Wednesday Reading Meme

[osprey_archer]

What I’ve Just Finished Reading

Andrea Cheng’s Year of the Book, a short book about a Chinese-American girl whose best friend is waffling between continuing to be her best friend or maybe becoming the best friend of a different girl in their class. This was pretty much the story of my life in fifth grade and I reacted pretty much the same way that Anna does, which is to say by ignoring the problem and reading 5,000 books rather than attempting to do anything about it, so as you might imagine this book and I bonded.

This strategy ended up working out fine for both me and Anna, but all the same we might have both benefited from being a bit more proactive and trying to find new friends rather than concluding that social skills were dumb and the only true friends were in the pages of books anyway.

I also read Shirley Jackson’s We Have Always Lived in the Castle, because there’s a movie version coming out later this year. I’m having second thoughts about the movie, because the book is so overwhelmingly creepy - not in a gory or jump-scare sort of way, but just in the creation of an atmosphere of creeping wrongness - that I broke my usual rule and read part of the introduction before I finished the book because I had to know if I was right about the identity of the murderer. (I was.)

What I’m Reading Now

I’ve started reading Elizabeth Stuart Phelps’ The Story of Avis, which is a novel about a woman artist written in the 1880s & set in the 1860s and therefore very relevant to my interests - but, alas, rather a slog to read.

I also started Winston Churchill’s Savrola - yes, that Winston Churchill; there was another one, but he mostly wrote comedies of manners, not dramatic tales of revolution spearheaded by a heroic young politician who is the leader of his party and the defender of the constitution of the Ruritanian state of Laurania.

Yes. Churchill wrote a whole novel about his self-insert Mary Sue. I’m fascinated to see if he’s going to be Tragically Wounded at some point and then nursed back From the Brink of Death by his love interest, or else face rejection from his party for standing up in favor of what is right instead of what is expedient and then being thrust into the political wilderness before finally being called back when the country realizes that it truly needs him - which I’m sure Churchill thought was the storyline of his actual life, now that I think about it. Possibly his self-insert will simply go from strength to strength without the awkward “political wilderness” period in between.

And I’m reading Ian Mortimer’s Time Traveler’s Guide to Restoration Britain. In which a fire has just burned down London! Don’t time travel back to 1666, is what I’m getting out of this.

What I Plan to Read Next

E. M. Delafield’s Diary of a Provincial Lady!

Comments

[asakiyume]

I wonder if Andrea Cheng has reached the same conclusion you have about being proactive with regard to finding new friends. Books have real advantages over flesh-and-blood friends in some ways, but obvious disadvantages too....

[osprey_archer]

I was going to write "Books never betray you!" - but we've all had that experience where you reread an old favorite and you discover that the writing is actually terrible and you just didn't notice when you were eight, or the whole story is littered with horrible stereotypes, or whatever. Even books are not safe.

Anna befriends a crossing guard and also an elderly man, and by the end of the book Anna and her friend have reconnected and Anna is working at the friendship rather than just sullenly waiting to be abandoned - so I think Cheng is indeed in favor of being proactive about one's friendships, although proactivity doesn't always mean finding new friends.

[asakiyume]

Aww, that sounds really sweet. I believe wholeheartedly in the sustaining of friendships like the one with the crossing guard and the old man. Although some old people can be just as immature and selfish as some young people, years of experience along with social norms that say older people should be responsible/protective around much younger people mean that there's a higher likelihood they'll be forbearing and generous with young people they become friends with, and that extra leeway gives a younger person time to heal up and get stronger and also realize what friendship can really look like. Also, when you realize that friendship can be with, for example, a crossing guard, your sense of what friendship can be gets richer and realer.

[osprey_archer]

There really ought to be more books with intergenerational friendships. American culture - especially school culture - forces people to be around other people of their own age all the time and there's nothing wrong with same-age friends, but there are a lot more people in the world than that, you know? I think it's good for people to have older (and hopefully more forbearing) friends, and also sometimes to be the older and more forbearing friend to someone younger.

[asakiyume]

I know my life's definitely been enriched in both directions!

[evelyn_b]

was pretty much the story of my life in fifth grade and I reacted pretty much the same way that Anna does, which is to say by ignoring the problem and reading 5,000 books rather than attempting to do anything about it

Hah! I feel this book and I might have some things in common. <3

So. . . how's Winston Churchill as a writer?

[osprey_archer]

Well, so far he's a bit dull too, unfortunately. I'm hoping things will pick up as the book goes on.

It doesn't help that I keep getting yanked out of the book. My coworkers will persist in talking to me. (Possibly I have not actually changed very much since fifth grade.)

[thisbluespirit]

LOL, I had not realised that Churchill wrote self-insert fic, but am somehow not surprised!

And I’m reading Ian Mortimer’s Time Traveler’s Guide to Restoration Britain. In which a fire has just burned down London! Don’t time travel back to 1666, is what I’m getting out of this.

1665 is worse, though!

[osprey_archer]

That's the plague, right? Maybe it's best just to skip the 1660s entirely.

[thisbluespirit]

You'd probably be okay if you arrived in 1667 or something instead.

And, yep, plague, mostly in London! Even less fun than fire.

[sovay]

I also read Shirley Jackson’s We Have Always Lived in the Castle, because there’s a movie version coming out later this year.

I keep forgetting about that! I have enormous difficulty picturing it as a movie; it's the kind of story which at a stretch I can see as a stage play, but otherwise not as anything but itself.

[edit] To be fair, The Haunting of Hill House (1959) generated a surprisingly fine movie. But the movie and the book are really not quite the same story and I'm waiting to see if that happens with We Have Always Lived in the Castle as well.

[osprey_archer]

The effect of the book is so dependent on Merricat's narrative voice that I'm not sure it can be adapted, really. A voiceover is a clumsy thing compared to a first-person narrator.

The story itself has enough inherent drama that I'm sure it can be made into a movie of some kind - but I think it will inevitably be quite different from the book, even more than movies usually are different from their source material.

[skygiants]

What's most important is that we understand Churchill's self-insert is not only extremely handsome but a VERY BRILLIANT SPEECHWRITER!

[osprey_archer]

I haven't gotten to his speechwriting yet but I am sure that it is epic. There has already been a loving description of his library, which shows him to be a man of Culture but also of Action.

[missroserose]

Jackson had a real gift for creating that atmosphere of creeping dread. Even those of her books I'm less fond of, I can still pick up and easily find a paragraph that I just sit back and admire for its word choice and overall effect.

I'm thoroughly entertained about the Churchill wish-fulfillment piece, though I'm sorry it's far more dull to read than to snark about. :)

[osprey_archer]

The Churchill book may pick up! You never know. Or it may be a monument to the reason why Churchill went into politics rather than novel-writing.