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I probably should start cross-posting the "What I Read This Month" blog posts I've been endeavouring to write in this thread too.

Please do I should really read more Poirot, I supervised a whole thesis looking at Agatha Christie novels and still didn't get round to reading more of them...


Meanwhile what I have read is my ninth fiction book of the year, The Somewhat Wicked Witch of Brigandale by CM Waggoner. I enjoyed it, it was definitely light reading but light reading well pitched in my direction. It's one of those books which thinks about the fact that it's a book, something that can be self-indulgent but is handled in a way that comes across as awkwardly but percipiently self-knowing in a way that I think speaks well to lovers of stories: and it very much is a story, it's not really trying to world-build as fantasy but rather to achieve a sort of self-knowing, gently funny book that only doesn't become satire because the humour isn't quite barbed enough.

I don't think one can talk about this book much more than that without mentioning Terry Pratchett: I am pretty confident in saying that Waggoner a) has read and b) loved to bits his Witches books, and she definitely produces witches and indeed writing styles in that mould, full of asides and scattered thoughts and footnotes. What she's attempting is gentler than Pratchett's work - it doesn't punch as hard, doesn't have the calmly burning underlying anger of a good man which defined his writing. It nonetheless rhymes with his work, and what it does have is a certain crisp observational sort of humour and willingness to self-analyse which are welcome in their knowing humanity, and the sort of cosy-Pratchettianism that resulted was definitely something I very much enjoyed. Will need to read more of this author in future. Very much recommend if you want something gentle and funny to read!