Revisiting my 2018 Reading List

[osprey_archer]

Last time I posted one of these reading lists, asakiyume noted that I’d already read, like, half the books, and I decided that it might be the path of wisdom in the future to try to post these lists BEFORE I started reading the books on them. So! Behold! The authors I intend to revisit from my 2018 reading list!

Juliana Horatia Ewing - the university library has Mrs. Overtheway’s Remembrances (memories of early nineteenth-century England), The Story of a Short Life (unclear, but I think a child soldier dies valiantly?), and Lob Lie-by-the-fire ; Jackanapes ; Daddy Darwin's dovecot (three short stories, possibly fantasy). Any preferences?

Ngaio Marsh

Jerry Pinkney

Rosemary Sutcliff - We Lived at Drumfyvie, on the basis of regshoe’s review

Frances Hodgson Burnett - The Head of the House of Coombe

Roald Dahl - I’ve read the most famous ones (Matilda, James and the Giant Peach, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory), plus his memoirs Boy and Going Solo. But I’ve barely skimmed the surface otherwise. Recs?

Caroline Dale Snedeker

M. T. Anderson - Nicked. Recced by multiple people!

D. E. Stevenson - Mrs. Tim Flies Home. The last of the Mrs. Tim quartet.

E. M. Delafield - technically The Provincial Lady in America is next, but I’d have to get it through ILL, whereas the library has The Provincial Lady in Wartime. Will probably get Wartime unless someone feels strongly the books must be read in order and/or the America is wonderful and I simply mustn’t risk missing it.

Elizabeth Enright - Spiderweb for Two. Wrapping up the Melendys!

Rick Bragg - I really liked his food memoir The Best Cook in the World: Tales from My Momma’s Table, so I meant to try some of his other books, but… I have not. Any suggestions?

Daphne Du Maurier

Edward Eager - Playing Possum (the last of his little-known picture books)

Deborah Ellis - One More Mountain, the newest Breadwinner novel, published in 2022

Fyodor Dosteovsky - The Brothers Karamazov. Thoughts which translation I should get?

Jacqueline Woodson

Eliza Orne White - I, the Autobiography of a Cat. I am including White on this list solely because the archive has this book, and how am I supposed to resist a title like that?

Zilpha Keatley Snyder

C. S. Lewis

Elizabeth Gaskell - Mary Barton or Ruth, probably.

Dorothy Gilman

E. Nesbit - The Wouldbegoods

Thanhha Lai - When Clouds Touch Us, the sequel to Inside Out and Back Again. Always nervous about sequels but going to give this a try.

Vera Brittain - Testament of Youth. Another book I’ve meant to read for AGES.

Comments

[ethelmay]

My favorite Ewing is Six to Sixteen. I can't remember if you've already read that.

[osprey_archer]

Yes, I've read that one already.

[sartorias]

Re Lewis I recommend TILL WE HAVE FACES

[osprey_archer]

Yes, that's a great book! I think I've read all of his novels at this point and all the more famous nonfiction, so at this point I'll be delving into the deep cuts.

[ethelmay]

There is a play version a local-to-me theater is doing that I am hoping to see.

[sartorias]

Oh, wow, I hope it's good!

[regshoe]

Memories of early nineteenth-century England by Juliana Horatia Ewing! I will check that out, anyway :D

I, the Autobiography of a Cat

That is a pretty irresistible title.

[osprey_archer]

Yeah, memories of early nineteenth century England does sound fun! I'll start with that one and save the others for later.

Isn't I, the Autobiography of a Cat an amazing title? Truly intense cat-ness right there.

[troisoiseaux]

For Roald Dahl, did you ever read The BFG? Absolutely no idea how it holds up, but I remember it being my second favorite of his books (behind Matilda) as a child.

[grrlpup]

Seconded! Both the story elements and the Quentin Blake illustrations have stuck with me for many years.

[osprey_archer]

I feel that maybe I had part of The BFG read to me at some point, but I don't think I've read the whole thing. Time to correct that!

I was actually a bit surprised to realize how few Roald Dahl books I've read. I thought I'd read more, but I guess actually I just reread Matilda a bunch of times.

[coffeeandink]

As a kid, I was very fond of Caroline Dale Snedeker's The Forgotten Daughter and The White Isle. No idea if they hold up.

[osprey_archer]

Ooooh, I'll have to read The White Isle. I really enjoyed The Forgotten Daughter, which I read for the Newbery Project.

ETA: I'm so excited you weighed in on Snedeker. I really thought that she was so obscure no one would have an opinion and I'd just have to fly blind in choosing my next one, so it's lovely to find out that someone else has read her work and has opinions about it!

[grrlpup]

Hooray, especially for Spiderweb for Two! :)

[osprey_archer]

Yes, I'm excited for another Melendy book!

[ethelmay]

The premise is slightly contrived, but it has some great scenes and is quite satisfying. I am convinced there is a shout-out to Frank Lloyd Wright (Enright's uncle), but it's about three words of description of a house, and I might be making it up.

[asakiyume]

Frank Lloyd Wright was Enright's uncle?! Small world! .. or something?

[thisbluespirit]

Roald Dahl - I’ve read the most famous ones (Matilda, James and the Giant Peach, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory), plus his memoirs Boy and Going Solo. But I’ve barely skimmed the surface otherwise. Recs?

