Wednesday Reading Meme
May. 6th, 2026 08:25 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
osprey_archerWhat I’ve Just Finished Reading
Mark Helprin’s A Kingdom Far and Clear, a single book containing all three books of Helprin’s Swan Lake trilogy, the first of which is a retelling of Swan Lake (tragic mode), and the second and third of which are a continuation of the story based on the question, “But what if Rothbart wasn’t defeated at the end of Swan Lake? And also Rothbart wasn’t just a garden variety sorcerer, but a totalitarian dictator, but in a weirdly whimsical way where (for instance) our ten-year-old heroine spends an entire Joan Aiken-esque sequence working as a yam curler, wearing a special orange and black yam kitchen uniform to roll yams off the yam conveyor belts, and the yam kitchen is so gigantic it has 6000 employees?”
Bizarre. Bleak. Beautifully written! Beautiful but sometimes strangely static illustrations by Chris Van Allsburg. As a retelling I felt this was this not so much engaging with the original as using it as a springboard to deal with its own thematic preoccupations. At the end of book three, the late queen’s husband and son return together from beyond the magical Veil of Snows, the implication being that they’re finally going to get rid of Rothbart once and for all, but let me be real with you, I am no longer convinced this man can die. Non-zero chance he simply slaughters the husband and now-grown son, but the son in the meantime has impregnated a swan princess, and the cycle will continue on and on…
Conclusion: books two and three could have done with a LOT more swans.
I also read Michiko Aoyama’s The Healing Hippo of Hinode Park, translated by Takami Nieda. Like Aoyama’s Hot Chocolate on Thursdays, this is a warm, gentle book about a series of loosely linked characters, linked in this case by the fact that they recently moved into a new condominium development near a park with a concrete ride-on hippo named Kanahiko, the eponymous Healing Hippo. He probably doesn’t actually have healing powers (this book has less of a fantasy undercurrent than Hot Chocolate on Thursday), but even just hearing about these healing powers helps people reexamine the problems in their own lives.
What I’m Reading Now
I’m reading Clay Risen’s The Crowded Hour: Theodore Roosevelt, the Rough Riders, and the Dawn of the American Century. I got to the part where the whole army starts converging on Tampa for the invasion of Cuba (Tampa had only one railway line and no port, but an entrepreneur had suggested using it at a staging ground and Washington said “Yes” without actually checking into the details), and the officers are hanging out at the hotel with thirteen silver minarets… “I’ve been there!” I shrieked. This hotel is now the flagship building of the University of Tampa.
What I Plan to Read Next
Michiko Aoyama’s What You Are Looking For Is in the Library, which looks similar to Aoyama’s other books in that it is about a bunch of loosely linked characters (connected in this case by a library) who figure out a way forward through their problems. Then I’ll be out of Aoyama books until Matcha on Monday comes out in July.
Mark Helprin’s A Kingdom Far and Clear, a single book containing all three books of Helprin’s Swan Lake trilogy, the first of which is a retelling of Swan Lake (tragic mode), and the second and third of which are a continuation of the story based on the question, “But what if Rothbart wasn’t defeated at the end of Swan Lake? And also Rothbart wasn’t just a garden variety sorcerer, but a totalitarian dictator, but in a weirdly whimsical way where (for instance) our ten-year-old heroine spends an entire Joan Aiken-esque sequence working as a yam curler, wearing a special orange and black yam kitchen uniform to roll yams off the yam conveyor belts, and the yam kitchen is so gigantic it has 6000 employees?”
Bizarre. Bleak. Beautifully written! Beautiful but sometimes strangely static illustrations by Chris Van Allsburg. As a retelling I felt this was this not so much engaging with the original as using it as a springboard to deal with its own thematic preoccupations. At the end of book three, the late queen’s husband and son return together from beyond the magical Veil of Snows, the implication being that they’re finally going to get rid of Rothbart once and for all, but let me be real with you, I am no longer convinced this man can die. Non-zero chance he simply slaughters the husband and now-grown son, but the son in the meantime has impregnated a swan princess, and the cycle will continue on and on…
Conclusion: books two and three could have done with a LOT more swans.
I also read Michiko Aoyama’s The Healing Hippo of Hinode Park, translated by Takami Nieda. Like Aoyama’s Hot Chocolate on Thursdays, this is a warm, gentle book about a series of loosely linked characters, linked in this case by the fact that they recently moved into a new condominium development near a park with a concrete ride-on hippo named Kanahiko, the eponymous Healing Hippo. He probably doesn’t actually have healing powers (this book has less of a fantasy undercurrent than Hot Chocolate on Thursday), but even just hearing about these healing powers helps people reexamine the problems in their own lives.
What I’m Reading Now
I’m reading Clay Risen’s The Crowded Hour: Theodore Roosevelt, the Rough Riders, and the Dawn of the American Century. I got to the part where the whole army starts converging on Tampa for the invasion of Cuba (Tampa had only one railway line and no port, but an entrepreneur had suggested using it at a staging ground and Washington said “Yes” without actually checking into the details), and the officers are hanging out at the hotel with thirteen silver minarets… “I’ve been there!” I shrieked. This hotel is now the flagship building of the University of Tampa.
What I Plan to Read Next
Michiko Aoyama’s What You Are Looking For Is in the Library, which looks similar to Aoyama’s other books in that it is about a bunch of loosely linked characters (connected in this case by a library) who figure out a way forward through their problems. Then I’ll be out of Aoyama books until Matcha on Monday comes out in July.
no subject
Date: 2026-05-06 05:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2026-05-06 06:19 pm (UTC)I read A City in Winter when it came out without knowing it was either a retelling or a sequel, which actually works very well. I believe I finally tracked down a copy of Helprin's Swan Lake some years after the fact of The Veil of Snows.
no subject
Date: 2026-05-06 06:57 pm (UTC)Immediately curious about this
no subject
Date: 2026-05-06 07:27 pm (UTC)I really ought to read these Helprin books, not least because every time I hear about them I get more confused about the tone and scope of them, lol. Clearly the solution is to read them and then contribute to the confusion of others!
The Healing Hippo of Hinode Park sounds lovely.