![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Wednesday Reading Meme
Oct. 16th, 2019 07:15 amWhat I’ve Just Finished Reading
The latest Baby Sitters Club graphic novel, Boy-Crazy Stacey. The first time I read the BSC books, back in the days of my youth, my favorites were all the girls who I felt were like me in some way: Mary Anne, Claudia, Mallory. (Not that I disliked the others the first time round, I just didn’t super connect with them.) One of the pleasures of reexperiencing these books in this new form is that I’m now old enough to also enjoy Stacey, even though her tendency to fall in love at the drop of a hat still makes her feel like a space alien to me: now I can accept and embrace the alien-ness instead of just gazing on in incomprehension.
Jean Webster’s The Wheat Princess is an ungainly duck of a book, and yet I became very fond of it as I read. It gets off to a rocky start - the first chapter is all scene-setting, like reading a rather boring guidebook - but after that it slowly gains steam, and you can see Webster beginning to write the kind of exploration of intellectual growth that makes Daddy-Long-Legs such an excellent and unusual book: one of the few college books (Tam Lin is another) that is actually about the intellectual discovery of college, rather than just the emotional entanglements.
Webster is still learning how to do this in The Wheat Princess (it’s only her second book), which accounts for the ungainliness, but it’s so interesting to see her take her first steps in that direction.
What I’m Reading Now
I finished the first half of Edward L. Ayers’ The Thin Light of Freedom: The Civil War and Emancipation in the Heart of America. The war is almost over! Reconstruction awaits! It sounds like we’re getting to the good part when I put it that way, but actually we’re getting to the “things will look up briefly and then all hope will be ruthlessly crushed” part.
I’ve also begun Judith Flanders’ The Victorian City: Everyday Life in Dickens’ London, because I acquired her earlier book Inside the Victorian Home lo these many years ago and read it so many times that the cover is peeling; it really began my Victorian obsession, my interest in English history generally. The Victorian City will undoubtedly not be so formative, but so far it seems set to be a good time.
What I Plan to Read Next
Reading Boy-Crazy Stacey awakened a desire to tear through a few graphic novels, so I’ve put a few on hold. Next up: Rainbow Rowell’s Pumpkinheads and Colleen A. F. Venable’s Kiss Number 8. And maybe it’s time to finally read the Phoebe and Her Unicorn series?
The latest Baby Sitters Club graphic novel, Boy-Crazy Stacey. The first time I read the BSC books, back in the days of my youth, my favorites were all the girls who I felt were like me in some way: Mary Anne, Claudia, Mallory. (Not that I disliked the others the first time round, I just didn’t super connect with them.) One of the pleasures of reexperiencing these books in this new form is that I’m now old enough to also enjoy Stacey, even though her tendency to fall in love at the drop of a hat still makes her feel like a space alien to me: now I can accept and embrace the alien-ness instead of just gazing on in incomprehension.
Jean Webster’s The Wheat Princess is an ungainly duck of a book, and yet I became very fond of it as I read. It gets off to a rocky start - the first chapter is all scene-setting, like reading a rather boring guidebook - but after that it slowly gains steam, and you can see Webster beginning to write the kind of exploration of intellectual growth that makes Daddy-Long-Legs such an excellent and unusual book: one of the few college books (Tam Lin is another) that is actually about the intellectual discovery of college, rather than just the emotional entanglements.
Webster is still learning how to do this in The Wheat Princess (it’s only her second book), which accounts for the ungainliness, but it’s so interesting to see her take her first steps in that direction.
What I’m Reading Now
I finished the first half of Edward L. Ayers’ The Thin Light of Freedom: The Civil War and Emancipation in the Heart of America. The war is almost over! Reconstruction awaits! It sounds like we’re getting to the good part when I put it that way, but actually we’re getting to the “things will look up briefly and then all hope will be ruthlessly crushed” part.
I’ve also begun Judith Flanders’ The Victorian City: Everyday Life in Dickens’ London, because I acquired her earlier book Inside the Victorian Home lo these many years ago and read it so many times that the cover is peeling; it really began my Victorian obsession, my interest in English history generally. The Victorian City will undoubtedly not be so formative, but so far it seems set to be a good time.
What I Plan to Read Next
Reading Boy-Crazy Stacey awakened a desire to tear through a few graphic novels, so I’ve put a few on hold. Next up: Rainbow Rowell’s Pumpkinheads and Colleen A. F. Venable’s Kiss Number 8. And maybe it’s time to finally read the Phoebe and Her Unicorn series?
