Wednesday Reading Meme
Sep. 18th, 2024 11:13 amWhat I’ve Just Finished Reading
After dragging my feet for months, I finally began the 2024 Newberies, and about ten pages into M. T. Anderson’s Elf Dog and Owl Head I excitedly contacted![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
littlerhymes: “It’s like Narnia! At long last someone has realized that a global tragedy (WWII/the pandemic) is the perfect setting for a children’s fantasy!”
Typed out like this it may sound sarcastic, but I mean it genuinely: who among us would NOT have had a better pandemic if we adopted an elf dog who led us on secret pathways through the woods to eerie other worlds peopled by humans with owl heads? (The owl-headed people call people from our world “human-headed people,” which suggests that there are, somewhere, a human creature with a human head but different bodies.)
Anyway. The Narnia comparison is an unfair burden to lay on any children’s fantasy, and inevitably Elf Dog and Owl Head can’t quite live up to it. I thought ultimately the sum was somewhat less than its parts, but some of the parts are great, like the bit where our hero steals a fast-grow powder from the owl-headed people in order to prove to his parents that the magic paths exist… and then his sister shakes it on her sweater and the wool becomes a tiny sheep with sleeves. And his dad shakes it into the laundry, because he thought it was laundry powder, and his polyester shirt becomes a tiny dinosaur. With sleeves. And then the sheep and the dinosaur become friends!
Does it exactly make sense that wool grows a sheep and long-deep dinosaurs grow into new dinosaurs like seeds growing into plants? No. Do I care? Also no. It’s magic! It’s charming! Why shouldn’t Father Christmas show up in Narnia?
What I’m Reading Now
Almost no progress on Jane Eyre this week. Jane just collapsed on the doorstep of her cousins whom she doesn’t yet know are her cousins, who have taken her in, and I was musing how easily Bronte could have avoided this truly unbelievable coincidence. Jane has been in contact with her uncle! He could have mentioned that she had some cousins in the area!
But also, although this would have made more practical sense than having Jane just happen to collapse on their doorstep, emotionally it’s the right choice to have her not know. It’s so much more powerful to have Jane leave Rochester, friendless and penniless, with no support but her self-respect, than to have her make the eminently practical choice, “Well I’ve got these cousins over thataway, I’m gonna get away from my boyfriend the bigamist and go stay with them for a while.”
What I Plan to Read Next
I finished John Le Carre’s first Smiley novel Call for the Dead yesterday (about which more anon) and I intend to dive into the second, A Murder of Quality.
After dragging my feet for months, I finally began the 2024 Newberies, and about ten pages into M. T. Anderson’s Elf Dog and Owl Head I excitedly contacted
littlerhymes: “It’s like Narnia! At long last someone has realized that a global tragedy (WWII/the pandemic) is the perfect setting for a children’s fantasy!” Typed out like this it may sound sarcastic, but I mean it genuinely: who among us would NOT have had a better pandemic if we adopted an elf dog who led us on secret pathways through the woods to eerie other worlds peopled by humans with owl heads? (The owl-headed people call people from our world “human-headed people,” which suggests that there are, somewhere, a human creature with a human head but different bodies.)
Anyway. The Narnia comparison is an unfair burden to lay on any children’s fantasy, and inevitably Elf Dog and Owl Head can’t quite live up to it. I thought ultimately the sum was somewhat less than its parts, but some of the parts are great, like the bit where our hero steals a fast-grow powder from the owl-headed people in order to prove to his parents that the magic paths exist… and then his sister shakes it on her sweater and the wool becomes a tiny sheep with sleeves. And his dad shakes it into the laundry, because he thought it was laundry powder, and his polyester shirt becomes a tiny dinosaur. With sleeves. And then the sheep and the dinosaur become friends!
Does it exactly make sense that wool grows a sheep and long-deep dinosaurs grow into new dinosaurs like seeds growing into plants? No. Do I care? Also no. It’s magic! It’s charming! Why shouldn’t Father Christmas show up in Narnia?
What I’m Reading Now
Almost no progress on Jane Eyre this week. Jane just collapsed on the doorstep of her cousins whom she doesn’t yet know are her cousins, who have taken her in, and I was musing how easily Bronte could have avoided this truly unbelievable coincidence. Jane has been in contact with her uncle! He could have mentioned that she had some cousins in the area!
But also, although this would have made more practical sense than having Jane just happen to collapse on their doorstep, emotionally it’s the right choice to have her not know. It’s so much more powerful to have Jane leave Rochester, friendless and penniless, with no support but her self-respect, than to have her make the eminently practical choice, “Well I’ve got these cousins over thataway, I’m gonna get away from my boyfriend the bigamist and go stay with them for a while.”
What I Plan to Read Next
I finished John Le Carre’s first Smiley novel Call for the Dead yesterday (about which more anon) and I intend to dive into the second, A Murder of Quality.
