My last Reading Weds was in November last year, and before that in June, and, as I said, I got a bit weird about not wanting to talk about the books I was reading in case I stopped being able to read them, or I wasn't being fair to them anyway because of not taking things in, but if I don't write these entries I forget everything about almost everything I read, and it is nice to chat, and I think I should at least try again.
What I've Finished Reading
Of note (one way or another) since November, I got Paladin of Souls by Lois McMaster Bujold for Christmas from a friend and enjoyed that very much (as I mentioned to![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
hamsterwoman. I'm not actually sure which of the two Chalion books I enjoyed the most, in the end. Maybe a little more the first, because of all the world building, but it was good to follow Ista's story as well.
I got around to reading The Dragon and the Rose by Roberta Gellis, which I think I must have found in the magic free book shop when it was still here - it is famous in tumblr Henry VII/Elizabeth of York fandom as it is a 1970s historical novel that is only just shy of a Henry/Elizabeth romance novel. It was enjoyably bad; I could not part with it afterwards. I mean, it's not the sort of thing you find every day in a charity shop.
Another from the TBR pile was Black is the Colour of My True Love's Heart, one of Ellis Peters's contemporary murder titles. It wasn't as memorable as a good Cadfael installment (it was a later one, but there was very little to illuminate the main detective and his family), but it was really lovely as ever & a good read, and the guest characters were vivid. I'm not sure why I'd always avoided her modern ones before being ill, but clearly I shall make amends on that score now if I can.
In other murder mysteries, I read the last two Adelia Aguilar books, Relics of the Dead and The Assassin's Prayer (but the series was new to me), which were 12th C historical murder books. The first was set in Glastonbury, Somerset, so I enjoyed that one more than the second. Somerset settings are surprisingly rare, so I treasure them when they come along. They both edged a little more to the thriller than the detective story in places for my taste, but they were lively and I enjoyed them. (Adelia was a little too much Not Like the Other 12th Century People, but at least she had decent reasons for it.) I enjoyed the second slightly less because it wasn't set in Somerset and had a murderer POV (although to be fair it was helpfully marked out in italics so I could skip all of it very easily), but, as I said, I enjoyed both of them and could read them pretty easily, which is the most important thing these days.
Also from the TBR pile, I had picked up Greenmantle by John Buchan, one of his Dick Hannay books, which was also surprisingly lively and readable with a nifty turn of phrase, although it was written in 1916 with a particular voice and seemed to be trying for an offensiveness bingo (it succeeded) that made Golden Age detective writers suddenly look like paragons of restraint in that department, especially in the first third. But overall, it was interesting, and I'm glad to have read at least one his oeuvre. It was not anywhere near as good as the 1936 film of The 39 Steps, though. No handcuffed-together shenanigans here!
What I'm Reading Now
I found another Daisy Dalrymple on the charity bookstand at Tesco! (The bookstand keeps moving about alarmingly, worrying me that Tesco have taken it away, but, no, just moved it again. Happily they've at least realised that maybe outside the loos was not in fact ideal, after a fancy noticeboard displaced it from where it had been for three years.) Anyway, this one is a later one, The Bloody Tower (set in the Tower of London, as you may imagine) and obviously Daisy has immediately fallen over the dead body of a beefeater, much to her Scotland Yard DCI husband Alec's embarrassment. (He is, though, resigned to it by now. It is just Fate that wherever Daisy goes corpses crop up in her wake.)
I haven't got much further, but it's nice to have a familiar friend in my hands again, as it were.
What I'm Reading Next
One never knows, meme! I am, though, having the curious pleasure of actually being able to read almost anything I pull off the TBR pile, though, so maybe something off that. I feel highly wary of this lasting, though. Maybe I'll find something else at Tesco, or re-read something, so you never can tell.
What I've Finished Reading
Of note (one way or another) since November, I got Paladin of Souls by Lois McMaster Bujold for Christmas from a friend and enjoyed that very much (as I mentioned to
hamsterwoman. I'm not actually sure which of the two Chalion books I enjoyed the most, in the end. Maybe a little more the first, because of all the world building, but it was good to follow Ista's story as well.I got around to reading The Dragon and the Rose by Roberta Gellis, which I think I must have found in the magic free book shop when it was still here - it is famous in tumblr Henry VII/Elizabeth of York fandom as it is a 1970s historical novel that is only just shy of a Henry/Elizabeth romance novel. It was enjoyably bad; I could not part with it afterwards. I mean, it's not the sort of thing you find every day in a charity shop.
Another from the TBR pile was Black is the Colour of My True Love's Heart, one of Ellis Peters's contemporary murder titles. It wasn't as memorable as a good Cadfael installment (it was a later one, but there was very little to illuminate the main detective and his family), but it was really lovely as ever & a good read, and the guest characters were vivid. I'm not sure why I'd always avoided her modern ones before being ill, but clearly I shall make amends on that score now if I can.
In other murder mysteries, I read the last two Adelia Aguilar books, Relics of the Dead and The Assassin's Prayer (but the series was new to me), which were 12th C historical murder books. The first was set in Glastonbury, Somerset, so I enjoyed that one more than the second. Somerset settings are surprisingly rare, so I treasure them when they come along. They both edged a little more to the thriller than the detective story in places for my taste, but they were lively and I enjoyed them. (Adelia was a little too much Not Like the Other 12th Century People, but at least she had decent reasons for it.) I enjoyed the second slightly less because it wasn't set in Somerset and had a murderer POV (although to be fair it was helpfully marked out in italics so I could skip all of it very easily), but, as I said, I enjoyed both of them and could read them pretty easily, which is the most important thing these days.
Also from the TBR pile, I had picked up Greenmantle by John Buchan, one of his Dick Hannay books, which was also surprisingly lively and readable with a nifty turn of phrase, although it was written in 1916 with a particular voice and seemed to be trying for an offensiveness bingo (it succeeded) that made Golden Age detective writers suddenly look like paragons of restraint in that department, especially in the first third. But overall, it was interesting, and I'm glad to have read at least one his oeuvre. It was not anywhere near as good as the 1936 film of The 39 Steps, though. No handcuffed-together shenanigans here!
What I'm Reading Now
I found another Daisy Dalrymple on the charity bookstand at Tesco! (The bookstand keeps moving about alarmingly, worrying me that Tesco have taken it away, but, no, just moved it again. Happily they've at least realised that maybe outside the loos was not in fact ideal, after a fancy noticeboard displaced it from where it had been for three years.) Anyway, this one is a later one, The Bloody Tower (set in the Tower of London, as you may imagine) and obviously Daisy has immediately fallen over the dead body of a beefeater, much to her Scotland Yard DCI husband Alec's embarrassment. (He is, though, resigned to it by now. It is just Fate that wherever Daisy goes corpses crop up in her wake.)
I haven't got much further, but it's nice to have a familiar friend in my hands again, as it were.
What I'm Reading Next
One never knows, meme! I am, though, having the curious pleasure of actually being able to read almost anything I pull off the TBR pile, though, so maybe something off that. I feel highly wary of this lasting, though. Maybe I'll find something else at Tesco, or re-read something, so you never can tell.
