Wednesday discovered that Manchester University Press is having a hardcover sale*
What I read
Finished The Black Book, a really solid and important work.
Though after that (and everything else) felt like something a bit lighter, so went for Margery Sharp, The Stone of Chastity (1940), which had been intriguing me for many years during which I had been unable to get hold of it. It's actually not, I think, among the top Sharps for me but one of her slighter works though enjoyable enough in its fluffy way.
I then picked up Marilynne Robinson, Jack (2020), which may have been a mistake: I could see that it was good, and I had enjoyed the earlier boks in the Gilead sequence, but somehow I was not quite engaging with this, even though I finished it. Possibly not the right time?
Tales from Lindford has indeed come to an end (sob).
Read Aliette de Bodard, Seven of Infinities (2020): good - think I prefer the Xuya universe to the Domain of the Fallen.
On the go
Had to put down 1848: I could not be doing with the throwing up of barricades and the forces of counter-revolution bringing up the cavalry and artillery, etc, not just now. (Also had prob got as much as I needed for my particular purposes.)
Started Catherine Riley, The Virago Story: Assessing the Impact of a Feminist Publishing Phenomenon (2018), which I'm finding not telling me quite the things I wanted to know. There's a lot about general context of changing feminisms over the period, and the different feminist publishers, and publishing, and perhaps rather too much vagueness about the internal struggles going on? What I would be more interested in is more about why they chose to publish the works they did - okay, I can deduce that if they were about constructing an alter-canon of women writers that could be a reason why they were reprinting some writers and works who, really, Not Forgotten and Not Even Out of Print for Decades, but one would like to see what was the case for republishing perhaps rather too many early C20th posh Sapphist novelists of distinctly dodgy political views... rather than (e.g.) Much Moar Mitchison.
Also on the go, have discovered that two collections of Tanya Huff short stories from her 'Blood 'Verse' about the vampire PI 'Victory' Nelson and her associates have recently been e-published and am currently reading Blood Shot (2020). (Realise that it is a helluva while since I read any of the novels.)
Up next
Well, I have that book about women writing in to de Beauvoir - I have several more Margery Sharps plus there were some other Furrowed Middlebrow books being offered as freebies last week - I have various works from academic press sales, electronic and hardcover -
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*It's not everything (chiz: a couple of things I've been lusting after are still full price), but I picked up a couple of v tasty items at a lot under list price.
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