Wednesday Reading Meme
Feb. 14th, 2018 09:31 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
osprey_archerWhat I’ve Just Finished Reading
Ellen Kindt McKenzie’s Drujienna’s Harp, which I hoped I would love but did not, sadly. I guess sometimes books just don’t click for whatever reason.
What I’m Reading Now
Mary Downing Hahn’s Stepping on the Cracks, which is set on the American home front during World War II and is about two girls, Margaret and Elizabeth, who live next door to each other and are best friends, which all in all ought to be crack for me but in fact I just can’t get over how mean Elizabeth is. She’s always teasing Margaret for being a ‘fraidy-cat to make Margaret do whatever Elizabeth wants, and when she and Margaret discover that the bullying neighbor boy is hiding his brother the deserter in a cabin in the woods, her first impulse is to blackmail the neighbor - and then she’s like, “Nah, maybe we should tell on the deserter.”
And, okay, the bullying neighbor boy totally brought that blackmail on himself - he destroyed their tree house! It’s only just he should built them a new one! - but tattling on the deserter just seems… ehhhhhh. (Admittedly she backs off on the idea two chapters later, but still.) It would get him sent to jail or shot; it’s just a really mean interfering kind of thing to do to a guy who’s just living in the woods not hurting anybody.
So right now I’m team “new friends for Margaret.” Unfortunately there don’t seem to be any new friends in the wings, unless I suppose she befriends the mean neighbor boy. But frankly it seems more likely that Elizabeth will befriend him, in that “not dating because they’re too young but you can totally tell they’re going to get together once they grow up” way which is an actual relationship category in children’s books. They have so much in common! They’re both so mean.
I’m also keeping on with Kathleen Norris’s The Cloister Walk, which has settled into a discussion about the Psalms, which I find far less aggravating than Norris’s musings about The Poet’s Calling. In fact some of it is quite interesting! I’m at the part where she’s talking about the anger of the Psalms, which is making me want to read the Psalms themselves.
What I Plan to Read Next
THE ALA JUST ANNOUNCED THE 2018 NEWBERY & CALDECOTT WINNERS. Awww, the Caldecott winner looks super adorable: just look at this cover. It’s called Wolf in the Snow and it’s about a wolf cub and a girl who rescue each other and it has strengthened my long-held belief that the Caldecott people are obsessed with snow. There are five Caldecott books that reference snow directly in the title and two others with illustrations all about snow (The Polar Express and Owl Moon).
The Newbery Winner doesn’t ring my chimes the same way, largely because the description is so vague (what do they mean when they say “the characters are the definition of creative agency”? That could mean anything), but we’ll see how I feel about it once I’ve read it.
Ellen Kindt McKenzie’s Drujienna’s Harp, which I hoped I would love but did not, sadly. I guess sometimes books just don’t click for whatever reason.
What I’m Reading Now
Mary Downing Hahn’s Stepping on the Cracks, which is set on the American home front during World War II and is about two girls, Margaret and Elizabeth, who live next door to each other and are best friends, which all in all ought to be crack for me but in fact I just can’t get over how mean Elizabeth is. She’s always teasing Margaret for being a ‘fraidy-cat to make Margaret do whatever Elizabeth wants, and when she and Margaret discover that the bullying neighbor boy is hiding his brother the deserter in a cabin in the woods, her first impulse is to blackmail the neighbor - and then she’s like, “Nah, maybe we should tell on the deserter.”
And, okay, the bullying neighbor boy totally brought that blackmail on himself - he destroyed their tree house! It’s only just he should built them a new one! - but tattling on the deserter just seems… ehhhhhh. (Admittedly she backs off on the idea two chapters later, but still.) It would get him sent to jail or shot; it’s just a really mean interfering kind of thing to do to a guy who’s just living in the woods not hurting anybody.
So right now I’m team “new friends for Margaret.” Unfortunately there don’t seem to be any new friends in the wings, unless I suppose she befriends the mean neighbor boy. But frankly it seems more likely that Elizabeth will befriend him, in that “not dating because they’re too young but you can totally tell they’re going to get together once they grow up” way which is an actual relationship category in children’s books. They have so much in common! They’re both so mean.
I’m also keeping on with Kathleen Norris’s The Cloister Walk, which has settled into a discussion about the Psalms, which I find far less aggravating than Norris’s musings about The Poet’s Calling. In fact some of it is quite interesting! I’m at the part where she’s talking about the anger of the Psalms, which is making me want to read the Psalms themselves.
What I Plan to Read Next
THE ALA JUST ANNOUNCED THE 2018 NEWBERY & CALDECOTT WINNERS. Awww, the Caldecott winner looks super adorable: just look at this cover. It’s called Wolf in the Snow and it’s about a wolf cub and a girl who rescue each other and it has strengthened my long-held belief that the Caldecott people are obsessed with snow. There are five Caldecott books that reference snow directly in the title and two others with illustrations all about snow (The Polar Express and Owl Moon).
The Newbery Winner doesn’t ring my chimes the same way, largely because the description is so vague (what do they mean when they say “the characters are the definition of creative agency”? That could mean anything), but we’ll see how I feel about it once I’ve read it.
no subject
Date: 2018-02-14 04:49 pm (UTC)What won you over? I had the feeling while I was reading that I was walking around and around a round house looking for a door or a window or anything, but aside from Tha's cleverness figuring out how to interpret the Know-Nothings (which is a pretty minor part of the book), I just couldn't find something that would let me into the story.
no subject
Date: 2018-02-14 04:56 pm (UTC)I think the world set-up--the different zones, the times of day and the way the light worked, the relationship of this with the bottles and the bottles to the goblets--all that appealed to me. And some of what I recognize to be didactic elements--like in the Shophosian (sp? I'm doing this from memory) Mists--appealed to me in the way that some of the didacticism in Narnia does. And I guess I liked the overall prophecy, and I was interested how the prophecy-conflicts were going to resolve in the current generation. And I liked the end-of-the-world place. And I think I liked the weirdness of it? And some of the details, like the harp strings seeming to extend up through the ceiling of the curiosity shop.