Wednesday Reading Meme

[osprey_archer]

What I’ve Just Finished Reading

Shirley Jackson’s Hangsaman, about which I babbled AT LENGTH in a comment to a previous post, which I won’t copy here because otherwise it will take over my entire Wednesday Reading Meme. But it’s there if you’re interested.

Katherine Applegate’s Crenshaw, which is good as all of Katherine Applegate’s books are. (I think I probably missed out by not reading Animorphs. Not enough to actually read Animorphs now, though.) This one is about an economically insecure family that may be on the verge of homeless - not something that you see very often in children’s books - but in a way that is light enough to be readable without glossing over the difficulties of homelessness.

Crenshaw is the hero’s imaginary friend, a giant cat who likes to stand on his head, a la the giant bunny in Harvey. In fact, Applegate references the movie in the book’s epigraph.

What I’m Reading Now

Keeping on with The Odyssey! Odysseus has arrived back in Ithaca and will at any moment rain down unholy vengeance on the suitors. (I remember this part from the Wishbone version. I’m looking forward to the bit where Odysseus shoots his arrow through twelve axes.) Although right now he’s chatting with his son Telemachus while pretending to be just some random beggar dude, which I’m sure is killing him inside.

Laurel Thatcher Ulrich’s A Midwife’s Tale: The Life of Martha Ballard, Based on Her Diary, 1785-1812. One of the things I find particularly interesting about this book is that Ulrich not only has Martha Ballard’s diary, but also the remarks of commentators from later in the nineteenth century, and it’s so interesting to see what these readers considered worthy of note. They’re surprised, for instance, that Ballard spent so much time gadding about to visit her neighbors.

I wonder if it’s actually that nineteenth-century women actually spent less time gadding - or if it was actually pretty comparable, but the ideal was that women should be the heart of the home and rarely stir from the hearthside, and so people just kind of failed to see how much time women (even respectable married women) spent outside of the home. But the written record of Martha Ballard’s movements made it plain and impossible to ignore.

I’ve also begun Dorothy Sayers’ Unnatural Death. I find the way she talks about spinsters kind of annoying, especially considering that she married late herself - but maybe that just makes increases the temptation toward condescending magnanimity.

Oh! And I’m working on Enid Blyton’s The Secret Island (having run out of Mallory Towers for the moment), which has a very Boxcar Children-type appeal: four kids on their own figuring out how to provide themselves with shelter and food and so forth.

AND FINALLY (deep breath) (I’m reading a lot of books this week) (too many maybe?) I’m reading Sarah Smarsh’s Heartland: A Memoir of Working Hard and Being Broke in the Richest Country on Earth, about Smarsh’s childhood among poor white farmers in Kansas, which I can only read in small doses because it’s so infuriating reading about how thoroughly the government has undermined the middle and working classes.

Not least by pretending that the working classes don’t exist. Everyone is middle class in America! What do you mean you’re working 60 hours a week not to get by? Everyone is middle class in America. If we say it enough times that will make it true even as we enact policies that dismantle worker protections and favor large companies and factory farms.

It occurred to me - this is not a point Smarsh makes, just something that came to mind - that maybe part of the reason the “fake news” narrative has gained traction is that the media has in fact systematically ignored or misrepresented working class experiences for decades, so there are a lot of people in this country who don’t trust the media because… why would they? What has the media done to deserve it?

What I Plan to Read Next

The library for some reason has loads of Enid Blyton’s Famous Five books in Spanish. I’ve been thinking I should polish up my Spanish, and the Famous Five is probably about the difficulty level I can take after letting my Spanish go to seed for so long, so maybe I’ll give them a go.

Comments

[troisoiseaux]

Ooh, I love Dorothy L. Sayers! Peter and Harriet have the best relationship.

[osprey_archer]

I started by reading the Harriet and Peter ones and now I've gone back to fill in the earlier books. I'm not convinced this is the best way to go about it; I keep thinking BUT WOULDN'T THIS BE BETTER IF HARRIET WERE HERE THOUGH.

[slashmarks]

I've owned A Midwide's Tale for ages without reading it. I should get to that.

[osprey_archer]

Books are quite dangerous that way. It's so easy to buy them and then they just sit there.

[ladyherenya]

I remember finding Unnatural Death unsettling, mostly, I thought at the time, because of how I felt about the murder method. But it didn't deter me from reading more Sayers (it was the one I started with).

[osprey_archer]

I haven't gotten to the part where Peter figures out the murder method yet, but it already looks like it's going to be something ghastly.

[asakiyume]

I used A Midwife's Tale in doing story research some years ago!

... And I think you're right about the how and why of media having lost people's trust.

[osprey_archer]

I think the media would do better to redirect its attention from "But what is WRONG with rural white people?" articles to "What have we done that has undermined so many Americans' trust in us?"

At very least, the articles themselves probably wouldn't contribute to more alienation that way.

[evelyn_b]

I'm not sure there's any fact about Sayers' life that didn't increases the temptation toward condescending magnanimity. Our Dot was susceptible to say the least.

Nineteenth-century women are not a monolith, of course, but a large number of them spent a lot of time gadding. Visiting culture was a big deal for a long time. I don't know if Victorians did more or less of it than their grandmothers, though. Maybe, like young people from time immemorial, they thought they invented it?

Homer is shockingly good at yanking those heartstrings. I mean, it shouldn't be shocking, because things stick around for a reason and people of all times and places like having their heartstrings yanked. But it still comes as a surprise.

[osprey_archer]

Probably women have been gadding (just like young people have been frolicking) since forever and every single generation people look on and sigh and shake their heads and say "In MY day, women stayed in their homes and young people were respectful, but NOW..."

This may be the true human verity.

I just got to the bit in the Odyssey where Odysseus finds his dog, which he trained as a puppy and then left behind on Ithaca without ever having the chance to hunt with it, but the by-now-ancient dog recognizes him and wags his tail one time before expiring on the spot. WHY YOU GOTTA PULL OUR HEARTSTRINGS LIKE THIS, HOMER?

[evelyn_b]

OH LOOK ODYSSEUS you made your sad dog happy for 1/3 of a second TOO BAD IT COULDN'T LAST and you can't run over and rumple his ears because you're pretending to be some dude. YOU CAN'T FOOL ARGOS THOUGH ;__;