Caroline is Writing

a blog by a writer attempting to live the literary good life on the internet

08 Jan 2026 7 min read Permalink

Then I Stopped Being Able To Close The Wardrobe Door

Thirteen small suggestions for a slightly better life.

Every new year, I think about the bookshop where I worked as a teenager. Specifically, a shift I always did on 24th December. While the shop was open that day, we were very busy with last-minute Christmas shoppers. Then after closing the staff stayed for an extra two hours to turn what had been a festive wonderland of abundant decorations and displays of lovely books into an austere landscape of piled up diet manuals and memoirs of recovery against the odds. It had to be suitable for the "new year, new me" customers who would come through the door the next time we opened. It always felt rather jarring, given that at the time we were making this switchover, Christmas hadn't even happened yet.

I think about this because it makes me remember how utterly arbitrary our January interest in resolutions and goals is. I'm a sucker for a new hack or "one weird trick" — normally, purchasing a new notebook — if I get too invested in the idea that something about me has to change. I have to ask myself: is this really something I want to do, or am I merely reacting to the fact that the world has (metaphorically speaking) just replaced all of the Christmas decorations with diet books? In fact, I find that the best use for this season of self-improvement is to do some thinking about what has worked in the past rather than making any changes or rash promises for future change.

Last year, I made the first Thursday Thirteen post of the year a round-up of small habits or new activities I had acquired in the previous 12 months and which I planned to continue. I'm doing that again today. These are little things that have brought me joy, made my life a bit easier, or helped me get closer to my big-picture intentions. They are, of course, specific to my life and are not inteneded to be universal advice. Perhaps you will find a spark of inspiration below for your own version.

Normal service with links will resume next week, once I've spent enough time on the internet again to find some good ones.

Only subscribe to one streaming service at a time. I absolutely despise paging through the homepage of Netflix (or any other streamer) looking for something, anything, I can bear to watch. I usually get frustrated and just pick a show, which I then abandon twenty minutes in because I don't like it, and start scrolling again. It's the opposite of relaxing. Eventually, I came to realise that this was a problem caused by there being too much choice. Having subscriptions to multiple streaming services (a significant financial outlay) was creating such a vast pool of things I could watch that I was actually watching very little. Since all the major ones let you subscribe by the month and then cancel without penalty, I now just have one at a time. I keep a list of shows and films I'm interested in seeing (compiled from reviews and personal recommendations) and then when I'm ready to choose my next service, I pick the one with the longest accumulated list of things I want to see on it. If there's enough, I might even keep it for two months! You can also be quite broad in what you choose to define as a "streaming service" — one month, we had Dropout, for instance, a video library made by the people who used to run CollegeHumor. I watched lots of their show Smartypants, in which funny people give Powerpoint presentations about their niche obsessions/irritations (it has big Taskmaster energy). Since I implemented this system, there has been no more annoying scrolling or watching of terrible documentaries "just to put something on" while we eat dinner. If you keep the date that you join/cancel each one consistent — I aim for the last day of the month — it makes it easy to avoid being caught by an auto-renew.
Have a toilet bag that stays in your luggage. I had seen this tip a lot but only implemented it in 2025. It's incredible. I used to spend ages squeezing creams into smaller tubes and often forgot something vital, like toothpaste. Now I keep the complete travel toilet bag in my most-used rucksack and know that when I've packed it, I've packed everything I will need. The only maintenance you need to do comes at the end of a trip when you top up or replace anything in the bag before you put it away.
After cooking, wait until food is room temperature to eat it. Somewhere along the way while I was learning to cook, I internalised the rule that everything needs to be as hot as possible at the moment that you put it on the table and/or the plate. Hotter than the sun, if possible. Which is just not true, and is in fact a recipe for burning your mouth when you take the first bite. I've started letting dishes rest for a bit after coming out of the oven, or dishing up and then doing a couple of minutes of tidying up before tucking in. It's a revelation! I don't want my food to be stone cold, but I don't want it to be piping hot either. When it's just nicely warm, you can properly taste all of the flavours that you spent so long trying to cultivate.
Wash your head, not your hair. This one is very personal to me and my type of hair/scalp so your mileage may vary. However, I've found it much more useful when shampooing to think about washing the surface of my head rather than the strands of hair that hang from it. I get a much more thorough clean this way, more akin to the wonderful scrub they do when you go to the hairdressers.
Throw things away, even if it is uncomfortable. Overconsumption is awful, but hoarding things that you don't want/need but can't bear the idea of going to landfill is awful too. Especially if the things are now broken and useless and degrading the experience of being in your space. Get rid of things in the most responsible possible way (repurpose, sell, donate, recycle, throw away) and then don't buy too many things again. This last bit is the hardest part.
Do a pantry audit. One afternoon while trying to avoid doing some work I didn't want to do, I took everything out of the kitchen cupboards, checked the expiry dates, made a quick tally on a piece of paper of what we had, and then put back what we could still eat. I've been keeping up with my record since, and it's quite eye-opening how much less food we've been buying now that I know what we already have. I'm sure there are fancy apps and databases that you can use for this, although I tend to find that the lofi, quick way is usually the way that will stick for me.
Use chopsticks to eat snacks. I'm sure everyone who uses chopsticks as their primary cutlery already knows this. I've only just learned that using them to eat crisps/crackers/nuts is a great way to munch and keep your hands clean at the same time.
Mend things, even if you can't do a perfect job. This is connected to my throwing away point, above. I used to have a graveyard of clothes in the bottom of my wardrobe that needed a minor repair, like a darn or a patch or a missing button replacing. I wouldn't throw them away, but I also wouldn't just do the job because I was waiting for some mythical future moment when I would be "better" at mending. (This attitude might have been caused by watching too much aesthetic mending content on TikTok and Instagram, before I quit social media.) It got so bad that I stopped being able to close the wardrobe door so had to do something about the pile. It turns out, it doesn't really matter if my darning is unattractive or my sewing is crooked. It's just nice to be able to use my things again.
Enjoy inconsequential chats with strangers. It's pleasant to talk to people, even for a couple of minutes, about their holiday or their dog or what they're making for dinner that night. I don't pursue random strangers with my desire for conversation, obviously, but if we get chatting anyway because of a transport delay/our dogs playing together, I now let myself enjoy it rather than constantly scanning the horizon for the nearest exit.
Make your homepage blank. Methods for doing this will vary by device or operating system (just search for yours), but I highly recommend making the homepage for your browser a blank page of some sort. In Chrome, you can just make it about:blank. I find that it forces me to remember what I opened it for in the first place, rather than getting sucked into looking at recommended news stories or whatever other algorithmic stuff it tries to serve you.
Use bar soap. I have really got into solid soap in the last year. I'm very prone to dry skin and it seems to help with that (probably because I'm using less of it per wash) and it also generates way less plastic waste. It lasts for ages, too, and you can easily buy it from small businesses rather than big chains. I'm personally partial to the products of The Soap Dairy in the Lake District, but I'm sure there will be something lovely local to you. I have a sisal soap sack for in-shower exfoliation and a travel tin. You can also get dry bags for travelling with your soap, although I've been fine so far with the tin. As a bonus, you don't have to worry about it at airport security, as it counts as a solid not a liquid.
Replace paper towels with cloths. We've accumulated a lot of random cleaning cloths over the years. I also now generate more in my ongoing attempt to find uses for old fabric rather than sending it to landfill (just cut it up and roughly hem it!). They are now my paper towels. I lay them out in a long row on the kitchen counter, slightly overlapping, and then I wind the whole lot tightly around our paper towel spindle (we have the kind that is just a stick on a base, like this). Then you can just take one off any time you need something to mop up a spill etc. Ideally I would have a dedicated place to put the dirty ones, perhaps in a bin under the sink until I have enough for a wash, but I'm still working on that and currently just throw them straight in the washing machine with whatever is going next. They air dry on a spinner thing in the airing cupboard and then join the queue to be used again. I do still keep a roll of disposable paper towels in the cupboard for jobs that can't be done any other way (sometimes you just need one to germinate some seeds on) but the cloths do most of the everyday work.
Use your RSS reader for everything. I use my RSS reader for keeping track of all sorts of things, not just blogs and websites. My one of choice is Feedly and it can handle email newsletters, subreddits, YouTube channels, Patreons, podcasts and more. I like having all of my content easily browsable in the same place and find that it helps me spend less time aimlessly clicking around the internet getting distracted.

