Wednesday Reading Meme

[osprey_archer]

What I’ve Just Finished Reading

I finished Gerald Durrell’s Birds, Beasts, and Relatives, his second memoir about his childhood with his eccentric family on Corfu. He just comes up with the most beautiful metaphors, like this description of fallen olive leaves, “as curled and crisp as brandy-snaps.”

He’s also so good at painting character in just a few swift pen strokes. So many characters are lots of fun, but I think my very favorite is Gerry’s pretentious, sex-obsessed brother Larry. Upon learning that snails are hermaphroditic, and when two snails mate the female half of one snail mates with the male half of the other and vice-versa, Larry cries, “I think that’s unfair. All those damned slimy things wandering around seducing each other like mad all over the bushes, and having the pleasures of both sensations. Why couldn’t such a gift be given to the human race? That’s what I want to know.”

I also finished Dorothy Gilman’s Mrs. Pollifax on the China Station, which was a fun ride (it reminded me of the bit in one of Ruth Reichl’s memoirs where she visited China right after it began to open up for tourists), but the ending was definitely “I’m run out of word count! How do I wrap this up in two thousand words or less?” (As I recall, this is not the first Mrs. Pollifax book that has run into this problem, so obviously I’m not reading these books for the endings.)

I also liked this piece of advice, which Mrs. Pollifax offers to an unhappy tour member: “There are no happy endings, Jenny, there are only happy people.”

What I’m Reading Now

Jeanine Basinger’s The Movie Musical! (The exclamation point is part of the title.) I’ve loved Basinger’s movie writing ever since I read Silent Stars back in high school, which kicked off a valiant but largely unsuccessful quest to fall in love with silent movies (she just makes them sound so fun!); fortunately, movie musicals are a genre that I already know I enjoy, so mostly what this book has done is give me MANY more titles to check out, like Ernst Lubitsch’s The Merry Widow. I also went through a Lubitsch stage back in high school, but somehow I missed that one.

What I Plan to Read Next

Guess whose hold on Caroline Fraser’s Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder arrived at the library? MINE!

Comments

[troisoiseaux]

Guess whose hold on Caroline Fraser’s Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder arrived at the library? MINE!

I can't wait to hear what you think!

[osprey_archer]

I have high hopes for this book!

[oracne]

Ooh, silent movies.

[osprey_archer]

If you like silent films you would probably love Basinger's book; it's packed full of all sorts of interesting information, and lively and fun to read, too.

[copperfyre]

I do really enjoy Gerald Durrell's books, his childhood memoirs are some of my go-to comfort reads. He was such a delightful way with words and descriptions (of people, animals, places...).

[osprey_archer]

I've started the third book in his Corfu trilogy and I'm already thinking about whether I want to delve into his other books after I'm done, but he wrote MANY, so I'm not sure where to start. Do you have any other favorites among his works?

[copperfyre]

Ooh, now, that's an interesting question. A lot of his other books are about going to various countries as a white naturalist and collecting animals for zoos in the 1950s and 1960s and I haven't reread them as an adult since I actually started thinking about those things, but I'm going out on a limb and assuming that they haven't aged well at all in terms of racism and colonialism. So definite warnings for that, and also probably for animal treatment (though on the latter point Durrell did actually have a very modern approach to zoos right from the beginning, in terms of promoting animal comfort and conservation. The Jersey Zoo is a flagship zoo for a reason.).

So... there's that as a major caveat. I remember rereading A Zoo In My Luggage, The Bafut Beagles, and Golden Bats and Pink Pigeons over and over as a kid. On a more directly non-fictional note, The Stationary Ark is less anecdotes and more musings on what a zoo should be trying to do, but I acknowledge that's probably less general interest.

[osprey_archer]

Thank you! The library seems to have a random scattering of Gerald Durrell's books which do not include any of those, but interlibrary loan is always an option...

[evelyn_b]

Aww, Larry. <3

I hope you enjoy Prairie Fires!

[osprey_archer]

Larry is my "I would not want to live with you but I loooooove reading about you" fave.

I've started Prairie Fires, and I've already learned that there was a Little House anime! (Laura, the Prairie Girl.)

[evelyn_b]

Have you read any of Larry's books? The Alexandria Quartet is incredibly annoying and ultimately very good (imo). I don't know if it's worth reading just to deepen your appreciation of how much you don't want to live with Larry, but . . .

[osprey_archer]

I read your posts about the Alexandria Quartet! The posts were v. entertaining, but tbh that may be as close to Larry Durrell's writing as I want to get, I feel like I may just prefer him when he is filtered through someone else, either his brother or you.

[evelyn_b]

Hah, fair enough!