Mabith's 2024 Reads

Read in 2024:

State of Exile by Cristina Peri Rossi
The Club – Leo Damrosch
Saving Sunshine – Saadia Faruqi
The Bass Rock – Evie Wyld
You Use a Gun, I Use a Bow – Hu Sheng You Meng

Kingdom of Characters – Jing Tsu
Rebecca – Daphne du Maurier
White Teeth – Zadie Smith
Seasons in the Sun – Dominic Sandbrook
Angelica – Sharon Shinn

Don't Call it a Cult – Sarah Berman
Cluny Brown – Margery Sharp
The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl Volume 6 – Ryan North
For Real – Alexis Hall
Rogues' Gallery – Philip Hook

It's Lonely at the Centre of the Earth – Zoe Thorogood
Girls and Their Monsters – Audrey Clare Farley
The Affair of the Bloodstained Egg Cosy – James Anderson
The Picts and the Martyrs – Arthur Ransome
Havana Nocturne – TJ English

Heart in a Box – Kelly Thompson
The Birth of Classical Europe – Simon Price
Don't Tell Anybody the Secrets I Told You – Lucinda Williams
The Affair of the Mysterious Letter – Alexis Hall
The Snarkout Boys and the Avocado of Death – Daniel Pinkwater

Empire State – Jason Shiga
What's Cooking in the Kremlin – Witold Szablowski
Sheets – Brenna Thummler
The Fraud – Zadie Smith
Beauty is a Verb – Jennifer Bartlett, Sheila Black, Michael Northen

Adventures of a Dwergish Girl – Daniel Pinkwater
The Wager – David Grann
Fuzz: When Nature Breaks the Law – Mary Roach
Hidden Valley Road – Robert Kolker
After I Died I Became Popular Again – Zuo Chuanchuan

Felix Holt, the Radical – George Eliot
The Snarkout Boys and the Baconburg Horror – Daniel Pinkwater
The Dictionary People – Sarah Ogilvie
Boy in a China Shop – Keith Brymer Jones
Bunbury – Tom Jacobson

Mr. Fashionable – Yu Xiao Lanshan
Rebirth of a Movie Star – J112233
Tipping the Velvet – Sarah Waters
How to Say I Love You – Feng Liu Shu Dai
The Buried Book – David Damrosch

After Marrying the Villain I Became Popular – Gan Hui
In Farleigh Field – Rhys Bowen

After a three year break from LT due to a variety of factors (pandemic, sudden long-term cat death, father's death etc...) I'm back! Excited to see some familiar names and get back to having more variety on my reading (and to-read) lists.

The photo is my dad with my cousin and myself.

When I was feeling like I was ready to come back to LT he got a diagnosis of Alzheimer's and late stage multiple myeloma at basically the same time and then died six months later in September of 2022. My mom died in 2017, roughly a month after her cancer diagnosis, and being only 38 years old the mental adjustment to Orphan has been very challenging. My grief over my mom only seems to grow in scale each year with the sheer enormity of what was lost (for both of us).

My dad wasn't a great father or friend to his adult children (just didn't have the emotional maturity for it), but he was very fun when I was a kid and so many of my reading interests were informed by his interests (which he very successfully passed on to me). He was a librarian for all of my childhood, so being stuck in libraries for full work days growing up during the summer or school breaks also informed how much I enjoyed reading and libraries in general.

2023 Favorite Reads:

Fiction:
1632 by Eric Flint
The Last Devil to Die by Richard Osman
10 Things That Never Happened by Alexis Hall
Babel by RF Kuang
She Who Became the Sun by Shelley Parker-Chan
When the Angels Left the Old Country by Sacha Lamb
Piranesi by Susanna Clarke
At Night All Blood is Black by David Diop

Non-Fiction:
Kissinger's Shadow by Greg Grandin
Unmask Alice by Rick Emerson
Unruly by David Mitchell
The Field of Blood: Violence in Congress and the Road to the Civil War by Joanne B. Freeman
Madame Restell by Jennifer Wright
State of Emergency by Dominic Sandbrook
Things Are Never So Bad That They Can't Get Worse by William Neuman
The Domestic Revolution by Ruth Goodman
Ambition and Desire by Kate Williams
Delicacy by Katy Wix
Madhouse at the End of the Earth by Julian Sancton
River of the Gods by Candice Millard
The Reason for the Darkness of the Night by John Tresch
Born to be Hanged by Keith Thomson

I did so much re-reading this year that it was certainly easier to pick favorites out of the new-to-me books!

Welcome back, Meredith. I was sorry to read about your loss and the difficult time over the last few years. I hope that 2024 is a huge improvement, and that you have a great year of reading.

I am looking forward to catching a lot of book bullets from you and the rest of the Group.

It's good to have you back, Meredith. I'm so sorry to hear about the deaths of your parents. No matter how old you are, you're cut adrift. I hope things go well for you this year.

Thank you both! It's been so nice to see so many familiar names still active on here (not really a surprise exactly, but you never know with online communities).

State of Exile by Cristina Peri Rossi

A quite small read to get myself going for the year. Rossi was exiled from Uruguay in 1972 (after her work was banned), after which she moved to Spain. These poems were written during her journey and the first period of her exile. They are largely quite brief and mostly speak to the day to day feelings. I feel like it's less a collection to become a favorite and more stands as an interesting window to that specific experience and the disconnects it imposes.

I'd marked a couple to copy out, but I can't retrieve the book as now my cat is sleeping on my lap, and well, I am a sucker. Let's pretend it's just because she had a difficult time over the holidays when there were a lot of guests around a few times so I have to make it up to her.

Cat placeholder for eventual poem:

Adding the Cristina Peri Rossi here

Proximities

I don't need to go very far
to dream
A train to the suburbs is enough for me
Some rusted tracks that run
along the seashore
and I feel I'm already in another world
My ignorance of the nomenclature
allows me to baptize with other names
My foreignness
--I am the foreigner, the passing strange--
is the universal citizenship of dream.

Cercanias

No necesito ir muy lejos
para soñar
Un tren de cercanias me basta
Unas vias herrumbrosas que corren
al borde del mar
y ya me siento en otro mundo
Mi ignorancia de le nomenclatura
me permite bautizar con otros nombres
Mi ajenidad
--soy la extranjera, la de paso--
es la ciudadania universal de los sueños.

What a way to learn I still remember the alt code for an N with a tilde! Thank you high school Meredith for memorizing so many of those.

The Club: Johnson, Boswell, and the Friends Who Shaped an Age by Leo Damrosch

This book suffers a bit from containing very interesting information but scattered across a range of people who spent most of their lives apart. Damrosch gives potted biographies of each but the length of time he's covering and the variety of figures makes the book feel disconnected in a way I wasn't prepared for.

