Wednesday Reading Meme
Mar. 23rd, 2016 08:24 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
osprey_archerWhat I’ve Just Finished Reading
As well as Rainbow Rowell’s Carry On (which I posted about already), I finished Louisa May Alcott’s Hospital Sketches, which I would only recommend if you are for some reason a Louisa May Alcott completist.
Oh, and I read Betsy Birney’s The Seven Wonders of Sassafras Springs, which was cute. Eben reads a book about the Seven Wonders of the World and complains that there’s nothing interesting in his hometown, Sassafras Springs; his father challenges him to find seven wonderful things in the town, and if Eben manages it, he can take a train out to Colorado to visit an aunt.
So it’s a “finding the wonderful in the world all around you” book, and I like those books so I enjoyed it, but there’s nothing particularly special about it: it does what it says on the tin.
What I’m Reading Now
Elizabeth Stuart Phelps’ Gypsy’s Cousin Joy, which is the sequel to Gypsy Breynton, a children’s book that slightly predates Little Women and is sometimes cited as an inspiration for it, because Gypsy, like Jo, is a delightfully sprightly hoyden of a girl.
And I’ve started Betsy and the Great World, which is about Betsy’s Grand Tour of Europe. (She’s cutting it close: her trip starts in January 1914. And, it occurs to me, she’s planning to stay a whole year...oh dear.) So far, she’s still on the steamer to Genoa, whence she plans to go to Munich, where her sister studied opera.
What I Plan to Read Next
I really should read Rainbow Rowell’s Eleanor and Park. It’s been on my reading list ever since I read Fangirl, but somehow I never got around to it…
Oh, and I’m also thinking that maybe I should read a Raymond Chandler novel, because it turns out that I slandered the poor man a few posts ago: it turns out that Raymond Carver is the one who was a wife-beating drunkard who, after he was sober, wrote and published an essay about how his children ruined his life. (You couldn’t just discuss that with your therapist and/or your AA group, Carver? Privately, where your poor benighted children could never hear it? I bet it never even occurred to Carver that maybe he had ruined his children’s lives, too.)
Raymond Chandler, on the other hand, was an as-far-as-I-know-blameless detective fiction writer. My library has The Big Sleep, so I’m thinking about starting there.
As well as Rainbow Rowell’s Carry On (which I posted about already), I finished Louisa May Alcott’s Hospital Sketches, which I would only recommend if you are for some reason a Louisa May Alcott completist.
Oh, and I read Betsy Birney’s The Seven Wonders of Sassafras Springs, which was cute. Eben reads a book about the Seven Wonders of the World and complains that there’s nothing interesting in his hometown, Sassafras Springs; his father challenges him to find seven wonderful things in the town, and if Eben manages it, he can take a train out to Colorado to visit an aunt.
So it’s a “finding the wonderful in the world all around you” book, and I like those books so I enjoyed it, but there’s nothing particularly special about it: it does what it says on the tin.
What I’m Reading Now
Elizabeth Stuart Phelps’ Gypsy’s Cousin Joy, which is the sequel to Gypsy Breynton, a children’s book that slightly predates Little Women and is sometimes cited as an inspiration for it, because Gypsy, like Jo, is a delightfully sprightly hoyden of a girl.
And I’ve started Betsy and the Great World, which is about Betsy’s Grand Tour of Europe. (She’s cutting it close: her trip starts in January 1914. And, it occurs to me, she’s planning to stay a whole year...oh dear.) So far, she’s still on the steamer to Genoa, whence she plans to go to Munich, where her sister studied opera.
What I Plan to Read Next
I really should read Rainbow Rowell’s Eleanor and Park. It’s been on my reading list ever since I read Fangirl, but somehow I never got around to it…
Oh, and I’m also thinking that maybe I should read a Raymond Chandler novel, because it turns out that I slandered the poor man a few posts ago: it turns out that Raymond Carver is the one who was a wife-beating drunkard who, after he was sober, wrote and published an essay about how his children ruined his life. (You couldn’t just discuss that with your therapist and/or your AA group, Carver? Privately, where your poor benighted children could never hear it? I bet it never even occurred to Carver that maybe he had ruined his children’s lives, too.)
Raymond Chandler, on the other hand, was an as-far-as-I-know-blameless detective fiction writer. My library has The Big Sleep, so I’m thinking about starting there.
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no subject
Date: 2016-03-23 12:31 pm (UTC)But I luurrrrrvvve Chandler (see icon, from a graphic novel adaptation of The Little Sister). The Big Sleep is the most iconic for sure but any of the Marlowe novels are worth reading imo.
no subject
Date: 2016-03-23 05:51 pm (UTC)Also, on the topic of the other Raymond, Carver's editor apparently edited him verrrrry heavily. A lot of what people think of as the Carver style is actually a result of editing and not Carver at all. Raymond Carver: a terrible person, and also not that much of a genius!
no subject
Date: 2016-03-23 06:19 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-03-24 11:37 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-03-24 04:26 pm (UTC)Speaking of editing, I'm working on a story set in late-Victorian England about a young man down on his luck who is modeling for an old school friend turned artist. Naturally the modeling session turns into... something more. Would you be interested in beta-reading it?
no subject
Date: 2016-03-25 02:47 am (UTC)I'm intrigued! For sure, send it through. :)
no subject
Date: 2016-03-25 01:45 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-03-23 06:15 pm (UTC)I haven't read the book, but The Big Sleep is a terrific movie, if a little incomprehensible.
no subject
Date: 2016-03-23 06:49 pm (UTC)