2019/128: Wayward Son -- Rainbow Rowell

2019/128: Wayward Son -- Rainbow Rowell

The therapist said I needed to work through the past to keep it from undermining the present. And I said— Well, I didn’t say anything. I skipped my next appointment and didn’t make any more. [loc. 442]

I very much enjoyed Carry On, and was looking forward to this sequel (which turns out to be the middle volume of a trilogy): I was disappointed, though,( mild spoilers )

2019/129: Gaudy Night -- Dorothy Sayers [reread]

2019/129: Gaudy Night -- Dorothy Sayers [reread]

The young were always theoretical; only the middle-aged could realise the deadliness of principles. To subdue one’s self to one’s own ends might be dangerous, but to subdue one’s self to other people’s ends was dust and ashes. Yet there were those, still more unhappy, who envied even the ashy saltiness of those dead sea apples. [loc. 6327]

I think this might have been the first Lord Peter Wimsey novel I read, and it's still my favourite, perhaps because it's told wholly from the viewpoint of Harriet Vane. She's fragile in quite a different way to shell-shocked, upper-class Lord Peter. Harriet, who first appeared on trial in Strong Poison, is labouring under the knowledge that she owes her life to a man who's in love with her. For a weaker woman, or a more Gothic heroine, this would mean a glad surrender to marriage, but Harriet is proud and fiercely independent, and can't countenance an(other) unequal relationship.( no spoilers )

2019/130: The Fortune Hunters -- Joan Aiken

2019/130: The Fortune Hunters -- Joan Aiken

“It isn’t only that sometimes I can’t remember what I’ve been doing. Now I’m beginning to be afraid—afraid that I might find out.” [loc. 2218]

Annette has recently moved to a small town near the coast. She's experienced three major life events in recent months: the death of her father, a substantial windfall, and an unpleasant bout of 'pneumonia complicated by jaundice', which has left her prone to fits of amnesia.
( no spoilers )

2019/131: The Maker of Swans -- Padraig O'Donnell

2019/131: The Maker of Swans -- Padraig O'Donnell

Words, in their minds, were not fixed to things as a tendon is to a muscle. Every particle of creation, to them, was submerged in a flux of words. Everything was contiguous with everything else, the touching of one word or object setting up currents and mutations that seemed never to stop. They described the world by ceaselessly unsettling it... [p. 26]

The Maker of Swans is a beautifully-written but overly obscure gothic novel with strong fantastical elements. ( probably no spoilers, but who knows )