Wednesday Reading Meme

[osprey_archer]

What I’ve Just Finished Reading

Letters Regarding Jeeves has begun! We started off with a perfectly ripping story called “Jeeves Takes Charge,” in which Jeeves shimmers into Bertie Wooster’s employ and saves him from an engagement with a most unsuitable girl (though she did have a splendid profile), as well as a hideous checked suit. So glad that I signed up for this. It’s going to be a delightful ride.

And I have at last completed E. B. White’s One Man’s Meat! This is a collection of the essays that he wrote for Harper’s from 1938 to 1942, and one thing that struck me is how very bloggish it felt. A few of the essays are more structured (like the one where he inveighs against Anne Lindbergh’s book about how totalitarianism is the wave of the future, and who can fight the future? Maybe you can’t fight the future but maybe in this case we should TRY, says White), but some are quite disconnected, a few thoughts here and a few thoughts there and an observation about the agricultural life and we have a post magazine article.

Here’s an observation which I think is even more apropos today than it was in White’s time: “Even intelligence is an accident of Nature, and to say that an intelligent man deserves his rewards in life is to say that he alone is entitled to be lucky. Maybe he is, but I sometimes wonder.”

What I’m Reading Now

MANY HAPPENINGS in Sir Isumbras at the Ford! The Chevalier de Vireville was about to be shot by a firing squad – only to be yoinked at the last minute for more questioning—then sent away to another town, where this time he goes before a firing squad and IS shot. Broster does like to have her little jokes! Holding out hope till the last moment, then ripping it away from under out feet!

Also Raymonde has met Anne-Hilarion (I believe in her heart she wishes to adopt Anne-Hilarion; this appears to be how everyone feels upon meeting him) and learned from him of Vireville’s death, whereupon she realized that Vireville was the only man she could ever love. ROUGH.

What I Plan to Read Next

Fate is against me: a second volume of L. M. Boston’s memoirs has now slipped through my fingers. Alas!

Comments

[conuly]

Anne Lindbergh’s book about how totalitarianism is the wave of the future, and who can fight the future?

Wait, what? Man, the Lindbergh family just gets weirder and weirder the more I hear about them.

[osprey_archer]

I was previously familiar with Anne Lindbergh from Gift from the Sea, so it was startling to realize that in earlier years she had a totalitarian phase! Although maybe I should have expected it, since Charles Lindbergh did, and married couples often influence each other.

[superborb]

I often feel like magazine essays are quite bloggish! Maybe because they tend to be shorter than some of the longer form essay venues?

[osprey_archer]

Yes, that would make sense! And apparently people just have always liked to read "here's a bit about my day and what I happen to be thinking about," long before the internet made it possible for every Tom, Dick, and Harry to take a stab at the genre.

[lokifan]

Here’s an observation which I think is even more apropos today than it was in White’s time: “Even intelligence is an accident of Nature, and to say that an intelligent man deserves his rewards in life is to say that he alone is entitled to be lucky. Maybe he is, but I sometimes wonder.”

SO relevant today! I mean, even if rich clever people were RIGHT that it was all down to their brains and not their financial advantages... :side-eyes Silicon Valley:

[osprey_archer]

Even if they were RIGHT, look what kind of world they've used their brains to create!