Wednesday Reading Meme
May. 9th, 2018 07:46 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
osprey_archerWhat I’ve Just Finished Reading
I finished Winston Churchill’s Savrola, which only gets more delightfully iddy as it goes on. It includes this delightful exchange between the despotic President of Laurania and Savrola, who has just been caught kissing the President’s wife (who is totes in love with Savrola now, they’ve spoken like three times but that’s enough):
“Down on your knees and beg for mercy, you hound; down, or I will blow your face in!”
“I have always tried to despise death, and have always succeeded in despising you. I shall bow to neither.”
Savrola succeeds in defeating the despotic president, only for the tide of politics to turn against him, forcing him to flee the city with his love. They stop at the top of a hill to gaze back at the burning city. “‘And that,’ said Savrola after prolonged contemplation, ‘is my life’s work.’”
And then he nobly rides on, the human embodiment of the paragon described in Rudyard Kipling’s “If,” who can “meet with Triumph and Disaster/And treat those two imposters just the same.”
BUT WORRY NOT. Later on the people realize their folly and summon Savrola back, so after nobly bearing tragic defeat, he enjoys triumph after all.
I also read Elizabeth Enright’s Gone-Away Lake, which was delightful! On an early summer exploring expedition, cousins Portia and Julian discover a pair of quirky old people living in a colony of abandoned summer homes by the edge of a swamp (which used to be a lake), one of which they offer to our heroes Portia and Julian to make over into a clubhouse (!!!!!), AND there are illustrations by the husband-and-wife team who illustrated The Borrowers. Could you ask for more from a single book? It’s a perfect summer idyll of a novel.
What I’m Reading Now
I meant to save up my Sara Jeannette Duncans, but in the end I couldn’t resist, and I’ve begun reading A Social Departure: How Orthodocia and I Went Round the World by Ourselves, which is, well, what it says on the tin. In the late 1880s Duncan and her fellow journalist Lily Lewis (a.k.a. Orthodocia) traveled round the world together, starting in Montreal and working their way westward. They passed through Vancouver a mere two years after it was founded and have now landed in Japan, where they have had many adventures, not least of which involves eating something Duncan calls a fish roll which sounds an awful lot like sushi.
They also rent a tiny house for the duration of their stay, which prompts the characteristically droll reflection, “We might even make it valuable to other people by starting a domestic reform movement, when we went home, based on the Japanese idea. Life amounts to very little in this age if one cannot institute a reform of some sort, and we were glad of the opportunity to identify ourselves with the spirit of the times. We were thankful, too, that we had thought of a reform before they were all used up by more enterprising persons, which seems to be a contingency not very remote.” (76)
What I Plan to Read Next
The Iliad, as read by Dan Stevens. I meant to be a bit more thoughtful in my selection of which translation, but then I saw the audiobook with Dan Stevens as the reader and I threw caution to the winds, because it will be like I am listening to the bards of old and anyway the most important thing in an audiobook is a reader you like.
He also read The Odyssey and The Aeneid. I could get really cultured this summer.
I finished Winston Churchill’s Savrola, which only gets more delightfully iddy as it goes on. It includes this delightful exchange between the despotic President of Laurania and Savrola, who has just been caught kissing the President’s wife (who is totes in love with Savrola now, they’ve spoken like three times but that’s enough):
“Down on your knees and beg for mercy, you hound; down, or I will blow your face in!”
“I have always tried to despise death, and have always succeeded in despising you. I shall bow to neither.”
Savrola succeeds in defeating the despotic president, only for the tide of politics to turn against him, forcing him to flee the city with his love. They stop at the top of a hill to gaze back at the burning city. “‘And that,’ said Savrola after prolonged contemplation, ‘is my life’s work.’”
And then he nobly rides on, the human embodiment of the paragon described in Rudyard Kipling’s “If,” who can “meet with Triumph and Disaster/And treat those two imposters just the same.”
