What I've Been Reading (belated)
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.
Crossposted from Dreamwidth. Please click through to comment. -- Current comments:
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.
Crossposted from Dreamwidth. Please click through to comment. -- Current comments: