Wednesday can report that landline appears fixed (engineer didn't even have to come in)
What I read
Courtney Milan, This Wicked Gift (finished), Proof by Seduction (2009), Trial by Desire (2010) and that pretty much wound down the binge.
Re-read of Stella Gibbons, A Pink Front Door (1959) - not one of her absolutely top ones, but pretty good. People circulating around a codslapworthy young married woman who is not only one of those people who is always Helping Others at the expense of actually tending to the needs of her nearest and dearest, but dragging other members of her circle into geting involved in the help, usually at great inconvenience. Some interesting (period) things going on about generation and social class and gender roles and social change.
Diane Atkinson, The Criminal Conversation of Mrs Norton (2012) about which I was a bit meh, found the style somewhat stodgy and a few errors (mostly on tangential matters referred to) which would probably only irk pedants like moi. I thought it was a bit over-non-commital about Norton's writing, focusing mostly on the awfulness of her life and minutiae of her wrangles with her husband/family matters - she earned her living by her pen and had fairly positive critical response in her day, I for one should like to know a bit more.
If the Fraser bio comes out in paperback in due course I might take a punt on it.
My mind having turned to Lady Antonia, I took Quiet as A Nun (1977), the first of the Jemima Shore mysteries, from the shelf. My recollection is that (this was the first) they got rather better over time. However, if your thing is the subgenre of murders in convents or monasteries...
On the go
Have finally downloaded George Meredith's Diana of the Crossways (1885) from Project Gutenberg, and no, I still do not get on with Meredith. I think I read this A Very Long Time Ago - possibly even before Virago reprinted it. It was based on Norton's case - the failed crim. con. case which left her 'neither wife nor widow' tied to a man she loathed but not living with him - but does rather sanitise the whole thing - there are no children for the husband to keep from her, no suggestion of domestic abuse, just incompatibility and jealousy, and no hint of the familial/political/financial shenanigans by which she was persecuted. Diana has abounding health, unlike Caroline, gets to be a fairly successful author but doesn't seem to be scrabbling doing editing magazines and keepsake albums, writing songs, etc, and there's no mention of the precarious legal position of a married woman in her situation (a legal nonentity); is living rather a plush life and holding salons. Okay, I suppose one must give GM some marks for Female Friendship, but this does a lot of Plot Weightbearing.
Up Next
Well, I discovered my copy of Naomi Mitchison's Among You Taking Notes: the Wartime Diary of Naomi Mitchison 1939-1945 (edited from her Mass Observation diaries by Dorothy Sheridan) somewhere where I would never have thought of looking for it, but possibly I would like something a little lighter first.
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