osprey_archer (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
osprey_archer) wrote2020-04-15 09:03 am
osprey_archer) wrote2020-04-15 09:03 am
Wednesday Reading Meme
What I’ve Just Finished Reading
William Dean Howells’ Suburban Sketches, which is a collection of essays about his life in a suburb of Boston in the 1870s. On the whole I enjoyed it less than his fiction, but there was one chapter when Howells starts talking about how some future chronicler is going to read this hoping for salacious tidbits about the nineteenth century Boston theater and YES Howells you have CAUGHT me I am ABSOLUTELY reading this for salacious tidbits about nineteenth century Boston theater, PLEASE TELL ME MORE about all the cross-dressing.
I also finished St. Therese of Lisieux’s The Story of a Soul; I got sort of bogged down once it moved from childhood memoir to spiritual reflection. Some of St. Therese’s insights about practicing forbearance in the face of the small irritations is very obviously applicable to the social isolation life (nuns: practicing social isolation before it was cool?), but nonetheless it took me a while to wade through it.
And I finished Sarah Moss’s Ghost Wall, which is beautifully written, but I felt it ended a little too abruptly, and I thought there ought to be at least a little foreshadowing that the professor was the sort of person who would say “Oh yeah, let’s tie up your minor daughter and walk her across the moors and play-act that she’s one of the human sacrifices who became the bog people.”
Mind, I absolutely buy that Silvie’s dad would come up with that horrible idea. It just seemed odd that the professor not only went along with it, but continued to go along with it after Silvie’s dad actualfax cut her with a knife, which takes it considerably beyond playacting and into a realm where there might be some legal liability. At least have him nod along with Silvie’s dad’s male chauvinistic pronouncements earlier in the story, or something?
What I’m Reading Now
Back in the saddle with Richard Rubin’s Back Over There: One American Time-Traveler, 100 Years Since the Great War, 500 Miles of Battle-Scarred French Countryside, and Too Many Trenches, Shells, Legends, and Ghosts to Count, which is really driving home how little I know about World War I - about military history in general, actually, I don’t think there’s any war where I could reliably give the names and dates of the major battles, let along outline their military importance.
What I Plan to Read Next
Mary Norton’s Bed-knob and Broomstick! Possibly after a suitable time has elapsed since I’ve seen the movie, so I’m not comparing the two directly.
William Dean Howells’ Suburban Sketches, which is a collection of essays about his life in a suburb of Boston in the 1870s. On the whole I enjoyed it less than his fiction, but there was one chapter when Howells starts talking about how some future chronicler is going to read this hoping for salacious tidbits about the nineteenth century Boston theater and YES Howells you have CAUGHT me I am ABSOLUTELY reading this for salacious tidbits about nineteenth century Boston theater, PLEASE TELL ME MORE about all the cross-dressing.
I also finished St. Therese of Lisieux’s The Story of a Soul; I got sort of bogged down once it moved from childhood memoir to spiritual reflection. Some of St. Therese’s insights about practicing forbearance in the face of the small irritations is very obviously applicable to the social isolation life (nuns: practicing social isolation before it was cool?), but nonetheless it took me a while to wade through it.
And I finished Sarah Moss’s Ghost Wall, which is beautifully written, but I felt it ended a little too abruptly, and I thought there ought to be at least a little foreshadowing that the professor was the sort of person who would say “Oh yeah, let’s tie up your minor daughter and walk her across the moors and play-act that she’s one of the human sacrifices who became the bog people.”
Mind, I absolutely buy that Silvie’s dad would come up with that horrible idea. It just seemed odd that the professor not only went along with it, but continued to go along with it after Silvie’s dad actualfax cut her with a knife, which takes it considerably beyond playacting and into a realm where there might be some legal liability. At least have him nod along with Silvie’s dad’s male chauvinistic pronouncements earlier in the story, or something?
What I’m Reading Now
Back in the saddle with Richard Rubin’s Back Over There: One American Time-Traveler, 100 Years Since the Great War, 500 Miles of Battle-Scarred French Countryside, and Too Many Trenches, Shells, Legends, and Ghosts to Count, which is really driving home how little I know about World War I - about military history in general, actually, I don’t think there’s any war where I could reliably give the names and dates of the major battles, let along outline their military importance.
What I Plan to Read Next
Mary Norton’s Bed-knob and Broomstick! Possibly after a suitable time has elapsed since I’ve seen the movie, so I’m not comparing the two directly.
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I'm blanking on the specific details, but I thought I remembered him... basically doing so? At the very least, he never objected to the division of labor where the guys got to go off hunting and the women did basically everything else. Admittedly, it's a pretty big jump from "assumption that cooking is A Lady Job" to "let's human sacrifice a 16-year-old!", but ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
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Silvie's dad is clearly drawn to the Iron Age (among other reasons) because he sees it as a time when Manly Men made Manly Decisions and everyone else did what they're told, and I would have liked more of a sense that the professor is also attracted to that aspect of the time period, even if he doesn't vibe on it as hard as Silvie's dad. It would have bridged the gap between "cooking is a Lady Job" and "let's pretend to human sacrifice a 16-year-old!" for me.
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I remember reading about some culture that had a shared open-space living situation, maybe like a longhouse: when people turned their face to the wall, it was firm custom to let them be, not try to talk to them, not interact with them. That stance signaled, I am alone now; I am in private. Many of us are lucky enough right now to have rooms we can retreat to, but not all of us are. And yet everyone needs down time, alone time.
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Gennadyyou https://twitter.com/nahhhlina/status/1250515121333510144no subject
I actually did think about trying to work more proverbs in, but I had the feeling that I would somehow manage to fuck up the usage (when exactly does someone say "Don't look now, but someone is stealing your potatoes"?) ... and there's already a lot going on in that book anyway.
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//opens mouth
//closes mouth
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stolen potatoesan iffy thing.I think in Polar Star, the detective Arkady Renko keeps quoting these little Marx and Lenin proverb sayings, but I don't know how accurate that writer is.
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(Looks as though they've got the first 6 so far.)
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Haha, oh no! D:
Mind, I absolutely buy that Silvie’s dad would come up with that horrible idea. It just seemed odd that the professor not only went along with it, but continued to go along with it after Silvie’s dad actualfax cut her with a knife
Silvie's dad sounds SO AWFUL that I feel I should read this book even though I have many things to read.
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