In the end, some of the most interesting sections were about the women in and around this group (the most well known of whom is Fanny Burney). Approached as a collection of interlinked essays, I think it would be a more satisfying read. I didn't dislike it, it's a great start to approaching any of the figures it covers, or this period of history, but it is limited. Damrosch is not as skilled at building the full picture as, say, Candice Millard or Caroline Alexander.

After reading this I've also cursed myself by looking up Damrosch and discovering a much earlier book that I'm desperate to read but cannot find at an affordable price, The Sorrows of the Quaker Jesus: James Nayler and the Puritan Crackdown on the Free Spirit. Most of my high school years I attended a very small Quaker boarding school, and I bet this was in the library when I was there (or in the library at the meeting house). So tempted to call and ask about it.

Saving Sunshine by Saadia Faruqi

This is a middle-grade aimed graphic novel about a set of twins (a brother and sister) on vacation with their family. They've been bickering so badly that their phones are confiscated and they're forced to amuse themselves together at the beach.

I found this through the illustrator (Shazleen Khan), who writes and draws a webcomic I really like. A friend of mine has a sort of mini-book club with her daughter, and as the friend's birthday is coming up I snapped this up for her. Of course, what kind of person would I be if I didn't read it before mailing it off.

Needless to say, I really liked the art. The story is largely focused on the siblings attempts to understand each other but brings up wider issues as well (the sister has started to wear a hijab and the brother has trouble sticking up for her when kids make ignorant comments). It's well balanced, and feels like the right length for the story, which has become quite a problem after publishers realized graphic novels were popular but felt every title should be 100 pages long. I'd certainly recommend it to anyone looking for middle-grade graphic novels.

I'm sorry to hear about your parents' deaths. I'm back after a long LT break that also encompassed the death of both my parents (Mum after a long running battle with cancer in 2021 during the second long Sydney lockdown from COVID; Dad from a shorter battle with cancer in 2022; it took my sister and I some 9 months to clear out their house as well because they'd lived there for 45 years and had all sorts of beautiful things that we both wanted to sort through, as well as the mandatory odd drawer full of rusted jar lids, etc). Some days the grief still hits me out of the blue, and I go and hug Dad's cat Pippi who is living with us now and bringing us much joy. I'm glad you have a cat to help you through the difficult days.

I'm so sorry you're on this train as well, Tania, and with such a small gap between the deaths. Cancer is an absolute bastard. I'm sure the cats especially give themselves a lot of credit for comforting us.

The cats deserve all credit, tbh. 🐈 ❤

The Bass Rock by Evie Wyld

Wyld is a writer I particularly like, but I put this title off for a few years. It's her third novel since 2009 (she's very much not a full time writer), and her second (All the Birds, Singing) was so impressive, so innovative in form, so soul-shattering, that I couldn't stand to pick up The Bass Rock. This one does not quite reach those previous heights, but it was still incredibly immersive.

The book opens with a little girl finding a dead body in a suitcase on a local beach and cycles us through three time periods and groups, largely in Scotland. We go from the target of a literal witch hunt, to a woman embarking on a new marriage as the second wife and adapting to a new community after WWII, to one whose life is falling apart in the wake of her father's death. There are ghosts, secrets, and strangeness galore, along with so much grief in varying forms. Everyone is struggling and haunted and facing personal demons, and the atmosphere is delivered extremely effectively.

Since I knew I'd read this book no matter what, I didn't actually read the publisher's summary at any point. I can only thank myself for this grace, as I don't think it represents the book all that well (makes it sound more 'book clubby' than it is, in the negative sense, and speaking as someone in book clubs). On the other hand, I probably could have used the heads up for parent deaths in the book. Six of one, half dozen of the other I guess.

Wyld is one of those novelists particularly skilled is creating living characters, and I'll continue to seek out her work. This year I might try to carve time and energy for a re-read of All the Birds, Singing.

You Use a Gun, and I Use a Bow by Hu Sheng You Meng RE-READ

Re-read of a Chinese webnovel. I started casually learning Chinese some years ago, which led to watching a lot of Chinese TV and then reading heaps of webnovels (sometimes the basis for those shows). Even though I'm reading translations there are always a lot of interesting notes of word usage and idioms and cultural points.

This is one of the pro-gaming focused novels, and just a pure comfort reread after I had to heal myself from Wyld's too-real characters. This one is a particularly amusing queer romance. Given that most of these writers are doing this as a side gig, I'm often pleasantly surprised by the quality of the work and the different culture around webnovels, where authors frequently say things like 'hey don't worry about X happening because it won't.' It's also fascinating that SO many Chinese dramas are based on webnovels, and they're often adapted extremely well.

Kingdom of Characters: The Language Revolution that Made China Modern by Jing Tsu

This is about the various hurdles that written Chinese faced over the late 19th through the late 20th centuries, with how to use it for telegraphs, how to develop a typewriter for it, how to standardize a phonetic form, how to develop computer fonts and allow input, etc... For those who don't know, when you're typing Chinese on a computer or smartphone you use the phonetic form which brings up a list of characters with that syllable (or with phones especially there are usually handwriting inputs as well).

This was interesting, particularly the section on typewriters, I don't know how on earth anyone felt confident about developing that. A lot of the book is also just about the place that the written language has in the culture and the push back against the idea that it had to be scrapped in order to become a modern country. It's an absolutely ludicrous idea that you could change the written form given the number of homophones (and I don't even mean the same syllable with different tones, though there are loads, I mean same syllable AND same tone). Even the simplification of common characters experienced a lot of outrage, due to changing the radical in a character.

Probably only a more interesting read if you're already into the language and somewhat familiar with it (which I am).

Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier

It's always a bit strange finally reading a book that you've known the title and author association for so long without knowing anything about the plot. This was picked for my book club, otherwise I probably wouldn't have gotten around to reading it.

I can see why the novel became such a touch point of 20th century novels, the atmosphere is very strong and quite compelling. However, I felt the narrator was too contradictory. She is obsessed with her new husband's first wife, who she knows tragically drowned. She is constantly in her own head about what the first wife was like, the fact everyone seemed to love her, her own place in her new husband's thoughts, and of course the oppressive house where every corner was touched by the woman who came before her. Only then, despite the obsessive thoughts and low self-esteem and insecurity, she'll be talking to people about swimming at the beach where the other woman drowned and not understand why the atmosphere shifted for minutes at a time. I don't think du Maurier remotely understood how that kind of anxiety manifested.

Where the plot went also felt fairly predictable, but the contradictions in our narrator (and the husband to a lesser extent) is what constantly got in the way for me. I could see so many ways to accomplish what du Maurier seemed to want with her in other less contradictory ways. The husband had quite a few of those moments as well, but they are less prominent because he is largely less prominent.

