My Gracious Silence

 As this is (nominally) a LJ of reading, I thought I'd swipe the book meme that azdak posted:

The book I am currently reading:  England's Mistress, by Kate Willams - about Emma Hamilton.  Bought at random in Waterstones because it was World Book Day and I was going to buy an actual book in an actual bookshop, darnit.   I know nothing about Emma Hamilton beyond the fact that she was Nelson's lover, so it's interesting to find out more.  The book's well written and does, thankfully, seem to make it clear where they are extrapolating from the known experiences of other people in a similar situation (as to childhood/teenage etc experiences) rather than discussing something actually known about Emma.

The book I am currently writing: another tax book - on intellectual property, again.

The book I love most: to read, Gaudy Night.  As a physical object, a book on calculus that was my grandfather's at school - it's gorgeous, bound in soft leather with thin pages, and is covered in neat scribbling of his thoughts and questions as he worked through it.

The last book I received as a gift: I have no idea.  People tend not to give me books because they don't know what's already in the 4,000+ here at home.  

The last book I gave as a gift: a book on architecture details, to nephew for his birthday about six weeks ago - he wants to study architecture at Cambridge.

The nearest book on my desk: I have a small desk, there's isn't a book on it, unless you count the books stored on my Kindle app on the iPhone and iPhone?  In which case the open book in the iPhone app is A History of Christianity by Diarmaid MacCulloch and the open book in the iPad app is Abraham Lincoln and the Structure of Reason by a couple of lawyers and I'm too lazy to turn on the iPad to find out their names.  The iPad and iPhone are stacked together, so I can't tell which is nearest.  The nearest physical book is impossible to tell, as the desk in the middle of shelves, there are rather a lot all at the same distance away from the edges!

And finally - still not running yet. My kneecap is still numb in the middle and hypersensitive around the top, so I'm disinclined to stress-test it.  Maybe next week.

Wandered homewards via Mecklenburg Square. There were people in the Square garden playing tennis, energetically if rather erratically. The continuity across decades was rather comforting.

Reading: Death on the Air - the Ngaio Marsh kick continues.

http://gaudynight.com/

"And we know the sex is great because Harriet doesn’t get around to sourcing the quotation for ten whole days." Fabulous quote.

Early morning, late night. It's dark and I sit in a small pool of light, a single and not especially powerful lightbulb as the only light on in the house or hereabouts. Even the streetlighting is off. The cats are asleep, snuffling softly after imagined rabbits. I've been reading Virginia Woolf's Thoughts on Peace in an Air Raid, as it went with the mood and the recent re-listening to A Presumption of Death and a sudden burst of wimseyfic reading.

Odd how many people who write wimseyfic also seem to write vorkosiganfic; then again, as they seem to write Cordelia/Aral, perhaps it's not at all surprising. Harriet Vane and Cordelia Vorkosigan: perhaps the closest I come to having heroes.