Wednesday has the heating turned on
What I read
Finished Stripping Gypsy, which was interesting, but I think it had a bit that problem of Doing A Biography when, if you know a bit about the period and other women doing similar things, you think, well, she was part of a context? and probably not the only woman making a remunerative career who had Issues with Men and Marriage, and wrangles with the studio system, and Troubles With HUAC (Lee was seriously about unionising, rly!) and running athwart the Whole Fifties Thing. But still, usefully informative.
Sortes ereader unfinished list: Katrina Jackson, Pink Slip (The Spies Who Loved Her, #1) (2018) - erotic 3some spy thriller, I'm still not sure how I acquired this, I think as part of some bundle or other? It was quite agreeably pacey and entertaining but I possibly wanted more spy-type action and less lustful yearning..,
Sin Soracco, Edge City (1992, reissued by PM Press, 2012). I think I acquired this as part of a PM Press promotional deal? I'd already read something by Soracco, anyway. This is sort-of noir, except very slow and rather dream-like, the main character being Reno, a talented thief just paroled and out of touch with her old connections and life outside prison walls generally. I kept reading.
Ethel Lina White, Some Must Watch/aka The Spiral Staircase (1933), having watched the 1946 movie, which makes significant changes (setting shifts from the Welsh Marches to New England, the family dynamics are different, the protag in the book is not traumatically mute, and the motivation of the killer is misogynistic 'ugh superfluous women' rather than creepy eugenic 'destroy the afflicted') but they both have a lot of the same atmosphere. There was an e-collection of several of ELW's oeuvre for 49p (she also wrote e.g.The Lady Vanishes): my Kobo recs now come up with massive amounts of crime novels of that period, inc several I have already been sent freebies of by the publisher.
Naomi Novik, A Deadly Education (The Scholomance, #1) (2020) - I am never sure, from the descriptions I read of them, whether I will like Novik's more recent works, so I tend to wait until the ebooks are discounted... this was, as they say, much better than likely.
On the go
Jackie Lau, Grumpy Fake Boyfriend (Kwan Sisters, #1) (2018) - again, scrolling through the virtual 'Unfinished' pile, which I actually spent some time last week cleaning up, as the last Kobo update messed up a lot of my settings and it's been annoying me.
Up next
I might get stuck in to the 1906 homophile novel Imre: A Memorandum by 'Xavier Mayne' (Edward Irenaeus Prime-Stevenson), lately made available via Project Gutenberg (Prime-Stevenson/May also wrote The Intersexes (1908), which so far I've been unable to find online, but maybe havnent looked hard enought)
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