>17 mabith: Daphne du Maurier writes a good gothic romance, but they're not great literature. They follow a formula. The heroine of this one is typical: weak, worried and alone in the world. You don't expect insight and intelligence from a gothic heroine (unless she's Jane Eyre). Maximillian de Winter is also typical: silent, brooding and mysterious. It's all about the melodrama! The Hitchcock film is worth watching too.

I just finished Dragonwyck, another good gothic which I really liked despite its many flaws. Dragonwyck and Rebecca were written in the thirties and forties, when being dependent and not very bright weren't necessarily bad qualities in a romantic heroine.

I'm currently plodding through du Maurier's The King's General, which is a bit too worthy and serious.

Pamela, I'd say gothic novels generally won't be my thing, though I'll get to Jane Eyre eventually probably.

Typically for me, I suppose, I've read two of Anya Seton's books and loved them, but they're both her biographical novels rather than her gothic novels.

White Teeth by Zadie Smith

I've been meaning to read this for over a decade and finally got to it. Despite the years of hype for this novel and Smith in general, it exceeded my expectations. I'm blown away that this was her debut novel. I imagine it must have been difficult to have to come out SO strong when it came to the immediate followup. The writing was just fantastic. and enjoyable the whole way through.

Other than knowing that race would be a theme of the novel, I didn't remind myself of the specific premise of the book, and as usual I feel like going in ignorant of specifics works in my favor. The loosest summary of this one is simply the dynamics of two close family groups in the second half of the 20th century (well two and half families really). If it's on your list to read already, don't keep putting it off.

Seasons in the Sun: The Battle for Britain, 1974-1979 by Dominic Sandbrook

Last year I read the book before this one, covering 1970-74 and really enjoyed the deep dive into a short period. Sandbrook is very good at tying in the threads of popular culture and events with the political situation. He also seems reasonably good at being fair to the public figures involved, or at least looking well past common knowledge/assumptions and pointing out where they're inaccurate. I don't always agree with his conclusions but that hasn't impacted my enjoyment of the books.

They are quite long (in paperback this is 840 pages), and this one felt like a particularly hard slog. I found so many of the key figures incredibly stressful, partly I'm sure because this period is so responsible for building much of our current world and the events of my childhood. It's hard to look at it in isolation and 'watch' the politicians make the stupidest, most short-sighted decisions. He does try bring the humor where he can, but it's a dark period.

Of course, part of me still wants to immediately read the next in the series so take from that what you will (keeping in mind that history of almost any sort is my favorite reading subject, so your mileage might vary).

In the last few weeks I've also reread seven or eight of my Chinese webnovels, but none of them really need posting about in isolation.

For months I've had various disability benefits review appointments going on and the stress has made me reach for all the rereads. Everything *should* be fine, certainly nothing in my health situation has changed, but when your ability to live a semi-independent life is on the line it's hard to be calm about it (especially after losing both my parents).

Angelica by Sharon Shinn REREAD

A night-time audio reread for lying awake in bed but knowing the 'rest' is needed... This was the last book Shinn did in her Samaria setting, a far future world where the population was whisked away from their home planet after devastating war and started over with minimal technology and protections in place from their god to keep the peace. But all is not what it seems.

I enjoyed the Samaria trilogy (starts with Archangel), it has an interesting arc and she generally writes compelling characters. After those three books, she did two stand-alone works in the world, of which this is the weakest one. The pacing and personal development just seem a bit off. It feels like maybe she just needed a guaranteed payment and the publisher was more open to another set in this world vs a new series. The two main characters are also just less interesting and compelling than her leads usually are.

Don't Call it a Cult by Sarah Berman

This is a about the group NXIVM, led by Keith Raniere who was found guilty of various charges in 2019. There's a two season documentary series mostly focusing on one aspect of it called The Vow.

It's really hard to understand how so many people just missed all the red flags about this group and its teachings, particularly all these young women. There was a lot along the lines of 'if you feel upset by something that's probably your own fault so you need to examine your own behavior.' Even as a seven year old child my older sister saying she couldn't *make* me feel bad, she couldn't *make* me feel any particular emotion, *I* was in control of that, smacked of bullshit.

The book went into the fuller story whereas the documentary is heavily focused on a supposed women's empowerment group Raniere had set up which involved a lot of sexual coercion and being branded with his initials among other things. It was an interesting, if disturbing and confusing read. I know we'd all like easy answers to our problems, but I'm constantly surprised how many people fall into believing those actually exist and are held by one random guy.

Cluny Brown by Margery Sharp

I'm a big fan of Sharp's Rescuers books (which the Disney movies were inspired by, one can't really say based on). They're smart, very funny, and a great time, so I've been meaning to read a few of her more adult works. The Rescuers at least was actually not exactly written for children either, which is fairly clear as you're reading it though I think she tailored them more for kids after that.

Cluny Brown is a young woman who doesn't know her place, so people keep telling her. She does shocking things like use her own money to take herself to tea at the Ritz (quite abover her station) and speaks plainly to people around her. Her uncle decides the solution is to send her into service and she becomes a parlor maid. We bump merrily along with her, her employers, their son, a Polish house guest, and the local pharmacist. Unusually for a book of this vintage (originally published in 1944), you never feel quite sure of what's going to happen, which was an enjoyable aspect. The ending somehow felt neither utterly predictable or particularly unusual, but did feel right. Though I think Sharp could have made any of the possible outcomes feel right.

While it's not an absolutely fantastic read I'll be pushing at everyone I encounter, it was a fun little snapshot of the era and I really enjoyed Cluny as a character. I'm certainly still thinking about it and how it might have fit into contemporary novels of the time. I don't know enough about this kind of 1940s novel and I wish I did to have more context for it (most of my reading from the 30s-40s are mystery novels or children's novels).

The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl Volume 6: Who Run the World? Squirrels by Ryan North and Erica Henderson

I'm not a big mainstream comics reader, but Squirrel Girl is such a fun series. It's such a silly character that all of the nonsense that accompanies Marvel anything doesn't feel jarring in the way it does with other characters. I'm still happiest with the more alternative side of comics (or with old Carl Barks and Walt Kelly) but these always make for a nice break.

>21 mabith: I enjoyed this book, too, (as I have all of Dominic Sandbrook’s history times) although I agree that it was perhaps overlong. I remember 1974, when the book opens, quite well as it marked my last terms in primary school and the move to secondary school. I turned eleven in the April of that year, so the two general elections for 1974 are the first that I can remember.

I was also struck by the opening in which he describes Crichton School in Muswell Hill. Back in the 1970s, with the wife of Labour Politician Roy Hattersley as head teacher, it had a bad reputation, and was frequently placed in the Draconian sounding ‘special measures’. Since then it has evolved into Fortismere School, now one of the best performing schools in the borough. I know about it because it is situated literally across the road from my house!

Dominic Sandbrook delivers a very entertaining podcast called ‘The Rest is History’.

