Wednesday is unable to provide any update re tortoises, alas

[oursin]

What I read

Finished Penance, which was very good but hmm, is this 'documents in the case' only electronic becoming A Thing??? and also, this is the second thing I've read lately where I felt Unreliable Narration was not turning out quite as Massively So as it could have done. Maybe I am Jaded and Cynical.

Also finished Ambitious Heights, about which my only cavil was really that I thought it needed a final concluding chapter, ended a bit in the air with the implosion of Geraldine Jewsbury's attempt at proposing marriage. But so good: I particularly adored Norma Clarke's BURNZ of Wordsworth: 'William Wordsworth's self-absorption was great, even by the standards set by male poets' and it went on from there.

Emily Tesh, Some Desperate Glory (2023) about which had lately been seeing buzz hither and yon, and I can quite see why. Are her earlier novellas worth looking? I surmise they are in v different mode.

Anne De Courcy, Five Love Affairs and a Friendship: The Paris Life of Nancy Cunard, Icon of the Jazz Age (2022), which was readable but somewhat disappointing/frustrating. de Courcy has form for writing about early C20th uppercrust women and does have a good deal of background knowledge of the period and its mores. However. Why FIVE? Nancy Cunard boinked her way pretty much through the whole of the Imagiste/Modernist/Dada and Surrealist movements (including a one night stand with TS Eliot), and why that particular five, except maybe they wrote about her? (but not the only ones) and Aldous Huxley was a very brief affair (she described the experience as 'like slugs crawling on my skin'). She was also bopping around all over the place even during the 20s and the height of the Jazz Age and Paris as a kind of Mecca.

Some inconsistencies/inaccuracies - if France was so cool and free from censorship, how come there was that episode where a disguised detective tried to buy a book she was publishing in order to arrest her for trafficking in porn? I also felt certain issues were left out until right at the end - like her bisexuality, and I would have liked a bit more consideration of her probable eating disorder and the fact that the hysterectomy in her 20s may have meant Whee, no worries about contraception or dangerous illegal abortion, but also, surgical menopause? Also, massive raised eyebrows about exactly how 'pure' and avuncular/quasi-fatherly George Moore's relationship with child Nancy had been.

On the one hand: OMG Nancy, check your privilege. She could treat people - especially her Black lover Henry Crowder - so badly and thoughtlessly. On another: when male novelists wrote women like Nancy into their novels, they never mentioned the commitment to publishing modern literature and supporting art, the political, in particular anti-racist, activism, did they, it's all about beauty, bed, and making men miserable.

On the go

Was dipping into Beyond Fandom again yesterday when out in the world with my ereader.

Have just started Jasper Fforde, The Constant Rabbit (2020), which was Kobo Deal recently. Enjoyed the early Thursday Next books and the Nursery Rhyme ones, but I am not sure I shall persist with this. Trying a bit hard, somehow?

Up next

Well, it's unlikely to be Ronald Hutton, Blood and Mistletoe, of which I have heard excellent report, but as I have gone for a dead tree version on the grounds that reviews of the ebook were scathing about the omission of illustrations, I now find that delivery is some way in the future, chiz.

So otherwise, no idea.

Comments

[arkessian]

I enjoyed the two Tesh novellas -- quietly satisying, from memory.

[luzula]

+1

Opinions differ on whether people consider the sequel disappointing or not, but pretty much everyone I've seen enjoyed the first one.

[coughingbear]

I also enjoyed the Tesh novellas - very different atmosphere, but good.

[wychwood]

I thought the first novella was an absolute blinder, and the second one was quite good! But definitely worth a look.

[bibliofile]

I expect that Constant Rabbit was on sale ahead of the new book coming out (Shades of Grey #2, Red Side Story) Feb. 6th. I found CR somewhat satisfying to read in 2020, in the early days of the pandemic and while hoping for the end of the Trump administration. This year, yeah, it might be less satisfying.

Thank you for the notes on the Cunard biography. I doubt I'll ever read it, but I appreciate the thoughts re: Cunard and also (heh) Wordsworth.

[oursin]

It's not even a full biography of Cunard - it briefly covers her upbringing but it's mostly about The Jazz Age, The Beautiful and The Damned in Montparnasse and elsewhere and a real skim of what happened after that. I did read a biography once which was rather disappointing, which you would not think was possible with a character like Cunard.