Late again!
I started the last reading week with a DNF: ‘This Finer Shadow’ (1941) by Harlan Cozad McIntosh, in The Green Carnations collection of “classic queer fiction” which I have been reading off and on for literally years. This one had 30 chapters. I tapped out after Ch 5, skipped to Ch 30, confirmed that the MC ends up back where he started (on a commercial freighter), still self deluding & unpleasant & having learned nothing. Why the editors consider this a classic is beyond me. Utterly failed at making me care.
2. [re-read: I first read this way back in grad school when I was mainlining all things French Revolution] ‘Scaramouche’ (1921) by Rafael Sabatini. The ebook file was glitchy but this is a cracking good adventure in which all the people we’ve come to care about survive/escape and the slow & conflicted underlying love story gets a happy conclusion. Plus, as I am feeling somewhat revolutionary these days myself, I appreciated the anti-plutarchy sentiments.
3. ‘Asmodeus: or, The Devil On Two Sticks’ (1707) by Alain-Rene le Sage, transl. J. Thomas, another glitchy ebook file; not what one would now consider a novel. This is one of the 18th century’s greatest bestsellers (in many different formats from French book to English book to serials to chapbooks to stage productions), according to that thing I recently read about the social use of books in England. It’s a moral tale in which a licentious Spanish student, fleeing men with swords who surprised him in the bedchamber of a lady he shouldn’t have been with, finds refuge in a temporarily deserted magician’s chamber where a demon speaks to him from his imprisonment in a witch bottle and convinces the student to let him out. The demon then takes the student on a 12-hour tour of the city (Madrid, I believe), telling stories about all the people they see, mostly illustrating that people are lustful, greedy, faithless, violent pigs, but throwing in some tales of virtue, occasionally rewarded. Along the way, they observe a house fire in which a young lady is trapped. The student begs the demon to get her out. The demon assumes the student’s form and does so; the student is then assumed to be the hero and is, ultimately, offered the young lady’s hand in marriage as a reward from her rich father. The conclusion involves the magician discovering his escapee and summoning the demon back to captivity, while the student presumably goes on to live a more virtuous life. Weird and nothing but talk (occasionally taking the form of philosophical dialogue), but entertaining. My 1820 characters would definitely have been familiar with this, which is why I read it.
4. ‘Death by Petticoat: American History Myths Debunked’ by Mary Miley Theobald, a history professor and former docent at Colonial Williamsburg. Most, but not all, of this I already knew; it’s short & entertaining, recommended.