Wednesday Reading Meme
Jul. 23rd, 2025 08:35 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
osprey_archerWhat I’ve Just Finished Reading
Valenti Angelo’s Nino, a 1930s Newbery book of one of my favorite genres, “a thinly fictionalized memoir of the author’s childhood in Ye Olden Times.” Angelo emigrated to the United States at the age of eight, but he remembered his early years in Italy in great detail, especially the delicious food, like polenta with cheese and honey.
I’ve been looking for a Louisa May Alcott book to read for my postcard project, and rather stymied because I’ve read all the main ones at this point, but Tasha Tudor came to the rescue: she illustrated A Round Dozen, twelve short stories by Louisa May Alcott collected by Anne Thaxter Eaton. Alcott’s moralistic tendencies grow somewhat more concentrated in short story form, and although I have generally a high tolerance for that sort of thing, by the last story I wanted to eat an entire indigestible mincemeat pie while sitting in a hayloft reading something unwholesome.
And I read Dorothy Gilman’s The Tightrope Walker, a recent Little Free Library find! Our heroine Amelia Jones, unwilling to follow her therapist’s recommendation that she find some purpose in life by taking a typing class, instead acquires a secondhand shop. While tidying up her new wares, she discovers a note inside the hurdy-gurdy, which purports to be from a woman who is about to be murdered…
If you like Gilman, you’ll like this. An excellent mystery story that grows increasingly tense, with a couple of twists that delighted me.
What I’m Reading Now
In Lord Peter, I just read a short story that appears to be Sayers’ first go-round for the mystery plot of Have His Carcase, followed by a short story where Lord Peter fakes his own death and goes undercover for two years in order to round up an evil secret society of criminals.
This is particularly funny because in the story immediately preceding, Lord Peter announces that he always loses interest in detective stories featuring evil secret societies of criminals. So do I, Lord Peter! And yet here we are!
What I Plan to Read Next
I have a mere THREE Newbery books left! Lois Lenski’s Phebe Fairchild: Her Book, Jeanette Eaton’s Leader by Destiny: George Washington, Man and Patriot, and Dorothy Lathrop’s The Fairy Circus. Full speed ahead to the end!
Valenti Angelo’s Nino, a 1930s Newbery book of one of my favorite genres, “a thinly fictionalized memoir of the author’s childhood in Ye Olden Times.” Angelo emigrated to the United States at the age of eight, but he remembered his early years in Italy in great detail, especially the delicious food, like polenta with cheese and honey.
I’ve been looking for a Louisa May Alcott book to read for my postcard project, and rather stymied because I’ve read all the main ones at this point, but Tasha Tudor came to the rescue: she illustrated A Round Dozen, twelve short stories by Louisa May Alcott collected by Anne Thaxter Eaton. Alcott’s moralistic tendencies grow somewhat more concentrated in short story form, and although I have generally a high tolerance for that sort of thing, by the last story I wanted to eat an entire indigestible mincemeat pie while sitting in a hayloft reading something unwholesome.
And I read Dorothy Gilman’s The Tightrope Walker, a recent Little Free Library find! Our heroine Amelia Jones, unwilling to follow her therapist’s recommendation that she find some purpose in life by taking a typing class, instead acquires a secondhand shop. While tidying up her new wares, she discovers a note inside the hurdy-gurdy, which purports to be from a woman who is about to be murdered…
If you like Gilman, you’ll like this. An excellent mystery story that grows increasingly tense, with a couple of twists that delighted me.
What I’m Reading Now
In Lord Peter, I just read a short story that appears to be Sayers’ first go-round for the mystery plot of Have His Carcase, followed by a short story where Lord Peter fakes his own death and goes undercover for two years in order to round up an evil secret society of criminals.
This is particularly funny because in the story immediately preceding, Lord Peter announces that he always loses interest in detective stories featuring evil secret societies of criminals. So do I, Lord Peter! And yet here we are!
What I Plan to Read Next
I have a mere THREE Newbery books left! Lois Lenski’s Phebe Fairchild: Her Book, Jeanette Eaton’s Leader by Destiny: George Washington, Man and Patriot, and Dorothy Lathrop’s The Fairy Circus. Full speed ahead to the end!
no subject
Date: 2025-07-23 12:52 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-07-23 01:05 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-07-23 01:08 pm (UTC)I have no suggestions for Alcott, but this book is my favorite Gilman. It has always held up when returned to. It may have been inevitable that her version of The Maze in the Heart of the Castle does not live up to Hannah's, but since I had no idea that she had actually this-world written it until it turned up in a local library, I had an incredible shock of metatextually collapsing discovery.
no subject
Date: 2025-07-23 01:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-07-23 06:30 pm (UTC)Yes!
Somewhere, statistically, there must be at least one reader who encountered The Maze in the Heart of the Castle first as a child and then grew up to read mysteries and be so mindblown.
no subject
Date: 2025-07-23 06:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-07-25 03:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-07-25 03:46 pm (UTC)I don't think it should put you off! In context it works perfectly.
no subject
Date: 2025-07-24 05:30 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-07-25 12:07 pm (UTC)