Wednesday Reading Meme
Sep. 19th, 2018 08:02 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
osprey_archerWhat I’ve Finished Reading
Shannon Hale’s Princess Academy, which I liked more than I expected, but not so much that I intend to read the sequels. The story begins when it is prophesied that the prince’s bride will come from an isolated mountain village. Therefore, all the village girls are therefore sent to a Princess Academy for a year to learn how to be ladies before the prince meets them at the ball.
It’s a set-up that suggests that the girls are going to compete with each other to win the princess, complete with several stereotypes that seem inevitable in this kind of girl: the snobby outsider, the mean girl who fights to win. But then the book sets out to undermine the expected storyline: there is some competition, but the girls also work together, and the bad girls turn out to have more complicated personalities than it first appears.
But it feels somewhat mechanical - like Hale went into it with a list of tropes she wanted to subvert and carefully ticked them off her list. It’s competent, but never really catches fire.
Frances Hodgson Burnett’s That Lass O’Lowrie’s, on the other hand, is all fire from start to finish. Some of my predictions from last Wednesday reading meme turned out to be incorrect (not everyone I expected to get engaged did so - but then I think it’s only a matter of time before they do), but on the whole it’s a satisfying and weird book - although sometimes only weird because it’s a Frances Hodgson Burnett book. If it was any other nineteenth century writer, Joan’s prominent conversion to Christianity would be absolutely par for the course.
I also read another Aunt Dimity book, Aunt Dimity and the Next of Kin. Good cozy comfort reading, as always. There ought to be more mystery series that don’t always center on murders. Not that I don’t like a good murder as much as the next person, but variety is the spice of life.
What I’m Reading Now
Still working on Tamora Pierce’s Tempests and Slaughter and Michael Pollan’s How to Change Your Mind, and by “working on” I mean I haven’t made much progress at all in either one. It’s been a busy week! Neither one is really grabbing me! I got totally distracted by Aunt Dimity. :(
I have made some good progress in Laurel Thatcher Ulrich’s A House Full of Females, at least. As the book has gone on we have gotten a higher concentration of women’s diaries and letters, but it’s still a very different book than I expected based on her earlier book, The Age of Homespun, which dissects ideas about women’s work and the age of homespun as a patriotic American myth about an edenic lost past of wholesome home-based industry.
A House Full of Females has much less analysis and much more purely chronological history of the Mormon migration to Salt Lake City - and the analysis of Mormon polygamy in the context of nineteenth-century gender norms is what I really wanted to read about. Oh well.
What I Plan to Read Next
I suppose I’d better start reading I’ll Give You the Sun for my September reading challenge, “a book recommended by a librarian or indie bookseller.” I am not entirely jazzed about a reading challenge that involves someone else telling you what to read, but who knows, maybe I’ll love it.
Shannon Hale’s Princess Academy, which I liked more than I expected, but not so much that I intend to read the sequels. The story begins when it is prophesied that the prince’s bride will come from an isolated mountain village. Therefore, all the village girls are therefore sent to a Princess Academy for a year to learn how to be ladies before the prince meets them at the ball.
It’s a set-up that suggests that the girls are going to compete with each other to win the princess, complete with several stereotypes that seem inevitable in this kind of girl: the snobby outsider, the mean girl who fights to win. But then the book sets out to undermine the expected storyline: there is some competition, but the girls also work together, and the bad girls turn out to have more complicated personalities than it first appears.
But it feels somewhat mechanical - like Hale went into it with a list of tropes she wanted to subvert and carefully ticked them off her list. It’s competent, but never really catches fire.
Frances Hodgson Burnett’s That Lass O’Lowrie’s, on the other hand, is all fire from start to finish. Some of my predictions from last Wednesday reading meme turned out to be incorrect (not everyone I expected to get engaged did so - but then I think it’s only a matter of time before they do), but on the whole it’s a satisfying and weird book - although sometimes only weird because it’s a Frances Hodgson Burnett book. If it was any other nineteenth century writer, Joan’s prominent conversion to Christianity would be absolutely par for the course.
I also read another Aunt Dimity book, Aunt Dimity and the Next of Kin. Good cozy comfort reading, as always. There ought to be more mystery series that don’t always center on murders. Not that I don’t like a good murder as much as the next person, but variety is the spice of life.
What I’m Reading Now
Still working on Tamora Pierce’s Tempests and Slaughter and Michael Pollan’s How to Change Your Mind, and by “working on” I mean I haven’t made much progress at all in either one. It’s been a busy week! Neither one is really grabbing me! I got totally distracted by Aunt Dimity. :(
I have made some good progress in Laurel Thatcher Ulrich’s A House Full of Females, at least. As the book has gone on we have gotten a higher concentration of women’s diaries and letters, but it’s still a very different book than I expected based on her earlier book, The Age of Homespun, which dissects ideas about women’s work and the age of homespun as a patriotic American myth about an edenic lost past of wholesome home-based industry.
A House Full of Females has much less analysis and much more purely chronological history of the Mormon migration to Salt Lake City - and the analysis of Mormon polygamy in the context of nineteenth-century gender norms is what I really wanted to read about. Oh well.
What I Plan to Read Next
I suppose I’d better start reading I’ll Give You the Sun for my September reading challenge, “a book recommended by a librarian or indie bookseller.” I am not entirely jazzed about a reading challenge that involves someone else telling you what to read, but who knows, maybe I’ll love it.
no subject
Date: 2018-09-19 11:59 am (UTC)I'm glad That Lass O'Lowrie continues to be good!
And "working on" is what I'm doing with all my reads right now, and I guess what I need is to add a true pleasure read into the mix. I did start Letters to Malcolm! Which won't be so worky but at the same time isn't exactly id-tastic either.
no subject
Date: 2018-09-19 02:40 pm (UTC)It's funny how much faster I read when I'm on something that I'm really into! It shouldn't be that surprising and yet somehow it is...
no subject
Date: 2018-09-19 09:24 pm (UTC)And That Lass O’Lowrie’s is now on my physical (as opposed to vague mental) "to read someday" list, which gives it a slightly better chance than usual of being read someday. It sounds very worth my time.
no subject
Date: 2018-09-20 02:14 am (UTC)That Lass O'Lowrie's was evidently HUGELY popular in its day - there's like an entire page of complimentary quotes from contemporary reviews at the back of the book - so there is some hope of finding a physical copy in the wild somewhere. If I do, I'll pass it on to you!
no subject
Date: 2018-09-22 02:20 pm (UTC)That Lass O’Lowrie’s sounds interesting! My experience of Frances Hodgson Burnett is limited to reading The Secret Garden countless times, reading A Little Princess once (I didn't own a copy), and reading about Little Lord Fauntleroy in Eva Ibbotson's Journey to the River Sea.
no subject
Date: 2018-09-23 01:14 am (UTC)There is a whole world of Frances Hodgson Burnett out there and the forgotten ones are - I won't say "as good" as the ones that we still read - but certainly entertaining. I always feel that she was writing straight from the heart and it means her books are sometimes really weird, but never boring.