I’ve been reading so much lately it felt time to write another post of this type. After what has been a long semi-slump – which often turned into a short complete slump – I’ve a lot of motivation.

My current older read, though I use ‘current’ loosely as the book is not a priority at the moment, is Charlotte Turner Smith’s Emmeline – the full title includes ‘The Orphan Of The Castle’ but I’m going to employ the single word/name most of the time. (I’m not sure how correct that is, but many pages online shorten it.) I discovered Turner Smith some years ago but Emmeline, which is a Cinderella-type story, was only available in scanned fragments of old editions and difficult to find in print. In the years since, Project Gutenberg have produced a full text. Finding that made my day.

Born in the mid 1700s, Turner Smith led a mixed life. She was rather well-known in literary circles for her poetry – she wrote both poetry and prose, a good few novels at that – finding praise from Wordsworth and Coleridge, but otherwise her life was not so good. Her husband got into enough debt that he was sent to prison and Turner Smith joined him; the couple separated at one point and whilst the author later made good money she ultimately ended up in poverty.

I intend to make the book a priority when I can; at the moment I’m just a few pages in, having wanted to get a sense of the atmosphere. So far, so great. There’s a very, very, gentle humour and a lot of what seems to be goodwill. It’s a fairly long book but yes, if these few pages are something to go by, it’ll be worth it. I wasn’t aware of Turner Smith’s other work, didn’t even know she was a poet, and I can’t remember how and why I first found out about her, but I’m considering reading her other work if I enjoy this one. I love the idea of reading older fiction and as this is 1700s (which is quite early in terms of female writers – I’m also looking at 1600s’ Aphra Behn) it suits.

Emma Henderson’s The Valentine House has been welcomed this month. I had been wondering if she was writing a second book, after her Orange Prize shortlister, Grace Williams Says It Loud; it’s been an exciting few days. There seems to be a bit of a disability theme going on, with one character making vague references to a ‘weird gait’ and what appears to be Bell’s Palsy. I’m almost half-way through and it’s not been made clear yet but again, as with Henderson’s previous book, it’s a look at things from a more distant view, for want of a better term, and the focus is on the story. I’m not quite sure where the narrative is going but I think it may turn out to be one of those books you read to relax. It’s set in various decades of the 20th century, always in the French Alps, and features a lot about climbing and family requirements. This said, there’s a sexual theme lingering beneath that is quite dark – it may well be that it’s a nice easy read up to a certain point.

Phillip Lewis’s The Barrowfields made my (previous) week. I was working on a deadline, semi-self imposed as review deadlines can be, and it was the best kind of book for such a situation – I could have stopped reading, in that ‘could put it down’ way, but I was really very happy to continue. I came close to waxing lyrical in my review so I won’t carry on now except to say I’m really looking forward to Lewis’ next, even if I’ve not heard hide nor hair of it.

Jennifer Donnelly’s Revolution is fairly good. I’m finding the writing a bit lazy, as though Donnelly has tried too hard to get contemporary young adult speech right, and the letters written by a 1700s teenager don’t read any differently, but the story is promising. It’s a lovely little book; I found a hardback copy which was very welcome as I’d wanted the book for a while and it was one of those situations where you regret not having got a book before a cover change.

I’ve Sarah Perry’s The Essex Serpent waiting in the wings. I might be very excited about that.

What are you reading?