Wednesday Reading Meme

[osprey_archer]

What I’ve Just Finished Reading

Earlier this summer, the first floor of my favorite university library closed for renovation. “Will they purge my beloved higgledy-piggledy children’s section?” I wailed. “And what if I need a book from the section while it’s closed?”

Reader, I am happy to share that they have not purged the children’s section, and moreover I found a Secret Passage into the section so I could sneak in while it is closed. (Actually I think my Secret Passage is a totally legitimate access point, but shhhh, we’ll just say I was in grave danger of Library Jail at every moment.)

The Secret Passage story is in fact a bit more exciting than the book I used it to get, Katherine Milhous’s Through These Arches: The Story of Independence Hall. You may know Milhous from The Egg Tree, one of the great picture book loves of my youth, and incidentally a Caldecott award winner. Through These Arches sadly doesn’t allow her pictures nearly as much space to shine, as there’s a lot more text, but it is interesting to get this glimpse of early Philadelphia. Although the book brings the story up to the then-present 1960s, the meat of it is really from the 1680s to 1800 or so. Lots of interesting facts about polymath Charles Willson Peale, the Leonardo da Vinci of the early republic (artist! scientist! excavator of a mammoth skeleton!) and his similarly talented family.

Intrigued by sovay’s and troisoiseaux’s reviews, I also read Ellis Peter’s Black is the Colour of My True-Love’s Heart, a murder mystery that takes place at a weekend folk music class at the gothic manor of Follymead. My only criticism is that I wanted more folk music, but this is perhaps an unfair demand to make of a murder mystery, and it is a cracking good murder mystery. I stayed up late to finish it because I just had to know what happened.

The mystery is a standalone, but I got a feeling that we were stepping into an ongoing story with the detective and his family, and later on I looked it up and indeed we are! This book is part of a series of about a dozen mysteries.

What I’m Reading Now

I’ve begun Jane Eyre! I’m not planning to post about it as I go along (although now that I’ve started…), but I was intrigued to discover that the Jane as a fairy comparisons started much earlier than I remembered. When she’s shut in the shadowy Red Room, Jane sees herself in the looking glass, and “the strange little figure there gazing at me, with a white face and arms specking the gloom, and glittering eyes of fear moving where all else was still, had the effect of a real spirit: I thought it like one of the tiny phantoms, half fairy, half imp, Bessie’s evening stories represented as coming out of lone, ferny dells in moors, and appearing before the eyes of belated travellers.’

What I Plan to Read Next

Should I continue my Katherine Milhous journey with Lovina, A Story of the Pennsylvania Country?

Comments

[troisoiseaux]

I was intrigued to discover that the Jane as a fairy comparisons started much earlier than I remembered

I'm genuinely surprised I've never seen a "Jane Eyre is literally a changeling" fantasy adaptation of Jane Eyre?? I mean, there's a Jane Eyre In Space!

[osprey_archer]

SURELY it exists somewhere and we just haven't found it yet? It's right there in the text! The lowest hanging of fruit!

[asakiyume]

I would read Jane Eyre: Actual Changeling in a heartbeat.

[minutia_r]

Do you think that in this AU, Mary, Diana, and St. John are also fairies?

[osprey_archer]

Could go either way! Either the entire extended Eyre family is fairies (in which case we may need a new vocation for St. John... unlikely to be a missionary), or Jane was changed even before her parents died, in which case she's not related by blood to any of them.

[sholio]

I would definitely lean towards Jane being the only changeling in the family; it feels more correct for her.

It is an amazing idea!

[sovay]

I'm genuinely surprised I've never seen a "Jane Eyre is literally a changeling" fantasy adaptation of Jane Eyre??

Agreed!

[lokifan]

Under The Pendulum Sun by Jeanette Ng has elements of this. It's not literally a Jane Eyre adaptation but it's a very Gothic 'Victorians in fairyland' story and has massive amounts of Jane Eyre in its DNA - I realised the changeling heroine was going to get incestuous with her brother when she met him again by finding him fallen off his horse on a misty moor, a la Jane and Rochester.

[sovay]

I realised the changeling heroine was going to get incestuous with her brother when she met him again by finding him fallen off his horse on a misty moor, a la Jane and Rochester.

Legit! (Also, I'm glad to know it.)

