Wednesday Reading Meme
Dec. 13th, 2023 12:38 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
osprey_archerWhat I’ve Just Finished Reading
Wilkie Collins’ The Woman in White, which was a wild ride from start to finish. (Collins is clearly having a great time, especially when he’s writing Count Fosco’s self-aggrandizing closing narrative. Count Fosco is exactly the kind of villain who would love to write an extended account of How He Did It, including the totally unnecessary admission that he definitely would have killed Anne Catherick if she hadn’t conveniently died of natural causes. It tickles his vanity of his own wickedness to assure us that it is so!
However, I was a bit disappointed that the book didn’t feature more of the Heroism of Marian Halcombe. Perhaps it’s simply that various people have raved to me about Marian Halcombe over the years, till it built her up beyond what she could deliver. But Charlotte Bronte, I feel, would have found more for her to do, not to mention some way for her to have a final showdown with Count Fosco.
Also Frances Hodgson Burnett’s The Racketty-Packetty House, a book about a set of dolls who live in an early Victorian dollhouse, which has been pushed to the side of the nursery now that their owner has a brand spanking new up-to-the-minute dollhouse of 1906. Although the dolls live in fear that their dollhouse may be burned at any minute, they are essentially jolly souls, always joining hands and dancing around in circles. One of the dolls from the new dollhouse yearns to come over and join in the fun… particularly if it means she can meet Peter Piper, who is always turning somersaults. A tale as old as time!
What I’m Reading Now
Traipsing gently onward in Sir Isumbras at the Ford. Young Anne-Hilarion is paying a visit to two elderly ladies who are friends of his father… or are they? I have a suspicion that they may be SPIES, attempting to wrangle details of his father’s secret mission out of innocent young Anne-Hilarion, who of course has no idea what they’re doing.
What I Plan to Read Next
Pining for my Vivien Alcock novels to come in at the library. (The Red-eared Ghosts and Stranger at the Window.) Surely someday soon…
Wilkie Collins’ The Woman in White, which was a wild ride from start to finish. (Collins is clearly having a great time, especially when he’s writing Count Fosco’s self-aggrandizing closing narrative. Count Fosco is exactly the kind of villain who would love to write an extended account of How He Did It, including the totally unnecessary admission that he definitely would have killed Anne Catherick if she hadn’t conveniently died of natural causes. It tickles his vanity of his own wickedness to assure us that it is so!
However, I was a bit disappointed that the book didn’t feature more of the Heroism of Marian Halcombe. Perhaps it’s simply that various people have raved to me about Marian Halcombe over the years, till it built her up beyond what she could deliver. But Charlotte Bronte, I feel, would have found more for her to do, not to mention some way for her to have a final showdown with Count Fosco.
Also Frances Hodgson Burnett’s The Racketty-Packetty House, a book about a set of dolls who live in an early Victorian dollhouse, which has been pushed to the side of the nursery now that their owner has a brand spanking new up-to-the-minute dollhouse of 1906. Although the dolls live in fear that their dollhouse may be burned at any minute, they are essentially jolly souls, always joining hands and dancing around in circles. One of the dolls from the new dollhouse yearns to come over and join in the fun… particularly if it means she can meet Peter Piper, who is always turning somersaults. A tale as old as time!
What I’m Reading Now
Traipsing gently onward in Sir Isumbras at the Ford. Young Anne-Hilarion is paying a visit to two elderly ladies who are friends of his father… or are they? I have a suspicion that they may be SPIES, attempting to wrangle details of his father’s secret mission out of innocent young Anne-Hilarion, who of course has no idea what they’re doing.
What I Plan to Read Next
Pining for my Vivien Alcock novels to come in at the library. (The Red-eared Ghosts and Stranger at the Window.) Surely someday soon…
no subject
Date: 2023-12-13 07:25 pm (UTC)It is just possible those nice innocent little old ladies are not what they seem, yes... (Argh, that bit is so sinister—poor Anne-Hilarion!)
no subject
Date: 2023-12-13 08:20 pm (UTC)It occurs to me that there's a similarity here to Ewan's English interrogator listening to him talk in his sleep.