Wednesday Reading Meme
May. 29th, 2024 12:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
osprey_archerWhat I’ve Just Finished Reading
Sarah Vowell’s Take the Cannoli: Stories from the New World, an essay collection about life in America in the 1990s (with excursions into Vowell’s childhood and youth in the 1970s and 80s). I enjoyed it, but I think I’d only recommend it for a Sarah Vowell completist. It’s fine, but only fine, and there are just so many books in the world.
Also Robert Louis Stevenson’s Travels with a Donkey in the Cevennes, a slim travelogue about a two-week walking trip that Stevenson took through the Cevennes. Some interesting information here about the Camisards, a Protestant sect that the Catholic church spent twenty years attempting to suppress in the early 1700s before flinging up their hands in despair.
What I’m Reading Now
Gerald Durrell’s The Picnic and Other Inimitable Stories. In the title story, Gerald’s brother Larry is coming back to England after an absence of ten years—
“Ten peaceful years,” corrected Leslie.
“They weren’t at all peaceful,” said Mother. “We had the war.”
“I meant peaceful without Larry,” explained Leslie.
The family attempts to have a pleasant seaside picnic. I laughed so hard I almost cried. Just what I needed after a rather stressful weekend.
What I Plan to Read Next
I have run into a minor roadblock with Project Read All the Franny Billingsley: I can’t remember if I’ve read Well Wished or not. I know that I borrowed it from the library, only to discover that the book had been bound so that after chapter 10 or so, it started over at chapter 1… but did I hunt out a properly bound copy and finish it?
Surely I must have done? Surely the lure of the Quest would have pulled me on until I found an unblemished copy and finished reading the book.
Sarah Vowell’s Take the Cannoli: Stories from the New World, an essay collection about life in America in the 1990s (with excursions into Vowell’s childhood and youth in the 1970s and 80s). I enjoyed it, but I think I’d only recommend it for a Sarah Vowell completist. It’s fine, but only fine, and there are just so many books in the world.
Also Robert Louis Stevenson’s Travels with a Donkey in the Cevennes, a slim travelogue about a two-week walking trip that Stevenson took through the Cevennes. Some interesting information here about the Camisards, a Protestant sect that the Catholic church spent twenty years attempting to suppress in the early 1700s before flinging up their hands in despair.
What I’m Reading Now
Gerald Durrell’s The Picnic and Other Inimitable Stories. In the title story, Gerald’s brother Larry is coming back to England after an absence of ten years—
“Ten peaceful years,” corrected Leslie.
“They weren’t at all peaceful,” said Mother. “We had the war.”
“I meant peaceful without Larry,” explained Leslie.
The family attempts to have a pleasant seaside picnic. I laughed so hard I almost cried. Just what I needed after a rather stressful weekend.
What I Plan to Read Next
I have run into a minor roadblock with Project Read All the Franny Billingsley: I can’t remember if I’ve read Well Wished or not. I know that I borrowed it from the library, only to discover that the book had been bound so that after chapter 10 or so, it started over at chapter 1… but did I hunt out a properly bound copy and finish it?
Surely I must have done? Surely the lure of the Quest would have pulled me on until I found an unblemished copy and finished reading the book.
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Date: 2024-05-30 12:41 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-05-30 12:06 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-06-01 02:58 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-06-01 03:22 pm (UTC)There's another volume with some post-Corfu family memoirs, Fillets of Plaice.
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Date: 2024-06-01 03:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-06-01 04:02 pm (UTC)