Wednesday again! This week is a bit busier, but I’m trying to keep plenty of time for reading…

What have you recently finished reading?

I finished up reading Metropolitan Mysteries yesterday, another anthology of more-or-less classic crime stories in the British Library Crime Classics series, and edited as usual by Martin Edwards. I’ve said quite a few times before that I find these collections to be more than the sum of their parts, really: each story in and of itself might be entertaining, but it’s in being collected together as a survey of a subject that makes them most interesting to me (as someone who studied the development of crime fiction as a genre, albeit only as an undergrad).

What are you currently reading?

Quite a few things at once, no surprises there. I just read a chapter of The Magic Books (Anne Lawrence-Mathers), which is only mildly interesting to me in that “magic” mostly meant semi-religious astrology — so a lot of the discussion around these manuscripts is about acceptability to the church, which gets a bit repetitive. It’s hard to say what else I hoped for, because it certainly focuses on the contents of the manuscripts too, but I think the answer is just that sadly I don’t find these particular manuscripts that interesting.

I’m also reading volume three of The Apothecary Diaries, the light novel version. I’m noticing a lot of confusion about the difference between manga and light novels on my blog, so to be clear, they’re not the same thing. Light novels are prose, though usually with a few illustrations (though my ebook copy of My Happy Marriage didn’t have any), as opposed to manga/manhua/manhwa which are essentially comics. Sometimes a light novel gets adapted into a manga; The Apothecary Diaries has been adapted twice, in fact, and there’s a further spin-off manga as well. The volume numbers don’t match up: the story from the first volume of the light novel is covered in volumes 1-4 of the manga, if I understand correctly.

Anyway, I haven’t read much of the manga, but I’m enjoying the light novels! Maomao is a lot of fun as a character.

Other than that, I’ve just started on The Banquet Ceases, by Mary Fitt, a queer mystery writer based in Wales who as far as I know the British Library Crime Classics series hasn’t seen fit (ha) or haven’t been permitted to republish, but luckily, Moonstone Press have. I’m not very far into it yet, but it seems very “classic” in setup (though that word is getting a bit tired/ill-defined around mystery/crime).

And! I’m also reading Paladin’s Grace, by T. Kingfisher. It slipped onto the backburner a bit, but I’m enjoying it.

What will you be reading next?

I really need to get round to starting A Letter from the Lonesome Shore, by Sylvie Cathrall. I begged for a review copy, so I’d really best get round to it! I’m excited for it, though I sort of feel tempted to reread the first book… but really, I didn’t read it that long ago, I should be able to pick up the threads. We’ll see, I might reread it anyway, just for fun.

Yay, time to talk about books! As if I ever stop, ahaha.

What have you recently finished reading?

Robert Jackson Bennett’s A Drop of Corruption, which I adored. I originally had an ARC, but then life happened (my wife broke an ankle and my grandmother died), so I didn’t get round to it until I bought the finished copy last week — but believe me, I was eager for it, because I really liked the first book. It’s such a rich and inventive world, and does much more than “Sherlock Holmes in a fantasy setting” might make you think.

What are you currently reading?

I’ve actually been finishing books quite quickly, so there’s nothing lingering around that hasn’t been lingering around for a while already. This morning I started on Anne Lawrence-Mathers’ The Magic Books: A History of Enchantment in 20 Medieval Manuscripts, which I expect will take a while (the Bookly app says four more hours, which is a lot for me). So far it’s mostly about works relating to astrology, which isn’t quite what I think of when I think of magic/enchantment, but I’m curious to read more anyway.

What will you read next?

I just got an ARC of A Letter from the Lonesome Shore, by Sylvie Cathrall. I adored the first book and could barely put it down, so this is high on my list. I’m also very tempted by T. Kingfisher’s Paladin’s Grace, though, and The Baby Dragon Café (A.T. Qureshi). I feel like I could do with something lighter before I plunge into A Letter from the Lonesome Shore — I have quite the “book hangover” from A Drop of Corruption. Daniel M. Ford’s Advocate is another ARC I’m late to read, and I just finished the previous book Necrobane, so that’s somewhere on my “next up” list too.

In sum… who knows? I’ll read something, that’s for sure: I’m very much in a reading mood!