Beyond the Roundels

Things continue much as before. I wanted to make a post, but I haven't quite the brain for reviews or the like, so here are two random quick things:


1. Back when we were all making top 100 lists, osprey_archer did a picture books one, and there was a discussion in the comments about US vs UK picture books, so I did a UK one, with the best/most popular/influential picture book illustrators I could think of (up to 2010 when I stopped being a children's librarian and, indeed, anything much), but it took ages to try and make sure I wasn't missing people and put all the covers on, and then I kept forgetting I'd made it.

It's here for those who like clicking on books in a list.

(I apologise for the lack of 2010s and 2020s; but I have not kept up at all! Also I included picture books only for the most part, with a few honourable exceptions, so this means there are very few early reader type books & no comics, but there are picture books for older readers. It needs to be an unorthodox size and shelved in the kinder boxes! Also, I focused on illustrators not authors. Plus a tiny handful were just personal favourites, but it is my list. ;-p)


2. I was talking about Outrageous, the U&Drama/Britbox TV series about the Mitfords last time. It continued to be excellent and it finally occurred to me that I could link the trailer, which would be helpful:

I actually managed to do this meme this year! I haven't got more than partway through it since about 2021, which I do regret, but here we are, I've been chipping away at this for a week or so:

Your main fandom of the year?:

Doctor Who, as ever. Not that I don't run off to flail at least briefly about many other deeply obscure things every other day, communicating my enthusiasms to the distant and patient sympathy of the flist by means of semaphore or something, but that only feels fannish if someone responds, and that can't be expected very often.


( Cut for length of me wittering about TV, film, audio & books under here )

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!

swordzsnorcery also asked for Spaceships:

1. Liberator
2. The TARDIS
3. Star Bug (it's cute)

At this point, though I do like spaceships, I'm not sure I'm attached to any others in the same way?

4. Padme's ship in SW (it's really elegant, I like it)
5. Voyager, maybe? The Millennium Falcon? I don't know.


liadt asked Top 5 humorous reads? I read less humorous things generally, because it takes up a lot of energy to manage to read, even more to feel, and getting my sense of humour to work on top of that is never guaranteed. Anyway, moaning aside, these are therefore almost all very old favourites, but they all still make me smile:

1. The Truth - Terry Pratchett (Discworld, generally, but that's my favourite of the series, probably)
2. PG Wodehouse (there's no point specifying, almost any Wodehouse will do, although I have a particular soft spot for Blandings)
3. The Tough Guide to Fantasyland - Diana Wynne Jones
4. High Rising - Angela Thirkell (made me laugh even while ill; it must be good)
5. Sprig Muslin - Georgette Heyer (Heyer's usually more low-level amusing/witty, but she does have some very funny set-pieces in quite a few of her novels, and the bit where everyone finally catches up with Gareth, Hester, Amanda and Hildebrand (and all their lies) at the inn is a very good one, with a few other smaller funny bits in the run up.)


trobodora wanted Top 5 TV shows:

A tough choice - TV is my medium at the moment, and, in terms of fandom at least, always has been:

1. Doctor Who (despite everything)
2. Public Eye (I was tempted to make it #1 because it probably deserves it, and also I don't like DW at the minute, but I didn't.)
3. Sapphire & Steel
4. Blake's 7
5. Spooks | MI5

But it is very hard to narrow it down only to five, and not even by category.


For hamsterwoman - How about top 5 Babylon 5 characters

This question is a bit like the fruit one - #1 is G'kar, then everyone else, who I like pretty evenly. (More evenly than I like all non-banana fruit, though.) I shall try, however, but it is a bit arbitrary:

1. G'kar
2. Vir
3. Delenn
4. Londo
5. Susan

I finished The Mysteries of Udolpho! Too quickly, in fact, for once it got past the first 250 pages, I thoroughly enjoyed it. I may be broken, it's true. I think at many other times I wouldn't have been in the mood to get past the start, but right now it suited me, and once it got moving, I rather loved it, for all the parts of it that don't play well to a modern reader. It definitely helped that I had already read The Castle of Otranto and The Old English Baron since it has come in a distinct line from both, with Otranto's OTT-ness (no giant helmets here, but there are TWO gloomy gothic mountain castles with a Mysterious Haunted Chamber in both and two doomed and mysteriously lost ladies, two sublime mountain ranges, multiple sets of bandits, orgies (avoided by Emily, though), and at least two murders) mixed with a realism born of the Baron, but with leavening humour, affection and powers of description that the other Lady lacked.

