What I read

Two more Mick Herrons, Spook Street (Slough House #4) (2017) and London Rules (Slough House #5) (2018), keeping up the high level.

This could not be said of Jonathan Kellerman, City of the Dead (Alex Delaware #37) (2022). This at first seemed to promise that the victim was murdered for some reason to do with her scammy, scammy, ( Read more... )

I.e. have finally reached a stage with The Sekkrit Projekt where it is not eating my entire life and I have a little wiggle room for doing some me-reading that isn't something short on the Kobo while I'm commuting or sitting in a waiting-room.

What I read

Finished the Tanya Huff short story collection, He Said, Sidhe Said. Read 2 Robert van Gulik ( Read more... )

Have just been watching the DVD, obtained with much difficulty and considerable expense (because we needed to get it for Region 2), of the Hepburn/Richardson/Robards/Stockwell production of Long Day's Journey into Night.

Excellent

Nonetheless:

I was thinking, you wouldn't have to make a lot of textual changes if you turned Mary Tyrone into a ( Read more... )

I recently acquired, at considerable expense, though not as much as most copies have been offered at, Jane Gaskell*'s 1964 vampire novel, The Shiny Narrow Grin. I had been telling myself that if I ever saw it on offer below [a certain figure] I would (assuming I was feeling reasonably financially flush at the time) buy it, damn it, because I have ( Read more... )

Because I don't seem to have done a Recent Reading post since mid-July - for some while it didn't seem like enough to make a post and then it was completely out of hand, so this is probably going to be very selective.

Also, there was quite a bit of re-reading during the period.

Thrillers and mysteries

Gillian Bradshaw, Dangerous Notes (2001). On ( Read more... )

Kathryn Hughes on the history of the woman's magazine on which there is currently an exhibition at The Women's Library. Interesting, but I'm not sure I agree with the categorisation:
the home-making (Englishwoman's Domestic Magazine, Prima) to the campaigning (Englishwoman's Journal, Spare Rib) by way of the liberating (the Freewoman, Cosmopolitan ( Read more... )

Back from Grayshott. Lovely time.

Just possibly the very best thing on this particular visit was the walks. Not only was Ludshott Common lovely, turning completely purple in places with the heather coming into flower (and by extreme coincidence, partner's flowers for my return include heather, isn't that something?), and the weather glorious (one ( Read more... )

Okay, props to Hambly for the early scenes in Sewell's lunatic asylum. I'm not saying Victorian private lunatic asylums are my Mastermind special subject or anything like that, but I know enough about them that my threshold for being jolted out of willing-suspension-of-disbelief (or muttering 'plagiarism! plagiarism!' when spotting where the ( Read more... )