Certainly a chaotic general election to be the first that made an impression! The school sections really did my head in, partly as that non-school is the best school attitude largely came later in the US. 1974-75 in my county brought a textbook war over inclusions of multiculturalism and egalitarianism where numerous schools were bombed and school buses were attacked with shotguns to intimidate parents who continued to send kids to school (whose homes were also attacked at times). Slightly different issues...

I do love The Rest is History, though I lost a lot of reading hours to it last year. I wish they'd take the line of another history podcast I like (You're Dead to Me) and avoid focusing on WWII and the Tudors. There's just such a glut on those topics already, and yet, have they done an episode about AD Wintle? They have not!

For Real by Alexis Hall REREAD

Starting in 2023, Hall has become one of my favorite authors. This is perhaps, unexpected, as he largely writes romantic novels (many or most with LGBTQ characters). I've never been a big one for romance, in fiction or real life, and I'm one of those asexuals who assumed for years that sexual attraction (as opposed to aesthetic attraction) was made up for fiction. Five or so years ago I fell into a romance drama TV pit after years of cutting off my own emotional life and it hasn't let me go since.

So here we are with a romance novel also centered around BDSM and I liked it enough to reread it. A scrawny young man, a would-be dom, meets an older man still struggling with the end of his previous relationship, and they form an unlikely duo, fraught with problems due largely to insecurity.

What Hall does so well are the emotions involved, realistic dialogue, and humour. His books have made me laugh more than almost anything else (equal amounts of laughter to reading Terry Pratchett or Donald E. Westlake). He also clearly loves literature, most of his books are packed with literary references, some obscure, some mainstream (the metaphysical poets get quite the nod in this book).

This is not my favorite of his books, and not the first one I'd recommend to others (just writing this review has felt rather embarrassing), but it is one of his most deeply emotional, in a way. Many of his others take a well-known romantic trope (fake dating, enemies to lovers, etc...) and breathe a terrific amount of complexity and real emotional into them. It probably helps if you're familiar with UK pop culture though. My favorites by him are Something Fabulous, 10 Things That Never Happened, and Boyfriend Material.

Rogues' Gallery: A History of Art and its Dealers by Philip Hook

An interesting little jaunt into the art world, and how dealers have shaped trends in collecting and, at times, artists themselves. Not the most fascinating book I've ever read, but full of interesting tidbits.

It's Lonely at the Centre of the Earth by Zoe Thorogood

This is a graphic memoir largely covering a short period of the author's life when she seems to have particularly struggled with her place in the world, as an artist and as a person. She draws many versions of herself, who have slightly different views of the situation. Her depression and suicidal ideation is a central part of the work, so be forewarned.

The art is wonderful and captivating, but it was a hard read. This is partly due to age, I think. Thorogood is only 25, but somewhat comes across like one of those very young people who consider themselves old or haven't realized that even when they're 50 they will largely still feel 25 (until faced with actual 25 year olds, of course).

Girls and Their Monsters: The Genain Quadruplets and the Making of Madness in America by Audrey Clare Farley

As the subtitle makes clear, this is about a set of identical quadruplets. Born in 1930, all four developed mental health problems, at varying rates in childhood and teen years, diagnosed as schizophrenia. Because they were identical, the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), did a study on them to try to investigate a genetic origin for schizophrenia.

What was often ignored in the study are the actual factors of their home lives, with extremely controlling and often abusive parents who both treated them as a single person and but also heavily favored two of the girls. The girls' problems were often taken entirely out of the context of their lives. The book attempts a fuller picture, and also a mini-history of studies into nature vs nurture around mental illness.

The author does a pretty good job with looking at the wider picture and trying to be fair to those involved. Bringing in the mini-biographies of a couple of the main scientists involved in the research was also done well. The book felt balanced, and like it brought enough general information to make the importance of the this study (and the flaws) clear.

The Affair of the Bloodstained Egg Cosy by James Anderson

This is a book I looked at on the bookshelves at home for years. Age six, I thought the title was the funniest combination of words ever devised. It also had a great cover which I could not find online, and I'd meant to read it for years. I so regret I didn't specifically rescue it when we moved during my teen years.

I had been led to believe, from who knows where, that this was a spoof of a golden age mystery (it was published in 1975), but it really isn't. It does bring in a lot of classic tropes, and it has some funny aspects, but definitely not a spoof or parody.

Classically, it involves a group of people having a weekend at a large country house. There are foreign office types dealing with representatives from a foreign nation who they want to keep on-side ahead of WWII (this is set in 1937 or 1938), an American gun collector there to look at the homeowner's collection, a now-struggling girl from a formerly well off family, hidden identities, etc...

Not a mystery you can figure out from clues by reading but a great time. I'll definitely be reading the others he wrote in this vein.

The Picts and the Martyrs by Arthur Ransome

After see Lisa (labfs39) read Peter Duck on her thread, I remembered I hadn't actually finished this series! I got anxious about 'running out' and was saving the last couple for some unknown point. I am skipping Missee Lee, as it's another fictional story written by the children vs a novel about them and I know it's going to annoy me.

In this one, the Amazons (Peggy and Nancy) are on their own with the cook, but their mother is letting them host the Ds (Dick and Dot) on their own as they arrive to pick up their own small sailboat. However, horror upon horrors, the Great Aunt has learned of their mother's absence and taken it upon herself to take charge. Nancy won't have the GA harassing their mother about her lax parenting, so is determined that they hide Dick and Dot and pretend to be perfect little ladies during the five or six days of her stay.

Banished to a shack in the woods, Dick and Dot become Picts while Peggy and Nancy are Martyrs at home. Dick and Dot, unlike the Swallows, have only recently learned to sail and have not taken care of their own cooking and such before. The book is occupied with this and avoiding the GA, but also pointing out the ways Nancy and the GA are actually quite similar. I really liked that aspect, it's something I see in a lot of people. There's this person they complain about, but cannot recognize their own behavior in. He doesn't moralize on this, or focus on it hugely but it's a classic little Ransome element and part of why I've loved these books.

These books are also, essentially, my ideal childhood, and I'm thankful I'm old enough and grew up in a rural enough place that I did get to run around on my own from a young age (though nowhere near to this extent, unfortunately).

Havana Nocturne: How the Mob Owned Cuba and then Lost it to the Revolution by T.J. English

Well the subtitle really says it all on this one. It's a quick little popular history book. Not the most amazing read ever, but generally interesting, and maybe a useful addition to wider reading about 20th century Cuban history. The writing and organization of the book worked fine for me, no big complaints.

Heart in a Box by Kelly Thompson, illustrated by Meredith McClaren

This is a seven-issue comic about a woman who agrees to wish away her heart so she can stop feeling heartbroken over a past relationship. I mostly had it on my list because I'm a huge fan of the illustrator (one must support fellow Merediths). It's a nice little meditation on humanity in a way. Nothing super deep, but a fun quick read, and again, fantastic illustrations.

