Wednesday Reading Meme
Oct. 26th, 2016 08:39 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
osprey_archerWhat I’ve Just Finished Reading
Kimberly Brubaker Bradley’s The War That Saved My Life, a 2016 Newbery Honor book which I sort of wish had won the medal itself, although it certainly might have added to the Newbery’s reputation for grimness. (Although it’s not even in the same misery league as Out of the Dust. I don’t think anything can touch Out of the Dust for sheer despair.)
When World War II begins, Ada and her little brother Jamie are evacuated to the countryside from their abusive home in London. And this is not abusive in the Roald Dahl sort of way where the child abuse is a sort of slapstick background: when Matilda’s father tells her she’s an idiot, Matilda never actually believes him. Ada, on the other hand, is pretty well convinced that her clubfoot makes her worthless and unlovable, because her mother has been telling her so for her entire life.
(What makes this even worse is that even in the forties a clubfoot was a totally treatable condition, so if Ada’s mother had it treated when Ada was a baby then - well, okay, she probably would have come up with a different excuse to tell Ada she was worthless and unlovable. But at least Ada could have run away without bleeding all over the ground!)
Anyway, they’re sent to the countryside where they are boarded with an old lady who is still super depressed over her lover Becky’s death two years before (the book doesn’t 100% spell out that they were lovers, but it’s pretty obvious), and the rest of the book is about Ada learning how to cope with being treated decently and also how to ride a pony, because why not, everything is better with ponies.
What I’m Reading Now
I’ve almost finished Melanie Wallace’s The Girl in the Garden, which is well-written but bleak: the story of a lot of lonely people, living side by side, and almost all too damaged by their lives to reach out of that loneliness and connect with each other. One of them lives in a literal compound surrounded by a high concrete wall. This is a pretty good metaphor for everyone in this book.
This is another NetGalley book, and probably one I wouldn’t have read if it hadn’t been free on NetGalley. On the one hand I am glad I read it, because it is very well-written - the descriptions of the New England landscape, the ocean, the desolate winters, are very evocative - but on the other hand it reminds me why I don’t read this sort of book very often.
What I Plan to Read Next
I’m still waiting for the library to get me the new American Girl book. I am beginning to suspect that some power in the universe doesn’t want me to read this book.
Kimberly Brubaker Bradley’s The War That Saved My Life, a 2016 Newbery Honor book which I sort of wish had won the medal itself, although it certainly might have added to the Newbery’s reputation for grimness. (Although it’s not even in the same misery league as Out of the Dust. I don’t think anything can touch Out of the Dust for sheer despair.)
When World War II begins, Ada and her little brother Jamie are evacuated to the countryside from their abusive home in London. And this is not abusive in the Roald Dahl sort of way where the child abuse is a sort of slapstick background: when Matilda’s father tells her she’s an idiot, Matilda never actually believes him. Ada, on the other hand, is pretty well convinced that her clubfoot makes her worthless and unlovable, because her mother has been telling her so for her entire life.
(What makes this even worse is that even in the forties a clubfoot was a totally treatable condition, so if Ada’s mother had it treated when Ada was a baby then - well, okay, she probably would have come up with a different excuse to tell Ada she was worthless and unlovable. But at least Ada could have run away without bleeding all over the ground!)
Anyway, they’re sent to the countryside where they are boarded with an old lady who is still super depressed over her lover Becky’s death two years before (the book doesn’t 100% spell out that they were lovers, but it’s pretty obvious), and the rest of the book is about Ada learning how to cope with being treated decently and also how to ride a pony, because why not, everything is better with ponies.
What I’m Reading Now
I’ve almost finished Melanie Wallace’s The Girl in the Garden, which is well-written but bleak: the story of a lot of lonely people, living side by side, and almost all too damaged by their lives to reach out of that loneliness and connect with each other. One of them lives in a literal compound surrounded by a high concrete wall. This is a pretty good metaphor for everyone in this book.
This is another NetGalley book, and probably one I wouldn’t have read if it hadn’t been free on NetGalley. On the one hand I am glad I read it, because it is very well-written - the descriptions of the New England landscape, the ocean, the desolate winters, are very evocative - but on the other hand it reminds me why I don’t read this sort of book very often.
What I Plan to Read Next
I’m still waiting for the library to get me the new American Girl book. I am beginning to suspect that some power in the universe doesn’t want me to read this book.
