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Wednesday Reading Meme
Nov. 20th, 2024 08:29 amWhat I’ve Just Finished Reading
Cannot BELIEVE I waited all these years to read Zilpha Keatley Snyder’s Gib Rides Home. The book is loosely inspired by Snyder’s own father’s childhood, and features a Dickensian orphanage! horsies! a horseless carriage! a lonely child finding a home! and just in general is a fantastic homage, as the character of Gib is loveable and memorable and recognizably a child while also being clearly the kind of child who would grow up into the calm, steadfast, loving father Snyder describes in the afterword.
What I’m Reading Now
I had good intentions of traipsing slowly through Charlotte Bronte’s Villette so we could all savor it together, but alas, I’ve been unable to restrain myself, and have galloped through the first few chapters. Alone in the world, with but a little money in her pocket and an even more meager stock of French, Lucy decides to set forth across the Channel to seek her fortunes on the continent. On the crossing, she meets Ginevra Fanshawe, a pretty flibbertigibbet who is headed to a pensionnat in Villette (capital city of Labassecour, for which read Belgium), and for no better reason goes to Villette herself, and soon finds herself ensconced as an English teacher in the self-same pensionnat.
Selfish, boastful, vain, but a saving open straightforwardness in her desire to be admired, Ginevra is one of the delights of the book.
Notwithstanding these foibles, and various others needless to mention—but by no means of a refined or elevating character—how pretty she was! How charming she looked, when she came down on a sunny Sunday morning, well-dressed and well-humoured, robed in pale lilac silk, and with her fair long curls reposing on her white shoulders.
What I Plan to Read Next
Obviously Gib and the Gray Ghost, the sequel to Gib Rides Home. These came out during the PEAK of my Zilpha Keatley Snyder obsession, so I’m truly baffled that I didn’t read them at the time.
Cannot BELIEVE I waited all these years to read Zilpha Keatley Snyder’s Gib Rides Home. The book is loosely inspired by Snyder’s own father’s childhood, and features a Dickensian orphanage! horsies! a horseless carriage! a lonely child finding a home! and just in general is a fantastic homage, as the character of Gib is loveable and memorable and recognizably a child while also being clearly the kind of child who would grow up into the calm, steadfast, loving father Snyder describes in the afterword.
What I’m Reading Now
I had good intentions of traipsing slowly through Charlotte Bronte’s Villette so we could all savor it together, but alas, I’ve been unable to restrain myself, and have galloped through the first few chapters. Alone in the world, with but a little money in her pocket and an even more meager stock of French, Lucy decides to set forth across the Channel to seek her fortunes on the continent. On the crossing, she meets Ginevra Fanshawe, a pretty flibbertigibbet who is headed to a pensionnat in Villette (capital city of Labassecour, for which read Belgium), and for no better reason goes to Villette herself, and soon finds herself ensconced as an English teacher in the self-same pensionnat.
Selfish, boastful, vain, but a saving open straightforwardness in her desire to be admired, Ginevra is one of the delights of the book.
Notwithstanding these foibles, and various others needless to mention—but by no means of a refined or elevating character—how pretty she was! How charming she looked, when she came down on a sunny Sunday morning, well-dressed and well-humoured, robed in pale lilac silk, and with her fair long curls reposing on her white shoulders.
What I Plan to Read Next
Obviously Gib and the Gray Ghost, the sequel to Gib Rides Home. These came out during the PEAK of my Zilpha Keatley Snyder obsession, so I’m truly baffled that I didn’t read them at the time.
