I read the "other" Thing of Darkness, by the way, which is by Harry Bingham and part of a Welsh-set crime series. I happen to like the series (sticks out tongue) although another poster gave it a shot and wasn't impressed.
Sick child yesterday so I was at home and able to improve the shining hour with some reading, in between cleaning up vomit.
6. Curiosities of Literature, by John Sutherland
Disappointed in this - very short anecdotes and lists about writers, the kind of thing you see as page-fillers in the Reader's Digest. The stories were all fairly familiar - Ruskin's disappointing wedding night, the Shelley/Byron writing challenge that led to the creation of The Vampyre and Frankenstein etc. Hack-work.
7. The sober diaries : how one mum stopped drinking and started living by Clare Pooley
A Dry January read. It's a blog turned into a book. Nice middle-class mum realises she's downing too much vino and stops, finding that she enjoys her nice, middle-class holidays (summer in Cornwall, skiing in Verbier, short break in Jamaica with her husband) even more. Might have been the hangover from Poverty Safari (see if sobriety is so delightful in a high-rise in the Gorbals). She gets breast cancer but a friend gets her in to see a top consultant the next day, and it all works out fine. I shouldn't be sneery, as cancer isn't a breeze even under the best conditions, and she's well-intentioned and honest and it's all very readable. She doesn't pretend to be writing a searing sociological treatise. I'm irritated by writers who talk about their "research" and then tell you what they Googled earlier. Despite my moans, I didn't actually dislike it.
8. In Search of Lost Books by Giorgio van Straten
Non-fiction translated from Italian, about manuscripts that disappeared. I knew about the burning of Lord Byron's memoirs, but wasn't familiar with all the authors he mentioned. It was okay but didn't transport me.
Looking at those reviews, all that cleaning up of bile may have affected my mood.