osprey_archer (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
osprey_archer) wrote2017-02-01 06:08 am
osprey_archer) wrote2017-02-01 06:08 am
Entry tags:
Wednesday Reading Meme
What I’ve Just Finished Reading
I’ve knocked two books off the TBR pile! Although actually, I think they were both rereads, but it’s been so long since I’ve read them (if in fact I did read them before) that I don’t remember them at all.
Joan Blos’s A Gathering of Days is a Newbery book, so I almost certainly read it during the Newbery Project 1.0 (when I was eleven), but I reread it just in case I hadn’t and subsequently realized that I’d forgotten this because it’s a super forgettable book. But also it’s pretty short and there’s some fun bits of American history in the 1830s info sprinkled in, so I’m not sorry I reread it.
Janet Taylor Lisle’s A Message from the Match Girl is one of those books where there’s maaaaaybe something magic going on but it’s never quite certain either way. I approached this book with trepidation once I realized this, because Lisle wrote another book (Afternoon of the Elves) that sort of feints in this direction but turns out to have no magic at all, not even the “is it or isn’t it?” kind, and I felt quite betrayed.
But A Message from the Match Girl manages its balancing act a little better, which oddly is probably why I forgot it almost totally after reading it (I did get a few whiffs of memory as I reread: the scene where they find a package in the pocket of the bronze Match Girl statue at the park lodged somewhere in my mind). It’s competent at what it does, so it didn’t upset me, but Lisle doesn’t do it as well as Zilpha Keatley Snyder (or for that matter Elizabeth Marie Pope, in The Perilous Gard), so I didn’t remember it particularly either.
What I’m Reading Now
The Hunger Games! I’ve just finished part 2 and OH MY GOD, KATNISS, I am amazed that she’s still on her feet and moving forward rather than a sobbing wreck.
Over the years I’ve picked up a lot of spoilers for these books, not on purpose, just by vague osmosis. On the one hand I wonder what reading these would be like without knowing beforehand, say, that the rules of the game would be changed so that two tribunes from the same district could both win (I expected that to happen much earlier in the book, honestly), but on the other hand I think this would be absolutely gut-wrenching to read without being spoiled for a lot of it beforehand and honestly I am okay with not having my gut wrenched right now.
What I Plan to Read Next
Catching Fire and Mockingjay. I’ve also, in much lighter reading fare, borrowed the first Miss Read book from my mother, who promises that it is about charming English village things (the first book in called Village School) which sounds just delightful right now. I think it will be my new bedtime book.
I’ve knocked two books off the TBR pile! Although actually, I think they were both rereads, but it’s been so long since I’ve read them (if in fact I did read them before) that I don’t remember them at all.
Joan Blos’s A Gathering of Days is a Newbery book, so I almost certainly read it during the Newbery Project 1.0 (when I was eleven), but I reread it just in case I hadn’t and subsequently realized that I’d forgotten this because it’s a super forgettable book. But also it’s pretty short and there’s some fun bits of American history in the 1830s info sprinkled in, so I’m not sorry I reread it.
Janet Taylor Lisle’s A Message from the Match Girl is one of those books where there’s maaaaaybe something magic going on but it’s never quite certain either way. I approached this book with trepidation once I realized this, because Lisle wrote another book (Afternoon of the Elves) that sort of feints in this direction but turns out to have no magic at all, not even the “is it or isn’t it?” kind, and I felt quite betrayed.
But A Message from the Match Girl manages its balancing act a little better, which oddly is probably why I forgot it almost totally after reading it (I did get a few whiffs of memory as I reread: the scene where they find a package in the pocket of the bronze Match Girl statue at the park lodged somewhere in my mind). It’s competent at what it does, so it didn’t upset me, but Lisle doesn’t do it as well as Zilpha Keatley Snyder (or for that matter Elizabeth Marie Pope, in The Perilous Gard), so I didn’t remember it particularly either.
What I’m Reading Now
The Hunger Games! I’ve just finished part 2 and OH MY GOD, KATNISS, I am amazed that she’s still on her feet and moving forward rather than a sobbing wreck.
Over the years I’ve picked up a lot of spoilers for these books, not on purpose, just by vague osmosis. On the one hand I wonder what reading these would be like without knowing beforehand, say, that the rules of the game would be changed so that two tribunes from the same district could both win (I expected that to happen much earlier in the book, honestly), but on the other hand I think this would be absolutely gut-wrenching to read without being spoiled for a lot of it beforehand and honestly I am okay with not having my gut wrenched right now.
What I Plan to Read Next
Catching Fire and Mockingjay. I’ve also, in much lighter reading fare, borrowed the first Miss Read book from my mother, who promises that it is about charming English village things (the first book in called Village School) which sounds just delightful right now. I think it will be my new bedtime book.