Wednesday Reading Meme
Apr. 11th, 2018 08:53 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
osprey_archerWhat I’ve Just Finished Reading
Mary Stewart’s My Brother Michael, which is a good solid Mary Stewart book, with the added bonus of being set in Greece and therefore having oodles of Greek scenery. A good mystery, some solid suspense, a book you will like if you like Mary Stewart; and if you don’t like Mary Stewart… well, I guess we all have our crotchets.
I also finished Gypsy’s Sowing and Reaping and moved right on to Gypsy’s Year at the Golden Crescent, in which Gypsy goes to boarding school, and promptly gets a violent crush on Maude Clare, her stylish classmate. As Gypsy writes to her mother, “She and I are never going to marry, because we could never love our husbands as much as we do each other. Besides, I’d a good deal rather have her than a husband, and besides, I wouldn’t be married anyway. I think it’s horrid.”
Will Maude Clare turn out to be a bad influence? Will Gypsy then turn gratefully to Jane Bruce, her plain quiet roommate who is in mourning and therefore has Been Tempered in the Crucible of Suffering, and discover within her the true beauty of character? If you have any read any nineteenth century boarding school novels, you know the answer is yes. But, like any good nineteenth century boarding school story, there are also jolly midnight feasts, and capers, and dancing, and maybe even occasionally a spot of Virgil.
I also read Jean Webster’s Much Ado about Peter, a set of linked comic short stories about the same characters. This seems to be rather more her usual vein than her most famous book, Daddy-Long-Legs, and it’s a light, entertaining vein, but I must confess that when I read Jean Webster I am always hoping for more like Daddy-Long-Legs and except for the actual sequel, Dear Enemy, I am always disappointed.
Aaaaand - drumroll, please! - I finished Italo Calvino’s If On a Winter’s Night a Traveler, although I must confess that the book wore out its welcome long before it ended. I’m sure that a book that consists of a succession of first chapters of different books is extremely clever but I got tired of it, especially as the first chapters all seemed so stylistically similar: it didn’t feel like we were getting books from a bunch of different authors. Possibly that’s a translation problem, though.
What I’m Reading Now
The urge came upon me to read some mid-twentieth century British literature, so I’ve started D. E. Stevenson’s Celia’s House and I’ve put E. M. Delafield’s Diary of a Provincial Lady on hold. There’s been a bit of a Stevenson revival recently so her books aren’t too hard to get, but I suspect that it’s going to be difficult to get my hands on much Delafield and I’m already bitter because the one book of hers that I have read was completely delightful.
I’ve also been reading Brian Matthew Jordan’s Marching Home: Union Veterans and Their Unending Civil War, but I think I’m not going to finish it. Jordan’s thesis is that union veterans were treated shabbily in the aftermath of the Civil War, which may in fact be true, but he’s so relentless in the pursuit of this thesis that I keep wanting to argue with him: has it occurred to him that perhaps some soldiers had trouble readjusting to civilian life not because civilians Just Didn’t Understand, but because coming home from a war is just plain hard?
He also gives the impression that all or nearly all Civil War soldiers came home Broken in Body and Spirit, and I’m sure some few of them did, but still I felt it would have strengthened the book if he had mentioned at least in passing that this was not universal. It might seem to undermine his thesis, but a little more elasticity would make his thesis more interesting anyway.
What I Plan to Read Next
I have one more Elizabeth Stuart Phelps’ book. (Not that this by any means exhausts the Elizabeth Stuart Phelps supply; I just can’t read her whole enormous oeuvre at once.) It’s The Story of Avis, the tale of a young woman becoming an artist in the nineteenth century. Will she kill herself at the end of the book? (This happens to a lot of young women artists in nineteenth century fiction.) We shall see.
Mary Stewart’s My Brother Michael, which is a good solid Mary Stewart book, with the added bonus of being set in Greece and therefore having oodles of Greek scenery. A good mystery, some solid suspense, a book you will like if you like Mary Stewart; and if you don’t like Mary Stewart… well, I guess we all have our crotchets.
I also finished Gypsy’s Sowing and Reaping and moved right on to Gypsy’s Year at the Golden Crescent, in which Gypsy goes to boarding school, and promptly gets a violent crush on Maude Clare, her stylish classmate. As Gypsy writes to her mother, “She and I are never going to marry, because we could never love our husbands as much as we do each other. Besides, I’d a good deal rather have her than a husband, and besides, I wouldn’t be married anyway. I think it’s horrid.”
Will Maude Clare turn out to be a bad influence? Will Gypsy then turn gratefully to Jane Bruce, her plain quiet roommate who is in mourning and therefore has Been Tempered in the Crucible of Suffering, and discover within her the true beauty of character? If you have any read any nineteenth century boarding school novels, you know the answer is yes. But, like any good nineteenth century boarding school story, there are also jolly midnight feasts, and capers, and dancing, and maybe even occasionally a spot of Virgil.
