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Wednesday Reading Meme
Oct. 6th, 2021 08:12 amWhat I’ve Just Finished Reading
Two more Newbery Honor books this week. In Aranka Siegal’s memoir Upon the Head of the Goat: A Childhood in Hungary 1939-1944, Siegal records the unraveling of her life as the Jewish community’s plight in Hungary grew ever more desperate. Siegal is very good about recording it as she felt it at the time, rather than through the lens of hindsight: the reader knows where this is going, but the people in the book don’t, and their hope makes it a gut punch when the book ends with the family climbing onto a cattle car to Auschwitz.
Patricia Lauber’s Volcano: The Eruption and Healing of Mount St. Helens is about, well, what it says. Basically I already knew the story this book was telling (volcano erupts! Scientists amazed by the speed with which life returns to devastated area!), but it was fascinating to read about it in more detail. (In fact my only complaint about the book is that I wanted yet more detail. Tell me ALL about those lichens, Lauber!) Lovely photographs.
I also read Edward Prime-Stevenson’s Imre, which was privately printed in 1906 and one of the first novels that unambiguously portrays a gay relationship between two men that ends happily. This is an amazing resource if you’re interested in the cutting edge understanding of sexuality in the early 1900s; if you’re just looking for an entertaining novel, however, this is perhaps not the best choice, as the longest chapter of the book is a monologue by Oswald, the narrator, recounting his life story and also all his FEELINGS about homosexuality, also referred to as similisexuality and Uranianism. Two years later when EPS published a book about the topic, he called it The Intersexes. Clearly the terminology was still in formation.
After this there is a rather sweet part where the leads finally end up getting together. After Oswald’s confession Imre, who hates writing letters, suddenly starts writing Oswald every day all “I can’t sleep because I’m thinking about you” and “I can’t wait to see you again so I can tell you something I can’t write down” and so forth and so on, and Oswald is all WHAT DOES THIS MEAN…? and then decides it means that Imre’s going to confess that he’s in love with his former best friend’s wife. OSWALD MY DUDE. (But I get why he’s so hesitant to imagine that it means what it does in fact mean, because he’s had a horrible experience in his past where he confessed his love to a different BFF and the BFF was all WE MUST NEVER SPEAK AGAIN, so naturally he’s a little gun shy.)
What I’m Reading Now
The move has taken over my life! No thoughts, head empty.
What I Plan to Read Next
I have discovered an essay collection called The Mask of Fiction: Essays on William Dean Howells which apparently contains an essay detailing Howells’ “friendship with a homosexual,” which seems like a promising lead on that potentially mythical slashy Howells novel. Do I care enough to interlibrary loan the darn thing? I am sorry to say that the answer is probably yes.
Two more Newbery Honor books this week. In Aranka Siegal’s memoir Upon the Head of the Goat: A Childhood in Hungary 1939-1944, Siegal records the unraveling of her life as the Jewish community’s plight in Hungary grew ever more desperate. Siegal is very good about recording it as she felt it at the time, rather than through the lens of hindsight: the reader knows where this is going, but the people in the book don’t, and their hope makes it a gut punch when the book ends with the family climbing onto a cattle car to Auschwitz.
Patricia Lauber’s Volcano: The Eruption and Healing of Mount St. Helens is about, well, what it says. Basically I already knew the story this book was telling (volcano erupts! Scientists amazed by the speed with which life returns to devastated area!), but it was fascinating to read about it in more detail. (In fact my only complaint about the book is that I wanted yet more detail. Tell me ALL about those lichens, Lauber!) Lovely photographs.
I also read Edward Prime-Stevenson’s Imre, which was privately printed in 1906 and one of the first novels that unambiguously portrays a gay relationship between two men that ends happily. This is an amazing resource if you’re interested in the cutting edge understanding of sexuality in the early 1900s; if you’re just looking for an entertaining novel, however, this is perhaps not the best choice, as the longest chapter of the book is a monologue by Oswald, the narrator, recounting his life story and also all his FEELINGS about homosexuality, also referred to as similisexuality and Uranianism. Two years later when EPS published a book about the topic, he called it The Intersexes. Clearly the terminology was still in formation.
After this there is a rather sweet part where the leads finally end up getting together. After Oswald’s confession Imre, who hates writing letters, suddenly starts writing Oswald every day all “I can’t sleep because I’m thinking about you” and “I can’t wait to see you again so I can tell you something I can’t write down” and so forth and so on, and Oswald is all WHAT DOES THIS MEAN…? and then decides it means that Imre’s going to confess that he’s in love with his former best friend’s wife. OSWALD MY DUDE. (But I get why he’s so hesitant to imagine that it means what it does in fact mean, because he’s had a horrible experience in his past where he confessed his love to a different BFF and the BFF was all WE MUST NEVER SPEAK AGAIN, so naturally he’s a little gun shy.)
What I’m Reading Now
The move has taken over my life! No thoughts, head empty.
What I Plan to Read Next
I have discovered an essay collection called The Mask of Fiction: Essays on William Dean Howells which apparently contains an essay detailing Howells’ “friendship with a homosexual,” which seems like a promising lead on that potentially mythical slashy Howells novel. Do I care enough to interlibrary loan the darn thing? I am sorry to say that the answer is probably yes.
