Wednesday Reading Meme
Dec. 20th, 2023 08:19 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
osprey_archerWhat I’ve Just Finished Reading
A couple of Newbery Honor books from the 1930s. I got so caught up in Sarah Lindsay Schmidt’s New Land that I stayed up a couple of extra hours to finish it. After years of wandering, the Morgan family has settled on a claim on a new federal irrigation project, and seventeen-year-old Sayre is determined to prove the claim so her family can finally settle down and stay put. In pursuit of her goal, she signs up for a part-time vocational agriculture class at the high school.
Sayre is the only girl in the class, but this is emphatically not a book about a girl blazing a trail in a male-dominated field. It’s not even a school story. Although Sayre attends the classes, the book is almost entirely about her putting what she’s learned into practice on the claim, and more generally about the revolutionary potential of vocational agriculture education to train even wholly inexperienced city slickers such as Sayre and her brother Charley to make a living on the land. (The author’s husband was a vocational agriculture teacher - the book is dedicated to him - and I strongly suspect he’s the model for the kind, thoughtful, inspiring teacher in the book.)
Reading it now is a little bittersweet, as it’s pointing toward a future that didn’t come to pass. The world of family farms in which Sayre and Charley live would be largely swept away a couple decades later by post-war government agricultural policies that favored enormous factory farms.
The other Newbery Honor book was Elsie Singmaster’s Swords of Steel, which is set mostly in Gettysburg from 1859 to 1865, and it’s one of those historical fiction novels which wants to schlep its hero to as many historical events as possible: as well as Gettysburg (which is fair enough when your hero is in fact a Gettysburgian), we take in Harper’s Ferry and Appomattox. There’s nothing wrong with it exactly, but I just never came to care very much about the characters, so it was a bit of a slog.
What I’m Reading Now
Sir Isumbras at the Ford is galloping along! Last week, I expressed concern that the two old ladies youg Anne-Hilarion was visiting were Not All That They Seemed; this week, we learn that the two old ladies are SPIES who have had Anne-Hilarion KIDNAPPED to serve as BAIT for his father.
Instead, however, the Chevalier de la Vireville realizes what is afoot, and rushes to France to rescue Anne-Hilarion! Thus follows a thrilling escape sequence, in which the Chevalier re-kidnaps the kidnapped boy and they rush together for the coast, making for the island of Jersey, a center of Royalist activity. After some narrow escapes (including a sojourn in a seaside cave; Broster just loves seaside caves, it seems! Very understandable, they are so atmospheric) the Chevalier has entrusted Anne-Hilarion to a lieutenant on a ship in the Royal Navy, who will see him safe home to his grandfather in London.
I am continually impressed by Broster’s talent for intuiting major fanfic genres of the future. I don’t usually read kidfic, but part two of this book is A+ kidfic, right down to the part where poor Anne-Hilarion, overcome by just a trifle too much adventure, throws a temper tantrum in a post-chaise. Honestly impressed that he remained so calm for so long!
What I Plan to Read Next
I just realized that the library had a copy of L.M. Boston’s childhood memoir Perverse and Foolish... and foolishly put it on hold, despite knowing full well that sometimes when you put an old book on hold, they decide to weed the book from the collection rather than send it to fulfill your hold!
I really hate it when they do this. Couldn’t they send it out for one last circ, since clearly someone wants it enough to ask for it? Put a note on it! Weed it out when it comes back! Why must they torment me in this way!
A couple of Newbery Honor books from the 1930s. I got so caught up in Sarah Lindsay Schmidt’s New Land that I stayed up a couple of extra hours to finish it. After years of wandering, the Morgan family has settled on a claim on a new federal irrigation project, and seventeen-year-old Sayre is determined to prove the claim so her family can finally settle down and stay put. In pursuit of her goal, she signs up for a part-time vocational agriculture class at the high school.
Sayre is the only girl in the class, but this is emphatically not a book about a girl blazing a trail in a male-dominated field. It’s not even a school story. Although Sayre attends the classes, the book is almost entirely about her putting what she’s learned into practice on the claim, and more generally about the revolutionary potential of vocational agriculture education to train even wholly inexperienced city slickers such as Sayre and her brother Charley to make a living on the land. (The author’s husband was a vocational agriculture teacher - the book is dedicated to him - and I strongly suspect he’s the model for the kind, thoughtful, inspiring teacher in the book.)
Reading it now is a little bittersweet, as it’s pointing toward a future that didn’t come to pass. The world of family farms in which Sayre and Charley live would be largely swept away a couple decades later by post-war government agricultural policies that favored enormous factory farms.
