Wednesday has been misjudged by posterity
What I read
Dr rdrs, I finished one book during the past week: Ovidia Yu, Aunty Lee's Delights (2013), which had been hanging around part-read on my Kobo while more alluring things came my way. I did get back to it, and I did finish it but I doubt I shall be reading any more of these unless someone tells me that she's upped her game. It was - all right - and did a certain amount of interesting background detail about Singapore, but, as well as the head-hopping previously commented on, struck me as a bit tell-not-show and lacking in tension. May be just me (I'm sure I saw someone recommending these - perhaps it's just not the moment between me and them? There are some mystery series I follow that I have as it were got into the habit of, and were I to begin them now I might have similar feelings.)
On the go
I am into the marathon of reading the biography of Anna Letitia Barbauld that I started some weeks ago, which is very good, very dense, very detailed. Barbauld seems to have fallen foul of British governmental and popular paranoia over the French Revolution during her lifetime, and then gone down in history (partly due to an early biography by a niece that was anxious to conceal her Jacobinical tendencies) as a writer of very influential works for children of an improving and educational nature that went on being popular well into C19th. This did not do great things for her reputation/possibilities of rediscovery.
Have also started biography of another overlooked/neglected woman of letters, the early C20th writer, literary journalist, literary hostess, etc, Naomi Royde-Smith. Who is someone who crops up a lot in the margins of works about better-known individuals.
Up next
Those should keep me going for quite some while, but I could do with a little light relief. This entry was originally posted at http://oursin.dreamwidth.org/2404697.html. Please comment there using OpenID. View
comments.