Wednesday Reading Meme
May. 8th, 2019 12:04 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
osprey_archerWhat I’ve Just Finished Reading
The Sundial is one of Jackson’s lesser-known books. There are times when I’m puzzled by the way that an author’s works are remembered - why is such-and-such a book lesser known when it seems just as good as the most famous one? - but this is not one of those times. The Sundial contains many of the qualities that will become so powerful in Jackson’s later work: the creepy yet beloved house, the sense of dissolving boundaries between the characters and the outside world - I’m not sure if I’m putting that right - the sense of disorientation that makes it feel as if the characters’ identities are dissolving.
But these qualities haven’t reached their full potential yet. In particular, I think the ending doesn’t quite work, mainly because it doesn’t really feel like an ending at all, but as if Jackson realized she had written herself in a corner where any ending would be anticlimactic and therefore just stopped.
On a lighter note, I read Anne Bogel’s I’d Rather Be Reading: The Delights and Dilemmas of the Reading Life, which is a light read about… well, what the title says. It has short chapters and it fits nicely in a purse, which makes it a good book to carry around for errands or doctor’s appointments or any other time when you’ll have bits and pieces of reading time.
I also treated myself to another William Heyliger book, Detectives Inc, which I expected would be about a boy detective… but in fact the boy is a mere sidekick to his uncle, former police detective Dr. David Stone, who went blind five years ago but still solves crimes with the aid of his nephew and his trusty Seeing Eye dog Lady (the book begins with a prefatory chapter about Seeing Eye dogs and you get the impression that Heyliger learned about the program and was so enchanted he felt he HAD to write a book), but mostly relies on his powerful deductive reasoning skills, insight into human nature, intricate mental map of the town, ability to orient himself by reading air currents and the temperature gradients of shadows, and also echolocation.
I read a recent nonfiction book that mentioned a blind man who navigates on bicycle by echolocating through clicks of his tongue, so this is actually a thing some humans can do.
What I’m Reading Now
I’ve begun Enid Blyton’s Upper Fourth at Mallory Towers and I will remain forever sad that I didn’t read these books as a child. I’m enjoying them now, but if I had read them when I was ten I think I could have joyfully obsessed over them. Their boarding school is in Cornwall right by the sea! They can hear the waves in their dormitory! THEY HAVE AN OCEAN POOL TO BATHE IN.
I’m also reading Elizabeth Warnock Fernea’s A Street in Marrakech, which I’m not loving quite as much as her earlier memoir Guests of the Sheik - Fernea’s children leave her less time for charting the intricate social world of women in Marrakech than she had in the village in Iraq where Guests of the Sheik is set. However, it’s still interesting, and I’m definitely planning to read the memoir that comes in between the two, A View of the Nile.
What I Plan to Read Next
The library has the new Charles Lenox book, The Vanishing Man! I actually HELD IT IN MY HAND but it was on hold for someone else so I haven’t gotten to read it yet. :( :( :( BUT SOON IT WILL BE MINE.
The Sundial is one of Jackson’s lesser-known books. There are times when I’m puzzled by the way that an author’s works are remembered - why is such-and-such a book lesser known when it seems just as good as the most famous one? - but this is not one of those times. The Sundial contains many of the qualities that will become so powerful in Jackson’s later work: the creepy yet beloved house, the sense of dissolving boundaries between the characters and the outside world - I’m not sure if I’m putting that right - the sense of disorientation that makes it feel as if the characters’ identities are dissolving.
But these qualities haven’t reached their full potential yet. In particular, I think the ending doesn’t quite work, mainly because it doesn’t really feel like an ending at all, but as if Jackson realized she had written herself in a corner where any ending would be anticlimactic and therefore just stopped.
On a lighter note, I read Anne Bogel’s I’d Rather Be Reading: The Delights and Dilemmas of the Reading Life, which is a light read about… well, what the title says. It has short chapters and it fits nicely in a purse, which makes it a good book to carry around for errands or doctor’s appointments or any other time when you’ll have bits and pieces of reading time.
I also treated myself to another William Heyliger book, Detectives Inc, which I expected would be about a boy detective… but in fact the boy is a mere sidekick to his uncle, former police detective Dr. David Stone, who went blind five years ago but still solves crimes with the aid of his nephew and his trusty Seeing Eye dog Lady (the book begins with a prefatory chapter about Seeing Eye dogs and you get the impression that Heyliger learned about the program and was so enchanted he felt he HAD to write a book), but mostly relies on his powerful deductive reasoning skills, insight into human nature, intricate mental map of the town, ability to orient himself by reading air currents and the temperature gradients of shadows, and also echolocation.
I read a recent nonfiction book that mentioned a blind man who navigates on bicycle by echolocating through clicks of his tongue, so this is actually a thing some humans can do.
What I’m Reading Now
I’ve begun Enid Blyton’s Upper Fourth at Mallory Towers and I will remain forever sad that I didn’t read these books as a child. I’m enjoying them now, but if I had read them when I was ten I think I could have joyfully obsessed over them. Their boarding school is in Cornwall right by the sea! They can hear the waves in their dormitory! THEY HAVE AN OCEAN POOL TO BATHE IN.
I’m also reading Elizabeth Warnock Fernea’s A Street in Marrakech, which I’m not loving quite as much as her earlier memoir Guests of the Sheik - Fernea’s children leave her less time for charting the intricate social world of women in Marrakech than she had in the village in Iraq where Guests of the Sheik is set. However, it’s still interesting, and I’m definitely planning to read the memoir that comes in between the two, A View of the Nile.
What I Plan to Read Next
The library has the new Charles Lenox book, The Vanishing Man! I actually HELD IT IN MY HAND but it was on hold for someone else so I haven’t gotten to read it yet. :( :( :( BUT SOON IT WILL BE MINE.
no subject
Date: 2019-05-08 08:11 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-05-09 01:42 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-05-08 09:21 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-05-09 01:40 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-05-08 11:39 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-05-09 01:43 pm (UTC)