Wednesday Reading Meme
Jul. 30th, 2025 08:17 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
osprey_archerWhat I’ve Just Finished Reading
Another Newbery! Lois Lenski’s Phebe Fairchild Her Book, which is set in Connecticut in the 1830s and features Phebe Fairchild, sent from the port of New Haven to stay with her Puritan farming cousins upstate, where she has to hide her Mother Goose because the Puritan farming cousins do not approve of silly rhymes. Phebe learns some farming skills, the Puritan cousins learn to unbend a bit, and a good time was had by all.
I’ve vaguely meant to read Liz Kessler’s The Tail of Emily Windsnap for years, and thentroisoiseaux posted about it, and then asakiyume decided to read it (and later posted about it too), so obviously its time had come.
Unfortunately, I think I just waited way too long on this book. I might have liked it better if I had read it back in 2003, when I was still reasonably young and impressionable, although I might equally have been even more annoyed by the fact that mermaid society is not a thoroughly worldbuilt society in its own right, but merely an underwater reflection of the land world. The court stenographer may be writing her report in squid ink, and the presiding judge may be the King of the Mermaids himself, but otherwise the court functions exactly like a law court on a TV show.
What I’m Reading Now
Nearing the end of Lord Peter. Read the MOST HORRIFYING story this week, in which a man driven by unsubstantiated jealousy systematically withholds his wife’s thyroid medication, without which she degenerates to a mumbling wreck, and moves to a remote outpost in the Basque country so that the only witnesses are superstitious villagers who think that she’s bewitched. TERRIFYING. AWFUL. Lord Peter solves it and saves her of course, but HORRIFYING.
What I Plan to Read Next
Two Newbery books left to go! The project is almost complete, a mere seven years after it began!
Another Newbery! Lois Lenski’s Phebe Fairchild Her Book, which is set in Connecticut in the 1830s and features Phebe Fairchild, sent from the port of New Haven to stay with her Puritan farming cousins upstate, where she has to hide her Mother Goose because the Puritan farming cousins do not approve of silly rhymes. Phebe learns some farming skills, the Puritan cousins learn to unbend a bit, and a good time was had by all.
I’ve vaguely meant to read Liz Kessler’s The Tail of Emily Windsnap for years, and then
troisoiseaux posted about it, and then asakiyume decided to read it (and later posted about it too), so obviously its time had come.Unfortunately, I think I just waited way too long on this book. I might have liked it better if I had read it back in 2003, when I was still reasonably young and impressionable, although I might equally have been even more annoyed by the fact that mermaid society is not a thoroughly worldbuilt society in its own right, but merely an underwater reflection of the land world. The court stenographer may be writing her report in squid ink, and the presiding judge may be the King of the Mermaids himself, but otherwise the court functions exactly like a law court on a TV show.
What I’m Reading Now
Nearing the end of Lord Peter. Read the MOST HORRIFYING story this week, in which a man driven by unsubstantiated jealousy systematically withholds his wife’s thyroid medication, without which she degenerates to a mumbling wreck, and moves to a remote outpost in the Basque country so that the only witnesses are superstitious villagers who think that she’s bewitched. TERRIFYING. AWFUL. Lord Peter solves it and saves her of course, but HORRIFYING.
What I Plan to Read Next
Two Newbery books left to go! The project is almost complete, a mere seven years after it began!
no subject
Date: 2025-07-30 01:08 pm (UTC)The world-building of the mermaid society is indeed the weakest part - which is so annoying, because it's a mermaid society, it could have been so cool, but noooo - and the mermaid school in particular annoyed me as a child. (Hairbrush monitor???) I did find the courtroom scene hilarious this time - maybe more so than I did as a kid? - because it was just so Law and Order: Underwater Edition.
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Date: 2025-07-30 07:12 pm (UTC)Law and Order: Underwater Edition also sounds like it could be a great premise for something.
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Date: 2025-07-31 03:28 pm (UTC)I mean, I guess mermaid society doesn't have to languish in the equivalent of European dark ages, but it should have a differently inflected modernity!
The jealous husband who's doing that to his wife--is it his intention to ultimately kill her or what? I hope he gets his proper comeuppance.
no subject
Date: 2025-07-31 06:04 pm (UTC)The jealous husband is SO jealous that it is his intent to reduce her to a state where no one else will want her, but keep her alive. In the end she escapes but he does NOT get his comeuppance, although I like to imagine that like Dido Twite's father he is eventually eaten by wolves.
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Date: 2025-08-04 01:04 pm (UTC)(I have friended you, I hope you don't mind!)
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Date: 2025-08-04 06:54 pm (UTC)Always nice to have new friends! Welcome!