Wednesday is somewhat nitpicky
What I read
KJ Charles, Any Old Diamonds (2019), which, breathtakingly twisty plot, but I was taken aback, because I do not expect this from KJC, by 2 bloopers: one of the characters has a title which was that of an actual and eminent Victorian aristo, and error over the terms of the 1857 Matrimonial Causes Act under which a woman might obtain a divorce, though I will concede that I have seen such errors and misunderstandings and regrettable vagueness perpetrated not merely in fiction but in works which purport to be serious biography and history.
Chris Kraus, After Kathy Acker (2017), about which one might say, You Could Not Make It Up, except Kraus indicates that there was a certain amount of myth-making going on (though perhaps doesn't push quite as hard at that as one might?). Gosh she sounds very much of a specific time and place, and having a rather weird kind of male muses thing going on, and riveting to read about even while one thinks she was probably mad, bad and dangerous to know and left a lot for other people to clear up.
Finished the From Taverns to Gastropubs book and feel that there was a big historical jump to the quite detailed study of the rise of gastropubs and how they function in the final section. It was well-done but perhaps not quite the book I was looking for, whatever that was.
JD Robb, Leverage in Death (no 47) (2018). Not, I thought, one of the stronger entries in the series.
On the go
Megan Abbott, Give Me Your Hand (2018)
Up next
Not sure.
***
Question for other readers: is not 'faded from memory/forgettable' a reasonable critical comment on a book? Someone was snarking at me in comments to one of my GR reviews that I'd copped to not remembering much about a book (that I'd first read about 20 years ago) when I came to re-read it, and that it had faded again in the years since the re-read. While this may be an effect of the numbers of books I have read over a half-dozen decades of reading, and advancing age, I depose that there are some books that just do not stick in the mind. This entry was originally posted at https://oursin.dreamwidth.org/2881675.html. Please comment there using OpenID. View
comments.