I also read Jean Webster’s Much Ado about Peter, a set of linked comic short stories about the same characters. This seems to be rather more her usual vein than her most famous book, Daddy-Long-Legs, and it’s a light, entertaining vein, but I must confess that when I read Jean Webster I am always hoping for more like Daddy-Long-Legs and except for the actual sequel, Dear Enemy, I am always disappointed.
Aaaaand - drumroll, please! - I finished Italo Calvino’s If On a Winter’s Night a Traveler, although I must confess that the book wore out its welcome long before it ended. I’m sure that a book that consists of a succession of first chapters of different books is extremely clever but I got tired of it, especially as the first chapters all seemed so stylistically similar: it didn’t feel like we were getting books from a bunch of different authors. Possibly that’s a translation problem, though.
What I’m Reading Now
The urge came upon me to read some mid-twentieth century British literature, so I’ve started D. E. Stevenson’s Celia’s House and I’ve put E. M. Delafield’s Diary of a Provincial Lady on hold. There’s been a bit of a Stevenson revival recently so her books aren’t too hard to get, but I suspect that it’s going to be difficult to get my hands on much Delafield and I’m already bitter because the one book of hers that I have read was completely delightful.
I’ve also been reading Brian Matthew Jordan’s Marching Home: Union Veterans and Their Unending Civil War, but I think I’m not going to finish it. Jordan’s thesis is that union veterans were treated shabbily in the aftermath of the Civil War, which may in fact be true, but he’s so relentless in the pursuit of this thesis that I keep wanting to argue with him: has it occurred to him that perhaps some soldiers had trouble readjusting to civilian life not because civilians Just Didn’t Understand, but because coming home from a war is just plain hard?
He also gives the impression that all or nearly all Civil War soldiers came home Broken in Body and Spirit, and I’m sure some few of them did, but still I felt it would have strengthened the book if he had mentioned at least in passing that this was not universal. It might seem to undermine his thesis, but a little more elasticity would make his thesis more interesting anyway.
What I Plan to Read Next
I have one more Elizabeth Stuart Phelps’ book. (Not that this by any means exhausts the Elizabeth Stuart Phelps supply; I just can’t read her whole enormous oeuvre at once.) It’s The Story of Avis, the tale of a young woman becoming an artist in the nineteenth century. Will she kill herself at the end of the book? (This happens to a lot of young women artists in nineteenth century fiction.) We shall see.
no subject
Date: 2018-04-11 02:23 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-04-12 01:30 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-04-11 05:21 pm (UTC)I remember reading Dear Enemy as a kid - I remember absolutely nothing about it except that it was epistolary and I ate it up. I didn't know it was a sequel.
I'm enjoying your tour through Girls of Yesteryear and Their Crushes, but also feeling the weight of unread books. I should set aside a month of this year for Stuff I Want to Read Not On My Reading Program.
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Date: 2018-04-12 01:23 am (UTC)I've managed to pack in so many Girls of Yesteryear because I've got a lot of downtime to read at the library, so I've downloaded loads of free old books from Google. Some of these things are books I've meant to read for years and just let slide because I didn't have a good time where they would fit in my day.
no subject
Date: 2018-04-12 01:50 pm (UTC)I've got a lot of downtime to read at the library
I'm so glad you have an awesome library job that lets you read! I don't miss the uncomfortable chairs or never having any money left over at the end of the month, but I DO miss the guaranteed 40 hours/week of downtime I used to have working at an unsuccessful gift shop/bookstore.
no subject
Date: 2018-04-12 02:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-04-11 06:01 pm (UTC)It's one of my favorites.
no subject
Date: 2018-04-12 01:27 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-04-11 09:02 pm (UTC)That would be hard to keep up interest - and, as you say, sufficient difference in the writing. Is there any linking thing in it?
I’ve put E. M. Delafield’s Diary of a Provincial Lady on home. There’s been a bit of a Stevenson revival recently so her books aren’t too hard to get,
Ha, I haven't even heard of Stevenson, but I fall over Diary of a Provincial Lady in omnimbus form practically everywhere I go. (I have a copy of it, too.) Cross-Atlantic differences again, I suppose!
no subject
Date: 2018-04-12 01:29 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-04-12 07:32 am (UTC)It's a bit impressive how many ways he comes up with to cut off a book at the first chapter, but still frustrating.
As is constantly failing to find a whole book!
no subject
Date: 2018-04-12 01:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-04-12 04:23 pm (UTC)(Time is always trying to break through and destroy everything.)
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Date: 2018-04-12 05:46 am (UTC)I haven't read Dear Enemy. If I knew it was a sequel to Daddy-Long-Legs, I had forgotten that.
I read If On a Winter’s Night a Traveler at uni; I remember being simultaneously impressed and frustrated by it. Not something I've ever felt compelled to revisit.
no subject
Date: 2018-04-12 02:36 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-04-12 02:27 pm (UTC)HOW GOOD IS DADDY-LONG-LEGS.
I felt much the same way about If On A Winter's Night tbh, a disappointment after the hype. By contrast Invisible Cities, which is a collection of standalone stories linked only by theme, I thought was amazing and beautiful.
no subject
Date: 2018-04-12 02:36 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-04-13 11:34 am (UTC)