Reading Wednesday
Aug. 9th, 2023 09:19 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
troisoiseauxCurrently reading
- Agent Garbo by Stephan Talty, about Juan Pujol García, a WWII double agent who fed disinformation from the British to the Germans. This is one of those absolutely bonkers true stories that would be too improbable to believe if it were fiction. You can read an amusingly phrased summary here, but it misses one of the most genuinely insane events of his spy career: the time he faked his own arrest and trial for treason in order to convince his disgruntled wife not to follow through with her threats to blow his operation. (She apparently bluffed him/MI5 right back, by faking a suicide attempt, but ultimately agreed she wouldn't blow his cover. You will be unsurprised to learn their marriage didn't last.)
- Perilous Times by Thomas D. Lee, in which the knights of the Round Table are immortals doomed to be resurrected whenever Britain is in peril— in its near-future setting, the peril is climate change and also dragons— and Christopher Marlowe is an evil immortal bureaucrat, for some reason?? I'm only a couple of chapters in, but I love it already.
Currently listening
Still following Re: Dracula, which I continue to find even spookier and more emotionally compelling than when I read Dracula last year— I'd kind of rushed through the voyage of the Demeter when I read the book, but with the updates spaced out, and read aloud, the captain's voice (provided by another Magnus Archives alumnus, Alasdair Stuart (aka Peter Lukas)) increasingly wretched with each desperate log entry...!!! This audio adaptation includes original songs to mark the end of significant sections— Jonathan's last journal entry from Dracula's castle ("Bite"); the last entry in the captain's log from the Demeter ("The Ratcatcher")— which is a very cool touch.
- Agent Garbo by Stephan Talty, about Juan Pujol García, a WWII double agent who fed disinformation from the British to the Germans. This is one of those absolutely bonkers true stories that would be too improbable to believe if it were fiction. You can read an amusingly phrased summary here, but it misses one of the most genuinely insane events of his spy career: the time he faked his own arrest and trial for treason in order to convince his disgruntled wife not to follow through with her threats to blow his operation. (She apparently bluffed him/MI5 right back, by faking a suicide attempt, but ultimately agreed she wouldn't blow his cover. You will be unsurprised to learn their marriage didn't last.)
- Perilous Times by Thomas D. Lee, in which the knights of the Round Table are immortals doomed to be resurrected whenever Britain is in peril— in its near-future setting, the peril is climate change and also dragons— and Christopher Marlowe is an evil immortal bureaucrat, for some reason?? I'm only a couple of chapters in, but I love it already.
Currently listening
Still following Re: Dracula, which I continue to find even spookier and more emotionally compelling than when I read Dracula last year— I'd kind of rushed through the voyage of the Demeter when I read the book, but with the updates spaced out, and read aloud, the captain's voice (provided by another Magnus Archives alumnus, Alasdair Stuart (aka Peter Lukas)) increasingly wretched with each desperate log entry...!!! This audio adaptation includes original songs to mark the end of significant sections— Jonathan's last journal entry from Dracula's castle ("Bite"); the last entry in the captain's log from the Demeter ("The Ratcatcher")— which is a very cool touch.
no subject
Date: 2023-08-10 12:47 am (UTC)