Wednesday Reading Meme

[osprey_archer]

What I Just Finished Reading

Katherine Applegate’s The One and Only Ivan, which I found unexpectedly compelling. Ivan is a gorilla who lives in a little cage in a mall circus that is slowly going bankrupt. The keeper decides to bring in a new attraction: a baby elephant, Ruby, to join Ivan’s ailing elephant friend Stella in an elephant act.

”A good zoo,” Stella says, “is a large domain. A wild cage. A safe place to be. It has room to roam and humans who don’t hurt.” She pauses, considering her words. “A good zoo is how humans make amends.”

A good zoo is their goal: they want to save Ruby from living this tiny cage life. It’s an economical book. Ivan writes short sentences and leaves a lot of white space on the page, but there’s a lot of story packed in those few sentences.

Humans waste words. They toss them like banana peels and leave them to rot.

Everyone knows the peels are the best part.

What I’m Reading Now

Back to Les Mis! Houston, we have an Eponine!

Also we have creepy stalker Marius. He doesn’t know Cosette’s name yet, but he stands under her apartment window at night and swoons when he sees a shadow on the wall that might be hers. Also he sees her in the park every day, and gets mad when the wind blows up her skirt. The hussy! How dare she stand in the wind so anyone could see her legs!

I just finished up with the scene where Grantaire goes to a tavern to Talk Revolution, and Enjolras walks by later and discovers that Grantaire is playing dominoes and not talking revolution at all. carmarthen, did you ever write that story where Grantaire (presumably after Enjolras drags him out of the tavern by his ear) waxes eloquent about the noble history of strip domino?

I’m also reading Jaclyn Moriarty’s I Have a Bed Made of Buttermilk Pancakes. Despite my devotion to Moriarty’s work I hadn’t heard of this book till recently, and I am beginning to suspect this was for good reason. Also, it seems to be the same book as The Spell Book of Listen Taylor? Like, parts of it were adapted to make Listen Taylor.

What I’m Reading Next

I am hoping to settle in and steamroll through the rest of Les Miserables, because I have only six more weeks of French class and one measly book is not a very good summer overview of French literature.

Plus of course I have more Newbery books. Except I forgot to bring Susan Cooper's The Dark is Rising sequence with me when I visited my parent's house! Noooo, those were totally going to be my early morning tea books.

It is ridiculous that I have not read The Dark is Rising yet, I know. I did read Cooper's King of Shadows and The Boggart - I loved The Boggart ridiculously and rather turned up my nose at the inferior boggarts in Harry Potter.

King of Shadows and The Shakespeare Stealer are probably responsible for the fact that I automatically assume all things Shakespeare are cool. Also Becoming Rosemary, which quotes him liberally. I think possibly there is a children's book conspiracy to acclimate the young into an appreciation of Shakespeare - and a longstanding conspiracy, at that, stretching back to Laura Elizabeth Howe Richard's 1892 Captain January.

Comments

[lycoris.livejournal.com]

The One and Only Ivan was really, really good - I didn't expect to like it as much as I did (although I've liked (using various meanings of the word there) everything I've read by K. A. Applegate.) It was just really good, beautiful in a sparse sort of way. And managed to have a moral without it feeling too much like it was being slammed into your head, which was surprising given that it was clearly a moral-led book in some ways.

King of Shadows is a magnificent book, one of my favourites. It is the reason that I nearly burst into tears at the end of The Tempest (though I had forgotten why until I re-read it and then was all "OH YES, THAT'S WHY THE CHOKED SOBS THEN.")

Good luck with Les Mis! :)

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

Yes! I think the sparseness lets the moral pack a big punch without making the book seem heavy-handedly moralizing. It's so concise that there's really no room for that.

And I need to reread King of Shadows. Sometime. So many books!

[ghosted.livejournal.com]

You need to read The Dark is Rising! The copy I bought (and annotated) for writing my dissertation is being passed around my friends now. Finally, they're all reading it. I need to read King of Shadows, though.

I can't wait to read The One and Only Ivan. I'm a huge Applegate fan.

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

My parents are bringing The Dark is Rising down when they come to visit in a couple of weeks, so I will start reading it then! Given that we actually owned a copy throughout my childhood, it is kind of ridiculous that I did not read it then.

[carmarthen.livejournal.com]

I did not! And I kind of doubt I will, tbh.

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

Do you mind if I write it? I may never get around to it, but...dominoes!

[carmarthen.livejournal.com]

Not at all! It was voksen's idea anyway, but I don't think she cares about Amis anymore.