Here we are again! As usual lately, trying linking up with Taking on a World of Words.

What have you recently finished reading?

I haven’t finished anything in a few days; I’m trying not to stress about that and just let my brain do a bit of a reset, because I have been reading… just not necessarily focusing on finishing books. Looks like the last thing I finished was How to Lay an Egg with a Horse Inside, by Brian Bilston: it’s ostensibly a guide to writing and enjoying poetry, but it largely felt like a platform for Brian Bilston to show off his poetry and humour. That might work better for others, but I didn’t enjoy it a lot.

What are you currently reading?

A bunch of books at once, as ever, but with a decent amount of enthusiasm now, which is a relief. I most recently started John Darnell and Colleen Darnell’s Egypt’s Golden Couple; so far I’m raising an eyebrow slightly at their stated decision to take “the small liberty of providing the royal couple with personal quirks”. I’m giving it some time, especially as the bibliographical essays in the back do show sources, but I do hope the speculative/invented stuff is clearly flagged up.

I’ve also got started on volume two of Feng Yu Nie’s Mistakenly Saving the Villain, and I’m eager to see how the relationship develops now that some time has passed and Yue Wuhuan has gained more power and confidence.

I diiiid also start on Moorea Corrigan’s Thistlemarsh, but haven’t got far with that, and am knee-deep in Hal Rubenstein’s 100 Unforgettable Dresses, too many of which I find kinda forgettable. Mostly I think it’s not as focused on fashion history and what fashion tells us as I’m interested in, and more on “dresses make women beautiful”, with a dip in the last few entries I read into beliefs that all women want to look beautiful (implied: in a dress), so, yeah, not entirely my thing.

What will you read next?

I just got this month’s British Library Crime Classic via my subscription, and this month’s is a short story collection: Puzzles of the Parish, focusing on stories around churches and clergy (I expect at least one appearance of Father Brown). I often end up gobbling up the short story collections, and they’re a nice range of different authors/periods/styles, so I might well pick this up next.

Linking up with Taking On A World of Words.

What have you recently finished reading?

I finally got round to finishing Kate Strasdin’s Dressing the Queen! I enjoyed it a lot: it doesn’t actually focus on the various royal women it references, but on the craftspeople who created their clothes and accessories, repaired them, laundered them, sorted them, packed them for journeys, etc. Sometimes there’s not a lot of information out there, but Strasdin did a pretty good job of pulling together what there is, I think.

What are you currently reading?

I still have a ridiculous stack of books I’m supposedly partway through, but I did a bit of reorganising and paused some that I wasn’t really getting anywhere with, so I’m hoping to feel a biiiit more in control and less overwhelmed with that. So I’ll just talk about the two I’ve picked up in the last two days!

First, a random pick that I’d added via Kobo Plus at some point: Marilyn Johnson’s The Dead Beat: Lost Souls, Lucky Stiffs and the Perverse Pleasures of Obituaries, which is mostly a deep dive into the lives and thoughts of obituarists she admires, with examples of their work and how it influence obituaries as a form. I’m getting a little bored with it now, but it has been a mostly interesting read.

I also started a book I put on hold at the library and forgot about until it actually came in, Brian Bilston’s How to Lay An Egg with a Horse Inside, which is about writing and enjoying poetry (and by enjoying poetry, so far it mostly means the process of writing it). I know nothing about Bilston and only realised I’d read one of his poems (“On ‘;..p'[[[[[[[[[[[[[;’;////////////////////////3,’“, about his cat’s “poetry”) when he included it here. It’s a mostly tongue-in-cheek musing on poetry that so far has offered nothing new or insightful as far as writing or enjoying poetry goes, but it’s mildly entertaining and I will probably finish in it.

What will you be reading next?

Not a clue, but volume two of Feng Yu Nie’s Mistakenly Saving the Villain is a possibility, as is finally getting round to Omniscient Reader’s Viewpoint vol 3. We’ll see — at the moment it’s pretty much whatever gets me reading, so I might also dip into the randomness of the books that turned out to be available on Kobo Plus, got added to my Kobo, and haven’t been thought of since.

Linking up with Taking On A World of Words.

What have you recently finished reading?

Last night I pretty much mainlined volume one of Mistakenly Saving the Villain (Feng Yu Nie), and… this is why I hesitate to start series which haven’t been finished or fully released in translation or whatever reason there might be for me not being able to read the whole thing. I did order volume two, which is out, but volume three isn’t until the end of June, and volume four not until autumn. Sob!

As you can guess, I had fun with it — Song Qingshi and Yue Wuhuan are completely unhinged about each other, even while Song Qingshi is kinda oblivious to why either of them are that way. I am suspicious of everything about An Long, and very curious where other things are going. I will probably read volume two pretty soon after it arrives — or I hope so, anyway; I can’t always keep up the momentum.

What are you currently reading?

I’m actually currently in a state where I’m technically reading a lot of books, in that they’re marked as “currently reading”, but I haven’t touched any of them in a little bit. I think my next target to try to focus on and finish is John Dickson Carr’s The Unicorn Murders, which was this month’s British Library Crime Classic and should be a fun one. I slightly stalled at first because the main character pretty much launched the book by lying about something kinda high stakes (pretending he is indeed a spy when a mistake is made by an old acquaintance), and I hate that… but it’s classic crime, so, you know, the emotional part of things is likely to be skated over reasonably lightly. It’ll be fiiiine (they said, in hopeful tones).

What will you be reading next?

I think I’m going to try to focus to get the currently reading pile under control, really. It feels pretty blocked-up and like it’s unfun to have so many books on the go. Some of it might be being realistic and going “clearly it isn’t the time for this book” and deciding to DNF or put it back onto the TBR. Some of it might just be picking something to focus on — like Kate Strasdin’s Dressing the Queen, which I am in fact pretty enthusiastic about!