Wednesday Reading Meme
Jan. 8th, 2025 08:25 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
osprey_archerWhat I’ve Just Finished Reading
Perhaps surprisingly, given my lack of enthusiasm for Phyllis Ann Karr’s Frostflower and Thorn, I actually quite enjoyed Frostflower and Windbourne. I enjoyed Frostflower and Thorn’s established friendship and I liked the further fleshing out of the worldbuilding, which I had thought was rather thin in book one, but it came together elegantly here. I particularly liked the solution to the mystery of why Frostflower didn’t lose her powers when she was raped, when everyone believes that sorcery is tied to virginity. A priestess suggests that sorceri actually lose their powers when they use those powers for harm, which most sorceri only do in the last extremity, that is, when they are about to be raped in order to powerstrip them.
I knew from the start that there are only two books in this series, but having finished the second one, I wonder if Karr didn’t originally plan to write more. The conclusion is satisfying, but it leaves a lot of open ends loose in a way that suggests she was planting hooks for a possible sequel.
I also read Elizabeth Goudge’s The Lost Angel, a set of short stories, some Christmas-themed. Uneven as short story collections are wont to be. My favorite was the title story, about a little boy who is supposed to play an angel in the Nativity play but escapes from dress rehearsal and wanders around London dressed as an angel.
And I read Frances Hodgson Burnett’s short story “Seth.” A homely and retiring young man arrives at a mine in Tennessee, hoping for employment, as the mine is owned by a native of his hometown. The handsome young mine owner indeed hires him, and Seth is in return devoted to him. Meanwhile, Bess the landlord’s sharp-tongued daughter seems softer on Seth than she has ever seemed to a young man before, so people tease her she’s sweet on him, to which she responds “Happen I am.”
A cholera epidemic sweeps through the settlement. The handsome young mine owner almost DIES, but is nursed back to health by Seth! But then Seth dies, and it turns out that Seth is a woman!!! Bess shows up to sob at Seth/Jinny’s bedside and tell us all her story.
In her hometown, Jinny fell in love with the handsome young mine owner. When he emigrated to America, she decided to follow, not because she had any hope of being loved back but simply to be close to him. But Jinny’s brother died on the journey, and a combination of the danger of traveling unprotected/the difficulty of getting mine work as a woman/the fact that her own clothes were wearing out pushed her into wearing her brother’s old clothes. So she showed up at the mine dressed as a man and let everyone believe that she was and will be buried as such because the poor creature had enough trouble in her life without causing a scandal at her death as well, THE END.
What I’m Reading Now
I’ve reached the tragic part in The Life of Charlotte Bronte, where everyone starts dying. First Branwell, and that’s tragic because he never accomplished anything and was in fact a misery to everyone who knew him for the last three years of his life. Then Emily, whose death is differently tragic, because Emily refuses to ask for help or even admit she’s sick till her dying day, when she finally acquiesces to see a doctor mere hours before she dies. And now Anne, who is willing to let Charlotte and the doctors try to help, but nonetheless is fading, fading…
What I Plan to Read Next
Contemplating which Rumer Godden book to read next. The ones I have easy access to are Four Dolls, The Dark Horse, and The River. I’m leaning toward Four Dolls because I usually like Godden’s children’s books better than her adult books, but then again there is In This House of Brede batting one thousand for the adult books... so I thought I’d see if anyone has a strong opinion about the other two.
Perhaps surprisingly, given my lack of enthusiasm for Phyllis Ann Karr’s Frostflower and Thorn, I actually quite enjoyed Frostflower and Windbourne. I enjoyed Frostflower and Thorn’s established friendship and I liked the further fleshing out of the worldbuilding, which I had thought was rather thin in book one, but it came together elegantly here. I particularly liked the solution to the mystery of why Frostflower didn’t lose her powers when she was raped, when everyone believes that sorcery is tied to virginity. A priestess suggests that sorceri actually lose their powers when they use those powers for harm, which most sorceri only do in the last extremity, that is, when they are about to be raped in order to powerstrip them.
I knew from the start that there are only two books in this series, but having finished the second one, I wonder if Karr didn’t originally plan to write more. The conclusion is satisfying, but it leaves a lot of open ends loose in a way that suggests she was planting hooks for a possible sequel.
I also read Elizabeth Goudge’s The Lost Angel, a set of short stories, some Christmas-themed. Uneven as short story collections are wont to be. My favorite was the title story, about a little boy who is supposed to play an angel in the Nativity play but escapes from dress rehearsal and wanders around London dressed as an angel.
And I read Frances Hodgson Burnett’s short story “Seth.” A homely and retiring young man arrives at a mine in Tennessee, hoping for employment, as the mine is owned by a native of his hometown. The handsome young mine owner indeed hires him, and Seth is in return devoted to him. Meanwhile, Bess the landlord’s sharp-tongued daughter seems softer on Seth than she has ever seemed to a young man before, so people tease her she’s sweet on him, to which she responds “Happen I am.”
A cholera epidemic sweeps through the settlement. The handsome young mine owner almost DIES, but is nursed back to health by Seth! But then Seth dies, and it turns out that Seth is a woman!!! Bess shows up to sob at Seth/Jinny’s bedside and tell us all her story.
In her hometown, Jinny fell in love with the handsome young mine owner. When he emigrated to America, she decided to follow, not because she had any hope of being loved back but simply to be close to him. But Jinny’s brother died on the journey, and a combination of the danger of traveling unprotected/the difficulty of getting mine work as a woman/the fact that her own clothes were wearing out pushed her into wearing her brother’s old clothes. So she showed up at the mine dressed as a man and let everyone believe that she was and will be buried as such because the poor creature had enough trouble in her life without causing a scandal at her death as well, THE END.
What I’m Reading Now
I’ve reached the tragic part in The Life of Charlotte Bronte, where everyone starts dying. First Branwell, and that’s tragic because he never accomplished anything and was in fact a misery to everyone who knew him for the last three years of his life. Then Emily, whose death is differently tragic, because Emily refuses to ask for help or even admit she’s sick till her dying day, when she finally acquiesces to see a doctor mere hours before she dies. And now Anne, who is willing to let Charlotte and the doctors try to help, but nonetheless is fading, fading…
What I Plan to Read Next
Contemplating which Rumer Godden book to read next. The ones I have easy access to are Four Dolls, The Dark Horse, and The River. I’m leaning toward Four Dolls because I usually like Godden’s children’s books better than her adult books, but then again there is In This House of Brede batting one thousand for the adult books... so I thought I’d see if anyone has a strong opinion about the other two.
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Date: 2025-01-08 01:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-01-08 02:06 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-01-08 05:48 pm (UTC)Well, that's the "Sweet Polly Oliver" ending I like least.
I would definitely have read a third Frostflower and Thorn novel. There are two other short stories from the same time and I believe a couple of later ones, although I can't vouch for those.
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Date: 2025-01-08 08:05 pm (UTC)Yeah, I would have loved to see where a third Frostflower and Thorn novel would have went. Probably somewhere unexpected, given the Phyllis Ann Karr of it all.
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Date: 2025-01-08 07:06 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-01-08 08:07 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-01-09 11:44 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-01-10 04:36 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-01-10 06:24 pm (UTC)Oh, I haven't read The River and my avoidance of the India Goddens doesn't have much to do with their quality -- "well" was meant to represent "I can cope with the atmospheric racism of mid-20th century white British authors so long as no non-white characters actually appear, but once the setting is a colonised territory and non-white characters appear, I often start to struggle". I thought Peacock Spring was pretty good for example, but ... well.