The Birth of Classical Europe: A History from Troy to Augustine by Simon Price

A generally interesting read, though it perhaps didn't do enough to justify the title, in terms of cause and effect? Not bad at all, just one of those okay historical reads. I needed something focused on the distant past, and this served well enough.

This review is probably a bit of a disservice to the book, and read at another time I might have found more enjoyment in it.

Don't Tell Anybody the Secrets I Told You by Lucinda Williams

Williams is a musician I like a fair bit, having seen her live several times on Mountain Stage as I was growing up. Her music is quite personal, inhabiting a sort of folk country rock space, which varies a bit between albums.

She had a rocky childhood in some ways, due to her mother's struggles with her mental health and alcohol, though there were also compensations. Likewise, she had a rocky road to reasonable musical success. She comes across as a very genuine person, trying her best to understand a frequently confusing and difficult world. Her inability to stand up against her mother's family in the wake of her death really broke my heart, though I understand why. She's very honest about her own mistakes.

It's a short book, and there's often a shift in focus to how a particular song was written and the story behind it which can sometimes feel like they should be in a separate inset box of text. It was generally a good read though, if you're interested in Williams already. Some musician memoirs have a wide appeal (Patti Smith's, for instance), but I don't think this one does.

The Affair of the Mysterious Letter by Alexis Hall

This is Hall's venture into a fantasy world Sherlock Holmes pastiche and it's incredibly fun. He really captures the Watson narration tone well and it's a well constructed mystery as well.

The world building is also impressive. I don't read loads of fantasy, and the type I tend to enjoy most are historical fantasy, very character driven, with the fantasy element being less prominent. However, I didn't grow up on the Oz books for nothing, and also love a unique world that feels complete and compelling (Garth Nix being my pick for the worldbuilding successor to Baum). Hall's world and how he brought up the various countries and elements within it strongly reminded me of Jaclyn Moriarty's Colours of Madeleine trilogy, which is a major compliment.

There will be plenty of references in this I've missed, both to known fantasy novels and also to Sherlock Holmes details. I've read the Holmes novels and most of the short stories, but it's not a series or character I'm super into. Even without that, it was a great read. Hall really is the funniest recent writer I've encountered, and it's been a godsend.

The Snarkout Boys and the Avocado of Death by Daniel Pinkwater REREAD

There are few authors I'm as devoted to as I am to Daniel Pinkwater. His books helped me hang onto imagination as a pre-teen/teen and not give into the idea of Growing Up as quickly as possible. His children's novels especially are so funny but also just smart! Also, he's a lovely man.

I've read them all so many times, and picked this up now as my "lay in bed for too long before sleep comes" listen. You can download many of his self-read audiobooks for free from his website, and he is always the best reader for them.

This is one of his rarer forays into what could be termed YA, as the protagonists are teenagers. They live in a version of Chicago, where instead of the Clark Theatre, there's the Snark, which shows a different double feature of old films every night. Our protagonists, Winston Bongo and Walter Galt, make a habit of Snarking Out, sneaking out of the house at night to go see movies. They quickly meet a headstrong young woman, known as Rat, who also snarks out and then get involved in searching for uncle, who frequently goes missing. It's an adventure, it's a meditation on the nonsense of high school, it's a comedy, it has its pastiche and Sherlock and Watson, it's a love letter to avocados and classic films. I watched so many old movies because of the ones mentioned in this book and the sequel.

Trying to adequately summarize any Pinkwater novel is an impossible task. If you have kids and pre-teens in your life, get them some Pinkwater. No one is more fun, no one encourages the creative mind more, no one else works as much art and philosophy into their books.

For anyone already devoted to Pinkwater, there's quite an interesting little book out there about his YA work (written before The Neddiad and its sequels came out), called The Agony and the Eggplant and it was a fascinating read.

Empire State: A Love Story (or Not) by Jason Shiga

This is a medium length graphic novel about a couple of mid-20s friends. One of whom has just moved to New York City (from Oakland, CA), prompting the other to realize he may have been in love with her. He writes her a letter to say he's coming to visit and to meet him at the Empire State building and hops on a greyhound bus. She hasn't received the letter and is already dating someone.

I liked the style of it, but it was a mediocre read for me in most ways. Shiga is an author I always feel I should like more than I do because my favorite of the comic artists who came up in early 2000s (Shaenon K. Garrity) likes him, but here we are.

What's Cooking in the Kremlin: From Rasputin to Putin, How Russia Built an Empire with a Knife and Fork by Witold Szablowski

I feel the title and subtitle of this may give a false idea of the tone of the book. In many ways we spend an equal amount of time on experiences during the Ukrainian famine and the siege of Leningrad, and the very personal stories of the cooks. There's an edition with the subtitle A Modern History of Russia Through the Kitchen Door, which doesn't quite answer either.

In any event, it's a good combination of food and history, the personal and political. There's a decent mix of horrible events and interesting little anecdotes, to keep one from feeling too overwhelmed. Szablowski lucked out with the timing of writing and researching this, as if he'd started a year or two later he wouldn't have been able to travel freely where he needed to (and I believe some of the oldest interviewees would have died).

Some sections are essentially monologues by interviewees and I sometimes felt this was jarring, the change in tone from those to the standard narrative writing. I imagine there wasn't really a better way to do it though, and I appreciated having the clear voice and personality of the subjects uninterrupted by other comments.

Sheets by Brenna Thummler

This is a graphic novel aimed at middle grade readers. It's about a girl whose mother has recently died, her father is retreating into alcohol, and she's trying to run their laundry business herself. Meanwhile a local man is trying to sabotage the business so they'll she'll have to sign the property over to him and suddenly she's seeing the ghost of a young boy who doesn't want to face his own death.

I know I'm not the target audience, but I found it difficult to suspend my disbelief with this one. Not over the ghosts, or the shady local man. My issue was the town acting like it was totally fine for a THIRTEEN YEAR OLD to be running the business and being very rude to her when she's a little late opening after getting home from school. It was annoying while reading it when I thought she was actually a few years older and doubly annoying when I double-checked her age and found it SO young. It's a small town, not a large city, they all know her mom died and that she's largely looking after a much younger sibling as well, what the hell is wrong with these people.

I liked the art, but I almost gave up on it fairly early on due to that issue and only kept going because well, graphic novels are very quick reads and I was curious about how the ghost stuff would pan out. Not recommended.

The Fraud by Zadie Smith

This historical novel covers both the very briefly popular novelist William Harrison Ainsworth, and the Tichborne case, whereby a man originally from Wapping in London saw ads searching for a wealthy young man thought to have died in a shipwreck and claimed to be him, necessitating several court trials and creating a public sensation. I found out about the book via a podcast on the case where Zadie Smith was the guest.

