What have you recently finished reading?

I picked up a couple of epistolary novellas, both because of the blogging event Novellas in November and because I needed something to review for Postcrossing’s blog. I finished Julie Schumacher’s Dear Committee Members on Monday, and thought that it was a lot of fun but that I have no urge to read more — one book of Professor Fitger seems like plenty. Yesterday I read Kim Fay’s Love & Saffron, which was sweet though a touch predictable. Both ended sadly, though it was more of a surprise (and better conveyed) in Dear Committee Members.

What are you currently reading?

I’m almost done with Ashley Douglas’ With My Own Hand, a biography of Marie Maitland, a Scottish poet who wrote love poetry to another woman and concealed it in an anthology of her father’s poetry. There are obviously some limitations on what we can know about her (and a lot of general history to contextualise her and flesh out the book), but I’m enjoying it.

What will you read next?

I’m not sure. I’d like it to be my reread leading into the final volume of Liu Gou Hua’s After the Disabled God of War Became My Concubine, which should’ve been out yesterday… but since my copy hasn’t shipped and nowhere seems to have copies available, I guess Seven Seas (or their distributor, Penguin) have done goofed again. Maybe it’s a good thing I hadn’t started my reread yet, or I’d be pretty sad!