Wednesday Reading Meme

[osprey_archer]

What I’ve Just Finished Reading

Four Dolls, by Rumer Godden, with illustrations by Pauline Baynes (whom you may be familiar with as the illustrator of The Chronicles of Narnia). This is actually a collection of four doll stories: Impunity Jane, The Fairy Doll, The Story of Holly and Ivy (which I’ve read before but apparently forgot in its entirety), and Candy Floss. I particularly enjoyed The Fairy Doll, which is one of those Godden stories where a Child Makes a Thing (in this case a fairy house for the fairy doll out of a bicycle basket that becomes a cave), and Candy Floss, about a doll who lives in a coconut shy at a fair.

Also Rosemary Sutcliff’s short story “Shifting Sands,” which excited me immensely by beginning with a reference to 1850 - surely the most recent date of any Rosemary Sutcliff story! But 1850 is simply a reference to the year that the shifting dunes revealed the ruins of Skara Brae, and the story itself is about the last days before the village was buried beneath the sand. Most everyone escapes, which is certainly not a given with Sutcliff.

What I’m Reading Now

I’m in the middle of my next Le Carre, Smiley’s People, in which we learn that Connie has retired to the countryside with five hundred pets and a girlfriend. Someone surely has written their thesis about Queerness in Le Carre.

What I Plan to Read Next

Before I move on from the Brontes, I’d like to read one more biography, preferably something more or less recent. I’ve had a rec for Juliet Barker’s The Brontes. Any other contenders?

Comments

[troisoiseaux]

I definitely read The Story of Holly and Ivy as a child, but I had no idea it was by Rumer Godden! And I can't remember whether I actually read Four Dolls - although that seems the most likely? - or somehow encountered it as a standalone story...

I am also interested in reading Baker's Brontë biography but I have been Struggling With Books, lately.

[osprey_archer]

The Story of Holly and Ivy was reprinted in IIRC the nineties (?) with illustrations by Barbara Cooney, so that may have been how you encountered it.

[mildred_of_midgard]

(Here via network.)

Seconding the rec for Barker's book, which is a masterpiece of historical research, but you should know that it is over a thousand pages long. I like long books, but not being the great selenak, I had to read it in chunks over the course of a few months. ;)

If you're in the market for something shorter, I recommend Lucasta Miller's The Brontë Myth. It's not a biography, but it's a metanalysis of biographies over the ages, and it does a good job of being sensible.

I personally loved Lynn Reid Banks' (you may know her as the author of The Indian in the Cupboard) novel Dark Quartet, but is just that: a novel, not a biography. In addition to making things up, it relies on outdated research, and trusts Gaskell just a little too much. But it's one of my favorite books!

Sorry I can't recommend a proper biography, but hopefully these biography-adjacent recs are helpful to you or whoever reads your comments. :)

[osprey_archer]

Oh no, that's even LONGER than Gaskell's biography, which is also a chunk. Maybe I'll start reading and see if I get on with the style before I make a final decision...

Lynn Reid Banks had such a variable career! (I just checked her Wikipedia and learned that she died this year.) I have very much enjoyed some of her books, so I might give Dark Quartet a try...

[regshoe]

Not reading behind the spoiler cut because I haven't read the story and would probably like to at some point, but: aww, I love that historical fiction thing of starting with some place in a contemporary or still-historical 'present day', describing some aspect of it that's relevant to the main historical setting and then going back into that past for the actual story!

[osprey_archer]

I hope you get a chance to read the story sometime! It sounds like it would be right up your alley.

[sovay]

But 1850 is simply a reference to the year that the shifting dunes revealed the ruins of Skara Brae, and the story itself is about the last days before the village was buried beneath the sand.

I didn't know she'd written about Skara Brae! That's neat. I will have to track it down.

[genarti]

Agreed! It's such a fascinating place, I'm not surprised she wanted to do a take on it, but I didn't know she had.

[osprey_archer]

Best of luck finding it! It's quite short but I do think it was published individually, so you might have luck through ILL.

[asakiyume]

Your and genarti's remarks sent me for a Wikipedia read on Skara Brae--fascinating! Furniture made of stone--conjures up Flintstones-style portrayal of the stone age, and yet it's for real!

[genarti]

Some biographies I have enjoyed in recent years (though they're not about the same era and circles as the Brontës book, if that's a factor):

Marie Equi: Radical Politics and Outlaw Passions, by Michael Helquist
Everybody Was So Young: Gerald and Sara Murphy, a Lost Generation Love Story, by Amanda Vaill
Tolkien and the Great War: The Threshold of Middle-earth, by John Garth
The Mutual Admiration Society: How Dorothy L. Sayers and her Oxford Circle Remade The World for Women, by Mo Moulton

[osprey_archer]

Well, right now I'm looking specifically for Bronte biographies, but I'll keep these in mind if I decide I need to go on a general biography binge. May have read The Mutual Admiration Society? Or was that the one I checked out and read part of and didn't finish? Hard to keep track sometimes.

[genarti]

Aha, I misread! In which case I am no use to you whatsoever, but I'm rooting for you to find a good and useful one.

[hedgebird]

Surprisingly, the most recent date for a Sutcliff story is the 20th century. Three picture books she wrote in the 1980s – The Roundabout Horse, Little Hound Found, and A Little Dog Like You – seem to take place in the then-present. The most recent historical story is "The Jubilee Wing" at the end of We Lived in Drumfyvie, set in 1897.

I happened to be browsing a 2015 Bronte book today: Charlotte Bronte: A Fiery Heart by Claire Harman. I am not at all a connoisseur of Bronte biographies, so the only claim I make for it is that it was quite readable.

[osprey_archer]

Oh, fascinating! Those are the three picture books I haven't read, too - I read Chess Dream in a Garden and The Minstrel and the Dragon Pup but didn't have easy access to the others.

[lucymonster]

Ohhhh, yes, I remember those Narnia illustrations! I wouldn't have known the illustrator's name if you didn't flag it, but I've always loved those pictures. She's so talented at bringing magic to life.

[osprey_archer]

I probably wouldn't have recognized her based just on style alone, but I recognized the name so it was fun to see her work in another context. (C. S. Lewis apparently felt that she didn't have a firm grasp on animal anatomy.)

ETA: Little Hound Found wasn't listed on her Wikipedia page, so I added it.

[asakiyume]

Things That Would Make Great Houses for Something Small! Definitely something fun to think about. A coconut shy at a fair seems like too public a housing arrangement, though, kind of like living in a pint glass at a pub.

[osprey_archer]

Perhaps I should have said Candy Floss works at a coconut shy! By night she and the wooden horse and the dog all sleep in the cozy caravan with the coconut shy's owner.

[asakiyume]

Ah okay! Cozy caravan--much more fun and less public home!