Wednesday morning saw two parakeets and assorted other avians

[oursin]

What I read

Finished Not Guilty, which is useful personal histories covering a period of differing experiences and social change for gay men, and very stuttering legal improvements to their lot.

A Traveller in Time: The Critical Practice of Maureen Kincaid Speller (2023) - some of you may remember her from Wiscon or other cons or from LJ days. This is a collection of her reviews and essays and is the sort of responsive reading that can be enjoyed even has one not read the works in question or had a different reaction. With various appreciations of her and her work.

JD Robb Payback in Death (In Death #57) (2023) - ebook finally came down to equivalent price to mass market paperback. Pretty much the usual mixture.

Abigail Burnham Bloom, Geraldine Jewsbury (Key Popular Women Writers) (2020). I have been wanting to read about Jewsbury for some while: however, this book although it was I think doing the job it set out to do was not quite the book about her that I was wanting to read. Also I felt a) she could have invoked the miasmatic breath of Woolf's 'Angel in the House' well before the last page when thinking about constraints on what Geraldine could say in print (or even in letters?) and b) also considered the chilly breath of Mudie's Circulating Library - does mention a novel (one I think that she was a publisher's reader for rather than one of hers) that was deemed unacceptable by them - on the output of Victorian novelists. (But I will concede that I thought that a lot of the issues to do with The Woman Writer and What She May Acceptably Say were still things that were swirling around for my 20s gals, so not entirely on board with It Was Victorianism. Let's read Russ, eh?)

On the go

Eliza Clark, Penance (2023), which I think somebody or other mentioned, and which was recently on Kobo promotion? finding it quite gripping so far.

Having seen it name-checked by Bloom, pulled Norma Clarke's Ambitious Heights: Writing, Friendship, Love : The Jewsbury Sisters, Felicia Hemans, and Jane Carlyle (1990) off the shelves, and you know, I think this might be the book I'm actually looking for? Just reading the intro is resonating more with me.

Up next

Dunno.

Comments

[calimac]

Maureen Kincaid Speller - noted, ordered. I remember her well, you bet.

[kore]

I remember her as brisingamen from LJ. She was such a good friend, as well as a good writer.

I have heard about Penance a lot! I haven't had the stomach to read it yet tho.

[themis1]

Maureen was a friend - we frequently sympathised on sibling issues. I miss her a lot. I'm glad you found her posthumous collection worthy :-)