It's Always More Complicated

What I read

Well, mostly it was that book on the Huxleys, which was heavily weighted towards TH ('Darwin's bulldog', though Bashford massively nuances his relationship with Charlie and his ideas) and Julian, with supporting intermittent appearances by other members of the family. It was thematic, and did a lot of chronological back and forthing, and maybe I would have liked a bit more about relationships, including with people outside the kinship group, I was frankly boggling at certain archives which had not been consulted wot wot wot and characters who did not feature. Also I'm not sure the Penguin p/b was the ideal physical reading experience....

Then I took a break by reading Robert B Parker, Painted Ladies (Spenser, #38) (2010)

On the go

And then I moved on to Sarah B Rodriguez, The Love Surgeon: A Story of Trust, Harm, and the Limits of Medical Regulation (2020). She touched on this very gruesome and depressing episode towards the end of her earlier work on Female Circumcision and Clitoridectomy in the United States: A History of a Medical Treatment (2014). While Burt did accept the role of the clitoris in female sexual pleasure, he thought there was a design flaw in the female genitalia and performed surgery on the vulval area (often without the woman's knowledge in the course of other operations) (as well as vaginal tightening procedures). He thought this would promote sexual harmony in marriage (in a very male-dominated model) and in fact it caused massive suffering.

I am having to take breaks - between the accounts of his activities and the women's experiences, the state of the medical profession's inability/reluctance to do anything is cringe-making, though, historian of medicine remarks, the professional omerta of code of silence and cover-up, not exactly unprecedented and unknown.

So I have been going back to Points of Departure.

Up next

Really must get to Dawn's Left Hand. And the latest Literary Review is not going to read itself.

What I read

Finished The Whim of the Dragon.

Re-read of Dorothy Richardson, Oberland (Pilgrimage, #9) (1928) in anticipation of next week's online group discussion.

As it arrived, Sara Paretsky, Bad Company, just out, not VI Warshawski (chiz) but a standalone thriller which I give points to for having the protag a 70+ year old woman even if she was CIA back in the day: the intricate plot deals with stuff coming back from the past, a made-up former Soviet Central Asian country, billionaires who want to live for ever, almost as much internecine shenaningans as fighting the enemy, etc. Very readable, but I really wanted more Vic, really.

On the go

And then I finally succumbed to Pamela Dean, Tam Lin (1990). Have been trying to remember which trip to US it was during which I bought a second copy to sustain me during the trials of the return flight.

Have also started the 2 books for essay review, having got the review hanging over my head off to relevant reviews editor.

Up next

Some little while ago I discovered that there is a Robert B Parker Spenser thriller of which I don't seem to have a copy - I appear to have read but don't recollect much about it - have obtained cheap p/b off eBay and maybe that's next.

What I read

Finished It's Not A Cult, not really my sort of thing, somehow. Well done if you like it, I suppose.

Anyway, took a genre/mood veer into Jeevani Charika, Knowing Me Knowing You (2024) okay but not really up there with her best work. Situation felt a bit contrived and forced, whereas in her others it seems organic.

Following seeing robot_mel's praise of it elsewhere, CL Moore's Doomsday Morning (1957) (may have read it back in the day but had no memory of doing so.) (Will confess to having had some confusion in my mind between CL Moore and Leigh Brackett as vaguely contemporary women writers deploying gender neutral names to publish under, not entirely surprising given the period). This is dystopian thriller, central character is a washed-up actor who is pulled out of general labour pool by old mate now in high political position at a Time of Crisis, to undertake a task involving travelling theatre company. Rather good, and I gave it points for having women characters who were not only not just there for protag to perve on (which might be understandable, though women writers might have felt obliged/pressured to conform to expected genre patterns) but rebel leaders, had agency in plot, etc.

Rebounded from this - edge of seat suspense in final section - to the new Tansy Rayner Roberts, Saucers and Sorcery: a Cozy Fantasy Collection (Teacup Magic Book 7) just out.

Also read the latest Literary Review.

Have just finished Margaret Drabble, The Great Good Places - essays, bits of memoir, short stories - including a piece on how she is no longer writing novels, she started one and then her daughter became very ill (and then died) and it all went away. Which is distressing because one was rather hoping she had not actually stopped.

On the go

I don't know if these count as on the go rather than stalled - I haven't returned to The Three Furlongers and while I've taken the odd look at further passages of The Quiddity of Will Self one of the things it does not have is a compelling narrative drive....

Up next

Oooo, dunno.

What I read

Finished The Talk of the Party, which was misdescribed somewhere as a mystery/thriller. Okay, there is a mystery, but it is the kind of dark mystery lying in the past that you are wont to get in family sagas - this is a story about a prosperous Lagos family and some of its circle, the present day narrative is the 60th birthday celebration of the matriarch, and there is a lot of flashing back and assorted narrative strands, not to mention some coincidences at which Thomas Hardy himself would have blushed. I did keep reading.

Latest Literary Review.

Was beguiled by a review therein to check out Charlotte Vassell, A Fatal Legacy (DI Caius Beauchamp, #4) (2026) and do not think I will be pursuing this author.

