Wednesday Reading Meme
Aug. 21st, 2024 07:59 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
osprey_archerWhat 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 bysovay’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?
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?
no subject
Date: 2024-08-21 06:39 pm (UTC)Agreed!
no subject
Date: 2024-08-22 09:18 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-08-22 09:20 pm (UTC)Legit! (Also, I'm glad to know it.)