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Wednesday Reading Meme
Apr. 25th, 2018 09:47 amWhat I’ve Just Finished Reading
Andrea Cheng’s Year of the Book, a short book about a Chinese-American girl whose best friend is waffling between continuing to be her best friend or maybe becoming the best friend of a different girl in their class. This was pretty much the story of my life in fifth grade and I reacted pretty much the same way that Anna does, which is to say by ignoring the problem and reading 5,000 books rather than attempting to do anything about it, so as you might imagine this book and I bonded.
This strategy ended up working out fine for both me and Anna, but all the same we might have both benefited from being a bit more proactive and trying to find new friends rather than concluding that social skills were dumb and the only true friends were in the pages of books anyway.
I also read Shirley Jackson’s We Have Always Lived in the Castle, because there’s a movie version coming out later this year. I’m having second thoughts about the movie, because the book is so overwhelmingly creepy - not in a gory or jump-scare sort of way, but just in the creation of an atmosphere of creeping wrongness - that I broke my usual rule and read part of the introduction before I finished the book because I had to know if I was right about the identity of the murderer. (I was.)
What I’m Reading Now
I’ve started reading Elizabeth Stuart Phelps’ The Story of Avis, which is a novel about a woman artist written in the 1880s & set in the 1860s and therefore very relevant to my interests - but, alas, rather a slog to read.
I also started Winston Churchill’s Savrola - yes, that Winston Churchill; there was another one, but he mostly wrote comedies of manners, not dramatic tales of revolution spearheaded by a heroic young politician who is the leader of his party and the defender of the constitution of the Ruritanian state of Laurania.
Yes. Churchill wrote a whole novel about his self-insert Mary Sue. I’m fascinated to see if he’s going to be Tragically Wounded at some point and then nursed back From the Brink of Death by his love interest, or else face rejection from his party for standing up in favor of what is right instead of what is expedient and then being thrust into the political wilderness before finally being called back when the country realizes that it truly needs him - which I’m sure Churchill thought was the storyline of his actual life, now that I think about it. Possibly his self-insert will simply go from strength to strength without the awkward “political wilderness” period in between.
And I’m reading Ian Mortimer’s Time Traveler’s Guide to Restoration Britain. In which a fire has just burned down London! Don’t time travel back to 1666, is what I’m getting out of this.
What I Plan to Read Next
E. M. Delafield’s Diary of a Provincial Lady!
Andrea Cheng’s Year of the Book, a short book about a Chinese-American girl whose best friend is waffling between continuing to be her best friend or maybe becoming the best friend of a different girl in their class. This was pretty much the story of my life in fifth grade and I reacted pretty much the same way that Anna does, which is to say by ignoring the problem and reading 5,000 books rather than attempting to do anything about it, so as you might imagine this book and I bonded.
This strategy ended up working out fine for both me and Anna, but all the same we might have both benefited from being a bit more proactive and trying to find new friends rather than concluding that social skills were dumb and the only true friends were in the pages of books anyway.
I also read Shirley Jackson’s We Have Always Lived in the Castle, because there’s a movie version coming out later this year. I’m having second thoughts about the movie, because the book is so overwhelmingly creepy - not in a gory or jump-scare sort of way, but just in the creation of an atmosphere of creeping wrongness - that I broke my usual rule and read part of the introduction before I finished the book because I had to know if I was right about the identity of the murderer. (I was.)
What I’m Reading Now
I’ve started reading Elizabeth Stuart Phelps’ The Story of Avis, which is a novel about a woman artist written in the 1880s & set in the 1860s and therefore very relevant to my interests - but, alas, rather a slog to read.
I also started Winston Churchill’s Savrola - yes, that Winston Churchill; there was another one, but he mostly wrote comedies of manners, not dramatic tales of revolution spearheaded by a heroic young politician who is the leader of his party and the defender of the constitution of the Ruritanian state of Laurania.
Yes. Churchill wrote a whole novel about his self-insert Mary Sue. I’m fascinated to see if he’s going to be Tragically Wounded at some point and then nursed back From the Brink of Death by his love interest, or else face rejection from his party for standing up in favor of what is right instead of what is expedient and then being thrust into the political wilderness before finally being called back when the country realizes that it truly needs him - which I’m sure Churchill thought was the storyline of his actual life, now that I think about it. Possibly his self-insert will simply go from strength to strength without the awkward “political wilderness” period in between.
And I’m reading Ian Mortimer’s Time Traveler’s Guide to Restoration Britain. In which a fire has just burned down London! Don’t time travel back to 1666, is what I’m getting out of this.
What I Plan to Read Next
E. M. Delafield’s Diary of a Provincial Lady!
