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Wednesday Reading Meme
Feb. 7th, 2024 06:10 pmWhat I’ve Just Finished Reading
The Mousewife, by Rumer Godden, a retelling of a story by Dorothy Wordsworth, about a mouse who befriends a dove in a cage. A lovely story, made lovelier by William Pène du Bois’s naturalistic black-and-white illustrations. I particularly loved the series of mouse portraits (ending with a Cubist mouse) and the two-page spread that shows the dove’s memories of its sweet days flying free.
Also The Romantic Friendship Reader: Love Stories Between Men in Victorian America, an anthology collected by Axel Nissen. I escaped with less damage to my reading list than I feared, just Theodore Winthrop’s Cecil Dreeme and perhaps Bayard Taylor’s Joseph and His Friend, although I’m not sure I could stand the prose styling of the latter at novel length. Also happy to report that this anthology includes the complete text of Frederick W. Loring’s Two College Friends, so if anyone wishes for a paper copy of this whumpy trainwreck of a Civil War friendship, look no further!
What I’m Reading Now
In Sir Isumbras at the Ford, we have AT LONG LAST learned of the Chevalier de la Vireville’s TRAGIC PAST! ( spoilers )
In One Man’s Meat, I’ve just reached E. B. White’s chapter “Dog Training,” which is a fascinating look at change in dog- training methods over time. White observes, “at the turn of the century… one’s dog was fed on mashed potatoes and brown gravy and lived in a doghouse with an arched portal. Today a dog is fed on scraped beef and Vitamin B, and lives in bed with you.”
(Although my mother, growing up on a farm in the 1950s & 60s, remembers that the farm dogs were never let in the house. So this may have been regional, and maybe also a result of the fact that underneath his crusty exterior, White was a big old softie!)
What I Plan to Read Next
Good things come to those who wait! At long last Further Chronicles of Avonlea has arrived at the library!
The Mousewife, by Rumer Godden, a retelling of a story by Dorothy Wordsworth, about a mouse who befriends a dove in a cage. A lovely story, made lovelier by William Pène du Bois’s naturalistic black-and-white illustrations. I particularly loved the series of mouse portraits (ending with a Cubist mouse) and the two-page spread that shows the dove’s memories of its sweet days flying free.
Also The Romantic Friendship Reader: Love Stories Between Men in Victorian America, an anthology collected by Axel Nissen. I escaped with less damage to my reading list than I feared, just Theodore Winthrop’s Cecil Dreeme and perhaps Bayard Taylor’s Joseph and His Friend, although I’m not sure I could stand the prose styling of the latter at novel length. Also happy to report that this anthology includes the complete text of Frederick W. Loring’s Two College Friends, so if anyone wishes for a paper copy of this whumpy trainwreck of a Civil War friendship, look no further!
What I’m Reading Now
In Sir Isumbras at the Ford, we have AT LONG LAST learned of the Chevalier de la Vireville’s TRAGIC PAST! ( spoilers )
In One Man’s Meat, I’ve just reached E. B. White’s chapter “Dog Training,” which is a fascinating look at change in dog- training methods over time. White observes, “at the turn of the century… one’s dog was fed on mashed potatoes and brown gravy and lived in a doghouse with an arched portal. Today a dog is fed on scraped beef and Vitamin B, and lives in bed with you.”
(Although my mother, growing up on a farm in the 1950s & 60s, remembers that the farm dogs were never let in the house. So this may have been regional, and maybe also a result of the fact that underneath his crusty exterior, White was a big old softie!)
What I Plan to Read Next
Good things come to those who wait! At long last Further Chronicles of Avonlea has arrived at the library!
