Wednesday Reading Meme on Tuesday
Dec. 29th, 2020 09:15 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
osprey_archerI have a bunch of New Year related posts to deal with over the next few days, so I’m going to get this week’s Wednesday Reading Meme out of the way today, even though it is but a Tuesday.
What I’ve Just Finished Reading
I finished up my Christmas reading with Mary Kelly’s The Christmas Egg, a pleasantly forgettable detective novel from 1958 with enjoyable Russian elements. The Christmas egg in question is Faberge, stolen from an exiled princess who fled the Russian Revolution and had been living ever since in a squalid apartment in London with a trunk full of treasures under her bed.
I also finished Gene Stratton Porter’s Freckles, which, like many Stratton Porter books, is a trip and a half. Freckles falls madly in love with a girl he nicknames the Swamp Angel; there is one point where one of her footprints hardens in the mud and Freckles goes back later that night to kiss the footprint, which is one of the most extra things I’ve ever read and I love it so much I may steal it.
Together, Freckles and the Swamp Angel defeat the tree thieves who have come to steal timber from the Limberlost! But soon afterward Freckles is SORELY INJURED in saving the Swamp Angel from a falling tree, and although the best surgeons in the country are brought in to work on him, it seems he is going to die anyway because of DESPAIR, because he and the Swamp Angel can never marry, because Freckles is a foundling, abandoned as a baby on the steps of the orphanage, black and blue and minus his right hand. If his own mother loathed him so much she cut off his hand, how could he ever be worthy of love????
The Swamp Angel sets out to prove his mother didn’t do it! And, in the process, to find out who his mother was! And, by extremely lucky coincidence, it turns out that Freckles’ aunt and uncle are searching for him RIGHT NOW, and did I mention that the uncle is an Irish nobleman? Yes, that’s right. Freckles is of noble birth! Blue blood has flowed in his veins all along! For some reason I had expected Gene Stratton Porter to be more restrained (for shame! Any reader of Gene Stratton Porter should have known better than to expect restraint) and make Freckles merely the son of, IDK, a country doctor or some other respectable figure who is not actually a lord, but NO. We’re going full lordship here.
I am also delighted to inform you that the library has at last plugged the gap in its Mrs. Pollifax collection, so at long last I read Dorothy Gilman’s Mrs. Pollifax and the Golden Triangle. I am grudgingly - very grudgingly! - coming around on Mrs. Pollifax’s new husband Cyrus; I suppose after another book or two I will be so used to him that it will be like he’s always been there.
And finally, at long last I’ve finished M. Wylie Blanchet’s The Curve of Time, which I started *mumblecough* a while ago. In the late 1920s through the early 1930s, Blanchet and her five (!) children spent their summers exploring the coast of British Columbia in a 25-foot boat. Even after reading the whole Swallows and Amazons series, I know so little about sailing that I often found myself confused while reading this book, but the idea of these maritime summers continues to enchant me.
What I’m Reading Now
I have begun Gordon Corera’s Secret Pigeon Service: Operation Columba, Resistance and the Struggle to Liberate Europe, which I think is going to be a delicious treat. I’ve neglected World War II for a while (World War II was my first historical love) and it feels lovely to be getting back to it.
What I Plan to Read Next
I’ve been contemplating what worked best in my reading in 2020, and also what I want out of my reading life in 2021, and came to two seemingly contradictory conclusions: what worked best in 2020 was finally reading books by authors I’ve meant to read for ages (Donna Tartt, James Baldwin, Mary Renault, etc.), and what I want in 2021 is more spontaneity in my reading life.
But actually I don’t think it’s that contradictory; I’d meant to read those authors for quite some time, but the actual decision that the time was now was taken more or less on a whim. I think I need to attend more to what I want to read at this moment, and trust that the time will come for any book I really need to read.
