Wednesday Reading Meme
May. 22nd, 2019 10:04 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
osprey_archerWhat I’ve Just Finished Reading
No one has published Elizabeth Wein’s latest book Firebird in the United States, butlittlerhymes kindly sent me a copy so I got to read it anyway, which is good because otherwise I might have expired from yearning because the book is about Soviet! women! fighter pilots! in World War II! and thus basically everything that I have ever wanted in a novel.
I liked the book, but I have definitely decided that this is the truthful report that Nastia thinks out in her head but definitely 100% does not write down, because even if you set aside the Romanov stuff (although you can’t set aside the Romanov stuff; that alone could get her shot), she aided and abetted a deserter in a time of war. Nastia! No! Don’t confess that!! No army on earth is going to approve, and the Soviet armed forces are going to disapprove so hard that she’ll be lucky if she’s the only one who gets shot over it!
So yeah. The written report totally says something like “I landed behind enemy lines in hopes of rescuing my gallant comrade, but she was EXTREMELY DEAD so I couldn’t.” No mention of aiding said gallant comrade in desertion. Definitely no “and also she was the Princess Anastasia who escaped execution and became a Soviet flying instructor!” WHY, NASTIA.
I tend to think “Anastasia escaped!” narratives are overdone, but I actually rather liked this one, because “Anastasia escaped and became a hard-bitten, chain-smoking Soviet flying instructor” is such an unexpected angle. I mean, why not, I guess!
I also read Penelope Farmer’s The Summer Birds, which I felt ambivalent toward until the end, which I thought tied the book together well although in a slightly macabre fashion: it turns out that the mysterious boy who has taught the schoolchildren how to fly is actually the last of a magical species of bird, and he’s hoping to lead them away to an island to turn them into more birds of his kind so the species will survive.
Now that I’ve written it out like that, it sounds like the kind of ending I’d usually hate. It worked for me here because it fit with the tone of the book, which is far more melancholy than you might expect from a book about magical flying adventures, and also because it does fit with the boy’s characterization so far: you can feel that he did it out of desperation, not malice, and even though you’re glad the children aren’t going to be Pied Pipered away, at the same time it’s tragic that he failed and now his species will die out.
Then I got sick for a few days and needed something light to read, and Mary Stewart came to my rescue with Wildfire at Midnight. It’s not top-tier Mary Stewart, but even second-tier Mary Stewart is solidly satisfying, and just what I needed to cheer the dreary day.
What I’m Reading Now
I haven’t started anything new since I finished Wildfire at Midnight, because I’ve been indulging in schadenfreude over the internet meltdown about the last episode of Game of Thrones. People have been banging on for years about how this show is so “dark” and “morally complicated” and “realistic” and then it ended with the bad characters dead and most of the good characters alive and repenting of their sins like its a freaking Cecil B. DeMille epic. Did the showrunners trip and fall on a moral?
What I Plan to Read Next
I’m not sure! I’ve been looking longingly at my other Mary Stewart books, but there’s something to be said for parcelling them out over time as needed.
No one has published Elizabeth Wein’s latest book Firebird in the United States, but
littlerhymes kindly sent me a copy so I got to read it anyway, which is good because otherwise I might have expired from yearning because the book is about Soviet! women! fighter pilots! in World War II! and thus basically everything that I have ever wanted in a novel.I liked the book, but I have definitely decided that this is the truthful report that Nastia thinks out in her head but definitely 100% does not write down, because even if you set aside the Romanov stuff (although you can’t set aside the Romanov stuff; that alone could get her shot), she aided and abetted a deserter in a time of war. Nastia! No! Don’t confess that!! No army on earth is going to approve, and the Soviet armed forces are going to disapprove so hard that she’ll be lucky if she’s the only one who gets shot over it!
So yeah. The written report totally says something like “I landed behind enemy lines in hopes of rescuing my gallant comrade, but she was EXTREMELY DEAD so I couldn’t.” No mention of aiding said gallant comrade in desertion. Definitely no “and also she was the Princess Anastasia who escaped execution and became a Soviet flying instructor!” WHY, NASTIA.
I tend to think “Anastasia escaped!” narratives are overdone, but I actually rather liked this one, because “Anastasia escaped and became a hard-bitten, chain-smoking Soviet flying instructor” is such an unexpected angle. I mean, why not, I guess!
I also read Penelope Farmer’s The Summer Birds, which I felt ambivalent toward until the end, which I thought tied the book together well although in a slightly macabre fashion: it turns out that the mysterious boy who has taught the schoolchildren how to fly is actually the last of a magical species of bird, and he’s hoping to lead them away to an island to turn them into more birds of his kind so the species will survive.
Now that I’ve written it out like that, it sounds like the kind of ending I’d usually hate. It worked for me here because it fit with the tone of the book, which is far more melancholy than you might expect from a book about magical flying adventures, and also because it does fit with the boy’s characterization so far: you can feel that he did it out of desperation, not malice, and even though you’re glad the children aren’t going to be Pied Pipered away, at the same time it’s tragic that he failed and now his species will die out.
Then I got sick for a few days and needed something light to read, and Mary Stewart came to my rescue with Wildfire at Midnight. It’s not top-tier Mary Stewart, but even second-tier Mary Stewart is solidly satisfying, and just what I needed to cheer the dreary day.
What I’m Reading Now
I haven’t started anything new since I finished Wildfire at Midnight, because I’ve been indulging in schadenfreude over the internet meltdown about the last episode of Game of Thrones. People have been banging on for years about how this show is so “dark” and “morally complicated” and “realistic” and then it ended with the bad characters dead and most of the good characters alive and repenting of their sins like its a freaking Cecil B. DeMille epic. Did the showrunners trip and fall on a moral?
What I Plan to Read Next
I’m not sure! I’ve been looking longingly at my other Mary Stewart books, but there’s something to be said for parcelling them out over time as needed.
no subject
Date: 2019-05-24 04:48 pm (UTC)I'm happy for the Stark girls and I hope they figure out how to train seagulls and stay in touch. John and Arya, too. Surely they can set up some kind of seabird-raven relay system?
no subject
Date: 2019-05-24 09:15 pm (UTC)Surely after everything the Stark girls have been through, training a few seagulls to act like carrier pigeons will be a piece of cake. Or maybe Arya will come back from her sea adventures every few years to see how things are going in the North? Then she and Sansa can send a messenger dog (I'm seeing a kind of St. Bernard here, only with a message in a flask around its neck rather than whisky) to Jon and he can come hang out for a while or something, IDK.
no subject
Date: 2019-05-24 10:12 pm (UTC)I'd love to see the Stark Family Reunion in ten or twenty years.
no subject
Date: 2019-05-24 10:55 pm (UTC)