[lokifan]

Under The Pendulum Sun by Jeanette Ng has elements of this. It's not literally a Jane Eyre adaptation but it's a very Gothic 'Victorians in fairyland' story and has massive amounts of Jane Eyre in its DNA - I realised the heroine was going to get incestuous with her brother when she met him again by finding him fallen off his horse on a misty moor, a la Jane and Rochester.

[littlerhymes]

I will continue to firmly believe it is a secret passageway. Probably used by smugglers, back in the day! Or JEWEL THIEVES (what are jewels doing in the library? no matter).

[osprey_archer]

Smuggling out RARE BOOKS, or perhaps purloining antique illustrations. The jewel thieves have branched out. Diversified their portfolio. Developed a side hustle, if you will.

[slashmarks]

Fun fact, in my home city a few years back there was legitimately a criminal trial involving $8 million dollars of rare books stolen from the public library, fenced through a beloved local rare and used bookstore which was knowingly complicit in the theft. Absolutely wild to follow in the news. Here's a retrospective: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/theft-carnegie-library-books-maps-artworks-180975506/

[osprey_archer]

Stolen BY THE DIRECTOR OF THE LIBRARY. Horrifying!

Also embarrassing that he didn't even manage to make a fortune from his ill-gotten gains, but instead barely managed to keep his four children in private school. Dude should have thought bigger.

[slashmarks]

I know, right?

I had always wondered how Caliban Books stayed open, in an expensive business district, despite apparently never being open or interested in selling anything. I really didn't expect the answer!

[asakiyume]

I got a feeling that we were stepping into an ongoing story with the detective and his family, and later on I looked it up and indeed we are! --Do you think you'll read more of them?

[osprey_archer]

Probably not. I imagine the others don't involve folk music at all, and there are just so many books in the world.

[asakiyume]

there are just so many books in the world. --TRUTH

[slashmarks]

I also read Black Is the Colour of My True Love's Heart this week, courtesy of troisoiseaux's review. I entirely agree: I wanted more folk music (and also more technical music details), but that's a fault of me rather than Peters. It was still lots of fun.

[osprey_archer]

Tiny DW book club! And, yes, given the predilections of tiny DW book clubs, I'm not surprised many of us wanted more folk music and musical details, but, well, such is genre mystery sometimes.

[ethelmay]

Me too. The black-haired not-so-black-hearted fellow reminded me irresistibly of a half-Welsh singer I knew who would have been close to the right age at the time, but I don't think he was involved in the folk scene, and anyway there are likely much more obvious models from Pargeter's life, should she have needed any. But I like to think that it's not impossible she saw him perform.

[sovay]

The black-haired not-so-black-hearted fellow reminded me irresistibly of a half-Welsh singer I knew who would have been close to the right age at the time, but I don't think he was involved in the folk scene, and anyway there are likely much more obvious models from Pargeter's life, should she have needed any.

I am curious!

[ethelmay]

He wasn't super famous or anything, but he was at King's College, Cambridge, and appears on some of their recordings. Lindsay Heather, baritone. I can't find a public picture of him.

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He wasn't super famous or anything, but he was at King's College, Cambridge, and appears on some of their recordings. Lindsay Heather, baritone. I can't find a public picture of him. <a href-"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6wXyWz7VSLo">Here he is in Vaughan Williams's "Five Mystical Songs."</a>

[ethelmay]

Apparently I can't edit? Should have previewed. Here he is in Vaughan Williams's "Five Mystical Songs."

[ethelmay]

And also he was always an easier-going person as far as I have heard (obviously I didn't know him as a young man), but he did have the coloring, heavy eyebrows, saturnine good looks, charisma, etc., and the description of Lucien's voice seems to match pretty well.

[lokifan]

Secret passage!!! Excellent :D Especially to me since I love a Gothic children's book.

Which Jane Eyre has elements of, tbf - I read it for the first time aged ten, and didn't realise it wasn't meant for kids; it didn't seem at all out of keeping with the other books I'd read about young orphan girls with horrible families, who end up in manors. That said, I remember being horrified she was going back to horrible Mr Rochester, and not staying with St John Rivers, which I do think suggests I was a bit too young for it; the emotional/sexual chemistry with Rochester and lack thereof with St John clearly didn't come through to me.

[osprey_archer]

Many children's books would be improved by a gothic secret passage.

Jane Eyre definitely has elements of a gothic children's novel! The first bit especially, the orphan girl and the evil family and the horrible school (which eventually becomes less horrible). Probably an influence on books like The Secret Garden.