What I'm Reading Wednesday
Snagged from all over my flist!
1) What I just finished reading:
The Mitford Girls: The Biography of an Extraordinary Family, by Mary S Lovell.
Fascinating book about fascinating people. I've been curious about the Mitfords since I watched the recent reboot of "Upstairs, Downstairs", and this biography actually only makes me more so. One reviewer said that "The family were eccentric even by English standards". The book reads like a novel, and they knew everyone. They were relatives of the Churchills, and knew the Kennedys, etc. One sister, Diana, scandalously left her husband and young children for the odious fascist leader Oswald Mosley, who I can never think of without conflating him with Evelyn Waugh's Roderick Spode. It turns out Waugh was a good friend of oldest sister Nancy, and based Lord Sidcup/ Spode on Mosley. Nancy was a well known novelist; Jessica, also a writer, was a communist who ran off to Spain for the Spanish civil war; Unity was basically an Adolf Hitler Fangirl. She stalked him in the late 30s, and shot herself in the head when WWII broke out. You just can't make this stuff up!
2) What I'm reading now:
Little Girl Lost, by Brian McGilloway.
I've read a several of the books in his Inspector Devlin series, and may like this Lucy Black series even more! Set in Northern Ireland it's a police procedural, but gorgeously written and characterized. He has a new book coming out this summer. I've preordered!
3) What I'm reading next:
Books by the Mitford sisters. Probably The Pursuit of Love, by Nancy and Hons and Rebels, by Jessica. And Someone You Know by Brian McGilloway. Out in a couple of weeks!
1) What I just finished reading:
The Mitford Girls: The Biography of an Extraordinary Family, by Mary S Lovell.
Fascinating book about fascinating people. I've been curious about the Mitfords since I watched the recent reboot of "Upstairs, Downstairs", and this biography actually only makes me more so. One reviewer said that "The family were eccentric even by English standards". The book reads like a novel, and they knew everyone. They were relatives of the Churchills, and knew the Kennedys, etc. One sister, Diana, scandalously left her husband and young children for the odious fascist leader Oswald Mosley, who I can never think of without conflating him with Evelyn Waugh's Roderick Spode. It turns out Waugh was a good friend of oldest sister Nancy, and based Lord Sidcup/ Spode on Mosley. Nancy was a well known novelist; Jessica, also a writer, was a communist who ran off to Spain for the Spanish civil war; Unity was basically an Adolf Hitler Fangirl. She stalked him in the late 30s, and shot herself in the head when WWII broke out. You just can't make this stuff up!
2) What I'm reading now:
Little Girl Lost, by Brian McGilloway.
I've read a several of the books in his Inspector Devlin series, and may like this Lucy Black series even more! Set in Northern Ireland it's a police procedural, but gorgeously written and characterized. He has a new book coming out this summer. I've preordered!
3) What I'm reading next:
Books by the Mitford sisters. Probably The Pursuit of Love, by Nancy and Hons and Rebels, by Jessica. And Someone You Know by Brian McGilloway. Out in a couple of weeks!