Wednesday Reading Meme
Sep. 24th, 2014 09:29 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
What I’ve Just Finished Reading
Eva Ibbotson’s The Morning Gift, which I found sad, especially at the beginning. The heroine is a refugee, who has fled Vienna (by means of a marriage of convenience, which of course turns out to be true love after much travail) to England soon after the Anschluss, so probably I should have expected it to be sad. But it’s an Ibbotson book! Who expects an Ibbotson to be sad? And A Countess Below Stairs also has refugees (White Russian refugees that time), and it’s not melancholy.
But Ibbotson herself fled Vienna in the late 1930s, and her love for the city that was before the war is strong in this book. I’ve never even been to Vienna, and I want to weep for it.
What I’m Reading Now
Rosemary Sutcliff’s Rider on a White Horse.
What I Plan to Read Next
Edwidge Danticat’s Claire of the Sea Light, which I am reading partly because I’ve seen good reviews -
asakiyume, I believe you wrote about it? - but also because the cover is gorgeous, which is a dangerous method for finding new books. Hopefully this will be a Crown Duel rather than a Yonahlossee Riding Camp for Girls situation.
Also Maureen Johnson’s The Name of the Star.
Eva Ibbotson’s The Morning Gift, which I found sad, especially at the beginning. The heroine is a refugee, who has fled Vienna (by means of a marriage of convenience, which of course turns out to be true love after much travail) to England soon after the Anschluss, so probably I should have expected it to be sad. But it’s an Ibbotson book! Who expects an Ibbotson to be sad? And A Countess Below Stairs also has refugees (White Russian refugees that time), and it’s not melancholy.
But Ibbotson herself fled Vienna in the late 1930s, and her love for the city that was before the war is strong in this book. I’ve never even been to Vienna, and I want to weep for it.
What I’m Reading Now
Rosemary Sutcliff’s Rider on a White Horse.
What I Plan to Read Next
Edwidge Danticat’s Claire of the Sea Light, which I am reading partly because I’ve seen good reviews -
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Also Maureen Johnson’s The Name of the Star.
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Date: 2014-09-24 02:36 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-09-24 10:21 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-09-24 11:11 pm (UTC)How's Rider on a White Horse?
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Date: 2014-09-25 01:43 am (UTC)Rider on a White Horse is pretty good, but also very put-down-able; I enjoy it when I'm reading it, but when it doesn't have the narrative drive to make me pick it back up once I've set it aside. I meant to write more about it this morning, but it fell by the wayside because I dashed off to work on the robot book instead.
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Date: 2014-09-25 02:06 am (UTC)I haven't read any of Danticat's other books. The ones whose blurbs I checked out seemed much grimmer and maybe more lurid? I think I might try *future* books by her.
... Actually, I think she wrote one about the conflict between the Dominican Republic and Haiti, and I might be interested in that one.