Books and Stuff (NS, No 2): Reading In May 2020 (Part 2)

You can see the post about the splurge of reading I did in the first part of the month here.  Since then I've settled down a little (basically, I'm sleeping better, so not reading into the early hours, which is obviously a good thing).  As the reception of that post was positve, I am reviving the series where I look at what I've been reading (probably on a monthly business).

Read

J D Davies, The Mountain of Gold

The second of the Matthew Quinton series about a captain in the Restoration Navy.  In this one he get's involved with Robert Holmes and a version of one of his River Gambia expeditions.  About half the book is involved with Quinton's domestic problems, but I don't mind that.

This book held up to the promise of the first, and I shall carry on with the series.  Holmes has just started the Second Anglo-Dutch War, so things will be livening up a little!

Arthur Conan Doyle, Tales of Unease

I mentioned this on my earlier post.  As I've said, I'm a fan of Conan Doyle and his, under-rated non-Holmes stories.

These tales of the supernatural rate nicely with the RW Chambers ones I read earlier in the month, and although they don't reach the peak of MR James, are very good.  Being Doyle, many of them touch on Spiritualism and many or the heroes are medical men, but there are two very good mummy stories, a satirical story about the electric chair (!!) and even a story (from 1913) about the perils of aviation.  Well worth digging out if your interested in pre-Hollywood horror and ghost stories.

Currently Reading

Peter Le Fevre and Richard Harding (edd), Precursers of Nelson: British Admirals of the Eighteenth Century

And I've continued with the series of biographical articles on Admirals of the long-C18th.  I've now got up to Vernon and Hawke, so am on a little firmer ground that I was with the earlier ones.