Wednesday is a bit blowy
What I read
Finished reread of Conspiracy Theory. Not, I think, one of the top entries in the series.
Carol Dyhouse, Heartthrobs: A History of Women and Desire (2017) - mostly C19th-C20th and possibly trying to do a bit too much in the space, but shooting off lots of interesting ideas and materials, and to my mind to be preferred to those works with promising titles that turn out to be very close readings of 2 canonical C19th texts and one outlier. What I might have liked would have been a bit more queering of the narrative - Dyhouse foregrounds that many heartthrobs of stage and screen raved on by women were gay in their private lives, also the ways in which romantic heroes complicate received notions of masculinity (why no Scarlet Pimpernel, we ask...), and the allure of boy-bands - but I'd have liked to see some mention of women crushing on male impersonators when those were a thing in music hall, and onwards into the appeal of slash and m-m romance (possibly by way of e.g. Mary Renault). However, it is a really easy read.
JL Merrow, Muscling Through (2011) - m/m romance novella, sweet if slight.
Matt Wallace, Pride's Spell (2016), Idle Ingredients, Greedy Pigs, and Gluttony Bay (all 2017), Sin du Jour 3-6, and no 7 is not out until April, aaargh: these became cumulatively addictive.
On the go
Still Dreams of Darkness and Light, which are really pretty much do not read too many in a bunch (and some already cropped up in collections I've read of recent years, rather than back in the day).
Benjamin Dabby, Women as Public Moralists in Britain: From the Bluestockings to Virginia Woolf (2017) - not very far in, but liking it a lot.
Up next
A new episode of Tremontaine, after the break. This entry was originally posted at https://oursin.dreamwidth.org/2708397.html. Please comment there using OpenID. View
comments.