What I read
Well, I finally finished The Strange Case of the Alchemist's Daughter and remained pretty much meh about it. (Also, I am beginning to think that there should be a moratorium on introducing Holmes and Watson as characters unless you can shake it up in some way. Why does nobody ever call upon Lady Molly of Scotland Yard, e.g.? or the ( Read more... )

What I read
Episode 10 of Tremontaine Season 4.
Jonathan Kellerman, Night Moves (2018). Alex 'Smug' Delaware was a bit less annoying in this one: but it still rather conformed to the usual pattern.
Nicola Griffith, So Lucky (2018) - not sure how one classifies this - not, she emphasises in the afterword, the auto-fiction it was originally marketed ( Read more... )

What I read
The most recent Slightly Foxed.
Finished EM Delafield's General Impressions (1933) - several series of humorous articles from Time and Tide. Possibly funnier in their day. Also People You Love: On the Status of the Family Under Nazism, which is terrifying.
Lucy Neville, Girls Who Like Boys Who Like Boys: Women and Gay Male Pornography ( Read more... )

What I read
Finished Someone Like Me which somehow I did not get on with as well as the other Careys I've read: possibly it's in that genre of 'psychological thriller/horror' that is just not my thing. Well-written, etc, but not quite my thing.
More Delafield short stories, the play, To See Ourselves: A Domestic Comedy in Three Acts (1930), which ( Read more... )

What I read
Some more Delafield short stories.
Barbara Hambly, Cold Bayou (2018) - found it took me a while to get up to speed with this, partly because it started with a largish group of assorted characters with history with one another assembling in a remote location, but it was really good.
Laurie R King, Island of the Mad (2018): yes, okay, she ( Read more... )

Over the past few weeks I've been reading The Akeing Heart. Letters Between Sylvia Townsend Warner, Valentine Ackland and Elizabeth Wade White by Peter Haring Judd (who inherited EWW's papers). First published in 2013, this edition 2018.
It's blurbed as The Akeing Heart is the story of the tormented relationships between the British novelist and ( Read more... )

What I read
Finally made it through to the end of The Akeing Heart - have a feeling I read the various memoirs etc cited but long enough ago that my memories are a little hazy. I felt the editor (a cousin of Elizabeth Wade White) was perhaps leaning rather heavily on the 'Sapphic love triangle/quadrangle' aspect in pitching the work, but this was ( Read more... )

What I read
The Deirdre David biography of Pamela Hansford Johnson (2017). Still not sold on PHJ's position as novelist of enduring merit, though of social history interest perhaps. Okay, not quite as dead as husband CP Snow - wot a rottah - does anyone here have a hatpin? At least with Reggie Smith you could pretty much see what you were getting, ( Read more... )

Oliver Burkemann points out what I have oft remarked: that what is the Highbrow Okay Thing To Do With Your Time shifts over time (okay, I deduct a few points for that 'Throughout history'): Throughout history, people who like to think of themselves as high-minded have sneered at the masses, frittering their days away on “mindless entertainment”. ( Read more... )

What I read
Finished Dancing Death, and a) I think that poison gas was in contravention of the Detection Club rules about 'undiscovered poisons' and b) if love for a specific individual is going to motivate a convoluted double murder plot, I really think the individual in question should get more page time and character development rather than ( Read more... )