I'm in the middle of Mary Gentle's 1610: A Sundial in a Grave. It's been marketed as an historical fantasy/adventure pastiche that involves plots to kill both Henry of Navarre of France and James I of England -- and is all that -- but I think more important is its exploration of gender and sexuality. Some might find the romantic relationship a bit too deviant, but I'm finding it quite profound the further it progresses. It's the kind of book that should have been nominated for a Tiptree award, but I don't find it on any Tiptree shortlist. And have I mentioned that Mary Gentle really knows how to write a good sword fight?

A good lamington is my fave! I have baked hundreds in my time :-) Often they are sold in bakeries split through the middle and filled with red jam (usually raspberry) and whipped cream, or just the whipped cream but I prefer mine plain. Pink lamingtons are made by dipping the sponge in raspberry jelly (US jello) that has been made with a little less water and allowed to get to the thickening up stage of setting before rolling in the coconut.

This morning I finished Traveling Alone, a Nordic Noir novel by Samuel Bjork who is actually Frode Sander Oien. I guess that means he's well known enough in Norway to want to hide his identity as an author? Not sure, since they give it away on the back flap of the book cover. In the novel, dead little six-year-old girls are being found hung from trees in various forests. All are dressed in identical doll dresses and are wearing a "Traveling Alone" sign (like the ones they apparently put on children flying without an adult). At this point, you might be wondering why I would be reading such a deeply noir novel, which is a legitimate question. Well, the investigators are very clever and interesting people. Although the book kept me on the edge of my chair, I will probably stay away from this genre in the future.

I finished Homecoming by well-regarded Australian author Kate Morton. I then went to check if I had read any others of hers, and found my assessment of The Forgotten Garden (aka The House at Riverton) which concluded 'I don't think I will bother with any more'!! It was an interesting story about a 40-ish Australian woman living in London who flies home to Sydney after her grandmother, who brought her up, had a fall. She is an investigative journalist who finds out about a tragedy in her family's past, but in doing research on the internet, finds there was a book written at the time about it, and gleans all her information from that. Of the main characters, the grandmother was a bully who considered everything had to be done her way, the mother was a cipher for most of the book, and the journalist character was OK. The mystery was done well. However, the author had done a lot of research, and the reader was made to pay. There was so much extraneous information, long descriptions of the birds, the trees, the weather and so on. But most annoying were the factual mistakes, many of which should have been avoided by the above-mentioned research. Since part of the book was set in the Adelaide Hills near where I live, I picked up on them, but I suppose the out-of-town reader wouldn't have noticed. I also finished listening to the wonderful House of Niccolo books by Dorothy Dunnett.