What I read
Josh Lanyon, Fair Game (2010) m/m romantic thriller (I guess), following a rec from someone somewhere. It was okay - though I'd fingered one character as at least dodgy and concealing something quite early on - but I'm not inspired particularly to continue reading the series.
Robin Stevens, First Class Murder (2015).
On the go
Simon ( Read more... )

I daresay my dr rdrs are already apprised of the slight furore about women historians that's been muttering on of late:
‘Big books by blokes about battles’: Why is history still written mainly by men?
The media is also to blame for a narrow, elitist view of what constitutes history.
Which is as it were visually summarised in this Tom Gauld cartoon ( Read more... )

Admittedly, I am getting this via an article which considers her pretty much Point Thahr, Misst, but it does sound as if a Certain Author is trying to generalise wildly from her own miffyness that people do not buy her books pristine and new.
The piece I link makes pretty much all the right points about Why Secondhand Books Are A Desirable Thing: ( Read more... )

London’s oldest bookshop chooses first instalment of Trollope’s Barsetshire Chronicles, The Warden, as best novel published since the shop’s opening in 1797.
Okay, will cop to having read Very Little Trollope (possibly only the one in my VictLit undergrad course?) - for years I said I was saving him for my old age: I still am...
But, really, I ( Read more... )

Although it wasn't so nice this afternoon as it was this morning (started clouding over) it seemed nice enough (and possibility of clearing up) to undertake a walk.
I discover that, since my last visit, it costs £4 to visit Highgate Cemetery East (the newer bit) and that entrance is only via the Swains Lane gate. As I had hoped to walk across from ( Read more... )

What I read
Barbara Hambly, Darkness on his Bones (2015). Somehow I just do not, on the whole, find this series quite as riveting as some of her others, but still, pretty good.
Heather Rose Jones, Daughter of Mystery (2014): found this a bit slow to get going, but good enough that I've now downloaded the followup, The Mystical Marriage
Jo Walton, ( Read more... )

Excursion today to Rye, which involves a 90+ minute bus-ride both ways, over roads which at some points could be smoother.
A nice day for it - although showers were promised, and it was a bit gloomy at first setting out, the weather was very good, just as well as Rye is one of those places which is largely about going up and down and walking to ( Read more... )

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Still not feeling the reading roundup is where I'm at.
Gosh this is the land of effusive politesse to the point where my response to the wish that I might have a nice day is rapidly tending towards a frosty 'Thank you, but I had other plans'.
Also, I have heretofore encountered 'bookstores' in US college towns that are much more about collegiate ( Read more... )

I did this quiz on FaceBook - 100 Top Sci Fi Books List Challenge - scoring an above average of 54 -
And then the internet ate my posting of it with snarky comment that the reason for this level of success was that it was largely writers who would have been on the shelves of the local public library at the era when I was reading relatively ( Read more... )

Have feeling this has made the rounds before? Spotted on FaceBook - You know how people buy drinks for girls in bars? Why can't people do that in book stores? Like if I'm looking at a novel in Barnes and Noble and some person walks up to me and strikes up a conversation and offers to buy the book for me there is a lot better chance of that working ( Read more... )