osprey_archer (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
osprey_archer) wrote2019-11-20 08:29 am
osprey_archer) wrote2019-11-20 08:29 am
Wednesday Reading Meme
What I’ve Just Finished Reading
A short story by Francesca Forrest, The Boy on the Roof (the link takes you to both a written and an audio version of the story), which is somehow heavy and light all at once. There’s just enough detail to hint at a much larger story of devastating climate change, but the story itself is a quiet, contemplative moment, a brief meeting between a traveler and the titular boy on the roof, who has been married to the clouds in the hope that he’ll bring rain.
Chad Sell’s The Cardboard Kingdom, a graphic novel about a neighborhood where a bunch of kids play a series of loosely interconnected fantasy games. I loved the concept for this one, but I thought it could have benefited from more focus: there are sixteen (!) main characters in this fairly svelte book, so by the time that all the characters had been introduced, the book was basically over. I would have liked more space to get to know them.
Alternatively, this is a concept that could have made a good series: the character introductions could have been spaced out more, and there would have been more time to get to know each character, too.
What I’m Reading Now
I am beginning to suspect that I was correct when I thought William Dean Howells’ A Foregone Conclusion would deal with a love triangle, and I am VERY SAD about it because one of the characters is a Catholic priest which pretty much ensures he’s getting an unhappy ending out of this.
But, on the other hand, he’s already pretty unhappy, because he doesn’t like being a priest and really isn’t very well-suited for it (and also Venice in 1861 was apparently a terrible place to be a priest, because according to Howells the populace hated the priests and saw them as spies for the Austrian empire). He has just explained how he came to be a priest in the first place: when he was a little boy he liked to make puppets and pretend to put on Masses and his relatives interpreted this, understandably but totally incorrectly, as an interest in priesthood rather than an interest in making puppets.
I JUST WANT THEM ALL THE BE HAPPY and I have horrible presentiments that none of them are going to be happy at all. How can Howells work this out?
I’ve also been reading Marie Brennan’s Turning Darkness into Light, which is slower going than the Lady Trent series - although I should keep in mind that I found the first Lady Trent book somewhat slow going, too; the fifth book had, well, five books of momentum behind it. So I should modify my expectations a bit here, perhaps.
Our heroine is Audrey, Lady Trent’s granddaughter, who has been hired to translate a set of Draconean tablets that seem to contain an origin story. She is joined in her quest by Cora, the ward of the dimwitted but voraciously greedy antiquities hunter who discovered the tablets, and Kudshayn, a Draconean scholar, by which I mean both a scholar of ancient Draconean but also a Draconean himself.
There is one scene where Cora asks intrusive questions about Kudshayn’s family life, and afterward Audrey has a talk with Cora wherein Audrey realizes that she’s never asked about Cora’s family and decides that this means that ~she’s the one who was rude~, when really… no? Why on earth would it be rude for Audrey not to ask prying personal questions about Cora’s family that Cora might not want to answer?
Or possibly I’ve been mortally offending all my coworkers by not demanding that they spill their tragic backstories. Hmm.
What I Plan to Read Next
I really ought to read the 2019 Newbery Award winner, Merci Suarez Changes Gears, before the end of the year.
But let’s be really, I’m probably going to read Thanhha Lai’s Butterfly Yellow next, instead.
A short story by Francesca Forrest, The Boy on the Roof (the link takes you to both a written and an audio version of the story), which is somehow heavy and light all at once. There’s just enough detail to hint at a much larger story of devastating climate change, but the story itself is a quiet, contemplative moment, a brief meeting between a traveler and the titular boy on the roof, who has been married to the clouds in the hope that he’ll bring rain.
Chad Sell’s The Cardboard Kingdom, a graphic novel about a neighborhood where a bunch of kids play a series of loosely interconnected fantasy games. I loved the concept for this one, but I thought it could have benefited from more focus: there are sixteen (!) main characters in this fairly svelte book, so by the time that all the characters had been introduced, the book was basically over. I would have liked more space to get to know them.
Alternatively, this is a concept that could have made a good series: the character introductions could have been spaced out more, and there would have been more time to get to know each character, too.
What I’m Reading Now
I am beginning to suspect that I was correct when I thought William Dean Howells’ A Foregone Conclusion would deal with a love triangle, and I am VERY SAD about it because one of the characters is a Catholic priest which pretty much ensures he’s getting an unhappy ending out of this.
But, on the other hand, he’s already pretty unhappy, because he doesn’t like being a priest and really isn’t very well-suited for it (and also Venice in 1861 was apparently a terrible place to be a priest, because according to Howells the populace hated the priests and saw them as spies for the Austrian empire). He has just explained how he came to be a priest in the first place: when he was a little boy he liked to make puppets and pretend to put on Masses and his relatives interpreted this, understandably but totally incorrectly, as an interest in priesthood rather than an interest in making puppets.
I JUST WANT THEM ALL THE BE HAPPY and I have horrible presentiments that none of them are going to be happy at all. How can Howells work this out?
I’ve also been reading Marie Brennan’s Turning Darkness into Light, which is slower going than the Lady Trent series - although I should keep in mind that I found the first Lady Trent book somewhat slow going, too; the fifth book had, well, five books of momentum behind it. So I should modify my expectations a bit here, perhaps.
Our heroine is Audrey, Lady Trent’s granddaughter, who has been hired to translate a set of Draconean tablets that seem to contain an origin story. She is joined in her quest by Cora, the ward of the dimwitted but voraciously greedy antiquities hunter who discovered the tablets, and Kudshayn, a Draconean scholar, by which I mean both a scholar of ancient Draconean but also a Draconean himself.
There is one scene where Cora asks intrusive questions about Kudshayn’s family life, and afterward Audrey has a talk with Cora wherein Audrey realizes that she’s never asked about Cora’s family and decides that this means that ~she’s the one who was rude~, when really… no? Why on earth would it be rude for Audrey not to ask prying personal questions about Cora’s family that Cora might not want to answer?
Or possibly I’ve been mortally offending all my coworkers by not demanding that they spill their tragic backstories. Hmm.
What I Plan to Read Next
I really ought to read the 2019 Newbery Award winner, Merci Suarez Changes Gears, before the end of the year.
But let’s be really, I’m probably going to read Thanhha Lai’s Butterfly Yellow next, instead.
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It's good that Marie Brennan uses "Draconean" as her adjective, because "Draconian" would be not-so-good.
And also ... Thank you!
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That is tragic.
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Now I'm hoping this book ends with the priest leaving the priesthood and becoming a puppeteer.
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Ugh, how DARE you not pry into the personal lives of people you spend 40 (?) hours a week with in a professional setting? You're totally denying your narrator the chance for some much-needed exposition!
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It was a totally weird moment in the book, though. Especially given that right afterward, Cora that she DOESN'T want to talk about her family, so clearly Audrey was doing nothing wrong even by the somewhat peculiar scale of "She didn't telepathically divine that Cora wanted to talk about her family! How rude!" Because... Cora doesn't.
I'm pretty sure the book is trying to present Cora as autistic (it's set in ~1910-era fantasyland so it doesn't use the word, but still) and it's trying to do a thing where she does something that seems rude and then the other characters realize that she really didn't mean it that way and THEY were rude for reacting so badly... but that only works if the characters do in fact react really badly. If Audrey had run after Cora screaming "HOW DARE YOU ASK KUDSHAYN THOSE RUDE PRYING QUESTIONS, YOU MONSTER?" or something. But in fact Audrey's reaction is restrained and understanding from the very beginning.
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[John Mulaney voice] Now, we don't have time to unpack ALL that.