Wednesday Reading Meme
Jun. 17th, 2026 12:50 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
osprey_archerI trundled on in Three Moments of an Explosion until the story with three dead women (one of them died 500 years ago, but still) returned the ratio of stories to dead women to one to one. Then I decided enough was enough and I stopped.
What I’ve Just Finished Reading
Zilpha Keatley Snyder’s The Bronze Pen. A budding young writer acquires a bronze pen that seems to make what she writes come true. Propulsive while I was reading, but not very memorable aside from the fact that the main character is named Audrey Abbott - like Martha Abbott in The Changeling! - but evidently no relation.
Also Alexander Woollcott’s Two Gentlemen and a Lady, a trio of dog stories that I purchased in Bloomington in the interstices of the wedding I was attending. The stories were cute, but what I liked best were the illustrations by political cartoonist Edwina. Political cartoonists often make a very successful transition to illustration, I find. (See also Tenniel’s illustrations of Alice in Wonderland.
What I’m Reading Now
In The Romanovs, Nicholas I has just blundered into the Crimean War, which is going poorly because he has failed to modernize the Russian army since the Napoleonic Wars. Fortunately for him, the British and the French are catastrophically mismanaging their modernized armies, so Russia is not getting nearly as trounced as you might expect.
What I Plan to Read Next
I purchased two other books in Bloomington: Nigel Andrew’s The Butterfly: Flights of Enchantment, and Christopher Morley’s Parnassus on Wheels.
What I’ve Just Finished Reading
Zilpha Keatley Snyder’s The Bronze Pen. A budding young writer acquires a bronze pen that seems to make what she writes come true. Propulsive while I was reading, but not very memorable aside from the fact that the main character is named Audrey Abbott - like Martha Abbott in The Changeling! - but evidently no relation.
Also Alexander Woollcott’s Two Gentlemen and a Lady, a trio of dog stories that I purchased in Bloomington in the interstices of the wedding I was attending. The stories were cute, but what I liked best were the illustrations by political cartoonist Edwina. Political cartoonists often make a very successful transition to illustration, I find. (See also Tenniel’s illustrations of Alice in Wonderland.
What I’m Reading Now
In The Romanovs, Nicholas I has just blundered into the Crimean War, which is going poorly because he has failed to modernize the Russian army since the Napoleonic Wars. Fortunately for him, the British and the French are catastrophically mismanaging their modernized armies, so Russia is not getting nearly as trounced as you might expect.
What I Plan to Read Next
I purchased two other books in Bloomington: Nigel Andrew’s The Butterfly: Flights of Enchantment, and Christopher Morley’s Parnassus on Wheels.
no subject
Date: 2026-06-17 05:49 pm (UTC)