Reading Wednesday
Dec. 15th, 2021 09:26 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
yuuagoJust Finished: Ashes of London by Andrew Taylor. Mystery novel set in 1666 London. I liked this one; on the mystery side, we get decent answers as to whodunit and what in fact was dun. From the historical side, the author did a good job of setting up the atmosphere and making London seem like a lived-in place, at a particular time, where people actually existed - in other words, the setting isn't just window dressing. Enjoyed it, would recommend if this kind of thing seems like your kind of thing, and would read more from this author.
Currently Reading: Thomas Quick: The Making of a Serial Killer by Hannes Råstam. About a judicial scandal centred around a psychiatric patient who confessed to over thirty unsolved murders, and was found guilty of some of them, but never actually committed any of them. I'm not much of a true crime person - I generally prefer the crime I read about to be fictional, and only ended up looking into this one because I liked the audiobook reader's other work - but this one is a little different, considering Quick wasn't actually a serial killer. A serial liar and serial confessor, yes, and also a victim of psychiatric abuse and a corrupt judicial system, who was subject to tons of "recovered memory"treatment quackery and gave "evidence and confessions" while high as a kite on institution-provided benzos - and was somehow taken seriously?! Honestly the whole thing is so batshit and awful that if it were the premise of a novel, I'd find it far-fetched.
Reading Next: I have the following out from the library -
+ The Outsider by Stephen King. The library has the film adaptation, which has been on my to-watch list for a while for reasons I can't recall, so I decided to read the novel first.
+ The Ballet Lover's Companion by Zoe Anderson. Covers the various periods of ballet history, and gives run-downs of the various titles. The history sections are relatively brief, so I'm basically going to treat it as a run-down of "stuff I might want to see if I can find viewable somewhere, eventually".
+ Apollo's Angels: A History of Ballet by Jennifer Homans. Looks like it's what it says on the tin. Seems pretty detailed, so I'm looking forward to it. :V
Currently Reading: Thomas Quick: The Making of a Serial Killer by Hannes Råstam. About a judicial scandal centred around a psychiatric patient who confessed to over thirty unsolved murders, and was found guilty of some of them, but never actually committed any of them. I'm not much of a true crime person - I generally prefer the crime I read about to be fictional, and only ended up looking into this one because I liked the audiobook reader's other work - but this one is a little different, considering Quick wasn't actually a serial killer. A serial liar and serial confessor, yes, and also a victim of psychiatric abuse and a corrupt judicial system, who was subject to tons of "recovered memory"
Reading Next: I have the following out from the library -
+ The Outsider by Stephen King. The library has the film adaptation, which has been on my to-watch list for a while for reasons I can't recall, so I decided to read the novel first.
+ The Ballet Lover's Companion by Zoe Anderson. Covers the various periods of ballet history, and gives run-downs of the various titles. The history sections are relatively brief, so I'm basically going to treat it as a run-down of "stuff I might want to see if I can find viewable somewhere, eventually".
+ Apollo's Angels: A History of Ballet by Jennifer Homans. Looks like it's what it says on the tin. Seems pretty detailed, so I'm looking forward to it. :V
Yuu. Fic writer & book lover. M/Canada.