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Wednesday Reading Meme
Nov. 8th, 2023 08:08 amWhat I’ve Just Finished Reading
Mary Stolz’s Coco Grimes, a short, sweet, slightly underpowered novel. Young Thomas is a fanatical baseball fan. His grandfather’s friend knows an elderly man (the titular Coco Grimes) who used to play in the Negro Leagues, so Thomas and his grandfather drive across Florida so Thomas can meet Mr. Grimes. And that’s it! That’s the story, or rather the sequence of events, as these events never really build on each other to become a story.
I did very much enjoy the descriptions of Florida. My grandparents used to live there, during the same period that this story was published, in fact, so reading it was a real blast from the past.
Also Hildegarde Swift’s The Railroad to Freedom: A Story of the Civil War, a Newbery Honor book from the 1930s which is, in fact, a biographical novel about Harriet Tubman. Swift grew up in Auburn, New York, where Harriet Tubman lived until her death in 1913, which is how Swift grew interested in her story. (Like certain movie stars or politicians, I had so fully associated Tubman with a particular period that it surprised me to learn she outlived it by decades.)
I do find these biographical novels slightly maddening, because I’m never sure which parts are true. It seems very narratively convenient that Harriet Tubman should meet her loathed former master spying behind Union lines, for instance! (She shoots him when he doesn’t give the countersign, then discovers his identity.) But who can say? I also doubted that Tubman could have served Robert Gould Shaw his last meal, but according to Wikipedia, this is reportedly true.
What I’m Reading Now
Another Mary Stolz! Good-by My Shadow, a young adult book from 1957, and I always find it fascinating to read older young adult books because there was such a huge change in the genre just when I was in my peak YA-reading years. This one is interesting because the mother’s POV gets nearly as much page time as the daughter’s. There’s been no catastrophic breakdown in their relationship, just an everyday drift till they struggle to understand each other.
What I Plan to Read Next
Yearning for my final two 2023 Newbery books to come in. They’ve been in transit a whole week! What are they doing, taking a vacation in Tahiti?
Mary Stolz’s Coco Grimes, a short, sweet, slightly underpowered novel. Young Thomas is a fanatical baseball fan. His grandfather’s friend knows an elderly man (the titular Coco Grimes) who used to play in the Negro Leagues, so Thomas and his grandfather drive across Florida so Thomas can meet Mr. Grimes. And that’s it! That’s the story, or rather the sequence of events, as these events never really build on each other to become a story.
I did very much enjoy the descriptions of Florida. My grandparents used to live there, during the same period that this story was published, in fact, so reading it was a real blast from the past.
Also Hildegarde Swift’s The Railroad to Freedom: A Story of the Civil War, a Newbery Honor book from the 1930s which is, in fact, a biographical novel about Harriet Tubman. Swift grew up in Auburn, New York, where Harriet Tubman lived until her death in 1913, which is how Swift grew interested in her story. (Like certain movie stars or politicians, I had so fully associated Tubman with a particular period that it surprised me to learn she outlived it by decades.)
I do find these biographical novels slightly maddening, because I’m never sure which parts are true. It seems very narratively convenient that Harriet Tubman should meet her loathed former master spying behind Union lines, for instance! (She shoots him when he doesn’t give the countersign, then discovers his identity.) But who can say? I also doubted that Tubman could have served Robert Gould Shaw his last meal, but according to Wikipedia, this is reportedly true.
What I’m Reading Now
Another Mary Stolz! Good-by My Shadow, a young adult book from 1957, and I always find it fascinating to read older young adult books because there was such a huge change in the genre just when I was in my peak YA-reading years. This one is interesting because the mother’s POV gets nearly as much page time as the daughter’s. There’s been no catastrophic breakdown in their relationship, just an everyday drift till they struggle to understand each other.
What I Plan to Read Next
Yearning for my final two 2023 Newbery books to come in. They’ve been in transit a whole week! What are they doing, taking a vacation in Tahiti?
