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Wednesday Reading Meme
Apr. 1st, 2020 08:50 amWhat I’ve Just Finished Reading
Marilyn Nelson’s Carver, A Life in Poems, which indeed tells the story of George Washington Carver’s life in poems. This is one of those Newbery books where I feel that the awards committee (and also the publisher) forgot to consider what actual children might make of lines like
“Another lynching. Madness grips the South.
A black man’s hacked-off penis in his mouth,
His broken body torched…”
On a lighter note, I also finished Elizabeth Peters’ The Curse of the Pharaoh. Still kicking myself for not picking up more of the series - indeed, more of any mystery series - while the library was still open. Perfect brain candy for a stressful time.
And I blasted through the last quarter of Padraic Colum’s The Golden Fleece and the Heroes Who Lived before Achilles. About halfway through the book, Colum completes the adventures of the Argonauts, so the rest of the book is just following up on the heroes’ life stories outside of the Argo: the Twelve Labors of Heracles, Theseus and the Minotaur, Jason throwing over Medea without whom he would have died a loser who never accomplished anything, etc. etc. (Colum goes for a less-savage version of the Medea story, where Medea merely murders Jason’s new prospective bride Glauce; Medea and Jason have no children for Medea to murder.)
What I’m Reading Now
Therese of Lisieux’s The Story of a Soul, which I’ve been enjoying as a memoir of her childhood - although we’ve now left her childhood; I’ve just gotten to the part where all but two of the nuns in the convent fall ill with influenza, and Therese, as one of the well ones, is worked practically off her feet… but it’s fine, because “I was able to have the indescribable consolation of receiving Holy Communion every day… Oh! How sweet that was!”
I really don’t think I quite get nineteenth-century Catholicism.
I’m taking Svetlana Alexievich’s Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster a bit at a time, because it’s a grueling read. One image that keeps recurring: again and again people comment on the contrast between the natural beauty of the Exclusion Zone and its deadliness, the gorgeous cabbages that have to be plowed right back under the earth because they’re saturated with radiation.
What I Plan to Read Next
I’ve still got ten library books left, and I’ve also been casting a thoughtful eye on my unread bookshelf. It seems to me that this might be the perfect time to read a Mary Stewart or two; I’ve always enjoyed her ability to make you feel like you’re really visiting the places she writes about, and now is the perfect time for a literary holiday. I’ve got Airs above the Ground and The Rough Magic, which take place in Vienna and Corfu, respectively.
Marilyn Nelson’s Carver, A Life in Poems, which indeed tells the story of George Washington Carver’s life in poems. This is one of those Newbery books where I feel that the awards committee (and also the publisher) forgot to consider what actual children might make of lines like
“Another lynching. Madness grips the South.
A black man’s hacked-off penis in his mouth,
His broken body torched…”
On a lighter note, I also finished Elizabeth Peters’ The Curse of the Pharaoh. Still kicking myself for not picking up more of the series - indeed, more of any mystery series - while the library was still open. Perfect brain candy for a stressful time.
And I blasted through the last quarter of Padraic Colum’s The Golden Fleece and the Heroes Who Lived before Achilles. About halfway through the book, Colum completes the adventures of the Argonauts, so the rest of the book is just following up on the heroes’ life stories outside of the Argo: the Twelve Labors of Heracles, Theseus and the Minotaur, Jason throwing over Medea without whom he would have died a loser who never accomplished anything, etc. etc. (Colum goes for a less-savage version of the Medea story, where Medea merely murders Jason’s new prospective bride Glauce; Medea and Jason have no children for Medea to murder.)
What I’m Reading Now
Therese of Lisieux’s The Story of a Soul, which I’ve been enjoying as a memoir of her childhood - although we’ve now left her childhood; I’ve just gotten to the part where all but two of the nuns in the convent fall ill with influenza, and Therese, as one of the well ones, is worked practically off her feet… but it’s fine, because “I was able to have the indescribable consolation of receiving Holy Communion every day… Oh! How sweet that was!”
I really don’t think I quite get nineteenth-century Catholicism.
I’m taking Svetlana Alexievich’s Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster a bit at a time, because it’s a grueling read. One image that keeps recurring: again and again people comment on the contrast between the natural beauty of the Exclusion Zone and its deadliness, the gorgeous cabbages that have to be plowed right back under the earth because they’re saturated with radiation.
What I Plan to Read Next
I’ve still got ten library books left, and I’ve also been casting a thoughtful eye on my unread bookshelf. It seems to me that this might be the perfect time to read a Mary Stewart or two; I’ve always enjoyed her ability to make you feel like you’re really visiting the places she writes about, and now is the perfect time for a literary holiday. I’ve got Airs above the Ground and The Rough Magic, which take place in Vienna and Corfu, respectively.
