Weekly Reading Round-Up
Happy Friday, all!
I have a pile of new books I ought to be reading (and two books I ought to be writing!) but I’ve retreated back to my happy place, the village life of an England that never was but ought to have been (as George MacDonald Fraser would say) with a combination of Golden Age mysteries and Angela Thirkell.
I’d forgotten just how much I adore Agatha Christie’s harum scarum mystery novelist Mrs. Ariadne Oliver. (Don’t you think she and Harriet Vane would have a wonderful time at cocktail parties?) I visited with her in Cards on the Table and Dead Man’s Folly before moving sideways from Agatha Christie’s mid-century England to Patricia Wentworth’s mid-century England and her omniscient knitting spinster detective with Dark Threat (not one of my favorite Wentworths because spoilers) and Latter End (absolutely one of my favorite Wentworths).
After that, it was just a short hop and a skip to Angela Thirkell’s Barsetshire. For those who haven’t read her, I always like to describe Thirkell as a cross between P.G. Wodehouse and Nancy Mitford. She writes incredibly funny but also very gentle satires of English village life, in which there’s a always a young man down from Oxford, a sweet-natured heroine, domineering schoolboys, delightfully distracted but universally adored ladies of the house, some sort of theatrical production or village fete, and nannies called Nannie. I started with one of my absolute favorites, August Folly, and then moved on to Wild Strawberries.
What have you been reading this week?
Reading Eloise James’s Say Yes to the Duke – love the repartee.
Currently reading The Spy Wore Red by Aline, Countess of Romanones, an American who recounts her adventures as a WWII spy based in Spain. Fascinating!
Also attempted a contemporary romance set in the Florida Keys which I hoped would be a nice, light diversion, but unfortunately contained a bit too many contemporary political asides to fit the bill (I need my escapist fiction to provide some escape from current events).
I devoured the new Riley Sager, and I have to say, I DID NOT see the twist coming in ‘The House Across the Lake.’ Then I moved back to the regency with the second Andrea Penrose Lady Arianna mystery ‘The Cocoa Conspiracy’ and I have the third one, ‘Recipe for Treason’ to follow. Oh, and I read ‘The Paper Girls’ comic, which was a supreme letdown. I’m excited for the show, but the show looks like it made it more accessible and less all the bad things about the eighties.
Did you use ketchup, mustard, hot sauce? Maybe relish? Paper is awfully dry, don’t you think?
Reading “Mary Jane” by Jessica Anya Blau in anticipation of “Groupies” by Sarah Priscus.
I devour it like evil Willow in season six of Buffy!
Reading your “The Lost Summers of Newport”… excellent as always!!!