Wednesday Reading Meme
Dec. 26th, 2018 10:02 pmI’ve had a bad cold (or a mild flu? Hard to tell the difference) since the 21st, so the last few days of the Christmas season passed by in a feverish blur and I never did make the buche de noel because I couldn’t spend that long away from the sanctuary of the blankets. But I did do a lot of reading! So that was nice, I suppose.
I wanted to read the first Mrs. Pollifax book but the library had a horrible copy where the binding swallowed the last word in each line of type, so in that I was defeated. But I’m assuming this is a series where it doesn’t matter too much if you start at the beginning? I could just jump forward till I find a book more graciously bound.
What I’ve Just Finished Reading
Victoria Finlay’s Color: A Natural History of the Palette has been on my reading list for basically as long as I’ve had a written reading list and I FINALLY read it this weekend. Why did I wait so long? This is full of fascinating tidbits about the history of paint, and how people created all sorts of colors in the days before aniline dyes. I particularly enjoyed the bits about how the physical properties of paint affect paintings over time: a lot of Turner’s works, for instance, look very different today than he did when he painted them, because he loved to experiment with new paints and they often faded or reacted oddly with each other over the years.
I finished Remember, Remember! The Selected Stories of Winifred Holtby - my favorite story I think was “Truth Is Not Sober,” in which Truth (drunk off her head, of course) invades the study of a novelist who prides himself on the sober reality of his narrow stories of middle-class life in which nothing much ever really happens, and shows him that the kind of action that he derides as melodramatic is taking place all around him.
But! But! I’ve been saving the best for last. I read Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House. Actually I wanted to read Shirley Jackson’s Hangsaman, because I read![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
truepenny’s review and it sounded like exactly the sort of thing I would like (a classic demon lover tale! But they’re both girls!), only the library didn’t have it… but it turns out that The Haunting of Hill House also features an intense female friendship, so that worked out well.
( spoilers )
What I’m Reading Now
Still working away at Isabel Allende’s The House of the Spirits. Will hopefully have more to say about it once I’m done reading it?
I’ve also begun Helen Dawes Brown Two College Girls, which is one of the earliest women’s college novels - published in 1886 - and moderately interesting so far, although I’m still only a few chapters in.
What I Plan to Read Next
I have hopes for Shirley Jackson’s Life among the Savages, her humorous memoirs about raising her children. This book sounds about as different as it possible to be from the likes of The Haunting of Hill House and I am fascinated by the contrast.
I wanted to read the first Mrs. Pollifax book but the library had a horrible copy where the binding swallowed the last word in each line of type, so in that I was defeated. But I’m assuming this is a series where it doesn’t matter too much if you start at the beginning? I could just jump forward till I find a book more graciously bound.
What I’ve Just Finished Reading
Victoria Finlay’s Color: A Natural History of the Palette has been on my reading list for basically as long as I’ve had a written reading list and I FINALLY read it this weekend. Why did I wait so long? This is full of fascinating tidbits about the history of paint, and how people created all sorts of colors in the days before aniline dyes. I particularly enjoyed the bits about how the physical properties of paint affect paintings over time: a lot of Turner’s works, for instance, look very different today than he did when he painted them, because he loved to experiment with new paints and they often faded or reacted oddly with each other over the years.
I finished Remember, Remember! The Selected Stories of Winifred Holtby - my favorite story I think was “Truth Is Not Sober,” in which Truth (drunk off her head, of course) invades the study of a novelist who prides himself on the sober reality of his narrow stories of middle-class life in which nothing much ever really happens, and shows him that the kind of action that he derides as melodramatic is taking place all around him.
But! But! I’ve been saving the best for last. I read Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House. Actually I wanted to read Shirley Jackson’s Hangsaman, because I read
truepenny’s review and it sounded like exactly the sort of thing I would like (a classic demon lover tale! But they’re both girls!), only the library didn’t have it… but it turns out that The Haunting of Hill House also features an intense female friendship, so that worked out well.( spoilers )
What I’m Reading Now
Still working away at Isabel Allende’s The House of the Spirits. Will hopefully have more to say about it once I’m done reading it?
I’ve also begun Helen Dawes Brown Two College Girls, which is one of the earliest women’s college novels - published in 1886 - and moderately interesting so far, although I’m still only a few chapters in.
What I Plan to Read Next
I have hopes for Shirley Jackson’s Life among the Savages, her humorous memoirs about raising her children. This book sounds about as different as it possible to be from the likes of The Haunting of Hill House and I am fascinated by the contrast.
