Wednesday is still a rather niche expert
What I read
Had a vague recollection that I had heard fairly well of Heyer's Frederica (1965), and I will give it points for being able to see the Alpha Hero growing and changing under the impact of the older and sensible heroine (and her brothers), but even so, there were rather annoying aspects, like again, She Is Not Like Other Women, who are femme and ditzy &C. (Also, yet another recurrence of getting somebody sick or injured and having to be nursed away from home...)
Years ago I read Teresa Nielsen Hayden's Making Book (1994) and finding her later compilation of blog posts etc Making Conversation (2016) hard to source in the UK discovered that it was available as ebook. Quite interesting/entertaining but perhaps not quite as much so?
There was a very enthusiastic piece in the most recent Slightly Foxed on Isabel Colegate's The Shooting Party (1980), so I acquired a copy. However, I was fairly meh about it, and considered that though back in the day I occasionally, I think, got Colegate's books from the library, I don't think I ever read this one before, and it is, I think, A Sign, that I never actually went out and bought any of her oeuvre (except possibly once from a charity shop).
How different, I say, the case of Alison Lurie. I was actually not looking specifically for Foreign Affairs (1984) but a couple of her more recent novels which I know are somewhere in the book maelstrom. But this was what surfaced and, boy, it is good, I enjoyed that.
On the go
I discovered, somewhat tangentially via a mention on Twitter, Hallie Lieberman's Buzz: The Stimulating History of the Sex Toy (2017), and although it's very much the C20th USA story, for general interest/research purposes I have downloaded it and am reading. A few boggles - wot they were only just having the equivalent of Ann Summers parties in the 90s???? - and quibbles - I really don't think it was impossible to get birth control if you were unmarried - but it is certainly Of Interest, and does not have any truck with the Maines Myth-Making, which gains it considerable merit points.
Up next
I have actually managed to acquire at a very low price one of the pseudonymous category romances written by Jane Haddam/Orania Papazoglou as Ann Paris. I also have Miranda Seymour's bio of Mary Shelley.
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