osprey_archer | Wednesday Reading Meme

What I’ve Just Finished Reading

William Dean Howells’ My Mark Twain, which is half reminiscences of Howells’ friendship with Mark Twain and half a collection of reviews Howells’ wrote of Twain’s various books. The first half would make an amazing buddy comedy: Mark Twain the eccentric humorist as the comic and Howells as straight man, going on adventures like “visiting Gorky in his hotel room to help him raise money for the Revolution, only to end up embroiled in Publicity when Gorky got kicked out of the hotel the next day for checking in with a woman not his wife.”

The second half unfortunately made me want to read some Mark Twain. I say “unfortunately” because historically I have struggled with Mark Twain, having attempted and failed to finish The Prince and the Pauper, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, AND Joan of Arc. But maybe if I try something aside from Twain’s historical romances…? His essays, his autobiographical travel books….? And I’ve always felt a sneaking suspicion that I really ought to read Tom Sawyer.

Gerald Durrell’s Marrying Off Mother and Other Stories, which I thought was more uneven than most of Durrell’s work. A couple of stories struck me as mean-spirited (particularly “Ludwig”), but I really liked “The Jury” and “Miss Booth-Wycherly’s Clothes.” I believe these are both fiction dressed up as memoir, but if anyone was going to run into a former professional hangman who was now a drunk in the jungles of South America, it would be Gerald Durrell.

What I’m Reading Now

After long cogitation, I’ve decided that it’s time to reread Katherine Patterson’s Jacob Have I Loved. As a child I found the narrator unbearably whiny about her perfect sister, but I’ve long harbored the suspicion that I might see something more or at least different in it as an adult. So far, I’ve been appreciating the strong sense of place and time, both in the lyrical landscape descriptions and the clear picture of the community on Rass Island at the beginning of World War II, and noticing that Louise does indeed have some endearing qualities: for instance, she loves to use long words, but often pronounces them wrong, as she’s only ever seen them written.

…I was not however wrong to remember that Louise spends a LOT of time whining about her sister Caroline, enviously recounting that every time they suffered a childhood illness, Caroline nearly DIED, thus making herself the center of attention YET AGAIN. So we’ll see how I feel about this in the end.

What I Plan to Read Next

Fascinated/appalled to discover that American Girl is releasing a novel about grown-up Samantha: Fiona Davis’s Samantha: The Next Chapter. Opposed to the whole endeavor on the grounds that everyone ought to be free to imagine Samantha’s future as they wish, whether it’s marriage to Eddie Ryland or rabble-rousing as a lesbian suffragette. However, I may nonetheless prove unable to resist reading the book.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

asakiyume

I haven't read Jacob Have I Loved, but being jealous because your sister gets so much attention every illness because she nearly dies makes me think of the picture book Madeline, where the other girls in the school cry "boo-hoo, we want our appendix out too" because Madeline gets presents, etc., when she's in the hospital. I guess the nearly dying part seems too abstract and distant for kids, and the care and attention very concrete.

Wow, I guess now that the generation that first played with American Girl dolls have grown up, the company sees a market in stories like Samantha: The Next Chapter.

From:

osprey_archer

Yes, it's understandable that a child would feel jealous of a sibling (or fellow orphan) getting tons of attention for an illness. Every single incident of Louise's jealousy is understandable on its own, but the upshot is a character whose keynote emotion is searing jealousy. A bold choice for an author.

Yeah, AG has been leaning hard on the nostalgia angle recently. The latest Girl of the Year is apparently Samantha's great-great-(however many greats) granddaughter, for instance.

From:

asakiyume

Yeah, my initial comment was much longer originally because I was going in all sorts of directions thinking about jealousy and what authors do with it, and why feature it, etc. I feel like somewhere in the 20th century the emphasis moved from, yes, this is a very familiar emotion we all experience, but you need to be able to grow beyond it because We Live in a Society to, I don't know, kind of really dwelling on the feeling and luxuriating it in because it's just such an EXPERIENCE. Oooh. Don't we all feel jealous when... Don't you hate it when that other person... without as much attention to the growing past that. (I say this is my impression, but I don't read the genre really, so maybe I'm dead wrong. You can tell me!)

