Wednesday Reading Meme
Dec. 9th, 2020 09:00 amWhat I’ve Just Finished Reading
At long last I’ve read Dylan Thomas’s memoir/short story/prose poem, A Child’s Christmas in Wales, in a beautiful edition illustrated by Trina Schart Hyman (illustrator of Caldecott winner St. George and the Dragon and Caldecott runner-up Hershel and the Hanukkah Goblins, among many others).
I’m glad I waited till now for this book. The writing is beautiful, and I don’t think I would have appreciated it fully as a child.
Continuing the Christmas theme, I read a collection of Louisa May Alcott’s Christmas short stories, A Merry Christmas, and Other Stories. This is about as saccharine as you would expect (read: VERY), but for whatever reason I find that much more tolerable in nineteenth century authors. In Alcott’s case particularly, I think it’s partly because her own family was so poor when she was a child: when she writes about sad waifs who are transported when a charitable neighbor gives them a Christmas tree, you sort of feel young Louisa beyond it, yearning for SOMEONE to give her and her sisters the tree laden with mittens and gilded nuts that her feckless father will never provide.
I also finished G. Neri’s Tru & Nelle, which is a somewhat odd book. It sort of gestures at being a mystery without, in fact, fully developing its mystery. However, I enjoyed it enough that I am reading the sequel, which is actually why I read the first book in the first place, because the sequel is a Christmas story and I wanted to read it this December.
And finally, I read Iona Datt Sharma’s Division Bells, because![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
skygiants reviewed it as a romance deeply grounded in the minutia of UK House of Lords procedure. This is not something that I knew I wanted until I read the review and my traitorous heart, determined to lengthen my ever-lengthening to-read list, said “YES.”
It’s very sweet! I did wish it was a little longer so the relationship had more time to develop, but on the other hand the Parliamentary procedure was everything I hoped and dreamed - in fact, considerably more; my knowledge of the House of Lords is so slight that I didn’t even know what to hope and dream for.
What I’m Reading Now
I’ve begun G. Neri’s Tru & Nelle: A Christmas Tale. So far, Truman Capote has escaped from military school and run away to Alabama, where he almost doesn’t knock on Nelle Harper Lee’s window because she has been forced to wear a dress and so he is not sure that he has the right window.
What I Plan to Read Next
Christmas with Anne, and Other Holiday Stories, a collection of stories by L. M. Montgomery. I’ve never read Montgomery’s short stories before, so I am intrigued to make their acquaintance.
At long last I’ve read Dylan Thomas’s memoir/short story/prose poem, A Child’s Christmas in Wales, in a beautiful edition illustrated by Trina Schart Hyman (illustrator of Caldecott winner St. George and the Dragon and Caldecott runner-up Hershel and the Hanukkah Goblins, among many others).
I’m glad I waited till now for this book. The writing is beautiful, and I don’t think I would have appreciated it fully as a child.
Our snow was not only shaken from whitewash buckets down the sky, it came shawling out of the ground and swam and drifted out of the arms and hands and bodies of the trees; snow grew overnight on the roofs of the houses like a pure and grandfather moss, minutely white-ivied the walls and settled on the postman, opening the gate, like a dumb, numb thunderstorm of white, torn Christmas cards.
Continuing the Christmas theme, I read a collection of Louisa May Alcott’s Christmas short stories, A Merry Christmas, and Other Stories. This is about as saccharine as you would expect (read: VERY), but for whatever reason I find that much more tolerable in nineteenth century authors. In Alcott’s case particularly, I think it’s partly because her own family was so poor when she was a child: when she writes about sad waifs who are transported when a charitable neighbor gives them a Christmas tree, you sort of feel young Louisa beyond it, yearning for SOMEONE to give her and her sisters the tree laden with mittens and gilded nuts that her feckless father will never provide.
I also finished G. Neri’s Tru & Nelle, which is a somewhat odd book. It sort of gestures at being a mystery without, in fact, fully developing its mystery. However, I enjoyed it enough that I am reading the sequel, which is actually why I read the first book in the first place, because the sequel is a Christmas story and I wanted to read it this December.
And finally, I read Iona Datt Sharma’s Division Bells, because
skygiants reviewed it as a romance deeply grounded in the minutia of UK House of Lords procedure. This is not something that I knew I wanted until I read the review and my traitorous heart, determined to lengthen my ever-lengthening to-read list, said “YES.” It’s very sweet! I did wish it was a little longer so the relationship had more time to develop, but on the other hand the Parliamentary procedure was everything I hoped and dreamed - in fact, considerably more; my knowledge of the House of Lords is so slight that I didn’t even know what to hope and dream for.
What I’m Reading Now
I’ve begun G. Neri’s Tru & Nelle: A Christmas Tale. So far, Truman Capote has escaped from military school and run away to Alabama, where he almost doesn’t knock on Nelle Harper Lee’s window because she has been forced to wear a dress and so he is not sure that he has the right window.
What I Plan to Read Next
Christmas with Anne, and Other Holiday Stories, a collection of stories by L. M. Montgomery. I’ve never read Montgomery’s short stories before, so I am intrigued to make their acquaintance.
