jeff wayne – A Keyboard and an Open Mind

It’s time for WWW Wednesday! This blog hop is hosted by Sam over at A World Of Words. Link up with us by commenting on Sam’s post for this week, and just answer the three questions.

I’m trying to get back into blogging this week! We came back from overseas and immediately had to organise moving house, which was an event. We now everything in the new place, though we’re yet to unpack most of it. Everything is in piles in the living room!

All this is to say is that I feel like I haven’t had a lot of time for reading and even when I’ve had time, I’ve felt too tired. But when I sat down to write this post, I realised I’ve finished four books so ffar this month, and that’s pretty much on par with my usual reading pace. And I feel that this week I have pulled out of my reading slump, so hopefully I’ll be speeding through some great books from here on out.

What have you recently finished reading?

The first thing I finished since my last post was The Women in Black by Madeleine St. John, a book that is considered something of an Australian classic. I really enjoyed this slice-of-life, peering into the lives of several different women in late 1950s Sydney. Here’s my review.

After that I listened to Jeff Wayne’s The War of the Worlds: The Musical Drama, which… isn’t really an audio book, more of a musical full cast dramatisation, but it has a listing on GoodReads, so I’ll take it. I’m a fan of Jeff Wayne’s original 100 minute War of the Worlds album from the 70s, so at first I wasn’t sure about this, but I ended up loving it, even without the songs.

Next up, I’ve read Evangeline and the Alchemist and Evangeline and the Bunyip, the first two novellas in the Antics of Evangeline series by Madeleine D’Este. These are entertaining, though I wish there was some more fleshing out of Evangeline’s back story. No reviews yet because I’m going to review the series as a whole when I’ve finished it.

And then there was my favourite book so far this month, Gods of Jade and Shadow by Silvia Moreno-Garcia. It’s a hard book to describe, but it is a book that deserves to be read all in one sitting, rather than the dribs and drabs over a month that I read it in. It’s folklore-y and fairytale-y and that’s the only way I know how to describe it.

Other reviews I’ve posted since my last WWW:

Good Omens by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman
Women of Wasps and War by Madeleine D’Este.

What are you currently reading?

I started Dead Blondes and Bad Mothers: Monstrosity, Patriarchy, and the Fear of Female Power by Sady Doyle, which examines depictions of women in such things as horror movies and true crime fandom. At first, I wasn’t sure I would make it through the first chapter, since apparently even descriptions of The Exorcist are enough to creep me out and have me walking around my own house with my back to the wall. But I’m a few chapters in now and I think I can cope with most of the horror content.

I left Dead Blondes… at work yesterday and needed something to read at home last night so I started my other library book, Suicide Club by Rachel Heng. I guess you’d call this a dystopia, but it’s set in a recognisable not-too-distant future America where bodily enhancements mean immortality is within humanity’s reach… but at what cost?

Last but not least, I am listening to Scratchman by Tom Baker and James Goss. It’s also narrated by Tom Baker, which is perfect. I haven’t read any DW books in a while, and most of the ones I have read recently have been 10th or 11th Doctor-era. So this has been fun.