Do you have any little life improvements like this that you'll be sticking with for the next year? Tell us all about them in the comments.

Filed under: Links, Blog

06 Jan 2026 6 min read Permalink

Reading Georgette Heyer: The Black Moth

This is the 1965 Pan paperback edition of *The Black Moth.* The novel was originally published by Heinemann in 1921.

I began The Black Moth with very little information beyond its biographical context. Heyer first invented the story to amuse her younger brother Boris during an illness; her father, overhearing its telling, encouraged her to write it properly for publication. She was nineteen when the first editor she approached accepted it, launching a prolific career she pursued with startling confidence — no plans for further education or a day job. That confidence paid off: when her father died a few years later, Georgette's writing supported her brothers through school and kept her mother's household running. A very important book for understanding Heyer as a writer, then, but not one with a titanic literary reputation of its own.

After a brief and mysterious prologue featuring an insolent duke writing a letter about a failed romantic affair, Heyer plunges the reader straight into the hurly-burly of a country coaching inn in the early 1750s. Here can be found one Sir Anthony Ferndale, a foppish baronet which is in fact, we are quickly told, a persona sometimes adopted by a disgraced peer, Lord John Carstares (known to his friends as Jack). He tumbled down from the heights of high society six years before after being exposed as a cheat at cards. He has since turned himself into a proficient highwayman, albeit one in the Robin Hood vein. He forwards the better part of his ill-gotten gains to the deserving poor. A year before the book opens, he had the bad luck to hold up a carriage containing his estranged younger brother Richard, which Jack thought was very funny but his sibling found both mortifying and confusing.

Within just a few pages, Jack emerges as a man of honour who also retains a sense of humour about his altered state in life. It is clear from the start that he, rather than the mysterious aristocrat in the prologue, will stand in the role of romantic hero for this book. During a visit from the Carstares family solicitor we learn that Jack's estranged father has now died and he has thus inherited the title of Earl of Wyncham and associated estates. He, though, prefers his disreputable life on the road to returning to high society and dealing with the social consequences of the cheating incident (this betrayal of honour while gambling seems to be of seismic significance to everyone in this book). He would quite like Richard to step into his shoes. Richard, meanwhile, has married Lavinia Belmanoir, who is a high society beauty and crucially sister of the Duke of Andover, our friend from the prologue.

It might seem like I've given away half the plot of the book here, but I promise that all of this happens in just the first dozen pages. Heyer, even in her first novel, showed great skill at conveying plot and character information quickly and without overwhelming the reader. Already, I felt connected to the characters and the scenario that she was presenting. Jack especially. He may have silly opinions about silk breeches, but he is a fundamentally decent person who has sacrificed his own comfort and prestige in order to give his brother the life he desired.

From here, the story jogs along briskly. Jack, despite his repudiation of title and wealth, is set on a course back to his rightful station in life. The universe (and Georgette) does not want him to be a highwayman forever. His true identity is almost discovered again when he holds up a carriage containing a justice of the peace and he is only saved by the fact that said justice is his own erstwhile best friend, Miles O'Hara. Jack wriggles out of that awkwardness, but his outlaw career is once again severely endangered when he fights a roadside duel with none other than the insolent duke of the prologue, whom Jack catches in the act of abducting a very attractive young woman from her aunt's carriage.

So far, so much derring-do. Exactly what I had expected for my first historical Heyer: aristocrats with elaborate wardrobes and complicated honour codes, much dashing about the countryside in carriages and on horseback, and a splendid sprinkling of era-specific slang (more on that below). While the wit exhibited by Jack and the cleverly-sketched minor characters — such as Molly O'Hara and Jim the valet — do show promise, there is little here to elevate it beyond the typical early twentieth century historical adventure novel. Yet there is one major element of this book that to me absolutely prohibits its dismissal as juvenile or derivative. And that is the Black Moth himself.

His Grace the Duke of Andover, or "Devil" to his friends, is an extraordinary character. He hovers menacingly on the edge of the Robin Hood, swashbuckling story I have just described, seemingly without a motive other than to make everyone else uncomfortable. His sister Lavinia's marriage to Jack's unfortunate brother Richard is rather tempestuous. Together with another brother, Andrew, the three Belmanoir siblings seem to exist to be extravagant, without deriving any particular pleasure from their profligate habits. They are perpetually quarrelsome and world-weary, the Duke by far the worst of them. Nobody ever seems to know where he is or what he is up to, either. He scorns predictability and the usual rhythms of society. He flits about the country restlessly, unable to settle to life in either the country or the town. He is always arguing with his family and looming menacingly at debutantes. Heyer gives him the moniker of "Black Moth" because he dresses only in black as a contrast with the apricot and puce and gold worn by every other character. In a novel where men's elaborate costumes receive as much description as women's, this refusal to take part in the general sartorial gaiety marks him as fundamentally apart.

The Duke comes across as almost a nihilist, taking pleasure in nothing and immune to the structures of honour that otherwise rule his social set. He seems incapable of love, either romantically or platonically. He is a fascinating character for a sheltered young woman to have written, a shadow-man who lurks on the periphery of the bright, gay world that she has otherwise created here. He is definitely not good, but he's not purely evil, either. Eventually the romance plot pushes him into the position of Jack's antagonist, but even then there is nothing truly villainous about him. The climax of the book involves another abduction of a young woman, committed by the Duke, yet you feel that his heart is hardly in it and he would probably have got bored before he did anything irreversibly awful. As such, he is allowed to fade away from this incident largely unscathed.

His punishment is of a more karmic kind. He eventually loses his heart, for real, to Jack's bride Diana. The book closes as it opens, with an epistolary epilogue in which the Black Moth acknowledges, but does not really resolve, the tragedy of his unrequited love for another man's wife. I finished it with the feeling that he was the true protagonist, not the swashbuckling aristocratic highwayman who gets the girl, even though we spend much less time with Tracy Belmanoir, Duke of Andover. Heyer could have written a conventional love story interspersed with action sequences. Instead we get this sly portrait of a restless, cynical, grim man who finally realises he has the capacity for love only when it is too late to do anything about it. It isn't romantic, but it is very interesting and even rather sad. I would read this book again, I think, but only to try and fill in the gaps of what "Devil" is up to while the rest of the lavishly-dressed adventurers are cavorting around. Heyer left me wanting to know what the Black Moth was doing while I wasn't in his company. For a romance novel written by a teenager as entertainment for her sick brother, that's a genuine literary achievement.

