Beyond the Roundels

I've been meaning to carry on catching up with my reading posts, so maybe one day I can do the regular ones again, or more probably, regular media-consuming ones. And then I looked and found the one catch up post I actually made was in March 2023, which is not a speedy rate at which to catch anything up. HAVE ANOTHER POST.

[ETA: I started drafting this post out on 4th Jan, so you can see I'm keeping up with the speedy part.]

(Last time, in March 2023, I had caught up as far as early 2020, when I fell into a Star Wars Prequel hole and wrote ridiculous amounts of fic and read a whole bunch of SW novels, where I mostly liked the Legends ones and resented the new canon ones, but not always.)

Record of a Spaceborn Few by Becky Chambers, and while I am not at all at hamsterwoman's level of (what is it? frustration? love to hate? affectionate and deeply invested loathing? lol), these have proved to be fine but only sometimes for me - the second one, where it was more contained, really worked for me. This one didn't really. But I gave it a star and a smile in the margin in my Book Diary, which isn't bad, either! (I think therefore the disappointment is just because I hoped they would be so much more my thing than they've turned out to be, rather than me not liking them or anything. Just, easy to read, fine, I appreciate lots of the world-building, no great feelings, alas.)

Anyway, next up I read The Cloud Roads by Martha Wells, the first in the Raksura books, and I loved it! I had to swiftly follow it up with The Serpent Sea and The Siren Depths (presumably with b'day cash), oh, and The Edge of Worlds and since have read through the rest at a slow rate of waiting (im)patiently for birthdays and Christmases and continued to love the world-building and characters and the whole thing, and, although sometimes I get exhausted when she gets all fast-paced, that is merely a compliment to her skill and testament to my general lack of everything.

Murder on the Flying Scotsman, The Black Ship and Heirs of the Body by Carola Dunn, which at this date is now making me all nostalgic for lack of Daisy, Murder Magnet Supreme, and the long-suffering Alec in my life for AGES. Anyway, Daisy went on a train and there was murder, she went out for dinner in the suburbs and there was murder and, um, I forget the plot of the last one, but there was definitely murder.

(I must re-read them. I just need to pick up more of the first few, which at the time I got from the library and now the library does not have them, and I am less good at getting to the library anyway.) Anyway, these are fun and well done cosy detective stories set in the 1920s, which I enjoyed a lot, and were easy-going enough to help me back into reading when I was so unwell.

Murder Most Unladylike by Robin Stevens, which was great fun (a children's book mash-up of boarding schools and golden age murder), although I have STILL not stumbled over any of the sequels in charity shops; a grave injustice.

I also read a few more Angela Thirkell's Barsetshire books, which generally enjoyed, and some much more than others, and occasionaly where they suddebly mid-20th C attitudes at me in the middle of the souffle of delight (inevitable, but also ALAS) but at this stage I can't remember them individually without going to look at the and read the blurb to remind me which was which, as they sort of merge in my head rapidly. Although, unlike Wodehouse, I can remember which ones I read by reading the blurb, so I can do that if people want to know.

Then, for family history reasons, I took notes from Paupers and Pigkillers: The Diary of William Holland 1799-1818. William Holland was the vicar of a tiny Quantock parish called Overstowey, close to where I grew up and where a lot of my ancestors come from. He was sometimes, inevitably, much as you would expect from an 18th/19th C Vicar, but his diary entries were fascinating and never dull. He was Welsh and took a long time to adapt to the "stupid, slow" Somerset people (worse in every way than Welsh common people). He had opinions about all his fellow vicars, and a local Non-Conformist bigwig (Thomas Poole) was his Nemesis ("Satan himself cannot be more false and hypocritical") and he gets very gleeful if he feels he is one up on the Nemesis. He also got to correspond to an Earl about face-science and was involved in some coincidences that you wouldn't have put in a novel because it would have been too unrealistic, but rl can get away with these things.

His diary was written in multiple notebooks over the period and for whatever reason, only around every other one has survived, so there are a lot of gaps, and we also do not know what made him start writing a diary, because the first one is among the lost. The first entry we do have, though, is him being very disapproving of the Coleridge party who'd arrived at Nether Stowey, invited by the Nemesis himself: "Saw that Democratic hoyden Mrs Coleridge who looked so like a friskey girl or something worse that I was not surprised that a Democratic Libertine should choose her for a wife."( More from William )

Anyway, in short, it's great stuff if you have ancestors from the Quantocks or are interested in that sort of thing generally.

