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Wednesday Reading Meme
Dec. 20th, 2023 08:19 amWhat I’ve Just Finished Reading
A couple of Newbery Honor books from the 1930s. I got so caught up in Sarah Lindsay Schmidt’s New Land that I stayed up a couple of extra hours to finish it. After years of wandering, the Morgan family has settled on a claim on a new federal irrigation project, and seventeen-year-old Sayre is determined to prove the claim so her family can finally settle down and stay put. In pursuit of her goal, she signs up for a part-time vocational agriculture class at the high school.
Sayre is the only girl in the class, but this is emphatically not a book about a girl blazing a trail in a male-dominated field. It’s not even a school story. Although Sayre attends the classes, the book is almost entirely about her putting what she’s learned into practice on the claim, and more generally about the revolutionary potential of vocational agriculture education to train even wholly inexperienced city slickers such as Sayre and her brother Charley to make a living on the land. (The author’s husband was a vocational agriculture teacher - the book is dedicated to him - and I strongly suspect he’s the model for the kind, thoughtful, inspiring teacher in the book.)
Reading it now is a little bittersweet, as it’s pointing toward a future that didn’t come to pass. The world of family farms in which Sayre and Charley live would be largely swept away a couple decades later by post-war government agricultural policies that favored enormous factory farms.
The other Newbery Honor book was Elsie Singmaster’s Swords of Steel, which is set mostly in Gettysburg from 1859 to 1865, and it’s one of those historical fiction novels which wants to schlep its hero to as many historical events as possible: as well as Gettysburg (which is fair enough when your hero is in fact a Gettysburgian), we take in Harper’s Ferry and Appomattox. There’s nothing wrong with it exactly, but I just never came to care very much about the characters, so it was a bit of a slog.
What I’m Reading Now
Sir Isumbras at the Ford is galloping along! Last week, I expressed concern that the two old ladies youg Anne-Hilarion was visiting were Not All That They Seemed; this week, ( spoilers )
I am continually impressed by Broster’s talent for intuiting major fanfic genres of the future. I don’t usually read kidfic, but part two of this book is A+ kidfic, right down to the part where poor Anne-Hilarion, overcome by just a trifle too much adventure, throws a temper tantrum in a post-chaise. Honestly impressed that he remained so calm for so long!
What I Plan to Read Next
I just realized that the library had a copy of L.M. Boston’s childhood memoir Perverse and Foolish... and foolishly put it on hold, despite knowing full well that sometimes when you put an old book on hold, they decide to weed the book from the collection rather than send it to fulfill your hold!
I really hate it when they do this. Couldn’t they send it out for one last circ, since clearly someone wants it enough to ask for it? Put a note on it! Weed it out when it comes back! Why must they torment me in this way!
A couple of Newbery Honor books from the 1930s. I got so caught up in Sarah Lindsay Schmidt’s New Land that I stayed up a couple of extra hours to finish it. After years of wandering, the Morgan family has settled on a claim on a new federal irrigation project, and seventeen-year-old Sayre is determined to prove the claim so her family can finally settle down and stay put. In pursuit of her goal, she signs up for a part-time vocational agriculture class at the high school.
Sayre is the only girl in the class, but this is emphatically not a book about a girl blazing a trail in a male-dominated field. It’s not even a school story. Although Sayre attends the classes, the book is almost entirely about her putting what she’s learned into practice on the claim, and more generally about the revolutionary potential of vocational agriculture education to train even wholly inexperienced city slickers such as Sayre and her brother Charley to make a living on the land. (The author’s husband was a vocational agriculture teacher - the book is dedicated to him - and I strongly suspect he’s the model for the kind, thoughtful, inspiring teacher in the book.)
Reading it now is a little bittersweet, as it’s pointing toward a future that didn’t come to pass. The world of family farms in which Sayre and Charley live would be largely swept away a couple decades later by post-war government agricultural policies that favored enormous factory farms.
The other Newbery Honor book was Elsie Singmaster’s Swords of Steel, which is set mostly in Gettysburg from 1859 to 1865, and it’s one of those historical fiction novels which wants to schlep its hero to as many historical events as possible: as well as Gettysburg (which is fair enough when your hero is in fact a Gettysburgian), we take in Harper’s Ferry and Appomattox. There’s nothing wrong with it exactly, but I just never came to care very much about the characters, so it was a bit of a slog.
What I’m Reading Now
Sir Isumbras at the Ford is galloping along! Last week, I expressed concern that the two old ladies youg Anne-Hilarion was visiting were Not All That They Seemed; this week, ( spoilers )
I am continually impressed by Broster’s talent for intuiting major fanfic genres of the future. I don’t usually read kidfic, but part two of this book is A+ kidfic, right down to the part where poor Anne-Hilarion, overcome by just a trifle too much adventure, throws a temper tantrum in a post-chaise. Honestly impressed that he remained so calm for so long!
What I Plan to Read Next
I just realized that the library had a copy of L.M. Boston’s childhood memoir Perverse and Foolish... and foolishly put it on hold, despite knowing full well that sometimes when you put an old book on hold, they decide to weed the book from the collection rather than send it to fulfill your hold!
I really hate it when they do this. Couldn’t they send it out for one last circ, since clearly someone wants it enough to ask for it? Put a note on it! Weed it out when it comes back! Why must they torment me in this way!
