Wednesday Reading Meme
Nov. 14th, 2018 08:57 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
osprey_archerWhat I’ve Just Finished Reading
Pamela Toler’s Heroines of Mercy Street: The Real Nurses of the Civil War. A good overview of the Civil War nursing experience without too much gory detail about the wounds - although equally if you need nitty-gritty details about bandaging techniques etc., this is not the book you’re looking for.
Karina Yan Glaser’s The Vanderbeekers of 141st Street, which is a children’s family story about a bunch of brothers and sisters get up to shenanigans, of the kind that used to be quite common (think Little Women or Five Children and It) but no longer is, possibly because modern versions are often oddly unsatisfying - I felt the same about the Penderwicks. Both the Penderwicks and The Vanderbeekers of 141st Street are just a little too cozy, if that’s possible.
And also Three Girls in a Flat, which is an odd, ungainly novel/memoir by three girls who get a flat together as they work on preparations for the Chicago World’s Fair. There are undigested infodumps about the Board of Lady Managers and their work for the World’s Fair; charming descriptions of the girls’ life and shenanigans in the flat; a random burglar; and also a chapter in which the girls take in a beautiful but penurious woman who models for a nude sculpture, and eventually they learn that she’s an Italian aristocrat who eloped with a Russian count, only to discover in San Francisco that the count was already married, at which point she abandoned him and made her way to Chicago with her baby daughter. (The girls manage to contact her father, and father and daughter are reunited with happy tears.)
And of course there’s a love story to round everything off. Altogether an odd assortment of things, but rather charming in its very strangeness.
What I’m Reading Now
I’ve begun Thanhha Lai’s Listen, Slowly. Twelve-year-old Mai is exasperated! shocked! and outraged! to be sent to Vietnam for the summer while her grandmother, who fled Vietnam decades ago (right before the fall of Saigon), returns to the country to see if her husband might still be alive. I must confess I’ve put this book off for a while, even though I loved Lai’s Inside Out and Back Again, because “I’m being FORCED to go on an AWESOME ADVENTURE, oh no!” has never been one of my favorite premises, but Mai is winning me over despite myself. Make friends with the Vietnamese girl with the buzzcut and the pet frog and forget the boring boy back home, Mai.
And I’ve picked up Beyond the Gates again, and I’m beginning to wonder if the writers of The Good Place ever read this, because there are certain similarities between the book and the show… But then again I guess “In heaven, everyone has a really awesome house” might easily be explained by convergent evolution.
What I Plan to Read Next
Samin Nosrat’s Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat. I don’t usually post about the cookbooks I read here, but this one has gotten such great reviews that I may end up having something to say about it. Or maybe not! We’ll see.
Pamela Toler’s Heroines of Mercy Street: The Real Nurses of the Civil War. A good overview of the Civil War nursing experience without too much gory detail about the wounds - although equally if you need nitty-gritty details about bandaging techniques etc., this is not the book you’re looking for.
Karina Yan Glaser’s The Vanderbeekers of 141st Street, which is a children’s family story about a bunch of brothers and sisters get up to shenanigans, of the kind that used to be quite common (think Little Women or Five Children and It) but no longer is, possibly because modern versions are often oddly unsatisfying - I felt the same about the Penderwicks. Both the Penderwicks and The Vanderbeekers of 141st Street are just a little too cozy, if that’s possible.
And also Three Girls in a Flat, which is an odd, ungainly novel/memoir by three girls who get a flat together as they work on preparations for the Chicago World’s Fair. There are undigested infodumps about the Board of Lady Managers and their work for the World’s Fair; charming descriptions of the girls’ life and shenanigans in the flat; a random burglar; and also a chapter in which the girls take in a beautiful but penurious woman who models for a nude sculpture, and eventually they learn that she’s an Italian aristocrat who eloped with a Russian count, only to discover in San Francisco that the count was already married, at which point she abandoned him and made her way to Chicago with her baby daughter. (The girls manage to contact her father, and father and daughter are reunited with happy tears.)
And of course there’s a love story to round everything off. Altogether an odd assortment of things, but rather charming in its very strangeness.
What I’m Reading Now
I’ve begun Thanhha Lai’s Listen, Slowly. Twelve-year-old Mai is exasperated! shocked! and outraged! to be sent to Vietnam for the summer while her grandmother, who fled Vietnam decades ago (right before the fall of Saigon), returns to the country to see if her husband might still be alive. I must confess I’ve put this book off for a while, even though I loved Lai’s Inside Out and Back Again, because “I’m being FORCED to go on an AWESOME ADVENTURE, oh no!” has never been one of my favorite premises, but Mai is winning me over despite myself. Make friends with the Vietnamese girl with the buzzcut and the pet frog and forget the boring boy back home, Mai.
And I’ve picked up Beyond the Gates again, and I’m beginning to wonder if the writers of The Good Place ever read this, because there are certain similarities between the book and the show… But then again I guess “In heaven, everyone has a really awesome house” might easily be explained by convergent evolution.
What I Plan to Read Next
Samin Nosrat’s Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat. I don’t usually post about the cookbooks I read here, but this one has gotten such great reviews that I may end up having something to say about it. Or maybe not! We’ll see.
no subject
Date: 2018-11-15 01:50 pm (UTC)(I found Little Women a bit unsatisfying, maybe because the sermons-to-shenanigans ratio was not what I wanted it to be)
(and as Basically Pat Gardiner, Only In A Really Mediocre Apartment, I can sympathize with Mai's pain about being forced to go on an awesome adventure. Like I'm sure Vietnam's cool and all, but will her friends be there? NO, just a bunch of random people and relatives! What if she wants to re-read one of her favorite books and it ISN'T THERE? What if it's the perfect day to chill on the giant squishy arm-pillow, but she CAN'T because it's five million miles away?? Curiosity and openness to new experiences have their drawbacks)
no subject
Date: 2018-11-15 10:40 pm (UTC)I guess the more recent books feel consciously old-fashioned to me. The children just seem more cut off from the outside world & outside friendships than seems feasible to me in a modern setting. The Vanderbeekers hinges on a mystery that the kids could have solved in two seconds on the internet - and they do look it up on the internet, but the internet is mysteriously unhelpful.
If in real life someone told me "You're going to spend a month in a half in a faraway country learning about your Roots!" I would probably feel 100% like Mai - especially if they sprung it on me pretty much at the last minute, as they do to poor Mai. Or if I ended up on some sort of fantasy quest (another genre where heroes sometimes complain about being the Chosen One), I would probably whine the whole time. But when I'm reading about these things I feel like "Stop whining and get on with the story already!"