The Garden of Discordia

What I read

Finished The Tortoiseshell Cat, which was Royde-Smith's first novel, and rambles around a bit before it gets going, and the protag is really somewhat unbelievably naive about the world and its ways, but it's still pretty good and readable. Okay, there is character who turns out to be a Predatory Lesbian with a backstory of relationships with other women with masculinised names, and it got namechecked by Lilian Faderman for being bad representation of the period (1920s) but there is a certain ambivalence (VV is awful but is the sapphic desire itself bad? Gill seems to feel a certain reciprocity.). And there is a certain amount of evidence that Royde-Smith had leanings at least, and did write another novel with v sympathetic lesbian lead. Anyway, quite aside from Here Is A 1920s LGBTQ Pioneer Who Is Not Radclyffe, would read more of her if it was only available.

Some while ago picked up Le Guin's The Books of Earthsea omnibus as a Kobo deal and while I think I have all except maybe some short stories on my shelves or somewhere, it's handy to have them all together with Ursula's commentaries. Made my way through the initial trilogy, found the narrative style rather reminded me of the various myths and legends recounted in works of my youth (and probably hers too). I do wish, see earlier post, she had had some contact with Mitchison's works but I don't know if they were even published in N Am.

On the go

Took a break from going straight on to Tehanu to do my re-read of Dorothy Richardson, The Tunnel (Pilgrimage, #4) (1919) - the text I originally downloaded from Project Gutenberg was no longer playing nicely with the ereader but I downloaded the most recent version and it's fine. This is the one that is embedded in bits of London very very familar to moi - even if Euston Station looks quite different these days.

Up next

Probably back to Le Guin and Earthsea.

That is, I have finally knocked off a review that has been hanging over me for months, probably needs a little more fiddling with but it was very much I had got to the stage of 'just sit down and write the bloody thing' and did it. It's a book I'm fairly lukewarm about, doing fairly useful work with what it does but it feels a bit all over the place and hard to get a proper grip on.

Also, yay, am feeling rather less washed out than the past few days following vaxx.

We have appointment to see solicitor about our Testamentary Dispositions next week - finally found one in the fairly close vicinity through the Law Society Find a Solicitor facility.

Have just been getting Documentation from the local authority who are actually paying me to go and talk about johnnies in their collections in just under two months, so I guess that's sort of the next thing on my agenda.

Though am gradually making my way through ms by deceased colleague, though there is not major urgency on this as my collaborator is still in academic life and overwhelmed with the responsibilities of that at present.