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Wednesday Reading Meme
Dec. 27th, 2017 10:29 amWhat I’ve Just Finished Reading
Tracy Porter’s Treasures in the Dust, a novel about two girls who are friends during the Dust Bowl, which is told with alternating first person narrators. Now, my standards for books with multiple first person narrators were set by Sarah Monette’s Melusine, which is perhaps unfair - it would be impossible to mistake a paragraph of Mildmay’s narration for a paragraph of Felix’s and that’s an awfully high bar to clear - but nonetheless I did not feel that the narrators here were as well differentiated as they should have been.
I’ve also finished the sequel to The Friendship Matchmaker, The Friendship Matchmaker Goes Undercover, and I’m sorry that there aren’t more in the series, which is a little odd given that I always end up arguing with the morals of the story. At the end of the last book, Lara Zany gave up friendship matchmaking in order to focus on her own budding friendship with Tanya. In this book, she is drawn back to her beloved old hobby, which she takes up again on the sly because she promised not to do it anymore.
And then the book ends with her giving it up again and - I don’t see why she has to give it up. It would be one thing if she were bad at it, or interfering when people didn’t want it, but in fact she’s very good at helping people with friendship problems and her fellow students come to her begging for her aid. And she loves helping! Yes, she clearly needs to work out a better work-life (hobby-life?) balance, so she has time for her own friends too, but I see no reason why she has to give up her friendship work entirely. She has a gift! Let her use it!
What I’m Reading Now
I’ve almost finished The Enchanted Wood! The children have just been turned into toys, and then turned back into children again by Santa Claus, and now goblins have invaded the Faraway Tree, as they do. It’s quite a picaresque novel, isn’t it? There’s not really any kind of overarching plot or even character arcs - just lots of little adventures.
And I’ve just started Lauren Wolk’s Wolf Hollow, which I was rather dreading in a vague way because I was reading it because it won a Newbery Honor, not because I had chosen it for myself - but actually I’ve really liked it so far; I was hard pressed to put it down last night, even though it was late and I really only meant to read the first chapter before I went to bed. In the event I read six, in the vain hope that our heroine Annabelle might vanquish Betty Glengarry, a bully with an unfairly euphonious name - but clearly Betty Glengarry is going to remain a problem throughout the book.
What I Plan to Read Next
2018 is approaching! And with it, the beginning of my next reading challenge! I have decided to save The Brothers Karamazov for “a book in translation” and The Woman in White for “a book that’s more than 500 pages” (both are very long and I think I’ll have more luck with that when the weather is brighter), which still leaves me to decide what to read for “a classic you’ve been meaning to read” in January.
Maybe Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Black Arrow? Or I’ve been meaning to read Aldo Leopold’s A Sand County Almanac. Does that count? But upon investigation the library only has it in gigantic omnibus editions, and I hate giant omnibuses, so perhaps it had better be The Black Arrow after all.
Tracy Porter’s Treasures in the Dust, a novel about two girls who are friends during the Dust Bowl, which is told with alternating first person narrators. Now, my standards for books with multiple first person narrators were set by Sarah Monette’s Melusine, which is perhaps unfair - it would be impossible to mistake a paragraph of Mildmay’s narration for a paragraph of Felix’s and that’s an awfully high bar to clear - but nonetheless I did not feel that the narrators here were as well differentiated as they should have been.
I’ve also finished the sequel to The Friendship Matchmaker, The Friendship Matchmaker Goes Undercover, and I’m sorry that there aren’t more in the series, which is a little odd given that I always end up arguing with the morals of the story. At the end of the last book, Lara Zany gave up friendship matchmaking in order to focus on her own budding friendship with Tanya. In this book, she is drawn back to her beloved old hobby, which she takes up again on the sly because she promised not to do it anymore.
And then the book ends with her giving it up again and - I don’t see why she has to give it up. It would be one thing if she were bad at it, or interfering when people didn’t want it, but in fact she’s very good at helping people with friendship problems and her fellow students come to her begging for her aid. And she loves helping! Yes, she clearly needs to work out a better work-life (hobby-life?) balance, so she has time for her own friends too, but I see no reason why she has to give up her friendship work entirely. She has a gift! Let her use it!
What I’m Reading Now
I’ve almost finished The Enchanted Wood! The children have just been turned into toys, and then turned back into children again by Santa Claus, and now goblins have invaded the Faraway Tree, as they do. It’s quite a picaresque novel, isn’t it? There’s not really any kind of overarching plot or even character arcs - just lots of little adventures.
And I’ve just started Lauren Wolk’s Wolf Hollow, which I was rather dreading in a vague way because I was reading it because it won a Newbery Honor, not because I had chosen it for myself - but actually I’ve really liked it so far; I was hard pressed to put it down last night, even though it was late and I really only meant to read the first chapter before I went to bed. In the event I read six, in the vain hope that our heroine Annabelle might vanquish Betty Glengarry, a bully with an unfairly euphonious name - but clearly Betty Glengarry is going to remain a problem throughout the book.
What I Plan to Read Next
2018 is approaching! And with it, the beginning of my next reading challenge! I have decided to save The Brothers Karamazov for “a book in translation” and The Woman in White for “a book that’s more than 500 pages” (both are very long and I think I’ll have more luck with that when the weather is brighter), which still leaves me to decide what to read for “a classic you’ve been meaning to read” in January.
Maybe Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Black Arrow? Or I’ve been meaning to read Aldo Leopold’s A Sand County Almanac. Does that count? But upon investigation the library only has it in gigantic omnibus editions, and I hate giant omnibuses, so perhaps it had better be The Black Arrow after all.
