Wednesday Reading Meme
Aug. 28th, 2024 08:12 amWhat I’ve Just Finished Reading
Gerald Durrell’s The Ark’s Anniversary, a book commemorating not only the twenty-fifth anniversary of Durrell’s zoo, but also his triumph in establishing captive breeding as an important practice for saving desperately endangered species. “If captive breeding was mentioned twenty-five years ago within the hearing of a group of earnest conservations,” he notes, “they flinched and spoke loudly of other things, rather as if you had the bad taste to confess that you thought necrophilia a suitable means of birth control.”
His earlier books tend to be pure romps, whether they are memoirs of his family or his animal collecting adventures. This one is a little bit more political (“When ecology becomes a luxury then we are all dead,” he comments with exasperation, with regard to certain obstructive politicians), but still very funny, as in this description of a colleague who lost his luggage on a flight.
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littlerhymes and I also finished Ghost Hawk, which we put on our list because Susan Cooper wrote it and it was available in both our countries. I have in the past sung the praises of going into books sight unseen, but in this case I wish we had done a bit of research, because it turns out that this is a book about how Colonialism Is Bad. This is of course laudable, but as with books about how Women Had It Tough in the Ancient World (or indeed simply in The Past), I feel I’ve done my time with this one, and indeed also with Slavery Is Bad, Racism Is Bad, War Is Bad, etc. etc. I’ve got it. I’ve grasped the concept. I don’t need to read another book about it.
Because it’s Cooper, the prose is of course beautiful, and she evokes the woodlands of Massachusetts just as in other books she evokes the mountains of Wales or the Scottish lochs. But I did feel it was really more about its message than about a story.
What I’m Reading Now
After a long hiatus in fairy allusions, Jane Eyre comes back strong when Jane meets Rochester. In fact, the first reappearance of the fairy allusions is from Jane toward Rochester: when Jane first hears Rochester’s horse on the road, she half-convinces herself that this is the sound of the gytrash, a fairy creature who preys on unwary travelers.
Once Jane sees him, the fairy illusion is dispelled, or rather passes from Jane to Rochester, because next time he sees her, he teases, “And so you were waiting for your people when you sat on that stile?”
“For whom, sir?” asks Jane, startled.
“For the men in green: it was a proper moonlight evening for them. Did I break through one of your rings, that you spread that damned ice on the causeway?”
And Jane falls instantly in with his joke: “The men in green all forsook England a hundred years ago,” said I, speaking as seriously as he had done. “And not even in Hay Lane, or the fields about it, could you find a trace of them. I don’t think either summer or harvest, or winter moon, will ever shine on their revels more.”
What I Plan to Read Next
I have after all acquired Elizabeth Wein’s Cobalt Squadron.
Gerald Durrell’s The Ark’s Anniversary, a book commemorating not only the twenty-fifth anniversary of Durrell’s zoo, but also his triumph in establishing captive breeding as an important practice for saving desperately endangered species. “If captive breeding was mentioned twenty-five years ago within the hearing of a group of earnest conservations,” he notes, “they flinched and spoke loudly of other things, rather as if you had the bad taste to confess that you thought necrophilia a suitable means of birth control.”
His earlier books tend to be pure romps, whether they are memoirs of his family or his animal collecting adventures. This one is a little bit more political (“When ecology becomes a luxury then we are all dead,” he comments with exasperation, with regard to certain obstructive politicians), but still very funny, as in this description of a colleague who lost his luggage on a flight.
In one hand Tom clasped what seemed to be all his worldly goods in a briefcase which had apparently been constructed out of the skin of an ancient crocodile suffering from leprosy. His suit looked as though it had been slept in by seventeen tramps and then discarded as being of no further service… His tie – at one time I have no doubt a magnificent piece of neckwear – looked as though it had been seized and thoughtful masticated by one of the less intelligent dinosaurs and then regurgigated. His shoes completed the whole ensemble: Charles Chaplin spent years trying to get his shoes to look like that without success…
littlerhymes and I also finished Ghost Hawk, which we put on our list because Susan Cooper wrote it and it was available in both our countries. I have in the past sung the praises of going into books sight unseen, but in this case I wish we had done a bit of research, because it turns out that this is a book about how Colonialism Is Bad. This is of course laudable, but as with books about how Women Had It Tough in the Ancient World (or indeed simply in The Past), I feel I’ve done my time with this one, and indeed also with Slavery Is Bad, Racism Is Bad, War Is Bad, etc. etc. I’ve got it. I’ve grasped the concept. I don’t need to read another book about it.Because it’s Cooper, the prose is of course beautiful, and she evokes the woodlands of Massachusetts just as in other books she evokes the mountains of Wales or the Scottish lochs. But I did feel it was really more about its message than about a story.
What I’m Reading Now
After a long hiatus in fairy allusions, Jane Eyre comes back strong when Jane meets Rochester. In fact, the first reappearance of the fairy allusions is from Jane toward Rochester: when Jane first hears Rochester’s horse on the road, she half-convinces herself that this is the sound of the gytrash, a fairy creature who preys on unwary travelers.
Once Jane sees him, the fairy illusion is dispelled, or rather passes from Jane to Rochester, because next time he sees her, he teases, “And so you were waiting for your people when you sat on that stile?”
“For whom, sir?” asks Jane, startled.
“For the men in green: it was a proper moonlight evening for them. Did I break through one of your rings, that you spread that damned ice on the causeway?”
And Jane falls instantly in with his joke: “The men in green all forsook England a hundred years ago,” said I, speaking as seriously as he had done. “And not even in Hay Lane, or the fields about it, could you find a trace of them. I don’t think either summer or harvest, or winter moon, will ever shine on their revels more.”
What I Plan to Read Next
I have after all acquired Elizabeth Wein’s Cobalt Squadron.
