Wednesday Reading Meme on Tuesday

[osprey_archer]

I’m posting Wednesday Reading Meme a day early this week, as tomorrow I am heading out on my Massachusetts trip! Not planning to take my computer with me so probably will not post until I return, bearing news of a Katherine Hepburn film festival, fancy tea at the Boston Public Library, and (if all goes well) a visit to a maple sugaring operation.

What I’ve Just Finished Reading

Eliza Orne White’s I, the Autobiography of a Cat, a charming book from 1941, with adorable illustrations by Clarke Hutton (one features a cat batting at an ink pen; cats never change). A cat tells us about his life with a lovely old lady in her beautiful home, where our cat accompanies her on her daily walks around the veranda. (She is blind so uses the veranda rail as a guide, and he walks ahead so she can stroke him from time to time.) Delightful. Always happy to read another book in cat POV. My main contemporary source is Japanese works in translation, but there was clearly a boom in this sort of thing in mid-century American children’s publishing.

I also finished E. Nesbit’s The Wouldbegoods, which perhaps suffered very slightly because I didn’t read The Treasure Seekers first (mostly because I spent the entire book wondering “Who is Albert and why are the Bastables staying with his uncle?”) but overall a pleasant read about children getting up to shenanigans in Edwardian England. Loved the bit where the children decide to walk to Canterbury like the pilgrims of old.

What I’m Reading Now

Zipping through Sarah Tolmie’s The Fourth Island, which is a delight! There is a fourth (magical) island of Aran, where lost people wash up from time to time, and the locals help them build houses and fit into the local community. A little bit Dinotopia although without the dinosaurs.

What I Plan to Read Next

Plotting my trip reading! I have four books on my Kindle: Patricia C. Wrede’s Caught in Crystal, Andrea K. Host’s Stray, George Gissing’s New Grub Street, and Kaje Harper’s Nor Iron Bars a Cage.

Comments

[magid]

Not quite from the cat’s point of view, but possibly of interest anyway: Thomas Gray, Philosopher Cat (Philip Davis).

[osprey_archer]

Oh, interesting. What's it about?

[magid]

Borrowed from elsewhere, a description by the author:

"Introducing Thomas Gray, a cat, and Lucas Fysst, a slightly eccentric Fellow of Pembroke College. Their collaboration leads them both to high honours in the intellectual world, and, as an aftermath, raises a number of metaphysical questions.
_________________________
Placed in Cambridge, England, this fantasy contains an introduction to the English University scene, an old Irish poem, a still older problem in mathematics, and six meals, together with some speculations on the human condition.”

It’s a lovely low-key nerdy sort of book, by the same mathematician author (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_J._Davis) who wrote The Thread: A Mathematical Yarn (and in poking around the internet, just found out that there’s a Thomas Gray sequel I can now look forward to!).

[osprey_archer]

Oh, fascinating! It looks like none of my local libraries have it, but I could ILL it once I get back to my trip. Love it when academics write weird little novels.

[kore]

From what I remember Thomasina by Paul Gallico is partly narrated by the titular cat, but there's upsetting cat death. :-(

[sovay]

Loved the bit where the children decide to walk to Canterbury like the pilgrims of old.

I have not read this book in so long, I had completely forgotten that happened.

"Of course we knew the way to go to Canterbury, because the old Pilgrims' Road runs just above our house. It is a very pretty road, narrow, and often shady. It is nice for walking, but carts do not like it because it is rough and rutty; so there is grass growing in patches on it."

[osprey_archer]

Nice for them that they just happen to live on the Pilgrims' Road! And typical that it doesn't occur to them to find out just how far it might be to Canterbury.

[ethelmay]

I love the bit about the chapel that was called the Lady Chapel in the wicked days when people worshiped the Virgin Mary, and its now being the Dean's Chapel, whereat H.O. asks if they worship the Dean now.

I realized at that point (I mean back when I was first reading these books) that this chapter is an outlier, that otherwise there's essentially no churchgoing in Nesbit's books, nor is there any in some other books of the era where you might expect it - e.g., in The Little Princess there's no kindly clergyman wondering why Sara isn't coming to confirmation classes any longer, that sort of thing.

[sovay]

I realized at that point (I mean back when I was first reading these books) that this chapter is an outlier, that otherwise there's essentially no churchgoing in Nesbit's books, nor is there any in some other books of the era where you might expect it

That never once occurred to me!

[landofnowhere]

I'll be curious to hear what you think of New Grub Street! It's really well-done but also depressing in a way where I'm not actually sure if I should recommend it to anyone who makes a significant income from creative work. (I would also really like post-canon Marian fic to be a thing, but I am someone who daydreams about fic ideas rather than actually writing fic.)

[kore]

Gissing is so, so depressing. Almost worse than Hardy.

[landofnowhere]

I have not read Hardy! I read Gissing because the first third of New Grub Street was assigned for a history class. But yes, Gissing can be really depressing, especially with his Social Darwinist attitude. But I'm very fond of the minor characters in the book, who get to have more interesting arcs (like the sister of the insufferable dudebro who is quietly becoming a successful writer of books for young women while her brother spends the whole book pontificating about what it takes to be a Success in Literature).

I know osprey_archer has read The Odd Women, which I think is the least depressing of Gissing's books, partly because the depressing aspects are baked into the premise.

[kore]

....I have read way more Hardy than I ever wanted to due to studying VicLit. Not that much Gissing though!

[kore]

Oooh New Grub Street. Oh man. I read that once and can still remember scenes from it all too vividly.