Oh, definitely Danny the Champion of the World! It's (for Dahl, lol, so, you know), a little more nostalgic and realistic(Ish) (mine even had non-Quentin Blake b&w illustrations, although I do not think you can get Blake-free Dahl these days. No offence to Blake, who is a wonderful artist and suits Dahl down to the ground, but I loved the original Danny ills) and it was my favourite of his as a child. (I am old enough that at the sort of age I was reading Dahl, Matilda was not yet published, or certainly had not made it into my vicinity yet).

Seconding The BFG, though, if you haven't read it. The Witches is much more disturbing & don't know how well it's aged maybe now, but it was delightfully and legendarily terrifying for me and Middle Sis in all the right ways as a child.

Btw, in the UK, in the 1980s, we still had Jackanory, which was a TV show where an actor, occasionally another celeb, would do a reading of a children's book. I had a bit of a love-hate relationship with it, as I (mostly) hated being read to, but otoh some of them just worked so well that it's the Jackanory dramatic reading that still lives in my head, so basically I either adored it or was sort of simultaneously deeply frustrated but yet unable to walk away and break the storytelling spell and wee me resented this hugely. (The dilemma of each new installment - to watch or not to watch!! XD)

Which is to say I have no idea if any of these would be of any interest to you, but even now I recall that the Roald Dahl ones were pretty much always absolute standouts, so I poked YouTube to see if I could find any of the ones I remember, and got mixed results:

One of the very best was George's Marvellous Medicine & it turns out that it was by Rik Mayall, so yeah, but of course - it's a shorter book, and honestly I think this may well be the best way to experience it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NHSQFuTz-8Q

There was a wonderful Matilda one by Victoria Wood, but YT surprisingly, given the amount of VW uploaded, will not provide, but it was lovely, dammit.

Kenneth Williams was a particular star at Jackanory generally, and his efforts included a memorable James and the Giant Peach. (He might have done The BFG as well - somebody did it and that was excellent, too, but no sign of it on YT).

(I am now laughing that growing up we seriously still had a TV show aimed at 8-12 yr olds where you were straight up read a story as a thing! Truly, we live in a different age. Also, well, the BBC was still rather Reithian in patches even then. XD)

[osprey_archer]

I think I have read Danny the Champion of the World! That's the one where the boy and his dad go poaching, right? And the dad runs a gas station, back when gas stations were still mostly small local businesses? I enjoyed that. Might reread it one of these days.

For right now, I think I'm going with The BFG, but I'll definitely keep George's Marvellous Medicine in mind for the future. Do they show the illustrations onscreen during Jackanory, or should I get a copy of the book so I can look at the illustrations while being read to? (TBH might be too impatient to allow myself to be read to, as I can surely read the book much faster than it's being read out loud, but I may give it a try. Good to slow down and smell the roses/listen to the excellent readaloud sometimes.)

IIRC I started The Witches and found it too scary to finish! So that might be another one that I'll give another try by and by.

[thisbluespirit]

That's the one where the boy and his dad go poaching, right? And the dad runs a gas station, back when gas stations were still mostly small local businesses? I enjoyed that. Might reread it one of these days.

Yes, that's it!

Do they show the illustrations onscreen during Jackanory, or should I get a copy of the book so I can look at the illustrations while being read to?

Yes, they show the illustrations. It varies - some of more read while acting out some of the action, some with illustrations. The 80s ones weren't static readings, but they were readings.

[magid]

I loved Fantastic Mr. Fox as a kid, and reread it numerous times, enough so that I avoided the movie.

[osprey_archer]

I remember seeing the trailer for the movie and even as someone who hadn't read The Fantastic Mr. Fox, I felt that it didn't look like a very good adaptation.

[littlerhymes]

For Roald Dahl, I read Fantastic Mr Fox, The BFG, and The Witches many many times as a child. The Giraffe and the Pelly and Me with the Quentin Blake illustrations is a lot of fun. I also read George's Marvellous Medicine many times.

[osprey_archer]

I think I'm going to start with The BFG, but I'm hoping I have more Roald Dahls in the future because I've gotten many excellent recs! Possibly The Witches next to confront my childhood fear?

I actually did read The Giraffe and the Pelly out loud when volunteering in a friend's fifth grade class room. Actually I've read surprisingly more Dahl than I thought, but still not nearly all of them.

[asakiyume]

Excellent; it'll be fun to see you cross these off.

So the authors who are just names are ones where you don't have a particular work, but you want to find something more by them, yes?

Have you read other Dostoevsky? (I did really love Bros K. but I read it a long time ago. My mom gave me The Idiot and Devils [also translated as The Possessed], but I haven't read them yet. Did read and like Crime and Punishment.)

[osprey_archer]

Yes, if there's no specific work listed by the author, I don't have a strong feeling which specific book I'd like to read next, but I know I want to read more of their work. Will settle on the specific book when I'm actually in front of the shelf looking at the available Jerry Pinkneys (or what have you).

I've read Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment and Notes from Underground and have meant to read others, but he's one of those authors where many of his books are so long and emotionally intense that I need to extra spur of a challenge to get around to actually, you know, reading them.