Genealogy

What I've Finished Reading

I finished up The Castle of Otranto and it continued to be delightfully OTT and ridiculous right to the very last line. I laughed a lot. Especially at the last line. The charm of it is, I think (other than gloomy castles and giant suits of armour and what have you), that it's very hard to tell if the whole thing is some kind of joke, or just bits of it. This seems to have been the question for 250 years, and, indeed, the next book I read, The Old English Baron by Clara Reeve is quite openly The Castle of Otranto, the more rational (and therefore possibly not-truly-Gothic) remix.

As Clara Reeve says in the introduction, certain elements of Otranto, "destroy the work of imagination, and, instead of attention, excite laughter." (Walpole apparently responded that hers was, "So probable, that any trial for murder at the Old Bailey would make a more interesting story." Hmm, wait, a novel featuring a real life murder...? Shame he didn't try it, heh.)

It does indeed tail off into a long, plodding fixit of everything, though. It's rather like a tumblr-recommended fixit version of Otranto where everything is relentlessly put right and all the bad people are punished or grovel and apologise to the good people. I liked the beginning with the locked up haunted wing with the murdered body in it very much, though, mixed with a more recognisable setting. Also its hero Edmund has an amusing tendency to weep over people. (The best bit was at the end where he flung his arms round both his mentors legs at once and they had to stop him and then he still had to hug them and weep over them.)

But, given that it's still only about 130 odd pages and has a haunted East wing, it was readable and fascinating to compare to Otranto. I'm glad the collection had them both.

I also read another Daisy Dalrymple (Dead in the Water), which you could probably tell because fic happened. My friend is coming to see me again this week - I have hopes she might be able to lend me some more, because the only others I've found are quite a few books on from that. (Obviously, I'm looking forward to seeing her with or without books, but with books is always better.)


What I'm Reading Now
Sorcerer to the Crown by Zen Cho, which, as promised by aralias, is very light and enjoyable and just my sort of thing. I seem to be okay with it, too. \o/ (The only downside is the inevitable comparison to Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell, which can do it no favours. It's a shame she didn't set it, say, 20 years later or earlier to mitigate that. Although, of course, I'm only 100 pages in; there are no doubt very good Plot Reasons.)

(I'm still note-taking from A Mad Bad and Dangerous People? and technically sort of reading Desolation Island, but have not progressed far with either since last time.)


What I'm Reading Next
Well, if my friend does bring me some more Daisy, there'll be that. And once I've finished Sorcerer to the Crown, I might try the next Gothic novel in the collection, which is Mistrust by Matthew Gregory Lewis (author of The Monk).

Title: Fatal Error
Author: lost_spook
Rating: All ages
Word Count: 693
Characters/Pairings: Twelfth Doctor, Clara Oswald
Notes/Warnings: None.
Summary: Letting the strangers go had clearly been a mistake…

For persiflage_1 in the 500 Prompts Meme: 12. Why didn't we detain them? - Twelve & Clara Oswald (DW)

Here @ AO3 | Also @ the Teaspoon

I've been trying to finish off a few runaway_tales things, including another AU. This one was also written for genprompt_bingo square "Happy Endings" and hc_bingo square "grief" and is a modern coffee shop AU. I am so proud of myself, even if maybe the coffee shop is probably too incidental. But a while ago, oonaseckar said to me that it would probably be impossible to do a modern Edward/Julia AU and, of course, if someone says that it's impossible to write something, obviously I have to write it. (I wrote Six/Rose and Steed/Baldrick once for the same reason. Edward and Julia managing excuses to have a fake relationship and then be awkward about it in the 21st C was no problem at all.)

But I crossposted it to AO3, as I think it's a fun/sweet enough standalone piece; also it's for two other comms, and also because LJ's word limit forced me into posting it in two parts over at RaTs, which annoyed me, because clearly it isn't a work that's meant to be in two parts. I hoped I'd done enough amputation, but apparently not. (Dammit, LJ.)