The novel flits around in time, starting more or less in the middle of things, with our main focus being Ainsworth's cousin/housekeeper, Eliza Touchet. Ainsworth's second wife is a keen supporter of the Tichborne claimant (absolutely a fraud), and between this and the public attention on the case, we're brought into that story.

Smith's balance of the two tales is incredibly well done, and I never found myself confused about where we were in time even with the audiobook because the people around the Ainsworths and Touchet change so much in each period. It was well read by the author herself, which was quite unexpected.

The book is touched with what I hope is Smith's trademark humor (having only read this and White Teeth. Touchet is a brilliant character to focus on (and create, to be fair, the real woman having died before the Tichborne case), and her own changes over the years seem absolutely realistic and believable. The use of Touchet might bother some readers, but it worked really well for me. Smith thoroughly recreates this period in a way that makes it seem she mostly writes historical fiction, even though this is actually her first.

Beauty is a Verb: The New Poetry of Disability edited by Jennifer Bartlett, Sheila Black, and Michael Northen

This is a brilliant, challenging collection featuring 36 poets with a wide variety of disabilities. I'm disabled myself, and basically have been for my entire adult life after being totally healthy up to age 19.

Each poet has an initial short essay or excerpt from a speech or previously written piece and then a few poems. I marked many places, and many poems.

This is perhaps my favorite poem from it (though I've posted two others in the Poetry thread in Club Read):

The Common Core – Vassar Miller

Each man's sorrow is an absolute
Each man's pain is a norm
No one can prove and no on refute.
Which is the blacker, coal or soot?
Which blows fiercer, gale or storm?
Each man's sorrow is an absolute.

No man's sickness has a synonym,
No man's disease has a double.
You weep for your love, I for my limbs—
Who mourns with reason? Who over whims?
For, self-defined as a pebble,
No man's sickness has synonym.

Gangrene is fire and cancer is burning.
Which one's deadlier? Toss
A coin to decide; past your discerning
Touch the heart's center, still and unturning,
That common core of the Cross;
You die of fire and I of burning.

“I think the way I approach translation is the same way most translators do: crumple the original poem into a tiny wad, chew it for a while, spit it out, unwrap it, try to pat is down as flat and neat as possible.”
John Lee Clark – from Translating and Reading ASL Poetry

“Like the male gaze, the medical gaze doesn’t exist discreetly in the human eye, but as a sort of collective eye. A cultural peeper. The medical gaze, leering ever pointedly since the end of the nineteenth century (see Foucault), works two ways: 1.) it reveals things about you that you yourself did not know, and 2.) if it cannot see your illness, your symptoms don’t exist.”
Danielle Pafunda – from Meat Life

“Nothing I've said in this essay changes the fact that I also perceive my illness as a terrifying constraint: physically limiting, but also psychically limiting when fear of the future takes hold of me. But by thinking of chronic illness as a language, I can become engaged in an observation of what fluency might mean, the fluency to speak in a language entirely different from my body's language of health. I can then try to use words to communication this fluency, recounting my experience of body, of this opening to what is the altered or increased or dispersed perspective that illness provides or simply stimulates. But words are the second order of speaking in my body, through my body, and I have to be sensitive to the histories that each word calls forth, the traditions, which will reflect meaning in a different way than a healthy body would recall them, or understand them. I've discovered that the body is a surprisingly “elastic” medium for appreciating, for translating the languages at its disposal. Perhaps there are more than these two—the body's language of health and of illness—but these two are where I begin.”
Rusty Morrison – from To Saturate the Matter of the Present

< 40 Thanks Meredith for reminding me about Daniel Pinkwater's books!
I really enjoyed his creative writing and zany characters and haven't read any for years, will find The Snarkout Boys and others I haven't read, thanks again:)

>44 mabith: Thanks for these comments on The Fraud. When a well established author comes out with a new book there is so much hoop-la generated by the publishers that I think reviewers in good periodicals tend to be over favorable. So I have learned to discount those reviews which can often disappoint. I prefer to read the thoughts of experienced readers outside the industry.
So in this case I will add The Fraud to my list

>46 bryanoz: He's always worth catching up to! I need to re-read his The Neddiad trilogy (which came out 2006-2010). I remember being happy he'd returned to some similar themes as Alan Mendelsohn, the Boy from Mars (particularly in the third book of that trilogy), which is the one that absolutely reignited by brain at age twelve.

>47 scunliffe: Publishers often shoot themselves in the foot in that way. We know Zadie Smith is well-regarded already, they'd be better off giving the basic points, mentioning the most unique point (the narrative structure), and letting people go into the read relatively blank. I certainly find the average LT review more helpful than anything in a professional publication.

Adventures of a Dwergish Girl by Daniel Pinkwater

When I was looking up dates on the previous Pinkwater re-read I noticed a couple more recent books I hadn't read yet and obviously had to start catching up.

Dwergs are a dwarfish race secretly living in the Catskills. Some adventurous or bored dwergs go to regular public schools, and Molly O'Malley is one of those. Unwilling to become a typical Dwergish girl with all the weaving and cooking, she decides to move to the human town, where she gets a job in a pizza place and starts seeing a lot of ghosts around. There are trips to New York City, consulting a magical king about the ghosts, and a plot to steal the Dwergish gold to foil.

It's not Pinkwater's best work, but there are some fun little details. For the curious Pinkwater fans, my favorites of his 21st century works are The Artsy Smartsy Club and Adventures of a Cat-Whiskered Girl.

The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny, and Murder by David Grann

I'm partial to a ship voyage book and by extension shipwreck and mutiny stories as well. For one, you really feel grateful to be alive now with no danger of impressment and able to get around the world in a faster, safer, and more pleasant manner.

This one wasn't my favorite of the genre, but it was well done, written clearly and fairly compellingly. Unfortunately, I was greatly looking forward to the court case against the mutineers and that was incredibly anticlimactic and minor.

I was in my local independent bookstore (where I used to be assistant manager so I have a Lot of Opinions about how things are done), and this was book was in the True Crime section... Which, you might as well put most of the history section in there if that's how you're arranging things.

Fuzz: When Nature Breaks the Law by Mary Roach

I'm a general fan of Roach's non-fiction, where she just explores a lot of little related or semi-related topics to her heart's content. She's really found a great way to do one thing but have an incredibly varied life.

I picked this one for my book club to break up all the murder focused and Sad Times books that got chosen, and I was surprised how much discussion it inspired, though it may have had the side effect of making people more nervous about bears than they need to be (one of the suburbs of my city has had a lot of bear sightings lately).

As usual, Roach skips around topics and continents, and one of the more interesting aspects are the cultural differences in how we deal with 'problem' animals. I do wish she'd had a section on historical animal trials (she mentions a few very briefly), as that's always quite fascinating and usually very funny. It's not my favorite of her books, but an enjoyable read.

