WWW Wednesday. This meme is from shouldbereading.
To play along, just answer the following three (3) questions…
• What are you currently reading?
• What did you recently finish reading?
• What do you think you’ll read next?
• What are you currently reading?
I’m reading a Regency romance, The Notorious Atherton, for the amazing Patricia Rice. You have to wait until July to read it. I get to read it now. Me, taunting? You bet! But even though you can’t read it today, you can read the two books in the Rebellious Sons series that came before it, starting with The The Wicked Wyckerly
• What did you recently finish reading?
Last week I lied. I said I was going to read A Bride Most Begrudging
So instead, I chose a different book that had been on my Kindle for a very long time, another book I picked up free somewhere, The Apothecary’s Daughter
I liked it a lot. This approach to the Regency time period was fresh and interesting–the legal and personal and professional conflicts between physicians, apothecaries, and other medical “professionals” of the era. I am not sure if this was marketed as a Romance. Most romance readers are going to find it at least a little frustrating, and some will find it totally frustrating. I skimmed a number of reviews to be sure before making that comment. The heroine does not have a strong love story here. Depending on how you view the story, either three or four potential suitors are involved. I loved that it wasn’t clear who she would end up with, but many will not like that. Because the reason it wasn’t clear is because there is because she never seems all that smitten by any of them. Her main goal is saving her father’s apothecary business and keeping her family together. I found her story and world compelling and the book worked for me.
Bonus points for making her Christian faith a small but real part of the book, without sermonizing or making me roll my eyes and stop reading. I find spiritual subplots fascinating no matter whether the main character worships the Judeo-Christian God I worship or the Flying Spaghetti Monster. I find living in other person’s world fascinating, whatever that might mean. Just don’t use fiction as a pulpit, and we’ll get along fine.
Bonus: I love the graphic flourishes Bethany House Publishers put in this ebook.
I finished listening to Speaking from Among the Bones: A Flavia de Luce Novel
• What do you think you’ll read next?
Two books showed up from the library and so I need to read them next. The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel
I’m keeping a running total of my reading challenges–the Historical Fiction Reading Challenge (see banner at the bottom of the right sidebar) and my own challenge, the Embarrassment of Riches Challenge. The January wrap-up is here and I’ll post a February wrap-up on the 28th, in which I’ll ask everybody who is participating to respond with their current numbers in comments.
Paisely Vandermeir requests the pleasure of your presence.
What about you? What have you been reading lately? Put the link to your WWW Wednesday entry in comments, or just tell me!
is getting shoved aside yet again. Lymond deserves better treatment, but I have a couple of library books I really would like to read before they disappear from my Kindle, thus…
, by Susan Elia MacNeal. IRA terrorists, Nazis, and Churchill’s underground war room–this is a really terrific read so far. Plus I’m eager to know what Maggie Hope doesn’t know about her father, that everybody else does…
, by Natasha Solomons. A nineteen-year-old Viennese Jewish girl (raised without religion by her opera-singer mother and novelist father) is sent to England as a parlour maid to escape the Nazi threat. Elise is confused, lost, angry and totally unsuited to servitude… and her world is about to turn upside down in more ways than one. I’m enjoying it, and it’s making me much happier about bustling about doing housework or even (gasp) walking for my health. Along with keeping score by logging steps with my 
. If I were a betting girl (and I’m not) I would bet that the book originally ended with “happily ever after” and she needed to make it longer. (You’ll have to read it to get that reference.) It continued to be interesting and I wasn’t gnashing my teeth with frustration or anything, but the romance had concluded and now we just got a bit of what happened next. Still, a good read.
is still on the way from England. I think the saddest part of knowing that the reviews are dismal is that it has been very easy to avoid spoilers. People aren’t even talking about it. So will it really be next? Not sure.
, by James Joyce. I somehow always thought it would be heavy, awful reading, and it might be. And I might not finish it. But Kit Kerr tells me it she found it to be funny in a vulgar and scatalogical way, and how can I not give that a try, I ask? I may try to find an annotated version so I can actually understand it, though.
and 
.
. This week it’s 
.
, by Dorothy Dunnett. I’m debating whether to keep reading it or stop long enough to read 
so I can turn it back into the library. I’m just not reading print books as much as I’m listening to audio right now–too much time in the car driving instead of sitting where I can read.
. Charming, exploring a part of society we rarely see in other Regency-era novels: the poor relations who are genteel and starving. Written by Marion Chesney, aka MC Beaton.
showed up from the library, followed quickly by The Paris Wife (see below) but now am back into Lymond and loving every word. It always takes me a bit of time to sink into one of these, because Dunnett keeps the reader at a distance from Lymond. But her world and other characters are so rich, I find myself totally caught up in it once I give it enough time.
. A fast read, but emotionally difficult at times. I was not familiar with their story and wasn’t sure how it would end. This is definitely worth reading, and from the notes at the end, is a faithful exploration of a well-documented relationship.
, by Deborah Harkness. This one started off great. I loved the Oxford setting, the ongoing research in “Bodley’s Library,” the Ashmolian tie-in… it was smart and fun. A tenured professor from Yale is researching in Oxford. She is a witch denying her magic, but it seems magic will not be denied. She puts in a request for an obscure text, 
by Keith Roberts. This is from the 
, by Jacqueline Winspear. Maisie (and for some reason that sounds like an old woman in Brooklyn to me, not England) is a private investigator between the World Wars. She served in a field hospital (and was injured) during WWI, where she also lost her fiance. She’s seen a lot. I find these books difficult to judge because I do enjoy them. I enjoy the worlds, the characters, the era–but then, is anybody surprised? England. Need I say more? I was bothered in this one by the fact that our pov character finds things or does things while leaving the reader in the dark, which is manipulative and a cheat from the author. It wasn’t enough to ruin the book for me, but it was enough for me not to give it highest marks. It may have been a little less annoying because I think this is true of early mysteries, so it felt a little bit “period” in the author’s handling of these things, and I forgave it. Mostly.
, by Lilith Saintcrow.
, by Mary Ann Shaffer
, by Marion Chesney
, by Marion Chesney
, by Ariana Franklin
by Margiad Evans
by Jo Beverley
by Jo Beverley
by Jo Beverley
planet pooks 