Wednesday Reading Meme
Dec. 6th, 2017 09:00 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
osprey_archerWhat I’ve Just Finished Reading
I have at last finished all the books in the Unread Book Club! GO ME. My copy of The Silver Brumby included a novella called Wild Echoes Ringing, which was the last story Elyne Mitchell wrote before she died. I suspect she had not finished editing it, or indeed possibly finished the first draft of it, because it reads like someone bunged together all the bits she had written even though in a final draft she probably would have done things like, say, actually write the scene where the Brumby Hunter nearly fell off the cliff. The other characters refer to this scene as if we have just read it, even though in the scene as it actually happens, it’s the Brumby Hunter’s dog who falls off the cliff.
Naturally Thowra rescues the fallen dog, and there is a big scene of reconciliation because this dog has hitherto been their mortal enemy… except in the next scene, which seems like it might actually be set earlier chronologically?, they’re all enemies again.
This needed a good editor, or possibly an editor willing to say, “This is too early in the drafting process to turn into another Silver Brumby story. Alas!”
Sharon Bell Mathis’s The Hundred Penny Box also feels unfinished, although in this case, deliberately so: I’m not sure why she decided to end the story on such an inconclusive note but it’s clearly intentional.
Young Michael’s great-great-aunt Dew has a wooden box with a hundred pennies in it, one for every year of her life; she likes to count them over and tell Michael the story of each year. It’s large and battered and (one can put presume) the sort of thing one barks one’s shins on constantly, so Michael’s mother wants to get rid of the box and put the pennies in something smaller - never mind Aunt Dew loves the box as much as the pennies.
That’s it. That’s the story. The books just ends with the problem hanging there. Mom still wants to burn the box; Aunt Dew still loves the box; and she won’t hear of Michael hiding it somewhere so Mom can’t get at it. It’s beautifully written but oddly upsetting.
What I’m Reading Now
I’ve started reading Lester V. Horwitz’s The Longest Raid of the Civil War: Little-Known and Untold Stories of Morgan’s Raid in Kentucky, Indiana & Ohio, which is, well, what it says on the tin. I’m just a few pages in and he’s already shared a recruiting poster for the 9th Tennessee Cavalry that reads in part, “Come on boys, if you want a heap of fun and to shoot at yankees. Join now! Must furnish your own arms and mounts.”
This is possibly the most American recruitment ad in the most American war ever.
What I Plan to Read Next
THE LIBRARY FINALLY HAS FIRE AND HEMLOCK FOR ME. YES. IT ONLY TOOK THREE MONTHS FOR THEM TO GET IT.
I have at last finished all the books in the Unread Book Club! GO ME. My copy of The Silver Brumby included a novella called Wild Echoes Ringing, which was the last story Elyne Mitchell wrote before she died. I suspect she had not finished editing it, or indeed possibly finished the first draft of it, because it reads like someone bunged together all the bits she had written even though in a final draft she probably would have done things like, say, actually write the scene where the Brumby Hunter nearly fell off the cliff. The other characters refer to this scene as if we have just read it, even though in the scene as it actually happens, it’s the Brumby Hunter’s dog who falls off the cliff.
Naturally Thowra rescues the fallen dog, and there is a big scene of reconciliation because this dog has hitherto been their mortal enemy… except in the next scene, which seems like it might actually be set earlier chronologically?, they’re all enemies again.
This needed a good editor, or possibly an editor willing to say, “This is too early in the drafting process to turn into another Silver Brumby story. Alas!”
Sharon Bell Mathis’s The Hundred Penny Box also feels unfinished, although in this case, deliberately so: I’m not sure why she decided to end the story on such an inconclusive note but it’s clearly intentional.
Young Michael’s great-great-aunt Dew has a wooden box with a hundred pennies in it, one for every year of her life; she likes to count them over and tell Michael the story of each year. It’s large and battered and (one can put presume) the sort of thing one barks one’s shins on constantly, so Michael’s mother wants to get rid of the box and put the pennies in something smaller - never mind Aunt Dew loves the box as much as the pennies.
That’s it. That’s the story. The books just ends with the problem hanging there. Mom still wants to burn the box; Aunt Dew still loves the box; and she won’t hear of Michael hiding it somewhere so Mom can’t get at it. It’s beautifully written but oddly upsetting.
What I’m Reading Now
I’ve started reading Lester V. Horwitz’s The Longest Raid of the Civil War: Little-Known and Untold Stories of Morgan’s Raid in Kentucky, Indiana & Ohio, which is, well, what it says on the tin. I’m just a few pages in and he’s already shared a recruiting poster for the 9th Tennessee Cavalry that reads in part, “Come on boys, if you want a heap of fun and to shoot at yankees. Join now! Must furnish your own arms and mounts.”
This is possibly the most American recruitment ad in the most American war ever.
What I Plan to Read Next
THE LIBRARY FINALLY HAS FIRE AND HEMLOCK FOR ME. YES. IT ONLY TOOK THREE MONTHS FOR THEM TO GET IT.
no subject
Date: 2017-12-06 02:00 pm (UTC)9 years might have been more appropriate. Consider yourself lucky. ;-)
no subject
Date: 2017-12-06 05:03 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-12-06 09:00 pm (UTC)I have very, very old memories of reading this book, but mostly just the idea of one penny for every year of Aunt Dew's life, nothing of the actual story, so I have no idea why it ends the way it does. The illustrations were by Leo and Diane Dillon?
no subject
Date: 2017-12-07 10:09 pm (UTC)I really liked the idea of having a penny for each year of her life, though - that's very striking. Probably I would have preferred the book if it was mostly about her telling the stories connected to the pennies rather than the box being in peril.