It's Always More Complicated

What I read

Finished Hell's Heart, which was a bit of a slog, and maybe it is that thing where just because you like an author doing a certain genre, them doing something else does not ring the same bells. Authors are not obliged to keep doing the same thing.

Also finished The End of the House of Alard which was a bit less gloom and doom in the Sussex loam that I had expected - okay there is an awful family patriarch, and thwarted love-affairs, but the two youngest children actually escape, one into marriage with a yeoman farmer and the other into a monastery, and these are seen as positives and getting out from under the Demands of The Family and the Estate.

On the go

On the other hand, I have started another Sheila Kaye-Smith, The Three Furlongers (1914), which is showing signs of everything going to hell in a handbasket for everybody and not sure I am sufficiently invested to continue.

Also on 'am I that invested?' I found that the ebook of Sam Mill's The Quiddity of Will Self (2012) was remarkably inexpensive and as I'd really enjoyed The Watermark I thought I'd give it a whirl but it is less entertaining than I'd hoped.

Currently reading Joey Batey, It's Not A Cult (2025), a recent Kobo deal, which is in that subgenre of horror about bands which raise (or do they) Powers. Or is it just about internet cults?

Up next

Still have not got to the latest Literary Review.

Have treated myself to signed hardcover of Margaret Drabble, The Great Good Places (2026) (I did get a discount for having a BL reader-card).