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Wednesday Reading Meme
Aug. 25th, 2021 07:38 amWhat I’ve Just Finished Reading
I finished Nick Lloyd’s The Western Front: A History of the Great War, 1914-1918, which ends on the cheery image of General Pershing gazing thoughtfully at a map of the battle lines just before the armistice and musing “What a difference a few days would have made.”
This is one of those tempting “What if?” moments in history. What if the Allies had taken a few more days and thrown the German army right back across the border into Germany, maybe even followed them a little way across the border just to make it REALLY CLEAR who had won the war? If the Allies had insisted on unconditional surrender rather than an armistice, could World War II have been avoided, and the Treaty of Versailles created a peace as lasting as the Treaty of Paris in 1815, which lasted ninety-nine years?
Of course, if the peace following the Treaty of Versailles lasted 99 years, that would probably put us… smack in the middle of Alternate Universe World War II right now. Hmm.
After that I needed a little break from the war, so I read Bette Greene’s Philip Hall Likes Me, I Reckon Maybe. (You may be familiar with Bette Greene as the author of Summer of My German Soldier.) It’s probably just as well I didn’t read this when I was actually in the target age group, as Philip Hall would have driven me up the wall, as he is one of those boys who expresses his crush on the narrator mostly by teasing her. I am old enough now to recognize the artistry of the book… while also still wanting to drown Philip Hall in a bucket just a little bit.
Also, my roommate bought the first two volumes of Kousuke Oono’s The Way of the Househusband, which I’ve been hearing about all over the place, so of course I had to give them a try. They’re cute! But I don’t think I’m invested enough to seek out the rest of the manga.
What I’m Reading Now
I’ve begun E. M. Delafield’s The War-Workers, which is one of Delafield’s earliest novels, but as far as I can tell she appeared from the head of Zeus fully formed as a writer: it’s just as well-written and gently trenchant about human nature as her later work.
I’m also reading Brian Matthew Jordan’s A Thousand May Fall: Life, Death, and Survival in the Union Army, which is about an ethnically German regiment from Ohio in the American Civil War, and quietly weeping about my own stupidity in making Russell German-American in Sleeping Beauty. Did I just WANT to make this book extra hard for myself? Did that just seem like a good IDEA?
What I Plan to Read Next
Yours Cheerfully, the sequel to A. J. Pearce’s Dear Mrs. Bird!
I finished Nick Lloyd’s The Western Front: A History of the Great War, 1914-1918, which ends on the cheery image of General Pershing gazing thoughtfully at a map of the battle lines just before the armistice and musing “What a difference a few days would have made.”
This is one of those tempting “What if?” moments in history. What if the Allies had taken a few more days and thrown the German army right back across the border into Germany, maybe even followed them a little way across the border just to make it REALLY CLEAR who had won the war? If the Allies had insisted on unconditional surrender rather than an armistice, could World War II have been avoided, and the Treaty of Versailles created a peace as lasting as the Treaty of Paris in 1815, which lasted ninety-nine years?
Of course, if the peace following the Treaty of Versailles lasted 99 years, that would probably put us… smack in the middle of Alternate Universe World War II right now. Hmm.
After that I needed a little break from the war, so I read Bette Greene’s Philip Hall Likes Me, I Reckon Maybe. (You may be familiar with Bette Greene as the author of Summer of My German Soldier.) It’s probably just as well I didn’t read this when I was actually in the target age group, as Philip Hall would have driven me up the wall, as he is one of those boys who expresses his crush on the narrator mostly by teasing her. I am old enough now to recognize the artistry of the book… while also still wanting to drown Philip Hall in a bucket just a little bit.
Also, my roommate bought the first two volumes of Kousuke Oono’s The Way of the Househusband, which I’ve been hearing about all over the place, so of course I had to give them a try. They’re cute! But I don’t think I’m invested enough to seek out the rest of the manga.
What I’m Reading Now
I’ve begun E. M. Delafield’s The War-Workers, which is one of Delafield’s earliest novels, but as far as I can tell she appeared from the head of Zeus fully formed as a writer: it’s just as well-written and gently trenchant about human nature as her later work.
I’m also reading Brian Matthew Jordan’s A Thousand May Fall: Life, Death, and Survival in the Union Army, which is about an ethnically German regiment from Ohio in the American Civil War, and quietly weeping about my own stupidity in making Russell German-American in Sleeping Beauty. Did I just WANT to make this book extra hard for myself? Did that just seem like a good IDEA?
What I Plan to Read Next
Yours Cheerfully, the sequel to A. J. Pearce’s Dear Mrs. Bird!
