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Wednesday Reading Meme
Aug. 2nd, 2023 07:28 amWhat I’ve Just Finished Reading
Karl Schlögel’s The Soviet Century: Archaeology of a Lost World. I wish I’d taken notes on this as I was going along, because it’s a huge book, full of chapters that function as mini-essays on all sorts of interesting things: the early Soviet obsession with America, The Book of Healthy and Tasty Food (the Soviet Joy of Cooking), graffiti, tattoos, those classic early Soviet names meant to celebrate the revolution (Traktorina! Oktyabrina! Even contemporaries like Ilf and Petrov satirized this naming trend), wrapping paper, the catalog of forbidden books… I read it all, because I am like that, but this is definitely a book that you could dip in and out of depending on your interests
One item of particular interest: Schlögel includes a diagram of a communal apartment, which I’ve struggled to envision for years. As it turns out, the pre-revolutionary bourgeois apartments that became communal apartments consisted of a long corridor with rooms opening on either side and the kitchen acting as a sort of cap at the end of the corridor.
He also includes a picture of the communal kitchen, where each family had its own table pushed against the wall and all its cookware either on the table or hanging above it.
I also read Anne Lindbergh’s The People in Pineapple Place, which is one of those books that feels like it was written just for me. August is struggling to adjust to his move to DC, until he discovers Pineapple Place - a mysterious street that no one else can see. Forty-three years ago, concerned about the impending World War II, one of the residents wrenched Pineapple Place from its moorings, and it’s been moving from city to city ever since, the unaging residents invisible to most of the population. But August can see them! Friendship, mysterious invisible streets, a spot of time travel (August gets to ride a streetcar!)… this book has it all.
This week’s Newbery: Alice Dalgliesh’s The Silver Pencil, a semi-autobiographical Portrait of the Author as a Young Girl, noteworthy because it does not end with the heroine getting married. Instead, Janet has just bought a house in Nova Scotia with her first book advance (houses were cheaper then) and received a proposal from a gentleman she’s just met. The book ends with the proposal still up in the air, allowing the romantic reader to imagine wedding bells, although as Dalgliesh never married, one imagines Janet won’t either.
What I’m Reading Now
More fun with The Wordhord! I am truly sad that modern English has replaced the excellent word “flittermouse” with the more prosaic “bat.”
What I Plan to Read Next
Before I leave Indianapolis on August 26, I’d like to finish up the Newbery Honor books of the 1940s, my Betsy-Tacy reread, and also some books that the Indianapolis library has that are not readily available in other libraries, including Monica Dickens’ Mariana and Emma Bull’s War for the Oaks.
Is this perhaps more books than one person should attempt to read in one month? Maybe! I’ll do my best.
Karl Schlögel’s The Soviet Century: Archaeology of a Lost World. I wish I’d taken notes on this as I was going along, because it’s a huge book, full of chapters that function as mini-essays on all sorts of interesting things: the early Soviet obsession with America, The Book of Healthy and Tasty Food (the Soviet Joy of Cooking), graffiti, tattoos, those classic early Soviet names meant to celebrate the revolution (Traktorina! Oktyabrina! Even contemporaries like Ilf and Petrov satirized this naming trend), wrapping paper, the catalog of forbidden books… I read it all, because I am like that, but this is definitely a book that you could dip in and out of depending on your interests
One item of particular interest: Schlögel includes a diagram of a communal apartment, which I’ve struggled to envision for years. As it turns out, the pre-revolutionary bourgeois apartments that became communal apartments consisted of a long corridor with rooms opening on either side and the kitchen acting as a sort of cap at the end of the corridor.
He also includes a picture of the communal kitchen, where each family had its own table pushed against the wall and all its cookware either on the table or hanging above it.
I also read Anne Lindbergh’s The People in Pineapple Place, which is one of those books that feels like it was written just for me. August is struggling to adjust to his move to DC, until he discovers Pineapple Place - a mysterious street that no one else can see. Forty-three years ago, concerned about the impending World War II, one of the residents wrenched Pineapple Place from its moorings, and it’s been moving from city to city ever since, the unaging residents invisible to most of the population. But August can see them! Friendship, mysterious invisible streets, a spot of time travel (August gets to ride a streetcar!)… this book has it all.
This week’s Newbery: Alice Dalgliesh’s The Silver Pencil, a semi-autobiographical Portrait of the Author as a Young Girl, noteworthy because it does not end with the heroine getting married. Instead, Janet has just bought a house in Nova Scotia with her first book advance (houses were cheaper then) and received a proposal from a gentleman she’s just met. The book ends with the proposal still up in the air, allowing the romantic reader to imagine wedding bells, although as Dalgliesh never married, one imagines Janet won’t either.
What I’m Reading Now
More fun with The Wordhord! I am truly sad that modern English has replaced the excellent word “flittermouse” with the more prosaic “bat.”
What I Plan to Read Next
Before I leave Indianapolis on August 26, I’d like to finish up the Newbery Honor books of the 1940s, my Betsy-Tacy reread, and also some books that the Indianapolis library has that are not readily available in other libraries, including Monica Dickens’ Mariana and Emma Bull’s War for the Oaks.
Is this perhaps more books than one person should attempt to read in one month? Maybe! I’ll do my best.
