Wednesday considers attacking one historical cliche with a different historical cliche ill-advised

What I read

Continuing the Sayers streak: Murder Must Advertise (1933) - okay, Sayers does make a bit of an ironic thing about drugs/advertising, but I don't think she, at that date, got the Big Honking Irony of Bringing Down The Drug Ring (which I have elsewhere remarked on as implausible for the date) while Bigging Up Sales of Whifflets Cigarettes, hmmm? - Have His Carcase (1932), which has its longeurs, and Five Red Herrings (1931), which I actually gave up on, wanting more about artistic types and their interpersonal tensions and less about railway timetables and missing bicycles, also, lacking the regular cast of supporting characters.

Discovered purely by chance that three collections of Anne Billson's film columns for The Guardian (2009, 2010, and 2011) were available absolutely free on Kobo, along with, at a very low price, two volumes of her other film criticism Spoilers (which I realise I bought in hardcopy at some point but have no idea where that's got to). I had actually noticed a reference to a work of horror fiction she had recently published, which was also very moderately priced. So I have read the 3 volumes of Guardian columns - which are more general meditations on various things about movies rather than actual reviews, and v good - so far.

Alexis Hall, A Lady for a Duke (2022), which is lovely. (Even though it had A Duke fighting as an officer in Wellington's Army, I thought this was done much more plausibly than in that other book I complained of doing this thing.)

On the go

Still rather gradually working on Dimple Hill.

Up next

Do I feel ready to tackle Lady Ranelagh?

Have also obtained copy of Pamela Moore, Chocolates for Breakfast, about which I posted a link last week.

On another prickly paw, the discussion of feminist utopias makes me wonder about doing some re-reads....

Have been feeling a bit thwarted in my desire to read one or two of the many novels of prolific early C19th novelist Catherine Gore. Many have been digitised by the Internet Archive, and I find several Free On Kobo but they are suffering Bad OCR Issues. Looking on Amazon, there are Kindle editions: at the asking price of nearly £8 I was anticipating properly proofread and maybe a critical introduction, but these seem to be the exact same manky versions, very poor show. Project Gutenberg and The Faded Page have not stepped up here.