Wednesday Reading Meme

[osprey_archer]

What I’ve Just Finished Reading

G. Neri’s Tru & Nelle: A Christmas Story, which I feel would have been more Christmassy if Neri hadn’t made Tru & Nelle responsible for the arrest of the Ezells. In real life, the Ezells were at the center of Harper Lee’s father’s only criminal case, a Black father and son who were charged with murder and hanged. Why put it at the center of a Christmas story when the incident really took place years before the story is set? And why make our heroes responsible for the arrest that led to this miscarriage of justice?

It occurred to me as I was reading the Tru & Nelle books that I’ve never actually read a Truman Capote book (yes, I know) and LO, it turned out that the library has his essay A Christmas Memory in adorably illustrated book form! Capote lovingly describes the fruitcake-making that figures so heavily in Tru & Nelle: A Christmas Story: pecans hulled with a “cheery crunch, scraps of miniature thunder sound as the shells collapse and the golden mound of sweet oily ivory meat mounts in the milk-glass bowl”; the carefully hoarded money spent on dried fruits and spices and whisky (although the whisky purveyor offers to trade the whisky in return for a fruitcake, instead), the cakes compounded before a black stove that “glows like a lighted pumpkin.”

L. M. Montgomery’s Christmas with Anne, and Other Holiday Stories is a collection of Christmas stories Montgomery wrote for magazines, plus a couple of excerpts from the Anne books: the Christmas where Anne gets her longed-for dress with puffed sleeves, and also the time Anne takes sarcastic cross-patch Katherine Brooke home to Green Gables for Christmas and Katherine blossoms out like a desert flower in the rain now that she’s finally received some affection. I LOVE this dynamic. I may steal it for a story of my own. How many chapters of sarcastic crosspatchery do you think I could get away with before readers would despair of the romance ever getting off the ground?

One non-Christmas book snuck in: Christopher Bakken’s Honey, Olives, Octopus: Adventures at the Greek Table, which was perhaps the wrong book to read in 2020, as it unfailingly made me yearn to go to Greece and eat everything in sight immediately, which is, unfortunately, impossible right now.

What I’m Reading Now

Christine Hallett’s Containing Trauma: Nursing Work in the First World War has a fairly dry introduction, but once you get into actual material about nursing work it’s absorbing, although inevitably sometimes gruesome. Who knew that tissue infected with gas gangrene makes a crackling noise?

Also, who knew that gas gangrene had nothing to do with the various poison gasses used in World War I? It’s caused by anaerobic bacteria in enclosed wounds without much oxygen, caused by bits of dirty cloth etc. driven deep into the wound by projectiles. This was common knowledge among medical staff in the war, but I, a confused layperson, always vaguely assumed it was something to do with mustard gas.

What I Plan to Read Next

In the long run I’d like to read more Truman Capote. In the short run, however, I’m rushing onward with Christmas books. I’ve got L. Frank Baum’s The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus and Kate Milford’s Greenglass House next on my stack.

Comments

[troisoiseaux]

Why put it at the center of a Christmas story when the incident really took place years before the story is set? And why make our heroes responsible for the arrest that led to this miscarriage of justice?

Wtf????????

(I've read, and really liked, Truman Capote's In Cold Blood, but given the subject matter ymmv, and holiday reading it is not.)

[asakiyume]

I did know that about gas gangrene! Because of my morbid interest in illnesses.

I could take lots of sarcastic crosspatchery so long as I had sympathy for the person in some way (i.e., some of their barbs have some validity) or if they're funny in their lack of self-knowledge, like Eustace's in Voyage of the Dawn Treader--although there still has to be something that makes you want to care about them. Like it sounds as if with Katherine, you feel sorry for the life she's had up until now, and so you're rooting for her to blossom, as opposed to just wanting her offscreen. (I remember a fic of yours that I think featured her? It was someone who had blossomed, and it was in the Anne of Green Gables world--I think it was her? Obviously I remember no details, but I remember really liking it. She was yearning about letters, correspondence?)

[osprey_archer]

Yes, that's the Katherine fic! Katherine PINES and YEARNS for Anne and ultimately decides never to write to her because she knows that if she doesn't cut Anne off entirely she will pine and yearn hopelessly forever. (Really this is an explanation for why Katherine never shows up later in the series, although really the reason is that Montgomery actually wrote those in-series-chronology-later books before the book where Katherine shows up.)

Obviously in the Sarcastic Crosspatch: Origfic version, not!Katherine's love would eventually be requited.

[kore]

Grass Harp is a really good Capote novel. I didn't care much for Breakfast at Tiffany's.

[rachelmanija]

Who knew that tissue infected with gas gangrene makes a crackling noise?

Also, who knew that gas gangrene had nothing to do with the various poison gasses used in World War I?

I did! I knew both those things!

Why I am unpopular at parties.

[osprey_archer]

An excellent way to escape cocktail party conversation. "Did you know that gas gangrene makes a crackling sound in the affected tissues?" you say, eyes shining. "And it emits a thin mousy smell, too!" Suddenly other party goers chug their wine and flee for a refill.

[osprey_archer]

I've heard the novel Breakfast at Tiffany's is really different from the movie, too. Which is not necessarily a dealbreaker? But it's not at the top of my list.

[osprey_archer]

It's just... well, it's a choice.

In Cold Blood seems to be Capote's big one, and to a lesser extent Breakfast at Tiffany's? But neither of those are really Christmas-y, so they would definitely be reads for later.

[lokifan]

ne takes sarcastic cross-patch Katherine Brooke home to Green Gables for Christmas and Katherine blossoms out like a desert flower in the rain now that she’s finally received some affection. I LOVE this dynamic.

I LOVE IT TOO PLEASE WRITE THIS. Mary from The Secret Garden and Eustace from Dawn Treader have been two of my most beloved characters since I was a kid <3

[osprey_archer]

I have begun writing it! ...Unfortunately it is a Christmas story so it may not see the light of day until next Christmas, but at least it is coming into existence.