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Wednesday Reading Meme
Jan. 15th, 2025 08:37 amWhat I’ve Just Finished Reading
Four Dolls, by Rumer Godden, with illustrations by Pauline Baynes (whom you may be familiar with as the illustrator of The Chronicles of Narnia). This is actually a collection of four doll stories: Impunity Jane, The Fairy Doll, The Story of Holly and Ivy (which I’ve read before but apparently forgot in its entirety), and Candy Floss. I particularly enjoyed The Fairy Doll, which is one of those Godden stories where a Child Makes a Thing (in this case a fairy house for the fairy doll out of a bicycle basket that becomes a cave), and Candy Floss, about a doll who lives in a coconut shy at a fair.
Also Rosemary Sutcliff’s short story “Shifting Sands,” which excited me immensely by beginning with a reference to 1850 - surely the most recent date of any Rosemary Sutcliff story! But 1850 is simply a reference to the year that the shifting dunes revealed the ruins of Skara Brae, and the story itself is about the last days before the village was buried beneath the sand. ( spoilers )
What I’m Reading Now
I’m in the middle of my next Le Carre, Smiley’s People, in which we learn that Connie has retired to the countryside with five hundred pets and a girlfriend. Someone surely has written their thesis about Queerness in Le Carre.
What I Plan to Read Next
Before I move on from the Brontes, I’d like to read one more biography, preferably something more or less recent. I’ve had a rec for Juliet Barker’s The Brontes. Any other contenders?
Four Dolls, by Rumer Godden, with illustrations by Pauline Baynes (whom you may be familiar with as the illustrator of The Chronicles of Narnia). This is actually a collection of four doll stories: Impunity Jane, The Fairy Doll, The Story of Holly and Ivy (which I’ve read before but apparently forgot in its entirety), and Candy Floss. I particularly enjoyed The Fairy Doll, which is one of those Godden stories where a Child Makes a Thing (in this case a fairy house for the fairy doll out of a bicycle basket that becomes a cave), and Candy Floss, about a doll who lives in a coconut shy at a fair.
Also Rosemary Sutcliff’s short story “Shifting Sands,” which excited me immensely by beginning with a reference to 1850 - surely the most recent date of any Rosemary Sutcliff story! But 1850 is simply a reference to the year that the shifting dunes revealed the ruins of Skara Brae, and the story itself is about the last days before the village was buried beneath the sand. ( spoilers )
What I’m Reading Now
I’m in the middle of my next Le Carre, Smiley’s People, in which we learn that Connie has retired to the countryside with five hundred pets and a girlfriend. Someone surely has written their thesis about Queerness in Le Carre.
What I Plan to Read Next
Before I move on from the Brontes, I’d like to read one more biography, preferably something more or less recent. I’ve had a rec for Juliet Barker’s The Brontes. Any other contenders?
