Adventures in the Mouse House

These are all from January, so I'm being crap again.

5. The Secret Rooms: A True Gothic Mystery by Catherine Bailey

I knew this book was going to suck, but I thought it would be at least amusingly sucky. Oh boy was I wrong. I only finished it because I was going to write a long scathing review, but now I find that I can't even be bothered. (Go read the Guardian's review - it covers most of the points I would have made).

This is history for people who know nothing about history, or how society used to work. I think it's for people who read chick lit. The author is all shock! horror! that aristocratic parents in the late Victoria era weren't all cuddly with their children. And that they abused their power. Apparently that came as news, or she thinks it will do to her readers. And then there's the "explanation" that while staying away from the war to be with one's young family is seen as a good thing these days (a huge insult to every soldier with children who has deployed in recent conflicts), it was considered desertion in WWI (unless you knew the right people).

If I'd ever stuck such irrelevant quotes and padding in any of my undergraduate essays I would have been deservingly failed and have no degree.

The stupid, it burns!

If I was in any way less than effusive about Jenny Uglow's achievement in In These Times, this book has thrown into perspective what a towering piece of scholarship it is.

On the other hand, I kind of want to visit the stately homes mentioned in the book now.

6. Foxglove Summer by Ben Aaronovitch

Regular readers will know that I adored the first book in this series, Rivers of London, but feel that recent efforts had somewhat gone off the boil.

Aaronovitch is back on top form with this one. I read it in two days.

Detective Peter Grant (in the division of all things spooky) is completely out of his element - in the countryside (Herefordshire). Some girls have gone missing and he is sent to make routine enquiries with a registered hedge wizard in the area. That's a dead end, but he feels the need to stay and help out as a regular police officer. Not surprisingly the case turns out to be all supernatural.

Alternatively funny and suspenseful (and unicorns are really scary!), I just couldn't put it down.

7. The Rights of Man by Thomas Paine

Have I mentioned lately how much I love Tom Paine?

Started reading it in the summer and then got distracted. This is Paine's treatise on the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and on government in general. It's longer and more difficult that Common Sense but still full of wonderful quotes which are still relevant today. The last chapter on "Ways and Means" could bog you down in figures, but some of his best points are found there.

26. Moon Over Soho by Ben Aaronovitch

Second in the PC Peter Grant series featuring the apprentice wizard with the Metropolitan Police. Or, what I did at the weekend.

Most books that take this little time to read are disposable and not actually terribly good. These are. They are so very London - this one is set in the dodgy clubs of Soho as Grant investigates the deaths of several jazz musicians. There are good one-liners and some thought-provoking bits. And lots of laughs.

Can't wait till volume 4 comes out in July.

April reading

6 books total, 1 non-fiction.
1 borrowed from friends, 3 from the library. So only knocked two out of the two-read pile. Which I cannot remember if I added to or not.

4. Rivers of London by Ben Aaronovitch

This month's Bibliogoths book.

Just what I need - another supernatural detective series in my life.  This one's closer to Charles Stross' Laundry series in that it centers around the latest recruit to the Metropolitan Police's unit for dealing with the weird and wonderful.

It's an odd book - I was absolutely glued to parts of it, and found that it dragged in others.  The main character is a bit of an idiot, but that's the point - we learn with him.  I think the odd pacing has to do with the two simultaneous investigations - a pissed-off ghost making people do violent things, and arbitrating a dispute between the different personificatios of the titular Rivers of London.  Although I don't intrinsically have a problem with mixing supernatural elements - what is the modern novel for, otherwise - in this case, sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. 

Overall, a lot more that I liked than I didn't; part of its clunkiness is in its obvious setting-up for a series.  I will definitely be reading the other books, but from the library.