I finished Britannia Mews by Margery Sharp, which is one of her less humorous novels so not a personal favourite but it's good at what it's trying to do, which is quirky family saga. I realised it was also an accidental re-read - my second in a row, lol.
I read a popular novel billed as "feel-good" that I was enjoying until the author decided to drop some unsubtle racism bombs.
Now just over halfway through the 2024 Wainwright Prize for Nature Writing winner Late Light, The Secret Wonders of a Disappearing World, by Michael Malay, which is mostly four extended essays about four species of animal found in the UK (eel, moth, mussel, cricket) with more general top and tail chapters at each end. The writing is meditative and expansive but also melancholy and inevitably downbeat as it's tracking declining populations in reducing habitats. It deserved the award wins for both the prose and the content imo. I've read all the other shortlisted 2024 Wainwright books and the only two that came close are the travel memoir Local, A Search for Nearby Nature and Wildness, by Alastair Humphreys, and popular social history Rural, The Lives of the Working Class Countryside, by Rebecca Smith. I usually find at least one or two books I want to read through the Wainwright Prize shortlists (released August with three different categories) and I often read some of the books that don't especially appeal to me as well because they're all good one way or another.
Am considering trying to persuade a few people into a one-chapter-a-month readalong of some short, obscure, and not necessarily good anthology that's out of copyright everywhere and easily available such as Aurora Australis. If I'm not currently enjoying the reading then at least I'd appreciate the company and be amused by any ensuing fanworks. :-)
Who are we shipping Shackleton with?! :) I am, admittedly, partial to doomed polar explorations and sea voyages, especially if there is scurvy or cannibalism.
Sadly for you, Aurora Australis is from one of the earlier, sucessful, scientific expeditions to the Antarctic. :D
Surely the ships are Endurance/ghost of Erebus, and Shackleton/his men? ;-) But I encourage all possible fanworks in all variations, in this case especially the forms and genres of the original which include art, poetry, weird dream fiction, and travel writing (serious and not so serious), amongst other possibilities (such as expanding the timeline to cover more history). :-)
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branchandroot
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Date: 2025-04-09 10:38 pm (UTC)I read a popular novel billed as "feel-good" that I was enjoying until the author decided to drop some unsubtle racism bombs.
Now just over halfway through the 2024 Wainwright Prize for Nature Writing winner Late Light, The Secret Wonders of a Disappearing World, by Michael Malay, which is mostly four extended essays about four species of animal found in the UK (eel, moth, mussel, cricket) with more general top and tail chapters at each end. The writing is meditative and expansive but also melancholy and inevitably downbeat as it's tracking declining populations in reducing habitats. It deserved the award wins for both the prose and the content imo. I've read all the other shortlisted 2024 Wainwright books and the only two that came close are the travel memoir Local, A Search for Nearby Nature and Wildness, by Alastair Humphreys, and popular social history Rural, The Lives of the Working Class Countryside, by Rebecca Smith. I usually find at least one or two books I want to read through the Wainwright Prize shortlists (released August with three different categories) and I often read some of the books that don't especially appeal to me as well because they're all good one way or another.
Am considering trying to persuade a few people into a one-chapter-a-month readalong of some short, obscure, and not necessarily good anthology that's out of copyright everywhere and easily available such as Aurora Australis. If I'm not currently enjoying the reading then at least I'd appreciate the company and be amused by any ensuing fanworks. :-)
no subject
Date: 2025-04-10 12:08 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-04-10 08:54 am (UTC)Surely the ships are Endurance/ghost of Erebus, and Shackleton/his men? ;-) But I encourage all possible fanworks in all variations, in this case especially the forms and genres of the original which include art, poetry, weird dream fiction, and travel writing (serious and not so serious), amongst other possibilities (such as expanding the timeline to cover more history). :-)