Wednesday Reading Meme
Nov. 6th, 2019 07:01 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
osprey_archerWhat I’ve Finished Reading
Vivien Alcock’s The Mysterious Mr. Ross, which is delightfully peculiar. Our heroine, Felicity (Fliss for short, which I loved) lives in the rundown seaside guest house that her mother runs. One day, she saves a stranger from the dangerous tides - but he’s injured in the process, and ends up recuperating in the guest house, where questions gather around him because he’s lost his luggage and his identification - everything but his name, Albert Ross. Which sounds like albatross…
What strikes me as oddest about Alcock’s books, I think, is the fact that she doesn’t seem to feel any compulsion to solve the mysteries she sets up: we never do learn where Albert Ross comes from, or if (as Felicity half-wants to believe) he’s an albatross transformed into human form. In another book, I might find this frustrating, but it really works for Alcock: it gives the story a sense of mystery and magic (even though, in this case, there may not be any magic at all), and in any case the important question is not “Who is Mr. Ross?” but “is he dangerous?” - and this question does get answered: he isn’t.
And I finished George Orwell’s Homage to Catalonia, which has really driven home to me how little I know about the Spanish Civil War, despite having taken a Spanish film class that could have been titled “Sex and Civil War: The Art of Spanish Cinema.” (Sometimes at the same time, as in the joint Spanish-Mexican production The Devil’s Backbone.) But I do know enough to know that Franco won in the end, which makes Orwell’s hope that the Spanish socialists might prevail painfully touching. But even though the war was still raging as he wrote, he already knew that the possibility of genuine socialist revolution had been squashed - and by the USSR, at that.
And also Booth Tarkington’s Seventeen: A Tale of Youth and Summer Time and the Baxter Family Especially William, which I found delightful in the main: the book gently pokes fun at young love (our hero, seventeen-year-old William, falls for a girl who is visiting down the street), which offers fertile ground both in the raptures of the young lovers and the irritation of the people around them who are forced to contend with their silliness.
I particularly like William’s little sister, ten-year-old Jane, who wreaks havoc with his love life, occasionally unintentionally but most of the time definitely intentionally. She acts not so much out of malice as sheer childish love of pranks, although of course William, enrapt in the throes in young love, can only see it as an attempt to spoil all his happiness for life.
What I’m Reading Now
It was only a matter of time before I checked to see if Gutenberg had any William Heyliger books, and indeed, they had one that I haven’t read before! You’re on the Air! is about a young man pursuing his dream to have a career in radio.
What I Plan to Read Next
I’ve stocked a bunch of e-books for my trip. Up next… perhaps William Dean Howells’ A Foregone Conclusion?
Vivien Alcock’s The Mysterious Mr. Ross, which is delightfully peculiar. Our heroine, Felicity (Fliss for short, which I loved) lives in the rundown seaside guest house that her mother runs. One day, she saves a stranger from the dangerous tides - but he’s injured in the process, and ends up recuperating in the guest house, where questions gather around him because he’s lost his luggage and his identification - everything but his name, Albert Ross. Which sounds like albatross…
What strikes me as oddest about Alcock’s books, I think, is the fact that she doesn’t seem to feel any compulsion to solve the mysteries she sets up: we never do learn where Albert Ross comes from, or if (as Felicity half-wants to believe) he’s an albatross transformed into human form. In another book, I might find this frustrating, but it really works for Alcock: it gives the story a sense of mystery and magic (even though, in this case, there may not be any magic at all), and in any case the important question is not “Who is Mr. Ross?” but “is he dangerous?” - and this question does get answered: he isn’t.
And I finished George Orwell’s Homage to Catalonia, which has really driven home to me how little I know about the Spanish Civil War, despite having taken a Spanish film class that could have been titled “Sex and Civil War: The Art of Spanish Cinema.” (Sometimes at the same time, as in the joint Spanish-Mexican production The Devil’s Backbone.) But I do know enough to know that Franco won in the end, which makes Orwell’s hope that the Spanish socialists might prevail painfully touching. But even though the war was still raging as he wrote, he already knew that the possibility of genuine socialist revolution had been squashed - and by the USSR, at that.
And also Booth Tarkington’s Seventeen: A Tale of Youth and Summer Time and the Baxter Family Especially William, which I found delightful in the main: the book gently pokes fun at young love (our hero, seventeen-year-old William, falls for a girl who is visiting down the street), which offers fertile ground both in the raptures of the young lovers and the irritation of the people around them who are forced to contend with their silliness.
I particularly like William’s little sister, ten-year-old Jane, who wreaks havoc with his love life, occasionally unintentionally but most of the time definitely intentionally. She acts not so much out of malice as sheer childish love of pranks, although of course William, enrapt in the throes in young love, can only see it as an attempt to spoil all his happiness for life.
What I’m Reading Now
It was only a matter of time before I checked to see if Gutenberg had any William Heyliger books, and indeed, they had one that I haven’t read before! You’re on the Air! is about a young man pursuing his dream to have a career in radio.
What I Plan to Read Next
I’ve stocked a bunch of e-books for my trip. Up next… perhaps William Dean Howells’ A Foregone Conclusion?
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Date: 2019-11-06 12:23 pm (UTC)