RIP (Read In Progress) Wednesday

[silversea]

Happy November! What are you reading now?

Comments

[dancesontrains]

Just started Shannon Chakraborty's 'The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi' earlier today. Enjoying it so far.

Also recently started Ruby Hamad's non-fiction 'White Tears/Brown Scars: How White Feminism Betrays Women Of Colour', which is very promising.

[petrea_mitchell]

Since I last reported in, the significant other and I finished the run of The Warlock of Firetop Mountain successfully and started on book 2, Deathtrap Dungeon. The SO has requested some kind of "save point" mechanic to deal with the fact that this one is living up to its name already.

I read all of Sethra Lavode, part of a side story to the Dragaera series, but I want to get back to the main sequence now.

And I just finished The Adventures of Mary Darling, a book reworking the story of Peter Pan from the POV of Mrs. Darling, with some added Sherlock Holmes. Sometimes it felt like it was leaning too heavily on coincidence to keep the story moving, but I appreciated that the author was horrified by the same stuff about Peter Pan that I was. (The book version of Peter Pan is much darker and more cynical than the play.)

[rekishi]

"Cigarettes" by Harry Matthews for book club. WHich certainly is...a product of its time. I'm not sure what to think of it yet.

[spiralsheep]

Apparently I last reported in here at book 96. Here are the best since then. :-)

100. The Possibility of Tenderness, by Jason Allen-Paisant, 2025, non-fiction, 5/5
Personal memoir as community social history, very readable prose, relates several subjects together and was shortlisted for a "nature-writing" prize.

101. Lost to the Sea, by Lisa Woollett, 2024, non-fiction travel history geography, 5/5
A social history of human settlements around the coastline of the British Isles (including Ireland) that have been "lost to the sea" by coastal erosion, flooding, and sand dunes, from prehistory to today. Not comprehensive but each chapter covers a different type of situation.

103. Love & Other Scams, by PJ Ellis, 2023, novel romance crime, 4/5
Witty, thoughtful, incredibly unlikely diamond heist, and very millennial romance. Author is a gay man, which became obvious to me by page 13, lol, and he subsequently wrote an m/m romance that I haven't read.

104. Just beginning a Fannie Flagg novel because someone on librarything has been recommending them to me for years and she fits into my A-Z of authors from the library challenge.

[bluapapilio]

Wooing the Witch Queen by Stephanie Burgis, it's just what I'm needed to get through work lately! :') I need more books like this. The male lead is basically a simp for Saskia the witch queen, and so far she's more dominant.

[cactus_rs]

Njal's Saga at the recommendation of a bookish friend. I'm also waiting on a hold for Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow to come in for a book club.

[sixbeforelunch]

Alix E. Harrow's A Spindle Splintered, a retelling/deconstruction of Sleeping Beauty. I'm not sure how I feel about it, but it's keeping my attention so far.

[merrileemakes]

I've just started The Angel of the Crows by Katherine Addison, which is a Cumberbatch Holmes/Watson AU Victorian steampunk wingfic with the serial numbers filed off. I'm glad I knew that going in because the intro is almost a scene by scene rewrite of the start of the show. I think I'll enjoy it more knowing it's fanfic.

I'm also reading Flames over Frosthelm by Dave Dobson, which is a fantasy police procedural complete with forensic investigation magic. Dobson is very inventive with his stories, this is the third of his books I've read this year.

November is apparently my speculative crime era.

[thepasteldyke]

'The Angel of the Crows' is a wonderful title ngl.

[cornerofmadness]

Anne of Green Gables of all things

[vriddy]

Reading A Crack in Everything, by Ruth Frances Long, after hearing her speak at a con (in general, not about this book specifically - my library just happened to have it!). I'm worried it'll turn darker than I usually look for, but I'm enjoying the lore and setting so far!

[valoise]

I finished Accomplished Ladies Rich Closet of Rarities by John Shirley, a 1690 guide for managing an upper class household. I mainly read it for the sections on cooking and food preservation, but there were significant sections on having and raising children (more than usual for this kind of book) and vast numbers of recipes for cosmetics and medicine.

I'm also about halfway through with Final Orbit by Chris Hadfield. Part of a series of Cold War thrillers set in an era that extends the Apollo program beyond its original ending. Hadfield, as usual, uses his career as an astronaut to bring authenticity to the action in space, but this time it feels like the character development isn't quite as strong. Still enjoying it, though.

