osprey_archer: (books)
osprey_archer ([personal profile] osprey_archer) wrote2017-03-01 01:33 pm

Wednesday Reading Meme

What I’ve Just Finished Reading

A couple of NetGalley books, one of which I’ve already posted about & one of which I really liked and am therefore finding it difficult to post about. Why is it always so much easier to write about the books you hate?

I guess there is an element of vulnerability in saying that you loved something, or that something touched you or inspired you, in a way that isn’t true of saying that you hated something.

What I’m Reading Now

Ethel Turner’s The Family at Misrule, the sequel to Seven Little Australians, because my heart finally recovered from the ending of that first book. The second book seems less likely to BREAK MY HEART AND CRUSH IT INTO PULP, but then I didn’t expect it of the first book either till the very last chapter, so WHO KNOWS.

I’m also reading The Collected Raffles, which is all four books of Raffles stories collected into one; I’ve finished the first two, and they are just as much ludicrous late-Victorian you-don’t-even-need-slash-goggles-to-see-this fun as they were when I read the first few stories online.

It really is nicer to have them in book form though. I don’t mean to knock ebooks - God knows without them, my quest to read obscure old books would be utterly hamstrung - but I do feel that I retain more & often have more of an emotional response when I read books on paper.

...although being an ebook certainly did not keep me from having an emotional response to Seven Little Australians, so maybe not so much.

What I Plan to Read Next

GUESS WHO JUST FOUND DOROTHY SAYERS’ HAVE HIS CARCASE. THAT’S RIGHT, IT’S ME. I now have all four Peter Wimsey/Harriet Vane books!

...I’m actually still not planning to read them for a few more months (I’m saving them for my reading challenge “Three or more books by one author”), but it’s nice to have them all.

For books that I am planning to read next in the literal sense: Isobelle Carmody’s The Red Queen. I’ll be back visiting my parents for the weekend, so I will have lots of lovely empty time to read, which is really the best way to read a Carmody book IMO.

[identity profile] osprey-archer.livejournal.com 2017-03-02 03:08 am (UTC)(link)
I've seen this TV adaptation! Or at least most of it; I didn't get all the way to the end, so I don't know for sure if it ended in the two of the kissing. At very least, I feel like it ought to have ended with Bunny kissing Raffles' marble brow after Raffles dies in some appropriately dramatic and redemptive fashion - and then Bunny goes off to write the chronicles of their adventures, so Raffles can live forever at least in literature.

There was an episode I particularly liked where Raffles gets stuck in a murder machine worthy of a Bond villain and Bunny has to save him. OH BUNNY. (I just read the written version of this and Bunny is far less clever and heroic than in the TV version. Good on you, TV writers.)
thisbluespirit: (adam adamant)

[personal profile] thisbluespirit 2017-03-02 09:05 pm (UTC)(link)
I didn't get all the way to the end, so I don't know for sure if it ended in the two of the kissing. At very least, I feel like it ought to have ended with Bunny kissing Raffles' marble brow after Raffles dies in some appropriately dramatic and redemptive fashion - and then Bunny goes off to write the chronicles of their adventures, so Raffles can live forever at least in literature.

LOL, let us both imagine that it did! I can't cope with my characters breaking the law all the time like that, which is a shame, because it was a pretty fun series otherwise. (I was watching it because my favourite James Maxwell was Inspector McKenzie in the pilot. Which is the version with dodgy intentions about getting Bunny in his dark room, obviously not realising that Bunny and Raffles are already married.)

Aww, yay, 1970s writers! Sometimes they improve things; sometimes they really don't. It's good to know when they do. :-)