I followed that up with note-taking from another diary by another Somerset vicar who lived around the same time, although not so near the places I was interested in - John Skinner's Journal of a Somerset Rector 1803-1834. This was also interesting, but a much harder read as became increasingly mentally ill and depressed as it continued, often alienating those around him with his paranoia, and eventually committed suicide. He, too, hated Methodists, lived in his parish and visited his parisioners (and Shepton Mallet Gaol), but he and William Holland had very little in common beyond that. It's another very useful resource and interesting for local and micro-history, though.


* hamsterwoman won't mind me mentioning that!

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 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 just finished reading

Tracing Your West Country Ancestors by Kirsty Gray, which was pretty much what you would expect, but useful/interesting enough from my point of view, although I am still eyeing it askance for failing to mention the Monmouth Rebellion even once. (This is not quite as bad as adaptations of Lorna Doone that skip the Battle of Sedgemoor or film it in a hilly Welsh wood*, but I am judging the lack, as you can guess.)

I also read Whip Hand by Dick Francis, which was really interesting because it's both a book in a series by the original author and sort of pro-fanfic for the TV series The Racing Game. This happened because Yorkshire TV turned Odds Against, Dick Francis's first book about Sid Halley, a jockey who injures his hand and turns to being private investigating, into a 6 part series (1 part adaptation, five parts new adventures), but the twist is that Francis really liked it and the star Mike Gwilym and was inspired to write more about Sid - the result being Whip Hand. Having now read the other three books, I was intrigued to read this (which is even dedicated to Mike Gwilym and the producer of the show). It really does try to mesh the TV continuity into the original and he keeps the casting not only for Mike Gwilym as Sid, but clearly for Mick Ford as Chico and James Maxwell as Charles Roland (so you see where I fit into this equation). (I had no idea till I read Odds Against shortly before this that there was any fundamental difference, because of the way that he actually made the two fit as closely as possible retrospectively. The books have an extra injury! I suppose this shouldn't even be surprising...)

Anyway, I liked this one the most, probably not unrelated to its being the most TV-influenced, and also because it had the most Sid & Charles, and they have a really great relationship, which comes to a point here. (Charles is Sid's father-in-law, a retired admiral with a posh house and they initially hated each other, but later became such good friends that their relationship outlived Sid's marriage to Charles's daughter. Sid's narration says things about how Charles is the most important person in the world to him, but of course they never say things like that to each other. But he tells Charles, when he turns up in trouble in this one, that he came home and they both know what they mean. <3<3<3)

(The last one Under Orders isn't as good but it does have a priceless bit where Sid introduces his new fiancee to Charles and then gets jealous because Charles non-seriously flirts with her as Charles is HIS ALONE.)


I also read another Daisy, Sheer Folly, which is a later entry into the series, but an enjoyable one - a unique restored grotto that Daisy is writing an article about gets blown up with somebody inside it. Could it be murder? Of course it could. Alec is annoyed again, because he was coming down to join Daisy for a couple of days off and instead when he arrives he has to dig a body out of an a lot of rubble underground and unofficially assist a murder investigation. It's hard being married to a murder-magnet, although a DCI of Scotland Yard is the best candidate for it, really. (Luckily, she's cute.)


What I'm reading now

I am still reading The Surgeon's Mate, and in my family history note-taking, I have started We Danced All Night: Britain Between the Wars by Martin Pugh, which is proving to be both highly relevant and readable so far.


What I'm reading next

Well, I do have another Daisy out from the library...


* Sedgemoor is situated in the middle of the Wetlands in the Somerset Levels, so you know, there could be a clue as to the landscape in that fact.

What I've finished reading

I finished The Curse of Chalion by Lois McMaster Bujold, and enjoyed it very much indeed. I hope to get to Paladin of Souls sometime soon - it does actually seem to be in the library system, so hopefully next month maybe when I may be able to visit that library (but if not I could be a spendthrift and request it).

