Recent Highlights

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It's been rather a long time since I last posted, so I thought I'd do a recap of some recent reading highlights.

Fiction

I've been enjoying quite a few mystery/detective stories recently. I really enjoyed Death on the Cherwell by Mavis Doriel Hay, a murder mystery set in 1930s Oxford. St Peter's Fair and The Leper of St Giles, books four and five in Ellis Peters' Cadfael series, were also very good. Unnatural Death, the third Lord Peter Wimsey book by Dorothy L. Sayers, didn't quite live up to the others in the series I've read, but it was still enjoyable. A Plague on Both Your Houses by Susanna Gregory, set in medieval Cambridge, was good, but not really to my taste; it was a bit more thriller-y than the other books I've mentioned here, with lots of twists and turns and not knowing who to trust, which is not really my sort of thing, although it kept me reading to find out what would happen.

I've also read several lesser-known vintage novels: I really enjoyed A College Girl by Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey (although the title is slightly misleading, as not much of the story is set at college; it's more a coming-of-age tale); The Girls of St. Wode's by L.T. Meade was also very enjoyable, and The Diary of a Goose Girl by Kate Douglas Wiggin was a quick, entertaining read (although rather lacking in plot).

Other books I enjoyed were A Walk Across the Sun by Corban Addison, several books in the Alice-Miranda series by Jacqueline Harvey, and The Lay of Aotrou and Itroun by J.R.R. Tolkien.

Non-Fiction

Mere Christianity and Letters to Malcolm by C.S. Lewis were both excellent (as Lewis always is). Misreading Scripture with Western Eyes by E. Randolph Richards and Brandon J. O'Brien gave me a lot to think about. Fierce Convictions by Karen Swallow Prior, a biography of Hannah More, was a great read; she is a fascinating person to read about.

Currently Reading

The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis (almost finished)
A Man of Some Repute by Elizabeth Edmondson
North Side of the Tree by Maggie Prince (just started, but really enjoying)
The Diamond of Drury Lane by Julia Golding
Charlotte Fairlie by D.E. Stevenson

Anticipating

Death in the Arena, the third books in the Roman Quests series by Caroline Lawrence, which comes out this week. I really enjoyed the first two books, so I'm looking forward to this one.

I've got a few reviews hanging around in my drafts that I'll probably post soon, so hopefully there'll be a rather shorter interval between this and my next post.