We have a double Wednesday this week
What I read
Finished the Upward book - not really a biography, more about thinking about him as a literary man, even though one might say that much of his life was one of 'unhistoric acts' as a teacher, Communist, non-Communist far left person, CND activist, etc; which might be more interesting to me, at least, than the endless angsting about whether literary art and politics were in conflict or not. And not entirely convinced that that conflict was why he wrote so little: I wonder whether agonising perfectionism - even quite late on he was constantly revising things actually in press - might have had more to do with it, but he did rather walk into the art vs politics thing with a very early article on the novel and Marxism shortly after joining the Party.
Courtney Milan, Proof by Seduction (2009) and Trial By Desire (2010), which were compelling readable even if I think she has improved in her more recent works. (Also, I am somewhat dissenting that the Victorians knew nothing about mental illness unless, presumably, it led to being banged up in an asylum or having Grace Poole swilling porter outside your door. I think Janet Oppenheim's Shattered Nerves might have somewhat to say on the subject: not to mention biographies of all those Eminent Victorians who had the pretty much standard period of breakdown over loss of faith, failure to achieve Senior Wrangler, disappointment in love, inability to marry for financial reasons, etc.)
Two episodes of Tremontaine Season 2, which I'm not getting into in the same way as season 1.
The latest issue of Slightly Foxed.
Vanessa North, Roller Girl (2016): one of a giveaway of 4 LGBT romance ebooks from Riptide Publishing. I started L C Chase, Pickup Men but couldn't get into it, but Roller Girl I found quite readable, and marked it up for some clever misdirection in the early chapters.
Heather Rose Jones, Mother of Souls (2016) - latest Alpennia novel, very good: though I did guess the authorship of the in-text scandalous novel quite early on.
Angela Thirkell, Northbridge Rectory (1941) - I've been in something of a mood for Thirkell, but didn't want to be confronted with a whingefest about the iron heel of Clem Atlee and the tyrannical despotic introduction of the welfare state, so the anxieties of the early years of the war fitted the bill. I just wish that just occasionally she would let rip a bit more with the subtle and nuanced and complex that she shows capable of in particular plot strands.
Marcia Muller, Skeleton in the Closet (2012) - novella in the Sharon McCone series. A bit slight.
Mrs Humphry, Manners for Men (1897): discussed elsewhere. Got a bit stock etiquette manual towards the end - though I liked the suggestion to make sure that the person about whose demise you are offering condolences is actually dead and that it was not actually someone else of the same name - but otherwise, amusing stuff.
John Moore, Brensham Village (1946) - read this some 50 years ago, it was in the school library, but found that various episodes I thought I recalled must have been in Portrait of Elmbury instead. I think I enjoyed it more back then. Though (on top of Ms Thirkell) I found the fact that the life of the village was under threat from a sinister capitalist syndicate buying up land and pushing down wages and 'developing' the place, rather than Red Socialism cheering (not that it was a cheering tale, just that 'faceless capitalist exploiters' was a nice change). I also thought his railways (good) vs charabancs (bad) was a dichotomy that was probably rehearsed over stagecoaches/railways, and I wonder if, more recently, charabancs might at least have been seen as communal enjoyment as opposed to the atomisation in cars.
On the go
T H White, The Age of Scandal (1950) which I am finding rather annoying, partly from the probably somewhat faux High Tory take on the thing, and partly because I am a dry and pompous adherent of Clio like what his epigraph disses on, and I don't think that even by standards of light popular history it's all that great. Also, yay blokey - I am not going to be terribly keen on an author who has an aside snark on 'Victorian bluestockings' and doesn't even mention the original Blues, except for one or two individuals in passing when they are part of some amusing anecdote. Also feel it is one of those books that anyone with access to a decentish library that would get them published collections of letters and so forth if they did not have them on their own shelves could hack together. Plus, think 'gossip' would be more accurate than 'scandal'. I have read much better books by White. (And OMG, is he really naive or trying to get something under the radar when he mentions the creepy George Selwyn's fondness for 'little girls?)
Another of the Riptide freebies, Anne Gallagher, Lead Me Not (2015) - Christian/LGBT romance fusion. Although the initial plot set up is somewhat implausible, she says with a considerable degree of litotes, I'm finding it quite readable.
Up next
I have discovered that Edward Upward's trilogy, The Spiral Ascent (1977 revised edition) is available free as ebooks from his official website. A bit daunting a prospect, though.
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