Wednesday Reading Meme

[osprey_archer]

What I’ve Just Finished Reading

Cannot BELIEVE I waited all these years to read Zilpha Keatley Snyder’s Gib Rides Home. The book is loosely inspired by Snyder’s own father’s childhood, and features a Dickensian orphanage! horsies! a horseless carriage! a lonely child finding a home! and just in general is a fantastic homage, as the character of Gib is loveable and memorable and recognizably a child while also being clearly the kind of child who would grow up into the calm, steadfast, loving father Snyder describes in the afterword.

What I’m Reading Now

I had good intentions of traipsing slowly through Charlotte Bronte’s Villette so we could all savor it together, but alas, I’ve been unable to restrain myself, and have galloped through the first few chapters. Alone in the world, with but a little money in her pocket and an even more meager stock of French, Lucy decides to set forth across the Channel to seek her fortunes on the continent. On the crossing, she meets Ginevra Fanshawe, a pretty flibbertigibbet who is headed to a pensionnat in Villette (capital city of Labassecour, for which read Belgium), and for no better reason goes to Villette herself, and soon finds herself ensconced as an English teacher in the self-same pensionnat.

Selfish, boastful, vain, but a saving open straightforwardness in her desire to be admired, Ginevra is one of the delights of the book.

Notwithstanding these foibles, and various others needless to mention—but by no means of a refined or elevating character—how pretty she was! How charming she looked, when she came down on a sunny Sunday morning, well-dressed and well-humoured, robed in pale lilac silk, and with her fair long curls reposing on her white shoulders.

What I Plan to Read Next

Obviously Gib and the Gray Ghost, the sequel to Gib Rides Home. These came out during the PEAK of my Zilpha Keatley Snyder obsession, so I’m truly baffled that I didn’t read them at the time.

Comments

[philomytha]

I must reread Villette, I know I loved it as a teenager but I can't remember much about it now, even the names of the characters /o\

[osprey_archer]

It's a book that rewards rereading IMO. Hope you still love it now if you do reread!

[oracne]

Gib Rides Home sounds GREAT - I am surprised never to have encountered it before.

[osprey_archer]

I surely DID see it on the shelves in my youth, so I don't know why I never read it! Maybe I objected to the fact that the main character is a boy.

[lokifan]

Awww Snyder's portrait of her dad as a child sounds very loving.

[osprey_archer]

Yes, it's really lovely.

[asakiyume]

Could it be that younger you wasn't so interested in boy-focused stories, and that's why you passed on ZKS's Gib stories? (I didn't know those existed!)

[osprey_archer]

Yes, I'm sure that contributed. But I did read Greensky, and the first book starred Raamo (second book more about his sister ofc), so clearly it wasn't a total refusal to read books about boys... but maybe the Changeling connection won me over for that one.

[skygiants]

I keep thinking someday I will write a Lucy/Ginevra inspired book. This isn't that day. But someday!

[osprey_archer]

I did write a Lucy/Ginevra story for Yuletide one year! But a whole book... would they end up together? COULD they end up together without Ginevra eventually driving Lucy to homicide?