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Currently reading:
Paul Cornell's London Falling, which is like a grittier and yet more mystical cousin to Ben Aaronovitch's Rivers of London. I'm about fifty pages from the end, and will post more about it once I've finished it, but I'm liking it so far. It's got a strong cast of characters (one of whom is gay! because Paul Cornell is not afraid of including queer characters!), a gripping plot (and I say this as someone who doesn't care that much about plots, normally), and some intriguing worldbuilding that I think does genuinely new things with "urban magic" tropes.
Recently finished:
Shadows in the Street and The Betrayal of Trust, by Susan Hill. I liked some things about Shadows, not least being that it seemed to back away from the previous book's pathologizing of singleness. And then came Betrayal (pun unintended but rather apt for how I feel about this addition to a series I had, with reservations, liked), which made me so angry that I posted about it here.
The Vault, by Ruth Rendell. I'm a long-time fan of Rendell, although this was the first Inspector Wexford book I'd read since The Babes in the Wood, which I didn't care for. Wexford, in The Vault, is retired and living intermittently in London, happily exploring its geography and history but also happy to be included as a consultant on a cold case. The London stuff was enjoyable--I always like books with a strong sense of place--the case was, well, a decent enough McGuffin, and the characterization, always Rendell's strong suit, was as powerful as ever. By the way, if you're inclined to ship Wexford with his old friend and colleague Mike Burden, as I am, this book will do nothing to discourage you. An example:
What I'm reading next:
Society and the Homosexual, by Gordon Westwood, which I just got today through Interlibrary Loan and am very excited about. This is the book Westwood published in 1952, before the Wolfenden Committee report recommending decriminalization of homosexuality, and before Westwood's remarkable 1960 book A Minority, which I discuss here. It's the same kind of thing, an attempt at showing what gay men's lives and experiences are really like as opposed to the stereotypes. It looks to be more anecdotal than A Minority, which was based on extensive interviews, and less openly pro-gay, but I'm looking forward to it. And it does have a short chapter which I've already read about prisoners of war, which includes some remarkable case studies and gives the lie to the claims found in almost every secondary source (and many published POW memoirs) that POWs only rarely had sex with each other. More about that later.
Brutality and Desire: War and Sexuality in Europe's Twentieth Century, ed. Dagmar Herzog. My other ILL acquisition, requested on the strength of an essay about homosexuality in the British armed forces during the Second World War, and specifically about the considerable extent to which known gay and lesbian people were accepted. The rest of the essays are mostly about the rape of women in wartime, which while a crucially important topic also means the book has less scope than I was hoping for.
Not in the Flesh and The Monster in the Box, by Ruth Rendell. These are the two Wexford novels published before The Vault, which I'll read to catch up on what I've missed of the series.
Paul Cornell's London Falling, which is like a grittier and yet more mystical cousin to Ben Aaronovitch's Rivers of London. I'm about fifty pages from the end, and will post more about it once I've finished it, but I'm liking it so far. It's got a strong cast of characters (one of whom is gay! because Paul Cornell is not afraid of including queer characters!), a gripping plot (and I say this as someone who doesn't care that much about plots, normally), and some intriguing worldbuilding that I think does genuinely new things with "urban magic" tropes.
Recently finished:
Shadows in the Street and The Betrayal of Trust, by Susan Hill. I liked some things about Shadows, not least being that it seemed to back away from the previous book's pathologizing of singleness. And then came Betrayal (pun unintended but rather apt for how I feel about this addition to a series I had, with reservations, liked), which made me so angry that I posted about it here.
The Vault, by Ruth Rendell. I'm a long-time fan of Rendell, although this was the first Inspector Wexford book I'd read since The Babes in the Wood, which I didn't care for. Wexford, in The Vault, is retired and living intermittently in London, happily exploring its geography and history but also happy to be included as a consultant on a cold case. The London stuff was enjoyable--I always like books with a strong sense of place--the case was, well, a decent enough McGuffin, and the characterization, always Rendell's strong suit, was as powerful as ever. By the way, if you're inclined to ship Wexford with his old friend and colleague Mike Burden, as I am, this book will do nothing to discourage you. An example:
Wexford sometimes thought how awkward it was for Englishmen to greet each other, even in the case of close friends. Continental Europeans would have shaken hands or even embraced. Arabs and many Asians would have embraced and kissed, even to that extraordinary fashion he had only seen on the screen, of kissing on one cheek, then the other, then the first again. Secretly, in those wakeful, vaguely mad times of the night, he thought that he would quite like to embrace Burden when they met after an absence, though he drew the line at that triple kissing.So, yeah, it's now canon that Wexford sometimes lies awake thinking about how much he'd like to embrace Mike Burden. Later in the book, Wexford is in the hospital and his wife tells him that Mike will come to see him the next day. He tries to sound only vaguely pleased, on the grounds that "it might be hurtful [to his wife] to show too much enthusiasm," but she quite correctly reads his response as containing "an undercurrent of madly longing to see him." This makes me happy.
What I'm reading next:
Society and the Homosexual, by Gordon Westwood, which I just got today through Interlibrary Loan and am very excited about. This is the book Westwood published in 1952, before the Wolfenden Committee report recommending decriminalization of homosexuality, and before Westwood's remarkable 1960 book A Minority, which I discuss here. It's the same kind of thing, an attempt at showing what gay men's lives and experiences are really like as opposed to the stereotypes. It looks to be more anecdotal than A Minority, which was based on extensive interviews, and less openly pro-gay, but I'm looking forward to it. And it does have a short chapter which I've already read about prisoners of war, which includes some remarkable case studies and gives the lie to the claims found in almost every secondary source (and many published POW memoirs) that POWs only rarely had sex with each other. More about that later.
Brutality and Desire: War and Sexuality in Europe's Twentieth Century, ed. Dagmar Herzog. My other ILL acquisition, requested on the strength of an essay about homosexuality in the British armed forces during the Second World War, and specifically about the considerable extent to which known gay and lesbian people were accepted. The rest of the essays are mostly about the rape of women in wartime, which while a crucially important topic also means the book has less scope than I was hoping for.
Not in the Flesh and The Monster in the Box, by Ruth Rendell. These are the two Wexford novels published before The Vault, which I'll read to catch up on what I've missed of the series.