Hidden Valley Road: Inside the Mind of an American Family by Robert Kolker

Carrying on from Girls and Their Monsters about the Genain quadruplets, it's another family where the children have a high occurrence of schizophrenia and how their story fits into the larger narrative of schizophrenia research and mental health treatment in the US generally. There are twelve children, and six of the ten boys are eventually diagnosed with schizophrenia.

It's very well written, and I think does a good job at refraining from judgement of all parties while presently the difficult realities of their lives and how this fact has impacted both the well and sick siblings. The oldest child, Don (also the first to show symptoms) is twenty years than the youngest, and these wide age gaps also contribute to many difficulties given the sheer number of uncontrollable kids (and the parents not bothering to try to control them all that much either).

After I Died, I Became Popular Again - Zuo Chuanchuan

Mostly I've not posted about the re-reads of Chinese webnovels I've been reading, partly because they've been particularly silly ones lately and of little interest to anyone who isn't me. This is a new-to-me one though, and moderately less silly.

This is a transmigration-into-a-novel one, though unusually it's a couple of ancient people going into a modern dogblood novel (the plot of which involves the baby of a rich family, Qi Linqing, being switched out and growing up very poor in the countryside and the false young master getting everything good in life). More usually you have modern folks going into ancient settings. However, now a famous ancient painter is inhabiting Qi Linqing and he doesn't want any part of the drama. His previous apprentice has also transmigrated, into a classmate, and gradually suspects that the other is his master.

There's much face-slapping of the entitled false young master, and perhaps more detail about traditional Chinese ink painting than I needed in my life. I think the author must do it themselves, or else is just very convincing at bullshitting. It was a fun read, without big conflicts, and the interactions between the master and apprentice were very amusing.

It's interesting that transmigration-into-novel is now such a common trope that some authors don't bother to justify why the transmigration happened, which is a bit of a shame. A fair few involve the author maliciously sending a reader into a book after they've made negative comments or rejected it as a publisher (though the majority are just 'I Stayed Up Too Late Reading and Now I'm in the Book' - it's a lesson to us all).

Unrelated, my favorite novel-setting book has this premise allowing the main villain access to the entire work: “Due to an overabundance of plot holes, this story has been rejected by its readers. Thus, the most popular character among the readers has been selected to personally verify the story’s consistency, and make suitable changes.”

Felix Holt, the Radical by George Eliot

And now for something completely different...

I've been putting off reading this, as it's my last Eliot novel and I adore her work SO much. Her writing style, her humor, and her absolute grip on the psychology of her characters is just joyous. It's everything I love about Victorian novels.

One aspect of many of her books for me is also that I can't quite predict what will happen. There are numerous paths that seem possible (and plenty that seem impossible of course, given the times), and you're not sure until the very end what she'll choose. This is so rare with older novels. It doesn't necessarily make it better for me, I know where Elizabeth Gaskell's books are going, but love them to pieces regardless, but not knowing does make for an interesting reading experience.

This novel was one of her less successful for me. The pacing just doesn't seem right, like perhaps it should have had a whole extra volume inserted towards the end. The reveals that happen (to the characters, the reader can be aware) are so late into the book and it feels like the main one is an afterthought. The writing is still impeccable and deeply enjoyable, but it felt lacking compared to almost all her other novels. Perhaps this is because the previous work, Romola, was not a success at the time and impacted how she wrote this one. Our titular character Felix simply doesn't feel like a main character in the way he ought to, and he's far less developed than either of the other main characters.

It's a bit of a shame I didn't save Middlemarch to be my final Eliot read perhaps. I am thankful that I love to reread books, however, and I will enjoy revisiting some of hers in the future (just not this one or Silas Marner).

>25 mabith: I like Margery Sharp because she's dry and witty and likes her characters. And her books are short! Barbara Pym is also worth trying.

>32 mabith: Added this to the wish list.

>55 pamelad: That's such a good way to describe Sharp, that she likes her characters. That absolutely shines through. I'll definitely be reading more of her adult work.

The Snarkout Boys and the Baconburg Horror by Daniel Pinkwater

After rereading the first one I had to complete the set. Like the first, there are SO many fun elements in this book. The teens discover a dark coffee house with terrible poetry and folk music (haven for teens of any era), there's a werewolf loose, Wallace Nussbaum is back, and Pinkwater has predicted the future with his Japanese pizza robots at the Garden of Earthly Bliss Drive-In and Pizzeria.

As ever, a great ride, many literary and historical allusions, and yet another mystery food which is never fully described but makes one deeply hungry (borgelnuskies).

The Dictionary People: The Unsung Heroes Who Created the Oxford English Dictionary by Sarah Ogilvie

A nice little non-fiction read by a former OED editor, looking particularly at the volunteer contributors who are often overlooked (but only going into the main leaders of the project).

Good read for me, if the idea appeals to you I think the book will as well (does what it says on the tin, and all). Ogilvie and her helpers put in an extreme amount of research tracking people down after finding James Murray's address books of contributors.

Boy in a China Shop by Keith Brymer Jones

There are a variety of creative competition shows which sort of spun-off from the popularity of The Great British Bake Off (all of which I basically prefer, because I love a handmade thing that's also usable), including The Great Pottery Throw Down. Jones is a judge on the show (the only one who has stayed for all the seasons of it), and became well known for crying and generally getting incredibly emotional over the work of the potters. He will tear up at least twice every episode. It seemed so ridiculous when I first started watching the show, but now I'm almost 40 and I tear up at the drop of a hat as well so it's become more endearing.

Surprisingly to me, Jones actually picked up pottery and stuck with it from quite a young age. Other than joining and being pretty serious about a punk band, pottery was really his life. He joined a working pottery right out of school and spent three years on apprentice grunt work before being allowed on the production line. When that business decided to move to Scotland, he set up his own studio and proceeded to nearly work himself to death.

It was a good read, and nice to get his full story in pottery. Amusingly, I had heard of the punk band he was in, The Wigs, and their big song was on a compilation of 1980s UK punk. Was very surreal to find out that was him.

Bunbury by Tom Jacobson

"What if... Romeo & Juliet had a happy ending? Or Blanche Dubois didn’t go crazy? Or the Three Sisters actually made it to Moscow? When he discovers he’s only a fictitious, never-seen character in Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest, Bunbury joins forces with Rosaline, Romeo’s never-seen obsession from Romeo and Juliet. Together they infiltrate and alter classic literature."

This play had a wonderful premise but couldn't quite live up to it or make full use of it. How any of this play travel works, how they figure out what play they're in, how they get a hold of the scripts, etc... is never gone into. The main point of it is the writing and a lot of in-jokes as long as you recognize the plays. Jacobson's writing in the style of Wilde was particularly fun. If you don't recognize the plays, or don't know them well, you're a bit stuck. I've read Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolf but decades ago, and while I knew that's the play we were in I couldn't remember anything about the plot and had to look it up.

