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Wednesday Reading Meme
Dec. 13th, 2017 09:01 amWhat I’ve Just Finished Reading
At last I’ve finished Tom Reiss’s The Black Count! General Dumas’s life was a rip-roaring adventure (there’s a part where he stands on a bridge and single-handedly holds off a whole horde of Austrians until the French reinforcements can arrive) and Reiss writes it well, so it should not have taken me ages to finish this book. But I dragged my feet because I knew going in that the French Revolution was going to degenerate into a bloodbath, and then (after a five year pause of comparative sanity, during which France invaded everyone, so really it wasn’t that sane after all) Napoleon was going to take over and rip the beating heart out of revolutionary ideals, and that’s all just such a bummer.
Also! Also! People familiar with French history doubtless already knew this, but APPARENTLY France crossed the Alps and conquered Italy in 1796-97 - only to lose it again when Napoleon stranded a large portion of the French army in a bitter campaign in Egypt. So all this ballyhoo about “Napoleon crossing the Alps” only became necessary because Napoleon vainglorious self-aggrandizing narcissistic invasion of Egypt ruined France’s previous gains.
Also he was super racist and reinstated a lot of racist laws that the Revolution had overturned and re-legalized slavery in the colonies where it had never successfully been eradicated (it being somewhat difficult to enforce a policy on a colony that is halfway around the world when one’s own government at home is in a constant state of turmoil). Everything I learn about Napoleon lowers my opinion of him. I am heartily sorry that his fellow generals didn’t assassinate him the way that Brutus and Cassius assassinated Caesar when he got too big for his britches.
What I’m Reading Now
Fire and Hemlock! Which I am quite enjoying. It’s definitely got it’s “the past was another country” moments: I can’t imagine anyone today letting a ten-year-old girl go off to London to spend an entire day with a strange man she barely knows, and met when she accidentally gate-crashed a funeral. This seems even weirder to me than the magic, although the magic as yet is still quite subtle.
I missed out on most of Diana Wynne Jones as a child - I read Witch Week 10,000 times so I’m not sure why I didn’t go on to the others; I think I read one of the other Chrestomanci books and didn’t like it as much and that was that? Clearly unfortunate. Must rectify it.
I’ve also started Enid Blyton’s The Enchanted Wood, which sadly I think I would have appreciated it 200% more if I had first read it when I was eight or so and too young to care about characterization and prose style or lack thereof.
In a way this is a relief because it means I’m off the hook for reading Blyton’s 500 other books (that number may not be an exaggeration: she was very prolific), but at the same time she’s a titan of children’s literature so I’m sorry I’m not appreciating her more. I’ll at least finish this book just in case it grows on me.
What I Plan to Read Next
Emma lent me Helen Simonson’s The Summer Before the War, which I really ought to read in time to give it back to her at Christmas.
At last I’ve finished Tom Reiss’s The Black Count! General Dumas’s life was a rip-roaring adventure (there’s a part where he stands on a bridge and single-handedly holds off a whole horde of Austrians until the French reinforcements can arrive) and Reiss writes it well, so it should not have taken me ages to finish this book. But I dragged my feet because I knew going in that the French Revolution was going to degenerate into a bloodbath, and then (after a five year pause of comparative sanity, during which France invaded everyone, so really it wasn’t that sane after all) Napoleon was going to take over and rip the beating heart out of revolutionary ideals, and that’s all just such a bummer.
Also! Also! People familiar with French history doubtless already knew this, but APPARENTLY France crossed the Alps and conquered Italy in 1796-97 - only to lose it again when Napoleon stranded a large portion of the French army in a bitter campaign in Egypt. So all this ballyhoo about “Napoleon crossing the Alps” only became necessary because Napoleon vainglorious self-aggrandizing narcissistic invasion of Egypt ruined France’s previous gains.
Also he was super racist and reinstated a lot of racist laws that the Revolution had overturned and re-legalized slavery in the colonies where it had never successfully been eradicated (it being somewhat difficult to enforce a policy on a colony that is halfway around the world when one’s own government at home is in a constant state of turmoil). Everything I learn about Napoleon lowers my opinion of him. I am heartily sorry that his fellow generals didn’t assassinate him the way that Brutus and Cassius assassinated Caesar when he got too big for his britches.
What I’m Reading Now
Fire and Hemlock! Which I am quite enjoying. It’s definitely got it’s “the past was another country” moments: I can’t imagine anyone today letting a ten-year-old girl go off to London to spend an entire day with a strange man she barely knows, and met when she accidentally gate-crashed a funeral. This seems even weirder to me than the magic, although the magic as yet is still quite subtle.
I missed out on most of Diana Wynne Jones as a child - I read Witch Week 10,000 times so I’m not sure why I didn’t go on to the others; I think I read one of the other Chrestomanci books and didn’t like it as much and that was that? Clearly unfortunate. Must rectify it.
I’ve also started Enid Blyton’s The Enchanted Wood, which sadly I think I would have appreciated it 200% more if I had first read it when I was eight or so and too young to care about characterization and prose style or lack thereof.
In a way this is a relief because it means I’m off the hook for reading Blyton’s 500 other books (that number may not be an exaggeration: she was very prolific), but at the same time she’s a titan of children’s literature so I’m sorry I’m not appreciating her more. I’ll at least finish this book just in case it grows on me.
What I Plan to Read Next
Emma lent me Helen Simonson’s The Summer Before the War, which I really ought to read in time to give it back to her at Christmas.
