![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
So apparently noting your current reading on a Wednesday is a meme.
WHAT I WAS READING ON THE WAY TO WORK: Elizabeth the Queen: The Life of a Modern Monarch by Sally Bedell Smith. An interest in the present-day British royal family has been an adjunct to my Merlin (BBC 2008) fandom, particularly after I read Rageprufrock's classic fic Drastically Redefining Protocol. I love backstage stories and royalty spends a lot of time trying to negotiate the onstage/offstage transition. That's a fancy way of saying "I have read, on paper and in public, a pulpy joint bio of Princes William and Harry. And two other biographies of the Q-Unit.*"
* Her Majesty: Queen Elizabeth II and Her Court by Robert Hardman and Majesty: Elizabeth II and the House of Windsor by Robert Lacey
Random memorable facts from the book: 1) The Q-Unit was once denied entry to the US upon landing in Lexington, KY because she doesn't have a passport. (The matter was resolved with a call to the British Embassy, who called INS, who called the customs official - it is not recorded if the customs official was told to look at a damn pound note.) 2) JFK was nearly ten years older than the queen. I don't know why that surprised me but it did. It rather neatly highlights the sharp difference between "young for a president" and "young for a monarch." When QEII visited the Kennedy White House she'd been a head of state for nearly ten years and JFK, while older, had been a head of state for about ten minutes (well, six months.)
(Recently I have also been listening to YouTube'd documentaries about various Hanover/Saxe-Coburg-Gotha/Windsor/Windsor-Mountbattens while doing data entry or other such tasks, and have finally gotten it absolutely clear in my head who it is who survived to kick off the alternate history in Peter Dickinson's King and Joker and also has been put forward as a possible Jack the Ripper. To wit: Prince Albert Victor, the oldest son of Queen Victoria's oldest son.)
WHAT I MOST RECENTLY FINISHED: either The Thief by Megan Whalen Turner or Christine Falls by Benjamin Black. Thief is YA adventure about Greeks and gods, and is highly enjoyable, though I felt slightly jerked around by a narrative twist. Christine Falls is the first in a series of mystery novels centered around a morgue pathologist in 1950s Dublin. It's... grim but very well written and compulsively readable.
WHAT I MOST RECENTLY REREAD: In This House of Brede by Rumer Godden. Also a variety of P.D. James books, most notably Children of Men of which I said to my parents: "It's a lot better than I thought it was when I was sixteen. It's better than I think I was able to grasp at sixteen." At sixteen (or possibly fifteen or even fourteen, I don't remember exactly when I read it) my thoughts were mostly "where's Adam Dalgliesh?" and "wow, the end of the world is depressing." Now my thoughts include "this doomsday scenario is uncomfortably vivid" and "the should-I-get-involved-or-retreat-into-my-own-comfort question is both well-drawn and pointed" and "I'm sure I did not get, fifteen-plus years ago, how a female Archbishop of Canterbury features as PART of the dystopia."
WHAT'S UP NEXT: The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern and The Queen of Attolia by Megan Whalen Turner.
WHAT I WAS READING ON THE WAY TO WORK: Elizabeth the Queen: The Life of a Modern Monarch by Sally Bedell Smith. An interest in the present-day British royal family has been an adjunct to my Merlin (BBC 2008) fandom, particularly after I read Rageprufrock's classic fic Drastically Redefining Protocol. I love backstage stories and royalty spends a lot of time trying to negotiate the onstage/offstage transition. That's a fancy way of saying "I have read, on paper and in public, a pulpy joint bio of Princes William and Harry. And two other biographies of the Q-Unit.*"
* Her Majesty: Queen Elizabeth II and Her Court by Robert Hardman and Majesty: Elizabeth II and the House of Windsor by Robert Lacey
Random memorable facts from the book: 1) The Q-Unit was once denied entry to the US upon landing in Lexington, KY because she doesn't have a passport. (The matter was resolved with a call to the British Embassy, who called INS, who called the customs official - it is not recorded if the customs official was told to look at a damn pound note.) 2) JFK was nearly ten years older than the queen. I don't know why that surprised me but it did. It rather neatly highlights the sharp difference between "young for a president" and "young for a monarch." When QEII visited the Kennedy White House she'd been a head of state for nearly ten years and JFK, while older, had been a head of state for about ten minutes (well, six months.)
(Recently I have also been listening to YouTube'd documentaries about various Hanover/Saxe-Coburg-Gotha/Windsor/Windsor-Mountbattens while doing data entry or other such tasks, and have finally gotten it absolutely clear in my head who it is who survived to kick off the alternate history in Peter Dickinson's King and Joker and also has been put forward as a possible Jack the Ripper. To wit: Prince Albert Victor, the oldest son of Queen Victoria's oldest son.)
WHAT I MOST RECENTLY FINISHED: either The Thief by Megan Whalen Turner or Christine Falls by Benjamin Black. Thief is YA adventure about Greeks and gods, and is highly enjoyable, though I felt slightly jerked around by a narrative twist. Christine Falls is the first in a series of mystery novels centered around a morgue pathologist in 1950s Dublin. It's... grim but very well written and compulsively readable.
WHAT I MOST RECENTLY REREAD: In This House of Brede by Rumer Godden. Also a variety of P.D. James books, most notably Children of Men of which I said to my parents: "It's a lot better than I thought it was when I was sixteen. It's better than I think I was able to grasp at sixteen." At sixteen (or possibly fifteen or even fourteen, I don't remember exactly when I read it) my thoughts were mostly "where's Adam Dalgliesh?" and "wow, the end of the world is depressing." Now my thoughts include "this doomsday scenario is uncomfortably vivid" and "the should-I-get-involved-or-retreat-into-my-own-comfort question is both well-drawn and pointed" and "I'm sure I did not get, fifteen-plus years ago, how a female Archbishop of Canterbury features as PART of the dystopia."
WHAT'S UP NEXT: The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern and The Queen of Attolia by Megan Whalen Turner.