Wednesday Reading Meme
Oct. 23rd, 2019 09:06 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
osprey_archerWhat I’ve Just Finished Reading
These days I rarely pick up books that I haven’t heard of, but I was so charmed by the cover of Dylan Meconis’s graphic novel Queen of the Sea that I couldn’t resist it, and it turned out to be delightful. It has nuns who live on a small rocky island and care for shipwrecked sailors, a queen deposed by her vengeful sister, a loyal courtier who kneels to his liege-lady even though it could mean death if he is lost, and also beautiful illustrations. What more could you want from a book? Meditations on the meaning of rulership? A selkie story retelling? It has that too. (No actual selkies, though. Did not want to mislead you on this important point.)\
I also read Elena Dmitrievna Polenova’s Why the Bear Has No Tail and Other Russian Folk Tales, which Polenova’s friend Netta Peacock prepared for publication in England after Polenova’s death in 1898… and then for some reason it was not published. (It was too early for the Revolution or even World War I to interfere, so it’s not clear what happened.) But then Peacock’s descendents found the manuscript, and it was published in 2014.
The story of this circuitous publication stuck in my mind far more than the stories - there’s something about the cooperation across continents and also centuries that got me.
And I zoomed through Rainbow Rowell’s Pumpkinheads, which was adorable, both in its cute love story and also in the sheer autumnal exuberance of its illustrations: the story is set at the Pumpkin Patch, which is not so much a pumpkin patch as a rustic autumn theme park where Deja and Josiah have worked for the last three years.
What I’m Reading Now
William Dean Howells mentioned Oliver Goldsmith’s The Vicar of Wakefield as one of his favorite books as a child, so of course I had to give it a try. I’ve been enjoying it so far, insofar as one enjoys a book about a man suffering every ill that flesh is heir to, although during my own childhood I would not have understood it at all. Of course, I’m much farther away from it in time than Howells was, which may account for it.
I’ve also been reading Guy R. Hasegawa’s Mending Broken Soldiers: The Union and Confederate Programs to Supply Artificial Limbs, which I was hoping would have a bit more about the experience of wearing a Civil War era prosthesis, but as the title suggests it really does focus mostly on the artificial limb supply programs.
The Confederate program was called ARMS, which is especially funny because the Confederate program did not, in fact, supply any artificial arms. All the artificial limb firms before the war were based in the North, and while Confederate manufacturers managed to make decent legs, they never made acceptable arms, partly because they’re more mechanically complicated than legs but also because by the time the Confederates got around to having a limb program (1864) the Confederacy were already running out of just about everything.
What I Plan to Read Next
My ebook hold on Always and Forever, Lara Jean finally came in! Here’s hoping for a couple of slow days at the library: I want to devour the book.
These days I rarely pick up books that I haven’t heard of, but I was so charmed by the cover of Dylan Meconis’s graphic novel Queen of the Sea that I couldn’t resist it, and it turned out to be delightful. It has nuns who live on a small rocky island and care for shipwrecked sailors, a queen deposed by her vengeful sister, a loyal courtier who kneels to his liege-lady even though it could mean death if he is lost, and also beautiful illustrations. What more could you want from a book? Meditations on the meaning of rulership? A selkie story retelling? It has that too. (No actual selkies, though. Did not want to mislead you on this important point.)\
I also read Elena Dmitrievna Polenova’s Why the Bear Has No Tail and Other Russian Folk Tales, which Polenova’s friend Netta Peacock prepared for publication in England after Polenova’s death in 1898… and then for some reason it was not published. (It was too early for the Revolution or even World War I to interfere, so it’s not clear what happened.) But then Peacock’s descendents found the manuscript, and it was published in 2014.
The story of this circuitous publication stuck in my mind far more than the stories - there’s something about the cooperation across continents and also centuries that got me.
And I zoomed through Rainbow Rowell’s Pumpkinheads, which was adorable, both in its cute love story and also in the sheer autumnal exuberance of its illustrations: the story is set at the Pumpkin Patch, which is not so much a pumpkin patch as a rustic autumn theme park where Deja and Josiah have worked for the last three years.
What I’m Reading Now
William Dean Howells mentioned Oliver Goldsmith’s The Vicar of Wakefield as one of his favorite books as a child, so of course I had to give it a try. I’ve been enjoying it so far, insofar as one enjoys a book about a man suffering every ill that flesh is heir to, although during my own childhood I would not have understood it at all. Of course, I’m much farther away from it in time than Howells was, which may account for it.
I’ve also been reading Guy R. Hasegawa’s Mending Broken Soldiers: The Union and Confederate Programs to Supply Artificial Limbs, which I was hoping would have a bit more about the experience of wearing a Civil War era prosthesis, but as the title suggests it really does focus mostly on the artificial limb supply programs.
The Confederate program was called ARMS, which is especially funny because the Confederate program did not, in fact, supply any artificial arms. All the artificial limb firms before the war were based in the North, and while Confederate manufacturers managed to make decent legs, they never made acceptable arms, partly because they’re more mechanically complicated than legs but also because by the time the Confederates got around to having a limb program (1864) the Confederacy were already running out of just about everything.
What I Plan to Read Next
My ebook hold on Always and Forever, Lara Jean finally came in! Here’s hoping for a couple of slow days at the library: I want to devour the book.
no subject
Date: 2019-10-23 09:19 pm (UTC)I hope you get a slow day just right for reading!
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