- I have been reading Victorian instruction manuals for household servants. The one for nursemaids has surprisingly sound advice on teaching kids good table manners, and also advice about feeding infants that makes me amazed that infant mortality wasn't higher. The one on being a good lady's maid is full of gems like 'it is a blessing to the heart ( Read more... )

Okay, False Value, notes as I went along. This is not an intelligent review of the book, this is more a look inside my head as I was reading it :-P

( spoilers here )

A couple of things I have read/watched/etc recently.

The Spy and the Traitor, Ben MacintyreMacintyre has a great line in tell-all real-life spy dramas; he's written several for WW2 and they're all very readable and fascinating, so when I saw this on the shelf in Sainsbury's I knew it wouldn't disappoint, and it hasn't. This is the story of Oleg ( Read more... )

There's a special kind of joy in reading a book, enjoying it very much, then discovering it has a sequel, then realising it is the first in a series of nine books so far. My only problem now is that I have a lot of other things I'm supposed to be doing. Still, thanks to @sholio's post about spy thrillers, I remembered that I had At Risk, the first ( Read more... )

There is a new Bujold novella out and nobody mentioned it to me! Knife Children, a Sharing Knife sequel or epilogue, a sweet little tale about Barr and his daughter. I inhaled it and am reminded of how much I love the Sharing Knife series, every bit as much as I love the Vorkosigan series. They do different things, and TSK is such a gorgeous world ( Read more... )

( spoilers spoilers everywhere )

The Mrs Pollifax series by Dorothy GilmanI love these SO MUCH! Mrs Pollifax is the best, I love everything about her. I love her eye for people and her determination and her kindness and friendliness and I love watching Carstairs and Bishop point her at people and then spend ages panicking over what she's done next. She's not a bit like Miles ( Read more... )

BodyguardI'm up to date again, and I won't give any spoilers here beyond saying that I don't think the thing that happened in episode 4 is going to be reversed later, I think it really happened. No idea who the bad guy is in all of this, and if Line of Duty is anything to go by, it's possible that by the end I still won't be completely sure what ( Read more... )

I picked this up on the strength of the sample chapters on Tor.com (there's five of them, which was shrewd, it's a slow-burn sort of book and it wasn't till I'd read all five of them that I realised I wanted to read the rest). It's Lovecraft stuff, but in this book, when a horde of scaly trident-wielding monsters rush out of the sea towards you, ( Read more... )

( aka stuff I've read or watched semi-recently )