osprey_archer | Wednesday Reading Meme

What I’ve Just Finished Reading

Gaston Leroux’s The Phantom of the Opera, but I have a post in the works about that so I shall not detain you here.

Also Paula McLain’s The Paris Wife, because Emma recommended it to me. It’s a recently published adult book, which puts it rather out of the way of the things I normally read. I quite enjoyed it - I mean, in the way that you enjoy a book that’s really pretty depressing - and that set me to thinking why I don’t read recently published adult fiction more often.

Ultimately I think it’s just that there isn’t time to read everything, because there are so many books in the world. You have to pick and choose which genres you’re going to focus on.

Also, I seem to have a talent for striking on recently published adult novels that are lovely but very sad. The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake is also beautifully written, but still a total downer. A life without the ability to enjoy food! So sad!

What I’m Reading Now

Elizabeth Wein’s Rose Under Fire. Holy moly, you guys, this book starts less than a year after Code Name Verity went down, and Maddie Brodatt and Jamie Beaufort-Stuart just got married! I remember discussing this post-CNV possibility with others, and we all thought it might happen - years in the future, after the war, once they’ve had ages upon ages to recover.

Clearly that was a bit of an overestimation.

I had not realized quite how invested I was in Maddie and Julie’s ~epic love~ until this happened and I was like “WHAT, but Julie is barely even COLD IN THE GROUND, how can Maddie even be dating yet???” But I’ll get used to it eventually, I suppose.

I did legit start weeping when Maddie thought she’d lost Rose, as well. It’s like the universe is plotting to kill all her friends.

What I Plan to Read Next

J. K. Rowling’s new mystery novel, The Cuckoo’s Calling. I didn’t really like the later Harry Potter books, but I loved the first few and I’m awfully fond of mysteries, so I’m hoping I’ll love this too.

SPEAKING OF MYSTERIES. Did you know that Jane Langton - who wrote The Diamond in the Window and, my most favorite, The Fledgling - wrote mystery novels about the Transcendentalists? I DIDN’T. So excited about this!

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

I read RUF this summer and was also so disappointed by that! I mean - okay, wartime, people clinging together, etc etc, I can make it work in my head, but...

I know, right! I've somewhat reconciled myself to it, and I can see why Wein would want to show the readers that Maddie was recovering, but... a "Maddie has made a new friend, Rose, and is keeping in touch with Jamie" recovery would have felt better to me.

I've gotten to the part where Maddie, Irena, and Rozja (how do you spell her name? I'm listening to the audiobook, which is fantastic but unhelpful about spelling) steal a plane and escape from Germany. They've found a Luftwaffe coat in the back of the plane! Finally they get warm!

I don't have a copy to hand, but I think it's Róża for her name, and I couldn't even begin to guess for the 'little Roza' nickname.

It's pretty funny how we all kind of assumed Maddie would completely pull away from everything after Julie, and instead we have her making new friends and falling in love and being a leader of the ATA pilots. (That last bit makes me really happy. Well, all of it does when it involves Maddie being happy, but you know).

They steal a plane. I loved that bit so much. It's just so incredible and almost ridiculous. Taran!

I am so requesting Rose Under Fire for Yuletide this year. I just have to figure out what about it I'm requesting. (Yes, there's less than 48 hours left, I have plenty of time really)

Oh, man. I guess anyone writing RUF fic will have to copy and paste Róża's name, because that's going to be a pain to type. (I'm planning to go back and look at all the RUF Yuletide prompts once I'm done...)

I was shocked by Rose's casual references to Maddie's boyfriend - "But how can you talk about Maddie's love life in such unambiguous terms???" - because Code Name Verity is so silent about romance. (Which makes sense. If there was anything to tell, Maddie would probably consider it too personal for a diary kept in her pilot's notes, and Julie would consider it none of von Linden's business.) I was expecting more ambiguity and reading-between-the-lines.

I think Maddie's marriage makes sense in the context of WWII. Lots of people married very hastily, and often to someone they had not known very long, because they didn't know if they had time to take things slow. And I suspect Maddie has somewhat pushed her grief for Julie aside, rather than dealing with it properly, because her wartime job doesn't allow her the space to properly grieve.

(So I started feeling all defensive of Maddie's choices in marrying Jamie after reading a comment from someone arguing that "looks like dead best friend" was a terrible basis for a healthy relationship. I maintain that we don't actually know if this is the basis of their relationship, particularly as half of Maddie's interactions with Jamie in CNV were written by Julie, not Maddie, etcetera...)

Even given the non-romantic focus of CNV, I think there's more than enough information there to let us know that there's more to Maddie and Jamie's relationship than the fact that he looks like her dead best friend. They looked out for each other in France! He leaves her his RAF boots!

Eight months from that to marriage does seem a little fast, but as you say, it is wartime. "Gave me his boots when I was stuck in occupied France" is probably a more solid basis for their relationship than many other couples had; Nick wanted to marry Rose on much less.

I am a bit piqued at Nick for going and marrying someone else so fast, even though he did have good reason to believe that Rose was dead. But as Jamie says, Nick isn't very strong; I suspect eventually this would have strained his and Rose's relationship, so maybe it's for the best in the end.

And I think Rose needed something to hold on to more than she really loved Nick. She liked him just enough for him to be a good symbol: she didn't miss him so much that he was painful to think about, like her hometown.

I'm racing toward the end! I've gotten to the Nuremberg trials, and I'm waiting on tenterhooks to see what Anna Engel is going to do.

Wednesday Reading Meme

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