General reading update/a trip to the library

Reading has been a bit slow lately, partly because of Yuletide writing (which is going reasonably well so far), partly through lack of opportunity.

I recently finished A Shadow Above: The Fall and Rise of the Raven by Joe Shute, an interesting and somewhat odd natural history. Shute examines the various symbolical and practical relationships people have had, and have now, with the raven, across time and cultures, all in the context of the species's recent improved fortunes and spread back across much of its old range. I hadn't realised quite how far that return had progressed, and some of the descriptions of how numerous they apparently are in some places seemed frankly improbable (they're still only 'very rare vagrants' where I live, sadly), but it was all fascinating and sometimes disturbing. I thought the prose didn't really live up to the subject—something like this really needs to be properly vivid and dramatic, which it wasn't always, and the occasional minor SPAG errors were less easy to ignore because of that—and that Shute missed out quite a bit of the relevant political context in discussing conflict between humans and ravens, but it was still enjoyable. (By far the book's gravest flaw, of course, is that it never mentions Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell, despite including a discussion of the raven in historical and current popular culture. Why not???)

However, I went to the library this afternoon, which so far seems like the best of the big public libraries in the various places I've lived in. I found:

• A big book about the traditional knitting styles of fishing communities around Britain, particularly ganseys and similar jumpers, with patterns included. I've wanted to learn to make proper Fair Isle jumpers for ages, and this book will be a great resource—it has not only the instructions but background about the history and context of the clothes. The author apparently made a journey around the coasts gathering knowledge from local knitters as the traditions were dying out in the late twentieth century, and it all looks like fascinating stuff.


• The Castle of Otranto by Horace Walpole, which I'm sure will be terribly exciting. I think this was one of Catherine Morland's favourites.


• Doreen by Barbara Noble, which I found by the tried and true method of looking along the shelves, seeing a Persephone edition and going 'ooh, those are usually relevant to my interests!'. I have a love-hate relationship with these editions, because on the one hand they're really pretty and well put together, they are usually relevant to my interests and the distinctive style makes them easy to pick out on library and bookshop shelves, but on the other hand they don't have summaries on the covers, which is extremely annoying and means it's always a bit of a gamble picking one up. We shall see how this one goes.


• Waverley by Walter Scott, which I am now thirty pages into. I've read Ivanhoe and Rob Roy, and my general opinion of Scott based on those is that he has an amazing talent for creating really interesting situations and then approaching them from the least interesting possible angle. However, when I remembered what Waverley is about it seemed inevitable that I'd have to read it, and so far the protagonist does seem to be a bit more colourful than those of the other books. He's just got to Scotland, so I await what happens next with some interest. :D


• Two different editions of A Scots Quair by Lewis Grassic Gibbon, which I didn't take out because I already have a copy, but which it was very good to see. I abandoned the trilogy after Sunset Song because I thought it must be impossible to say anything more after such a ridiculously perfect book as that, but actually I probably will get round to reading the other two at some point, so it was good to be reminded of it.