osprey_archer (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
osprey_archer) wrote2019-02-13 09:16 am
osprey_archer) wrote2019-02-13 09:16 am
Wednesday Reading Meme
What I’ve Just Finished Reading
I treated myself to Sherwood Smith’s The Poignant Sting last weekend - I always enjoy her Austen books (silverusagi, do you do ebooks? If you do, you might want to give Sherwood Smith’s Austen books a try) and I was particularly smitten with the idea of an Emma book, as that’s one of my favorite Austens. And this one has a gentle fantastical element, too! Miss Bates (yes, Miss Bates who never stops talking) has a touch of telepathy in her blood.
Also I thought Frank Churchill’s decision to hire the most! moddish! physician! to oversee Jane’s lying-in was the most Frank Churchill thing to do, good Lord man maybe next time you shouldn’t hire a guy whose favorite medicine is calomel? JUST A THOUGHT.
I also finished John Cacioppo’s Loneliness: Human Nature and the Need for Social Connection, which I read because I’ve seen it referenced in a bunch of books. Sometimes when you go back and read the book all the other books are based on, you find out that the source book is so rich and dense that the other books have not been able to tell you half its glories; other times you go back and you discover that the source book was an important first step but considerably more steps have risen since then. This falls more in the second category.
And I read Evelyn Snead Barnett’s Jerry’s Reward, because Barnett was one of the founding members of the Louisville Authors’ Club which produced such bestsellers as The Lady of the Decoration, Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch, and the Little Colonel series… all of which were written by authors other than Barnett, who was one of the least successful members, probably because (judging by Jerry’s Reward) she just wasn’t that good of a writer. Maybe she had a better head for editing/business? Because her club certainly did midwife (as it were) a lot of writers.
What I’m Reading Now
Winifred Holtby’s South Riding, which I found unexpectedly absorbing. The title is extremely apt: the book is the story of a place, the fictional South Riding of Yorkshire in 1933, and a great cross-section of the people in it. Sometimes books with an enormous cast feel baggy to me - like I’m reading two or three different books that have been poorly stitched together - but in South Riding the local government provides the delicate web of connection that binds characters as disparate as an overwhelmed science teacher at the girls’ high school and a struggling insurance salesman whom bad times have forced on the dole.
Holtby’s mother was one of the first female alderman (maybe, in fact, the first?) in Yorkshire, so she writes from inside knowledge. Indeed the character of Mrs. Beddows is based on her own mother, and is one of the most vivid and interesting characters in a book positively bursting with clear individual portraits. You feel that you could meet these people - perhaps not today, because they are so very much of their time and place, but if a time machine took you to Yorkshire between the wars, you’d meet them.
What I Plan to Read Next
Oh, God, I have so many books. I think I’d better push Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye to the top of the pile to make sure I get to it in February.
I treated myself to Sherwood Smith’s The Poignant Sting last weekend - I always enjoy her Austen books (
silverusagi, do you do ebooks? If you do, you might want to give Sherwood Smith’s Austen books a try) and I was particularly smitten with the idea of an Emma book, as that’s one of my favorite Austens. And this one has a gentle fantastical element, too! Miss Bates (yes, Miss Bates who never stops talking) has a touch of telepathy in her blood. Also I thought Frank Churchill’s decision to hire the most! moddish! physician! to oversee Jane’s lying-in was the most Frank Churchill thing to do, good Lord man maybe next time you shouldn’t hire a guy whose favorite medicine is calomel? JUST A THOUGHT.
I also finished John Cacioppo’s Loneliness: Human Nature and the Need for Social Connection, which I read because I’ve seen it referenced in a bunch of books. Sometimes when you go back and read the book all the other books are based on, you find out that the source book is so rich and dense that the other books have not been able to tell you half its glories; other times you go back and you discover that the source book was an important first step but considerably more steps have risen since then. This falls more in the second category.
And I read Evelyn Snead Barnett’s Jerry’s Reward, because Barnett was one of the founding members of the Louisville Authors’ Club which produced such bestsellers as The Lady of the Decoration, Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch, and the Little Colonel series… all of which were written by authors other than Barnett, who was one of the least successful members, probably because (judging by Jerry’s Reward) she just wasn’t that good of a writer. Maybe she had a better head for editing/business? Because her club certainly did midwife (as it were) a lot of writers.
What I’m Reading Now
Winifred Holtby’s South Riding, which I found unexpectedly absorbing. The title is extremely apt: the book is the story of a place, the fictional South Riding of Yorkshire in 1933, and a great cross-section of the people in it. Sometimes books with an enormous cast feel baggy to me - like I’m reading two or three different books that have been poorly stitched together - but in South Riding the local government provides the delicate web of connection that binds characters as disparate as an overwhelmed science teacher at the girls’ high school and a struggling insurance salesman whom bad times have forced on the dole.
Holtby’s mother was one of the first female alderman (maybe, in fact, the first?) in Yorkshire, so she writes from inside knowledge. Indeed the character of Mrs. Beddows is based on her own mother, and is one of the most vivid and interesting characters in a book positively bursting with clear individual portraits. You feel that you could meet these people - perhaps not today, because they are so very much of their time and place, but if a time machine took you to Yorkshire between the wars, you’d meet them.
What I Plan to Read Next
Oh, God, I have so many books. I think I’d better push Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye to the top of the pile to make sure I get to it in February.