My favourite bit, though, was when Emily's courtship-by-fainting technique failed her, and having believed her beloved was approaching, she fainted (as one does) only to discover herself in someone else's arms when she came round. Poor Emily. Always check who it is you're fainting at.

I did also like that Valancourt became a Fallen Man, though. I was muchly amused. And the fact that the infamous veil is lifted somewhere around p400, but you have to wait 400 pages more to discover what made Emily so horrified the reader could not even be informed of the truth.

Anyway, I enjoyed it a lot, and it's fairly easy to see why it would have been so popular at the time - it is pretty much peak Romanticism in several different ways.

I skipped all the poetry, though. I was here for the Sinister Goings On, not random people pausing in wondering where other characters have MYSTERIOUSLY VANISHED to in order to compose a so-so poem on the wind. (Emily has strange priorities, even aside from the fainting. One time she spent a whole day in a coma of horror, but to be fair, that was because she suspected murder, not that Valancourt was hanging around the garden playing a lute.)

I should probably re-read Northanger Abbey now and feel smug or something, but I think I should leave the late 18th century alone for a bit.

ETA: I just checked and there's never been an adaptation, which is sad. Not even a 1960s burninated one or something, only a radio one in 2 parts, which seems a little on the short side, even given all the stuff you could easily strip away. (Nevertheless, having found it on the Internet Archive, I have snaffled it.) The BBC should get on that for real, though!

On a Wednesday and only 3 weeks after the last! \o/

What I've Been Reading

I found Amy Snow by Tracy Rees on the Tesco's bookstall, which looked intriguing and easy to read, and the cover was pretty, so I snaffled it. It was easy to read and quite sweet and fun. Victorian foundling Amy Snow's foster sister and sole friend in the world dies, but leaves her a treasure hunt to solve.

My Mum lent me The Librarian by Salley Vickers, which was good, although it could have been more about the actual librarianing, but probably I am the only person who would complain about that. (I see in my reading diary that I gave it two stars which is quite high, as three is the most I run to; only now I am baffled because obviously I liked it a lot more when I had just finished it than I think I did now. I cannot explain myself sometimes.)

I also read Tracing Your Merchant Navy Ancestors by Simon Wills, which was helpful. Not that I can actually do any further tracing of anything of that sort until I can visit an archive again one day, but it's good to know where to go, and the bibliography threw up a couple more possible merchant navy titles to look into.


What I'm Reading Now

Currently I'm just at the end of The Magician's Guild by Trudi Canavan, which has been fairly engaging and readable so far (although - and not that I was bored or anything, because I wasn't - technically we've had nearly 400 pages and very little has actually happened when I stop and think about it). Anyway, I've had this trilogy and some of the next on my TBR pile of hope for ages, so it was very satisfactory just to be able to take it down and read it fairly easily. Take that, brain!

For family history purposes, I am going through Wartime Britain 1939-1945 by Juliet Gardiner, which is very interesting, readable, and useful social history. If you write anything in that period, it seems like a good book to have to fall back on for background detail and info, so far at least.


What I'm Reading Next

Well, The Novice by Trudi Canavan, the next book, but probably first An Echo of Murder by Anne Perry, which I got from the library.

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?

What I've Finished Reading

Mostly unexpected things!

A few months ago, my friend (the v kind one who takes me to libraries and hospitals, depending) lent me The Readers of Broken Wheel Recommend by Katerina Bivald, which is about a Swedish bookworm who goes to a tiny town in the mid-West US to visit a pen-friend who turns out to be dead. I'd tried looking at it before and just got a headache, but with the weirdness of this illness, I suddenly knew I could read it, and I did. Much too fast. I got a headache again, but for reading it in less than three days instead of looking at the first page. It's really sweet and wish-fulfilling and all about books making a difference, and I can see why my friend lent it to me. (I just need to see her again now so that I can tell her that I have READ it and, yes, I loved it. I may need my own copy, but I'd like one with kinder sized print, though for less-headaches on re-reads.)