Three Other Thoughts

On the morning of a threatened flight from the marital home, neither wife nor husband can drink their morning cup of chocolate in bed, they are so upset. This little gastronomic aside is somehow both childish and endearing.
In fact, everyone in this book — with the exception of the Black Moth himself — is quite childish most of the time. Is it because Heyer was herself so young, or is she showing how facile the life of the idle rich is/was?
Jack has a very sensitive aesthetic sense. He cares very deeply about cravats and waistcoats. It's shown that he can sort embroidery silks into precise shades and tones better than any of the female characters. I like this as a trait for a male character.

My Favourite Phrases

From my reading of Heyer's crime fiction, I already know that she is quite handy with a turn of phrase and the period slang that she dug out (or simply invented?) for this book was marvellous. Here is a selection.

A woman is deplored as a "spendthrift jade".
Someone declares in a vexing situation that "tis a plaguey nuisance".
To express sympathy, a character says "my poor lamp!" (I think this means "poor thing").
When she is crying and crossed in love, Diana says "Oh, are all men such big stupids?".
Quite regularly, men are described as making someone "a marvellous leg". I think this is a bow or reverence? I love this phrase and yearn for reasons to use it in everyday conversation.

Thanks for reading. I'm making my way through Georgette Heyer's historical novels — you can find all entries here.

You can support my work with a recurring contribution or leave a one-off tip.

Filed under: Reading Georgette Heyer, Blog, Book Review

05 Jan 2026 11 min read Permalink

Reading Without Limits Or Expectations

What I read in 2025 and what I'm changing for 2026.

At the beginning of 2025, I set an intention for my year: Reading A Lot, But Differently. Now that the year has ended, I want to assess how I did. I certainly accomplished the first part of it — I read 121 books last year, the most since I've been keeping records — but did I do the second part, the "differently" part? No, I didn't.

If anything, I stuck more closely than ever to the genres and styles that usually comfort me. There's nothing intrinsically wrong with this as an approach to reading. It just didn't feel good to me this year. At certain points I had the sensation of being constricted, frustrated even, that I didn't seem to be able to break out of my habits. I wanted to read longer books, or books I've previously pegged as "challenging", or books in languages and styles that are new to me. Yet I didn't. The desire was there, but I still didn't do it. More on how I'm going to try and remedy that in a moment.

One aspect of my reading this year that did really work for me in 2025 is this space here, this blog/newsletter. Recording the books I read satiates my appetite for gradually accumulating data. Reviewing each title allowed me to flex a critical muscle I don't use much these days, now that I rarely write reviews for traditional media outlets. Discussing matters arising with readers and receiving recommendations was wonderful. Nothing to change there. I will make some tweaks to my process, though, so that I don't end up with a huge backlog of reviews to post as I did in 2025.

I was also conscious of feeling a little aimless with my reading this year. Outside of the books I needed to read for my podcast, I had no project or principle to what I read. I added titles that looked interesting to my Storygraph's "to read" feature diligently and then barely read any of them. I did a lot of scrolling on library apps and placing holds that I then never used. I think there's definitely a place for "mood reading"; just following your nose to whatever will satisfy in those particular circumstances. I did a little too much of it, perhaps. I am someone who responds very well to structure and I have plans to add a little more in 2026.

I certainly curbed my book-buying habits (as noted last year, I have already far exceeded SABLE status, or "Stash Acquired Beyond Life Expectancy"). I didn't make a noticeably larger dent in the books I already own, though. Rather, I got hooked on the ease of ebook loans from the library rather than browsing my own shelves. That's something else I'd like to work on.

Now, let's move on to:

My reading stats for the year: genre, format, and so forth
Recommendations for the ten best books I read
My aims for 2026
My new reading project

2025 in Review

I read 121 books in 2025. See them all here. My goal was 120, or ten a month, and I just hit it. I reviewed every single book in my monthly reading roundups, so you can get more detail on any one title by browsing those here.
115 were fiction and 6 non-fiction, despite my intentions to achieve a more even balance.
My most-read genre was (as it probably always will be) mystery/crime. The second was historical, followed by romance. These are the Storygraph's genres and I don't entirely agree with them — it put "classics" fourth, but it considers most of Agatha Christie and Dorothy L. Sayers to fit into that category so... Who knows.
My five most-read authors were:
- Georgette Heyer, 16 books
- Agatha Christie, 13 books
- Ben Aaronovitch, 9 books (interesting; with the exception of one graphic novel, his books were all consumed as audiobooks)
- Mary Westmacott, 6 books (this is Christie under another name, so I suppose technically she was my most read author)
- Dorothy L. Sayers, 4 books
Approximately 44 per cent of my reading was done with physical books, 44 per cent via ebooks, and 12 per cent through audiobooks. This is a substantial change from last year (when my print/ebook split was 65/25). I attribute this to me replacing other scrolling on my phone with reading via the library apps, which is not necessarily a bad thing.

The Best Books I Read in 2025

My ten favourite titles break down like this:

all fiction
nine originally in English, one translated from German
of the ten, there are
- three genuine "golden age" detective novels (published during the interwar period or very close to it)
- two other novels from the interwar period by crime writers that don't quite fit the mould as "crime"
- two works of literary fiction from the middle of the twentieth century
- a really good new second chance romance
- an accomplished Arthurian retelling from 2024
- and a collection of crime short stories from the turn of the nineteenth century in the Austro-Hungarian empire

The Conjure-Man Dies by Rudolph Fisher

I must thank the Shedunnit Book Club (the book club that runs alongside my podcast) for this one, because they chose it as their book to read in February 2025. I had owned the recent Collins reissue of this 1932 for several years and never got round to reading it, so the push to do so was welcome. It's an accomplished detective novel set in the Harlem neighbourhood of New York City, concerning the apparently impossible murder of a local "conjure man" who tells fortunes for a fee. As tradition dictates, everyone in the waiting room at the time is a suspect and Fisher gives his own profession, that of medical doctor, to his police detective's "Watson". While it's a decent mystery, what really made this book stand out to me was its portrayal of Harlem and its inhabitants in the early 1930s. I always love learning about social history through fiction and this was a great example of that. In Fisher's rendering, Harlem is a small town where everyone knows each other — something that can be both good and bad when you're caught up in a murder investigation. I haven't independently verified this, but The Conjure-Man Dies is said to be the first work of detective fiction with a black detective and a full cast of black characters. Fisher was apparently keen to make it the first of a series and had planned out several sequels, but unfortunately died only two years after the book was published.

The Heat of the Day by Elizabeth Bowen

Another book that came my way because of the podcast: this time when I was researching an episode about Agatha Christie's Taste in Crime Fiction. Christie was a fan of Elizabeth Bowen, a Dublin-born novelist who spent time on the fringes of the Bloomsbury Group in London and published her first novel in 1923. The Heat of the Day from 1949 is set in wartime London and concerns a love triangle that becomes an espionage triangle. The specificity of its WW2 scenes and the well-calibrated pacing of the book did remind me of the best detective fiction, but its strong emotional currents and intensely interior style makes it literary fiction, I think. A clever and unsettling read.

