What have you recently finished reading?

The last thing I finished was Joseph Howgego’s The Meteorite Hunters, which was pretty good. I liked it more than Helen Gordon’s The Meteorites, even though at times they were covering the same thing, I think because Howgego stuck to a more popular-science framework while Gordon was a bit more focused on cultural stuff at times.

Before that, I finished Anthony Delaney’s Queer Georgians, which had fewer new-to-me stories that I’d anticipated, actually (though I’m not saying there was nothing new to me, and though I knew of the ladies of Llangollen, I didn’t know about their lives in any detail before they arrived in Llangollen). I thought it was pretty good, though it’s not a pet period/topic of mine, so hard to really judge.

What are you currently reading?

I started Kate Strasdin’s Dressing the Queen on the train back from London yesterday, having picked it up in St Pancras, and got a chunk of the way in. It’s not about any given queen per se, but about the clothes and textile items provided for royalty over the last 200 years or so, and who made them, a bit about how they were made, etc. It’s highlighting fairly ordinary people at times, and I’m finding it fascinating.

Other than that, I’m slowly inching my way through Gareth Russell’s Queen James, which is less focused on the romantic partners of James than I had guessed from the subtitle, blurb, etc. I believe there are some more solidly understood lovers coming up from the chronological point I’ve got to, though.

And finally, I’m deep into S.L. Huang’s The Water Outlaws, and curious where it’s going exactly.

What will you read next?

I’m honestly going to try to focus on books I’ve started already. More of Cecilia Edwards’ An Ancient Witch’s Guide to Modern Dating, for one, and I think I’m not that far from finishing (or DNFing) David Crystal’s William Tyndale and the English Language, which is just… talking to a reader who isn’t me, and I think has made most of the points that are interesting to me already — the rest seems to be detail. But we’ll see, I’ll give it time next, is the main thing.