Then, in my Magic Free Bookshop, I found a copy of Home by Julie Myerson, a book which I own and have read many times and love but grudgingly (I have mixed feelings), and it was a so much nicer edition than my C-format Hbk-in-disguise-as-a-pbk one that I took it. And then when I looked at it, it had extra bits and letters in the back and I was so ridiculously happy about this and had to re-read the whole thing before I could read the new bits.

Home is basically the book I wish somebody would write about tracing your family tree, except it's about tracing the history of a house and everyone who lived in it. (My mixed feelings are due to: I don't always like the fictionalised segments, and while I get while they're there - the book is also partly about the concept of home on a very personal level - I don't care about the bits where she revisits her old homes). Anyway, it had extra stuff from the people who lived in the house at the back! I am embarrassed by how delighted I am by this. Also, it is a much prettier book and my love for it is immediately a whole lot less grudging than it used to be, because clearly I am shallow like that.


And on Sunday, also possibly by magic, because I don't get post on Sundays, a book dropped through my letterbox. It was Bookworm by Lucy Mangan, and it was my birthday present from my friend G, which I knew immediately as it could be from no one else. (This is very early for G; usually I get my birthday present about six months later. It's not that she's disorganised, it's just that she takes birthdays very seriously and has to get the perfect present and often that takes time!)

Anyway, Bookworm (which had very kind type but which I also read too fast and gave myself a headache) is one of those autobiography-through-books books, but this focuses on childhood and the author is three years older than me and G, and also British, so her experiences correspond very closely to mine (although I took the path that led to Middle Earth and other fantasy novels and she didn't. Diana Wynne Jones is her biggest omission.) It's not uncritical of things that warrant criticism but it's very fondly written, sometimes beautifully, too, on what is so effective about the books she highlights, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. She's pretty good on seeing what's good about the books she didn't take to - her loss, our gain.) It's also a very pretty book in itself, and of course, made me think about where my experience was the same and different. (That was what gave me the headache, really. I start writing imaginary blog posts of all my thoughts; it's exhausting, and then you have absolutely no spoons left to write even coherent sentences on anything of the kind.) It was also the most G-like present possible!


I did also read A Viking in the Family by Keith Gregson, which is a small book of very short family history stories from various people, which was nice to dip in and out of. I think I could have lived with the stories being a little longer in places and the how to all kept to the section at the back, but I enjoyed it anyway.


What I'm Reading Now

On the NF (Family history) side, I am note-taking from Poor Jack by Ronald Hope about Merchant Seamen, which is interesting and accessible (mostly via contemporary accounts), but for my purposes has very little about coastal seaman, and even though it's about Merchant Seamen, it's amazing how often you still find yourself in the Navy.

I am not reading anything else properly at the moment, as I am waiting for the last Sarah Caudwell book to arrive, and it is resolutely not arriving. I'm mildly reading The Wills of Our Ancestors by Stuart A. Raymond, which is actually what you would expect and pretty helpful. (Pen & Sword have a whole series of these kind of books and they mostly are, although some more than others.)


What I'm Reading Next

*stares at the letterbox*

*obstinately ignores piles and piles of books in room*

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

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

Sorcerer to the Crown by Zen Cho, which I continued to enjoy. It's very good, but very light (it doesn't feel as if it ought to be 400 pages in both the good and less good way), but I'd certainly be keen to read more, and I did like it a lot. (Thanks for the poke in the right direction, aralias!)

I then read The Affair of the Mutilated Mink by James Anderson, a loving Golden Age murder pastiche down to the last detail, with some overt winks to the genre. One of the characters reports having had a conversation with Lord Wimsey over their last murder, and when they have to send for Scotland Yard, they hope in vain for Roderick Alleyn or John Appleby. Naturally, because copyright is a thing, they get St Clair Allgood, who is not all his reputation cracked up to be, and, as Inspector Wilkins notes, "He's not in the same class as Mr Appleby or Mr Alleyn." My favourite bit though was when Wilkins complains that, having gone into the police in the country, he never expected to plagued by such a crime wave among the upper classes, leading to inconvenient promotions. I'll have to look out for the other two, as it was good fun. I'm only surprised nobody ran into Bertie Wooster or someone as well, because the Earl is clearly a nod to Blandings, rather than the Golden Age of Crime.

