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Wednesday Reading Meme
Mar. 24th, 2021 07:57 amWhat I’ve Just Finished Reading
“...perhaps the most useful thing about being a writer of fiction is that nothing is ever wasted; all experience is good for something; you tend to see everything as a potential structure of words.”
Shirley Jackson’s Come Along with Me: Classic Short Stories and an Unfinished Novel also includes two essays about the craft of writing fiction. The above quote comes from one of those essays and it’s just so true.
I’ve also gotten a start on the 2021 Newbery award winners. Often I quibble with the Newbery committee’s decisions (I still haven’t gotten over their choice of Hello, Universe), so I’m pleased to report that I enjoyed this year’s winner, Tae Keller’s When You Trap a Tiger, which weaves together magical happenings drawn from the Korean folktales that Keller’s grandmother used to tell with an engaging contemporary story about… well, okay, a girl whose beloved story-telling grandmother is dying. Would I have enjoyed the dying-grandmother part of the book as a child? As an adult it’s very touching and made me cry, but little!me might have wanted More Magic and Less Death.
What I’m Reading Now
Onward in Armadale! (Perhaps I will make faster progress in this book now that I’m not dividing my online reading time with Battle Cry of Freedom.) The two Allan Armadales’ friendship has been TORN ASUNDER by Lydia Gwilt, who is… perhaps in love with Allan Armadale #2, alias Ozias Midwinter? Possibly appalled to discover herself still capable of the emotion of love?
I’m fairly sure that this is going to end with Allan Armadale #1 married to Miss Milton, but Very Concerned about how the book will wrangle a happy ending for Ozias Midwinter and Lydia Gwilt, given that Midwinter is penniless and Miss Gwilt an adventuress who came to Thorpe Ambrose specifically planning to marry into a large fortune. I JUST WANT OZIAS MIDWINTER TO BE HAPPY, WILKIE COLLINS, is that too much to ask???
I almost gave up on Maeve Binchy’s Evening Class a couple of chapters in; I couldn’t get over the forty-five-year old who had just fallen in love with a twenty-one-year old… who does that?. But I kept going, and although I continue to question almost all of the characters’ romantic choices (Bill, for instance, should really consider breaking up with the girlfriend who locked up her visiting mother, threw away the key, and then called Bill hysterically for help), I’ve become just as invested in their lives as they have grown invested in each other through their Italian class.
What I Plan to Read Next
Continuing my journey through Jacqueline Woodson’s oeuvre with Before the Ever After.
“...perhaps the most useful thing about being a writer of fiction is that nothing is ever wasted; all experience is good for something; you tend to see everything as a potential structure of words.”
Shirley Jackson’s Come Along with Me: Classic Short Stories and an Unfinished Novel also includes two essays about the craft of writing fiction. The above quote comes from one of those essays and it’s just so true.
I’ve also gotten a start on the 2021 Newbery award winners. Often I quibble with the Newbery committee’s decisions (I still haven’t gotten over their choice of Hello, Universe), so I’m pleased to report that I enjoyed this year’s winner, Tae Keller’s When You Trap a Tiger, which weaves together magical happenings drawn from the Korean folktales that Keller’s grandmother used to tell with an engaging contemporary story about… well, okay, a girl whose beloved story-telling grandmother is dying. Would I have enjoyed the dying-grandmother part of the book as a child? As an adult it’s very touching and made me cry, but little!me might have wanted More Magic and Less Death.
What I’m Reading Now
Onward in Armadale! (Perhaps I will make faster progress in this book now that I’m not dividing my online reading time with Battle Cry of Freedom.) The two Allan Armadales’ friendship has been TORN ASUNDER by Lydia Gwilt, who is… perhaps in love with Allan Armadale #2, alias Ozias Midwinter? Possibly appalled to discover herself still capable of the emotion of love?
I’m fairly sure that this is going to end with Allan Armadale #1 married to Miss Milton, but Very Concerned about how the book will wrangle a happy ending for Ozias Midwinter and Lydia Gwilt, given that Midwinter is penniless and Miss Gwilt an adventuress who came to Thorpe Ambrose specifically planning to marry into a large fortune. I JUST WANT OZIAS MIDWINTER TO BE HAPPY, WILKIE COLLINS, is that too much to ask???
I almost gave up on Maeve Binchy’s Evening Class a couple of chapters in; I couldn’t get over the forty-five-year old who had just fallen in love with a twenty-one-year old… who does that?. But I kept going, and although I continue to question almost all of the characters’ romantic choices (Bill, for instance, should really consider breaking up with the girlfriend who locked up her visiting mother, threw away the key, and then called Bill hysterically for help), I’ve become just as invested in their lives as they have grown invested in each other through their Italian class.
What I Plan to Read Next
Continuing my journey through Jacqueline Woodson’s oeuvre with Before the Ever After.
