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Wednesday Reading Meme
Jul. 10th, 2024 08:16 amWhat I’ve Just Finished Reading
Lyuba Vinogradova’s Defending the Motherland: The Soviet Women Who Fought Hitler’s Aces, which suffers the indignity common to books I actually own, which is that I started it and then it languished for months as library book after library book took precedence. An unjust fate for this book, which is fascinating, although also sometimes bleak, as books about the Eastern Front are wont to be.
I also discovered that I had misremembered the fate of Lilya Litvyak from Elizabeth Wein’s book about Soviet women flyers: I had carried away the impression that her body was found decades later by one of her comrades (who later taught school in the area and for years organized the schoolchildren to search for downed planes). As it turns out, this intrepid woman and her schoolchildren found lots of other downed planes and often did manage to identify the pilots, but they never found Litvyak’s. Someone else apparently found a plane with a female pilot in the area, which presumably was Litvyak’s, female pilots being not too thick on the ground; but it wasn’t investigated properly at the time, so we’ll never know for sure.
Also Lisa See’s latest, Lady Tan’s Circle of Women, which in contrast I read over the course of one afternoon! As this sprint perhaps suggests, I really enjoyed this book. ( Spoilers )
What I’m Reading Now
In Chantemerle, we have just been introduced to another fair cousin, who has had a tendresse for Gilbert ever since they met eight years ago in Somerset. A prophecy: Gilbert will marry this Somerset cousin, leaving Louis and Lucienne free to marry!
Also continuing on in William Dean Howells’ Italian Journeys. Howells is taking a cab to the quai when a stranger hops on the front seat and starts directing the driver, whereupon Howells starts mentally composing the notice of his death that will likely appear in the next morning’s paper. Howells and I are so different in many ways, and yet we are also the same person.
What I Plan to Read Next
Daphne Du Maurier’s The Flight of the Falcon. I have had this book out of the library for MONTHS and I am DETERMINED that I shall finally read it.
Lyuba Vinogradova’s Defending the Motherland: The Soviet Women Who Fought Hitler’s Aces, which suffers the indignity common to books I actually own, which is that I started it and then it languished for months as library book after library book took precedence. An unjust fate for this book, which is fascinating, although also sometimes bleak, as books about the Eastern Front are wont to be.
I also discovered that I had misremembered the fate of Lilya Litvyak from Elizabeth Wein’s book about Soviet women flyers: I had carried away the impression that her body was found decades later by one of her comrades (who later taught school in the area and for years organized the schoolchildren to search for downed planes). As it turns out, this intrepid woman and her schoolchildren found lots of other downed planes and often did manage to identify the pilots, but they never found Litvyak’s. Someone else apparently found a plane with a female pilot in the area, which presumably was Litvyak’s, female pilots being not too thick on the ground; but it wasn’t investigated properly at the time, so we’ll never know for sure.
Also Lisa See’s latest, Lady Tan’s Circle of Women, which in contrast I read over the course of one afternoon! As this sprint perhaps suggests, I really enjoyed this book. ( Spoilers )
What I’m Reading Now
In Chantemerle, we have just been introduced to another fair cousin, who has had a tendresse for Gilbert ever since they met eight years ago in Somerset. A prophecy: Gilbert will marry this Somerset cousin, leaving Louis and Lucienne free to marry!
Also continuing on in William Dean Howells’ Italian Journeys. Howells is taking a cab to the quai when a stranger hops on the front seat and starts directing the driver, whereupon Howells starts mentally composing the notice of his death that will likely appear in the next morning’s paper. Howells and I are so different in many ways, and yet we are also the same person.
What I Plan to Read Next
Daphne Du Maurier’s The Flight of the Falcon. I have had this book out of the library for MONTHS and I am DETERMINED that I shall finally read it.
