New York Books, Part One
Mar. 23rd, 2022 10:59 amI read MANY books on my trip (and also missed last Wednesday Reading Meme), so rather than do a proper Wednesday Reading Meme this week I thought I would start with the three physical books I read over the trip.
I began with the latest entry in Elizabeth Wein’s Girl Pilots of World War II series, The Last Hawk, which I’ve been saving since![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
littlerhymes sent it to me (inexplicably, these books have not been published in the US) because it seemed like the perfect book to read on the plane. It was! Lots of gorgeous descriptions of piloting a glider in the mountains, maybe Wein’s best flying sequences since Code Name Verity.
Otherwise, this is solidly entertaining, although there’s nothing as delightfully off the wall as
( Spoilers for Firebird ). The Last Hawk starts with Ingrid writing her story for the Americans after flying over enemy lines to smuggle important information out of Germany (literally she tells us this on the first page), and the rest of the story explains how she got there.
I had intended to buy LOTS of books in New York, but as it turned out, I was cruelly misled (probably by my own hopes and dreams, because I can’t recall anyone telling me this) into believing that the Strand’s 18 miles of books include many USED books. Possibly it does on the fourth floor? But the fourth floor was CLOSED and so my carefully curated list of Ye Old Authors was for naught.
However, my luck improved at the delightful children’s bookstore Books of Wonder, where I found Penelope Farmer’s William and Mary and T. Degens' The Visit. Farmer is most famous for Charlotte Sometimes, in which modern-at-the-time-of-writing Charlotte keeps switching places with a girl who studied at her boarding school decades before, during World War I. This is the final book in a trilogy, the other two books of which are about children who learn to fly.
William and Mary has the same weird atmosphere, although the details of said weirdness are totally different. William and Mary are stuck at boarding school over break, and discover that William’s shell allows them to enter into a variety of sea-themed art objects: a painting of Atlantis, a photo of coral reefs, a sea shanty about fishing, and so forth and so on. It didn’t quite come together for me at the end, but it’s also not a book where the ending really matters. The weird magical happenings are the point.
T. Degens’s The Visit also didn’t quite come together, but unfortunately it is the kind of book where the ending matters. Every year, Kate’s buoyant, vivacious Aunt Sylvia comes to Germany for a monthlong visit. These visits used to be the highlight of Kate’s year… until she found the diary of her long-dead Aunt Kate, and realized that Sylvia was somehow implicated in the first Kate’s death at Hitler Youth camp.
The story is told in alternating chapters: present-day chapters in first person, in which Kate sulks through Aunt Sylvia’s visit, and past chapters in third person, which must be Kate’s imaginative reconstruction of the past based on Aunt Kate’s diary.
The structure really demands a final clash in which Kate confronts Aunt Sylvia about What Happened to Aunt Kate (and maybe also What Were You All Thinking with the Nazism). But the book ends before the confrontation: Kate decides she’ll ask Aunt Sylvia directly, and then the book cuts off. I can sort of see why, because Aunt Sylvia is exactly the kind of charming narcissist who would try to wiggle out of all responsibility, and that’s not a satisfying ending either - but it would be more satisfying than what we get.
I enjoyed all these books (even The Visit, though it's the most flawed of the three), but I don't feel the need to keep them. They are all free to a good home! Let me know if you would like one.
I began with the latest entry in Elizabeth Wein’s Girl Pilots of World War II series, The Last Hawk, which I’ve been saving since
littlerhymes sent it to me (inexplicably, these books have not been published in the US) because it seemed like the perfect book to read on the plane. It was! Lots of gorgeous descriptions of piloting a glider in the mountains, maybe Wein’s best flying sequences since Code Name Verity.Otherwise, this is solidly entertaining, although there’s nothing as delightfully off the wall as
( Spoilers for Firebird ). The Last Hawk starts with Ingrid writing her story for the Americans after flying over enemy lines to smuggle important information out of Germany (literally she tells us this on the first page), and the rest of the story explains how she got there. I had intended to buy LOTS of books in New York, but as it turned out, I was cruelly misled (probably by my own hopes and dreams, because I can’t recall anyone telling me this) into believing that the Strand’s 18 miles of books include many USED books. Possibly it does on the fourth floor? But the fourth floor was CLOSED and so my carefully curated list of Ye Old Authors was for naught.
However, my luck improved at the delightful children’s bookstore Books of Wonder, where I found Penelope Farmer’s William and Mary and T. Degens' The Visit. Farmer is most famous for Charlotte Sometimes, in which modern-at-the-time-of-writing Charlotte keeps switching places with a girl who studied at her boarding school decades before, during World War I. This is the final book in a trilogy, the other two books of which are about children who learn to fly.
William and Mary has the same weird atmosphere, although the details of said weirdness are totally different. William and Mary are stuck at boarding school over break, and discover that William’s shell allows them to enter into a variety of sea-themed art objects: a painting of Atlantis, a photo of coral reefs, a sea shanty about fishing, and so forth and so on. It didn’t quite come together for me at the end, but it’s also not a book where the ending really matters. The weird magical happenings are the point.
T. Degens’s The Visit also didn’t quite come together, but unfortunately it is the kind of book where the ending matters. Every year, Kate’s buoyant, vivacious Aunt Sylvia comes to Germany for a monthlong visit. These visits used to be the highlight of Kate’s year… until she found the diary of her long-dead Aunt Kate, and realized that Sylvia was somehow implicated in the first Kate’s death at Hitler Youth camp.
The story is told in alternating chapters: present-day chapters in first person, in which Kate sulks through Aunt Sylvia’s visit, and past chapters in third person, which must be Kate’s imaginative reconstruction of the past based on Aunt Kate’s diary.
The structure really demands a final clash in which Kate confronts Aunt Sylvia about What Happened to Aunt Kate (and maybe also What Were You All Thinking with the Nazism). But the book ends before the confrontation: Kate decides she’ll ask Aunt Sylvia directly, and then the book cuts off. I can sort of see why, because Aunt Sylvia is exactly the kind of charming narcissist who would try to wiggle out of all responsibility, and that’s not a satisfying ending either - but it would be more satisfying than what we get.
I enjoyed all these books (even The Visit, though it's the most flawed of the three), but I don't feel the need to keep them. They are all free to a good home! Let me know if you would like one.
