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Wednesday Reading Meme
May. 12th, 2021 07:37 amWhat I’ve Just Finished Reading
Jared Cohen’s Accidental Presidents: Eight Men Who Changed America, which chronicles the vice presidents who stepped into office when the president died/was assassinated, answered a question that had long bothered me: what the hell was Lincoln thinking when he selected Andrew Johnson as vice president?
Andrew Johnson was the only loyal senator from a southern state, and Lincoln (among many others) greatly admired his moral courage in standing strong against the secessionist tide. Moreover, during the war Johnson embraced emancipation and civil rights for the formerly enslaved. It was only after Lincoln’s assassination (which occurred right after the war ended) that it became clear Johnson had embraced these things only as war measures to knock out Confederate fighting power. Now that the war was over, he fought any further civil rights measures tooth and nail.
He also proved far more lenient with former rebels than anyone could have expected, given that during the war he advocated harsh punishment for the leaders & instigators of the rebellion. In the event, however, he handed out pardons left and right. Even Jeff Davis only spent two years in prison.
I also finished Aoko Matsuda’s Where the Wild Ladies Are, which was a delight. I’m not usually a big fan of short story collections - often I find the quality of stories really variable - but the tales in this book are uniformly excellent, and I loved Matsuda’s quirky retellings and remixes of Japanese folk tales in contemporary Japan.
And I read two more Newbery Honor books from the 90s, both of which are pretty Peak Newbery, although I must say Carolyn Coman’s What Jamie Saw is far more restrained than it could have been: it had the perfect set-up for Tragic Baby Death (given the book begins with a baby being thrown across the room), but instead the baby gurgles on.
Laurence Yep’s Dragon’s Gate, on the other hand, is chock full of disaster - and chock empty of dragons. After accidentally killing a Manchu, young Otter flees China to work with his father and uncle on the Transcontinental Railroad in California… where Otter’s father is blinded, his uncle breaks his leg and freezes to death and his body is lost on the mountainside, and (this is truly the Peak Newbery moment) after Otter’s messmate Doggy’s moon guitar is stolen, the whole crew heartwarmingly comes together to buy him a new one… only for Doggy to lose two fingers to frostbite the very night before they present him the new guitar. His guitar-playing fingers, obviously.
And finally (possibly because I needed something lighthearted after… all of that) I read Dorothy Gilman’s Mrs. Pollifax Pursued, which delighted me with its unusual riff on the Mrs. Pollifax formula: instead of being sent on a mission by the CIA, Mrs. Pollifax sets off on a mission of her own, intending to save a young woman who took refuge from foul pursuers in Mrs. Pollifax’s closet. Soon, they are hiding out in a carnival! Genuinely tragic that Mrs. Pollifax didn’t end up pretending to be a fortuneteller, as the carnival’s owner briefly suggested, but overall a lively fast-paced read.
What I’m Reading Now
Russell Freedman’s Eleanor Roosevelt: A Life of Discovery. Well-written, like all of Freedman’s books, but wow! Eleanor Roosevelt had a pretty sad life! I’ve just gotten to the part where Franklin has an affair with Eleanor’s social secretary and I just want to kick him. Of all the girls in all the world, couldn’t he find one who wasn’t a friend of his wife’s?
What I Plan to Read Next
I’ve got just two Newbery Honor books from the 1990s left, both by Nancy Farmer: The Ear, The Eye, and the Arm and A Girl Named Disaster. I’m so close! I can do this!
Jared Cohen’s Accidental Presidents: Eight Men Who Changed America, which chronicles the vice presidents who stepped into office when the president died/was assassinated, answered a question that had long bothered me: what the hell was Lincoln thinking when he selected Andrew Johnson as vice president?
Andrew Johnson was the only loyal senator from a southern state, and Lincoln (among many others) greatly admired his moral courage in standing strong against the secessionist tide. Moreover, during the war Johnson embraced emancipation and civil rights for the formerly enslaved. It was only after Lincoln’s assassination (which occurred right after the war ended) that it became clear Johnson had embraced these things only as war measures to knock out Confederate fighting power. Now that the war was over, he fought any further civil rights measures tooth and nail.
He also proved far more lenient with former rebels than anyone could have expected, given that during the war he advocated harsh punishment for the leaders & instigators of the rebellion. In the event, however, he handed out pardons left and right. Even Jeff Davis only spent two years in prison.
I also finished Aoko Matsuda’s Where the Wild Ladies Are, which was a delight. I’m not usually a big fan of short story collections - often I find the quality of stories really variable - but the tales in this book are uniformly excellent, and I loved Matsuda’s quirky retellings and remixes of Japanese folk tales in contemporary Japan.
And I read two more Newbery Honor books from the 90s, both of which are pretty Peak Newbery, although I must say Carolyn Coman’s What Jamie Saw is far more restrained than it could have been: it had the perfect set-up for Tragic Baby Death (given the book begins with a baby being thrown across the room), but instead the baby gurgles on.
Laurence Yep’s Dragon’s Gate, on the other hand, is chock full of disaster - and chock empty of dragons. After accidentally killing a Manchu, young Otter flees China to work with his father and uncle on the Transcontinental Railroad in California… where Otter’s father is blinded, his uncle breaks his leg and freezes to death and his body is lost on the mountainside, and (this is truly the Peak Newbery moment) after Otter’s messmate Doggy’s moon guitar is stolen, the whole crew heartwarmingly comes together to buy him a new one… only for Doggy to lose two fingers to frostbite the very night before they present him the new guitar. His guitar-playing fingers, obviously.
And finally (possibly because I needed something lighthearted after… all of that) I read Dorothy Gilman’s Mrs. Pollifax Pursued, which delighted me with its unusual riff on the Mrs. Pollifax formula: instead of being sent on a mission by the CIA, Mrs. Pollifax sets off on a mission of her own, intending to save a young woman who took refuge from foul pursuers in Mrs. Pollifax’s closet. Soon, they are hiding out in a carnival! Genuinely tragic that Mrs. Pollifax didn’t end up pretending to be a fortuneteller, as the carnival’s owner briefly suggested, but overall a lively fast-paced read.
What I’m Reading Now
Russell Freedman’s Eleanor Roosevelt: A Life of Discovery. Well-written, like all of Freedman’s books, but wow! Eleanor Roosevelt had a pretty sad life! I’ve just gotten to the part where Franklin has an affair with Eleanor’s social secretary and I just want to kick him. Of all the girls in all the world, couldn’t he find one who wasn’t a friend of his wife’s?
What I Plan to Read Next
I’ve got just two Newbery Honor books from the 1990s left, both by Nancy Farmer: The Ear, The Eye, and the Arm and A Girl Named Disaster. I’m so close! I can do this!