Anyway, I don't really like the trend of luxuriating in the destructive emotion. Yes, it's real. Yes, we've all felt it. But I'm more interested in how to deal with it and move on.

But sounds like maybe the Jacob story has other issues it's dealing with. Like maybe what to do if a parent just doesn't care much for you? Because that must be a doozy to have to get over.

From:

osprey_archer

I also haven't read a lot of other books really delving into jealousy, maybe because I just don't care for it and am therefore not the ideal audience for Jacob Have I Loved. The other one coming to mind is C. S. Lewis's Till We Have Faces, which also features a main character who can be very envious, but nonetheless I've always very much liked her... maybe because she has a lot of other characteristics? Maybe because she does grow over the course of the story? Will muse at this at more length once I've finished Jacob. Louise might yet grow!

IMO Louise's parents do love her and in fact trust her in some ways that they don't trust Caroline, because she is so much hardier physically - when there's a hurricane incoming, Louise is the one they trust to help a neighbor, for instance. Characteristically, Louise never notices when she's the one who might be said to be favored.

From:

asakiyume

Yeah, there's a lot more to Orual than her envy/jealousy.

From:

sovay

Oooh. Don't we all feel jealous when... Don't you hate it when that other person...

Like clickbait!

(As far as I have been able to tell, I don't experience jealousy unless we count periodic spasms of wondering why some nimrod is allowed to sound off for money in a major newspaper while I can't pay my rent and have thus never gravitated toward narratives that assume its universal relatability any more than I can hack most love triangles without wanting to throw all participants into a wall.)

From:

asakiyume

I did feel jealousy as a child, and now and then I can feel it as an adult, but I really dislike the feeling, and as an adult I'm able to diffuse it pretty quickly. I associate it with a lack of empathy (inability to consider the whole of the jealousy-target's reality) and self-centeredness, qualities I don't like when I see them in other people or in myself.

From:

sovay

I did feel jealousy as a child, and now and then I can feel it as an adult, but I really dislike the feeling, and as an adult I'm able to diffuse it pretty quickly.

I think it's incredibly cool that you learned to do that.

From:

asakiyume

It makes my life a lot happier!

From:

troisoiseaux

American Girl has been leaning hard into the millennial nostalgia market for its 40th anniversary and I mostly feel terribly cynical about it. Will be curious to hear your thoughts on the book, though, if you end up reading it so I don't have to.

(Interesting that they keep specifically building out Samantha's story— the Girl of the Year 2026 is canonically Samantha's great-great- or whatever-granddaughter, and now these sequel?)

From:

osprey_archer

I will try to resist the book, but we shall see if I can stay strong. I haven't read the 90s girls series yet. What's even the point without illustrations?

I do wonder why they keep returning to Samantha. Samantha's great, but so are all the other classic girls! Why not a bit more Felicity?

ETA: They apparently also released a 1920s girl while I wasn't looking. Haven't read that one either. Generally on American Girl strike until the illustration situation is remedied.

Edited Date: 2026-02-25 03:27 pm (UTC)

From:

sholio

I am intrigued that your Mark Twain attempts are completely disjoint from the ones I've read (Tom Sawyer, Huck Finn, and Letters from the Earth). That being said, I'm not completely sure I'd recommend any of them, though I do remember liking them at the time (but the time was like 30 years ago; I feel as if Letters from the Earth in particular is the type of book that is fascinating to read as a college freshman and at no other time in your life).

From:

osprey_archer

I did read Huck Finn in class for high school, and it was, like, FINE, but it didn't bowl me over.

I've never even heard of Letters from the Earth. Is it a book of essays?

From:

sovay

I've never even heard of Letters from the Earth. Is it a book of essays?

It's a posthumously published interrogation of his relationship with Christianity, including something that I would consider a forerunner of The Screwtape Letters except that its argument runs in the exact opposite direction from Lewis. I also haven't read it since college or grad school and have no idea if it would hold up or if I would now shriek GET THEE BEHIND ME RICHARD DAWKINS.

