![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Wednesday Reading Meme
Jan. 22nd, 2014 02:53 pmWhat I’ve Just Finished Reading
Anne Bronte’s The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, which is a portrait of a girl who marries a cad under the belief that she can save him, and her slow, painful realization that he’s a selfish drunk who is unsaveable because he has no wish to be saved. It’s very well-done, which means that a lot of the book is miserable and sad.
All the male characters, including the heroine’s eventual second husband, continually disregard her stated opinions and desires, and believe instead that she must believe things that are more congenial to themselves. This becomes (as it is meant to become) absolutely enraging to read: by the time I was two-thirds of the way through the book I would have been happy if all the male characters (but for the heroine’s son) jumped into the sea and left her bloody well alone.
What I’m Reading Now
Still Ben Hur. He’s escaped the galleys and is now wandering around Antioch plotting VENGEANCE. Vengeance by chariot race!
And more Tam Lin. I’ve gotten to the part where Nick gives Janet a natural herbal birth control tea, and Janet seems...surprisingly okay with the idea of using it? I’m going to assume this is one of the ways that Blackstock is messing with her head, because she otherwise seems so sensible.
Every time I read this book I feel the urge to start a reading list based on all the books Janet reads. DON’T DO IT, SELF, the Romance of the Rose and The Revenger’s Tragedy are almost certainly better to read about than to actually read!
Also Flora’s Fury, the third Flora Segunda book. So far, there has been a WEREBEAR. This means it is automatically awesome. (Also, the romance that I feared at the end of the second book has not come to pass. Probably we will get romance angst instead, but that’s a price I am willing to pay.)
What I Plan to Read Next
The 2014 Newbery Award winner will be announced soonish, I think. So I’ll be reading that!
Anne Bronte’s The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, which is a portrait of a girl who marries a cad under the belief that she can save him, and her slow, painful realization that he’s a selfish drunk who is unsaveable because he has no wish to be saved. It’s very well-done, which means that a lot of the book is miserable and sad.
All the male characters, including the heroine’s eventual second husband, continually disregard her stated opinions and desires, and believe instead that she must believe things that are more congenial to themselves. This becomes (as it is meant to become) absolutely enraging to read: by the time I was two-thirds of the way through the book I would have been happy if all the male characters (but for the heroine’s son) jumped into the sea and left her bloody well alone.
What I’m Reading Now
Still Ben Hur. He’s escaped the galleys and is now wandering around Antioch plotting VENGEANCE. Vengeance by chariot race!
And more Tam Lin. I’ve gotten to the part where Nick gives Janet a natural herbal birth control tea, and Janet seems...surprisingly okay with the idea of using it? I’m going to assume this is one of the ways that Blackstock is messing with her head, because she otherwise seems so sensible.
Every time I read this book I feel the urge to start a reading list based on all the books Janet reads. DON’T DO IT, SELF, the Romance of the Rose and The Revenger’s Tragedy are almost certainly better to read about than to actually read!
Also Flora’s Fury, the third Flora Segunda book. So far, there has been a WEREBEAR. This means it is automatically awesome. (Also, the romance that I feared at the end of the second book has not come to pass. Probably we will get romance angst instead, but that’s a price I am willing to pay.)
What I Plan to Read Next
The 2014 Newbery Award winner will be announced soonish, I think. So I’ll be reading that!
