Wednesday Reading Meme

[osprey_archer]

Books I've Given Up On This Week

I regret to admit (or rather admit without regret) that I got deeply bored about a quarter of the way through Jean-Paul Sartre's Nausea, and have therefore taken it back to the library. Sorry, Jean-Paul! This is simply not a season of my life where I am interested in you.

What I’ve Just Finished Reading

While looking for more Penelope Farmer books, as one does, I discovered that the author of Charlotte Sometimes also occasionally moonlighted as a translator from Hebrew. Specifically, she and Amos Oz teamed up to translate Oz’s book Soumchi, a wistful childhood journey through British-occupied Jerusalem between the world wars.

This is an adult book about children rather than a children’s book - the tip-off lies in the prologue, a melancholy reflection about how everything is changing all the time which is very “adult looking back at childhood.” A gentle period piece about a boy with a massive crush on his classmate Esthie and also absolutely zero common sense, as evidenced by the fact that he keeps making trades where he is fairly obviously getting the worse end of the deal.

Also continuing my Vivien Alcock explorations with A Kind of Thief, a contemporary novel about a girl whose father is arrested for theft. But before he’s marched off by the police, he manages to sneak her the information to pick up a bag at the railroad station. Does receiving these presumably stolen goods make her… a kind of thief?

I think Alcock’s work is stronger (or at least more tailored to my interests) when she’s exploring a fantastical premise. This is fun but not something I would suggest seeking out unless you’re an Alcock completist. (If you are an Alcock completist, I do own a copy and I would be happy to send it to a new home.)

Also zipped through Dorothy Gilman’s Kaleidoscope, the sequel to The Clairvoyant Countess, which I probably should have read first as Kaleidoscope is chock full of spoilers for the earlier book. On the other hand, I’ll probably have forgotten all the spoilers by the time I mosey around to The Clairvoyant Countess, so it’s fine.

Always love Gilman’s older heroines. This book is aptly named, a kaleidoscope of different fractured glimpses of other people’s lives, some of which appear once and some of which are threaded throughout the book. No strong through-line but lots of fun little interweaving stories.

What I’m Reading Now

Grace Lin’s Chinese Menu, a lavishly illustrated compilation of the legendary origin stories of many classic Chinese dishes. Just about the embark on the story of spring rolls.

What I Plan to Read Next

I know I keep saying I’m going to read E. F. Benson’s Queen Lucia, but I’m going to read Queen Lucia for real this time.

Comments

[magid]

I agree on Dorothy Gilman’s older protagonists; so nice to see active older women!

[osprey_archer]

Yes, they're always so fun! Who among us doesn't want to grow up to be Mrs. Pollifax?

[magid]

I’ve wanted to be Mrs. Pollifax for years!

[sovay]

I think Alcock’s work is stronger (or at least more tailored to my interests) when she’s exploring a fantastical premise.

I would not have been surprised for an Alcock protagonist to pick up a bag at the railroad station and acquire some kind of ambiguously supernatural problem with it, either.

This is fun but not something I would suggest seeking out unless you’re an Alcock completist. (If you are an Alcock completist, I do own a copy and I would be happy to send it to a new home.)

I am interested, never having read it, but mostly if it will not put you out.

[edit] Hestia posted this comment by stepping on my keyboard, so I guess she's interested, too.

[osprey_archer]

Who am I to deprive Hestia! I'll send the book to you if you'll PM me your address.

[sartorias]

Penelope Farmer! She wrote one I enjoyed in high school. I think it was called The Summer Birds. V. poignant. Kids flying, which I could never get enough of, so I wrote my own. As one does at 14. (I also thought the ending a profound tragedy)

[osprey_archer]

Yes! I've read that one too, with the flying kids.

[troisoiseaux]

I got deeply bored about a quarter of the way through Jean-Paul Sartre's Nausea, and have therefore taken it back to the library

You got further than I did— I only made it the first couple of pages. Camus' The Stranger at least has the selling point of being funny.

[ethelmay]

FUNNY? Good lord, no one ever told me that. I thought it was the most depressing thing I'd ever read. (Sophomore year of high school. Generally a good year for English, but Camus made no sense to me. Neither did Frank Conroy's Stop-Time.)

[troisoiseaux]

I mean, it's very much darkly funny, in the increasingly absurd and disconcerting ways the main character is like sure, whatever, nothing matters anyway in response to quite literally anything anyone says to him, but I did in fact laugh out loud at one point while reading The Stranger. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[kore]

Oh, yeah, he's such a poseur, it's hilarious. "Maman died today. Maybe yesterday. Who knows." //long puff of Gitane

[osprey_archer]

Why is it so easy to make fun of existentialists? I remember once watching a short black and white film, narrating the thoughts of our protagonist the existentialist cat. Hilarious.

[osprey_archer]

A part of me wishes to read The Stranger even though I KNOW it would be a choice I would regret. But who among us doesn't enjoy laughing at an existentialist poseur from time to time?

[troisoiseaux]

DO IT DO IT DO IT

[osprey_archer]

This is what everyone said when I was thinking about trying Sartre and look how THAT turned out...

[troisoiseaux]

To be fair, I was only advocating reading The Stranger last time, too. I would send you the second-hand copy I'd acquired but I already Little Free Library'ed it. :(

[osprey_archer]

It's available at the local library if I decide that I need to give existentialism another go!

[littlerhymes]

I haven't read The Stranger but The Plague was so readable! CAMUS IS NOT BORING!

[lucymonster]

You are making better life choices than me re: Sartre. How much further after the Great Picking-Up-Paper Crisis did you make it before losing the will to continue?

[osprey_archer]

He's just realized that the Self-Taught Man is reading his way through the library in alphabetical order, and has just reached the Ls. The Self-Taught Man is trying to remember the author of something he read, murmuring "Na... Ne...." and our narrator points out that he hasn't gotten that far in the alphabet yet.

[lucymonster]

Ah, riveting stuff! The translation I read rendered that character as “the Autodidact”, which I feel has more gravitas - a bit too much gravitas, really. (Do you want spoilers?)

[osprey_archer]

Yes, happy for spoilers!

[lucymonster]

Yeah, so, the Autodidact is a practising paedophile. Towards the end of the novel, he gets caught red-handed molesting schoolboys in the library. But luckily nothing matters, so Roquentin doesn’t really think any less of his friend for this petty foible.

[osprey_archer]

Oh no. He seemed like such a nice man...

[chestnut_pod]

I find literary authors who also translate so interesting. It seems much more common outside of English, sadly.

[osprey_archer]

Apparently Lloyd Alexander started out translating from the French. Who knew!

[asakiyume]

G'by, Sartre! Don't let the door hit you on the way out!

I can vividly remember seeing the art for Chinese Menu at the Eric Carle!

[osprey_archer]

That must have been a fantastic exhibit!

[asakiyume]

It was part of an exhibit devoted to her work, and yes, it was!