What i've Been Reading Wednesday

[thisbluespirit]

On 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?

Comments

[oracne]

*adds Olusoga to the wishlist*

[thisbluespirit]

Yes, it's good!

[singe]

Normalcy is overrated. Weird your heart out!

[thisbluespirit]

Not the good kind of weird, alas! The bad kind that means I get stressed when I try to read. :-/

[umadoshi]

The bad kind that means I get stressed when I try to read. :-/

Ack, that sounds like a wretched and difficult place to be. :/ I hope you can untangle yourself from it.

[thisbluespirit]

Thanks, and so do I! It's all part and parcel of having had so little concentration for so long - now, even though I am better at reading, I think I worry too much it'll go or I'll exhaust myself and then I can't get into things.

[sovay]

(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 look forward to your writeup when you get to it! I see it has Ian Hunter, Henry Kendall, Jack Hawkins, and Val Gielgud himself.

[thisbluespirit]

Thank you! I might have got a tad carried away when I first discovered Talking Pictures, so now I just have a big lot of films to watch on the DVR that aren't shrinking, but it has definitely gone up the list!

[liadt]

I've seen 'Death at Broadcasting House' but as usual I've forgotten what happened in it! I think it was fine though.

The 'Black and British' book sounds good:)

[thisbluespirit]

It was!

And murder at the Beeb! How could a person resist?

[moon_custafer]

I think the only Regency I ever read was Heyer’s False Colours and that was because somebody informed me the cast included a fop named Sir Bonamy Ripple. So basically I skimmed through it, only reading his scenes; which I liked enough that I now wish for fanfic in which Sir Bonamy and Lady Denville are secretly doing Intelligence for the Regent because they’re both way cleverer than everyone thinks.

[thisbluespirit]

Sir Bonamy would make a good intelligence agent, but Lady Denville would sort of be one by accident, I think. That's not a bad one to have read! I keep reading all the Avon ones and they are basically full of terribly sexy people called Storm and Carolyn. I mean, some aren't that bad, but they are frequently nothing but candyfloss, so it helps get me back into reading when it gets too much for me. (And then I grumble at them ungratefully afterwards, just because Not My Fantasy. I love Heyer, though, for all her many faults. I wish there was a modern person who wrote like her in any period, but as far as I can see, there isn't. People just recommend Regencies where everyone is terribly sexy and went to High School and are called Carolyn, and there I am.)

[moon_custafer]

The person who recommended False Colours did note that due to the amount of historical research they’ve been doing for their own Regency, they can now tell which period slang is genuine and which Heyer seems to have just made up…

Sir Bonamy would make a good intelligence agent, but Lady Denville would sort of be one by accident

Well that would be the fun of it!

[executrix]

Just borrowed it from the library yesterday and haven't started it, but Ruth Goodman's "How to Behave Badly in Elizabethan England: A Guide for Knaves, Fools, Harlots, Cuckolds, Drunkards, Liars, Thieves and Braggarts" sounds like it might be fun.

[thisbluespirit]

I have her How To Be a Tudor, which is very good, but that one does sound like even more fun! Essential info for the time traveller, I should think? :-D

[executrix]

Reading fanfic convinced me that "anthropologist" is a vital crew position for travelers making First Contact who want to make sure they haven't violated taboos or shown up during the Orgy Festival unless, of course, they wanted to.

[thisbluespirit]

Vital skills indeed!

[jhall1]

As you say you like parodies of crime novels, you might like the comic thrillers that were co-written by Caryl Brahms and S.J. Simon. I confess I've not actually read them, but I've always meant to, as they are supposed to be very funny. According to Brahms' Wikipedia article:

"...Brahms and Simon started to write comic thrillers together. The first, A Bullet in the Ballet, had its genesis in a frivolous fantasy spun by the collaborators when Brahms was deputising for Arnold Haskell as dance critic of The Daily Telegraph. Brahms proposed a murder mystery set in the ballet world with Haskell as the corpse. Simon took the suggestion as a joke, but Brahms insisted that they press ahead with the plot (although Haskell was not a victim in the finished work). The book introduced the phlegmatic Inspector Adam Quill and the excitable members of Vladimir Stroganoff's ballet company, who later reappeared in three more books between 1938 and 1945."

[thisbluespirit]

Tanks for the rec! I don't think I've seen any of theirs around. I think I recognise the names, though - are they the same ones that did the book Shakespeare in Love was made from?

[jhall1]

According to Wikipedia:

"...Brahms and Simon went back to Elizabethan times, with No Bed for Bacon (1941). ...The plot concerns a young woman who disguises herself as a boy to gain membership of Richard Burbage's and William Shakespeare's, theatrical company (a device later employed by Tom Stoppard as the central plot of his 1999 screenplay Shakespeare in Love)."

[thisbluespirit]

I thought it rang a bell!

[executrix]

Last night I watched two episodes of Island at War on Amazon Prime. I'm amused to see that they also have Enemy at the Door. It would make an interesting compare-and-contrast. The role formerly undertaken by bb!Anthony Head is here undertaken by bb!Sam Heughan from Outlander.

I also watched one episode of the Vanity Fair in which Phillip Glenister is Dobbin (miscast, wouldn't you say?) so seeing him in Island at War made me blink and wonder who made Gene Hunt a Baron.

[thisbluespirit]

I've never seen Island at War, and this side of seeing EatD, I'd probably get unfairly grumpy at it!

[executrix]

In Island at War, the Germans display what seems to me a rather Californian disappointment at not being liked by the islanders.

[thisbluespirit]

LOL!

[swordznsorcery]

I'm so late in replying to posts! I hope the extra ten days have been kind to you, and you're feeling a bit less weirded. Reading should not be hard or unpleasant. It does sound as though you've had some good books come your way though. The Olusoga book sounds fascinating. I'd love to read something in that line, so I shall have to check it out.

[thisbluespirit]

I think I'm just going to be weird forever now! There is no end to it. But the Olusoga is definitely well worth a read if you were wanting something along those lines.