Have been seeing a certain amount of buzz here and there over James Alistair Henry, Pagans (2025), which is a crime novel set not so much in alt-history as alt-present - am a little irked with blurb that says 1066 did not happen in this world, because surely the Roman Empire never happened before then even? the whole centre of historical gravity is different. Would read more.

Robert B Parker, Potshot (Spenser, #28) (2001), because I was not feeling up to anything else much yesterday evening. Read this ages ago and was a bit unimpressed, on returning to it still not one of the top Spensers but it does complicate what initially looks like Spenser and his posse being the 7 Samurai.

On the go

I'd actually started Dorothy Richardson, Revolving Lights (Pilgrimage, #7) (1923) for the online Richardson group, but it was not where my head was at last night. Getting back to it now.

Up next

Have got my hands on a copy of Alison Lurie, Truth and Consequence (2005) which I'm sure I had/have a copy of somewhere but has completely disappeared.

What I read

Finished Poor Caroline which is one of those novels - ?I think they went on being a thing beyond the period when this was written? - where you have several ill-assorted people's stories through them being brought together through some reason cutting across their usual associations, in this case, via the eponymous Caroline who is a dotty and determined ageing spinster who is trying to set up a Christian film company. And everyone has their own motivations, and so on, which have little or nothing to do with any stated purpose. Not a top Holtby but has its moments.

Re-read of NK Jemisin, The City We Became (Great Cities, #1) (2020) and The World We Make (Great Cities #2) (2022) - slightly less whelmed by the first perhaps but still gripped by the second.

Started to re-read KJ Charles, Copper Script (2025) and realised why it had not made much impression upon me. Well off-form - clunky, sluggish and has a lot of one of my pet peeves, very distinctively of-the-present-day expressions and word-usage in a period setting. Decided not to continue.

On the go

Foluso Agbaje, The Talk of the Party (2026) a mystery/thriller about wealthy socialite family in Lagos. Just started.

Up next

Have not yet got to Literary Review.

What I read

Finished Second Wind, which was really a bit kitchen-sinky in all the stuff that happened to Our Hero the Physicist Turned Weatherman - I thought Rare Form of Bovine TB was really going a bit far after all the flying through hurricanes etc.

Finished Free for the book-group - account of growing up in Albania just before and just after the Fall of Communism, in a family with rather a lot of intricate backstory on both sides. And a lot of it narrated via perspective of very young person who is, understandably, not being told everything by the parents and living under that particular regime.

Then read JD Robb, Stolen in Death, (In Death #62) (2026), and while I am always pleased when Dallas is not chasing a serial killer or someone with weird perverse agenda, this one did not seem to me one of the top entries in the series, quite apart from the jewel theft from the TATE!!! blooper. (I was trying to construct any scenarios in which there would be v pricey jewels on display alongside, you know, all the PAINTINGS and some sculptures.)

Then I re-read, the first time in a Very Long Time, George Eliot, Felix Holt, the Radical (1866). A lot of it reads like practice-steps for Middlemarch, which has so much more going for it. The plot-stuff to do with legacies, lost heirs, etc, is pretty clunky. Felix himself is somewhat of a pain. There's not much of her humour. Even so, there's some terrific stuff there.

On the go

Winifred Holtby, Poor Caroline (1931), which I appear to have re-read slightly more recently than I thought, though still not very recently.

Up next

There's a new Literary Review. Otherwise, feel I am on a bit of a re-reading things kick.

What I read

Finished Keep Calm and Kill the Chef in spite of the hiccupy epub. Went on to read the novella The Blackmail Blend (Café La Femme, #1.5) (2015).

Finished Deadlock.

Read Mick Herron, Reconstruction (2008), which is set rather peripherally in the Slough House universe. Discovered I read it a few years ago and I remembered absolutely nothing about it. Not really him in top form.

Finished (which I have been dipping into for quite a while), The Observing Eye: The Sayings of Muriel Spark (Virago Modern Classics Book 781) (edited by Penelope Jardine 2018) which as I recall was a Kobo deal some while ago. I do want to read more of her but not sure this selection would have stimulated me to that....

Felt moved for some reason to re-read Stella Gibbons, The Wolves were in the Sledge (1964), which I discovered I had actually read more recently than I had thought.

Matthew Sweet, Bookish (2025), which is apparently a novelisation of a TV series I have not seen and about which I was a bit meh. (I have some v slight acquaintance with the author - best known around these parts for showing up N Wolf on air over her interpretation of 'death recorded' - we had a bit of a dingdong on a listserv many years ago and were on a radio programme about, as I recall, Bulwer-Lytton some time in the mists of yore.)

Also finished the other book for review.

On the go

Have started Lea Ypi, Free: A Child and a Country at the End of History (2021) for in-person book group. (Feel other group members do rather go for worthy books.)

For a bit of a break picked up Dick Francis, Second Wind (1999), which is the one with the BBC meteorologist and a perhaps over-convoluted plot (kudos for all the research he must have done, okay?).

