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Wednesday Reading Meme
Feb. 6th, 2019 08:30 amWhat I’ve Just Finished Reading
I read Mary Boewe’s Beyond the Cabbage Patch: The Literary World of Alice Hegan Rice as research for the blog post I’m writing about Annie Fellows Johnston and her writing group (the Authors Club), and it was perfect, exactly the kind of information that I wanted about the interconnections within the group.
And also - although this is beyond the scope of the post - Rice’s connections with the wider writing world: she corresponded with Ida Tarbell the muckraking journalist and Kate Douglas Wiggin (the two writers were often confused, as Rice’s most famous book was Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch) and even Mary Mapes Dodge, the editor of St. Nicholas Magazine, a grand doyenne of the American literary world. I love this kind of tracing of social & professional connections - like a literary family tree.
Alice’s husband Cale Young Rice was also a writer, a poet, of the insufferable not-very-talented “my poetry isn’t popular because the masses only want dreck!” kind. He sent a lengthy letter to Harriet Monroe of Poetry magazine to demand to know why she didn’t publish more of his work or review his books and Harriet Monroe - presumably driven beyond endurance by his endless stream of poems - she responded that she found his work derivative and dull and didn’t publish it because she didn’t want to, and I feel a little bad for him because that would be crushing, but at the same time - I can’t feel too bad when he literally asked for it. WHY, CALE.
I also read Jaclyn Moriarty’s The Extremely Inconvenient Adventures of Bronte Mettlestone, which I think suffers somewhat from a surfeit of characters - I was having some trouble keeping track of who’s who - but the world-building is as charmingly whimsical as in the A Corner of White trilogy, and I’m looking forward to the sequel. Which probably will not be published in the US for ages.
What I’m Reading Now
Winifred Holtby’s South Riding has arrived at last! It’s still early days (which in a book of this size means I’m over a hundred pages in) but so far I’m impressed by Holtby’s ability to introduce a vast cast of characters so vividly that I haven’t had any trouble keeping track of them. (Of course it helps that a few years ago I saw a miniseries based on the book - so far as I can tell, pretty faithfully.)
I am a little put out that we haven’t gotten to spend more time with my favorites, though. But I’m sure Midge and Sarah Burton will show up again soon.
I’ve begun Henry Williamson’s Tarka the Otter, His Joyful Water-life and Death in the Country of the Two Rivers, which is approximately 75% landscape description, and unfortunately landscape description is one of those things where I’ll suddenly realize that I’ve reached the bottom of the page and have no idea what I just read. But I’m persevering: a chapter a night.
What I Plan to Read Next
I wanted to continue with the Lord Peter books, only to discover that the library only has The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club on audiobook, but I listened to Whose Body on audiobook and hated the narrator so much that it almost put me off Sayers for life - he just made Peter sound so insufferable! So I’ll have to find another way to get this book.
In the meantime I’ve got The Nine Tailors on hold; I don’t suppose (outside of the Harriet books) that it matters too much which order I read the books in.
I read Mary Boewe’s Beyond the Cabbage Patch: The Literary World of Alice Hegan Rice as research for the blog post I’m writing about Annie Fellows Johnston and her writing group (the Authors Club), and it was perfect, exactly the kind of information that I wanted about the interconnections within the group.
And also - although this is beyond the scope of the post - Rice’s connections with the wider writing world: she corresponded with Ida Tarbell the muckraking journalist and Kate Douglas Wiggin (the two writers were often confused, as Rice’s most famous book was Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch) and even Mary Mapes Dodge, the editor of St. Nicholas Magazine, a grand doyenne of the American literary world. I love this kind of tracing of social & professional connections - like a literary family tree.
Alice’s husband Cale Young Rice was also a writer, a poet, of the insufferable not-very-talented “my poetry isn’t popular because the masses only want dreck!” kind. He sent a lengthy letter to Harriet Monroe of Poetry magazine to demand to know why she didn’t publish more of his work or review his books and Harriet Monroe - presumably driven beyond endurance by his endless stream of poems - she responded that she found his work derivative and dull and didn’t publish it because she didn’t want to, and I feel a little bad for him because that would be crushing, but at the same time - I can’t feel too bad when he literally asked for it. WHY, CALE.
I also read Jaclyn Moriarty’s The Extremely Inconvenient Adventures of Bronte Mettlestone, which I think suffers somewhat from a surfeit of characters - I was having some trouble keeping track of who’s who - but the world-building is as charmingly whimsical as in the A Corner of White trilogy, and I’m looking forward to the sequel. Which probably will not be published in the US for ages.
What I’m Reading Now
Winifred Holtby’s South Riding has arrived at last! It’s still early days (which in a book of this size means I’m over a hundred pages in) but so far I’m impressed by Holtby’s ability to introduce a vast cast of characters so vividly that I haven’t had any trouble keeping track of them. (Of course it helps that a few years ago I saw a miniseries based on the book - so far as I can tell, pretty faithfully.)
I am a little put out that we haven’t gotten to spend more time with my favorites, though. But I’m sure Midge and Sarah Burton will show up again soon.
I’ve begun Henry Williamson’s Tarka the Otter, His Joyful Water-life and Death in the Country of the Two Rivers, which is approximately 75% landscape description, and unfortunately landscape description is one of those things where I’ll suddenly realize that I’ve reached the bottom of the page and have no idea what I just read. But I’m persevering: a chapter a night.
What I Plan to Read Next
I wanted to continue with the Lord Peter books, only to discover that the library only has The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club on audiobook, but I listened to Whose Body on audiobook and hated the narrator so much that it almost put me off Sayers for life - he just made Peter sound so insufferable! So I’ll have to find another way to get this book.
In the meantime I’ve got The Nine Tailors on hold; I don’t suppose (outside of the Harriet books) that it matters too much which order I read the books in.
