Wednesday Reading Meme

[osprey_archer]

What I’ve Just Finished Reading

Jim and Jamie Dutcher’s The Wisdom of Wolves: Lessons from the Sawtooth Pack, which is engrossing (I read it in one day) although I did have some questions about the validity of some of the observations. The Dutchers made a documentary about a wolf pack formed from wolf pups they had raised by hand, which meant that they could get much closer to the wolves than researchers can get to a wild pack - which enabled them, for example, to record a far wider range of vocalizations than most researchers, who aren’t close enough to hear more than the howls.

But I do wonder how representative of wolf vocalization these sounds were. Pups raised by humans wouldn’t have older wolves to teach them how to ‘talk,’ as it were. Were the Sawtooth pack vocalizations typical, or were they basically speaking wolf pidgin?

Also Susan Hermann Loomis’s In a French Kitchen: Tales and Traditions of Everyday Home cooking in France, which is a food memoir/recipe book (but mostly memoir) about cooking in France, with plenty of stories and tips from Loomis’s French friends. A pleasant, charming example of the genre if you’re into food memoirs. Plus I found a few recipes that look both delicious and easy enough to be worth trying, a combination that happens in fewer cookbooks than you might expect.

What I’m Reading Now

Onward in My Brilliant Career! Sybylla has her doubts about Harold Beecham’s suitability as a suitor - does the man have a spark of true emotion in him? But she begins to warm to him when he flies into a rage after she allows another man to carve his initials with hers on a gum tree. Harold grabs her by the arm and shoulders and shakes her. Later, Sybilla “laughed a joyous little laugh, saying, ‘Hal, we are quits,’ when, on disrobing for the night, I discovered on my soft white shoulders and arms — so susceptible to bruises — many marks, and black.

It had been a very happy day for me.” (204)

Nothing says “I love you” like copious bruising!

I’ve also started reading Eliza Orne White’s When Molly Was Six, and have discovered that each chapter is a month of the year. This seems like a delightful way to organize a book and now I want to write one like that, although the heroine would probably be older than six.

And one of my friends lent me Rebecca Traister’s All the Single Ladies: Unmarried Women and the Rise of an Independent Nation, which I have been reading with interest, although also occasional argument: I think Traister oversells the joys of living alone, in a way that makes it seem like your only options in this life are marriage or living alone foreverty-ever (or perhaps living with a romantic partner without marriage). What about singles who live with roommates or friends or join a commune or, hell, even live with their parents?

You know what we need? A thoughtful, nonjudgmental book about young adults who still live with their parents. Does that exist? I feel that this is a demographic shift that we’ve mostly ignored in the hopes that it will go away because we’ve decided it’s embarrassing, even though adult-children-living-with-their-parents is actually an extremely common pattern throughout human history, and occurs in the animal kingdom, too. Not all wolves wander off to find mates! Some of them just stay home and help their natal pack!

BUT ANYWAY. I’m not sure how much this is a genuine weakness in the book, and how much of it is just that I personally would have preferred All the Single Ladies Band Together to Try Out New Family Structures: Chapter 3 Is about a Goat-Farming Commune.

What I Plan to Read Next

I may need to come up with a backup plan in case the library doesn’t get me Zilpha Keatley Snyder’s Eyes in the Fishbowl in time for my August challenge.

Comments

[evelyn_b]

Plus I found a few recipes that look both delicious and easy enough to be worth trying, a combination that happens in fewer cookbooks than you might expect.

We used to get a lot of vegetarian cookbooks as gifts, and I feel this. Lots of nice-sounding recipes that required specialized equipment and buying ingredients.

Is being embarrassed about living with parents primarily a US thing? I don't get the impression that most people are very worried about it elsewhere.

[osprey_archer]

I think it might be primarily a US thing, although maybe also a thing in other Anglophone countries? But pretty much everywhere else adult children living with parents just seems to be What People Do, which makes the US attitude toward it seem especially silly.

[ladyherenya]

Embarrassment about adults still living with their parents definitely isn't just a US thing, although
the expectations around when and how people leave home seem to differ somewhat. From what I can tell, the US has much more of a culture of leaving home to attend college than Australia does -- at least, I think it's more common here to stay at home and commute if one can. And maybe it's more common to find work in the same city/state, too.

[littlerhymes]

Nothing says “I love you” like copious bruising!

Whyyyy was romance so messed up back then. (...and also now, I guess.)

I think the reaction to being an adult living with your parents will vary wildly depending on cultural norms. I am puzzling over what I have read or watched that talks about the issue specifically though, and coming up blank. Hmm. I will think on it.

eta: oh, this just came up on tumblr, how timely

[osprey_archer]

Is "anyone who lives with their parents after the age of 18 is a looooooser" a thing in Australia too, or is that mostly US (or maybe North American, IDK how they feel about it in Canada)? I see a smattering of anxious thinkpieces about What It Means that the youth of today are Spurning Independence and Living with Their Parents, but mostly it's more of a pervasive cultural attitude that grown-ups are not supposed to live with their parents.

[littlerhymes]

Mainstream white/Anglo Australia I'd say yes, but I think you see the cultural difference when you look at say Asian Australia. (My parents let me move out without big drama, but there was a sense of reluctance.)

But yeah reality has moved on and living at home is the norm for so many reasons now? I guess it gives people opportunity to write thinkpieces about how millenials.

[osprey_archer]

Well honestly thinkpieces about millennials are one of the few growth industries left in this cruel world, so we can hardly take that away from thinkpiece writers. Otherwise they might have to move back in with their parents, who are probably ninety.

[ladyherenya]

I'm curious about My Brilliant Career, but I'm not sure if I'd like it.

in a way that makes it seem like your only options in this life are marriage or living alone foreverty-ever

That annoys me. Especially when people start talking as if being single = living alone. I've clicked on articles that have, in spite of the headline being about being single, focused on living alone instead, totally overlooking that lots of single people live with others and that some people in relationships live alone.

You know what we need? A thoughtful, nonjudgmental book about young adults who still live with their parents. Does that exist?

I don't know. I agree that it is needed. Books about it and stories which portray it without making it seem like a huge failing.

[osprey_archer]

I think the movie of My Brilliant Career is worth seeing, but the book is maybe only worthwhile if you're interested in the history of Australian literature. Although who knows! Perhaps it will speak to you.

I'm trying to think of any recent novels (set in the current day) in which the adult protagonists live at home with their parents and it's not a big deal and I'm coming up blank. Maybe this should be my next project...