What I’ve Just Finished Reading
I finished up my Christmas reading with Mary Kelly’s The Christmas Egg, a pleasantly forgettable detective novel from 1958 with enjoyable Russian elements. The Christmas egg in question is Faberge, stolen from an exiled princess who fled the Russian Revolution and had been living ever since in a squalid apartment in London with a trunk full of treasures under her bed.
I also finished Gene Stratton Porter’s Freckles, which, like many Stratton Porter books, is a trip and a half. Freckles falls madly in love with a girl he nicknames the Swamp Angel; there is one point where one of her footprints hardens in the mud and Freckles goes back later that night to kiss the footprint, which is one of the most extra things I’ve ever read and I love it so much I may steal it.
Together, Freckles and the Swamp Angel defeat the tree thieves who have come to steal timber from the Limberlost! But soon afterward Freckles is SORELY INJURED in saving the Swamp Angel from a falling tree, and although the best surgeons in the country are brought in to work on him, it seems he is going to die anyway because of DESPAIR, because he and the Swamp Angel can never marry, because Freckles is a foundling, abandoned as a baby on the steps of the orphanage, black and blue and minus his right hand. If his own mother loathed him so much she cut off his hand, how could he ever be worthy of love????
The Swamp Angel sets out to prove his mother didn’t do it! And, in the process, to find out who his mother was! And, by extremely lucky coincidence, it turns out that Freckles’ aunt and uncle are searching for him RIGHT NOW, and did I mention that the uncle is an Irish nobleman? Yes, that’s right. Freckles is of noble birth! Blue blood has flowed in his veins all along! For some reason I had expected Gene Stratton Porter to be more restrained (for shame! Any reader of Gene Stratton Porter should have known better than to expect restraint) and make Freckles merely the son of, IDK, a country doctor or some other respectable figure who is not actually a lord, but NO. We’re going full lordship here.
I am also delighted to inform you that the library has at last plugged the gap in its Mrs. Pollifax collection, so at long last I read Dorothy Gilman’s Mrs. Pollifax and the Golden Triangle. I am grudgingly - very grudgingly! - coming around on Mrs. Pollifax’s new husband Cyrus; I suppose after another book or two I will be so used to him that it will be like he’s always been there.
And finally, at long last I’ve finished M. Wylie Blanchet’s The Curve of Time, which I started *mumblecough* a while ago. In the late 1920s through the early 1930s, Blanchet and her five (!) children spent their summers exploring the coast of British Columbia in a 25-foot boat. Even after reading the whole Swallows and Amazons series, I know so little about sailing that I often found myself confused while reading this book, but the idea of these maritime summers continues to enchant me.
What I’m Reading Now
I have begun Gordon Corera’s Secret Pigeon Service: Operation Columba, Resistance and the Struggle to Liberate Europe, which I think is going to be a delicious treat. I’ve neglected World War II for a while (World War II was my first historical love) and it feels lovely to be getting back to it.
What I Plan to Read Next
I’ve been contemplating what worked best in my reading in 2020, and also what I want out of my reading life in 2021, and came to two seemingly contradictory conclusions: what worked best in 2020 was finally reading books by authors I’ve meant to read for ages (Donna Tartt, James Baldwin, Mary Renault, etc.), and what I want in 2021 is more spontaneity in my reading life.
But actually I don’t think it’s that contradictory; I’d meant to read those authors for quite some time, but the actual decision that the time was now was taken more or less on a whim. I think I need to attend more to what I want to read at this moment, and trust that the time will come for any book I really need to read.
no subject
Date: 2020-12-29 04:48 pm (UTC)(The latest media I actually enjoyed that did similar stuff: the book Oliver Twist, which has the cojones to have Oliver be illegitimate and cast out by bad people, and the movie The Man who Laughs, where the hero longs to know he has honorable origins for the first half of the movie, and then finds out about those origins and runs away from them as fast as he possibly can.)
no subject
Date: 2020-12-29 08:38 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-12-30 10:26 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-12-30 02:02 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-12-30 05:26 pm (UTC)But that does sound about right, because when I did read Freckles, I was a bit baffled as to how that counted as a sequel.