I finished off Desolation Island, which got pretty exciting before the end, too. I also picked up Valley of the Shadow. part of a different Carola Dunn series, these more recent, and set in 1960s/70s Cornwall, which was also easy and enjoyable.

Also [redacted] for Yuletide purposes.


What I'm Reading Now

I am now not-reading the next Aubrey-Maturin (until I am reading it), The Fortune of War and Tracing Your London Ancestors by Jonathan Oates, a useful overview for a person with multiple London ancestors.

Plus, some more [redacted] for Yuletide.


What I'm Reading Next

I picked up another of the Carola Dunn Cornwall mysteries series, Manna From Hades, so most likely that, in between not-reading Aubrey-Maturin. Maybe at some point, I'll read the next Gothic horror installment in the collection as well.

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!)

But better doing it now than later before I've forgotten everything...

What I've finished reading

I finished several of the things I was reading last time (it was three weeks ago), and also Polly of Primrose Hill by Kathleen O'Farrell. This was a random mid-century girls' story I found on the charity stall in my supermarket. I couldn't resist. It was actually fairly decent for what it was, while also being, well, a mid-century girls' story that's understandably fallen out of sight. Polly is an orphan. She reads a book about a large family with a grouchy grandfather with a beard and decides that what she needs is her very own cross bearded grandfather! (It is original in that much; she doesn't want new parents, because parents are unreliable and abandon you places. Crotchety old men are the way to go!) Luckily for her, she runs into a suitable grumpy and absent-minded old professor and asks him to adopt her on the spot. After refusing, he changes his mind and does, and so she joins his household. Naturally, the housekeeper and her son are secretly stealing things, his sick niece is in fact not sick and there is a secret passage and all ends happily. I read it in an hour and made myself ill, which wasn't the plan, but oh well.

I also found J. Jefferson Farjeon's Mystery in White. I still don't entirely know what to make of his writing, but it was certainly enjoyable with more than its fair share of murder tropes: our heroes are stranded on a snowbound train on Christmas Eve. There is a murder on the train, and they escape to a mysterious abandoned house where another (unconnected) murder has possibly taken place! One of them is an elderly professional ghosthunter who also feels the house is haunted. I feel sorry for the poor clerk, though, who likes fantasizing about adventure (his favourite is rescuing a crashed female aviator, who then falls in love with him) but spends the whole of this one in bed with a temperature. Life, and murder mysteries, are just unfair sometimes. Maybe one day a female aviator will crash in his vicinity and he can save her!

And I even managed to pick up HMS Surprise again, and have finished it! \o/ The sloth was debauched, yes. Also it all wound up with a tortoise.

The Winter Garden Mystery by Carola Dunn, which was a very cosy modern-but-set-in-the-1920s murder mystery. Someone recommended the Daisy Dalrymple books to me, and my friend just lent me this one, and it was fairly easy going, even for me, and I enjoyed it quite a lot. I eye the long list of sequels warily, though, because I can't help but feel keeping it going must spoil the fun inevitably, but I'll look out for the next few.

(I have only one criticism, which is that the author is much too keen on phonetic dialogue, to a quite ridiculous level at times. I mean, I know universal country bumpkinese is to be expected, ditto your Common Cockney, but rendering "chauffeur" as "showfer" is baffling and pointless, plus a hundred thousand down points for phonetic Welsh accents with all the 'v's written as 'f'. WHY. WHY. /o\ Luckily, these were kept to a minimum, or Daisy would have found herself hurled at the wall, despite her escapist charms.) I enjoyed it a lot otherwise, but how many more I read will definitely depend on how bad the phonetic dialogue gets!


What I'm Reading Now

The Mauritius Command, following on from HMS Surprise, which I have just started. I'm also taking (family history) notes from Anne Laurence Women in England 1500-1760, because it seemed like a sensible one to follow the general social history for the same period I was reading before.


What I'm Reading Next

Who knows? Something off the TBR pile, hopefully! Oh, and my friend also lent me the first of Robin Paige's Victorian Mysteries, so I suppose that should also get read sooner rather than later.