Wednesday had to faff around reinstalling malwarebytes, but has got an nice ALCS payout

[oursin]

What I read

Finished Conflict Is Not Abuse, which was interesting, though there were several parts where I was going 'Melanie Klein and the paranoid-schizoid position, what?' and feeling that Klein might have been useful to the thought-patterns and emotional problems she was discussing. But that might be me.

Anyway, after that it was Ben Aaronovitch, What Abigail Did That Summer, just out, okay but not overwhelming?

Then I read Jeffrey Weeks, Between Worlds: A Queer Boy from the Valleys also just out. Declaration of interest that I know the author, he was the external examiner for my PhD, is much of the same generation as myself (a little older, but basically, post-War beneficiaries of the 1944 Education Act, the Welfare State) and also got into the history of sexuality when it was not something that was an approved mainstream topic in history departments. Though his career was a lot more academic precariat than mine (with my nice stable supportive job in archives) until very late on. Lived through a lot of changes and developments in queer/gay lifestyles, etc.

On the go

Jane Smiley, Thirteen Ways of Looking at the Novel (2005),which is very much a novelist's, and a novel-reader's, book on the subject, and thankfully free of ponceyness. Though I am irked by her use of 'he' too often for the generic novelist - when your very first individual specimen is The Tale of Genji and the list of 100 novels has a meritorious representation of the laydeez, I would go with 'she' in support of centuries of the scribbling sisterhood. BUT, she is very sound on The Fountain Overflows and Nancy Mitford, for which I will forgive a great deal.

MR Carey, The Fall of Koli (Ramparts Trilogy #3) just out. About halfway through, and as if everything hadn't been grim enough already, everything is going to hell in a handbasket at the moment.

Up Next

Probably, as I feel I may require something rather fluffy after that, Zoe Chant, Unicorn Vet published a week or so ago; or possibly Sherry Thomas, Claiming the Duchess (2014). which I found was a freebie when I was looking on the Kobo site to see if I could preorder the next Lady Sherlock novel (not yet available for preorder in UK, chiz).