It would be a fun live performance to attend, particularly if one took the time to reread all the referenced plays beforehand, but I don't know that I particularly recommend it as a solo read/listen (or if so go into it with low expectations).

Two weeks ago we had a tornado in my area, which is very unusual here in WV. 90 mph winds, and 36 hours without electricity. It's not that long, but when you only have an electric stove and live in a fairly dark house it does FEEL long. The morning of the tornado I also went out and found I had a flat tire out of nowhere, so I couldn't seek electricity at friends' houses either, so I was forced to bury myself in re-read comfort (and now I've had to buy two new tires as the flat couldn't be fixed and that's just not fun on a fixed income.

Now you get the Chinese re-read round up!

Mr. Fashionable by Yu Xiao Lanshan 语笑阑珊

Gluttonous fashion model/actor runs into director of a company he'll be working with when he's in disguise to eat, director falls in love with him, very very silly book, very very silly main character (what the Chinese netizens would call a husky type - which has been decided to be the silliest dog for reasons that are mysterious to me but probably related to amusing meme pictures).

Rebirth of a Movie Star by J112233

This is another classic genre in the Chinese webnovel world - the rebirth novel. The main character dies relatively young and then finds themselves transported ten years or so back to the past with all their knowledge of the later years. This one features an unlucky actor who was used as a bank by his brother, has a very rocky career due to scandals related to that, and then is pushed into a heart attack when his partner, after pushing him to come out as gay, uses the backlash to crush his career and announce his marriage to rich woman. Going back, he decides to accept being the company boss' kept lover to avoid the complications of his brother's debts and the relationship becomes real (the boss was there when he died and was very distraught, so it wasn't out of nowhere). I don't know why this is my go-to comfort reread, but the main character is very appealing and there's an amusing child in it.

How to Say I Love You by Feng Liu Shu Dai 风流书呆

Neglected younger child of a wealthy family comes home, isn't allowed to join the company despite excellent achievement, mother pushes him into acting. Has conflicts with a star actor who judges him harshly, star actor is in car accident that leaves him able to read minds, realizes he's misjudged the other man and is woken up to how little he seems to know the people around him. A more thoughtful, less silly one.

Tipping the Velvet by Sarah Waters

This is only my second Waters read (previously read The Night Watch), just one of those hundreds of contemporary authors I kept not getting to.

We're thrust into the late Victorian period and Nan Astley, a working class girl, falls into love with Kitty Butler who is a 'masher' or male impersonator at music halls. Kitty returns her feelings (though with more guilt and anxiety over the illicit nature of their love) and Nan follows her to London to serve as her dresser before joining the act. Her life has many ups and downs and she reels through three distinct phases and modes of life after moving to London.

I had to take several longer breaks in this reading because I was getting a little too upset about what was happening to Nan and some of her choices, but it was a good read with a good balance of humor. If you struggle with unlikable protagonists, you might struggle with Nan. She frequently doesn't do herself any favors.

The Buried Book: The Loss and Rediscovery of the Epic of Gilgamesh by David Damrosch

An interesting read that I perhaps wasn't in the right headspace for. I think I was particularly stressing out about car repairs when I was reading it, so the epic and world of Victorian archaeology was less diverting than usual.

This book covers the epic, Ashurbanipal, who was one of the last kings of Assyria, and particularly George Smith, a self-taught Assryiologist from a working class background whose many discoveries were often pinned to other more aristocratic or traditionally educated figures. It's another brick of the wall of my dislike for E.A. Wallis Budge (who appears in the Amelia Peabody mysteries by Elizabeth Peters, and probably in some other non-fiction I've read).

The territory he wants to cover is a pretty big ask for a relatively short book, so maybe it's not totally my fault I wasn't as into it as I'd expected to be. I did enjoy it though and now feel permanently aggrieved for how Smith was treated.

After Marrying the Villain I Became Popular by Gan Hui 甘洄

More transmigration into a novel as I was continuing to not get my car dealt with at this point, but it's not a re-read this time.

This represents the subgenre of transmigration where the transmigrator is someone who was extremely ill in the real world and had a really narrowed down life, so now they get to be healthy. As someone with disabling chronic pain, this certainly appeals.

Xia Wan is the cannon fodder ex-toy of the novel's protagonist, but of course the new Xia Wan, finding himself at the protagonist's engagement party grabs a new target to protect him, not realizing it's the protagonist's brother who becomes the main villain of the book. It's one of those where the 'villain' has reasonable complaints and is just driven to extreme action, vs actually being a villain so of course love saves him etc... (the actual evildoers still suffer). This is quite a well done one, with a more advanced plot than most, with numerous elements not present into the novel the original Xia Wan read because they only related to him and he was just a side character.

Part of what keeps me in the Chinese webnovel scene is the abundance of funny queer novels without too much drama, and often set in queer-norm worlds (the f/f ones tend to be more heartbreaking, barring a few, so I do end up reading fewer of them, I need to limit the heartbreak).

In Farleigh Field by Rhys Bowen

Not a good read and gets worse the more you dig into it. This was selected for my book club, and had so many flaws. The author has published far too many books for some of these things to still be slipping through.

There are whole side stories that had absolutely zero impact on the book as a whole and could have been cut without anyone noticing and there were numerous little bits you think will lead to something and they're just never mentioned again. The premise is during WWII a parachutist is found dead in a small village and thought to be a spy due to wearing an older variant of a uniform and badge. It's billed as a mystery but written as a social novel, the pacing is very odd, there's little concern for the mystery or spy until the very end. The villain is flagged pretty clearly at the beginning to the extent you think 'oh, probably a red herring' but no, he's the end villain and it ends incredibly anticlimactically.

If it were just a social/character novel set in this period it would be better (though still not for me). You have three childhood friends, one of whom, Jeremy, was in a German prison camp and has escaped and come home. Just before the war he crashed a plane due to recklessness, injuring another friend Ben, so that he can't serve in the military and joins MI5 instead. Then there's Pamela, daughter of a lord who is working at Bletchley, and deeply in love with Jeremy (Ben is in love with her of course). The book goes back and forth sometimes acting as if she and Jeremy are dating and sometimes that it's unrequited, it's quite odd. Ben is there to halfheartedly investigate the spy, Pamela is there to see Jeremy. There are a million side characters.

Not recommended for anyone.

>62 mabith: Hi Meredith, Sarah Water’s Fingersmith is one of my favourite historical fiction reads, I also enjoyed her The Little Stranger and The Paying Guests. No new books from her since 2014 sadly, happy reading!

Thanks, Bryan! Fingersmith is probably the next I'll read by her. I found the characterization in The Night Watch a little too thin, which I think is part of why it took me so long to pick up another by her.