From:

sholio

I've never even heard of Letters from the Earth. Is it a book of essays?

Yeah, that's exactly what it is, a collection of various essays that were mostly unpublished during his lifetime. IIRC the frame story is the devil reporting back to the afterlife on humanity's general prospects for salvation/damnation and the various weird things they get up to.

Edit: which I see has already been capably answered above!

Edited Date: 2026-02-25 08:07 pm (UTC)

From:

sovay

Fascinated/appalled to discover that American Girl is releasing a novel about grown-up Samantha

What.

(I grew up with Kirsten, in hindsight a fascinating exercise in representation: not Jewish, but the only immigrant character of the original line and thus the closest to my family stories.)

From:

osprey_archer

I'm assuming that the Samantha book is a marketing ploy, which aggravatingly will probably work, but I'm still cross about it.

From:

lirazel

I appreciate Huck Finn as a story of a kid struggling with the racism of the society he's living in, but Tom Sawyer is a lot more fun (I say based on 25-year-old memories). Not a favorite book of my mine, but it's much more of a romp. I would say it's worth reading, and it probably wouldn't take you long. I don't know if this will be a reference that hits for you, but it's basically "what if the protagonist of Anne of Avonlea was Davy instead of Anne?"

I will be very interested to hear where you land on Jacob Have I Loved because I did NOT like that one as a kid.

Opposed to the whole endeavor on the grounds that everyone ought to be free to imagine Samantha’s future as they wish, whether it’s marriage to Eddie Ryland or rabble-rousing as a lesbian suffragette.

I could not agree more. The entire point of American Girl books are the girlhood!!!!

From:

osprey_archer

I have to admit that I cannot stand Davy and the idea of making him the protag of Anne of Avonlea gives me chills, so maybe I had better not read The Adventures of Tom Sawyer after all. Maybe I had better let the Wishbone episode stand in my memory for the book.

Jacob Have I Loved will probably get an entire post devoted to both how I felt about it as a child (incredibly negative! Really loathed it!) and my feelings as an adult (I can see that it's well-written and the historical detail and landscape descriptions are both really compelling... might still end up loathing the protagonist, though).

From:

ethelmay

I remember enjoying The Adventures of Tom Sawyer as a child, but after I had read Huckleberry Finn, which is much better written except all the parts about Tom, I hated Tom so much that I couldn't really go back to TS. But forty years later or whatever it is by now, eh, I might pick it up again and I might not.

From:

sholio

Fistbump of solidarity as a fellow Davy disliker. I still remember my deep tweenage resentment of that one scene in which Anne admits that Davy is her favorite because he's the difficult one, and tween!me was just like "But he's THE WORST though!!"

From:

osprey_archer

He's so awful! Inexplicable to me that he would be Anne's favorite!

From:

mildred_of_midgard

Omg, he is THE WORST, WHY.

From:

msilverstar

Twain's historical fiction did not age well.

Huck Finn is surprisingly good though

From:

osprey_archer

Yes, I read Huck Finn in high school. I did make it all the way through that one!

From:

genarti

I disliked Jacob Have I Loved because, as an older sister, I definitely felt for Louise -- she gets in her own way too much, but her feelings made sense to me! I felt bad for her! I wanted her to be free of her life in which she was constantly being compared to Caroline and found wanting, and for her to find her own space in which she can blossom into herself, and people who actually like her best, and a life where she could relax and come to actually believing that people could like her for herself!

...Unfortunately the book ends as it does, so, well. The depiction of the landscape and community was lovely, though.

From:

osprey_archer

I don't remember ALL the details of the ending, but IIRC doesn't she leave the island and make her own life elsewhere and presumably blossom into herself?

Maybe she leaves but remains miserable and unblossomed.

From:

genarti

I remember her leaving and sort of unfurling a little bit but remaining fundamentally miserable and unblossomed. But maybe that's wrong! I haven't read it since high school, and there is a solid chance that if I read it now I would find nuance and optimistic hints there that flew right over my head when I was a teen. I'll be interested to hear your opinion, if you do indeed stick with it!