Substitute (13480 words) by lost_spook
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Original Work
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Original Female Character/Original Male Character
Characters: Julia Graves (OC), Edward Iveson (OC)
Additional Tags: Community: hc_bingo, Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, Romance, Grief/Mourning, Fake/Pretend Relationship, Brief mention of car accident, Community: runaway_tales, Fluff, Humor, Angst
Summary: Julia Graves has perfectly reasonable motives for fake-dating a customer – it’s all about interior decorating, honestly…

3 more AU meme results!

( The House of Eliott: Bea and Evie )

( B7: Cally )

( DW: Liv Chenka )

1. Yuletide sign-ups are still open for anyone thinking of taking part. (I believe they close on the 9th, but check the link.)


2. For those of you in the UK who don't mind a bit of old telly, I checked the Drama channel, and guess what their next run of ancient TV on Saturdays is? It's the BBC's 1976-77 historical (Edwardian) drama The Duchess of Duke Street! It has a very slow start (even for ancient telly), but Gemma Jones is so fabulous throughout, and I recommend it. The bit where Julian Fellowes turns up and swipes the plot for use in Downton is also entertaining, and S2 has bonus Lalla Ward. (And then write me Louisa/Mary, because I never could manage it, though I tried.)

(And when I say Saturday, I mean tomorrow.)


3. Fall Equinox went live the other day. Lots of lovely fanvids! (The theme this time was 'based on books.')

Only one day late!

What I've Finished Reading
The Mauritius Command, and the series continues to be solidly excellent. Then, slightly to my own surprise, I managed to read The Goblin Emperor, which I enjoyed very much (I can see what people mean about it being a very reassuring read and why some other people also find that annoying, but it suited me just fine right now) but stupidly did so in only about three or four days and was sick for the following three days as a result, which does dampen enthusiasm somewhat. (I don't know why I did it; I think I get a bit panicky that my reading ability might vanish, leaving me stranded halfway through a book).

So, after that I didn't read properly for a week, and then read the v light Daisy Dalrymple mystery I got from the library, Damsel in Distress, by Carola Dunn.


What I'm Reading Now
I'm technically reading Desolation Island (the next in the Aubrey-Maturin series), but not really much at the moment, as I think I was reading too much of them and having less brain than I should have done.

I am also beginning to work my way through my random Seven Masterpieces of Gothic Horror, starting with the first, The Castle of Otranto by Horace Walpole. It's very random and its heroes are terribly saintly, but this makes me laugh, especially when some of the other characters would rather be hanging around with less saintly people, or somebody has a moment of sarcasm. (Matilda's maid Bianca would obviously prefer to be in a Shakespeare comedy, but Matilda won't oblige her with even normal curiosity, let alone shenanigans and scheming.) There is also a spooky giant helmet with plumes of doom, and it's only 100 pages long.

I also enjoyed the particularly OTT bit where a Helpful Friar who has turned up to reason with Villainous Manfred accidentally causes Manfred to order the execution of the suspiciously Noble Peasant Theodore and is midway through begging for Theodore's life when he pauses to realise (via a handy birth mark) that Theodore is in fact his long-lost son (and he was formerly the Count of Falconara, because obv. you can't actually have a Noble Peasant. How he carelessly lost his son and her mother, hopefully I will find out before it's done.)

I am (family history) note-taking from Boyd Hilton's A Mad, Bad and Dangerous People: England 1783-1846, but I don't know if it counts as reading, as it is one of the Oxford History of England so more political and so on, so I am doing a lot of skimming through it. (It's a large book. When I'm not using it, I am trying to flatten some paper with it. It's multi-purpose.)


What I'm Reading Next
I think the library has the next Daisy Dalrymple book, so I might get that next week, but otherwise I think it will be something else off my TBR pile. There are several possibilities! If I can be sensible this time, that is. And at some point, presumably the next 'Gothic Masterpiece,' The Old English Baron by Clara Reeve. (It's longer, though - all of 134 pages!)