I also finally finished The Skeleton in the Clock by Carter Dickson (aka John Dickson Carr), which I was given as a Christmas present and started around then, but unfortunately, despite it being actually pretty fun and interesting (although not quite as much fun as And So to Murder, but probably more interesting in some ways), I got put off it by how stressed and ill I was. (There was this business with psychic activity in the condemned cell and execution shed in a former prison, and it didn't help at the time.) Anyway, I feel better, and I was able to finish it off and enjoy it, although probably not as much as if I'd not tried to read it when I was too ill. I still can't make my mind up about H.M. as a detective, even though there was much more of him in this one. Is he entertaining or do I want to join the queue of characters who'd quite happily murder him? It's a toss up. (His method seems to be to solve the mystery half way through, refuse to tell anyone, and then plant a funfair in someone's garden in the meantime.)

And then I read a later Daisy, Anthem for Doomed Youth, in which Alec was digging up bodies in Epping Forest while Daisy went to their daughter's sports day and the PE teacher turned up dead.


What I'm reading now

The free book shop had a Daisy for me, which I was very pleased by, so now I am reading The Case of the Murdered Muckraker. Daisy is in New York and tried to go to lunch with her editor only to have another journalist fall down a lift shaft in front of her. The FBI are keeping tabs on her because they have heard of her fatal attraction to murder. (Alec is in Washington DC and put out that she couldn't go a few days without him without stumbling into more murder.)

For family history note-taking, I am reading (or sometimes skimming through), Thomas Dormandy's book on TB, The White Death, which is very useful and interesting. (It's a fair mix of medical and social and even literary history, given the topic.)


What I'm reading next

Who knows? (I don't know why I do this bit of the meme, but why not, I suppose.) Although I was just starting a more recent Daisy book that someone had lent me when the free book shop came up trumps with an earlier one, so I'm sure I shall return to that presently.

I also am probably going to do some note-taking/reading of The Time Traveller's Guide to Restoration Britain after I get through the TB one. (The White Death is lengthy, but it's soon going to get less relevant for my purposes once it gets more into the 20th C.)

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!

What I've Finished Reading

I finished up The Castle of Otranto and it continued to be delightfully OTT and ridiculous right to the very last line. I laughed a lot. Especially at the last line. The charm of it is, I think (other than gloomy castles and giant suits of armour and what have you), that it's very hard to tell if the whole thing is some kind of joke, or just bits of it. This seems to have been the question for 250 years, and, indeed, the next book I read, The Old English Baron by Clara Reeve is quite openly The Castle of Otranto, the more rational (and therefore possibly not-truly-Gothic) remix.

As Clara Reeve says in the introduction, certain elements of Otranto, "destroy the work of imagination, and, instead of attention, excite laughter." (Walpole apparently responded that hers was, "So probable, that any trial for murder at the Old Bailey would make a more interesting story." Hmm, wait, a novel featuring a real life murder...? Shame he didn't try it, heh.)

It does indeed tail off into a long, plodding fixit of everything, though. It's rather like a tumblr-recommended fixit version of Otranto where everything is relentlessly put right and all the bad people are punished or grovel and apologise to the good people. I liked the beginning with the locked up haunted wing with the murdered body in it very much, though, mixed with a more recognisable setting. Also its hero Edmund has an amusing tendency to weep over people. (The best bit was at the end where he flung his arms round both his mentors legs at once and they had to stop him and then he still had to hug them and weep over them.)

But, given that it's still only about 130 odd pages and has a haunted East wing, it was readable and fascinating to compare to Otranto. I'm glad the collection had them both.

I also read another Daisy Dalrymple (Dead in the Water), which you could probably tell because fic happened. My friend is coming to see me again this week - I have hopes she might be able to lend me some more, because the only others I've found are quite a few books on from that. (Obviously, I'm looking forward to seeing her with or without books, but with books is always better.)


What I'm Reading Now
Sorcerer to the Crown by Zen Cho, which, as promised by aralias, is very light and enjoyable and just my sort of thing. I seem to be okay with it, too. \o/ (The only downside is the inevitable comparison to Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell, which can do it no favours. It's a shame she didn't set it, say, 20 years later or earlier to mitigate that. Although, of course, I'm only 100 pages in; there are no doubt very good Plot Reasons.)

(I'm still note-taking from A Mad Bad and Dangerous People? and technically sort of reading Desolation Island, but have not progressed far with either since last time.)


What I'm Reading Next
Well, if my friend does bring me some more Daisy, there'll be that. And once I've finished Sorcerer to the Crown, I might try the next Gothic novel in the collection, which is Mistrust by Matthew Gregory Lewis (author of The Monk).