The Bright Sword by Lev Grossman

I have thought about this book a lot since I finished it in April. It's a 600+ page work that weaves something new and surprising through the Arthurian legends retold ad nauseam by Mallory et al. It's told from the point of view of a new young knight called Collum, who overcomes great hardship to get himself to Camelot only to learn that King Arthur has been killed in battle two weeks before. He joins up with the few remaining knights of the round table for a quest to salvage the moral ideal of Arthur's united kingdom before it is too late. On one level, it's a rollicking fantasy adventure read. What I found most arresting, though, was the way in which Grossman had successfully internalised the structural oddities of the old chivalric "romance", with successive quests and side-quests taking the reader on a meandering journey that seems to have no purpose until it finally does. I imagine that writing something that feels both aimless and, at the end, very focused, is really difficult to do and I am full of admiration that he chose to do this rather than staying in the safe zone of his highly successful Magicians fantasy trilogy.

In Muffled Night by Dorothy Erskine Muir

I'm always really intrigued by crime writers who just write one or a small handful of good novels and then disappear off to do something else. Dorothy Erskine Muir was one such. In Muffled Night from 1933 was the first and best of her trio of detective novels, each of which was based partially on a real-life crime. I love this one for its moody, Victorian time capsule of a house and the contrast of this interior's perfection with the shocking crime that takes place within. It's a mystery that is clever both practically and psychologically, too. I made a podcast episode about this writer back in April.

The Feast by Margaret Kennedy

Another Shedunnit Book Club selection. I think the member who originally proposed this book thought it was a crime novel in the manner of And Then There Were None. That was an entirely reasonable inference, given that Faber have republished it with a very crime-coded cover and a blurb about a group of people isolated in a remote Cornwall hotel before deaths occur. However, The Feast is not a conventional crime novel, with a detective or clues or a murderer revealed at the end. We learn from the prologue that in a week's time the hotel and anyone in it is going to be buried under a landslide. Then Kennedy takes us back seven days and shows us the sins of all the guests, all leading up to a tense finale right before the cliff cracks... It's a marvellous work of literature and I'm so glad it was put my way.

Death on the Down Beat by Sebastian Farr

I fully recognise that this might not be for everyone. I'm a classical music nerd so an epistolary detective novel set among an orchestra that includes extracts from the score as part of the material was odds-on to delight me. And so it did.

Let's Make a Scene by Laura Wood

The only novel published in 2025 to make my top ten. A gloriously well-written and plotted second-chance romance between two British actors. It has a dual timeline: one occurs when they are young and filming a romantic period drama film that will go on to become a cult classic, with the second covering the time thirteen years later when they have to reunite to make the sequel. The first time the leads hate each other, then they... don't.

Penhallow by Georgette Heyer

I read 16 Heyer novels this year (all twelve of her crime ones and four historical romances) but only one makes this list. It's the least stereotypically "Heyer" novel of all, being a dark, Gothic-tinged thriller about an unhappy family trapped in their remote Cornish estate by their cantankerous patriarch. There's something a bit Du Maurier about it. I found it extremely compelling and quite disturbing at the end.

Absent in the Spring by Mary Westmacott

I've gone on at length elsewhere about how good I think this book is so I won't repeat it all again. Suffice to say, this is a psychological thriller by Agatha Christie that, had she published it under her own name, I think would be considered up there with some of her best work. There's no Poirot or Marple or clues revealed in the drawing room after tea, just a woman marooned by travel plans gone awry who must finally confront the truth about herself and her life. It's a pageturner, I promise.

The Adventures of Dagobert Trostler by Balduin Groller

Do you remember back in 2023 when everyone started talking about their "Roman Empire", ie the historical era or topic that they thought about a lot? Since I was about 15, mine has been the Hapsburgs and Austria-Hungary. Imagine my delight, therefore, when I learned this year that there was a series of short stories from Austria published in the late nineteenth century about the "Sherlock Holmes of Vienna", one Dagobert Trostler. Beyond the fact that both inhabit great cities and pursue criminal cases in an amateur capacity, there aren't really many similarities between Holmes and Trostler, though. This Viennese detective isn't interested in footprints or types of cigarette ash, nor does he have a Watson, or even much of a desire to see criminals punished for their crimes. He is a creature of Viennese high society, who would always rather effect the solution that hushes things up and leaves everyone's public reputations unbesmirched. He's good at deduction and observation, yes, but puts these talents to quite a different purpose. Fascinating. I wish someone would translate more of the stories into English.

Changes for 2026

No Reading Goal

I was about two thirds of the way through 2025 before I realised that having a set number of books I was aiming to read in the year was changing my behaviour, mostly for the worse. I noticed that I was starting and then abandoning lengthy audiobooks or novels that required me to read more slowly because they would stop me from reaching the ten books a month needed to hit the goal. Now that I seem to have fully recovered from my Covid-induced inability to finish books, I don't need the numerical incentive to keep reading. In fact, I'd be pleased if I manage to read fewer books overall this year, focusing instead on a wider variety of lengths and types.

Read The Books In My House

There are so many incredible-looking unread books in my house (and in my storage unit, eek). I want to read some of them this year, instead of haunting Netgalley and the library apps. Subsidiary goal: finally read the massive hardback copy of Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell that I own. Many of you have told me it is just the kind of thing I will like and I want to agree (even though I have abandoned it thirty pages in about three times, probably because of the reading goal problem detailed above).

Seek Greater Variety

I'm repeating this goal from last year in the hope that I do it this time. I'd like to try reading more non-fiction, more poetry, more translations, more books of all kinds, really. Not aiming to hit a certain number of books in a year, removing limits and expectations generally, and mostly "shopping" for books in my own house will help, I think.

Read Short Stories At Bedtime

Since I quit social media, I've done a pretty good job of staying off my phone in the evenings. However, I quite frequently get into bed at a reasonable hour (say 10pm) and am then still up past midnight because I keep promising myself "just one more chapter" of whatever book I'm reading. I'm going to try instead to keep a book of short stories by the bed and read just one each night before lights out. Hopefully reading something short that has inbuilt closure will encourage me to go to sleep on time, and it will have the added benefit of creating a routine around reading something other than novels.

Write Reviews As I Go

I'm going to try writing and publishing individual reviews of books as I finish them rather than holding everything for an end-of-month round up (here's one I did a few days ago as a test). I'll do them as blog-only posts so I'm not cluttering your inboxes, and then still send a digest at the end of the month with some reflections and links to everything I've reviewed. If you do want to get each individual review delivered to your inbox, you can click here and opt into receive "all posts".

Have A Project

I'm going to attempt to read and write about a whole sequence of books by a single writer this year (don't worry, it's not a big departure — it's someone you've already heard me talk about a lot!). I want to read this body of work as research for something else I'm doing and I would like to talk to other people who enjoy this stuff, so posting about it seems like the best way to find them.

All will be revealed tomorrow when the first post goes out...

Thanks for reading along with me this year.

If you purchase a book from one of the links above, I may receive a small commission that supports my writing. The price remains the same for you.

