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Wednesday Reading Meme
Jun. 1st, 2022 08:52 amWhat I’ve Just Finished Reading
Worrals of the W.A.A.F., Worrals Flies Again, and Worrals Carries On, the first three books in W. E. Johns’ Worrals series. These are fast, easy-to-read adventure stories. Worrals and her best friend Frecks, two pilots in the W.A.A.F., keep getting embroiled in spy hijinks during World War II.
Also Joan G. Robinson’s The Dark House of the Sea Witch. I am sorry to report that this book does NOT include an actual sea witch, a fact reflected in the original UK title Meg and Maxie (the names of the heroine and her little brother), which I can only assume the US publishers thought needed more pep. In fact, the book is about Meg and Maxie realizing that their weird neighbor is NOT a witch, but an eccentric and reclusive painter. I enjoyed the thorny sibling dynamic (Meg is continually promising herself to be nice to Maxie, then losing her temper with him) and the seaside Norfolk setting, but the book is no When Marnie Was There.
What I’m Reading Now
Kassia St. Claire’s The Secret Lives of Color, which is full of wonderful tidbits about the pigments used in dyes and paints. For instance, the chrome yellow Van Gogh used in his sunflowers darkens in reaction with pigments in sunlight; “Van Gogh’s sunflowers, it seems, are wilting, just as their real-life counterparts did.”
In Dracula, Jonathan Harker is in a bad way! Dracula has taken ALL his pens and paper (except his diary which he must keep in his pocket, perhaps with its own little pencil), as well as his travel documents and traveling clothes! HOW WILL HE GET OUT? (I have read this book before, but I genuinely don’t remember how he gets out of this predicament. BE SAFE, JONATHAN HARKER.)
What I Plan to Read Next
I’ve put in an interlibrary loan for Joan G. Robinson’s Charley (which has the promising alternate title The Girl Who Ran Away), but it looks like her other two children’s chapter books, The House in the Square and The Summer Surprise, may not have been published in the US. Damn!
Worrals of the W.A.A.F., Worrals Flies Again, and Worrals Carries On, the first three books in W. E. Johns’ Worrals series. These are fast, easy-to-read adventure stories. Worrals and her best friend Frecks, two pilots in the W.A.A.F., keep getting embroiled in spy hijinks during World War II.
Also Joan G. Robinson’s The Dark House of the Sea Witch. I am sorry to report that this book does NOT include an actual sea witch, a fact reflected in the original UK title Meg and Maxie (the names of the heroine and her little brother), which I can only assume the US publishers thought needed more pep. In fact, the book is about Meg and Maxie realizing that their weird neighbor is NOT a witch, but an eccentric and reclusive painter. I enjoyed the thorny sibling dynamic (Meg is continually promising herself to be nice to Maxie, then losing her temper with him) and the seaside Norfolk setting, but the book is no When Marnie Was There.
What I’m Reading Now
Kassia St. Claire’s The Secret Lives of Color, which is full of wonderful tidbits about the pigments used in dyes and paints. For instance, the chrome yellow Van Gogh used in his sunflowers darkens in reaction with pigments in sunlight; “Van Gogh’s sunflowers, it seems, are wilting, just as their real-life counterparts did.”
In Dracula, Jonathan Harker is in a bad way! Dracula has taken ALL his pens and paper (except his diary which he must keep in his pocket, perhaps with its own little pencil), as well as his travel documents and traveling clothes! HOW WILL HE GET OUT? (I have read this book before, but I genuinely don’t remember how he gets out of this predicament. BE SAFE, JONATHAN HARKER.)
What I Plan to Read Next
I’ve put in an interlibrary loan for Joan G. Robinson’s Charley (which has the promising alternate title The Girl Who Ran Away), but it looks like her other two children’s chapter books, The House in the Square and The Summer Surprise, may not have been published in the US. Damn!
