What I read
It has been all Bujold all the time: finished Captain Vorpatril's Alliance (still a rather weak entry) , went on to Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen (2016) (opinion remained as here), then circled back, not for a complete re-read:
Mirror Dance (1994) - I'd forgotten what a lot of running around there was in the earlier sections and that ( Read more... )

What I read
Well, Fabulosa was pretty good, both about Polari per se and the gay social history, even if I thought it was a tad broad brush about the trajectories of change post 67. I was also a bit 'huh?' that someone who works in British slang and its diverse influences missed the Indian/or at least what one might consider Hobson-Jobson ( Read more... )

What I read
Well, I did actually get to the end of Diana of the Crossways (there may have been a certain amount of skimming, OMG, George M, you were neither George Eliot nor Oscar Wilde, your deep thinkies were not all that and spare me your notion of glitteringly witty dialogue). Came away thinking he thought in a rather Henry Jamesian way that ( Read more... )

What I read
Finished Judith, which felt like Streatfeild got bored and decided to skip over a whole load of character development, so there was a sudden change which happened very fast after a break in the narrative leaving one wondering where it came from.
Genevieve Valentine, Icon (Persona #2) (2016). I read Persona way back in 2017 and enjoyed ( Read more... )

What I read
Re-read Courtney Milan, Once Upon a Marquess (2015), After the Wedding (2018), and Mrs Martin's Incomparable Adventure (2019).
Rachel Hope Cleves, Unspeakable: A Life beyond Sexual Morality (2020) about the writer Norman Douglas, who is also a case study in changing sexual mores and understandings around sexuality, and partly just what ( Read more... )

I daresay many of my dr rdrz have already encountered this (siiiiigh): I longed for novels about female desire - women empowered by sex and their expressions of lust. So I sat down and wrote my own.
Which seems to me to be doing for its different genre what so many authors have done for science fiction/fantasy - i.e. not actually read any, or at ( Read more... )

What I read
Finished The Fall of Koli, which I felt slightly fell off from the previous volumes - a bit kitchen-sinky with all that was being thrown in.
Sherry Thomas, Claiming the Duchess (Fitzhugh Trilogy #0.5)(2014). This was very slight, especially when it turned out that about half the pages were a trailer for Vol 1 of the actual trilogy. ( Read more... )

What I read
Finished Conflict Is Not Abuse, which was interesting, though there were several parts where I was going 'Melanie Klein and the paranoid-schizoid position, what?' and feeling that Klein might have been useful to the thought-patterns and emotional problems she was discussing. But that might be me.
Anyway, after that it was Ben ( Read more... )

What I read
Finished Paladin's Strength - just possibly I could have done with a little less of the prolonged UST on both sides? - not to mention the various acts interrupti - but kept me gripped.
Ditto Arkady Martin, A Desolation Called Peace, which arrived last week, and which at first I was, do I want to plunge into this or not, and before I ( Read more... )

Augusta Fells Savage, a talented sculptor who had faced obstacles due to her sex and race at every turn: [L]ittle of Savage's work survives today. Because she couldn't afford bronze, she often had to make her sculptures out of plaster; most of these have crumbled over time. Other works, like The Harp, were destroyed because they could not be moved ( Read more... )