Filed under: Reading Updates, Blog

01 Jan 2026 2 min read Permalink

The Wonder of Wool by Justine Lee and Jess Morency

This was a brilliant Christmas present from my husband. It's partly a non-fiction exploration of the history of British sheep and wool, partly a directory of all the different breeds with notes on their suitability for knitting/spinning, and partly a book of knitting patterns that suit certain heritage wools.

I've been interested in rare breed wool for a few years, having made a few small things with the Ronaldsay wool produced in Orkney and been gifted some hanks of Manx Loaghtan wool from the Isle of Man that sadly perished in a moth attack before I could use them. Now, after reading what this book had to say about fast fashion vs locally-produced fibres and garments, I'm feeling fired up to expand my stash and my repertoire.

I also learned a lot about the history of wool production and sheep breeding from this book, which was instructive. As cotton grew in popularity and affordability in the 17th and 18th centuries, the demand for British wool (previously a highly sought after and traded commodity) completely collapsed. This was especially nice for me to read about because one of my favourite books as a child was The Wool-Pack by Cynthia Harnett, which is all about the wool trade in 15th century England and the arrival of Medici financiers in the wool and cloth business. The Wonder of Wool filled in some gaps for me.

Everything changed for British wool in about the 1700s. Sheep farmers began to prioritise the meat only, ignoring the quality of fleece, so many previously excellent wool-producing breeds became indifferent or useless. There is now a movement to improve this again, although it will take many ovine generations for the project to reach fruition, of course. Similarly, there is a growing effort to conserve individual rare breeds for their specific wool attributes, also a long game.

This book also caused me to reflect on the complications of moving to a more sustainable way of making clothing. I'm probably just about an intermediate knitter, I have a flexible job with no commute, and I don't have caring responsibilities. It still takes me weeks of dedicated knitting, fitted in around other work, to make a single garment. I looked at the knitwear store run by one of these authors to see how much a finished version of one of the patterns was, and a single jumper costs £575. I'm sure that is a fair price given the materials and labour involved, yet it's a price that is completely inaccessible to almost everyone, including me.

As I was reading this book, I was having daydreams of a completely handmade wardrobe, from little vests made out of the softest underwool to sturdy coats made from more rugged fibres. Fun to imagine, even if it isn't remotely practical or possible. I will, however, be checking the provenance of all the wool I buy in future and doing my best to source it from UK rare breed suppliers.

If you purchase this book from one of the following places, I receive a small commission that supports my writing. The price remains the same for you.

Filed under: Blog, Book Review

31 Dec 2025 3 min read Permalink

Jandy Mac Comes Back by Elsie J. Oxenham

A somewhat bewildering plunge into the later stretch of the Abbey Series.

This is my copy of *Jandy Mac Comes Back*, the 1952 Collins edition.

Jandy Mac Comes Back is a grand reunion in book form. I imagine that a devoted Elsie J. Oxenham reader devouring it when it was first published in 1941 would have revelled in all of the detail about what beloved characters from earlier titles in the Abbey series have been doing since they left school and got married. But for me, a relative newcomer, it was a bit confusing.

Among Elsie J. Oxenham aficionados, Jandy Mac Comes Back is known as "A29" and the start of a run of books known as the "Second Generation Titles". I've only read two other Abbey books so far, both of which I picked up at random earlier in 2025 (Maid of the Abbey in July and The Abbey Girls in Town in August) but I'm slowly getting to grips with the overlapping chronology and recurring, multi-generational character structure. Still, a lot of the references in this one went over my head and I had to do some extra research to make sense of all the characters that have names beginning with J. Allison Thompson's Abbey writings have been particularly helpful for this.

This is a reunion story in every sense. "Jandy Mac" of the title, Janice Fraser née MacDonald, has returned to England after many years married life in Samoa and Australia. With her is her thirteen year old daughter Joan, named after one of Jandy's schoolfriends and main Abbey girl, Joan Shirley. Jandy has decided to surprise her friends by turning up at their homes after over a decade away with no warning. Fairly predictably, this goes wrong. The friends are either away from home or, in Joan's case, have just that morning given birth to a new baby. Luckily, Jandy and her Joan (aka "Littlejan" or "Joan-Two" to avoid confusion) are scooped up by another Abbey girl, Rosamund, now Lady Kentisbury, and taken to stay in her castle while other friends are tracked down.

Everyone gradually gets up to date on each other's family histories, and there are a few surprises and adventures too. One Abbey girl, Jen, makes a sudden departure to Yorkshire (and out of the book's narrative) when her husband is in a car accident at their farm there. Then the world of Kentisbury Castle (apparently based on Arundel) is rocked when kidnappers, working in collusion with the Earl's chauffeur, steal several of the household's children in the hope of ransoming the heir. Jandy, her daughter, and the housekeeper's niece Tansy all perform various acts of heroism. Soon, all children have been returned to their rightful place unharmed and the malefactors are in custody. The gratitude expressed towards Jandy Mac and her daughter renew their ties to the Abbey crowd and promise greater interaction in future books. Unlike in the other two I've read, there is no folk dancing or May queen stuff in this one, which was slightly disappointing.

My other quibble with this book concerns Jandy Mac's great act of heroism. She happens to be riding towards the picnic cove as the children are being abducted and sees the struggle. Tansy and three kids are taken away on a boat, while Jandy's daughter Joan is left lying on the shore, perhaps unconscious, perhaps dead. Instead of going to her aid, Jandy turns her horse around and gallops straight back to the castle's village to raise the alarm. Afterwards, she is much praised for overcoming the maternal instinct to care for her child in order to protect the kidnapped heir to the castle.

This reads strangely to the modern eye. Without any way of getting help other than going herself, Jandy did have to think and act quickly, and the kidnappers were already away. But it's odd that she doesn't even do a quick triage check of the survivor before riding off — and even odder that this, more than her fast and daring riding, is what she's lauded for. Given how focused the rest of the book is on the demands of motherhood above all else, this felt out of place and reminded me of the similarly illogical behaviour during the kidnapping plot in Elinor M. Brent-Dyer's The Princess of the Chalet School. I know expecting realism from early twentieth century school stories is silly, but characters usually behave with some internal consistency to their world!

Despite this, and despite the fact that for me reading this book is a bit like overhearing a reunion conversation between people you don't know, I still enjoyed it, which I think is testament to Oxenham's breezy prose and knack for stringing events together with good momentum. As my experience shows, you can read it without a full knowledge of everything that has gone before, but it might be better if you do come upon it in the proper seqeuence. I feel like I'm inching ever closer to having to become a non-casual Abbey fan and actually start reading these books in order...

If you purchase this book from one of the following places, I receive a small commission that supports my writing. The price remains the same for you.

Abebooks | Amazon

Filed under: Blog, Book Review

29 Dec 2025 9 min read Permalink

Wickham, Wimsey, Westmacott: What I Read in October, November and December 2025

October:

Hallowe'en Party by Agatha Christie

I re-read this for the Halloween episode of Shedunnit, and was pleased to find it better than I remembered. There's a folk horror, pagan element to it that I rather enjoyed.

Third Girl by Agatha Christie

A less successful Christie, mostly because of her attempts to be up to date. She tried to fold details about youth culture and drug taking into the story when she clearly didn't know very much about them. I did, however, enjoy Mrs Oliver's antics in this book, especially the bit where she tails a suspect across London and then ends up having tea with them.

