Wednesday had a weird spam phonecall on the landline

[oursin]

What I read

Slightly Foxed #85: 'A Matter of Compression'.

Margaret Drabble, The Pure Gold Baby (2013), not sure I'm quite so keen on this as I was on first reading?

Anthony Powell, A Buyer's Market (A Dance to the Music of Time, Vol 2) (1952) for the discussion group, at which I nobly refrained from perorating at the length I could have done over various matters within the purlieu of my expertise.

CJ Wray, The Excitements (2024), a Kobo deal, blurb a bit misleading, moderately entertaining but if it is the start of a series, don't think I shall be pursuing.

Re-read of KJ Charles, The Duke at Hazard, because I discovered on Saturday night that although I had lately downloaded several books to my ereader my Device Was Not Recognised As Authorised and would not open them, so I fell back on this. Is this one particularly Heyerish??? (or has various Heyer-type elements.)

On the go

Rebecca Makkai, I Have Some Questions For You (2023) - woman returns to the school where in her sad youthful days another pupil was murdered, and there are still True Crime delvings as to whether the alleged killer was in fact fitted up. Still, as Forestfan, trying to get over character named Thalia Keith (nothing like Tim).

Up next

The latest, and alas the last, Scribbler, and a new Literary Review.

Comments

[carbonel]

I read I have Some Questions for You a month or so ago, so I'll be interested in your thoughts once you finish it.

[flemmings]

I don't think I could read a book with an un-Timish character called Thalia Keith. Disbelief would not suspend.

[rmc28]

The Duke at Hazard is not just Heyerish, but specifically riffing on The Foundling, just as The Nobleman's Guide to Seducing a Scoundrel is on The Unknown Ajax, and Band Sinister on Venetia.

In fact, Band Sinister was so obviously Venetia retold from the blurb that it convinced me to finally read this KJ Charles author in like late 2019, after which I fell down an utter rabbithole getting through her entire backlist (some of which I'd bought years earlier in a sale, but not actually got around to reading). Venetia was likewise my first Heyer, picked up from the "bring and share" bookcase on a Nile cruise in 2000 when I'd (horror!) read all the books I'd brought with me; it too prompted a mad dash through the backlist, though rather slower as I hadn't starting reading ebooks at that point.