Wednesday Reading Meme

[osprey_archer]

What I’ve Just Finished Reading

Another Newbery book! Hildegarde Swift’s Little Blacknose: The Story of a Pioneer, a slender novel told from the point of view of the first railway engine on an American line. Black Beauty for trains! I enjoyed the black and white illustrations by Lynd Ward.

I also read Zilpha Keatley Snyder’s The Treasures of Weatherby, which I approached with the trepidation befitting a late Snyder, but actually I mostly enjoyed it. Like The Headless Cupid, The Trespassers, The Velvet Room, and various other Snyder books, this features a large old house, the largest and most gothic of all Snyder’s large old houses, as this one features an overgrown garden and an impenetrable yew maze and a cast of genteelly decaying family members.

Bored out of his skull, Harleigh the Fourth goes for a walk in the overgrown garden, where he meets a girl named Allegra who claims she flew over the tall and unscalable wrought iron fence. Harleigh insists he doesn’t believe it (maybe he believes it) and the two of them strike up a friendship.

Enchanting in that particular Snyder way right up until the last couple of chapters, at which point I get the impression that Snyder ran out of word count and rushed to wrap everything up and explain it all. Oh well. Endings are generally not her strong suit, and up till then the book is a lot of fun.

What I’m Reading Now

I enjoyed Sebastian Smee’s Paris in Ruins: Love, War, and the Birth of Impressionism so much that I toodled right along to Smee’s The Art of Rivalry: Four Friendships, Betrayals, and Breakthroughs in Modern Art, where I instantly hit a wall in the first section, in which Lucien Freud and Francis Bacon careen joylessly through a series of airless mid-twentieth-century love affairs. (Although really one should call them sex affairs as love is rarely involved.)

They are having as much sex as John Le Carre characters (lots) and getting the same amount of actual happiness out of it (none) and why. Why. Why are they doing this to themselves! You just imagine them in a rare moment of sobriety puzzling over the fact that, even they do whatever they want whenever they want to, somehow they are miserable? Then they wash the thought away with a shot of gin and toddle off to their next mind-numbing affair.

It’s so miserable to read about and must have been absolutely ghastly to live.

Also hit a wall on Our Mutual Friend because I so intensely dislike Eugene Wrayburn for his refusal to promise that he’s not going to ruin my girl Lizzie Hexam. I don’t think he IS going to ruin Lizzie but I hate him anyway, because he either wants to keep the option open just in case, or else feels that Lizzie’s brother is too far beneath his notice to deserve a promise.

I could probably get past this if I hadn’t hit a wall on the book overall. Maybe I should set it aside for now and give it another go in a few years.

What I Plan to Read Next

Upon finishing Little Blacknose, I am TEN BOOKS away from finishing the Newbery project, but I have hit a tiny mental wall so I am taking a break for a bit to read other things.

Comments

[kore]

I cracked open OMF because I was curious and it was very strange. I have never felt so compelled to read about such really unpleasant characters. (And Lizzie was a cliche and the way Bella was with all the men in her life was horrifying.) It felt like Dostoyevsky at times!

[osprey_archer]

20th century people who think they invented books where all the characters are awful have clearly never read Thackeray or certain books by Dickens. (I mean, I guess Dobbin is not the absolute worst, but don't we all think a bit less of him for being in love with the most boring woman in the world for 15 years?)

[lirazel]

They are having as much sex as John Le Carre characters (lots) and getting the same amount of actual happiness out of it (none) and why. Why. Why are they doing this to themselves!

I am too ace for this shit. This sounds terrible to me. I'm guessing the reason is because of Asserting Their Masculinity. Just thinking about it makes me so tired.

[osprey_archer]

I'm convinced that some people in the 20th century were having lots of sex because they had been told that having lots of sex was Liberated, and if they protested that they didn't want that much sex actually they would be informed they were Repressed, which was the next thing to being a Victorian Prude, which was the worst thing in the world, so get out there and have some miserable affairs already!

[lirazel]

I think you're onto something with that!

[regshoe]

I love the idea of Black Beauty for trains :D And hey, Lynd Ward, my fave Kidnapped illustrator.

[osprey_archer]

I didn't realize he had illustrated Kidnapped! Fascinating.

[troisoiseaux]

I toodled right along to Smee’s The Art of Rivalry: Four Friendships, Betrayals, and Breakthroughs in Modern Art, where I instantly hit a wall in the first section, in which Lucien Freud and Francis Bacon careen joylessly through a series of airless mid-twentieth-century love affairs

Hmm. I had considered reading this next (I finished Paris in Ruins! it was great!) but I might give it a pass at the moment...

[osprey_archer]

I expect I will enjoy the Manet-Degas section when I get there, but I might just skip the other twentieth century art parts. Which is three-quarters of the book unfortunately! But hey, at least each artist pair has its own section, so I can go directly to the good stuff.

[asakiyume]

Oooh, Lynn Ward illustrations would be a definite draw!

and why. Why. Why are they doing this to themselves! You just imagine them in a rare moment of sobriety puzzling over the fact that, even they do whatever they want whenever they want to, somehow they are miserable? --I wonder what it was? Was it that sexual liberation promised them that sexual encounters would be just soooo fulfilling, and then they weren't, but they just kept trying?

There's a thing in litfic (and genre fic too, I guess, esp. lit-leaning genre fic), the disaffected character, disaffected from everything... I don't really like these. I read them when I was compelled to for school (high school, college), but without being compelled to read them, I tend to avoid them. What is the author trying to do?? I guess--it's a thing that a lot of people feel now and then and some people (I guess) feel a lot, so maybe it's validating to have it portrayed? And maybe that's enough? ... but not for me.

[osprey_archer]

It genuinely does not seem to have occurred to any of them that sexual liberation means being liberated NOT to have sex as well as being liberated to have loads and loads of sex. Or, you know, just to have sex occasionally, or whatever. Plus, yes, also the idea that sexual encounters are supposed to be sooooo fulfilling, so a lot of people just kept trying even though they don't seem to have been enjoying themselves.

I do wonder if this mindset created a lot of these disaffected characters. Like, I am DOING all the THINGS I am supposed to in order to be FULFILLED, but I don't feel fulfilled at all! I've tried EVERYTHING and there is nothing left but to be disaffected. Because rejecting the sex drugs and rock 'n' roll philosophy would mean becoming a Victorian Prude which is of course the worst thing in the world.

[oracne]

"Black Beauty for trains" would be a great elevator pitch! For...something. I must ponder.

[osprey_archer]

A TV show about trains! ...except that's just Thomas the Tank Engine, isn't it?

[oracne]

I was thinking more along the lines of Murderbot meets trains. Also Black Beauty. My brain makes strange connections sometimes.

[lokifan]

"Black Beauty for trains" sounds so sad! Is Little Blacknose mistreated? :(

[osprey_archer]

Not to the same extent that Black Beauty is, but there IS the ever-present threat of being sold for scrap hanging over his head as bigger and better trains are introduced. (He ends up going on display in Grand Central Station as the first American-built railway engine.)