Wednesday Reading Meme

[osprey_archer]

What I’ve Just Finished Reading

I rounded out 2025 with Jacqueline Woodson’s Locomotion, the verse prequel to Peace, Locomotion. I thought Peace, Locomotion was ultimately a stronger book, but nonetheless I enjoyed spending more time with the characters.

Then I kicked off 2026 with the new Charles Lenox mystery, The Hidden City, in which Charles Lenox gently brushes against the life of the extremely poor! These books are always a good time, extremely readable, although I thought some of the backstory was unnecessarily convoluted, for reasons that I attempted to explain only for the explanation to quickly grow unwieldy. Too convoluted!

Finally - alert to my fellow Elizabeth Wein fans! She recently co-authored a book with Sherri L. Smith (of Flygirl fame), American Wings: Chicago’s Pioneering Black Aviators and the Race for Equality in the Skies, which does what it says on the tin, plus some excursions to Ethiopia during the Italian invasion of 1936, during which time Pioneering Black Chicago Aviator John C. Robinson attempted to train an Ethiopian air force despite Ethiopia’s pitiful collection of woefully outdated aircraft. It’s not the final Lion Hunters novel but I’ll take what I can get.

What I’m Reading Now

Like Tolstoy, Solzhenitsyn starts out In the First Circle by introducing dozens of characters with about three names each, and in my confusion I was flagging a bit. But then! Then Solzhenitsyn stops dead for Stalin to recount his life story! And now Stalin is meeting with head of SMERSH Abakumov (SMERSH of course stands for “Death to Spies”) who begs Stalin to bring back the death penalty. It’s so hard to keep track of who you’ve executed when you’re not officially allowed to execute people! “You might be the first one we execute,” Stalin teases(what a wag!), and Abakumov murmurs anxiously that of course if it becomes necessary…

What I Plan to Read Next

Thanhha Lai has published a sequel to Inside Out and Back Again: When Clouds Touch Us. I couldn’t bring myself to check it out because I am generally suspicious of sequels, but I know that I won’t be able to resist for long.

Comments

[asakiyume]

“You might be the first one we execute,” Stalin teases (what a wag!) --That Stalin! Always letting loose another thigh slapper!

[osprey_archer]

Truly, just SUCH a card.

[mme_n_b]

I've lived with English for decades, and I still don't understand why "Beyoncé Giselle Knowles-Carter" is an easy name, and "Natalia Nikolayevna Pushkina" somehow isn't.

[osprey_archer]

I think it's mostly down to familiarity, to be honest. It's got nothing to do with the intrinsic difficulty or lack thereof and everything to do with whether or not you've heard the name five thousand times.

The other factor I think is that English writers often feel constrained to use just one name for a character and stick with it, whereas Russian writers will often use different nicknames for the same character in different situations. (At least recent English writers. But then there are Shakespeare's history plays where all the guys are named John and Richard and all the women are Elizabeth and Anne and there are sixteen different guys with the title Gloucester. Modern English speakers complain about that too.)

[mme_n_b]

English writers use different names too, we just frequently skip right past Mr. Richard Johnson whom his wife calls Richard, his mistress Dickie-poo, and his boss Johnson without stopping to think whether those may be three different people.

[osprey_archer]

What outcome are you hoping to achieve from this conversation? Are you hoping that I'm going to cry, "Gosh, it makes no logical sense for me to be confused by the large cast of characters with names that are unfamiliar to me! I will henceforth decide not to be confused!" I regret to inform you that confusion does not work like this.

[mme_n_b]

No, I was hoping to understand something that doesn't make sense to me. I'm sorry that I didn't frame this in a way that is right for you, annoying you was not my intent.