An Unsuitable Heir by K.J. Charles

I read this on the recommendation of a blog reader (thank you, Theodora!) and ended up agreeing with her that K.J. Charles writes good romance-mystery hybrids that are straightforward enough to read for relaxation but sufficiently well-written that your brain doesn't snag on any rough edges. This one was a queer nineteenth century romance that included some discussion of gender fluidity, circus/music hall performing, and ghosts. I'll pick up other books by this author when I'm in the right mood, for sure.

Giant's Bread by Mary Westmacott

A work project that I can't talk about yet required me to re-read all six of the Mary Westmacott books (written by Agatha Christie under a penname) in a short space of time. I've covered them on Shedunnit before but haven't looked at them in at least five years and arrived at some new insights this time around, probably because I've advanced in my knowledge of the Christie canon quite a lot in that time. I do think all six are worth reading. In this one, I was rather struck by the details about music, which was Christie's first choice for a career (she was a talented singer and pianist).

A Rising Man by Abir Mukherjee

This was the Shedunnit Book Club's November book and my detailed thoughts on it are available to members over there. In brief: I found the setting in Raj-era India fascinating, the mystery just ok, and the author's choice of first-person narration frustrating.

Unfinished Portrait by Mary Westmacott

The correspondences between this second Westmacott novel and the sections of Agatha Christie's autobiography (which she didn't start writing for a couple of decades after this) are very striking. All of her youthful courtship details are the same and the failed marriage of "Celia" and "Dermot" is very similar to that of Agatha and Archie Christie. It actually made me wonder about the extent to which Christie's memories were shaped by working on this novel in the early 1930s, and whether that was what she was remembering, rather than the actual events, when she came to write her memoirs.

The Impossible Fortune by Richard Osman

A new Thursday Murder Club novel, consumed as an audiobook. It was just OK for me, this time. I still regret the loss of Lesley Manville as the original reader of the series (sorry, Fiona Shaw). I also feel like any attempt at serious mystery plotting has been shelved in favour of dialogue and character stuff, which doesn't work as well for me.

Pride and Prescience by Carrie Bebris

Another instalment in my continued and never-ending effort to read every Austen spin-off ever written. This series is a crime fiction crossover, with a now-married Darcy and Elizabeth taking on the role of "detectives" when things go awry in their social circle. In this one, Caroline Bingley has married a rich American and started behaving very strangely. Then, while everyone is staying at Netherfield Park, a murder takes place... A decent premise, but stilted dialogue and a slow-moving plot meant it disappointed, and I won't be continuing the series.

November:

Penhallow by Georgette Heyer

Now, this is a book I've thought about a lot since I finished it. I read and largely enjoyed all of Heyer's twelve detective novels this year as I was making a podcast episode about them, and this was the standout. Perhaps because it's barely a detective novel at all, but rather a grim, Gothic portrait of a family being controlled by a brutal patriarch on a remote estate in Cornwall. Shades of Rebecca, for sure. According to her biographer Jennifer Kloester, Heyer personally considered this to be one of her best books and was rather disappointed when the reading public didn't agree. I think I might, though! There is a murder plot in it, of a sort, but now that I've read some of Heyer's historical fiction this feels like a bridge between her work in the two different genres.

Duplicate Death by Georgette Heyer

Here, Heyer was on much safer ground, genre-wise — this is a traditional whodunnit, set around a card party at a fancy London house and detected by her recurring detective, Inspector Hemingway. After I mentioned this book in passing on the podcast, a bridge expert felt compelled to get in touch to point out that the "duplicate bridge" aspect of the plot doesn't really work, but since I don't know what that is anyway it didn't bother me. Perfectly readable, and with the usual Heyer sharpness of wit and description.

The Rasp by Philip Macdonald

I had heard bad things about this book from a fellow devotee of interwar crime fiction. But despite the dire warnings, I had a generally good time reading it. It felt to me like a mid-1920s hybrid, with MacDonald including both R. Austin Freeman-style forensic investigation of footprints and more thriller-ish elements such as you find in an early Christie like The Secret Adversary. Sometimes these two styles vie for the reader's attention in an irritating fashion, but mostly I wasn't bothered by it. I liked the early details about contemporary journalism and liked the amateur sleuth MacDonald sets up here, Anthony Gethryn. What this book has over and above everything else is vim and purpose: the narrative momentum is so great that it positively zips along. When I discussed this book with my guest for the podcast episode, I learned a lot about MacDonald's subsequent screenwriting work, and this unlocked a whole new appreciate in me for what he does with structure in this book. Have a listen to the Shedunnit episode about it.

Absent in the Spring by Mary Westmacott

I am convinced that this was Agatha Christie's experiment with horror fiction. It follows a self-satisfied, middle class English woman as she travels back home from visiting her married daughter in Baghdad. Owing to some bad weather, she misses a connection and has to wait for an unknown number of days at a remote rest-house on the Turkish border until the next train can get through. She quickly finishes the small amount of reading material she has with her and runs out of writing paper. There is nothing to do and nobody to talk to, beyond the staff who have no interest in engaging with her.

For the first time in her life, she has nothing but her own mind to fill her days. She takes desultory walks in the surrounding desert, reliving happy memories of her wonderful husband, lovely children, and attentive neighbours. But the more she thinks about her life, the more she comes to realise that she has been living in a smug, self-centred bubble, absolutely unaware of what is really going on around her. Her husband was relieved that she was going away on a long trip because he finds her hard work to live with. Her children pity her and have made hasty, unsuitable marriages to get away from her. The neighbours she has looked down on with their coarse, inferior lives were actually much better off — happy, together, honest. It's an intense and fascinating psychological portrait. Christie wrote this book in three days straight without sleeping, during WW2, and the intensity of tone and the narrative momentum is consistent with this kind of creation. I'd highly recommend it.

The Rose and the Yew Tree by Mary Westmacott

The back half of the Westmacott half dozen is a bit less rewarding. The overarching storyline of this one makes me go "hmmm". I do, however, like the details of a post-WW2 parliamentary election campaign, supposedly gathered by Christie from the experiences of her nephew Jack Watts.

A Daughter's A Daughter by Mary Westmacott

Originally a play and I can imagine it being better in that format. Still, a very clear-sighted and not especially flattering viewpoint on motherhood, written by someone who was mother to an adult daughter who hated this piece of work.

The Burden by Mary Westmacott

The final Westmacott and, like the one above, centred around quasi-parental relationships and the tensions thereof. My main observation coming out of this one: for someone who didn't write much in her crime fiction about children, Christie really loved to write about childhood.

The Nine Tailors by Dorothy L. Sayers

This was the Shedunnit Book Club's December book and my detailed thoughts on it are available to members over there. I already knew that I liked this book a lot (bellringing, crime fiction and East Anglia being three of my favourite things) but on this re-read I unlocked a whole new level of love for it.

The Murder of Mr Wickham by Claudia Gray

Another Austen follow-on, again with a crime slant. Wickham, for obvious reasons, is a popular murder victim in this type of book (P.D. James is not alone in thinking that, although for me, Death Comes to Pemberley was far too weighed down with all the period research she had done to be a good read). I liked this one best of all the Austen-crimes I have read so far, principally because Gray does a great job of blending all the characters from all the different Austen novels together into one wide circle of acquaintance so she has plenty of scope (she explains her reasoning regarding timelines in an explanatory preface). Thus, our amateur detectives are Mr Jonathan Darcy (son of Darcy and Elizabeth) and Miss Juliet Tilney (daughter of Catherine from Northanger Abbey), and they detect a crime that takes place in the home of Emma and Mr Knightley. I will read more of these!

