Wednesday Reading Meme

[osprey_archer]

What I’ve Just Finished Reading

Who finished War and Peace? THAT’S RIGHT, IT’S ME.

I’ll post about it at greater length tomorrow, but for now I will leave you with this quote: “Pierre’s madness consisted in not waiting, as he had formerly done, to discover personal attributes that he called ‘good qualities’ in people before loving them: his heart overflowed with love, and by loving without cause he never failed to discover undeniable reasons for loving.”

I also read Mary Stewart’s Touch Not the Cat, which is classic Mary Stewart except with added telepathy. Unless she has a lot of books with telepathy and I’ve just missed them until now?

Anyway, I think I should take a break from Mary Stewart books from a bit. I love her formula - the stalwart young heroine who knows gobs about poetry and English wildflowers slowly discovers that she has a murderous nemesis and also falls in love - but it is a formula and I think it will feel fresher if I give it some time to rest.

What I’m Reading Now

Christopher Benfey’s A Summer of Hummingbirds: Love, Art, and Scandal in the Intersecting Worlds of Emily Dickinson, Mark Twain, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Martin Johnson Heade, a book that - you can tell by the title - was clearly written with me personally in mind.

It does just what it says on the tin - with the addition of a few other dramatis personae not listed in the title, probably because Benfey figured Henry Ward Beecher would be too obscure for the modern reader, although if that were the criterion then I’m not sure why Martin Johnson Headley is in the title. (Headley was a painter of salt marshes and hummingbirds, and also surprisingly intertwined with the other leading personages in the book.)

In any case it’s kept my attention fairly well despite the fact that I feel as if I am losing my mind, which I feel is a pretty high recommendation of its quality.

What I Plan to Read Next

I have Diana Wynne Jones' Minor Arcana, and I'm looking forward to reading the novella "The True State of Affairs," about a girl who is imprisoned. ladyherenya posted an excerpt and it struck me there was something rather Code Name Verityish about it.

Comments

[thisbluespirit]

Not having read W&P, I can only say, Well done!!! And also a yay for DWJ, because DWJ. <3

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

I have had mixed reactions to DWJ's work in the past, so I'm hoping that this story will provide me a line into loving her work like other people do. We'll see!

[thisbluespirit]

Well, nobody's for everyone, especially someone like DWJ. But i hope you enjoy it, anyway. She was a formative influence as a teen, really.

[ladyherenya]

Congrats on finishing War and Peace.

I hadn't thought about similarities between "The True State of Affairs" and Code Name Verity until you suggested it, perhaps because of the differences, but there are definitely some similarities there.
I'll be interested to see what you think of it.

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

I'm planning to start reading it tonight.

[artemis_wandering]

I ultimately never was able to hop on the Russian novelist train. I tried W&P once, made it 100 pages maybe before giving up. One of the few books I've ever given up on. I was annoyed at the romance and lack of real war.lol Congrats on making it through!

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

I bombed out of War and Peace the first time I tried it. I got about a hundred pages in and still couldn't tell most of the characters apart and said "Fuck this."

It gave me a bit of a head start on sorting all the characters out the next time around, but it still took a while for me to get them straight.

[evelyn-b.livejournal.com]

WOOOOOO WAR AND PEACE FINISHER

\o\
put your hands in the air
/o/
wave them like you don't care
\o\
(about Tolstoy's theory of history)
\o/

YOU ARE A TRUE HERO. I look forward to more thoughts!

Also, that may be the best possible quote to single out from War and Peace. I'm biased because it also functions as description of what reading War and Peace did to my brain. I love it when books stealth-describe themselves.

I ALMOST BOUGHT Touch Not the Cat at the other bookstore I went to, but I didn't! I'd already bought so many other books that I felt I had to draw the line somewhere. Oh, well.

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

It's such a good quote! If Tolstoy had to spend lots of time theorizing, he could have at least spent it embroidering on that quote instead of going on and on about history.

I am sorry you didn't buy Touch Not the Cat for synchrony's sake, but at the same time it's not my favorite Stewart so it's probably not a great loss. The Moon-Spinners and Nine Coaches Waiting are both better IMO, and Rose Cottage has the best cozy cottage atmosphere ever.