasper... (Plus, he is slightly biased in favour of Jasper and Henry because they were WELSH, shall we say that again several times? The bards sang, yay. To be honest, this did amuse me quite a lot.) There is another book on Jasper. I might have to get it some time, because this one is pretty unreliable.


What I'm Reading Now

The Curse of Chalion by Lois McMaster Bujold. I wanted to try the Vorkosigan saga, but it's not that easy to come by where I am (at least not cheaply or freely), but this was, and I'm nearly halfway through now, so it seems to be okay for me, and I'm enjoying it a lot so far, especially now the plot has suddenly picked up in the last few chapters. And, actually, it's much better to have picked one that's a duology rather than an epic series, really. (I gather there are more, but most of those seem to be a sort of separate sub-series or something? At least, I hope so as two books seems do-able!)

I am note-taking from Voices from Dickens' London now. It is not exactly scholarly, but I'll take contemporary quotes where I can find them. I am rewarded by this one alone: a Captain Shaw, visiting London wrote of a visit to Seven Dials: "The walk through the Dials after dark was an act none but a lunatic would have attempted, and the betting that he ever emerged with his shirt was 1,000 to 60. A swaggering ass named Corrigan... once undertook for a wager to walk the entire length of Great Andrew Street at midnight, and if molested to annihilate his assailants. The half-dozen doubters who awaited his advent in the Broadway were surprised about 1 a.m. to see him running as fast as he could put legs to the ground, with only the remnant of a shirt on him... (My ancestors lived in Great (St) Andrew Street for at least 20 years. Ha.)


What I'm Reading Next

I don't know. It'll take me a while to finish those, I should think. Although if I find another Daisy in the meantime, that, because it's an easy-reading series that seems to suit me perfectly just now.

For note-taking, I have lined up a history of Tuberculosis, since it was such a common cause of death in the past, and many of my ancestors died due to it. Morbid, but useful, I hope!

Comments

[hamsterwoman]

(I gather there are more, but most of those seem to be a sort of separate sub-series or something? At least, I hope so as two books seems do-able!)

Yes :) There are a bunch all set in the same world, but in three different timeframes with no character overlap (besides the Gods :)

- Curse of Chalion + Paladin of Souls is one time setting (I think the sequel is even better than 'Curse')
- Hallowed Hunt (which is the one I like least) is off on its own
- And the Penric novellas (which are up to 6 at this point, I think? I'm several behind) are again separate (and at ~100 pages apiece are fun, easy reads)

Tracking down Vorkosigans is complicated by the way they're omnibused together (at least in the US editions), so the easiest/cheapest way to source a book may not be under its actual title. But, yeah, it's rather a long series, and if you'd rather not get into it at the moment, Chalion-verse may be a better bet. (Although Shards of Honor and Barrayar (omnibused as Cordelia's Honor) can be read on their own without continuing on with the rest, since there's a protagonist switch at that point.)

[thisbluespirit]

The Vorkosigan saga is a lot less easily available in the UK. It is out here, but it seems to have been only relatively recently, it seems, and mostly via online options, so not so many cheap second-hand copies floating about. Whereas the two main Chalion books seem to have been published under Hodder's main fantasy imprint and are easy to pick up! Paladin of Souls I can also find cheap and I can see it's in stock at a library I may be able to visit soon, so that's good.

But when I am stronger, I shall get onto the Vorkosigan saga and just put them on my b'day list, so thanks for the tip. Someone before told me just to try and start with Shards of Honour anyway, so I have that listed. But probably shorter series first is a good motto for now! I'm still trying to work through all the Patrick O'Brian sea stories.

[scripsi]

I'm glad you enjoy The Curse of Chalion so far. And even if it has a sequel- which I too think is better, Curse is a finished book in itself, so there's no need to read Paladins of Souls if you don't want to.

[thisbluespirit]

Thanks! I see no reason not to go onto Paladin of Souls after, though, since it's actually in the library system, but we'll see. I can certainly give myself a break if I need it, then!

[unsentimentalf]

I personally like Curse and Paladin a great deal more than the Vorkosigan books; there's a bit more solid ambiguity to them. They are all undoubtedly very readable though - it's never a chore to pick the next one up.

[thisbluespirit]

Hee, I know what you mean, but I'm still amused at "solid ambiguity"!

[unsentimentalf]

:-) I knew what I meant, at least!

[shannonsequitur]

The Seven Dials anecdote seems like something that would happen in a Discworld Watch book.

