Recent reading
Mar. 1st, 2026 02:26 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
regshoeI have been overdoing it again (there are too many good things to do!) and am not feeling brilliantly up to writing complex book reviews, but we'll see what I can manage:
The Lonely Londoners by Sam Selvon (1955). I was browsing shelves at the (tiny local) library a few days ago and realised that they've been keeping the books I reserve from other libraries around the county, rather than sending them back where they started: almost every vaguely old book there, if it wasn't a very well-known classic, was something I'd ordered and read in the last year. This was the one exception I could find, so I picked it up. It's about Caribbean immigrants in post-war London, beginning with Moses, a Trinidadian who's been in Britain for some years already and now observes the arrival of more and various other Caribbeans. The narrative follows each of these people for a little while, exploring their personalities, how they get on in London and how they experience the sometimes hostile reactions of white Brits to their presence. It's written in a blend of standard English with Caribbean dialect (apparently Selvon tried to write in standard English at first but it just wouldn't work; I can see that this works a lot better), and the general mood is partly grim humour and partly what I'd call 'various' or 'it's all really complicated, isn't it'. It's very good, if not the most enjoyable book ever.
Mrs Overtheway's Remembrances by Juliana Horatia Ewing (1869). I picked this one up hoping for something about the early nineteenth century as seen from the perspective of the late nineteenth century, which is one of my favourite themes in Victorian fiction, but it's not really that, though the premise sounds like it might be. A lonely child amuses herself by watching the comings and goings of the old woman who lives across the street; eventually they get to know each other properly and Mrs Overtheway tells young Ida some stories about her early life. But the stories are really just stories that could have been contemporary rather than even incidental historical commentary, and I didn't find them all that interesting as stories; that was disappointing, but at least Ewing's skill at writing child POVs and her love of plants and gardening, fully on display in this book, were good.
The Blood of the Martyrs by Naomi Mitchison (1939). This book is about the early Christians in Emperor Nero's Rome, it's six hundred pages long, it is exactly like what the title sounds like it's going to be like and it is compelling in the way where I really mean that word. Mitchison is so endlessly worth reading.
King of Dust: Adventures in Forgotten Sculpture by Alex Woodcock (2019). First of all, please admire the beautiful cover design. The author's career approached the subject of this book, Romanesque architecture in medieval churches in the southwest of England, from multiple directions: he completed a PhD in the study of it, then trained as a stonemason and spent several years employed in that capacity at Exeter Cathedral. The book isn't a memoir telling that story; instead Woodcock describes his visits to various notable pieces of church architecture around Cornwall, Devon and Dorset, interspersing the descriptions with out-of-order and incomplete bits of his own biography where relevant, and also with the history of the study and appreciation of the Romanesque and some thoughts about the meaning and significance of both the style and stone-carving in general. It's a thoughtfully-constructed and well-written book, and I liked it very much despite knowing almost nothing about the subject.
The Lonely Londoners by Sam Selvon (1955). I was browsing shelves at the (tiny local) library a few days ago and realised that they've been keeping the books I reserve from other libraries around the county, rather than sending them back where they started: almost every vaguely old book there, if it wasn't a very well-known classic, was something I'd ordered and read in the last year. This was the one exception I could find, so I picked it up. It's about Caribbean immigrants in post-war London, beginning with Moses, a Trinidadian who's been in Britain for some years already and now observes the arrival of more and various other Caribbeans. The narrative follows each of these people for a little while, exploring their personalities, how they get on in London and how they experience the sometimes hostile reactions of white Brits to their presence. It's written in a blend of standard English with Caribbean dialect (apparently Selvon tried to write in standard English at first but it just wouldn't work; I can see that this works a lot better), and the general mood is partly grim humour and partly what I'd call 'various' or 'it's all really complicated, isn't it'. It's very good, if not the most enjoyable book ever.
Mrs Overtheway's Remembrances by Juliana Horatia Ewing (1869). I picked this one up hoping for something about the early nineteenth century as seen from the perspective of the late nineteenth century, which is one of my favourite themes in Victorian fiction, but it's not really that, though the premise sounds like it might be. A lonely child amuses herself by watching the comings and goings of the old woman who lives across the street; eventually they get to know each other properly and Mrs Overtheway tells young Ida some stories about her early life. But the stories are really just stories that could have been contemporary rather than even incidental historical commentary, and I didn't find them all that interesting as stories; that was disappointing, but at least Ewing's skill at writing child POVs and her love of plants and gardening, fully on display in this book, were good.
The Blood of the Martyrs by Naomi Mitchison (1939). This book is about the early Christians in Emperor Nero's Rome, it's six hundred pages long, it is exactly like what the title sounds like it's going to be like and it is compelling in the way where I really mean that word. Mitchison is so endlessly worth reading.
King of Dust: Adventures in Forgotten Sculpture by Alex Woodcock (2019). First of all, please admire the beautiful cover design. The author's career approached the subject of this book, Romanesque architecture in medieval churches in the southwest of England, from multiple directions: he completed a PhD in the study of it, then trained as a stonemason and spent several years employed in that capacity at Exeter Cathedral. The book isn't a memoir telling that story; instead Woodcock describes his visits to various notable pieces of church architecture around Cornwall, Devon and Dorset, interspersing the descriptions with out-of-order and incomplete bits of his own biography where relevant, and also with the history of the study and appreciation of the Romanesque and some thoughts about the meaning and significance of both the style and stone-carving in general. It's a thoughtfully-constructed and well-written book, and I liked it very much despite knowing almost nothing about the subject.
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Date: Mar. 1st, 2026 04:07 pm (UTC)How cool to train in a subject academically and then do it practically in a whole different way, as well.
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Date: Mar. 1st, 2026 05:57 pm (UTC)She really is! And she wrote about so many different things, it's amazing! I'm looking forward to reading this one!