Wednesday Reading Meme

[osprey_archer]

What I’ve Just Finished Reading

Charles Dickens’ The Old Curiosity Shop. The whole point of the book seems to be delineating Little Nell’s character (and, to a lesser extent, her grandfather’s - by the by, I don’t believe he ever gets a name) purely so we can sob helplessly as she spends ten chapters dying.

I may be underestimating the number of chapters it took. Interleaved with the dying are chapters about other characters far away, so we can spend more time fretting about (and presumably savoring the pain of fretting about?) Nell’s imminent demise.

I’ve been thinking about listening to Dickens’ books on CD, but I’m glad I didn’t with this one, because that would have just drawn out the sadness. The one problem with books on CD is that it’s impossible to skim.

What I’m Reading Now

Still A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. It takes a while to get through twelve CDs of story. I like Francie a lot - she also finds lists hypnotizingly compelling! - but I think my favorite character is her aunt Sissy, who is at this point a trigamist.

Also Rainbow Rowell’s Fangirl, which came in on hold on Sunday and I was going to save reading it till next weekend but I finished writing a paper and I was like, “Clearly I must celebrate!”

And also there are half a dozen people on the holds list behind me, so it is positively a public service that I am reading this in a timely fashion instead of letting it languish.

I feel kind of inferior in the face of Cath’s 20,000 hits a chapter - a chapter! Not even for a story, but a chapter!

What I’m Reading Next

Avi’s Crispin: The Cross of Lead, which is the last of the Newbery books, HOORAY! And then I will be done with the project that I started when I was eleven! Obviously there was a decade-long hiatus between the beginning of the project and the end...

Comments

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

You started the Newbery project when you were eleven? You are the awesome-est!

And Fangirl is in the air; my LJ friend handful_ofdust just read it and wrote a good review of it, and it just turned up on my what's-happening-in-YA newsletter from Goodreads.

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

I did not get all that far when I was eleven - I can't remember if it's because the library didn't have many of the earlier books or because I just ran out of steam.

And yes, Fangirl is showing up everywhere! The last YA book I remember getting this much buzz on LJ was Code Name Verity

[island-of-reil.livejournal.com]

The whole point of the book seems to be delineating Little Nell’s character (and, to a lesser extent, her grandfather’s - by the by, I don’t believe he ever gets a name) purely so we can sob helplessly as she spends ten chapters dying.

So was Oscar Wilde (http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/25879-one-must-have-a-heart-of-stone-to-read-the) right?

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

Well, it didn't make me laugh. But then, I tend not to be a fan of Oscar Wilde.