[thisbluespirit]

I think Ankh-Morpork's similarity to late 18th C/early 19th C London is not accidental!

[shannonsequitur]

Oh, definitely! It becomes especially obvious in Pterry's Dodger, which is set in actual Victorian London. IDK if you've read that one, though.

[thisbluespirit]

I haven't, no - it was another one that came out while I unable to read. I've got a lot of catching up to do and I'm still very slow and uneven at doing it. But a bit better, definitely!

[sovay]

Daisy had toothache and tried to go to the dentist, only to discover her dentist dead in the chair.

Please tell me she finds another dentist who isn't dead! The idea of trying to solve a murder mystery with a toothache sounds miserable.

(My ancestors lived in Great (St) Andrew Street for at least 20 years. Ha.)

Have you read Margery Allingham's The China Governess (1963)? The history of a fictional but famously disreputable part of London is key to the plot, and this anecdote reminded me of it.

[thisbluespirit]

Please tell me she finds another dentist who isn't dead! The idea of trying to solve a murder mystery with a toothache sounds miserable.

No, even better - her toothache was miraculously cured by the murder! It never twinged again. The shock cure, very effective, but hard on dentists, so rarely attempted.

I stopped before I got into the later Campion books - I think that was when I was getting ill - but that would be a hundred years too late for me. :-)

[dimity_blue]

So, Jasper was Welsh, was he?

I hope you get more Daisy books. They sound a lot of fun.

[thisbluespirit]

He was, he really was! :-D

I am set on hunting down more Daisy books. They seem to exactly suit my current brain level and despite the nonsense, I got rapidly quite fond of Alec & Daisy.

[persiflage_1]

I wish I'd known you were after the Vorkosigan books - I still had many of them in paperback until I moved - even though I had the ebooks, but I ditched them when I moved.

[thisbluespirit]

Aw, thanks! And it was only earlier this month that I thought I might possibly be up to trying them, so I didn't know myself other than that they were on my one day list. But probably it's as well not to have another long series on the go until I'm a bit stronger again.

[persiflage_1]

*nods*

Do you have a Kindle? Because a lot of the early books in the series were made available for free via Baen, the publisher's website.

[thisbluespirit]

No, I still don't have an ereader! One day I'll get one of those, too.

[persiflage_1]

Ah. I thought you did not - but figured it was worth asking.

[jadesfire]

Is the Jasper Tudor book for general interest or more research? I adore the series of BBC plays Plantagenet by Mike Walker, which obviously deal with the period, although only in tiny, inaccurate flashes ;) But I did get quite interested, aided and abetted by Philippa Gregory.

Like you, I want to try the Vorkosigans, but it wasn't until I read your comment upthread that I realised they might be hard to find over here. Oxfordshire libraries have some, but not as extensive a collection as they do by other authors, and literally nothing electronically, which is just odd. It's clearly very geographically specific!

[thisbluespirit]

Is the Jasper Tudor book for general interest or more research?

It's sort of both - mostly general interest, but also for mild research as I got into the period by watching the BBC 1972 serial Shadow of the Tower, which covers the reign of Henry VII (or most of it) and then writing fic for it and sometimes for 15th C requests for Yuletide as a result. So I have collected a few others now as well as the Jasper book. I was keen to get more on Jasper, as he's very interesting in lots of ways, but this one was not so much original research and the author had not edited anything down! (I quite enjoyed the amusingly unashamed YAY WELSH bias though. Not one for Ricardians!) I haven't heard of those plays, though - they sound interesting. When did they come out?

Like you, I want to try the Vorkosigans, but it wasn't until I read your comment upthread that I realised they might be hard to find over here.

I'm not sure if they're very hard to find, or if it just depends where you live. I should imagine places with large student populations like Oxford might well have more SFF floating about the second hand bookshops and libraries. Our library service is tiny, though, and not well equipped with anything these days, let alone SFF.

[jadesfire]

For some reason, my brain reminded me last night that I hadn't replied to this, sorry!

Wikipedia tells me that the plays came out in 2010-12, which feels about right, as that was the height of my Radio 4 addiction ;D He went on to do the Stuarts as well, which was another fabulous series. Honestly, I just automatically listen to anything he writes, the same as Bert Coules. They're guaranteed to be good!

[thisbluespirit]

Oh, radio plays! Oh, cool. I'll have to see if I can get my hands on them by any means. And thank you!

