Wednesday Reading Meme
Jul. 18th, 2018 08:36 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
osprey_archerWhat I’ve Just Finished Reading
While I was in Canada, I pounced through a few of Lilian Jackson Braun’s The Cat Who… mysteries, which I have gazed at thoughtfully for years but put off reading because I had dire premonitions about cutesy talking cats.
There are no talking cats, cutesy or otherwise. There’s just Qwilleran, a reporter (who later in the series inherits a vast fortune and becomes a man of leisure who lives in a converted barn in an apple orchard) who solves mysteries with the help of his Siamese cat, Koko. Or at least he thinks Koko is helping. He also thinks that his mustache bristles when something suspicious happens, so he might just be an eccentric.
I read two of Braun’s novels and enjoyed them both, but to my surprise, my favorite was her book of short stories, The Cat Who Had 14 Tales. All the stories are cat-themed, but many of them aren’t mysteries: there’s a ghost story, an SF story about cat-like aliens, three stories told in the form of interviews at an old folks’ home, and an epistolary story. It really showcases Braun’s ability to create different voices and capture different time periods and it’s a lot of fun.
I also read a couple of Billabongs, a couple of Netgalley books (those will get their own posts), and Mary Stewart’s Thornyhold, which I enjoyed so much that I instantly lent it to my mother. In the years after World War II, our heroine Gilly (pronounced Jilly) inherits a beautiful house and garden from her godmother. “I looked out of the taxi window as the houses dwindled back and the road began to wind between high, banked hedges full of ivy and holly glistening with recent rain, and the red berries of honeysuckle twining through pillowfight drifts of traveller’s joy.” (37)
There’s a bit of supernatural coloring here, but mostly the story is about Gilly settling in the house and the neighborhood and making it her own and - it’s just a very calming read.
What I’m Reading Now
I’m taking another crack at Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment. I’m about a three-quarters of the way through it and there is something compulsively readable about Raskolnikov’s circular self-torturing “Have they realized yet that I murdered the old lady???” thoughts, but at the same time, man this could have used an editor.
Also reading Brian Switek’s My Beloved Brontosaurus, which is a little bit about the newest finds in dinosaur science but also about our emotional attachment to dinosaurs: why so many children go through a dinosaur phase, why we’re expected to grow out of our dinosaur phases, and why we cling to the name Brontosaurus even though by the rules of scientific nomenclature it ought to be Apatosaurus.
I would have preferred a bit more about dinosaurs and a bit less about how we feel about dinosaurs: the preference for Brontosaurus, for instance, strikes me as pretty self-explanatory. It’s more fun to say and it just sounds bigger. Of course people prefer it.
What I Plan to Read Next
I got a bunch of Mary Stewarts for my birthday, which I ought to space out a bit, because they are apt to run together if you read too many at once. But one more should be okay… I’m awfully tempted by her first book, Madam, Will You Talk?
While I was in Canada, I pounced through a few of Lilian Jackson Braun’s The Cat Who… mysteries, which I have gazed at thoughtfully for years but put off reading because I had dire premonitions about cutesy talking cats.
There are no talking cats, cutesy or otherwise. There’s just Qwilleran, a reporter (who later in the series inherits a vast fortune and becomes a man of leisure who lives in a converted barn in an apple orchard) who solves mysteries with the help of his Siamese cat, Koko. Or at least he thinks Koko is helping. He also thinks that his mustache bristles when something suspicious happens, so he might just be an eccentric.
I read two of Braun’s novels and enjoyed them both, but to my surprise, my favorite was her book of short stories, The Cat Who Had 14 Tales. All the stories are cat-themed, but many of them aren’t mysteries: there’s a ghost story, an SF story about cat-like aliens, three stories told in the form of interviews at an old folks’ home, and an epistolary story. It really showcases Braun’s ability to create different voices and capture different time periods and it’s a lot of fun.
I also read a couple of Billabongs, a couple of Netgalley books (those will get their own posts), and Mary Stewart’s Thornyhold, which I enjoyed so much that I instantly lent it to my mother. In the years after World War II, our heroine Gilly (pronounced Jilly) inherits a beautiful house and garden from her godmother. “I looked out of the taxi window as the houses dwindled back and the road began to wind between high, banked hedges full of ivy and holly glistening with recent rain, and the red berries of honeysuckle twining through pillowfight drifts of traveller’s joy.” (37)
There’s a bit of supernatural coloring here, but mostly the story is about Gilly settling in the house and the neighborhood and making it her own and - it’s just a very calming read.
What I’m Reading Now
I’m taking another crack at Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment. I’m about a three-quarters of the way through it and there is something compulsively readable about Raskolnikov’s circular self-torturing “Have they realized yet that I murdered the old lady???” thoughts, but at the same time, man this could have used an editor.
Also reading Brian Switek’s My Beloved Brontosaurus, which is a little bit about the newest finds in dinosaur science but also about our emotional attachment to dinosaurs: why so many children go through a dinosaur phase, why we’re expected to grow out of our dinosaur phases, and why we cling to the name Brontosaurus even though by the rules of scientific nomenclature it ought to be Apatosaurus.
I would have preferred a bit more about dinosaurs and a bit less about how we feel about dinosaurs: the preference for Brontosaurus, for instance, strikes me as pretty self-explanatory. It’s more fun to say and it just sounds bigger. Of course people prefer it.
What I Plan to Read Next
I got a bunch of Mary Stewarts for my birthday, which I ought to space out a bit, because they are apt to run together if you read too many at once. But one more should be okay… I’m awfully tempted by her first book, Madam, Will You Talk?
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