Wednesday Reading Meme
Nov. 16th, 2016 08:13 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
osprey_archerWhat I’ve Just Finished Reading
I spent most of Monday afternoon sitting in my chaise in my sunny room, drinking a cup of tea as I read Charles Finch’s latest Charles Lenox book, The Inheritance, and this is just about the best use of an afternoon that I can think of. This series is a gift that keeps on giving: I love Charles Lenox and his ever-so-slowly expanding group of family and friends and their affection for each other and even the infodumps, God bless Finch’s enthusiasm for weird bits of historical trivia. Obviously what this book needed was a page-long digression about why American drive on the right while the British drive on the left.
This book also includes lengthy flashbacks of Lenox’s schooldays at Harrow during the early Victorian era. YESSSSSS, this is everything I never knew I wanted from a Charles Lenox book! (Also I love that Charles’ older brother Edmund was kind of obnoxious and full of himself when they were at Harrow together. People grow and change!)
Also: DALLINGTON D: D: D:
In other news,![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
littlerhymes and I read Mary Grant Bruce’s A Little Bush Maid, the first book in the classic Australian Billabong series, which has all characteristic strengths of early twentieth century children’s fiction - breathless adventure! entertainingly unlikely coincidences! delicious food description! delightful landscape description! modern fiction could really stand to include more descriptive passages - and also the characteristic weaknesses, which is to say racism.
In this case, it’s not only racist but actually at the more racist end of the “how racist is this book?” spectrum of its time period, and the spectrum is pretty racist to begin with.
We’re still going to read the next book, though, just to see how many more ways our heroine Norah will save the day. In book one alone she saved a) an entire flock of sheep from a bushfire, b) a lion tamer from his lion, and c) a mysterious hermit from typhoid or typhus, I can never remember which is which. Is Norah the first Australian superheroine? Stay tuned to find out!
What I’m Reading Now
I’m allllmost done with Rob Dunn’s Never Out of Season: How Having the Food We Want When We Want It Threatens Our Food Supply and Our Future, which is terrifically interesting in “World-wide famine indirectly caused by agribusiness is not an apocalyptic scenario I had previously considered” kind of way, although unfortunately not quite so interesting on a page by page level.
What I Plan to Read Next
I still need to read The Things They Carried.
I spent most of Monday afternoon sitting in my chaise in my sunny room, drinking a cup of tea as I read Charles Finch’s latest Charles Lenox book, The Inheritance, and this is just about the best use of an afternoon that I can think of. This series is a gift that keeps on giving: I love Charles Lenox and his ever-so-slowly expanding group of family and friends and their affection for each other and even the infodumps, God bless Finch’s enthusiasm for weird bits of historical trivia. Obviously what this book needed was a page-long digression about why American drive on the right while the British drive on the left.
This book also includes lengthy flashbacks of Lenox’s schooldays at Harrow during the early Victorian era. YESSSSSS, this is everything I never knew I wanted from a Charles Lenox book! (Also I love that Charles’ older brother Edmund was kind of obnoxious and full of himself when they were at Harrow together. People grow and change!)
Also: DALLINGTON D: D: D:
In other news,
littlerhymes and I read Mary Grant Bruce’s A Little Bush Maid, the first book in the classic Australian Billabong series, which has all characteristic strengths of early twentieth century children’s fiction - breathless adventure! entertainingly unlikely coincidences! delicious food description! delightful landscape description! modern fiction could really stand to include more descriptive passages - and also the characteristic weaknesses, which is to say racism. In this case, it’s not only racist but actually at the more racist end of the “how racist is this book?” spectrum of its time period, and the spectrum is pretty racist to begin with.
We’re still going to read the next book, though, just to see how many more ways our heroine Norah will save the day. In book one alone she saved a) an entire flock of sheep from a bushfire, b) a lion tamer from his lion, and c) a mysterious hermit from typhoid or typhus, I can never remember which is which. Is Norah the first Australian superheroine? Stay tuned to find out!
What I’m Reading Now
I’m allllmost done with Rob Dunn’s Never Out of Season: How Having the Food We Want When We Want It Threatens Our Food Supply and Our Future, which is terrifically interesting in “World-wide famine indirectly caused by agribusiness is not an apocalyptic scenario I had previously considered” kind of way, although unfortunately not quite so interesting on a page by page level.
What I Plan to Read Next
I still need to read The Things They Carried.
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no subject
Date: 2016-11-17 08:09 am (UTC)The chief narrative problem of the Billabong series is that they are all super competent and so must constantly help others because they rarely need help. And as they get older and older they get more and more competent so they need to help with bigger and bigger projects.
As you can tell by the episodic nature of the book, it was originally serialised and then printed as one volume. The later volumes were written as books.
no subject
Date: 2016-11-17 11:50 am (UTC)Are there particular Billabong books that stand out to you as particularly good? Or bad? There's so very many!
no subject
Date: 2016-11-20 08:41 am (UTC)From Billabong to London (1914)
Billabong's Daughter (1924)
Billabong Adventurers (1928)
no subject
Date: 2016-11-20 10:19 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-11-17 01:25 pm (UTC)I fully expect the Billabong crew to save the entire nation of Australia by the final book. I'm not sure what they will save it from or how, but I'm sure they'll find something!
no subject
Date: 2016-11-20 06:27 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-11-17 11:49 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-11-17 01:24 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-12-01 03:52 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-12-01 04:12 am (UTC)I can't decide whether I'm angry or impressed. Maybe a little of both. I really wasn't expecting that.
no subject
Date: 2016-12-01 10:49 pm (UTC)Of course he didn't in the end, but I actually thought he might, which impressed me.