Wednesday is now well-stocked-up with Yogi teas
What I read
Finished Tom Tiddler's Ground, which was quite good, might try more Ursula Orange. Wondered whether anyone has ever done a study of that genre I have noted, novels written more or less contemporaneous at the period of the Phoney War, with the various tropes of evacuees, muddle, blackout, etc. Coincidentally there passed across my horizon a new book on Women and Evacuation in WW2 but it looks like more of a social history study (though possibly worth looking at).
After that it was moar Cyril Hare, since the Faded Page was doing me so well for these: The Wind Blows Death (1949), That Yew Tree's Shade/Death Walks the Woods (1954), and Untimely Death/He Should Have Died Hereafter (1958) (Francis Pettigrew #3-5 - the last one I thought got a bit over-complicated); Tenant for Death (1937) (Inspector Mallet #1, although he figures in the Pettigrews as well), and Suicide Excepted ((Inspector Mallet #3) (1939) - in which Mallet was out of the picture for a lot of the story. Unfortunately #2 of that sequence was not available. A bit variable, but all readable.
The latest Literary Review.
That rather annoying thing where I'm pretty sure I have copies of the books in question but they are not in the most obvious place and doing a search would involve a lot of upheaval.
Georgette Heyer, The Corinthian (1940): beautifully frothy and just what one would want to read in the shelter with the Blitz going on overhead or to accompany one's sparse meal of spam fritters or Woolton pie. Query: extent to which Heyer's female protags are set up as Not Like Other Girls, who are overly feminine nitwits, or awful ambitious matrons?
Then started Faro's Daughter (1941), which was not doing it for me. Has one of her more objectionable male protags, and I am not sure I am enamoured of Enemies to Lovers when it starts out with such a major imbalance of power. Also, that gaming-house! I could not but hear Madame C- and Abby G- giggling and then snorting with contempt at how badly run it was (OK, they could not offer the USP of the prospect of Madame C- staking her favours, but even so.) Given up.
On the go
Sprig Muslin (1956), which is okay so far.
I did make a start on the Bernal biography but I'm not sure I'm committing. It's clearly v solidly researched but a bit stodgy? - maybe it lightens up a bit after the obligatory family background/childhood&education section.
Up next
There is a new Slightly Foxed.
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