Diane Seed, "The Top One Hundred Pasta Sauces"

I have attempted three of these top one hundred pasta sauces, and can happily report that this book is a keeper. While it's a bit prescriptive and inclined to go on about what Proper Italian Housewives do, particularly in the cooking of the actual pasta, the recipes are good, clear and tasty. It's also old enough (1987) that the ingredients that were obscure when it was first published are now available at pretty much every supermarket (e.g. mozzarella, olives).

I made Spaghetti Vesuvio (a tomato sauce, not spicy at all - the vulcanicity is in the appearance, with melted mozzarella streaming forth like molten lava); Linguine con Peperoni - sweet peppers cooked long and slow and then put through a sieve; Conchiglie alla Burina - with sausages, tomato and peas. All good.

Lindsey Davis, "A Body in the Bath House"

Ever since I discovered that I had read every mystery novel that Agatha Christie ever wrote, I have been searching for another detective series to get hooked on. Dorothy L Sayers did the job for a while, but there's less of Wimsey than there is of Poirot. Roderick Alleyn annoys me, though I still read the odd Marsh when I find them.

But I think Marcus Didius Falco may do the job. Very readable, very funny.

Wesley Stace, "Misfortune"

From BookCrossing.

A neo-gothic saga of missing heirs, secret codes, revolting relations and gender issues. A fairy tale set in that mythickal countrie of Olde Englande. (Seriously. The guy needs a good Britpicker. A 'baby carriage'. I ask you. And he seems to have spent a considerable portion of his life on our shores. I don't even know.)

This was a good read. I enjoyed the tale of Rose's adventures, and hir narration, and the happy (if predictable) ending. I had to persevere through some considerable irritation, though; apart from the britpickery concerns mentioned above (and srsly, I don't think anybody was fussed about the Empire in 1814, or, if they were, they didn't talk about it like that) there was some awful poetry and balladry, and some tiresomely Dan Brown codebreaking.

If you want a jolly country house story with a genderqueer central character... I would skip this and go straight to Orlando.