The other Newbery Honor book was Elsie Singmaster’s Swords of Steel, which is set mostly in Gettysburg from 1859 to 1865, and it’s one of those historical fiction novels which wants to schlep its hero to as many historical events as possible: as well as Gettysburg (which is fair enough when your hero is in fact a Gettysburgian), we take in Harper’s Ferry and Appomattox. There’s nothing wrong with it exactly, but I just never came to care very much about the characters, so it was a bit of a slog.
What I’m Reading Now
Sir Isumbras at the Ford is galloping along! Last week, I expressed concern that the two old ladies youg Anne-Hilarion was visiting were Not All That They Seemed; this week, we learn that the two old ladies are SPIES who have had Anne-Hilarion KIDNAPPED to serve as BAIT for his father.
Instead, however, the Chevalier de la Vireville realizes what is afoot, and rushes to France to rescue Anne-Hilarion! Thus follows a thrilling escape sequence, in which the Chevalier re-kidnaps the kidnapped boy and they rush together for the coast, making for the island of Jersey, a center of Royalist activity. After some narrow escapes (including a sojourn in a seaside cave; Broster just loves seaside caves, it seems! Very understandable, they are so atmospheric) the Chevalier has entrusted Anne-Hilarion to a lieutenant on a ship in the Royal Navy, who will see him safe home to his grandfather in London.
I am continually impressed by Broster’s talent for intuiting major fanfic genres of the future. I don’t usually read kidfic, but part two of this book is A+ kidfic, right down to the part where poor Anne-Hilarion, overcome by just a trifle too much adventure, throws a temper tantrum in a post-chaise. Honestly impressed that he remained so calm for so long!
What I Plan to Read Next
I just realized that the library had a copy of L.M. Boston’s childhood memoir Perverse and Foolish... and foolishly put it on hold, despite knowing full well that sometimes when you put an old book on hold, they decide to weed the book from the collection rather than send it to fulfill your hold!
I really hate it when they do this. Couldn’t they send it out for one last circ, since clearly someone wants it enough to ask for it? Put a note on it! Weed it out when it comes back! Why must they torment me in this way!
no subject
Date: 2023-12-20 01:24 pm (UTC)Broster would have posted some bangers on AO3!!
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Date: 2023-12-20 01:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-12-20 01:49 pm (UTC)What kind of MONSTERS
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Date: 2023-12-21 11:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-12-20 02:06 pm (UTC)WHAT this makes no SENSE
They could at that point just give it to you! Send the book to a good green pasture in its old age!
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Date: 2023-12-20 08:27 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-12-21 03:06 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-12-21 11:16 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-12-21 11:17 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-12-22 12:08 am (UTC)one is tempted to call it a SIN
but one sadly understands
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Date: 2023-12-20 03:41 pm (UTC)Hee, I didn't think about the kidfic aspects that way, but you're right. I do hope she and Gertrude Schlicht whom she lived with had the same fanficcy tastes...
Looking forward to when you get to Raymonde!
despite knowing full well that sometimes when you put an old book on hold, they decide to weed the book from the collection rather than send it to fulfill your hold!
OMG, that's terrible! Someone wants the book, why would they throw it away??
no subject
Date: 2023-12-21 11:20 pm (UTC)Unless the book is literally falling to pieces I see no reason to throw it away rather than let it go out for one last circ, and to be honest even if it were falling to pieces I, personally, would still be happy to receive it. Put a little note on it if you are concerned the patron may be miffed! "This is our last copy so we are sending it even though it is in poor condition."
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Date: 2023-12-20 04:00 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-12-21 11:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-12-22 02:11 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-12-20 05:14 pm (UTC)Libraries can be awful about old books. The other day I was browsing my (pretty good on the whole) new public library's policies, which include a rule of not buying books more than seven years old unless they have 'continued to be popular' (how popular???). But that is especially egregious—you'd think it wouldn't be much more effort for them to just give it to you and let you keep it! You should complain.
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Date: 2023-12-21 11:42 pm (UTC)The current fashion in libraries has swung really sharply toward intense weeding, and I get that shelving space is limited and one wishes to stock books that people will check out etc. etc.... But weeding a book just after a patron has requested it seems truly beyond the pale. Clearly the book IS wanted! Let it have its final circ!
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Date: 2023-12-21 12:11 am (UTC)As an ex-librarian the idea of weeding the book before circulating it infuriates me!
I did often struggle even when things would go in the opposite direction. Sometimes I would check out a book that hadn’t circulated in 20+ years and was not in good shape and just know in my bones that it was going to get weeded when I returned it…
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Date: 2023-12-21 11:31 pm (UTC)no subject
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Date: 2023-12-27 10:55 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-12-28 12:30 am (UTC)