Wednesday is huddling up with a good book

What I read

Last week's episode of Tremontaine.

The next two volumes in the Protection Inc series by Zoe Chant: Defender Dragon and Protector Panther, which do what they say on the tin: BBW + shifter paranormal romance, in somewhat different genres but with a fair amount of thrillery/action type stuff.

Josephine Elder, Exile for Annis (1938), which I discovered in a local charity shop the day after a discussion of girls' school stories and their habitual tropes.

Robin Forsythe, Missing or Murdered? (1929), yet another freebie e-ARC from the press that is producing these revivals of lesser-known works from the Golden Age of Detective Fiction. This was not bad, if not outstanding, but at rather over three-quarters of the way through, did a thing I really bar in crime fiction, which is introduce an entirely new character, never previously even mentioned, whose machinations finally make sense of the various pieces of evidence. (Surely this must have been one of the Detection Club no-nos?) Forsythe had the unusual background for a crime writer of actually having been in chokey, for running a scam in the course of his civil service employment.

On the go

William McCarthy, Anna Letitia Barbauld: Voice of the Enlightenment 92008). A big fat bio that seems quite good but may take me some time.

Naomi Novik, Uprooted (2015) - there is one personal and idiosyncratic bit of enjoyment I'm getting out of this: perhaps one would not relish the notion of a Malevolent and Evil Wood quite so much were one not currently researching the Woodcraft movements of the interwar years in which woods and woodcraft have to bear a lot of symbolic weight for Good Stuff vs the evils of Modern Civ.

Up next

Latest ep of Tremontaine.

I have only just been alerted to the fact that there is a new book in the Melissa Scott and Jo Graham 'Order of the Air' series.

I also think I ought to brace myself and start buckling down to some serious research reading.

S	M	T	W	T	F	S
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2	3	4	5	6	7	8
9	10	11	12	13	14	15
16	17	18	19	20	21	22
23	24	25	26	27	28	29
30	31

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Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

legionseagle

Thoughts on Exile for Annis? I had all three when I was a kid, presumably acquired from a second hand shop by by sister in the late 50s.

oursin

Maybe I would have liked it more had I read it in the days when I was reading some of the other books listed on the back of the jacket - I was a bit uninspired, but perhaps I was hoping that the Farm School would be a bit more wildly experimental than it turned out to be.

I realise that there is a trope in girls' school stories, that whatever kind of school they are sent to (even if it's kicking and screaming and protesting all the way that either they don't wanna go to school at all, or not That Sort of School), they will learn valuable life lessons and acquire Important Values.

sara

I want even aware there was a new Melissa Scott series, so thanks for that!

boxofdelights

I just watched Would I Lie To You episode 1 season 9, in which Jon Richardson attempted to make us disbelieve his true story about his childhood by claiming that he had gone camping with a group called the Woodcraft Folk!

The Woodcraft Folk are still going (unlike some of the similar bodies)! - I even know people whose own children are Woodcraft Folk.

Edited Date: 2016-01-21 07:55 pm (UTC)

It's Always More Complicated

The wandering thoughts of a wandering hedgehog