Wednesday Reading Meme

[osprey_archer]

What I’ve Just Finished Reading

I was beginning to feel crushed beneath the gloom and doom of the books I’m reading. (A Place of Greater Safety: everyone’s gonna die. The Honourable Schoolboy: not everyone is going to die, but someone is sure going to die horribly. Simon Sort of Says: everyone already died in a school shooting. Okay, not actually, there are no literal ghosts in this book. The hero’s tragic backstory is that he’s the only child in his classroom who survived, though.)

So I picked up How Right You Are, Jeeves from the library. Important to introduce variety into one’s reading diet! This one had a bit less Jeeves than is perhaps ideal (he’s gone for at least half the book), but no one AT ANY POINT was in danger of death, dismemberment, total psychological dissolution, etc., and there was an extremely funny sequence where Bertie bonds with Sir Roderick Glossop, the eminent brain specialist.

I also reread Kate Seredy’s The Singing Tree, the sequel to The Good Master, which is less about the Problem of Tomboys (although there is a great scene where Kate beats all the boys in the horse race… having promised that she will give up riding astride thereafter) and more about the Problem of War, which is especially poignant when you realize it was published in 1938. The subplot about how the Jews are, in fact, very nice people! and an integral part of Hungary! (and, by extension, all of humanity!) feels depressingly relevant again today.

What I’m Reading Now

I’ve started my semi-annual reread of Jostein Gaarder’s The Christmas Mystery, a book about an advent calendar which unfolds in 24 chapters. I find this book-as-advent-calendar structure enchanting and long to emulate it, but have discovered it’s quite hard to do, actually, which makes me appreciate the book even more on this reread.

What I Plan to Read Next

I’ve been contemplating how many more Smiley books to read. The next one, Smiley’s People, is the final book of the Karla Trilogy, so of course I have to read that, and after that there are just two more (The Secret Pilgrim and A Legacy of Spies), but published long afterward which always makes me rather doubtful… Has anyone read them? What did you think?

Comments

[troisoiseaux]

everyone already died in a school shooting. Okay, not actually, there are no literal ghosts in this book. The hero’s tragic backstory is that he’s the only child in his classroom who survived, though.

GEEZE. Newberies gonna Newbery...

[osprey_archer]

We were having such a good, non-tragic year until this book! (I put off this book for last because I knew from the jacket copy that it was awash with tragedy.) And this book is making up for the non-tragedy of all the others.

[regshoe]

What an enjoyable mix of things to be reading at once :D Jeeves & Wooster is very good relief from more depressing books.

The advent calendar book thing sounds a little bit like drabbles, in being a very specific, neat structure whose specificity makes it both satisfying when done well and tricky to actually do.

[osprey_archer]

Yes, the drabble comparison is pretty accurate! It's like the sonnet of novels, a very specific structure that he makes look natural but could probably become extremely clunky and awkward.

[galadhir]

I haven't read them, but it sounds like you're only 2 books off from doing the entire series, so you should just go for it anyway!

[osprey_archer]

This IS tempting tbh, but also sometimes a long-running series goes off at the end in a way that actually spoils the earlier books... However no one has popped up yet to scream "DON'T READ A LEGACY OF SPIES," which might be a good sign. I feel that people bust out of the woodwork to warn unsuspecting readers away from really egregious examples of this.

[kore]

Oh the Advent book sounds so fun!

I really enjoy Secret Pilgrim but I know a bunch of people who don't. Not to be spoilery, but it's very episodic, and the focus is not so much on Smiley as the guy witnessing his final address iirc at Sarratt, and that sends him off on his own memories. They're like interconnected short stories, a form I've always had a weakness for.

A Legacy of Spies I had more trouble with. It's a sequel snd prequel to, and revision of, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, and I really should have just reread that first, except rereading The Spy Who Came in from the Cold is a trauma event. But I wouldn't tell someone not to read it.

[osprey_archer]

It sounds like I'll probably have to give them a try. They may not be up to par with some of the others but they also don't sound like "this will undermine everything you ever loved about this series" level of bad.

Is A Legacy of Spies a revision of The Spy Who Came in from the Cold in that it is trying to make Smiley and co look less terrible? Or does knowing more of the backstory give new (but equally terrible) insight into everything that was going on?

Another thing that gets me is that the Circus went to all this trouble to save Mundt and then we never hear about Mundt again. All this trouble! Massive operation to save one of their most important sources! And then that oh so important source completely falls off the map afterward.

[kore]

"Or does knowing more of the backstory give new (but equally terrible) insight into everything that was going on?"

It's been a while since I read it but I think it's more that!

"Another thing that gets me is that the Circus went to all this trouble to save Mundt and then we never hear about Mundt again"

Ooh well, hmmm.

[osprey_archer]

I mean it's also possible that Mundt will turn up again in a later book. Or I somehow managed to overlook mention of him in the books I just read? (Although I think I would have screamed "FUCK YOU MUNDT" at the top of my lungs.) But there is also something incredibly Le Carre about the idea that they went to all this trouble to save him and then he became worthless as an intelligence asset and/or died of a sudden heart attack, so it was All For Naught.

[kore]

Hmmm, mmm.

[kore]

(Not trying to be a jerk! Just not wanting to spoil)

[osprey_archer]

Does he die at the end of A Legacy of Spies DON'T TELL ME I just want to be able to say I called it if that is in fact what happens.

[kore]

Matrixunabletospeak.gif

[anna_wing]

I recall one of those discussions one has in one's rash and splenitive youth, about whose fictional universe one would wish to visit, given the chance; I ended up choosing P G Wodehouse, since his worlds were the only ones where it was guaranteed that nothing horrible would happen to me.

[osprey_archer]

It's true, P. G. Wodehouse would be a safe place to visit. You might get to eat one of Anatole's dinners, too, which Bertie assures us are an epoch in one's life.