Wednesday Reading Meme
Mar. 6th, 2019 08:28 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
osprey_archerWhat I’ve Just Finished Reading
Ben MacIntyre’s The Spy and the Traitor: The Greatest Espionage Story of the Cold War. I intended to get some other things done on Sunday, but instead I spent the afternoon reading this book and eating cookies and it was a good life choice. MacIntyre is one of those nonfiction writers with an irresistibly readable style, augmented in his case by an irresistibly readable choice of subject matter: spies!
In this book, MacIntyre is telling the story of Oleg Gordievsky, a KGB man who became a spy for MI6 out of genuine ideological conversion (always a more interesting story than someone who becomes a spy for money, like Aldrich Ames, who becomes a subplot in this book because his story intersected with Gordievsky’s).
I was particularly fascinated by the internal KGB politics - in particular, by the way the whole agency became infected with the paranoid conviction that the US was going to launch a nuclear first strike any day now once the paranoiac-in-chief, Andropov (first leader of the KGB and then of the Soviet Union in general), became obsessed with the idea. It’s kind of hilarious - all these big tough guys quaking in their boots over literally nothing! - but also sort of sad, and perhaps Gordievsky’s greatest accomplishment was to convince Reagan and Thatcher that no, this wasn’t just bluster, the KGB truly feared a first strike, and both of them became less belligerent toward the USSR in response.
On a whim I read Sara Zarr and Tara Altebrando’s Roomies, because it was on a list of books about female friendship and I needed a new book on Overdrive. It’s a YA novel, structured around the emails that two future roommates exchange the summer before they go to college. I didn’t think it would have space to do all the plotlines justice: both girls have their best-friend-from-high-school plotlines, boyfriend plotlines, and family plotlines, and there’s the getting-to-know-your-potential-roommate plotline that ties them together - but actually I thought the book did most of them justice, although I wanted a little bit more from EB’s difficult relationship with her mom: it turns around a little too fast for me in the end.
And I finished the final Billabong book, Billabong Riders, and it feels like the end of an era:littlerhymes and I have been reading these books for over two years now. What shall we doooo now that it’s over? (Actually we’ve already discussed reading the Anne of Green Gables series next, so I think we shall be fine.)
In some ways it doesn’t feel like the last book in the series - there’s no big series-ending event (Norah’s already gotten married and had her first child, both of which books often use as convenient stopping points) and no particular push to get in at least a cameo appearance from all the best-beloved side characters. But on the other hand it is a very typical Billabong book, with all the old gang (plus Tommy) going off on a cattle-herding adventure, so in that way it’s a satisfying cap to the series.
What I’m Reading Now
Shirley Jackson’s Raising Demons goes along at a fairly even domestic family memoir keel until you get to the part where Jackson writes about Bennington College - and then even the restraints of the genre can’t hold back her rage: fury positively smokes out of her as she writes about the life of the faculty wife and the adoring students who crowd around her husband.
What I Plan to Read Next
The newest Lisa See book, The Island of Sea Women! There are very few contemporary authors whose work I keep up with, but I do snap up new Lisa See books, because I like that she writes about women’s friendships and I have not yet given up hope that eventually she’ll write a book where the friends remain friends for the whole story.
Ben MacIntyre’s The Spy and the Traitor: The Greatest Espionage Story of the Cold War. I intended to get some other things done on Sunday, but instead I spent the afternoon reading this book and eating cookies and it was a good life choice. MacIntyre is one of those nonfiction writers with an irresistibly readable style, augmented in his case by an irresistibly readable choice of subject matter: spies!
In this book, MacIntyre is telling the story of Oleg Gordievsky, a KGB man who became a spy for MI6 out of genuine ideological conversion (always a more interesting story than someone who becomes a spy for money, like Aldrich Ames, who becomes a subplot in this book because his story intersected with Gordievsky’s).
I was particularly fascinated by the internal KGB politics - in particular, by the way the whole agency became infected with the paranoid conviction that the US was going to launch a nuclear first strike any day now once the paranoiac-in-chief, Andropov (first leader of the KGB and then of the Soviet Union in general), became obsessed with the idea. It’s kind of hilarious - all these big tough guys quaking in their boots over literally nothing! - but also sort of sad, and perhaps Gordievsky’s greatest accomplishment was to convince Reagan and Thatcher that no, this wasn’t just bluster, the KGB truly feared a first strike, and both of them became less belligerent toward the USSR in response.
On a whim I read Sara Zarr and Tara Altebrando’s Roomies, because it was on a list of books about female friendship and I needed a new book on Overdrive. It’s a YA novel, structured around the emails that two future roommates exchange the summer before they go to college. I didn’t think it would have space to do all the plotlines justice: both girls have their best-friend-from-high-school plotlines, boyfriend plotlines, and family plotlines, and there’s the getting-to-know-your-potential-roommate plotline that ties them together - but actually I thought the book did most of them justice, although I wanted a little bit more from EB’s difficult relationship with her mom: it turns around a little too fast for me in the end.
And I finished the final Billabong book, Billabong Riders, and it feels like the end of an era:
littlerhymes and I have been reading these books for over two years now. What shall we doooo now that it’s over? (Actually we’ve already discussed reading the Anne of Green Gables series next, so I think we shall be fine.) In some ways it doesn’t feel like the last book in the series - there’s no big series-ending event (Norah’s already gotten married and had her first child, both of which books often use as convenient stopping points) and no particular push to get in at least a cameo appearance from all the best-beloved side characters. But on the other hand it is a very typical Billabong book, with all the old gang (plus Tommy) going off on a cattle-herding adventure, so in that way it’s a satisfying cap to the series.
What I’m Reading Now
Shirley Jackson’s Raising Demons goes along at a fairly even domestic family memoir keel until you get to the part where Jackson writes about Bennington College - and then even the restraints of the genre can’t hold back her rage: fury positively smokes out of her as she writes about the life of the faculty wife and the adoring students who crowd around her husband.
What I Plan to Read Next
The newest Lisa See book, The Island of Sea Women! There are very few contemporary authors whose work I keep up with, but I do snap up new Lisa See books, because I like that she writes about women’s friendships and I have not yet given up hope that eventually she’ll write a book where the friends remain friends for the whole story.
no subject
Date: 2019-03-07 01:52 am (UTC)