The Victorian Prizefighters series by Alice Coldbreath (three books)

In a similar vein to the K.J. Charles book mentioned above, these are well-structured but quite repetitive historical romance novels that I read either when travelling in hard-to-concentrate circumstances (in this case, incredibly busy and loud trains to a conference) or when extremely tired. If you have similar need for a brain-break but find a lot of supposedly "cosy" fiction frustratingly badly written, these might work for you (as long as you can handle the occasional spicy scene).

December:

Detection Unlimited by Georgette Heyer

The twelfth Heyer detective novel is something of an anticlimax, being very far from her best either in plot or character terms. I'm glad I managed to read all of them this year, though.

Elephants Can Remember by Agatha Christie

Another re-read for an upcoming podcast episode. This one still isn't a favourite of mine, even though I am fond of Mrs Oliver. By 1972, at the age of 82, I think Christie was a bit tired of writing mystery novels.

The Documents in the Case by Dorothy L. Sayers and Robert Eustace

This is the next title in my Green Penguin Book Club series on the podcast and a book I have a real soft spot for. Probably because it's Dorothy L. Sayers at her most peculiar: there's no Peter Wimsey, no conventional mystery structure, and no well-developed characters who go on a journey through the novel. Just 53 documents, laying out the inner lives of the inhabitants of a suburban London villa in the early 1930s and the horrible crime that gets committed as a result. The episode will be out in January.

The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie

This is the Shedunnit Book Club's chosen book for January! Join us if you'd like to discuss it together.

The Adventures of Dagobert Trostler by Balduin Groller

These are short stories starring the "Sherlock Holmes of Vienna", the titular amateur detective, Dagobert Trostler. I really enjoyed these and would have read lots more, but I have so far struggled to find any more English translations beyond the Kazabo edition. If you have any leads for me, please get in touch.

A Case of Life and Limb by Sally Smith

A Christmas present, devoured in one day on 26th December! I recorded this time last year how much I enjoyed the first book in this historical mystery series set in the Inner Temple in the early 1900s, and the second book held up well. Here's hoping Smith keeps up her schedule so I can keep getting these as gifts for some years to come.

These Old Shades by Georgette Heyer

More on this to come in my next reading email...

Carrington's Cases by J. Storer Clouston

Another Christmas gift — a lovely collection of mystery short stories by an Orkney-born writer from the golden age of detective fiction. I suspect my husband worked quite hard to track this down, but if you do get a chance to pick up a copy, it's well worth it.

That was, belatedly, my reading for October, November and December: 28 books across three months, bringing to 121 for the year (if I finish any others in the remaining three days of December, I'll update the total in the next update). I just hit my target of 120 books read in 2025.

I'll have more coherent thoughts about my year of reading and what I plan to do in 2026 for you next week. Thanks for scrolling this far through all of that — I hope you found something to try reading yourself. If you would like to follow along in real time, you can see what I'm reading at any given moment on the Storygraph.

Filed under: Reading Updates, Blog

18 Dec 2025 1 min read Permalink

Someone Who Has Become Very Curmudgeonly In Recent Years

Thirteen things this Thursday that I have read, watched, listened to or otherwise found noteworthy.

Did Jane Austen Invent the Wellness Guy? Yes she did! And there's a whole section in my most recent book (which could still be purchased as a holiday gift, there is time) about this!
Almost nobody writes little memoir vignettes as well as Jean Hannah Edelstein, in my opinion. This one — "A silver clutch that I last used at a wedding" — is wonderful.
When Secret Santa goes wrong: I still think sometimes about the time, 15+ years ago, when a colleague bought me a bag of penis-shaped pasta seemingly as a way to initiate a conversation about my sexuality at the work Christmas party. If only it was a workplace with an HR department...
Spend a week on the Swiss rail system via this video.
Some good tips on writing from a former magazine editor. My favourite is: "Learn to think like a fact-checker".
This BBC list of "ten of the greatest murder mysteries ever" was surprisingly good, and I say that as someone who has become very curmudgeonly in recent years about the apparent nosedive in people's ability to tell what is good in crime fiction.
On Being Interested in Stuff Almost No One is Interested In.
It's harder than it might seem for farmers to stop using plastic.
When Maga came for Calibri, what did you do?
Am I Divorced? A single man wonders.
The finalists for the 2025 Comedy Wildlife Awards.
Soman Chainani writes global YA bestselling novels. He also writes really beautiful blog posts about his partner's farm in Missouri, such as this one about how their herd took care of an accidental early calf during a snowstorm.
This one is for the people who remember when I used to do the "compulsory medieval thingamabob" at the end of every newsletter.

Filed under: Blog, Links

08 Dec 2025 4 min read Permalink

Summer, Station, Scene: What I Read in September 2025

Dead Man's Folly by Agatha Christie

I was a reader of Christie long before I saw any of the film or TV adaptations, so I formed my own imaginary versions of her characters long before I saw any actors interpreting them. But for some reason, with this book only, the 2013 ITV version with David Suchet and Zoe Wanamaker as Hercule Poirot and Ariadne Oliver dominates my mental image of it. Perhaps it's because it was filmed at Greenway, the very house that Christie had in mind when she was writing it? I'm not sure. Anyway, I found myself favourably impressed by the plot upon this re-read, given that this is not a book that is usually named as a top tier Christie mystery. She did a good job here of marrying the old and the new, combining a classic country house setting with some hints of social change. I'm writing about this book shortly for an episode of Shedunnit, so look out for that if you want more extended thoughts on it.

What Abigail Did That Summer and The Furthest Station by Ben Aaronovitch

My audiobook re-listen of the Rivers of London series continues with two of the novellas. I really like both of these stories because they give me my favourite things about Aaronovitch's work — the magic and the London history — without the bit I like least, which is the police procedure and the multi-book nemesis. What Abigail Did That Summer cleverly fills the reader in on what was happening in the capital while usual protagonist Peter Grant was off on a rural case in Foxglove Summer, with his cousin Abigail as narrator. She gets in with a gang of talking foxes on Hampstead Heath, makes a new friend, and gets trapped in a century-old timeloop in a very posh house. Shvorne Marks narrates what I think might be my favourite book in the series so far.

The Furthest Station, another novella, is also great for readers with my preferences, as it's a magical ghost story set in Metroland (ie, along the northern extent of the Metropolitan line). John Betjeman fans, swoon with me. Unlike Abigail, this one stars Peter Grant again and does a great job of running a historical mystery in parallel with a contemporary one, another favourite trope of mine. At about four hours, an excellent listen when you want something engrossing and escapist but can't face committing to another 10+ hour audiobook.

Green for Danger by Christianna Brand

This was the October book for my podcast's book club and a novel I was delighted to revisit — truly one of the best WW2 mysteries and such a clever plot. I've talked at length about it already so I won't repeat myself, but I highly recommend this and the 1946 film starring Alastair Sim.

