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Wednesday Reading Meme
Aug. 16th, 2023 07:45 amWhat I’ve Just Finished Reading
Juliana Horatia Ewing’s Mary’s Meadow, and Other Tales of Fields and Flowers, which I read because the characters enthused over it in Jennie Lindquist’s The Little Silver House, and I am nothing if not suggestible when the authors of old books rhapsodize about even older books that they loved as children. Like Lindquist’s other recommendation, The Cuckoo Clock, this is charming in an incredibly Victorian way. Mary and her brothers and sisters (a lot of the story is written in the first-person plural) make up a gardening game, and end up reconciling their family with a crotchety old neighbor.
Another Newbery book: The Wonderful Year, by Nancy Barnes, which is indeed wonderful! A similar vibe to Jennie Lindquist’s work, really: the early 1900s setting, clearly in some ways inspired by the author’s own childhood although not directly autobiographical, full of characters who are just having the most wonderful time.
Young Ellen Martin has just moved to Colorado for her father’s health, and she takes to country life like a duck to water. She has a dog, a horse (both charmingly characterized), a bicycle, and a best friend who is four years older than she is and also just immigrated from England so he’s always saying things like “I’m an awful duffer.” What more could a child want!
(Her English friend is always telling her “don’t be such a girl,” meaning “don’t be so annoying,” which I found annoying, but so it goes.)
Also, the illustrations by Kate Seredy are absolutely charming, full of life and vigor. I especially love the picture of Ellen sitting on the back of the wagon clutching her beloved new bicycle.
What I’m Reading Now
In Carney’s House Party (review forthcoming!) the 1911 bestseller Queed is mentioned a couple times, and as per above I couldn’t resist giving it a try. So far, a girl is walking around town with a gigantic dog (his name is Behemoth), who has just knocked down a spindly professor type. Will the spindly professor type show up again later? Almost certainly!
Also continuing on in A. T. Fitroy’s Despised and Rejected! I spoke too soon re: lugubriousness. Although Antoinette, whom we meet first, has apparently spent her life wafting about getting crushes on girls with nary a worry in her head about it, soon the narrative shifts over to Dennis who is so appalled to find himself crushing on a young man that he flees in terror, only to obsess about him for months after, convinced that his beloved Alan is exactly the sort of person to join the army instantly upon a declaration of war and rush out of the trenches shouting defiance before being brutally cut down.
Dennis himself is a pacifist, of the “if everyone would stop fighting, there would be no war!” variety, which is a bit like being an anti-STD crusader of the “if everyone would stop having sex outside committed, monogamous, life-long relationships, there would be no STDs!” I mean sure, logically this makes sense, but also: everyone is not going to stop. They have never stopped before, and they certainly aren’t going to stop now.
What I Plan to Read Next
Contemplating whether I have time to sneak in just one more book while I still have access to the Indianapolis Public Library. NO I really do not, but also I really want to read Peter Hart’s Aces Falling: War Above the Trenches, 1918, so….
Juliana Horatia Ewing’s Mary’s Meadow, and Other Tales of Fields and Flowers, which I read because the characters enthused over it in Jennie Lindquist’s The Little Silver House, and I am nothing if not suggestible when the authors of old books rhapsodize about even older books that they loved as children. Like Lindquist’s other recommendation, The Cuckoo Clock, this is charming in an incredibly Victorian way. Mary and her brothers and sisters (a lot of the story is written in the first-person plural) make up a gardening game, and end up reconciling their family with a crotchety old neighbor.
Another Newbery book: The Wonderful Year, by Nancy Barnes, which is indeed wonderful! A similar vibe to Jennie Lindquist’s work, really: the early 1900s setting, clearly in some ways inspired by the author’s own childhood although not directly autobiographical, full of characters who are just having the most wonderful time.
Young Ellen Martin has just moved to Colorado for her father’s health, and she takes to country life like a duck to water. She has a dog, a horse (both charmingly characterized), a bicycle, and a best friend who is four years older than she is and also just immigrated from England so he’s always saying things like “I’m an awful duffer.” What more could a child want!
(Her English friend is always telling her “don’t be such a girl,” meaning “don’t be so annoying,” which I found annoying, but so it goes.)
Also, the illustrations by Kate Seredy are absolutely charming, full of life and vigor. I especially love the picture of Ellen sitting on the back of the wagon clutching her beloved new bicycle.
What I’m Reading Now
In Carney’s House Party (review forthcoming!) the 1911 bestseller Queed is mentioned a couple times, and as per above I couldn’t resist giving it a try. So far, a girl is walking around town with a gigantic dog (his name is Behemoth), who has just knocked down a spindly professor type. Will the spindly professor type show up again later? Almost certainly!
Also continuing on in A. T. Fitroy’s Despised and Rejected! I spoke too soon re: lugubriousness. Although Antoinette, whom we meet first, has apparently spent her life wafting about getting crushes on girls with nary a worry in her head about it, soon the narrative shifts over to Dennis who is so appalled to find himself crushing on a young man that he flees in terror, only to obsess about him for months after, convinced that his beloved Alan is exactly the sort of person to join the army instantly upon a declaration of war and rush out of the trenches shouting defiance before being brutally cut down.
Dennis himself is a pacifist, of the “if everyone would stop fighting, there would be no war!” variety, which is a bit like being an anti-STD crusader of the “if everyone would stop having sex outside committed, monogamous, life-long relationships, there would be no STDs!” I mean sure, logically this makes sense, but also: everyone is not going to stop. They have never stopped before, and they certainly aren’t going to stop now.
What I Plan to Read Next
Contemplating whether I have time to sneak in just one more book while I still have access to the Indianapolis Public Library. NO I really do not, but also I really want to read Peter Hart’s Aces Falling: War Above the Trenches, 1918, so….
