What I read
Finished Pointed Roofs - gosh, how bizarre is that German girls' school? It seems more like somewhere that parents send their little darlings to until marriagable age, and actual education is not a priority.
Simon R Green, Which Witch (The Holy Terrors #3) (2025), enjoyable popcorn read.
Which could also be said for Simon Brett, Death in the Dressing Room (A Fethering Mystery, #22) (2025), phoning it in a bit perhaps.
I thought Janice Hallett, The Killer Question (2025), was doing the opposite of phoning it in and straining too hard. This might be the thing one sees when a writer has done Something Fresh and Exciting but there comes a point when that is hard to sustain and there is a feeling that they have scurried around a bit and it feels kinds of effortful.
Matt Houlbrook, Songs of Seven Dials: An Intimate History of 1920s and 1930s London (2025) (which is, I may point out, well after the epoch of Seven Dials in which I have shown interest....). It's very good, very readable, if I had been sent it for review I might have made a few quibbles - e.g. on the basis of the evidence he adduces about the changes going on in the area, even if the mixed race couple the Kittens hadn't brought a libel suit against entrenched wealthy interests, wouldn't their cafe have had to close eventually anyway? Also was reminded of those lecture by Gayle Rubin on the leather community in San Francisco and how very specific local contingent factors meant that certain phenomena could arise, also very much within a specific time. Also that cities (if they are places where things are still happening rather than historical relics) tend to see changes all the time and there is a fluidity around spaces.
On the go
Still on the go, Diary at the Centre of the Earth, which I am enjoying a lot.
Exasperatingly, because of the e-reader issue and because Some Men in London 1960-1967 alleged it was not properly authorised I had to reauthorise my reader via Adobe Digital Editions, as a result of which a large number of my books have been removed from the ereader, including that one, removing my place markers when I reimported it.
Up next
Should probably get on to Anthony Powell, Hearing Secret Harmonies (A Dance to the Music of Time #12 (1975) for the final meeting of the book-group next month.
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