Hosted by Taking on a World of Words, this meme is all about the three Ws:
- What are you currently reading?
- What did you recently finish reading?
- What do you think you’ll read next?
Why not join in too? Leave a comment with your link at Taking on a World of Words and then go blog hopping!
What I’m Currently Reading
May We Feed the King by Rebecca Perry (Granta)
She is a curator, who spends her time dressing the rooms of historic buildings to bring them to life. But in the lush private quarters of a medieval palace, she finds herself so transfixed by the reign of an almost-forgotten King that the edges of her life begin to blur.
He is a reluctant ruler with no hunger for power, rushed to the throne after the untimely deaths of his older brothers. But it isn’t long before whispers begin to fly around the court. And with the growing belief that the King is not fit for the throne comes the idea that another might rule in his stead.
Doom Painting by A. K. Blakemore (Granta via NetGalley)
It is 1381. England, reeling from plague and years of conflict abroad, is a tinderbox waiting to spark. Two childhood friends ride into the town of Brentwood, Essex, where they come upon an altercation with a local Justice bent on squeezing more coin from the masses. Thus begins a rebellion of the common folk – loyal to the king, but not to those wealthy landowners who curtail their freedoms; the multitude finding cause against the powers that threaten their livelihoods.
Set over sixteen days, Doom Painting roves across England as the revolt grows and swells and the rebels march to London to take their demands to the child-king Richard II. Out of the rebellion emerges its enigmatic and charismatic leader Wat Tyler, an opportunistic and mercurial rogue whose morality is birthed by the cause, and who shapes an identity for the English which has never been lost.
What I’ve Just Read
V is for Venom: Agatha Christie’s Chemicals of Death by Kathryn Harkup
The Housekeeper by Rose Tremain (Vintage)
Mrs Danowski – known as Danni – is the housekeeper of a grand mansion on the wild coast of Cornwall. When glamorous young writer Daphne du Maurier visits Manderville Hall to research her new novel, she and Danni are drawn into a clandestine and intoxicating affair.
For Danni, it is an all-consuming love; for Daphne a submission to long-suppressed desires. But their fragile secret is vulnerable to prying eyes and destined for heartbreak. When Daphne’s novel launches to triumphant success, Danni is distraught to find herself transformed into a malign and jealous character on the page. She seeks respite from the hurt by telling her own story: The Housekeeper. (Review to follow)
What I’ll Be Reading Next
Creatures of Circumstance by W. Somerset Maugham (Heinemann)
The short stories in this extraordinary collection – with the exception of one – were written after the close of World War I. Maugham shrewdly and brilliantly exploited the public taste of his time to put on display the changing morality of the twentieth century. An expert storyteller, he was also a master of fictional technique. His fiction offers a synthesis of pleasures in the form of realism, exoticism, shrewd and ironic observation, careful craftsmanship, and characterization.
Among the stories included in Creatures of Circumstance are “The Colonel’s Lady,” “Flotsam and Jetsam,” “Sanatorium,” “Appearance and Reality,” “The Point of Honor,” “A Woman of Fifty,” “The Man from Glasgow,” and “The Kite.”
