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Wednesday Reading Meme
May. 15th, 2019 09:02 amWhat I’ve Just Finished Reading
Fittingly, I found Stuart Kells The Library: A Catalogue of Wonders while browsing the stacks at the Central Library. The book is a fascinating account of libraries through the ages in all their varied settings: libraries, country houses, universities, national libraries, etc. etc. I particularly enjoyed the part about book thieves and forgers; there’s just something about rapscallions, I guess.
I finished Elizabeth Warnock Fernea’s A Street in Marrakech, which remained not quite as good as Guests of the Sheik, although in a way it feels unfair to complain that one memoir is about a life-changing, horizon-broadening experience, while the other is about a year in a life - an interesting year but not a big turning point. Of course, Fernea does learn interesting things about Morocco, but the learning curve isn’t as steep as it was in Guests of the Sheik, so you don’t get the same sense of personal growth and discovery.
I also discovered that the library has quite a lot of Dorothy Gilman’s Mrs. Pollifax books on ebook, so that’s what I’ll likely be ready during quiet moments at work for the foreseeable future. This week I polished off the first one, The Unexpected Mrs. Pollifax, and I super ship Mrs. Pollifax and Farrell now, you guys, I really want him to follow her around with dog-like devotion but never speak of his feels (at least not for books and books) because he is convinced that she’s much too sensible to fall for him and also views him as a young whippersnapper as he is a mere forty-one. Just look at this exchange:
“You haven’t been planting seeds of insurrection, have you, Duchess?”
“Well, it’s a change from planting geraniums,” she retorted.
What I’m Reading Now
Latest news from Malory Towers: as a result of a midnight feast gone terribly wrong, Darrell has been DEMOTED from Head Girl of the Fourth! But on the bright side, this has freed Darrell’s little sister Felicity from the invidious trammels of June’s friendship (June was just a LITTLE too pleased by Darrell’s downfall), so once the shame has passed Darrell might decide that this is overall a win.
On a distinctly heavier note, I’ve begun reading Hannah Arendt’s The Human Condition. It is extremely dense and I suspect that a chapter a day is about as much as I’ll be able to handle; we’ll see if I finish it. So far I’ve gotten through chapter one and learned that in this book, labor will be defined as the things we have to do to survive and work as the things that we create - so, for instance, dinner is labor, a cookbook is work.
The book also has its own definition of action but I’m still wrapping my head around that one.
I’ve also begun Cari Beauchamp’s Without Lying Down: Frances Marion and the Powerful Women of Early Hollywood. The title comes from a quip of Marion’s, which is also the book’s epigraph: “I’ve spent my life looking for a man I can look up to without lying down.” I love her already.
What I Plan to Read Next
Kells’ The Library convinced me that I really must read Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose. Someday! This is a statement of velleity rather than of actual intent to go out and get the book forthwith.
Fittingly, I found Stuart Kells The Library: A Catalogue of Wonders while browsing the stacks at the Central Library. The book is a fascinating account of libraries through the ages in all their varied settings: libraries, country houses, universities, national libraries, etc. etc. I particularly enjoyed the part about book thieves and forgers; there’s just something about rapscallions, I guess.
I finished Elizabeth Warnock Fernea’s A Street in Marrakech, which remained not quite as good as Guests of the Sheik, although in a way it feels unfair to complain that one memoir is about a life-changing, horizon-broadening experience, while the other is about a year in a life - an interesting year but not a big turning point. Of course, Fernea does learn interesting things about Morocco, but the learning curve isn’t as steep as it was in Guests of the Sheik, so you don’t get the same sense of personal growth and discovery.
I also discovered that the library has quite a lot of Dorothy Gilman’s Mrs. Pollifax books on ebook, so that’s what I’ll likely be ready during quiet moments at work for the foreseeable future. This week I polished off the first one, The Unexpected Mrs. Pollifax, and I super ship Mrs. Pollifax and Farrell now, you guys, I really want him to follow her around with dog-like devotion but never speak of his feels (at least not for books and books) because he is convinced that she’s much too sensible to fall for him and also views him as a young whippersnapper as he is a mere forty-one. Just look at this exchange:
“You haven’t been planting seeds of insurrection, have you, Duchess?”
“Well, it’s a change from planting geraniums,” she retorted.
What I’m Reading Now
Latest news from Malory Towers: as a result of a midnight feast gone terribly wrong, Darrell has been DEMOTED from Head Girl of the Fourth! But on the bright side, this has freed Darrell’s little sister Felicity from the invidious trammels of June’s friendship (June was just a LITTLE too pleased by Darrell’s downfall), so once the shame has passed Darrell might decide that this is overall a win.
On a distinctly heavier note, I’ve begun reading Hannah Arendt’s The Human Condition. It is extremely dense and I suspect that a chapter a day is about as much as I’ll be able to handle; we’ll see if I finish it. So far I’ve gotten through chapter one and learned that in this book, labor will be defined as the things we have to do to survive and work as the things that we create - so, for instance, dinner is labor, a cookbook is work.
The book also has its own definition of action but I’m still wrapping my head around that one.
I’ve also begun Cari Beauchamp’s Without Lying Down: Frances Marion and the Powerful Women of Early Hollywood. The title comes from a quip of Marion’s, which is also the book’s epigraph: “I’ve spent my life looking for a man I can look up to without lying down.” I love her already.
What I Plan to Read Next
Kells’ The Library convinced me that I really must read Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose. Someday! This is a statement of velleity rather than of actual intent to go out and get the book forthwith.