[thepasteldyke]

Oh, the recipes for cosmetics and medicine sounds interesting, what kind of ingredients were there in the makeup they used in this specific book? Food preservation tips sound great though, I asked my grandma a little about that cus I needed a better way to preserve my carrots than last year (only had one styrofoam box, not nearly enough space in it) and now I've got a bunch of carrots buried in sand. xD

[valoise]

The cosmetics are mostly things like how to make your hair curly or beautiful, how to remove freckles or restore your complexion. Some have really iffy ingredients (the one to stop hair loss starts with burning pigeon dung to ashes).

A lot of the food preservation recipes involve candying or drying fruits, or making marmalade, conserves, or syrups with them. You can find the 1696 edition online at https://archive.org/details/bim_early-english-books-1641-1700_the-accomplished-ladies-_shirley-john-fl-1680-_1696/mode/1up

[thepasteldyke]

Oh, I am curious to look at the hair curling. (Lmao can you substitute it for horse dung, I know where to find plenty of that)

Lots of sugar! I guess it's a good contrast to how a lot of food preservation can also be done with salt. Lots of ways to preserve things. Thank you for the link!

[rabbit_stew]

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley. I know that I read it in HS, but remember nothing about it. I'm a bit bored with it right now, but I suspect that will change.

[xwyndx]

Hello everyone! It's my first time participating in this comm. I'm currently reading "The Wonder State" by Sara Flannery Murphy. It's a fantasy thriller about a girl who disappeared and her friends are trying to find her, while simultaneously recounting the events that happened 15 years ago and are related to the present. I'm enjoying it a lot so far.

[greetingsfrommaars]

ooh sounds exciting! and welcome!

[thepasteldyke]

Continuing my attempts to learn more about Sweden's queer history, I'm currently reading "Eva-Lisas monument, berättelsen om en transpionjär" which translates to "Eva-Lisa's monument, the story of a trans pioneer" by Sam Hultin. It's a biography about Eva-Lisa Bengtson who was, as the title suggests, a pioneer in the trans movement in Sweden. She started the first trans club in Sweden in 1964 and was one of the founders of Kvinnohuset (The Women's House) in Stockholm in 1979, which she was shut out of when part of the feminist movement of the time (that day's terfs) decided to shut trans women out. When she passed, she left a huge amount of documents, photos and correspondence (etc) that documented her life and activism.

I learned about the book via a queer magazine when it came out this spring, and was reminded of it during Pride where they showcased it at the library. I'm about a third way in. Afaik it hasn't been translated into English.

Link to the section on Sam Hultin's website about Eva-Lisa and the book (in English).

[mistressofmuses]

I'm am currently partway through "Red Rabbit," which I am enjoying. The time change has done a number on me, though; I usually read before I go to sleep, but I keep dozing off "an hour early" because I haven't adjusted yet. My progress is much slower than I like!

[antisoppist]

I joined a while back but then I had to read 19 books to judge a translation prize and I'm not allowed to talk about those yet. Since finishing that, I have read:

A Well Full of Leaves by Elizabeth Myers (Persephone). Poor upbringing, frustrated parents, 4 children grow up in different ways. Love of nature and delight in the world, great. TB, less so. The end suddenly went darker than I was expecting. The author's letters to Eleanor Farjeon at the end are great though.

Gulity by Definition by Susie Dent. She definitely likes words and the workplace aspect of how people work at a dictionary was really interesting and it did keep me guessing who the murderer was but she says in the acknowledgements that her publisher thought she should try fiction and it does feel a bit like she would rather be writing about etymologies instead.

Diplomatic Baggage by Brigid Keenan (charity shop). I thought she was one of the diplomatic wives interviewed in Daughters of Britannia so picked it up. I also assumed from the cover (heels and miniskirt) that it was written in the 1970s but no it was 2007. I suppose that is still quite a while ago now and it is set in the 1970s. It is funny but you can have too many funny stories about dinner parties and being a ditzy fashion journalist and not being able to communicate with local staff.

Crooked Cross by Sally Carson (Persephone). Written in 1934 about a happy German family living in Bavaria with a daughter engaged to a lovely doctor chap who happens to have a Jewish surname. Yeah.

I bought three books in the Persephone bookshop in August and must see if the third one is more cheerful.