Weekly what I'm reading Wednesday
What I'm Reading
Re-read of Testament of Friendship is being a bit desultory - a few pages here and there (is there a problem that VB is not entirely clear whether she is writing The Biography, or a personal memoir about her Bezzie Buzzie Friend?). Perhaps what I really want to be doing is re-reading some of Holtby's pre-South Riding novels?
Peter Dickinson, Earth and Air: short pieces, similar to ones he did in the two joint collections with Robin McKinley, plus explanation as to why this one is just him (her stories kept turning into novels). Pretty good so far.
Curdella Forbes, Ghosts.
What I just finished
Simon R Green, The Bride Wore Black Leather - I thought the early phases of this were a bit recapitulation of characters and places and events from earlier in the series, but it did pick up pace. Not, I think, the place I'd recommend anyone to begin the series. (And not sure whether that ending is meant to be End of The Nightside series, or whether the hints about Big Trouble A'Coming mean a whole new arc.)
The Detection Club, Ask a Policeman (2012 reprint of 1933 original, with added essay on detective fiction by Agatha Christie). This was so much revealing of crime fiction as a conversation between writers working in the genre: to the point where the contributors are each doing a chapter around one of the other's sleuths rather than their own. However, I found the actual mystery tedious in the extreme, the sort of thing you can only get a grasp on with diagrams and timetables, and none of the suspects seemed particularly adequately characterised, except for the secretary. However, might possibly look out for the Helen Simpson/Clemence Dane Sir John Saumerez mysteries, though suspect they may be subject to the same objections as Simon Brett's Charles Paris series: would thesps really be quite so cool about being in a production with somebody with a track record of being mixed up in murders?
What I'm Reading Next
Well, there's another thing for the Project I Am Not Yet Discussing, and I think it might be the last.
See above, re early Holtby.
I've also been eyeing Margaret Buckley's The Commune (1993), which surfaced during a recent rearrangement of the tottering piles.
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