Wednesday Reading Meme
Aug. 31st, 2022 07:49 amWhat I’ve Just Finished Reading
Elizabeth Wein’s “No Human Hands to Touch,” the Medraut/Morgause companion piece to The Winter Prince published in Sirens and Other Demon Lovers, edited by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling. It is exactly as “Dead Dove, Do Not Eat” as you might imagine from the fact that Medraut spends a large proportion of The Winter Prince waking up with screaming nightmares about his incestuous affair with his mother.
( Spoilers (need I tell you they are disturbing spoilers?) )
This has been quite a week for creepy sex books, because I also read Anne Serre’s The Governesses (translated by Mark Hutchinson), an exceptionally strange French novella about three governesses who show up at a country house where there are no children. Never fear: the governesses come with their own batch of little boys in tow! Not that they spend much time actually looking after the children, mind: most of their time goes to enticing strange men in the estate and devouring them out in the woods. (The devouring is probably a sexual metaphor, but it wouldn’t exactly surprise me if the governesses were vampires. Or fae. Or some other supernatural bitey creature.)
A weird, atmospheric, sex-drenched book. I have no idea what it’s trying to say, if indeed it is saying anything - might just be an exercise in vibes? Odd and interesting.
And now for something completely different: Rebecca Caudill’s Tree of Freedom, a Newbery Honor book from 1950 set during the American Revolution. When the Venable family moves from North Carolina to Kentucky, young Stephanie Venable takes along a seed from an apple tree, which in turn sprouted from a seed brought across the Atlantic when her Huguenot ancestors fled persecution in France. Inspired by her brother Noel’s patriotic fervor, she names the resulting sapling the Tree of Freedom, even though the seed at one point gets eaten by a chicken (!) and then Stephanie cuts the chicken’s crop open to get at the seed (!!) and then sews the crop back up (!!!!!!)... but don’t worry, both seed and chicken are fine. (Would a chicken be fine after that? Maybe I don't want to think about this too deeply.)
What I’m Reading Now
In Mrs. Pollifax, Innocent Tourist, Mrs. Pollifax is on her way to Jordan to pick up the manuscript of a novel by a recently murdered Iraqi author! In her undercover role as an innocent tourist, she has returned to her roots with a truly massive floral hat, and I love her.
In Dracula, Lucy is feeling better! Thank God her illness is all over. She’s definitely going to survive till her wedding at the end of September.
What I Plan to Read Next
I would like to track down a copy of Elizabeth Wein’s other extended Lion Hunters’ ‘verse story, “Fire,” but we shall see. In the meantime![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
littlerhymes has sent me a copy of Cherith Baldry’s Exiled from Camelot, the woobiest Kay novel, which I am VERY much looking forward to reading.
Elizabeth Wein’s “No Human Hands to Touch,” the Medraut/Morgause companion piece to The Winter Prince published in Sirens and Other Demon Lovers, edited by Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling. It is exactly as “Dead Dove, Do Not Eat” as you might imagine from the fact that Medraut spends a large proportion of The Winter Prince waking up with screaming nightmares about his incestuous affair with his mother.
( Spoilers (need I tell you they are disturbing spoilers?) )
This has been quite a week for creepy sex books, because I also read Anne Serre’s The Governesses (translated by Mark Hutchinson), an exceptionally strange French novella about three governesses who show up at a country house where there are no children. Never fear: the governesses come with their own batch of little boys in tow! Not that they spend much time actually looking after the children, mind: most of their time goes to enticing strange men in the estate and devouring them out in the woods. (The devouring is probably a sexual metaphor, but it wouldn’t exactly surprise me if the governesses were vampires. Or fae. Or some other supernatural bitey creature.)
A weird, atmospheric, sex-drenched book. I have no idea what it’s trying to say, if indeed it is saying anything - might just be an exercise in vibes? Odd and interesting.
And now for something completely different: Rebecca Caudill’s Tree of Freedom, a Newbery Honor book from 1950 set during the American Revolution. When the Venable family moves from North Carolina to Kentucky, young Stephanie Venable takes along a seed from an apple tree, which in turn sprouted from a seed brought across the Atlantic when her Huguenot ancestors fled persecution in France. Inspired by her brother Noel’s patriotic fervor, she names the resulting sapling the Tree of Freedom, even though the seed at one point gets eaten by a chicken (!) and then Stephanie cuts the chicken’s crop open to get at the seed (!!) and then sews the crop back up (!!!!!!)... but don’t worry, both seed and chicken are fine. (Would a chicken be fine after that? Maybe I don't want to think about this too deeply.)
What I’m Reading Now
In Mrs. Pollifax, Innocent Tourist, Mrs. Pollifax is on her way to Jordan to pick up the manuscript of a novel by a recently murdered Iraqi author! In her undercover role as an innocent tourist, she has returned to her roots with a truly massive floral hat, and I love her.
In Dracula, Lucy is feeling better! Thank God her illness is all over. She’s definitely going to survive till her wedding at the end of September.
What I Plan to Read Next
I would like to track down a copy of Elizabeth Wein’s other extended Lion Hunters’ ‘verse story, “Fire,” but we shall see. In the meantime
littlerhymes has sent me a copy of Cherith Baldry’s Exiled from Camelot, the woobiest Kay novel, which I am VERY much looking forward to reading.
