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Wednesday Reading Meme
Jan. 10th, 2024 07:37 pmWhat I’ve Just Finished Reading
Mary Stolz’s Cezanne Pinto: A Memoir is a novel in first person about a boy who escaped from slavery just before the Civil War. Cezanne Pinto is the name our hero and his mother chose for him together the night before she was sold down the river to Texas; he promises her that he’ll escape once he’s older, and indeed he does, along with the ferocious cook Tamar. (I love Cezanne, but powerhouse Tamar who learned to read from the Bible and talks like it might be my favorite character.) After the war, Cezanne sets out for Texas to find his mother.
Cezanne is telling us this story decades after the fact, and he tells us very early on that he never saw his mother again. This was a clever decision on Stolz’s part: the book would be terribly depressing if you read it in hope of a reunion only to have that hope dashed on the last page, but since you go into it knowing, it’s sad but not devastating, and you know that the real point of the story is not the quest but the friends Cezanne makes along the way.
Another decision I quite liked is that, although Cezanne mentions his wife and it’s clear he loved her deeply, the story ends before he actually meets her. It would have imbalanced the book to shove in a “How I Met Your Mother” plot. The heart of the story is Cezanne’s mother, and that is as it should be.
I also read picture book, Carol Ryrie Brink’s Goody O’Grumpity, which sounds like it should be about a grumpy old woman but is in fact about a woman baking a toothsome spice cake that all the children want to eat. Charming illustrations by Ashley Wolff, woodblock painted with watercolors, which set the tale in a Puritan village.
Also Vivien Alcock’s The Red-Eared Ghosts, which is a wild ride of a book. Young Mary Frewin is an average, everyday, indeed slightly dull young Londoner – except for one thing: ever since she was a baby in her pram, she’s been able to see red-eared ghosts that no one else can see. Over the course of the book we learn what these ghosts are and where they come from, an explanation which hares off in several unexpected directions.
I didn’t think this book came together as well as some of Alcock’s others, but I have to admire the sheer weirdness of it all. Red-eared ghosts! Why not! (And in case you are wondering, no, although we learn quite a number of other things about Mary’s ghosts, we never learn why their ears are red.)
What I’m Reading Now
Not much progress in Sir Isumbras at the Ford this week. But I have to go to the BMV this Saturday to update the address on my driver’s license, so I may make excellent progress while I wait.
What I Plan to Read Next
I now have a university library card! Although I may, at some point, get around to more scholarly fare, at the moment I am trawling through the spooky little children’s section tucked back behind the magazine archives. I got Mary Stolz’s Night of Ghosts and Hermits and Rumer Godden’s biography of Hans Christian Andersen… I should see if they have any Anne Lindbergh or Sorche Nic Leodhas.
Mary Stolz’s Cezanne Pinto: A Memoir is a novel in first person about a boy who escaped from slavery just before the Civil War. Cezanne Pinto is the name our hero and his mother chose for him together the night before she was sold down the river to Texas; he promises her that he’ll escape once he’s older, and indeed he does, along with the ferocious cook Tamar. (I love Cezanne, but powerhouse Tamar who learned to read from the Bible and talks like it might be my favorite character.) After the war, Cezanne sets out for Texas to find his mother.
Cezanne is telling us this story decades after the fact, and he tells us very early on that he never saw his mother again. This was a clever decision on Stolz’s part: the book would be terribly depressing if you read it in hope of a reunion only to have that hope dashed on the last page, but since you go into it knowing, it’s sad but not devastating, and you know that the real point of the story is not the quest but the friends Cezanne makes along the way.
Another decision I quite liked is that, although Cezanne mentions his wife and it’s clear he loved her deeply, the story ends before he actually meets her. It would have imbalanced the book to shove in a “How I Met Your Mother” plot. The heart of the story is Cezanne’s mother, and that is as it should be.
I also read picture book, Carol Ryrie Brink’s Goody O’Grumpity, which sounds like it should be about a grumpy old woman but is in fact about a woman baking a toothsome spice cake that all the children want to eat. Charming illustrations by Ashley Wolff, woodblock painted with watercolors, which set the tale in a Puritan village.
Also Vivien Alcock’s The Red-Eared Ghosts, which is a wild ride of a book. Young Mary Frewin is an average, everyday, indeed slightly dull young Londoner – except for one thing: ever since she was a baby in her pram, she’s been able to see red-eared ghosts that no one else can see. Over the course of the book we learn what these ghosts are and where they come from, an explanation which hares off in several unexpected directions.
I didn’t think this book came together as well as some of Alcock’s others, but I have to admire the sheer weirdness of it all. Red-eared ghosts! Why not! (And in case you are wondering, no, although we learn quite a number of other things about Mary’s ghosts, we never learn why their ears are red.)
What I’m Reading Now
Not much progress in Sir Isumbras at the Ford this week. But I have to go to the BMV this Saturday to update the address on my driver’s license, so I may make excellent progress while I wait.
What I Plan to Read Next
I now have a university library card! Although I may, at some point, get around to more scholarly fare, at the moment I am trawling through the spooky little children’s section tucked back behind the magazine archives. I got Mary Stolz’s Night of Ghosts and Hermits and Rumer Godden’s biography of Hans Christian Andersen… I should see if they have any Anne Lindbergh or Sorche Nic Leodhas.
