Beyond the Roundels

I accidentally let this drop for a month, but I've been tired a lot, and reading some more fanfic (I had quite a nice Obi Wan/Padme binge for a while, after rewatching AotC and RotS for that Janeway & Obi Wan coffee heist fic I had to write). And so there were stupid Regencies and things not worth mentioning, but otherwise, over the month:

What I've Finished Reading
One of the later books in the Daisy Dalrymple series, Superfluous Women, which I read at the same time as I made my way through We Danced All Night: A Social History of Britain Between the Wars by Martin Pugh, an amusing combination as Martin Pugh kept reminding me that the whole 'superfluous women' business was as much a myth as that of the 'Lost Generation' (but I already knew that on both counts).

I also finally finished The Surgeon's Mate, and now I don't have the next one, which is probably a good thing for me and the series, and hopefully I will have more brain when I get back into the series. Hopefully. Or a level that works out, anyway.

And then recently I read and very much enjoyed Angela Thirkell's High Rising. It was written in the 1930s (I didn't actually plan my reading to be this thematic, it just happened) so has some of the usual hang-ups (although less than others, I'd have said), but Laura, the middle-aged heroine (who doesn't get married, but turns down two proposals in the course of the novel) was lovely and it even made me laugh aloud in patches. I enjoyed the three proposals that didn't go anywhere, and the trip to see King Lear even though nobody likes Shakespeare (and "the play is in in itself inherently improbable and in parts excessively coarse and painful. But they may do it in modern clothes, or in the dark, or all standing on stepladders. You never know.") And best of all the bit where the author George Knox gets out-talked by Laura's train-obsessed son Tony and swears he will never talk so much again... in a speech that lasts for a page and a half without a paragraph break.

I have another of hers that I picked up and I am now looking forward to reading that too. The introduction puzzled me mildly, as it is at pains to assure me that even though Angela Thirkell is completely forgotten these days, she is at times even nearly as good as Barbara Pym. I have heard of and seen Angela Thirkell's books before; I have sort of vaguely heard of Barbara Pym but have never seen her works on a shelf anywhere (although clearly I should keep an eye out). I'm not sure whether it's me that's back to front here, or just the introduction.


What I'm Reading Now
Having finished The Surgeon's Mate and being free to read lighter things more suited to a brainless person, I immediately started instead on Norman Davies's Vanished Kingdoms (but to be read in installments, kingdom by kingdom, so I have a Plan in this case), which is excellent and looks at European nations that no longer exist. It is over 700 pages, though, so it will probably take me longer than the next book in the Aubreyad would have done, but NF is easier as I don't have to follow a plot. And it should be very good!

And of course, this week I had my birthday, which naturally included me being given some presents, one of which was a copy of The Shortest Way to Hades by Sarah Caudwell, which I am now happily devouring.


For family history note-taking, I have started Useful Toil: Autobiographies of Working People From the 1820s to the 1920s (ed. John Burnett), which varies as to how relevant it is, but where it is, it's very useful indeed, as well as being interesting in itself, consisting of accounts of ordinary thing by ordinary people.


What I'm Reading Next
I don't know, Meme, but, given my birthday I am now a bit of a donkey with half a dozen carrots. I expect next up will be the light and hopefully interesting/entertaining A Viking in the Family and Other Family Tree Tales by Keith Gregson, a collection of small but interesting anecdotes about ancestors and how people found them. Less entertainly, but hopefully useful, I have The Wills of Our Ancestors by Stuart A. Raymond to help me understand wills and inventories and things. I also have The Pox: The Life and Near Death of a Very Social Disease by Kevin Brown, which is about Syphilis. (My ancestors, what can I say?)

Probably also that other Angela Thirkell, or something else I shall stumble over in a charity shop/free book shop/library.

Only one day late!

What I've Finished Reading
The Mauritius Command, and the series continues to be solidly excellent. Then, slightly to my own surprise, I managed to read The Goblin Emperor, which I enjoyed very much (I can see what people mean about it being a very reassuring read and why some other people also find that annoying, but it suited me just fine right now) but stupidly did so in only about three or four days and was sick for the following three days as a result, which does dampen enthusiasm somewhat. (I don't know why I did it; I think I get a bit panicky that my reading ability might vanish, leaving me stranded halfway through a book).

So, after that I didn't read properly for a week, and then read the v light Daisy Dalrymple mystery I got from the library, Damsel in Distress, by Carola Dunn.


What I'm Reading Now
I'm technically reading Desolation Island (the next in the Aubrey-Maturin series), but not really much at the moment, as I think I was reading too much of them and having less brain than I should have done.

I am also beginning to work my way through my random Seven Masterpieces of Gothic Horror, starting with the first, The Castle of Otranto by Horace Walpole. It's very random and its heroes are terribly saintly, but this makes me laugh, especially when some of the other characters would rather be hanging around with less saintly people, or somebody has a moment of sarcasm. (Matilda's maid Bianca would obviously prefer to be in a Shakespeare comedy, but Matilda won't oblige her with even normal curiosity, let alone shenanigans and scheming.) There is also a spooky giant helmet with plumes of doom, and it's only 100 pages long.

I also enjoyed the particularly OTT bit where a Helpful Friar who has turned up to reason with Villainous Manfred accidentally causes Manfred to order the execution of the suspiciously Noble Peasant Theodore and is midway through begging for Theodore's life when he pauses to realise (via a handy birth mark) that Theodore is in fact his long-lost son (and he was formerly the Count of Falconara, because obv. you can't actually have a Noble Peasant. How he carelessly lost his son and her mother, hopefully I will find out before it's done.)

I am (family history) note-taking from Boyd Hilton's A Mad, Bad and Dangerous People: England 1783-1846, but I don't know if it counts as reading, as it is one of the Oxford History of England so more political and so on, so I am doing a lot of skimming through it. (It's a large book. When I'm not using it, I am trying to flatten some paper with it. It's multi-purpose.)


What I'm Reading Next
I think the library has the next Daisy Dalrymple book, so I might get that next week, but otherwise I think it will be something else off my TBR pile. There are several possibilities! If I can be sensible this time, that is. And at some point, presumably the next 'Gothic Masterpiece,' The Old English Baron by Clara Reeve. (It's longer, though - all of 134 pages!)