Wednesday Reading Meme
Jan. 3rd, 2024 10:25 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
osprey_archerWhat I’ve Just Finished Reading
Carol Ryrie Brink’s A Chain of Hands is not so much a personal memoir as a collection of essays about people Brink remembered from her childhood: “Those I remember best are unimportant people. When I have stopped remembering them, they will cease to exist in this world. So I must write in order to save a few of the faces that belong to a few of the hands…”
A fascinating impressionist image of life in a quiet college town in Idaho around 1900. There isn’t a lot of direct information about Brink’s writing career, but it did confirm that many of her books are based very closely on life. Caddie Woodlawn grew from her grandmother’s stories of her childhood, Two Are Better than One and Louly from Brink’s childhood, and Family Grandstand and Family Sabbatical from Brink’s grown-up life as a faculty wife at the University of Minnesota. (No wonder she did such a spectacular job evoking that big Midwestern university feeling!) I wonder if the Brink family really did take a sabbatical in France…
What I’m Reading Now
In Sir Isumbras at the Ford, Raymonde is on the scene!!! She is the SISTER of the man whose reputation the Chevalier de la Vireville RUINED when he ACCUSED him of cheating at CARDS, and she is OUT FOR REVENGE!!! She has our hero trapped in a garret, and she’s going to fetch the Guard! So our hero has put into effect a cunning plan: he has hung a sheet out the window to make the guards think that he escaped, while in actual fact hiding in a closet in that very room, since his injured foot wouldn’t let him escape far…
I suspect that Raymonde and the Chevalier will, in time, become reluctant allies AND PERHAPS MORE, but we shall see. There is a pleasing symmetry in the fact that neither of them is about to bring themselves to kill the other, despite both feeling that they have compelling reason to do so.
What I Plan to Read Next
In A Chain of Hands, Carol Ryrie Brink reminisces about her college friendship with McKinley Helm (who wrote the state song of Idaho in a college song contest), and recommends his book Spring in Spain, “which detailed his travels with his wife and two Pekinese dogs and a large box of books.” Doesn’t that sound delightful?
But it falls in that awkward mid-century period where the books are still in copyright, but most libraries don’t keep them because they’re decades old. I could probably get it through ILL, but now, perhaps, is not the time… but I record it here on the theory that perhaps I will run across this note again at a quieter time in my life, and decide that it is indeed time for Spring in Spain.
Carol Ryrie Brink’s A Chain of Hands is not so much a personal memoir as a collection of essays about people Brink remembered from her childhood: “Those I remember best are unimportant people. When I have stopped remembering them, they will cease to exist in this world. So I must write in order to save a few of the faces that belong to a few of the hands…”
A fascinating impressionist image of life in a quiet college town in Idaho around 1900. There isn’t a lot of direct information about Brink’s writing career, but it did confirm that many of her books are based very closely on life. Caddie Woodlawn grew from her grandmother’s stories of her childhood, Two Are Better than One and Louly from Brink’s childhood, and Family Grandstand and Family Sabbatical from Brink’s grown-up life as a faculty wife at the University of Minnesota. (No wonder she did such a spectacular job evoking that big Midwestern university feeling!) I wonder if the Brink family really did take a sabbatical in France…
What I’m Reading Now
In Sir Isumbras at the Ford, Raymonde is on the scene!!! She is the SISTER of the man whose reputation the Chevalier de la Vireville RUINED when he ACCUSED him of cheating at CARDS, and she is OUT FOR REVENGE!!! She has our hero trapped in a garret, and she’s going to fetch the Guard! So our hero has put into effect a cunning plan: he has hung a sheet out the window to make the guards think that he escaped, while in actual fact hiding in a closet in that very room, since his injured foot wouldn’t let him escape far…
I suspect that Raymonde and the Chevalier will, in time, become reluctant allies AND PERHAPS MORE, but we shall see. There is a pleasing symmetry in the fact that neither of them is about to bring themselves to kill the other, despite both feeling that they have compelling reason to do so.
What I Plan to Read Next
In A Chain of Hands, Carol Ryrie Brink reminisces about her college friendship with McKinley Helm (who wrote the state song of Idaho in a college song contest), and recommends his book Spring in Spain, “which detailed his travels with his wife and two Pekinese dogs and a large box of books.” Doesn’t that sound delightful?
But it falls in that awkward mid-century period where the books are still in copyright, but most libraries don’t keep them because they’re decades old. I could probably get it through ILL, but now, perhaps, is not the time… but I record it here on the theory that perhaps I will run across this note again at a quieter time in my life, and decide that it is indeed time for Spring in Spain.
no subject
Date: 2024-01-03 05:23 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-01-03 05:39 pm (UTC)SPOILERS
SPOILERS
stands over him with a knife as he sleeps! Trying to work herself up to stab him as he lies there helpless! GOOD STUFF.
no subject
Date: 2024-01-03 06:23 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-01-04 06:20 am (UTC)Raymonde and the Chevalier, meanwhile, sound the opposite of everyday, but delightfully dramatic!!
no subject
Date: 2024-01-06 01:37 am (UTC)D. K. Broster is SO good at bringing the drama and I really appreciate that about her.
no subject
Date: 2024-01-06 02:31 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-01-07 02:06 pm (UTC)