This week was all England all the time, in books, at least.
I read Julia Whelan’s My Oxford Year
, about an American abroad at Oxford– which made me want to re-read Dorothy Sayers’s Gaudy Night
, arguably the best of all possible Oxford novels in that best of all possible worlds (although you can also put in a plug for Brideshead Revisited)
. It also reminded me that I’ve been meaning to read Charles Finch’s The Last Enchantments
forever (or at least since he wrote it), and that it’s sitting right there on my bookshelf and really ought to be read.
Next up was A.J. Pearce’s Dear Mrs. Bird
, and, oh my goodness, WHERE has this book been all my life? (Thanks so much to Andrea Katz of Great Thoughts Great Readers for the recommendation! And for telling me that it read as though I’d written it. Having now read it, I account that a great compliment.) The heroine would undoubtedly be best friends with Henrietta Dorrington. The tone is sheer comic genius. If a Heyer character were to find herself in World War II, this would be her internal monologue, with more than a soupcon of Sally Fitzhugh.
What have you been reading this week?
I’ve been reading So Pretty a Problem, a Golden Age murder mystery by Francis Duncan.
Enjoyed My Oxford Year, which I just read and finished a few days ago. Also have Dear Mrs. Bird and The
Summer Wives on loan as ebooks from my library system.
I devoured Career of Evil in preparation for Galbraith’s Lethal White next month, now I’m reading Tasha Alexander’s Tears of Pearl, which is making it very hard for me to want to do work or leave the house and be social.
The Death of Mrs. Westerway. It was really good even if slightly predictable.
Love, love, LOVE Gaudy Night!
Didn’t manage to finish anything this week, working on 4-5 books currently (unusual for me).
To be continued.
I absolutely LOVE Gaudy Night. I remember a conversation with a date in college where we discussed people we would enjoy having dinner with and I said Harriet Vane and Peter Wimsey. He never heard of them!!! That was the end of our romance! Just finished Crime and Punctuation by Kaitlyn Dunnett and it was okish.
I’m currently reading Libba Bray’s The Diviners. It’s set in New York City during the 1920s. Our heroine is a flapper with a dangerous gift: she can touch an object belonging to someone and see their last moments and have their secrets revealed to her. And, there are other gifted people like her throughout the city.
Loved My Oxford Year and Mrs Bird.
Currently reading Mary B by Katherine Chen.
Reading the County Cork series by Sheila Connolly… like a summer vacation in rural Ireland!!!
Re reading The Hundred Secret Senses by Amy Tan 🙂