Wednesday Reading Meme on Tuesday
Dec. 30th, 2025 03:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
osprey_archerI’m doing the Reading Meme one day early this week, as tomorrow is the last day of the year and therefore the day for the Year In Review.
What I’ve Just Finished Reading
I am freeeeeeeee of my vow to read Christmas books for Advent, and therefore… accidentally read one more book with Christmas in… Marilyn Kluger’s Country Kitchens Remembered: A Memoir with Favorite Family Recipes, about the farm kitchens she remembers from her childhood during the Depression, not only her own family’s but her grandparents on both sides. Like any good farm kitchen memoir, the book documents the different foods of each season, which means of course a Christmas chapter, but also chapters about the new peas of spring, the corn on the cob fresh cut from the stalk literally minutes before lunch, the frost-nipped persimmons brought in during the Thanksgiving grouse hunt… Good eating and good reading.
But then! Then I truly broke free with Ngaio Marsh’s Spinsters in Jeopardy! Set in summer in the south of France, Inspector Alleyn and his lady wife Troy co-star in a mystery featuring a drug racket run by an erotic murder cult. You know I love a cult! Also featuring their six-year-old son Ricky, a surprisingly well-observed child. A shocking number of writers of adult fiction couldn’t write a convincing kid to save their life.
And I also slipped in my December Unread Bookshelf book by the skin of my teeth: E. Nesbit’s The Phoenix and the Carpet. I got this soon after I read Five Children and It, then it languished for so many years that I forgot why I was putting it off, but as I read it I remembered: I find these children so stressful! They are forever doing things like “setting off firecrackers inside the house,” which is how they set fire to the old nursery carpet which results in the bringing in of the magic carpet.
What I’m Reading Now
I’ve started Rumer Godden’s Thus Far and Now Farther, which so far is what I expected Elizabeth and her German Garden to be: a charming memoir about a woman in an isolated location with her children, her governess, and her vast army of underpriced labor making a charming garden.
What I Plan to Read Next
No plans! Only vibes! Okay, actually I do have plans, but I am contemplating if I ought to jettison them in favor of vibes. Maybe 2026 should be the Year of Vibe Reading? I have been trying to come up with a good New Year's Resolution...
What I’ve Just Finished Reading
I am freeeeeeeee of my vow to read Christmas books for Advent, and therefore… accidentally read one more book with Christmas in… Marilyn Kluger’s Country Kitchens Remembered: A Memoir with Favorite Family Recipes, about the farm kitchens she remembers from her childhood during the Depression, not only her own family’s but her grandparents on both sides. Like any good farm kitchen memoir, the book documents the different foods of each season, which means of course a Christmas chapter, but also chapters about the new peas of spring, the corn on the cob fresh cut from the stalk literally minutes before lunch, the frost-nipped persimmons brought in during the Thanksgiving grouse hunt… Good eating and good reading.
But then! Then I truly broke free with Ngaio Marsh’s Spinsters in Jeopardy! Set in summer in the south of France, Inspector Alleyn and his lady wife Troy co-star in a mystery featuring a drug racket run by an erotic murder cult. You know I love a cult! Also featuring their six-year-old son Ricky, a surprisingly well-observed child. A shocking number of writers of adult fiction couldn’t write a convincing kid to save their life.
And I also slipped in my December Unread Bookshelf book by the skin of my teeth: E. Nesbit’s The Phoenix and the Carpet. I got this soon after I read Five Children and It, then it languished for so many years that I forgot why I was putting it off, but as I read it I remembered: I find these children so stressful! They are forever doing things like “setting off firecrackers inside the house,” which is how they set fire to the old nursery carpet which results in the bringing in of the magic carpet.
What I’m Reading Now
I’ve started Rumer Godden’s Thus Far and Now Farther, which so far is what I expected Elizabeth and her German Garden to be: a charming memoir about a woman in an isolated location with her children, her governess, and her vast army of underpriced labor making a charming garden.
What I Plan to Read Next
No plans! Only vibes! Okay, actually I do have plans, but I am contemplating if I ought to jettison them in favor of vibes. Maybe 2026 should be the Year of Vibe Reading? I have been trying to come up with a good New Year's Resolution...
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Date: 2025-12-30 10:05 pm (UTC)