Wednesday Reading Meme

[osprey_archer]

What I’ve Just Finished Reading

I continue to progress in my quest to read the books I took from my grandmother’s house after she died. This time, Lucy M. Thruston’s A Girl of Virginia, which I took because I had started reading it and wanted to finish it (although clearly not enough to get to it any time in the last decade…), in part because it has that “(A Girl) of (Someplace)” title style so popular around 1900. Anne of Green Gables, Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, Alice of Old Vincennes, Rose of Old Harpeth, Beverley of Graustark... this last one is a cross-dressing Ruritanian romance. I should read it sometime.

ANYWAY. A Girl of Virginia is set at the University of Virginia, and offers a fascinating picture of life at campus and more generally in Virginia society at the time. Also the heroine picks the right hero in the love triangle! Heroines are so rarely allowed to pick the man that I personally believe they should pick. GOOD FOR YOU, FRANCES!

Anne McCaffrey’s hilarious misnamed The Mark of Merlin, which is not even slightly related to Arthurian legend. The titular Merlin is the heroine’s completely non-magical dog, who neither has nor makes any plot-relevent marks. Our heroine, Carla, is a little tiny spitfire on her way to frozen wastes of New England, where she gets snowed in with her big, brawny, scarred-in-mind-and-body-from-his-recent-service-in-World-War-II guardian Major Laird.

Does the romance plot progress as expected? One hundred percent. McCaffrey loves a brawny man manhandling a bratty itty bitty girl. Does the plot otherwise progress as expected? Absolutely not. I was surprised at every turn, and not just because the title made me expect Merlin to be far more plot relevant than he was. A solid mystery with lengthy pauses for beef stew and apple pie.

Continuing my Tasha Tudor journey with The Private World of Tasha Tudor photographed in loving detail by Richard Brown, who also photographed Tasha Tudor’s Garden and Tasha Tudor’s Heirloom Crafts, the latter of which I also really want to read but also I can’t just let Tasha Tudor take over my entire life, can I? Can I? Should I. Would it be WISE. Will it end with me buying a corgi?

Like Tasha Tudor’s Garden, an enchanting book, putting the core in cottagecore. I especially enjoyed the details about Tudor’s dollhouse (there is of course a whole book about Tasha Tudor’s Dollhouse), and the marionette theater she and her children created, and her yearly holiday celebrations…

What I’m Reading Now

Slow but steady progress in Lord Peter. Most recently, Lord Peter found himself caught up in a ghost story, only the ghosts to turn out to have a non-supernatural explanation, of course. I would love to see him head to head with an actual ghost, though.

I also couldn’t resist starting Louisa May Alcott’s A Round Dozen, a dozen stories with illustrations by Tasha Tudor (which is how I stumbled across it). Most recently, a little boy witnessed a jamboree among the silverware set out on the dining room table awaiting the family Thanksgiving feast.

What I Plan to Read Next

The flesh is weak. I put a hold on A Time to Keep: A Tasha Tudor Books of Holidays. I love a holiday celebration, and I’m sure Tudor has some crackerjack ideas how to get the most holiday joy out of every season.

Comments

[ethelmay]

Harriet meets the family ghost in the library at Denver.

[osprey_archer]

Thank you.

[lirazel]

I am weak for stories about pre-war co-eds! I might have to seek this one out....

I am DELIGHTED that you have been sucked into Tasha Tudor's world having lived in it myself for many years!

only the ghosts to turn out to have a non-supernatural explanation, of course.

For some reason, this made incepted me with a nightmare idea: Wimsey/Scooby-doo crossover.

I would love to see him head to head with an actual ghost, though.

As would I!

[osprey_archer]

This is a near-the-end-of-the-war coed, but might hit some of the same buttons? Although we never actually see her at college.

Tasha Tudor DID build a whole world! The rest of us merely worldbuild in our heads but Tudor actually CREATED it.

I have no idea how a Wimsey/Scooby-Doo crossover would work but the idea made me laugh.

[sovay]

Our heroine, Carla, is a little tiny spitfire on her way to frozen wastes of New England, where she gets snowed in with her big, brawny, scarred-in-mind-and-body-from-his-recent-service-in-World-War-II guardian Major Laird.

If the Major were only RAF, I would suspect McCaffrey of filing the serial numbers back onto her own work. I am glad the plot was less predictable than the romance!

[osprey_archer]

The major is merely infantry, but there is nonetheless a certain emotional similarity to the Weyrs in Pern. Although in the Weyrs, McCaffrey managed to find a way to make the heroine completely central to the quasi-military structure, whereas here Carla is just a bit outside and can't really get in.

[rachelmanija]

I never even heard of Mark of Merlin!

[osprey_archer]

McCaffrey wrote SO MANY books and I've only heard of like. Three of her series.

[genarti]

Neither had I, until Becca and I found it at a used bookstore for $5! The price was right, although we both also assumed that Merlin would be, you know, plot-relevant in some way. It's not one of her most memorably gonzo (I would in fact say one of her least gonzo that I've read, though I definitely haven't read all her more-or-less-contemporary romances) but kind of entertaining in its way just for that.

[asakiyume]

I await the corgi. Maybe don’t name him Merlin, though.

[osprey_archer]

Alas, I don't think I'm home enough to give a corgi a good life. (Or that my cats would forgive me for bringing home a dog.) Perhaps a stuffed animal corgi, though?

[asakiyume]

A stuffed corgi is the perfect solution!