osprey_archer (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
osprey_archer) wrote2015-10-28 09:09 pm
osprey_archer) wrote2015-10-28 09:09 pm
Wednesday Reading Meme
What I've Finished Reading
Eugenia Ginzburg's Within the Whirldwind, the far-less-harrowing sequel to Journey into the Whirlwind. It's less harrowing both because a good half of the book takes place after Ginzburg's release (being released from the gulags came with its own problems, mind, but it's still better than actually being in a gulag), and also because in the first half of the book, she meets the man who becomes her second husband, whose presence irradiates her life.
I guess love really can bring light to the darkest of places. Or perhaps not the darkest - they meet when Ginzburg becomes a nurse at a gulag tuberculosis hospital, which in gulag terms is a pretty cushy position, although by any ordinary standard it's horrifying - but certainly in places much darker than one might imagine.
What I'm Reading Now
L. M. Montgomery's The Story Girl, which is fun but rather slight. All of her books are pretty clair, but there's often a half-hidden darker edge (not so hidden in the Emily books) which doesn't seem to exist so much in The Story Girl.
I've also just started Sarah Vowell's Lafayette in the Somewhat United States, which is about... well, the Marquis de Lafayette and the American Revolution and the French Revolution and also, possibly, just about revolutions in general, although we'll see how that develops. I enjoy Vowell's work because she has this tendency to bounce all over the place, drawing in things that are perhaps only tangentially related to her main subject but fascinating in their own right.
What I Plan to Read Next
I'm thinking about going on a bit of an L. M. Montgomery binge: the sequel to The Story Girl, The Golden Road, and perhaps also the two Pat books. There are still a few others that I haven't read, but I don't want to go and read them all at once.
Eugenia Ginzburg's Within the Whirldwind, the far-less-harrowing sequel to Journey into the Whirlwind. It's less harrowing both because a good half of the book takes place after Ginzburg's release (being released from the gulags came with its own problems, mind, but it's still better than actually being in a gulag), and also because in the first half of the book, she meets the man who becomes her second husband, whose presence irradiates her life.
I guess love really can bring light to the darkest of places. Or perhaps not the darkest - they meet when Ginzburg becomes a nurse at a gulag tuberculosis hospital, which in gulag terms is a pretty cushy position, although by any ordinary standard it's horrifying - but certainly in places much darker than one might imagine.
What I'm Reading Now
L. M. Montgomery's The Story Girl, which is fun but rather slight. All of her books are pretty clair, but there's often a half-hidden darker edge (not so hidden in the Emily books) which doesn't seem to exist so much in The Story Girl.
I've also just started Sarah Vowell's Lafayette in the Somewhat United States, which is about... well, the Marquis de Lafayette and the American Revolution and the French Revolution and also, possibly, just about revolutions in general, although we'll see how that develops. I enjoy Vowell's work because she has this tendency to bounce all over the place, drawing in things that are perhaps only tangentially related to her main subject but fascinating in their own right.
What I Plan to Read Next
I'm thinking about going on a bit of an L. M. Montgomery binge: the sequel to The Story Girl, The Golden Road, and perhaps also the two Pat books. There are still a few others that I haven't read, but I don't want to go and read them all at once.