Going Postal by Terry Pratchett

I mentioned this back in April: I really enjoy the type of book where someone reluctant ends up being terrifically competent and guiding an institution towards a good outcome. And this Discworld book about a convicted thief having to rescue a city's neglected post office and bring it back into operation absolutely scratches this itch for me. The sub-plot involving a cabal of investors who ruin the "clacks" — a semaphore-based telegraph system, basically the technological advance that has killed off the post — felt quite prophetic on this reread given the state of the tech companies these days... I'm only a casual Pratchett-enjoyer (I think I've read about half a dozen of his books, total?) but I've listened to the unabridged audiobook of this one at least three times.

A Rare Book of Cunning Device by Ben Aaronovitch

I fear I am becoming a Ben Aaronovitch completist. This was a short short story that he wrote for an event, now recorded by superb Rivers of London narrator Kobna Holdbrook-Smith. It's brief — under thirty minutes — and the plot is correspondingly simple. Since I love bibliomysteries, I kind of wish he had developed this idea of a sentient book roaming the British Library stacks into something longer.

Let's Make a Scene by Laura Wood

This is a gorgeous novel, a second-chance romance about two actors who originally meet (and clash, despite obvious chemistry) in their youth when they are both cast in a period drama film. It's all made much worse by the fact that the studio puts them in a fake PR relationship to promote the film. At the end of the press tour, they part ways and mutually agree never to speak again. Then they have to come together again thirteen years later to make the sequel. The original film has become a cult classic and their careers have gone in very different directions: formerly inexperienced Cynthie is now an Oscars darling, and alleged nepo baby Jack is doing a vampire TV show, to the disgust of his snobby thespian parents. When the pair reunite, they don't seem to hate each other anymore...

I follow Laura Wood's work because she is an Eva Ibbotson fan and I feel that influence strongly in her fiction. For me, this is her best novel yet — funny, clever, sharp and moving. The passages that deal with Cynthie's "cancellation" because of her affair with a married director are nuanced and feel accurate but don't overwhelm with their topicality, while Jack's struggles with his family and their legacy are likewise handled with a light touch. Wood thanks Emma Thompson in the acknowledgements for writing the The Sense and Sensibility Diaries, which gave her insight into what it's like to make a really good small-budget Austen adaptation, and you can feel that influence. Probably the highest praise I can give this book is that it reads like the off-camera romance you wanted from Sense and Sensibility or the 1995 Pride and Prejudice series.

The Pale Horse by Agatha Christie

Another reread in advance of writing that podcast episode I mentioned up top. My opinions are divided on this 1961 Christie. The solution is fantastic and the creepy misdirection layered on top is pretty good, but I really dislike a lot of the "young people are so dirty and modern" stuff. It's there at least in part because Christie is trying to give her middle-aged male narrator a distinct point of view, but there's enough of it that it was grating on me by the end of the book. I would have preferred more about the witches, honestly, but that's just me.

That was, belatedly, my reading for September: 7 books, bringing me up to 93 for the year to date. I'm a couple of books ahead of the pace needed to hit my target of 120 books read in 2025.

If you would like to follow along in real time, you can see what I'm reading at any given moment on the Storygraph. I just use that as a tracker, though, I don't publish any reviews there. I am trying to catch up with these reviews before the end of the year...

Filed under: Blog, Reading Updates

04 Dec 2025 2 min read Permalink

When The Writing Is Very Good That Doesn't Matter

Thirteen things this Thursday that I have read, watched, listened to or otherwise found noteworthy.

Somehow, the most insightful thing I have read/seen about contemporary social media usage is this Google Slides presentation. It's got over 400 slides but they're really quick to tap through; it's almost like a flipbook. The primary takeaway is: be weird and don't care about what everyone else is doing.
May you never be too old or jaded to have a good cry at an xkcd comic.
I was surprised to find myself both gripped and moved by this essay by Brandon Taylor about starting playing tennis because he was lonely and then going to a fancy tennis camp in the south of France instead of celebrating Thanksgiving. I don't care about this sport or celebrate that holiday, but when the writing is very good that doesn't matter. I really recognised this bit: "At one point, I had what I thought were friends, and at another, seemingly overnight, no one spoke to me or tried to see me, and what I had were in fact reciprocal story likes on Instagram."
It is essential that you watch this video all the way through.
On virtuosity vs "performing" virtuosity.
A report on a visit to the "Bop House", a three-storey penthouse in Florida where six attractive young women are turbo-charging their OnlyFans operation.
If you have even the slightest interest in how the internet works, this is a good click.
An enumeration of all the different types of scams out there targeting writers. I would add, these also exist for podcasts — the number of emails I get offering me "free promotion on Apple Podcasts for the low starting price of $50" is quite astonishing.
An antidote to the greatest scam of them all: Spotify's harvesting of your personal data and then somehow convincing you to do free marketing for them at the most lucrative time of year! This phenomenon also goes by the name of "Spotify Unwrapped". I've got back into using LastFM this year and I highly recommend it if you like data about your music consumption.
The Last Video Rental Store Is Your Public Library. I co-sign this! DVD/CD players are very cheap these days, and you can borrow all the audiobooks and films you like without paying a monthly fee.
A random Wikipedia page I enjoyed: Ice cream barge.
The first of a four-part essay on "the devoid", a twenty-first century Gothic space.
MacKenzie Scott, ex-wife of Jeff Bezos, is quietly disrupting the world of high-level philanthropy by... just giving worthy organisations money without attaching any conditions. A revolutionary thought!

Filed under: Blog, Links

27 Nov 2025 1 min read Permalink

Win The Right To Supply The President With Baguettes

Thirteen things this Thursday that I have read, watched, listened to or otherwise found noteworthy.

The most popular link last time was this piece about packing for a 25-city book tour, with this look at Dua Lipa's dream job second.

If you're a productive procrastinator like me, you might need this: Things That Aren't Doing the Thing.
Pictures of Glenn Gould at the piano in 1956.
I love a very specific Wikipedia page, such as this one for the "Concours de la meilleure baguette de Paris". If you win this contest, you get a medal, 4,000 euros, and the right to supply the French president with baguettes for the year. And presumably bragging rights over all the other Parisian bakers.
I enjoyed this book extract exploring the possibility that the first aliens to reach Earth might not be the super science-y ones.
The novelists are fighting (over desks).
Smart analysis of the new social media paradigm, where "your content either gets seen by no one or everyone". If you're a company or a person trying to do something tangible with your posts, that's tough. The "middle lane", where at least your followers would see what you were posting, is now gone.
Lovely ideas for how to fill a sketchbook.
Why don't people return their trolleys (or shopping carts, if you're of that persuasion) after using them? Lots of reasons, most of them bad! It's a fascinating microcosm for studying civic behaviour.
I felt extremely targeted (in a good way, ultimately) by this piece about "selective agency in capable people": Maybe you’re not Actually Trying.
Why Is Everyone’s Robot Folding Clothes? Because we've only just started to be able to make robots that can fold clothes, it looks impressive, and it conceals the things that robots still aren't good at.
The future of publishing isn't AI, it's small presses.
We have emoji because of a physics joke gone wrong.
I have been known to snark a bit about romantasy. It's not for me! But I also like to read decent criticism about it, and this is a great example of that.

Filed under: Blog, Links