Wednesday changed the water filter
What I read
Well, I finally came to the end of Mary Shelley, and it is a good solidly researched biography (even if a pedantic medical historian noted an error in the dating of when the connection was made between cholera and the water-supply and therefore upgrading of the sewers), and on Mary's side without being unduly hagiographic, but really, the reason it took me so long was that she had such a miserable life. Compared to her, one felt, well, Lady Byron had a very horrid time in her marriage but she left her husband fairly pronto and heavily pregnant, and seems to have had a later life being, perhaps, more the heir of Wollstonecraft than Mary was (Seymour gives plausible reasons as to why Mary Shelley was obliged to perform respectability and not frighten the horses).
I then read Carmen Maria Machado, In the Dream House (2019), which has been on my list for a while, and I found brilliant and intense - there is a certain group of books/writers that I respond to that have that kind of confessional intensity, I am not quite sure what one can call it and in some cases it would be actual diaries.
I already expressed some thoughts about Why Women Read Fiction: The Stories of Our Lives by Helen Taylor, which had its points of interest but I thought could have been so much better and gone deeper.
I am somehow still reading these when they come down to a promotional price: Laurie R King, Castle Shade (Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes #17) (2021). They are definitely getting away from 'what meta-fictional stuff can I be doing' to bringing in interwar RPF - this time it's Marie of Roumania. Though in the meta-fictional realm, there are shout-outs in text to Bulldog Drummond - but my feeling was, sinister shenanigans in Eastern/Central Europe, touch of the old Dornford Yates, what? Just me? (My maternal grandmother was a great DY fan, what can I say.)
Lara Elena Donnelly, Base Notes (2022) - which is somewhere on the horror/noir spectrum, set in present-day New York, more or less, but with a fantastical premise about perfumery, which I shall not spoil. Rather more grimdark than the Amberlough Dossier.
Have also read the latest Literary Review
On the go
At the moment I do not have anything actually on the go except the book I am reading for review.
Up next
Possibly Ruthanna Emrys, Deep Roots (2018), the sequel to Winter Tide, which I had been meaning to read. Or Stephanie Burgis, Good Neighbours (2022) as possibly I could go for something a bit fluffy.
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