[swordznsorcery]

I wonder what it was about Great Andrew Street that made the locals so passionate for shirts! Captain Shaw sounds as though he should have written a book himself. He has a lovely turn of phrase.

[thisbluespirit]

Clothes were worth money, that's why, so they'd have all the outer clothes off you - and even the undershirt. Also they may have objected to swaggering asses going through the streets at midnight, I suppose.

[swordznsorcery]

That's a really good point, and one that I should have thought of. Clothes were worth so much more then. And if he was a swaggering ass, he probably had some properly decent clothes, so his would have been worth even more.

"Swaggering ass" is such a lovely turn of phrase. I think we should all try to use it more often. :)

[thisbluespirit]

Heh, well, I have spent a lot of time taking notes from social history books lately! :-)

"Swaggering ass" is such a lovely turn of phrase. I think we should all try to use it more often.

But not be it!

[swordznsorcery]

Oh, I'm frequently an ass! Don't think I know how to swagger though.

[jaxomsride2]

How does £1.04 plus £2.75 shipping sound to you?
Both Shards of Honour and Barryar are available at that price from Abe books
https://www.abebooks.co.uk/servlet/SearchResults?kn=shards+of+Honour&sts=t

https://www.abebooks.co.uk/servlet/SearchResults?sts=t&an=&tn=&kn=Barrayar&isbn=

I'd recommend Shards as a first read too before you delve into the Miles Vorkosigan sagas.

[thisbluespirit]

That's not bad! I keep forgetting to look at Abe books because it's usually more expensive. I've spent my Christmas money now, though! And, as I said, probably much better to let the longer series wait.

[jhall1]

I'm glad that you're now feeling well enough to do some moderately serious reading.

"What I'm Reading Next"

You know what I'm going to suggest. :)

[thisbluespirit]

Thanks, although Daisy is really more my level! But she's a step up from the Regencies, so that's something.

I suppose you mean the graphic novel you sent? I haven't forgotten, but I am very peculiar with my reading and I have to just let things wait for the magic right moment, or else it doesn't go well. And it is not the moment for that yet. (I do feel bad, I probably shouldn't have agreed to let you send me it, as it probably will take a while to get to it - I've looked at it and while it does seem like a labour of love on the part of the author/artist, indeed, but also quite dark in the way that many graphic novels are and I am not always up to that. It very much depends. But i'll hang onto it till I am and can give it a fair shot!)

[jhall1]

That's fine. Take as long as you need to.

Yes, it's pretty dark in places, but no more so than many of the adaptations in that "Tales of Mystery and Imagination" TV series.

[thisbluespirit]

I can't watch all of those! And they're cardboard telly, so it's more okay. (It's not a logical thing, really.)

[vilakins]

I loved the Vorkosigan Saga, though I have to say that was back when I had access to a very good library system which had pretty much anything I wanted to read. The Curse of Chalion I enjoyed a lot, but found the second book even better, and quite different.

Now I'm very cut off as the local library is small and ebooks are ridiculously expensive when by well known authors. There's no way they should cost what paper books do.

[thisbluespirit]

Everybody keeps saying the second book is even better! I shall now have unrealistic expectations and be disappointed, heh. ;-) (Well, hopefully not really.)

Now I'm very cut off as the local library is small and ebooks are ridiculously expensive when by well known authors. There's no way they should cost what paper books do.

Do the local library not also loan ebooks? Ours doesn't, but that's for reasons of crisis budget cuts that got rid of the man't team, who were the people who would have got it in place, but almost every other library service I know of these days does & I always hear the NZ is particularly good for libraries. (As far as I can gather, where they do have it, you borrow it all electronically and the book just vanishes at the end of the loan period unless you renew it.)

[vilakins]

The library does have some ebooks but they seem to be mainly romance; nothing appealed. In Auckland I could get books from any library in the area but distances are too great and population too small down here for interloans to work. It's the one thing I miss the most. :-(

[thisbluespirit]

Oh, that is annoying! I can't do ILLs either, because we made them too expensive, so let us commiserate together. That is a drawback indeed.

[liadt]

If you ever want a electronic copy of 'Shards of Honour' I might be able to help. It does feature not fun stuff happening to characters including a brain frying ray in the first chapter.

[thisbluespirit]

Aw, thank you! If I ever wind up getting an ereader, I may come begging to you.

[liadt]

I do recommend a proper e-reader (as opposed to a tablet) it makes reading big heavy books easier!