BUT WORRY NOT. Later on the people realize their folly and summon Savrola back, so after nobly bearing tragic defeat, he enjoys triumph after all.
I also read Elizabeth Enright’s Gone-Away Lake, which was delightful! On an early summer exploring expedition, cousins Portia and Julian discover a pair of quirky old people living in a colony of abandoned summer homes by the edge of a swamp (which used to be a lake), one of which they offer to our heroes Portia and Julian to make over into a clubhouse (!!!!!), AND there are illustrations by the husband-and-wife team who illustrated The Borrowers. Could you ask for more from a single book? It’s a perfect summer idyll of a novel.
What I’m Reading Now
I meant to save up my Sara Jeannette Duncans, but in the end I couldn’t resist, and I’ve begun reading A Social Departure: How Orthodocia and I Went Round the World by Ourselves, which is, well, what it says on the tin. In the late 1880s Duncan and her fellow journalist Lily Lewis (a.k.a. Orthodocia) traveled round the world together, starting in Montreal and working their way westward. They passed through Vancouver a mere two years after it was founded and have now landed in Japan, where they have had many adventures, not least of which involves eating something Duncan calls a fish roll which sounds an awful lot like sushi.
They also rent a tiny house for the duration of their stay, which prompts the characteristically droll reflection, “We might even make it valuable to other people by starting a domestic reform movement, when we went home, based on the Japanese idea. Life amounts to very little in this age if one cannot institute a reform of some sort, and we were glad of the opportunity to identify ourselves with the spirit of the times. We were thankful, too, that we had thought of a reform before they were all used up by more enterprising persons, which seems to be a contingency not very remote.” (76)
What I Plan to Read Next
The Iliad, as read by Dan Stevens. I meant to be a bit more thoughtful in my selection of which translation, but then I saw the audiobook with Dan Stevens as the reader and I threw caution to the winds, because it will be like I am listening to the bards of old and anyway the most important thing in an audiobook is a reader you like.
He also read The Odyssey and The Aeneid. I could get really cultured this summer.
no subject
Date: 2018-05-09 01:22 pm (UTC)I feel like Sara Jeanette Duncan would be just as at home in the blogosphere as she was in her time—given how many fads I've seen just in the past few years for fixing your life through x (be it changing your diet, throwing out possessions, rejecting established medical science, etc.)...though clearly her reflection on the limited number of possible reforms has turned out to be more hopeful than accurate.
no subject
Date: 2018-05-09 03:07 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-05-09 07:28 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-05-09 02:06 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-05-09 03:06 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-05-09 02:07 pm (UTC)Life amounts to very little in this age if one cannot institute a reform of some sort, and we were glad of the opportunity to identify ourselves with the spirit of the times. We were thankful, too, that we had thought of a reform before they were all used up by more enterprising persons, which seems to be a contingency not very remote.
Heh, I like her!
What translation did you wind up with?
no subject
Date: 2018-05-09 03:05 pm (UTC)I highly recommend Sara Jeannette Duncan to absolutely everyone, and it's probably a toss-up between this book and An American Girl in London which one is the better place to start.
I ended up with the Fitzgerald. In the end Dan Stevens trumped all other considerations.
no subject
Date: 2018-05-09 07:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-05-09 04:08 pm (UTC)I remember loving this book as a child, but I haven't read it in decades. I'm glad to know it not only holds up, but works for first-time adult readers.
no subject
Date: 2018-05-09 04:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-05-09 05:59 pm (UTC)I never did! The other major Enright I read was the Melendy quartet, The Saturdays (1941) and sequels.
no subject
Date: 2018-05-15 03:59 am (UTC)I haven't read any Sara Jeannette Duncan, but that one sounds thoroughly charming!
(Also hello! I wandered over here from
no subject
Date: 2018-05-16 02:29 pm (UTC)And hello! I of course feel that everyone should read Briarley and then buy copies for all 500 of their closest friends. :p (Seriously though, no pressure.) Most of my posts are in fact book posts so that's a good thing to be here for.