Weekly media report - for the week ending 2025 10 29
Oct. 29th, 2025 02:18 pmBooks
The Sisterhood of Ravensbruck: How an Intrepid Band of Frenchwomen Resisted the Nazis in Hitler's All-Female Concentration Camp, by Lynne Olson. Excellent WWII history that winds surprisingly into the present day. Horrible and yet joyful, and very much worth reading.
Hemlock and Silver, by T. Kingfisher. The author takes on Snow White from a very different point of view. I want to steal the mirror magic from this.
The Society of Unknowable Objects, by Gareth Brown. I really enjoyed his first book. This one not quite as much, though it's in a similar vein, because the protagonist takes a while to warm up to. I'm really looking forward to the next one.
Murder Is Bad Manners and Poison Is Not Polite by Robin Stevens. 1930s YA boarding school mysteries. In the first one two third-formers accidentally discover a body and then a series of murders. In the second one, it's a locked-house mystery in one of the girls' homes. The narrator is Asian and the topic is handled nicely. Easy to read and cute and much better as a boarding school story than That Magic School stuff.
The Secret Casebook of Simon Feximal, by K J Charles. Queer occult Holmes pastiche. The sex was fine but the characters and worldbuilding were great.
Music
The Last Dinner Party, Prelude to Ecstasy and From the Pyre. I've really enjoyed every song of theirs I've heard until now (all radio, so I hadn't heard the explicit version of Nothing Matters) and finally hearing the full albums has not changed that. It's got some of the bigness of Florence Welch but also the harmonies. And the sharp-edged lyrics.
Kelly Moran, Don't Trust Mirrors. Frostily gorgeous electronics.
The Sisterhood of Ravensbruck: How an Intrepid Band of Frenchwomen Resisted the Nazis in Hitler's All-Female Concentration Camp, by Lynne Olson. Excellent WWII history that winds surprisingly into the present day. Horrible and yet joyful, and very much worth reading.
Hemlock and Silver, by T. Kingfisher. The author takes on Snow White from a very different point of view. I want to steal the mirror magic from this.
The Society of Unknowable Objects, by Gareth Brown. I really enjoyed his first book. This one not quite as much, though it's in a similar vein, because the protagonist takes a while to warm up to. I'm really looking forward to the next one.
Murder Is Bad Manners and Poison Is Not Polite by Robin Stevens. 1930s YA boarding school mysteries. In the first one two third-formers accidentally discover a body and then a series of murders. In the second one, it's a locked-house mystery in one of the girls' homes. The narrator is Asian and the topic is handled nicely. Easy to read and cute and much better as a boarding school story than That Magic School stuff.
The Secret Casebook of Simon Feximal, by K J Charles. Queer occult Holmes pastiche. The sex was fine but the characters and worldbuilding were great.
Music
The Last Dinner Party, Prelude to Ecstasy and From the Pyre. I've really enjoyed every song of theirs I've heard until now (all radio, so I hadn't heard the explicit version of Nothing Matters) and finally hearing the full albums has not changed that. It's got some of the bigness of Florence Welch but also the harmonies. And the sharp-edged lyrics.
Kelly Moran, Don't Trust Mirrors. Frostily gorgeous electronics.