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osprey_archerWhat I’ve Just Finished Reading
Lisa See’s On Gold Mountain: The One-Hundred-Year Odyssey of a Chinese-American Family, which is part family history, part history of Chinese immigration to America, and part (a rather smaller part) a history of modern China. I’ve been meaning to read this for years, and I’m glad I finally got around to it, because it’s fascinating. I can also see shadows of See’s later book Shanghai Girls, which draws on a lot of this research, and as I enjoyed Shanghai Girls, this adds an extra layer of pleasure to On Gold Mountain for me.
(As much as I enjoyed Shanghai Girls, I can’t recommend it because ending is completely inconclusive, and the sequel, Dreams of Joy, is not nearly as good. It feels much thinner, less lived-in, Pearl and May spend most of the book apart - and their relationship is really the driving force in Shanghai Girls - and Joy is not nearly as interesting as her mother and aunt. Of course, it’s probably unfair to expect a single person to be as interesting as two people put together...but still.)
I also finished Hilary McKay's Caddy's World, and am moping slightly at having no more Casson books to read. I love the Casson family, which is so odd and disorganized and yet very, very functional: the children are encouraged to do what they loved, and they know that they are loved, not only by their parents (particularly their mother) but by their siblings.
What I’m Reading Now
Maria Thompson Daviess’s Rose of Old Harpeth, to which I give props for having a romantic heroine who is already thirty... although I also take some away because Rose Mary often acts so head-in-the-clouds as to make Anne of Green Gables look like a grounded and level-headed person.
Thinking about this a bit more - I think the difference lies not so much in the quality of their musings, but in the fact that Anne has a fully functional set of emotions, including anger and misery, while Rose Mary seems to have excised anger and sadness from her emotional repertoire. It makes her feel insubstantial.
I’m beginning to think that Phyllis, the first Daviess book I read, was probably her best - or perhaps I should say, was most suited to my personal tastes - because neither this one nor The Golden Bird really grabbed me.
I'm also reading Jaleigh Johnson's The Mark of the Dragonfly, because I was charmed by the title and the giant dragonfly on the cover. This is a somewhat dangerous method of book selection, but so far (I'm only about twenty pages or so in) I'm enjoying it. Our heroine, Piper, lives in a town of scrappers, people who make their living by collecting the debris from other worlds that falls from the sky on the nights of the full moon...and something is clearly about to happen which will turn her life upside down, but I haven't gotten that far yet.
What I Plan to Read Next
William Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury. I am girding my loins for this one.
Lisa See’s On Gold Mountain: The One-Hundred-Year Odyssey of a Chinese-American Family, which is part family history, part history of Chinese immigration to America, and part (a rather smaller part) a history of modern China. I’ve been meaning to read this for years, and I’m glad I finally got around to it, because it’s fascinating. I can also see shadows of See’s later book Shanghai Girls, which draws on a lot of this research, and as I enjoyed Shanghai Girls, this adds an extra layer of pleasure to On Gold Mountain for me.
(As much as I enjoyed Shanghai Girls, I can’t recommend it because ending is completely inconclusive, and the sequel, Dreams of Joy, is not nearly as good. It feels much thinner, less lived-in, Pearl and May spend most of the book apart - and their relationship is really the driving force in Shanghai Girls - and Joy is not nearly as interesting as her mother and aunt. Of course, it’s probably unfair to expect a single person to be as interesting as two people put together...but still.)
I also finished Hilary McKay's Caddy's World, and am moping slightly at having no more Casson books to read. I love the Casson family, which is so odd and disorganized and yet very, very functional: the children are encouraged to do what they loved, and they know that they are loved, not only by their parents (particularly their mother) but by their siblings.
What I’m Reading Now
Maria Thompson Daviess’s Rose of Old Harpeth, to which I give props for having a romantic heroine who is already thirty... although I also take some away because Rose Mary often acts so head-in-the-clouds as to make Anne of Green Gables look like a grounded and level-headed person.
Thinking about this a bit more - I think the difference lies not so much in the quality of their musings, but in the fact that Anne has a fully functional set of emotions, including anger and misery, while Rose Mary seems to have excised anger and sadness from her emotional repertoire. It makes her feel insubstantial.
I’m beginning to think that Phyllis, the first Daviess book I read, was probably her best - or perhaps I should say, was most suited to my personal tastes - because neither this one nor The Golden Bird really grabbed me.
I'm also reading Jaleigh Johnson's The Mark of the Dragonfly, because I was charmed by the title and the giant dragonfly on the cover. This is a somewhat dangerous method of book selection, but so far (I'm only about twenty pages or so in) I'm enjoying it. Our heroine, Piper, lives in a town of scrappers, people who make their living by collecting the debris from other worlds that falls from the sky on the nights of the full moon...and something is clearly about to happen which will turn her life upside down, but I haven't gotten that far yet.
What I Plan to Read Next
William Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury. I am girding my loins for this one.