Up next

JD Robb, Stolen in Death (In Death, #62) (2026), epub having finally come down to what I consider reasonable price equivalent to old mass market p/b, probably.

What I read

Finished Camp! and remained underwhelmed - there was a whole section in the final chapter about how 'in the twenty-first century, feminine-presenting young men have become an increasingly popular part of Chinese culture', and apparently official backlash against this. Having seen the movie Farewell My Concubine about the Peking Opera and its tradition of travesti male stars, this is perhaps more complicated? an older tradition/retro? All felt a bit crammed and rushed.

Literary Review

For some reason felt moved to take a look again at the novels of William Cooper, and picked my ancient Penguin of Scenes from Provincial Life (1950). Set in 1939, just after Munich. Would probably be interestingly compare/contrast with all those novels by women of the period I constantly mention. Joe Lunn and his circle are both sort of flailing in a panic - much discussion of fleeing to the USA but they are not very together about doing this- and being absorbed in their quotidien professional/emotional lives. For 1950 it's remarkably not what one expects - one character, Tom, is gay but much more is made of his being the sort of person who Knows Best about everything and tries to organise everyone's lives for that reason - Joe and his girlfriend have a pregnancy scare but after a gin-swilling evening and some worry the problem disappears - however the abortion issue arises again when one of his sixth-form pupils (he is a physics teacher/novelist) has got his girl friend definitely pregnant and collection is taken up to cover the cost - Tom's boyfriend, besides being fed up with having his life organised for him, is getting interested in GURLZ - Tom, who has particular reasons to for fearing the Nazi invasion he posits is on the horizon (besides being gay, is Jewish) takes boyfriend on holiday to France -

This actually all works well both with the feel of people getting on with their lives/actually not knowing where their lives are going to go. The muddle is the point. And then the War comes and everything changes.

Unfortunately Scenes from Married Life (1961) and set in 1951 just felt rambly, though there is a useful section where Joe's latest novel has his publisher getting worried over censorship and the way that actually worked through nudges and whisper networks.

I more or less finished, with a certain amount of skimming, Tales of the Uneasy, especially as the last tale was a version of something of hers I'd already read.

Re-read of Livia Day, A Trifle Dead (Café La Femme, #1) (2013) and Drowned Vanilla(Café La Femme, #2) (2014)

Cat Sebastian, Hither, Page (Page & Sommers, #1) (2019), on the train, as I was in the middle of Drowned Vanilla and it is a paperback which I did not want to tote around.

On the go

Cat Sebastian, The Missing Page (Page & Sommers, #2) (2022), started on the return journey.

Have begun book for review.

Up next

Maybe more Cafe La Femme?

What I read

Dorothy Richardson, Interim (Pilgrimage, #5) (1919) for online reading group. Less dentistry in this one, but Canadian doctors.

Vonda McIntyre, The Curve of the World - which, well, my bar for her is set high, and one does wonder if maybe she would have worked more on this had she had the time, but it was still pretty good, even if there was a bit of an air of thought-experiment about the possibilities of cultural exchanges at the period. Points for having ageing (textually indicated to be menopausing) protag, and the seafaring party includes a pregnant woman.

Mick Herron, Nobody Walks (2015), thriller set in the Slough House universe and with various known characters mentioned but a stand-alone about unrelated characters. Not bad.

On the go

Still Persuasion, but very nearly there.

Still dipping in to Violet Hunt's Tales of the Uneasy - possibly her strength lay in the creepiness lurking within human relations, because I'm not sure she's really up there with her horror contemporaries?

Up next

There's a new Slightly Foxed.

What I read

Finished Platform Decay

Read Jonathan Coe, Bournville (2022), which was a Kobo deal, and I have been vaguely interested in reading something by him since coming across his really rather good intro to that archetypal Sad Girl Novel, Dusty Answer. However, was rather meh and tempted at points to give up on this family saga from VE Day to Covid told as vignettes at various Memorable Dates in History of C20th Britain.

There was a certain amount of picking things up and reading a bit and thinking, no, at least, not now, if ever.

Re-read Sally Smith, A Case of Life and Limb (The Trials of Gabriel Ward, #2) (2025), as there is another one forthcoming shortly.

Kobo deals turned up a new Simon R Green, For Better or Murder (Holy Terrors Mystery #4), alas, this was pretty much phoning it in.

Muriel Spark, The Hothouse by the East River (1973), which is a very very weird novella, absurdist, grotesque, is it about something that happened when they were working for Secret Organisation with German POWs in War and is that why the unheimlich frisson (turns out, no).

After that I just wanted the perhaps too simple and predictable pleasures of Robert B Parker, Silent Night (Spenser #41.5) (2013, unfinished at his death, completed by his agent Helen Brann).

On the go

Persuasion, which I began somewhat behindhand of the daily chapter group read on bluesky.

Up next

Well, there's that new Literary Review, but apart from that.

Am being irked by certain writers whose new ebooks are pretty 2x or more what they used to be. (I might have gone for this I suppose had I not been a bit underwhelmed by some recent offerings.)