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Wednesday Reading Meme
Mar. 29th, 2023 07:57 amWhat I’ve Just Finished Reading
Finished my St. Patrick’s Day books! (Well, except Sally Rooney’s Normal People, which will just have to wait another year.) R. A. MacAvoy’s The Grey Horse is a lively story about a grey horse in late nineteenth-century Ireland who is in fact a puca, come to court Maire Standun, the black-haired young Nationalist with a fiery temper on her. Good fun, with a bit of a deeper bite; I particularly enjoyed the part where the priest baptizes the puca who then murders a government inspector (as one does) and then goes to the priest and is all, I broke my vow to keep all Ten Commandments. An interesting collision of worldviews between the fairy world and the Church.
Also finished Meindert DeJong’s Hurry Home, Candy, another Newbery Honor book, this one about a dog named Candy who gets lost and spends a year in shivering terror in the countryside before ( spoilers )
And I read Carol Ryrie Brink’s Family Sabbatical, in which the Ridgeway family takes a sabbatical in France! As a child I always hoped my father would take a sabbatical in France (my parents did this before I was born, but never after!), so I read this with the greatest attention, and it’s full of just the sort of incidents one would want to happen on a sabbatical in France: a German princess lodging at your hotel, a box of sweets cunningly disguised to look like rocks, an attempt to throw an American-style Halloween party… Lots of fun.
What I’m Reading Now
Barbara Kingsolver’s Demon Copperhead. It may have been a mistake to read this so soon after David Copperfield, as a direct comparison with Charles Dickens rarely does other authors any favors. Particularly baffled by Kingsolver’s decisions with regard to Agnes, who in the original overflows with such warmth, patience, and love for humanity that she befriends Dora Spenlow, evidently sincerely, even though ( Spoilers )
Now I understand why Kingsolver might wish to make the character a bit less angel-in-the-housish, but I have no idea why she decided to effect this update by making Agnes (Angus in this version) a raging misogynist who has no female friends because she thinks girls are full of bullshit. (Teenage boys as we all know are crystal-pure fonts of bullshit-free discourse.) Especially not mad keen about Kingsolver giving this attitude to the girl who was the moral center of the original book.
Does this aspect of Demon Copperhead ever improve? And is it a general theme in Kingsolver’s work? Because I’ve been meaning to check out some of her books for years, but wow, if this is a recurring character type then I won’t bother.
What I Plan to Read Next
At the back of Family Sabbatical there’s a list of other classic family stories, most of which I’ve read, but also Brenda Wilkinson’s Ludell which I’ve never heard of, so of course I’m giving that a try.
Finished my St. Patrick’s Day books! (Well, except Sally Rooney’s Normal People, which will just have to wait another year.) R. A. MacAvoy’s The Grey Horse is a lively story about a grey horse in late nineteenth-century Ireland who is in fact a puca, come to court Maire Standun, the black-haired young Nationalist with a fiery temper on her. Good fun, with a bit of a deeper bite; I particularly enjoyed the part where the priest baptizes the puca who then murders a government inspector (as one does) and then goes to the priest and is all, I broke my vow to keep all Ten Commandments. An interesting collision of worldviews between the fairy world and the Church.
Also finished Meindert DeJong’s Hurry Home, Candy, another Newbery Honor book, this one about a dog named Candy who gets lost and spends a year in shivering terror in the countryside before ( spoilers )
And I read Carol Ryrie Brink’s Family Sabbatical, in which the Ridgeway family takes a sabbatical in France! As a child I always hoped my father would take a sabbatical in France (my parents did this before I was born, but never after!), so I read this with the greatest attention, and it’s full of just the sort of incidents one would want to happen on a sabbatical in France: a German princess lodging at your hotel, a box of sweets cunningly disguised to look like rocks, an attempt to throw an American-style Halloween party… Lots of fun.
What I’m Reading Now
Barbara Kingsolver’s Demon Copperhead. It may have been a mistake to read this so soon after David Copperfield, as a direct comparison with Charles Dickens rarely does other authors any favors. Particularly baffled by Kingsolver’s decisions with regard to Agnes, who in the original overflows with such warmth, patience, and love for humanity that she befriends Dora Spenlow, evidently sincerely, even though ( Spoilers )
Now I understand why Kingsolver might wish to make the character a bit less angel-in-the-housish, but I have no idea why she decided to effect this update by making Agnes (Angus in this version) a raging misogynist who has no female friends because she thinks girls are full of bullshit. (Teenage boys as we all know are crystal-pure fonts of bullshit-free discourse.) Especially not mad keen about Kingsolver giving this attitude to the girl who was the moral center of the original book.
Does this aspect of Demon Copperhead ever improve? And is it a general theme in Kingsolver’s work? Because I’ve been meaning to check out some of her books for years, but wow, if this is a recurring character type then I won’t bother.
What I Plan to Read Next
At the back of Family Sabbatical there’s a list of other classic family stories, most of which I’ve read, but also Brenda Wilkinson’s Ludell which I’ve never heard of, so of course I’m giving that a try.
