What I'm Reading Wednesday (the day late and a dollar short edition)
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.
Crossposted from Dreamwidth. Please click through to comment. -- Current comments:
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.
Crossposted from Dreamwidth. Please click through to comment. -- Current comments: