Wednesday Reading Meme

[osprey_archer]

What I’ve Just Finished Reading

Deborah Ellis’s My Name is Parvana, the final Breadwinner book. In some ways I didn’t think it was quite as good as the others - the construction is a little shakier - but on the other hand it was just so satisfying to see Parvana and Shauzia reunited, and it has completely the perfect last line, so.

And Jewell Parker Rhodes Sugar, which is part of her Louisiana Girls trilogy along with Bayou Magic. I therefore expected it to have magic too, but it doesn’t, unless the magic of interracial friendship counts… which actually it might in a novel set in 1870.

It’s been five years since slavery ended, but Sugar and her mama remained on the old sugar plantation, waiting for Sugar’s daddy to come home. But now Sugar’s mama is dead, and most of the other young families have moved away, which leaves only Sugar and a bunch of old people to bring in the sugar harvest until the plantation owner sends out to hire Chinese workers.

Now on the one hand, I suspect this book offers a fairly rosy view of race relations. But on the other, it’s totally charming to watch Sugar win over everyone (the plantation owner’s son, the Chinese workers, eventually to a certain extent the plantation owner and his wife) through sheer force of personality and chutzpah. I particularly liked the scene where one of the Chinese workers teaches Sugar how to write her name in Chinese.

I also read Madeleine L’Engle’s Friends for the Journey, which I enjoyed, but much more mildly than I expected; it didn’t go nearly as deep into the topic as many of her other books do, possibly because it was co-written with her friend Luci Shaw. Although from a certain point of view, you might expect that to make it deeper? But no.

What I’m Reading Now

I'm almost done with Adeline Dutton Whitney’s A Summer in Leslie Goldthwaite’s Life, in which young Leslie spends the summer at a mountain resort and learns important lessons about how to live a good life pleasing to God. (I realize this makes it sound completely airless but I promise it is not Elsie Dinsmore: The Yankee Mountain Edition.)

Along the way, Leslie reforms Sin (short for Asenath) Saxon, a mischievous high-spirited boarding school girl who has been using her sparkling wit to tease the good-hearted spinster next door. Naturally, by the end of the book she has realized that the kindly spinster is actually a wonderful person, and it’s better to use your wit to make people happy than torment the life out of them (although said spinster has actually found Sin’s antics enormously amusing; still, the next one might not be so understanding), and arranges a pleasure jaunt for a pair of sisters who have been much left out of the social life at the hotel that summer.

I have noticed that in nineteenth-century literature buoyant tomboyish girls generally stand a better chance of redemption than the girls who are “too girly” - that is, too interested in clothes and being seen in the right society and, worst of all, boys. The tomboys reform but the snobs remain snobs till the end, gently sighed at by the narrative but generally unrepentant.

And I’m still reading Paula McLain’s Love and Ruin. I’ve gotten to the Love part: Martha Gellhorn and Ernest Hemingway have fallen into each other’s arms during the Spanish Civil War. I figure we’ve got maybe a hundred pages before Ruin sets in hardcore, although both Gellhorn and Hemingway can already see its shadow even at the dawn of their relationship.

What I Plan to Read Next

My reading challenge for September is “a book recommended by a librarian or indie bookseller,” so I’d better have a chat with one of my coworkers about that.

Comments

[kore]

I got Love and Ruin, but haven't even started it yet. A mini Martha Gellhorn renaissance would be very pleasing.

[osprey_archer]

The book has made me consider reading Gellhorn's stuff, it is true. I'm interested in Hemingway as a person but I've never really gotten into his books (aside from A Moveable Feast) and it would be kind of ironic if I ended up becoming a big Gellhorn fan...

[amaebi]

But Elsie Dinsmore rises from the dead! And the novels are so pleasingly pathological!

[osprey_archer]

Oh God, I hadn't thought of it in quite those terms before, but she really does rise from the dead, doesn't she? And her death and resurrection save her father's soul. Elsie Dinsmore is antebellum Jesus.

[amaebi]

With wistful incest!

[osprey_archer]

Multiple characters comment that if they didn't know better, they'd think Elsie and her father were lovers upon seeing them interact. Multiple characters!

[amaebi]

And consider how repeatedly emphasized is Horace's youthful beauty, and his eager kisses as he holds his daughter on his lap.

Have you read the New Yorker-published parody of, oh, the 1930s or 1940s?

[osprey_archer]

I wrote a little bit about Elsie Dinsmore in my senior thesis and I was always sorry that I couldn't write more, but on the other hand I knew that if I really dug into it, then "WTF Elsie Dinsmore?!?!?" would become the entire thesis. There's also a scene where Horace freaks out because Elsie might have kissed her perfidious fiance, and he's so relieved when Elsie assures him that she hasn't that he kisses her again and again. Why. Why??

I haven't read the New Yorker parody! Is it hilarious?

[amaebi]

As for the New Yorker parody-- Welllllll-- it's about what you'd expect starting from a clear family likeness to Gentlemen Prefer Blondes whose illustrator it shares.

I'm kind of sorry that I only read it standing up in a used bookstore rather than buying it. But not awfully sorry.

[asakiyume]

Although from a certain point of view, you might expect that to make it deeper?

You know, I'd never thought about that, but yes. If you are writing something collaboratively, I imagine you talk about stuff, discuss stuff, so yess, I would expect the final result to be deeper.

Tomboys vs. prisses (as we called that type of girl when I was in elementary school)--shows clearly the hierarchy. Writers by and large approve of tomboys, but not prisses. I never really loved... or even finished... Little Women, but insofar as I remember it, the portrayal of Amy is a good example of a sympathetic priss. She's concerned with appearances, but you understand it. And it's not just appearances.

it’s better to use your wit to make people happy than torment the life out of them (although said spinster has actually found Sin’s antics enormously amusing; still, the next one might not be so understanding) --this just made me smile.

[amaebi]

One of the reasons I liked the Susan Sarandon Little Women movie is that it gave a very sympathetic portrait of Amy. Whom, as a conventional and suckered reader, I never liked before.

[asakiyume]

That may be the film version that somewhere I have a note I should see (but there may be several such!)

[osprey_archer]

The Susan Sarandon version is the one I watched recently, so possibly that is the one you made note of? But there are a lot of Little Women films - and a lot of new ones coming out, too!

One of the new adaptations (which isn't out yet) is set in the modern day. I'm not sure how I feel about it; the trailer makes it look a little too heart-warming, but at the same time it's got a sort of Lizzie Bennet Diaries vibe so I'll probably end up seeing it.

[asakiyume]

Yeah... not sure about that present-day one. The trailer gives the impression that every scene is curated for maximal beauty. Sometimes I don't mind that--sometimes I like it: in All the Boys I've Loved Before, I noticed how color and design were used in her room, and at one point she props her bike up against a wall, and the bike was pinkish and the wall was pale green (or maybe the opposite), and her outfit matched the wall's color, and it was really pretty! But ... I don't know; I'm losing faith in what I'm trying to say here. I think "a little too heart-warming" may be all that needs saying.

[osprey_archer]

I think you've talked around an important point, though, which is that the aesthetic in the Little Women trailer (like the aesthetic in To All the Boys I've Loved Before) is an upper-middle-class aesthetic: it takes time and money to achieve something that quirkily beautiful.

Lara Jean's father is a doctor so this makes sense for her, but the Marches are supposed to be struggling financially; not poverty-stricken, but making ends meet with difficulty. Things should be a little less slick.

[osprey_archer]

I think Amy is meant to be sympathetic, but my impression is that many readers don't like her - although this may be in large part because she gets Laurie in the end. Readers might like her better if she didn't get in the way of the most popular pairing (not that Jo was going to marry Laurie even if Amy didn't, but still).

[amaebi]

I know I was brought up wrong, but I thought Professor Bhaer seemed like a very satisfactory sort of spouse.

[asakiyume]

I can understand people resenting her for that, for sure.

[silverusagi]

I saw Sugar at the library, thought I might pick it up sometime!

[osprey_archer]

I hope you like it if you do!